The Valiant Hearts Romance Collection

by Kristin Billerbeck

  Aides in dark dresses and white aprons took over for nurses and doctors in the physical therapy rooms. A soldier flirted with a smiling aide while she massaged his arm. Glorie waited while another soldier completed his hot water treatment, his leg in a tall, round canister that looked like a metal wastebasket. The patient she’d wheeled down would receive the same treatment on a leg amputated just above the knee.

  She wheeled another patient back to his ward. They met a group of ambulatory convalescent patients returning from an outdoor exercise session, not looking at all like patients in their sweaters and wool slacks.

  One of the men grinned at her patient. “How do you rate, Tom, riding and with a beautiful woman at your service? I’ve only these ugly doughboys for company.”

  The wheeled man spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “Ugly attracts ugly, and good-looking—”

  The men hooted and continued on their way.

  The patients’ good cheer continually amazed Glorie. They seldom allowed themselves the luxury of self-pity, and they didn’t treat each other with pity, either. She and the other nurses followed the men’s example to the best of their ability.

  After delivering the man to his ward, Glorie headed for the officers’ dayroom. Grace was scheduled to read to some of the blinded men and had asked Glorie to join them if she could get away. Their war duties kept them so busy, they seldom saw each other, compared to Glorie’s prenursing days.

  She was thankful for the busy hours. The joy of Armistice had tarnished with news that her brother Fred was missing in action in the last offensive. She swallowed the painful lump of fear, said a prayer, and forced her thoughts away from the worst.

  Her steps slowed when she neared Johan’s ward. She hadn’t seen him in almost two weeks, not since she’d been reassigned to surgery. She often wondered whether the humorous soldier was healing well. Unless he had another episode with the callous Captain Smith or his friends, Johan’s throat and blistering should soon be healed well enough for him to be discharged. She felt a slight twinge in her heart at the thought.

  She toyed with the possibility of stopping to say hello but tossed the idea aside after a moment. Fraternizing with patients was discouraged. Patients often developed fond feelings for their nurses.

  Glorie sighed and forced herself to pass the ward doors. It wasn’t the patient whose heart was endangered; it was hers. She wasn’t sure why Johan drew her interest more than any of the hundreds of other men, but he did. Certainly his humor helped, though other men joked and teased, too. Whenever she recalled his face and voice when he’d greeted his parents, the memory warmed her like a blanket. It was like a gift, seeing his heart open in that intimate way. All the patients were courageous men, but few allowed others to see their vulnerable side. Perhaps Johan would have hidden his emotions if his parents hadn’t surprised him.

  Outside the officers’ dayroom she stopped to take a deep breath and put on a smile. She could hear Grace’s musical voice through the door. When Glorie entered, the first person she saw was Lt. Johan Baker, seated in a leather mission chair near the stone fireplace. He glanced up. A smile leaped to his eyes, sending shivers of joy through her.

  He and the other officers started to rise.

  Glorie shook her head. “Please, continue with what you are doing.”

  Their activities were varied. Captain Smith and a major played chess in one corner. Another major read a book. A lieutenant sat at an oak table writing a letter on familiar YMCA stationery that bore a printed heading which stated that he was proudly serving in America’s armed forces. A deck of cards in the middle of another table showed how others spent time. The new tune “Everything Is Peaches Down in Georgia” filled with cheer the corner where a nurse and colonel looked through the record collection beside the Victrola.

  A calendar hung above the Victrola, picturing a child Elisabeth’s age with short blond curls. Beneath her image was the caption, “Guess what Daddy bought me for my birthday. A Liberty Bond!” Glorie tried to imagine Elisabeth happy about a bond for a gift and failed.

  Grace’s voice rose and fell while she read the day’s St. Paul Pioneer Press to a blinded captain. She and the captain were seated in overstuffed chairs near the fireplace.

