The Two Sisters

I'll be kind to my true love, if he'll be kind to me.

A Poets-verse one-shot. The WWI setting is completely untried territory for me, but I was thinking about a very specific backstory. Yes, of course, it's Jeanne's train wreck of a family.

<Somme, France, June 1918>

Over the last month, the U.S. Army’s Camp Hospital #1 had come to feel something like Hell. It was supposed to be worse in the field hospitals, of course, and worse yet on the fighting lines, but the Leahy sisters had been fortunate enough to land here instead. Katie Ann thought it was fortunate, at least. Siobhan - Vonnie - would have liked to escape the training area and join one of the detachments treating gas injuries on the front while shells whizzed over their heads. But that was Vonnie for you: wild. Katie Ann was content to watch the smoke from the gas drills and finish the inventory count at night without worrying that she’d have to shred her petticoat for bandages.

It wasn’t as if the nurses had it easy here, even behind the lines. Camp life was necessarily rough and rude, and since the start of the first offensive, the influx of wounded from the front had steadily eroded Katie Ann’s few joys in her work. Her patients had started to resemble grotesque parodies of men - men with no faces left, or no minds, fresh from the field hospitals’ operating-rooms and ready for another round of surgeries to remove embedded shrapnel or putrid flesh. Every day, their commander asked them to fit another bed somewhere. There was no longer enough disinfectant in the place to kill the stench that hung in the crowded wards and around the vivid green patches of earth where they dumped the washbasins. Every man and woman on the staff ran without stopping with no coffee and precious little sleep. None of it seemed to bother Vonnie, who went around bright and beautiful, same as ever. Katie Ann could hear her insistently leading a song at the other end of the ward now…high-spirited, strong-willed little Vonnie, everyone’s favorite until they got to really know her. This was her element. Mousy old Kathleen should have stayed in Chicago to swaddle babies and knit for the Red Cross.

“Nurse, ma’am?”

“Yes?” Katie Ann set aside the drainage tube she’d just finished cleaning and walked down the row with the sweetest smile she could summon. With all these boys were going through, there was no way in Hell she’d let her own melancholy show.

It was one of the new arrivals, a good-looking young man sandwiched between two much worse cases who were either comatose or nearly so. He’d lost most of his right arm, and she could see his bandaged shoulder still trying to reach with it as he spoke. “I don’t guess these fellas will mind if I smoke without sharin’, but - uh -”

She saw his trouble immediately. “It’s no problem, soldier. I’ll get you a light.”

“Bless you,” he said, a little sheepishly. “I am sorry to put you out, Miss Nurse. Gimme another week or two an’ maybe I’ll have figured out this southpaw thing.”

“I’m sure that you will.” Katie Ann lit a match behind her hand and leaned in to light the battered cigarette caught between his lips. She found she couldn’t help watching his face while she did; he was an attractive, sturdy boy, worth a second look even with his brown hair cut short against the lice. His eyelids twitched shut and then open again, and he laid back on his pillow and grinned brilliantly at her through the smoke.

Katie Ann blushed as she turned away to answer another patient’s call without daring to speak.

His name was Johnnie. It wasn’t the name on his card, but he insisted that only his mother used that, so Johnnie it was. When he got up to talk or play cards with the other boys, he was so slow to move and speak that they'd laugh at him. With her, though, he always seemed to know just what to say, unfailingly pleasant even when he wasn’t trying to charm. Even as the shock of his loss wore away and the inevitable, overwhelming pain rose up in its place, he wept silently and never complained. Johnnie’s company was a little bright spot in the accumulating gore and horror; Katie Ann began to allow herself to enjoy it, even while she waited for him to suddenly turn and die. But he didn’t rot, and he didn’t catch flu, and after his third surgery to fix up the stump, he made her take down a letter to his mother in Missouri.

“Tell her I met my wife,” he said, nudging Katie Ann with one of his knees.

“Really! I can’t write that,” she protested.

“Your face! …well, all right.” Johnnie didn’t look sorry in the least for teasing her. “Tell her I met a girl, anyhow. I’ll think about gettin’ you to marry me later on.”

Katie Ann fiddled with the pen. “Sure you don’t mean it.”

“Sure I do,” he said. Could she believe that smile? “You think about it, Missy. You think I’m gonna let a li’l flesh wound stop me? I got plans.”

