It is no less than six hours since Amélie shoved two envelopes into Marguerite's pocket. The letters arrived just before a convoy of casualties from the dressing stations, and they've been run off their feet ever since tending to the wounded men. Surgeries, amputations, changing dressings, checking fevers, administering drugs. Six hours of it, and this is the first proper chance Marguerite has had just to sit down.
Though she is off her legs, her calves throb.
It was not a bad round, really. It could have been so much worse. They could be still rushing yet, and at the back of her mind Marguerite cannot help but wonder if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
If they were still rushing, there would be more wounded soldiers to tend to. The fact that there isn't…the fact that there isn't does that mean that they were simply not wounded? Or does it merely mean that it is already too late? That they're already dead?
Her stomach churns and she shudders, bites her lip to ground herself. Such thoughts will not help anyone. It is better that she forget that she ever had them.
The letters weigh heavy in her pocket now.
She will not pull them out yet. She is too tired for that, too exhausted. To read the letters in this state would taint her enjoyment of them, and she would never be able to bear looking at them again, not even to write a response. No. They've already waited this long. A little longer will be no harm to them.
Sighing, she wraps her fingers around a mug of hot coffee as if the heat of it alone will revive her. Her eyes are scratchy and dry, but she cannot close them, not yet. If she does she will only see wounded bodies before her again, the pale faces and muddy uniforms, the blood leaking from a hundred tiny shrapnel wounds and long jagged ones too, the yellow fluid-filled blisters on the boys – most of them are not men, far from men – who were gassed. She can hear them, their rasping breaths and whimpers from throats too raw to speak, gasping as if the very air would choke them, their throats already swelling closed.
Those boys came from several sectors away, should never have ended up at this hospital, but there was a mix up in the field and that is how Marguerite found herself holding the hand of a boy that looked no older than Émile, tears leaking from his swollen blind eyes as his chest heaved with the desperation to get just one breath. The curé whispered Latin over him and with the holy oil made the sign of the cross on his peeling forehead.
The silence was nauseating when the boy stopped gasping.
Marguerite swallows, her heart clenching as she shakes her head and curls her fingers tighter around her mug. She must not remember him, she must not, she must not. She must banish every thought of the boy, shove him far away. To let herself remember is to let every other wounded boy become him, and she cannot do that, she cannot. There are enough ghosts already without…without adding him to it.
Her thoughts are disturbed when Amélie slides onto the bench beside her, and musters up a tired smile, her brown eyes heavy. "I'm glad that's over with," she says, her voice soft as she sips her own coffee.
"For now," Marguerite mutters, the words out before she has time to stop them, and Amélie's eyes widen.
"Don't say that!" The response is expected, too loud and too desperate, but beneath the chatter of other voices it goes unnoticed by the other nurses around them. "Have you opened your letters yet?"
Safe ground. Letters. Yes, best that they talk about them. "Not yet. You?"
Amélie's sweetheart is on permanent base duty thanks to his weak lungs, stationed somewhere up near Rouen, and he writes her most days usually with little to say. But his letters are one of the few reliable things they have left now.
Amélie nods, drawing a letter from her own pocket.
"René says they were shelled the other night. Only about twenty bad casualties, and a lot of minor cuts and bruises. He's well, though. Missing me." She blushes almost as red as her hair. "He wrote a very sweet poem."
In spite of the tiredness aching in her bones and the awful day it's been, Marguerite cannot help grinning. Amélie's René always writes "very sweet poems" and some of them are truly lovely and others…others would make a harlot blush just by their little suggestions. Based on Amélie's high colour, this one is one of the latter.
"Are you going to show it to me tonight?" She keeps her voice light, innocent, but the very question makes Amélie's blush deepen, and Marguerite's lips tingle, her stomach fluttering.
"Only if you open your letters now." But Amélie's eyes twinkle with the promise of more, and Marguerite knows that she'll see the poem regardless.
"I promise you they won't be as exciting as all that."
"They're still more exciting than nothing at all. Better to have letters than to have a reason to have none."
The wisdom in the words is undoubted, and Marguerite sets her mug down on the table, sighing dramatically as she reaches into her pocket and pulls out the two letters. "As you say, ma chérie."
Amélie has the letters plucked from her hand in a moment, and shuffles them, peering at each one closely. "This one is from Paris, and the writing is particularly delicate so I presume it's your parents instead of your aunt and uncle." She waves the letter, and sets it down on the table, and the urge burns in Marguerite's fingers to take it and open it, but she fights the longing, waits to see what the second letter is. It's all of two weeks since she's had anything from her parents, though she had a very lovely letter from Christine last week with a note from her uncle Raoul. But Amélie is waving the second letter, setting that down too and saying, "This one has come from the Adriatic, so it must be your brother Guillaume."
Excitement bubbles in Marguerite's stomach. Guillaume. It's two months since there's been anything from Guillaume. He must have been on shore again, and it must mean he's safe.
Her heart is light as she grins. "Give me the Paris letter first." Guillaume's letters are so rare it's always best to savour them and read them second, and the smile that Amélie returns suggests she knew what Marguerite's choice would be.
