3.
~ Ariadne was waiting for a train. The trains were always running late these days and it had started to rain.
"Here, Madam. Why don't you wait in the car? Mr. Hays wouldn't want you to catch cold." Miles said as he held an umbrella over her head.
"Thank you, Miles. I think I'll live." she whispered as she saw in the distance a white puff coming from a steam engine.
The others at the station, mostly women waiting on the wounded men to get there, stood as well. Everyone anxious to see their sons and sweethearts again.
What would she say to Fredrick after almost a year? They had parted on such business like terms.
Te war department hadn't told her how wounded he was. Could he even walk? Where would they go from here? If he wasn't wounded badly, would they go back to London? Would they live as husband and wife? Or would she still be the live in governess?
The train arrived, and with it, men who wouldn't let the women in the cars to see their loved ones.
Instead, ever sensible, they were made to cue up and give names.
What spilled out of that train car was like hell had opened up.
Ariadne waited in line as the passenger cars were opened and the men helped off.
The smell hit her first. The smell of something gone sour and rotten. The stench of something that had become infected and all the ladies put their hands to their noses.
The men who could still walk carefully stepped off the cars and peered around the train station. Faces badly burned and some were even blind.
"The gas, madam." Miles whispered to her.
She had to watch as the stewards delivered less able bodied men to their women in the wheelchairs. One had no legs and his face was horribly burned.
"Tom?" cried a young girl as her husband was almost catatonic. "Tom, it's Jane! Tom, can you hear me?"
Finally, Ariadne arrived at her turn.
"Mrs. Fredrick Hays." she said to the man with the clip board.
"Captain Hays will need a wheelchair. He's not well, ma'am." the man said.
"Just get him here, I have two footmen who can take him home waiting by the car." Ariadne said curtly as Miles went to retrieve the two teenage boys who had replaced their normal footmen. Two brothers who they learned were killed just a few weeks ago.
Ariadne thought she would be ready to see Fredrick come off the train. He might need a cane perhaps, but she expected him to look the same as when he left.
She was not expecting the broken thing they put in the wheelchair instead.
Fredrick's body was swollen and bloated. His legs hung uselessly to the side. As if they hadn't been any use to him in months.
"What happened to him?" Ariadne whispered as she looked at his burned face and his eyes milky and glazed over.
"Gas, ma'am." the man with the clip board whispered. "It blinded him, and the doctors said it caused some kidney failure."
Ariadne looked at puffy face of the once handsome man. His whole body was bloated and his hands were so full of fluid, they had turned red.
"He's not much longer for this world, I'm sorry." the man whispered.
~ It took the slow and careful efforts of the two young men, Miles and Ariadne to help Fredrick into the car.
"Harold?" Fredrick whimpered as Ariadne tried to sooth him on the drive back home.
"He's fine, Fredrick." she told him as every jostle along the dirt road seemed to hurt him.
She went to brush back his hair and Fredrick leaned closer to her.
"Don't let him see me like this. Please, Ariadne, don't let my boy see me like this." he said.
~ It was quickly decided that Fredrick would be regulated to the servant's basement. The stairs were impossible and he could be looked after better this way.
The cook brought out a gurney like low table that was used for bringing large orders of groceries in, and Fredrick was pushed down to the housekeepers sitting room.
Maggie and the other house maids quickly put a bed in the little room and Ariadne went to get Lady Percy.
"We have to drain some of this fluid, Missus." Maggie said as she looked over Fredrick's broken body.
Lady Percy agreed.
"The surgeon is too busy just now to be bothered with it. My father was afflicted with this kind of swelling." the older woman said. "Maggie, I shall rely on you to help. Get a knife from the kitchen and some matches as well. Get your sewing kit, clean bandages and some of that good strong liquor we saved in he back store room."
"A bucket, madam?" Maggie asked worriedly.
"Yes, the largest one you have." Lady Percy agreed.
Ariadne had no idea what they were about to do as they prepared for some kind of field surgery. She did as she was told and prepared clean towels around his body.
Fredrick had pockets of fluid around his body, but the worst was in his lags and and his arms.
"Lady Percy, what are you doing?" Ariadne whispered as she watched the older woman run a match over a clean kitchen knife and then start to cut open Fredrick's leg.
She expected her husband to cry out, but the large cut didn't seem to bother him at all.
Instead, it was Ariadne who almost wretched at the sight of what flowed out of his swollen leg.
"We leave the fluid in his legs, it will become infected and he'll die." Lady Percy said. "It's also painful to be this swollen." she added as they watched the pink watery substance flow into the bucket like an open sink.
Maggie held the leg and allowed the wound to drain in the bucket like what was happening was completely normal.
Already, Fredrick's leg was shrinking and the drain was slowing.
"Try and get all of it. That's it." Lady Percy said as the two women gently pressed around the leg and forced more pink water out.
"Maggie, make sure Captain Hays had plenty of water to drink. He'll be needing to rehydrate." Lady Percy instructed.
"Won't that just make him puffy again?" Ariadne whispered.
"He's going to get the fluid right back, but we can't let all of it build in his body like this. It will stop the heart." Lady Percy said as Maggie cleaned and dried the wound that had stopped flowing.
"Wait a while before you stitch him up." Lady Percy said. "Now lets do the other one."
It took hours to drain the legs and arms, and Maggie fearlessly wrapped up Fredrick's arms and legs till they looked like normal size body parts again.
"There will be some seepage." Lady Percy instructed as Maggie dumped the bucket outside. "But he'll live a few more weeks unless infection sets in."
"Maybe we should have just let him pass away." Ariadne whispered. "He's blind and can't do for himself."
"He needs to say goodby to his son and his wife." Lady Percy said darkly. "he won't regret this time with Harold. When he's rested, the boy can see him. Let Maggie clean him up a little better and Harold can see that his father is a hero."
Ariadne stood back and looked over the older woman. She was calm and collected. She never seemed to panic and knew precisely what to do. It had been the same when Olivia was born.
"Lady Percy, I think you missed your calling. You shouldn't have been lady of a house but a surgeon!" she said.
"Stop being so ridiculous." Lady Percy snapped. "Now tell cook to prepare Fredrick a stiff drink to help with the pain. Go on."
~ Eames awoke to the sounds of cannon fire and shouting. He opened his eyes to see the grimy field hospital crowded with wounded.
It smelled here. Smelled of decay and too many bodies.
He wanted to sit up; get some fresh air when a horrible pain made him wince and lay back down.
He looked at his right leg.
'Please let it still be there.' he thought.
He took a deep breath, and chanced a glance down.
He leg was still there. Bandaged with a dirty looking wrap that needed to be changed.
He let out a sigh as he felt his leg was hot and the skin too tight.
'Infection. So that's how I'll go.' he thought as he tried again to sit up. 'My leg will rot off and I'll die of blood poisoning or something.'
He let out a mirthless laugh and tried to stand.
Still unsteady on his feet, he hobbled out of the infirmary and to get some fresh air.
"Don't wander off too far, mate." an orderly called back. "Surgeon's going to take your leg next. Before the infection sets in."
Eames pretended he didn't hear. He looked up at the sky and took out his side arm.
The chamber of the gun was loaded and he pulled back the hammer, ready to fire.
He looked back up at the clear blue sky again, and was thankful it was nearly over.

so, i have not been getting a lot of feedback for this story and would love to hear if I'm writing a story you guys want to keep reading. I know my readers are hardcore A&A and A&E is not their fav, but let me know if anyone likes this story.

Leah