Authorial forgiveness is begged for artistic liberties taken.
Chapter I: Nurse
She raised her hands at the oncoming blow. "Clear off, you stupid cow!" the soldier cried, his voice corded with a fear she couldn't even begin to comprehend. "Clear off! You hear?" A chorus of agreement rose from the other beds, and she bolted.
Eleven weeks in, and things had yet to grow easier. Elle had assumed her role as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment would see her mopping sweaty brows, reading poetry to wounded men, offering comfort and calm in a world of chaos. She had even been prepared to change bedpans and clean up surgery floors - she had steeled herself for those less-than-pleasant jobs, hoping to outweigh the gore with the balm. But she had now been a volunteer for nearly three months, and though her time in England, at a recovery hospital in Sussex, had been successful, life on the Italian front was proving to be vastly more taxing than she had ever dreamt.
"Andersen?"
Oh, ye gods. "Matron." Elle snapped her spine to a straight line, fixing her eyes on the red cross of a nearby tent. "Yes, ma'am?"
Matron Agatha Barnett, she of steely Welsh gaze and sturdy bearing, looked down at the young London girl who had yet to impress anyone. Matron Agatha Barnett preferred being impressed. "Did I hear a ruckus coming from Recovery Ward D? Is that not your jurisdiction for this week?"
As Elle stammered out an explanation, the older woman sighed. She was not wholly without sympathy, but the girl had been under her charge for nearly two weeks with little sign of improvement. Patients either found her too cloying or too chatty; the other VAD girls complained that she focused too much on how the men were feeling emotionally, and was far too "moony" to actually make beds properly or roll bandages tightly enough. Nurses found her odd; a little daydreamy, still enraptured with romantic notions like a child, one who'd read far too many novels and penny-dreadfuls. To this end, Barnett had met with Principal Matron Clarke just last Thursday to discuss what should be done about Andersen: despite her inadequacies, Elle was an eager thing with some fairly capable medical training, and that enthusiasm, her matron felt, could and (indeed) should be channelled into something useful. But the Principal Matron has simply ordered that the girl be assigned to Ward D, populated by some of the more cantankerous patients, who had recently returned from a skirmish near Tramonti, several miles to the south, alongside some Canadian forces. The men, for officers, were abrasive and wildly upset at the losses they had suffered, and the Principal Matron had a difficult time keeping both nurses and aides in rotation.
"Perhaps it will toughen her up, eh?" Clarke said with a smile that didn't reach her tired eyes, which were staunchly avoiding looking down at the black-and-white photograph of a nephew she hadn't heard from in weeks, not since the news from Tunisia. "There'll be some iron in her, somewhere, I suppose."
Barnett was doubtful, but even she could understand that a semi-capable aide was better than the prospect of a strained rota. As the Italian campaign progressed through the autumn, she knew Elle's medical training, however scant, would come to be of increasing necessity. The losses from Operation Avalanche just days before had been dismaying enough, and the continued battles and skirmishes along German blockades and posts throughout the countryside were resulting in a rapidly growing volume of incoming patients. Over four thousand men from Salerno alone were being transported and distributed amongst the various mobile hospitals available. Already, Barnett had seen far too much, lost far too many men, and they were only three days out from the official end of the operation. The Allied invasion of the Italian peninsula had been a geographic success, but a damned human tragedy, if you asked her, which no one did.
This left matrons like Agatha Barnett to make tough decisions, to weigh the stakes. The triage and surgical wards at the camp were already pushing capacity, and the recovery tents would, God willing, be full within the matter of a few days. Though Andersen was a chatterbox with very little in the way of subtlety, and despite the accusations of her exasperated colleagues, she could indeed perform basic first aid tasks and had shown herself to be more than conscientious when it came to logistics-related tasks. She had come to Italy bearing glowing reports from her superiors at the English recovery hospital, and really, how could Barnett punish the girl for having a personality? It wasn't as though there was a dismissal code for that.
