Posey walked the halls of Ward Number Five with her heart wobbling around in her boots. Whilst the ward seemed less chaotic than the others she'd passed, likely because it was a designated officers' ward, she still cringed at some of the states she saw the men in. She resented herself for looking away, for these were men who had been wounded in combat just like her brother had been, just like most of the men of Easy Company likely would be, and she couldn't bring herself to look. With every step further into the ward she felt bile creeping its way up her throat, wondering whether she'd even be able to look at her brother when she found him.
She came upon John at the opposite end of the ward to the door, tucked away into a corner and reading a folded-in-half newspaper which he held with one hand. As she approached she took care to look him over, for he didn't have any discernible injuries, and came up relieved. Whatever he was in for didn't seem so bad at all. She could look at him, at least, and do so with little distress at that. However, for all that he looked whole, he didn't look much the same as she remembered at all. Infinitely aged by what he'd been through, it seemed, even his posture was weary. His eyes appeared sunken in, weighed down by dark bags that revealed a plethora of sleepless nights. His blond hair was thinner and so was his face, skin pulled taut over sharp cheekbones. He looked a shell of the boy she'd watched leave for training at the beginning of the war.
Well, he was no longer a boy at all, it seemed.
"John," she said when she approached, her voice a mere whisper.
Where he sat propped up against the bed's headboard, John was bathed in sunlight, an ethereal glow settling around him and having him appear as though he was in a Renaissance painting. Even when ailing he seemed unattainably superior to anyone she'd ever met. He'd always been her hero.
When Flight Lieutenant Jonathan Wells looked up at his sister, his eyebrows crashed down. His jaw fell agape and slackened. He seemed to be frozen in time for a few moments.
"Hi," Posey began tentatively, taking two minute steps forwards. She wanted to reach out and run a hand over the pristine white bedsheets he sat under - find out whether they were as soft as they looked - but she didn't. She held his gaze, her eyes wide and hopeful whilst his were narrowed and confused.
"Posey?"
He looked as though he was seeing a ghost. She felt as though she was, too. There was something colourless about his appearance, now that she was close up. The gold they'd once shared in their hair seemed grey and dull on him now. Did hers look the same?
"Hi," she said again. She didn't know what else to say.
"What are you doing here? Why are you dressed like that? How did you even find me?"
That was John, same as ever, always wanting to know the fine print immediately. There was no 'how are you', no 'I missed you', not even the hint of a smile. Posey felt stupid for ever imagining that he might say either of those things and even more stupid for hoping for a smile. His smiles had always been few and far between, and she had no idea why she'd expected one whilst he was laying wounded in a hospital bed.
"I came to visit you," she replied, choosing to answer the questions one by one. "I..." She trailed off, wondering how to even begin to explain what she'd done. Standing there under his piercing gaze she felt she'd been incredibly foolish, her life from the past year a series of increasingly terrible decisions. She feared his reaction but pushed on anyway. "I wanted to get home. I was worried about you - about you and mum..." She trailed off once more, then cleared her throat and added, "The quickest way across the ocean was via troopship so I pretended to be a boy and trained to be a paratrooper. I passed, as well. Got my jump wings." She pointed the shiny silver pin on her lapel out to him. His eyes didn't flicker to glance down at it.
Posey sighed and let her eyes slide down to her boots where they toed at the tiling beneath her. "Did you know," she began, her voice hoarse and strained, "about mum?"
"Yes," John said. When Posey risked a glance up his eyes were hard. "Of course I knew."
"When did it happen?"
"About three months ago."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Her voice broke the moment the question hit the air. She wiped furiously at the lone tear that tracked down her cheek, betrayed by how it exposed her as being just as weak as ever. She had wanted to prove to him how strong she was now, how brave she'd been to do what she'd done to get home. All she felt was stupid.
John shrugged and looked back down to his newspaper, an air of unbothered nonchalance about him. "I didn't think it right to tell you in a letter."
"You were going to wait until the end of the war?" Posey's eyebrows sat screwed together, her eyes wide and tearful. "What if you didn't make it that long? And I crossed the Atlantic back home to find I had no family left? What then?"
John's eyes shot up to her with fire sparking in their depths. "Why the fuck would you say something like that?"
Her voice was small when she replied. "What?"
"The life expectancy of a pilot is terribly short, Posey. Shorter than you can imagine. Every sortie I get sent on I make sure not to organise anything for any day after so I'm not taking my life for granted. I didn't think that far ahead because I can't afford to. Thinking that far ahead when you're at war is a death sentence."
"I'm sorry."
Posey shut her eyes and wondered how this had all gone so terribly wrong. Her happy reunion with her beloved brother had somehow become a bitter standoff. Whilst she recognised the face, she didn't recognise the man.
But, she hoped, he was still in there. Just a bit hardened.
"John," she began warily, afraid to say the wrong thing, "I don't know what to do now. Now that I'm back in England, I mean."
