It didn’t hurt. Not until he moved. Or breathed too heavily. Or, heaven forbid, laughed at something another of the patients said to one of the nurses. Then he was keenly aware of the way that blasted German bullet had ripped through his insides.

He’d been lucky, the doctors had said. Through and through. No vital organs hit. No internal bleeding.

He knew he’d been lucky—knew it the moment he pressed his hands to that hot, sticky mess that was his back and stomach on the railcar. But luck didn’t make the ceilings any less boring or the pain any less acute when he tried to do something actually human.

He would be a shell for the next weeks or months, that was all. An artificial man, delegated to the barest physical duties. Eat. Sleep. Take his medicine. Try to pretend it wasn’t embarrassing to have a nurse in her grey uniform hand him a bedpan. Try not to think about Thoroton and the other chaps still in Spain, still working and fighting and discovering and doing while he lay here like a . . . like a . . .

His fingers twisted in the sheet as a moan sounded from the next cot over. He was better off than many of the blokes here, and he knew it. He’d had nothing amputated. He hadn’t lost any brothers in a mad rush up some hill, into the face of exploding ordnance. He’d not encountered any of that nightmarish mustard gas that the Germans had started using over the summer.

He’d gain his feet again, assuming infection didn’t set in.

But he wanted to do something. Idleness wasn’t, apparently, in his nature. It’s just that he’d never realized it until now, when it was his only option.

“Mary,” the bloke on the other side of him groaned. “Mary. Mary.”

“Mary will be to see you later today, Private.” The nurse’s voice was cheerful, but not gratingly so. Drake turned his head just enough to see her. She was uncommonly tall, clad in the same boring grey uniform and white apron every other nurse wore, the white kerchief tied over her nearly black hair. She wasn’t pretty, exactly, but she looked pleasant. And she turned to Drake with a bright smile. “There’s our newcomer, alert and ready for a meal, no doubt. How are you feeling, Lieutenant Elton?”

It would be a long time before the idea of food did anything but inspire pain, he suspected. But he conjured up a grin. “Like I’ve been shot.”

“Astounding.” She poured him a cup of water and helped him hold his head up so he could sip it. As if he were an infant. “I’m Nurse Arabelle Denler. I imagine we’ll be seeing a good bit of each other until we’ve got you back on your feet.”