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London, England
Winter, 1915
Her eyes fix on the grain of the wooden counter against which she leans, tracing the whirls and circles in the pattern of the wood even as her mind drifts in circles, softly upon the waves of her thoughts. Drifting, drifting until just like that, she is there again.
The sounds of explosions in the distance and shouting numbing her ears, smoke in her lungs making her cough, screaming soldiers surrounding her as she and her fellow nurses try to help. Fruitlessly, helplessly. As men come and go from beneath her fingers, as she holds lives in her bloodstained hands without ever knowing their names.
The sound fills her ears even now, drowning out the soft piano that someone had begun to play. Her eyes squeezing shut as she tries to come back to herself, come back to now.
Come back.
Come back.
"Another?"
She looks up to find Leroy looking at her, his voice gruff but his eyes soft in a way that is familiar to her now. She nods at him and smiles gratefully, sliding her glass back across the counter.
She sits at the end of the bar at The Warren House, her shoulders slumped, her coat hanging off the back of the high chair upon which she sits, her braided hair tucked into a hat pulled low over her head and her body hidden under layers of baggy men's clothes.
This isn't the first time that she had decided to come to an old friend's pub to hide.
Over the last fourteen years, Leroy had remained a grumpy but constant friend, their journeys in this foreign yet familiar land entwined. Emma settling into a life with a family and Leroy without one. Leaving his seven brothers behind, he had built a life here, first as a bartender and later proprietor of the The Warren House.
And ever since the first argument she had had with her father, a few months into her arriving in London, he had let her come here whenever she liked, let her stay past the mandated closing times and allowed her to slump in the chair at the end of the bar, keeping unwanted attention away from her.
A small pub hidden into the end of a street, a single door marked with its name, the Warren House's small winding rooms are largely filled with regulars and loyal patrons. Quiet and familiar, the pub feels like a warm blanket with its soft lantern light, with the mismatched flower pots on the window sills, with the little piano tucked into a corner for anyone to play.
It is the perfect place to hide and tonight, she hides from Henry.
Just after six in the evening, the pub is getting ready to open for the supper shift in accordance to the new wartime rules. Already people are beginning to slowly make their way down the roadside to the pub. But as Emma sits in the corner, her eyes watching the amber liquid in her glass sway as Leroy passes it back to her, she cannot help but hear Henry's voice, his words echoing in her head again and again. The soft melody of the piano a sharp contrast to Henry's shrill protests as she had all but shouted at him in her fear for his safety.
"But mom, I just want to do my part! I want to help, be a hero! Like my dad!"
"Henry, no!"
"But-"
"No! I am your mother and I know best and I say that you go to school. Do you understand?"
Emma's eyes squeeze shut as she remembers, her hand closing tightly around the glass as she takes a long drag. He had gone to school, his shoulders lower, his eyes dimmer and she had fallen into a fitful sleep, only to wake in a cold sweat, a scream in her throat, the shadow of crimson staining her hands. She had come back to the city then, mumbling to her mother about having forgotten something at the hospital as she had rushed out the door.
The sound of someone starting to sing washes over her but the words are lost to her as Henry's voice rings louder than everything else.
"Just like my dad!"
It was supposed to be a small lie. A little fib she had told in her initial panic to spare Henry more pain when he had just lost his adoptive mother to influenza. When he had traveled a thousand miles to find her, with a name scribbled in a shaky hand by a mother looking to give her child his best chance just like Emma had all those years ago.
It was supposed to be a small lie because she could not bear to tell him that his father had abandoned her, that he had left her to fend for herself when she had found herself with child, that he was a liar who had betrayed her, who had broken her heart.
So she had told him instead that he was a brave man who died fighting for his country.
Henry's eyes had lit up at the story and she had thought that perhaps she had done well for her first test as his mother. But now she wonders if she would have done better to tell him the truth.
For now, his head full of dreams of glory and heroism, only fueled further by the constant barrage of propaganda that surrounds them, by the story she had told him, her boy who is not yet 14 wants to join the ranks of the men who pass through her hospital each day.
The singing gets louder as more men join in, the chorus becoming a raucous affair as the piano gets louder.
