The Girls of Pearl Harbor

by Lane, Soraya M.

  ‘Who would do this to us?’ she cried.

  Teddy gently wiped a thumb across her cheek before pulling her in close.

  ‘The Japanese,’ he whispered. ‘That’s who.’

  But why?

  Grace froze as the plane circled back, the noise vibrating through every inch of her as Teddy scooped her up and started to run with her in his arms. But it wasn’t taking aim at them this time—it was firing at the American flag waving beside the hospital—and it didn’t stop until it was torn to shreds.

  Her body felt numb as Teddy stumbled, as she wept into his chest, her cries muffled by the constant drone of aircraft, the noise that sent waves of terror vibrating through her, cringing as she braced for them to be gunned down. When Teddy stopped running and set her down, she clung to him, her nails digging into his shirt as her legs shook so hard she wondered if she’d even be able to walk on her own. And then she remembered his injury, his ankle that was probably still bandaged. Was that why he’d been here this morning, or had he sneaked down to see Poppy?

  Poppy. They needed to get to Poppy!

  ‘We can’t leave her,’ Grace mumbled, her teeth chattering as if she were frozen cold, arms wrapped tight around herself. ‘Have to go back. Have to get her.’

  Sirens wailed, and people yelled; the noise was like a circus, overwhelming and painful all at once. And then she looked up at Teddy and saw tears streaming down his cheeks, streaming into his mouth as he tried to speak, and she knew that he wanted to get back to her as badly as she did.

  ‘We can’t,’ he croaked. ‘She’s gone, Grace. I saw it with my own eyes.’

  April’s hand, familiar and warm, covered her arm then. She looked around, eyes wide, gulping in air as fast as she could, convinced she wasn’t getting enough oxygen into her lungs. Grace clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering.

  ‘We need to help,’ April said as a man was rushed past them, one of his legs dangling from the knee, blood spurting everywhere.

  Teddy, his hand trembling against Grace’s shoulder, stared straight into her eyes. ‘If she’s alive, I’ll get her. I promise,’ he said, before letting go and running back toward the field, back toward the relentless drone, the loud vibrations of enemy aircraft making the walls of Tripler General shake as if a violent earthquake had struck.

  ‘We need to go. Now,’ April said. Grace could hear her, and she could see her mouth moving, but she couldn’t seem to answer.

  ‘Grace!’ April yelled.

  Her sister grabbed hold of her hand and dragged her, and she stumbled forward, trying not to fall, her jaw hanging open as another man was rushed past them, as sirens wailed louder nearby, as she stared at a trail of blood that one nurse slipped on right in front of her. It was like red sauce smeared across the ground, leaving a gruesome trail.

  Grace yanked her hand free and doubled over as nausea took hold, vomiting all over the floor, the yellow bile mixing with the blood as she tried not to inhale, terrified of breathing in the acrid smell.

  ‘Grace!’

  She ran then, trying to avoid the blood, trying not to think, trying to push away the image of Poppy’s body flying backward as bullets had penetrated her slender body, as her smile had turned to a look of horror. How could that pilot have smiled at her, have looked at her like that and waved, and then gunned down her pretty, fun-loving friend as if he were doing target practice?

  ‘Grace!’

  She turned, her own name echoing in her ears as she stared at her sister. April’s face was tearstained, but she recognized the steely glint in her eye, the determined clench of her jaw. It was the very same look she’d had on her face after they’d buried their mother, the moment they’d walked away from the graveside. She knew that look, and she knew right then that April would know what to do. April would figure this out. April would keep them safe.

  ‘Grace,’ April said, squeezing her fingers tight. ‘These men need us. We need to save lives today, okay?’

  She nodded, still numb. She didn’t even know how to save a life, did she? ‘I can’t,’ she mumbled. ‘I . . . I . . .’

