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They have to break it again. John is told this in a hushed frenzy, barely one foot in the stalag and still bleeding sluggishly, and Benny tells him that they have to re-break Buck’s arm.
It happened today, Benny says. Buck arrived a week before, his right arm wrapped tight in layers of dirty gauze, bone sticking through the skin. He’d fucked it up going down, getting tangled in his chute and landing awful hard. He meant to have it fixed up properly. The Krauts were meant to take him to a Kraut hospital; set it right and stitch him up and drop him back in the camp within a day or so.
He went nowhere for seven days. He’d been called up to the General’s office on the eighth. On the cusp of the ninth day- this morning- he’d returned to their bunks, white and trembling, arm not fixed but worse. Blood and filth were making it difficult to see the true extent of the damage, but it was clear that it was really, very, fucking bad.
John had been in a cold cell at the time, feeling like a dog for the needle, wondering if it could get any worse for him.
“There’s a kriegie Doc,” Benny says, breathless as he leads John around the camp, a whirlwind of a welcome home tour. “A surgeon before. He’s doing it, he’s doing it now.”
“Now?”
Benny is hard-faced and grimacing as they round another shack. “It needed it. Look, Bucky, God. This is a rotten thing to process, I know. But it was gonna have no chance of healing as it was. He’ll- he’ll be glad to see you.”
It’s a warning. Don’t panic.
John bites his teeth, and Benny hands him a smoke as if reading his mind. He lights it on a match, hovering outside the makeshift infirmary. Crank and Brady are there, standing two abreast outside the doors as if guarding them, and John hardly has the wherewithal to slap them both on their backs. Happy to see you boys. Yeah, maybe not here.
“Closed for business?” John says. Crank looks between him and Benny. John catches it, feels a misplaced spike of anger, like they’re keeping things from him.
“There’s another wing down the east side,” Crank says. “Didn’t- didn’t want too many guys in here.”
John looks at them. Watches the way their faces flicker with some shielded, shared trepidation. He doesn’t wait to hear any more. He grinds the end of the cigarette out on the door and shoulders his way inside.
“Bucky, wait-” Benny says, but John’s already there.
“Jesus Christ.”
"John Egan," Gale says, almost reverent, sitting up on the rickety patient chair and beaming at him. “I’ll be damned.”
John can hardly move. He’s frozen to the spot, staring at Gale, worried for a brief moment that he’s going to vomit right onto the floor.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he grinds humourlessly, mouth numb.
Buck’s in a vest, and visibly sweating despite the chill. His right arm is outstretched, currently cradled between the hands of who John presumes is the Doc. There is a bone sticking out. Benny warned him, he told John, but seeing it in front of him, Buck’s bone piercing the soft flesh of his forearm- John can’t quite comprehend it. He finds it in himself to move, crossing the room in three strides, and collapses down at Gale’s left. Up this close, John can see tremors running all through his body.
“Buck,” he breathes. “Jesus Christ, what happened to you?”
Buck turns to him, rolls his head on his shoulders and fixes him with a look that doesn’t quite focus. “It’s nothin’,” he smiles. “You’re here.”
John looks at his arm. The torn skin around the bone is a mess of blood and ragged tissue, gory and raw. It looks like the mouth of a bombsite. John has seen too much of people’s insides on the outside in the last few days. The bone sticking out bends Gale’s wrist at an angle no arm should ever be at. It’s not nothing. It’s not anything John has ever seen before.
“I’m here,” he says, dragging his eyes back to Buck’s face.
“Wh’took you so long?” he says. His words are all blurring together.
John pushes the sweaty hair back from his forehead. His skin is as hot as the sun. “Got turned around,” he says absently, gaze still being pulled to the chaos of Gale’s arm. He looks at Doc instead. “Is he- is he dosed up?”
Doc inhales through his nose, mouth down-turned. “Got what we could.”
“The hell does that mean?”
“Morphine,” Doc says. “Some. Bargained for it, but we couldn’t get much."
