Chapter 1~ Introductions

Maria Holland sat at her desk in the small, dark room that she called her office. Slap bang in the middle of the war zone in Afghanistan, the tiny but efficient Field Hospital where she worked was, as always, alive with activity and the smell of blood. She found herself thinking, as she frequently did, about her family back home in London. Her father in his late eighties with a multi-billion pound estate which he was adamant not to give to either of his two children, seeing as he had a passionate hatred of the pair of them, all because they left home at sixteen and still got decent jobs. Her brother, Sebastian, on his longboat in Nottingham or wherever he happened to fancy going. She hadn't heard from Seb in about six months now, and hoped that his wife and kids were driving him mental. She hadn't met her niece yet, and smiled at the photo of the four members of her brother's family upon the top of her desk.

Lou, her assistant, poked his head round the grubby doorframe.

"There's another lot come in, Ri, where do you want 'em?" Maria sighed and stood up, immediately wishing she hadn't. Rubbing the new bump on her head from the low ceiling, she followed Lou out of her office.

"Uhh, wherever there's space I think, Lou. If there is any, that is," The boy ran off in the opposite direction, shouting something about Ward 2, which had been emptied earlier that morning. Maria fished an icepack out of the industrial use freezer and plastered it to her forehead with a finger, making a soon-forgotten mental note to do something about the low ceilings as she made her way to Ward 2 to inspect the fresh victims of war.

Captain Becker shook his head in bewilderment as another twenty of his men were carted off to the nearest Field Hospital. He knew that the closest one was too far away, and that Doctor Holland would only get six or seven of them alive. On an up-note, however, he also knew that this new doctor was something of a miracle worker, and however many men arrived living at that hospital, all of them would come back, no matter how severe their injuries. Becker accepted the cold beer from his Sergeant gratefully, leaning back against the bonnet of his jeep.

"How many more do you think, Sir?" Sgt Harry Williams asked. Williams was a young soldier, one of those who, like Becker, had somehow managed to get very high up in the military very quickly. Becker didn't turn to face his Sergeant, but stared up at the solitary cloud floating in the middle of the blue wasteland that was the sky. He already knew the answer to his question.

"How many more what, Harry?"

"How many more are we gonna loose, sir. I mean, we've been out here for two months and already we've lost..." Williams paused to consider the total. "How many?"

"Thirty five," Becker didn't need to think about it, he made sure that the casualties of his troop were at the front of his mind at all times. "On the other hand, though, we've had thirteen back from Holland," Williams' shoulders dropped.

"Yeah, I guess, but that means that we've had to send forty eight good men to that place. I know that Holland's lot work their socks off and all, but..." He was cut off by his Captain

"Hey, no hospital in the whole of this goddamned war had doctors as good as Holland and his lot, presuming that he's a he. We could be stuck with Robertson, and then we really would be stuffed," Sgt Williams grinned and uttered his short, barking laugh.

"Suppose you're right, sir, I almost died of a cold in Robertson's sorry excuse for a surgery," Becker grinned, the emotion not quite reaching his eyes as the truth of Williams' words dawned on him. They had arguably the best doctor in the British and American armies put together, yet somehow Becker didn't look forward to meeting this legendary physician. The circumstances of their introduction wouldn't be over a cup of coffee and some chocolate digestives, that much was certain.

Maria stood with horror imprinted upon her features as she stared at the twelve, blood-stained faces that, no matter how much she wished otherwise, she could never have saved.

"That's another twelve from that damn Becker. He must know by now that what he's doing is suicide, surely?" Lou shrugged with a look of depletion in his eyes.

"I met Becker once. Well, not really met, more like got nodded at, but he seemed like a pretty decent guy. And anyway, he can't choose whether or not..." Lou immediately regretted saying anything, Maria was always dangerous when she lost lives, and twelve was a pretty big loss in her book.

"What? He can't choose if he stays or not, is that it? I don't care whose responsibility it is, we had fifteen the other day, and I could only save six of them! They're wasting lives over there!" She slouched back down in her seat and plonked her chin in her cupped hands, puffing out her cheeks at regular intervals in the awkward silence that followed. Lou risked saying something.

"Well, maybe if... What if we moved closer to them? I mean, they're, what, seventeen miles south? I'm not entirely sure it's entirely Becker's fault that so many die, maybe it's that they cant get here quick enough," He shrugged again.

