Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 9

that I realized what Doyle and my other men had been trying to tell me.
    "How could I have forgotten?" I raged many minutes later. "How could I have forgotten that the wounded still lay in my trench?"
    I had to shout to be heard. Amidst the renewed screams of the shells – for Fairview's attack had been beaten back by the Mippite sharpshooters – came the far more horrible screams from the wounded men who had not escaped the fire.
    Thanks to the quickness of my men, only a few of the wounded had been immolated. Upon seeing from the look on my face that I now understood the situation, my men hadn't bothered to waste time asking whether my orders were countermanded; they had simply run to the fire-touched trench and had begun dragging out every wounded man they could reach. A few of the wounded, watching the fire approach, had managed to crawl out on their own. Only four of the wounded had been so far away from the rest of the soldiers that the fire had engulfed them. One was Fulton, who had died without ever waking from the shock of his shell wound. Two other wounded men were lightly burned, as were the soldiers who had rescued them; they were all being cared for now in an impromptu dressing station that had been set up next to the right flank's trench. In the past minute, we had already lost one doctor's assistant and two stretcher-bearers to shrapnel, but the sharpshooters and machine-riflemen, in their first mercy of the day, were directing their shooting away from the dressing station.
    Healer Mahone was busy, not examining his patient, but shouting at two stretcher-bearers, who stood obstinately motionless, refusing to lift the patient onto their stretcher. Leaving Fairview behind the General's rock – he was nursing a sprained ankle he had gained by tripping over a rock during the latest attack – I reached Healer Mahone and his stretcher-bearers.
    Healer Mahone turned to me, full of fury. "These natives ," he said, pointing at the dark-skinned stretcher-bearers, "refuse to do their duty and take this man down to the field hospital."
    I looked down at what remained of Lexington. He had been given morphine, and so his screams had subsided, but he was still whimpering. His face had been spared; the rest of him was little more than flesh flayed by fire. It was hard to believe that he was still alive.
    The doctor's assistants were working feverishly to cover Lexington's fire-scarred skin with bandages. It was like trying to put clothes on a raw oyster. I looked over at the head stretcher-bearer, who was standing nearby.
    He shrugged, saying to me with perfect grammar, "He will not survive the trip down the hill, nor the trip to the field hospital. And if he does, what then? The field hospital cannot care for such injuries. He will have to travel miles by wagon, and then miles by train, and if he should survive all that pain, what life awaits him? His skin is gone. His arms and legs do not obey his commands. . . . Sir, in my land, when such things happen to my own people, we care tenderly for the family member who is afflicted, for as long as he wishes to remain alive. Will this man's family do so?"
    He left his words hanging as a genuine question. I looked down at Lexington – orphan Lexington, whose only friends were here, on this summit. None of us who survived would be able to accompany him on that long trip. He would undergo the pain of the journey by himself, and if he survived the trip to Yclau, he would be left alone, to spend the rest of his days in a foreign hospital.
    Perplexed, I looked over at the General's rock. Seeing my wordless plea for help, Fairview limped his way over, ignoring the bullets that blew past his face.
    As he crouched down beside me, I appraised him of the situation in a low voice. Beside us, Lexington was beginning to plead for water, but we had used the last of it on the other wounded men. Nearby, Doyle watched, biting his lip and wiping away tears. The white spaniel shivered at his feet.
    Fairview asked only one question: "Can he understand me?"
    I looked over at Healer Mahone. The doctor shrugged his hands. "He is surprisingly alert – the pain is so sharp that it is cutting through the morphine. I would say, Yes, he will understand you."
    Fairview nodded. "Give us space, then, if you please."
    All of us withdrew. There was a momentary lull in the shelling and gunfire; I caught a word or two of the conversation that followed between Fairview and Lexington. "Don't have no