Timeless

Chapter 24

A/N: Aaaaaand.....one more just to leave you with this historically inaccurate cliffhanger! Thank you!

If Doctor Kathryn Egan thought that the most humiliation she would receive was the injustice faced at Lieutenant Hausmann's hands, she was sorely mistaken. Because being forced to strip and change into clothes in front of those SS Agents was far worse. The way that they looked at her made her feel as though she were just a piece of meat or some sort of thing to be devoured.

She clenched her teeth and she took the humiliation and the whisperings. She took the pain and when she was forced into a car with the other nurses, Kathryn couldn't help but feel a small sense of relief at the sight of her girls. Inez and Beatrice looked worse for wear, thick bruising still prominent against their skin and Inez sported a black eye. Upon her entrance into the car, Kathryn found herself linking hands with the girls.

Beatrice still had handprints and bruises around her wrists. Maggie was next into the car, eyes empty as her red hair fell around her face. Inez leaned forward and untangled a piece, unable to force a smile onto her face. Then there was Tina and Annie, shoved ungracefully into the car and shivering together for warmth. It was immediately clear to Kathryn that Annie was biting back some sort of insult.

"Don't," Kathryn murmured in a quiet warning tone.

Annie looked at her in surprise. Kathryn had been the one to shoot those men. She had been the first to fight back. But that was then and it was different. There was no way out of this. So her jaw snapped shut with a look of anger. But Tina just grabbed her elbow gently and held onto her.

"So a camp," Tina said softly. "There's not gonna be other women there."

Kathryn paused. "No," she agreed. "So we stick together. We keep our heads held high and we don't leave each other alone."

No one said anything. No one needed to. They knew that the only way that they got through this was going to be together. They had come into this together, they had bled and died with one another, and they had suffered the same abuse at the hands of those soldiers. No, these six women were forever tied to one another in sickening ways that they could never escape or forget.

It was unspoken that Kathryn was their leader here too. That she was going to lead them through. They had all thought—that when Kathryn returned with the Allies that they were saved. That the long nightmare was over and that they could all go home. They had tricked themselves into thinking that being in that truck had saved their lives. All it had done was make them more of a target.

Still, it was Doctor Kathryn Egan that had shot those men. It was Doctor Kathryn Egan that had held them all together in the two days since the assault had first occurred. It was Kathryn Egan that kept them together in the prisons—vocalized and advocated for them. She was their leader and their protector. And they would do their best to protect her too.

The sights passed by quickly through the car windows. It all just seemed to be a lot of the same thing for the women though. Trees and forests—things that reminded them of the hospital that they had tried to hold onto, tried to defend. It was where their friends had died.

Charity, Evelyn, Rhoda, and Dorothea deserved to be here with them. Not lying dead in an American Red Cross Truck that was likely being recovered by the Allies as they sat there. They would be reported as missing in action—at least until they got to the camp and their identities and information was sent on ahead back to their families and original bases.

Kathryn didn't even want to look out the window at first. It made bile rise in her throat to stare at the trees. Instead, she focused her attention on her hands. Twin handprint bruises still marked her wrists—and she was missing three of her nails. There was an aching bite to the missing nails and she wasn't even sure how she had lost them—