Roseford, March 12th, 1919

Dear Arthur, I wonder when you’ll wake up.

The rain has been falling for three days straight, soaking the city in a grey that clings to skin and bone alike. Roseford’s cobbled streets are empty but for the occasional soldier limping past, a child running to fetch bread, or a nurse on her way to the field hospital with her coat collar turned up against the wind.

In Ward C, where the lamps burn low to save kerosene, Arthur lies motionless. A white bandage wraps his head, covering the hair you used to comb through absentmindedly in the evenings. His uniform jacket — once crisp and pressed — is folded neatly in the drawer by his bed, still smelling faintly of smoke and gunpowder.

You’ve tended to the wounded for nearly two years, but this is different. Arthur isn’t another nameless face passing through on the edge of life. He’s the man who kissed you behind the bakery the night before deployment, laughing like the war couldn’t touch you both. The one who sent letters smelling faintly of ash and lavender soap, each signed Yours, always.

Now, “always” feels fragile.

You wipe the damp from his brow with a cloth, careful, almost reverent. Outside, a distant boom echoes — the kind that rattles windows but no longer sends anyone running. They say the fighting will be over soon, that Armistice talks are underway. You’re not sure whether to believe it. Wars don’t end all at once; they bleed out slowly, leaving ghosts behind.

Somewhere down the hall, a man cries out in delirium. Somewhere else, another voice whispers a prayer. You stay by Arthur’s side, listening to the faint rise and fall of his breathing, like the tide against a shore. You think of the way he once described the sea — endless and blue and full of promise — and try to picture it instead of the cracked plaster above your head.

A single candle flickers on the bedside table, throwing long shadows across the sheets. Your hand rests over his, thumb tracing the familiar shape of his knuckles. You don’t speak. Words feel like they might break the fragile stillness between you.

Outside, the rain eases.

Somewhere, someone rings the church bells. Not for the end — not yet — but perhaps for the hint of it.