Archive of Our Own

The convoy was due in any moment. They’d had the usual hour’s warning and were ready, as ready as they could be, bandages and disinfectants laid out, instruments sterilized, floors swept and linens organized. Next to Sophia, Sister Foxley was folding and unfolding her compact mirror, making it snap and creak, over and over.

“Could you please give it a rest?” Sophia said.

Foxley frowned. “Sorry, Winter.” They all started calling her that when she arrived: an ice queen, she had seemed, pale and immovable and thinking she was so far above them all. This had proven not to be the case soon enough, but the name had stuck. It only ever was used by the staff: the boys called her “sister,” of course.

Sister Thornhill was staring off into space, in her own little world as always. Sister Haverfield was shifting from foot to foot. Matron Hall was calm, a bulwark of stability. The whole camp hospital, stretching across the disused racetrack, was taut as piano-wire, waiting for the wounded. Even the night-birds were saving their calls for later. Then at last through the crisp and silent air they heard it: the rumble of the convoy.

The trucks regurgitated them, one after another, blood-caked and groaning. The stretcher-cases went right the operating theatre; the walking-cases directed towards the marquees where beds were waiting for them, starched and turned-down in a display of severe perfection that Sophia couldn’t help but feeling proud of. The men who couldn’t walk but didn’t need surgical attention immediately were carried in on the orderlies’ backs: it was amusing to watch the soldiers protest that Corporal Gibson couldn’t possibly manage to lift them, only to be hefted easily by the twig-like fellow and taken all the way in to bed.

Once they started coming in, her mind went quiet: it was just the work, and she knew the work. The blood didn’t bother her anymore; nor did the screams, or the vomit, or the shit. Her mind was perfectly free of the turmoil that tended to cloud it when she was idle. This was what she had come here to do. Every part of her was occupied: her hands, her feet, her voice, her thoughts.

And then she heard her name, her first name being called, by a familiar voice—a male voice, a young voice—and then she looked up and saw him being carried towards the theater, chest stained dark, field-bandage all over his front, pale as death—

The walking-case she was guiding collapsed onto the mud, clutching at his bleeding neck, and she had to go back to work.

Hours of blanket-baths and bandaging later, things were showing no sign of settling down. The battle they had been hearing distantly for days had been a horrible one and new trucks were still bringing men in. But soon the shift would turn over, and the others would stagger off to bed, and then Sophia could quietly excuse herself to Surgical and see if he was there. But what if he wasn’t? Had he died on the table? Was that all she would ever see or hear of him, just her Christian name and a desperate glance? It would be worse, far worse, than nothing at all.

Finally the staff-sergeant came through and let them know they could shuffle off; Sophia put to bed her last case, a Pte. Chambers with a badly broken leg now splinted and elevated, and, unnoticed in the chaos of the changing-over, slipped into the marquee where the men just out of surgery were being settled in.

His tag hung around his neck, not that she needed to check it. Pte. T. Hartnell. 41st Division, Royal West Kent Regiment. Underneath it the bandages were pristinely wrapped—Haverfield’s work—smelling strongly of carbolic. She couldn’t tell how bad it had been, but she could guess: shrapnel all through his shoulder and upper right chest. A few inches lower and it would’ve reached his heart and stopped it, then and there. He would have dropped like a stone in the middle of it all; he would have been alone; with nobody beside him to help him go, to tell him how well he had done.

But it was alright, she told herself, bidding tears not to come. She’d be able to tell him herself, when he awoke, because he was here, right here. She had the thought, the type of horrible selfish thought that had always come so easily to her, try as she might to keep them out, that he might have to stay here long enough to come to depend on her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, apologizing for thinking such things, for all that she’d done to him before, for all that he had yet to endure. Sunk deep in dreamless morphia-sleep, he did not wake; he did not shift or sigh when she put her hand on his.

***

“Seasick, miss? You look a bit green.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sophia observed the soldier come up and stand next to her at the taffrail. Staring out at the receding shores of England, she shook her head. “No,” she replied. “Just thinking.”

“That’s all right, then,” said the soldier. She expected he would carry on bothering her—to a Tommy, a lady alone was catnip—but he didn’t. Just stood next to her, watching the sea.

She turned to look at him. He was of middling height, with red cheeks and blue eyes, and a posture she would describe as “jaunty”: like an illustration from a recruiting poster. His cap covered his hair, but it was probably fair. Leave had done him well, clearly: he had a glow about him, an aura of luxuriant health, one he shared with the other returning soldiers he’d boarded with, all looking clean as anything in their uniforms. More of them were scattered about the stern: jocular and effusive, taking bets on where they’d be billeted this time, if the rations would be any better, how soon it would be before they could get back to the front and give Fritz what-for.

She wondered if they were in one of Frank’s regiments. Probably not. But thinking of Frank, as always, made her want a cigarette. She was halfway through bringing it to her mouth when the soldier’s lighter appeared, gallantly flicking on.

“Thank you,” she said. He nodded at her.

“If you don’t mind me asking, miss, have you got someone over there you’re visiting?”

“No,” she said; a half-truth. “I’m a nurse, actually. A volunteer.”

“You going to be taking care of us, sister?” said one of the soldier’s friends, perching himself along the rail. “When we all had trench fever, the nurses were cruel as anything. Starving us, like. You’d be different, though. Much nicer.”

