October 1952.
Margaret knows as soon as she walks into post-op that it's going to be a long night. The soldier in the corner's curled his knees up onto his chair and folded his arms on top, maybe so that nobody would notice him keeping watch over his sleeping friend— a chest case, from the bandages, big and blond. She thinks his name begins with an H.
She sighs and walks down the aisle, mentally preparing herself for a long argument. As she gets closer, she can see corporal's stripes on the sitting man's fatigues under a thin layer of dirt, but his shock of dark hair is inexplicably clean. His head is propped against the wall, and his mouth slightly open. When she shakes his shoulder gently, he starts and looks directly at her. His eyes are bright blue and bloodshot; at a guess she would have said he'd been awake for at least thirty hours.
"Are you married?" It's a standard question for a nurse, but it's been a long day, and it takes more effort than usual not to roll her eyes.
"Yes, Corporal."
"Oh. You wanna get divorced?"
"Corporal, I suggest you watch your mouth." She moves to take his arm and haul him out of the chair, but he dodges.
"I swear I'm not coming on to you or anything, okay? I know the uniform can be deceiving but I'm really a lawyer. My best friend, BJ Hunnicutt, he's a lawyer too, a good one. He can get you any divorce, any time, any place, you name it, he can get you out of it. He's got a very smooth tongue and I think if he shaved he'd have very smooth cheeks." As he rambles on, Margaret manages to haul him upright. He's much taller than she'd expected from seeing him curled up.
He blinks down at her blearily. When he speaks, his breath smells like alcohol and coffee."You know I keep falling in love with people with blond hair and blue eyes?" Margaret really does roll her eyes this time. She doesn't respond as she drags him down the aisle and deposits him on an empty bed.
"Hey, hey, where are we going? I can't leave him alone."
"You need to rest."
"But I can't, don't you understand? BJ got shot by some idiot on our side who didn't know that you shouldn't play with guns when everyone else is playing for keeps! If I don't watch him nobody will, and if anything happens it'll be all my fault." He tries to rise again, but she pushes him down.
"You can't take care of him if you don't have any strength of your own," she retorts, not unkindly. It isn't the first time she'd had to deal with a scared friend. The faces are different but the script is the same. "Sleep for a little while. He'll still be here when you wake up, I promise." He considers this.
"Okay," he says at last, and lies down. She can see that his hair is shot through with gray now, yet he sounds very young when he mumbles, "Wake me up if anything happens, okay?"
"Alright. Sleep now, Corporal."
He turns over so he's facing his friend on the other side of the ward. Margaret heads back to her desk, and maybe her ears are playing tricks on her, but she swears she can hear someone sing: there's a somebody I'm longing to see, I hope that he turns out to be… someone to watch over me… When she turns around to check, the corporal is snoring softly.
*******
She falls asleep at her desk near the end of her shift.
She's back in the bedroom she had when she was seventeen, the one with an oak tree outside a big bay window that lets the morning light in. It's the best of all the rooms she's ever had. It's the eleventh time she's had this dream. She wants to turn her head and see who's in bed with her. She wonders if it's Donald, although it hasn't been him for the last three weeks.
At some point she started standing at the kitchen sink with Helen, walking three gigantic Saint Bernards with Helen, lying on a sofa as Helen pressed her sore calves, sitting on the floor as Helen brushed her hair out. It didn't scare her the first few times it happened. They're together for most of the day; it had seemed only natural that Helen should appear in her dreams. It was all innocent enough. Her brain was just confused.
No, there was no problem until her stupid, mutinous brain decided to wake up next to Helen. She doesn't know when it happened first, because she can't write about it in her diary, only that she awaits the dream with an equal mixture of fear and desperate hope.
Margaret turns her head. It's Helen, just as it's been the last five times. Terror. Exhilaration. Absolute peace.
The sunlight filtering through the gap in the curtains is the same as always and so is the bedroom, and so is Helen's smile as she whispers good morning, Margaret. Then Helen leans across the pillow and kisses her for a moment, which feels like both a year and a millisecond. It's deep and dirty and it feels like dream-Helen meant it, which is already bad, and then dream-Margaret kisses her back and she must have meant it too because she feels very calm, and happier than she's been in a long time. And then dream-Helen rolls half on top of dream-Margaret and reaches a hand between her legs, which is when real-Margaret wakes up sweating.
The clock above her head reads 5:57 in the morning— she's been out for just under an hour. Someone is talking quietly at the other end of the room.
The corporal is awake and back in his chair, telling a story to his friend. The blond man is clamping his hand over his stomach and suppressing his laughter as the tired corporal waves his hands around. Margaret should tell them to shut up, but the dream has left her rattled and oddly sad. She tells herself grow up, dreams are just dreams. (She doesn't believe herself.) Leans back in her chair, scrubs her eyes, gets back to her charts. It'll pass.