The last few metres to the aid station were the worst. Posey could no longer walk, the pain was too much and had bent her double; she was forced to crawl her way there on her hands and knees. She'd lost a lot of blood. She'd been forcing herself not to look but she knew that if she turned back she'd find it in a river. She was a bleeder, though, and bleed she did; she could feel the blood leaving her body, soaking her ODs through and freezing on her skin. It seemed to her she could feel herself losing awareness, her vision becoming foggy and her thoughts hazier the longer she kept dragging herself onwards.
She'd never known tiredness like this. Each of her limbs felt like lead, weighing her down and giving her yet more weight to heave behind her. Her head, however, felt detached from the rest of her body; as though suspended in mid air, her head felt light, almost as though it was floating. It wasn't as pleasant a feeling as she might have imagined floating to be. Instead, it felt as though the world was tilting back and forth around her and at any moment she'd be tipped right off the edge. She found herself gripping at handfuls of snow to try to keep herself from falling.
Posey was only just clutching at the last threads of consciousness when she reached the aid station.
The guard on the door seemed to run away from her when he saw her approaching. Maybe he'd been scared away by all the blood, or maybe her head actually was floating away from her body. Maybe she was coming entirely undone.
He returned with a nurse at his side, and the nurse rushed through the snow to meet her.
"I need help," Posey managed to say, her head lolling to one side as her elbows buckled beneath her.
"That's alright," the nurse said. Her voice was soft and reassuring and it reminded Posey distantly of Gene's. "Lets get you inside, you're gonna be just fine."
Posey's eyes fell closed and she assumed the guard was lifting her, though she didn't honestly care. A wall of sound rushed up around her along with a slight lift in temperature and still she kept her eyes closed, focusing on the beating of her heart, on forcing each breath out of her lungs and then back in again.
When she was laid down on a bed she felt herself relax, then tense up as a fresh wave of pain crashed over her. The nurse said something she didn't hear and Posey opened her eyes to watch the guard's retreating form. She was powerless to protest when the nurse tore open her ODs.
"Oh -" started the nurse, her perplexity written plainly across her face, "- my God..."
"You can't tell anyone," Posey said, forcing her eyes to stay open to watch the nurse's reaction. Her voice was a mumble regardless of how hard she tried to force the words out. "Please don't tell anyone. 'M gonna get in so much trouble."
"Oh my God," the nurse said again, likely now looking at the wounds.
"Please, you can't tell anyone," Posey insisted, her speech beginning to slur.
"You need surgery, I can't -"
"Oh no," she wailed, her vision getting darker by the minute. "This can't be happening to me."
The nurse was gone and back again in a moment, and when she returned she had another nurse trailing behind her. "Jesus Christ -!" exclaimed the second nurse, startled, before the first began talking to her in a hushed whisper, likely explaining the situation.
When both nurses turned back to Posey she mustered strength enough to say, "If the army finds out they'll kill me," and then her eyes fell shut again. All she could do after that was mumble as she lost the thread of what was going on around her.
"Come on, honey, up we get," said the second nurse, and a second later Posey was being lifted.
"Where are we going?" she asked, trying to crack an eye open.
"To a back room. Don't you worry your little head about it, we'll get ya sorted out."
The words were so kind and so confusing, for she had no idea what was happening, that Posey felt herself start to cry.
"Oh, no, don't cry!" pleaded the first nurse, keeping her voice quiet.
"I wish I had my bear," Posey said, her voice thick with tears.
"Listen," said the second as the pair of them laid Posey down. She crouched down to get closer and kept her voice quiet but firm, "you gotta stop cryin', honey. If you don't stop cryin' we'll tell everyone here that you're a girl."
"No!"
"Then stop cryin'."
"Okay."
"Here's what's gonna happen," she went on, and though her face was partially blurred and partially shaded in Posey's vision, she could tell that it was kind, "we're gonna try to operate on you ourselves. The surgeon here - well, he's a fickle bastard, and to put it simply he can't be trusted. We can't put you out, though, not all the way. You gonna be alright?"
