Gunslinger

“Yes honey, it’s me”, Emily cried. Dana still looked very confused and she tried to sit up, and frowned at the tubes and wires attached to her arms and chest. What the hell was going on? Dana looked around the room, confused about what time period she was in. Was she still in the past, and was Emily a figment or her imagination, or had she been returned to the present?
“Where am I?”, Dana asked. Emily pressed Dana back gently against the mattress of the hospital bed. Emily realized that Dana was confused, and she smiled softly, trying to calm her obviously agitated friend.
“You’re in Huntington Beach Hospital. You and Brian were brought here when you both collapsed outside Johnny’s a few weeks ago.” Dana’s eyes clouded with even more confusion. How could Johnny’s have only happened a few weeks ago, when she and Brian had been in the past for almost a year?
“What do you mean only weeks ago?”, Dana asked. “But what about the roadblock, and where’s Brian?”, she exclaimed.
“Roadblock, what roadblock?”, Emily asked, her brows knitting together in confusion.
“Where the GI shot the Germans and the British guys”, Dana mumbled. Emily’s eyes widened. Surely what the old woman had told them couldn’t be real, could it? Another part of her brain asked her how could Dana possibly have known what the old woman had told them, as she had been lying in this exact same hospital bed at the time. She took a deep breath before she spoke to Dana again.
“What’s the last thing that you remember?”, she asked Dana.
“Brian and I had just driven the privates to the roadblock, and I think I got shot”, she replied. Emily’s eyes widened.
“Shot!?”, she exclaimed. Dana couldn’t feel any pain in her chest, however she recalled the pain that she had felt at the moment before everything went white.
“I was shot in the chest, I think”, she replied. “And then everything went white, like it did when I was standing outside Johnny’s with Brian.”
“Where was this? Where were you when you got shot?”, Emily asked, wondering if both she and Dana were losing their minds..
“In Zell am See”, Dana replied.
“Where the hell’s that?”, Emily asked. She had never heard of the place before.
“It’s in Austria”, Dana replied. “The whole company was sent there to occupy it and deal with the POW’s.” Emily wasn’t sure what to say to that, but before she could say anything else, the door to the hospital room burst open and Jimmy came bounding inside. He had obviously heard them speaking, and he leapt across the room in a single bound, and pulled Dana into bone crushing hug.
“Danarooni!!!! Oh my god, my dwarf is back!”
“What’s going on?”, Dana asked. “Where’s Brian?”
“He woke up yesterday and went home. He’s fine”, Jimmy replied.
“He went home?”, Dana asked, her eyes wide. “He didn’t come to see me?” Jimmy and Emily shared a look over Dana’s head.
“No”, Jimmy said slowly. “He’d be the last person to come in here, Danes. You know that.” His eyes narrowed in confusion when she saw the stricken look cross Dana’s face.
“But, I don’t understand”, Dana sighed, feeling a constricting pain in her chest.
“Honey, are you alright?”, Emily asked her. Dana shook her head.
“Oh my god, did I dream it all?’, she said softly, tears falling from her eyes. “Did I dream the whole thing?”

She looked up at Emily, and Emily felt her eyes welling with tears at the stricken look in Dana’s eyes. She had never seen Dana looking as lost as she did at that moment and she wondered what had caused it.
“What are you talking about?”, Emily asked. “What dream?”
“About the war”, Dana responded. Emily and Jimmy stared at her wide-eyed, and Jimmy whispered in Emily’s ear.
“She can’t be talking about what that old woman told us, can she?”, he asked. “I mean, really, that shit can’t be real.” Both of them turned back to Dana, who had rested her head back on the pillow and was staring at the ceiling. Her eyes were scrunched tightly closed, and tears were leaking softly out of the sides of her eyes.
“A woman came to us last week and said that you and Brian were in World War 2.” Dana’s eyes lost some of their confusion, and she tried to sit up again, wincing when the monitor stuck to her chest pulled on her skin.
“Madeline! She was here?”, she exclaimed.
“So you and Brian were really in World War 2?”, Jimmy asked. “Holy fucking shitballs”, he said as he sank heavily into the seat next to Dana’s bed.
“So why the concern about Brian?”, Emily asked. “I’m sorry hun, but the last time we spoke you were telling me how much you hated him.” Dana broke down into noisy sobs.
“I….I love him”, she eventually muttered. Jimmy’s mouth fell open and he stared at Dana in shock. He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by the doctor entering the room.

