Dogwood

Trenton :: Year 1719

Eyes had been closed, a mouth had been parted with soft, practically inaudible moans melting into the darkened bedroom when it happened. A door downstairs had swung open so violently it cracked against the wooden-logged wall, the sound echoing through the cabin thrice before dissolving into the whistling pops from the fireplace.

Upstairs, with lips pressed together, fingers and palms intertwined within each other’s, the two fell back into reality in one painful, terrifying jolt.

The servant was the first to push herself out of the bed. Her petticoat lay bunched in a tangled mess on the floor. Her shift, a maroon waistcoat, a white apron, had all been pushed into a pile against the headboard. A frightened gasp escaped her lips as she swept her coif and shoes into her shaking hands. She ran across the floor, her nearly naked form glistening from the hearth’s embers as she struggled to lessen the growing panic within her chest. The adrenaline shot so thickly through her horrified body that she stumbled against the door, her thin side taking the brute force of the fall. She heard a worried gasp behind her and, as she ducked out into the empty, dim hallway, her master’s wife hissed a warning.

She disappeared into the adjacent bedroom the very moment William Trent stormed up the stairs, the musket riffle slung ominously over his shoulder. Her shivering back pressed up against the smooth wooden wall as she listened. She was shaking uncontrollably, her legs so paralyzed by fear that she stood there, topless, her ruffled shift hanging lazily over her small breasts, longer then she should have. The arguing across the hallway cracked the surface of her sanity, and she quickly bite down on her lip hard enough to draw blood. The pain woke her up, turned her fear into flickering pangs of hatred and survival. She dressed sloppily, nothing tied properly, nothing buttoned or fastened as it should, and crouched against the door. She paid a fair amount of attention to assure the floorboards didn’t creak as she slipped back into the hallway, her delicate form bent over like that of an older woman’s. The pain in her lower back only furthered her determination to move forward. A hand touched the wall, she steadied herself. Her young face, barely old enough to understand the severity of her situation, inched it way over the crack held apart by the door’s hinges. She could barely see into Lady Trent’s room, but the shadows swaying and dancing against the floor told her exactly who was where.

“There was someone in here.” His voice threatened his wife to admit the opposite, to quell the suspicions that had risen in him ever since he had followed her here from Philadelphia.

“Do you see anyone in here?” Her singsong tone defied his, humiliating his pride, reproving his qualms about her as ridiculous and jealous laments. He had made a mistake marrying such a strong woman.

“One of the newer servants said she just saw a woman in here.”

“Are you stupid?” She pushed past him and started to slowly remove the shawl she had hurriedly swung around her shoulders mere minutes ago. “All my servants are girls.”

“Why were you in bed at this hour then?”

“Well,” She narrowed her eyes, glancing down at his crotch in a superior show of wits. “It’s definitely not because of you.”

The servant’s eyes could hardly widen any further. Large and inked in a delicate shade of olive, they shown through the ocher line that glowed between the cracks in the door. She waited until the man’s back was to her then, with a blinding, tangible burst of adrenaline, sprung across the opened doorway. She was down the stairs, a slim arm clutching the heavy wool apron to keep her legs untangled in the flight, before she realized she had been holding her breath. Her hands immediately swept up her long curls, lightened a soft blond by the sun, up into a taut bun. Her coif, after a good few smacks against her knee to rid the dust, slipped over the tightened bundle.

She heard the shout seconds later. Her nativity had always been her downfall, her false sense of safety had fooled her so many times. The master of the house was, and had always been since childhood, a huntsman. Of course she had managed to escape down the stairs by the speed that youth afforded her, but she had made too much noise. Her bare feet had slapped against the wooden floor too hard, the course fabric pulled over her slight frame had ruffled and shifted too loud.

“He’s coming.” Her arm was pulled, nails digging into her darkly tanned flesh so roughly that her skin heated immediately. She clutched at the hand but allowed it to pull her towards the back entrance. The boy, a young servant she had befriended upon his entrance into the William’s household three months ago, threw the door open into the freezing, snow-covered night.

“This is likely the last time I’ll ever see you.” He hissed as he threw her against the icy porch. The pain and fear was present in his voice, but his eyes shown with such anger, such betrayal and frustration, that she knew not to argue with him. The girl’s feet slid against the stone porch, pushing out from under her. She collapsed onto her knees, hands digging into the icy slabs of rock with shivering fingers.

