Bastogne lay under a blanket of snow and fog. Mercifully, Darcy was either in the town hall or the church attending to patients, the men from the line who came in by the dozens.

She heard they had no aid station out there and that they were running low on food and other supplies. They were sleeping huddled together in their foxholes with about an inch of snow or more falling on them every night.

Darcy was lucky if she got a moment to herself. They were spread so thin that she hardly got a chance to sit down for more than a minute at a time. She wished she'd made the most of her Sundays off when she first came to Europe. Now she was either sleeping for two hours or chasing around after the wounded.

It felt as though as soon as someone was either evacuated or returned to the line, ten or so more soldiers came in. The stretchers were a steady stream and soon Darcy dreaded the cries for nurses that came from arriving medics on their trucks.

It was a few days before Christmas and she stopped hoping for anything to change any time soon. She kept her head down instead of longing for the days when all Darcy worried about was whether she could buy comics with her baby brother.

She tried to stay distant from the men that died in front of her. A few years ago she'd never seen a dead body before, and now they were starting to pile up outside because the Germans managed to cut off the roads.

One night as she came back from her hasty dinner of stew and a stale roll, another nurse named Cindy who happened to be Darcy's only friend relayed her new information.

"We have to be sparing with the morphine," her blonde counterpart murmured in her accented English, her hair looking frizzier than ever when she took her cap off to wipe at her sweaty brow. "Bandages are low, too."

They were standing in the church together surrounded by men laying in their cots, candles lit everywhere with people moving around in the background. This was a brief respite, and Cindy gave a long sigh.

"You hear from Freddie?" Darcy asked, and Cindy gave a small smile.

Her romantic stories about the American soldier in France helped Darcy occasionally escape. She nodded at Darcy, looking relieved.

"Finally. A letter this afternoon," Cindy said, and Darcy smiled.

"Nothing dirty?"

"No," Cindy hissed as she hit Darcy's arm lightly. Her cheeks reddened and Darcy tittered.

"Too bad," she replied.

Cindy rolled her eyes, looking at Darcy's hands.

"You got a smoke?"

"Yeah," Darcy said, her hand going into the pocket of her dress, finding her pack of Lucky Strikes and her box of matches.

"Where'd you get those?" Cindy said with a gasp and widened eyes. "Got any dirty stories to tell me?"

Darcy stopped smiling and remembered a soldier giving them to her when she finished cleaning his wound. She cringed.

"I shouldn't have taken them. Now he's gonna want a date or somethin'," Darcy muttered, pushing the whole pack into Cindy's hand with her matches.

Cindy just giggled, and then looked over her shoulder and moved closer to Darcy to whisper.

"New one over there got hit by a mortar. He'll need his bandage changed soon. He's pretty out of it."

Darcy's eyes travelled to Cindy's face to behind them where a man lay with his eyes closed. In his unconscious state, he looked serene.

"What happened?"

"He lost his arm."

Darcy's heart sank. He'd be going home, then. She let out a sigh.

"Want to know what he said when he lost his arm out there?" Cindy asked, and Darcy nodded slightly. "He said, 'Give me my wristwatch'. It was on his arm on the ground."

"Jesus," Darcy hissed.

Darcy went back to the soldier whose cigarettes she took earlier and he was wide awake, smiling up at her crookedly.

"Hey there, beautiful," he whispered, and Darcy hid her smirk.

"Private, I need to see your bandage."

He held his arm out to her. "The other one said it's not my artery, thank God. Her name's Sandy? Sally?"

"Cindy," Darcy corrected, and she knelt closer, pushing back his sleeve to unpeel the bandage.

His gash was superficial and most likely he'd be back on the line tomorrow.

"If it was your artery, you'd have been dead."

"Yikes, sweetheart," the soldier muttered, and Darcy shrugged slightly.

Darcy felt his eyes on her, watching her face as she concentrated on cleaning the wound.

He hissed, reflexively pulling his arm back from her swab.

"Hey, quit wriggling."

"I'm trying not to, sweetheart," he retorted, gritting his teeth. "That shit hurts."

Darcy glanced up from her work into his eyes, and he looked sheepish.

"Pardon my language," he muttered, and Darcy looked away, wrapping a clean bandage around his forearm.

"You enjoying my smokes?" he asked, and Darcy narrowed her eyes at the space just below his hairline, avoiding his gaze.

