The Girls of Pearl Harbor

by Lane, Soraya M.

  ‘Good morning,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m liking this cooler weather. The heat these past couple of months has been stifling.’

  ‘Not to mention the ants. They’ve been eating me alive.’

  Dr. Grey held her gaze then, and she laughed. Right now he looked like he could eat her alive. Maybe the girls were right—maybe he did like her—but after he’d made it clear that he didn’t approve of her doctor aspirations, she’d wondered if he’d even want to work with her again. They stopped at the door, and she waited, unsure of what to do. He reached out and touched a tendril of hair that was caressing her face, tucking it back behind her ear with the softest of touches.

  ‘You brighten up my day in there,’ he murmured.

  She leaned into his touch just a little, her cheek against his fingers, and he moved closer, his lips finally brushing against her cheek where the hair had been.

  ‘I’ll see you in there.’

  Dr. Grey opened the door for her, and she quickly walked through, hoping no one had seen. As she glanced back one last time at him, he winked, and she could have fallen to the ground.

  ‘Nurse, do you have a moment?’

  She pushed away thoughts of the barely there kiss and followed the young doctor who’d called out to her. He’d only just joined them, and she hadn’t met him properly yet.

  ‘I’m told this patient is under your care,’ he said, and April rushed to his side when she recognized the young soldier. He’d needed extensive surgery, but he’d been fine during his recovery so far.

  ‘Yes, his name’s Patrick Hunt. He had a long surgery two days ago, but he pulled through with flying colors.’

  The doctor frowned and moved around to the other side of the bed, looking up at her as he listened through his stethoscope. ‘There’s something wrong. He’s been in chronic pain this morning, and he’s developed a fever. I can’t pinpoint what’s going on with him.’

  April reached for the patient’s hand and shut her eyes, thinking back, trying to recall the exact moments throughout the surgery. It had been the one where she’d assisted on stitching, side by side with Dr. Grey, the same day she’d confessed her doctor aspirations. The day she’d been so exhilarated by only moments earlier. She remembered this particular patient, because it was after her coffee with Eva, and she’d assisted him with two more surgeries, both general surgeries to repair internal bleeding and organ damage. With this patient and the following one, he’d asked her to help with stitching once he was ready to close, because his hands had been cramping and he hadn’t wanted to be compromised for the next surgery.

  ‘Can you recall anything? If he doesn’t get any better, we’ll have to open him up again.’

  ‘We did multiple surgeries the day before yesterday together, Dr. Grey and I. You should probably ask him—he’s just arrived—but it all seemed to go according to plan from what I could tell. This was one of the ones we did later in the day, before my shift ended.’

  ‘Dr. Evans,’ he said, moving back around to her side of the patient’s bed. ‘I should have introduced myself before.’

  ‘April Bellamy,’ she said, surprised when he took the time to shake her hand. Most of the doctors couldn’t care less what their nurses’ names were or about making introductions.

  ‘Come and find me personally if his condition changes.’

  She was about to speak when an urgent call rang through the ward, and just like every other time, the hairs on April’s arm stood on end as corpsmen came running with stretchers.

  ‘Incoming!’ someone yelled, and the deep male voice jolted April into action. She dropped her coat onto her patient’s bed and ran beside Evans.

  ‘I need morphine, now!’ he yelled. ‘Get these men out of pain, and start assessing their wounds!’

  She snatched the morphine vials as he assessed the first patient, and other doctors and nurses flocked around the others.

  ‘Start with morphine, and ask any lucid patients whether they’ve had tetanus shots,’ he said as he fought to stop the first soldier’s arm from losing so much blood. She watched as it pooled on the floor before he stemmed it with a tourniquet. ‘And let’s save lives today, April. We’ve already lost enough men and enough limbs to this goddamn war. It’s time we started figuring out how to save every body part and their lives along with them.’

