It was always jarring to catch sight of her own reflection in the curve of a bedpan or a dirty window, let alone a real mirror. The basement underneath the doctor's office where she had spent the majority of the last nine years hadn't had one. She'd asked for it to be removed after the doctor had taken her first child from her, and when little Chloè had complained, she'd shattered it instead. Strangely, the guilt from one incident - intentionally taking from her sister that small comfort - far outweighed what little she had allowed herself to feel over the child. It had been the worst that first time. Each time after that she felt less and less. 

There was no help for any of it now, though, not the dark memories from the occupation, nor the dark nights that had proceeded it. Least of all the harshness of her own reflection staring at her from a different plane. Most of her flame red hair was tucked carefully beneath her stark white nurse's cap, though of course there was that ever present rebellious coil that dangled into hard green eyes. Everything about her screamed no-nonsense, the sort of cool professionalism that came of having grown up first beneath a doctor's office, then any number of hospital rooms. She had been head nurse now for only a few short months, but the assignment had felt more natural to her than anything had since the night her parents had died. 

Turning now away from the mirror, the young nurse tucked that single wisp of whimsy back behind her ear and made her way down the hall to begin her rounds. Two girls had reported in sick again this evening, and she herself was now beginning her third shift, putting her at eighteen hours on her feet and nearly twenty-four without sleep, though simple matters of fatigue had ceased to bother her long ago. At some point, she would have to take responsibility for her own exhaustion, but in her mind, her duty to the men under her purview far outweighed the mere necessity of rest. 

She had made it past just two rooms, one empty (and unmade - she would have to tell the new girl, Renée, she needed to keep up with her empty beds just as much as her full ones), the other dark and silent, when a quiet moan issued from the third. The nurse stopped short, green eyes flitting down to the clipboard in her unscarred hand, but the young man's name was not there. She had the doctor's notes, of course, and while they provided her with enough information to spark her own nurse's intuition as to what the moan meant, she'd long since discovered soldiers as young as these liked to hear their own names, or at least their own language first. 

She scanned the list again, looking for the nurse assigned to him, knowing she needed to finish her own rounds, and came up empty. It was late, and most of the men were sleeping. She could not imagine there would be any great emergency if the others were made to wait. In the meantime, this young man was alone and in pain, and she had never been the type to let things lie when she knew there were things she could do. 

She disappeared briefly back down the hall and returned a moment later with a silver tray - this own obscuring her own reflection with a syringe and a small, dark bottle. Her ministrations were quick and clean and it was only when she finished that she was able to offer a smile that was surprisingly sincere for a woman with eyes as hard as hers. 

"Hello," she said quietly. "Do you know where you are?"