When he came to, the pretty nurse was still standing by the bed, but there was another nurse and a doctor. And someone else he couldn’t quite bring into focus.

“Thank goodness,” the pretty nurse said, and turned away while the Doctor came closer.

“You gave us quite a scare, Major,” he said, being careful not to use any names.

“Well, what happened?” asked another male voice, one he recognized, one that brought him an image from his memory, blurred and indistinct, of a older man than he, giving orders, commands, rebukes.

“He fainted,” the Doctor said simply. “Shock, I imagine. Mary said he couldn’t remember anything. Not his name, age, not the year, anything at all. That’s why we allowed you in.”

“What?” asked the second male.

“Sometimes,” the doctor explained placatingly, “a patient’s memory can be jogged by association. We were thinking that perhaps you may be able to offer some assistance.”

“Oh. What do I have to do?”

Ah, so this person knew him? Better yet, that second man was American.

“Just ask him the same sort of questions, in the way you would usually ask them, please.”

“Right.”

No-one was in focus, he realized grimly. And he could barely move. And the pain was even worse than last time.

“Hey!” said that voice, and though it might have been the only familiar thing, he suddenly hated it. “You listen to me and you listen good. I’m gonna ask you somethin’ and, God damn it, you’re going to give me answers!”

Why so loud, pal?

“…Yessir…”

What? Where had that come from?

“Name, rank and serial number!”

His mind ached, his chest hurt, he squeezed his eyes shut as the pain intensified.

“Halloran, David, Major, oh-five-seven, three-two-seven, nine-six-nine, Sir,” he blurted.

What!?

But before he had time to think about it, the voice was shouting at him again.

“City of birth and age!”

And before he even realized what had been asked, he had the answer.

“Chicago, Illinois, thirty-one years, Sir!” he returned, with more fervor.

The pain was starting to lift, with incredible rapidity.

He opened his eyes in astonishment. Of course he was Dave Halloran, of course he was a major, of course he was thirty-one!

“And, Major Halloran,” the voice said, far less harshly, almost smugly. “Can you now tell me the year?”

“Forty five,” he breathed, a relieved smile slowly spreading across his face as his eyes closed again, the pain almost completely gone. “Nineteen-forty-five!”

“Very good,” the Doctor was saying, but Halloran hardly heard. “I think the worst of that’s over.”

“Thank goodness!” the second nurse agreed and, though he couldn’t see her, he was sure he’d met that nurse before somewhere.

“There you are, you see,” the doctor continued. “He’s going to be alright.”

A voice from his clouded memory whispered suddenly.

I tell a lot of men they’re going to be alright and they believe me because they want to, because they’re young…

 “You sure?” Halloran wheezed. “You’re not just saying that because you know I’ll believe you?”

That second nurse, so it appeared, gave him an odd look.

“Quite sure, young man,” the Doctor said. “You’ll make a full recovery.”

“Wait,” Halloran said. “Where are my personal effects? I have tags…Jewelry…”

“You’ll get them back,” the Doctor assured him as he and the second nurse left.

“So,” the man beside him said.

He was dressed, from what Halloran could see, in green and he was quite tall, though not as tall as Halloran would be if he could stand to face the man.

“You’re still getting yourself into these messes?”

Halloran frowned.

“Excuse me…Sir?”

There was a soft chuckle.

“Halloran, don’t you know who I am?”

Halloran blinked and squinted.

“I can’t…see you…very well, Sir,” he answered.

The man leant down to him and all the blurred lines unexpectedly came into focus.

“Ron!”

Major General Ronald Bart grinned back at him and nodded slowly.

“Been a long time, hasn’t it, Halloran?”

Halloran tried his best to laugh, too. Ronald Bart had been a Colonel when Halloran, then a Lieutenant, had served under him, giving briefings before they went on bombing runs. And Halloran had always found a way to give him hell, answering back, making disparaging comments, anything to annoy him.

“It sure has…Sir.”

Bart laughed again and indicated Halloran’s stomach.

“What did you do this time?”

Halloran’s puzzlement showed clear as he gave Bart a questioning glance, then looked down at his own stomach.

He was utterly amazed to see a large, white bandage there.

“I…”

He looked back up at Bart, thoroughly confused.

“I don’t know, Sir.”

Bart chuckled again, nodding gently.

“That’s no surprise. You took a nasty crack to your head back there.”

“Sir,” he said desperately, unsure if he should ask this question, unsure if he wanted to know the answer, “what about my crew?”

“Your crew?” Bart asked, cocking his head.

“Yeah. I…remember flames and…smoke and…a lot of…blood…and I saw people…all dead…”

Bart shook his head and grasped Halloran’s fingers, steadying them; Halloran hadn’t even noticed they were shaking.

“That was two years ago, David,” he said gently. “You remember that, don’t you?”

“No,” he said, his eyes beginning to close again.

“Dave, stay with me,” Bart ordered, squeezing Halloran’s cooling fingers hard. “That was the George-Ann. That’s over, that’s done.”

Halloran had, when he’d first met Colonel Bart, made every attempt to irritate him. But after a disastrous night-time mission, which the participation of the Gorgeous George-Ann’s crew Halloran’s backchat had brought about, in some roundabout way, that relationship had changed. For, on the mission, Halloran’s attention had been forced upon safety, stealth and task completion. It was only back at Base that things finally hit home:

Every member of Halloran’s crew had died that night, and Halloran felt entirely responsible. No other death had ever affected him so badly, but he’d been friends with the members of his crew from the beginning. Jerry Cimino he’d known since childhood. But he had to return to base, alone.