“And nicer to look at,” crowed a third. “Those lot were plain as sin.”

“Get off, Bobby,” said the first soldier, shaking his head. “They were doing their best. You’re just a grouser. Too bad there’s no medicine that’d shut you up.”

She couldn’t help smiling at that: he noticed, and smiled back at her. Now would be the perfect time to slip below decks and get back to quietly reading her book, and leave the boys to jostle each other, but for some reason she didn’t.

“You’re headed to the front, miss?” asked yet another private, preternaturally tall with nearly invisible eyebrows.

Sophia shrugged, and tapped her cigarette against the rail. “I don’t know yet. I haven’t been told much. I suppose it’s as likely as anywhere else.”

“Cor, she’s posh,” the one named Bobby whispered to another one; Sophia pretended she didn’t hear.

The first soldier, the one she was thinking of as Tommy, said, “Well, no matter where you end up, I’m sure you’ll make a brilliant nurse. ”

“I would hope so,” she said, not a bit sharply. “I’m two years into training to be a doctor. Which doesn’t qualify me for a real nursing position, but it’s good enough for the V.A.D.”

Tommy's eyes widened. “A real doctor?”

She allowed him a nod of confirmation. One of the boys behind him let out a whistle.

“And you’re giving it all up to come out here?”

“I thought,” she said, “that it was the right thing to do.”

***

“How long have you had bleeding like this?” Sophia asked, concerned. The boy’s gums were dark and puffy; rivulets of red blood ran between his teeth. She had been the first one to notice, apparently.

“Dunno.”

“Can you try to recall?”

“I dunno, sister,” the boy repeated. Military age twenty, real age seventeen; Private Young had been heavily concussed, among other things. “Can’t you just let me sleep? I’m tired.”

“Of course you’re tired,” said Sophia kindly. “But I really would like to—”

“Leave him be, Cracroft,” said Corporal Gibson, passing by; his orderly’s whites somehow pristine, as they always were no matter the amount of bodily fluids he had his hands in from hour to hour.

“Gibson,” she said, “come here.” He stopped, and came, begrudgingly. The orderlies, as a rule, did not like to be bossed about by V.A.D.s; but Sophia had never cared much for what anyone else did or didn’t like. “Now, what do you think of this bruising? Have you seen it on a patient before?”

“Well, it’s not gas gangrene,” he said with a frown. “But it’s not your usual sort of contusion, either…”

She turned to the boy. “Private Young, what have you been eating these past weeks?”

“Rations,” said Young.

“Which are…?”

“Bully beef and biscuits, mostly…. Bread and cheese. And,” he said, brightening a bit, “right before the big push we had some jam. Best thing I ever tasted, I think. Be dead if it weren’t for that jam.”

Sophia sighed. “Gibson, this boy is showing all the signs of scurvy. Can you speak to Matron about getting him on a diet of mainly vegetables? Make sure it happens today; the bones won’t start to knit until the scurvy goes, and not a minute sooner.” She departed, leaving Gibson standing stunned mouthing scurvy? and the poor boy utterly bewildered.

The camp was still nightmarish, twenty-four hours after the convoy’s arrival, but becoming steadily less so. She had tried to check in on Tom every chance she got, but those chances were few and far between. Of course not only the patients but the staff needed care as well, and Sophia had spent a good half-hour that morning coaxing Colonel Fitzjames into taking a minute to sit down and get some food and drink in him.

At last she had a moment to herself. Walking past the officers’ tents, she saw that Captain McDonald, the handsome surgeon, was off-duty too, stretching out his long legs in his tent, lighting a pipe and setting the needle down on his Victrola: Beethoven, tonight, as per usual.

“Sophy!” he said happily. “Please, be my guest. I’ve got a beautiful bottle of the finest champagne, just in from Paris, popping the cork now.”

The bottle in question, of course, was a repurposed milk-jug filled with the curious beverage that McDonald and Stanley, his tentmate and fellow-surgeon, brewed not-so-secretly in stills below their cots. It was, to put it lightly, disgusting, but one could not resist McDonald, nor would one dare disappoint him. She perched herself on the very edge of his camp-bed and took a sip of the concoction to fortify herself. “If I ask you something, will you keep it between us? It’s nothing to do with—well, it only concerns a patient, just the one.”

“Color me curious, Winter. What’s the matter?”

“You probably don’t remember, but last night you operated on a Private Hartnell…”

“Now, you know I remember all my cases,” he said. “What was his condition?”

She described his appearance, and the appearance of his wound, trying to present it as dispassionately as possible.

“Well,” said McDonald, “The lad was lucid enough when he came in, I recall. Took the chloroform well, and we got all the shrapnel out alright, I can be sure of that. I was impressed at how neatly it missed the subclavian. If he stays clear, doesn’t go septic… I don’t imagine he’s likely to be fully discharged. Back to the front after a few months in Blighty… Oh, dear. That isn’t quite the answer you wanted, is it? He a chum of yours?”

She said nothing; drank some more; considered with cold logic the choices that lay ahead. “I met him,” she said, “on my way here from England, last year.” While this wasn’t untrue, it was not the whole of it, but thankfully McDonald did not press her for more detail.

