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It was dark and blurry and fuzzy, all at the same time. His vision fizzled out and then returned again, with the same fuzzy edges distorting his view. He could hear the call in the distance, the faint cry of ‘Medic!’ from a voice that sounded too familiar, too intimate to be just another unknown soldier. It sounded like it was so close, and yet he couldn’t seem to reach it. He ran as fast as he could through ever thickening, freezing snow. He would fall down and then pick himself back up again, the fuzzy edges of his vision growing with each stumble.
The direction of the voice had changed now, had grown more distance and more desperate. It was as though he’d been running away from it, rather than towards it. But that couldn’t be, he would never run from a man in need. He picked himself up once more, feeling his vision blur once more and attempted to take a step forward, before crumbling back into the snow. What happened? Why weren’t his legs responding to him?
The voice was surrounding him now, coming from multiple directions. It sounded ominous now, the tone was less desperate, and instead it sounded angry. Or was it they? He couldn’t tell. It couldn’t be just one man anymore. No. There were too many voices around him now, and if he couldn’t get his damn legs to work they were all going to die.
He chanced a look down at himself, to try a figure out why he seemed to be stuck and he felt his vision start to black out again when he saw the bright red pool of blood underneath his useless legs. It looked like he’d been peppered with splintered tree bark and small bits of shrapnel. It was like an out-of-body experience, watching the blood seep out of his body. The only thing that was bright with colour and clear in his vision. He hadn’t heard any exploding shells or artillery fire. He hadn’t even heard a single gunshot. So why was there someone crying out for help? How had both of his legs managed to get in this state? He couldn’t feel anything, no pain, no shock. Nothing. He would have thought, with the amount of blood he’d lost, that he’d have started feeling faint by now. But aside from the blurry, fuzzy vision that had been haunting him since he’d first heard the call, he felt like he did before he’d been hit.
He tried to reach into his bag to find something to stem the bleeding. If he could sort himself out first, then he’d be more useful to the wounded man. Only his bag wasn’t at his side where it should have been. What was he thinking, rushing to try and save a life with no equipment? That bag never usually left his side. Especially not here, not in this frozen hellscape. With a groan of frustration he reached around to grab his red-cross armband, looking for anything to use as a sort of tourniquet. Except when he felt for it, there was only the blank khaki green of his jacket. But he very rarely took that armband off. It was one of the first things they taught the medics in training, to never take that red-cross off during combat.
He lay down in the snow, exhaustion overtaking his senses as he allowed the white flakes to settle over his face. Closing his eyes, he tried to allow sleep or death to claim him -
“Doc”
He jumped, sitting up immediately and search around frantically, “Captain Winters?” He could see the blurred outline of a figure next to him and willed his eyesight to return to normal.
“Doc, what do you think you’re doing?” That was definitely Winters, and yet his normally reserved, steady tone was sharp with barely contained rage. “Laying down on the job like this, while good men are dying out there!”
When his vision finally came back, he could see Winters more clearly, but still his outline looked odd. Like the edges of his form were the sketches in an artist’s book. Though what was very clearly visible was the bullet hole through the centre of the man’s chest. The, again abnormally bright red, blood staining his uniform.
“Sir, I -” He tried to speak, to explain, but the words got caught in his throat. As though an unknown force had closed around his windpipe, allowing air to pass but nothing else.
Winters knelt down in the snow so that his eyes were level with the other man’s. He’d never seen Winters eyes look like that before, so cold and dark, empty yet accusing at the same time. “Take a look at what you’ve done.” His voice had gone as dark as his eyes, so dark that it didn’t sound anything like the man he’d proudly served under.
When he could finally wrench his eyes away, he saw the scattered bodies of hundreds of dead soldiers, littering the previously pristine white snow. They appeared to be monochromatic, except for the unnaturally bright red of the blood that stained each of them, from wounds of all types. From wounds that would have been easy to patch up, to ones that would have rendered the victim dead instantly.
His vision was now unnervingly clear as he began to recognise the bodies. He could see Guarnere and Toye laying together, each missing one leg. He saw Sisk with his tree bark-peppered leg, the red spots of blood creating a polka-dotted effect on his grey skin. He saw the young private, Albert Blithe, bleeding profusely from the neck where the bullet had gone clean through. Close to him was Julian, Babe’s friend, his mangled windpipe exposed to the brutally cold air as he still tried to gurgle for help. The nameless soldier from the church in Bastogne, the one he’d failed to save, was next in his vision, his shirt undone to reveal the gaping hole in his stomach. On his right he could see the unmoving form of Renee, her body covered from head to toe in large pieces of splintered wood, blood oozing from each wound.
