Dancing in the Rain

by Amanda Harte

  Once we eat (and I won’t bore you with the litany of canned rations), it’s time to tend to the donks. Carolyn smiled again. The first week, Ed had complained that the soldiers gave everything nicknames. Mules were called donkeys, or donks for short. Now, she noted, he’d adopted the abbreviation. Mine kicked mud everywhere—all over me. Not that I was clean before then. Once Donk was fed, it was back into the trenches with nothing to do except wait for dusk and another Stand To.

  But then we had mail call. Carolyn, my dearest, your letter was better than sunshine. I tried to picture you with a clothespin on your nose, and that made me laugh for the first time in days. Thank you, my darling.

  Carolyn squeezed her eyes closed to keep the tears from falling. No matter what happened in the future, she could not regret her engagement, not when it had made Ed happy.

  Chapter Five

  Dwight stared at the door to the operating theater, frowning when it did not open. Where was she? Breakfast had been over for hours, or so it seemed. She should be here. Just because the other staff hadn’t arrived didn’t mean there were no men to treat. Didn’t Carolyn realize that they had important work to do? Men’s lives were at stake, and she was late. Dwight thrust his hands into his pockets when he realized he had balled them in frustration. He couldn’t let Carolyn—or anyone—annoy him that much.

  If it were another nurse, Dwight would have thought she was fussing with her hair, but—though she was the prettiest woman Dwight had ever seen—Carolyn appeared to spend no time primping. He had never seen her look in a mirror or try to catch her reflection in a window the way Louise and his sisters did. Dwight was certain curling her hair wasn’t the reason Carolyn was late. Knowing her, she was joking with someone in the wards. That wasn’t necessarily bad. Even though Dwight put no credence in the therapeutic effects of laughter, the men in the wards appreciated Carolyn and her jokes. The problem was, men needed her here. He needed her, for until she arrived, he could do nothing. He couldn’t ask the orderlies to bring in his first patient, because without a nurse, he was unable to operate.

  Dwight frowned again. Where was she? He had been waiting for what felt like hours, and she was—he blinked when he saw the clock. It must have stopped. He reached for his watch, shaking his head when it registered the same time as the stately grandfather clock. There was no denying the evidence. Carolyn wasn’t late. He was early.

  How odd. Today, he had felt an unusual sense of anticipation when he had wakened. That must have been the reason he’d rushed through breakfast without being aware of how quickly he must have eaten. It was surely the thought of saving more lives that had brought him here ahead of schedule. It couldn’t be anything else. It most definitely could not have been a desire to see Clothespin Carolyn’s smile.

  As the other doctors began to arrive, the energy level in the operating theater increased, and the orderlies wheeled in the first patients. Still, there was no sign of Carolyn. And then the door opened, and she whirled inside. That was the only way to describe her entrance, for she was practically running, and that lovely golden hair bounced against her cheeks, while she bestowed a warm smile on each man that she passed. She was beautiful and so filled with vitality that it was difficult not to smile in return. Dwight didn’t smile, of course. That would not be seemly, particularly not here in the operating room. He wouldn’t want the injured men to think he regarded them with anything less than complete seriousness. As Carolyn smiled again, Dwight bit the inside of his mouth to keep his lips from turning up.

  Two of the men who lay on stretchers waiting for their turn in surgery did more than smile. They whistled their appreciation.

  “Gentlemen.” Carolyn gave them an obviously false frown. That pretty heart-shaped face radiated joy, despite the down-turned lips. “My granny would say that you had indulged in inappropriate behavior. A gentleman never whistles inside a building.”

  The man with the head wound grinned. “Can’t a fella say you’re the prettiest sight he’s seen since he left home? You’re worth gettin’ wounded for.”

  Carolyn shook her head. Though her hair bounced, the starched cap remained firmly perched on top of her head. “My granny always told me flattery was like cod liver oil. A little is good for you, but you don’t want to overdo.”

  While Dwight struggled to maintain his solemnity, the soldier laughed. “My granny never told me nurses were like you.”

