All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

32: Luck

"Do the men not wonder where you're going when you come here?"

Posey's face fell at the words. She didn't know why she continued to get her hopes up that one of these days her brother would be pleased to see her, but every time he managed to trample those hopes within mere seconds of her arrival.

"Perhaps," Posey replied, dragging a seat to John's bedside and lowering herself into it. "But they don't ask so I don't see that it really matters."

"What will you say if they do ask?" John challenged, shifting to face her as much as he could in his hospital bed. He was still sitting bathed in sunlight, just like the first time she'd visited, though the ethereal quality she'd first felt struck by had never appeared to her again. Instead, the light looked like it was stripping him bare, revealing to her all of the flaws she'd never noticed before, or perhaps simply not cared to look for. Sat there, watching her closely with an expectant expression settled onto his face, he seemed just as flawed as everyone else. Just as human, too. Just as dead when his time ran out, just like she would be when hers did.

"I'll say I've been visiting relatives," Posey replied as promptly and smoothly as she was able, hoping to prove to him that she'd already had everything worked out. In truth, there were still details she hadn't thought to iron out and this was one of them, but she prided herself on being a quick liar. This time, it seemed, John was convinced that she'd been organised.

"They know you're British, then?" he went on to question.

Posey shook her head. "They know mum's British. They think I'm from Boston." She shrugged and gave a noncommittal gesture of her hand towards the window, as though brushing the conversation out of it. "I've worked my story out, John, it's fine. I've been doing it longer than you've known I have. You needn't worry." She was always surprised by how quickly a conversation with John could resurface her old, boarding school-educated way of speaking. She always had to take care to shake it off before returning to Aldbourne. "Anyway, how are you?"

"Fine, considering," John replied, as blunt and unfeeling as he could manage, it seemed.

"Any word on rehabilitation yet?" she wondered, fiddling at the bedsheet until he grunted, indicating he wanted her to stop. Before, he'd always slapped her hands when they fidgeted, or slammed a hand down on her leg to stop it from bobbing up and down. Now, when she sat on his right, he had to content himself with audible cues. It was always sobering when he did it, reminding her that his hand was gone and that it wouldn't be coming back. She thought that perhaps all war was, really, was a means of taking as much as possible from as many people as possible until they eventually surrendered. She wondered what else John had lost, beyond his hand and his toes, that she couldn't yet even begin to comprehend. She wondered whether one day she'd know that loss all too well herself, even more intimately than she did already.

"No."

"Soon, I'm sure."

"It's likely."

A stagnant pause settled over the pair, their silence only broken by a nurse coming in to check some of John's vitals. When she left, Posey rushed to speak, fearing her imminent dismissal, for that was always how it went - she left when John told her to, when he'd had enough of her, and never a moment before.

"Have you managed to speak with Daniel yet?" She was referring to his wireless operator, the only member of his crew he knew the whereabouts of because he was also in hospital. 

"He's dead," John said, eyes set firmly on the wall in front of him. "Complications in surgery."

"When?"

"Yesterday morning."

Posey's eyes welled with tears, though she hardly knew why. She'd never met Daniel but for some reason her heart ached.