Katie Ann thought about it. Of course she could see he was a flirt with the other nurses - even if he obviously liked her best - but it didn’t bother her. Why should it? Nothing was going to come of this anyway. Even if he were serious, there was her professional code to think of: it was a fine thing to keep up the boys’ spirits, but Katie Ann wouldn’t dare to play favorites on the ward, and God forbid she actually nurture feelings for a man under her responsibility. She knew better.

That was an admirable resolution, but it didn’t last. Before she knew it she was asking him what he’d do when he got home, realizing those plans of his were viable and real. There was land waiting for him that he could still run cattle on one-handed, so long as he had a woman to keep the house and books, and he talked about red dirt and the wind in the trees until she thought she’d die of wanting. Maybe she could love him. Maybe Johnnie could finally be a real way out - as long as he did come back for her after the War.

Now that she had to, she considered her competition more seriously. Katie Ann was no old maid yet, at twenty-five the youngest of the women in camp - well…to tell the truth, not quite the youngest. That would be Siobhan, born fully two years after the cutoff, but admitted to the Nurse Corps under the bald-faced lie that she was Katie’s twin. Vonnie was a fine nurse, properly trained and all, and Katie Ann hadn’t quite been able to leave the kid behind with Nanny. The first twinge of regret for that decision suddenly made itself felt as Katie Ann wrung out her mop and began to work at a spot on the floor of the storeroom, eyeing her pretty sister uneasily.

The truth was, she’d never had anything that Vonnie didn’t end up taking. She'd pout, or she'd rage - whatever it took. Katie Ann had never tried to get a man before, but she had the sinking feeling that a lover would be no exception.

Vonnie caught her sister's gaze and sashayed over, wiping her clean hands idly on her apron. “Well, Nurse Leahy, what's eating you?” she asked, smirking a little.

“Nothing, Nurse Leahy.”

“Nothing? Is that so?” Vonnie leaned in past her to get out a bottle of iodine. “I hear you've been making awfully good friends with the Corporal out there.”

“No better than I should,” Katie Ann said forcefully.

“Shhh.” Vonnie clasped her reassuringly by the arm. “I'm not going to turn you in, you poor goose. Anybody can see you're hopeless, anyway.”

Katie flushed hot despite herself. “He’s a sweet boy. Nanny’s going to be furious, but - but I don't care.”

“Truer words never spoken. Nanny wouldn't approve of anybody, you know; she expects you to stay there and keep her vicious, miserable old carcass breathing ‘til Jesus comes, and all that.” Vonnie smiled thoughtfully. “Me, though…”

“Don’t,” Katie Ann breathed, suddenly dizzy. “Oh, Siobhan, please don't. Anybody else. I couldn’t hope for any better, but you don’t even want him, maimed like he is-”

“Don’t get the vapors, now. You make everything into such a production.” Vonnie strategically untucked a strand of red hair from under her cap and then looped it back into a more aesthetic position. “I only thought I’d try my luck. Maybe he’ll prefer you.”

He wouldn't. He couldn't. Nobody did. Katie Ann felt her stomach knotting up in unfamiliar configurations that burst suddenly into her throat as anger. “You'd never be content with that,” she snapped, pulling her whole body in tight to force her voice into a whisper. “You know you wouldn't. If you couldn't have what you wanted, you'd ruin it all.”

“I’d what?” Vonnie frowned, the very picture of injured innocence. “Kathleen, you know that's just not true. When’s the last time you saw me get what I wanted at all? Why, I could be out there in the real action right now - but I've stuck by you this whole time, because where would you be without me?”

“Nowhere,” Katie Ann admitted reluctantly.

“Worse than nowhere.” Vonnie squeezed her arm gently again, just where Nanny liked to grab you so she could wind up some real leverage. Katie Ann felt herself go instinctively limp. “Don’t work yourself up over nothing, dear. It’s just a little fun... ‘cross my heart’, I'll play honest, promise.”

Katie Ann knew she wouldn't, but there was nothing else to say. She smiled hollowly back at Vonnie and disentangled herself from her sister to return to her mopping, holding her feelings inside at a quiet simmer. It had been foolish to think of escape. She had her place, and no matter which of them Johnnie chose, someone would always find a way to keep her there.