  They’re not, Dwight wanted to say. Instead, he said only, “Nurse, please prepare this man for surgery.” He nodded at the first man who had whistled. Judging from his badly lacerated arm, fragments of a shell had hit Corporal Miller. The man’s chart indicated that he was from the American Expeditionary Force. “I see you’re part of the Big Red One,” Dwight said, using the nickname the soldiers had given to the US First Division.

  “Yes, sir!” Corporal Miller started to salute, then winced when his arm refused to move. “You gonna take off my arm?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Though Dwight thought he had sounded confident, Miller’s expression was dubious. Carolyn laid a hand on his uninjured arm. “You can trust Dr. Hollins,” she said, her voice low and soothing.

  “But what if he can’t save it?”

  “He will!” Dwight wished he were as confident as Carolyn. He had amputated far too many limbs since this war had begun. All he could do was pray that the statesmen were right and that this was truly the war to end all wars. If this was the last time men had to fight, perhaps all the suffering Dwight had seen would not be in vain.

  Carolyn reached for the chloroform. “You can trust the doctor.” As she prepared to slide the mask over Corporal Miller’s face, she gave him a conspiratorial smile. “My granny always said you could tell a mule’s character by the shape of his ears and a man’s by the shape of his thumbs.” She nodded toward Dwight. “Dr. Hollins has honest thumbs.”

  It was all Dwight could do not to laugh. He had never heard anything so absurd in his entire life. But the patient was less critical. He let out a full-bodied laugh. “That’s good,” Carolyn said with another of those smiles that must have charmed the young men in Texas. “Laughter can heal almost as well as medicine.”

  “If you say so, Nurse.” Corporal Miller closed his eyes and relaxed. Dwight shook his head slightly. Though Carolyn’s techniques were distinctly unconventional, he had to admit they worked.

  “Did your grandmother live with you?” he asked when they had sutured the corporal’s wounds. Although he normally spoke only to demand another instrument or bandage, Dwight was feeling almost ebullient at the fact that he had saved the man’s arm. Miller would return home able to wrap both arms around his sweetheart. Sweetheart? Where had that thought come from? Dwight hadn’t been thinking of Louise.

  “What makes you think that?”

  For a second, Dwight stared at Carolyn, wondering how she had known he was thinking about sweethearts. Then he realized she was responding to his question about her grandmother. “You quote her so often,” Dwight said, hoping his relief that she was not a mind reader was not obvious. He didn’t need anyone—especially Carolyn—knowing the direction his thoughts had taken. “I figured you must have spent a lot of time with your grandmother.”

  Carolyn blushed. Her lips parted as if she were going to speak, but before any words could emerge, she clamped them together.

  Though Dwight raised one brow, trying to encourage her, she remained silent. By the time she had anesthetized a man with a head wound but had uttered not one word, Dwight was annoyed. Was she playing a game, reminding him that he was normally taciturn? Pettiness like that seemed out of character for Carolyn.

  When her lips quivered again, Dwight could stand it no longer. “It’s obvious you want to say something. Do it.”

  She shook her head and handed him the forceps he’d requested. “You told me to think before speaking or acting. I simply took your advice.”

  He grimaced. “Is this a case of ‘be careful what you ask for’?�
�� When Carolyn shrugged, Dwight suspected she had no intention of responding to his original question. “At this point, whatever you say can hardly be classified as impulsive,” he told her. Though he’d been mildly curious about her grandmother when he’d posed his question, now Dwight felt an almost irrational need to know how the older woman had influenced Carolyn. “You’ve had plenty of time to think and to phrase your answer as carefully as an attorney.” Dwight looked down at his patient, annoyed when he realized how distracted he was. “Come on, Carolyn. What’s the problem? All I did was ask was a simple question.”

  “But the answer’s not so simple.” Another blush stained her cheeks. Dwight wondered if she realized how becoming that blush was. Even when frowning, Carolyn was a beautiful woman, but with the faint color on her face and those sparkling blue eyes … Dwight clenched his jaw, attempting to repress thoughts that were decidedly inappropriate.