That very morning, Barnett had watched Elle Andersen - twenty-six, unmarried, orphan, state education, pre-war secretarial employment, according to her file - march over to D with a determined smile on her face and good intentions in every step. It was the sort of attitude that the Matron had come to expect of her: can-do vigour complemented by repetitive failures. And now, just over two hours later, here she was, desperately trying to suppress unprofessional tears, leaning against an unopened stack of linen crates. The Matron's heart briefly clenched, her face twitching into an expression dangerously close to empathy, and then she managed to smooth it over, the sight of the girl's shining eyes doing nothing to shake her. Visibly, at least. "That Ward is your charge for the day, Andersen. You are not to leave until the end of your shift, when McTavish arrives to relieve you. Is that understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," the girl nodded. "Sorry, ma'am."
Barnett could admit this much: Elle Andersen was no complainer. Rolling her shoulders to ease her obvious tension, the girl strode back between the dun canvas flaps, not daring to look back or to her sids, focusing solely on the end of her shift and nothing else. The thing might be an ignorant little chit, dreamy and irresponsible, but damned if she wasn't bloody determined to prove everyone wrong. And there had to be something said for that.
Indeed, there was a new mettle to her step, a new grit to her lips as she furtively adjusted the waistband of her white uniform, creasing dress and mouth to a tight line. An unbreachable line. One glance downwards at Corporal Lucas, however, and the latter softened to a firm smile, observing as the newspaper in his hands rustled slightly at the return of the stupid cow. He was abruptly penitent, realizing now that the aide reminded him somewhat of his younger sister, Marie - this VAD girl had the same chestnut curls, tucked up under her cap; the same green eyes; the same gentle, quiet manner, the sort of woman who preferred books and tea to dances and film-stars. Dare he say it? Even her voice sounded like Marie's, curling into his ear, the echo of childhood games. Marie always spoke with a giggle tripping at the edge of whatever she was saying, and this girl had it, too. He could hear it as she wished him a good day, as she took the paper from his hands. How was that possible?
"Here, Corporal," she said, trading him the newspaper for a slim blue volume of poetry. "Why don't you read this while I tidy up? A bit more enjoyable than old news." It was code, he remembered, "tidying up." Something the other aides and nurses would say right before they were about to draw the curtains and conduct a humiliating sponge bath. "Tidying up" meant that it was time for the others to look away, to close their ears to the sounds of a wounded man biting back whimpers and cries of embarrassment as an inexperienced girl took on a tender task previously performed only by a mother, and even then years in the past. And yet, as this girl straightened the iron-framed screens about his bed and turned to him with kind hands and a warm cloth, removing his pyjamas so deftly and impassively, he could not help but find himself relaxing under her ministrations. She avoided the wounds on his legs, as she had been instructed; she paid careful attention to his hands, which pleased him. Corporal Lucas was only a moderately vain man, but he could not bear to see his fingernails so unkempt and rimmed with dirt.
She spoke to him intermittently, asking impersonal questions about the books on his nightstand; making observations about the weather and the general Italian temperature - these niceties all worked together to foster a safe distance between them. The world outside quietened, softening the militaristic but frenzied orderliness of the camp beyond the canvas walls of this sanctuary she was weaving just for the two of them. In the cocoon of her voice and her care, he felt as a boy again, all sleepy limbs and new-washed skin.
He heard Marie in the turning of the pages; his father's voice reading Tennyson aloud; his mother was there in the careful smoothing of the bedsheets and the tentative steps away from him, as the VAD girl prepared to move on to Bridges in the next bed over. Lucas hated to see her go, hated that he had been so awful to her, hated that whatever was festering away now in his mind, dancing to the beat of the guns he could not deafen - hated that all that had reared its ugly head in her sweet direction. He raised a clean hand, grasped hers as gently as possible. "Thank you, miss - though I'm afraid I didn't catch your name."