  Grace watched as chaos erupted around them and corpsmen filled the room, carrying bodies and calling orders. Where were they even supposed to start? Another wave of nausea rose within her, but she fought it, swallowing it down, trying to stay focused on her sister as other nurses looked to her too. Some were in their dressing gowns still; others had their hair sticking on end as if they’d just woken, perhaps being pulled from bed as news of the attack had hit. Most looked as lost as she felt.

  Doctors ran in, their white coats setting them apart from the other men in the hospital.

  ‘Mark them on the forehead with a red M when they’ve had morphine,’ April yelled out. ‘And a T for their tetanus shot. We need to know who’s had what. You can do this, Grace—I know you can.’

  ‘What do I use?’ she cried.

  ‘Your lipstick! Anything!’ April called back.

  ‘I can do that,’ Grace managed, fumbling in her pocket for her lipstick. ‘I can do that,’ she said again, almost to convince herself.

  The corpsman closest to her put up his hand. ‘Me too; I’ll help with that.’

  The building rattled, and a large boom sent tremors through Grace’s body and fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.

  ‘The rest of you either assist with initial assessments or help to set up theaters. We’re equipped to deal with burns and surgeries, but there’ll be more than we’re prepared for,’ called out a dark-haired doctor, possibly the doctor April had assisted the day before. ‘Take the dead straight to the morgue; if there’s not enough space, put them in the adjoining room. And if any man’s too far gone, then he goes there too. We’ve only got enough space for the living and those who are going to make it.’

  Grace looked up, wondering if she’d heard right. They were to take men who weren’t even dead yet to the morgue? She swapped glances with her sister, knowing from the pain in her gaze that she’d indeed heard correctly.

  A flurry of activity behind her alerted Grace to more patients being brought in, and she scanned them for Poppy, looking for her familiar silhouette, wondering if it could be her. There had to be a chance she was still alive, that she’d survived the attack. But all she saw was blood. There was no time for these men to be tidied up—it was blood and gore like she’d never expected to see in her lifetime, nothing like their training. This was war.

  ‘Nurse!’ She spun around and gagged at a man lying with his clothes shredded, bloodied face and closed eyes making it hard to tell if he was even alive or not, but his hand twitched, and she watched as his mouth opened and he cried out, more animal than human.

  April was gone now. There was no one to help her, no one to tell her that everything was going to be fine.

  She ran to the supplies cupboard and found the vials of morphine and syringes, hands shaking as she carried it all.

  ‘We need more morphine and tetanus shots!’ she called to a corpsman, his eyes meeting hers. ‘Bring it to me—we need to give it to every patient.’

  She ran back to the patient who’d been covered in blood and found three more just like him, lined up and waiting. She almost tripped over a foot sticking out from beneath one of the beds, and when she bent to look, it tucked back under.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Making space for those who need it,’ a man nursing his arm and dragging an injured leg said. ‘Give my bed to someone else.’

  She didn’t have time to tell him off, because he was right, they did need the space, and she’d already seen plenty of men leave their beds and rip off bandages to get out to fight. She quickly grabbed a cloth, rubbed a space on the first man’s forehead, and marked him with an M as he writhed in pain, before inserting a needle into his arm and injecting him with morphine. She looked at his wounds and wanted to give him tetanus, too, but she was still waiting on the supplies.

  Grace bent low and vomited again, not able to he
lp it, but there was barely anything left in her stomach now, and she hoped she’d be able to get through the rest of whatever she needed to do without fainting. Her hands trembled so badly that she could barely hold the next needle. But then a hand found hers, a warm, sticky hand that left a print of blood on her skin.

  ‘Sing to me,’ the soldier whispered, his cracked, bloody lips barely moving. ‘Please, just sing.’

  She took a deep breath as his hand slipped away, administering more morphine and trying to think of something, anything, to sing. The only thing that came to mind was their national anthem, and she started low, barely able to remember the words, but slowly they came to her, and she stopped stumbling over them, the verses clearer, helping her to concentrate.

