Zell am See, Austria

Summer 1945

The German soldier's eyes are dead. His body is very much alive. Though broken, it's not beyond recovery. The hollowness in his stare leaves me cold as I unwrap the wound on his calf.

"What is your name?"

His English is perfect, steeped in an accent that is both familiar and abrasive to my ears. It's jarring to hear him address me with those glassy eyes. He can't be much older than me, but he looks like he has lived ten lifetimes.

"Ruth."

My eyes skip over his long face, sunlight filling the hollows in his cheeks. A heavy eyebrow lifts as he waits for my surname.

"Ruth Tucker," I begrudgingly comply.

"For the book of Ruth?" He takes a slow drag from his cigarette, his bloodshot gaze drifting towards the sunset shining through the canvas flaps of the POW hospital. "In the Bible?"

"For my grandmother."

A ghost of a smile drifts across his mouth. The sour smell of the infection in his wound is appalling. I try my best to keep a straight face.

"When was this last looked at by a doctor?" I ask.

"I can't remember."

A pair of tattered, leather boots are propped beside the cot. His wound has probably gone days untended as he marched towards surrender. He doesn't flinch as I press a cloth soaked in iodine to the sickly flesh.

"You're going to need a surgeon to evaluate you by this evening at the latest," I gasp hoarsely.

The soldier taps the ash from his cigarette to the brown grass. I pat the wound, the stinging chemicals and rank aroma making me dizzy. I sense his eyes graze over me and dare another look at him. His hand drops from his mouth, a cloud of smoke filling the space between us.

I think of my older brother back home with one less leg. He's alive, but it'll never be the same for him. Perhaps this is the same German who was responsible for the artillery shell that nearly killed Cal.

There is always the chance.

My hands tremble as I reach for the bottle of iodine, but it slips from my grasp. It tumbles off the cot. The German snatches the bottle before it can hit the ground. He holds it out to me.

"Thank you," I mumble, taking it from him.

Our fingers brush. The brief touch leaves me nauseous. Accepting even this little help from him feels like I'm betraying Cal.

"You're welcome, Ruth," he calmly replies. "Leon."

"Excuse me?"

"Leon Wagner." His voice caresses the sound of his name as though he is conversing in his mother tongue. "So you will know what to call me next time."

I am rendered speechless. I am only nursing in the POW hospital temporarily, filling a vacancy. Soon I will be back in the familiar ward in town where my American patients talk about state fairs in the fall and baseball scores.

The other Germans I have tended today were silent, vacant shells of men. I liked them that way. But this German, Leon. Putting names to faces was never something I expected to do when I was assigned to the POW camp. I don't like it.

"Ruthie?" A male voice brightly calls out behind me.

I bolt up from the cot as though I've been found fraternizing with the enemy, even though it's been months since VE Day. The lanky figure of Lawrence McNeil from Indiana appears between the tent flaps. He approaches me, his eyes trailing over Leon with disinterest.

"Ruthie, I wanted to see if you'd like a ride back to town?" he asks.

"My shift isn't over for another ten minutes."

"I can wait." He grins.

I manage a weak smile in return. "I'll be out soon."

"Sure thing." He strides away.

I sit down hard on the cot. My eyes sear into the wound as I bind it in clean linen, rushing through the rest of my work on Leon. I need to get away quickly before I say something vicious.

"He knows you well. He called you Ruthie. Is that a pet name?" the German states, tossing the smoldering stump of his cigarette to the ground. 

I fight to maintain a strained silence, but cannot for long.

"He was my brother's friend," I explain. "It's a family nickname."

"Was your brother's friend?" Leon knits his fingers together and rests them on his middle.

"Is my brother's friend. Cal is back home now."

"Why?"

I bristle and shift my weight on the creaking cot frame.

"He was wounded this winter."

"Bad?"

Tying the bandage with a swift jerk, I look up in time to see him wince.

"He lost a leg." I glare as though he is personally guilty of the deed. For all I know, that's true.

"There are no unwounded soldiers, I fear. On any side."

The hate that I have been quietly banking beneath my ribs is threatening to burn out of control. Bitterness is unbecoming of a woman, but I cherish mine like the memory of first love. I see nothing in Leon Wagner, but an automaton. He is a machine of the Third Reich. I am surprised he even bleeds.

"I will tell the doctor to see to you."

Gathering the remaining bandages and capping the bottle of iodine, I move to leave.

"Ruth," he says softly, running a hand over his scruffy chin. "Ruth in the Old Testament, she was a stranger in a strange land as well, correct?"