  “Promise you won’t tell anyone?” she asked. She looked around the room, as if trying to assure herself that no one would overhear her. But the rest of the staff, unlike Dwight, was too busy treating the wounded to care about Carolyn’s revelation.

  Dwight nodded his assent. “And if you’re wondering whether you can trust me, remember that you’re the one who said I have honest thumbs.” He couldn’t help the smile that crossed his face at the memory of her absurd declaration. It was just another dreary day in Goudot, with rain pelting the windows. The coal shortage had worsened, and now even the operating theater, which had been reasonably warm yesterday, felt frigid. Yet the dismal conditions had seemed to fade when Carolyn told her tales. Honest thumbs! What an idea!

  “That’s the problem.”

  Dwight quirked an eyebrow. “You mean you were wrong, and I don’t have honest thumbs?”

  “No.” As she glanced at his hands, another blush rose to her cheeks. “That is …” Carolyn swallowed deeply, then blurted out the words, “I don’t know …”

  “You mean your grandmother really didn’t teach you how to judge thumbs and mules’ ears?”

  Carolyn shook her head. “My grandmother didn’t teach me anything. Both of my grandmothers died before I was born.”

  Her response surprised him, as she must have known it would. Once again, Clothespin Carolyn had done the unpredictable. “Then all those granny stories …”

  “Were just that: stories.”

  “Let me guess. You invented the grandmother and her homilies on an impulse.” That seemed to be the way Carolyn got through life, doing whatever seemed best at the time.

  “Exactly.” Judging from the expression on her face, she had no regrets, other than the fact that he’d revealed her deception. “I wanted to make the soldiers laugh.” Her eyes were somber as she continued. “Haven’t you noticed that no one thinks young women are funny? If I had told the same stories and admitted they were mine, no one would have been amused. So I invented a wise old grandmother.”

  It wasn’t, Dwight had to admit, a bad idea. “Let me look at your hands.” Obviously puzzled by the request, she held them out for his inspection. They were small, almost delicate, with graceful fingers. And one of those fingers bore an engagement ring. Dwight started to frown, then stopped himself. Of course, she was engaged. He’d known that from the first day she’d assisted him.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  He nodded solemnly. “I was right.” He paused for effect, then added, “You don’t have honest thumbs.”

  Carolyn’s eyes widened in obvious surprise. “You made a joke, Doctor Hollins.” There was a note of wonderment in her voice.

  “Why, so I did.” Dwight looked down at the man on the stretcher. It hadn’t hurt either him or his patient. Maybe Carolyn was right. Maybe humor had its place.

  In her dream, someone was ill, violently ill. Carolyn turned and pulled the pillow over her head, willing the dream to go away. But the sounds continued, retching punctuated with soft moans of pain. It was no dream! Carolyn’s eyes flew open and she sat up, tossing the pillow aside as she realized that Helen was in agony.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, lighting a lamp. The only thing worse than being sick was being sick in the dark. She wondered how long her roommate had been huddled over a basin. In Carolyn’s dream, the sounds had gone on forever, but dream time, Carolyn knew, often bore no relation to real time. Perhaps it had been only a few seconds.

  “Do you think the fish was spoiled?” Carolyn had never acquired a taste for fish and had refused last night’s main course.

  Helen shook her head, then wiped her face and turned to Carolyn. “I’m not sick,” she said with a weak smile. Though she was pale, her brown eyes sparkled with what looked like happiness. “Promise you won’t tell anyone.”

  Carolyn nodded, remembering how, less than a day earlier, she had extracted the same promise from Dwight. Whatever secret Helen wanted her to keep, she suspected it was more important than an imaginary grandmother.

  Helen reached for the pitcher they filled each evening and poured herself a glass of water. When she’d taken a sip, the smile she gave Carolyn was radiant. “I’m pregnant,” she announced.

