TIME, FOR THE young soldier, dissolved in a haze of drug-induced sleep and paralyzing flashbacks. He could no longer measure its passing in minutes, days, weeks, and months. He marked it by the only constants in his life: morphine injections, recurring nightmares, nurses’ shifts, and the changing faces of the occupants in the beds surrounding him. A few of the occupants recovered enough to be transferred to prisoner of war camps, but most lay behind the field hospital, in shallow unmarked graves.
The young soldier had been in the German field hospital for nineteen new faces when he woke from another nightmare about his first night in the trenches and found himself staring into the terrified eyes of the twentieth new face. Bandages hid most of twenty’s features, as well as his small body, but his messy black hair and dark eyes, swimming with tears, sparked memories of the last time the soldier had seen another young boy with a headful of cowlicks, crying and waving goodbye from the platform of a train station.
Twenty, noticing the soldier staring at him, reached out a bandaged hand and spoke in a hoarse, hurried whisper. The young soldier did not know the French words spilling from the prisoner of war’s trembling lips, but he had no trouble interpreting their shaky, hitched delivery. The boy was in terrible pain and very scared. The faster he spoke, the more his tears flowed, until they choked off his voice completely. His wide eyes locked on the young soldier’s face. The boy’s chest heaved in panicked breaths.
The young soldier stretched out his hand and took hold of the boy’s exposed fingers.