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***
Oh Lord, grant that I shall never seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, or to be loved as to love with all my heart. - Corporal Eugene 'Doc' Roe
***
It's late at night, and the flares make the snow light up white against the black sky. Gene has blood dried just as black under his fingernails, and his skin is milky with cold. He wonders sometimes if he's lost the ability to see in colour, or even shades of grey, in this black and white place.
The good earth of Bastogne shelters them, thank God, because the Germans are ringing in the festive season with tree-bursts. Dirt don't do much to keep splinters out of your hide, but it's enough. Tonight, Gene is in Heffron's foxhole, and he can't sleep. From the shifting beside him, neither can Heffron.
The men hate the cold, the hunger and the damp. Gene hates them too, but mostly he worries about hypothermia, starvation and trench-foot. Toye needs boots. Lieutenant Dike won't move out of his foxhole, and he's starting to freeze up. Guarnere needs penicillin that Gene ain't got to give to him. And strung out along the line, the men can't even keep each other warm except in twos and threes, and that ain't efficient against this kind of winter.
Gene tries to help them all, but there's only so much one guy can do.
'Hey, Heffron?' Gene says eventually, when it's clear from the shifting that they're both awake and staying that way.
'Yeah?'
'You ever … you ever think maybe this is exactly where you're meant to be?' Gene says it, and doesn't know why he did. But it's been going round in his head, like the prayers his traiteuse Grandma used to say: Dear Lord, help me to have the strength to use this gift you gave to me. Dear Lord, show me the way you've planned for me.
Oh God, why am I here?
'Jeez Doc, you like being here?' Heffron shuffles round a bit under the blanket they're sharing so that he can look Gene in the eye.
Gene looks down. He shouldn't have said anything. 'No, I don't like it, I just - someone has to be here. We're doing a good job, aren't we?'
'I suppose.' Heffron shrugs.
Gene sighs, and slumps down even further under the blanket, until only his eyes and the tips of his ears are left out in the cold, sandwiched between his helmet and the coarse Army cloth. 'I think God puts people in the place they'll do the most good, is all.'
'Remind me to thank him,' says Heffron, and he doesn't mean it with sarcasm, but it's the end of the conversation anyhow. They wriggle til they're leaning kind of shoulder-to-shoulder, the blanket tight-pulled around them to keep in whatever heat it can, and eventually, Gene thinks he falls asleep.
They keep yelling 'medic!' even in his dreams, so it's kinda hard to tell, some nights.
***
By the end of the next day, Skinny's in Bastogne, hit by a tree-burst; Lieutenant Welsh is down with a gunshot wound; and a patrol lost Julian, shot through the throat, and Gene wasn't there to help. Oh, and Joe Toye has trench-foot, and won't come off the line. And Gene's worried about Heffron, because he was Julian's friend and he was there when Julian was hit but he couldn't do anything neither.
And he's not in his foxhole.
When Gene gives up looking and slides into his own foxhole, Heffron's in there with Spina. He's in a bad way, fretting and guilty something awful about Julian. They get him to sleep eventually, but he's not resting easy - he moves and mutters. He's not hurt in his body, but he's in pain. Any medic could tell.
After a while, Spina starts whispering from Heffron's other side. 'Hey, whaddya call them, y'know, them Cajun healers?' he asks.
Gene smiles. 'Traiteurs,' he whispers back. 'You know, my Grandma was a traiteuse.
It's good to talk about Grandma. Good memories for a time like now, so he'll talk about her, keep her wisdom in mind. 'She prayed a lot. Talked to God about the pain she pulled out,' Gene says, remembering and wishing he could do the same thing - take pain with a touch, rather than hoarding syrettes of morphine and bein' stingy with it when it's needed. 'Ask Him to carry it away.'
Spina snorts, kind of like he's impressed. He says, 'Hell, I'm still trying t'work out why they picked me for a medic.'
Gene knows how that feels.
'Snap of a finger, just like that, you're a medic.' The other man shifts uncomfortably. 'Well, I've had enough of playing Doctor. How 'bout you?'
Under the blanket, where it's just starting to get warm, Gene takes Heffron's hand. He doesn't have his Grandma's skill, but he's here, and he has a duty. Heffron's fingers close around Gene's just for a second, and he quiets a bit in his sleep. He knows someone is here with him. Gene thinks of his Grandma's prayer, about consoling, understanding, loving with all his heart.
No, Gene's not done playing doctor, at least not while his friends are still playing soldier.