Page 53 of The Unknown Birds

“Please,” Ash begged. “She’s one of us.”

“It’s not hygienic. You’ll have to wait outside,” the nurse told Max, who seemed to smile before trotting back out of the tent to wait.

“I’ll get this one. It’s time you had a break,” another nurse said, bustling over with a tray full of fresh white bandages. She set them down and adjusted her cap, and recognition dawned for Ashley—it was dear Nurse Jo.

“Sure as I take a break, Hamish will be back with another load of men,” the nurse griped, but she scurried off anyway, stretching out her neck.

“Back again?” Nurse Jo asked. “How’s the anemia?”

“All right. This time it’s my feet.” Ashley’s voice broke on the word feet, and she bit down on her lip.

“Take off your boots and socks. Let’s have a look.” Jo squeezed her shoulder before picking up a clipboard and filling out a form with the information from Ashley’s identity disc.

Ash unlaced her muddy boots, but her feet were so swollen Jo had to help her pry them off. When her socks were pulled away, Ashley gasped—at both the horrific odor and the slightly blue color. Her nails were very nearly purple, and there were blisters between her toes and red sores along the arch.

“I’ve seen worse,” Nurse Jo assured her, bringing a basin of warm water for each foot to soak in, acting as though she didn’t even notice the putrid stench as she gently washed them.

She held up a bottle of disinfectant.

“This will likely sting,” she warned before applying it to the blisters, but Ash didn’t feel a thing, which made her panic grow.

“Will they be cut off?”

“I don’t think it’ll come to that, runner,” Jo said softly, before wrapping Ashley’s feet with a warm compress and elevating them on a towel-covered pillow. “Would you like to write a letter home?” she suggested, offering Ash a printed postcard and a pencil before hurrying away to tend another lad.

Ash didn’t want to worry her mother, so she jotted down a quick, generic note, ending with a plea to send more socks.

It was a nice distraction.

She requested more postcards and continued to scrawl idly, trying to trick her brain into forgetting the stabbing pains that otherwise made her catch her breath.

Soon her scribbles turned to letters and the letters turned to words, the lines pouring out of her like tears she couldn’t cry. Ash allowed the pain and grief to wash over her, just enough so it coursed through her veins and out her pencil, coalescing into something like a poem. She filled up all the white space of the postcard and started another, refining the words one final time until her mind was completely spent.

After nearly a year in trenches sleeping catch as catch can, cramped into holes or on the ground in billets, the dressing station cot felt like floating on a cloud, and Ashley drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

Sometime in the night, she was awakened by the most piteous cries for, “Water. Please, have mercy. Water!”

Once awakened, Ash became aware of a pain like fire, like bayonets being driven right through the soles of her feet all the way to her ankles. It was the most excruciating torment she had experienced in her life, so piercing that her vision went blinding white, and she leaned over the bed to vomit on the floor. Ash the Splash strikes again.

Two nurses rushed to her bedside, as tears streamed down her cheeks while she apologized over and over for the mess. On the other side of the bed, Max whined and licked her hand despite the nurses trying to shoo her out again.

Nurse Jo removed the compress and poked at Ashley’s red and splotchy feet. She could barely feel the gentle prodding, just a hint of pressure beneath flames of ceaseless pain.

“You’re all right, soldier,” Jo said softly. “It hurts like the dickens now, but it’s a good hurt. Means the nerves are coming back to life, and that’s what we want, yes? Yes,” she answered for Ash, who could only clench her jaw and hold back tears.

After wiping Ashley’s forehead with a cool, damp cloth, Nurse Jo gave her more bitter medicine to drink, and soon enough she faded back into oblivion.

She awoke some hours later, the pain a dull but tolerable ache, and Ash could finally feel her toes wiggle when she tried.

“Good. You’re up,” Nurse Jo told her. “Someone’s been waiting quite a while to say hello.”

For a brief second, Ash expected to find her mother, having come to stroke her hair and hum soft ditties at her side, but of course that was the silliest of notions. Her mum was safe in London with no idea of Ashley’s woe, and once the postcard reached her, she’d learn only some half-truths and outright lies.

Heavy footfalls made their way towards her as Jo helped her to sit up, then Ashley gazed into the anxious face of Alex Rook. The comfort she’d been craving settled heavy on her chest like a warm and cozy blanket by the fire and she blinked back stinging tears that filled her eyes.

“Swinging the lead are you, Little Bird?” he murmured.

“What are you doing here, Private? You’re not injured?” she asked, scanning his handsome face, broad chest, and arms, fearing some ill effects still lingered from the harrowing trench collapse.