The girl turned, and Lucas could see now that she did not, in fact, look all that much like Marie - but that didn't matter anymore. This girl was taller, her hair a far deeper brown, nearly black; her eyes an unromantic shade of hazel. She was gangly in her movements, and her smile, when it unfurled, was less endearing than mischievous. Yet her warmed to her all over again. "Elle, sir, Elle Andersen."
The mobile hospital and the camp containing it was a veritable warren of mud and canvas, stretching across a tentative valley in the Neapolitan countryside, nestled within an unconfident cradle of a valley. Of considerable benefit was the river which snaked away several hundred yards from the main hub of the camp, providing the inhabitants with a ready source of fresh water, untainted by farm runoff here in the rural heart of southwestern Italy. As they were still relatively close to the coast, many locals here were involved in the fisheries, rather than farms, and those that did keep livestock or grow crops tended to operate in the old ways, eschewing the modern chemicals and inventions that would tend to rather muck up nearby bodies of water.
To the east lay a forest of foreboding proportions, rising up as it did on the other side of the turquoise ribbon which separated its encroaching edges from the camp. When the hospital had first been established there, General Williams had pointed out that the other side of the river might make for a more appealing location, but his advising council had argued against it, pointing out that the woods held far too much appeal for Nazi scouts. The further away the camp was situated, the more advantageous the British position, as they could set their own patrol guards to monitor and intervene prior to potential enemies having the opportunity to leave the cover of the forest, ford the river, and infiltrate the camp. Any anxieties that Williams expressed regarding the possibility of flooding was simply outweighed in the face of this grimmer arithmetic. HYDRA scouts were of additional concern - these operatives representing the science and research division of the German forces liked to keep close tabs on Allied hospitals, hoping to sabotage recoveries and gather intelligence on numbers of wounded and dead.
Setting aside the functional temerity of life on a floodplain in the Mediterranean autumn, the camp and mobile hospital of the British Eighth Army operated like a well-oiled machine, as most army camps were wont to do in the latter months of 1943, those days following the Italian invasion, and the beginning of the peninsular campaign. Losses were heavy on all sides, but most of the boys there were well-seasoned after three years of war, and the officers of the makeshift base maintained a strict code of ethics that extended down through every order, every rank, every operation. Surgeon-General Louis Belasis, alongside Matron-in-Chief Susan Musgrave, kept a firm grip on all medical procedures and staffing, and both had served in the Great War together years before, in France. Admittedly, the two had a bit of a reputation for bullying about the aides, and this was unfortunate, to be sure, but unsurprising: most of the aides were newly trained, simply inducted into service as quickly and painlessly as possible in order to ensure that the more menial hospital duties were lightened from nurses' shoulders and that their skills were thus freed up for more intensive occupations.
Elle had yet to meet either Belasis or Musgrave, but she had heard horror stories aplenty: in the VAD quarters, section three of an evening, it was the only topic of conversation that strayed from sweethearts and film-stars. "She once sent a whole contingent of girls home in tears," gossiped May, a strapping girl of nineteen with a conqueror's temperament. "Just arrived, too!"
Rebecca was from York. "Belasis' lost two of his sons already," she whispered conspiratorially from her spot by the back of the tent, where she had furtively loosened enough of an overlapping portion of the canvas to allow a sort of provisional chimney, through which the smoke from her cigarette curled away into the night air. "His third boy's somewhere north of here, I heard." Another girl knew of his daughter, who was reportedly a passionate, pacifistic bohemian living in London. On and on the whispers went, throughout the brief evening respites they enjoyed before exhaustion claimed them. The ladies of section three - a round dozen of them - traded in secrets and sighs before lights out, tossing names onto the air in the hopes of catching their owners' some good luck. Sweethearts, husbands, parents, sisters, brothers, friends - boys and men and women and girls, strewn over the world's chaotic, bloody stage, fighting and striving and bartering normalcy for a glimpse of peace.