John cringes. The urge to begin shouting is overwhelming. To pull rank and order anyone near enough to sort it out, to fix it, but he doesn't know how far rank will stretch in this place. He doubts it would stretch to summoning drugs that simply aren't there, or to pushing Gale's white, sharp bone back into place. Buck's clammy fingers find John's neck, resting on the side of his throat and stroking his thumb over the hinge of his jaw. Once, twice. John looks back to him and tries to smile. It's a far off thing, rigid and implausible. Gale's brows are drawn.
"Your face," he says, brushing a fingertip over John's busted cheek.
John barks out a short, harsh laugh. "Your arm."
Gale's shivering, a thin sheen of perspiration shining on his exposed skin, and John can see in the clenching of his jaw just how much he's trying to steel himself. He's breathing deliberately slowly; controlled and heavy. Keeping it together with every ounce of his energy. He winces, pulling focus into his face, expression pinched and head tipping closer to John like he's about to tell him a secret.
"He's gotta reset it," he says quietly. "Don't think it's gonna be fun."
"Y'don't think?" John says. Gale smiles, closing his eyes and bumping his sticky forehead against John’s. He takes a deep breath. John’s heart is hammering in his chest. He grabs Gale's hand, squeezes it lightly, doesn’t care that Benny, Crank, and Brady have found their way inside to see. "You'll be alright."
"Mm-hm," Gale hums.
"We'll reset it after," Doc says, and John draws his head back up to look at him. "The callus on the underside of the break has started to knit. It'll be fucked up forever if it carries on in this position. It's not real bone; it's not like breaking it again, but it- it ain't gonna be pleasant." John can't stand what he's saying, but he settles for the way that he's saying it. He seems competent. Steady, like he knows exactly what he's doing. It's that steady competence that stops John from going green when Doc says, "We gotta do it now before the drugs are completely useless."
Gale's eyes are still shut, and there's a tension there, now, that's overtaken his features.
"Y'hear that, Buck?" John asks, feeling unwell, and Gale nods.
"Just do it," he grits out.
John expects to hear a crack. He looks at Gale's face; does not watch his arm, does not think about the branches and twigs he snapped underfoot in those woods, and the only sound that comes is from Gale's throat. He groans, jaw taut, lips pressed shut in a firm, straight line. John watches a drop of sweat travel down from the hollow of his collar bones to the cotton of his tank, and his stomach twists as he sees how Gale's chest is heaving faster, harder with each breath.
"Show-off," John says into his hair. “Takin’ it like a champ, huh?”
“Going again,” Doc says before Gale manages to formulate a response.
John’s gut plummets. “That’s not it?”
“Ain’t like ripping off a band-aid, Major. I can’t be fucking it up worse by going fast.”
Then, without any further warning, Doc twists Gale’s arm. John can’t stop himself from watching this time. The bone that’s sticking out shifts along with Buck’s upper forearm whilst his wrist and hand stay motionless, a sick disconnect that looks as though it should be an optical illusion. Blood wells up and pushes its way past the messy tear of the wound. There is still no crack, but John can just about make out the sounds of wet, shredding flesh slipping against itself; the end of the broken bone still tucked in Gale’s skin peaking out and hitting into its starkly exposed twin.
Gale cries out, then.
“Sh, sh, sh,” John soothes, frantic and wavering, still staring at his blood-slicked arm. “It’s okay, ’s’alright. Jesus fucking Christ, can’t you go fuckin’ easy on him?”
“’S’okay,” Gale gasps out. His voice is ragged, breathless and saw-edged. “Gotta- gotta do it, or else-”
John stares at him. His eyes are open again, gleaming and slightly wild, but he still somehow forces a smile. It doesn’t hold long. He’s panting with the effort it’s taking to hold himself together, and John’s heart aches so hard he thinks it might burst. He looks up at their men. Benny has gone pale. Crank lights a cigarette and sets his jaw.
“Buck, it’s just our boys,” John says in a low voice. Squeezes Gale’s fingers, feels him squeeze back with half the strength. “Nobody’s needin’ you right now.”