  Elisabeth rose with a gasp of delight and raced to Glorie. The white veil of a miniature Red Cross headpiece Grace had finally made the girl floated out behind her. Glorie knelt to receive the little girl’s hug. “Hello, Elisabeth. Are you having a good time?”

  “Yes. Muvver is weading, so I must be quiet like my kitty when she naps,” Elisabeth informed her in a stage whisper. She took Glorie’s hand. “Come sit with me.”

  Glorie followed obediently. Elisabeth sat on the rug before Johan’s chair. She indicated that Glorie was to sit down beside her.

  Immediately Johan stood and waved his sketch pad toward his seat. “Take my chair, Nurse Cunningham.”

  “I’m accustomed to sitting with Elisabeth, thank you.” She lowered herself as gracefully as possible beside her niece, trying to ignore the awareness of Johan’s presence, which made every movement feel exaggerated and clumsy.

  Johan sat down beside them, crossing his legs.

  “Shh.” Elisabeth held a stiff index finger to her lips.

  “Sorry,” he mouthed.

  “Your voice sounds much stronger,” Glorie whispered.

  “I’ve a lot of practice whispering,” he said with a straight face.

  She giggled. “I meant when you spoke normally.”

  “The doctors say they’ll discharge me any day now. My throat and the lesions are almost healed.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “Here’s some great news, everyone.” Grace raised her voice for the entire room to hear. “Sugar allowances have doubled. We’re now allowed eight teaspoons a day. It’s about time. I’m simply wasting away with so little sugar and real flour. Soon Fuelless Mondays, Meatless Tuesdays, and Sugarless Fridays will be behind us. But they were worth it. It says here that Minnesotans saved thirty-six million pounds of sugar and three million bushels of wheat for the Allies. Hooray for us!” She returned to reading articles for the officer beside her, and her voice moderated. The others in the room returned to their occupations, too.

  “You’ve bobbed your hair,” Johan remarked, studying Glorie.

  Her hand went to the marcelled waves framing her face. “Yes. I thought it would be easier to care for now that I’m so busy.”

  “I like it.”

  His approval warmed her, and she ignored the thought that it shouldn’t give her so much pleasure.

  Elisabeth tired of not receiving their attention. She leaned toward Johan. “Are you done drawing me?”

  “Almost.” He added a few strokes. “There.” He handed the pad to Elisabeth.

  She beamed in delight. “Look, Aunt Glorie.”

  The sketch caught Elisabeth’s intensity as she comforted a bandaged doll in her arms. “You’re very good,” Glorie told him, her gaze and emotions riveted on his sketch.

  He took the tablet from her without comment.

  Glorie lifted the real doll from Elizabeth’s lap. “What happened to your baby?” It appeared almost mummylike, with only its porcelain cheeks and a few stray brown curls peeking out from the gauze.

  “She was wounded in the war.” The statement came out short and matter-of-fact.

  “Is she a soldier?” Johan asked.

  “No, Silly.” Elizabeth shook her head vigorously. “Girls aren’t soldiers. She’s a nurse.”

  Glorie wondered where Elisabeth came across the idea the war endangered nurses the same as soldiers. True, the flu epidemic killed many nurses. Those near the front lines were sometimes injured, but none had been killed in battle.

  The Victrola sent out a new song. Elisabeth jumped up, eyes gleaming. “That’s my favowite song. K–k–k–katy,” she sang as she skipped across the room to the couple playing records.

  Glorie glanced at Johan, and they share
d a laugh at the girl’s enthusiastic rendering of the popular tune. When the laugh died, they were still staring into each other’s eyes. Glorie wondered what he thought and felt inside, in that place with war memories he didn’t share with anyone. She had the sudden, aching wish to hold him, her arms absorbing all the awful pictures, all the horrible and painful memories.

  It almost took a physical effort to pull her gaze away. Her cheeks felt warm. Had he seen her thoughts in her eyes?

  “Are you changing the doll’s dressings?” Johan’s teasing tone made her aware she was picking at the doll’s bandages.

