The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

09: How Hard Can It Be?

Autumn hummed her agreement, coming to stand with them in their own tiny little triangle. "That makes sense." She looked between the pair of them, her eyebrows furrowing but her grin only widening as she took in their expressions.

Charlie felt a pang of envy, then, for Autumn's seeming inability to ever be thrown off by anything. Life seemed to be smooth sailing to her whether things were going right or wrong. How Charlie would love to be that easy going about it all.

"Why don't we just take the stations we set up?" Autumn suggested, throwing a gesture behind her to the registration desk she'd taken charge of. "I'll sign them in, Charlie will inject them, and Violet, you'll sign them out. Does that sound like a plan?" As an afterthought, she added, "Only if Maddox and Mabel aren't done in time, of course." Even Autumn didn't want to be caught attempting to usurp their lieutenant's authority.

"That sounds like a plan," Charlie agreed, glancing at Violet as she nodded beside her.

"Alright." Autumn looked around her. "Do you know how long we've got?"

"Not long," Violet fretted.

Charlie also began to look around the room, seeking out a clock, before Violet murmured something about the back office and scurried off. She returned with the time and a nervous utterance of, "We have ten minutes until they start arriving."

The soldiers of the company were due to arrive in waves, first the officers, then First Platoon, then Second, then Third. None of this meant much of anything to Charlie, who didn't have a clue who was in each platoon and had never met any of the officers; she found the prospect of each wave equally as bad as the others. If anything, the fact that the officers were coming first only added to her nerves, because surely they'd be expecting a certain level of organisation that Charlie couldn't say they really had covered at the moment - not without Lieutenant Maddox overseeing them and micromanaging everything, as Charlie had known her to do for the entirety of the four days she'd worked under her.

Hoping to calm herself down, Charlie looked over Violet's shoulder and out of the window, where the blackout blinds were pulled up to reveal the hospital's garden beyond. It was a pretty day outside considering the time of year, the sky blue and the birds chirping. Trees which were just beginning to turn green swayed gently in the light wind, flowers which were desperate to bloom started to show pops of colour. Looking at it from the other side of the glass, Charlie wanted nothing more than to go out there and sit on one of the benches, where she'd sat and eaten her lunch alone on her first day of work, but duty called and there simply wasn't time. Instead of wasting her time in wanting for things she couldn't have, Charlie turned back to Autumn and Violet, and sighed.

"Should we go and find Lieutenant Maddox, maybe? I hope she hasn't lost track of time."

Before either Autumn or Violet could reply, a nurse from another ward came hurrying through the door.

"There are inoculations happening here today?" the nurse asked hurriedly, out of breath. "In this ward, I mean? Soldiers' inoculations?"

"Yes," Autumn replied warily, sharing a quick glance with Charlie and Violet. "In about ten minutes' time. Why?"

"They're arriving now. I wasn't sure where they were supposed to go so I just left them standing outside."

Now the reason why she was out of breath made sense; she'd probably run through the whole hospital searching for a ward which had military nurses in it. And theirs was tucked right at the back and out of the way, so she'd probably been searching for a while.

"I'll go and get them," Autumn declared, nodding confidently at the nurse before she hurried off again. "Charlie, are you all good to go with the injections?"