“I’ll hold him back as long as I can.” He swiped am arm at her, begging her with his wavering voice to run. With that, the door slammed shut, the square of light that had rested over her from inside disappeared. She knelt, body quaking violently from the wind, as a paralyzing shock overtook her. She couldn’t run, she didn’t want to. There was no way she could get far in this weather, in the thin layers of poorly-stitched cloth she was wearing. However, the luxury of choice had been taken from her, and she knew she had no other option. With a muffled sob, she pushed herself up, pulled the apron and waistcoat up to expose her naked feet, and stepped down into the snow.

She didn’t get far before her name was called behind her. There, slowly closing the servant’s door, stood the woman of the household, her regal figure a stark contrast to the dimmed, harsh night around them.

The girl immediately climbed back onto the porch; her hands brushed up against the woman’s soft, pale cheeks. Her lips pushed into hers, bruising in their fervent want, but tender from the overwhelming fear that threatened to bring down her entire body. The servant girl breathed something against those lips, three simple words that escaped her throat in a shivering sigh.

“I love you.”

The girl started to cry, trying her hardest to quiet her sobs as she repeated it. They locked eyes, both staring into something they had learned was so dangerous and wrong.

“I love you.” Again. She looked up into the woman’s face, straining into the darkness to see, to hear her confession’s reply.

Say it back, she begged with her eyes. Just once.

The woman held her so strongly against her warm body that the young girl was pulled forward on her tiptoes. There was no reply, nothing was repeated in words. Noses touched, lips barely brushed against each other in the silence.

“Come with me.” The girl wept silently, the tears lightening her already glowing eyes into a deep, shimmering lime. The words begged with all the energy she could gather. Emotion stained her words, asking them in a helpless, raw plea.

“I can’t now.” The woman ran her hands over the girl’s wet cheeks, wiping the icy tears away with equally cold fingers. Her hands left the young girl’s body and she stepped backwards, bracing the door shut. A man’s angry screams flew throughout the tiny cabin, searching, nearing. Oval disks of blue begged the child for forgiveness. “No matter what I’ll find you again.”

As the door behind them strained to open, the girl threw herself back onto her own two feet. She felt a pull as the course ruffles on her apron snagged against something small. A gold locket, molded with the master’s coat of arms, the interlocking vines of three white roses, broke from the woman’s bare neck. Panicked, the girl grabbed it in mid-air, clutching it to her chest as she crouched against the frozen ground. She was across the lawn, hidden deep within the surrounding shadows, before the man stepped out onto the porch, musket raised to his shoulder.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” The woman, his wife, shouted towards him. She watched in dismay as two more men, her husbands hunting friends, followed him out into the middle of the yard. They weaved between the trees, racing blindly into the inky blackness that stretched on for miles.

When he finally turned around, she knew it was the end. She saw the gravity of the situation from his single angry, yet despairing stare. Something vile raised up in her stomach, churning and ripping into her strength. She finally knew it was over; she finally realized she had lost. She would never know the extent of his suspicion, her pride would never allow her to ask, but at that very moment, she knew his growing doubts had matured into certainly. The energy drained from her body, the blood from her head as a shot ran out in the distance. An overwhelming pang of vulnerability, an utterly heart-stopping twinge of futility, pulled her onto her knees.

Another shot.

She thought she had started screaming, thrashing and beating against his chest and face. She thought her body had been overcome with anger deep enough to coat her vision in crimson. She could have sworn she sobbed as loudly as she could, straining the veins in her neck, turning her pale face an ugly, horrified shade of red. But, in reality, she sat on the icy ground, hand groping the doorframe for support, with her lips slightly parted, her eyes barely brimming with tears. The shock held her body still. Her wailing mind had no way to vent. All she could do was listen to the echoing taunts of musket fire in the night.

They found the servant girl’s body underneath a dogwood tree deep in the woods outside the town. Curled up against the trunk, her small body was mixed with the blue of winter and her own red that leaked from two wounds in her side. The woman stood over the body, her chest heaving from the long search, her breath clouding the air in huge wisps around her head. The servant to her side coughed into his hands, his large turquoise eyes looking away, trying so hard to push down the tears the burned the back of his throat.

“Go get my husband.” The woman whispered towards him. She could hardly raise her voice to be heard.

“Alone?”

She nodded as she clutched the thick shawl around her shoulders.

“I can’t leave you out here alone.” The boy kept his gaze off the body. “What would happen if it started snowing? It was a two hour hike here. What if we can‘t find your tracks--”

“Go get my husband.”