From then on, he’d sat at the back of the briefing room, silent, stony faced, eyes hollow, hanging on Bart’s every word, ignoring the whispers of those around him, never hearing the consoling words they offered, paying no heed to the few insults and barbed comments thrown his way by people needing someone to blame.

Eventually, people just stopped talking to him because they saw that there was no reaction to their support and loyalty. And even those who blamed him at first saw no denial, no refusal, no answers to their accusations, only deep, hardened guilt and muted acceptance. They watched him at night as he muttered and groaned in his sleep, lay shaking on the mattress, watched him try to keep his hands steady enough to eat and drink, watched him jump at every little noise, back away from every stranger, hesitate at every dark doorway and confined space, and realized slowly that Lieutenant David Halloran had already been punished enough.

But, much to everyone else’s surprise, as well as Halloran’s, it was Bart who had helped him through that awful period, Bart who had helped him keep going, Bart who had taken him under his wing, offered him friendship, and given him a reason to want to keep going.

The memory of the George-Ann was blurred, like everything else at the moment, but he knew at least that he was safe here, if only because Bart was here, too.

Bart had changed him, and changed for him, and Halloran would be ever grateful for that.

But the memory of that terrible night only served to confuse him.

“Then what about…my crew, Sir?”

“Your crew is all safe. You landed the Lovely Lesley in time. There were flames, Halloran, there was blood, but I’m telling you now there’d have been a hell of a lot more if it weren’t for you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You came back safe, Halloran. You were fine until you made your approach. Then something went wrong, it’d been going to for some time, and you got a fire inside the plane. When you brought her in, you set her down and most of your crew got out. Iverson and Rodes didn’t. You went back for ‘em.”

“Did they get out?” he asked, clutching at Bart’s sleeve.

Bart smiled.

“You all did. Even those two. But we nearly lost you. She went up just as you appeared with Rodes and it’s a miracle of God that you didn’t go up with her. Shrapnel went flying and you got hit with some of that, and some of the tarmac.”

“She took the tarmac with her?”

“No,” Bart said matter-of-factly. “But you were thrown clear, and by quite a way.”

Halloran winced. He shouldn’t be surprised really; it certainly felt as though something like tarmac had snuck up on him and hit him pretty damned hard.

“How far?”

Bart looked up, searching his memory.

“Oh, twenty or thirty feet. Quite a way, like I said. And then you hit and took off half your face on the tarmac, and Rodes landed on the grass about two feet to your left.”

“Jesus,” Halloran whispered, raising a hand to his forehead.

“Yeah, lucky son of a bitch,” Bart chuckled. “He just took a couple of bruises.”

“Well, what happened…to me, then? I feel like…hell!”

“You, mister, hit the ground, bounced, skidded and rolled, and then we realized you had shrapnel in you. You fractured your wrist, broke a leg and gave yourself a good solid smack on the head. You also scraped a hell of a lot of skin off of your forehead and you broke your nose.”

“Broke my nose, again,” Halloran muttered in correction.

“Again,” Bart nodded. “You also cut your lips.”

“Oh no,” Halloran said in mock distress. “Not my lips(!)”

“So, like I told you, there was blood, lots of it, but only yours.”

Halloran narrowed his eyes and turned his head to look out of the window, his eyes momentarily catching the “WARD ROOM 4” sign affixed there, and ignoring it. He hated hospitals.

Stomach caught the shrapnel, which is why it hurts so bad, same for the pain in my wrist and my leg, the skin I took off my face’ll be why my forehead stings and my nose is why it’s hard to breathe. And my head aches, but that’s no surprise. So why could I hear them? After all this time?

“I heard screaming, Ron,” he said quietly. “I heard them, like I never heard ‘em before.”

Bart nodded slowly. He didn’t need to ask what Halloran was talking about.

“I thought they didn’t say anything,” Bart said carefully.

“They didn’t used to,” Halloran answered in a whisper. “But I’ve been having nightmares about how I found them. They’re like they were, corpses, and there’s blood and flames and they’re all dead. But when I get to them, talk to them, try and move them, Cimino starts moaning, not in pain, just moaning. Just quiet at first. And then it gets louder, and louder, and he sits up, this bloody mess, and he faces me and looks at me with eyeless damned sockets and he screams. Tries to grab me. First Cimino, then Hyer, then Lucas, and suddenly they’re all there, faceless corpses, screaming. God, it’s awful.”

Bart shivered involuntarily, but he grasped Halloran’s shoulder.

“Trauma can do that to you, David. But we’ll get you through it.”

“But it feels so real sometimes,” Halloran whispered, turning to look at Bart, his eyes hooded, haunted.

“I know that, Halloran,” Bart answered him, “I know. But we’re gonna beat it, just like we did before.”

The ghost of a smile touched Halloran’s broken lips.

“Thanks, Sir,” he said. “I’m grateful for your help.”

Bart offered him a wry grin.

“You’re welcome, Major,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I let you get away with it, Halloran: You still say ‘sir’ like a wiseass!”

~~~~~