  April stole a quick glance at this new doctor, at the determination etched on his face as he ran beside the stretcher on its way to surgery. And just like that, a flicker of doubt punched through her. Had too many men lost limbs under Dr. Grey’s care? Had Grace been right to question that the other day? She shrugged the thought away and focused on the next patient. A few minutes earlier, she’d been filled with excitement about her almost kiss with Dr. Grey, but now all those doubts were creeping back from the day before, and she had no idea what she was supposed to make of it all.

  Six hours later, April was exhausted. The time had passed by in a blur, and they’d saved more lives than they’d lost, but it still hurt knowing how many hadn’t made it. She looked around the ward and slowly made her way toward Patrick’s bed, hurrying the last few steps when she saw that he was far worse than he’d been that morning. His pallor was gray, and he had an obvious fever.

  Grace came past then, quietly standing beside her.

  ‘He looks dreadful,’ Grace said.

  ‘I know. Something’s gone wrong, but I just don’t know what,’ she said with a sigh, dipping a cloth in cool water to cleanse his forehead. ‘Would you mind finding Dr. Evans for me?’

  ‘The new doctor?’ Grace asked. ‘I met him a couple of days ago. He’s full of as much energy and enthusiasm as all the other doctors combined. Is he the one the locals said had helped them?’

  April nodded. ‘I wondered why his name sounded so familiar; you’re right.’

  Grace hurried off, and Dr. Evans was by her side within a few minutes, but from the look on his face, she knew it wasn’t good.

  ‘We need to open him up, figure out what’s wrong. April, can you assist?’

  ‘Of course. Should I find Dr. Grey?’

  ‘Nurse!’ he said, beckoning to Grace. ‘Find Dr. Grey; tell him we’re opening up a patient of his and that I need to consult with him.’

  Grace ran off again, and with the help of a corpsman they moved the patient and hurried him into surgery. Within half an hour, Dr. Evans was slicing through his skin, cutting past the stitches in the man’s abdomen she’d helped with only two days prior.

  ‘This is unusual,’ he said as he reached his hand out and April placed an instrument in his palm. ‘I can’t see any bleeding or ruptures’—he paused and bent lower—‘no cause for infection—’

  She leaned closer as he went silent; then she gasped as he reached into the patient and pulled out a wad of fabric bandage and a metal clamp. He raised it and looked at her before depositing it into a metal bowl.

  ‘We’re losing him!’ April cried as blood poured out of him and his pulse vanished; she met the doctor’s horrified gaze.

  He frantically started closing, and she held the soldier’s hand, shaking as she prayed that he’d make it.

  ‘What the hell is going on in here?’

  Dr. Evans didn’t look up, but Dr. Grey marched in, a cloth lifted to cover his mouth as he fixed his stare on her.

  ‘We tried to alert you immediately, but there was no time. He had an infection and . . .’ She shook her head, and Dr. Evans threw his instruments down with a sudden bang, ripping his mask off and looking like he was about to punch Grey.

  ‘You’re the doctor who did this?’ he said, seething.

  Grey folded his arms across his chest, brows raised. ‘Did what? Saved that man’s life before you managed to kill him on the table?’

  Dr. Evans pointed to the bowl on the table beside the patient as April watched, silent tears sliding down her cheeks as she let her hand rest on the patient, knowing he was gone but hating that his last moments were filled with such rage.r />
  ‘There’s only one doctor who killed that patient, and it’s you,’ Evans shouted. ‘I found a goddamn instrument inside of him!’

  Dr. Grey moved silently toward the dish before speaking again, his eyes flickering to hers, holding her gaze as if to silence her. ‘You want someone to blame, how about Little Miss Doctor over there?’ he said, gesturing at her as if she were nobody important. ‘This was all her.’

  April’s jaw dropped.

  ‘You’re going to blame the nurse?’ Evans spluttered.

  ‘Hasn’t she told you that she wants to be a doctor? I humored her little confession and let her take a look at my handiwork,’ Grey said with a nonchalant shrug. ‘Silly girl must have dropped it in there. She shouldn’t be allowed near a patient again.’

  ‘No!’ April gasped. ‘You’re lying! You know I didn’t have anything to do with this!’

