Chapter 2

I was stroking the hair away from the young woman's face as she lay next to me. She was soft and warm, her hands clinging to my naked chest and arm. Her passionate lips murmured endearments. Her face wasn't clear to me, but her lovemaking had been hard and without preliminaries. Our mutual passion left me covered in sweat.

I sat up alone in bed. The tiny room was dark.

I wanted to go back to the dream to remember all of it. The smell of her had been an incredibly pungent rose scent, something about it had been a powerful aphrodisiac. Yet, my conscious mind stirred, insisting it had not been real. It felt real. My muscles even ached from all the activity, and my palms were clammy.

The only thing I smelt now was my sweaty bed covers. The bed was uncomfortable, and the air felt slightly cold and damp. I felt cold and feverish, so I dropped back to my blanket and covered up. I lay still, trying to remember what happened to me, but my foggy brain resisted. I felt sweat trickle from my forehead just before I closed my eyes again. Sleep embraced me, and darkness called with a woman's voice in my mind whispering sweet promises. I smiled, slipping into the deep recesses of my mind, hearing the strange woman's voice. "Sleep, it is for the best. You will never be alone in your dreams."

Later, I opened my eyes to sun beams filling my room. A single-paned glass window highlighted a multitude of drifting dust particles. I turned my head away from the light and the morning sun, seeing an elderly man in a white lab coat standing next to me. "A doctor," I thought. The doctor mumbled and tugged on his pocket watch's chain, drawing out the brass casing. He flicked the watch open with practiced ease, examining the time for only a brief moment. I wasn't impressed by the looks of the white haired doctor. His body language was unfriendly, and the skin of his face was stretched tight in irritation. His elongated jaw jutted out, which looked both striking and odd.

"Go ahead Ethel, it's time," the doctor instructed someone. He put his watch away in his pocket, and then leaned on his wooden cane.

I felt so tired, it was hard to keep my eyes open. My mouth was dry.

"Water," I asked.

"Nurse Ivy, wet his mouth," the doctor said gruffly, while playing with his mustache.

"Ethel, I must move on to other patients. Be quick about it and give him his medicine," the doctor demanded. He was clearly a testy man.

The doctor never once looked at me. Before I realized what was happening a pain in my arm jerked me out of my sleepy fog for a moment. An attractive looking nurse with a Red Cross on the chest of her apron withdrew a large gauge needle from my arm and put it on a tray. The nurse was a blonde with a short bob hairstyle; she picked up a glass of water and passed it to Ivy.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"It's morphine for the pain," Ethel explained, sweetly. "We are trying to keep you comfortable."

"What pain?" I choked out.

Ethel's eyes went wide with surprise. "You're not in pain?"

"No," I choked out.

"That can't be," she whispered. "Wyvern venom is extremely painful. The venom was all over your face and in your mouth. We thought you must have an incredible pain tolerance to live this long."

Ivy, a short and petite nurse, wet my lips with a cloth, and then stepped back to get a better look at me. She didn't say anything, but nervously twirled a piece of her short brown hair around a finger.

Both nurses were wearing ankle-length, gray dresses with white aprons and white nursing hats.

"You have all the classic symptoms of wyvern blood poisoning: profuse sweating, the shakes, swollen joints, crying out in your sleep, restlessness. Of course, you are in pain, you aren't talking rationally," the doctor said, turning and walking to the door. Over his shoulder, the doctor ordered, "Keep up his washing treatments. I'll check back later to see if he is in his right mind, if he thrashes about call an orderly."

"This isn't happening," I thought, as the tendrils of fog retreated from my mind. "I am in the dark ages of medicine, a prisoner of circumstances."

Ivy stepped forward again, wetting my lips, giving me enough moisture to protest.

"I am not in any pain! Morphine is highly addictive stop giving it to me."

The two nurses looked at each other with concern, a silent communication based between them.

Nurse Ivy poured some water down my throat, and then wet my lips with the cloth again before whispering, "I'll have a word with the head nurse."

I sucked at the wet cloth to refresh my dry lips, until the phantom fog passed over my mind again, taking me to my dream world and darkness. Reality and dreams blurred together as Nurse Ivy's pretty face and sexy voice followed me into darkness.

"There he goes once more, the poor lad," Ivy announced. The voices of the nurses became distant and faded to nothing.

The shapely and naked apparition of the woman of my dreams visited me again. "Bare your soul to me again," the lady demanded.

I felt gentle hands touching my naked body in loving caresses. Her tenderness and whispered confessions stirred my emotions. She washed me with a warm cloth. The real sense of wet skin and warmth quickly turned cool. My senses soaked up the long swipes of the washcloth and the little touches of her bare hands. Here and there she paused to tug at some part of my body, cleaning it. I couldn't help smiling behind my closed eyes when her hand lingered, playing with my sensitive bits.

"Such a handsome lad, you are. It's such a heavy responsibility to wash you up," she whispered and giggled. "You give off such a nice tingling feeling when I touch your skin. What a wonder it would be if you touched me back."

Her continued giggles and stroking aroused primal feelings deep within me. I recognized the petite nurse's voice as Ivy's.

"You like that, don't you?" The mysterious woman asked from within my thoughts. "It's part of your new charm."

