Aimee (A Time for Love Book 3) (16 page)

Aimee’s mind spun with questions as she tossed and turned. Several times, she made up her mind to cancel the whole thing and find herself a nice, normal guy who’d grown up in a suburban rancher with a TV and a collection of boy band CDs. But she also wanted a guy whose arm around her made her feel safe. Who would always tell the truth. Who valued marriage and a family as much as she did. Who loved her cooking and even watched her eat. Who could even admit he was afraid of frogs. And she would have him, if not for that one argument, where she’d released all the pent-up frustration leftover from her relationship with Tom.

For years, Aimee had lived with the secret fear that Tom would leave. She had never felt quite good enough for him or confident in his feelings for her. She’d known, even if she didn’t want to admit it, that their relationship meant more to her than to him. The lack of a formal commitment had added to her insecurity, but she’d always been afraid of what would happen if she pushed for an engagement ring.

Instead, she’d bottled all her insecurities and hidden them with the wedding dress she kept deep in her closet. So why had she unleashed all her negative emotions with Frank?

As Aimee puzzled over her own behavior, the answer finally came to her: she trusted him not to abandon her. She thought their relationship was strong enough to handle the conflict she’d always avoided with Tom.

And she still believed it was, even though Frank had left.

He hadn’t left because she made his life inconvenient or because he wasn’t emotionally involved. After he kissed her, he’d even said he hoped to marry her.

He’d left because she hadn’t told him how she felt. He’d mistaken her leftover anger at Tom and herself for lingering feelings for her ex. He’d seen her fear of the future as lack of faith in their relationship. He didn’t realize she’d felt free to express those emotions
because
of her faith in their relationship.

Or maybe she was wrong? Frank had already rejected her once, after the first phase of their relationship. Now, he’d done it again. Maybe he didn’t really care. Maybe he was just faking it so he could stay in the twenty-first century and avoid an early demise. But if that were the case, why did he leave?

No, Aimee trusted her instincts. Somehow, she knew Frank would keep any commitment he made, that together they could build the solid marriage and family she needed.
He
was what she needed.

All she had to do was find him and bring him back. She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer that she could do it. Whatever it took.

Despite her sleepless night, Aimee felt fully alert, if not rested, when she arrived at A Time for Love. She still wasn’t sure she was up to the task of rescuing Frank, but she was determined to try. Lucas was waiting in the lobby when she arrived, and Whitney escorted them both to Edwina’s office.

Edwina offered them tea or coffee, which they both declined. Then she repeated the lecture she’d already given Aimee about the dangers of the trip. Lucas nodded and asked a few questions. When she finished, Edwina studied each of them.

“Are you certain you still want to go?”

“Yes,” Aimee said.

“Yes,” Lucas echoed.

“Then follow me.”

She led them down a hallway to the same conference room where Aimee had gone on her first date with Frank. She paused beside the door in the far wall. “Take note of the spot where you arrive. You have approximately six hours to find Frank and treat his wound.” She handed Aimee a slim black wristwatch. “This watch is set to the local time. You’ll need to get Frank back to your arrival point by daybreak.”

“Daybreak?” Aimee tried to ask, but Lucas was already opening the door.

He had produced an old-fashioned nurse’s hat that he insisted Aimee wear, and had given her a surgical mask. She clutched it with one hand and the strap of her backpack with the other as she followed Lucas.

“Stay with me. Keep your head down,” Lucas instructed tersely over his shoulder as he stepped through the door.

The change was abrupt. One moment she was in the comfort of a carpeted meeting room, the only noise the hum of the ventilation system. The next, she was standing at the edge of a field whose lush grass was churned into mud. Drifting veils of smoke obscured a scene of utter chaos. Voices and cries came from all directions, punctuated by low booms in the background.

Aimee’s eyes focused on the green and struggled to make sense of the objects lying on it. Not objects. People. Bodies. Men were stretched every which way in the grass, some moaning or struggling to rise, others completely motionless. Most of the uniforms they wore were stained with red, and the air smelled of gunpowder and blood. Aimee gagged and took a step back.

“Lucas! I can’t—“

“Pay attention to where we came in,” he reminded her. “See this wagon? We came in just to its left, right at beginning of the woods.

Aimee nodded. Her eyes remained on the scene of destruction before her. It felt unreal. The booms in the distance warned that the battle wasn’t over, but the soldiers that lay in the field before them wouldn’t be fighting again today.

One soldier managed to rise to his knees, then clutched his stomach and fell over. Lucas ran toward him, and Aimee followed.

“He’s got an intestinal wound,” Lucas said briefly. “From a bayonet, most likely. I need to bandage him, or he’ll bleed out.”

