I glanced around at the work that had been accomplished in just one week, and nodded to myself. This was a step in the right direction. In the past few days we had gone through some tough moving around because of Will's and I's orders. Each level of beds had to be washed and re-stuffed. Most of the linens had to be replaced and new bed frames were being built as I organized the supply closet on the second floor. A certain sense of order overcame the Central Clearing Station.

Sure, it was almost always crazy trying to keep track of everything because new wounded arrived every few hours, and many left for hospitals at the same time. The medical records cabinet was a mess as well. No one seemed to have taken proper medical notes for each patient before our group had arrived. Now I had to fix this as well.

When I wasn't organizing and filing, I was taking on intense surgeries that could last hours at a time. It was amazing that I found enough time to sleep. We had created a sort of rotation of the doctors and nurses. I made sure I was never on the same shift as Atlas, and when we did see each other, he would glare intensely at me. The role of head surgeon was no longer his. I had appointed Dr. James Treavel, who had proved to be one of the best I had ever seen.

A quiet man, James didn't speak unless it was absolutely necessary. He would issue soft orders to nurses during his examinations, but that was mostly it. If you wanted to talk, he was a good listener. I, myself, had found myself talking to him over meals about what we should be doing with the soldiers. Their treatment was of the upmost importance to both of us, so we did a lot of planning together. I did most of the talking, of course.

"Dr. Chase!" I heard a shout from downstairs. I shut the cabinet I had been working on. Descending the staircase, I was met with a rush of chaos.

Piper tore past me up the stairs with a stack of linens in her arms. "There's another wave of soldiers coming in as we speak. And the injuries are really bad this time." She called over her shoulder.

"Got it." I called back and came into the first-floor room. We had turned this room into our surgery room. Right now, it was being flooded with new patients. I pulled on some rubber gloves from the bin in the hallway and a new gauzy surgical mask. Piper reappeared behind me and did the same. Here we go.

Coming to my station there was a man already lying there. He was semi-conscious and had multiple wounds.

"Assessment." I said.

Piper launched into listing his external wounds, "Shrapnel in his left leg and cerebral cortex, fractured right arm, and a gunshot graze in his stomach."

I groaned. "Why don't they bring these men to us immediately when their injured?"

"What are we starting with?" Piper asked.

"Shrapnel in his head," I replied, easily. "If we don't get that out, the rest of the healing process is futile. Tweezers and Catlin knife"

Piper handed the tools to me. The man whose name I didn't know slipped out of consciousness as I began. I was glad or that. I didn't like using chloroform all that much because no one seemed to know the long-term effects of the drug. Sure, it was helpful, but could it cause more harm down the road?

"Begin working on stopping that blood from the gunshot," I ordered. Piper tore his dirty and bloody uniform, leaving his chest open to the air. I glanced at it and decided that it looked worse than it probably was. As she began to clean the wound, I slowly shifted each tiny piece of bullet shrapnel out of his face, sometimes using the knife to cut rotting flesh out of the way. This man should have been in the hospital as soon as he had been hurt. Instead, they had waited until he was on the verge of death to send him to safety.

When I had finished, I soaked up the blood on his face with a clean towel. Without speaking, Piper and I switched places and she sewed up the larger incisions. Her tiny stitches could hardly be seen except for the black thread she was using. I, meanwhile, checked her work on his abdomen, then wrapped it in a clean white bandage. Next, I cut the bottom half of his pants off, so I could get to the shrapnel on in his leg.

Though it took longer, I would rather sit and remove shrapnel than decide to cut off someone's limb. That would only cause more trauma for the soldier to go through, but it sometimes had to be done. That was not the case here, and I began my careful work once again. When Piper finished bandaging the soldier's head, she began setting his arm, so that his bones would mend correctly. After that, she helped me with his leg and soon we were finished.

I wrote a short note listing his injuries and what I had done then clipped it to the end of the bedframe. As Piper and I changed gloves, two boys, aged around 15 or so, lifted the man onto a wooden stretcher and moved him upstairs, taking the list that I had written with them. Then another wounded man replaced the last and we got to work again, following the same procedures over and over until our shifts were over.

I yawned silently as washed up for the night, dragging a coarsely woven, wet rag over my skin, smearing the blood that had gotten on my arms earlier. It had been a long day. The 'shipment' of men had come in at nearly 12:30 p.m. and I had finished my last patient at around 9:00 p.m. In total, I had worked on about forty or so of them, and so did the rest of the doctors. Now that we were switching out I could wash up and change into a clean uniform before eating dinner. Afterwards, I would stay up a little later with Piper to write all of the reports for each of the men we had treated.

Technically, only I, as the doctor could write the reports, but Piper refused to go to bed until I had completed my work. So, she helped me. I was sure every doctor at the Boisleux-au-Mont clearing station had an assistant, otherwise nothing would get done in the first place.

The dinner tonight was a thin soup with celery and potatoes. Most of the nurses insisted that the soldiers have the best food available to them, so that they could heal faster, and I had agreed. But that didn't mean I had to like the food I was eating. The soup was watery and tasteless. However, it was hot, and that was more than most people were getting in this war.

As I made my way to the top level, which was where most of the men were crammed, I passed Will in the staircase.

"Annabeth." He acknowledged me. I could see that something was bothering him. I nodded back to him. Will and I didn't see much of each other. Because there were two of us leaders, we were put on different shifts. I was just glad that I had the day shift. I didn't like working at night by the light of small electric lamps. They made the shadows in the corners of the room flicker, reminding me none to subtly of my fear of spiders. I could take anything else besides spiders. I shivered just thinking about it.

"How are you faring, Will?" I asked.

"I'm alright." He answered. "I heard you had a lot of patients today."

