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London, England
Winter, 1915
Her skin feels like it is aflame, heat spreading through her as she breathes in sharp, shallow pants, her fingers clenched at her sides as she stares at the man perched on the examination table in front of her. The man who had just lit a spark in the pile of gunpowder that her heart had become over the course of the night.
Her body is tired from standing so long, her calves screaming for relief, her back aching for sleep. Her soul tired from hearing the cries of men too broken and boys too young to be going through torment she cannot even begin to imagine. But his words have gotten her ready to fight, her muscles tight and tense. They have gotten her ready to let the blood that stains her apron stain the words that wait to leave her lips.
He is quiet now, his mouth half open to speak, his eyes wide, darkness lurking underneath them but shining a deep blue even as he sits shadowed by the light from the window behind him. His dark hair is a tousled mess atop his head, the fingers of his right hand clutched tightly around his left wrist and it is then that she sees it.
The way that his forearm falls away into nothing, a large, rumpled piece of fabric tinged with a little red wrapped tightly around the stump where his hand used to be. His knuckles are white from the grip he has on his wrist, his fingers clutching tightly around the cloth. Fingers that are stained with something blue, she thinks dimly, noting the odd detail even as she feels all the fight drain away from her. Her shoulders slumping, her fingers unclenching, she takes a deep breath and turns away from him.
He was one of them. Of course he was. The right age, the right build. Fit and strong and just broken in the right ways, just bitter enough. Just good enough at hiding his pain to tell her that he had been a part of it already.
She should have known.
She sees them pass from beneath her fingers everyday. Boys and men of all ages, broken and injured in a myriad of new and horrible ways each day. Hurt with fire and metal and poison until it is too horrible to dwell on for too long lest she collapse under the weight of it all. They pass through her room, the beds in the hospital filled with young boys with faces still too rounded to be twisted into such pain, with men who stare into the ceiling with their teeth grinding together as she tries to keep the poison in their wounds from spreading, as she dresses the pieces of them they have lost.
She walks to the cupboard, her fingers busying themselves with fetching some Iodine, readying some cotton and gauze for his wound.
She tries to forget their first names as soon as she hears them, tries never to know the stories that hide behind the eyes that look up at her from the table. Mostly scared, mostly angry but sometimes she sees a pair of eyes that look up at her with a hope so incredible, so incredulous that it takes her breath away. Those are the ones she tries to forget the most for more often than not, she sees them again and they are the same eyes from before, their brightness taken away, the blues and greens and browns of them duller than they used to be.
A breath before she begins to form the apology in her mind and another before she begins to speak it.
"I apologise, Captain. It's been a difficult night. I didn't know that you too had-"
She turns back to face him, placing the Iodine and cotton on the tray beside him, her hands reaching for his wrist, her eyes fixed on his arm unable to meet his eyes.
He clears his throat, as though looking for his voice, making her stop in her tentative movements before he speaks again.
"No, It is I who should apologise. What I said was out of line and unwarranted. It has been a difficult night for all I suppose, Miss-?"
He stops with a question, his voice low and sincere, his hand removing the fabric covering his wrist and raising it to her.
"Swan. Emma Swan," she almost mumbles as she gently touches his wound, her fingers finding the raised edges of the clotted blood where he had been cut.
He flinches at first but quickly relaxes, even as his body retains the constant stiffness that betrays the pain that he bears.
"It is but a nick from the edge of my palette and yet it aches as though someone had stabbed me with a blunt knife."
She finds herself tracing the thin line of the cut gently back and forth with her gloved fingers, suddenly overwhelmed. The weight of last night coming to rest so very heavily on her shoulders, tears blurring her vision just a touch as young Philip who had just left here on crutches comes to her mind. Eric with his beaming smile even as half his face is covered in bandages. Frederick coming in with a letter to his wife Kathyrn tucked into his jacket, only mumbling that someone get it to her even as they rolled him into surgery.
Captain Jones here with his sharp words but soft eyes, bearing his own pain in the shadows on his face.
