CHAPTER THREE. WILL THEY PUT ME IN THE FIRING LINE?
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HE PULLED THE BARBED WIRE BACK A BIT. Both the solider and the nurse made their way through the wire. The moment Mags made her way past the entrance, the wire snapped back. A barb punctured into Schofield's hand, eliciting a grunt of pain from him. Curses slipped out of her mouth as she delicately grabbed the wire and pulled it back for him to pull his hand out. "When we stop, I'll wrap it, okay?" She reassured him. "I don't have enough room to get into my pack." He nodded in response, holding his bleeding hand against his chest.
Craters littered the muddy ground ahead of them. Reminders of the realities they lived in. Who had these shots killed? How many had they killed? How many were soldiers she had seen? These questions would linger in her mind without an answer. Ahead in the distance, the German line of wires could be seen. Dead trees dotted the horizon in the distance. "Sap trench." Schofield pointed out towards the small crater. He led them to the sap trench, being the first to go in.
Shortly after, Mags jumps in after. She cringes as her butt lands against the squishy mud. With swift movements, she begins rooting through her bag for gauze. As she pulls the roll of gauze out of her bag, Blake jumps back, knocking her over into Schofield. To catch himself, Schofield's injured hand lands inside the open and rotting stomach of the dead German soldier. "You fucking idiot!" Mags shouts at Blake with pure rage in her tone.
Blake stares at his friend in shock. He's panicking. His terrified eyes meet the angry ones of the nurse. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Sco-"
"Shut up." Schofield mumbles, pulling his wounded and dirty hand out of the corpse.
With a huff of annoyance, Mags grabs his wounded hand and places it in front of her. "We can't move yet. You'll have to be patient, Blake."
"We have to keep moving."
"He may lose his hand because of you, so I don't think you're in any position to be giving me orders." Her glare and tone were sharp. It cut him. Her gaze softened at the pure remorse that overtook Blake's features. "He's not going to lose his hand. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Just... I need you to be more careful next time, Blake."
"I'm not a child."
Mags rolled her eyes before returning to Schofield's hand. Pulling out the flask Leslie gave her, she mumbled an apology before pouring the whiskey onto his wound. He grunted in pain as his free hand grabbed her wrist tightly. "I have to do this. It's the best thing we've got." She reassured him before pouring a small bit of whiskey onto the wound. Placing the flask back in her pack before beginning to wrap his hand with gauze. "That's as good as we can do right now. As soon as we get to the Second Devons, we'll take you to a doctor."
The solider nodded, taking deep and steady breaths to ease the pulsing pain in his hand. With one last deep breath, Schofield leads the two along the sap trench towards the German line. Everything is silent. It wasn't a soft and enjoyable silence, but an eerie and unsettling silence. It sounded like the calm before the storm. Mags glanced around the area, on high alert for any enemy soldiers.
