Free Toby's Room by Pat Barker

sleep, and she was able to relax, a little.
    A sulky fire burnt in the grate, spitting whenever a flake of snow found its way down the chimney and hit the hot coals. The room was beginning to feel cold. She pressed a log down hard on to the embers, but the flames that licked round it would take an hour or more to get a hold. The chair she was sitting in had springs sticking through the cushions. She twisted and turned, trying to get comfortable, but nothing worked, and the coat she’d wrapped round herself was still wet from the long walk through the snow. Toby was clinging to the edge of the bed, leaving plenty of space on the other side. Without undressing, or even loosening her belt, she climbed across him, and curled up in the narrow space between his spine and the wall.
    She pulled the damp sheet over her, convinced she wouldn’t sleep, not with those dreadful rattling breaths beside her, but after a while she did manage to doze off, though she was aware, all the time, of the other body beside her, kicking, turning, never still, not for a moment, always wanting more room, more room. Without waking, he rolled over towards her. She wriggled away, but he seemed to be following her, pressing in on her, until her face was only a few inches from the wall. And he was pouring out sweat. At last, she gave up, and went back to sitting in the chair, trying to persuade herself that the curtains were beginning to let in a little more light. Though the clock said it was only twenty past three: the dead of night, the hour when the grip on life weakens.
    She lit the lamp and brought it closer to his face so she could see the colour of his skin. The extent of his deterioration was frightening.While she’d been dozing, he’d turned from a doll into a clown. She put a hand on his chest and felt the huge, dark muscle of the heart labouring away in its cage of bone. Somehow or other she had to get his temperature down. She looked around for something to put water in, but all she could see was the jug by the bed. There had to be bowls somewhere. She found one in a cupboard beside the sink, and another in the bathroom across the landing. She filled them with tepid water and carried them to the marble washstand beside the bed.
    As she brought the wet flannel close to his face, he said, ‘No!’ loudly, almost shouting, and reared away from her.
    ‘We’ve got to get your temperature down.’
    He withdrew from her then, from his own body almost, straining his neck and head back as if to disassociate himself from the sweating bulk on the bed. She began to wash him down, singing little snatches of songs:
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do, I’m half crazy …
How different this body was from that other one on the slab, and yet how alike too. The glow of his wet skin in the lamplight …
All for the love of you
.
    She worked rapidly, drying and covering him again as she went, so that he wouldn’t get chilled. Nursing was the only part of her education that hadn’t been neglected, until she’d gone to the Slade and met Tonks. At the end, she soaked the flannel in cold water and laid it across his eyes. She felt the darkness on her own lids, the cold weight, like the pennies they used to put on the eyes of the dead. As soon as the thought occurred she wanted to snatch the flannel away, but no, he was making little grunts and murmurs of pleasure, so she left it there, wetting it again to cool it down whenever it warmed through.
    After that he slept for almost three hours. But then, gradually, inexorably, his temperature rose again, until he was twisting and flailing about, trying to escape from the bedclothes, even, it seemed, from his own body. And the muttering started again, but this time she couldn’t make out the words. Something about a train, was it?
    ‘You don’t need to go anywhere, Toby. Lie down.’
    He gripped her by the upper arms so tightly it was an effort not to cry out.
    ‘Elinor?’
    ‘I’m here.’
    He looked