Charlie, Henry, Boo, and Autumn were just about to finish putting together their puzzle when chaos exploded into the basement of OP-1.
"We got wounded, come on!" shouted Earl McClung as he led the rest of the men from the patrol inside. They trampled over the rubble and discarded piles of wood, banged against the walls and sent dust pluming into the air.
Autumn swiped the puzzle pieces onto the floor to clear a space on the table. Charlie rushed over to help Chuck and Ramirez lower a severely wounded Eugene Jackson onto it.
"Popeye, get the Krauts back there, and shake 'em down!" Johnny ordered. "Move!" he shouted as man after man poured into the room, blocking the doorway. "Move!"
Charlie tuned out the rest of his orders as she tore open Jackson's ODs.
"He's spitting blood, Charlie," Boo said, her hands quickly turning scarlet as she tried to wipe it away to find the damage.
"What happened?" Charlie demanded the men around them.
"He threw a grenade and ran into the building too soon," Chuck told her stiffly while Johnny continued shouting his orders.
All around the basement was noise; men were screaming at each other, at the Germans they'd captured, at the nurses to help Jackson, at everyone to shut up. People were pushing and shoving each other, jostling themselves this way and that, pushing further into the room and then retreating when they were told what to do, or else leaning over the table to get a better look at Jackson. Outside was the clamour of gunfire, of artillery exploding, of shells crashing.
Charlie switched places with Boo and took a gentle hold of Jackson's face. "Keep him steady!" she ordered Autumn and Boo, standing down by his legs. "Sulfa on the chest," she added to Boo. "Someone give me light!"
With the flame of a lighter flickering above Jackson's forehead, Charlie checked the dilation of his pupils. She found them dilated wide in spite of the light right above him and clicked her tongue in frustration. She pressed two fingers to the pulse point in his neck and ducked her head to listen at his mouth for his breathing.
Blood was gurgling up his throat with every breath. Internal bleeding.
"Someone get one of the surgeons!" Charlie shouted.
Henry elbowed her way out of the basement without needing to be asked twice.
"He's gonna fucking die!" someone shouted.
"Hold his shoulders," Charlie ordered Webster and Ramirez, who were standing at the head of the table.
As they both took hold of him, Webster took it upon himself to try to calm Jackson down. "Jackson, listen to me. Calm down, or we can't help you. Settle down."
"He's gonna fucking die!" that same person shouted again.
"Jackson, look at me, don't listen to him. Look at me. You're gonna be fine," Webster went on assuring him. As Charlie tried to work, Jackson only seemed to move more with every word coming out of his mouth. "Everything's gonna be okay. Keep still. Be calm, buddy, everything's fine. Everything's fine."
Jackson tried to look at Webster with the eye which hadn't been sealed shut and that was when he started to cry.
"Webster, you're making it worse!" Charlie snapped. Jackson was thrashing more now in the wake of the reassurances than he had been before.
"God damn it!" cried someone behind her. There was movement in her periphery as multiple men rushed over to the corner of the room where the German prisoners were being held at gunpoint.
"Autumn, I need you to get me A-negative blood and equipment for a transfusion." Charlie said. "Now!"
Autumn left without another word.
"Someone else hold his legs!" Charlie went on.
"Jackson, stay calm," Webster was saying as Charlie sprinkled more sulfa over Jackson's face and neck. "You're gonna be fine, buddy. Charlie's gonna help you." He stepped back from the table and demanded of Charlie, "Why the fuck aren't you doing anything?!" as though because he'd taken a step back that meant Jackson wouldn't hear him.
Charlie didn't take her eyes off of her work as she replied, "Shut up, Webster! You expect me to perform a blood transfusion and cut him open with my bare hands?!"
"Doc's here!" someone near the door announced.
Gene checked over Jackson's face as soon as he was standing by the table. "All right, Jackson, take it easy, okay," he soothed, and from him, the reassurance actually worked. "Okay," he said gently as the tension in Jackson's muscles started to ease, as his heaving sobs started to abate.
"Internal bleeding," Charlie told Gene quietly, pressing a bandage to Jackson's chest. "Nothing I can do until we have a surgeon and blood for a transfusion."
Gene nodded.
Henry shouted down the stairs, "Surgeons want him in the hospital!"
