The Wedding Dress

by Danielle Steel

  They were sad to see them leave three days after Christmas, but Eleanor wanted to spend some time preparing for the term that was starting in January. She enjoyed her work, and the young girls who came to the school with somewhat less lofty backgrounds now. Some of the Old Guard had disappeared, and people with new money were beginning to take their place. The families that sent their daughters there weren’t as elite as in Eleanor’s day, but Eleanor enjoyed them and the subjects she taught.

  She was at her desk, preparing her French classes, and Camille was asleep the night they got home, when the doorbell rang, and a Western Union messenger handed her a telegram. She hadn’t heard from Alex in three weeks, but it had happened before and she knew that eventually his letters would catch up with her again. She just had to hope and assume he was alive in the meantime.

  The messenger handed her the telegram quickly, and as she opened it, he was already halfway down the stairs. The telegram was from the U.S. War Department. The words in the telegram leapt off the page in capital letters as she closed the door and read them again and again. “Regret to inform you your husband Lieutenant Alexander William Allen wounded December 4, 1942, due to arrive Port of San Francisco approximately January 12 Hospital Ship USS Solace” and it was signed the adjutant general. That was all it said. It didn’t state the nature of his injuries or what had happened. All she knew after she read it was that Alex had been wounded, but he was alive and due to arrive in San Francisco in fifteen days, so he was well enough to travel, and thank God he wasn’t dead.

  Her heart was pounding as she sat down on the couch with the telegram still in her hand and she read it again. His military serial number was listed on the telegram, but there was no one to call, no one to give her the details, except Alex himself in two weeks. But she was grateful he was coming home. He had been gone for nine months. She just hoped his injury wasn’t too serious, but maybe serious enough to keep him out of the war once he got home. It was all she could hope for now. She had been aware that there were military transports arriving, and hospital ships, with their wounded who were being sent home, to be tended in the States at military hospitals. And San Francisco was one of the ports they were using on the West Coast.

  She read the telegram again the next morning, and called her parents to tell them. The best news was that the telegram hadn’t announced something much worse, and if he was coming home by ship, it seemed to indicate that he was well enough to travel. Her parents were concerned, but were encouraged by the fact that he was alive, and his injury wasn’t so severe that he couldn’t make the journey.

  She informed the school when they reopened in January, and by then she had nine more days to wait to see Alex’s situation for herself. She didn’t know if he would have to report to a military base, would need to convalesce at a military hospital, or if he could come home to the apartment with her and Camille. The days seemed interminable as she waited for the USS Solace to reach San Francisco.

  She called the Port of San Francisco on January 5 to ask if they had any word of the ship’s progress, and they told her to call back in two or three days, they expected to have news by then. They said the Solace hadn’t reached Hawaii yet, so it would be at least another week before she reached San Francisco, if not longer. They asked if she had someone on the ship, and she said yes, her husband. The voice at the other end was slightly more sympathetic after she said it.

  “Most of them will be going to Letterman Hospital in the Presidio, in case you miss him at the dock. Check with them there. It’s always chaotic when they come in. You’ll have an easier time finding him at the hospital than here.” But there was no way she was going to let Alex return to San Francisco wounded and not do everything in her power to meet him at the dock, and accompany him wherever he was going after that, if they let her.

  She called every few days to check. They told her there had been storms in Hawaii and finally on the fourteenth, they told her the ship would dock in two days.

  “Is it a big ship?” she asked, nervous after what they’d said before, that she might miss him at the dock.

  “We have almost six hundred wounded men coming in on her. She’s big enough. Normal capacity is four hundred eighteen,” the man said. He said the Solace might have to wait in the bay for several hours, before they were ready to receive her in the port. “They usually let them dock around seven or eight in the morning. We try to unload the men in daylight.” He made the injured men sound like so much cargo.

  The last two days were the longest of all since the telegram had arrived seventeen days before with the cryptic message, and so little information for her to go on. She had thought of nothing else since she got the telegram.

  The morning of January 16, Eleanor took an early morning bus to the Embarcadero where the ships docked, so she’d have time to find the right one before he got there. There were laborers, construction workers, and dockworkers on the bus with her, and no one questioned what she was doing there. She was the only woman on the bus. She was a young and attractive woman and obviously had a mission of some kind, or maybe a job. The bus made a stop several blocks from the docks, and she got out and began walking at a brisk pace. It was still dark, and she had left Camille with her neighbor the night before, and explained that her husband was being sent home from the war. Her neighbor’s brother was an infantryman in Europe, and her husband had a heart defect and was at home.

  She reached the port on foot at six in the morning, and saw a huge red cross painted on a white background to indicate where the hospital ship would come in. There were longshoremen standing around, and military personnel. When she asked, they told her where to go. They said they didn’t know what time the Solace would dock, but it might not be for a while, although they were expecting her that morning. There was a heavy mist and it was damp. She could hear the foghorns in the distance. She took refuge in a doorway, and by eight o’clock, she saw a long string of military ambulances begin to arrive, and park haphazardly near the docks. In another hour, the area was bustling with activity. There were wagons with red crosses on them, a line of buses, more ambulances, military vehicles. And then in the distance, she saw the ship moving slowly through the bay with her precious cargo.

