With Love, Wherever You Are

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  “Sally knows enough about nursing to never wear a dress like that,” Helen said. “She’s not afraid to get her hands, or her uniform, dirty in the line of duty. And speaking of duty, you’d better get to it. We’re changing all the beds, something your earlier shift neglected.” Peggy had told Helen about Colonel Pugh’s visit to the ward that morning. He’d caught Victoria stretched out on an empty bed reading magazines, and he’d written her name on the night roster himself. Helen wished she could have been there to see it.

  “I can’t do everything,” Victoria whined. “In case you haven’t noticed because you spend so much time in the basement, Nurse Eberhart, half of our Allied nurses are out sick.”

  “Knock it off, Vic. Get to work!”

  “Catfight!” shouted a patient. Others seconded the notion.

  Helen hated herself for taking Victoria’s bait in front of patients. “Maybe later, fellas. Right now, we’re too busy. Time for your nighttime meds.”

  Groans sounded from all over the ward.

  “Just so you know,” Victoria said, “I have a big date tonight, and nobody’s going to make me miss a New Year’s Eve celebration. Liddy’s coming with me. Major Grayson is meeting me by the river for fireworks.”

  “Haven’t you seen enough fireworks to last a lifetime?” Helen had always loved the national anthem, but she wasn’t sure she could ever again join in on the line about bombs bursting in air.

  “Some New Year’s Eve,” muttered a soldier a few beds down.

  Across the ward, mumblings agreed with him.

  Helen gazed around the ward at the patients, mostly boys who hadn’t had the chance to celebrate many New Years. Tears pressed against her eyeballs and threatened to make her head explode. Had she ever felt this melancholy?

  Stop it! She commanded the gypsy in her to do something about it. She headed out, calling back, “Peggy, can you cover for me for a bit?”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Victoria yelled after her. “To the basement?”

  It took only twenty minutes to shame four bottles of Scotch out of the officers in the officers’ club. Each of them had received two bottles for personal use, and they hadn’t parted with their treasures easily. Thankfully, Colonel Pugh had stepped in to help persuade a couple of reluctant majors. “Happy New Year, Nurse Daley!” He handed over the fourth bottle.

  “Happy New Year to you, too, Colonel.” And for the first time, she saluted him.

  Helen burst onto the hospital ward, her secret hidden in two brown bags.

  “It’s about time,” Victoria muttered.

  Helen let it pass. She set out the four bottles on a gurney.

  “Helen, you’re amazing!” Victoria read the labels. “Want me to take them to our barracks before the patients see?”

  Helen faced the ward, then whistled through her teeth the way Eugene had taught her. Once she had their attention, she shouted, “I’ve brought a little something from the officers’ club, a New Year’s gift from the big brass. Peggy, see if you can’t scrounge up more pill cups, will you? Sally, can you help me open these things?”

  Victoria stared at her as if this waste was beyond her comprehension.

  Sally had no trouble opening the bottles. Then she and Peggy set the little cups onto trays while Helen searched the cabinets for more pill cups.

  “Weren’t there four bottles here, Helen?” Sally asked.

  “Right.” She glanced at the gurney. One bottle was missing.

  A private by the door, recovering from typhoid fever, said, “That foxy nurse took it. Her and the tall one with a ponytail.”

  Liddy? Helen’s melancholy returned like an enemy waiting for the right moment to drag her down. She refused to let it.

  “Okay, gents! If it’s New Year’s Eve you want, it’s New Year’s Eve you’ll get!” Carefully, she poured just a touch of Scotch into each cup. “Now, don’t make a habit of this, gentlemen! And don’t drink it until everyone’s been served. I want you to think of this as New Year’s medicine for our heroes. To you, men!”

  They passed one dose of Scotch to every soldier on the ward who could hold a cup. Then Helen and Peggy made a special tray for the patients who needed help—the armless boys, the young soldiers with the shakes so bad they couldn’t steady their drinks. Outside, fireworks boomed and banged.

  “Peggy,” Helen said. “You’re loud. You do the countdown.”