Aimee’s head spun. She was slowly absorbing the fact that she hadn’t stumbled onto a movie set, that the carnage around her was real. She fought back a scream and closed her eyes.
What have I gotten myself into? How can this be real? Lord, help me,
she prayed.
What good can a chef do? Please, make it go away.
But when she opened her eyes, the scene hadn’t changed.

Lucas tossed down the black bag Aimee hadn’t even noticed he was carrying and pulled out latex gloves. He handed Aimee a pair. “Put these on.” When she didn’t move, he added sharply, “Now!”

“Why? Aren’t we supposed to be looking for Frank?”

“You want to let this man die?”

“Of course not.”

Aimee pulled on the gloves and her mask. Then reluctantly, keeping her eyes averted from the man’s slashing wound, she helped Lucas to stanch the bleeding and bandage the soldier. When he finished, he signaled to a group of four soldiers bearing a ragged stretcher.

“This soldier’s next,” he told them. “Get him to the field hospital, and he should make it.”

Neither soldier questioned Lucas’s authority. They just nodded and knelt to ease the man onto the rough canvas. Lucas was already moving on to the next fallen soldier.

Aimee tugged at his arm. “Lucas! We have to find Frank!”

He paused and looked at her. “I can’t bypass all these soldiers, when I can help them. He has six hours. Many of these men don’t. If you help me, I promise we’ll look for Frank as we go.”

She didn’t like it, but she could see Lucas wasn’t going to change his mind. She felt faintly ashamed that her primary emotion was concern for Frank, rather than compassion for all the other men, but they still didn’t seem real to her, despite the blood and guts she was seeing. Or perhaps because of it. Part of her mind warned she couldn’t let them become real to her, not if she wanted to keep from falling apart.

She and Lucas moved along the field, helping where they could. A steady stream of soldiers carried stretchers into the woods, where one soldier explained to Lucas an aid station had been set up.

Lucas asked every soldier who was alert enough to answer if he knew a Frank Elkins, but the answer was always no. Lucas never seemed discouraged. He handled the endless procession of bodies like a superhero. He helped when he could and comforted when he couldn’t. Aimee did what he told her to do, without question and without thought. She moved like a robot, and the only way she could keep going was to tell herself it wasn’t real. She wasn’t here. It wasn’t really happening. Any moment now, she’d wake up back in A Time for Love’s conference room, or better yet, in her own bed.

“The lady needs a rest.” A tall man in a black coat stopped beside them and grabbed Aimee’s arm when she swayed. “There’s hot coffee and stew in the tent.” He pointed.

Lucas turned and seemed to notice Aimee’s trembling hands and swaying walk for the first time. He nodded. “Go on, get something to drink.”

“Not without you. We’re staying together,” she reminded him.

Lucas tied off the tourniquet he was binding around the leg of one of the injured, signaled to the stretcher-bearers, and stood. “All right. We’ll take a break.”

“I’m Dr. Peter Behar,” the man said as he led the way to the edge of the field where a makeshift tent had been set up. “Doctor of surgery, from New York.”

“Dr. Lucas Burke, from Alabama.”

The man shook his head. “You Alabama boys sure gave it to the Germans today, didn’t you? But many paid the price.”

“Is there a hospital nearby?”

“The nearest field hospital’s that way.” The man pointed. “And we’ve got ambulances coming in, that’ll take the ones that can make it to Chateau-Thierry or maybe even Paris.”

The two men continued their conversation about medical facilities, but all Aimee could focus on was the welcome thought of food. At the tent, she accepted a bowl of stew and a cup of black coffee. Lucas added sugar to her cup, and she didn’t object. Most of the men stood outside, but a couple of tables had been set up inside the tent. When he saw her, a soldier stood up and offered Aimee his seat.

“Thank you, but I think you need it more than I do.” She nodded towards a bandage just above his elbow.

“It’ll take more than one little ol’ bullet from the Huns to keep me from doing right by a lady,” the soldier answered and gestured towards his empty spot.

She would insult him by refusing, so Aimee said, “Thank you.”

With her mask gone, the scent of the stew combined with the smells of gunpowder, unwashed bodies, antiseptic, and odors she couldn’t identify made her head swim, but Aimee forced herself to eat the stew and swallow the bitter coffee. She could have a nervous breakdown later. For now, she had to eat so she could get back to the field and locate Frank. She wouldn’t let herself think about the possibility of not finding him.

