Timeline | Bucky Barnes x OC | (1)

Chapter 19- Safety is the Price we Pay

It was 3am when Clara was finally dismissed. They were on strict orders to report back to the hospital for a 10 o'clock start. Clara didn't think she could manage another day like that, she would never forget what she had seen that day. It initially came as a pleasant surprise that a new rule had come into pass that all training nurses need only have four weeks training before they were allowed to serve in the army. Yesterday had been the end of Clara's four weeks training and it was announced to all the girls in her ward that they would be shipped out that very day. Each of them received a slip of paper with their details; their names, their number and their destination.

N.Lewis, nurse 4131, destination: England.

Clara joined her line of nurses, each of them going to the same hospital somewhere in England. She didn't recognise any of these nurses as the ones from her ward. Once inside the army truck, crammed in between two nurses with only just enough space to breath, the truck began to roll away from the Brooklyn practise hospital. After yesterday's ordeals they had been deemed ready, ready for what Clara didn't want to know. The girl to her right was sniffling and holding a faded postcard. It had two white lines dividing it into quarters where she had bent it and the picture had faded away. Clara could still tell what it was. It was a cottage on a cliff, overlooking a quiet sea with the artistic scrawl of "someday" in white, italic font in the bottom left corner. She was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, the initial H embroidered in red in the corner. As she went to stuff the postcard into her breast pocket, a padded wedge of letters spilled out. They had been carelessly tied up with packaging string so scattered themselves across the floor as they fell. The girl let out a pitiful sob as she stuffed the handkerchief away and began her scramble to obtain the letters.

Clara leant down to help the poor girl. She gathered the rest of the letters up to let the girl dry her tears with as much dignity as she had left. She offered the letters to her and in the exchange their hands brushed. Clara caught a glimpse of a letter, it had been signed off affectionately: "I'll find you when this is all over and we live the rest of our lives out together. You and me until the end. Love, your Harry."

"Thank you." The young woman whispered, not daring to disrupt the sacred silence that had befallen the nurses the previous day and had lingered as if in remembrance. Clara nodded to her and smiled, to say you're welcome without drawing any attention to the poor, flustered girl. She made no attempt to stash the letters away back in her pocket. Instead she held them to her chest, to her heart, to again be with her lover.

The hospital where Clara and the rest of the nurses were stationed in England was a minimal safe distance away from any fighting or large cities. The hospital was run by nuns so was essentially a convent. It would have been a beautiful building if it were not modified for war: all the stained glass windows had been boarded up with planes of wood painted black, every door had sandbags lurking next to it just in case they were needed and all of the wards had been moved into the basements. The only rooms that remained furnished above ground where the old bedrooms. The bedrooms were made available to the nurses as everyone who used to live in them and sought shelter in the safety of the basements. All the nuns, and all the war orphans they had taken in, now set up refuge in the basements to protect themselves from the bombings. The only space the nurses had free to occupy where the above ground bedrooms. At least they had proper beds and not a sheet of canvas spread out on the cold stone floors. Safety was the price of luxury.

The tearstained face of the girl on the convoy now unpacked the few items they were allowed to bring with them on the only other bed in the room she and Clara had been assigned. Between them, they had two metal bed frames and a matress each. They would have to collect their own bed sheets later themselves from the wash rooms. They had to share the one shelf in the room and each had half a desk to use between them. On the wall above each bed was a wooden cross no bigger than Clara's hand. The window in their room just above the desk was nailed over with a board of cork that, if they had had pins, would have been useful to display the other girl's many, many letters.

The nurses were blessed with an hours free time before they would join the nuns and the children for dinner. Clara's bed spread clanked as she sat down on her bed, the metal bars of her head board moaned under the little weight she had applied to them. She didn't know what to do with herself now she had some time of her own. It felt like she was being ignorant to a suffering soldiers' pain and had to remind herself that the hospital currently occupied no one, they had all been discharged before she had arrived. It wouldn't be long, Clara thought, before those same men were sent back to the hospital.

"Thank you for helping me earlier," The girl said softly as she plonked herself on the end of Clara's bed. "I meant to say something but I was in such a state. Oh the other girls must think me pathetic."

"Not at all. I thought you were very brave. I'm sorry but I read the end of one of your letters. He must love you very much." Clara admitted, quickly spinning her words around to comfort her. The girl's eyes were pricking with tears. "I'm sorry." Clara said as the girl next to her began to silently cry. She fussed her hands about her face frantically wiping the tears away but to no avail, more kept spilling down her cheeks.

"No, I'm sorry. I'm afraid I won't be much company. All I seem to do now is cry. Sister Goodwin certainly made herself clear that I would never make it as a nurse." The girl sobbed, her head immersed in her hands. Her back heaved with each horse sob that left the girl's throat.

"My ward sister said the same, for what woman could ever succeed as a nurse if she neglects to store the broomstick correctly." Clara cited Sister Foster's words exactly although she put more sarcasm to her than Sister Foster had done. The girl's sobs turned to a melancholy laughter.

"My name's Holly. Or Nurse Church as our ward sisters would insist." She said smiling.

"In that case, I'm Nurse Lewis. And God forbid if I let slip that my Christian name is Clara."

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