Chapter Seven, ‘The Infirmary’
Emily is gone. I can pretend that she’s dead and it’s easier.
Nobody came to help us, you know. Whoever was in charge of telling the army where to go obviously decided that our little corner of the country wasn’t really worth saving; from then, it was a small group made up of whoever was left after that first day.
Most of them I’m not interested in getting to know, so I try and get along with everyone politely, and I keep mostly to myself, escaping whenever it’s possible, whenever nothing’s happening—I usually make my excuses and run off to the bridge that crosses the burn, and follow along the stream until I can walk under the trees and look over the water without being watched.
It’s beautiful here, I can admit, but it’s usually better if I stick to the unknown parts and make myself scarce—which is really easy to do, considering the fact that I get ignored most of the time. None of us are anything special, but the rest of the people I’m fighting with can all connect in a way that’s blindingly obvious, and sometimes I worry that they wonder about who I think I’m fooling. I certainly don’t feel the type of camaraderie you’d expect around here, but I can watch it from a distance and I’m a lot happier for missing out on it.
My only ambition now is to stay here and fight it out, and keep under the radar of everyone else. I already know that if I try too hard on behalf of these people, if I fight too ugly or with too much passion, I’ll only get shunned. That’s why I volunteered to go out to the bridge tomorrow. They all know I can’t feel anything anymore, so for the first time I get left alone and I can watch the reeds along the bank of the river that keeps us all safe.
You always think with these things (well, I did, before I got involved in this one), there’s one line, and that’s where all the people are, that’s where all the soldiers are pushing back. No one tells you about the pockets of fighting, nothing about the spread of it, or how strange it is when you’re the only ones here. The whole country hangs in the air like a sick patient, and you can’t really breathe properly. Half of my time is spent trying not to panic, and if you’re one of those lucky ones who can switch off from the bigger picture, the kind of person who can have fun when they know they’re losing, you’d be better off in my place.
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