#liebroe

No one quite knows what to make of the quiet, dark-haired doc with the stern brow and eyes the colour of mercury, and he’s well aware. No one else seems to know how to take their training at Camp Toccoa seriously after meeting Sobel, either, but Eugene – Roe more often than not now, since Doc is a mantle he has to earn as surely as they all must earn their jump wings, but even the simple intimacy of his first name seems uncomfortable to the others – won’t be dissuaded by the man’s towering incompetence. He meets it not with annoyance, not with humour or mutiny, but with indifference so complete that no one can work out his game.

 That’s because there is no game. All Roe wants from his time in camp is to take full advantage of the training, build up his physical strength and stamina, develop the kind of dexterity it’ll take for him to spring and sprint across battlefields in search of the wounded: in short, he’s got a mission important enough that he can disregard Sobel without much concern and, in turn, the man hardly seems to notice him there. He’s always neat as a pin, after all, not a thing about his appearance that could brook complaint, and complaints never leave his lips, either. As a medic rather than a full-fledged soldier, he has the luxury of forging his own path to some degree.

 Eugene Roe is utterly unremarkable, which makes him the biggest mystery in the company.

 Sometimes he hears muttering that stops as soon as he passes a group of men: stick up his ass, he’ll hear, too fuckin’ good for the likes of us, thinks medics don’t mix with soldiers, and a million other suspicions about what makes him hold himself apart. No one ever starts a fight or even confronts him with direct insults, so he tries to let such incidents roll off his back as well, but he’s not out to be disliked; all he wants is to stay on task so that he and the very men looking at him askance collectively have a better chance of surviving the war.

 The biggest obstacle between himself and the other men is that he’s altogether too serious for camp, he thinks to himself as the company once again drags their asses up Currahee, men panting and moaning all around him while he jogs with neat, crisp steps and his head held high. These men are more like puppies sometimes, all rough and tumble and scrapping playfully one moment before snarling at one another the next. It’s a side of male bonding he’s never taken to all that naturally, not even with his own brothers, but that fact has also never troubled him much until now, when he longs for the normalcy it would -

 “Shit!”

 A thin, raspy voice curses loudly just behind Roe, and enough scuffle follows that he risks a glance over his shoulder, frowning at what he sees: someone’s taken a tumble bad enough that he’s not getting back up, hands clamped tightly around one ankle. The scuffle was, of course, the men circling around him to continue running because Sobel will rain hell down on their shoulders if they stop and try to help.

 They’re in a terrible bind. Roe knows that, and he knows they all bitterly regret not stopping for someone who will soon be their brother in arms; they’ve proven that with past acts of support for others, ones that couldn’t be judged as outright rebellion. He also knows that he’s got a certain leeway the others don’t in this situation – and, more importantly, he’s got much more of a moral duty to make sure this man is alright before he can carry on. It’s his entire purpose in the army.

 So he drops back until he’s out of the tight clutch of men, hearing whispers of both alarm and nervous amusement all around him as people realize what he’s about to do. Liebgott, he remembers when he reaches the other man, his name’s Joseph Liebgott, and by all accounts he’s got one hell of a mean mouth on him. Not to mention mean fists to back it up.

 “Hey Joe,” Roe says as he crouches down, trying to sound blandly amicable if such a thing is possible; it doesn’t seem to be, because Liebgott still stares up at him like he’s grown an extra head. “Can I get a look at that ankle?”

 “What the f -”

 “Stand up, Private.” Sobel’s strident voice is unmistakable to both of them, and the way it immediately causes lines of annoyance to spring up on parts of Liebgott’s face that looked boyishly smooth a second earlier almost brings a grin to Roe’s face. He keeps his own expression clear as he obeys the order, though, unruffled and inwardly rather relieved when he looks into Sobel’s eyes and sees no recognition whatsoever at the sight of his face. “What’s your name?”

 “T-4 Eugene Roe, sir. Company medic.” He speaks more briskly than is his habit, trimming a bit of the lilt from his vowels, and keeps his shoulders squared at perfect attention.

 Sobel is not impressed. “And what do you think you’re doing, Doc Roe?”

 It’s the first time he’s been called that, and a man is sneering it in mockery of his attempted aid. That actually gets under Roe’s skin.