She lets out a slow breath and pushes the tears back, pulling a smile onto her face. The one her mother had taught her, the one meant to calm and reassure even as your heart buckles under the weight of its own pain.
"It's alright. We'll take care of it. You just got too close to an old wound."
Her voice comes out even and sure and she is glad of it. He chuckles in response, the sound rumbling through his body but it is a sad, bitter thing and she feels herself looking up at him, her eyebrows raised in question.
"Oh Miss Swan, if you knew just how many old wounds I- " another soft laugh on an exhale and she almost misses what he says next, his voice lost somewhere between the ache of his wound and the ache in his heart,
"Fate is cruel."
His face twists into unease then, his eyes suddenly far away and she instinctively drops her own back to his injury, moving to push his sleeve up just a little to see it better but even as she does it, his body stiffens, his hand moving as if to cover himself back up but managing to restrain himself.
"Don't worry about it. I've seen worse," she says, her eyes still fixed on his wound, slowly pressing along it and up his wrist, the edge of a tattoo visible from under his sleeve and when he doesn't flinch apart from the small cut, she lets go of his arm, satisfied. Turning back to her tray, she pulls out the Iodine and cotton wool and looks back at him.
"Sorry, old habits Miss. Not everyone would look upon a man such as myself without well-"
HIs voice falls away then, his eyes falling away too, fixing upon his wound, his lips straightening into a thin line as his hand clenches again. Another sign of the pain he hides so well, physical or otherwise. The sun in the window behind him haloes his form, his back hunched over his hand, his head bowed and she has seen this before, she has seen this pain and this bitterness, this helpless anger and yet, there is something different about him.
She shakes her head, comes back to herself before she lets her thoughts distract her further. He is a patient and she has already dawdled far too long for one man. So, she puts on her best impression of her mother and soldiers on, pulling his wrist closer to her and dabbing his wound with the soaked cotton, ignoring his little gasp when she first touches his tender skin with the stinging liquid.
"Well, you'll not find that here. We're quite used to all the nicks and scratches a man suffers out on the front," she says, her eyes rising to meet his, her attempt at a bright voice falling flat even as his eyebrow rises in question at her sudden change in mood.
She smiles, embarrassed at being caught out, her voice softening again before she continues.
"Sorry, some men find it comforting when we talk that way."
Her eyes fall back to her task, unrolling a little gauze to wrap him up.
"Do you think all this is worth it? The war?"
He speaks slowly, his voice closer to her now as though he's swayed into her space as she's worked, bending slightly at the waist from his seat on the examination table.
"I think it doesn't matter what I think."
She says it as slow as he had, her own voice careful but firm with the words she speaks.
He is silent for a moment as she finishes wrapping his wound, flinching occasionally as the bandage passes over his cut. She pulls away when she's done, her eyes still following the folds of her dressing, her fingers patting down her apron before turning away to fetch something for his pain.
She's trying to decide what dosage of morphine to give him when his voice finds her again.
"What did you tell him? The lad who asked you why he would never walk again."
And though his voice is soft, sincere and full of what feels like genuine interest, she heeds the warning of her heart and continues her work. Choosing the higher dosage, she picks up the bottle and a spoon before moving back to him. Ignoring his question, her face as neutral as she can hold it, she hands him the medicine, directing him to take it.
"Two spoonfuls. For the pain."
As he swallows the bitter liquid with a grimace, she fetches him a glass of water and exchanges it for the medicine that would hopefully calm the constant twitching of his hand- closing into a fist and then back open again- make his tightly clenched jaw loosen, allow his tired eyes to shut in peace for a little bit.
"Alright Captain Jones. I think we're done here. Take the rest of the day to rest okay?"
"Thank you, Miss. Swan," he nods, his sentence punctuated by a grunt as he puts his weight on his hand once more to allow him to get back to the floor from his perch on the examination table.
He smiles a tiny smile as he faces her, their bodies closer than she had anticipated. Her eyes are drawn to the blue of his, looking between them and she doesn't realise until he's already got her hand in his, raising it to his lips, his fingers looped loosely around hers, loose enough that she may pull out of his grasp if she pleases.
