"You know, Nurse Swain. Your friends, the brunette and the blonde, what are their names?"

Lucille gave the young private out of Cincinnati a wry glance as she wrapped his wounded leg. "The really pretty ones?"

"Yeah. Them."

"Ruby is the brunette and Florence is the blonde."

"Really? We have been calling them Hedy Lamarr and Betty Grable."

Lucille snorted. "Better not let them hear you say that. You'd be taking your life in your hands."

"Oh I believe it. They are both beautiful, but they scare me."

Private McCreedy was in the Army Infantry. He was the only surviving member of his squadron after they were sent into the Hürtgen Forest. Lucille found it hard to believe that even Ruby's cold glare or Florence's vicious tongue could be any scarier than that nightmare woodland where boys were sent as mere machine gun fodder.

Lucille gave him a brilliant smile, feeling the need to help him forget the horror. "They aren't so bad."

He blinked up at her sleepily, his pain medication beginning to take hold. "Now you and the other blonde nurse... the one with the glasses?"

"Maisie French?"

"Yes! You two are our favorites, me and the other boys. Be- because Nurse French is funny like Myrna Loy in the 'Thin Man' movies. And you..." his head swayed to the side, his eyelids growing heavier.

"... and me?"

He jolted awake. "And you. Well, you're like all the girls we left behind in the States. Or like the girls we wish we'd left behind, if you're a bachelor like me."

He couldn't be more than nineteen. Hearing him call himself a bachelor nearly broke her heart, but she kept on smiling till her cheeks hurt as she wrapped his thigh.

"You, Nurse Swain, you're an American sweetheart. Healthy, sweet, and wholesome. And your smile..." He swayed again and nearly fell off the cot. Lucille hopped up from where she knelt and helped him lay down before he hurt himself. "You got a smile like apple pie."

Lucille perched her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. "Do you mean as sweet as apple pie?"

"Some- somethin' like that," he murmured, his eyes closing finally. "But I don't got a sweetheart back home."

The loneliness in his tone left her reeling. It was the end of her shift. She'd already seen too many destroyed bodies, held too many bloodied hands, helped write too many goodbye letters. It was only their second evacuation hospital and Lucille was starting to lose grip.

She grasped his hand and it brought him back to consciousness. "I don't have a sweetheart either."

"So I've got a shot?"

Lucille snorted and patted his cheek. After a moment's consideration, she gave him a peck on the forehead. "Sleep well, private."

"I will now," he muttered before passing out cold.

Florence stood at the front of the ward tent with a clipboard, making note of the last administrations of morphine and how much more they needed. She glanced up at Lucille as she trudged up to her. 

"Little McCreedy still doing his best to charm the ladies?" she asked as she made a mark on the paper.

"He's a good boy."

"He's a lucky boy. How that leg managed to escape gangrene is beyond me, went so long without proper care before he got here. Thank God he's not our problem starting tomorrow. He's on the next transport to England."

Lucille scratched at the dry skin along her hairline, her eyeballs feeling like they were coated in sand. She needed to rest. But she had another half an hour left of her twelve hour shift.

"I'll cover for you," Florence said, noticing her struggling to keep awake. "You go sack out. You drive yourself into the ground for these kids. I swear, you are a decent practitioner, but your strength is definitely in your bedside manner. You give more of yourself than you should."

Lucille peered up at her new friend with a nod. "I'm glad we got stuck with you, Wilkins."

"Don't get sappy on me, Swain. Go pass out somewhere before I'm forced to whip out the smelling salts."

"Thanks."

"Anytime. But," Florence held out an elegant hand and stopped her before she could disappear out the flap. "Check on Ruby, will you? When I left her quarters, she didn't look so good. Even Maisie couldn't get her to talk. She's got... this funny look-"

"Yes. Yes, of course," Lucille replied quickly, patting her fingers before ducking out into the cold, night air.

Ruby was lying on her cot as Lucille walked in, her back to her. Maisie was sitting at the end of the bed, her hand on Ruby's ankle. Maisie looked up at Lucille, her large, brown eyes reddened from a lack of sleep, but alert with concern. Her thin lips turned down as she silently beckoned Lucille over to them. 

It wasn't the first time in the past weeks that Ruby had fallen into such a state. After a shift, especially if it had been a brutal one in the O.R, she would collapse into her cot. But she wouldn't sleep. She would lay there, staring blankly into the distance. The life in her beautiful countenance drained, lips pale as the snowy ground outside, she almost looked like a breathing corpse. 

Lucille's heart jolted in fear at the sight of her best friend. Maisie patted Ruby's leg.

"Hey. Ruby, honey. It's Lucille. Do you want to talk to her maybe?" she attempted, her naturally monotone voice lilting with forced cheerfulness. The sound made Lucille even more panicked. It was rare that anything rattled the ever solid Maisie French. "Ruby?"

"Hmm," Ruby murmured, tucking her arms tighter around her. "I see both of you, I'm not blind."  

Maisie gave a weak chuckle as she stood and turned to Lucille. "I have to go on my shift."

"Go, go. It's okay. I'm done till morning," Lucille said, patting her arm.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course. You have to go, Maisie," she insisted in a hushed tone. "I'll try to talk to her."

"You gals know I'm still here... in this room..." Ruby growled, rolling over onto her back with her eyes closed.

Maisie bit her lip, but gave a consenting nod. Wiping her glasses off on her clean smock, she left them for the ward. Lucille sat down on the cot beside her friend's and unlaced her boots, casting uncertain glances Ruby's way.

"So. Did something happen in the O.R today?"

"No. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"I heard about that lieutenant they brought in with the chest wound."

"He died."

"Were you working on him?"

"Yes."

"Is that why you are feeling..."