There was no moving her. He left her in the cold, white woods, tracing their long, winding footsteps back towards town.

She waited until she was alone. The silence of the woods intoxicated her senses, dulled them, beat them down into one monotonous repeating moment of inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Finally, her eyes, a translucent, bottomless lake of sapphire, slowly lifted with her head. She glanced around at the monochromic world. White, heavily littered with thick trunks of blackened russet, stretched further then her senses could comprehend. Light clumps of snow would drift down from the weighted branches overhead. Aside from the lazy lull of snow patting against snow, there was nothing.

The shawl, which protected her body from the ubiquitous cold, slowly, gently, fell from her head. It slid over her dark mane, trailing down and over her shoulders. She caught it in her hand and let the end drop into the snow. A sad, lonely smile dimmed her face as she knelt. She spoke the girls name out as a mother would her child’s, loving, delicate, singing it with a certain familiarity that only befell two people who’s relationship was forever pure and unwavering. She reached a hand down to the girl’s face, brushing fingers over the now bluish skin. She touched the hardened, ruffled waistcoat, ran her fingers over eternally cold shoulders. Her body bent down, the shawl slipped from her grasp. She hugged the girl, pressed herself against the body on the ground. Her hands folded around two clutched fists, winding her thumbs around a gold chain that hung loosely between the fingers.

The cold never touched her as the afternoon aged into evening. She kissed the girl’s icy forehead, pressing her lips softly against the stone-like skin. As it started to snow, she closed her eyes.

Trenton :: Year 1944

The metal hospital bed banged into the young woman’s shin for the third time that trip. This time it had left a mark, a faint, welted cut that bled into the green fabric of her nursing scrubs. She would have winced if she had the time, but an elderly RN’s shout called her to push harder against the bed. They had to make it to the Emergency Room before the patient lost consciousness from his severed leg. The small nursing team turned a corner, the head runner screaming at those in front of them to make way. The young nurse, already drained from a double shift, already empty from two missed breakfasts and a lunch of coffee and cigarettes, slipped against the blood-soaked hallway floor, beaten, losing the smaller war that went on within her hospital’s walls. The side of her body crashed into the concrete wall, bruising her entire left arm from elbow to shoulder. The bed’s metal frame pressed into her stomach, now crooked from her stumble. She managed to steer it back into place with two shaking, burning arms.

“CPR!”

She reacted to the order as a scared child would, jerking back, retracting her arms to her chest. Her blue eyes darted around frantically for a helping gesture, but she was violently pushed out of the way by a set of frustrated hands. Her back made contact with the wall once again, just this time she remained motionless as the bed sped ahead without her. She followed the team with her eyes, watched the head runner turn and jump onto the bed to perform CPR, and knew at that moment that she would throw up on herself if she couldn’t get to a bathroom in time.

She hadn’t even the luxury to vomit before another needy pair of hands tugged at her uniform. She was handed a thin manila folder and pulled towards the widened double doors at the entrance of the infirmary. As the two nurse’s walked, which mimicked more a hasty, confused run, they sidestepped a mass of janitors filing in from the basement, mopes and buckets and disinfectant in hand. Pains were taken not to slip on the bloody pools scattering the hallway floor. The young nurse watched as tattered army uniforms were bunched together, merely pushed aside as team after team of nurses and doctors rushed past them to tend the sick.

“Helicopter just landed.” The older nurse, a slight, yet chiseled woman with a deep, challenging voice, informed her. “Two didn’t make it. Five landed safely.”

“What are their injuries?” The young nurse flipped open the folder as she ran, using the assistance of her superior to guide her through the deafening, chaotic mess around them.

“What are their injuries?” The woman laughed tauntingly, sarcastically. “Honey, they all have the fucking flu. What do you think?”

The girl kept her eyes fixed on the chart, trying to lose herself in the information to cover up her ridiculous embarrassment. As they neared the double doors, the older woman yanked her to the side. A caravan of stretchers started their lunge into the lounge. It was like a parade, one right after the other, each float and performance a different story. Severed arm, broken skull, severed femoral artery. She couldn’t get over the noise that each show brought to her ears. With the helicopter whirling mere feet from the entrance, with the screaming and moaning echoing not only in front of her, but from every corner, every inch of the place, with the crashing of wheels screeching against the floor and the stomp of hurried feet, she lost herself for a moment in one, large cacophony of regret.

