Timeless

Chapter 5

"Well alright, I won't." Buck stated, waiting a moment until she had taken the first bite. "So kindergarten?" He questioned, furrowing his brow.

In the dim light of the hospital wing, with the fading light, he could still see the blush dust across her cheeks. "I like working with kids. They're nicer than grown men."

"Well I can't argue with that."

"You just shouldn't argue with me anyway." At that, Buck gave a laugh and Kathryn realized it was probably the first time all day that he had laughed. She liked it when he laughed—liked to be the source of the smile and the laugh. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"I mean—" Kathryn just stifled a grin. "If there wasn't a war , what would you be doing?"

He shrugged. "I guess I never gave it much thought."

"You should."

"Why do you care so much?"

Kathryn was almost taken off-guard by the directness of the question—but to be fair, she had started it by asking. "This war isn't going to last forever. And if you're going to make it through, you have to start thinking about what happens afterwards too."

"I didn't peg you as an optimist."

"I'm not," Kathryn amended her statement. "I just think that we all need a little bit of hope sometimes."

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Kathryn found that sleep was elusive as smoke. Every time she tried to reach it, it just wafted higher and higher out of reach. Her bed was rickety and it wasn't much of a real bed . But she supposed that the days where she slept in an actual bed and not a military cot were long over.

She wondered how the men slept soundly at all. To sleep on a bed that felt like the ground, to wake up and know that you were risking your life—she almost wondered if the government knew just how bad these beds were. But then again, this was war. No amount of complaining was going to change the fact that they just didn't have the resources to give every man a soft bed.

Tossing and turning was second-nature to her at nighttime. When she had lived at home, she had shared a room with her older sister. Then of course, her sister had been married and she had been alone in the room. College was better and she had roommates there too—

And this wasn't far from what she thought of college as. She liked the other nurses well enough to feel at times, like this was just a roommate situation and that they were all there for something besides war.

Just then, in the darkness of the room, Kathryn's ears caught onto a muffled cry. Almost immediately, Kathryn was sitting straight up and staring into the dim room. Another cry and Kathryn didn't hesitate—

Annika was sitting in her bed and weeping. Kathryn didn't even register the light being turned on, or the fact that she and Laura were kneeling at Annika's sides, or the fact that Poppy and Becky were rushing around the room like mother hens. Annika was shaking like a leaf, face pale and a thin sheen of sweat running down her head.