  “Grace says she tore up an old sheet for Elisabeth to use, as she’s bandaging everyone and everything. She bandaged their cocker spaniel.” She liked the chuckle that rewarded her tale. “That wasn’t the worst of it,” she continued. “A few nights ago, while her father napped after dinner, she wrapped his feet—wrapped them together. Grace had to cut the makeshift bandages off.”

  The chuckle became a guffaw. “Wish I’d seen that. Did you know I met her husband? Daniel is one of the volunteers who take us restless convalescing soldiers for Sunday drives. I liked him.”

  “He’s a fine man.” Glorie sometimes envied Grace her pleasant married life, with a man who thought the sun rose and set in her and a daughter who lit up her heart. But I’ve never met a man I wanted to spend my entire life with, she thought. Besides, if I’d married, I wouldn’t be here now, helping the soldiers. Grace gave up her dream of nursing for a dream more important to her, building a life and family with Daniel. Until I meet a man I’m that crazy over, I won’t marry.

  Johan took the doll from her and looked down at it as though it had secrets to tell. “The men love it when Elisabeth visits. In France, when a little girl was in the hospital she was injured. The war wasn’t limited to soldiers.”

  Glorie’s chest constricted at his words. She closed her mind against the image of children with the same grievous wounds as the soldiers at Fort Snelling.

  “The day always seems brighter after seeing Elisabeth,” he continued. “Have you noticed the way the mood seems lighter in a ward when she’s there? She reminds us of that sweet world waiting for us when we leave here. Perhaps we’re selfish, grasping for the life she brings.” He ran a thick index finger over the wrapping binding the doll’s head. “No child should see all the carnage she’s seen here.”

  “No one any age should see or experience it.” Glorie stopped his finger, laying her hand lightly over his. “Children are stronger than we think. The children in France have seen worse things. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Great War turned out to be what President Wilson called it, a war to end war?”

  “An end to war. I wish we could make that happen.” His voice was low, the passion causing it to reverberate like distant thunder.

  “That’ll be the day.” Captain Smith’s harsh comment crashed through the world that had included only Glorie and Johan.

  Glorie snatched her hand away from Johan’s. The gesture that had been only a natural reaching out to comfort another, suddenly appeared forward and ugly when reflected in the captain’s glaring eyes.

  The captain’s lip curled. “The whole world fought together to put Germany out of business. As long as one German remains alive there won’t be a chance peace will last. The Allies shouldn’t have agreed to peace. We should keep fighting until the earth is wiped clean of filthy Huns.”

  Glorie could see Johan struggling to keep his temper. Music continued to roll out from the Victrola with inappropriately cheerful lyrics, but everyone but Elisabeth was watching the two officers. Glorie wanted to lay her hand on his again, to tell him the captain’s taunts weren’t worth challenging, but she clenched her hands tightly in her lap and sent up a prayer instead.

  “You’re right that Germany was the aggressor,” Johan said through tight lips, “this time.”

  “You can’t weasel your fatherland out of guilt just because there are wars your country didn’t fight in.”

  Johan pointed to a print on the wall beside them, a picture of an American Indian warrior slumped on the back of a horse after battle. “Your fatherland was the aggressor against this nation, wasn’t it?”

  Captain Smith snorted. “You can’t compare the two.”

  “Why not?” Johan asked softly. “The English and French wanted to take the land from the American Indians. The Germans in this war wanted to take land from the French.”

  “Are you saying the Germans were justified in invading France?” The captain braced his arms against the back of a chair and leaned toward Johan. Glorie sensed menace in the line of his body.

  “No.” Johan stood up, the bandaged doll hanging from one hand. “I’m saying evil doesn’t exist only in the people of one country. I’m saying a war started for the wrong reasons doesn’t justify condemning an entire people for all time, doesn’t justify forgetting the good things they’ve given the world.”

