Page 8 (1/2)

She glanced apologetically at the soldier, took a deep breath, and hopped up

When she was seated on the tiny stool, he handed up the jug of water and the box of gauze and bandages He started to shut the door

Wait, Luce whispered What do I do?

Thethe ride to Milan is Dress their wounds and keep them comfortable Do the best you can

The door slarip the stool to keep fro on the soldier at her feet The aht ca from a nail in the corner The only as directly behind her head on the inside of the door She didn't knohat had happened to Giovanni, the boy with the bullet in his stoain Whether he'd live through the night

The engine started up The aear and lurched forward The soldier on one of the top slings began to moan

After they'd reached a steady speed, Luce heard the pattering sound of a leak So She leaned forward on the stool, squinting in the diht

It was the blood of the soldier on the top bunk dripping through the woven sling onto the soldier in the middle bunk Thethe blood fall on his chest, but he was injured so badly that he couldn't move away He didn't make a sound Not until the trickle of blood turned into a strea with the soldier She started to rise from her stool, but there was no place for her to stand unless she straddled the soldier on the floor Carefully, she wedged her feet around his chest As the aripped the taut canvas of the top sling and held a fistful of gauze against its bottoers within seconds

Help! she called to the ambulance driver She didn't know if he'd even be able to hear her

What is it? The driver had a thick regional accent

This

We're all dying, gorgeous, the driver said Really, he was flirting with her now? A second later, he turned around, glancing at her through the opening behind the driver's seat Look, I'et the rest of these guys to the hospital

He was right It was already too late When Luce took her hand away froain So heavily it didn't seem possible

Luce had no words of co, whose eyes ide and petrified and whose lips whispered a furious Ave Maria The strea in the space where his hips

Luce wanted to close her eyes and disappear She wanted to sift through the shadows cast by the lantern, to find an Announcer that would take her somewhere else Anywhere else

Like the beach on the rocks below Shoreline's ca on the ocean, under the stars Or the pristine swi into, when she'd worn the yellow bathing suit She would have taken Sword & Cross over this aone to meet Cam at that bar Like when she'd kissed him She would even have taken Moscow This orse She'd never faced anything like this before

Except--

Of course she had Shealmost exactly like this It hy she'd ended up here Soirl who died and came back to life and went on to become her She was certain of it She must have dressed wounds and carried water and suppressed the urge to voirl who'd lived through this before

The streaan to trickle, then became a very slow drip The boy beneath had fainted, so Luce watched silently by herself for a long ti stopped completely

Then she reached for a towel and the water and began to wash the soldier in the middle bunk It had been a while since he'd had a bath Luce washed hie around his head When he ca evened, and he stopped staring up at the sling above hirow more comfortable

All of the soldiers seemed to find some comfort as she tended to them, even the one in the middle of the floor, who never opened his eyes She cleaned the face of the boy in the top bunk who had died She couldn't explain why She wanted him to be more at peace, too

It was impossible to tell how much time had passed All Luce kneas that it was dark and rank and her back ached and her throat was parched and she was exhausted--and she was better off than any of theher

She'd left the soldier on the bottom left-hand stretcher until last He'd been hit badly in the neck, and Luce orried that he would lose even more blood if she tried to re-dress the wound She did the best she could, sitting on the side of his sling and sponging down his gri some of the blood out of his blond hair He was handsome under all the mud Very handsome But she was distracted by his neck, which was still bleeding through the gauze Every tiot near it, he cried out in pain

Don't worry, she whispered You're going to make it

I know His whisper came so quietly, and sounded so iht Until then, she'd thought he was unconscious, but so in her voice seemed to reach him

His eyelids fluttered Then, slowly, they opened

They were violet

The jug of water fell from her hands