He trotted down the steps to the little pack of lieutenants, fell in with fellow stragglers, and tried not to let on he’d been struck by lightning. He hadn’t gotten a great look at that nurse as she burst out of the men’s room, her face blotched with tears, but what he had seen was pretty incredible. “Anderson, you owe me.”
“Are you still talking about that ten bucks of yours I lost in five-card on the train?” Andy gambled—and lost—entirely too much. Frank would use his friend as a cautionary tale and make sure that when he became a rich young doctor, he wouldn’t gamble away his money.
“Glad that hasn’t slipped your mind completely,” Frank said. “But I was referring to the debt you owe me since, for the first time in our colorful history together, you’re not the one keeping everybody waiting.” He got the seconding laughs he so richly deserved.
“You’re complaining about me showing up late on occasion?” Anderson joked. “How very Army of you, old man. I think we all know why we joined ‘this man’s Army’—good-looking nurses.”
“Does Alice know that’s why you joined?” Frank asked.
Andy ignored him. “A fresh crop of the gals in white have been trickling in since yesterday, men. Dozens of gorgeous possibilities. Before the day is out, I intend—”
“Do you guys want to shut up?” Lartz broke in. They were at the door of the chapel, which was packed with soldiers.
Anderson turned on Lartz. “What’s it to you? Aren’t you Jewish or something?”
“Something,” Lartz muttered. “Which is more than I can say for you.”
Frank thought Lartz’s mother was Jewish and his father Catholic, but they never talked about religion. Almost overnight, he and Lartz had become friends in residency, although they had little in common. Frank grew up in a small town, and Lartz had only lived in cities. Frank was half a foot taller than Lartz. Lartz claimed he’d been going bald since high school, while Frank had enough hair on his head for a dozen soldiers. Lartz weighed fifty pounds less than Frank, but in a fight, Frank would have picked the wiry New Yorker over any guy in the unit, including Anderson.
Inside the chapel every folding chair had a soldier in it. Every inch of floor space had someone sitting on it. Soldiers leaned against the wall all the way around the room and out the door.
“Standing room only,” whispered Larabee, one of the Iowa doctors. “Must be a war on.”
His buddy chuckled. “Take no chances. Hey—is it a bigger sin not to go to church on Easter or to show up late?”
“Will you guys pipe down?” Lartz whispered. “I want to hear what’s left of the sermon.”
They weren’t the only latecomers. A pack of soldiers and a few nurses clustered behind them. Frank heard the sermon in stereo, from inside and from speakers overhead. He thought about the little church back in Hamilton, where he and his siblings had never missed a Sunday. Then he hit college, where, if he didn’t sleep in on Sunday, he had more enticing options than church available. Dotty kept telling him he needed to make God a bigger part of his life, especially now. Judging by the crowd this morning, the thought wasn’t unique.
“Incoming at eight o’clock.” Anderson nudged Frank and nodded behind them, where three nurses were weaving through the crowd, edging in closer.
Frank stopped breathing. That wavy blonde hair, that adorable figure. And those eyes. He had never seen eyes that blue. There had never been eyes that blue. It was his girl from the men’s room.
“Hubba hubba.” When Anderson didn’t get a response, he frowned. “Daley, are you all right, sport?”
Frank stared at her, willing her to turn his way. “That’s her.”
“Who?”
Her gorgeous eyes were trained on the preacher, as intent as if he were speaking directly to her.
Anderson wouldn’t leave him alone. “Hey, do you know that nurse?”
“Not yet,” Frank said. “But I will.”
The minute the service ended, Frank shoved his way to the mystery nurse. Anderson and the others followed, laughing. When Frank stopped in front of the nurse, the others flanked him, effectively blocking her path.
She raised her eyebrows at them, and her eyes twinkled. That’s the word that sprang to Frank’s mind, even though he’d never said or thought such a worn-out expression. Yet what other word conveyed the sparkles of silver in the blue ocean of her iris, against the pure white of her sclera?