Gale looks like he’s about to reply, but Doc takes his fucked up wrist and does something, yanks, and his face screws up so hard John can barely see the tips of his eyelashes. His grip on John’s hand increases until he can feel his own bones grind, and only when Buck’s nails start to carve little crescent moons into his skin does he make a sound. John hears it building in the back of his throat; the edges of his little, hurried exhales getting harder and louder, and John realises that Gale is whimpering. Gnawing on his lip until it’s bloody. Doc has two fingers inside Gale's arm. He's digging into the inside of his body, and the noises he's making get louder. He presses his face into John's shoulder, making that horrid broken sound, like a car crash, and his arm looks like a car crash, too. John doesn’t know what Doc is doing to it, but the strange angle of his hand compared to his elbow looks like it should be two different limbs entirely. John uses his free hand to stroke through Buck’s damp hair. He cups the back of his head, feels the force with which he’s shaking, and when Doc finally moves away from the mess Gale is gripping the wrecked remains of his composure with an increasingly useless hold.
He slumps further into John's neck, wheezing. Blood drips loudly onto the floor. John never knew blood could be so fucking loud, and he has forgotten how to speak.
"That's the cartilage taken care of," Doc says. John looks at him, speechless. Even he's sweating. John is sweating, too, he realises- in Germany, in October. Gale has never been hotter to the touch. "I'll give him a minute, then I'll reset it. Alright?"
John blinks. Says, "Yeah, alright," voice detached and far away. Gale mumbles something into his shirt. "Buck? Hey, what is it?"
He coaxes his face up with a gentle hand. He's whiter than snow, his gaze shot, looking both past John somewhere and entirely through him, and he's shaking his head in tiny, clipped jerks.
"I can't," he whispers. "I can't, Bucky, tell him to stop."
John wants to die. He’s never heard Gale cave before. Gale, who got his men to Africa on half a plane and prayer he didn’t even believe. Who every man on base looked up to as a pillar of strength; stoic to a fault. Who never needed a drink or a smoke to dull the edges of the persistent fear John knows he must hold same as the rest of them. He’s never even seen him cry. John is the one who wears his cracks for all to see. He’s the one who, on Buck’s behest, got packed up and thrown to London. For a goddamn holiday in the middle of a war, waking up with a self-inflicted headache the day that Buck got shot down.
Gale’s head has fallen back into the curve of John’s shoulder. John can feel his rapid breathing, can hear it breaking on its way in and out. Can feel the cold sweat dripping off Gale and dampening his shirt collar. Gale’s lips are moving against him, whispering something. John has to hold his breath to hear him. When he makes out what he’s saying, it’s as though someone has punched straight through John’s ribs.
“Please.” Gale presses it into John’s skin. Quiet and breathless, repeating it endlessly like a mantra, like he isn’t aware that he’s saying it or that it has any meaning left. It hits John over and over again, on almost every one of Buck’s shattered exhales, half-slurred, hardly a word anymore. “Please, please, please, please.”
John looks up at Doc. He’s pointedly looking away, focussed on whatever shitty instruments he has to perform these shitty procedures. Their men are looking on, Brady and Benny frowning, Crank seeming downright terrified, and John makes a split-second decision. They can’t see Gale this way. He’d fucking hate it.
John nudges Gale softly with his shoulder, cradling the base of his skull as he moves him back against the inclining chair. He does not look at his face. John can’t break apart until he’s got everyone out.
“You gotta go,” he says roughly. He looks up at the boys, fixing them with his hardest stare. When they do nothing, John stands. “I’m orderin’ you, you gotta leave, you gotta fuckin’ go, come on.”
Benny opens his mouth as if to say something, but John moves on autopilot. He’s vaguely aware that he’s being brash. That they’re only there for the same reason that he is; to make sure Buck is okay, but he’s not okay. None of this is okay, and John can’t stand that Gale has no say in being seen like this right now. He bustles the boys outside, and when the fresh air hits him, so does everything else.
John turns to go back in, and he can’t move.