Some of this talk left Elle out in the cold. She had no one at home, no one to write to, no one to pray for. There was the boy, of course, as she found herself thinking of him, but he somehow didn't seem to count, not there under a Mediterranean moon, lulled to uneasy sleep by the discordant lullaby of faraway guns. The boy, with his overbearing father and kind mother; the boy who had simply just always been there. The boy who, it seemed, would make the most likely candidate for a husband, if she was so swayed. And yet, and yet - she could not help but listen enviously to the adventures of May and Rebecca, Susie and Pat. They had love stories to tell, proper ones: kisses and dates and sickly sweet poems, letters from their beaus and memories to warm them on these cool autumn nights. Pat was actually married; her husband was with the Royal Air Force, and though she was just a year or two older than most of the other girls, she often took it upon herself to bestow various pearls of marital wisdom upon a rapt audience.
Infrequently, Elle thought about contacting the boy; reaching out across the great expanse of space that divided them during wartime. She did wonder what state he was in, since he so frequently fluctuated emotionally. Such moods were often difficult for her to keep pace with, try as she might to soothe him when he grew overwrought; her calm words and a healthy dose of logic doing absolutely nothing to ease his panic, his frustration, his misery, or even, on occasion, his manic joy. Her own anger tended to be swift and brief, all flashing eyes and sharp tongue, whereas his could rage for days, an endless storm.
And yet, and yet…
There would always be an "and yet" where it concerned the boy. She had no recourse: he had been shakily hers and she vaguely his for as long as they both could remember, and everyone they knew and held dear had always assumed marriage was just around the corner, always just around the corner.
And yet, and yet…
The finger on her left hand was bare, and he was nowhere near this evening - in fact, he had not been for a long while. She had no such stories to tell the other girls, no billets-doux to pull out and blush over, no true kisses to recall - unless you counted the way his lips had pressed against hers the day they parted, cold and hard and tinged with regret or relief, she had not been able to tell.
So Elle Andersen curled up on her cot in that well-oiled machine of a hospital camp, one night in September, lonely and defeated and endlessly tired, just as she had done each night for two weeks now. Back in Sussex, she had not felt so useless, so uncoordinated. Lucas' earlier outburst and his subsequent show of contrition had levelled her somewhat, shattering the tentative inroads she had made over the past few days. Matron had praised her on Thursday, in fact, for her quick work in the storeroom; and just yesterday, Rebecca had offered her a smoke. Adjusting to this new camp would take time, she understood, but the cresting waves of self-assurance, followed by deep, pulling troughs of despair - those she had not anticipated. Elle had left good friends behind in Sussex at the hospice, and patients who had responded so well to her care, focused as she was on the minutiae, on creature comforts. Here, she met bloody men for the first time, men with the wounds of war still gaping and raw. Here, she met nurses with no time for niceties, for gentle hands and small jokes. Here, even tucked into this valley, with the river running by and the forest standing lush beyond - here, she was, for the first time, at war.
There was a purpose to her work here that was far clearer than it had been in England, and as the month drew on, many more within the Italian camp began to recognize it. Colonel Lucas, the following day, wrote up a formal commendation to Principal Matron Clarke, which was eventually passed on to Susan Musgrave herself. The letter praised Elle's natural propensity for comfort and explaining how she had transformed the fraught situation between them in the matter of a few moments. There were still complaints, of course; many patients disliked her close, tender care, finding her far too familiar and presumptuous. "I don't need to be read to," grumbled one officer; another disparaged her quiet voice and gentle hands - "She just needs to get on with it."
For her part, Barnett simply kept reassigning the girl over the next week, as complaints bloomed from each ward. Elle got on well with the others and she was no shirker, possessing an eager mind. These were all valuable qualities in a volunteer aide, who could be called upon to perform an ample variety of diverse tasks. Whether or not some of the men found her too sweet or too "much" mattered little in the grand scheme of things. There was a war on, after all, and capable hands could not be turned away. Never. What a waste that would be.
