8 February 1917…

A white cloud formed as I exhaled, the air turning to fog due to the cold. I shivered. The snow was up to my knees and I was starting to shake as I waited for the train with our supplies to pull into the station. Piper, Will, and I were back in Boisleux au Mont as of December of the year previous. In a way, it felt like coming home. The Battle of Somme ended in mid-November, when the British and French losses became too great to carry on fighting. I was grateful to be living at the clearing station again, where I had a bed and a workstation that were indoors.

Will shook and straightened out the newspaper he was reading. It was wrinkled, having been passed around all day as everyone read it. He finished the article just as it began to get darker with the sinking sun. The main article of focus was on President Woodrow Wilson's "Peace Without Victory" speech which had occurred weeks before. It had made it into the French newspaper, however, because it meant that the United States was still hell bent on remaining neutral for this war. Every now and then Will would show me the paper and point at a word. He, along with most of the medical staff from England, had learned to speak French when he had begun living here. Reading it was different, however, as pronunciation does not equal spelling, so I helped whenever he asked.

I frowned and made a show of glancing at my watch. The train was late. I wanted it to get here so I would be distracted from my disappointment that the U.S. still hadn't joined the war. I had thought, with my country's military assistance, the Allies could win, and this chapter of my life would be over. Wilson's speech, though making a very good point about the permanent, intolerable sacrifice of the losing party, had only solidified his stance of "desperate diplomacy" as the newspapers were calling it.

The whistle of the train drew me out of my stupor. I fought back a yawn. I was pulling double duty today. After a grueling day shift, I was heading into a dismal night shift. One of the night shift doctors had gotten sick, so those of us on the day shift were taking turns covering for him.

Will and I shuffled back and forth between the train station and the hospital, carrying the newest shipment of supplies. It was one way to warm up while still being out in the freezing temperatures. By the time we finished, the sun was long gone. I warmed my hands by the fireplace in the common area before washing up and heading into the surgery room. There were less soldiers being brought in at night, but a makeshift ambulance arrived forty-five minutes after Will and I came inside, so we were soon very busy.

The number of soldiers waiting to be treated went down with time. I had just finished suturing up a man's face when I noticed another soldier sitting in one of the waiting chairs pushed up against one of the walls. He didn't talk to anyone, but his eyes followed the movement in the room in an endless loop. His arms and legs spasmed every few seconds, bouncing up and down uncontrollably. I sighed. Shell shock.

I motioned to the nurse who had been helping me—Nurse Stoll—or Katie, as she asked me to call her. She had gotten information from those who had brought him in.

"This is Leroy Schroeder," Katie began. "He got buried by a shell and was like this when they found him. They said he couldn't remember anything before then."

I pursed my lips. "Retrograde amnesia and shell shock. Let's find him a bed and make sure he isn't injured anywhere else."

Together we approached the man. I introduced myself, "Hello Mr. Schroeder. I am Dr. Chase, and this is Nurse Stoll. We're going to help you."

He responded with little more than a nod of agreement. In the next thirty minutes Katie and I struggled to get the man upstairs. It was a slow-going process as Schroeder's trembling gait made it difficult for him to stay upright, let alone walk. Somehow we made it up the stairs without falling back down again, though we were all tired after ascending the singular flight.

We were getting Schroeder onto a cot when we heard a shell exploding in the distance. It didn't happen very often at night, but it wasn't like it was out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, the noise started our patient—he became frantic, his tremors becoming much worse. Katie and I tried to hold him down as he writhed, hoping to quiet him down before he woke up any of the other patients in the room. I thought I heard someone coming up the stairs to help, so I looked over my shoulder. In that second, my hands slipped, and the man's arm flailed up and struck my head.

I stumbled back, falling to the ground, seeing stars. I groaned, my hand coming up to hold my face. He had accidentally hit my right under my eye, which had pricked with tears from the pain. In the few seconds of my distraction, Katie had gotten the man to calm down. He seemed extremely apologetic—sad, even—when I got up again. I smiled faintly and him and told him it was alright. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened: someone in the staff getting hurt by accident by one of the patients. It was becoming more common in patients as more and more men came in with symptoms of shell shock. The soldiers themselves had named the condition. It was a psychiatric form of neurosis, one that most medical professionals didn't know how to treat.

I went down the stairs slowly, one hand on the wall to maintain my balance, the other still holding my face. I needed to get a compress on it. I passed a clock in the hallway. It was 2 a.m. I yawned rudely as I stepped into the kitchen, grabbing a clean dishcloth before I went to the door outside. In the next few minutes I scooped some snow into the rag and pressed it against my rapidly bruising face.