"Yeah. There were so many of them." I sighed and leaned against the wall. "It seems amazing to me that our governments can stand to let this happen to our soldiers; to our people."

"I'm afraid there's not much they can do. Our enemies just keep creating more and more weapons with deadlier force to use against us." He brushed his hands on his trousers. It was a nervous habit of his. "My father says that we have to find something to help us fight beck harder against them."

Confusion befell my face, "What exactly does your father do?"

Will swallowed anxiously, but answered anyway, "Normally I wouldn't tell people this, Annabeth, but I'm sure you can keep a secret, yes?"

I nodded, telling him he could talk.

"My father is Julius Apollo." He said, and gauged my reaction.

My eyes widened. Only those of us in the medical wartime world knew that name. Many of us didn't even like to think about his work. Julius Apollo was a doctor who excelled in chemical warfare. His creations terrified even me, and Will Solace was his son?!

"You see why I don't like to tell people. But he has been working on this poisonous gas that could hurt thousands of people." Will paused and met my eyes briefly before glancing away again. "We've never gotten along. I took my mother's last name growing up. I don't approve of him using his skills to hurt people, and he doesn't approve of my desire for no loss of human life. That's why I became a doctor. To save lives."

By the end of his short speech, Will had begun to speak faster and faster until he had to stop for a breath of air. Without thinking, I pulled him into a hug and promised, "It will all work out in the end. I think of you as my brother, and like it or not, we're family now, okay?"

Will took a shuddering breath and then pulled away, smiling gratefully down at me. "We even have the same hair color!"

I laughed. It wasn't a sound heard often in a place like this. "Well, I have to go do my reports, so let me know if you need anything."

"I will." He replied. "Thanks, Annabeth."

"You're welcome." I said, then continued up the remaining stairs.

Upon entering the third floor, I was unfortunately met with the sight if chaos once again. There was a group of nurses surrounding one man, and I couldn't tell what was wrong, just that he was almost screaming with pain. All around me, the rest of the men were trying to cover their ears, trying to block out the horrible noises coming from the cot in the corner.

"What the hell is going on here?!" I shrieked loudly, and got the nurses attention. I was surprised when I saw that Piper was one among them.

"Oh, Dr. Chase, thank God you are here! Please, you have to help him!" Piper almost cried.

"What is wrong?" I asked quickly, as I ran over to the supply table and grabbed some gloves, but no one gave me an answer. "Come on, then. Assessment!"

"We don't know ma'am!" Another nurse answered me over the terrible screaming.

I approached and saw that this soldier's stomach had swollen to double a normal size. I tried to think of what it could be, but couldn't think with all of his screaming.

"Somebody get him to sleep before I take out his vocal chords!" I ordered wildly. As soon as I started issuing commands, the stress levels in the room were going down. All except mine. I was going to have to cut this man open to see what was the matter. After prodding his bare stomach in a few places, I had some idea of what was wrong.

Piper looked at me for an answer, "What is happening to him?!"

I glanced at his face, which was handsomely chiseled with minimal scarring. There was just one tiny scar on his top lip. A giant bump on his forehead made me wonder what had happened to him. His blond hair was ragged and dirty.

"I think he may have ruptured his appendix." I told her. "Why does he look like he's been hit on the head with a brick?"

Piper ignored me and gave me a small bottle of antiseptic. I swallowed nervously and took it. I had never done this kind of surgery before. I had only seen it done once, briefly, in Manhattan.

Throughout the next hour and a half, I did what I remembered, falling back on my acute memory. The nurses shuffled around me, doing exactly as I said, not questioning me. They soaked up blood, maintained that the soldier stayed asleep through the procedure, handed me equipment, and even pulled my hair back when it escaped the bun at the back of my head. And then, it was over. I finished the last knot of his outer stitches and collapsed against frame of the bed. They would have to take them out in two days to take out the ones that I had put in his stomach tissue, and then sew him up again.

Glancing warily at Piper, I saw her brush an easy hand over the man's facial features. It wasn't in a friendly way. It was an endearing touch, as if they were more than just friends. I rose an eyebrow at her, which she promptly ignored.

The other nurses had left us now, and the room was mostly quiet except for the sounds of the sleeping men. As we cleaned up our equipment, I asked Piper, "What is his name?"

"Jason Grace." Piper replied softly, then looked back at him, as if to see if he were still there.

"Who is he?" I inquired. She didn't answer for a second, then met my eyes. I could never decide what color they were, just that they seemed different every day.

"He's a Lieutenant among the Royal Army." She told me. So, he was an Englishman who had probably joined the army young, and then worked up the rank just as the war started.

Piper and I were finished for the night. We decided to wake up early in the morning to do the reports for the files. Meanwhile, as we were getting ready for bed, I questioned her about Lieutenant Grace of the Royal Army.

"How did the two of you meet?"

Piper shrugged effortlessly. "When you went to bed two nights ago, and I was still putting some supplies away, he began to have a nightmare. Many of these men do, so, I tried to comfort him. He eventually woke up, but didn't want me to leave until he had fallen asleep again. I sat up with him for a while, and we just talked."

She sighed happily, "We didn't even mention the war. It was like it didn't exist and we were just two people who had the good fortune to meet each other."

I smiled sadly for her. "Listen, Piper. I know you may like him—" her face flushed scarlet. "But where is this going to go? In a few days Lieutenant Grace will be sent off to a hospital in the city. And after that, back to the war."

"You don't think I know that, Annabeth?" Piper sighed, exasperated and forlorn at the same time. "Sometimes, it's just nice to dream, you know?"

Piper crawled into her bed and rolled over, so that she wasn't facing me. And though she didn't make a sound, I could tell from the way her chest heaved in the darkness, that she was crying.