Perhaps as a sort of apology for their false alarm about being taken off the line, the Army delivered showers and supplies to Haguenau. After a hot shower they'd get to put on fresh ODs along with winter shoe packs - only two months too late - and stock the hospital back up, not only with medical supplies and equipment but with fresh rations.
Charlie's immediate thought when Henry passed on the information was that it was too good to be true. Her second, upon following her outside and seeing the row of tents set up with steam emerging from them, was that she must have fallen an incredibly long way at some point during the war to think being able to shower was too good to be true. Once, she'd taken such a thing for granted. Never again.
The nurses' shower tent was set up around the back of the bakery being used as the field hospital, away from the men's ones for safety reasons. There were two MPs, one posted at either end, to add an extra measure of safety, and a box full of fresh ODs and undergarments beside one of them.
"Boots and helmets are on the other side," the MP posted at the front of the tent said. "I'd get the boots before you go in, if I were you. Floor floods pretty fast and you don't wanna get your socks wet."
Henry thanked the man and inclined her head in the direction of the back of the tent. Charlie, Boo, and Autumn followed her silently. They each picked up the boots labelled with their names and skirted back around the tent, where they retrieved the bags containing their ODs and undergarments before heading inside.
"Anyone got a hairbrush?" Charlie asked as she attempted to comb her fingers through her tangled hair. It had grown out well past the regulation length and had become harder and harder to care for while out on the line. At some point she'd stopped trying altogether. Now, she didn't even want to imagine how hard it was going to be to get all of the knots out, but she knew she couldn't get her hair wet before she brushed it.
"Yeah, here," said Autumn, who had been taking care of her hair better than the rest of her. She passed the hairbrush over to Charlie, then took one look at her hair as Charlie removed her helmet and shook her head. "I'll do it," she decided.
"Thanks."
It must have taken Autumn an hour to brush out Charlie's hair. At one point Charlie had worried aloud that the shower tent would be taken down before they even got the opportunity to shower but Henry reassured them both from outside that she wouldn't let such a thing happen.
When Charlie's hair was finally detangled it felt dirtier than ever, thick with grease and mud and blood and still dusted with ash from the burning of the church in Bastogne. But she didn't have to wait long to get it clean again; her and Autumn stripped down immediately and opened the boxes of fresh bars of soap that had been left for them inside the tent.
Charlie ended up having to wash her hair four times before it felt clean, then washed it once more just in case; she didn't know when the next time they'd get access to showers was, after all. Then she turned her attention to her body. She could barely bear to look down at it even as she lathered the soap up over her skin. She was much thinner than she'd ever been, her rib cage visible even when she inhaled, and the expanse of her stomach, arms, and legs was covered in bruises. Shades of black, blue, purple, green, and yellow littered her flesh - most of them she couldn't even match up to a specific incident - and suddenly she was sure that the next time she looked at her face in a mirror she wouldn't recognise herself. If her body looked this different, and it had always been at least somewhat visible to her beneath her clothes, then how much changed was her face? The one she remembered, the one she imagined when she thought about herself, was round, with neat, thin eyebrows and full lips, bright blue eyes surrounded by thousands of tiny freckles which raced each other from one cheek, over the bridge of her nose, to the other, then curved up around each temple and scattered across her forehead. The face she remembered looked young, younger, even, than her years, but wasn't it true that everyone looked older now? So just how much had the war aged her? Were her lips thinner, her eyes duller, her face less round and more angular? Were the bags beneath her eyes darker, deeper, the hollows of her cheeks more pronounced?
The freckles, she knew, were still there. She could always tell when Floyd was looking at them and had watched him attempt to count them more than once during their time in Belgium. So, at the very least, she still deserved the nickname he'd given her, which she'd hated at first and now loved because it reminded her of a happier time, and an easier one, too.
There were no towels to use to dry off and the air was much too cold to stand around and wait to get dry, so Charlie had to content herself with trying to use her hands to rub off as much of the water lingering on her skin as she could before pulling on her new ODs.