“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders,” he said. “I trust this isn’t something I’m to worry about on your behalf.”

“Of course not,” she said, forcing a smile.

Later she saw Sister Haverfield, shoulders bowed in exhaustion, leaving the mess-tent, headed in the opposite direction of the nurses’ bunks. “I thought you were off-duty now.”

“Matron asked me to cover surgical tonight,” Haverfield said. “The orderlies are getting stroppy. Fitzjames is trying to appease them.”

“Oh—oh, I can do it,” said Sophia quickly, seizing on the opportunity.

Haverfield raised an eyebrow. They had gotten off on the wrong foot at the start, but nearly a year later and they knew each others’ foibles well enough: Haverfield did not like her routines interrupted, let alone changed multiple times in one day. “Well—alright, then,” she said at length. “I’ll—I suppose it would be nice, to go rest a bit… Thanks, Winter.”

“It’s really no trouble at all.”

There was plenty to do in surgical overnight, especially without the full complement of orderlies on hand: some bandages had to be changed every two hours, and there were tinctures to be mixed and temperatures to be taken all the while. But presently nobody except the boys were around to observe her breaking the camp rules and sitting herself down on his cot, taking his hand, not wishing to wake him too abruptly, but desperately wanting him to know she was there. “Tom,” she whispered, “Tom.”

Golden lashes fluttered open; he saw her. “Sophy,” he said. “I’m dreaming…”

“No, you’re not. You’re in hospital, you were fetched in, you’re going to be alright.”

His sweet young face twisted up in pain as it came back to him. “I remember,” he said. His hand closed tightly around hers. “I remember—I thought I wouldn’t—” He began to cry.

“Shh, shh,” she soothed, “it’s alright. I’m here.” She could not rest her head on his chest for his wound so instead she stroked his hair, wiped his tears away, entangled her fingers in his, until at last he calmed. They stayed like that a moment; then Tom began to squirm.

“Did Magnus make it? Magnus Manson, I need to find him, I’ve got to—is he here—?”

“I’ll have the Colonel inquire, and let you know as soon as I can. Manson, is it? Do you know his number?”

She made a note of it, and promised Tom his friend would be found. It seemed like he was keeping himself awake with a great deal of effort. Sophia knew he needed to rest, but she needed more time, she needed to hear him talk, she had not realized how much she’d missed it.

Seemingly he had forgiven her, for now at least: in the face of what he had been through she couldn’t blame him for wanting to be comforted, but sooner or later she would have to own up. Not yet, though. She was very good at avoiding things.

“You seem different,” he said, after a while. “Tired. Thin as a twig… Been bad here?”

“As you boys are so fond of saying, there is in fact a war on.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said, and began a laugh which soon turned into a grimace, wincing at the strain his movement put on his wound.

“Careful, Tom, please. You must stay very still, it’s barely been a day since you were brought in. You’ll be moved to one of the regular wards soon.”

“Hope it’s one of yours,” he said, which is what she had been thinking.

Less than a week later he was, in fact, deemed well enough to be moved out of Surgical and into a regular recovery ward, one of Sophia’s, the E2 marquee tent. She changed Tom’s dressing that afternoon, seeing his bare chest for the first time, seeing the damage that had been done to it.

Tom’s neighbor in his new bed was from his regiment: Pte. Golding, military age twenty-one, real age nineteen, and though he had been brought in nearly comatose and had to undergo sectioning of his abdomen he was awake now and using all the energy he could muster to complain endlessly. As soon as he’d spoken she’d remembered him from the Channel ferry: Bobby, the mouthy one.

“Sister,” he said, “this bandage is killing me, can’t you loosen it?” The situation, in her expert opinion, did not need her intervention, and she told him so, which only caused him to try to take it off himself, which in turn meant that an orderly had to be called over to deal with him. Regrettably the only orderly around was Armitage, who Sophia strongly disliked, and disliked the thought of the two of them teaming up against her.

She warned Haverfield to keep an eye on the potential conspirators when they swapped over, and then headed to the Colonel’s office. Fitzjames had received back with the inquiry on Pte. Manson she’d requested on Tom’s behalf: he was fine, he had made it through the push without a scratch and had been moved to reserve with the rest of the intact regimentals.

Telling Tom so the next morning she watched as he lit up in relief. “Thank God,” he said, “thank God. Oh, Magnus… Wish I could write to him—need to tell him I’m alright, but.” He gestured at his immobilized arm.

“I can take dictation,” she offered.

“Would you? You’re a doll.”

Sitting beside him she composed in her swift script his short missive to Private Manson: Dear Giant, glad to hear you’re intact, doing just fine here myself, gorgeous nurses &c, hope you are getting double rations or triple, you deserve it & more, don’t let Sgt Tozer shove you about, soon as I’m back we’ll pick up Great Expectations where we left off, if you read on ahead without me I’ll throttle you. Best love, Tom.

“I was with him,” he explained, as Sophia folded up the paper. “Got in front of him as the shell hit, but couldn’t be sure if he took any of it…”

Of course. “You’ll be decorated for that, you know,” Sophia said.

“Me? Hardly,” he scoffed. “Was just getting on with it.”

“Don’t get humble, now. I’ll see you after all this with medals on your chest if I have to put them there myself, Private Hartnell.”

“Right,” he said, looking stunned, to her immense satisfaction.