It was then that her lungs tightened in her chest. A pain short through them, pulling them tight against her ribcage. It stung, singed her heart a bit, pulling and twisting it around, nagging, begging. She had felt it before, the day her family had been informed that her father would not be returning from the war alive, the days she spent thereafter nursing other fathers back to health, back to the love of their wives and children.

The pain subsided as quickly as it had started. When it was done, she glanced down at a single bed wheeled before her. She looked up at the older nurse, only to find her eyes glued to the patient unconscious on the stretcher.

“She was flying the plane.”

The young nurse was left then, the guiding hand removing itself from her arm and hurried off after its owner. She stared down at the woman’s face laying against the small, white hospital pillow. Out cold, eyes furiously moving behind closed lids. The woman’s blond curls were strewn out around the covers, stained lightly with soot and dirt. The girl was overcome for a moment by the beauty this woman possessed. She was rammed into a second later, a telltale warning of the hospital’s low tolerance towards immobility. Immediately, she grabbed the bars alongside the bed and pushed it towards her wing of the building. She was quick, or so she thought, and cautious of those around her. It took little time to escape the overwhelming disorder and seek sanctuary inside the clean, quiet Room 131.

“Woman?”

The nurse raised her head as she wheeled her patient between two curtain. She glanced over at the man seated upright in his bed, a book opened against his lap. Despite both his broken arms and a bulky bandage covering one eye, he seemed to be progressing quiet easily.

“Do not we get many of those in here, yes?” His turquoise eye turned up in a crescent as he smiled. His heavily accented voice was optimistic and charming. Another easy patient given to her because of her young age and inexperience. She found him a blessing though, a small, lovely escape from the mess that awaited her right outside the door.

“You’re right. We don’t.” She replied as she pulled the curtain between them. “I think she was a pilot on one of those convoy planes.”

“Ah, bless her heart.” He turned his head back down to his book as the curtain curled around the metal track over the nurse’s head. “My woman. She never can of done that.”

The nurse gave him a smile before she sectioned herself alone with her new patient. She made sure the plastic drape was pulled tight around them before turning and scooping up a soft washcloth and small basin of warm, soapy water.

Not too sick. She recited over in her head. At least it’s a female.

She unbuttoned the woman’s jacket carefully, nudging her back onto her right then left side to slip the pressed blue uniform from under her. She undid each button on the shirt, using the same gentle rocking action to remove it from her body. She folded them carefully and set them on the foot of the bed, taking great pains to keep them as immaculate as she could.

She had never really seen a woman’s body quite like this one. Where her own limbs were long and fragile in their slightness, this woman’s body was lean with muscle. Her arms were etched with shape, every inch smoothed in a coffee tan from, she guessed, the German sun. She touched her own face for a second, running the picture of her pale, soft skin through her mind.

She could see where the ribs had broken. From where she stood, she guessed three had been fractured in whatever accident had happened. Slowly, the reached out a hand to the bruised chest, and ran her thin fingers over the taut body. She snuck a finger under the elastic fabric of the woman’s bra, inching it up to show a weird lump, another broken rip forcing its way to the skin.

With a slight tilt of her head, she scooped up the soapy towel from the water basin and swept it over an arm. Slowly, as the water dripped down onto the white sheets, as it collected in the curve of the woman’s elbow and over the swollen cuts that stretched across her bicep, the nurse felt her hand extend. Fingers pressed lightly over the glistening forearm, running down over raised veins that snaked over her wrist and around each knuckle. She slid a tip between each knuckle, inching the larger hand into hers. Her grasp tightened, and she held onto the hand. A perfect fit.

She became vaguely aware of the raised bump within the woman’s palm a few seconds later. The hand was turned over and raised to the girl’s face. Curious, she leaned in, and saw the small oval scar etched into the tender, soiled skin. Distinctly oval and small, the scar boasted various elevated marks that almost carved out a pattern. She traced it gently with her nail, pressed her own palm to it, turned the hand over a few times to determine what had caused it. Bullet wound? Stabbing? Was it a burn like the rest of her arm? She could have continued her speculation had the hand not retracted around her fingers. Slowly, she saw it curl in and hold hers. When she looked across the chest, she realized it was raising and lowering faster then before, indicative of early consciousness. The arm fell back onto the bed. The nurse continued the sponge bath inconspicuous to the fact that two green eyes had been watching her the entire time.

