The Pale Knight

 

Image by Devanath from Pixabay 

The Pale Knight

 

The screams woke her up. It was the young man next door, her room-mate told her. His lungs were full of fluid and needed to be punctured in order for him to breathe again.

Milutin was his name. He had been wounded months ago in one of the many wars that raged in the region. She thought she might have seen him before, in passing. A cheeky young man. He had been here longer than anyone else, her room-mate told her. Wasn’t he handsome? Her room-mate was smitten with him and so were most women here, even the nurses. Handsome and cheeky, yes, her room-mate told her, but he was crippled for life. A bomb had wreaked havoc in his stomach. Half of his organs were damaged or missing. He could no longer father children or, you-know. Still good with his hands and lips, her room-mate gushed.

Funny how everyone is obsessed with sex at hospitals.

She saw him two days later. He was thin and almost transparent.

You are the new girl, he said. I almost died the other day, he said. He had the air of someone who had been to the other side and back and now knew some secrets.

But he was still good with his hands and lips, as she soon found out. He came every evening and gave a Good Night kiss to every girl on the ward.

He brought her a book to read after that. They were both feeling better now, so they walked up and down the corridor. He told her how he used to be a weight-lifting champion before the war. He told her about the women he had loved and the children he had fathered. Whenever he spoke about a woman, he used the word love. Then he spoke about the war and his voice never changed. He was sorry he couldn’t go back. He missed the action and the fighting. A war movie was playing in his head all the time and he was the protagonist. The Enemy had no face. The Enemy was just someone to shoot at.

He had been evaluated by a psychiatrist, he said. Do you have any nightmares, the psychiatrist had asked. No, I sleep like a baby, he had said. Do you feel remorse about anything, the psychiatrist had asked. I have no idea what the psychiatrist was talking about, he told her.

She was still very young and had had a sheltered life. She had never encountered evil before, but surely it didn’t look like this?

That was in March. They saw each other one more time in May, as he was finally released from hospital. She was wearing a lot of make-up on that day. She wanted to look like a woman, not a silly little virgin girl who couldn’t tell good from evil.

You look different, he said. I am going home, he said. Then he talked about love. The love between the two of them. Let’s not talk nonsense, she said.

I am glad he has left. I never liked him, her best friend said. Well, neither did I, she replied. He might be a war criminal, for all I know.

She kept to herself the memory of the pale knight standing by her bed that day in March. The hero who had been pierced by a spear, yet survived. The man who had been to the other side and back and now had knowledge that other mortals lacked.

GloPoWriMo Day 1 - a story about the body