  It was ten before she docked, and by then Eleanor had been there for four hours. She was freezing and her clothes were damp from the mist and a light rain, but she didn’t care. Before the ship even docked, suddenly there were a swarm of medics and ambulance drivers, doctors, nurses, a sea of medical and military personnel crowding toward the dock to receive the wounded men. She didn’t see how she would get through them to find Alex, but she pushed her way into the crowd, and moved as far forward as she could as the ship approached.

  It looked huge to her, and it was nearly eleven before the ship with the enormous red cross painted on its side was securely tied up at the dock, as the medical personnel crowded forward, and half a dozen gangplanks were set up, and a number of the medics went on board carrying stretchers to bring off the most severely injured men first. She could see why they had told her she might miss him at the dock, but she was determined to find him. She prayed he wasn’t one of the men being brought off on stretchers. She positioned herself where she could see many of them as they were carried past her, but none of them looked like Alex, although some were so heavily bandaged you couldn’t tell. They were covered with army blankets, with their few belongings lying on top of them. There were a number of army and navy nurses in the crowd and men guiding the stretcher bearers toward the ambulances. It was a long time before men on crutches began to file past her, being assisted in many cases, and when she saw them, Eleanor began calling his name, hoping he could hear her in the crowd.

  “Alex Allen…Alex Allen…” There was so much noise she had to shout, and she had brought a photograph of him to show anyone who could help her find him.

  There were hundreds of men with bandages and canes and sling
s pouring out of the ship down all six gangplanks, heading toward the buses and transport trucks, and those who noticed her shook their heads when she asked them if they knew Alex Allen or had seen him, while holding up the photograph. Some of them looked dazed and many didn’t speak to her, but others shook their heads and said they hadn’t seen him, giving her admiring glances. She was the first civilian American woman they had seen since they’d left the States.

  Eleanor continued to thread her way doggedly through the crowd for two hours, wondering if she should give up and go to the hospital in the Presidio to find him. The situation at the dock seemed hopeless, and then she saw a long line of wheelchairs waiting to disembark, as one by one soldiers took them and rolled them carefully down one of the gangplanks, and Eleanor watched them, and then she saw him far back in the line. She waved and he didn’t see her, and she pushed her way through the crowd until she reached the foot of the gangplank and waited. She was looking up at him as they rolled him down, and then he saw her, and he started to cry, and so did she. The moment the wheels of his chair touched the dock, she put her arms around him and held him and he sobbed in her arms. The medic pushing him moved him out of the way so they didn’t block the others, and as Alex pulled back, she looked into his face. He was desperately thin, with his eyes deep set in his head. He had a bandage on one arm, but he looked uninjured other than the fact that he was in the chair, and he had a blanket over him to keep warm. He was shivering, and she wondered if he was too weak to stand. The medic was wheeling him toward one of the buses that had been fitted to carry the men in wheelchairs.

  “Where are you going?” Eleanor asked him in a hurry before they lifted Alex’s chair into the bus.

  “Letterman Hospital in the Presidio. You can see him there.” She nodded and kissed Alex, and he smiled at her as though he had thought he would never see her again, and couldn’t believe she was standing in front of him. It seemed unreal to her too. She couldn’t believe she had found him. She had been there for eight hours by then, but it was worth it. She had actually found him and been there the moment he came off the ship.

  “I’ll meet you at the hospital,” she said as she kissed him and smiled at him.

  “Thank you for being here. I didn’t know if you knew when we were coming in.”

  “I got a telegram almost three weeks ago. I’ve been calling every day.” He squeezed her hand as his eyes filled with tears again, and then he tried to pull himself together. “What happened?”

  “They dropped a bomb on a ship we were on. It was being moved to a new location. It was a direct hit. I lost most of my men. Only three of them survived, and so did I.” He looked exhausted as he told her, and then two men lifted his chair up, and he waved as they rolled him into the bus. He looked frighteningly thin, but he seemed to have come through it relatively unscathed.

  She walked quickly back to the bus stop where she’d gotten off hours before, and got on the bus to take her to the Presidio, and realized how lucky they were that he’d been sent to San Francisco. He could have been sent anywhere. This way she could visit him every day. It took her over an hour to get to the Presidio, and he had just arrived when she did. The hospital was a melée of patients and medical personnel, trying to sort them out, assign them to wards or rooms depending on the severity of the cases, and half an hour later, they directed her to the ward where Alex had been taken. She saw him in his wheelchair, and hurried over to him, as a male nurse helped him into bed. The blanket that had been covering him was cast aside before they moved him, and then she saw why he had come home. He had lost his legs, both of them. His thighs were still heavily bandaged. His legs ended just above his knees. He watched her face as she saw what had happened to him and their eyes met. But from what he had told her, he was lucky to be alive, and she would have been grateful if even less of him had come home, or he’d lost his arms and his legs.