The moment was interrupted as a color-sergeant across the tent roared out in pain; Sophia, called into action, gave Tom one last glance before hurrying across to tend and temper.

Later, in the field beyond the row of marquees, there was a game of kickabout going on; men only a day or two away from being discharged getting a last game in before they were dispersed like dandelion seeds, some home, some to the trenches. Some to live, some to die. Sophia sat in her usual deck-chair on the sidelines and lit up a much-longed-for cigarette.

Her moment of peace lasted only about five minutes before Matron Hall appeared and sat down in the chair beside her. She disliked that Sophia smoked, but had long given up on trying to stop her, so satisfied herself with a disapproving grunt before asking, “Holding up alright, Cracroft?”

“Yes, ma’am, just fine.”

“Mm. That’s your lad in there, isn’t it. Hartnell, isn't it?”

Somehow she always knew. Or, more likely, Sophia hadn’t been being as discreet as she thought; or maybe McDonald had let it get out after all. “Matron, I swear he’s not a distraction—please, don’t have him moved on my account.”

Matron eyed her. “I can’t lose you to a dalliance, Sophia, not this week, not when there might be more in any day, and in worse condition than the last convoy. You’re one of the best I’ve got, you know that.”

Sophia nodded solemnly. Please, please, don’t take him away from me.

“But,” Matron said, with a wry smile, “I trust you… and God only knows you deserve it, after… Well. I’ll be keeping an eye out, but that’s all.”

Sophia thanked her with utmost sincerity, and then Matron Hall left her alone, and sooner than she’d have liked the rest of her cigarette was gone, and she had to resist the urge to have another one.

Winter, they called her. Winter, it had been when she arrived here, well over a year past now. It was spring now, the early green days of it, and there were more men out there falling one after the another, and none of them could do a damn thing about it, other than be ready with needle and thread to stitch them up when they arrived.

***

Just as in London, where despite the Zeppelin threat there was still dinner, dancing, school exams, life still went on in France: children still played in the streets, the church-bells still rang, the fields were still harvested, and the markets still sprang up every week, overflowing with flowers and fruit and all sorts of trinkets, from stamped-tin badges to painted china dishes.

Passing a post-box, she felt a wince of guilt. Earlier that week Frank had written her, again. How he found the time, she never knew. Certainly he had enough to be getting on with; certainly he knew he wouldn’t receive a reply. She had dreams, sometimes, of him walking up the road leading to the hospital camp, meeting her there and getting down on one knee in front of all the staff; one dream found her entering Colonel Fitzjames’s office to give a report and finding him deep in conversation with Frank: a bizarre nightmare, she knew for a fact they didn’t know each other, and would be highly unlikely to enjoy each others’ company if they did.

Even when she was awake, she thought about him all the time, which was a strange thing to do regarding a man she didn’t love and certainly never wanted to see again. While dressing herself in the morning she would come up with new ways she would say no to him; while mechanically washing bandages she would explain, to an invisible jury, as if she were on trial, why precisely it was that she had been well-justified in turning down a man like him. Gruesome wounds and the daily treatment thereof couldn’t get the bastard out of her head: she wasn’t sure, at this point, what would.

Lost in thought, she walked straight into a solid khaki form, and the bag full of fresh produce she was carrying back to camp split, sending tomatoes and onions spilling everywhere.

“Oh, pardon me,” she said, embarrassed. Crouching to try and grab her goods before they rolled straight into the nearby piles of manure and mud, she found her fingers brushing against the interloper’s as they reached for the same tomato.

She looked up into blue eyes. “If it isn’t Miss V.A.D,” said the soldier, grinning. It was the Tommy from the ferry: she’d know him anywhere. She had the thought, like a girl in a romance novel, Oh, he is handsome, and clutched the tomato so hard that she broke the skin.

He took her into a small cafe and, in the charming soldier’s argot of the region, acquired coffee and sandwiches for the two of them. The men of his regiment had been moved to reserve earlier that week, and were billeted in the big house up the hill. Rumors they might get sent even further back were circulating, but Tom—for that was really, actually his name, naturally—thought that they were all stuff and nonsense.

“We’ve been lucky,” he said, “gained more ground than hardly any other division. It’ll be the next push for us, sure as anything.”

She wanted to ask him if he was scared, but refrained. Instead she pecked delicately at her food and asked him about his family.

Immediately she perceived that it had been a wrong question. His mouth went tight, a thin slash across his face, before picking itself back up into a smile, but a different one than the sort he’d worn before.

“Two younger sisters. And my brother Charles is sixteen…” Here it comes. “My older brother John died three years ago this month.”

“Three years…” She did the maths in her head. “Ypres?”

“No. God, he’d have been thrilled to go out. We joined up together. But he was sick—had been, for a while. Managed to hide it well enough to enlist but he never made it to the front. Died five weeks into training.”

“Tom, I am so sorry. I’m sure he was a wonderful brother.”

“He was. Yeah, he was. I’m fighting for him. I know I won’t die out here, on account of how I need to do enough living for the both of us.”

Moved by compassionate spirit, she took his hand across the table. She had no grief of her own to offer up: nothing bad had really ever happened to her. A charmed life, empty in its calmness; no consummation, no endings, no love lost, not really. She was lucky, she had been told: she was the most fortunate of all. Intelligent, pretty, rich, bored.