And so Elle Andersen was routinely moved around to various posts throughout the camp. For every commendation she received, it seemed, two complaints often followed, though they were minor and tended to slip by unregistered or unresolved. "According to Captain Crawley, she treated him like a 'puling" - and here Mrs. Pat Hemming, Matron Barnett's personal (if unofficial) assistant, squinted with suspicion at the word - "infant,' ma'am. And Major Falsworth found her too m-mawkish by far. He said she even offered to bring him a bouquet of wildflowers, ma'am, which he found highly irregular."
Barnett pinched the bridge of her nose; she didn't have time for this. The battle to the west had seen greater losses than had been anticipated, and the hospital was preparing for the arrival of the wounded and the untenable swelling of the populace, within just a few hours. The last thing she needed was another barrage of anti-Andersen sentiment. God, but wouldn't it just be easier to send the chit home at this point? She shuffled a few papers around the surface of her desk, avoiding Hemming's curious gaze. Crafting the illusion of productivity was a special gift of Barnett's, and she tended to deploy it at the most apropos of moments. "Thank you, Hemming. Leave the reports here and please assure the Captain and the Major that their complaints are being handled."
Brimming with self-importance, the girl scurried off, leaving Barnett alone once again, in what she understood to typically be only a temporary solitude, to think. In her opinion, Crawley did tend to behave like a puling infant, and as for the Major, well - a few flowers in hospital never hurt anyone. It irked her no end that she was going to consciously have to break this girl down; complaints from commissioned officers needed to be handled far more firmly than those from enlisted men, as the former were more likely to follow up on those complaints and pursue some sort of consequence for the object of their displeasure. The Principal Matron had made this point as clear as mud the night before: "The girl will have to go, if I hear of one more complaint," Clarke had crisply explained during the weekly debriefing, taking Barnett aside after hearing a few nurses gossiping about Colonel Lucas' outburst last week.. "It's absolutely ridiculous that she's been permitted to get away with this much foolishness for this long."
Even Matron-in-Chief Musgrave had gotten involved, though she tried to infuse her interjection with more feigned sympathy than Clarke was capable of mustering. "I understand the conundrum, matron, I really do. The girl is an eager enough worker, and that cannot be undervalued. However, the consternation of the officers is simply unacceptable and must be rectified." Steel-hued curls bobbing, Musgrave had waggled a condescending finger right in Barnett's face for her last point: "One more complaint, as Matron-in-Chief has explained, and the girl will be released. With an adequate commendation, of course, enough to secure her some sort of office work to aid in the war effort. Is this understood?"
Yes, she'd said, though not without a little venom embedded in her respectful tone.
Agatha Barnett was a patriot, make no mistake, and she accorded her military superiors the dutiful obedience she had been long been conditioned to display, but the whole charade of this particular situation grieved her no end. First and foremost, she was a bloody nurse, and that meant she fully understood the true value of what Elle was trying to accomplish. Nursing went beyond medicine, it plumbed well the depths of an innate human craving for comfort, a reliance on care and touch. It was why, for example, her own voice softened when speaking to Lieutenant Graham, a young man shattered from within by the endless screams of his dying cohort; why she always took a second, informal nightly turn about the recovery ward assigned to her contingent that week. Surgeon-General Belasis, along with Musgrave and Clarke and the whole sub-army of doctors with their syringes, their diagnoses, those manly recommendations to "hold a chin up, soldier," - they could not even begin to understand what those men needed more than pain relief. A sister's laugh, a mother's touch; jokes between friends; memories of home to fortify them in their fight against a new enemy, in a new kind of war. Clean sheets always helped, too.
Care was Barnett's primary function, and she was beginning to suspect that things were much the same for Elle. But where Barnett had sought out science and procedure, leaning into the firm embrace of structure and regulations, this girl found herself traipsing through fields in search of flowers to cheer a wounded soldier.
