A Memory Between Us (2 page)

“I’d rather have a kiss.”

“And I’d rather have a million dollars, but neither is going to happen.”

“I don’t know about that. I can feel that kiss already. My lips are all tingly.”

Ruth’s hand tightened on the towel. He was going into anaphylaxis, but where was Dr. Sinclair? Only he could give the adrenaline needed to save this man’s life. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”

At a fast clip, Ruth went to the medication room, where Lt. Harriet Marshall was completing her narcotic count from the end of her night shift. “Excuse me. I need to get some adrenaline and morphine. Lieutenant Holmes is going into anaphylaxis.”

Harriet’s elfin face blanched. “Oh no. Thank goodness Dr. Sinclair is on the ward.”

“Not yet.” Ruth grabbed a tray and put two sterilized syringes on top.

“So—so why are you already getting the meds?”

“I want to be ready when he comes. I can’t waste any time.” One vial of adrenaline.

“But he hasn’t ordered them yet.”

Ruth leveled a look at the girl. “I know the treatment for anaphylaxis.”

“That—that’s presumptuous of you. You’ll make the doctor angry.”

Ruth pulled a vial of morphine. “I don’t care about the doctor’s feelings; I care about my patient’s life.” She ignored Harriet’s gasp and returned to Lieutenant Holmes’s bedside.

He stared up at her with wild eyes. “My throat—it itches, it’s swelling up. Was that iodine?”

“Yes, sir, it was, but Dr. Sinclair is on his way.” She gave him her most soothing smile. “Now, let’s get you in a more comfortable position.” Ruth patted his back dry and helped him roll over.

Lieutenant Holmes clawed at his throat. “I can’t—I can’t breathe.” Red hives dotted his fair skin.

“Sure, you can breathe. Stay very calm. Very calm, and think about something else. Where are you from, Lieutenant?”

“New—Hampshire.” His chest heaved out the words.

Ruth filled a syringe with adrenaline. “So you’re used to this cold weather, unlike Arizona over there. Me too. I’m from Chicago. In fact, this must feel warm and balmy to you.”

The patient’s only response was a series of raspy, labored breaths. Where on earth was that doctor? “Lord, help me,” she whispered.

Ruth pulled up a dose of morphine and chattered about the way the snow filled the streets of her slum and made them look clean for a change, until the thaw made them look worse than ever. But as Lieutenant Holmes gasped for air, all she could see were Pa’s last breaths as the blood clot settled in his lungs and Ma’s wheezes as she wasted away with pneumonia.

As a nursing student, she couldn’t help her parents, and now as a nurse, she couldn’t help this young man. She glanced at the clock on the wall. If Dr. Sinclair didn’t come in the next sixty seconds, she’d give the adrenaline herself.

And lose her position? As the oldest of seven, she had a responsibility to her brothers and sisters. How could they get by without her support?

Images of those beloved faces swam before her—her purpose, her joy. Why did it always have to be this way? Why did she have to choose between doing the right thing and protecting her family?

Dr. Sinclair burst through the door, his white lab coat flying, and Ruth let out a deep sigh.

“Lieutenant Doherty, get me some adrenaline.”

“Right here, sir.” She handed him the syringe.

He stared at it. “Three two-hundredths of a grain?”

“Yes, sir.”

His jaw jutted forward, but he administered the dose and followed it with morphine.

Within the course of an hour, they had stabilized Lieutenant Holmes. Ruth cleansed his wounds, replaced his dressings, and changed the wet bedding. Then she took the empty syringes and vials back to the medication room, where she dropped the syringes into a pan filled with blue green bichloride of mercury solution.

“I suppose I should be mad at you.” Dr. Sinclair leaned his tall frame against the open door.

Ruth shook the pan until the syringes were submerged. “My job is to care for the patient.”

“And to anticipate my needs. I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be. I know proper treatment.”

“You should have been a physician.”

Ruth shook her head. If he only knew what she had to do to scrape up money for nursing school. “Too smart for that.”

His chuckles drew nearer, and Ruth stiffened. She didn’t feel like fending off another pass from this man.

