What a cruel thing war is…to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.
– Robert E. Lee
Andrea awoke to the drone of a low, moaning wind that sounded almost human. She turned her head side to side in an effort to stop the noise, then realized it was coming from her own throat.
“Andrea.”
She heard her name faint and detached, like it was coming through fog, or water, or from a thousand miles away through the distance of time and years.
“Andrea,” the voice said again.
She tried to open her eyes, but could see nothing but darkness. Then someone began to unravel a bandage she had not known was there. When it was off, she attempted to focus her eyes. She could see that the uniform standing before her was blue, but the face was too blurry to identify.
“Andrea,” the voice repeated. “It’s J.J. How are you feeling?”
Andrea took a deep, pain-filled breath, trying to remember where she was. She could only see out of one eye. The other was swollen shut. Her confusion must have been evident.
“You’re in a field hospital. You took a fall.”
Andrea closed her eye and remembered the battle, remembered galloping through the smoke, remembered— She gasped, struggling to sit up. “Justus?”
Memories rushed back. No, it could not be memories. It had to be the vision of a frightful dream, like the one about Hunter that seemed so real upon awakening. How silly to think that mere mortals could produce the scenes of horror she recalled.
J.J. gently pushed her back down.
Squinting with one eye, Andrea looked up in desperation, her hand grasping his sleeve. She pulled him down closer and tried hard to focus on his face. She could see now that it was full of concern—and it told her all she did not wish to know.
“You’ve been through a lot,” he said, ignoring her questioning stare. “Try to get some rest.”
Andrea closed her eyes, whimpering involuntarily. If Justus is gone, then Boonie is gone—and how many others? My goodness, how many others?
“Boonie?” She mouthed the word.
“I saw that his— He was sent home.”
Andrea continued to cling to his hand in desperation. “How I envy him,” she said after a long silence. “He would not take me.”
“Don’t talk that way,” J.J. scolded her. “This pain will pass.”
Andrea did not believe him. “Thousands are dead.” She closed her eyes tightly to shut out the memory. “All for glory, I suppose.”
“Listen, Andrea.” J.J. sounded desperate. “Just try…try to forget—what you saw, what you heard, what you felt. It’s over. You just have to forget. We all do.”
Andrea sighed again. Yes, she wanted to forget. Yet she knew the memory would never be erased as quickly and as effortlessly as had all those once-living souls on the battlefield.
She tried again to banish the image of the guns, the smoke, the cannons—the terror, the dead, the dying. Her horse had reared an instant before the fatal blast, had taken the death shot intended for her. He had been no match for that death-dealing ball of iron that consumed everything in its path. But that’s what cannons were for, were they not? To devour flesh and bone?
And that’s what the war was for, was it not? To destroy as many souls, as many lives, as possible?
Andrea kept her eyes closed and lay still, thinking how silly and senseless had been her arguments with Hunter. Who cared anymore who was right or wrong? This war was nothing but a killing machine now, a living, breathing killing machine devouring all in its path, wrecking everything, and destroying what everyone thought they were fighting for. Nothing and no one could stop it now, until perhaps everyone in the whole country was dead.
Or like her, longed to be.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” J.J. said. “In a day or two.”
Andrea moaned softly at a searing, stabbing pain in her arm and wondered how long she had been here. Was it one day? A month? She wondered how he would move her. The pain was too great to open her eyes. She could not imagine the prospect of having to travel.
“You’ll be okay.” She felt J.J.’s hand close on hers, as if he’d read her thoughts.
“No.” Andrea turned her head back and forth on the pillow. “The war has changed everything. And no one and nothing will ever be the same.” She felt a tear squeeze through her swollen eyelid. “I have lost everything, except that which I have been most willing to give,” she whispered.
The pressure of J.J.’s grip increased. “God has not willed the sacrifice of your life, Andrea. And neither should you.”
She responded by mumbling something she knew he could not understand, followed by something he could. “No, he was right all along J.J.,” she said, her voice cracking with pain. “God is nowhere to be found in this war.”