Which brought her back to the problem at hand: "One more complaint," Musgrave had warned. One more complaint and the girl would have to go, sent away in humiliation and disappointment, back across a war-ravaged sea. Lucas' recommendation from days before had been sent along up the chain of command, as had a few reports and notes from other officers who had, contrary to the opinions of a disgruntled few, enjoyed and benefited from Elle Andersen's tender attentions: "An affable volunteer, much appreciated and commended; her care was prompt and sensitive; a neat worker; kind; I highly valued the care provided. "
Glowing reports, dimmed only by the bitter, formalized additions of Crawley and Falsworth, and four more besides.
Agatha checked her watch. It was nearly nine o'clock - lights out for most of the officers in the recover wards as well as that of the day shift aides and nurses, but if she hurried she could catch a conversation with at least one of the men as part of her usual turndown service. She decided to head for Falsworth first, as she had had a few conversations with him in recent weeks and he seemed a decent, reasonable fellow. If either he or Crawley (though she hoped for both) could be convinced to switch sides and advocate even a smidgeon for Andersen, the girl stood a chance of staying. And Barnett - as she wrapped a sweater around her uniform and headed out into the cool night air, that absurd little ache in her right knee acting up (meaning they could expect some rain) - realized that, despite herself, despite her usual reluctance to get too chummy and kind with her underlings, she had grown to rather like this Elle Andersen, even with just a scant month under their belt together.
"Evening, Matron." Major James Falsworth was handsome, frightfully so. His looks threatened to bring out something distinctly girlish in Agatha who, at forty-three, had long since packed away any notions of romance, even (or perhaps, especially) during the throes of war. And yet, and yet - the way his green eyes twinkled by the light of his lamp; his musician's fingertips playing about the spine of a battered novel; the warmth of his crisp voice as it curled out in welcome. If she'd possessed just an ounce less self-control, she would have promptly blushed. "Is anything the matter?"
The story came out over a cup of tea. As Agatha spoke, the Major's face (abruptly contorting into a grimace at the first mention of Elle) gradually softened into something rather akin to regret. "I've not come to ask you to withdraw your complaint, sir," she finished, sitting up a tad straighter in her chair, "but only to explain about the girl. She means well, Major; she just needs some more practice."
Falsworth heaved a sigh, setting his mug down carefully on the nightstand. "To be honest, Matron, I was hoping to have a chance to do that very thing. I spoke in haste this morning." He gave her a rueful smile, gesturing to a small glass of red flowers next to the tea. "They did cheer me up, you see."
Three beds over, Captain Crawley was eavesdropping. "Not to be rude, Matron, but I quite agree. She rather grows on you. I-I should like to withdraw my complaint as well." Agreement and reassurances began to sprout from every corner of the spacious canvas tent; grown men - bandaged, wounded, weakened by a fear to which they refused to submit - changing their tune to sing the praises of one Elle Andersen, a sweet girl who "meant well."
With an uncharacteristic smile, Barnett reassured every single one of the men that any formal complaints could easily be retracted and replaced with brief commendations. After all, none of the criticisms had been overly serious in their nature, and so many of the officers were now clamouring to relate stories of how the girl had helped them, how calm she was, how endearing. Barnett promised to return in the morning with her assistant, with the intention of recording those testimonies.
But for now, she left them, those disgruntled men so swiftly soothed by the presence of one odd young volunteer without a trace of medical acuity beyond basic first aid. Stranger things, indeed.
General opinion of Elle about the camp had turned significantly with the formal writing-up of that exultant praise in her favour from Recovery Ward B. Musgrave had summoned her one Monday morning soon after to stand before herself, Matron-in-Chief Clarke, Matron Barnett, and Surgeon-General Belasis to be first raked over the coals as a final disciplinary action for her displays of unprofessional sentimentality, and then to be (roughly) buttered up with surprisingly generous commendations. "I must confess, Andersen, I've no idea why the patients are responding so well to your care after weeks of bad reports," Musgrave admitted begrudgingly, snapping the file closed and peering at its subject with stony eyes down the length of her nose. "But the officers in question have indeed retracted their complaints and replaced them with requests for your continued care and presence on their wards."
