#weekend workshop

I love all of these movies and TV shows for their immersive and highly textured settings, but you can really do this with any film.

Rome Outlaw King Tulip Fever The Libertine Harlots Master and Commander War and Peace Vanity Fair Emma (2019) Pride and Prejudice (2005) Poldark Jane Eyre Far From The Madding Crowd Little Women Anna Karenina The Age of Innocence The Alienist 1917 Downton Abbey Journey's End

It was painfully obvious that the walls had been painted in colours that had been deemed calming. Yellow at the top. Green at the bottom. The hospital that one of her brothers had been in when he had broken his leg when they were children had seemed to operate on a similar principle, but those walls had been light blue instead of the two tones that they had gone for here. But not even the supposedly soothing colours could do anything about the hospital smell that seemed to waft through the corridors at all times. Antiseptic mixed in with the sweet smell of oranges that were delivered from the orchard nearby. The combination was so odd that it had made her nauseous on many occasions.

As soon as he was well enough, she’d take him outside, park him outside on the green grass so he could sit in the shade of a palm tree. Maybe peel one of those oranges for him that they had a surplus of in this place. First thing he had to do was wake up however and no one seemed to know with certainty when that would happen. If it would even happen at all.

The x-rays look good, they’d tell her. Everything is as it should be.

The doctors, both the older one and the young ones, kept offering her reassurances and even showed her the pictures that she couldn’t make heads nor tails of. The nurses with their sympathetic eyes. Even the young priest that seemed to pass by her husband’s bed more times than he did the others. Always lingering near his bed whenever she came round for a visit, pretending that he was there for different reasons. He was always merely checking up, keeping tabs on the patients, but that couldn’t possibly be part of his job description. Whenever she’d pull up a chair and sit down next to the bed, she’d sometimes catch him shaking his head and frowning. That couldn’t be a good sign, could it?

Talk to him, they’d say. The sound of your voice will do him good.

So she brought him newspapers yet again, the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine was very prominently featured today, but reading to him about the horrors that happened at sea was probably not what staff had in mind when they had told her to read to him. Maybe it would be better to read from the automobile section. She’d seen something about that racecar driver that he liked and a fire truck running 15 miles in 23 minutes when she had skimmed through it that morning. He’d probably like that a lot more than if she told him that a Vanderbilt was amongst the many people that had died when the Lusitania sank.

Making her way through the largely empty corridors, she reached the room that he shared with two other people that were absent at the moment. The older man in the second bed frequently wandered the halls and the man in the first bed had been on one of the benches with his family when she had entered here. The fact that he wasn’t around was a very comforting thought, because he spent most of his time complaining about how ill he was and that he was positive that he was dying when it was clear as day that there was nothing wrong with him. How he could even say such things when there were people in the hospital who were a lot worse off than him was simply mind boggling.

Picking up a wooden chair that stood near the door, she put it on the right side of his white iron framed bed. Always on the right side. Sitting down, her eyes briefly flickered to the 3 that was painted over his bed before gingerly running her hand down his arm and checking the bandages around his head. They had stopped coming away all bloody a few days ago, but she had never seen what kind of mess lay underneath. Shaking her head, she turned the pages until she found the right section, cleared her throat and started to read.

“There’s an article in here about Teddy Tetzlaff. You remember him, right? Terrible Teddy?” He was in that short movie that he liked, The Speed Kings, with that other racecar driver Earl Cooper. “Well, he went on a 1500 mile trip to Big Pine with his Maxwell 25 and got caught in a big blizzard…”

From the corner of her eye, she could see him shift on the bed next to her, but that wasn’t unusual in and of itself. He had remained passive during the first three days, but after that he had started to move. During one visit the muscles in his leg had spasmed so violently that she had screamed and had to be led out of the room by one of the nurses. They’d taken her into one of the quieter rooms and had called her brother to pick her up, because she was in no state to continue her visit. Not after seeing that.

The car ride back to the house that her brother occupied with his wife and their two kids was still burned into her memory. That was the first time that she had broken down over this. All that time she’d kept herself together, kept pushing herself to stay strong. Not just for herself but also for the man that lay in that bed and for the life that was growing inside her that she hadn’t even had a chance to tell him about yet. Surprise.

Her poor brother had taken the brunt of everything that had been on her mind, but hadn’t told anyone about until then. Listened to her scream about how she didn’t know what to do, how to cope with this, didn’t know what he would be like if he woke up, how broken he would be. That was the main issue. What would he be like if he ever came out of this? No one had been able to give her a definitive answer. The doctors who kept going on about those damn x-rays didn’t know jackshit about what state her husband would be in if he ever came to.

He’ll be fine. But how did they know? Just keep talking to him. But did he even hear her at all?

“They were warned to turn back, but Teddy decided to keep pushing on…”

She’d been about to quote his words directly as they had been printed in the paper, something about Teddy saying that it was the worst blizzard they had ever seen in the valley, but the words suddenly started swimming in front of her eyes. Without even realising it herself, she’d dropped the newspaper from her hands, the pages sliding down her lap and scattering on the floor. A pair of bright blue eyes that she hadn’t seen open for eight days were looking right at her and not just that, but they actually seemed to be registering her presence as well.