  “I’d love to!” The ward hushed for a full minute until Peggy began her count, loud enough to be heard upstairs . . . and down. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six . . .” Helen joined the count, and so did the other nurses, along with most of the soldier-patients: “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one! Happy New Year!”

  They toasted one another at the stroke of midnight and brought in a New Year Helen thought none of them would forget.

  When the laughter and tears and cheers died down, the nurses returned to work.

  An hour later, Colonel Pugh stepped in to wish everyone a happy New Year. Since most of the patients were asleep, the nurses had divided the shift, and Helen and Sally were the only ones on duty. Peggy would take the last half of the night shift.

  “Lieutenant Daley, a word?” Helen joined him. “I thought you should know that I’ve had a complaint on your behavior.”

  Helen sighed. “And the New Year isn’t yet one day old.”

  Pugh gave her a conspiratorial grin. “True. One of the nurses—”

  “Let me guess. Might her first name be Victoria?”

  He grinned wider. “She reports that you encouraged underage drinking in our hospital.”

  “Guilty as charged. Mind if I ask what you said to her, Colonel?”

  “I believe I told her that any man old enough to fight for his country must be old enough to drink a thimbleful of Scotch for medicinal purposes on New Year’s Eve.” Then he broke into laughter so contagious that Helen found herself laughing with him.

  A door banged and shouts filled the hallway. Victoria ran in, her hair a mess, her face covered with mud, and what looked like blood on her dress. “Help! It’s Liddy! I think she’s dead!”

  RENNES, FRANCE

  Pugh took off at a dead run, Helen close on his heels. He slowed to let Victoria catch up. “Where is she?” he demanded.

  Victoria’s words came in fits and starts. She smelled of Scotch . . . and blood. “Down there!” She pointed to the darkness across the road from the hospital. “She drank too much. She’s not used to alcohol. We were just walking back, and she wandered off, and I saw her stop at that pile of debris. I thought she was going to throw up on the booby-trap pile, but she was saying something about a wooden soldier, that her husband collects them. She picked one up—it was in that ditch beside the pile, and—” Vic broke off in tears. She said something else, but her words were too slurred to make out.

  Helen and Pugh raced down the hill.

  “There she is!” Pugh slid the rest of the way down and crouched beside the still body.

  In seconds, Helen was there. Liddy lay on her back, with Pugh listening for a heartbeat. “Is she . . . ?”

  “She’s alive,” Pugh said.

  Helen wanted to see for herself. She reached to take Liddy’s pulse. That’s when she saw the source of the blood. “Doctor!” Blood gushed from Lydia’s hand. A sliver of wood stuck out where a finger should have been.

  “It exploded,” Victoria said. Helen hadn’t realized she was there. “I hate that husband of hers! Liddy was only trying to get that soldier to give to him.”

  Helen unbuckled her belt and tied it around Liddy’s hand. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

  Pugh took off his jacket and placed it over Liddy, then picked her up and started climbing the hill back to the hospital.

  Liddy opened her eyes, and Helen burst into tears of relief. The poor girl was shaking, trembling all over. But she was alive and conscious.

  “You’re going to be okay, Liddy.” Helen touched her cheek as Pugh carried her
like a baby in his arms.

  Pugh whispered, “I’m taking her to surgery.”

  “I’ll assist.” Helen ran ahead to the ward. Why had she brought that Scotch? If she hadn’t, Liddy would still have her fingers. If Liddy didn’t make it, Helen didn’t think she could live with herself.

  Victoria followed her. “What should I do, Helen?”

  “See to the ward. Wake up a couple of nurses to help you, but don’t treat any of the patients until you sober up.”

  Vic started to protest, then gave up. “All right.”

  By the time Helen gathered instruments and prepped for surgery, Colonel Pugh had Liddy sedated. They didn’t speak as Helen started an IV and cleaned the wound. Two fingers were gone, and Liddy’s hand looked like a wrinkled black leather glove.

  “Helen, we need a specialist. I’ve never performed this kind of surgery.”

  Helen looked up. He’d never called her by her first name. “You can do what she needs right now, Doctor.”

  “John.”

  She looked him in the eye and saw doubt there, and maybe a little fear. “You’re an excellent doctor. I’ve watched you work, and you’re the best we have.”