"It is unconventional, to be sure," puffed Belasis, helping himself to another ginger biscuit, of which no offer had been extended to Elle. "We must remember, though, that these are officers. They know what they want."
Elle could not explain precisely why the men were responding in the ways that they did - why tension so thick it could be cut with a knife could dissipate with a bunch of wildflowers or a conversation about poetry or London restaurants. She was often forgetful of the most basic of tasks, and was constantly peppering her superiors with clarifying questions that made Nurse Jenkins in particular roll her eyes no end. Yes, she prided herself on being a fairly good worker, but she was by no means perfect in this regard - Rebecca, for example, had a far better record when it came to medical aid, and Susie was a veritable machine where it concerned organization and distribution of supplies. Furthermore, she didn't possess the charm or beauty of many of the other female nurses and volunteers - her hair had gone lank and she had never quite managed to master a winning smile. It was a mystery to her, but one she was grateful for. It meant she could stay. Elle strongly suspected that she had been on the cusp of a booting-out, and despite her struggles, she had found such a strong sense of purpose here, almost the hallowedness of a mission, actually, that the prospect of leaving made her feel physically ill.
As she stammered through a deferential response and found herself dismissed into the autumn air, a tiny flicker of pride sputtered to life within her. No matter if she could not quantify it; she was making a difference.
Her rounds that week involved Recovery Ward B, to which she strode with a twitching grin. Major Falsworth, in the days since the retraction of his vexation: his wit and vigour were making a rapid return, as was his general health. He had been shot while on a reconnaissance mission to the north several weeks before, after making a landing too close to a German blockade. He was the only one of the three parachuters on the team to survive - though he never told her that. She'd heard it from Jenkins, who had had it from another officer on the ward. As Elle gave him sponge baths and brought him cups of tea he had taken to telling her stories of increasing daring, resplendent with finely wrought jokes and details that even she, with her relative lack of military knowhow, understood to be ludicrously false. But he never talked about the mission.
"Good morning, sir," she said warmly upon entering the tent. Other officers were engaged in physical therapy, a few card games, or were preoccupied with polishing off their breakfasts. Ward B had been filled with patients nearly ready to return to the front; another week or two, she guessed, and the Major's bed would be empty. The notion pained her. Her fellow volunteers were lovely, even though it seemed to be taking them a while to warm up to her fully, but the clever Brummie officer made far better company, in her opinion. She felt needed by him, appreciated. And she relished it.
He smiled at the sight of her, his sharp-boned composure softening into open pleasure. "Good morning, Miss Andersen. It's lovely to see you." Ordinarily, officers would not speak so familiarly with nurses or volunteers, but there was something so winsome and easy about Elle's manner that regulations seemed to fade away when she entered the ward, and Elle, to be frank, preferred it that way, though it brought some colour to her cheeks. When he said "lovely," it sounded as though he truly meant it. But too much formality tended to make her nervous, and it was difficult at times to navigate the strict and foreign rules that governed military life. It was indeed far lovelier to be friends.
As usual, she busied herself with the essential morning tasks necessary on the wards, consulting a list posted on the far side of the tent near the nurses' station. Dunbar and Jameson needed help shaving, and some beds needed to be stripped and prepared for new patients. Simple enough.
Elle tended to hum as she worked. Parker, one of the newer officers, shuddered at the grating inaccuracy of this particular rendition of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," but as she drew closer to him and neatly set a cup of tea by his side, he felt himself sinking into her genuine smile, recalling how he and Muriel had danced to that song, once upon a time.
The hours slipped by peacefully, until Elle checked the list of tasks one last time, preparing for the end of her shift. "Oh." Eyes downcast, she turned to her friend, who bore an apologetic smile.