He ran a battery of tests, but couldn’t find anything wrong with Dana, apart from a new two inch scar just below her breastbone.
“Well, there’s nothing I can find physically wrong with you but I’d like to keep you here overnight for observation”, he advised Dana. She barely heard his words as she lay back against the pillow. After he left the room, Emily and Jimmy both turned to her.
“So what happened with you and Brian over there?”, Emily asked her.
“It was kind of weird to start off with and we just acted like we normally did with each other, and then he started to change after the first time he walked in on me in the shower tent”, Dana began.
“So Syn saw you naked?”, Jimmy said with a leer. “You got a hot body, of course he’s gonna drool, babe.” He stopped when he saw the look of pain on Dana’s face, and he instantly wanted to just pull her into his arms and hold her. He didn’t have romantic feelings for her, but hell everyone, with the exception of Brian, just loved the short girl to death. She had a way of just getting into your heart without seeming to try. He often wondered just why Brian didn’t like her.
“You’re not helping Jim Jam”, she muttered.
“I’m sorry hon”, he said softly. “You know I’m always here for you, right?, he asked. She nodded slowly, her hands clenching and unclenching in her lap.
“So he saw you naked. What happened?”, Emily prodded. Dana sighed.
“Nothing really happened until Bastogne and we were in a fox hole during a barrage.”
“What the hell’s a barrage?”, Jimmy interrupted.
“We were getting fired on by artillery, and were stuck in a foxhole together, and one thing led to another….”, Dana’s voice trailed off.
“You two got it on during an artillery barrage?!”, Jimmy exclaimed with wide eyes. “Damn that’s kind of hot.” Dana rolled her eyes. Emily glanced at him, annoyed, and he mimed zipping his lips closed and throwing away the key. Despite the pain she was feeling in her heart at the moment, Dana smiled at her friend’s antics
“And that’s what started it?”, Emily prompted. Dana nodded.
“We were together from then”, she sighed. “At first I thought he just liked me because I was the only girl around, but he was always concerned about me, and then he told me he loved me.”
“Wait, what? Syn told you he loved you?”, Emily asked in surprise. Jimmy’s eyes widened.
“Holy fucking stallion ducks!”, he exclaimed.
“He always told me”, Dana repeated softly. “And now he doesn’t remember any of it, does he?”. Jimmy and Emily both shook their heads sadly.
“I’m sorry hun. He doesn’t remember anything, or if he has he hasn’t told us.”
“He’d tell me”, Jimmy said, eyeing Dana’s tearful eyes with regret. “Believe me, if he remembered even some of that he’d tell me.”
“What am I going to do?”, Dana asked, looking at her two friends with sadness in her eyes. “I love him, and how am I going to face him if he’s reverted back to the asshole who hates me?”
“I don’t know, my little munchkin”, Jimmy said, sitting beside her on the bed and pulling her into his arms. “But know this”, he said, kissing her temple softly, “we will all be there for you, no matter what happens.”
“But not the one I want to be there”, Dana muttered under her breath. Jimmy heard her, however, and his hold on her tightened. He just wished there was some way to jog Brian’s memory but short of dragging him to a World War 2 re-enactment he couldn’t think of a single thing.

Dana glanced around the room, her mind a swirl of emotions. She noticed a vase of yellow roses sitting on the small table next to her hospital bed.
“Aww, thanks guys. They’re beautiful”, she sighed.
“There’re not from us, hon. Two old guys bought them in.” Dana looked at Emily in confusion.
“Two old guys?”, she questioned. “Did they saw who they were?”
“There’s a card”, Jimmy said, fishing the card out of the flowers and handing it to Dana. She opened the small envelope and her eyes widened in shock.
“Oh my god they’re from Somerville and O’Shea!”, she squealed. “But how would they know to look for me here?”
“Who the hell are they?”, Jimmy asked. “How the hell do you know them?”
“Somerville was my major, and O’Shea was a sergeant like me”, Dana replied. Emily and Jimmy looked at each in shock. Damn, it was sounding more and more like Dana and Brian had really gone back in time.
“Damn, hon I just can’t picture you running around with a gun. And how the hell did you get those scars?”
“Scars?”, Dana asked. “Sonofobitch, did I really scar from when I got hurt? That fucking blows.”
“How did they happen?”, Jimmy asked, pointing to the scar that was visible on Dana’s shoulder as her hospital gown had slipped off her shoulder slightly.
“This was when I got hit with some shrapnel from the exploding tank”, Dana replied.
“What the fuck!!!”, Jimmy explained. “You got hit by an exploding tank?”
“I got off a lot more lightly than some of the other guys”, Dana replied softly. She grew a little sombre as she thought of the friends that she had lost.
“Somebody you got close to got hurt, huh?”, Emily asked.
“Yeah, Pagliaro”, Dana responded. “He lost one of his legs in Bastogne. Last I heard he was being shipped back home. Some of the other guys died, but I wasn’t as close to them.”
“Well, you get to home tomorrow”, Emily said with a smile. Dana wondered at that moment just what she was going home to. Would Brian remember at all, or would he act as he had before they had journeyed to the past? Dana wasn’t sure she would be able to cope if he was an asshole again.