2/19th SWG Barracks
2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
28 October, 1987
0630

"Are you going to help me?" I asked. I hated the whining sound of my voice. My words were slurred, my lips swelling up like balloons, my missing teeth giving me a lisp.

Stillwater just shrugged. "Sorry," was all he said.

I felt a twinge in my chest. My back burned where the skin had been stripped off by the cold of the floor.

"Help me," I begged him reaching out to him with my left hand. My pinky was still crooked. That was a problem. I was left handed.

He shook his head. "Sorry," He said again, then took a long drink off the bottle, "Can't."

I started crying. "Please, Stillwater, I'm hurt."

Another head shake. "Life is pain, Cromwell, get used to it."

I coughed, sharp stabbing pains in my ribs making me cry out.

A sudden realization made my blood run cold. I was already crying in pain and frustration.

"You're dead, aren't you?" I asked. I sobbed. "Am I going to die? Alone? In your shower?"

Another shrug, "Maybe. I'm not sure about me."

"Me? Am I going to die?"

He nodded slowly. "We all die, Cromwell. Some easier than others, but there's no good way to go. We all die alone."

I wrapped my arms around myself, hugging myself, as I started shuddering. "I don't want to die," I told him.

"We don't all get what we want," He told me, then chuckled, a harsh, bitter sound, "I wanted to be a normal boy, a normal person, with a job and a little house with a white picket fence." He pointed at his chest with the cigarette then took another drag. "Instead, I'm this."

"I'm in shock, aren't I?" I lisped. There was a glow-stick on the floor, a chem-light. I cracked it, shook it, and dropped it, painting the room in green.

He nodded again, "You were hypothermic. You turned the water up too high, warmed yourself up too face. Combined with your injuries, it sent you into shock." He took another drink off the bottle of Wild Turkey then set it down.

The glass was cold and slick with condensation when I wrapped my hand around it. I took a drink, staring at Stillwater. The alcohol burned its way into my stomach, making my bruised and battered guts clench. I coughed and took another drink, setting it down as I went through another coughing fit. My ribs flared with agony, but the booze made it easier to handle.

Stillwater picked up the bottle and took a long drink, then another drag off of his cigarette. I pulled myself half out of the shower, pulling the curtain over my back, and reached for the pack of cigarettes and the lighter on the floor by his boot.

I wiped my hands on his cold pants leg before pulling out a cigarette and lighting it.

My hands shook.

The nicotine felt good, the smoke filling my lungs. The first drag made me cough. The second made me dizzy. The third was just fine.

Everything but my arms below my neck was still in the hot water from the shower.

When I looked up, Stillwater was gone.

I laid my face on the cold tile and wept, smoking the cigarette. The bottle of Wild Turkey was still in reach. Blood was all over the bottle, and I could see my own handprint on it. There was blood streaks on the floor where it had rolled into the room. The pack of cigarettes had been in the middle of a frozen pool of blood that the heat from the shower had thawed.

Stillwater had dropped them when he was attacked, and they had ended up in the bathroom.

I was shivering, my core temperature slowly rising under the hot water.

My limbs hurt. They hurt so bad. It took everything I had not to just lay in the water and scream in agony.

Instead I took a slow drag off the cigarette, staring at the tile wall under the sink, and exhaled slowly.

Breathe. Just breathe.

Of all the people to hallucinate, I had to hallucinate that big thug.

And I let him get a rise out me. I had cursed at him. Like a common street trollop.

...ladies of noble blood do not need profanity to make their point, Heather my love...

Grammy's voice.

I shuddered again, my brutalized guts convulsing.

One of the men I'd fought with had at least fractured two of my ribs.

I'd taken a lot of damage, maybe too much, but I refused to let go. Refused to give in. I knew, from the long years at Atlas, that if you could survive, you could heal from anything. Foster had healed up from having his entire rib-cage turned into broken shards and both of his lungs collapsing.

I would survive. I would endure.

I dropped the cigarette in the pool of blood, the smell of scorched blood not even bothering me as I pulled myself back into the shower, curling in a ball and holding tight to my legs as I rocked back and forth, taking stock through the pain.

My jaw hinge was damaged, maybe a fracture, maybe worse. Missing six teeth. Cracked/broken ribs on my left side. Stabbed in the hip, blade grated along the bone. Cracked orbital socket for my right eye. Broken nose.

I put my fingers on it and snapped it into place.

Set broken nose, broken pinky finger on my left hand. Gashed thumb on my right hand. Torn and bruised rectum and vagina. Lacerations and shallow punctures on my breasts. Scalp bruised and torn free from anchors. Abrasions on my back and the back of my arms from pulling free of the frozen tile. Temperature variation damage to the internal organs. Possible lung damage from breathing in frozen air so deeply.

I'd live.

God, I didn't want to. Individually, the injuries were minor. Stacked together, they were enough to put me under.

...on your feet...

The words wound through my skull, loud, impossible to ignore. I struggled, trying to grab onto the shower wall, managing to get to my feet. I wavered slightly, but managed to straighten up, putting my forehead against the tile, letting the water wash my skinned back.

...was stillwater in with the preggos already, taking them one at a time, animalistically rutting with them out of genetic imperative to pass on his genes before he died...