“Um . . . excuse me, boys.” Her voice sparkled too, soft, musical, and sweet.
Frank felt somebody shove him forward. “We . . . I . . .” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had trouble with words. Words were his ace in the hole, his best weapon. He tried again. “I wanted to welcome you to Battle Creek.”
“Did you?” Her eyes did all the smiling anybody would ever need.
“And,” he added, “to offer my services to ensure you have a delightful time while you’re here.”
Anderson horned in. “We could start with a tour of the grounds? The dining hall? The men’s quarters?”
Frank watched the twinkle extinguish from her eyes. But a second later, she smiled at them, so maybe he’d imagined it.
“Awfully kind of you boys.” She checked her watch. “But I’m on duty, and I have to get back.”
“You pulled duty on Easter, and you just got here?” Lartz commented. “Sounds like something Captain Walker would do to one of her new nurses.”
The group still encircled her. She took a step forward, but it was as far as she could go. “Excuse me?”
The crowd thinned around them, but Anderson and the Iowa doctors closed in on the nurse. “Not until you tell us who you are,” Anderson said. At six foot two, he towered over her by a foot. Frank felt like slugging him. The letch. He’d already dated half the nurses here, and he had sweet Alice, his wife, at home in Massachusetts.
She gave Anderson a look a teacher might give a wayward child. “All right.” She paused, as if the name were new to her and she had to get it right. “Lieutenant Eberhart.”
“And I am Lieutenant John Anderson.” He clicked his heels and bowed curtly.
“That’s swell. Now may I get back to the ward so the Army won’t fire me on my first day?”
Frank couldn’t let her go, not with Anderson the last thing on her mind. He stepped between them.
She sighed and cocked her head to the side, making her hair bounce on her shoulders. “I suppose you want an introduction too?”
Frank grinned. “No. We’ve already met.”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked him over. “I don’t think so.”
“You’ve forgotten already?” He feigned a hurt look. “Fourth floor, main hospital. We were both in a rush—me to get in, you to get out. I was reading signs; you weren’t.”
He watched her gorgeous face redden as the realization sank in. “Don’t tell me—”
Frank couldn’t help laughing. “Listen, I’ll share anything with you at any time.”
She started pushing her way through the line of soldier doctors. “I really do have to go.” Flustered, glancing back at Frank, she added, “Go to the ward, I mean.”
He laughed. “Need an escort? In case you get the wrong door?”
She kept running toward the hospital, passing soldiers who turned their heads for a better look. Frank couldn’t blame them, although he did. He wanted to yell for them to back off. She was taken. He watched until he couldn’t see her any longer.
“What was that about?” Lartz asked.
Without taking his gaze from the last spot he’d seen Lieutenant Eberhart, Frank confided, “I’ve just met the gal of my dreams.”
BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN
Helen hoped she’d never see that doctor again. How had he recognized her? Of all the places to meet!
She raced up the hospital steps, glancing back to make sure nobody had followed her. Her cheeks still stung with mortification. She couldn’t deny that he was as cute as they came—tall, big brown eyes, and thick, curly bla
ck hair that even the Army ought to have sense enough not to cut. Still, she would die if she ever ran into him again. If you asked her, they were all pretty full of themselves, those doctor soldiers. She had enough on her plate at Percy Jones without that.
Helen pushed through the doors of the fourth ward and was met by heys and howdys, along with a few whistles. The ward already felt like home in a way.
“Next time, I want all of you to go to church with me!” She unpinned her cap and set it on the rack. She hated hats. They were regulation, and Captain Walker would probably have her head, hatless or not, if she caught her without that cap, but that was just too bad.
Helen conferred with her three ward boys. Bill Chitwood made an appearance and assured her that there would be more nurses on the floor tomorrow. They went through charts, checked IVs, and administered medications. The biggest job would be changing bandages every day and dressing the wounds.
