Kurt jumped at the barked order, startled out of his brief reverie and put down the wad of bandages on the small table beside him. He turned to see the general standing there stiffly, moustache practically bristling and a file held tightly in his red, pudgy hand.

“Yes, sir?” He asked, automatically straightening out his tunic and snapping a salute. The general waved him down and stuck the file out in front of him like it was diseased. Kurt took it cautiously. It was a faded green, with the words ‘Anderson, Blaine’ printed in neat typed letters across the top. Kurt flipped it open.

“He came in this morning, bullet wounds to the gut, shoulder and thigh. Infection set in the shoulder and he was running a dreadful fever” The general shifted uncomfortably, his belt straining around his copious belly. “Damn near lost him on the way here. He’s in theatre now, should be out shortly. You’re assigned to him, finish up with… whatever it was you were doing and report to ward three at once.”

Kurt snapped the folder shut and saluted once more, tucking it under his arm. The general nodded and turned to walk down the polished hallway; his heavy footfalls reverberating all the way down it and sending a young trainee scuttling away. Kurt sighed and turned back to the bandages, placing the folder open on the table and quickly rolling up the bandages as he read through it.

The soldier’s battle experience was certainly medal-worthy, Kurt thought drily as he glanced through the list of skirmishes this ‘Blaine Anderson’ had been involved in. He swallowed hard as he came to the bottom; “Somme, 1915, injured”.

“Poor beggar,” Kurt murmured, finished up the bandages and placing them side-by-side in a small wooden box with the words ‘American Medical Corps’ embossed on the front. Placing it back on the shelf he took a moment to ensure his uniform was presentable, then, picking up the green file from its place on the table, turned smartly and hurried down the hall.

As he neared ward three, the smell of blood became more and more apparent. Outside the window he spotted a long line of wounded soldiers filing into the hospital, their faces ashen. They were all completely silent; uniforms grey with dust and brown in places with mud. One man had an entire arm missing and his uniform was stained almost black with blood. He leaned heavily on another soldier who had a blood-stained bandage wrapped clumsily around his temple and left eye. They clung to each other, shepherded by an efficient team of nurses they were soon inside where Kurt lost sight of them. He glanced at his watch and clicked his tongue irritably, quickening his stride.

The surgeons were wheeling a patient out of the surgery just as Kurt rounded the corner. They looked up, relief evident in their faces.
“Is this a Mr Anderson?” He asked, assessing what little of the man lying before him he could see.
One of the surgeons, Brian, Kurt remembered belatedly, nodded.

“You’ll ‘ave your work cut out wi’ this one, Kurt; we were this close to losin’ him in there.” Brian’s accent was particularly strong today, Kurt noticed absently, reading Anderson’s chart; it only ever was whenever the man was particularly stressed. This man must have really done a number on Brian to make him so upset.

He replaced the chart and nodded to one of the nurses. Rachel he thought her name was. She took one side, Kurt the other and together they pushed the bed into one of the few empty rooms, setting it against the whitewashed wall opposite the bay window. The brass plate on the oak door read ‘33’. Kurt kicked the brake into place and pulled on a pair of pristine, white cotton gloves, rattling off a list to Rachel as he did so.

“I’ll need a basic first aid kit; iodine, sutures, needles, bandages and gauze. I also need a basin of some sort and warm water. Oh, and a couple clean cloths.” She nodded, drawing the curtains just enough to block the glare of the sun and left the room, closing the door behind herself.

Kurt gently pulled back the sheets drawn over the soldier’s body, folding them at the bottom of the bed. First he checked the shoulder, pulling back the loose hospital gown to look at the tightly wound mass of gauze beneath. Already blood was starting to soak through; the edges of the stain yellow. Kurt tutted, scribbling down ‘deep-set infection’ on the chart and moving onto the abdomen. This he was a lot happier with; there was no blood stain, apart from a few flecks and no sign of infection. Just as he went to check the leg wound, the soldier shifted on the thin mattress, forehead creasing as his head lolled helplessly on the pillow.