“I know this great restaurant—”

Ruth turned and glared at him. “How would your wife feel if she heard you talk like this?”

Dr. Sinclair lifted one salt-and-pepper eyebrow. “Come on, Ruth. There’s a war on. All the rules have changed. Besides, you talk one way, but I see it in your eyes. You’re just like me.”

Ruth clamped her teeth together. “No, sir. I’m not.”

“Heart of iron.” He thumped his fist on his chest. “You have one too.”

She stared into his chilly blue eyes, and the cold seeped down to her toes. How did he get so close to the truth? Long ago she’d clamped an iron shell around her heart and nothing and no one could pry it loose, but deep inside, the tender flesh still beat.

“Come on, Ruth.” His gaze settled on her mouth. “Just one kiss. I can’t resist those lips one day longer. You must be a great kisser.”

Her insides shrank into a squirming mass. She had listened to Eddie Reynolds when he told her she was the best kisser in the whole eighth grade, with that great boyish grin and that sheet of brown hair flopping over one eye, but she would not listen to this poor excuse for a physician.

Dr. Sinclair put his hand on her waist.

Ruth’s lungs collapsed under the weight of memories. She slapped away his arm. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me.”

“Oh, come on—”

Ruth shouldered past him and out onto the ward. Her breath returned in little bursts, and white sparkles appeared before her eyes. She made her way down the long semi-cylinder of the ward. “Sergeant Giovanni, I need—I need a short break. I’ll be right back.”

“Good time to do it while the doc’s here.”

Ruth grabbed her blue cape from the hook by the front door and stepped outside. After she swung her cape around her shoulders, she braced her hands on her knees and forced slow, even breaths.

She couldn’t work with Dr. Sinclair, but what could she do? Should she talk to the chief nurse? Would it do any good?

Ruth straightened up. Her vision was clear and so was her course of action. A discreet talk with the chief and a transfer to another ward. She just needed to get away.

She marched down the muddy road flanked by the corrugated tin Nissen huts that served as wards and into the administration building. Lt. Vera Benson’s door stood open, and Ruth stepped inside.

The chief nurse held a phone to her ear. Ruth backed up to exit, but Lieutenant Benson motioned for her to sit down.

“I’m so sorry, Agnes. Already? Three nurses PWOP?” She arched a strawberry blonde eyebrow at Ruth.

Pregnant Without Permission—the easiest way for a nurse to be relieved from her commitment to the military.

“Yes, that does create a problem. I’ll see what I can do. We don’t have our full contingent of nurses here either, but I’ll talk to the girls.”

Lieutenant Benson hung up the phone. “Now, how can I help you, Lieutenant Doherty?”

“Was that another hos—I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

Lieutenant Benson tilted her head and smiled. “I invited you to eavesdrop, and yes, it’s our business. The 12th Evac is setting up in Suffolk. Horribly short-staffed. Even more so than we are.”

“I’ll transfer, ma’am.”

The chief tilted her head in the other direction. “Excuse me?”

A smile floated up Ruth’s face. How often did a solution come so quickly, so neatly? If she didn’t know better, she’d think God was on her side. “Please, ma’am. A transfer is just what I need.”

2

Thurleigh Army Air Field, Bedfordshire

May 13, 1943

Maj. Jack Novak whipped his gaze like a lasso around his nine crewmembers to grab them, unite them, and jolt them with enthusiasm and confidence.

Beside him, his B-17 Flying Fortress waited in the early afternoon sun, a streamlined beauty bristling with machine guns. Jack knew Forts and he knew men, and under his guidance, this Fort and these men could handle anything the Nazis threw at them today on their first combat mission.

“Okay, boys,” he said. “You heard what Colonel Moore said in briefing. Yesterday—just yesterday—the last German and Italian troops in North Africa surrendered to the Allies.”

His crew whooped and cheered.

“My dad always said never hit a man when he’s down, but in Hitler’s case, I’ll make an exception. Agreed?”

“Agreed!”