Later that evening, the letters are still on Marguerite's mind. They remain tucked into her pocket, nice and safe and tonight she'll put them away with the others. The Garnier is throwing a charity gala tonight, apparently. Her parents will be there, and Christine and Raoul of course, and Anja if she has no shift, and little Émile who is not so little any more even if he forever seems twelve to her, even though the last time she was home on leave he had already turned fifteen and stretched from the child she remembered. Her cousins are growing up so fast…
Her heart aches to be with them at the gala. It's so long since she attended any sort of event, and there'll be all the beautiful gowns swirling as the ladies dance, and everyone would know her as the daughter of the Comte de Chagny and whisper over how close she came to joining the ballet. She would dance with many men, all that she could, from the ones too old to serve or exempt for some reason, to the officers stationed in Paris, and put them all to shame in the process, and not care a single whit for their whispers of almost-scandal because is it not her birthright? Her mother the former prima ballerina and her godmother the former prima donna?
Surely, surely her going into the ballet would not seem so terrible to all those whisperers now!
And Guillaume. Guillaume has three weeks furlough, but unless he somehow conjures an excuse to come up here she will not see him. He might have a chance of visiting Antoine, when Antoine is back behind the lines again, and Konstin too but even when he is out of the trenches Konstin finds a hundred ways to keep himself busy. But none of them are too likely to find their way to the hospital, and she is less likely to have much time to talk to them even if they did.
Her heart aches, the excitement of the letters died away as she steps into one of the rooms reserved for officers. There is no use in tormenting herself, in wishing for visits that can never happen. Better that she focus on the things that need to be done.
For the time being, there is only one wounded officer left in this room. The other two that were with him are in surgery – she helped bring them down herself. They were both too weak earlier, but they have stabilised now, so there is only this one left, dozing and pallid.
He does not stir as she measures his pulse, and finds it a little high. She takes his chart, and notes it down, eyes scanning for his wounds. Shrapnel embedded in the upper thigh. Amputation recommended due to its depth and proximity to the artery. Fractured vertebrae in the lower back, and her heart sinks to realise that he might not be able to feel his wounds anyway, even without the morphine.
His name catches her eye. Capitaine Edouard Dupuis. Dupuis. Edouard Dupuis. Why does Edouard Dupuis sound familiar? Did she know him in Paris?
He groans in the bed, and snaps the train of her thought. She sets the chart back down and leans in closer to him as his eyes flicker open and he regards her hazily from beneath heavy lids.
"Is there anything I can get you, Capitaine?" She keeps her voice soft, so as not to startle him. A soft voice, she's found, often works best.
He runs his tongue over his lips, swallows convulsively. "Wa—water."
Marguerite casts her mind back to the chart. Was there any mention of stomach wounds? No. It was just the leg, and the spine. Well, that's all right then. She reaches for the pitcher of water on the locker beside him, pours it into the glass that's there. Sliding an arm under his neck she carefully raises him, and presses the glass to his lips.
"Sip it," she murmurs, "or it will make you ill."
He takes two sips, and nods that he has enough, so she sets the glass back on the locker and eases his head down to the pillow. His eyes rove slowly over her face, and his frown deepens.
"Any…any news on Com..mandant Da…aé?" His words are halting, but there is no doubt that that is what he said, and her stomach lurches.
Commandant Daaé? Konstin? Is he one of Konstin's men? Is Konstin here? Why did no one tell her?
"I…," she swallows, her voice faint, "not that I know of, but I'll check for you, all right?" She sees him nod but she's already turning, her heart painfully tight as she walks from the room.
The hall is quiet as she walks down to the nurses' station, all the time her thoughts spinning. He asked about Konstin. Maybe, maybe it's not like that. Maybe Konstin isn't wounded. Maybe Dupuis was supposed to meet with Konstin to discuss something. Maybe Dupuis was simply wondering how the advance went. It's a normal enough question, after all. Maybe, maybe it's a different Commandant Daaé! Maybe she's taken this whole thing up wrong and it's not Konstin at all just someone who happens to share the same rank and surname as him. Yes, that's it. That must be it. There can't be any other explanation than a stray coincidence.
Even as she tries to force herself to believe it, Marguerite knows that the odds of such a coincidence are too low to ever to be possible.
dear Dupuis…watches for every man…finds a pulse even better than I can…
Konstin's words, from a months-old letter, seem as fresh in her mind as if she's just read them, and Marguerite's breath catches in her throat. He did write that, didn't he?
That's why she knows Dupuis' name. Oh, God.
Amélie is at the nurses' station with a bundle of charts in her arms, talking quietly to the Matron. Both of them raise their eyes when they hear Marguerite approach, and Amélie pales at the sight of her, the Matron frowning in that way she has when she is about to ask a question.
Marguerite shushes her, but her voice is still faint as she whispers, "Did Commandant Daaé come in with his men?" It's such a simple question, really, but even asking it takes all the strength Marguerite can muster and the very words leave her legs weak.
Amélie re-balances the charts to hold them with one hand, and reaches for the register, but the Matron shakes her head before she can lay a finger on it. Her eyes are kind, and her voice steady as she answers, "No. The latest news from the line is that he may be missing."
Missing? Missing? Konstin missing? No. No it's not right, it can't be. Not Konstin, of all people. It simply—it simply isn't possible.
The world dims as she sways, and dully she hears someone call her name. Then in the next moment she's sitting down, Amélie and the Matron both kneeling beside her, and she giggles because it's ludicrous that she should get weak over such news, she's not even really related to him, it's mad.
The Matron asks her something, but she shakes her head and whispers, "I'm fine. I'm fine." But the words weigh wrong on her tongue, and she does not need them to tell her that she is lying.
AN: I hope you've enjoyed this chapter, and please let me know what you think!
Up next week: Christine and Raoul at the gala, and a telegram the morning after.