𝐖𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 ━ five hargreeves

9│EVERYBODY LOOK WHAT'S GOIN' DOWN

When she returned to the soldier's tent she and Klaus first arrived in, she was more than a little relieved to see the man in one piece. He gave her a concerned look the moment he laid eyes on her. "You're not looking too good," he observed.

She gave him a weak smile. "Blood makes me squeamish. Um, when can we leave?"

"Leave?" he echoed.

"Yeah, to go back? We don't have to stay here, y'know."

"Oh, well—" the man start—d in that familiar, airy voice of his.

"Hey, who's your friend?" a new voice interrupted his response.

Before the brunette even turned around, she could see Klaus' face brighten and her hopes sank as he answered, "oh, this my, er— sister. Dol-Lola. Yeah, Lola."

When she finally did face the man, he smiled kindly at her. "It's nice to meet you. You're serving as a nurse?" he added, spotting her uniform.

"Um, pseudo-nurse," she answered without further explanation. She turned back to Klaus. "So, leaving?"

"It wouldn't hurt to stay a few days, would it?"

✧✧✧

Of course, it turned into more than a "few days" and Klaus always seemed deaf when she asked when they were leaving.

It was a great relief to Lola, though, that he didn't go out immediately on missions and spent most of the first month training. In the back of her mind, the statistics her father had read at the breakfast table one morning (before, of course, her mother scolded him for starting the day on such a horrible note) kept repeating themselves in the back of her mind: One out of every ten Americans who served was a casualty. 58,148 soldiers were killed. 304,000 were wounded. 2.7 million served. 75,000 veterans were disabled—

Lola pushed the voice as far away as she could. Instead, she chose to sort out the inventory until it was in tip-top shape. She repeated those numbers over top of the statistics to try and drown them out. When there was no inventory to sort, she was in charge of keeping the aisles between the cots clear and neat for easier passage. She made sure to keep her head down as she worked, refusing to look directly at any of the soldiers. She'd already thrown up more than she would've liked to admit and all of the nurses— Dottie, Beth, Maggie, Peggy and the head nurse (who everyone called Nurse Commander behind her back)— had seen her vomit at least once.

Thankfully, they didn't hold this against her, though their sympathy was also lacking. She guessed it was because kindness had no place on the battlefield and they'd all seen worse than a teenage girl reacting to the horrors of war. (And they were, truly, horrors.) Lola coped as best she could despite the worry that her parents had no idea where she was (she must have been missing for at least three days back home) and that her mind was still having trouble processing everything she was seeing.

✧✧✧

Halfway through their second month, Klaus approached her after their lunch shift with a grim expression on his face— an unusual look for him— and she was immediately concerned. "Klaus?" She thought of the man he usually hung out with. "It's not Dave, is it?"

"No, no. Well, not really," he answered, clearly trying to be reassuring. "It's just. . . we're going out. On a mission."

A heavy, stone-like feeling lodged itself in her stomach. "Oh. When?"

"Tomorrow morning, early," he sounded apologetic despite the circumstances being out of his control. "There's some Vietcongs nearby that we have to take care of. The sergeant major suspects we'll be gone a week, tops. I thought you might want to know." He left the threat of this being a one-way trip unsaid.