"I hope it's no bother," Falsworth said lowly, creasing the newspaper in his hands distractedly, avoiding her eye. "I was just told yesterday." He had been expecting the notification for some time now, actually; the wound in his arm had healed rather well, and just a few days ago he'd been capable of lifting a rather substantial crate of fresh linen into the tent, much to the flustered chagrin of a pretty nurse called Jenkins.
In truth, Falsworth was eager to return to the front. These past few weeks of recuperation had not been entirely unwelcome as a reprieve from the stress of active duty, particularly following the disaster near Cassino - but he was a soldier, through and through, sand there was a war on; bed was not the place for him these days. The girl, Andersen, had been a bit of a bright spot recently, following their awkward initial interactions, and to see her so gum at the prospect of his departure kindled a curious mixture of regret and pleasure inside him - it was a pleasant thing, after all, to be missed.
Elle's orders that day were to prepare his personal effects and then to draw the curtains about the space, affording him some privacy to dress. Afterwards, she would be required to strip his bed, once an orderly had come to escort him away to report to General Williams. She conducted the first of these tasks with a cool detachment, Falsworth noted, observing as she restacked the books on his nightstand and tugged the box of personal belongings from beneath the mattress - all in complete, though not impolite, silence. It was, he realized, how she was supposed to act: the calm demeanour adopted by many nurses and other medical staff, to whom his was just another face, another body demanding care and orders and procedures. Many soldiers found it reassuring, and he dimly recalled a time when he had, too. When he had preferred a quiet nurse who got on with her duties as though they didn't bother her in the slightest. But now, after spending time with Andersen, who hummed through her work and cracked innocent jokes and who swept onto the ward with an air of comfort and peace - now, her reticence was off-putting, and he felt guilty for leaving.
Without thought, Falsworth shot out a hand to grasp her wrist, pausing her in the motion of folding down his blankets. Elle froze, fingers trapped and hovering scandalously over his right thigh, and he flushed as he realized the potential implications of this show of familiarity, if they were seen. It may be 1943, he reminded himself, releasing her warm skin, but this was an RAMC field hospital on the Italian front, and he was damned foolish if he thought Elle would get off scot-free at the slightest whiff of impropriety with a patient under her care.
"Apologies, Andersen." He coughed; embarrassment did tend to catch in the throat. "I was just...concerned. You seem upset."
Hazel eyes, rich and welcoming, blinked at his, the questions she couldn't articulate clamouring at her tightly-pressed lips. Briefly, he wondered if she'd ever been kissed.
"I'm going to miss your stories, Major," she said finally, a wry smile dashing the frosty veneer she had composed so neatly on her face. "They were so very entertaining. I'll miss them terribly."
He smiled, shrewd enough to read between the lines, grasp at what she was really trying to say, without getting the both of them in trouble. "Well," he replied, eyes glinting, "perhaps I shall just have to write you some more."
Later, after a rousing series of "goodbyes" from his erstwhile ward-mates, Major James Falsworth fell deep into thought. She wasn't a pretty thing, Elle Andersen. He'd danced with far more beautiful women in his time, but never, ever had he felt such a warmth from them, such a care and sensitivity. She wore compassion like a fine perfume, clinging to her soul, dancing from her fingertips, and he could have happily luxuriated in her company for a hundred years.
But as he stepped out into the sunlight, back to purpose and work, back to striving for liberty and justice, her memory dimmed. Elle Andersen - sweet girl, he thought. He would recall her name, recommend her services, write a kind letter in her favour. He would tell other soldiers about the endearing aide who had laughed at his tall tales; who had brought him a sense of comfort he had not thought to ever find within the confines of the British Army. For a man so steeped in the rich rites of military propriety and regulations, it was actually absurd to realize how much he had enjoyed that unconventional care. A pot of flowers, a song out of tune, and those warm hazel eyes, misting over at the prospect of his departure - such simple things had done more for his healing than morphine and bandages alone ever could.