But the most horrifying part of it all was the groaning noise coming from every one of the motionless bodies. What he’d thought was just a steady hum had grown clearer since the bodies had appeared, and he could now make out the single, repeated word. “Medic”
Winters leant in close to him and whispered, “Someone wants to see you now”
He looked around frantically, heart beating at a rate he didn’t think was possible. However, when he saw who Winters was referring to, he swore he thought he felt it stop dead.
“Babe?” The name came out gravelly, barely recognisable as his own voice as he forced the sound out of his too-dry throat. There was no mistaking the man that had long since captured his heart, even if his body, face and hair were only coloured in shades of ashen grey. The only bit of colour on him was the same – too bright, much too bright – shock of red blood, trickling down his face in a constant steady stream from the open bullet wound, right in the centre of his forehead. “God, no, not you too Babe” He whimpered.
Then Babe’s mouth opened and the sound that came out was nothing like the voice of the man he loved. “Why didn’t you come for us?” The monotone voice spoke, dull and lifeless, completely void of warmth or love. So unlike the Babe he knew, whose voice was normally laced with whatever emotion he was feeling; anger, excitement, frustration joy. Love. But never lifeless like this. “You let us all die, Gene”
“No, please” He hadn’t wanted to hear his own name spoken in that voice. The figure of Babe, he refused to believe it was truly Babe himself, crawled towards him. One hand reaching out for his neck. He tried to drag himself away, but the snow felt like quicksand. The more he tried to pull himself out, the deeper he sunk into it. Eventually the hand made contact with his skin, the spidery fingers clamping around neck with a strength that shouldn’t have been possible.
“Why did you leave us, Gene?” The lifeless voice spoke again, but the cold eyes looked at him with an intensity that didn’t match. Anger and hate burned in the irises and when Gene tore his gaze away he saw the rest of the bodies staring at him. Dead eyes in dead faces, but all of them speaking his name, like an accusation.
He started to thrash around, desperate to get away, trying to prise the fingers away from his throat, scratching at his own skin in the process. The calling of his name was increasing in volume and he whimpered pathetically. He closed his eyes, waiting for the pressure around his windpipe to kill him and as felt his vision darken, the voices slowly beginning to fade until he could hear just one quiet voice in the background. This voice sounded desperate, emotional and scared and with his eyes still closed he focussed on it.
“Gene”
His eyes snapped opened, a ragged gasp filled his lungs with air and when he felt a hand touch the top of his head he bolted up into a sitting position, pushing the hands away forecfully as he pleaded for them to leave him alone. He brought his own arms around himself, curling in on himself and his body shook violently as he let the tears fall from his eyes.
After a few moments he felt arms encircle his body and he let his own fall limp to his sides, opening his eyes to the darkened bedroom that belonged to him and Babe. Babe, who was currently guiding Gene back down a lying position on the mattress, threading his fingers through his short black hair and whispering gentle ‘shh’ing noises into the top of his head when Gene complied. Gene could feel his body begin to relax once more, the tension leaving him as he buried his face into the crook between Babe’s neck and shoulder, flattening a hand over Babe’s chest, focussing everything he had on the steady beat of life under his fingers.
“You wanna talk about it?” He heard Babe whisper above him. He thought about it for a moment, but found that he couldn’t bring himself to take his mind back to that place.
He shook his head, “Maybe in the morning.” Because Babe would always tell him that it wasn’t good to keep things locked up, and logically he knew the other man was right.
Babe simply nodded, planted a single kiss on the top of Gene’s head and softly answered, “Okay.” He heard Gene’s breath even out, but he knew that neither of them would get anymore sleep tonight. Nights like this were a regular occurrence for both of them. He could feel Gene’s fingers tracing tiny patterns into the skin of chest. “You want a drink or something?” He asked, gently, receiving another shake of the head in reply,
“Just – Just stay with me, please, Babe” The other man murmured into his skin.
Babe smiled and tightened his embrace on Gene, the hand that had been threading through Gene’s hair now curled around the bare skin of his waist. “I ain’t going nowhere, Gene” He assured him, the tone of his voice soft but firm and determined for Gene to believe him, “I promise.”
And there they would stay until the sunrise peaked through the curtains, wide awake but relaxed in that comforting embrace.