She walked around the ward and introduced herself to each patient. She tried to remember their names. When she worked her way back to the front, she stopped at the bed of the man, or boy, whose head was wrapped, except for a slit at his mouth and another allowing one black eye to peer out. “Hey, soldier.” She picked up his chart, studied it, then took his vital signs. “I’m Lieutenant Eberhart, but you can call me Nurse.” She waited for him to introduce himself, the way the others had.
He didn’t respond, so she double-checked his name on the chart. “You must be Hudy. Sounds like a good Texas name, right? Hudy Bolin. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a Hudy before.” She kept up the chatter while she recorded his vitals and increased the IV rate. “Bet you celebrated Easter with kinfolk in Texas. In Cissna Park, Illinois, where I’m from, we’d all go to church in the morning. Then in the afternoon, we had a giant egg hunt, which was funny now that I think about it, because most of us hunted eggs in the chicken coop every day.”
His left arm was bandaged up to his neck. His right arm was gone.
“I’ll bet you’re thirsty, Private. This IV is supposed to take care of that, but it’s not the same as feeling the water pass over your tongue and down your throat, is it?”
He didn’t nod or shake his head or give any sign that he’d heard her. She wondered if he’d lost his hearing in whatever explosion must have caught him. There was something about his eye, too—the black dot that stared out from the cocoon of bandages. The pupil lay like an embedded marble in his skull. She peered into it, and he didn’t flinch. She waved her hand in front of his face. He didn’t blink. There was nothing on the chart, but she thought he was blind.
“Hudy, promise you won’t rat me out to my boss,” she said, as if conspiring with him, “but I’m going to sneak you a sip of water. Be right back.” She dashed to the nurse’s desk, poured a glass of lukewarm water from a clear pitcher, then searched drawers until she found a straw.
“Okay, Hudy. I’m going to stick the straw through this slit.” His lips were swollen and disfigured. “Just one tiny sip until we see if it goes down all right.”
Hudy took a sip, then leaned back against his pillow. “Thank you, ma’am. That there’s about the best drink I ever had.”
So he could talk, and hear. And she’d been right about Texas, or at least close. Even hoarse, he sounded like a cowboy. “There’s more where that came from, but we better wait a little while, okay?”
Helen moved to the next bed, where a boy she guessed to be about eighteen struggled to sit up. His wide grin showed straight, white teeth. With his boyish looks, he’d probably had his share of high school sweethearts. From the waist up, he looked normal, handsome. An Army blanket covered him from the waist down, resting smooth and flat where it should have been raised by legs. “You’re Danny, right?”
Danny gave her a huge smile. “Say, that was all right, what you did for Hudy.” He lowered his voice. “He hasn’t talked to nobody except Jimmy and me since we got here.”
She took his wrist and read his pulse. “Were you in the same unit?”
“Jimmy, Hudy, and me, we were with a fleet headed to the Russell Islands, north of Guadalcanal. The Japs had retreated, and we were just supposed to shore up defenses. Jimmy and me knew each other from base, and we got to know Hudy on board. None of us had seen action—had to wait until we turned eighteen to sign up. Anyways, we got excited when we saw the beach ahead. We were first in line to disembark. Hudy started up with this whooping and hollering, and Jimmy and me, we laughed so hard we almost fell off the plank.”
Danny stared down at his hands. “I don’t know which one of us set foot on land first. The next thing I knew, there was a boom, and I was flying through the air, with blood spraying around me. I landed hard on my back. I remember smelling smoke and seeing sand and flames. Hudy was on fire. All three of us took that first step on the beach and that was it. The Japs had planted mines before they took off.”
Helen didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, Danny.”
“Yeah. Guess I had about the shortest military career in history.” He glanced over at Hudy, who hadn’t moved since she’d left his bedside. “Things could be worse.”
“Not here they can’t,” she said. “Not if I can help it.”
Helen worked through dinner and well into the night, even after another nurse came on for the night shift. Finally she trudged down the four flights and into the cool darkness outside. She breathed in fresh air. No cereal smell this time.
“Hi there, Lieutenant Eberhart.”