Who wouldn't join the army?
That's what we all inquire
Don't we pity the poor civilians sitting around the fire.
Oh! Oh! Oh! it's a lovely war,
Who wouldn't be a soldier eh?
She smiles a small, bitter smile and takes another drink.
Casualty Clearing Station 5,
Somewhere in France
Autumn, 1914
The stretchers just keep coming.
One then two then twenty, they hadn't stopped since the ambulances had first pulled up into the grounds a few minutes ago. The night is moonless, stars twinkling merrily in the sky as Emma stands outside the doors that lead into the small hall of the abandoned school.
Thoroughly understaffed and never prepared enough, the team that makes up CCS 5 along with two other CCS' had taken up residence in two schools and a chateau in an abandoned French town not three miles from the front lines two nights ago.
And tonight, just a few hours past midnight, it had begun.
The sound of shelling muted but still apparent, the earth trembling with the aftershocks of the assault upon it. Emma had been stationed in the resuscitation ward, tasked with making sure the men were comfortable, writing letters home for the ones who couldn't, being a comfort and helping the nurses in whatever way she could as they lay the more serious cases in heated beds and performed blood transfusions for the ones who needed it. She had waited there ready, her heart pounding in her chest, her hands just on the edge of shaking as the nurses and orderlies began preparing their equipment.
But then, the stretchers had begun to arrive.
In they came, borne upon wood and pieces of fabric, their bodies caked with dust and mud and blood. Bodies in all states of ruin, they came in with pieces of themselves missing, a leg, an eye, an arm. Some came with bullets and shell fragments embedded in their skin and bones, spitting blood and gasping for breath. Some came in quiet and seemingly unharmed save for the single mark where a bullet had entered them, the ones who bled on the inside, afraid to be touched. Some walked in, but only barely. Their injuries hastily bandaged, splinted and wrapped, treated just well enough at their regimental aid posts to make it to the CCS.
The ambulances continued to arrive, the men flooding the rooms and spilling over into the corridors, stretchers and make shift beds everywhere as orderlies and nurses and surgeons rushed between them.
Resuscitation, as Emma had discovered quite quickly, was a terrible place. Originally meant to be a place for the shocked, collapsed and the dying, for men who were not able to stand operations yet but who might after some time in the heated beds that filled the room, after blood transfusions had been performed on them. But to Emma it had become somewhere men who were too far gone to help, or too much trouble to help were sent to live out their final moments. She had been here, holding the hand of a man twisting in his sheets, his eyes fluttering in a fever dream as she waited for him to pass. Her third in an hour, she had felt as though her soul was falling away from her like leaves from a tree.
But even so, she had been trying to remember the names. The names of the men and women they loved, the names they whispered and whimpered into the night as they went.
She had begun to chant them softly in her mind
Ashley, Edward, John-
Again and again and again until it never became easier.
Emma had been here when her matron had come in and pulled her out to the doors.
Their reception officer called into the operation ward to assist their surgeon, a clipboard thrust into her arms and a quick instruction of how she was to assist the orderly who had replaced him in identifying and sorting the men-
Worst cases and best go to resuscitation, men we can send back go to pre-op, everyone who's finished goes to evacuation. Understand? Emma, I need you to say yes. Do you understand?
Yes, she had whispered then at first. Her voice lost somewhere between the man who'd come one with a part of his jaw missing and another who has lost his leg. Yes, she'd said again. Stronger this time, grit her teeth and clenched her fists and gotten on with it.
Now she stands by the doors and watches them come.
Their faces melt into one another, drawn lips, empty eyes when they could see or when she could see their faces. But, most disconcerting is the lack of sound. Most of the men in shock and some beyond it now, they do not speak, they do not scream, they do not cry out in pain and it feels as though she is collecting all their silent agony in her lungs, her chest tight as she tries to keep her fingers from shaking, as she tries to keep her voice steady.
The words become like a horrible prayer.
Resuss, Pre-Op, Evac she says as they pass beneath her. Her heart splintering just a little bit more each time she sends a man who may need help to resuss because he could not go back to the front. His life somehow worth less now that he had given so much of himself away to this war.
