**A Second Chance from the Skies**
“Ow…” whispered Daisy, her cracked lips barely moving.
Trying to roll over was pointless—her body refused to cooperate, every muscle screaming as if a steamroller had taken a leisurely joyride over her. Her left arm hung limp and useless, throbbing with a pain sharp enough to split her skull. Her mind, fogged with terror and smoke, couldn’t piece together what had happened. Just flashes—fire, impacts, a sky black as coal… and a voice. Where was he? Where was Oliver?
The scream died in her throat. Her body trembled with pain, each cell flickering like a dying lightbulb. Then, through the haze, the smell of smoke hit her—acrid, burnt, suffocating. Daisy tried to drag herself away from the heat, from the flames licking at her legs. This wasn’t real. This was hell. The kind from nightmares.
She blacked out.
In the dream, she was back where everything had still been whole. They sat at a table. Crystal flutes, frothing champagne, Oliver grinning as he popped the cork.
“Well, Dais,” he laughed, “officially the maddest lass in the squadron. Only woman daft enough to sign up for flight school! Still don’t know how you sweet-talked the medics.”
“I’ve got more than just a pretty smile,” she winked.
“You’re a menace, not a pilot,” Oliver shook his head. “But you love the sky. Same as me. Navigation’s no tea party. Dead serious. Cheers for letting me drill you on the simulators—you nailed it.”
“Relax, Captain. Drink up before the bubbles vanish,” she grinned, sipping her wine.
Oliver started talking about the sky, how he’d first climbed into a helicopter as a kid. How he’d dreamed. How he’d imagined clouds shaped like animals grazing on candyfloss. Daisy had thought then, *What a daft dreamer…*
But she’d dreamt too. With him. They’d enrolled together. Trained together. Flew together. And, alas, fought together.
When consciousness returned, something crunched under her hip. The MH-60. Charred, shattered. Their helicopter—now just scrap metal. And beside the wreckage, him. Oliver. Hands clenched on the controls, as though even death couldn’t pry him from the cockpit. He’d fought to the end.
Daisy swayed, blood pounding in her temples. Too weak to go closer, she stared as ants crawled over his body, as flies swarmed the blood on his uniform.
To step nearer would be to accept it. To know. To admit he was gone. But how? When his voice still echoed in her skull? When she could still taste his last kiss, before takeoff?
The war had barged into their lives without warning. They’d just been prepping for another training run. The nickname “The Inseparables” had stuck fast at the airfield. Five years—one crew. One rhythm. One path.
“Ready, co-pilot?” Oliver had winked, zipping up his jacket. “Nappies packed?”
“Only for your backside,” she snorted.
“Remember how it started? You, apples, pigtails… bloody little thief in the Wilsons’ orchard.”
“And you, the gullible twit who boosted me over the fence,” she’d laughed.
That was their last chat before liftoff.
Now—just silence. Daisy tightened a belt around her arm—pain jolted through her like a live wire. She gathered what she could, slipped Oliver’s dog tag from his neck. He was gone. But she wasn’t. So she had to move. Had to survive. For him. For the memory. For the new life just beginning inside her…
A rustle.
Voices.
They were coming.
Daisy froze in the tall grass. Pain didn’t matter. Just don’t move. Don’t breathe. If they found her—game over. She crawled. Slow. Belly scraping dirt, teeth gritted to dust. Crawled until she passed out.
She woke under stars. Black sky. Alone.
Morning. A poppy field. Thirst gnawing at her sanity. Canteen empty. Arm broken. But her heart still beat.
“God, if you’re there…” she whispered, “don’t let me die. For him. For us.”
When Daisy woke next, she was in a ward. White ceiling. IV drip. Oliver’s dog tag clutched in her palm.
“My son will love the sky,” she murmured, hand resting on her stomach.
“How d’you know it’s a boy?” her mum asked.
“I just do. Back there, in the fire and smoke, I begged for a second chance. For me. For him. And someone listened.”
The war had taken everything. But it hadn’t broken her. Life went on. And where one dream had died, another was born—strong as his arms, clear as his gaze, bright as the sky he’d loved.