Kurt decided to forgo the leg wound; from what he could see the femoral artery had been repaired and really that was all he was worried about there, and placed a gloved hand on the soldier’s forehead, concerned at how hot the skin was there. Even without a thermometer, Kurt could tell he was running a fever. And a high one at that.

Rachel reappeared, pushing a trolley in front of her. She placed a jug of warm water on the bedside table, along with the basin and the cloths. The kit she put on a shelf above the sink. Kurt thanked her and she left just as quickly as before, her eyes meeting his for a brief minute before Kurt turned away and she the same. He ran the basin full of cold water and dipped one of the cloths in, wringing it out firmly and placing it on the soldier’s forehead. The only reaction it elicited was a tiny moan and so Kurt added a syringe-full of iodine to the jug of water and thoroughly soaked a cloth in it.

Gingerly, he peeled the final layer of bandages back, careful not to tug too hard on the newly sutured wound and taking care wherever the gauze stuck to dampen it with water so it came unstuck. Once all the bandages were off, he added a few more drops of iodine onto the damp cloth, changed his gloves and set to work.

It was a nasty wound; the bullet had ripped through layers of muscle and sinew, shattered the ball and socket joint where it had become lodged. The surgeons had done their best, but the shoulder itself was still disfigured and swollen. The infection raging through the injury certainly wasn’t helping matters; no matter how much Kurt cleaned it, it would not stop bleeding. What’s more, the platelets the soldier’s body was producing were overwhelmed by the sheer size and volume of infected tissue, so Kurt had no choice but to liberally douse a wad of gauze with iodine and pack the wound as best he could in the hope it would be enough to slow the infection.

Once the gauze made contact with the raw wound, the soldier on the bed jerked horribly, sweat beading at his temples. Kurt gritted his teeth and concentrated on wrapping the wound as tightly as he could; holding the gauze firmly in place. Once he’d finished, his gloves were stained red and yellow in a mixture of blood, pus and iodine and the soldier lay still as a corpse, his hair tousled and sweat-soaked. The cloth had slid off his forehead and Kurt replaced it, not before throwing his ruined gloves away, washing his hands and putting on his third pair of gloves.

Just as he placed the damp cloth back onto Anderson’s fever-stained forehead, his eyes fluttered open, blinking hazily up at Kurt through the fog of chloroform.
“Who’re you?” He asked, tripping over the words. Kurt smiled down at him, tugging the sheets back up from their place at the bottom of the bed.

“I’m Kurt Hummel; your doctor. You’ve just come out from surgery so things will be hazy for a while.” He tucked the sheet around Anderson’s body. He was very slight, for a battle-hardened soldier. “My best advice would be to sleep it off. You’re currently fighting off a fever so a little sleep wouldn’t go amiss.” He turned the cloth over and smoothed the sheets down, quickly checking Anderson’s pulse against his pocket watch.

When he pulled back to write it down (far too high), the soldier seemed to have taken his words to heart; he was fast asleep, head tilted slightly to one side and lips set in a tight line, his eyebrows creased. Hesitantly, Kurt smoothed the creases away, watching in fascination as the soldier’s entire face seemed to relax at once, his lean, but powerful body shifting under the thin linen sheets. Kurt pulled a grey-blue woollen blanket out from underneath the sink, shaking the folds out and spreading its heavy warmth over the woefully inadequate sheets.

Anderson looked so, so small underneath the bandages and blankets, and Kurt’s heart wrenched painfully as he dimmed the gas light and left the room, closing the door behind him with a snap. He’d go back to check on him in an hour, after making a quick round of the wards. Just as he was about to walk off, he remembered, spinning around to the empty nameplate beside the closed door. He pulled a pencil out of his pocket and printed the words ‘Anderson, Blaine’ on the white card there, sliding it back into the brass holder. That done, he headed off in the direction of the general ward, the smell of blood, chloroform and polish wafting over him like a cloud of mustard gas.