 “Liebgott appears to have hurt his ankle, sir,” he answers in the same crisp tone, gaze unwavering. “I meant to see if he’d be needin’ to get back to camp, or if -”

 “No one goes back to camp while we’re running Currahee, Roe. Not for anything. Maybe you missed that.”

 Roe’s eyes narrow to slits. “With all due respect, sir, this ain’t a stitch in his side or a bit of nausea. If he’s got a tear, he needs first aid or it could heal all wrong, hobble him for life.”

 In the disbelieving silence that follows his statement, Roe thinks he hears the words you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me whispered from where Liebgott’s still on the ground, and it takes everything in him to keep the corners of his mouth from twitching. Even if he’s not doing this for anyone’s approval, he has to admit that feels good.

 “Does he?” Sobel says, nostrils flaring as he starts to pace in tight steps before them. “Does he really, Doc Roe? And is that what you’d advise for one of your men on the front lines, when the sky’s still raining down mortar fire and the air’s thick with bullets? Going back for first aid?”

 Sometimes, very rarely, a person gets so firmly on Roe’s last nerve that he swears he can hear it snap just before his patience does. This is one of those times, and later he’ll look back on it and reflect that it established something of a pattern for his army career: he’ll only ever lose his temper at people who far outrank him, and only ever because they’ve put one of the men in danger through either their actions or inaction.

 “Prob’ly not if he’s laid out in a trench firin’ back or droppin’ shells into a mortar gun, sir, then I reckon he could hold his own ‘til things settle, but if he’s runnin’ straight up a mountain, yeah, I’d say he should stop and get himself looked at before he’s picked off by a sniper ‘cause he’s the slowest target there. Sir.”

 Silence. Stony silence, longer than any of the others that have stretched out between them. Roe’s spoken calmly, his expression unchanging, only the flintiness in his stare giving away that he’s more than ready to play hardball over Liebgott’s ankle. This isn’t about insult to him anymore, nor is it about Sobel’s overall manner; it’s about the precedent that could be set here if he backs down, which would trap him into taking irresponsible orders over keeping the men’s safety as his priority. Sometimes rank will have to defer to specialty if he’s ever to do his job as he should.

 From invisibility to insubordination: part of him wonders if this will be his last day at Camp Toccoa, but all of him still feels justified even if that should prove to be true.

 “… hurry up and see to Liebgott, Roe. You’d better both be out of the way by the time we circle back.” With that order delivered as though Roe’s been resisting it the entire time rather than advocating for it, Sobel runs off to rejoin the other men, and the only regret Roe feels is that he’ll likely berate them twice as hard because of the indignity he feels he suffered during this encounter. If only there were some way to apologize…

 “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!” Now that Sobel is safely out of earshot, Liebgott apparently feels free to repeat those words through sputtering peals of laughter. “What just happened? What the fuck did you just do, Doc?”

 Doc. It sounds better coming from Liebgott’s mouth, blossoming in Roe’s chest and spreading through him as a pleasant glow.

 “Just my job,” he says with a shrug, ducking back down to take a look at Liebgott’s ankle at long last. “‘Least that’s what I plan to do now – holy hell, Joe, wanna put both your feet side by side for me? Yeah… yeah, you got a real goose egg on this left one. S’gonna lay you up for a bit but I don’t think you gotta worry about nothin’ like breaks. Some ice and rest an’ you’ll be good as new in no time. I just gotta give your foot a turn, see how much mobility you still got, lemme know if anything hurts -”

 At first Liebgott seems oddly lulled by Roe’s smooth, easy patter, but his leg gives a violent jerk the moment Roe gets a hand on the sole of his boot: “Shit, shit, yeah, it all hurts. Soon as you touch my foot, it hurts.” He frowns as soon as the tirade’s out of his mouth, then switches gears so quickly that Roe hardly has to guess he’s a bit ashamed of having reacted so heatedly about a sprain. “It’s not that bad. Do what you gotta do.”

 Roe spares Liebgott a tiny grin, getting to his feet before offering both hands to help the other man back to standing. “Think you can limp back with your weight on me?”

 “What other choice do we – augh!” That’s not a tantrum, but a real cry of pain wrenched from Liebgott’s throat as he tries to walk on the injured ankle and nearly topples over; when his arms fly out to regain his balance, Roe quickly grabs hold of one and helps to steady him. So no, he’s not limping back.

