A/N: This story takes place in the 1940s during World War II in Kensington, London, England. I wrote it for two contests on GaiaOnline. The first is about self-injury and self-harm and for the second I had a choice of three prompts—I used the song 'Stand In The Rain' by Superchick. For this piece I was inspired by the book Atonement, which is an amazing read. Not all of my information is accurate, nor are the characters real. I made it all up. I suppose it is more of a realistic fiction though. The even that happens in this story was titled 'The Blitz', so if you're interested in reading about it (it's really quite interesting and horrifying at the same time) just look that up on Wikipedia.
Please enjoy and review with constructive criticism.

“Ne me laisse pas” Sabine begged.

“Je n’ai pas du choix.”

“Ne me laisse pas” she repeated.

“Au revoir, ma petite soeur.” Claude walked across the street and into the bus, taking a seat in the back corner—the corner that she was blind to. Sabine dropped her head in her hands. Her shoulders shook violently with emotion. If she lost Claude, there would be no one left. Why did he fail to understand that? Their father had lost his life less than a year before, when the war had begun. Their mother had sent them off to London, where she thought it was safe, and went off into hiding. Claude had been in university to be a doctor and Sabine was training to be a nurse. He didn’t have to fight—he could nurse other soldiers back to good health. Why was that not enough?

She heard the engine of the bus start up. She pulled her head from her hands. It was leaving…Claude was leaving!

“Claude! Reviens! Tu dois me retourner! Claude” she screamed, running after the bus. Her cap flew off of her head and into a puddle of mud, but that didn’t matter to her. “Claude!” Her cries echoed the streets and people turned to stare. Her piercing screams continued until the bus had long gone, invisible in the distance. She picked up her cap and sat on the curb of the sidewalk, her head once again in her hands.

“Claude…”

---

There was so much to do. St. Mary Abbots Hospital was an acute hospital, yet they had, as of late, held certain patients for so long. It made sense for them to, these patients were soldiers. Ever so often they’d take in a few more suffering from septicaemia or in need of amputations or with skin burnt so badly it crumpled at the touch. The trainee nurses would have to help out if it became too much.

Sabine stood in the lavatory, reading her last letter from Claude. She bit her lip as a lump formed in her throat. It was so hard to read his letters without crying, but she managed. Not a tear would drip on the sacred paper that her brother had written on. She feared that if she started, she would not have the ability stop.

Le 7 août 1940

Chère Sabine,

I miss you. I hope to be home soon. I hope that this war ends. But, don’t we all?

The other day one of my good friends died. I’m very sad, but now I remember what I’m fighting for. I was questioning just the other day why I am here. I was thinking of just letting my death come and to stand in front of a gun’s line of fire. But, little sister, I can’t do that. I must return to you and to Cambridge where I will become a doctor. More than ever, I wish I was already one now to help those who need it here.

I must end this now. Please write back and tell me how your training is.

Ton frère

Claude.

The sharp knife shone in the bright lights of the restroom. Sabine stood in a stall, the knife held tightly in her hand, with the bottom of her skirt pulled up to her hip. Her bare thigh was red and the skin was raw. She took the knife and pressed it against her upper thigh. Immediately, blood streamed down her leg like a tear. She cut a clean line downward, closing her eyes tight. It stung brutally. She only allowed herself to gasp in pain once.

She pulled a roll of tissues from the toilet paper dispenser and let the wet blood soak up into it. She wiped the perspiration that had formed on her forehead and licked her dry lips. Claude’s letter had been put safely put away with the others in her special box, which was closed and on the ground, near the base of the toilet.

This was what she did every time she read one of Claude’s letters. It wasn’t out of depression, though she was close to it, being alone, but to signify the pain he might go through everyday. Each month, when a new letter came, she’d pick at the scabs and re-cut. It was disgusting for Sabine but it was something she had to do everyday to keep Claude alive—that’s what she thought. She had developed obsessive-compulsive disorder while he was gone. It had begun the day the she had received Claude’s second letter in March. That day, as all days went, she had been stressing for his life. The morning that day, while cutting old bandages from a soldier’s leg, glued by his dry blood, she accidentally nipped her finger. When she received the letter at noon, she found good news: Claude was still alive! He had only been injured once, according to his last letter, but he was in perfect shape. The weeks afterward she had nightmares of Claude’s fate—each ending with his death. It wasn’t until the next time she cut herself, accidentally, that the nightmares stopped. She imagined him being alright.

Sabine walked down the hospital halls, her shoes clacking the tiles, the only sound in the silence. She should be getting back now—there seemed to always be something for her to do. But, first, she had to put her box back in her room.

The room was small, containing only one bed and a shelving unit behind it. She put the box, which was made of thick, red cardboard with metal corners to hold it together, on the ground and opened it to look once again. On one side there were Claude’s letters, each folded neatly and on the other there were what looked like little, red and bumpy ropes—these were Sabine’s scabs. In the middle were squares of tissues, folded just as neatly in the middle, a large stain of blood on each. They may not be shrapnel pieces that had lodged themselves into her skin or bullets that had pierced her arm, but they were her wounds from the war and it pleased her to think that all of it was keeping Claude alive.

She carefully placed the lid back onto the box, kissed the top, and slid it back underneath her bed. A smile formed on her raspberry lips as she whispered, “Tu est sauf, mon frère.”