He seemed harmless enough but she knew nurses grew close to patients all too often. That was how Cindy and Freddie happened.

"I gave them away."

"That hurts, sweetheart."

Darcy got up and made to move away from his cot but his uninjured arm caught her around the waist, pulling her toward him, her whole body flat against his with his mouth close to her throat.

"Wilkinson, leave her alone."

The soldier holding her let go, and Darcy moved off of him, looking toward the source of the gruff voice.

The soldier with his left arm cut off above the elbow was staring at them, and Darcy felt the heat rise in her cheeks, and she swallowed.

"Apologize," the soldier commanded, and Wilkinson nodded, shamefaced.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart."

Darcy believed him, but she wasn't ready to forgive that easily. "My name is Darcy."

"I'm sorry, Darcy," Wilkinson amended, "Ma'am."

Darcy pursed her lips slightly, frowning still. "Alright."

She moved away, deciding she had to talk to the other soldier sooner or later. Once Wilkinson apologised he'd looked toward the ceiling, and his gaze was glued there as Darcy moved toward him.

"Barnes, isn't it?" she murmured, and his gaze flitted to hers and then back up again.

"Yeah. Sergeant Barnes," he muttered, his voice rough. He blinked several times before looking back at her, eyes narrowing. "You're American."

Darcy nodded, finding a stool and scooting over to him.

He lay with his upper half uncovered by the sheet, his right arm through a sleeve of his uniform with his other side partially covered by another blanket. Darcy would need to look into giving him another shirt with a modified left sleeve. She could sew one in a few minutes if there was still a lull.

She did not let her eyes linger on his left side too long for his sake.

"I thought I imagined your accent," he said, and Darcy's eyes met his again. "The hell you doin' in Bastogne?"

"I came to help, like everyone else," Darcy said, and he looked puzzled.

"Where you from?" he asked.

"Philly," she said, and he smiled.

"Brooklyn."

"Really? I couldn't tell," she muttered, her hands going to his left side.

She moved the blanket away and saw a mass of a bandage around his injury, seeing congealed blood settling in every pore of what remained of his arm.

"I need to clean this," she whispered, and Barnes looked away, nodding.

She ran off to find supplies. Aware of the morphine issue, Darcy swiped the bottle of brandy from the back of a cupboard. She trailed back to Barnes and settled beside him.

He glanced at the brandy and then looked at Darcy.

"It's hooch, for the pain," she said.

She poured him a generous glass and handed it to him. She got to work, taking apart the wad of bandages as she assessed the damage.

The surgeons did a good job. Stitches were pristine, and as she cleaned the area Barnes kept his gaze straight ahead while he drank, his jaw ticking.

"They didn't give me morphine before," he grunted, as Darcy ripped at a bedsheet for new bandages. "The medic was running low."

He said no to morphine when his arm was blown off. Darcy shook her head slightly as she wrapped the bandages tightly around him.

Sitting this close to him, she could smell the dirt on his face.

He was very handsome.

"You write a letter yet to send to anyone about – about this?" Darcy asked, and Barnes shook his head, finishing his drink with a steady gulp. "Your sweetheart should know."

"Don't have one of those," he muttered.

"You married?" she asked, and he shook his head again.

That was wild to her. He was handsome and brave, and he seemed to have the good sense to not try and grab her like Wilkinson did.

"What about you?" he asked, and Darcy shook her head, laughing a little.

"No. Besides, we're not allowed," she said, meaning the nurses. They were quite stringent with those rules, especially if a nurse got pregnant, too.

She glanced at his empty glass.

"You right-handed?" she asked, and Barnes nodded. "Well, I suppose that's somethin'."

She poured him more brandy, looking him over to see if she missed anything.

His eyes began to droop, the liquor starting to work. Soon he'd be sleeping, and Darcy hoped he'd get a ride out of Bastogne as soon as possible.

He deserved some kind of peace for fighting like that, losing that much.

As she expected, he was falling asleep in seconds, and she took the glass from him, watching his steady breathing. Darcy rose a hand and pushed back his hair, fingers stroking his forehead.

"The poor dear," came Cindy's voice, and Darcy turned her head to see her friend standing behind her.

"He'll be okay."

For the first time in weeks Darcy found herself hoping for something.