Maura was having the most pleasant dream. Someone was caressing her. Who, she could not see - her eyes were filled with a blinding golden light. But the touch was soft and filled with love. It was not localised but all over her body on every patch of exposed skin and even underneath her clothes, warm and cool at the same time. It was odd but extremely comfortable. Maura wanted nothing more than to lay there in bliss for the rest of eternity.
But there was a strange throbbing sound in her ears. She frowned, but couldn't quite pick it out. It sounded like drums underwater. Now that her concentration had been snatched away she could also hear other things – the jingle of horse tack, hooves and wheels on stone, bootsteps, low voices.
She opened her eyes.
She was in the schoolhouse, tucked tightly into her bed. A lamp rested on a small table adjacent to her pillow, throwing a bright yellow light into her face. Maura shifted beneath the sheets and realised she was in her nightgown. She only allowed herself a second to feel embarassed about this fact as she pulled back the sheets and swung her feet to the floor, suddenly ignited with a frenzied need to find Jane.
She found a fresh, neatly folded uniform in her cubby in the back room and dressed quickly. Outside it was beginning to rain. A light sheen of mist too heavy to be fog was ghosting down from the dark sky. In the distance Maura could see tracer lights from shells and shuddered, reliving her brief experience under fire.
The streets were more active than usual. Artillery limbers rolled by in a constant line, while columns of infantry marched alongside. One or two soldiers called to Maura but she ignored them. Her stomach was clenched tight with hunger and, for a second, she considered grabbing a hasty meal at the mess tent. The thought was fleeting. Instead she tucked her chin into the high collar of her coat and began to make her way to the station.
It took longer than usual. Maura had to contend herself with walking alongside mules laden with ammunition. The poor things walked with their heads low, long ears drooping. Mud caked their flanks and the underside of their stomachs. Maura felt a sudden surging hatred of the war for causing such misery to everyone and everything. She had no treats to give the creatures, but as they halted to wait for a line of reinforcements to pass she gave the mules each a sympathetic scratch on their thin necks. They seemed to enjoy it.
Maura left her new friends when she reached the side street that would take her to the station. This street was kept reasonably clear and free-flowing so that the ambulances could drive without obstacle, so Maura made much better time and soon the tent came into view. Even from fifty metres away she could tell it was a hive of activity. The groans of the wounded were audible even over the explosions at the front, and she could hear Korsak's whiskery voice loudly directing nurses.
She ducked under the flap and came up into hell. It had been nearly two years since she'd seen the station so packed with wounded men, not since the last big skirmish at Ypres. It was chaos. Gwynn and Beth whisked by, arms full of red bandages. One of the newer nurses leaned her torso over a screaming soldier's face as Korsak struggled to pull a large piece of shrapnel from the man's upper arm. He succeeded just as Maura hurried up.
"Well, look who's awake," Korsak said, his smile twisting involuntarily into a grimace as he dropped the bloody bit of metal onto a tray.
"Where's Jane?" Maura asked breathlessly.
"Hello to you, too," he replied, barking a laugh.
"Hello. Now where's Jane?"
"She's gone," he said. Maura felt her heart plummet through her shoes. A cold panic replaced it in her chest.
"W-what?" she whispered.
Korsak looked alarmed at her reaction. Then he realised what he'd said.
"Oh god, no. She's not dead, Maura. She's just not here."
Maura's knees went weak with relief. She had to grip the nearest bed to steady herself.
"Where is she?"
"We couldn't do much for her here. I sent her to a field hospital with a transport."
"Which hospital?"
"I don't know, Maura. She was alive when she left. That's all I can tell you." Then Korsak turned and strode away to work on the next injured man.
Maura wanted to grab him, shake him, yell in his face and demand to know where Jane had gone. The strength of these feelings terrified her. With some difficulty she managed to rein herself in, swallow the lump in her throat, and go in search of her apron.
The battle kept raging well into the wettest summer and autumn of living memory. Maura had plenty of time to think about her feelings for Jane as she nursed through some of the worst skirmishes of the war. They lost Badr at the end of October when his ambulance received a direct hit from a shell near Passchendaele. There wasn't even a body to bury. By the time the Third Battle of Ypres drew to a close in early November the British troops had suffered over 300,000 casualties.
Although Maura looked long and hard she never found Jane. At first she sent out enquiring letters to local field hospitals. When that didn't work she started travelling around visiting them. She went as far as the Somme where she nursed for two weeks as she searched the surrounding area. But after two months she was forced to admit defeat and return to Armentieres.
In December Maura was given three weeks leave. She took it in England where she renewed her frantic quest to find Jane. A few days after her arrival in London she found a hospital that had treated Jane for severe abdominal wounds. Bolstered by the news that Jane had made it to England alive, Maura traced her whereabouts to a convalescent home in the countryside only for the trail to run cold again when she was told that Jane had been shipped back to America. Heartbroken, Maura spent the rest of her leave on a friend's estate just outside of London and returned to France convinced she'd never see Jane again.