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The loud echoing noises of white heels clacking against the marble floors. The screams or cries erupting from the wounded mouths, while they were waiting or getting the available help. Young nurses and medics walking in and out of the tall building, carrying a soldier on the stretcher or bandages underneath their arms. The greyish walls lit up by the warmth of candles or with the small rays of sunshine reflecting on the freshly fallen snow. It all was a perfect setting for the most horrifying scenes to ever exist, but for the soldiers, medics, nurses, it was all real. Not a tape shown on a large piece of beige canvas. The smell of blood was actually rotting in the church. The rapid heartbeats from adrenaline or limps that needed more blood, was felt in every person that had to see and witness the horrors.
"Wilson! I need Wilson."
"She's over there, Irene!" Rene points down the hall, toward a dark corner lit by a dimming flame burning. The young girl's hairs were bound in a ponytail, her cheeks visibly covered in the blood that the soldier transferred from his fingertips on the skin of her face. She was whispering to him, talking in a soft tone, accepting his sensitivity to loud noises. Her thumb kept on brushing over his chin, right below the big and deep wound that took out his eye and a large part of his nose. He was dying, Riley couldn't stop it. But what she did instead was calm him to that unstoppable death, making his journey to the never ending rest as peaceful as it could.
"Wilson, Easy company, battalion Two needs help right now. You know where that is, right?"
"I'm leaving immediately." Riley took the keys out of her jacket, stuffing the tin box she kept with her, back inside the pocket.
"You can't use the ambulance, we've just received the news that it got blown up by artillery. I've got you a jeep instead, hope you can work with that," Irene asked while throwing the correct keys in the driver's hands. She nodded as a response and was already on the move towards the stairs, running on them but keeping her grip around the remains of the rails. As a child, Riley had been terrified of stairs. Her dad always carried her up them towards her blue painted bedroom since she wouldn't go herself. That fear was mostly gone, but sometimes it just came back and now with all the fears Riley was facing, it might have thought to join the party too.
"The jeep is there!"
"You're going to be fine, Sisk." Riley took a hold underneath his shoulders and helped Eugene with placing him on the stretcher, which was bound on the front of the jeep she was driving around. The wounded soldier said a faint 'good morning' to her, she returned it with a smile but jumped fastly behind the steering wheel and drove back to the church.
"Do you know if you have extra things for me? I'm really low on supplies?" Eugene asked her.
"Sorry, Gene, we don't have much either. It is impossible for extras to get to us, everything is blown or threatened to blow around Bastogne. Maybe Rene or Irene can get you something, but don't count on loads of things," she answered his question truthfully.
"I finally found some scissors, Perconte kept a pair in his bag. Everyone from easy gave me their morphine, not all with a lot of enthusiasm."
"They're just scared."
"I'm there to help, that's what medics are for."
"That's right, Gene."
Two other medics came running towards the just arrived jeep and carried Sisk to the stretcher that they could easily carry through the many men in the back of the church. Riley ran right in from of them, clearing their path to the place that Renee was pointing at. She had to push through busy talking people, carefully replace a misplaced soldier and clear the table from whatever could prevent the medics from placing the stretcher on the furniture. Renee hurried towards them and asked Eugene the same question that every arriving medic had to answer. How bad it was, how much morphine that they've used, what was hit and so on. She then demanded Riley to stay with the wounded, the quest she always had to do, the reason why this learning nurse was with them.
Riley took out the chair she had already placed there and sat herself down next to Sisk. She started talking to him, about the most ridiculous subjects. But what she did was very effective, he was almost forgetting the pain that shot through his leg. Sisk only thought about the stories and the memories it awakened for him. They made him smile, a simple but very welcomed facial expression in the hospital. A smile, it always showed some hope for the soldier himself, the nurses aiding him or his friends who would hear about those happy curled up lips.
"With this angel over here, soldiers will really start to believe that this is heaven," Irene laughed, her hand brushing the fabric of Riley's jacket.
"More like hell," Anna answered.
"No this can't possibly be hell. It's too goddamn cold for that."
"Oeh, Wilson, watch out with the cursing."
"You're the one to say, Irene." The darker skinned woman took the self-made bandages that were piled up in the drawers of the table that Sisk was laying on and started to untie the ones he already had. The big flesh wound was bleeding very viciously, but the soldier wasn't in life danger. It was just a simple wound made by artillery, nothing that can't be fixed through time. The only thing that Sisk had to worry about, was keeping it as clean as he possibly could, which shouldn't be such a problem since he didn't have to go back soon to the battlefields.
"Hey, Riley, I'm going back now," Eugene stated, wanting to say a simple goodbye to his friend. She stood up from the wooden chair and pulled him a short embrace, wishing him luck and every bit of hope that she could give.
"Say hello to everyone from me, alright. And try to stay as safe as possible."