"Nurse! Nurse, we need someone here!"
But even though the men don't speak, the surgeon's voice almost drowns beneath the waves of sound from outside that still assault her ears, shouts of nurses and orderlies layered upon the sounds of distant shelling, of explosions that rock the earth beneath them.
Their ramshackle, reclaimed school turned Casualty Clearing Station feels unsteady on its foundations, her feet swaying from exhaustion or fear, she does not know.
She is just directing a man clutching his leg, a large gash in it staining his trousers to the pre-op ward when she hears the surgeon again, more frantic this time, his voice cracking as he calls for-
"Nurse!"
Emma's eyes find him, the man with the shocking blonde hair. Their surgeon who she had seen just last night smoking a cigarette by moonlight and humming a tune about home. The man who now stands with his hand trying to hold a soldier down who struggles against him, his eyes bloodshot and his scream silent as his mouth opens and yet no sound comes out.
"Nurse!"
"Emma," she hears a voice, a hand at her shoulder. Strangely, not screaming like the rest of the world seems to be at that moment, her matron speaks softly, as though trying to calm the latent panic in Emma's body.
"I need you to go help the doctor. Can you do that for me?"
Though her voice is calm, her face betrays her. Her matron, an older woman with greying hair and a voice that would freeze an ocean in its stride, the woman with not a hair out of place in even the most dire situations, the woman whose clothes carried not a shadow of a stain, the woman whose intense propriety that had been an annoyance at first and slowly become a comfort now stands before her with that same propriety lying shattered at her feet.
It is the wild look in her eyes that seems to mirror Emma's, the silent plea that lay dormant behind a face that was trying to hang on to confidence by a fraying rope that brings the strength into Emma's voice as she agrees.
She lets her clipboard and pencil- completely useless tools as she had come to realise but they had given her a sort of odd comfort, given her something to hold onto- are taken away from her and she finds herself taking step after step to the surgeon trying to calm the man who struggles against him still.
As she gets closer she begins to see the red. The blood that stains the sheets, the doctor's gloves, every piece of fabric that seems to be in contact with the injured soldier. The blood that looks like it is far too much to be flowing out of one person. The blood that drips from the man's left hand, his fingers a mangled mess, little bits of white bone peeking from beneath the crimson.
Emma swallows deeply, choking back the bile that rises in her throat, the sob caught somewhere in her belly before taking the soldier's other hand from the surgeon and holding down his leg, freeing up the surgeon to continue his work. She finds herself whispering soothing nonsense as her fingers stroke over the soldier's wrist, the doctor shooting her a grateful glance as the man begins to settle, his eyes still fluttering, his fist still clenching even as the blood continues to drip from his injury.
"We're going to have to amputate. The hand is too infected, too-."
Broken.
The surgeon's voice is a frantic whisper for Emma's ears alone as he begins to prepare his equipment, the tourniquet, the guillotine.
"Hold him down."
She nods shakily as she turns away from her surgeon and the bloody work he does, focussing instead on the man whose life sways precariously one breath to the next, whose hand she holds, whose eyes don't see her even as she tries to comfort him in what little way she can.
A breath.
The soldier's jaw clenches, his grip on her hand growing tighter as the surgeon fixes the tourniquet.
Another and his grip gets tighter still, his silent scream finally vocalised as the surgeon cuts through his injured arm.
The soldier's grip on her hand finally loosens, blood rushing to her fingertips, his hand falling away as he passes out from the pain.
And when she pulls away from him is when she sees it. Her hands stained with the deepest of crimson, spreading from her fingers to her wrist like she had pressed her hands into a wet painting.
It is then that she realises.
She didn't even know his name.
London, England
Winter,1915
It had gone on for thirty six more hours.
She had stood there and assisted her surgeon-Victor, he'd said after their fourth amputation. They had spent a night in hell together after all, there was no need for formalities-as the men passed beneath her. Even though at first she had only helped with keeping the men still and calm, as the number of men increased with every new ambulance that pulled in, Victor began to allow her to dress and clean wounds.
Her deft fingers and steady hand a valuable asset in a time where it looked like the flood of the injured would never end.
