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A Beautiful Day
    It was a quiet day on the outskirts of France. Not many soldiers had flooded the usually crowded hospitals. Still, Elizabeth was glad to be slipping out of the abandoned school at the end of her shift. She checked the date at the top of the day's newspaper as she departed: August 19th, 1914. The days were long and Elizabeth found it easy to lose track of the days, as she worked as a travelling nurse. Once, she had even confused the date a whole week off. 
    Every day, Elizabeth returned to her home, alone for months now as her husband William was off fighting somewhere on the Eastern front. He wrote often, but his letters were dull and emotionless. Elizabeth found it harder and harder to find the pieces of her husband in those letters, buried beneath months of nothing but war. While Elizabeth found it easy to channel her fear and loneliness into her work, William seemed to have nowhere to put all he was feeling, thus it stayed locked inside, slowly taking her old William away. Elizabeth found she liked her work more and more. While originally it was only to take in money while her husband was away, she quickly grew to love what she did. Getting to travel all over France and the surrounding European front was dangerous work, but Elizabeth was very good at what she did, and she knew many young men would be lost without her. 
    As the months carried on, summer turned to fall. The war got colder and harder, and, almost as if her prayers had been answered, her William was returned to her. But, she quickly found, this was hardly her William at all; and if this was an answered prayer, it was done out of pity, not love. The William that was returned to Elizabeth in the autumn of 1915 was hardly the man she had once known and loved. Elizabeth knew to expect this, knew war changed all men. She had seen it firsthand. And yet, seeing her once bright Will turned broken and bitter, it tore at Elizabeth like nothing she had seen in her time working as a nurse. She wished there was something she could do. She was regarded as the best, everyone knew. And while his leg had been amputated as best as possible, it was his mind Elizibeth could not fix. 
     And so, Elizabeth tried to return to the normal they had shared before the war had begun. She tried to take care of William, and she tried to settle into her work around the home. This was all fine. It was not so fine however, when Elizabeth tried to return to work one day. William protested quite strongly against Elizabeth's returning to work. She tried to explain how good she was at her work, how important and needed she was to the war. Still, William protested. When Elizabeth gently tried to point out that Will could not work because of his leg, he got angry and loud. For a moment, Elizabeth feared what he would do.
Following William's explosive outrage at her attempt to return to work, Elizabeth dropped the subject, and tried to return to being his old wife. She tried to be happy doting on him all day, as she tried to be happy cooking and cleaning as she once had. The Elizabeth of a year ago would have been overjoyed at getting her Will to herself all day, of getting to stay at home and fuss about the small, mundane things that occupied it. The Elizabeth of now, though, had had a taste of what it was like to be really important. Really needed. Beyond being needed to cook and clean and take care of her war-toughened husband all day, Elizabeth's work could save lives. Elizabeth longed to be back in the heat of a hastily set up med camp. She wished she could be one of the nurses who got to run into the fray and piece young men back together. She yearned for the travel and the constant chaos that was her work. She envied the women whose husbands had not yet come back. And that thought scared her more than anything. What kind of person was she to wish her husband was still miles away, fighting for his life every second? How cruel was it to blame him for the way he was now? Many women would never see their husbands again. How selfish was she to have hers back and mostly whole, yet long for him to be gone? 
     As fall hardened into winter, and Elizabeth wrestled with her conflicting thoughts, she sank deeper and deeper into her loneliness. It seemed she was lonelier now than she had ever been when William was away fighting. How could that be? She had him here with her, he'd been home for months now, and yet she found herself feeling more and more low. Until one brisk morning. While brewing a fresh pot of coffee for herself and William, she heard a dull commotion from not too far away. She knew William heard it too; ever since the war; he'd been jumpy and easily prone to panic in busy situations. Elizabeth went to the front window to see what was going on, and was surprised to find two figures running to their front door. Elizabeth went to meet them at the door before they could all come barging into their home. Will was easier to relax alone, but when others saw him in his panic, the rest of the day was rather long and unpleasant for Elizabeth.