I wanted to do more than just work in a hospital, though, in the middle of a nice city. I wanted to help like my father and mother did.
That’s why I’m halfway across the world, operating in a field hospital that’s little more than a small base full of green tents, looking after all the injured within the region. Any injured. Our soldiers. Their soldiers. Their children, terrified civilians caught within the grasp of war.
And it’s not pretty.
Right now, my case is an Algerian soldier, part of the joint forces that operates with America to track and deal with insurgent activity in the area. He’s young, barely more than twenty years old, and I’ve needed to extract a bullet from his shoulder, and make sure he gets enough rest and is clear of infection. I’m aware about his platoon. I’m aware of how his convey got caught on a roadside bomb, and in the chaos, were fired upon.
Poor kid has it rough. All I can do is smile, give them the best care possible, and wear the mask so they don’t see the horror reflected upon my face.
He’s not been awake long, so I know I’ll have to tell him about the fate of his platoon eventually.
“Thanks, nurse,” he says, as I hand him a glass of water, and place my hand over his forehead to check his temperature. The other nurses tend to their charges as well, including a few wide eyed kids, one with an anxious father hovering over him.
“Call me Jenny,” I reply with a smile, noting the pale, shivering sheen of his face. I don’t think it’s something I can help with. It’s a deep seated shock that infects the mind, but I offer him painkillers anyway, which he accepts.
“Jenny. Pretty name. I’m Isaac.” We shake hands. Isaac flinches at the sound of a distant explosion, and I reassure him that it’s okay. He dismisses my help.
“It’s not. You know where I was when I got hit?”
I shrug, though I know the soldiers usually patrol the nearby villages, and sometimes the plateaus, where the insurgents use the caves and the hills to travel from place to place, keeping silent. The soldiers in the hospital can be pretty chatty, possibly because of the fact there aren’t so many women out here, or because they get lonely, being stuck in the bed instead of the barracks with their comrades. I don’t know.
“We were patrolling an area not so far from here. Just over the hill that you can see from the camp. It’s a lot deeper than the enemy’s gone before.” His hands twitch nervously. “I think they’re scouting. Testing out our defenses. There could be a big one coming any day now, and you guys are gonna have your hands full.”
A shiver flickers through my spine, though I dismiss it as best as I can. Another distant boom rumbles. It’s hard sometimes to not be frightened, to wonder what kind of horrors you’ll see, the screams you’ll hear.
“We’ll be alright,” I reply, and I see the question building in his eyes now, as he looks around the inside and notices it’s only a few civilians being treated within the tent.
“Jenny… how many made it back with me?” There’s a sliver of fear in his eyes. My heart scrunches. I don’t want to be the one to tell him. But no one else deserves to be burdened with the problem, either.
“You’re the only one.”
“I’m…?” I see the panic, and my heart nearly breaks. Hell. I don’t know what’s worse. Finding out about the dead, or having to break the news and watch their faces crumple.
“You’re the only one they found alive. Two more are missing, unaccounted for. Jason White and Alex Baker,” I add, and his eyes shimmer.
“They could be alive?”
“Maybe. We won’t rule it out.”
Isaac Magdy grabs my hand tight. “Please. If they make it back, you tell me. You get me. I have to see if they’re okay.”
“Of course,” I say gravely. I’ll happily tell him. If they ever do come back.
I see him retreat into his own head, and I leave him with those thoughts, checking in on the kid who almost needed his leg amputated, simply because the local villages didn’t have access to antibiotics to fight the infection inside him.
About an hour later, commander Barnes enters the medic tent, and he draws the attention of all the nurses. The head surgeon greets him, and the commander wastes no time in getting to business. His dark eyes own the room, he stands tall and proud, his girth jutting slightly from his uniform,
“I’m here to recruit one of you for a mission. If any of you are feeling a little brave, we could do with an onboard medic. There’s a town thirty-five miles south. We need a volunteer.”
We all exchange glances. None of the nurses or surgeons in this field hospital have ever left base. We’re in a U.N sanctioned area, with sufficient defenses and full support from the local government. Going out to an outlying town means entering the potential line of fire.
When the silence presses on, he clears his throat, mustache bristling. “If no one steps up, I’ll be forced to choose. I’m not going there without a medic.”
I stare at Isaac, whose eyes are wide. I suspect the place is near where he got ambushed. If his friends are alive, which I’m unsure about, they may have taken shelter in such an area.
It’s speculation, really, but that thought leads me to step up and volunteer. Barnes gives me a huge smile, his square jaw set.
“Ah. That’s the spirit. Your name…?”
“Jenny Willard.”
I shake his hand, he thanks me for my bravery and sacrifice, and I can’t help but wonder what’s waiting for me on the other side.
We’re not exactly in Disneyland, after all. We’re in a small corner of hell, and it’s accepting people early.
Chapter Two
We drive part way, and walk the rest. I’m stuck in a small convey with around twenty other soldiers, a small platoon with me as the sole medic. Eighteen of the twenty soldiers are men, and although a few give me sly glances, and nudge one another, the rest are focused upon their mission.