Thirty six hours she had spent with her hands stained red until finally the last of the somewhat fit men had been sent out on the hospital train, until the last of the dead had been moved, until finally Victor took off his gloves.
She had gone for a walk then.
Through the tiny village and on and on until there was only the sky above and the earth below. On and on until she hit the edge of a small stream. On and on until the scent of medicine and bodies slowly began to dissipate from her nose. The sunlight reflecting off the flowing water made patterns of gold on a tree that hung over the stream, a large bird perched on a branch screeched loudly in the silence. She had let the bird's cacophonous song, the babbling of the water upon the stones and gentle rustling of leaves drown out the voice of Second Corporal Mason whispering for his daughter in between gasping breaths.
She had taken off her shoes first, let the wetness of the earth seep through her stockings before pulling them off too. The ribbon that secured her hair in a braid had been next. The breeze fluttering through her hair, feeling cool on her neck. The cold wasn't comfortable but it had woken her. It had brought her out of the hazy mire of adrenaline and borrowed pain and red, red, red.
She had sat there with her feet in the cold water, her hands dipped in it too, watching the red from her fingers dilute away into nothing as the water flowed.
She is staring at her hands still, she realises. In the warmth of the pub, a hundred miles and a year away from that night, she feels like the red has still not left her hands.
The clattering sound of a bowl dropping to the table startles her out of her thoughts, Leroy's voice following quickly.
"Eat something, would you?"
She looks at the bowl of peanuts that he'd pushed to her across the counter before meeting his eyes, a grateful smile on her face even as ignores the food and takes another sip of her drink.
Leroy only shakes his head, pointing at the bowl one more time and raising his eyebrows before turning away to attend to a customer calling his name.
"C'mon Leroy! Let me buy some drinks would you?"
She smiles to herself as she takes a handful of the nuts. She hears this same argument about twelve times a night.
"So you're going to be drinking ten pints of ale are you? All at once now?"
Ever since the No Treating Order had been put into place, the arguments at the pub had gotten more and more ridiculous. Since people weren't allowed to buy drinks for anyone but themselves, their excuses for attempting to buy a disproportionately large number of drinks had gotten fairly absurd.
She had once seen a man down five pints of ale in five minutes because Leroy wanted to be convinced that they were for him alone and not for the raucous band of men sitting a few tables away who had come in with him.
"Aye! What do you take me for? I'm a big boy! I can handle my drink just fine."
She doesn't hear Leroy's response, her ears suddenly filled with her father's voice.
"Well, you're a big boy now aren't you Henry? Almost as tall as I am!"
There is a panic in her gut, the sleeping kind where she knows that it is waiting to come out of her any day now. Kicking, screaming and demanding to be felt. But tonight, all it does is twist just a little tighter. He's so tall, her boy, far past the minimum height to enlist. His voice already sounding like a man's, his shoulders rising above the other children at school and the fear that always lies dormant in the back of her mind shows itself again.
What if one day Kristoff doesn't find him? What if one day he tries to enlist and someone lets him? What if one day an officer doesn't look to closely at the softness of his jaw, at the slight thin edge to his voice? What if one day someone looks away and just like that he would be gone?
Her hand is closed so tight around her glass, she can see her knuckles turn white. She loosens it slightly before tilting her head back and draining the glass. She feels her braid slip out of her hat, landing with a soft weight on her back.
The glass makes a loud noise as she puts it back on the table and signals Leroy for another, her hand already going to hide her hair back under the hat, hoping that nobody has noticed.
But she is too late.
"Fancy seeing you here, love."
She turns around at the sound of the voice. A familiar echo from her morning that somehow feels like an entirely different day, as she finds herself lost somewhere in a haze between memories of blood and little boys.
It takes her a minute to respond, to gather up the words scattered in the corners of her mind.
"Captain Jones," she nods at him, clearing her throat, her voice hoarse from disuse, "and that's Miss Swan to you."
She wishes she sounded more stern than she does but she cannot seem to find the energy for it.
