clean, and tend to the healing stump that replaced his right leg. He had no other visitors since the time he arrived. No other visitors until the older lady with the ankle-length dress and tightly secured bun at the back of her head entered the room.
“His name is Seven,” she said as she approached the nurse from behind.
The startled nurse quickly turned to see Patty behind her.
“I am sorry, excuse me,” she said to the old lady.
“He’s not Gilbert, never been Gilbert, he’s been Seven all his life,” Patty said as she politely nudged the young nurse out of the way.
Patty took Seven’s left hand, leaned over the bed railing, and said in her typical loud, clear, authoritative tone, “Seven, it’s time to wake up.”
His eyes did not spring open immediately, but his eyelids began to flutter. After a repeat of the prior command, his eyelids slowly lifted to expose his bloodshot brown eyes.
Seven awoke from two weeks of darkness and the first image that appeared to him was the face of the stern, coarse, maternal figure who raised him. He briefly considered the possibility that he was dead, but he quickly determined that Gran would probably not be the first to greet him in Heaven or Hell. Her purpose was to guide and correct him through his existence on Earth.
Gran peered into the confused face of her grandson like a mother inspecting her newborn. She surveyed him from head to foot, noting that only one foot remained of the boy that she sent off to military service just two years prior. She lifted the blanket and looked at the bloodstained bandage that wrapped Seven’s stump. With the confidence of a surgeon and the authority of a commanding officer, she instructed the confused nurse to change the bandage at once. The young nurse accepted Gran’s order and began the process.