bibliodragon

Title: Scarce Heard Amid the Guns Below
Author:

bibliodragon
Rating: T
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 300

Another drabble for

ar_drabbles. I love AUs!

She returned after her shift with the book in hand, like she said, making her way through the sea of misery that passed for a hospital ward. Past the beds and their ever changing occupants, through the fug of disinfectant that could never mask the stink of blood and gangrene.

One of the doctors had his own solution, the constant cigarette even in the middle of the most tricky of operations. He was busy seeing to the neighbour of the bed of her objective. She glared at him as puffed laconically at her, just daring him to say something. The young officer looked as if he was sleeping, and she was unwilling to wake him, but as she sat down he smiled.

"I didn't think you would remember," he said, opening his eyes, and she noticed the way his smile reached them in comparison to the grimace of earlier as she had changed his bandages.

"You should know better by now," she said, though not quite sure why. He did not show any sign that she had said anything strange, just continued to smile softly as she opened the book and fumbled for her glasses. "Though I know I don't have the most soothing of voices."

"I've had to listen to officers constantly bark out their orders," he said, trying to smother a cough. "Your voice is the sound of Heaven itself in comparison."

The violence of the cough took him by surprise, but she was quickly pouring water with expert haste. "Easy, easy, you need to rest that politician's tongue of yours." She held the water for him as he sipped.

"Yes Nurse Adams."

"Wilhelmina. Off duty, remember?"

"Then you must call me Lawrence."

She read to him over the steady throb of the distant guns of the Front.