  Grey shook his head and gave her what she imagined was supposed to be a sympathetic look. ‘Dr. Evans,’ he said quietly, ‘I haven’t wanted to embarrass April, but I’ve noticed she has quite the crush on me, and well, I should have mentioned it earlier, but I’m wondering if this might have affected her work?’

  What? She gasped, staring between the two men.

  ‘I mean, I’m a married man, and it’s highly inappropriate, but I was hoping it was harmless.’

  ‘Married?’ she whispered. ‘But it was you, it was you who led me on, you kissed me, you . . .’

  ‘Please don’t embarrass yourself any more than you already have,’ he said, frowning at Dr. Evans past her head.

  April was shaking, staring at Dr. Evans, desperate to explain it all to him, hating the lies he’d heard. He might not believe her, but she needed to try.

  ‘It’s not true,’ she pleaded. ‘None of this is true, and I’m sure I didn’t do anything wrong! You have to believe me, Dr. Evans.’

  ‘April, that’s enough. Please,’ Grey said, shaking his head. ‘Don’t you remember that I went to the bathroom and left you to watch the patient? What on earth did you do while I was gone, try to play doctor?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she sobbed. ‘Dr. Grey, you know that’s not true!’ She racked her brain. He had stepped out to relieve himself—she remembered that—but wasn’t it after the surgery was completed? She tried to recall it, wishing her memory weren’t so fuzzy.

  Evans moved in front of the door, and she clenched her fists, waiting for the worst to happen. Was he going to side with Grey too? But instead he seemed to block the door.

  ‘Get out of my way,’ Dr. Grey demanded.

  ‘You try to pin this on her, and you’ll have me to answer to,’ Dr. Evans said. ‘We’re all fatigued and doing the best we damn well can, but we don’t blame our nurses for our mistakes. We’re surgeons, and this is on you. No matter what the personal circumstances, no nurse can be blamed for a surgical error, and she certainly never should have been left alone with a patient open on the table!’

  ‘Look, the nurse did it. You know and I know it,’ Grey said. ‘Try pinning this on me, and I’ll make sure neither of you ever work in medicine again. Do I make myself clear?’ Dr. Grey stormed out, slamming his shoulder into the other doctor as he passed, and the second he was gone, April thought she was going to collapse. Suddenly there wasn’t enough oxygen in the air, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

  ‘Is it true?’ Dr. Evans asked in a low voice. ‘Any of it?’

  ‘No! I was just assisting at his side, like I was with you today. I didn’t do anything wrong, I couldn’t do anything wrong,’ she stuttered, trying to remember, reaching desperately for the memory. ‘I mean, I can’t have, can I?’ Could it have been her fault? Had she done something wrong?

  ‘I meant about you wanting to be a doctor?’

  April slowly breathed deep and nodded, not about to lie. ‘Yes, it’s true.’

  He shook his head, and she waited for him to ridicule her just as Dr. Grey had. But he didn’t.

  ‘You’d make a better doctor than him—that’s for sure.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s a stupid idea? That a woman might want to become a doctor?’ she asked.

  Dr. Evans laughed. ‘What’s stupid about it? The fact a woman could be a doctor or that you want to be one?’

  April was baffled. ‘Both, I suppose.’

  ‘You want to train to be a doctor, that’s your decision. I’ve grown up with three sisters, and I know full well what women are capable of and just how determined women can be when they set their mind to something.’

  April couldn’t believe how supportive he was being. ‘Well, that went down better with you than with Dr. Grey.’

  Evans scribbled something on the patient’s notes as two corpsmen came in to move the body.

  ‘What did he say?’ he asked, without looking up. ‘When you told him, I mean?’

  ‘Something about women needing to know their place,’ she muttered.

  ‘He’s going to come after you, April. I hope you’re prepared for it.’

  April shivered as she watched Dr. Evans leave the room and then turned and surveyed the blood on the floor and the instruments still covered in fluid and blood on the table. Someone would be taking the fall for this, and she had a feeling it would be her.

  ‘April, you look like you’ve seen a ghost! What’s wrong?’ Grace asked as she made her way into the tent and collapsed on her bed later that night. Even with all the bedding and clothes beneath it to try to make it comfortable, it was impossible to mask the stony, hard ground beneath.