  “I might disfigure this girl even more than—”

  “You can’t think about that now. Do what you can. Stop her bleeding. Close the wound to infection. And pray. This isn’t going to be Lydia’s only surgery.”

  He nodded. Then together they stopped the bleeding, and John stitched the wound so tenderly that Helen was reminded of her mother mending school clothes at the kitchen table, a single light shining on her.

  When they were finished and the hand wrapped and bandaged, Pugh pulled up a chair and sat inches from his patient. “You should get some sleep, Helen.”

  She was already pulling a chair to the other side of Liddy’s makeshift bed. “What about you?”

  “I’m fine. I think she’ll be out for hours. But I want to be here when she wakes up. She needs to get on a hospital ship back to the States. If I can get her to Paris, I can get her transport out of there and onto a ship, but I’ll need to make some calls.”

  “Do it,” Helen said. “I’ll stay with her. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want her to wake up and not see a doctor here.”

  Peggy cleared her throat from the entryway. She must have been eavesdropping. “Is she going to be all right? Vic told me what happened.”

  “Come on in, Peggy.” Helen filled her in on the medical details.

  “How can I help?” she asked. “Naomi’s covering the ward.”

  Pugh smiled wearily. “I have a feeling you’re just the nurse who can pull this off. I’m going to give you some names to call, and I’ll tell you what to say. We need to arrange transport on the next hospital ship sailing to America.” He jotted names and numbers onto a prescription pad. “Tell them you’re calling with my authority. Don’t take no for an answer.” He tore off the sheet and handed it to her.

  “I’ll get it done,” she said, and Helen knew she would. “How do I get in the general’s office to use the phone?”

  “You’ll have to wake him up,” Pugh said.

  “I have a better idea.” Helen knew that at least twice Victoria had managed to call her latest boyfriend on the general’s personal phone. “Ask Vic.”

  For the next three hours, Helen and John—though it took some work for her to call him by his given name—sat vigil over Liddy. They talked about everything, starting with the 199th, but veering off into their childhoods and their medical training. John was an only child of older parents and confessed he’d felt lonely until joining the Army. “I always wanted to have brothers and sisters.”

  “Wish I’d known you then,” Helen said. “I would gladly have given you a few of mine.”

  “How’s the war treating your brothers?” he asked.

  “I wish I knew. The two boys in the Pacific never write. Neither does my older brother the MP. I hear from Wilbur from time to time. He’s in Europe somewhere.”

  “Your poor mother has four sons in this war?”

  “Five.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to tell him about Eugene. But he was waiting. “I’m the most worried about Eugene. I think he may have been in Normandy, but of course, he can’t tell me. He’s not answering my letters.”

  That was enough. Helen didn’t want to share her worst fears about Eugene. “Oh, and I have a brother-in-law gallivanting and quite possibly spying all over Europe. Plus a sister-in-law who served in the Philippines until the island got overrun by the Japanese. And her husband—which makes him my brother-in-law, I suppose—was captured and hopefully still in prison, we think, in Tokyo.”

  “You and your husband have very colorful families.”

  “This is true.”

  “Tell me about your husband.” He said it with what might have been a melancholy smile.

  For some reason she couldn’t explain, Helen felt uncomfortable talking about Frank with him, especially now, after her husband decided not to have her meet him in Marseille as planned.

  She was saved by the footsteps in the hall. Peggy was back, and she’d dragged a disheveled and obviously hungover Victoria with her. “All set!” Peggy handed John a slip of paper. “That’s the contact and the authorization number to board the hospital ship. If she can make it to Paris in time, they can send her in an ambulance to catch the first ship out. Can’t get out through Brest or Le Havre, so it’ll be the long way around. Do you have somebody to take her? I’ll bet Bill would do it.”

  John shook his head. “No, I’ll do it. She might need medical attention on the way. She’ll definitely need to be sedated.”

  “How are you going to sedate her if you’re driving?” Peggy asked.

  It was the right question. Helen had been hanging on until the minute she could collapse in bed herself. But Liddy needed her. And why not? She wasn’t going to Marseille. “I’m going too.”

