33.

~ She had been dreaming of Arthur when a horrible bang rang out through the ward.

She had been fleeing France once more. Caught in a frightening world of endless nights and no way out. A maze like trap that she couldn't escape from. The humid nights had rolled in and she and a small group of strangers were running in the dark night air. The enemy was so close. She could hear them coming closer and closer. Their voices reaching them from the shadows.

She and the others were hiding in a village. The enemy prowling like cats through the streets. Hunting them and their was no place to hide. Her feet hurt so much as they hid in a loft of some house. They tried to be quite. So quite, they dared not even breathe.

She could hear footsteps reaching them. Feet on rotting floors as the midnight invaders searched for them.

A flashlight shone over them, and it wasn't the invaders at all. It was Arthur and his men. They had come just in time. She didn't have to walk to Dunkirk. She didn't have to have bleeding feet. The American's had arrived and already beaten back the hostile invaders. Arthur would take her home now. Back to the family in the big house with the stone lions. She would be spared from all of it.

Arthur was about to take her in his arms when the sound of gun shot reached the dream. She looked in horror as her rescuer, the handsome Major, was bleeding. His uniform covered in blood.

"Arthur?" She cried out and forced herself to wake up. Such a horrible thing could not have happened, and her mind fought back.

~ She knew it had been just a dream. But in the dream, things always felt real. Her heart was racing, her breath quick, and she didn't know why.

'Gun went off.' She remembered as she hobbled on her broken leg to the recovery ward.

"What happened?" She asked the ward nurse who was running back to the nurse's station in tears.

"What happened?" Ariadne asked more forcefully as the other patients were stirred awake.

"Ma'am!" One man shouted trying to get up. "It's over there. He must have kept another revolver in his pack."

All patients belonging were searched for weapons. But sometimes, in the hurry, things got missed.

She saw the blood and smelled the stinging smell of gun powder. The young man who Doctor Kikie had operated on, taking both legs and an arm, lay dead in his bed. His face melted off by the self inflicted gunshot wound. The horrible mess of blood and brain matter stained not only the bed, but the floor and wall as well.

"He was crying all night." One of the wounded men said. "I told him to stop. We're all hurt. He wouldn't stop." The other man said in near tears.

"I didn't think he would do this." Yet another man said.

Ariadne felt like she was surrounded by scared, fitful children. All of them needing comfort. All of them crying from their beds. She turned away from the dead man and hobbled back to the nurse's station. A feeling of defeat weighing her down and she divorced herself from feeling anything. She couldn't afford to feel anything. Her heart was already too heavy.

The ward nurse had alerted the staff by telephone. Still a novelty to a modern hospital. The Matron and attendants had rushed in. The shrewish old maid gasping at seeing the senior nurse.

"Nurse! You are in your night clothes!" The Matron said. A boney hand fluttering to her neck. The Matron was dressed in her robe that covered her from neck to toes. She always looked impeccable.

Ariadne stopped and looked at the Matron. Surely, she wasn't being lectured about the dress code right now. Not with a man's blood still wet and covering the walls and floors. The other wounded scared over what happened.

"We have a free bed, Matron." Ariadne said sadly and went back to her little cot.

Dear Arthur,

Things are going fine here in London. No more bombing for now. I am still trying to get passage to New York.

Everything is fine. We have a lot of wounded. Everything is fine. Please, don't worry about me. I'm fine.

Please be careful. I know it's selfish, but I want you back with me soon. I keep having bad dreams about you and I wake up scared.

Ariadne

~ Arthur read and re-read the letter his wife sent. She had only been in London a few days and he could tell she had wanted to stay there. But with this last letter, he could tell something had happened. Her neat handwriting was messy and she had to keep telling him she was fine and that made him suspicious. He knew something had upset her and she wasn't telling him what it was. Hopefully, whatever it was, it would make her want to go to New York.

It had been slow going through the forests these days. He had heard things from other units about death camps. How they needed to move faster and the Red Cross aide needed to come. During the day, Arthur would march. Afternoons, if they arrived at a village, they searched for remains of whatever final solution the Nazis had been doing. At night, Arthur would type reports. Detailing accounts and what the unit found.

His men were all depressed as they found evidence that nothing was sacarid in horrible war. Everywhere there was stories of families ripped apart and killed. Of mothers being tied to their children and shot over a bridge. The mother's dead body pulling the child down and drowning them both. All to save bullets.

The locals having to pull the bodies out of the river so the water would not become contaminated. Cobb looked especially disturbed by these stories. The Colonel looking at his pictures of his pretty wife Mal and their two children.
"James would be three now." Cobb mused one evening as Arthur was typing. The Major stopped his translation and looked up.

"I wonder what he looks like." Cobb whispered sadly. "I've been trying to picture their faces, and I can't seem to see their faces anymore."