The dry wind whips into my face. There are spots of green in the otherwise arid land. The mountains are tall and beautiful, stunning backdrops under the heat of an oppressive sun. The beauty seeps into my soul, but it’s a distraction from what’s really going on. I stare at the buildings that are decrepit and abandoned, knowing they can be rebuilt. There are tanks, stripped and riddled with holes.
One less tank in the world is one less engine of destruction. However, all the ruined buildings and vehicles speaks to me of something. How many lives must have lived here, and been lost? I don’t want to know. It hurts my heart to think, to even picture people living their lives as normally as they can, before everything changes under one blast of terror.
I’m not good with death. It’s why I try my hardest to prevent it.
We leave our vehicles a few miles before we reach the town, and we’re made to walk the rest of the way. My feet sink into dusty earth, and the sun beats down upon us.
Barely twenty minutes into the walk, Barnes suddenly barks for us to get low and find cover.
Before I register what’s happening, one of the soldiers has pulled me to the ground behind a small bank, and the others have also fallen flat on their bellies.
Overhead, planes whine and thrum overhead.
When the danger appears to be clear, we’re made to keep moving. My heart is hammering frantically at this point. I have no idea if the planes above were friendly or enemy, and neither, it seems, do the men.
“Better to be safe than sorry,” Barnes growls at me. “If you so much as think you hear a plane, yell it out. It’s not worth the gamble waiting to find out.”
I swallow the nervous lump in my throat, already regretting my choice to volunteer.
I don’t show it externally, though. I don’t want anyone to think I’m a coward. “Duly noted, commander.”
We reach our destination two hours later, trudging through the heat, sweat pouring down our bodies. The town unveils around us. It’s a dilapidated collection of ruins. War has desolated this place. I imagine it once thrived as a beautiful, bustli
ng town, with all the shops and their gleaming windows and the produce they try to sell. Now, all the windows are shattered or gone, most buildings have collapsed onto themselves, and there’s far too many places to hide for my liking. There could be many rebels stuffed along the cracks, and the first we’d know of them is when they start firing.
Barnes directs the platoon, and he appears to know what he’s doing and where he’s going. Eventually, he stops by a wall that has overlapping triangles drawn upon it in red spray-paint, and he unleashes a high pitched whistle, piping it four times in quick succession.
Nervous, we all wait. When two soldiers emerge from the rubble beyond the wall, the platoon instantly trains their guns upon them. Their response is quick and professional, if dominated by high nerves – because the two soldiers are not dressed in traditional camo, or are wearing any kind of identifiers.
“Relax,” Barnes says, and his soldiers, to their credit, obey him without hesitation. “And nurse. These are your missing two men. Jason White and Alex Baker. We caught intel on them when they managed to send a messenger to our base.”
“That’s right.” Jason salutes smartly. I catch a glimpse of his face through the grime. Blue eyes sparkle under a mop of dark hair. He has strong, definitive features, with a menacing aura about him that shows he knows how to fight. He’s damn handsome, honestly. Alex Baker’s not so shoddy himself, with that waspish blonde hair, and dark, dark eyes – and my heart thuds faster at the sight of them. Isaac would want to know this. Isaac was so fearful that he was the only survivor of his platoon.
He’s not.
“We’ve got a bunch of people underground in the makeshift bunker under the buildings,” Alex says in a deep, growling voice. “a lot of them are in need of patching and we don’t have the supplies or medical knowledge to help all the cases.” His dark eyes rest on me, and the conspicuous bag I have on, and the medic sling resting on my side. “Perfect,” he says.
I repress my blush and say, “I’m here to help. Jenny Willard. Take me to the civilians.”
“Sure thing, ma’am,” Jason responds, and we follow the two formerly missing soldiers into the underground shelter.
The entrance is deftly concealed under a lot of rubble and a trapdoor, and we walk into an expansive basement where there’s about fifty people crammed in there.
Shit, I think. I’m not sure if I have enough supplies for all of them, and I need to gauge who is in dire need of assistance first. My heart sinks when I see the grubby images of families, children and adults slumped together in huddled fear and despair, despondent because of the carnage wreaked on them from above, or the furtive lives they’ve had to lead. It’s horrible to see the victims, when all they’ve tried to do is live as peacefully and normally as they could in the land of their mothers and fathers, and many more before them.
I don’t have time to focus on White and Baker’s tales, how they survived the ambush and found their way here, but I notice how they follow me with their eyes as I make my way around the room, briefly instructing some of the soldiers on the easier cases, the ones that don’t need my expertize at all.
I do not speak their language, but I feel their pain, every scrape and bruise and dead eyed stare as a physical blow, and I do what I can to make these people suffer less. I cannot take it all away. I cannot remove the scars from their minds.
The soldiers converse, and Jason and Alex both confront me upon my break, thanking me for my service, for coming all the way out here to help these people.
“I’m always happy to help,” I reply, mustering up a smile, though frustration is rife. I should never have to be put in this position in the first place, to help others through their pain, to wipe away the physical wounds of war, and only watch as they contort themselves inside. There is a little boy, six years old, numb and speechless, with these eyes that penetrate your soul with horrific clarity. He has seen more than most see in a lifetime, and it’s etched onto his eyeballs, locked inside his mouth where he keeps the screams frozen.
