Nine Months Later

"Lieutenant!" I shout, "Give him a dose of morphine and close up that wound!"

Focusing on my own patient I dig shrapnel out of his shoulder before applying pressure and sulfa to stop the bleeding. I quickly sew up the gash and move onto another patient.

"Jackson! Lieutenant Jackson!" someone shouts and I stand up and turn around. There is Captain Elijah Dunne, carrying one end of a stretcher with a wounded man laying on it. I run over and direct them to a bed to the right.

"Forest! Priority patient!" I shout and she rushes over.

"How is it out there?" I ask Captain Dunne. I met him five months ago upon my arrival in Rome.

"We're advancing slowly but steadily, but it's still bad," he tells me.

I nod and look around. "I don't know where we're going to put them all."

"You'll figure it out, you always do," he says and someone shouts his name. "Alright, time to get back."

"Be careful," I say as he dashes out the door, giving me a small salute.

The groans and cries of the wounded fill my ears and I concentrate to block it out so I can do my job. As I do the familiar motions of cleaning out a wound and sewing it up, my mind wanders, to Alice, to Ruth, and to Daniel. My heart aches just thinking about him. We were inseparable when we were kids, always with each other, especially as our friendship turned into love. While I still write to him, every week, I never told him about the baby, or the miscarriage. I just couldn't, especially not through a piece of paper. He knew something was wrong, just like I thought he would, and tried to get me to tell him, but eventually as time passed he stopped trying to find out, knowing that I would tell him when I was ready. I still don't know if I ever will be.

One Month Later

I look around the courtyard of the French town of Fruelle. The church and square are filled with injured soldiers, although it's still at a manageable number. After all, D-Day was only two days ago, the fighting has barely begun. There are still too many injured soldiers for my tastes though.

With the coming of the invasion into Europe, everything changed, especially for me. I was pulled from where I was, to accompany a squad of soldiers with four other nurses to set up a field hospital for the Allies behind enemy lines. It was a very different and dangerous mission, which is why the women they chose to do it are all proficient with a weapon, just in case you may need to fire one.

When I asked the colonel who gave me these new orders why the military suddenly changed its mind about not putting women in potentially dangerous situations, this was the answer he gave me.

"We are expecting high casualties, not just with the beach invasions but with the paratroopers that land behind enemy lines. We won't be able to get them proper care besides field medics until after we secure the beachhead and can start moving inland, which will take some time. We need a field hospital set up where they can get good treatment. We can't waste any of our field medics so the only option we are left with are our female nurses."

The plane landing was quite bumpy, but no one was hurt, and with the help of the French Resistance, the small town fell quickly to us, although it did get a little messy.

"What's the situation?" Captain Dunne asks and an interpreter translates it.

The person in charge of the Resistance answers back in English surprisingly and it appears that they have taken a large portion of the town, but not all of it.

"Right then, time to take the rest," the Captain says. He orders the nurses to stay, each with our assigned private and an extra five men. The rest follow the Captain to take the rest of the town.

A few minutes later we hear gunfire and a few of the men with us start getting antsy, until one of the privates is suddenly shot in the head.

"Get down!" someone yells and I do, kneeling on the stone street as some of the others more out in the open take cover behind a building. More gunshots ring out and the soldiers fire back on the Krauts coming down the street.

The window of a car suddenly shatters and a nurse that was taking cover with a soldier behind the car cries out in pain.

"Shit!"

The soldier pulls the nurse to the side as a private next to me falls to the ground dead. Acting on instinct, I crawl forward and snatch his gun, grabbing one of the nurses and running behind a low wall. I'm running so fast that when we reach the wall we hit it rather harshly, the shock of impact reverberating up my arm. I raise the gun to the proper position that Daniel taught me and fire. At first I don't hit the Kraut I was aiming at, but then I adjust my aim and he falls to the ground screaming in pain. I take out another Kraut before all goes quiet except for a few shots in the distance.

I breathe heavily, wondering if I killed those two Krauts seeing as how neither of them are moving, but then Daniel's voice enters my head: 'If it's between you and them, I'd rather have it be you'. They attacked us; they tried to kill us, knowing that they could be killed in the process. It was either them or us.

"You busy?" Captain Dunne asks. I'm currently stitching up a wound.

"No, not at all," I answer sarcastically and he cracks a smile.

"Well, I have a proposition for you," he says and I finish the suture.

I stand and look at him wearily. "I know that I've told you I'm married."

This gets him to full out laugh before he says, "No, I'm to take a squad to Neuville, to help the men there that are trying to hold the town. Our medic was killed in the skirmish earlier and we need a replacement."

He takes out a cigarette and lights it.

"And you want me to be that replacement?"

"Well, yeah," he says, "Why else would I here telling you this?"

I roll my eyes before pausing and asking, "When do we leave?"

He grins at me, "As soon as you get some gear, Long will help you with that."

I nod and move to find Long but Dunne suddenly says, "Jackson!"

I turn back to him as he throws something toward me, which I catch reflexively. It's a pistol.

"You have some skill with it and if you're truly going to be in the field I have a feeling you're going to need it," he says somewhat grimly.

I nod and turn the gun over in my hands, looking at it. "Thanks, I have a feeling I'll need it too."

"Right, just try not to get shot, okay? You're our medic, you're supposed to take care of us when we get hit, not the other way round," he says and I smile slightly at his tone and nod.

"Got it."

"Good. Long!" he shouts and Private Long dashes over to us.

"Help her get some gear together," Dunne orders.

"Yes sir."

"Ten minutes, meet up at the front gate, it's going to take a day or two to get to this town," Dunne says, "Hopefully we won't run into any Krauts on the way."

Did he really have to say that? Now it's almost certain that we will. Really Dunne?