She also married a Jew, I want to answer. I want to ask if he has killed any of those lately, remembering the horror stories Lawrence has told me about the work camp his company liberated. But I know it's better to stay silent and walk away with my composure intact. We won the war anyway, that's enough of a period on that sentence.

"You alright, Ruthie?" Lawrence asks as I hoist myself into the passenger seat of the jeep.

He reaches across the distance between us, giving my shoulder a squeeze. The tips of his fingers linger at the space on my neck bordering my jawline. I pretend not to notice and give him a strained smile.

"Tired," I reply curtly. "Ready to go home."

"Aren't we all?" He sighs, pulling the jeep around.

∆∆∆

Normandy, 1944

I sit by the open flap in the covered bed of the transport truck. I am thankful for the chance to catch the fresh morning air. It is worth the heart rending view of a land cut up by invasion.

"Where are you from, Tucker?"

I glance across at Florence Wilkins, her blonde hair perfectly coiffed beneath her helmet. Her hand hangs delicately in the air, a cigarette poised between her fingertips. Despite our nightmarish surroundings, she looks fit for a movie screen. Her red lips part as she attempts a grin, but there is no friendliness in it.

"West Virginia."

"What does your daddy do?"

Her refined southern drawl lends a softness to her vowels. So different from my back country twang that gives my words rough edges.

"Coal mining."

Her dark eyes meet mine. We all know that Wilkins is as rich as Midas. What she is doing here tending the wolves amidst active combat is beyond us. I don't see her as being worth the effort of getting to know. I doubt she'll have the stomach to last long out here.

Secretly, I'm scared I won't be able to cope for long either. I constantly remind myself that I must for Cal's sake at least.

"Thinking of going into the family business after all this?" she asks drolly, tapping the ash from her cigarette out the edge of the truck bed.

I ignore her, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees.

"What is that smell?" The shrill cry of a girl in the front goes up.

I peer out in time to glimpse a rotting pile of horse corpses fermenting in the hazy sunlight. Though the mess is a good few feet from the road, the stench is all-pervading. I can almost feel it coming out of my eyes.

"Horses for warfare? In this day in age?" Florence scoffs. "Nazi ingenuity right there, ladies."

My gaze trails towards a group of men, cloths tied around their mouths and noses as they dig into the French farmland. An American GI is guarding them with a Thompson machine gun at the ready. I know I am seeing a group of German POWS, but they are nothing like the cartoonish buffoons shown in theaters back home. Their gaze is rank with apathy as they rip into the sod. 

One of them makes eye contact with me. The German is about Cal's age. My attention shudders away to the cloud glazed sky. Cal dropped in with the rest of the paratroopers on D-Day and I have yet to receive news, bad or good.

"That one took a liking to you, Tucker," Florence purrs, flicking the cigarette butt into the open air.

"Don't be stupid, Wilkins," I growl before I can stop myself. "Why don't you fix your lipstick or something."

Florence's round eyes widen at my hostility. A true smile erupts on her heart shaped face. It's the first I've seen on her after months of training and a long transatlantic voyage. It surprises me.

"Will do, darlin'." She winks, digging a lipstick tube from her coat pocket.

Fighting a grin in return, I lean against the metal railing behind me and close my eyes. But sleep is impossible.

When we get to the field hospital,the first shock of blood is the worst, but we are forced to acclimate quickly. The experienced nurses are too busy with other broken bodies to oversee us novices. We are thrown in head first, something we didn't expect.

I work silently at the quivering mass of muscle and tendon hanging like distended roots from a man's thigh bone. Florence Wilkins finds his artery and clamps it. It's frightening how easily I detach from the horror under my fingers. The individuality of the soldier disappears.

After he dies, I step away from the stretcher laid out on a dining table and remember that this used to be a human being. Florence is gasping as though she's been held underwater. She shuts his glassy stare with trembling fingers, her nail polish matching the blood staining her palms.

"You did your best, girls. Especially just coming in today and all." The head nurse comes up behind us with a sheet to cover the body. "Go take a moment for yourselves."

I wipe my hands on my apron. "C'mon, Wilkins."

Florence follows out the side door. She hands me a cigarette and lights it before her own. Letting the smoke flood my chest, I study the courtyard as it slowly fills with soldiers. As I study them, I realize with a jolt that some of them are paratroopers. Then I recognize one.

"Harry Sabbatini." I let out a smoky chuckle.

"What?" Florence tries to find my line of sight.

My brother's friend removes his helmet, squinting in the pale light as he rubs a grubby hand through his dark, matted hair. He sees me before I can say anything.