Never before had she thought of fatigues as soft - in fact, the general consensus was that they were rather itchy, especially brand new - but compared to her old ones, which had been stiff with everything that stained them and had cracked when she moved, the new ones were like sheep's wool.
As she emerged from the shower tent at long last, twisting her hair up to scrunch beneath her helmet to prevent it from dripping down her back, Charlie felt like a new person. When had she last been able to move her face so easily without feeling some dried liquid or other itch as it cracked and flaked, when had she smelt so clean?
Their rations were rudimentary but even those were a gift. To no longer have to eat long-since stale K-rations was more than Charlie could even ask for in terms of food. They'd been running out for so long she'd forgotten what it was like to not have to ration. Now they'd be able to eat full, proper meals again.
Charlie's mood was only dampened when she returned to the CP to check on Lip and was reminded of the patrol.
Lip was sitting on the same couch he'd been on the entirety of yesterday before Charlie had had to take him by the arm and physically haul him up out of it and to one of the beds reserved for the officers in the back of the house. Now, she rolled her eyes when she saw him but refrained from saying anything, instead choosing to stand by the door and wait for him to finish speaking to Floyd. Whatever they were discussing looked serious and she presumed it was about the patrol, however after a few more exchanged words both of them started to smile.
Lip glanced up and caught Charlie's eye. Floyd turned and immediately smiled.
"Hi," she greeted, walking a few steps further into the room. "Came to see how you were, Lip. Wondered if you needed someone to drag you back to bed again and apparently you do."
Lip laughed weakly. "I'm alright, Charlie. Just helping get things ready for the patrol tonight, then I'll head back to bed."
Charlie hummed dubiously. "Well, I need to take your temperature anyway, plus we've got a supply of penicillin again which I can give you. How are your symptoms?"
Floyd stepped aside to allow Charlie to sit on the edge of Lip's couch. "I love watching you play doctor," he teased as she stuck a thermometer in Lip's mouth.
Charlie cut her eyes at him and scoffed. "I'm not 'playing' doctor, Floyd. That's like saying that I love watching you 'play soldier'."
"Aw, do you, Freckles?" His grin widened. "Then you're in luck, 'cause I'm being promoted."
"You are?" She glanced up at him after reading the number on the thermometer, then looked back down as she noted it down.
"Lip's getting a battlefield commission to second lieutenant, so I'm the new Easy Company first sergeant."
"What?!" She'd only been half-listening before but now she was all ears. When she turned to look at him he was smiling proudly and her heart just about melted. "Yay," she said softly, mirroring his smile. "That's amazing. Congratulations."
"Thanks, Freckles," he replied, ducking his head and getting bashful all of a sudden.
Her smile only widened as she watched him hem and haw.
"Now you're only two ranks below me," she teased as she readied Lip's dose of penicillin.
"Two more ranks before I'm allowed to fraternise," he said.
Charlie breathed a hollow laugh. "Only one," she corrected, concentrating on Lip as she injected the penicillin. She knew Floyd was flirting but she didn't want to hear it and especially didn't want to encourage it; while it may have amused him, every time he flirted with her it made her heart crack just a little bit more, knowing that he didn't really mean it. "Mabs is a second lieutenant," she deflected. "And it's not like that's ever stopped you from fraternising with her in the past."
"Right," Floyd agreed after a beat, somewhat flatly.
Lip looked up at him with a sympathetic smile which Charlie missed as she packed her equipment away.
"Anyway," Charlie said, turning back to Lip. "Your symptoms. How are they?"
"Better," he said.
She gave him a look which made him laugh.
"I promise," Lip added. "Sore throat's easing up and I'm feeling less achy."
"And the tiredness?"
"Worse," he relented.
Charlie nodded. "That's good. Your body needs to sleep to recover."
"Hey, Talbert, this the company CP?"
All three heads whipped around to find none other than Frank Perconte standing in the doorway, grinning.
"Frank!" Charlie exclaimed. "How are you doing?"
