The next morning I am awoken by the sound of commotion somewhere far off in the distance.
Ignoring the sounds, I roll over on my back and wonder why Andres is making breakfast.
I usually make the breakfast at home, so it's unusual that he's awake before me.
Sitting in silence for a few minutes, I wait for the smell of homemade coffee to fill my nostrils, but when it doesn't appear I frown into the mattress.
Trying to grab a fistful of covers tighter over my body, my eyes dart open when I only find a blue blanket and not a homemade feather comforter.
The fact that I am not at home barely registers in my brain before I am being tossed some clothes and an apron to wear.
Realizing it can't be later than six in the morning, I groan in response. I am not a morning person despite the fact that it's been years since I've ever slept past eight.
Holding the plain dress in my arms, I scan the room to see if there is a bathroom I can use to get dressed in. Much to my disappointment, I find none, based on the fact that all of the other women are shamelessly changing in front of one another.
Biting my lip, I start reluctantly taking off my pale blue patchy dress, folding it on my bed as I finish stepping into the tan and white nurse uniform.
It's a stiff white button up dress, along with a cloth apron which suits my form rather comfortably, and for once I'm glad that the skirt is loose and the bodice is not too tight.
I've never liked the confinement of Woodson fashion dresses, which are cinched around the waist until you couldn't breathe. But unlike in Woodson, clothes for the army are made for practicality, not vanity.
I sigh in contentment after getting dressed.
Only minutes later, all of the women with matching uniforms are walking through the forest to go to the central camp with the confused new recruits, including myself, chasing behind.
We aren't really sure what we're supposed to be doing since no one bothered to tell us anything, but I can't help but feel like quick adjustment is part of the job.
Nonetheless, I manage to catch up out of breath just in time to hear Beatrice welcoming us into the medical tent. Seeing her bright smile, I briefly wonder how she could be so happy this early in the morning.
I say hello to her and stand in the back of the decent sized gathering, maybe a hundred women all circled around the woman waiting for her instructions.
"Good morning everyone!" She starts. "The people who's names have already been documented can go over there and wait for Julia's roll call. Anyone new can stay here with me."
With that sentence, half of the group parts to heed directions from an old woman, who I assume is Julia, who has already begun calling out names. Beatrice faces what's left - the new Woodson women.
"Here we are again, ladies. It's nice to see you are up. So, first things first, I am going to take attendance. What are y'alls names?"
Going around the room, Beatrice writes down our full names on a clipboard.
If I wanted to run away, it should have been yesterday when my name was undocumented.
There are not a lot of people that I know here, but I do recognize some. Amie, Dresdel, and Jillian are three middle aged wives that I recognize from Woodson. All of which do not have younger children, which explains why they probably came to become nurses - so that they can be closer to their husbands, in their possible last stages of life.
In my head I pray for the couples, hoping that they survive.
Beatrice proceeds to tell us things about the dinner schedule, as well as bed times and such, relaying today's plans while I zone out for a bit.
But then Beatrice stops talking, and clasps her hands together, telling us to go ahead and try making ourselves useful for now.
After that, most if not all of the women scattered throughout the campus are aiding others. The older women seem to understand what to do, but I am just, well, sort of.... lost.
I guess hands-on experience is the best way to train someone, but that doesn't make it any less awkward. Embarrassed and a little nervous, I approach Beatrice and ask her what I should do.
She sees the look on my face and laughs, telling me that I can go over to a station anywhere and help out a doctor.
I head over to a bed station next to a dark haired woman tending to a man who appears to be blind. No other new recruit has approached the pair yet.
The bed ridden man is shouting something at the doctor while she tries to get him to relax and lay down, but he is not listening.
Walking towards them, I stare on with curious eyes and cold hands. The blind man's eyes are clouded over and milky, as if they were made of mirror glass rather than live tissue. He seems old - too old for this.
My heart clenches a little, imagining that this is what my dad could have become if he were drafted instead of me. People with disabilities do not do well in our society, and although the injured get to return home because of their incapabilities, this man will most likely never be able to find a job or make a proper living for himself ever again.
I glance away from the man shamefully, feeling awful that I judged his fate so impersonally. This is somebody's father, somebody's son or brother.
Taking a deep breath, I make an effort to ask the doctor what is wrong and if there is anything I can do to help.
"Not much," she replies tiredly, her hands gripping onto the man tightly in an attempt to hold him steady. I can barely hear her over his yelling. "He's been like this all morning."
Uncertainly, I ask for the man's name. The doctor raises her eyebrows at me suspiciously. "It's Mark."
I nod and get closer to the hospital bed, so that the patient will be able to hear me. I lean down and touch his arm.
"Mark?" I try gently, as if coercing a child to go to bed.
His head whips towards me, and I can tell that he is trying to search for the source of my voice in darkness.
I stare right into his troubled eyes without gawking - the pair is hazel and foggy.
"Yes! Please help me, I can't see!"
I frown, and the doctor informs me quietly. "He woke up this morning from his coma. Lost his vision after the previous fight we had before we stopped in Woodson."
My stomach drops at his misfortune, and I hold his hand as I try to explain this to him. "Mark... You've got to listen to me."
The skin on skin contact of my cold hand in his warm ones seems to shock him enough so he stops screaming.
Good, I think. He needs to calm down.