The terrorizing connection of the strange voice to my flying nightmare made me sit straight up in bed. Ivy screamed. Her small hands quickly covered her pretty mouth while stepping back. She knocked a porcelain wash basin off the cart next to me, resulting in a shattering crash on the floor. Ivy's flush face turned bright red while she let out an abrupt squeal. She backed up into a wooden chair.

"Oh look, what have I done?" she wailed, her stunning eyes were round with fright at the calamity. "They will dock my pay for sure."

An elderly male attendant ran through the open door. He was a heavyset man with large fingers like sausages. "What is going on, Ms. Stuart?"

Ivy looked at him and then me, flustered and out of sorts.

"I knocked the water basin off the stand and it startled her," I explained.

He surveyed the room from just within the doorway, seeing the truth. The distance from my bed to the wooden cart was well out of my reach. The attendant became aware of my uncovered nakedness, narrowing his eyes when he saw my raised flag pole.

"You better cover that up, Nurse Parks is a step behind me," the white uniformed man advised through his thick accent, "and Mrs. Crannach is on her heels. One morning surprise for a nurse is enough, I think."

His shining eyes took on a protective look. He didn't wait for us to say anything further, but swiftly moved to the cart. Ivy and I remained frozen in place. My lower half was painfully aware where her gaze rested, and I felt like a hidden hand stayed me from moving. The attendant pushed the cart out-of-the-way Ethel darted into the room. Seeing me she stopped with wide eyes and spun around facing the doorway. The entrance of Nurse Ethel broke my trance-like state, and I grabbed my pillow and covered myself.

"He is covered now Ethel," Ivy announced. "You can turn around."

I felt the blood rush into my cheeks with my embarrassment. Ethel turned back to face us she had a cheeky grin on her face. Unlike Ivy, Ethel didn't look flushed.

"Don't worry yourself, Lieutenant. Ivy and I have seen them before," she said, smirking. After a moment, she added, "We are experienced nurses, of course."

The old orderly snorted and shook his head, pushing the cart against the wall. I couldn't help but wonder about their experiences after having experienced Ivy's active washing. The heavyset orderly broke into my thoughts when he started to pick up the fractured pieces. An intense looking woman of moderate height, in a gray uniform, entered the bedroom.

"Well, look who is finally awake," the thirtyish year old nurse announced. Her fair skin, deep copper hair and blue-green eyes were hard to ignore, considering her full package of natural curses.

"Yes, Mrs. Crannach, he is excited to be awake," Ethel remarked, holding her smirk out of the new woman's view.

"The lad made a bit of a mess, I'm afraid," the orderly added, still bent over to pick up the largest pieces of the smashed water basin.

"I'd almost finished him off," Ivy meekly contributed.

Ethel cupped her hand over her face, gagging the start of a sudden laugh, still not facing the new woman.

"Never mind," Mrs. Crannach responded. "Help Mr. Hall clean up. Go fetch a broom. We don't want the doctor seeing this mess."

"Yes, Mrs. Crannach," Ivy said. She quickly slipped out of the room.

Mr. Hall kneeled down gathering more pieces into his meaty hands, taking time to wink at me under Mrs. Crannach's watchful eyes. Ethel turned to face her superior, which seemed to clue Mrs. Crannach that something unsaid had happened. Her blue-green eyes searched Ethel's less-than-passive face and then mine again, calculating. She cocked her head to the side, but let the moment pass.

"Once your thrashing around in bed stopped, and your swelling in the joints disappeared, I knew you were out of the woods," Mrs. Crannach announced. "How are you feeling?"

"I feel a bit stiff, but otherwise healthy," I responded. "How long have I been out of commission?"

"Four days," Mrs. Crannach said, moving around Mr. Hall to put the back of her hand against my forehead. "You are in Dundee at the Training College Auxiliary Hospital. You are in good hands."

Ethel smirked again. The bed groaned when Mrs. Crannach sat on my bed and checked my pulse. Absentmindedly, I wondered what Mrs. Crannach would look like in more fashionable attire, rather than being hidden behind the thick layers of her full-length dress and the red-cross apron. She radiated warmth and caring.

"How is Alfred?" I asked.

"Your observer is doing well. He will be released tomorrow. For a plane crash, you both came out of it relatively untouched. Your second lieutenant had bruised ribs, a broken toe and a sprained knee," she answered, dropping my wrist. She scrutinized my right elbow, and then my left arm, before uncovering my leg to examine my knee. "The doctor wanted to keep him a few extra days to watch for signs of wyvern poisoning. He had a good splatter of the venom on the back of his flight jacket. Of course, your clothes have been destroyed. Yesterday, a couple of your mates from Montrose drove over to check on you and bring new uniforms."

Her hands reached over my pillow and manipulated my other knee. "No pain?"

"No pain," I attested. She wore a lavender fragrance I rather liked.

"Right, stopping the pain medication was warranted," she declared, "but, please don't mention that to Doctor Rootstein. He is rather sensitive when it comes to his pride. I had to approach him at a weak moment, when he was tired, to encourage him to stop wasting the drug on an unresponsive, dying man. I'm sure he has forgotten all about it."