"Well." He smirks, approaching with a swaying strut that he didn't leave behind in Flatbush, New York. "If it ain't Ruthie Tucker. Aren't you a sight for sore eyes?"

Pulling me into a side hug, I try to keep from smearing gore on him. After another look at his filthy uniform, I realize it wouldn't have mattered.

"And who is this?" He gives Florence a wink.

Straight faced, she lifts an eyebrow. "This is Florence Wilkins. And way above your paygrade, son."

"A feisty broad, huh?" Harry's strong jaw loosens as he openly admires her.

"Harry, have you seen Cal?" I interject, intently studying the crowd of men.

"Not since D-Day plus 2, but I'm sure he's here somewhere." Harry drops a heavy hand on my shoulder. "We got an eye on him, doll. Don't you worry."

A Red Cross jeep pulls into the yard with a man laid up on the hatchback, strapped to a stretcher. Harry peers over in its direction.

"Holy shit, it's Pops," he grumbles.

"Nurse!" A paratrooper calls, hopping out of the jeep.

Harry races over with us. The two men take the sides of the stretcher and lift the wounded soldier out of the vehicle.

"What happened?" I ask walking alongside the soldier.

Florence takes the wounded man's hand to check his pulse while I lift his eyelids to study his pupils. He's barely conscious. If he's lucky, its only a minor concussion.

"Explosion threw him back pretty good," the other soldier explains as we carry him into the converted French manor.

"Took some shrapnel to the face," Florence observes as they set him down on an unused cot. "What's his name?"

"Lieutenant Pawloski."

There is a heavy blood stain on his back near the man's kidney, a little too close for comfort. The other paratrooper grips my arm as I stand. Florence cuts away the jacket from Pawloski's torso. I meet the other soldier's mossy hazel gaze, still wild from the cruelty of heated combat.

"That's just a graze. I already checked," he explains, immediately knowing our concern.

"He'll be just fine," I say blandly, trying not to think of the dead soldier who I nursed not a half hour earlier.

After making sure Lieutenant Pawloski is well looked after by the doctor, I return to the cacophony on the cobblestone bailey. I am desperate, both hoping to see Cal in the crowd and not in case he's been hit.

"Sabatini says you're Cal Tucker's sister?"

With a brief glance over my shoulder, I notice the soldier that brought in the wounded Pawloski from my brother's company.

"Is the officer okay?" I ask as he moves alongside me.

"Blast knocked the stuffing out of him, but Doc says he'll be just fine." He runs the back of his hand over his grimy forehead.

"Good, I'm glad to hear it," I answer, scanning the men. "I'm Ruth.

"Lawrence McNeil, it's nice to meet you."

I barely register his introduction as the weary figure of my older brother trudges into the yard. He doesn't swing his heavy gaze towards me till I am nearly in front of him. I clasp my arms around his middle. The events of the day thud into my chest and I fight tears as he returns the embrace.

"Ruthie," he says, his familiar low growl making the ache in my throat pound. I realize that I've been expecting him to get hit. After only a day at the hospital, I was certain the next time I saw Cal, he would be on a stretcher. "When did you get here?"

I pull away with a deep sigh, scrubbing my face with the heels of my hands. "This morning. I hadn't heard anything, so I've been looking for you."

His dark eyes are hemmed with smoky remnants of exhaustion. Though still smiling, his thin lips pull tight. "I'm just fine, you knew I would be."

He gives me another squeeze with a kiss to the top of my head. The tightly wound knot around my heart loosens and I can breathe again. Harry Sabatini and Lawrence McNeil come up alongside us, warmly shaking hands with their comrade.

"I had no idea you had a sister, Tucker," Lawrence comments with a side glance in my direction. His Adam's apple bobs as Cal turns his brooding attention on him.

"Yeah?" Cal tips his head back as he levels him with a glare. "What of it?"

"I just- I didn't know," Lawrence replies, shrugging and turning his eyes to the ground.

"Ruthie is a good girl." Cal grips the back of my neck affectionately. "She's smart. She's going places. And not with you, McNeil. Got it?"

I clench my jaw with a pointed stare to Cal. Brushing his hand away, I hear a strained call for a nurse.

"I need to go," I mutter apologetically. "I'll try to see you before you head out."

"I'll let you know when we do, don't worry." Cal motions in the direction of the hospital. "Go save some lives, Ruthie."

I wince at his well meant encouragement and try to wipe the blood of the dead American boy off my hands on my apron as I rush into the hospital.