"Veteran"
by Acey
Disclaimer: -_- And I've been here how long, and I still have to write it? =P Animorphs is not mine. Be glad.
Apology: I am very sorry about the incredibly long wait. It was far from fair of me. Far.
The next day came, hotter, muggy still. More fighting over a town we already had won. And every doctor/surgeon avaliable was involved in more than he could handle -- of trying to bandage wounds, of administering quinine if he had enough left since the last shipment of supplies, or blue mass. And amputations.
"McCrat," one of the surgeon's assistants, Henry Kimball, said to me. The regular officers were far from the only ones who remembered that I not only had a title but a name as well. Those working with the sick knew my name (my last name at any rate), and referred to me as such, but the officers called me "Doc," and that was it. Perhaps because there weren't that many of us.
"Henry."
He said nothing at first and jerked his head down. I followed the direction of it, and noticed the first lieutenant I had spoken to the day before, a detail, apparently, sitting another man on the operating table, eyes downcast, opening his knapsack for such dressings as he had been issued. No smile was on his face today, no whistling of a partially merry but longing tune, longing for an end to this war, the victory over the rebels that so seemingly should've been won years before. The mustached lieutenant was saying a prayer.
No, a hymn. He pushed his brown hair back as he half-whispered it, "Amazing Grace," possibly.
Then I saw the man now on the operating table, suddenly realizing with a sickened horror why no one was looking directly at him.
His leg had been shot into pieces by a cannonball, the crimson plasma from the wound mixing in with what was already there. His small, frecked face was sunburned from so many hours, so many weeks spent on marches. He was young, probably only a drummer boy. His height had probably been the only thing that had passed him to volunteer as a soldier.
Henry looked at me, an expression of mixed sadness and expectancy. Like "you're the doctor here. I'll help you, but you know you're the doctor here."
Silence, silence from the healthy but the moans of the dying and afflicted everywhere else, including from the drummer boy. Delirious groans, sighs of the feverish. Most of the ones with fever that had had it for much longer a duration than a day would not make it. They called for loved ones, sweethearts, mothers, and some died thinking they'd found them, in peace.
I opened my kit of medical instruments, selecting one, instructing Henry to see if he could get anything of alcohol for the drummer. He came back with some brandy a little later, half a bottle of it, and morphine.
I tried to comfort the drummer and...
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Henry said nothing more as the day dragged on. Nor did the lieutenant or any of the rest of the details as they carried more of the wounded toward us, nothing but an occasional say of who the man was that had been hurt if they knew, so we could send a definite letter to his family if he had died.
We sent one to the mother of the drummer boy that day. I never knew how many other sons she had sent to war. It passed over the agony of his last moments as we tried to save him and his raging fever, and focused instead on his valiance on the field, as a soldier had seen it. He had stopped drumming the cadence under orders to and had taken up a gun from a fallen soldier, shooting until he too fell. In his duty to country, the brave boy had sacrificed his life in war.
There were no other letters to send that day, which I was grateful for. The fighting had slacked. I knew that we had Atlanta -- had it, no more battling over it -- now. Henry, as unobservant as he was, knew it, too. The mustached lieutenant had probably known the factt since he told me that we won it the day previous, something that I had found out was only a day off. Today we officially had Atlanta. The day before we had come close.
The bloodshed over the Southern city, so essential to the Rebel Cause, had ended. I didn't know what else would -- what else could, lie ahead.
**********************************************************************
Disclaimer: -_- And I've been here how long, and I still have to write it? =P Animorphs is not mine. Be glad.
Apology: I am very sorry about the incredibly long wait. It was far from fair of me. Far.
The next day came, hotter, muggy still. More fighting over a town we already had won. And every doctor/surgeon avaliable was involved in more than he could handle -- of trying to bandage wounds, of administering quinine if he had enough left since the last shipment of supplies, or blue mass. And amputations.
"McCrat," one of the surgeon's assistants, Henry Kimball, said to me. The regular officers were far from the only ones who remembered that I not only had a title but a name as well. Those working with the sick knew my name (my last name at any rate), and referred to me as such, but the officers called me "Doc," and that was it. Perhaps because there weren't that many of us.
"Henry."
He said nothing at first and jerked his head down. I followed the direction of it, and noticed the first lieutenant I had spoken to the day before, a detail, apparently, sitting another man on the operating table, eyes downcast, opening his knapsack for such dressings as he had been issued. No smile was on his face today, no whistling of a partially merry but longing tune, longing for an end to this war, the victory over the rebels that so seemingly should've been won years before. The mustached lieutenant was saying a prayer.
No, a hymn. He pushed his brown hair back as he half-whispered it, "Amazing Grace," possibly.
Then I saw the man now on the operating table, suddenly realizing with a sickened horror why no one was looking directly at him.
His leg had been shot into pieces by a cannonball, the crimson plasma from the wound mixing in with what was already there. His small, frecked face was sunburned from so many hours, so many weeks spent on marches. He was young, probably only a drummer boy. His height had probably been the only thing that had passed him to volunteer as a soldier.
Henry looked at me, an expression of mixed sadness and expectancy. Like "you're the doctor here. I'll help you, but you know you're the doctor here."
Silence, silence from the healthy but the moans of the dying and afflicted everywhere else, including from the drummer boy. Delirious groans, sighs of the feverish. Most of the ones with fever that had had it for much longer a duration than a day would not make it. They called for loved ones, sweethearts, mothers, and some died thinking they'd found them, in peace.
I opened my kit of medical instruments, selecting one, instructing Henry to see if he could get anything of alcohol for the drummer. He came back with some brandy a little later, half a bottle of it, and morphine.
I tried to comfort the drummer and...
**********************************************************************
Henry said nothing more as the day dragged on. Nor did the lieutenant or any of the rest of the details as they carried more of the wounded toward us, nothing but an occasional say of who the man was that had been hurt if they knew, so we could send a definite letter to his family if he had died.
We sent one to the mother of the drummer boy that day. I never knew how many other sons she had sent to war. It passed over the agony of his last moments as we tried to save him and his raging fever, and focused instead on his valiance on the field, as a soldier had seen it. He had stopped drumming the cadence under orders to and had taken up a gun from a fallen soldier, shooting until he too fell. In his duty to country, the brave boy had sacrificed his life in war.
There were no other letters to send that day, which I was grateful for. The fighting had slacked. I knew that we had Atlanta -- had it, no more battling over it -- now. Henry, as unobservant as he was, knew it, too. The mustached lieutenant had probably known the factt since he told me that we won it the day previous, something that I had found out was only a day off. Today we officially had Atlanta. The day before we had come close.
The bloodshed over the Southern city, so essential to the Rebel Cause, had ended. I didn't know what else would -- what else could, lie ahead.
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