The spent the next two days adhering to a strict schedule. The army hospital had practically been shut down due to overcrowding. She had been sent, numerous times, out to the front entrance to turn incoming ambulances away. She had been cursed at with words she was hardly old enough to understand. She had been pushed, screamed at, blamed for the hospital not having enough beds or supplies to house just one more soldier. By the end of it all, she was sick. Physically, mentally exhausted like she had never felt before. Things started to strain within her mind, and she pushed back against the abuse. She screamed and cursed too, pointing them north to the other hospital twenty miles away, explaining to them, in more the one language if needed, where they could stick their boot if they felt they needed to speak her in such a way.

She would never admit how much she had come to respect that power the hospital gave her. Her entire life she had been quieted as those like her, at that very moment across the ocean, were being quieted. It grew quickly, her aversion to authority, and she rivaled in that small space that it made, where it allowed her to take a solid breath for the first time since she became a nurse.

It brought something else up though. Along with that strength and resistance came hatred. Exhaustion fed it. Every soldier’s limb that had to be amputated, every time a man unraveled into a sobbing, homesick boy before her, every time one slipped through her fingers, it fed that mounting hatred. The pain in her legs, her back, the strain on her eyes, the headaches and nausea, the shock, that hatred fed on whatever it could find. She had already lost her compassion and empathy since she had become a nurse during wartime, and she felt her mind was next.

“You are more pale then normal.” The man with the turquoise eye observed on the third day. He was pacing the room, stretching his legs from the unnecessary bed stay that had been imposed since he was admitted. “The little lady need a rest, yes?”

“Where are you going like that?” She replied instead. She pointed at him as he neared the door. “You’ll be run over if you walk out there.”

“Better then to stay in here.” He nodded towards his roommate, the female pilot who had requested her bed be covered by the olive green drape at all times. “She will not talk to me.”

“Perhaps it’s because you’re so boring?” She smiled through the joke, nodding at him to be careful as he opened the door and slipped out into the busy corridor. She verbalized the warning, only to hear the door close on any response. Turning, she pulled open the curtain to the woman’s bed, and froze when she saw the grinning face raising to greet her.

“He is boring.” The woman replied, her voice low and hushed, as if anything louder was painful to her body. She had a slight accent. European perhaps. Italian. Something not American.

“Does he talk to you a lot?” She was in a bit of shock. The three days this woman had been here, she hadn’t heard her speak more then a few mumbled words. They had communicated primarily through nods, pointing, and the frequent lapses the pilot made into empty, blank stares.

“He talks about the war.” She said, as though it explained everything. “War stories.”

“And those are boring?”

“Compared to mine.”

The nurse took a longer time that day to comb the pilot’s hair. The two sat beside the window on the other side of the room, gazing out into the courtyard below. It was early May, and buds had just started to bloom. There was one particular tree, a laced white dogwood, just below their window. It bloomed before the flowers and surrounding evergreens, bragging about its beauty to whomever walked underneath its branches.

“It’s the only one there.” The girl said as she ran the brush over the women’s moist curls. They were in the process of drying after a thorough cleaning, and smelled delicious airing in the spring breeze. “Don’t they usually grow in groups?”

“Do they?” The pilot shrugged lightly, her eyes never leaving the window. She seemed weaker that day, a strange option for a body that had been hardened over years in the service.

“Something on your mind?”

There was a pause, but the anxiety was there. The soldier shifted uncomfortably in her seat and let out a short breath.

“My husbands a Lieutenant.” The woman replied as the brush jerked to a stop at the end of a blond lock. “I haven’t heard from him in a while.”

“Do,” She had to break to push the acidic sting from the back of her throat. The growing jealously, which she didn’t understand, was suffocated and quieted. “You have any idea what happened to him?”

“He could be dead.”

She said it so easily that her previous agitation seemed like nothing but a farce. Another shift in the chair, and she was sideways to the nurse, raising the girl’s hand, nudging it gently to continue what she was doing.

“I’m really sorry.”

“You shouldn’t.” She slipped her hand away from the girl’s arm and ran it over her bicep, itching at the cuts below the bandages. “I said all I needed to say to him before he left. I’ll see him again.”

The young nurse had heard suicide warnings more subtle then this. She knew the protocol, she knew exactly what to do and who to call in case there was any hint of suspicion. She was going to put together some ingenious lie to excuse herself from the room, but before even a word passed her lips, she saw the woman raise her eyes. There was no want of death in those eyes. It was obvious suicide had never crossed this woman’s mind.

“You said all you needed to say?” So she continued to talk. “So it was a nice goodbye?”