"Am I gonna die?"
The pause that followed the question wasn't promising. Posey realised, though perhaps distantly, that she was really toeing the line here between life and death. She knew intrinsically that these two nurses would do their best, but perhaps their best wouldn't be enough. Finally Posey had screwed up enough to land herself in proper trouble. Finally she was facing her comeuppance.
"Lets numb you up, huh, darlin'?" said Nurse Two.
Posey nodded as Nurse One bustled about, gathering equipment. "What's your name?" Posey asked, trying to keep her mind off of the clinking of the tools that were about to be digging around inside her abdomen.
"I'm Ellie, that's Viv. What's your name, sweetie?" This second nurse, Ellie, was clearly doing her best to keep Posey's eyes from venturing around the room.
"I'm Posey," she replied, and tried to muster a smile as her head rolled to the side.
"That's a pretty name. Is it a nickname?" Ellie questioned. "My name's a nickname. It's actually Eleanor, but that's a secret."
Posey managed a sleepy giggle. "My name's actually Josephine. That's kind of a secret, too."
"I can imagine," Ellie said with a knowing smile.
"We're all ready. Shall we put her under?" Viv asked, laying out whatever she'd gathered on the table where Posey couldn't see it.
"You alright, honey? We're about to numb you up."
"I'm okay," Posey said, trying to offer her most winning smile. She was sure it surfaced as more of a grimace but the intention was still there. "Will I be able to feel it?"
"A little," confessed Viv apologetically. "We'll be gentle."
"As long as I'm alive at the end of it, I don't care," Posey replied, and all three of them shared a nervous laugh.
"Alright, here we go."
Something was placed under Posey's nose, something that smelt so strongly of chemicals her head began to spin. She felt herself relax further into the table, felt that she'd lost all control of her limbs and could only move her head, and then her head began to feel so heavy she wasn't sure she could move that, either.
She was vaguely aware of voices above her but couldn't begin to imagine who they belonged to. Two voices, she thought, were speaking about something, but they sounded as though they were underwater.
Her vision went dark. At first she saw flashes of black, then a bright white slid over her vision and faded back out again. Then there was nothing. She was awake but unseeing, even when she blinked to clear the fog.
She tried to tell the voices that she couldn't see, tried to sit up or lift a hand or do anything to let them know that something was wrong, but all she could do was lie there and listen to the sounds of their muffled chatter.
There was something sharp in her stomach, something that moved. A tooth, she thought, and tried to flinch back. There was some kind of wild animal and it was trying to bite her.
A knife, she decided. Someone was stabbing her with their bayonet. Maybe it was Smith, like he'd done to Tab back in Normandy.
A syrette. Gene was administering morphine. Had she been wounded? Where was Bill?
She was lying in the snow, somewhere in the Ardennes, all alone. Gene was gone, now, and so was the stabbing. The sky spun around her, the world was rotating too fast. It began to tip and she began to slip and she tried to grab ahold of the trees but couldn't.
"Help me!" she tried to scream, but her mouth wouldn't open. There was something hurting in her stomach, something sharp and burning. When she looked down she saw blood. Still, she kept sliding and sliding through the trees, miraculously missing every one, until she slipped right off the side of the earth.
When she peeled her eyes open she saw the ceiling of her childhood bedroom. She'd always been here, she realised. Wherever it was she'd been before had just been a dream.
Someone was wrapping something around her - a blanket, maybe, though it was scratchy and didn't cover all of her and they only put it over her stomach.
She couldn't see who it was but she knew, instinctively, that it was her mother. Her mum always knew when things were wrong and always knew how to fix them.
Posey tried to look down, to shift her head so she could catch a glimpse of her mum's face, but her neck wouldn't let her move. She stopped trying after a while, just slumped back and let it be.
