Work Text:
Many other soldiers had described the battlefield as disorienting, and Aaron Burr didn’t entirely disagree with them. But this was different. He didn’t feel disoriented in an adrenaline-induced frenzy sort of way, he felt...if anything, he felt dizzy. His head hurt. This was a physical disorientation.
***
Burr was vaguely aware of voices talking in his general vicinity, though he couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. He opened his eyes. He was in a bed.
The pain and overwhelming urge to throw up hit him at the same time as he realized he had just been unconscious. He rolled over. There was an empty bowl on the bedside table. He went to grab it--and his arm didn’t move an inch. He tried again. Still nothing. Out of time, he looked over the side of the bed.
He did not throw up, instead simply dry heaving a few times.
The next thing Burr knew, he was waking up again, still in the same bed.
He tried to say ‘Does anybody know how long I was out for?’
What came out was closer to incoherent stammering of singular detached syllables.
That got somebody’s attention, though.
“Oh my--he really is awake! Doctor Meyer! Doctor Meyer, come quickly!”
A man entered the room, looking over at Burr and promptly making an expression of utter shock upon seeing the young officer actively staring back at him.
“Good God…”
The doctor approached Burr.
“Are you--are you really conscious, Colonel? Can you hear me?”
Burr nodded weakly. He really did make an effort to say ‘Yes, what’s going on?’ But once again, all that came out was a few weak disorganized syllables.
“Can’t speak, I suppose.”
Burr shrugged.
“But he certainly seems to understand what I’m saying. This is incredible!”
***
For the next several days, whenever nobody else was in the room with him, Burr tried to force his mouth to form words and his vocal cords to function normally. It was easier than attempting to force any of the rest of his body to function normally, and he figured being able to speak was a bit more important than anything else; nodding, shaking his head, shrugging, and making faces could only communicate so much.
“Y-you...you’ve...no...n-nothing t-- ugh !”
There were many things Burr could imagine himself having difficulty doing properly, but talking was certainly not one of them.
At least you got ‘nothing’ down , he thought. Look on the bright side of things. You’ve managed to say one non-monosyllabic word.
“There’s laid…’n the very nature o-of...of carnal men...a fa--a fo--found--oh, come on !”
***
A woman entered the room, making an expression that suggested she had heard Burr’s laughable attempts at reciting his grandfather’s sermon.
“I’d say your speech is improving, myself.”
“Mrs. Prevost!” Burr slurred. “How--how...long--”
“Have I been standing outside? A few minutes. I thought it best not to interrupt your...rehearsal.”
“Ah.”
“So, how are you feeling?”
“Er. Doesn’t...hurt, b-but I can’t move , so...n--uh, not ideal .”
“I suppose that is understandable.”
***
It took several days of waiting until nobody was around to practice, but eventually Burr was able to get the hang of talking without stuttering and stammering over everything again. He still trailed off at times, but he no longer cringed at the sound of his own speech, so clearly, progress had been made.
“Now I can speak without boring everybody in the room half to death before completing a single sentence, I have a question.”
“And what might that be, Colonel?” asked Dr. Meyer.
“How long was I...out? How long ago was the battle?”
The doctor made an expression that to Burr suggested the answer was ‘a rather long time.’
“Colonel, the current date is the seventeenth of July. You...you were completely unconscious for about fifteen days’ time.”
“Oh…”
Burr wasn’t entirely sure what to say to that. Nineteen days had passed since the battle, and he had only experienced ...all of four of them. One moment he was surrounded by the sound of cannons and gunshots and hooves pounding and people shouting and the next he was waking up in bed at the Hermitage, and in that one moment, two weeks had gone by. How was one supposed to respond?
Burr almost wished he would just pass back out. It was impossible to be stressed or in shock whilst unconscious.
“I suppose I’ve missed quite a bit, then.”
***
The biggest inconvenience of whatever had happened was that while simply laying still in bed, Burr felt perfectly normal. His head hurt, sometimes, and he experienced the occasional bout of nausea and the occasional dizzy spell--which was an odd thing to experience lying down--but for the most part, he simply felt like a normal and healthy young man lying in bed.
The injury he had sustained only became apparent when he attempted to get out of bed.
His arms moved now. They remained very weak and he still had some difficulty grasping things with his hands, but the important thing was that his arms seemed to be regaining functionality. Unfortunately, his legs were slower to it.
