«letters to the somme»

mary's nightmare.

Rose stands to the side of a corridor, reading James’ letter. Occasionally she shakes her head, and chews her nails, and at the end she gives a long sigh and slips the paper back into her pocket. She misses him dearly. Every day is as painful as the day before, knowing that he could die within seconds and she wouldn’t even know. 

Her biggest fear is the telegram. Mary’s friend has had one already; a cold, monotone line with the words ‘Killed in Action’ printed in black, crisp letters.

“Rose! Doctor Knight wants assistance with an emergency surgery! Get the towels!” Mary calls down the passage. She shakes out of her stupor and stalks to the storage room, and grabs a basket of towels and bandages. Mary waits at the door with a tray of knives, her rosy face pulled into a worried expression.

“Oh, Mary, I bet the post just can’t get to him.” Rose sighs.

“Luke hasn’t written to me in three weeks, Rose. Don’t pretend that you wouldn’t be worried by now.” Her voice shakes slightly as they make their way up the stairs.

They enter a ward, where there are coughs and sighs, the sounds of despair. Doctor Knight waves impatiently at them from a bed on the other side of the room, and so Mary and Rose rush down the ward. With her back to the patient, Rose sets down her basket and proceeds to remove towels, ready to clean the soldier’s wounds.

But then Mary lets off a haunting shriek.

And when Rose turns around, she sees why Mary is sobbing uncontrollably over the soldier on the bed, stroking his cheek and whispering his name over and over.

It’s Luke.

More than a thousand thoughts run through Rose’s head at the same moment. The first and foremost is that there can’t be anything more twisted, more cruel than what is unfolding in front of her at that moment. Luke’s legs are mangled and bloody, his trousers glued to his wound stickily. His face is almost unrecognizable to the irresistibly good looking blond boy she knew a year before. The smears of dirt and splinters all over his skin write a wordless story of what he has experienced. Her second thought is imagining what it must be like to be Mary in that moment.

“Mary! MARY!” Rose snaps to her senses and shakes the other nurse, who is wailing like a banshee now, tears spread all over her face, her skin blotchy and red.

“He’s not dead! He’s not dead! Right? Right?” She replies, eyes wide with terror as if in a nightmare.

Which she is.

“Nurse Lancaster!” Rose yells to a younger nurse. She scuttles over quickly, eyes wide with horror.

“Take her down to Sister Hardy, and come back up here to help me. Quickly!”

They manage to prise a hysterical Mary off Luke. Rose looks at Doctor Knight, who shakes his head with sorrow.

“Nurse, clean the wound, please, and get the patient ready for amputation.”

“Both legs? Is it necessary?”

“It’s a miracle he’s not dead. Please follow my instructions.”

And Rose shuts her mouth, steely-eyed, and tries to ignore the face of a boy she has known for over a decade, and concentrates instead on yet another poor soldier’s bloody, infected legs.