He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. The smoke tasted like the inside of a hospital tent. He didn’t mind.
The pale carnation pressed against his heart like a promise. Pale Carnations -Ch.4 Up.5- -Mutt Jeff-
The name had stuck after the war. Before that, he’d been just Jeff, or Private First Class Jeffries to the men who didn’t know him well enough. After the Armistice, after the gas had finished its slow work on his lungs and the nightmares had carved out a permanent home behind his ribs, he’d come back to the city and found it didn’t want him. Not the way he was. Ragged. Unhousebroken. A creature that had learned to bite first and ask questions never. He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers
Chapter 4, Up.5, ends.