Perhaps , Burr thought, it is like with speaking. I just have to force myself to simply do it enough times, and my body will eventually catch up .
This was easier said--or thought--than done. Burr rolled over, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and made to stand up--and instantly fell to the floor.
Perhaps not .
The door opened.
“What’s going on?” asked Mrs. Prevost, looking very mildly alarmed.
“Nothing, sorry,” responded Burr. “I was...at the risk of sounding like something of a dullard, I was trying to stand up.”
He attempted to climb back onto the bed, but to no avail, as his legs seemed determined to not work.
“Well, I suppose one can’t fault you for trying,” giggled Mrs. Prevost. “After all, you did regain the ability to speak seemingly by simply forcing yourself to. Do you need any help getting back into bed?”
“No!”
Burr tried to lift himself up again, and failed again.
“...Yes. Yes, I should appreciate that very much.”
Mrs. Prevost strode over to Burr and simply scooped him up in her arms as though he weighed nothing, then set him down on the bed. Burr sincerely hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt at that moment.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You know, you may call me Theodosia, if you like.”
“Well! You may call me Aaron, then.”
“Is
that
your first name? I don’t think I have ever heard you use it.”
“I don’t use it very often, but it is hardly fair for me to use your first name and then not let you use mine!”
“That seems logical.”
***
Still determined to recover enough to re-join the war effort, Burr took to simply trying to stand up on the bed when nobody else was in the room. That way, if he fell--which he inevitably did--he would simply fall back into bed, thus not requiring any assistance. After all, everybody else in the house had other things to do; it would be unfair to expect them to be there to help all the time.
***
“Look, watch this!”
Burr rolled over, swung his legs over the side of the bed--and stood up. His legs were shaking, but he was standing up, not leaning on or grasping at anything, and not falling down. He looked quite proud of himself.
“I can walk to the other side of the room and back to the bed before falling over, now!” he said, and promptly made to demonstrate. “At this rate, I shall be back to normal by the end of the month. Or, normal enough, at least.”
“Best of luck,” smiled Theodosia.
***
By the end of August, Burr was officially no longer bedridden. His hands worked just fine, and he could walk around the house without collapsing as well as anyone else there. To see him at a party you would hardly think that only a month ago he had been unable to speak or even move.
His voice seemed slightly different. Sometimes his sentences would simply trail off. He experienced occasional migraines, some of which seemed rather severe, and his eyes twitched perpetually from side to side. Sometimes, his legs would give way and he would simply fall over out of nowhere, but no loss of consciousness occurred and he would immediately stand back up seemingly unaffected. He called it a minor inconvenience at worst, and while one had to account for Burr’s insistent optimism, he really did seem to be doing much better. Almost normal.
Dr. Meyer smiled. “I think, Colonel, should you wish to rejoin the army, you should be able to do so.”
“Oh, absolutely! I simply refuse to sit by for the rest of the war.”
“Colonel Burr?”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Colonel Burr, this house witnessed a miracle when you awoke in July.”
Burr laughed nervously. “Well! That...that’s nice.”
“I mean it. Bigger and stronger men than yourself have died from less than what happened to you at Monmouth. When you were brought in after the battle, I thought it nigh impossible you would ever open your eyes again.”
“My goodness.”
“And yet here you are! Not only conscious, but
alive
. Functioning! Walking about and chatting up guests and fully functional, with only minimal permanent damage. God Himself wanted you to live, Colonel Burr.”
“God Himself! Well, I...erm. That is nice,” said Burr, nervously.
“God has plans for you, Colonel. Take that to heart. God has something in store for you, as He saved you from what should by all means have been certain death.”
“And here I thought I’d simply been lucky!”
“I tell you, Colonel Burr. God needs you alive for something. To do something or to witness something I cannot say, but know that your survival and recovery here was not for no reason.”
***
“Do you think he was right?” asked Theodosia.
“I don’t...know, honestly. I’ve no clue.”
“You don’t want to think he was right, do you?”
“You know me too well.”
“I could tell he was making you uncomfortable. I would have intervened, but I’m afraid that may only have made matters worse; it is better to simply wait it out, when Dr. Meyer gets going.”
“It is an uncomfortable notion, you know? That I survived that battle only because somebody needs me for something in the future. I don’t like to think it. I prefer to think I survived because ‘statistically improbable’ does not mean impossible. I was lucky, that’s all.”