"Miss Swan," he nods back, the smile on his face small but bright even as he looks just as disheveled, just as unsettled as he had that morning. His hair flopping over his eyebrows, his scarf askew, his coat unbuttoned to his waist. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she feels a dim notion that she ought to ask him about his wound, ask him to sit even. But, the alcohol swimming through her veins and the thoughts swimming through her head make her feel heavy and slow and all she wants now is to be alone.
So, she turns away and stares determinedly at her drink, as if it were going to speak at any moment, hoping fiercely that he would leave.
But, just as she takes another sip, she hears the shuffling sounds of someone taking the seat next to her. She feels the warmth radiating from his coat, black and thick wool, she almost wants to bury her face in it and breathe deep.
She frowns at her drink then, as though blaming it for the strange errant thoughts that flit through her mind.
"A glass of rum, mate?"
His voice is rough, rumbling through him and though she wants no conversation with this or any other man, she does not want to move either so she continues stubbornly staring into the amber liquid that swirls in her glass, hoping that he will stay silent.
"So, Miss Swan, what br-"
She looks up at him as soon as she hears him turn in his seat to face her, his smile still there, his eyes still storming softly. She cuts him off before he can finish. His mouth hangs open for a moment as she speaks.
"Captain Jones, I apologise but I'm afraid I am not feeling up to making conversation at the moment."
He chuckles, his mouth closing, his shoulders softening and falling before turning back to face the bar.
"I must confess that I am not feeling up to speaking much myself."
Her eyes trace his form, hunched over the counter, shadows and light playing upon his face in the dim light of the pub. She sees cheekbones rise softly as he continues to wear the remnants of his wry chuckle on his face.
Leroy slides a glass of rum to him, his eyebrows rising in question as he passes her, asking without speaking if she was alright. She nods at him, a wordless and grateful yes.
"Would you be amenable to a silent drinking partner then?"
She turns again to meet his eyes when he speaks. He still faces the bar but he looks at her sideways from under his lashes, his mouth curved into the smallest of smiles, quiet and hopeful.
He raises his glass towards her.
And she does not know why she does it. Perhaps it is the fact that despite how she had tried to ignore it, she sees the same quiet rage in him that she carries around herself. Perhaps it is the sincerity in his voice, the truth in his smile. Perhaps it is the fact that his eyes seem to tell the same story as hers.
Or perhaps it is just the fact that she does not want to be alone any more than he does.
She raises her glass.
A/N: Notes, historical or otherwise:
In this chapter,
The song they're singing in Leroy's pub is a real song. Songs like that, meant to raise spirits about the war were very popular at the time.
The Great War brought about a change in women's traditional roles as the men went off to war and women began to work. They also began to frequent pubs and drink even though authorities thought this was a bad idea.
Alcohol was considered to be a new and terrible problem for the home front and laws were put in place to curtail drinking. Two of which were cutting down on pub hours, allowing them to open for lunch (12:00 to 14:00) and later to supper (18:30 to 21:30) and the No Treating Order which only allowed for people to buy drinks for themselves ie; you couldn't buy a round of drinks for everyone in your party.
Though at first authorities were unwilling to send VADs to the front lines, the restriction was lifted in 1915. But for the purposes of this story, Emma goes in 1914.
Casualty Clearing Stations were the Fourth step in the evacuation procedure for injured soldiers from the front. It began with Stretcher Bearers on the field itself who then transported the soldiers to a Regimental Aid Post where urgent medical care was given. They were then sent via Motor Ambulance to Casualty Clearing Stations. CCS' were usually a a bit of distance behind the lines and the closest a female nurse was allowed to the conflict. Here soldiers who needed more serious attention were tended to and those who could be sent back were tended to as well. Blood transfusions and emergency operations and amputations were performed here. Once the soldiers had been made stable, they were packed onto a hospital train and sent to a base hospital where they completed their journey.
CCS' were split into 6 sections. A Reception Marquee, A Resuscitation tent, a pre-operation tent, an operation tent, an evacuation tent and a ward tent.
The minimum height for an enlisting soldier had to be 5'3" and they had to be at least 18. But due to the shortage of men and the large demand for soldiers, recruiters sometimes overlooked the age limit and sometimes younger boys slipped through the cracks. The youngest soldier of the Great War was 13.
I hope you liked this chapter and please do let me know what you think! :)