Ruby dropped the surgical instruments into the sink and stumbled back a step, her eyes glued to the view beyond the window. In the late afternoon gloom, a dark cloud mushroomed from one of the training fields. Lucille rushed into the room.

"What the hell was that?"

The nurses watched the haze of smoke dissipate into the atmosphere. Ruby stood frozen, her finger cut by one of the scalpels and bleeding down her palm. Lucille noticed her friend's injury. Grabbing a spare bandage, she wrapped Ruby's ring finger.

"Stalwhite! Stal-" Masie French burst into the room, brown eyes behind her spectacles so round that they occupied almost half of her square face. "Stalwhite, Swain! Sister Chantal needs us down in courtyard."

Lucille took off after Masie. It was only when she was out the door that she noticed Ruby was not with them.

"Ruby!" she hollered, sticking her head back into the room. "Now!"

Ruby jolted, glancing down at her hand as though only then realizing she had hurt herself. She peered over at the door with distant eyes, her face blanched so white that it sent a chill down Lucille's spine.

"Come on!"

Lucille didn't wait for her as she barreled down the twisting staircase. Gasping, she ran up to the small group of young women congregating around the head nurse.

"...we haven't been told yet how many to expect, but they should be transported here within the next ten minutes. I know you haven't experienced wounds of this nature, but you have had your training. I expect you to perform to the best of your abilities."

Sister Chantal's normally pleasant countenance was drawn thin. A tick played at the hollow of her cheeks as she spoke and her voice was tremulous. Seeing her in such a state was more frightening than the explosion itself.

The wail of sirens announced the approach of the vehicles transporting the wounded. Lucille swallowed hard, glancing over her shoulder to see Ruby standing behind her. Ruby gave Lucille a tentative nod, her dark red lips tight.

The first of the ambulances pulled up along the damp cobblestones to the entrance of the hospital.

"Have you got the artery, Swain?" Sister Chantal asked breathlessly as the ambulance driver helped her lift the wounded man onto the stretcher.

Lucille struggled to get a hold of the slippery vein, electric with blood. She pinched the severed artery from the ruins of his leg between her thumb and forefinger. Despite the man's grey complexion, his dark eyes were hyper alert. Lucille tried not to think of the pain he was in as they carried him up to the infirmary.

The event had been the result of a careless mistake by a new lieutenant training a group in artillery. The officer had been killed in the blast along with one other new replacement. Ten more wounded with a couple in very serious condition, like the man who had his foot and the bottom of his shin blown off. For a group of nurses who had never seen raw combat wounds, the women were drained by the end of the shift.

"Swain?" Sister Chantal called from her office as Lucille and Ruby passed by her door.

Lucille stopped, Ruby pausing further down the hall. There was a smear of blood on Ruby's neck underneath her chin. She shrugged with a nod.

"See you at home, old lady."

Lucille folded her hands behind her back, her fingers tinged pink despite how hard she had scrubbed them. It looked as though she had been canning strawberry preserves. Sister Chantal stood from her desk, a folder in front of her with Lucille's picture pinned to the cover. She waved to a chair.

"Please take a seat, Swain. Lord knows, you deserve the rest. I am reluctant to talk to you about this now, especially after the day we have had." The nun's small spectacles reflected the lamplight from where they perched on her aquiline nose. "Let me preface this by telling you how very impressed I was with your conduct today. You worked as calmly and efficiently as any field nurse I remember seeing during the Great War."

"Thank you, Sister," Lucille managed to rasp, her throat raw and mouth parched.

"I will cut to the quick. We have received word that there is a need for replacements on the continent. When I spoke with the other sisters about who would be best to fill quota, your name came up."

Lucille blinked. "The continent?"

"I assume you won't be on the front line. But there is a dire need in France and perhaps soon Belgium as the troops move further towards Germany."

"Who else is being considered?"

"I'm not at liberty to say. And I would not want to as not to let that influence your decision."

"You are giving me the choice?"

Sister Chantal paced to the front of the desk, resting against it. "Some of the other ward sisters are not, but I want to give you the chance to say no." She removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. "War is an ugly thing to witness up close. What happened today was minimal. I won't lie to you. If you go, what you see over there... you may end up carrying it for the rest of your life. I speak from experience."

Lucille studied the middle aged nun's weary face and tried to imagine her as a young woman on the fields of France in the last Great War. She wondered if Sister Chantal had taken the cloth before or after she witnessed what men could do to each other in battle.

"Can I think about it?"

"Of course, today is not the day to give your consent. But I must know by the end of the week." Sister Chantal gave her a fatigued smile and nodded towards the door. "Go home and get some rest now. I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night, sister."