Colonel Fitzjames and his delightfully speedy car weren’t due to pick Sophia up and take her back to camp for another hour yet, so she took Tom’s arm and strolled back through the market, her head feeling helium-filled, a great gas bag of confusion and delight.

Aunty Jane would just about have a heart attack, seeing this: bad enough that her Sophy was throwing over her training, even temporarily, to go set the bones of Tommies, doing a job any old Red Cross girl could do, but to lower herself to the level of friendship with one of them was beyond the pale. If Jane had her druthers the closest Sophia would ever have come to the front would’ve been crocheting socks and scarves for the soldiers and packing them off in the post.

“For the sweetest Sister,” Tom said, handing her a bouquet of fresh violets from a flower-stand teeming with color. How absurdly gallant.

“I’m not sweet,” she said. “I’m very cruel. You’ll soon find out.”

“Will I?” he asked, cheerfully. She swatted him with the bouquet and they darted about the street like children, light on their feet.

Dear Sophia,

Boys are teasing me because I’m writing and taking my time over it instead of scribbling one off to Mum. Can’t help that I don’t know what to say to you really. Easier when you’re in front of me. I hate that damned Colonel not giving you leave just when I finally managed to get my pass. I left something for you in in the flowers near the fountain. Next time you go by pick it up. We’ll probably be off on our way by then. Lovely weather for a war isn’t it. But you are lovelier. Our sergeant is hollering something horrible about someone nicking his field glasses. Told him to put a thumb in it which made the boys laugh. You met some of them that day on the ferry. Strong - “Circus” we call him, like a strongman. Manson, “Giant.” Bobby Golding, he’s “Scrubby.” And they call me “Lion.” Some grousers, some geniuses. Is it the same with nurses? What do they call you then? If it’s horrible you don’t have to tell me but I don’t see how it could be.

Yours,
Tom

“Winter’s got a lad,” announced Sister Thornhill proudly during laundry duty.

“What? How do you know? Is that true?” Haverfield demanded.

“Saw her reading her mail,” Thornhill answered. “Has to be a man. Wouldn’t be trying to hide her smile otherwise.”

“That’s wonderful, Winter,” Foxley sighed. “What’s he look like? Where is he stationed?”

“Bet he’s handsome,” said Thornhill.

“More of a looker than Foxley’s man, I’m sure,” said Haverfield with a smirk.

Foxley glared at her. “Why’s everything got to be a competition with you, Kate? If you’re trying to make me jealous it won’t work. I’m sure her fellow’s perfectly lovely. Isn’t he?”

“I really would prefer we discuss something else,” said Sophia.

There was an awkward beat; then, obligingly, Thornhill started describing an interesting bird she’d seen the other day, and Sophia returned to her tea in silence.

Selfish as always. It wasn’t that she was ashamed—but everyone and their mother at home had known about her and Frank, and look how that had turned out. She’d felt like public property; he had too, and it had made them both irritable and self-aware, prickling all over with knowing others were thinking of them in ways they could not control.

Of course, Matron Hall would know, since as a matter of protocol she read all the letters to and from the nurses serving under her, but Hall was a solid sort, and would not betray Sophia, especially as Sophia happened to have found out certain details of the formidable woman’s own unorthodox assignations.

Tom could brag about her to his messmates all he liked—in fact, the thought gave her a pleasant, illicit shiver—but here at the hospital he would be all hers, if she could make it so. Certainly Foxley gabbed on about her gentlemanly fighter-pilot fiancee enough for all four of them.

In the flowers near the fountain, just as he’d promised, Tom had left for her a gift, a silver comb—plate, of course, but beautiful. Another man might have bought jewelry: something frivolous she’d never be seen wearing. But this, he must have known she would use every day. She stood there, where he had stood just days before, turning it over in her hands, letting it catch the sun.

***

Golding was whining again. “Sister, when do I get a massage? My leg is cramping up something horrible.”

“It’s a charley-horse, it’ll pass,” said Sophia, who was working on Tom, digging her thumbs into the stiff knots of muscle underneath the bandages.

They weren’t talking. To converse would draw attention, but it had the downside of leaving all of Sophia’s senses to be focused solely on how Tom felt, the breadth of him, returning to life and healing, the smell of his hair and the soft sound of his breathing, small heavenly gasps as she set the blood flowing again him inch by inch. It was perfectly decent of her to be doing this, perfectly under the remit of her responsibilities as nurse, but it felt very nearly like sex. A crude thought about his state beneath the blankets pooled in his lap flitted through her mind; she swatted it away.

After all she was still waiting for him to turn from her, to decide he did not need or want her attention, to give her back what she had given to him. At the very least he should be asking her why she had stopped writing; demanding an explanation or an apology. That’s what she would’ve done, if it had been her.

So she kept her gaze demure and ignored the heat building between them, putting all her heart into her hands.

“Thanks,” he said, when she was done, looking up at her, so grateful it made her chest hurt. “I feel like a new man.” He moved to get out of bed, swinging his legs over the side of his cot.

“Don’t,” she said. “You shouldn’t be moving about—”

“I’m fine, So—sister,” he said. “C’mon, I’m wasting away here. I want to go calling. My lads are scattered about these tents, I don’t know how any of them are getting on, it’s killing me. Take me on a walk—pretend I’m your dog, won’t you? Lead me around a bit? I won’t stray.”

