2000 hours, 9th August

The sun is still out. Or should I say, it's still light out, since we can't exactly see the sun. Everything’s just a big grey soup. It's been four hours since the skies changed, maybe fifteen minutes since we got back from the beach, meaning that it should be nightfall. It's the least of my concerns right now.

Doctor Klein just finished his assessment of O’Hara. I caught the last few minutes of it. That yahoo who thought it was a good idea to try and pull the arrow out of him really made a mess of everything. The arrow is barbed. If you try to tug it out, it would rip up his insides quite terribly. And unfortunately for O'Hara, someone went and did it. It was easy enough to cut the wooden shaft off, but the arrowhead isn’t going anywhere without some more involved intervention. I’m going to help Doctor Klein with the extraction in a minute, just have to wait for him to brew his cup of joe. Christ. You’d think he was still operating in that tiny clinic in Fresno by how urgently he took to everything.

0100 hours, 10th August

We managed to get the arrowhead out.

I used callipers to part the flesh around the arrowhead while Doctor Klein slotted a pair of forceps into the base. Once the forceps were in, he opened them up in order to grip onto the arrowhead and carefully ease it out. O'Hara was screaming the whole time, even with the morphine in him. That was the good news. The bad news is that the darn thing really did make minced meat of O’Hara’s innards. There was too much haemorrhaging and the stomach was shredded. There was only one thing to be done.

Klein is well-trained, but he’s young and inexperienced. When it comes to book smarts, he's one of the best surgeons I've seen. The other side of the job though, where we have to deal with tough circumstances, that is something he struggles with. Not because he’s too compassionate, no. He’s too cold. Doesn’t give a damn about anything. I had him leave the room while I sat down with O’Hara. In his heavily medicated state, he said to me, ‘Fancy seeing you here, dollface’. Real charming.

I held his hand and smiled the way I usually do. We talked for a while about things. He ran a general store with his folks in Wisconsin. Had a knack for dealing with people apparently. When he asked about what I used to do, I told him I’d been an ER nurse at Manhattan General for a decade and had a fella waiting for me back home. O’Hara scoffed and said, 'What, he some sort of coward? How in the blue blazes could a man sit on his rear while his woman left to serve his country like that?'

It made me laugh. Then I told him, 'Well as a matter of fact, Mister O'Hara, my Harry happened to have lost his legs in the Somme when he was twenty-five years young. If you keep talking about him like that, maybe you'll be losing your legs too.'

Instead of apologising, he said the most arrogant, uniquely male thing I've ever heard. With a smirk, he said, 'Lost his legs? You'd have to be a fool to misplace those.'

Eventually, he started to doze off thanks to the drugs. I could hear how hard it was for him. The simple act of breathing that we all take for granted.

When he was fast asleep, I gave him enough morphine to make sure he never woke up.

I came to the bridge after that. I couldn’t stay another second in that infirmary. Not tonight. There are only two men at their stations at this time; Lieutenant Jackson, the helmsman, was guiding the Respite along the coastline as Ensign Mendez mapped it out on a piece of paper. They’re being kind enough not to pester me as I’m just loafing around writing this all down. It’s highly irregular, but I suppose they heard what happened. Maybe they’re just pitying me.

Now I’m upset that we didn’t get to retrieve those other bodies from the beach. O’Hara and a few others that passed during the last day or so are going to be needing burial at sea. I don’t think anyone wants to set foot on that blasted island again, even for a burial detail. It would’ve been nice for the others to be part of it, but I suppose it just wasn’t in God’s plan.

0400 hours, 10th August

I had a dream about Tanaka. It woke me up in such a fright that I couldn’t go back to sleep. I saw him floating in the sea, surrounded by bits of pulverised metal. He had both arms and both legs blown off. What was left was cracked and burnt like a strip of bacon left on a stove someone forgot to turn off. I want to vomit just thinking about it. I just don’t get it. Why wasn’t it O’Hara? That I’d understand. That makes sense. I’ve had dreams about men I’ve had to put under before. But Tanaka? He’s fine. The only thing wrong with him is he needs to grow a spine. He’s safe. He’s okay.

I’m going to go check on him.

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-

The bodies. The bodies are gone. I had them laid out on the beds with sheets over them. I went running to the captain as fast as I could. He sounded the general alarm. The sailors turned the ship upside down. They looked behind us into the water. From what they tell me, there’s no sign of any of them. Not a single bone, piece of meat, or drop of blood. I couldn’t help but think about whatever that was on the island. Did it follow us onto the ship? Did it take them? Without O’Hara, Winters is in command of the marines. Given his heritage as well as his relative lack of combat experience, there were quite a few men who were less than keen on the idea. He gave them a good throttling before he organised patrols at all hours to make sure we didn’t have any unsolicited passengers. He also made a point to tell me to keep an eye out for any suspicious sailors. We wouldn’t dare mention that to Westvallen; questioning the integrity of a captain’s crew was a surefire way to get on his bad side.

