1943

Chapter Six: Red

I quickly left my letter on my stiff chair before running out to the man, limping his way to the tent.

I looped his arm over my shoulders and wrapped my arm around his back, helping hold him up a bit and get him to the tent.

"I'm shot. Fuckkk, I'm shot." He told me as I quickly managed to get him out of the open area and into the medical tent.

I laid him down on an empty stained stretcher at the end of the tent as he hissed in pain. It was when I noticed the navy blue pants, leather bomber jacket and how he had tiny shards of glass in his dirty blonde hair.

"Fuck fuck fuck, please get it out." He begged as I couldn't even see where this bullet was.

But I saw the entry wound on his pant leg.

The blood had soaked the pant that I had thought it only was discoloured black because of the dew in the tall grass he had hobbled through.

Quickly, I managed to get his pant leg out of the way before staring at the bullet.

He had three in his leg.

"Jesus, it hurts so much. I need morphine."

I held him still, knowing we didn't have enough morphine to give to him for only a bullet wound. We were rationing it already and we had gotten a delivery three weeks before.

We had to save the morphine for the patients who needed surgery or were missing limbs.

"I can't, we don't have enough. You're going to have to trust me. Just breathe and you'll be fine. It's only bullet wounds, nothing much."

But as I took the final bullet out, two already sitting in my hand, I saw how that final bullet was against a tendon that it had been tearing. Now removing it cause it to tear more.

"You're getting morphine. Stay still."

He thanked me multiple times as I was rushing to the medical cart closest, grabbing morphine, bandages, a suture kit and alcohol.

He was lucky enough to get the lowest dose of morphine.

He relaxed more after the morphine hit his system as I was stitching his tendon together.

All I could think was that he was a pilot. A pilot like my Mack was.

"Thank you, nurse. I really needed that." He thanked again.

I nodded small, continuing to fix his tendon, hoping he would be alright again.

"Are all nurses this quiet, or is it because everyone's sleeping?" He asked, trying to make conversation.

I shook my head and gave him a small smile, knowing I fixed his tendon now.

"No, I just... I have a problem with pilots."

He raised a brown brow at me while I wiped his leg off, getting ready to stitch four inches of his shin closed.

"Whatever the rest say about us might not even be true... we do fly fast planes and have one of the most difficult and death defying tasks of the entire war effort, but we're all just average Joe's."