“Now let’s drive them from Europe. Today we’ll bomb just one airfield, but it’s Hitler’s airfield, where he sends up fighters to harass our planes and ships. Are we going to let him do that?”

“No!”

“Dead right, we’re not.” Jack’s grin swept upward. “He’s in for a surprise. Today we double the strength of the U.S. Eighth Air Force.”

“Four new bomb groups, but we’re the best.” Lt. Bill Chambers looked as if he belonged on a rocking horse, not in the copilot’s seat of a massive four-engined bomber. At least he’d stopped twisting his fingers together as he had during briefing. Maybe the kid could handle combat after all.

“Okay, boys, let’s show what the 94th Bomb Group can do.” The crew filed through the door in the waist section of the B-17. Jack clapped each man on the back—his radio operator and his flight engineer, his navigator and his copilot, two gunners to man the waist, one for the tail, and one for the ball turret bulging beneath the fuselage.

Last came his bombardier, Capt. Charlie de Groot, who pulled his flight helmet over a shock of yellow hair. “What’ll it be, Skipper? ‘Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition’ or ‘The Army Air Corps’?”

The first song memorialized Pearl Harbor. On December 6, 1941, Jack and Charlie had left Hamilton Field near San Francisco in a squadron of twelve Forts—at peace, unarmed. They arrived in Hawaii, surprised by war, by the zipping little Zeros with red meatballs on their wings, by Japanese bullets and American shells flashing past them. Jack could still see the roiling black smoke columns and flaming oil against tropical blues and greens, and still feel the confusion, helplessness, and rage.

Jack and Charlie had flown many missions in the Pacific, but now they were in England. Jack winked at his best friend. “‘Nothing’ll stop the Army Air Corps.’”

“Aye, aye, Skipper.” Charlie took a drag on his cigarette and stepped up into the plane. “‘Off we go into the wild blue yonder,’” he sang, his bass incongruous with his round baby face.

Jack sauntered down to the nose of the plane. He tugged the yellow Mae West life preserver into a more comfortable position under his parachute harness and reassured himself it was there. Yellow lettering on the nose of the olive drab plane read
Sunrise Serenade
, a great song and a fitting name for a daylight bomber.

He set hands on hips and surveyed the airfield, the coordinated rush of men and trucks, the smell of aviation fuel and nervous excitement—boy, was it swell. At Thurleigh Army Air Field, two squadrons from the 94th had been training with the veteran 306th Bomb Group, while the other two squadrons took lessons from the 91st Bomb Group at Bassingbourn. The 306th was Jack’s younger brother, Walt’s, group.

Former group.

“Poor kid.” Jack couldn’t wait to get back in combat and take a few shots at the Nazis who had put Walt in an Oxford hospital with his right arm amputated.

Jack scanned the thirty-six planes parked around the perimeter track, which circled three intersecting runways. As squadron commander, he was responsible for morale, and today it was pitch perfect. If his men performed as well in combat as they did in training, he’d be the next group executive officer. He couldn’t wait. He thrived on command—the electric charge of getting the best out of both man and machine.

Jack reached his hands up into the nose hatch. With a jump and tuck, he launched himself inside. Most fellows used the door, but Jack preferred the challenge of the athletic maneuver.

He leaned forward into the nose compartment, where Charlie adjusted his Norden bombsight, and the navigator, Norman Findlay, fussed over his maps. Norman, not Norm.

Then Jack crawled back through the narrow passage that led up to the cockpit.

He forgot to pray. Jack paused on hands and knees. He was his father’s namesake, his father’s image, except Dad wouldn’t forget to pray. Neither would Walt, and Walt was the only Novak man who wasn’t a pastor. His older brother, Ray, probably prayed whole psalms from memory, translated them into Hebrew for fun, Greek and Latin if he was bored.

But Jack—fine pastor he was. He closed his eyes.
Lord, please direct this mission. Guide these bombs straight to the target. Please keep us safe and get all 169 planes back intact.
He opened one eye and glanced at his watch. Time to report to his station.
In Jesus’s name, amen.

“This is a milk run.” Bill Chambers’s brown eyes glowed over the rim of his oxygen mask.