I was impressed by how Rachael conducted herself. She kept her cool, did everything the captain and I asked, and didn’t make a fuss. Kelly, however, was in tears the entire time. Rachael took the initiative and took some time to distract her by giving her a couple menial things to do. It doesn’t change the fact that she’s stubborn and pig-headed, though. Utterly unladylike.

I don’t know why anyone would want to take the corpses, but it’s easier to believe that people did this instead of whatever that was on the beach. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep now. I think I’m going to gather all the nurses and tell them to adopt a buddy system; no one goes anywhere or does anything without a friend tagging along with them. Doctor Klein seems emotionally bothered for once. Not as much as what I’d call the normal amount for a human being, but it’s something.

Tanaka was fine. Shaken by everything, but he’s okay. I need to pull myself together. There’s enough going on without my needless fretting over boys who clearly don’t need any help. I think Tanaka reminds me of him. He would’ve been around the same age by now.

1200 hours, 10th August

I managed to get an hour of sleep at the very least. After a coffee to help prop myself up, I tried to focus on seeing to the other casualties. Some needed bandage changes, others more drugs, and some just needed a smile and a reminder that someone was there for them. Kelly came over eventually and relieved me so I could go up and get some air and something to eat. She’s a sweetheart. I still can’t quite get used to dehydrated potatoes and powdered eggs, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. Not by much, though.

The first thing I saw when I stepped onto the deck was a dense field of wooden shrapnel floating in the water. Planks, splinters, entire walls and floorboards. They were everywhere. The bridge, fully crewed at this point, was swallowed by tense silence as everyone sent their eyes out and tried to squint through the bone-white fog. I leaned over to Mendez and asked what the deal with all the debris was. He said that some of the parts looked like they belonged to galleys and frigates, maybe. Old sail ships.

Winters had his men line the sides of the ship with their weapons at the ready. I don’t know what we thought would leap out at us, but after what happened on the beach, we knew that something was out there trying to pick us off.

Knowing I wouldn’t be of much use, I went back down to the infirmary. Kelly asked me if we found the bodies yet, I had to tell her that there was no sign they were ever here to begin with apart from our memories of them. With the help of the other nurses and Doctor Klein, we did what we could for the injured and realised that we don’t have any methods of restocking medicine and other supplies. That means we’re going to run out of fuel eventually too if we don’t figure out how to get out of here. Swell, I’m hearing shouting from above decks now. I suppose I’m going back up there.

-

Mendez tells me the survivor was lying unconscious on a plank of wood out on the water. Caradine, two sailors, and Tanaka went out there in a lifeboat and to take a look. One of the sailors fell into the drink as they were helping the man into the lifeboat. He never came back up. No bubbles. Nothing. This is going to seem selfish, but I’m glad I wasn’t there. It sounded like it would’ve been horrible to see. The survivor was still out cold by the time he was brought onboard the Respite. Klein and I gave him a once over in the infirmary. He has bruising on his left brow, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. He has hypothermia. He’s wearing, well, I would call it a one-shouldered dress. Not exactly doing much about the cold. He has a head of thick, curly black hair, olive skin, and the build of an olympic athlete. I started bundling him up under some blankets to hopefully warm him up. That was when his eyes snapped open. I almost died on the spot.

He leapt out of the bed, shouting in some foreign language. His eyes were frantic. They leapt from me, to Klein, to the bewildered casualties nearby in their beds, then to the floor and walls. A few marines were there as security detail, so I had to threaten to cut them unless they lowered their weapons and backed off.

I tried raising my hands and talking to him, but it was as clear as day that he didn’t speak a word of English. No one recognised the language he spoke. It took a few minutes of smiling warmly at him and slowly inching forward, but I managed to get close to him. I pointed at myself and said my name. I repeated it a couple of times before I pointed at him and nodded expectantly. He said ‘Alkybeeahdees’. At least I think that’s what he said and how it’s spelt. I had no idea what he said the first time, but he repeated it for me. Then he pointed at me and with a peculiar accent, said ‘Grace’.

He was calm then, so I sat him down, bundled him up in blankets, and tried to tell him to keep his chest warm. He probably had no idea what I was trying to tell him. He has this detached and fearful look in his eyes. Maybe he belongs to some remote fishing village and he’s never seen a big ship like this before. That could be why he’s so uneasy. I need to go and speak to the captain now. Seeing as I have a rapport of five minutes with the man, he wants to know my impressions of him. Honestly, all I can think is that if he was out there by himself and survived, maybe we have a chance too.