Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

Rome! One of the three great Axis capitals. The second heart of darkness in Europe. She has a map, a tourist map, but Roman streets bear only a vague relationship to maps, and it takes her until 11:30 before she reaches the Swedish Embassy and gives the guard there the name of the man she is to meet.

The Salerno artillery emplacements are in her pocket. She has only to hand the paper over and then . . .

And then?

And then, she has no idea.

24

FRANGIE MARR—SICILY AND PORTSMOUTH, UK

Am I hurt?

She sees through one eye, but as if through a sheer lace curtain, everything fuzzy, details all blurred.

She can hear, but only the low tones, the vibrations of loud voices, the deepest notes of explosions.

Sky overhead. Blue.

Shapes moving around her. Green.

Pain comes from everywhere at once; it has no specific location, it’s everywhere and everything.

Am I dying?

She knows she’s moving but realizes she’s not the one doing the moving. She’s being carried. She’s on a stretcher, a stretcher that crushes her between two rifles.

She raises her head to try and see what has happened but he

r head won’t move and the very thought of trying it again is exhausting. Everything is exhausting.

Lord, don’t let me . . .

She feels pressure on her eye, her one working eye, her left. The pressure is firm but restrained. Something wet. Something that stings.

She pries open that left eye and sees the face of the nurse, Lieutenant Tremayne. Tremayne is cleaning the blood from her eye.

Tremayne’s gaze meets hers. Tremayne is saying something, and Frangie can hear it if she strains her attention, tries to focus, watches her lips move . . . move . . .

Sleep.

Awake again.

Sleep.

Awake and now she sees Dr. Frame.

“Listen, Marr, I’ve eased off the morphine so I can explain things to you. The pain will come back, so try and understand me.” He’s speaking patiently, slowly, like to a child. “You took a grenade. Friendly fire, from the look of the shrapnel. Someone must have dropped it. You have a compound fracture of the right femur. That’s what will cause the most pain. You also have a perforated lung, perforated right kidney, burst right eardrum, contused right eye, and you can only count to nine on your fingers—you lost a ring finger, but on the right hand, so you can still wear a wedding ring someday.”

Frangie says, “Mmm?”

“You will probably live, Marr, and if you live you may be all right.”

“She’ll be fine,” Tremayne murmurs, not approving of the doctor’s bluntness.

“She’s a medic, she deserves to understand,” Dr. Frame says. “You’re being evacuated either back to North Africa or to England.”

“Mmm. Eh?”