“It was.” The two locked gazes for a moment. “In war, people just disappear. You have to be careful what you say to them before they leave you.”

The undertones of what was being said had changed. The nurse suddenly felt that pain in her chest, the burning up the back of her throat. She kept holding it back, distracting herself as best she could by tediously fingering the pilot’s hair into separate curls.

“Those could be the last words they ever hear from you.”

She had to look down. An embarrassed blush spread across her cheeks, something that even her black hair couldn’t conceal. She felt as if she was being scolded. The fire spread up against the roof of her mouth, numbing her tongue. She couldn’t breath, her fingers dropped the curls onto the woman’s back.

“You believe in God?” The question came so suddenly that the nurse stumbled over a choked breath. She looked up, confused, and asked for the question to be repeated with disorientated sapphire eyes.

“Do you believe in God?”

“No.”

“Reincarnation?”

“There’s no proof.” She moved away from the window and started to tidy up the hospital. “Do you?”

The silence in the room confirmed that the question had been heard and thought through, but completely ignored. A simple hum came from the pilot’s throat, as though she was contemplating the answer, as though she had found it but simply felt a reply was not needed.

“I started flying three years ago.” She started, standing up and leaning against the windowsill, her back pressed to the cool glass. “Since I started, there were times when I would trust someone with my life that I knew I’d never met face-to-face before.”

“Isn’t that what you learn to do in the army?”

“Completely trust someone with your life?” The older woman’s head lowered. “That’s not something you can ever learn.”

“But--”

“Ever.” Her head tilted back up and a sad smile grew on her full lips. “Sometimes when I bump into someone, or even brush against them as I’m walking by, I know I’ve spend hundred of thousands of lifetimes together with them. I’ve never met anyone I haven’t already known.”

The nurse was speechless. She wanted to leave. The ache in her chest had grown, an ugly pain had tightened her throat. Nostalgia? But that was impossible. She saw the pilot raise her wounded arm slowly, outstretching her scarred hand into the light. She saw the oval mark, blemished with patterns that intertwined with each other, etched skin that puckered together and curled around each other. Stems. Thorns. Roses.

“It’s not a scar.”

She reached out to touch the wounded hand. Something pulled her to it. When she placed her palm against it, the raising sickness within her throat and chest thawed. She felt her cheek press against the woman’s chest, felt a warmth encircle her shoulders and tighten. As two soft lips brushed against her forehead, she started to cry. It spilled out silently onto the woman’s hospital gown, wetting the thin fabric with large streaks of dark green. She looked up, suddenly conscious of her position, of her surroundings. The arms stayed tight around her. She lifted a hand to push back, but the lips that pressed into her forehead had come down to her own. The kiss was salted with tears, but slow, gentle, somehow familiar. Her eyes had shut and both her legs weakened until her body was completely supported within the hug.

When it ended, her eyes shot open, widened and crystallized by the tears. She felt a breath against her lips, spoken words, and forcibly pulled away. It took her only seconds to escape back into the hallway, her head buried in her arm to cover her blotched cheeks. She had heard something. As she rounded the corner, stumbling in one pathetic attempt to get to the bathroom before she threw up, she could still feel the words brushing over her lips.

The young nurse had explained to her superiors that she needed time off. A rest, a vacation, whatever she had called it, whatever emotional explanation she had given that day had worked. They weren’t essentially pleased with her decision, one less nurse, more importantly, one less that had grown so confident and certain of herself over the past few months, was a hard blow to the hospital. But, they had seen her start to burn out despite her strengths. They had heard so much about her breakdown in the bathroom the day before, sobbing into her hands on the floor, so weak and limp that she had to be carried and admitted herself, that even the head doctor had agreed on a lengthy break for her recovery.

So, with four weeks paid vacation, she walked home, passing under the window of the very patient that she was subconsciously running away from. No explanation, no warnings. She just left.

It was then that the sickness started. It had began the next morning, up from her toes, covering her entire foot, inching up ankles and calves and knees. The chill spread around her entire body, wounding her into shivering fits to keep warm. Her boyfriend had spoken to another doctor about it, only to be reassured that it was only stress. The break from work should do her well, he was told, just support her.

She spent most of her days huddled up in their bed, covers pulled tight under her chin, rubbing her thin arms as furiously as she could. After a while it started to hurt, the skin turned raw and irrigated. She begged him to buy a heater. One was bought. She sat in front of it, facing it, to the side, with her back to it, laying before it, anyway that she could for the heat to wash over as much of her body as possible. It worked for the first few days, but soon the coldness returned. The pain was soon pushed to the back of her mind because, that night, huddled in her boyfriends arms, the dreams started.

