Pale Horse, Pale Rider

Miranda wakes up and sees Adam beside her bed. Miranda has informed her office that she’s sick, so he visits her at home. Miranda explains that a doctor visited her and suggested she may need to go to the hospital but that the doctor has not returned. Adam leaves to buy medicine that the doctor prescribed for Miranda. Earlier in the day, her landlord, Miss Hobbe, insisted that Miranda was too sick to be anywhere but in bed. Miranda is certain that she’ll die soon and thinks about places she could be other than her small apartment. As Miranda slips into a delirious fever, Adam explains to Miss Hobbe that the hospital is extremely busy and can’t send an ambulance until the next day. He promises to look after her in the meantime. He sits with Miranda and tells her that “all the shops and restaurants are closed, and the streets have been full of funerals all day and ambulances all night” (92).

Adam ensures that Miranda takes her medicine, even though she can barely swallow the pills. Miranda reflects on the sudden onset of her illness; the same time the previous evening, she and Adam were dancing together. He lights a fire in the fireplace, and the light prompts Miranda to tell him that he is “very beautiful” (94). She suggests that they talk about the futures that have been forever altered by the war. Miranda says she isn’t sure she was ever happy but enjoyed some parts of her life. Adam explains that he intended to be an electrical engineer and he plans to act on this ambition when he returns from Europe. Miranda is afraid of falling asleep and wants to keep talking. In a pique of energy, she suggests that they sing an old hymn that begins “pale horse, pale rider, done taken my lover away” (95), but Miranda begins to feel overwhelmed by pain. She turns to Adam and tells him that she’s in love with him. He tries to tell her the same, but she seems unable to listen. She falls asleep.

In a fever dream, Miranda sees Adam die and come back to life “in a perpetual cycle of death and resurrection” (96). She wakes up with a scream, and Adam comforts her before leaving to fetch her ice cream from a store outside. While he’s away, the ambulance arrives and takes Miranda to the hospital. At the hospital, Miranda slips in and out of consciousness. She’s told that Adam visited, and the nurse reads her a note from Adam, in which he promises to return. The hospital is so busy that Miranda is placed on a temporary bed in a corridor. She is beset by feverish hallucinations, filled with “tenacious remorses and despairs” (99). She tries to tell herself that “there is nothing to fear” (100) from death and discovers within herself a stubborn desire to live. She awakens intermittently from her dreams as the doctors check on her. During one moment of lucidity, Miranda learns that “the war is over” (101), but she feels alienated from the celebration. She hardly recognizes her yellowed, sickened skin color. Most doctors give up on Miranda ever recovering, but a nurse named Miss Tanner is certain that she’ll pull through. As Miranda begins to recover, Towney and Chuck visit her. She assures them that she’ll return soon, as her illness is “almost over” (103). She reads through the letters they bring her, and among them is a letter from a soldier with the terrible news that Adam “died of influenza in the camp hospital” (103). Miranda recovers and prepares to leave the hospital. She wishes Adam had “come back,” as she did. She believes that she recovered only to be with him and is devastated that he’s dead. She feels his presence with her, almost more alive than herself. She leaves the hospital and returns to a quiet, cold world where she’ll have “time for everything” (104).