Startled, Helen turned to see a soldier stand up from the bottom step.
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d fallen asleep in there.”
It took a second to recognize him—the doctor from the men’s room. “You! What are you doing here?”
“Waiting to walk you home, since you didn’t come down for dinner.” He was even more handsome than she’d thought, or maybe it was the dark. In the starlight, though, she clearly made out two dimples and a boyish grin that made her grin back, until she caught herself.
She was too tired for this. “Tell me you haven’t been waiting here all night.” She glanced around for the others from chapel. But he was alone.
“I haven’t been waiting all night.” He squinted at his watch. “We have forty-five minutes until midnight. Plenty of time for a stroll.”
“Not for me, thanks.” She started toward the nurses’ quarters. He fell in beside her. “I’m dead on my feet,” she said, wondering if her legs had ever ached this much. “I’ll be lucky to make it back to my quarters without collapsing.”
“Then I better accompany you. Can’t have a new nurse collapsing on the old sanitarium grounds. What would people think?”
She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “Fine. But don’t expect witty conversation because I’m too beat to talk.”
“Understood.” He walked, not saying another word, his hands clasped behind his back, until they reached her quarters. Then he took off his hat and made a bow.
She managed a smile and turned to go, when she realized she still didn’t know who he was. She turned back and found him standing there, watching her. “Say, I don’t even know your name, Dr. Soldier.”
“Frank. Frank Daley, at your service. Good night, Lieutenant Eberhart.”
BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN
For the next five days, Frank was waiting outside the nurses’ quarters each morning when Helen walked out, and on the hospital steps every night. Frank had never shirked hospital duties as Anderson did, but he’d managed to glide through with as little work as possible. All this nurse did was work, and yet she fascinated him more than any girl he’d ever met.
On Day Six A. H., “After Helen,” Frank’s alarm went off and he rolled out of his bunk. Most of the forty-eight men in their barracks had fought over bottom bunks, but he liked the top. At least nobody would come crashing down on him in the middle of the night. He tried to be quiet climbing down, but Anderson’s bunk below him creaked when he stepped on it.
A
nderson groaned. “Give it up, Daley. Take a hint, sport. If she hasn’t come around by now, she’s not going to.”
“Ah, but you don’t understand true love, Anderson.”
Andy groaned again and rolled over.
Frank raced through the crisp, cool morning, still black as night. The stars, brighter than flashlights, lit his path while the Milky Way swathed the sky in starlight.
The steps were too wet with dew for him to sit on, but he didn’t mind standing. He never minded waiting for Helen. It gave him time to think. He wondered if this was how Dotty and Boots had felt when they met under these same stars thousands of miles away.
Fifteen minutes later, he heard soft, pattering footsteps, followed by the click of a door opening. He knew it would be Helen, always the first nurse out.
“Morning!” He strolled up the steps to meet her. She looked incredible in moonlight, like an angel. There was a touch of adorable sleepiness in her eyes, but the rest of her looked as if she’d spent hours making herself gorgeous just for him.
“Lieutenant Daley, good morning.”
“Frank, remember?”
“I remember.” She glanced up at him, and her eyes narrowed. “You look very serious this morning. Penny for your thoughts.”
“That’s about all they’re worth. I was thinking about marriage.”
Helen’s eyebrows shot up. “Who’s the lucky woman?”
He laughed. “My sister, Dotty. And she does consider herself lucky, even though her husband is probably in a Japanese prison.” As they began walking, he filled Helen in on Dotty and Boots.
“Your sister sounds like a remarkable woman.” Helen said this in a way that let Frank know she really meant it. “It’s certainly not your run-of-the-mill war marriage.”
“And we all know where those end up—one more casualty of war.”
“I like that,” Helen said. “‘Relationship casualties of war.’ Marriage and war being fraught with equal danger.”
They walked without talking for a minute. Frank didn’t care. It was being with her that made him wake up ready to take on the world.
With Love, Wherever You Are Page 6