They always started the same. Cold, restless, anxious. She could walk for miles, for hours, for days, through a white landscape of snow. She would grab at the frostbitten trees for balance, ripping and tearing at the bark if her footing failed her. She no longer felt her feet, her legs had numbed into nothing. Muscles started to rebel against the temperature, cramping and bruising through her delicate skin. Every step strained something in her body, but she kept walking.

She would wake up sobbing, rubbing her body to rid it of the pain. She would be comforted by the man beside her, comforted and kissed. She would fall back into the dream as quickly as she had left it, and the pain would start all over again.

Most of the time she stood with someone beside her, gasping and panting behind her, verbalizing the anguish of the journey with emotions that never even appeared on her face. Shouts were heard in the distance, long, agonizing ones calling out a strange name that pulled her head to turn and her feet to follow. She fought against them until they started to echo from all around her, changing, morphing into howls of sadness and loss. She would then follow them, her partner in tow, across the barren woods.

That night, the dreams didn’t stop there, where they had the entire week before. She had gotten stronger somehow and pressed on further. Hoof beats had pounded behind her, deafening as they neared. A line of black stallions passed around the two of them at harrowing speeds, inches away from her. Her black hair shot up from the wind, fluttering slowly down around her shoulders as if submerged in water, as they disappeared in the distance. With her nose and lips raw from the cold, she followed.

Spots had started to form in the show. When the cries got louder, the reddened patches of snow grew, leading her around the thick trunks that dotted the white expanse. She finally stopped and gazed against the ground, spotting two lumps buried in the snow beneath a small sapling dogwood. One lump, shadowed by a large man, visibly frightened and distraught, was being unearthed quickly. Powerful hands dug into the freezing snow, uncovering a curled body. She heard the strange name again, but ignored his pleas. He wasn’t speaking to her, she realized, he was screaming and sobbing to the body.

She watched him lift it up into his arms, stiff and blue from it’s time outside. Black hair was frosted back away from the woman’s fast, rivers of ice sketched across her nose where the tears had fallen to the earth. She saw him hug it to his chest as the men around him bowed their head.

It was then she started to cry. Not for her own face she saw in the corpse’s, but for the second body she saw below the snow. Left alone, it was twisted up against itself, impossibly small. She bent down and started to pull the snow away from it’s face. A second pair of hands started to help her as she dug. Skin was finally uncovered. Tanned, smooth skin turned into stone by the cold. She touched it, recognized the feel. The neck was uncovered, the girls shoulder, the white coif covering a mane of blond curls, the ruffled shift hiding her chest. The balled up fist were next, clasped around a thin gold chain that snaked down into the muddy snow beneath. As she laid her hand against it, a warmth filled her body. The ache disappeared, her muscles relaxed, and she smiled.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered to the small body as she stroked its hair. The boy beside her rested his hand against her shoulder and pulled her back gently. She turned, and gazed into two round, turquoise eyes.

As things started to fade, she heard him whisper one word.

“Hurry.”

The young nurse woke up with a start, sweating, aching from the heat that threatened to choke her body. The chill had vanished. Replaced by what seemed to be a nervous, strained impulse to move. She threw off the covers, flung her legs out of bed, and immediately ran out into her hallway. Confusion clouded her thoughts as she quickly dressed and pushed open the front door.

She had ran the entire way to the hospital, panicked that what she needed to see wouldn’t be there when she finally arrived. Her fears were realized as she pulled open the door to Room 131. The man with the turquoise eye jerked his head up, upset from his reading, and gazed at her worryingly.

“Where is she?” The nurse breathed as she saw the vacant space beside him, curtains pulled back to show an empty, neat bed. “Did she…”

He pointed to the window on the far wall, which she traversed to in a few quick steps. Below, dressed in a pristine, pressed blue suit, gold buttons glistening in the afternoon sun, hair pulled into a tight bun behind her head, stood the pilot. Stately, almost handsome, the woman stood with her hat held at her side, glancing at the road every few seconds to nod something to an unseen acquaintance.

“She is to go back soon.” He spoke slowly. “Hurry.”