Ruby pressed a hand to her eyes. "No. It isn't."

Lucille sat up after kicking off her boots. Rubbing her sore feet, she considered her next question. "Out of curiosity, do these episodes have anything to do with that you told me about your grandmother?"

Ruby's body stiffened. "I thought you didn't believe in all that stuff."

"Doesn't mean I won't talk to you about it though."

"Have you been able to dream since we got here?"

Lucille shrugged. "Most of the time, the second my head hits the pillow, I can't remember a thing."

"I still dream. And in them, I just know things."

Lucille shivered. "Is it about Hoobler?"

"Not this time," Ruby's voice was deadly still. 

"... what is it this time?"

Ruby sat up out of bed and opened her eyes, her vision as clear as day. When she met Lucille's gaze, her expression sent a shock wave of irrational fear though her chest. Lucille lifted her chin.

"What are you dreaming about, Ruby? Maybe if you talk about it, you'll feel better."

Ruby rose from her cot and crossed the room to where her things were kept. She dug through a small, carved box where she kept the letters she received from home and Hoobler. Slipping a blank envelope out of the bottom of the pile, she handed it to Lucille.

"What's this?"

"Just in case."

Lucille's heart dropped to her stomach. "In case of what?"

Ruby shrugged. "It's for my mum. And one for Donald."

Lucille gave a dismissive laugh. "Ruby. You know we are safe this far from the line. We have the enemy on the run, they've been saying that for months. By March, we'll be in Berlin."

"Will we?"

"Yes," Lucille replied firmly. "Stop being dramatic. All these dreams, these visions, they are coming from exhaustion and seeing too many boys blown to pieces. We are all worn thin. What you are feeling right now... we all feel the same way."

"And I need to apologize to you."

"Did you hear anything I just said?"

"Yes, but I'm going to ignore it. Just like you're ignoring me right now." She sat down next to Lucille and took her hands. Ruby's skin was like ice. "I'm sorry for keeping you from Buck."

Lucille shuddered with a pained scoff. "But you were right."

"Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe you should have listened to what he had to say about those letters. Maybe you should have waited till the end of all this to see how things played out. I may not particularly like the guy, but you two have something, a rare spark right from the start. We all saw it. It was undeniable."

Rising from the cot, Lucille whipped out her lighter and a box of Lucky Strikes. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it was something special. But in times like these, it's hard to tell if it's meant for the long run. Maybe those brief weeks were meant to be as dazzling and short lived as fireworks on the fourth of July. Not everything is built to last, but that doesn't our feelings weren't sincere."

Ruby held out a hand and Lucille handed her a smoke. "Maybe."

"Maybe."

Ruby was chosen the next morning to accompany the chief nurse on a supply run closer to the frontline. Luftwaffe attacks had become less frequent as the Nazi Airforce was slowly depleted. A single plane spotted their transport truck from high above and swung down towards the earth, spraying bullets as it dove. 

Maisie woke Lucille, barely able to speak for sobbing. They ran out into the yard as a Red Cross jeep carrying Ruby pulled up to the ward.

***

Maisie and Lucille sat on the floor. Maisie leaned against Ruby's vacant cot, her head buried in her arms. Florence paced in front of the tent flaps.

"What do they call nurses when we are killed?" Maisie lifted her damp face to the streak of sunset gold peeking through the slit in the tent opening. "Those boys, the ones we care for, they're heroes."

"They call us heroes too," Florence snapped, flicking her lighter as she tried to light a cigarette. "Don't question that, French. Ruby is a hero too."

"I'd rather have her alive." Lucille's dull voice sounded foreign to her own ears.

"We all do," Florence concluded. "But she sacrificed her life so the boys on the line might survive with the supplies they brought to them."

"She didn't sacrifice anything. She was killed. She didn't want to die. It just happened." Lucille threw her coffee cup across the room.

When Ruby first slipped away, her throat cut by a ricochet, Lucille had cried as she had pulled a blanket up over her body. Then the tears had stopped. All she was left with was a hollowing rage, threatening to burn her insides to ash. Till she was only left a shell of a woman.

"Do you remember the first time you put on that khaki nurse's uniform, looked at yourself in the mirror and thought you could really be something? That this whole thing would be one grand adventure?" Lucille spat, standing up with her arms crossed tight over her chest and back slumped. "I remember being grateful for a war. Grateful for Hitler so I could leave Kansas and the life of a minister's daughter. I wish I could go back and hit myself over the head with something really heavy-"

"A dictionary?" Maisie offered with a sniff.

"Then leave myself bleeding and stupid on the pavement."

"None of us could have known what we'd find over here," Florence added, finally getting her cigarette lit.

Maisie nodded. "All the promotional films at the movies made it look so glamorous and exciting. It was made to seem so romantic."

Lucille shook her head vehemently. "Sometimes I think Ruby always knew that things would be this bad."

"Ruby had a sixth sense about things." Maisie stood. Cleaning her glasses on her shirt sleeve and hooking them around her ears, she strode over to the desk. A worn typewriter sat at the center. She cranked in a sheet of paper.

Florence blew out a mouthful of smoke. "What are you doing?"

"Writing letters. To her mother and father." Maisie took a steadying breath. "To her beau."

Lucille's hand went to the pocket of her apron. It was still there. The blank envelope that Ruby had given her only a day earlier.

"I have something to add to that when you're done," she admitting, her voice breaking.

If only she had listened to Ruby the previous day. It was the least she could have done. How could she have been so heartless and dismissed her friend's fears? A hot rush of tears broke and she gave a rattling gasp, falling once again to the floor.

Florence walked over and sat beside her, smoking but not touching her, while Maisie punched away a letter of condolence to their dead friend's lover.