"Lou," Maria said in a matter of fact way, "You, my friend, are a genius! Why the toothpicks didn't I think of that before?" Lou giggled at Maria's highly creative use of words, before jumping up out of his chair and grabbing the phone at Maria's rapid orders. "Get hold of Colonel Richards, tell him to get a building team out there ASAP, in fact, screw that, I don't care if it's tents and floorboards as long as I have myself a clean camp that's usable in three days max!" Maria was out of the door in a trice, finding the other doctors in her building and telling them that she and Lou were leaving.

Becker took up his usual slouch against whatever he happened to be standing in front of, and watched the sizeable collection of tents being strung together about half a mile away from his camp, the thoughts of Colonel Richards' demanding "quarters" going through his mind.

"Wonder what's going on over there," Sgt Williams thought aloud.

"It's probably Colonel Richards paying us a visit. Don't know what he wants, though," Williams wasn't so sure.

"I heard something about a new hospital camp being set up; apparently this Holland character is getting pissed off at the amount of corpses we're dumping on her doorstep,"

"Her? Holland's a woman?"

"More like a girl. Heard someone say she's, like, twenty nine or something," Becker liked the sound of Holland even more, now that he knew this fanatical doctor was a woman, only three years younger than him and had set up shop right next to his contingent.

"There's nothing wrong with that, Williams," he said to his young Sergeant, who detected the tone in his Captain's voice immediately and smirked to himself.

"Permission to speak frankly, Sir?"

"You don't need to ask, go on,"

"You've got no chance,"

I watched Ri practically dancing around the new building, if you could call it a building. It was actually a collection of very large tents, strung together to form a field hospital that was, actually, awesome. Ri flopped herself down on one of the beds that had just been brought in, directing where she wanted everything to go.

"Right you lot, I want six down this end, six on the opposite wall and six down the middle, three and a half metre gaps between them, the life support systems and all that shite on the left, personal bed-side tables on the right, don't get it wrong. Please don't forget to label them all up, properly this time; I don't want to be giving hypo boosts to the wrong patients. Make every ward the same, please," The workers scurried around all over the place, pulling very delicate equipment behind them. I winced as they ran into a wall with a heart rate monitor, but Ri just laughed.

"What are you worrying about, Lou? They can throw the damn things at the ceiling for all I care, as long as they catch it before it hits the floor. Come with me, I wanna show you something," I followed her through the canvas covered corridors and through an entrance.

"That's the only complaint I have about this place," Ri said, pausing in the entrance. "No doors. So, Lou, whaddya think?" I stared around the room, only about five square metres, furnished with a desk, fridge, filing cabinet, even a sofa. I blinked in surprise at Ri, who was smiling in the doorway.

"Is this mine?" I managed to ask, completely shocked at having my own office. Ri nodded, a grin still plastered to her face.

"You can thank Colonel Richards' wife for the sofa, apparently she made him get rid of it as it clashed with the six thousand quid coffee table," Ri smirked at the thought "And I thought my dad was the only overspending git who would ditch six thousand quid on a coffee table. Oh, make yourself useful and go find this Becker guy, will you? I think its time he and I met," I tore myself away from the polished oak desk and jumped into one of the many jeeps waiting outside. All of a sudden I felt sorry for Captain Becker. By Ri's tone of voice, I could tell that this "meeting" wasn't going to be very pleasant for him.

I saw the jeep coming before Captain Becker. He was far too busy fantasising about this Holland, taking strangely huge interest in the wing mirror of one of the armoured personnel carriers. I was pretty darn sure that if a man like Becker could be reduced to gazing at himself in a six inch, magnified wing mirror by this Doctor Holland, the rest of humanity had no chance. I was almost sorry I'd mentioned her in the first place. I threw a small rock at him, bouncing it lightly off his helmet.

"If you're quite done, sir, there's a jeep on its way up,"

"You know what, Williams; I think I'll pay Holland a visit, see how her new hospital's coming along," I sighed.

"Sir, before you go charging off anywhere, THERE'S A JEEP COMING UP THE ROAD!" Becker blinked once or twice at me, seeming to come out of his romantic trance.

"Ok, ok, Williams, no need to start shouting. I heard you the first time, you know," I rolled my eyes in complete despair at my Captain, before greeting the kid behind the wheel of the jeep. He was no more than nineteen or so, and I wondered who on Earth had brought him out here.

"I'm Lou Walker, Doctor Holland's assistant. I'm looking for Captain Becker," I waved Becker over to the jeep, and whispered so that Lou couldn't hear,

"Don't do anything really stupid, sir, Colonel Richards is bound to be there and if you get caught flirting with her, you'll get demoted back down to cadet, you know that,"

"I know what I'm doing, Williams," was all he said before sliding into the jeep. I hoped to Hell that he was right.