Strangely enough, I assume the motherly tone of voice that I used to use when I was back at home in Woodson, tending to Andres as a boy when he was sick.
"I'm- I'm awake? I'm alive?"
The man's voice trembles, and his hand sends tremors through mine.
I keep it there, hoping to give him some more support. This is not going to be easy.
"Yes, you're alive. You were hurt in the last battle, though, and were in a coma for a few weeks."
The doctor beside me nods in confirmation, so I go on. "You were very brave, sir. Now you are in the hospital. You can't see anything, though, because you've lost your sight."
Remaining silent, the man - Mark - finally stops twisting and turning his head around frantically, stops searching for something tangible to see. I notice the moment he realizes why everything is pitch dark around him, yet he isn't dreaming.
His silence is awfully more deafening than the noise had been, even though the doctor sighs in her relief.
"Sir... I know you don't know me, but I'm so, so sorry. Whatever you've been through, just know you lived through it, okay? After you recover, you get to go home. To your family."
"H-Home?" The man asks shakily, his wrinkled hands reaching up to feel my face.
I glance up quickly at the doctor I o make sure that what I am saying is true. She nods with a tiny smile - at least one good thing will come out of this.
"Yes, Mark. You get to go home." I smile painfully at the man as he raises his arm, puts his wrinkled fingertips on my face, and traces the outline of my mouth.
Sound.
That will be the most important aspect of this man's life, now.
To my wonder, Mark's cloudy eyes fill with water as he lets his arms fall limply onto the bed.
"Okay. Thank you," he whispers, reaching for the edge of the bed.
Together, The doctor and I aid in lifting Mark up and helping him put on his shoes. Other than his eyesight and previous coma status, he seems to be healed and ready to go.
"I've got him from here," the doctor says gratefully, knowing where to take him so he can start his journey home.
"Okay," I reply, but my voice is unheard. The doctor, and Mark, are already on their way to somewhere new.
That wasn't so difficult now, was it?
I take a step back from the now-empty hospital bed, changing the sheets.
I never thought a doctors job was terribly stressing, yet, from that brief encounter, I can't help but feel drained.
Glancing around me at the business of the nursing tent, I understand how busy the nurses and doctors are. So I put my exhaustion aside, and set myself on another mission.
Besides, I like being busy.
From people needing supplies to changing beds and dressing wounds, I spend the rest of my time tirelessly learning more about the art of medicine, and all of the ways I can contribute.
I have learned more in the last couple of hours than I have in the last five years, since I had to stop going to school. Names of tools, techniques, the works - the nurses are up and running for patients of any kind.
According to Beatrice, this is only the beginning - there hasn't been a real battle for two weeks now, so all of the patients in the hospital today are only remnants from that.
Beside myself, I imagine what the hospital is like after a day full of battles.
***
The sun starts to set on the field of northeastern plains as I walk back to the wood cabin with a scattering of other women.
The time at the nursing tent went by quickly today, and I am very much worn out from running errands all across the fifty foot hospital tent floor.
As I walk, I hear every movement of my black boots against the crunchy grass, which bounces back from my footsteps.
The organic color of the sky is beautiful today, and I take a moment to appreciate the wonder before entering the cabin.
Once there, I haphazardly take off my uniform apron and rest on my bed, thinking about all of the things that I saw.
Men with gauze wrapped around their heads, men who lost their memory.
From what the wounds told me, explosions seem to be the Other's speciality, creating objects that spark with the minerals found on the coast.
How can so many nurses stand to be around the injured all day?
Most people vomit the first time they see bone.
It's not the bone that bothers me.
Beatrice told me that she was impressed by the way I stomached the smell of burned flesh and cuts so deep you could see the what you weren't supposed to.
But I don't care about the blood. The organs don't scare me. I am calm around the sick, the gruesome wounds that are possible to inflict on human anatomy. I have steady hands. Yet, it takes all of my strength not to let the idea of them dying shatter me from the inside out.
There is so much pain in the patient's eyes that I cannot even begin to understand.
Like Mark, for example.
His milky eyes may haunt me tonight.
My stomach clenches, not hungry anymore.
It is half an hour until dinner, the only free time I have.
But I can't nap, can't sleep.
Thirty minutes soon becomes empty, so I get up from bed, straighten my apron and dress.
Dinner means seeing Andres once again, and the thought of this makes my steps move a bit faster on their way to the dinner table.
I walk out of the women's cabin, help some of the nurses already there to prepare the table, and then search for my brother.
"Andres!" I exclaim, spotting him not too far away from me in the field. "Look at you, not a hair out of line."
"Ready for dinner?" He inquires, offering an arm to me.
"Oh yes, I'm always ready for food."
Taking a couple of minutes to settle down in matching standard wooden chairs, I study Andres' new camouflage suit as he sits to my right.
Just like the rest of the other men, my brother does not differ in appearance anymore. Camouflage jacket and pants, black boots similar to mine - my little brother fits in with the soldiers around him so easily that it scares me slightly.
I resent the fact that I couldn't volunteer in place of him, but at the very least, I am grateful that I am here to watch over him. If I had let him be drafted here with no one to rely on, I know he would be more scared and lonely.
Shaking my head, I grab a warm plate from an old women's offering hands and begin eating my meal.
There is bread and butter, broccoli and ham.
Andres and I dig in.
No other words are passed around the table except for please and thank yous, so that only Andres' warmth beside me fills the silence.