But before she can decide if she wants to, he stops. Turning her hand over so her palm faces up, his smile changes into a frown instead.
"Your hand- it's cut."
The concern on his face pulls her back to herself, her heart scolding her again for letting herself be carried away by the smoothness of his voice, by the fire in him that seems to burn in a way that seems entirely too familiar.
She pulls her hand away from his and steps back, looking down at the small cut between her thumb and forefinger.
"I must have scratched it against a bottle or something. I'll take care of it," she says quickly, her words melting into one another.
He makes to move towards her but perhaps he sees the look on her face, the stiffness in her posture because he stops and smiles softly instead, bending at the waist into a silly bow.
"Then I will leave you to it. Thank you again."
She almost smiles too.
After he takes his leave, Emma begins to clean up. He had been her last patient and the next nurse would be arriving soon to take over. But first, she needed to take care of the small wound on her hand.
Seated on the chair by the desk, she is just finishing cleaning it when she hears a sharp rap on the door of her room. Elsa's head pops into view a second later.
"Oh good, you're finished."
"Finally. It's been a long night," she says absently as she finishes cleaning her wound, throwing the piece of cotton she'd been using into the bin under the desk, taking off her gloves as she stands.
"I'm afraid you might not be able to rest just yet."
Emma's eyebrows rise in question, her heart already feeling heavy with dread. Not another, not another patient, not another heartache. She does not know if she could take it.
"It's Henry."
She needn't have worried. It's much worse. The dread in her heart quickly devolving into panic as she hears her son's name.
"He's supposed to be at school," Emma says, already beginning to untie the knots that hold her apron in place, her other hand reaching for her cap to take it off.
Elsa moves closer, her voice softening a touch from the tone that she'd begun talking in and Emma's steps become more frantic as she looks for her coat, her apron's knot stubborn as she struggles with it while walking.
"He didn't make it there. Kristoff found him at the recruitment office."
Emma's heart drops a few more inches as Elsa finishes her sentence.
"Emma, he's tried to enlist again."
Elsa's voice changes back to her nurse voice then, the calming, soothing one as her arms stretch out to take Emma's uniform from her as she hands it over, finally finding her coat behind the door, next to her bag.
"I'm- I need to-"
She stands at the door, opening it and looking back at Elsa, putting on her wool gloves, trying to find words from behind the haze of worry she's lost herself in.
"It's alright. Go. Kristoff took him home. I'll sign out for you."
Elsa smiles softly at Emma, already beginning to fold away Emma's hastily discarded uniform and Emma shoots a grateful smile back at her before leaving the hospital in a rush of wool and unravelling blonde hair.
It only takes her four steps out the door to realise that she's forgotten her hat, her ears catching the brunt of the cold breeze that makes her skin tighten, makes her breath crystallise in front of her.
She keeps walking though, her steps quick and firm even as she debates the merits of going back for it, her face bent low, half of it tucked into her scarf, her nose brushing the thickly knitted wool, her arms wrapped tight around herself as though trying to keep the warmth of her body trapped inside even as it feels like it is floating away on the wind.
She almost doesn't hear the frantic steps and the sound of her name shouted in between shallow, panting breaths.
"Emma! Emma wait!"
She stops and turns around to see a flustered Anna running towards her, her hair escaping her cap and her first thought is that something terrible has happened for who would brave this weather without a coat or a scarf, Anna having run out in just her uniform.
But then she sees the little blue, misshapen thing clutched in her left hand as her right rests on her cap trying to keep it from fluttering too much in the wind.
Her hat.
And Emma's heart suddenly feels too big for her chest, her legs moving faster towards the woman who is now standing still, having seen that Emma had noticed her, a small grin on her face as she tries to straighten the little crumpled ball in her hand that is Emma's hat.
When they finally meet in the middle, Emma raises her hand to take the hat, her lips curved into an apologetic smile as she sees Anna's cheeks flush red with cold but Anna shakes her head in refusal and instead plops the hat on Emma's head herself.