John didn't say anything but his eyebrows seemed to beckon for her to continue. She noticed that even though the lighting hadn't much changed he didn't look so angelic now.
"I paraded as a boy and trained with the paratroopers to get home and now I'm here. But we don't have a house. I'm supposed to be in America still. And you're wounded." She paused, trying desperately not to sigh. She knew self-pity was one of her worst traits and sought not to reveal that she was still guilty of it to the highest degree. "What do I do now? Where do I go?"
John paused a moment, considering. He sat the newspaper down in his lap and tapped his palm atop it where it lay against his thigh, beating a steady rhythm. After a few moments, he declared, "You'll have to stay with the paratroopers." He said it so casually, as though he was talking about the weather, yet so decisively. He left no room for argument.
"What?"
"I'm wounded, Josephine," John replied immediately, the roll of his eyes betraying his dwindling patience. He huffed as though annoyed she'd have the audacity to question his judgement. "You'll need to earn money to support us both which is alright, really, because American soldiers get paid more than everyone else. And I've heard the paratroopers get paid even more than that. Is that true?"
"Only because the mortality rate is so high!" Posey exclaimed in as hushed a voice as she could manage, conscious of the surrounding beds and RAF officers inside them. She shook her head, attempting to clear it so she could form an argument that would make her brother see sense. "I don't even get paid in sterling. I get paid in dollars that they send back to the States."
"You're being awfully selfish right now, Josephine," John said coldly, disregarding that argument entirely.
"I don't want to go to war, Jonathan! You of all people should understand why!"
"As your sole and legal guardian now, you'll do as I say and not ask why."
"You're not my legal guardian at all," Posey replied with a scowl. "I'm eighteen and not a child. But even if I wasn't, as far as any law is concerned - British or American or otherwise - I'm still staying in Boston with Mrs. Daniels because they won't let evacuees back yet!"
John beckoned her towards him with a curl of a finger resting on his newspaper. When she approached, albeit reluctantly, her movements were sluggish. Feeling as though her limbs were weighing her down, she struggled to meet his eyes. There was something enigmatic in them. He'd never been an open book to her but she couldn't begin to decipher what his eyes were betraying now.
As soon as she was close enough, John hissed, "The RAF won't let me back in." He kept his voice low, his eyes darting to the surrounding beds.
Posey didn't know what to say to that other than, "What?"
Instead of replying verbally, John wrenched his other arm out from beneath the sheets and displayed a bandaged stub. His hand was gone, severed at the wrist. Posey stuttered over words that never surfaced, her mind a whirl of chaos.
"The RAF won't let me back in and I can't bloody well get another job double lively, can I?" John snarled. "So I'd appreciate it if you would stop thinking about yourself for once and see the bigger picture. People can't afford to be selfish in wartime, Josephine. Everything is for the bigger picture." He rolled his eyes as he carefully positioned the duvet back over his arm. "You'd do well to realise that as soon as possible."
Like most things in her life since the war had begun, Posey realised, she didn't have any choice in this. There was no way out.
"I'll do it, then," she said, her voice lacking the conviction she'd attempted to project into it. "I'm on a weekend pass and I haven't told anyone what I'm doing so I can go back and just tell them I got lost or something."
"You're still training?"
"Yes."
"Good." John nodded his approval. "You're too green to go to war just yet."
Posey's blood fizzed in her veins, simultaneously freezing cold and boiling hot. She'd be going to war. She couldn't imagine herself in a warzone, had tried not to. She wondered why she'd avoided the worst case scenario for so long. Maybe if she hadn't she'd know what to say.
The pair of them remained in silence for a while after that. Posey stayed standing and made no move to grab a chair or sit on the bed, and John didn't acknowledge her for the most part. Eventually, he resumed reading his newspaper. As she watched him, Posey wondered how she hadn't noticed his lack of a right hand before. It seemed so obvious in hindsight.
After a few more minutes, Posey cleared her throat. "Where will you stay," she wondered, "when I... go?"
John shrugged. He didn't look up. "I'll be in hospital for a while. I've lost all of my toes too." He shrugged once more, his voice barren of emotion and his face entirely blank. "Frostbite," he explained. "After that I suppose the RAF will have to put me up somewhere. They won't pay me forever, though."
Posey shook her head. "No, I know." She couldn't remember whether she'd ever felt so young and naïve in his presence. She felt about six years old standing beside him.
"So are you heading back, then?" John asked nonchalantly.
Posey tried to hide the disappointment on her face, ignored the sting of the dismissal. "Yes," she said. "I suppose so."
"Bye."
She lifted a limp hand in some vague imitation of a wave and regretted it immediately. "Bye."
As she traipsed her way back to the train station, what she wished for more than ever was for the day to be over. Never had she lost so much within the space of a mere few hours. At least tomorrow she'd have nothing left to lose.