And she did. Out the door, down the hallway, down the stairs. She ran and jumped and weaved through every obstacle that stood between her and the exit. When she finally made it out into the courtyard, the very trip out had elevated her dread. The fear that built up inside abandoned her as she stood in front of the woman, breathing hard, disheveled and pitiful. She had nothing to say, she realized, nothing that would make any sense or have any meaning. It seemed as though the thought was not just her own. The two stood there, silent, as the world nevertheless continued on outside them.

“I do believe in God.” The older woman suddenly replied, breaking the peace with her calming voice. “I know you blame him for this war, and that’s why you don’t.”

“I can’t believe in someone who let that happen.” Was all the girl could put together in her head. “What God would--”

“This war was started for a reason.”

“But millions people are dying.” She stressed that line, aggravated at the fact she had hurried so quickly over to the hospital when this was all she was met with. If she wasn’t already confused before she got there, then she wasn’t sure what emotion would explain her now. “Families are town apart. People are separated from the ones they love--”

“People are also brought together.” The look that the pilot gave her said it all. She meant them. She meant something uniquely them.

A shout echoed from behind the nurse, an older man’s, wearing an army uniform, warning about the time and the deadline to get back on base. The pilot nodded and started towards him.

Sometimes when I bump into someone,

As she neared the nurse, her arm brushed up against hers, slightly, barely.

Or even brush against them as I’m walking by,

“I see no point in God allowing this fucking war to happen just so the two of us could meet.” The girl spit the words angrily, shaken that someone could be so naïve to believe such a thing. “I’ll probably never see you again, so why--”

“God would sacrifice everything he’s ever created just for two people to find each other.” The pilot turned as she spoke, her voice filled with the truth of a sad reality. “Love is that important.”

“This isn’t love.” The girl screamed back. “I already have someone I love. How do you explain that?”

“I was a little too late this time.” The older woman’s eyes softened as if she was remembering something she lost. “Next time.”

And she walked away, slowly, across the lawn, and slipped into the back of the black car.

The following year, on the day the war’s ending was broadcast on every radio and television station in the nation, while everyone was parading and screaming out their window of their joy, the nurse received the woman’s dog tags and uniform in the mail.

Years later, when the girl had grown up into a beautiful woman, after her boyfriend proposed to her, after they birthed two children together, fought, and divorced, she would look back on that day under the dogwood, and really realize how much had slipped through her fingers.

She still wore the pilots nametags around her neck.

She walked through the city with her headphones on. Her plaid shirt was torn and stitched up with patches and mesh cloth. Red stocking covered her lanky thighs, boots two sizes to big stomped down on the pavement as she neared the intersection. The heavy bag on her back strained her left shoulder, the two trash bags filled with her clothes weighted down the other. She had worn all her jewelry to save room in her bag. Plastic bracelets, braided threads, oddly colored bangles hung up to her forearm, necklaces chocked her throat, getting snagged on her shirt and cleavage. A small scrap of paper in her hand teased her with an address that was hardly legible. She was tired, her head hurt, the city was too loud, she hadn’t eaten, and the smell of sewage, the homeless, and wet dog had her stomach shriveled in shock. She pushed a sweaty black bang from her eyes, tucking it behind her hair among the streaked locks of bright pink. Her hand reached out and started to rake against a high iron fence, adding to the already deafening drone of engines, car horns, and tourists. She glanced through the fence at the city’s park with narrowed blue eyes, searching for a place to rest her feet. Stopping, she chose a particular tree, a blossoming white dogwood that jutted its full branches out over the sidewalk, for her shade. Wiping her forehead, she pressed her tensed back against the wrought iron fence and looked out across the busy intersection. Glancing down, she messed with a stone at her toe, kicking it away as she tried to catch her breath. Her chest had started to constrict, the back of her throat was stinging. Something was heaving up through her stomach, biting and wiggling against her attempts to control it. She realized it couldn’t be her breakfast, which had been a handful of Twizzlers and cold tea bought down in the subway. It felt like emotion, like the first crucial moment when you realize you'll be caught no matter how hard you fall. As she swatted the cream, hearts-happed pedals away from her face, she looked up and felt every inch of her tense. Her entire life, she had been falling uncontrollably.

In that very second, as her eyes leveled, she caught the very moment the traffic before her parted. In that one fleeting instant, the congested river of locals and tourists divided, the blinding gleam of afternoon sun dimmed behind a cloud. She saw across the roadway, cleanly, plainly, for the first time since she entered the city. There, standing against the curb, emerald eyes already wide, stood a girl with a mane of suntanned blond curls.