  Pugh turned to her. “You don’t need to do that. Wait—I forgot about your leave, Helen. You’re going to miss your train.”

  “My plans have changed,” she said. “I’m going to Paris.”

  Victoria jerked to attention. “Peggy, did you lock the office?”

  “What? No. You’re the locksmith. That was your job.”

  “We can’t leave it unlocked!” Vic looked from Peggy to Helen. “Oh, all right. I’ll do it.”

  Helen couldn’t have said how long the trip to Paris and back took. She fought to stay awake so she could keep John awake. They talked about almost everything and everyone . . . except Frank.

  MARSEILLE, FRANCE

  “Hello?” Frank couldn’t believe someone finally answered the phone. He’d tried calling Helen’s base in Rennes all day, mostly at odd hours since he had to sneak to the only phone, jealously guarded by Colonel Croane. “Is someone there?”

  “Whozziz?” The women’s words slurred.

  Frank hoped she wasn’t too drunk to take a message. Thanks to Croane, he’d barely had time to track down Michel at the post office and arrange to get word to Helen before she boarded the train to Marseille. Michel had sent a message to his uncle, who promised to take it to Helen. But Frank didn’t know if the plan had worked or not. He’d nearly panicked imagining his wife traveling all that way for nothing. “I need to talk to Helen Daley.”

  “Too bad,” said the voice at the other end.

  “No, please! You have to go get her. It’s important.”

  “Then you’ll have to go to Paris.”

  “Did you say Paris?” The connection wasn’t great, and the woman’s shaky voice even worse.

  “Yep. That’s where she is, all righty. Paris—with Colonel Pugh.”

  Whoever it was hung up, leaving Frank staring into space, wondering what on earth his wife was doing in Paris. With Colonel Pugh.

  Frank and Lartz made their way to roll call. “Why would she go to Paris with that colonel, Lartz?” Lartz had no answer. Sullen, Frank joine
d the ranks of soldiers and doctors to stand before Colonel Croane, good ol’ Chrome Dome, who hadn’t a kind word for anyone and who never offered explanations, probably because he didn’t know what he was doing. It was Croane’s fault that he and Helen weren’t together right now. The man had canceled all leaves without warning.

  “Anderson, wipe that smirk off your face!” Croane snapped.

  “Yessir, sir.” Andy saluted, but even the colonel had to see how hungover he was.

  Now it was Frank’s turn apparently. Croane stood directly in front of him, sunlight gleaming from his bald pate. “That hair, Lieutenant Daley.”

  “All mine, sir!”

  “You will cut it this morning. We are soldiers, and we will look like soldiers and win this war like soldiers!”

  “How will cutting my hair help us win the war, sir? Remember Samson in the Bible? Didn’t he win his battles until they cut his hair?” Frank didn’t want to cut his hair. Helen loved his curls, and he loved feeling her run her fingers through them.

  Croane’s face reddened. So did his head. “Off with it, Daley!”

  “I guess it’s true, then.” Under his breath, Frank muttered, “Chrome Dome.”

  “What?” Croane asked.

  “Misery really does love company.”

  That afternoon, Anderson, Lartz, and Frank, hair uncut, found themselves on a slow-moving train bound for Alsace-Lorraine. “This is all your fault, Daley,” Anderson said. They had to stand in the smoke-filled corridor outside one of the train compartments. Andy was on his second pack.

  “Take it easy, Andy,” Lartz said. “Who knows why Croane does anything? He’s probably had our orders for days and wanted to spring it on us last-minute.”

  “Who do you think you’re kidding?” Anderson shot back. “If Daley hadn’t made that crack about misery loving company, we wouldn’t be here now. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re the only Yanks aboard.”

  “Not my fault if Chrome Dome can’t take a joke. He’s lost his sense of humor—one more casualty of war.” But the truth was, Frank would have given anything to take back those words and return to Marseille. Andy was right. Except for a few British soldiers, the other passengers appeared to belong—women carrying shopping bags, one with a chicken under her arm, and men beaten down by hard labor from the looks of them. “Quit griping, Andy. It’s better than a boxcar.” Soon as the words were out, Frank wished again that he’d kept his mouth shut. Lartz winced as if hit in the gut.