Alice tried to keep herself occupied, which required very little effort on her part. She stayed up late and woke early in the morning, offering her friends as much sleep as they could steal. It became an increasingly frequent occurrence that they would be woken in the middle of the night, or asked to work past a normal 12-hour day into fourteen, sometimes sixteen hours.
It didn't bother Alice – even though she was hardily addicted to her morning coffee, the hours didn't exhaust her so much as the emotional toll of surrounding yourself with suffering. It weighed heavily on her heart to watch the men try to reign in the misery in her presence. They were stray animals; looking for a dark corner to ride out the agony or just die in peace.
It was in the middle of an afternoon that had blessed the 111th with four straight days of sunshine when Alice learned that she could no longer bear to stand idly by. She was rolling bandages – a task beloved by no one, but necessary nonetheless – while sitting in front of the main surgery tent. She wasn't too upset at having the task as it meant she could enjoy a little of the summer sunshine, and it kept her hands busy.
"Lieutenant Shaw?" a voice called from the entrance of the tent beside her.
She looked up from the rolls as a soldier exited the tent, looking sheepish. "Private… Donovan, was it?"
"Yes Ma'am – can I take you up on that offer to have a look at my shoulder? It hasn't really gotten better." He rolled it with a wince.
Alice finished the roll with a quick twist and set it on the pile. "Of course, go inside and I'll take a look." She tossed – as carefully as possible – the rolled bandages in their wide tin and slipped the lid on top. She perched it on her hip as she followed Donovan inside the tent and tucked the tin away on a shelf.
Alice had seen enough bruising in the last few months that Donovan's case didn't even make her blink, and it was some fairly severe bruising – a consequence of the percussive force of an exploding mortar. "How long has it been this color?" she asked, gently palpating the skin around the purple-green swaths of color stretching from his shoulder down his chest.
"Got pretty dark a day or so after I got here, and hasn't lightened much," the private replied.
Alice nodded – no one was getting the nutrition for injuries to heal at the proper rate. However, she was also concerned about latent damage from hauling men out of the trenches – torn ligaments, maybe? Alice ran through the very short list of available supplies in her head and came up with a big empty space where bruise treatments should have been located.
In the present decade, the only real treatments for bruises were ice, heat treatment, and compression. Alice worried a little on her lower lip. There was another option, but…
It had never seemed right – or prudent – to start supplementing available medicine with her specialized knowledge. Sure, it had made for great fun at pissing off Cable, but until that moment she had held back in using it practically. Alice had doubts – painful, pressing doubts – about affecting the timeline. If the 111th hospital was meant to run out of surgical instruments, or food, or medicine, would her supplementation send shockwaves through time?
Surely helping a bruise or two heal can't be that important, Alice reasoned with herself. Do no harm, right?
But that wasn't the harm she had traveled through time to prevent. She had come to save a soldier that hadn't even been created yet. She had defied the laws of physics to defend a single man from a single bullet, and then she would need to travel forward again to her own time. That was what was right.
It didn't feel right. It didn't feel right to surround herself with suffering and turn a blind eye. She knew that they were surrounded by natural medicines that could provide comfort. She knew that the fields were full of comfrey, plantain, and fennel. She knew that everyone could get a much heartier meal several times a day if she pointed out where to harvest dandelions and garlic. She knew all of this, but she still held back from fear.
"I understand if you're too busy, Ma'am," Private Donovan interjected in her mental dilemma with a forgiving smile. He even started to reach for his shirt, too accustomed to disappointment.
Fuck it.
Alice grabbed her fellow nurse by the arm as she came to retrieve some of the freshly-rolled bandages. "Gloria, can you cover for me for maybe twenty minutes?"
"What – why?" the other nurse spluttered as Alice didn't bother waiting for an answer.
"I'll be right back!" Alice grabbed a canvas satchel from a nail embedded in the tent-post and jogged to the edge of camp. She squinted in the sun and shielded her eyes with a hand, looking for a flash of purple in the field. Alice had seen it growing wild nearby, and has considered harvesting on more than one occasion.
What if she changed too much? Would she change the future so drastically that she didn't recognize it upon her return? Could more surviving American soldiers be a bad thing? If anything, wouldn't there just be fewer broken families back in the States?
The flowers mocked her, bobbing and laughing in the breeze. Salvation is here, they whispered, if you dare to try.
If she ever wanted to have a peaceful night's sleep again – if she ever wanted to silence the screams that haunted her – she would need to bury it in small favors. Bury the voices pleading for help, pleading for death.