  Eva and Grace were both sitting up now, both awake, their faces bathed in a combination of light and shadows from the gaslight burning between them.

  ‘I think I’m about to lose my job,’ she said, her voice devoid of emotion as she stared at the ceiling of the tent.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Grace asked. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Dr. Grey kissed me this morning,’ she confessed. ‘Only on the cheek, but he also told me how pretty I looked, or that I lit up the ward or something.’

  ‘And you’re going to lose your job because he kissed you?’ Eva asked.

  ‘No,’ she said, pulling up her blanket over her uniform. ‘I’m going to lose my job because he’s married and something happened during a surgery that he’s trying to blame on me.’ She wished she could remember, but all the surgeries had seemed to blur in her mind.

  ‘He’s married!’ Grace choked out. ‘He was so—I don’t know—flirty with you all the time. How is that your fault?’

  ‘And what can he possibly blame on a nurse?’

  April filled them both in, telling them exactly what had happened and why she thought she was going to be sent home.

  ‘It’s not over until it’s over,’ Eva said firmly. ‘If Dr. Evans sticks up for you and tells the truth, then—’

  ‘Nurse April Bellamy!’ came a brisk call. ‘Please step outside your tent.’

  April froze.

  ‘Get up,’ whispered Eva. ‘Maybe it’s good news.’

  April slowly pushed the blanket back and rose, her feet heavy as she trod toward the tent opening, holding the gaslight as she emerged outside.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, surprised to see their head nurse, Matron Johnson, waiting for her, with a doctor by her side.

  ‘Nurse Bellamy, we’ve had a serious complaint made about you by one of our most senior doctors,’ she said. ‘We’re placing you on leave pending an investigation into the allegations.’

  ‘On leave?’ she asked. ‘I’m one of your hardest-working nurses! I love what I do. What use is there having me sitting in a tent when I could be helping?’

  The older woman’s face didn’t change. ‘I’m sorry, but our decision is final.’

  She stood outside the tent in the dark, watching the old matron go. She dropped to her knees then, sobbing as she fell forward into the dirt. Because just like that, all her dreams of ever being a doctor were gone. She’d never get into medical school as a failed nurse. Never.
r />   CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  GRACE

  ‘Come on—it’ll do you both good to go for a swim,’ Eva said. She opened the tent up to air it out before hanging her spare clothes up to dry from a piece of string as they looked on.

  ‘I’d rather sleep,’ Grace mumbled, but she finished getting dressed anyway. She’d woken from a dream about Poppy, chasing her friend on the beach and splashing in the water, and she’d rather have fallen straight back into it than gotten up. Some days she missed her so much; she’d give anything to hear Poppy laugh or just sit and talk with her. But April needed to get out and do something to take her mind off the suspension, and she wasn’t going to be lazy when her sister needed her. April was always there for her, she’d looked after her for years, and hurting or not, she was going to help her.

  ‘I might just stay,’ April said. ‘You both have fun, though.’

  ‘April Bellamy! Get your shoes and your sun hat; we’re going out whether you like it or not,’ Eva declared. Grace gave a little salute. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ She received a glare from Eva in return, and she liked it. Eva had really started to emerge from under the dark cloud she’d been trapped in, and it was nice to see the old her again.

  ‘Come on; let’s go. I don’t want to waste a second of today in this god-awful tent.’

  Grace put her hat on as Eva grabbed her arm. ‘Someone’s got cabin fever today,’ she said, clasping Eva’s hand.

  ‘Someone’s sick to death of nursing an invalid with no understanding of how lucky he is to be alive,’ she grumbled.

  Grace tucked her head to Eva’s shoulder as they walked, feeling safe for some reason with her friend by her side. She’d been jumpy and tearful ever since that night, and she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Teddy. What he’d done for her, the way he’d saved her and tended to her, was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for her.

  ‘You’re usually desperate to get out and about,’ April said, catching up to them. ‘Why are you so reluctant, Grace?’