All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

80: Nurses

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.