A bitter drizzle was picking up in the pale of evening. The temperature had fallen hard since the frigid clouds had swept in from the hills. Her breath dissolving into white plumes, Lucille puckered her coat collar around her neck.

By the time she made it to her front door, it was nearly a downpour. Ruby had only turned on the small table lamp in the front hall. Making her way through the near dark, Lucille opened the back door. Music drifted unheard over Ruby who sat with the orange cat in her lap. 

She had named the creature Rufus after finding him crying like a starved child on their front step soon after the 101st had been sent away. Wrapped in an old crocheted blanket, her hand lay motionless on the sleeping cat's arched back.

Without saying anything, Lucille trudged over to the bench at the end of the porch. She propped her elbow on its wicker arm and watched the rain in silence.

"I ran into Masie as I was leaving and she said Sister Chantal asked if she wanted to become a field nurse." Ruby broke the quiet. "Was that what she asked you?"

"Yes."

"What did you tell her?"

Lucille rocked forward to her feet, biting her thumb nail as she leaned up against a porch post.

"She said I could have some time to think about it."

Ruby turned off the radio as Rufus leaped from her lap. "You have to decide for yourself, okay? I don't think I will be asked. I don't have the gift that you and Masie possess."

"I'm thinking about more than what you'll end up doing, Ruby." Lucille's hand brushing briefly over her abdomen as it fell to her side.

Ruby studied her. She picked up a new pack of Lucky Strikes sitting on the radio. Lighting one, she sauntered towards her. Lucille realized that she was wearing a worn t-shirt of Hoobler's that he had left behind. There was a falling paratrooper in the middle with the words Camp Toccoa printed underneath. 

"Did I ever tell you about my mother's side of the family?" Ruby tapped the ash from her cigarette out into the rain.

"No, I don't think so."

Ruby snorted. "I suppose I can trust you with a dirty little secret. My grandmother was a gypsy."

Lucille peered over at her with a surprised grin. "A gypsy? Like the one in 'The Wolf Man'?"

"Oh goodness no." Ruby rolled her dark eyes. "She wasn't quite that Gothic, thankfully. But we were close when I was a child. Anyway, she had certain... gifts."

Lucille arched a brow, bracing her back against the porch post. "Gifts? What kind of gifts?"

"She knew things intuitively. Sometimes before they even happened."

Biting back a scoff, Lucille crossed her arms over her chest against the chill.

Ruby took a drag from her cigarette. "She used to tell me that I had the same ability. It's nothing I can control, it just happens occasionally."

"Are you telling me you're a fortune teller, Ruby?"

"Nothing so archaic. I merely get feelings sometimes."

In the hedge, lined by the rain blackened remains of their garden, a crow lighted abruptly into the air. Its hacking cry echoed in the otherwise silent evening. Lucille tightened her arms around herself.

Ruby took a deep breath. "This afternoon, when the explosion happened... I just knew."

"Knew what?"

"Donald Hoobler will not be coming home to me."

Lucille shuddered, swallowing hard. "That's ridiculous- I mean, I respect your relationship with your grandmother, but..." She turned sharply back to the bench. "It sounds like a load of superstitious bunk to me."

"Oh, right. So you don't believe in fate?" Ruby's eyes were damp at the edges.

"No, not at all. It's all a silly delusion."

"What about the fact that you have carried that small copy of the New Testament in your pocket since Buck left? What do you call that?" Smoke drifted from Ruby's full lips, her tone as calm as if she had been discussing the bad weather.

Lucille let out a bark of a laugh. "I call that minister's kid guilt!"

"I don't think so. If you felt guilty about something, you would be running from God and not towards Him."

Lucille was speechless, suddenly feeling like she was having one of her notorious conversations with her mother. She rose and strode towards the door.

"I'm going to take a bath."

"Lucille." Ruby leveled her with a dark, knowing stare. "What do you have to feel guilty about now that you didn't before Buck left? What's going on that you aren't telling me?"

Hesitating with her hand on the door frame, Lucille cast her gaze to the floor. "I think there are still some leftovers from the other night. I don't feel like cooking, do you?"

Ruby was silent for a moment. Her figure relaxed as she edged towards the radio.

"I'm not hungry." She turned the knob as Lucille exited into the kitchen.

Ella Fitzgerald's rich voice singing 'My Melancholy Baby' glided up the stairs as Lucille tramped to the bathroom.

After her bath, Lucille bled for the first time since Buck had left. She nearly collapsed on the black and white tiled floor with relief.