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Eugene’s got his own heart in his hands: it’s a blue headscarf ripped in half. One belongs to a French with girl hands just as cold and bloody as his, the other to a boy from Philly who keeps him on the ground.
The world’s so cold he can’t feel his fingers until he digs into his bag and cuts his finger on the end of the only pair of scissors he’s got. It’s hard to tell one place apart from the next: shelled out, covered in white, dusted over with ash and blood.
Speirs knows they’re down on medical supplies—Lipton mentioned it to him after Foy—so he sends Babe, Eugene, Perconte, and a few others back to Bastogne to see if they can recover anything that might help them. There’s not much left when they make their way through the trees and find the town in ruins. The church looks like it caved in on itself, but people are trickling in and out, so he starts towards it.
His heart is pounding in his chest. He’s trying his hardest not to think about the blue encircling Babe’s hand, soaked with blood, about the scrap in his breast pocket.
“Hey, Gene, wait up—”
He doesn’t, but Babe hurries up to fall into step with him anyway. The tip of his nose is red, and Eugene dimly remembers that only men who got hit ever found their way back here, to the aid station.
Part of him is glad for it. It would have killed him to have taken Babe up here if he was wounded.
“C’mon,” Eugene says as he ducks under the crumbling doorway. He goes down the stairwell, picking his way carefully over rubble and under splintered support beams. There’s dead everywhere. Blood, too, but this is the only place he can think of that’s going to have anything they need.
“Gene—”
He stops dead in his tracks. It’s like the world suddenly decides to thaw just then, because he can feel something crack, or drop, or both, inside of him. He feels it and his lips part.
Renée’s leaning up against a wall, seated on a cot. In her corner, there’s no one there. She’s cradling her right arm to her chest, wonders if it’s the only thing that’s broken. She’s got dried blood smeared across her forehead, and her coat sleeve is torn, but she’s there. Like Babe’s next to him, she’s there.
French spills out of him. He doesn’t mean for it to happen.
Renée looks up. She blinks, once, twice, before her chapped lips pull into a smile and her eyes grow soft. “Eugene,” she says by way of greeting, getting to her feet.
The medic opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. I thought you died. I thought the war took you, too.
“—so, you gonna introduce me, or what?”
He looks back at Babe, his brow furrowing. What?
Babe just sidesteps him and grins broadly at Renée, who’s already smiling back. “Private Babe Heffron, at your service,” he says. “Sorry about Gene. He’s like that sometimes.”
Her eyes glitter in the dim light. Something light and warm is blooming Eugene’s chest, at the sight of her, alive, at the sight of Babe, alive, both of them standing near him, in front of him, and he thinks—he thinks—
Renée glances down. Her smile becomes sad. “What’s that?” she asks, indicating Babe’s hand.
“Oh, this?” Babe held up his arm. “This is nothing. Gene fixed me right up.”
Renée doesn’t say anything for a long, long moment before the smile drops from her face. She looks from Babe, to Eugene, to Babe again, and starts to say, “I…”
In French, she says, I thought you’d died.
“I only speak English,” Babe says, “and Gene says he don’t have time to teach me French.”
He swallows, give s a little smile. In English, he says, “this is Edward.”
He gets a dirty look for that. “Babe,” the Philly boy asserts, and then turns back to Renée. “Please call me Babe.”
“Babe,” she echoes, her eyes twinkling, and then she smiles again—the same smile she gave Eugene when she tossed him the chocolate, saying pour vous, causing his ribs to turn as blue as her headscarf.
Babe looks briefly between them for a moment, his lips pressed together, but then he shrugs. “Well—hey, what’s your name?”
She’s beaming at him now. “Renée.”
He smiles right back.
“Well, Renée, we’ve got to be getting back to the guys now. We’re heading out tonight.”
“You are leaving,” she says after a moment.
“Aw, no,” Babe says, “you’ll see Gene again. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Will you be there, too, Babe?” she asks.
The medic smiles when Babe turns a bit red. He knows the feeling. “Sure thing,” he says, and he glances sideways at him, and both of them are looking at him with something in their face that he can liken to the warmth blooming in his chest.
Eugene thinks: they’re both like the sun. It tastes like summer in his mouth.