  “It’s all right,” she said softly, and gently touched his face with her fingers, as he reached for her hand and held it.

  “Is it?” he asked her, and there were a million questions in those two words. She nodded in answer.

  “Yes, it is. We’ll be fine, and so will you.” He let himself be lifted into the bed then. He had had internal injuries too, but his legs were the worst of it.

  She sat down in a chair next to him, as the new arrivals continued to pour into the ward with assorted injuries. She knew their life was about to change radically again. It reminded her of when they were on their honeymoon and the world they knew had broken into a million pieces and been smashed to smithereens. It had just happened again. But it was different this time. It had happened to him, and to them, not to an entire world. But whatever it took, they were going to face it together. Of that she was sure. They would not be destroyed by this. She wouldn’t let it happen. She leaned over and kissed him as he sat in his bed, watching her for her reaction.

  “I love you, Alex,” she said in a strong voice, as he clung to her. She could feel the bones in his back and shoulders as she held him.

  “I love you too,” he said with a world of regret in his voice, and a silent apology for how he had come home to her. He felt useless now. She could see it, but Eleanor didn’t believe that. She just held him tightly to let her strength and faith in him flow into him like a river of love that nothing could stop or diminish.

  “Thank God you’re home,” she said as he closed his eyes and rested his face against her. They were exactly the words he needed to hear and what she had just said was all he needed to know. That even without legs, she still loved him.

  Chapter 10

  Alex settled into a routine at the hospital fairly quickly. They wanted him to do physical therapy eventually, but he wasn’t ready. His internal injuries were still causing him trouble, and his body was full of shrapnel. They had removed what they could, but enough of it was still there to worry his doctors. He had fevers almost every night, and flare-ups of infections of some of the wounds. Their worst fear was gangrene, which was what had happened to his legs after the explosion.

  Eleanor came to see him every day after she finished teaching. She corrected her students’ homework sitting next to his bed, while he dozed quietly beside her. She stayed with him until dinner time, and then picked up their daughter from the babysitter and took her home and cared for her.

  Her parents had been shocked and deeply saddened to hear about what had happened to Alex, and the loss of his legs. Her father wanted to come to the city for the first time in thirteen years to see him, but Alex wasn’t allowed to have visitors. He was still very weak, and they were concerned about the infections that continued to plague him. Eleanor was worried about him too. He wasn’t fully out of the woods yet. And if any of the shrapnel in him moved significantly, it could kill him.

  The doctors were estimating a five or six month stay in the hospital, and then she would take Alex to Lake Tahoe for the summer with Camille. Eleanor knew she would have to find another apartment for them before he came home. He couldn’t manage the stairs in a wheelchair and there was no elevator. He would be trapped in the apartment. She was planning to deal with it over the summer, but she had too much to do in the meantime, visiting him every day, working at Miss Benson’s, and taking care of Camille at night. Tahoe was going to be a good rest for both of them, and he was looking forward to it. He couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital and see Camille again. He hadn’t seen her in over a year, and he doubted that she’d remember him. Eleanor had told her that her daddy would be coming home now.

  He was making good progress in April when Eleanor got a call from her mother early one morning as she was getting Camille ready for school. Louise was sobbing almost incoherently. Charles had died in his sleep. His heart had given out. He was only sixty-five, but the hard blows he had lived through had aged him prematurely. He had looked much older in recent years, no matter how bravely he tried to face the changes in his
life. He never complained or talked about the past, but he had never been quite the same again.

  “Oh my God, Mama, I’m so sorry,” she said, crying herself as Camille watched her, shocked to see her mother crying. “I’ll come up later today, as soon as I tell Alex and the school. I’ll take care of everything.” Her mother couldn’t stop crying, and Eleanor’s mind was racing. She had so much to do now, and she had to get to her mother. It almost obscured her own grief for her father. But she knew he would want her to take care of her mother. This was going to be a crushing loss for her, which could easily kill her too, and Eleanor didn’t want that to happen.

  After she dropped Camille off at the sitter, she explained at school that she needed the rest of the week off to arrange her father’s funeral. At another time, fifteen years before, her father’s death would have made her an heiress of vast proportions, now it would barely make a ripple in their lives. As far as she knew, he had very little left, just a few investments he had mentioned to her and her mother over the years, that he would be leaving them one day. She had never allowed her father to tell her about them in any depth, and he didn’t insist. She didn’t want to talk about what would happen when he died. And now he had, and she knew nothing. Whatever he had managed to save would go to support her mother. And she didn’t expect it to be much. It was the least of her problems right now. She had Alex to take care of, and Camille, and her mother now too. Louise had always relied totally on Charles, and her world revolved around him.