He was, in fact, starting to regain some of his puppy-like mien: less sickly, more springy. So she helped him up and made sure his arm was strapped tightly against his wounded chest before walking him out of the tent and into the blinding spring sunlight. They did a circuit of the wards, slow-going at first and then faster, passing between rows of invalids, some antsy on the upswing, some living only a morphia life, some in that infinite in-between, and all being attended to, minutes or seconds at a time, adding up over time to hours of care: the best they could offer here.

In one of the more intensive wards, Tom paused for a moment over the bed of a boy who’d been touch-and-go since being brought in. Sepsis had snuck up and later today Captain Stanley was going to take off his leg.

“That’s Georgie Chambers,” Tom said. “He was with us… I didn’t see where he’d gone… oh, God, will he be alright?”

Sophia, always in the habit of honesty, said, “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Tom buried his face in her collar for just a moment, breathing deep; then crouched near Georgie’s cot and brushed the hair off his forehead, whispered something to him she couldn’t hear.

In the out-patient tent, full of men mere days away from departing, Tom was received with whoops and cheers from his healthier regimentals. Handshakes, all round; then embraces. “Mind your bandages, now,” Sophia warned, but it brought her joy to see them even as she worried for the wounds.

They settled in for a round of catch-up, names ping-ponging back and forth with great speed—yeah, Manson’s doing all right—Lieutenant Des Voeux still MIA? taken prisoner?—poor Chambers—that bastard Hickey—

She left them there, strolling out into the woods beyond the tent, where she thought idly she might pick some flowers. Might slip one into Tom’s buttonhole, gold to match his hair. Another one behind his ear, blue to match his eyes. From the direction of the tent she heard laughing, shouting. Her boots stepped lightly around trees and vines; bending every so often to gather up cowslips or primroses. Presently she rounded a corner and there he was, suddenly, leaning against a tree.

“You scared me,” she gasped, hand fluttering to her heart. “What are you doing?”

“Come to find you,” he said. “Why’d you wander? I wanted to show you off.”

“Did you tell them I’m—I mean. Do they know?” Know what, exactly, she couldn’t say—didn’t want to put words to it.

“Knew I had a girl,” he said. His hands were in his pockets. His casual pose had stiffened somewhat. “And then, knew I didn’t anymore. Don’t suppose it’s time for you to tell me what all that was about?”

“Tom, I—” she began, but a lump rose in her throat, cutting her off. She wanted badly to tell him, she knew that she must, but—oh, God. How would he take it? He might hate her, and then what would she do?

“Soph, it’s alright—listen, you’ll tell me later, plenty of time. Now come meet the boys, mustn’t keep ‘em waiting...”

He guided her out of the woods, free hand gentle on the small of her back. They emerged together, to general hollers, and after being introduced Sophia handed out her flowers to them all, watched happily as they adorned each other with signs of springtime. “Thank you, Sister,” said the tall one, Strong. “She really is grand,” said his friend, little Evans. “Just like you told us.”

Sophia blushed; Tom grinned at her. Later during their shift Haverfield said, “I don’t know how you do it, Winter. I’m barely hanging on, and here you are smiling away, not a care in the world.”

It was all on the tip of her tongue: he’s here, he makes me feel like this, have you ever felt like this, is this what it’s really like? Will it be like this forever? But habit was her master, and so she said nothing, just kept on smiling.

***

Letters, back and forth for weeks, with Tom at the front and Sophia working night shifts, sleeping soldiers all around her, moaning for their mothers or for men now dead, late summer birdsong as the sun rose on her way to the mess for a quick morning-dinner and then an exhausted retreat to bed. She slept with the comb in her hair, lifting one hand up to touch it, the other lower to touch herself. She had not kissed him yet. She didn’t know if he loved her. She didn’t even know if she wanted him to; if she would be capable of loving him back if he did. It had always seemed just beyond the limits of her abilities. When the wind was right, shelling could be heard to the northwest. She was terrified. She hardly thought about Frank anymore.

Then Tom’s unit was put back in reserve, billeted once more in the big house. He had been wrong about the big push—or perhaps this was just one final temporary reprieve beforehand. Whatever the reason, it was an unexpected joy to see him.

When she was with him she wasn’t an heiress, or a dutiful niece, or the only woman medical student in her class, or the innocent who would miraculously and easily improve a life long consigned to the bottle. She was just Sophy, and he was just Tom. Blue chambray and khaki. They could have been anyone—anyone at all.

Foxley happened to spot her out in the village with him, walking arm in arm. Sitting down across from Sophia at lunch the next day, she said without preamble, “Good god, Sophy, he must be nineteen if he’s a day!”

“Twenty-three,” said Sophia. “He’s older than he looks.”

“Still,” said Foxley. “You sure he’s not got a girl at home? You have asked, haven’t you?” Sophia, ashamedly, shook her head. Foxley clucked her tongue. “Walking right into his trap, you are.”

“He’s not like that, Anna—anyway, why do you get to have a man in uniform, and I don’t, all of a sudden? You were happy to hear it from Thornhill, as I recall.”

