A/N: Ok. This is a fic of if Thomas WAS NOT dead when his family.um, er abandoned him. Say that a passer-byer (what an idiot: the freaking house is burning with a bazillion dead officers around it. Let's go check it out.) Saw the body on the ground, felt pity, and tried to get him to a barn/hospital. This is a 19-year-old nurse's POV of what happened next. *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

Suddenly, the doors to the makeshift operating room flew open. A tall, young man gasped in a deep, desperate voice "Help!" His dirty blue uniform reflected in the pain in his baby blue eyes.

"Nathaniel!" I cried, running up to my betrothed. I looked down into his arms. A young boy, nearly unconscious, tiredly turned his eyes to me. I scooped up the boy and took him over to a couple bails of hay that my father and I had set up.

By the looks of the wound, it was about half an hour old. If that. My eyes looked upwards as drew a mental map, scanning a half-hour radius from the barn. The boy couldn't have been shot more than a half-mile away. Nathaniel was the fastest runner I knew, and that's why he volunteered to find the injured. But he couldn't carry a boy and full out run.

Looking down once again, I realized that where and why the shot was made didn't matter. I had to diagnose how to save the boy. Looking into his eyes, I felt the wind from the ball of metal enter his chest. As if sensing the wound again, the boy gasped a moan. His cry was more desperate and weaker than the others I heard earlier that day him, theirs slowly fading from my memory.

I whirled around, and searched frantically in my blue supply bag. At my feet lay a man no older that twenty: In my hands laid his life. Blood poured from his chest. I kneeled down and leaned him up against a stone nearby. He looked up at me, and tears filled his eyes as he looked in fear at my face.

I knew I should have left him. I knew he had no chance of seeing the next day. There were other soldiers in the field who had much more chance. I should have told Nathaniel to go find someone else. I didn't even know whose side The boy was for-he didn't wear a jacket. But I wouldn't leave the man to die by himself. All my training was flooded by compassion. So I took the boy's shaking hand, wishing that I wouldn't be the last to do so.

In shock at my gesture, he tried to say something, but only the telltale trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. In bewilderment at not hearing his voice, he reached two dirty fingers slowly, painfully up the base of his neck. The second place they traveled were his lips, where they felt the precious, warm liquid spilling out of his mouth. For one silent moment, his gray eyes locked into mine. In those two seconds, they screamed of disbelief, fear, and hopelessness.

The moment broke as the boy began to choke on his own bubbling blood. With every breath he took in, he coughed out even more of the blood that now nearly flowed out of his lung. I was paralyzed. My eyes never broke from his, until finally the choking stopped, and his eyes closed. His forehead relaxed, and it was over.

He was like so many. And so many yet to come.

THIS was war. And how I hated it.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^* Disclaimer: Don't own the patriot. Own nuttin'. Except this idea, which was based off of a longer work that was about a WWI nurse in France. I Patriot-ized it just for you ppl!