She grabbed armfuls of the stuff, the fine hairs of the stems tickling her arms. She marched back to camp and dumped the huge pile on a clean cloth by a fire and filled the kettle to start the slow process of coming to a boil.
She sat next to the fire as she started pulling leaves from the long stems and placed them carefully in a glass jar. After a few minutes, Gloria popped her head out of the tent and gave her a peculiar look. Giving in to the inevitable questioning, Alice waved her over.
"So what are you doing?" Gloria asked, hands on her hips and giving Alice a very 'disappointed mom' face.
"I'm making tea." She was making a tincture, but that sounded far less casual than tea. She could play off a "tea" without too much questioning.
Gloria squinted into glass jar of leaves as Alice took the water from the fire and poured it in slowly – she didn't want it at a true boil, just hot. "Sure doesn't look like any tea I've seen before," she murmured.
"It's just to help some bruises," Alice tried to wave it off. "Comfrey is good for bruises."
Gloria glanced up at Alice's face. She looked hopeful as the skepticism faded. "Do you think there's enough for a few more cups? There's a few fellas who would really appreciate just a little more help over in Tent Four."
"Uh…" Alice hadn't been expecting that response. "Yeah. When it's done, I'll soak some towels in it so there should be plenty. It's just topical."
Gloria looked relieved. "That's wonderful, Alice – thank you so much." She placed a hand on Alice's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "Really, thank you."
Alice kept a close eye on the water as it slowly changed color. She would have much preferred to make it over the proper course of a few days (or even weeks for a particularly strong dose), but this was just something small. She was just helping a few men with some bruises.
It happened slowly.
If it had happened any faster, Alice would have realized and put a stop to it. The very next day, Alice received at least two questions like "Lieutenant Shaw, Private Donovan told me you have something for bruises?" The following week, it became "Ma'am, I know it's not quite the same, but do you have anything for bee stings?"
Alice became familiar with the tentative phrase "Miss Alice?" It had a very particular tone to it – a little hopeful, a little intimidated.
It took less than a month for Alice to develop a real reputation as the local healer. While the 111th Field Hospital wasn't the go-to for large sucking wounds – being a field hospital, after all – it was the desired destination for life's little miseries. Bug bites, rashes, a cough that won't quite quit; you want to go see 2nd Lieutenant Shaw of the 111th Field Hospital.
Alice found large portions of her spare time became dedicated to collecting, drying, and preserving the local medicinal plant life. Her fellow nurses grumbled and complained about the various plants drying from the tent-posts, but Alice's remedies helped to reduce the aura of misery that lingered around the hospital, and even curmudgeonly Joanna couldn't argue with results.
Alice also discovered a very helpful side effect of having a healing factor; she only needed about one to two hours of sleep every night to feel fully rested. It had never occurred to her as a possibility – habit had always led her to seek seven to eight hours. It left vast swaths of otherwise unused time open to her, and she used it abundantly.
But even good deeds have consequences.
July 14, 1943
Allen Fletcher was in a good mood. The sun was shining, the floor was dry, and he had found a surplus of time on his hands for the first time in over a week. He had decided to do a good deed, and pick up a smaller case from the receiving area, instead of calling for a nurse or medical aide to take care of it.
"How can I help you, son?" Doctor Fletcher asked the soldier as he approached, his face warm and just the right amount of concerned.
The soldier squirmed under his gaze, eyes flickering down to his hands. "Well, Sir… I was actually hoping to see Miss Alice?"
Allen Fletcher had been in a good mood, up until that moment. His eye twitched as he tried to keep his composure. "Son, I'm more than capable of handling whatever is bothering you."
The soldier nodded emphatically. "Oh, yes Sir! But… it's just…"
He wants Alice.
He wanted Alice with her cold, dark eyes. He wanted the witch-woman. He wanted Alice, who let men die. He preferred a nurse, who was intent on stealing all of his patients for some strange grasp at glory.
"Excuse me, Son," fletcher turned on his heel, the swift motion stirring up the mud hiding under a thin layer of sunbaked soil.
Alice Shaw is a menace.
Fletcher ripped open canvas tent flaps, startling soldiers who had been resting in relative shadow. His burning glare whipped from corner to corner, searching for the cornsilk-blonde. He didn't respond to several calls of concern in his search.
But then he heard the trill of her laughter – behind him, around the Mess. He burst from the tent with the same fury with which he had entered, following that wicked witch's call.
He pushed through a crowd of men gathered around a fire, sharing low conversation and watching a large kettle simmer gently over a controlled fire. He glanced into it briefly, not really looking with any intent, but stopped cold when he saw what was floating on the surface. Fletcher had been expecting to see chunks of meat cooking in the evening's stew, but instead saw… flowers? A cold rage filled his heart – it's that witch's work, he though.