“George is a captain,” said Foxley. “And I thought—look, there are plenty of captains here, and better. Why not McDonald? Why not—Fitzjames, for that matter?”

Sophia let out a shocked squawk of a laugh.

“What’s so funny about the idea? Gosh, Sophia, you’ve got looks, you’ve got poise—you could have any man you wanted, the Colonel, a general—and anyone could tell you that! I know that type of Tommy. You ought to too, you’ve been here long enough now. He’s just playing with you. I don’t want you getting your heart broken, carrying on with him like that.”

“Thank you very much, but I can take care of myself.” She got up to dispose of her tray, having lost her appetite.

“I’m just trying to help,” called Foxley after her, frustrated.

And Foxley did help—and so did Haverfield and Thornhill—when, weeks later, the casualty list pinned up one morning had General Francis Crozier’s name right at the top of it; they caught her as she collapsed, carried her to the Colonel’s office, where Fitzjames put brandy in tea for her and Matron wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and eventually they wrung it out of her that it had been Crozier, whom many of them had heard of, some even met… He had existed outside her, of course, he had been someone to so many, and now, now—

This was her fault, somehow, she was sure. If she’d only written him back… paid him a visit, as she was sure he’d wished… If only she hadn’t been living in another world, a peaceful sunlit summerland, with a pink-cheeked soldier-boy barely out of his school-days, play-acting at courting, like they were different people in a different place…

She’d kept the ring. Granted a few days of compassionate leave by Fitzjames—which she’d protested vehemently against, she hardly deserved it—she found herself at the seaside, willing herself to throw it in the water, and failing.

The letter from Tom waiting for her on her return went unanswered. The ones after that, unopened and unread. Silence was her vice and she fled to it for all the comfort it could give her. Anyone who’d known about her and Frank—which is to say, everyone—sent condolences, she was flooded with them, and she answered those letters with brutal efficiency, and meanwhile somewhere in the dead of winter the year turned over into 1918, and Tom stopped writing altogether.

He would know what to say, was the thing. He would know exactly how best to comfort her. He had lost his brother, which was so much worse in every way than this, Sophia knew that—but that’s precisely why she couldn’t ask. She was unbelievably lucky, to have not lost anyone except a might-have-been. All her brothers were alive; her parents; her friends. If she had tried, really tried, to love Frank, perhaps she would deserve to feel the way she did about him being gone, deserve to seek Tom’s comfort. But she hadn’t, so she didn’t.

She couldn't think of what else to do, other than try to deflect all the undeserved sympathy still aimed at her, so she did nothing. She worked. Sutures, solutions, syringes. All the time in her head were two shapes, two outlines. One dead, one alive. Death was supposed to be a gilder; it was supposed to turn memories holy. But when she thought of Frank, it was just as likely, if not moreso, that she recalled his leer, his foul breath, his clumsy hands on her, his humiliating pleas, than she did his kindness, his laugh, the charming gap in his teeth, the gentle warmth of him. And behind his dark silhouette a bright young one, too bright for her to look at directly, too shining for flaws to show.

***

“Seen you getting along with that patient of yours,” said Armitage. “The blond one.”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked. He was sitting on his arse while she turned down the beds, as usual. They’d sent a few dozen men off to Blighty that morning, freshly combed and clean, bandages strapped on tight, all of them happy to be headed home, getting in their last flirtations with the Sisters, their last bribes with the quartermaster. Soon enough Tom would be among them; or, more likely, given his state of rapid healing, on a convoy back up to the front. She didn’t want to think about it.

“And Gibson saw you… petting him.”

“Did he now.”

“Saw you walking out of the woods together, near the out-patient tent.”

“Fascinating. Please, do tell me more, I’m on the edge of my seat.”

He was about to go on, but thankfully Matron Hall came striding through and requisitioned him for the operating theatre. “Yes, ma’am,” he said obsequiously, peeled himself up from his seat, and stalked out.

“That one,” said Matron, frowning.

“You could always have him transferred out.”

“And have him replaced with some child who we’d have to teach everything from scratch? No, we must make do with what we’ve got, dear Cracroft. On that subject, once you’re finished in here, your boys are simply dying for attention in E2.”

There were indeed a raft of complaints back at the ward: a new fever, a torn bandage, a stained sheet. But mostly it seemed the lads missed her. She enjoyed being liked by her patients; over the months some had become quite good friends, people she missed when they were gone.

She didn’t notice anything wrong until she came down Tom’s row, and while taking Golding’s temperature noticed the odd look clouding his usually clear countenance.

“Are you in pain, Hartnell?” Golding smirked. Tom didn’t say anything. “Let me take a look at you, make sure there’s no—”

He shouldered her off with a grunt, not meeting her eye.

“What’s gotten into you?” she said. “Tom, look at me. Talk to me.”

Soundlessly he got up from his cot and stalked out of the tent. Sophia, her stomach churning, followed. A little voice in her head sounding suspiciously like Matron Hall told her that she was abandoning her post in the middle of a shift. When they were sequestered in a quiet pool of shade underneath an ancient oak, she said, half-knowing what was coming, “Come on. Out with it.”

“You’re engaged,” he said, his stance defensive, “you were when we met, you lied—you never said—”

“Who’s been telling you this?”

“—I dunno how I could have believed I was the only one, a girl like you—”

“Tell me who told you,” she insisted.