It messes me up, honestly, but I don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to show these people I’m weak, because there is little respect for those who can’t control their emotions here. If you let them spill, you’re a liability. You’re a danger.
“Bullshit, but I see that you genuinely care about everyone you’ve been tending to. You’re not numb to their pain. Seriously, thank you for coming out here again. Let me grab you a drink,” Jason says. I nod gratefully, and he walks off to grab a bottle from the canteen area. He flickers a smile at me which I return. When he comes back and I accept the water, Alex leaps in with his question.
“What’s happening back at camp? Barnes is pretty tight lipped about the whole thing. How many of us made it back? It was chaos for a while.”
Now I have to tell them. I hold my composure as I say, “You have a friend back at the field hospital who’s super worried about you two. You were the ones who went missing during the attack, and he wanted me to inform him the second I found out about you guys. No signal here, though,” I reply wryly, and they nod.
“Yeah. We have that problem as well. Who’s the guy?”
“Isaac Magdy. He… I regret to say this, but he’s the only one who made it. The rest perished. And you two…”
God. Their faces frost over, processing the news that only three of them survived out of the twenty-eight who were caught. Neither were aware at all. I presume they must have instantly fled for cover, maybe some of the townspeople spotted them and flagged them over. Whatever happened, they didn’t see, they didn’t know.
I just have to watch the devastation, and offer what comfort I can.
The truth in this place is a weapon just as painful as a gun.
Chapter Three
A day passes. A day of working, of snatched breaths of rest, and more time spent with the missing men of Isaac Magdy’s platoon. There’s only three women here as part of the army, and I notice I’m drawing a lot of attention from the civilians and soldiers alike. I hide my features as best as I can because I don’t want to be a distraction, but blonde wisps of hair still curl out, and my eyes are still a striking, luminous green, in a room that is full of darker eye shades and darker skins.
The attention I feel most flattered by, however, is Jason and Alex’s.
It’s hard not to find the stares of those men invigorating and powerful. I tell myself often that I’m not here to fool around, I’m here to get the job done and serve my country, but it’s easier said than done, when you feel layers of frustration building up into you, and when it’s months and months without any sort of release, it does mean your mind starts wandering away, and thinking all sorts of thoughts.
I had one vivid dream, hunched up in my corner of the bunker, trying to get to sleep for the night as the cold wrapped around. Honestly, I just wanted to visualize the scenario, thinking I’d get tired enough and fall asleep before anything happened. I imagined having conversations with Alex and Jason. I imagined we were sitting at the dining table back at home. We’d be talking about anything, really. The weather. If any of us have pets. How glad we are to finally be back home, rather than living under a foreign sun, wondering what sort of horrors might be awaiting us the next day.
I’m already getting into the dream, smiling with my eyes closed. They’re both stunningly handsome, of course, wearing their tuxedos. Yes, they have tuxedos in my dream. Alex has that mop of blond hair, those dark eyes staring through long eyelashes, with his muscles barely contained under the suit. Jason has an easy going manner, he’s lounging back in his chair, blue eyes scintillating as he regards me. I like how he nods intently at my words.
Then, for whatever reason, they decide to take things further. Their eyes rake along the twin globes of my chest, and of course, I’m now conveniently stripping down at this point. Maybe they asked to see what I look like beneath the uniform, and I oblige.
I stand there in front of them in the dining room, and the heat between my legs is already
greedy, longing for something to slide there and fill me up. They both give me knowing smirks, and they start to peel off their suits as well. The ties and shirts come off, and I’m presented with muscular perfection – a thin and toned chest, and a broad barrelled chest that looks as if it holds a hefty set of lungs. Both of them are completely different body types, and yet both have the type of physique to die for.
In this scenario, when they take off their boxers, monster cocks spring to life, standing to attention, eager to trial me out. I’m just as eager to feel them inside me, to swallow, to do anything with them, just as long as my thirst is satisfied.
I can’t help it. The dream is getting good, and I reach my hand down between my legs now, idly playing with myself down there as I envision the next string of events to happen with these men. I’m not always as nice as I appear on the outside. I have needs like everyone else. Longings. Desires.
I wonder which of the two would touch me first. Perhaps Jason, reaching those long fingers towards me to caress my body, to make me skin shudder under his touch. Maybe Alex Baker will approach me as well, to run his hands over my cheeks, then reach to kiss my neck, even as Jason thrusts his tongue into my mouth. The heat those two generate is empowering, and I bask in it, desire it, and want them to take me and to never stop.
The movements of my hand intensify as I imagine this. I’m getting super excited by now, and my fingers probe around my core, which is slick with arousal.
I go further. I imagine Alex behind me admiring my curves, running his hands along my sides and then squeezing my rear, before with a gasp, both men embrace me from front and back. One erection presses against my stomach, the other is insistent against my back, and the promise of what’s to come sends a series of uncontrollable shivers through me.
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