Days after arriving in England, the doctor took her to the bunker,
calling it a spaceship-probably haunted, he said,
and that it used to be a morgue during the big war.

He showered over there and he pointed to a stall and said he went
running during lunch breaks.

He said she was the first to arrive. “One’s still on leave,” he told
her, and said he had big plans for what he called his clinic, and
finally took her to the room that would be her lab. “Such a mess, I
know,” he said. “It’ll be a while before we’re open.”

He left her alone, said to look around some, so she looked through
some of the papers left over from war, maybe some belonging to her husband.
He was here, he’d been there. There were signatures and checks.

Temperatures and values, needles and tubes way past their expiration.
Junk. Half a pair of crutches. Some old dusty chairs, a wheelchair
without its seat, a boot without a heel, a shoe without its laces.
Nothing belonging to her husband.

A radio. She turned it on and the British voice spoke of a martini,
then of an unfortunate explosion. She found a spectra, an instrument
she’d learned how to use in tech school, and hadn’t used one since
then.

She went down to the doctor, who was sitting at his desk, reciting
Shakespeare, and she asked what he expected.

“Just show up for now,” he said. He smiled nice. The sun shone in and
on their faces. He said, “Just wait.” He got up, tall, and said he was
going running. She’d run from her husband, after he came back from the
war, his hands shaking like her father’s.

The doctor was already in his sneakers. She had sneakers like him.
She smiled, said ok, and went back to her lab, feeling overwhelmed
with what to do with everything, so she went back to the bunker, which
reminded her of childhood. The smell, that scent of mildew, death, her
marriage, the sound of banging, pipes, her father. She thought she
heard that old piano. There were freezers and ashes. She’d come so
far.

She took off her boots and dusted off a cot, climbing up and clearing
out the cobwebs. She lay back and closed her eyes and imagined the
dreams that filtered through there. Soldiers. Airmen, possibly the
dead ones. She was a sergeant. She lay, still, just trying to listen.