He grips the splintering banister on the outside of the barrack, curling over it and dragging in a shaking breath. Someone puts a hand between his shoulder blades- Crank, maybe, but he isn’t sure. He’s offered another smoke, turns it down with a trembling hand. It would turn him sick right now. He already thinks he might be sick.
“Bucky,” somebody says. There’s a ringing in his ears. “Major.”
John shuts his eyes. Counts down from ten. Inhales deep then straightens his spine, rolling his shoulders until something clicks and fixing the men with a bleak look.
“He’s fine,” he says. Nobody replies. Brady’s mouth jumps with the start of an objection. John speaks louder, harsher. “He’s fine. Nobody’s gonna say anythin’ about this, alright? You’re gonna stay here, make sure not a fucking soul comes in. Including you. Yes?”
“Yeah,” Benny mumbles. Crank and Brady nod. It’s fucking unconvincing.
“Yes, what? Yes fuckin’ what?”
“Yessir,” Benny says, echoed by the others, and John doesn’t care that not one of them sounds in agreement with him.
He casts them another glance, something he hopes has more authority than panic pressing up against the surface of it, and grits his teeth. Turns around.
When he’s back inside, the full picture of the situation is flayed out in front of him. Gale’s looking up at the ceiling, eyes unseeing and half-lidded. The room is small for anything that could be called an infirmary in the civilised world, but empty except for Buck and Doc, it yawns open like a chasm. Gale’s arm is outstretched on the armrest of the chair. His hand hangs limply off the end of it, and John watches, paralysed, as blood trails down his fingers and soaks into the floorboards. It looks no better than it did at the beginning. It looks worse. All that pain, and Gale’s fucking bone is still tearing out of his skin at that inhuman angle; blood smeared up and down his forearm, his hand, his vest, the floor, the chair, Doc. Some of it is on John, too, despite his efforts to stay on Gale’s left. He lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding, finding his feet to slump back at Gale’s side.
Buck looks at him like he hadn’t realised he was there. He’s even whiter than before, lips bitten and eyes wet, tears not yet falling but clinging, clumping his lashes together.
“John,” he croaks. His voice, at least, sounds stronger. Like there is once again thought behind the words leaving his mouth. John’s hope nosedives almost as soon as it rises, as he realises that Gale’s regained lucidity means, most likely, that the meagre amount of morphine has run its course. “’S'it look bad?”
John laughs, he can’t help it. Takes Gale’s uncompromised hand in his and squeezes again. “Nah. A scratch, Buck. You’re makin’ a fuss over nothing.”
Gale smiles. It does not stretch far. “Tell me somethin’.”
John notices, out of the corner of his eye, Doc turning back to face them. His hands are scrubbed clean again, and hover over Gale’s arm. John avoids watching further, looks directly into Gale’s eyes and strokes his cheek.
“Remember when you thought you saw a ghost in England?”
“Did not,” Gale says. His breathing isn’t quite right. Restrained and sharp, but John can tell he’s trying.
“You did,” John presses on. Buck turns his head a little, the anticipation of going untouched clearly building, but John takes his chin between his thumb and forefinger, brings him back around to look at him. “You woke me up at Christ knows what time. I never seen you so frantic, I thought you were finally drunk. And you shook me awake, oh, Bucky, I saw somethin’. Oh, Bucky, I swear it was movin’ through the north side barracks.” Gale blinks slowly, huffs out a small laugh. “And I thought you’d gone crazy. ’Cos Buck Cleven, he told me he don’t believe in any of that bushwa first day I met him, when I told you my grandma used to post up in Ma’s house when she was already long gone.”
“Didn’t see no ghost, John,” Gale says. John knows he can sense Doc moving beside him, now. He’s gone tense, chest rising and falling with gaining speed.
“Hey, Buck, hey,” John says, trying desperately to pull his attention back to him. Gale meets his eyes, and John is hopeless to combat the panic in them. “I know you didn’t. Remember what it was, huh? Remember?”
“Meatball,” Gale says, barely audible.
“Fuckin’ Meatball. Got into the pantry and brought a whole bag of flour down on him. He looked ghostly, I’ll give ya that-”
John is cut off when Gale screams. He has never heard a sound like it from another human being.