He shrugged. "Ass is pretty sore, so as long as you don't go smackin' it I'll be fine."
"Well, there goes my favourite pastime," she retorted in a deadpan.
"Luz is through there," Floyd told him, pointing to the room behind them. "Supply room. Get him to send out a Hershey bar while you're in there, would ya? Tell him it's for Charlie."
Charlie snorted. "Tell him it's for Boo."
"You two are shameless," Frank accused as he all but waddled past them.
"Remember who patched up that sore behind of yours, Frank," Charlie called after him. "I'm scarred for life. It's the least you could do."
"Wait," Floyd said when Frank had disappeared into the supply room, "you're the one handling the ass wounds?"
Charlie hummed her affirmative as she stood from Lip's couch. "Sometimes."
In a stage whisper clearly intended for Charlie to overhear, Floyd said, "Quick, Lip, shoot me in the ass, would ya?"
"Floyd!" Charlie exclaimed with jaw agape.
Floyd just laughed while Lip chuckled weakly beside them.
"Well, I should be getting back to the hospital," Charlie said, swinging her med bag over her shoulder. "Go to bed, Lip. I have eyes everywhere so I will return if I hear you're still out here."
"Yes, ma'am," he agreed with a good-natured roll of his eyes. "I'll go back there as soon as I've spoken to Captain Speirs."
"Okay," she said with a nod. "Speirs'll tell me if you don't."
Lip breathed a hoarse laugh. "I know."
"Good."
With that, she said her goodbyes and was vaguely aware of Floyd saying his, too, before he was hurrying to keep up with her. "I'll walk you," he said by way of explanation as they made it back outside and onto the street.
They walked together quietly for a short while before Charlie spoke up. "Are you leading the patrol tonight?"
Floyd looked over at her and she realised with a start how tired he looked. Probably she hadn't noticed because he always seemed to be smiling when she looked at him, but when he wasn't he looked... drained. He looked in no fit state to be leading a patrol.
"No," he said.
Her shoulders relaxed, a heavy weight lifted from upon them.
"Originally it was supposed to be Malark, but now they've got Johnny with the new lieutenant in as ranking officer and observer."
"Right," Charlie replied. "Jones looks like he's barely out of middle school."
"Just a kid," Floyd agreed. He ran a hand over his mouth and Charlie realised he'd shaved his beard off. When she gave voice to as much, he shrugged. "It was getting itchy."
"I like you better without it," she told him, then blushed and stared resolutely at the ground ahead. Somewhere, machine guns were firing, probably aimed not too far from them, but they just carried on walking, unflinching and unbothered by a sound they were so accustomed to by now.
Floyd didn't say anything in reply to that, and Charlie blushed harder. She felt like her old self again, the way she'd been in Aldbourne when her biggest concern had been her romantic entanglements. She didn't think she'd blushed at all since leaving, and she'd used to do it almost as much as she'd breathed.
When they arrived at the field hospital they lingered outside, not wanting to enter and be swept up into the perpetual hubbub.
"Where is the patrol leaving from tonight?" Charlie asked, looking up into Floyd's face and being momentarily frozen by the warmth in his brown eyes. He had such pretty eyes. She knew for a fact she'd never seen prettier eyes than his. She could drown in them.
"OP-1," Floyd told her. "It's closest to the river," he explained.
"I'll wait there for them to return," she decided. "The field hospital is too far away if there's an emergency."
"They're leaving at 0100," Floyd informed her. "Sure you wanna wait up that long?"
"Of course."
"I don't know how I feel about you sitting in there all by yourself in the middle of the night, Freckles." The rest of the company - and the rest of the battalion, too - would all be giving covering fire. A shame. She would have liked to have Floyd for company.
"I'm sure the others will be there, too," Charlie reasoned. "And surely you won't be gone for that long, right?"
"Right," he agreed, but he didn't look convinced.
"I'll see you before you go," she said, cutting the conversation short before he could protest again. "See you tonight, Floyd."
"Yeah," he said with a tired sigh. "See you tonight."