Arthur said nothing and went back to work. He had no idea how to comfort Cobb. Nothing could give anyone peace in this strange land of graves and ghosts. This half world that he kept wishing he could wake up from. He could wake up and be back in a field of dieing summer flowers. A pretty nurse eating chocolate by his side.

At night, he would climb into bed, look at Ariadne's picture, and try to dream of her.

~ In his dreams she was in snow. But the snow was not natural. It was dark snow and smelled of burned unclean things. The ash was staining everything around them grey. Draining their world of color. Her face was deathly pale and she looked ghostly. Just a phantom of the girl in the blue dress.

Snow like ash was falling over her as she stepped lightly through the woods. Just out of his reach. He gave chase but couldn't catch her. Her fine eyes taunting him from the trees as the ash fell.

"Ariadne!" Arthur shouted and she didn't even turn back. Didn't even turn to see him as her body turned to ash and was caught in an updraft. Falling from the sky like an evil snow. His hands unable to catch it.

~ "Nurse." The Matron said the morning after the suicide. "I can no longer allow you to stay at the nurse's station over night."

"Matron, the lift is still broken. " Ariadne said having trouble walking to the little post office that was at the hospital. She had hoped for a letter from Arthur today.

"Yes, but my room is on the ground floor. You can stay with me. It is not fitting for a married woman to be sleeping so close to strange men while her husband is at the front." The Matron said in that stiff, efficient manner of hers.

"I can guard your celibacy for your husband's sake until you can be united with his family. " She said.

Ariadne felt her face fall. She didn't like where this was going.

Dear Ariadne,

I hope this letter finds my wife in New York and not in London. My wife did promise me she would be on the first boat out this war.

I'm very glad to hear you are keeping busy. I know you like working at the hospital and that's good. I want you to feel needed. I also want you out of England and with my family.

I am fine. It's all walking in the day, eating dinner at some village and then poker games with Cobb and Dax all night. Don't worry about me. Most days are very boring. The main action seems to be over. I won't have any interesting war stories to tell anyone when I get home.

I'll be home soon.

Arthur.

~ Ariadne kept her gaze on her compact as the Matron's loud snore ripped though the still night. She had to share a bed with the boney old maid and her knobby knees and elbows were always hitting her. She had taken to writing to Arthur everyday. A part of her comforted by telling him the mundane details of her daily life. The one sided conversation cathartic as she edited her letters of things she knew would upset him.

She sighed as she couldn't wait for dawn. Couldn't wait to write to Arthur. She wanted to write to him all about her new sleeping arrangements. Vent her frustrations. The whole thing made her finally book passage on a boat for New York.

~ Arthur was laughing as he read over Ariadne's most recent letter. She wrote to him almost every day. He was so happy to get a stack of at least eight letters at a time. His wife's careful, neat script and stamps that still told him she was in England.

"What is it?" Cobb asked as he took the cards Eames handed out.

The American's had run into the British Lieutenant just a few days ago. Seeing Eames again had made the slow, depressing march though Europe suddenly brighter. He had brought a certain mischief to the group that was missing. They were enjoying a round of poker to which Arthur and Eames were beating Cobb and Dax. Arthur had learned to play from his brothers. A thing they had kept hidden from their mother.

"My wife is having to share a room with the hospital Matron." Arthur laughed. "She say's the Matron is having her sleep in the same bed and that she snores all night and kicks her."

Cobb and Eames snorted a laugh.

It had been an enjoyable evening of talking for the men. A brief reprieve for them from the destruction of they had come to see everyday.

"You know, I always wondered about those kinds of women." Dax said in an amused little voice. "I mean, they decided not to marry and work for a living. What kind of woman decides not to have a husband?"

"Nuns?" Cobb offered.
"It's not natural for a woman to not want a man." Dax said plainly.

"Some women are afraid of men." Cobb said with a soft smile. Arthur could tell he was amused by the Lieutenant.

"What? You mean the horrors of the marriage bed?" Dax said being blunt. "Nothing to be afraid of. Most women I know, like it."

Arthur said nothing. His mind going back to his wedding night with his maiden bride.

"So, whats your point?" Cobb asked.

"So, I think women who never marry must be hiding something. Like maybe they don't like men for a good reason." Dax offered.

"Afraid of being with a man?" Arthur asked re-reading his wife's letter. His heart aching to hold her again. To share a bed with her. He could tell she missed him. Her worries about him seeming to grow.

"I think women like that secretly love other women." Dax explained in a whisper that made the other three men lean in closer to hear. "I've heard about it. They have relations with other women like men and women have relations."

"How would that even work?" Cobb asked with a laugh.
"They find a way." Dax hissed as if he was telling of some unbelievable thing.

Arthur shook his head. During the last round of promotions, Colonel Burch had asked about Dax. Arthur had made a point of telling him the Lieutenant was not cut out to lead anyone. But Dax was a good soldier. He did what he was told and didn't question his commanding officers.

Cobb was shaking his head as the men turned to general dirty talk. Arthur's mind going back to his own wedding night. To his virginal bride and how much he missed her.