  The corpsman was back at her side, passing her what she needed, and they started to make progress as eventually every single bed in the ward filled. He took to printing clearly on their foreheads with a pen, sometimes the only part of their bodies that was free of grime and blood when they wiped enough space to write, and she injected pain relief into each body, checked for pulses, administered tetanus shots to those who needed it, and called out to corpsmen and helpers to find out what had already been given to each patient. But as she came back around, almost to where she’d started, still singing, still using her voice to calm her patients and keep herself focused, not letting her mind wander, her voice stuttered and died in her throat. The man who’d asked her to sing, the man who’d touched her arm and left his mark, was dead, his eyes rolled back in his head.

  She took a deep breath, wishing for fresh oxygen, wishing she could run to the beach and gulp down the salty air, cleanse her body in the water and wash the day away.

  ‘Incoming!’

  The call that more patients were arriving, the shudder of the building again as the terrifying aerial assault continued, jolted her back into action. And as fear threatened to take hold, she held her head high and started to sing again, as much for herself as for the patients crying out in pain around her.

  Poppy. Her name echoed through Grace’s mind, over and over, but she pushed it away, blinking furiously every time that image came back to her.

  ‘Go away,’ she whispered.

  ‘What was that?’

  She jumped as a head peeked out from beneath the bed, a patient she’d forgotten about who was lying there to save space.

  ‘Sorry, nothing,’ she said. ‘Are you still all right under there?’

  He nodded, but she saw his grimace as he pulled himself out a little more. ‘I’m fine. Just wish I could get out there and help.’

  Grace was about to keep walking and tell him to tuck his legs back under, when she realized there was something he could do.

  ‘Would you mind making your way to the office?’ she asked. ‘I can help you there, and we could put you on the front desk. Then you could try to get on the phone to Hickam and anywhere else you can get through to—you know, to see what’s going on.’

  He scrambled out, reaching his good arm out to her, as his other was in a cast. ‘I’d rather be helpful than stuck in here, that’s for sure.’

  She remembered when he was upright that he also had an ankle sprain—she’d treated him only a few days earlier—so she waved over the corpsman who’d been assisting her.

  ‘Can you get him to the desk? He’s going to help with communications for us.’

  The corpsman nodded, and she gave the patient a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thank you. And please, if you can, would you try to make contact with the USS Solace? I’m desperate to know if my friend Eva Branson is safe.’

  Grace turned back and glanced around, the number of patients growing every few minutes, the casualties more horrific with every arrival. But she had to do this; she couldn’t give up. And besides, if she wasn’t doing initial assessments and injections, she’d have to be working in surgery or with the burn victims, and the thought alone made her stomach turn.

  Poppy. Her friend’s name, the look on her face, hit her hard again, out of the blue like a fist to the stomach. But she steeled herself as tears trickled down her cheeks. If Poppy were here, she’d be giving her a kick up the backside and telling her to get on with her work, that there were lives to save, and that was exactly what she was going to do. She thought of Teddy and prayed that he was okay, knowing that he’d be doing anything in his power to save Poppy if he could.

  As she checked a new patient’s pulse, her fingers to his neck, she realized that he was already gone and signaled for him to be taken before moving on to the next man. Only it wasn’t a man—it was a woman, a civilian woman who was clutching her baby to her breast. Her lifeless, blood-smeared little baby boy. Grace reached for her, stroking her arm as she gently wiped her forehead clean. The woman was covered in dirt and blood, which made it almost impossible to see what was wrong with her, and then she saw her leg, the bone visible, skin peeled back like a banana. She swallowed down bile and turned to get the morphine at the same moment a radio fuzzed and crackled nearby, before a broadcast played.

  She carefully slid the morphine needle into the woman’s arm, administering it as quickly as she could, but she doubted her patient even noticed. She was staring at her baby, and Grace didn’t know whether to try to pry the infant from her arms or let her hold him, grieve for her child as long as she could. Grace stood and listened, and as she glanced around, she realized the rest of the room had gone still too. Aside from the odd groan from a patient, they were all listening as a voice projected through the room.