 “I’m stronger than I look, Liebgott. I can carry you back.”

 “Like hell you can,” Liebgott says in a way that comes across as reflexive, but a slow grin’s spreading across his narrow, sharp-featured face. “Can you?”

 In response, Roe just turns away and crouches in front of him, arms held out at both sides and ready to catch his legs if he does hop on for a piggyback ride. And now, what other choice do they have, when Roe hasn’t even got an aid kit with the necessary tools to brace the ankle? Sure enough, he feels Liebgott’s arms curl around his neck pretty quickly, and they manage to juggle him into a comfortable position for both without too much discomfort on either side.

 Roe can’t quite pin down the sort of silence that settles between he and Liebgott as he carries the other man back down Curahee. All he really knows about Liebgott is that he’s scrappy, sharp-tongued and hot-tempered, none of which are personality traits he would’ve sought out in a potential friend even if he were being more social with the other men – that’s not a type that tends to have much patience for him, with one possible (well, glaring, if he’s honest) exception back home, and he didn’t wear his angry streak so much on his sleeve anyhow. Merriell was all about keeping up the simmer but never boiling over, arguing that the spectre of his potential temper would always be scarier to people than an actual tantrum or scrap. Fantasy, whether dream or nightmare, would always outmatch reality, he said.

 Just as Roe’s starting to think that he’d rather not dwell so much on the topic of Merriell, Liebgott finally speaks up again.

 “Shit, I can’t wait to tell the other fellas about that,” he chuckles, and Roe knows exactly what that is but keeps his misgivings to himself for now. “Never woulda thought you had it in you, Doc – you, of all people!”

 That gets Roe smiling as well, against his better judgment; it’s much more funny than insulting, especially because he’s always known how he must look to the other men. “I didn’t do nothin’ but my job,” he insists again, but does add: “Ain’t wise to get in the way of a man with other men’s lives in his hands.”

 There it is, a calm statement of the pressure under which he knows he’ll live if he makes it through camp and into battle: in an environment literally all about killing, it will be his job to keep people alive. He certainly doesn’t expect it to change how Liebgott looks at him – that’s not even his reason for saying it, which was nothing more than explanation for his emphatic speech to Sobel – but the much heavier silence that follows suggests that maybe it has.

 “Jeez,” the man on Roe’s back finally says, almost sounding resentful that things suddenly got so serious, “don’t you ever laugh, Doc? At anything?”

 Liebgott’s words bring Roe up short, and he cranes his head around to search the other man’s face as though he could possibly know what he just said. That Roe’s best friend back home, the one who dared to shatter their safe foundation before disappearing to his own training camp, once said almost the exact same thing to him. Merriell was all disdainful boredom while Liebgott still seems annoyed, but Roe is getting the strong impression that he’s just a variation on Merriell’s type: all id and no ego, but the same bad attitude at their core.

 Dangerous. Very dangerous, at least for Eugene Roe.

 “What?” Liebgott asks, his tone somewhere between defensive and uneasy, and Roe realizes he’s been staring silently at the sliver of Liebgott’s face he can see from this angle for a while. Averting his gaze back to the path a bit too quickly, he falls back into a steady pace toward camp.

 “Nothin’,” he says, but a moment later, adds: “You remind me of someone, s’all. Someone I knew back home. Know. Someone I know.”

 “Doc…” Liebgott says cautiously, but doesn’t sound like he’s quite sold on the idea of pushing the matter as his voice peters out there.

 “He’s in the marines. Headin’ for the South Pacific pretty soon, I guess.”

 “Yeah? Well if he is like me, he’d be pissed to hear you writing him off already. Give the guy some fuckin’ credit.”  The last thing Roe expects is for Liebgott to lift an arm from around his neck and give him a light swat in the head to punctuate his words, but that’s exactly what he does, leaving Roe to sputter in amused disbelief. “And work on your damn laugh, that’s pathetic.”

 Isn’t this just Roe’s luck? He reaches out to one of the men, one time, in the interest of doing his job the right and proper way and nothing more, and he ends up with a little spark of fondness for feisty, mouthy Joe Liebgott burning bright in his chest.