“Nurse Channing,” a thick Irish accent said. At the sound of her name, Sabine turned on her heel. Sister Kinsley stood so close; Sabine’s nose almost touched her forehead. Her black eyes glared up at the trainee, piercing with authority. Sabine didn’t flinch.

“Oui, Sister Kinsley?”

Sister Kinsley nostrils flared. “It’s ‘yes’, I don’t want to hear you speaking French around here.” Sabine nodded, knowing it was not wise to tell her that she had simply forgotten how much the sister hated the language. The sister also hated the accent, but there was nothing Sabine could do about that.

“The Corporal—” Sister Kinsley began, sniffing heavily before restarting, “The Corporal Ryan’s got shrapnel in his side. Pull it out then call me to bandage it up.”

“Yes, Sister Kinsley.”

“What’s a French woman doing in London?” the corporal asked.

Sabine got out the tools that she’d be using to pull out the shrapnel and disinfect his side. “I am studying to be a nurse,” she responded.

“Don’t they need those in France?”

“I ‘ave been sent ‘ere by my mother to be away from the war.”

“Yet you’re training to be a nurse—the closest position a woman can get to the war?”

Sabine ignored him and picked up the tweezers. His shirt had been pulled off, revealing the shrapnel in his side, not all the way into his side and not all the way out.

“Monsieur, this will probably ‘urt a lot. Brace yourself, please.” The corporal breathed in heavily and closed his eyes tight. The tweezers were firm around the loose end. “Ready?”

“Oh, hell. No, I am not ready. Just do it,” his voice was pained, he knew it would hurt. Sabine steadied her right hand with her left before she began to pull. She tried to get it as quick as she could, without tugging too much. The corporal would squeak every few moments. It must have taken a minute, which seemed like an hour, before she finally got it out of his skin.

“Gah!” he hollered.

“It is okay, corporal! It is out!” Sabine said.

The corporal’s mood had spiralled downward. “Just get me some strong alcohol.”

Sabine nodded and started to walk to get it, only to make eye contact with Sister Kinsley. She was slowly waddling over to where Sabine was with Corporal Ryan. She stood in the same spot, staring at the sister as she approached.

“You can stop working on him—I’ve had enough screaming today. Go outside or something.”

Sabine, feeling as though she was being treated unjustly, simply nodded and walked out of the room and into the hallway. Her feet clacked against the tiles of the silent hall all the way to the front doors. Her hands pushed it open and she breathed in the humid air. It was raining but she walked outside anyways. The sky was dark with clouds and her skin had already started to feel sticky.

Coming up the walk to the hospital was the postman. Sabine’s heart fluttered at the sight of him.

“Monsieur!” she called. “Do you ‘ave a letter for me? For Sabine Channing?” Perhaps Claude’s letter had arrived?

The postman looked through his bag, pulling out about ten that, she assumed, were for patients and staff of the hospital. He flipped through each one, reading the name of the person it was addressed to. He looked up at her nervously before handing her the letter. “Have a good day, ma’am.”

“You as well!” Sabine said happily, waving at him as he entered the hospital. She knew she was soaked, but she wanted to read Claude’s letter so badly—she could do her disgusting business later. Her hands fumbled with the envelope, which was a different kind than Claude usually sent. She hadn’t even paid attention to the fact that the address had been written by type-writer. Her eyes skimmed over the letter, widening when she reached the end. And as quickly as she had opened the letter, she shoved it into her skirt pocket and threw the envelope on the ground.

Her eyes looked forward and no where else as she walked down the street to the bus station. She walked slowly to the back of the dirty, chilly bus and took a seat by the window, leaning up against it and staring out as it drove away from the hospital. In the streets, people were out running their errands before shops closed. It was nearing the late afternoon. She stared at those people who carelessly did their things. How she envied them.

It might have been an hour later that Sabine, after transferring from bus to bus, had gone as far as she wanted to. She was at St. Toksvig’s Dock.

Her socks squished the rain water that had built up in her shoes and made noises as she walked across a field near the dock. She plopped down, up against a whitebeam tree, not caring at all that her dress would get dirty and muddy. She looked up toward the sky, letting the rain splatter against her face. When she was alone she tended to remind herself of Claude. But this, now, it was too much. As if a dam had burst, tears suddenly began to fall down her face. Sobs escaped her lips—sobs she had been holding for nine months since her brother had left. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. She didn’t care that she looked like a maniac, shaking as she pounding her fists and pulled at the wet, grassy ground.

“Claude!” she screamed. “Claude!” Her breathing was unsteady and uncontrolled. She threw her head back several times, smacking it against the tree. “Claude!”

Soon it wasn’t just her screaming. Not long after she had started did the screams of the city begin. At first she didn’t hear it over her own screams of pain and sadness, but then they got louder.

“Luftwaffe!” a man hollered, running past her. She looked to the sky, tears still streaming down her face as she mumbled nonsense in French. A plane zoomed in the air, something dropping from the bottom and their was no doubt in her mind, with the screaming and what fell out, that the German air forces, the Luftwaffe, had come.

She wrapped her arms around herself in the last few seconds of the bomb’s time in the air, screwing her eyes shut. “Attend, Claude. Je viens”