Without stopping to think further about the action, Fletcher upended the large cookpot of sweet-smelling tea, pouring the entire contents into the fire below. A huge plume of steam shot up an out, screaming with heat and scented like mint.
"Who's responsible for this?" he roared.
None of the soldiers around the campfire answered.
"Well somebody better say something!" he bellowed, stomping his foot.
"Doctor Fletcher," came the chilly voice he had been hunting. The soldiers parted to allow the small blonde nurse to approach Fletcher and the fire. She looked sadly down at the upended cookpot and several wasted hours spread out in the soot and mud. "I hope you have a good reason for disturbing afternoon tea."
He marched up to Alice, towering a good six or eight inches over her head, and waved an accusatory finger in her face. "I know what you've been up to, Shaw – don't think I don't!"
Alice's expression was unflappable. "Well… I was tending to the replenishment of a few IVs before I was informed some soap-for-brains had ruined my tea."
He grabbed her by the arm, giving her a hardy shake. "I am the chief surgeon of this field hospital, and I will not be spoken to in such a manner by a nurse." He snarled in her face, his breath sour. "You are worth nothing – I can replace you within a week."
"Is that so?" Alice quirked a brow. "And for that week, do you plan on sleeping?"
Fletcher's grip loosened a hair, and his face grew uncertain. "What do you mean?"
"I mean do you enjoy getting eight hours of sleep every night?" Alice tilted her head, her expression as cold as her eyes were dark. "I ask because after you've completed a surgery – some of them truly impressive – it is the nurses who keep your patients alive in recovery. If you lost one nurse, well…" she shrugged, and Fletcher's grip tightened again. "It would be up to someone else to maintain aftercare."
Her gaze redirected to the crowd of soldiers who had grown much, much closer during their very public argument. "What about bee stings, Doctor? Are you willing to devote a half-hour to those? What about rashes? Mild burns? Stomach aches?"
Alice leaned closer, snarling into Fletcher's ear. "You may save their lives, Allen, but I make life tolerable again."
Fletcher released the nurse, stumbling back as his rage withered away. He turned away from her, seeking redemption from those lives around him he had indeed saved, and found only contempt. Only anger. Faces turned to Alice instead, seeking the nurse's healing magic.
Arnold was going through the Smithsonian's collection of War letters again. He remembered some odd phrasing had come up with occasion, and he had the nagging feeling it might be connected to this mysterious Alice Shaw.
It wasn't that the name was unfamiliar, or that her face was so hard to find in photos. It was the 107th bit that confused him. For being the origin of two Howling Commandos, Arnold had held great pride in being familiar with every member. On top of that, nurses simply hadn't been assigned like that. Sure – hospitals tended to take care of men from the regiments and divisions that were closest to their hospitals –
Arnold nearly threw the letters across the room. The hospitals!
Letters forgotten, he slid over on his wheeled desk chair to a different filing cabinet. These were very nice cabinets, mind you – temperature controlled and dust-proof, but filing cabinets all the same.
He first perused a map of Italy, running a finger through the mountains until he found his destination – Azzano. From there, he worked West until he found the three closest Field Hospitals: 96th, 130th, and 111th
More gliding across the linoleum of the basement floor, to the appropriate files for the 96th, 130th, and 111th field hospitals. In only a few moments, a series of rosters lay at his fingertips.
96th FH ANC DIV: 1st LT Petunia Pembroke, 2nd LT Dorothy Bell, 2nd LT Agnes Dover, 2nd LT Samantha Turner
Arnold tossed the 96th back on his desk.
130th FH ANC DIV: Cpt. Mary Williams, 1st LT Diana Patterson, 2nd LT Jessica Smith, 2nd LT Sarah Irving
The 130th joined the 96th.
111th FH ANC DIV: 1st LT Gloria Potter, 2nd LT Joanna Quill, 2nd LT Ingrid Hill, 2nd LT Alice Shaw
Arnold stared.
2nd LT Alice Shaw
He laughed.
Found you.
A/N: Here we are! I do have to apologize for how slowly chapters are coming out, but it's been a struggle to figure out when/how to introduce characters in a way that feels natural and flows well with the plot. I hope you all continue to bear with me – next chapter Alice is going to meet up with a familiar face!
HOLY COW I REALLY HAVEN'T UPDATED IN TWO MONTHS?
I AM SO SORRY
Many thanks to my reviewers: AnonumousX (guest) and LadyScarlettDixon !
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