Charlie's jaw popped open. The whole point of the nurses waiting in OP-1 was in case anyone needed emergency treatment. The surgeons' insistence to stay in the field hospital instead of coming here might just cost Jackson his life.
"Alright, let's get him out of here," Gene directed as he and Spina lifted Jackson onto a stretcher.
Jackson's sobs resumed. "I don't wanna die!" he cried as men rushed from all directions to help with the stretcher.
"We only need two people on the stretcher, everyone else is holding us up!" Charlie shouted above the sudden noise.
"I don't wanna die!" Jackson pleaded with anyone who would listen.
"It's okay," Babe was saying. He pressed a hand onto the bandage Charlie had previously had pinned to Jackson's neck while she was pushed back by a man trying to get past her. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay, take it easy."
Jackson's invocations only got louder as he was carried towards the door.
Charlie and Boo were close on Gene's heels.
"I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die!"
"Get him out of here!" Gene was shouting. "Get him out!"
Men pushed each other to get out of the way faster.
Artillery fire made the basement shake. Dust came pouring out of the walls.
Jackson's stretcher nearly hit the floor as the men were knocked off balance.
"I don't wanna die!"
"You're not gonna die, Jackson!" Boo insisted, pushing to get back to the stretcher.
Jackson started to gurgle.
Charlie shoved a man out of her way.
"Jackson!" Gene shouted, hastily wrapping a fresh bandage around his neck.
Charlie threw her hands upon Jackson's chest, applying pressure to as many of the wounds as she could at one time. "Keep breathing, Jackson, slow and steady!"
"Hey, it's okay," Babe went on reassuring Jackson. "It's alright. You're alright."
"Doc!" Jackson choked out.
Charlie's hands were soaked in blood in spite of all the sulfa she'd poured on the wounds to stem the blood flow.
"Jackson, you are not gonna die!" Gene shouted down at the dying man. "You're not gonna die! I need you to hang on!"
Another loud bang. The basement shook. Jackson coughed up so much blood it came pouring out of his mouth. His head fell back as he convulsed. Charlie knew his lungs were filling up with blood. His head fell to the side. His throat pulsed with his final breath.
"Jackson!" Gene shouted.
Jackson went still.
The artillery fire continued outside while silence fell in the basement. Bright white light flashed in through the open door, lighting up Jackson's face in all of his wounded terror.
Charlie shut her eyes.
Only now did the chaos abate, when before they'd needed it more. Only now did the men in the corner who'd been so concerned with screaming at a pair of unarmed German soldiers realise what had been happening behind them while they'd been creating all that noise.
When Charlie opened her eyes again it was to Johnny covering Jackson over with a blanket.
Some of the men started to cry and tried to hide it.
Charlie couldn't stand the scene playing out before her eyes, nor her part in it.
One moment she was exhausted, the next filled with so much rage she thought she'd punch something, or someone, if she remained in the basement for a single second longer. She pushed past the men lingering near the doorway and stomped up the stairs, her breathing heavy and erratic, and pushed out of OP-1 onto the dark streets of Haguenau. She ignored the calls behind her telling her to stay inside, ignored the sounds of battle which were so close they sounded like they were coming from inside her head.
Over and over again Charlie replayed the scene in her mind. The shouting and screaming, the voices she'd tuned out at the time and now realised were more concerned with their anger at the prisoners than with the safety of their friend. The pushing and shoving. The demands for her to work faster, do better, most of which she hadn't comprehended in the moment but which were now all she could hear.
She'd only snapped back at Webster, but he hadn't been the only one. And she knew Jackson had been their friend, but she'd been trying. It had been her idea to wait in the OP, as close to the river as she could get, just in case they needed help! And what had she been supposed to do? He'd been bleeding internally. He'd needed surgery!
It wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault.
It's not my fault!
Charlie didn't know where she was going. She couldn't bear to go to the field hospital and have to look at the faces of the surgeons who had demanded a dying man be brought to them instead of going to see him themselves. And she couldn't bear to go to the CP and see the officers, men who had ordered this patrol, and have to be the one to tell them one of their men had died while on a stupid, trivial prisoner snatch.
So, with no destination, she just walked. She stormed her way across town, turning down unfamiliar streets and stomping through puddles until her trousers were soaking wet above her boots. She turned this way and that until she didn't recognise any of the buildings she saw, nor any of the street names painted in faded writing on the walls.