“Bobby did,” he said. Naturally. “Said Sister Thornhill told him you’d a fiance, and she’s a friend of yours, isn’t she? She’d know, wouldn’t she? He said she’d seen the ring, even. That you’d shown it to all of them.”

“Bobby Golding,” said Sophia, “is a rude little brat, pardon me, and Amelia Thornhill, bless her heart, is a bit thick in the head.”

“But is it true?” he said, voice cracking. “It is, isn’t it?” His big eyes were limned with the start of tears. Many boys, when they came to the hospital, wept for days, embarrassed the whole while, telling the nurses that they’d never cried like this before, not since they were a wee babe, but Tom seemed like the sort who’d always cried easy and often. He knew how he felt, and was not scared to feel it.

“Yes. Yes, Tom, it’s true, I was engaged. But he’s dead now. Thornhill—or Golding, more likely—conveniently failed to mention that he died in an air raid six months ago. That’s why I stopped writing.”

Tom’s mouth fell open; worry lines darted down between his nearly invisible brows. “... Oh. Soph—I didn’t know—I’d never—”

She put a hand up. “Let me finish. …When I first met you it was already over, I knew that I wouldn’t marry him, I’d told him so.” Now the tears were coming to her eyes, so she closed them, and plowed on: “He died still thinking he might have gotten the chance, if he asked again. I know he did—and I’ve been tearing myself up over it—oh, Tom, I never meant to hurt you—it was all a muddle in my head, they don’t prepare you for these things in medical school. I made a horrible mistake. I should have told you, I should have told you ages ago, please, I’m sorry—”

She didn’t see him come to her, but suddenly he was there, enfolding her in his good arm.

“Can you ever forgive me, Tom?”

Softly: “Course I can, sweetheart. And I’m sorry for it—for what happened—I’m sure he was a good man.” He sounded embarrassed for his outburst; but it had been his right to know, it was his right to feel jealous, his right to not want to share her, even with a dead man.

“You would’ve liked him, I think…” She heaved a dry sob, inhaling the soap-and-sweat scent of his convalescent blues, flannel she’d washed herself just days ago. “Or maybe not. I don’t know.”

“Whatever you say,” he said softly into her hair. Then, after a pause: “Dunno if I deserve a girl like you.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“Soph, when you weren’t writing… I was in a bad way, got in with some bad men. I’ve done… things I wasn’t supposed to do…”

Something was weighing on him still—she was sure she could hear all about it later. For now she could not wait a second longer, so she said, “Oh, I don’t care,” and kissed him. There on the edge of the forest skirting the field hospital, anyone could’ve seen them: maybe the orderlies were watching and would go running to Matron about it. Maybe Colonel Fitzjames himself was watching. Damn it all, it didn’t matter.

He held her as close as he could. She felt the wetness on his cheeks, or maybe hers: which tears belonged to who? They were nearly of a height; if she cut her hair and went to the front in his name, kept him safe, maybe nobody would notice—and he would live—yes, this would work—and she would come back to him, saying yes, yes to whatever he asked of her—she would never have to say no again.

When she moved away, he looked satisfyingly dizzy.

“Hang on, where are you going?”

“Back to the ward,” she said. “I’m still on-duty. Musn’t be missed. Come along.”

“Right,” he said, bashfully. “Of course.” He trotted obediently after her and then sat on his bed, watching her go round the tent, ignoring Golding when he asked what they’d spoken about out there.

One of the convalescents had his harmonica out; soon a hymn started up. She moved in time with it, humming along; she felt his eyes on her, following; she felt very strange. The kiss had not lasted nearly long enough; worse, it had made her want more. Who had the time? Certainly not her—but oh, somehow she would have to find it.

***

“Look at what he gave me,” Sophia said. She held her hand out over the mess table and the other nurses ooh-ed and aah-ed in admiration.

Haverfield whispered, “Is that—?”

“Shrapnel.” Resting inside a handkerchief embroidered T.H. in the corners was a pile of metal scraps. Some smaller than her fingernail; a few larger ones. It had all been inside him once. It had not done him enough harm to kill him, or to keep him here with her: but perhaps like her it missed the feel of him, and would draw him back in good time.

Thornhill said, in her plain way, “Are you engaged, Winter?”

Sophia shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“How do you not know if you’re going to get married?” Haverfield asked. Everything always had to be crystal-clear with her.

“We haven’t spoken about it.”

“But you want to, right?” Thornhill asked. “You must want to, saw the way you said goodbye to him, I saw—”

“Leave off, Amy,” said Foxley, to Sophia’s surprise. She thought surely some judgment had been fomenting on Foxley’s tongue, something like “too soon” or “too young” or “not a gentleman”—and perhaps it was, but Foxley was keeping it to herself.

Sophia wrapped up the precious pieces again and put them safely in her pocket. Had it all caught up to her at last? Had the past had let go its claws? Certainly not without a fight, not without pain, of which there was surely more to come: through the rest of the war and beyond. But right at that moment, sitting with her dear friends, Tom’s parting gift held secret beside her skin, she felt light; she felt present; she felt like an entirely different person than the girl who had first stepped on that ferry, not knowing what was to come, all the horror, all the love. One day it would be time to stop leaving, and start coming home.