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June 1944: Saint Marie du Mont: France
Resting her head back against the wooden table the medics of Easy had covered with a sheet to make space out where the wounded could stay, Riley kept her eyes closed throughout the process of the needle stitching her skin back together. Scrunching up her nose whenever it pushed through her wound, Riley hid the pain in her facial features and hid those behind her hands that she pressed against her cheeks. Continuously, she apologized to the medic whenever she flinched away, the man so focused that she only got a quick smile as a response.
Riley never experienced any fears of blood, gore, open wounds, or anything related to that. Thousands of stories had she heard in her childhood years, stories about patients in the hospital. Her mother was a nurse there, absolutely loved her job, and never stopped talking about it. The smallest detail was told over the dinner table. The family was so used to it that it couldn't ruin their appetite. Riley was fascinated by the wounds and how the doctors were going to fix them, as they'd like to promise. Fixing up an injury so big you could see the person's organs working. Yet laying there on the table made shivers run over her spine. This time it was her own blood, fluids that should be inside of her, running along the cloth held in the medic's hand.
Thinking about her own wound, Riley, in her head, went back to the lovely nights around the dinner table. Her mother was still dressed in her uniform, her dad only wearing his while working. Every night was the same. Riley would first be asked to talk about her day, but she'd refuse to answer first because of how curious she was to hear about her mother's work in the hospital and her dad's jokes that he had heard that day in the military base where he spends his days as a lieutenant. She wanted those nights back, she wanted to talk about injuries that weren't her own. She wanted her parents to show their love for her, she missed feeling their support.
Her childhood was filled with laughter and smiles, she'd never expected her future to turn out this dark. Even when they knew what was coming, there was no way her happy life could be torn apart because of a war happening on the other side of the world. Talks with her friends and learning about the truths convinced her that indeed, bad years were coming really close and she'd throw herself in the middle of the conflict. Just like her parents who had already signed to help, Riley's mom left to become a head nurse in Brussels, and her dad continued his army career, this time in Italy instead of the States. Riley left a year before they'd depart from their home and now that all three are in the middle of the heat, no letters are sent around, no news known about anyone. No knowledge of how they're doing, if they're even alive.
"Are you alright?" the medic asked when taking out the bandages, the most painful part passed and now it was simply a matter of keeping everything clean, even in their adventures through dirt and mud. Having to patch up such a wound, Eugene Roe expected more silent whimpers, yet Riley, almost tougher than the soldiers, barely showed him any pain. That's not always the best sign, someone being so numb, but she reassured him with her blabbering.