Doc has manoeuvred his arm, turning it to the resetting position, hardly a rough hold on it at all, and Gale screams like flaming engines do. Ear-splitting and jagged, ripping out of his throat painfully, and trailing off into desperate, dreadful gasps. John feels tears prick at his eyes. He lets go of Buck’s hand, stands up slightly to bend over him, holding his face between both palms and pressing their foreheads together again. John kisses the space between his brows without thinking, but if Doc reacts at all John couldn't care less. Gale’s breaths hit John’s lips, each one accompanied by a wretched, strangled noise. He’s hyperventilating.
“It’s okay,” John lies. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I got you, Buck. I got you, sweetheart. Just breathe.” Gale doesn’t seem to be able to. He’s gone beyond words, eyes screwed shut and fingers digging into John’s wrist. John lifts his head up just enough to look at Doc, catches sight of Gale’s arm and grimaces. It’s straighter, at least, but the bone isn’t lined up properly, yet. More blood is coming up from the wound, past dripping and now pouring out into the open. “How long is this gonna take?”
“Not long,” Doc says, not looking up from the hellish task at hand.
He pulls Gale’s arm straighter still, and Gale chokes, shudders, pitching forward and vomiting sour liquid onto John’s shirt. The motion wrenches his arm from Doc’s grip, and it flops again at that awful, wrong angle.
“Fuck, Gale, you gotta stay still,” John says, lifting Buck’s head up to look at him. He’s gone from burning hot to freezing cold in almost no time at all. There’s bile clinging to his lips. John swipes it off with his thumb. “Open your eyes, doll. Look at me, please.”
Gale does. John doesn’t know if he hears him at all, or if it’s just coincidence, because he searches for Gale in those shining, baby blues, and finds no one home. His eyelids hardly crack open halfway, and if Buck’s seeing anything it isn’t John. His grip on John’s wrist has gone slack. His breathing is still far too fast, and he’s got shakes running through his body that look like they’re going to rip him to pieces.
“Buck,” John says, receiving nothing in return.
“Shit,” Doc hisses, and John’s head snaps up so fast it hurts his neck.
“What? What, fuckin’ what, is he alright?”
“Lost a lot of blood,” Doc says, which John could have told just about anybody, but the way he says it sounds like it’s a bigger problem than he’d thought.
“Well, what, is he going to fucking die?”
“I’m nearly done,” Doc says.
It’s decidedly not an answer. John tries desperately to get a handle on his own panic, goes back to stroking Gale’s face because it’s the only fucking thing he can do. Doc pulls his arm out again, and the only noises Gale makes this time are muted, fractured whines.
John misses the screaming.
Doc gets John to hold Gale’s arm in place as he cleans it. John doesn’t want to, doesn’t want any part in this at all, but he holds Gale’s arm still as Doc begins to remove the worst of the blood. It’s relatively futile; Gale is still bleeding. Doc ends up satisfied with the best they can do, and finally he splints Buck’s arm in place. Straps him straight and stitches the mangled, ugly wound. Wraps the whole thing in gauze, blooming with red immediately, but Doc says to John that it’s the best they're going to get. Says they’ve just got to wait. It’s over.
John looks at Gale twitching, and watches the twitching like it’s the only answer to any prayer he has. Without it, passed out and so pale he’s nearly translucent, Gale would look like he’s already dead.
John lets his head fall forward onto Buck's chest. His heart is still beating under his ribs.
“He’ll stay here,” Doc is saying. John can only hear him as if he’s listening from underwater. “If the blood loss doesn’t get him, infection could be next. I’ll stay, keep it clean and watch. Try get him to a fucking hospital, I don’t know why these Krauts didn’t take him. They’re meant to-”
John isn’t listening.
“Buck,” he whispers into his chest. “Gale.”
Gale’s heart continues to beat beneath John’s ear. Quick. Too quick. John isn’t a doctor; he doesn’t know if that’s better or worse than it beating too slow. He isn’t going to ask.