  Pregnant! No wonder Helen had been sick so many mornings. Carolyn had attributed that and Helen’s complaints of fatigue to the schedule they both kept. But Helen’s malady wasn’t a malady at all. Instead, it was a reason for celebration. In the midst of this horrible war, a new life had begun.

  “That’s wonderful!” Carolyn hugged her friend, then studied her with new eyes. Helen was to be a mother. How exciting! “You must be thrilled.”

  “I am.” Helen smiled again as she cranked the shutters open. The pale light of another rainy dawn brightened the room only slightly. “The one thing I’m sorry about is that I won’t be able to stay here much longer. Miss Pierce will send me home as soon as she knows.”

  Carolyn didn’t doubt it. The head nurse was not one to bend rules without a direct order. “She’ll find out eventually.”

  “I know that.” Helen looked down at her still slim figure, and Carolyn suspected she was imagining the inevitable changes. “All I want to do is postpone it as long as possible. Somehow, I need to hide the morning sickness from her.”

  Carolyn nodded and suggested that she could take Helen’s early morning shift. “I’ll do whatever I can for you.” Carolyn hugged her friend again. “This is so exciting!” Though nothing short of a truce would end the horrible injuries and death they dealt with every day, it was wonderful to know that the circle of life continued.

  “It feels like a miracle,” Helen admitted. She sank onto the room’s one chair, as if the effort of opening the shutters had tired her.

  “What does Glen think?” Carolyn asked, referring to Helen’s husband. She knew they’d been married for three years and that one of the reasons Helen had volunteered to come to France was that her husband was stationed on the Western Front. The baby must have been the result of a brief leave that they’d managed to share the week before Carolyn had come to the hospital.

  Helen had told Carolyn that they had rendezvoused in Paris and that the French capital was as beautiful as she had dreamed, even though the mood was even grimmer there than in Goudot, as the Parisians feared an enemy occupation. The journey, too, had been fraught with difficulties. Though Paris was only one hundred kilometers from Goudot as the crow flies, Helen had explained that there were neither crow flights available nor any direct routes, and so the sixty-six miles had become close to one hundred. “But it was worth it!” she had declared. Now that visit must seem even more wonderful.

  “Is Glen as excited as you?”

  To Carolyn’s surprise, a shadow crossed Helen’s face. “I haven’t told him.” As Carolyn raised an eyebrow, Helen continued, “We had two false starts, so I want to be sure before I tell him.” She smiled at Carolyn. “You’re the only one who knows.”

  A lump formed in Carolyn’s throat at the thought that this woman who’d been a stranger a month before now trusted her with such
an important secret. “Thank you, Helen. I promise I won’t betray your confidence.”

  Helen reached forward and laid a hand on Carolyn’s arm. “I know you won’t. You’re the most loyal person I’ve ever met.”

  Though she couldn’t have explained why, Helen’s words transported Carolyn back to Canela, and she pictured Ed’s face the day she’d agreed to marry him. He had been happier than she’d ever seen him. And she? Carolyn couldn’t remember how she had felt other than the pleasure of knowing that she could help Ed. It was not unlike what she felt today, knowing she could help Helen. How odd. Was loyalty what she felt for Ed?

  “You’re late, Carolyn.” Dwight stood next to the operating table, his hazel eyes cold with anger. “You’re late,” he repeated.

  She knew she was, but she couldn’t regret it, not under the circumstances. If she had her way, this particular operation would be delayed even more. Today, for the first time since she had come to Goudot, so many injured men had been brought to the hospital that they had overflowed the wards and were lined up in the hallways. Carolyn glanced at the three men who were waiting for surgery and flashed them her most brilliant smile, hoping they’d understand what she was about to do. Though their faces were lined with pain and worry, the patients managed to return her smile. Dwight, however, did not smile. The steely look he gave her was as disapproving as his words.

  “Sorry, Doctor,” she said as she approached him. Keeping her tone light, she said, “I know I’m late, but I had to dance with one of my beaux.” If only that were true!

  The patients chuckled. The doctor did not. “That is not amusing. Now, if you can take time away from your dancing schedule to assist me …” He gestured toward the instrument tray.