The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

09: How Hard Can It Be?

Even though she'd known it was coming, the chaos of preparing to inoculate an entire company of soldiers caught Charlie off guard. It was the first time all four of the nurses had been on duty at the same time, but Lieutenant Maddox had pulled Mabel away the moment they'd all walked through the door. On each of their first days Maddox had watched, eagle-eyed, as she made each of them perform different rudimentary tasks for her so she could gauge how good they were at what they'd been trained to do. They'd already had to do as much in their final exams at nursing school, obviously, and Charlie had a niggling suspicion in the back of her head that this wasn't actually standard procedure and instead something Lieutenant Maddox had invented and implemented all on her own. Still, each of them had had to do it, and since it was Mabel's first day, inoculation day or otherwise, she had to be pulled aside.

With Mabel and Lieutenant Maddox off doing the examinations - or, indeed, whatever the whole affair was supposed to be called - that left Charlie, Autumn, and Violet to organise the ward to allow for the registration, injection, and then processing of each of the soldiers who'd be getting inoculated today.

Maddox, of course, had given them little instruction before pulling Mabel away, though her eyes had been hard and expectant and left no confusion as to the level of perfection required of them. So, with little-to-no direction but an awful lot to do, Autumn devised their game plan and they immediately set to work trying to turn their small, secluded ward into a processing centre.

A desk had to be dragged in from another ward to be set in the hallway. Whoever was sat behind it would be tasked with signing each of the boys in and giving them their clipboard, which would be passed through all of the nurses to make sure it was properly marked and processed.

Three beds had been set up in one corner to create the Inoculation Station - as Charlie, who had set it up, liked to refer to it. She wasn't sure whether they'd have Mabel and Maddox back by the time the soldiers started arriving but she was trying to be optimistic, so she chose to have three stations in the hopes they'd be able to get through three boys at a time.

Then, in the back office they were using another desk to process the rest of the paperwork, to sign off on and approve each boy's injected status.

It was all terribly official and made Charlie feel much older and more important than she knew she was. It was only when the rush to get everything done was over that she finally had time to worry about what came after organising everything, when they'd have a ward full of paratroopers and probably not enough people to get through them all on time.

"Do you think Lieutenant Maddox will let Mabel go before the soldiers get here?" Violet wondered, approaching Charlie from the back office she'd been setting up.

Charlie tried to hide her worries over that exact thing and put on a mask of optimism for Violet. "I'm sure she will. She'll know we need all the help we can get."

Violet nodded, not looking convinced.

Finding herself also suddenly overcome with nerves about the whole thing, Charlie added hastily, "Do you think we should work out between us who will be on each station? Just in case they're not finished in time?"

Violet nodded, but before Charlie could say anything else she was interrupted by the sound of footsteps clacking on the floor. Both Charlie and Violet turned to find Autumn approaching from the desk she'd been setting up in the hallway outside.

As soon as she saw their faces, Autumn grinned. "Why do you two look like you're trying to decide which one of you should shoot the other first?"

In spite of her nerves, Charlie couldn't help but laugh. "We were thinking that, in case Lieutenant Maddox isn't done with Mabel before the soldiers get here, maybe we should decide ourselves who's going to do what."