When she finished her meal, she stood up to take her dishes to a tub for washing, but a solider took them out of her hand with a muttered, “Ma’am,” and was gone before she could thank him. Outside the tent, Lucas was chatting with a soldier, who consulted his clipboard and shook his head. Aimee stopped beside them. She felt like an eternity had passed, but when she checked her watch, she saw it was not quite four hours. Two hours left to find Frank.

Behind the tent, the litter-bearers were loading men into a makeshift ambulance, a crude vehicle with wooden-spoked wheels and a red cross painted on the side. The vehicle looked like a ride at some amusement park, and Aimee could hardly believe the lives of the men inside depended on it.

Across the field, she could see a stone farmhouse, and in front of it, men working shovels into a flat area of ground. Why would they be digging at a time like this? she wondered, only to realize moments later that they were digging graves for their fallen comrades. Somehow the realization brought home the danger they and Frank were in, and Aimee started to shiver. Edwina had said it was July here, but the air was chill with a light mist, growing cooler as the skies darkened.

“Here, miss.”

A soldier offered her a coat, but she didn’t take it. “No, I couldn’t. You might need it.”

He shook his head. “It’s not mine, miss. And my friend, he won’t be using it anymore.”

She chose not to ask why, just pulled it on gingerly and rolled up the sleeves. “Thank you.”

“Thank
you
, miss. We all appreciate what you nurses and doctors are doing for us.”

He moved on, and Aimee felt guilty for her squeamishness. Lucas finished his conversation and took her arm. “That was Staff Sgt. Sam Trellborn of the 167
th
. From Alabama. He hasn’t seen Frank today, but he told me where his unit was positioned. Come on, let’s go find him.”

The frantic chaos she had seen at their arrival was gradually winding down as soldiers made camp for the night. The stream of litter-bearers trundling the wounded to the aid stations had slowed to a trickle, and even the booms of distant gunfire had subsided into the occasional dull thud. Smoke or haze still obscured the outbuildings of the stone farmhouse that seemed to have been the object of the battle. Aimee followed Lucas along a gentle incline, a slippery mess of mud and who knew what else. They edged closer to the farmhouse than where they’d been working earlier.

“Frank’s unit was positioned in this area,” Lucas said quietly as they walked along a row of men who were being treated by a lone medic and an assistant who carried supplies.

They skirted a broken cart with a large gun, smaller than a cannon, mounted on it. Two forms in unfamiliar uniforms that Aimee guessed must be German lay in the low brush just beyond it. Edwina assured them that Frank would still be alive at this time, but Aimee felt a surge of dread every time she approached a fallen soldier. The similarity of the uniforms, the hats, and the hazy air made it impossible to identify anyone until she was close enough to touch.

“How are we ever going to find him before he loses too much blood?” she asked Lucas. “We have less than two hours left.”

“We pray,” Lucas said grimly. Then he added, “Look for a coat with two chevron stripes on the sleeve. The sergeant said Frank was recently promoted to corporal.”

“I can’t even see the stripes!” Aimee objected. “I brought a flashlight. Should I use it? Have flashlights even been invented yet?”

“Yes, but they’re not exactly common. Use it discreetly so you don’t call attention to yourself,” Lucas advised.

“Are you a medic?” a man in uniform called out to Lucas.

“Yes, sir.”

“We need your help.”

“Keep looking, but don’t wander far away,” Lucas told Aimee before he left to join the soldier crouched beside a man who was moaning in pain.

Two stripes on the sleeve. That should make the search easier. Aimee cupped her hand around the flashlight to direct its beam downward and moved along the field, searching for the insignia Lucas had described. Once, a man begged her for something to drink, and she stopped to pour half her water bottle down his throat. Further down the line, someone asked if she had any rations, and she passed out the granola bars she had packed.

“A new kind of hardtack,” she explained when they eyed the shiny wrappers with suspicion.

One brave soul ripped his open and took a huge bite. “Mmm! Actually tastes like real food!” he said with his mouth full.

Aimee moved on before they could ask any questions. She passed a stack of bodies, none moving.
So much death. I could never be a real nurse
, she thought. She wasn’t even aware that tears were running down her cheeks until Lucas gripped her arm and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I can’t find him, Lucas. I keep looking, but I can’t find him.”

“Let’s try another way.”

Lucas waited until there was a lull in the battlefield noises. Then he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled two short notes, a long one, and two shorts. “Frank’s and my secret signal,” he explained.

They waited but didn’t hear a response. They continued moving towards the farmhouse, with Lucas whistling every few seconds.

“Hush!” someone called out to him. “Are you crazy?”

But Lucas ignored him, and when they were a mere hundred yards or so from the stone farmhouse, Aimee heard, not a whistle, but a faint voice calling something that sounded like “Lou.”