She was aware, vaguely, of missing someone. She had the distinct sense that someone wasn't there that she wanted to be, someone important, but the fog in her mind only deepened the further she tried to reach for a name.
Then, suddenly, it cleared. One minute she was gone and the next very much here, and reality came crashing back over her. She remembered leaving Easy after being found out, remembered leaving Teddy behind with Bill, and remembered getting hit in one of the explosions when she'd been on her way out.
The two nurses she remembered only when she saw them. When Posey tried to sit up the pain in her side screamed and the nurse she recognised as Viv rushed over to help her lay back down again.
"Easy, honey," soothed Ellie as she came up on Posey's other side. "How we feelin'?"
"A bit sore," Posey mumbled in reply, grimacing as she tried to get comfortable.
"A bit?" questioned Viv with a small laugh.
"No need to play the martyr, honey, you've just had your tummy cut open," said Ellie, giggling.
"Yeah. I feel like it, too." Posey allowed herself a short, painful half-laugh before she went on, "Was it okay? Did you sort it all out?"
"Everything's out and all the rest is perfectly in order, exactly where it should be," Viv assured her with a soft smile, crouching down so Posey could see her without having to strain to look up. "You're gonna be here a while, though, I'm afraid."
Posey nodded. "That gives me time to think, at least."
The comment raised questions, she could tell, and presently began the interrogation about just what on earth a British girl was doing dressed as an American paratrooper a couple of miles back from the front line of a world war.
And Posey just spilled it all out to them. Everything. From the Blitz to Mrs. Daniels, all the way through boot camp and Normandy, up to having her secret discovered and having to fake her own death.
The nurses drank it all in and mulled it over.
"That's quite the story," said Viv eventually.
Posey smiled bitterly. "I know."
"Sounds like your best option is to get yourself sent back to England," Ellie said, nodding as the idea settled.
"Can I get sent to England from here?" Posey wondered.
"You'll have to go through at least one hospital first," Viv said around a sigh. "First to the evac hospital and then either back to England or on to another hospital in France, depends on whether they think you could go back on the line."
"Do you think I could?"
"Hard to say." Viv shook her head, the tip of her tongue peeking out between her lips as she considered the question. "Either way, you can't actually go back on the line. We've gotta figure out a way to get you back home without running into too many doctors or surgeons."
Posey sighed, her exhaustion palpable as she let her head fall back to the table with a clang. She noticed for the first time how small this back room was - she thought it was probably more of a cupboard, really - and wondered how much trouble these two women would get into for stashing her away back here.
"I don't know what to do," she confessed quietly, letting her eyes fall closed. "I've got myself tied up in knots." Her eyes shot open. "Unless..."
"Unless?" echoed Ellie sceptically.
"Unless you teach me how to be a nurse. And I'll do all the small jobs - I'll mop up blood and read to soldiers and roll bandages, whatever you need me to do, and as soon as the opportunity arises I'll get myself sent back to England."
"That's..." Ellie said, already shaking her head.
"Maybe a brilliant idea," finished Viv, starting to grin. "We can find you a uniform, I bet, or you can just use our spares, and we'll say you've just been sent over. You'll have to use an accent -"
"I've got plenty of experience with those," Posey assured her.
"- and we'll just cover for you about the rest."
"You two are insane," Ellie said, her eyes darting between them, jarred.
"Ellie, she doesn't have another option," Viv insisted quietly, latching onto her arm. "We'll give her time to get better and when she's not so bad she can help out. Nothing extreme, just the small jobs."
"All the jobs you dread doing," Posey added, trying to smile reassuringly. "I'm a fast learner, too."
"And if any of the men come in from the line who know her? What then?"
"Then she'll hide - do inventory, roll bandages - does it matter? It's an extra pair of hands, either way, and Lord knows we need as many of those as we can get."
There was a long pause in which Posey tried to force herself not to fiddle. This seemed like the perfect way out - what else was she to do? - but if she were Ellie she wasn't sure she'd agree.
"Fine," came the eventual response.
And it was done.