Eventually, Charlie sank to her knees in a patch of grass that used to be someone's yard. The grass was wet and muddy and she was wearing new ODs but she didn't care. The discomfort brought with it some twisted sense of punishment; the knowledge that she'd be miserable later because of her decision to sit in wet grass was a welcome itch of suffering.
When it started to rain she tilted her head back and was glad she'd left her helmet behind. She could still hear the battle but it was distant now, so far away she dreamed of never being able to find her way back to that damned river and the buildings around it where soldiers were spending their days waiting to die.
She smiled as she thought of her friends asking each other where she was, of them trying to find her and not being able to. They would never find her here. They'd leave her behind. And when they went onto the next town they'd wonder what had happened to her, where she'd gone after she'd let Eugene Jackson die under her care, and they would never find out, because she'd still be sitting right here, in some French family's abandoned yard, smiling at her own pain as she stared at the sky.
Charlie fell asleep out there, listening to the sounds of war, letting the rain soak her to the skin until she was shivering even in slumber.
She woke at sunrise to total silence. No bombs. No gunfire. No shouting. No rain.
It was still mostly dark outside, only the smallest sliver of sunshine visible on the horizon, but Charlie knew she must have been sitting out here for hours. As she stared at the line of orange as it faded up into the dark blue of night she knew she should be starting to try to find her way back to the field hospital but her limbs remained fixed in place.
She didn't want to go back. To the responsibility. To the downcast expressions. To the sitting around and waiting for someone to get hit. She wanted to remain here in her own little world, a safe haven she had found for herself amidst sodden grass and mud, and pretend that the war didn't exist, had never existed, that she'd lived all her life here and could peacefully live the rest of it here, too.
Eventually, when the sun was rising in earnest and she had slowly managed to talk some sense into herself, Charlie planted her hands into the mud and pushed herself to her feet. She took a moment to look down at herself, at the dried blood on her hands and arms, now painted in mud, and all of the dark stains on the bottom half of her ODs, and for some reason she laughed, because she knew when she walked back it would look like she'd had an accident. So, giving herself an excuse to delay her return further, Charlie dirtied her hands up even more until the blood was no longer visible beneath the thick mud on her hands, and she wiped as much of it as she could on the back of her ODs until the entire back side of them was as muddy as she could manage and not just the bottom half of her, then wiped the remainder off down her thighs.
The entire situation was so pitiful, so soberingly unfunny, that it made her laugh even more. And, when she left the yard and started walking the streets of Haguenau, freshly reminded of the destruction she was living amongst, she laughed harder to recall she actually had no idea where she was. Last night she'd taken turn after turn, deliberately seeking a place she wouldn't be able to find her way back from, and now she was left with the near impossible task of retracing her steps.
Charlie must have been wandering around for hours before she first caught sight of a building she recognised. It was pure chance she'd seen it - she had simply noticed a tattered, powder blue curtain fluttering in the wind around a corner as she passed - but it had been enough to make her double back on herself to check. She'd long since stopped laughing by now, too tired to bother to keep it up when she'd been walking so long, and when she finally made it back to the stretch of road that contained the field hospital she felt her shoulders sagging in a mix of relief and disappointment.
Henry was not happy with her.
"Where the hell have you been, Lancaster?"
Henry hadn't called her by her surname in so long it jarred her like a slap to the face. Now she knew she was really in trouble.
"I was just... somewhere," Charlie said, not to be evasive but because she really didn't know. "Someone's backyard somewhere. I don't know where."
"Why?" Henry demanded.
"Because..." Because she'd been so angry she'd felt like she couldn't breathe. Because even though it filled her with rage that any of the men had accused her of not doing enough for Jackson, she blamed his death on herself. Because she'd felt that if she stayed even a second longer in that dingy, dusty basement, listening to men attempt to blow each other up across a river, she'd thought she might rip her hair out.
The words died on her lips.
"Because," she decided. Just, because.
Henry scowled. Behind her, Boo and Autumn watched Charlie warily.
"Well," Henry said slowly, "you'd better go find someone and tell them that you're back, 'cause Talbert's been out looking for you all night and I think he'll probably want proof of aliveness before he rips your head off your shoulders, like I'm about to."
"Oh."
"Yeah," Henry echoed sarcastically. "Oh."