  Glorie hadn’t been aware that the colonel had left the Victrola and now approached them, until he spoke from behind Johan. “Put a lid on it, officers. There are ladies and a child present. If you want to continue your private war, do battle elsewhere.”

  “Yes, Sir.” The captain’s back straightened.

  “No need for battle, Sir.” Johan’s eyes challenged Smith to refute him.

  “That’s right, Sir.” Smith’s look said the words were a lie.

  When Smith had left the room, the colonel faced Johan. “A word of warning: Take care how you express your feelings about the war. I know you are a loyal American and fought hard for us, but there are those who won’t take that into account. They’ll remember that your people came from Germany and interpret your words according to their preconceived ideas. They want someone to blame for their sons coming home like this.” He rested his left hand on the prosthesis that replaced his right arm. “As you said, this time it’s Germany’s fault.”

  Color drained from Johan’s face. “Right, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

  “Germany’s a long way away,” the colonel continued. “You’re here, so you’re an easy target.”

  “I was born in America,” Johan told him. “My parents immigrated from Germany right after they married. Both have brothers and sisters living in Germany. At least, we hope they are still alive. We haven’t heard from them since before the United States entered the war. I have cousins who fought for Germany. Neither I nor my parents have met them, but they’re family, my parents’ nieces and nephews. Over there, when we were shooting at the enemy, I might have been shooting at my cousins. I never thought it right that Germany invaded Belgium and France, but other Americans don’t understand what they asked of German-Americans in this war. No one should be asked to make such a choice.”

  Glorie’s throat tightened in sympathy at the pain in his voice.

  The colonel’s expression didn’t change. “It’s a nasty choice, no question about it. But remember, one of your cousins might have launched the gas shells that put you here, Lieutenant.” He gave a sharp salute and left the room.

  Glorie was dimly aware that the others in the room had gone back to their activities. Grace’s voice picked up a news story again, the paper crackling as she adjusted it. The other nurse asked Elisabeth about her favorite songs. The officers at the chess table murmured across the playing board.

  It’s impossible to live in Minnesota and not be aware of the German-Americans’ mixed sympathies, Glorie thought. Almost a quarter of the state’s population were born in Germany or Austria, or their parents were born there.

  Glorie rose to stand beside Johan and cleared her throat. “I have friends who Americanized their names after the war started.”

  “Denying their heritage? My family refuses to consider our ancestors shameful.”

  She wondered if he was turning his anger at Captain Smith on her. “They only wanted others to know they’re loyal Americans,” she said, “and to avoid trouble.”

  His gaze studied hers until she thought she
would quake at the intensity. “Do you believe it’s acceptable to deny your family and your history?”

  “I can’t judge them. I’ve not faced that choice, nor have I faced the awful choices you did.”

  “If I’d chosen not to fight for our country, for the United States, what would you think then?”

  The question seemed silly to her, asking what she would think if he were someone else. She wanted to duck her head to hide her smile, but he might interpret that as avoiding his gaze. “That depends. Would you choose to support Germany because of your heritage or because you believed Germany right in invading its neighbors? Did you enlist in the American army because you live in America or because you believe the Belgians and French and all other people have the right to choose the leaders who will govern them?”

  His eyebrows drew together in a frown. For a moment he looked confused. Then he laughed. “You should be a diplomat.”

  “I think that quality is required of nurses.”

  “Thank you for reminding me of the true questions.”

  “You always knew them.” She knew it was true. Yet it was equally true that he and millions of others had been forced to make a horrible and costly choice.

  “Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” he reminded her. “Will you spend it with your family?”

  “No. I see my family often since they live in St. Paul. I offered to work to free someone else to spend time with their family. My grandparents are coming for the holidays. They live in Virginia. I haven’t seen them in years. They arrive this afternoon and are staying through Christmas.” She didn’t tell him they’d decided the family needed each other over the holidays while they dealt with their fear and grief over Fred.

  “I’ve never met my grandparents.” Johan gazed out the window.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine life without grandparents.”