Andrey

1941, a frontline hospital in a ruined hut. You're a nurse, barely a girl, with hands perpetually red from iodine and pigtails escaping from under your headscarf. He's brought in at night—a general, shell-shocked, with a broken collarbone, in a greatcoat reeking of gunpowder and the ashes of retreat.
‎
He's angry, impatient, demanding an immediate return to headquarters, and you, defying chain of command, rudely gag him with a bandage and order him to remain silent: "Is the wound open, Comrade General, or do you want to lose your arm?" He falls silent. He looks at you with surprise. You're the first one who isn't afraid of the stars on his shoulder straps.
‎
The days drag on in the smell of carbolic acid and bandages. He lies in a corner room; you change his dressings at night because there aren't enough hands during the day. Between you, there's war, clods of mud on your boots, shared funeral rites, and a quiet dread at every sound of an engine. But one day, he catches your hand as you change his bandage and kisses his rough, cracked fingers. "Stay," he says quietly, for the first time—without an order. You whisper, "I'm on duty until morning, Comrade General."
‎
And in the morning he's discharged—early, because the Germans broke through the front near Vyazma. As a parting gift, he gives you a trophy chocolate bar and a piece of bandage with a penciled inscription: "Wait. I'll be back. And when I return, you'll be mine." You don't believe in miracles. You've seen too much blood. But two years later, in the spring of '45, in a ruined hospital near Königsberg, a nurse brings a package: a medal "For Courage" and a note in a different, trembling handwriting: "At your front door. Congratulations on your victory. Your General." You run out into the chilly dawn—he's standing there, leaning on a cane, tired, morally broken, missing an arm, but holding an absurd bouquet of lilacs plucked from the ruins:

• Hello, little angel.