Story: When We All Die or Interlude - the other stories

Author: Nanuk

Disclaimer: Nope, not mine

Summary and Explanation: I never thought I would write a WHN story for "Interlude", and I haven't. Not really. What happened is that I could not not write, and I guess this is what came out of it. These are basically vignettes that give little glimpses into Adam's life during the war, are scenes that may have taken place during "Interlude", as well as some that happen "after". I'm not sure I ever find the time to write enough scenes to make this into "a real story" at one time, yet here they are, in no particular chronological order, just so I have them all in one place. One never knows what may happen.

Doolittle, beta-reader extra-ordinaire - I owe you everything!

X X X

Ben rushed into the big building that served as the Nashville hospital, but he didn't see any of the surroundings until he was well into the house and it was too late to turn back. Heart open wide and fear ruling his mind, he hurried through the long corridor that led towards the main hall where the nurses had told him Adam would be, but he hadn't stopped to see their pitiful glances. Tired and worn out from his travel, he didn't want to remember that the journey that had almost cost him his life. Instead, he hastened towards the long room of the hospital that had once been a barn and now served as the hospital, because the losses at Stones River had been too much, too much.

He was exhausted, and the fear and pain had transformed him, he knew it had. It had taken him four weeks, four endless horrendous weeks to get to Nashville, and he didn't think he'd ever be able to forget them: not knowing whether his son was still alive, not knowing, always fearing, always praying…and still not knowing anything. He had been forced to take notice of outside life, as much as he had wanted to be left alone, but Kansas City had been a city torn by the war, and he had almost risked his life there.

Ben halted his steps in front of the big doors to the main room. So near, so near, and yet, he knew he might be too late. Almost he cursed his fate that gave him so much to suffer, but why, why had he to constantly quarrel with life, why did he have to fight to protect his sons when he knew he couldn't do it? Why did he have to live the life he lived, why did his sons have to live in constant danger? He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat, and the sickness he knew was rising in his stomach. He was tired; his mind exhausted and empty except for the one thought that had kept him alive all these weeks.

"Sir?" He jerked. A nurse stood in front of him, her eyes wide and too old for her young face, and he tried to smile at her, but didn't know whether he succeeded. His body felt suddenly too numb to do anything.

"Major Cartwright, Adam Cartwright," he choked, his voice raspy from disuse and endless hours of thinking nonsense thoughts, and she furred her brows for a moment. Ben watched her face, anxiously waiting, knowing that in a second she would turn her sad eyes on him and tell him how sorry she was. His stomach clenched tight at the thought, and he knew he wasn't prepared, no matter how often he had tried to face the possibility in his nightmares.

"Main hall," she said, "right here," and her eyes were still absent as if she wanted to remember something important, perhaps the face that the name applied to, but she gave up. There were too many soldiers to be cared for, too many, and no one could remember all of them.

She slowly opened the doors for him who still stared down at her and turned back on the floor. "To the left, I think," she called over her shoulder.

Ben took one step into the room and shivered. As his eyes fell on the seemingly endless rows of beds on front of him, smelt the searing fumes of desinfection, he could see how it must have been four weeks ago when the horror had been fresh, when it had invaded this hospital and brought chaos over all of them. For a second he didn't see the sober beds and linens, the sparse furnishings, but a room filled with dirty, bleeding, dying men, broken and filthy, moaning, crying for their family, could smell the stench coming off the hundreds of wounded and unwashed bodies. He felt a tremor running through him and blinked. The beds were white again, the patients still, the order restored. He could still smell a faint trace of blood and pus, but that was gone now, eliminated by desinfection. He shivered again. The room was freezing.

Left row she had said, and he walked down the left row and tried not to breathe too deeply, tried not to hear the hollow sound of his footsteps on the stone floor, one after the next, sounding lonely, alone in the midst of this hell. Bodies were lying on small cots, bodies to thin to be called humans, and he caught himself desperately wishing that Adam wasn't here after all, that somehow he wasn't as badly wounded as that telegram had said, that his son didn't have to stand the smell and cold, the fumes of desinfection, the moaning, the pain and suffering and desperation that threatened to overwhelm him.

Row after row he saw, soldiers after soldier, beaten bodies too many to count, most of them still, lying on their beds like rag dolls cast aside in the great storm that tore the country, tossed aside, like the useless things they were, body after body, soldier after soldier, and the rows didn't end.

They were lying quiet and peaceful as corpses, covered with thin rags that were the blankets of hospitals that didn't care either way, in a hospital that had seen too many die to still care, and yet they did, because they couldn't do anything else.

Row after row, and he knew that he would never forget what he had seen here, would never forget the place, the bodies lined up for inspection, covered in thin filthy blankets where the flees played their sordid games, lying on sweat-soaked grimy linen, bloody coverings only just hiding the horrible wounds that would kill sooner or later. The smell of blood and pus was overwhelming, as was the stench that came from the creatures that passed as human beings, and row after row he went, his eyes searching, his heart weeping. He gritted his teeth as his nails bit into the palm of his hands and bloodied them, so hard was he trying not to break down and cry because of the pain he saw here.

Row after row, bodies, blond hair, dark hair, straight and curly, lying still or trashing about in their fever, calling out to people long lost, memories and ghosts that haunted them in their troubled sleep. When he couldn't stand it any more, he looked up and rubbed a hand over his face, but the rows didn't end, and he had just seen the beginning.

Dark hair, dark hair, a long body, a tall powerful frame, and the most wonderful amber eyes he had ever seen. Dark hair, slightly curly when wet, but mostly groomed with care, cut shorter or too long… but it would be long now, too long, and so it would be curly, wouldn't it? Dark hair ... on a blanket, but this man was too small and his ear was missing, and …this one leaned on the cot, and his mind was blind to this hall and the horror it held.

Rows, and rows, and Ben choked with pain as he went on, searching, not knowing whether to pray or not, but it wouldn't have helped, as God wasn't here at this place, wouldn't know about it.

Dark hair, and a blanket clutched tight. Thin white hands like a skeleton's held the fabric and clutched it to the man underneath it, and Ben could see the shivering, frail body trembling beneath the blanket. Like a sleepwalking man he saw the emaciated body tense under the movement that would take hours to complete, saw the motion of the spider-like fingers when they needed minutes to close around the thin blanket, and he stumbled forward and couldn't tear his eyes away from the fingers that moved ever so slowly with the blanket and tried to hide the broken body underneath it, but Ben had seen the shock of black hair, had seen the long dark lashes flutter, and he rushed over to where the man lay he had been seeking, his son, his boy, who was dying.