Clothes. I'd need clothing. I was lucky to have survived out there, and I wasn't about to push my luck and try to make it to the fifth floor naked to the waist.

Plus my pants and the long-johns were soaked in blood and condensation from the shower.

My dogtags were swaying back and forth between my fat tits and I focused on them. Letting the steady pendulum swing of them numb my brain.

Another track of my brain ran over my options.

There would be clothing in Stillwater's room. He as a large man, I would be able to wear his uniforms. I was glad it wasn't a female's room. My shoulders were broad naturally, add in the muscle and most small uniforms wouldn't fit across my shoulders. My thighs were too thick for small uniforms, males would fit just fine.

Survive.

I opened the cabinet beside the shower, pulling out a towel. I dried carefully, making sure there was no moisture on my skin. I took the time to dry my hair as best as possible, not caring about tangling it. I'd start losing body heat the moment I opened the door of the bathroom, I needed to minimize it.

Taking a breath, I held it for a second, let it out explosively, then whipped open the door.

Move fast. Dresser first. Set up dress right dress according to unit SOP. Boxers. They fit. Longjohns next. T-shirt. Socks. Single layer. Move to the wall lockers. Twice I caught my finger and almost passed out from the sudden flare of agony. Pants. One BDU top had a field jacket liner sewn into it. Pull it on. Field jacket liner. Field jacket. Move to the desk. Check. Medical tape. Pull down everything, tape a pad over my stab wound. Pull back up. Tape fingers together.

Hurry hurry losing body heat hurry hurry

Finally dressed I moved back into the bathroom, transferring the contents of the pockets of my soaked pants into the warm dry pants I'd stolen from Stillwater.

No bra, but hell, I could handle that.

When I turned around I almost screamed.

Stillwater stood silently in the middle of the room, staring at me.

"Crawh-mwahl," He said, blood running down his chin. "Ur ah-lahv."

I nodded. "No thanks to you, you big thug," I told him.

"Hallp," He said. He leaned against the doorframe of the short hallway. "Huurrt. Cahld. Hallp."

I moved up to him, using my remaining teeth to pull off my glove and putting the back of my hand against his forehead.

He was cool, not cold, but I could feel that he was warmer than he had been.

He needed warmed up, and fast, or I'd lose him back to half-dead again.

Crap, I just got dressed.

I took his hand, pulling him into the bathroom and shutting the door. The shower was still running, the room warming up almost immediately. I knew that the steam wasn't good for either of our lungs, but there wasn't any choice.

"I need to get you undressed, take stock of your wounds," I told him.

He nodded, and stood silently while I undressed him.

Thick puckered purple scars from where he'd been stabbed. His skin was clammy to the touch. Scars all over his body. I got him stripped naked as fast possible, ignoring his genitals. I'd seen them before. That Gerber Mark II in the boot scabbard I paid attention to, setting it on the shallow metal shelf beneath the mirror.

Once he was naked I pushed him the shower and went back out into the cold and dark room. I quickly gathered up everything he would need to get dressed, leaving it all on hangars, and went back into the bathroom. I hung his uniforms up on the towel rack, then stripped quickly, folding up the clothing and putting it in the sink.

The crotch of the boxers were bloody.

When I stepped into the shower he was leaning against the wall, shivering, but trying to keep his body in the spray.

"Com'ere, ya big thug," I told him, pulling him toward me and wrapping my arms around him. I pressed against his back, turning him so the water sprayed directly on his torso. I could feel his body heat returning, and held him up as he began to cough.

Clotted blood from where his lungs had filled.

After a long time he straightened up, wiping his mouth.

"Better," He said, the words clearer and his voice stronger. He shuddered in my arms. "I think I was dead."

I hugged him tight. "Almost. You were half dead. What do you remember?" Every word hurt. The hinge of my jaw flared with agony with every word. I tried to minimize moving my jaw. That, combined with my lips and teeth, made my words sound off.

He shuddered again, almost slipping from my grasp. He was heavy.

"Atlas. Being tasked to get the pregnant troops from Graf, take them to the barracks so they can get their personal effects, and drive them to Rammstien so they can start their maternity leave," He said. He coughed for a bit, retched, and spit more clotted blood on the shower floor. His voice was getting steadily stronger.

"Anything else?" I asked. I felt goosebumps rise on his skin.

"Apple blossoms and blackberries," he told me.

Some things shouldn't be remembered. Being half-dead was probably one of them. I hugged him again, laying my head against his back. "They ambushed you, left you for dead, Aine brought you back, kept the mountain from taking you."

He shivered in my arms. "Don't let it take me, Cromwell," he said. He sounded close to tears. "I don't want to be like Tandy." He sobbed, "Don't let it take me."

With a start I realized he was terrified.

"I'm going to die here," he sobbed, "Don't let the mountain take me. Please. Don't let it take me into the dark and cold. I don't wanna be like Tandy."

His knees buckled and his weight pulled me down. I managed to shift so I was holding him in my lap, my legs wrapped around him. He held onto my arm, his grip almost painful, as he began to cry.

Sitting there, in a hot shower, holding my squad leader while he cried like a lost child.

I'd never felt so hopeless.