Looking For The Last Piece

July 1918... A male attendant unlocked the door to the women's ward and ushered Alice quickly through it. She looked for Elizabeth around the high-ceilinged expanse of a room that housed over thirty patients. A woman approached and placed her freezing cold hand in Alice's. Through the opaque skin, veins stood proud of the frail tendons that rested on the skeletal structure supporting them. The woman lifted Alice's hand to her own cheek, stroking it and humming, "Let Me Call You Sweetheart", a popular song of the day. She then led Alice to chairs in a bay window where they were to sit together for their allotted hour.