"He'll be fine. Kristoff has taken him home and he'll be fine, okay?"
Anna's voice shakes just a little, her breath coming out in sharp puffs that she can see but Emma laughs despite herself. It's a small, weak little laugh huffed through her nose but the warmth of her hat spreads slowly to her chest as Anna tucks Emma's hair into her scarf, pulls the hat tighter around her ears.
"Take care of yourself, will you? I'd rather not find you frozen on the underground if I can help it. I daresay Henry wouldn't like that either."
Anna smiles a lopsided smile then and Emma takes her hand just as she's pulling away.
"Thank you, Anna."
The smiles grows wider, her eyes sparkling with affection, concern and Emma almost doesn't know what to do with it all.
"Always," Anna says, her fingers gripping Emma's tight in response, "Now, go. You'll miss the train."
Her head falls against the window as the train moves, a gentle swaying motion, back and forth, back and forth. A little jerky at times, but soothing all the same. The sun shining through the large glass, the quiet of the early morning commute, all her fellow passengers too sleepy to do much of anything but sit in silence. All of it calms her pounding heart, her hat squeezed between her fingers, her bun slowly coming loose from all her running.
Running to the station, running her hands through her hair as she waited by the ticket counter, her thoughts running circles in her head as she stood on the platform, a breeze fluttering through occasionally as the doors open and shut, passengers entering and leaving the station.
But now as she sits on her seat on the train she takes everyday on her way to and from work, its colours, its seats, its constant swaying are a familiar and warm comfort to her troubled heart.
As is the hat currently pressed between her fingers. Her eyes fall to the petals of the tiny deep blue knitted flower on the side of it crushed between her forefinger and middle finger. She smiles softly then and begins to straighten it. Her fingers soft and gentle with first hat that her mother had ever knitted her that first winter long ago. Her first hat, her first winter in the warmth of a home that was hers, her first Christmas with gifts and parents who loved her.
The train jerks to a stop and her head bangs softly against the glass where she leans, the voice of the man making announcements filtering through as the doors open, a rush of cold air following the smaller rush of people into the train.
She finishes straightening her hat and puts her hands inside it which though gloved, are glad of the extra warmth.
The doors close and the train jerks again, her eyes closing as the newly boarded passengers, two women, behind her speak rapidly in a tongue she does not recognise.
And just like that she remembers another journey, her mind going back suddenly to a time when she had sat all alone at the bottom of a ship, swaying much like this, a little rougher perhaps, a little colder. Her clothes thinner, her body thinner too. Listening to a woman sing her baby to sleep in a tongue that though unfamiliar to her mind felt familiar to her heart.
A time when she didn't have a mother who would knit her hats, didn't have an Elsa who would keep an eye on her son, didn't have an Anna who would run out into the cold in her nurse's uniform to keep her warm, didn't have a father who would hold her with all the strength in his body and make her feel like she could hold the world on her shoulders if she had to, as long as she had them all.
A time when she had just left a little black haired boy, her baby, in a city that had only ever hurt her in the hopes that he might find a better way, a better life.
(Not realising then, that her son was her son after all and would find her eventually.)
Her eyes close, the exhaustion of the previous night finally catching up with her and with thoughts of warm hats and creaking old ships, deep blue eyes and lonely hearts, she lets the train rock her to sleep.
Notes, historical or otherwise:
In this chapter,
The war brought about major changes in medicine. Doctors learned the value of keeping clean in reducing infection related deaths. Antibiotics did not exist during this period, so avoiding infection of wounds was vital. The lack of antibiotics also meant that amputations were common practice to avoid spread of infection.
Blood Transfusions were relatively new at this time, the war on the front lines with limited equipment causing doctors to come up with new ways to perform them.
Iodine was a common antiseptic for smaller wounds like how Emma uses it in this chapter. Another common antiseptic was EUSOL (Edinburgh University Solution of Lime).
Morphine and other opiates were commonly used for pain.
My knowledge of medicine is very, very limited and though I've tried to be as close to what I have researched as I can, I hope you will forgive any mistakes. :)
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please let me know what you think!