I almost didn't see Will when I passed him in the hallway. He grabbed my arm, saying, "What happened to you?"

"It was an accident. One of my patients had shell shock."

That was enough of an explanation. Will nodded with understanding. He threw a glance over his shoulder to the surgery room. "There's no patients right now. I think we can handle anything else that happens if you want to head to bed."

I nearly cried with relief. "Thank you, Will."

He flashed me a smile before pushing me towards the sleeping quarters area. I didn't have to be told twice. I washed up quickly and slipped into my pajamas, dumping my icy compress in the bathtub to melt. When I got to bed, I noticed a letter waiting on my pillow. It was addressed from my father. I hesitated. I went back and forth on opening it that moment or waiting until the morning. I hadn't heard from him in ages and I didn't want to wait any longer. So, even though I was exhausted, I pulled the covers over my legs and ripped open the envelope.

Dear Annabeth,

So much time passes between each of your letters' arrival. Mail to and from overseas has taken longer due to the government's closer eye on the information passed in between countries. I want you to know that despite what the news and President Wilson might say about strict neutrality, the United States is far from being the isolationist union so many politicians want it to be. The truth is this country could very well decide the outcome of this world war. A few months ago I was recruited into the U.S. War Office. I have been helping our government to monitor the conflict overseas while creating estimates for expanding the Armed Forces. The numbers of raw materials I have gone over time and time again indicate that the U.S. could tip the balance as soon as any alliances are made.

Right now we are simply playing the waiting game. If anything changes in the world in the next few weeks, the U.S. will be going to war. Many of my new colleagues agree. I tell you this in hope that it encourages you to keep going, if just a little while longer. And then you can come home. On this matter, I must insist. It has been too long since you have been gone and I can hardly stand it that you are right in the middle of a danger zone.

I know we are not as close as we once were; how we should be now. I understand this stems from my own shortcomings, and not yours. You were always destined to do something more important than I had ever imagined.

Wishing you well-being and hope for the future,

Love, Father.

I took a deep breath and ran my fingers over the cursive lettering. Somehow, I knew in the back of my mind that I would eventually have to go back to the United States. I suppose I had been caught up in my romantic notions of going straight to London to marry Percy as soon as the war ended, and everyone had been sent home. I had imagined meeting his mother and stepfather, seeing where he had grown up and learned to dance in his kitchen like he told me all of those months ago. Oh, well. Perhaps those things would happen one day, but not anywhere near to now.

I went to sleep that night and woke the next morning with my similar routine, repeating over and over until the month of February passed and so had most of March. We treated incoming patients left and right, sending the healed back into the fray, the permanently wounded away by train, and the fallen into the ground. The cemetery by the singular church in town was growing more and more populated.

It's funny, sometimes, to think of the exact moment your life changes.

Earlier in my life, I would have said it was the day I had committed to becoming a doctor, no matter what. I would be able to tell you the date and the overwhelming calm that I felt, finally knowing what I would do with myself. Or perhaps I would tell you it was the day I had met Percy. Though I didn't realize it at the time, meeting him would change my life forever. Our slow love story evolving across oceans and time as the greatest war of all time raged around us.

And while these events did change my life significantly, they could not compare to the life altering abruptness of what I would meet at the end of March 1917.

The day started like any other. I was back to my normal day shifts, no longer filling in for the fellow doctor who had fallen ill in February. I checked in on my patients from the day prior, chatted with Piper about the recent letter she had received from Jason, and at my dinner as the sun went down in the sky. All very normal.

But then we heard yelling, and the rush of footsteps throughout the normally quiet village of Boisleux au Mont at night. Piper and I dropped our cutlery on the table same as everyone else, food untouched, as we rushed into the streets to see what was going on.

"What the hell is happening?" I pulled a bystander aside as they were carrying kindling towards a bonfire that had been built. Around us, people were hauling perishable goods—food, mostly—toward the growing fire, pitching it in like it was the last thing on Earth they would do.

"We need to get rid of all of this stuff as soon as possible!" They motioned for us to follow suit, intent on participating in the destruction, but Piper jumped in their path.

"What's wrong with it?" She asked, urgently. "Has it been poisoned?"

The stranger looked aghast and shook their head violently, "Haven't you heard?!"

Piper and I said at the same time, "Heard what?"

"The Germans are coming!"