“Hey.” Reaching up to wipe at her eyes which were already stinging with tears, she then took his hand in hers and squeezed. “Hey, handsome.”

“C-C-Ca- Cath-” He swallowed hard, his voice hoarse and sounding like his throat was lined with sandpaper. “Ca-Cat-”

His throat needed moisture. That much was clear. Turning around, she wildly reached for the basin and pitcher that were always right there in the corner, but there was no cup that she could put the water in. Her eyes were drawn to the cup that was on the cabinet on the other side of the bed and it was almost a mad dash to get there fast enough. Her hands shook as she clutched to the ceramic cup tightly and when she was back where the pitcher was, she dropped the damn thing and it rolled under the bed. Swearing under her breath, she dropped down on her knees to pick it up when she suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. Looking back up at him, he was still trying to find words which didn’t seem to be coming.

“Oh Christ.” Her eyes darted up to the crucifix that hung on the wall and said a silent prayer for using the lord’s name like that. “You had an accident.” Where he wasn’t able to find words, she had no problems and suddenly unleashed a torrent of words on him. “You… you… it was that last job of yours. Your boss told me the scaffolding wasn’t secure, the whole thing just… collapsed. You fell and hit your head. It’s… it was bad. Probably still is, but I’m not an expert. Lord, I should get the doctor. Tell them you woke up or something.”

“R-r-re-” Again he tried to search for words which weren’t coming. Squeezing his eyes shut, he took a deep breath. “Fuck.” She couldn’t help but suppress her laughter over that. Naturally that would be the word that wouldn’t cause him any problems. “Re-rel-l-ax.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Reaching for the cup, she got back to her feet and started filling it for him. “It’s just… I didn’t think you’d…”

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she held the cup to his lips and helped him drink. His right arm seemed to be fine, a bit shaky, but there was movement there as he reached for her hand to ensure that she didn’t pull the cup away before he had drained it of its contents. When she was finally allowed to pull it away, his eyes kept following her as she moved and his hand had tightened in her dress to ensure that she couldn’t get up.

“Glad you’re back.”

“C-c-co-couldn’t l-l-le-”

“I know.” He didn’t have to finish that particular sentence since it was something he regularly said. A shared joke between them. Unbeknownst to him, those words which he usually uttered without thinking about it, had turned into some kind of indication to her that maybe things weren’t as bad as she had initially thought. Maybe he would be alright. “Can I go get the doctor now?”

“N-no. S-st-stay.”

Her stop for today was a small service station with a swaybacked front porch, floorboards sagging under the combined weight of age and notoriety. This wasn't the kind of place built to stand up to much in the way of attention - but absolutely the kind of place you grew up trying to escape.

A passing breeze kicked up a little dust from the lane outside, stirring the long blades of grass hiding near the posts of the porch - pretty much the only movement in the place. Not a whole lot of change going on around here, she thought to herself. .

The steps creaked under her weight, shoes looking curiously new against the peeling paint of the stoop. Guess he's not much in the way of sending money home, either. Those walls haven't seen new paint since Wilson was in office.

The inside of the station wasn't much above the outside, half-cleaned windows sending yellowish light onto a counter, a cash register, a wall of fading and peeling announcements and papers. The proprietor came in from the back room, a balding man in his fifties whose shirt had seen better days. He looked her over and sniffed.

"Whatever you want, I don't have it."

"How do you know?"

"Been doing this long enough that it doesn't take a genius, miss," he said, dryly. "Folks like you don't stop in this part of town unless they're looking for the name above the door."

Ah, yes, the name - the hand-painted one next to the large enamel GULF sign: HB Barrow, proprietor.

"Now, Mr. Barrow," she started, but he cut her off mid-stream.

"I already told you, I don't have it. Your next story, or scoop, or whatever it is you newspaper types are calling it now. Now go on - I got a business to run."

"Mr. Barrow, if you would just lis-"

"Miss, I don't know you from Adam, and you could be fixing to write my boy out to be the saint I hoped I could raise, but every time one of you all show up, there's another headline and another story and another six weeks before I see my boy, and when he comes back, he's starry-eyed like being famous will actually put clothes on his back the way robbing banks is doing. I just want my boy back. And I figure the only way I'm getting him is when you all get tired of talking. So, if that means I've got to offend some of you by sending you back out to that car of yours without your headline, then that's just what I'm gonna do."

Henry Barrow was a man of little wealth and less education, but he'd obviously been working on this a while, and he gave the speech all the dignity of declaiming Shakespeare. She nodded, unsure what else one could do in the face of such refusal. "Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Barrow," she managed, fumbling with the clasp of her pocketbook and pulling forth the crisp two dollar bill she'd brought to sweeten the deal. It didn't seem like much, weighed against the speech he'd just given. Then she turned and left, feeling foolish.