  ‘We have witnessed this morning the distant view of a brief, full battle of Pearl Harbor and the severe bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy planes, undoubtedly Japanese. The city of Honolulu has also been attacked and considerable damage done.’ Grace felt as though her body had frozen as the reality of what had happened went through her like a shock wave. The radio crackled and then came back on, the words making it all seem so real. ‘It is no joke. It is a real war. The public of Honolulu has been advised to keep in their homes and away from the army and navy. There has been serious fighting going on in the air and in the sea.’

  A hand reached for hers, and she looked down to see the woman gripping her, her eyes wide, panic setting in.

  ‘We’re at war?’ the woman cried. ‘Is it true?’

  Grace nodded and kept hold of her hand, as much for herself as for her patient. ‘Yes,’ she said, finding it hard to breathe. ‘Yes, I think we are.’

  ‘Help my baby!’ the woman cried. ‘Please, just make sure he’s okay. Please.’

  Grace bravely nodded and held out her arms, taking the baby and holding him close, her hands shaking as she patted him, knowing she was being watched.

  ‘I’ll take him to get help,’ she said, smiling and wishing that there was something she could do. But he was ghostly pale, dead probably from the moment he’d been struck. It was incredible that the mother had even made it to the hospital with her leg shredded like that.

  Grace forced herself to walk all the way to the other end of the ward before passing him to a corpsman.

  ‘He alive?’

  She shook her head. ‘Straight to the morgue, please,’ she managed, her voice cracking as she choked on her words. Grace dropped a kiss to the baby’s little dark head. ‘But put him down carefully when you get there, would you? His mother thinks he’s still alive, and I want him treated with care.’

  The man nodded, his big arms engulfing the child, carrying him as Grace had, as if he were still alive, still a precious little bundle of life. As he disappeared from sight, Grace slowly turned, watching as a stretcher was carried past, yet another body on its way to the morgue, this one covered by a bloodstained sheet. But as she walked past, a flash of yellow caught her eye.

  ‘Stop!’ she called, staring, shivers running through her as she stepped closer, hand trembling as she reached to lift the sheet back. That yellow, that shade of color, the pretty cotton fabric, it looked so like . . .

  ‘No!’ she screamed, seeing Poppy’
s dark hair streaked with red, her mouth twisted, blood tracing a line down her chin.

  Not Poppy. No. No, no, no!

  The room spun as Grace’s legs buckled beneath her and she crashed to the hard floor below, her arm the only thing to break her fall as she wailed, as everything turned shades of swirling red and purple before falling black.

  ‘Grace! Grace, what’s wrong?’

  April was on the floor with her, holding her, stroking her hair.

  ‘What happened to her?’ she heard April demanding. ‘Why did she fall?’

  And then Grace felt her sister stiffen, knew she’d seen what she’d seen too.

  ‘Poppy’s dead,’ Grace whispered. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Cover the body, and take her away,’ April ordered, sobbing as she bent low and cradled Grace again, as they cried together.

  They were at war.

  Poppy was dead.

  And nothing was ever, ever going to be the same again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  EVA

  ‘Command battle stations!’

  Fear sliced through Eva like a hot knife through butter. It was the vibration that made her look up first, the heavy rattle in the air followed by the sickening noise of something thumping down from above. Over and over again.

  She looked in horror at the sky, at the planes flying too low in the distance, raining bullets or bombs or something from the sky. Eva couldn’t even make it out. Was this a training operation gone wrong? What on earth was happening? Why were those planes flying so low?

  Then she looked at sailors nearby, in their dress whites, waiting to go ashore in the liberty boats for a normal day out.

  ‘Command battle stations!’

  There went the call again. The sailors all looked at one another; she saw the confusion register, their eyes wide, before they all started moving, some running back down the deck and others commanded to go into the boats still. Where were they going? To shore? Now?

  Eva braced herself as a plane whirred closer, and she stared up, watching as the pilot raised one hand in a wave, his smile visible, before flying past and unleashing a torrent of bullets on a nearby ship.