On Distant Shores (16 page)

School of Air Evacuation
October 25, 1943

If Georgie was going to fail, today was the day.

The top half of a C-47 cargo plane lay by the side of a pool for ditching practice. They’d had lectures and seen a training film, but today they’d put it into action and work with a flight crew to evacuate a plane.

Georgie shuddered, and not from the brisk breeze. The situation reminded her of the crash that took Rose’s and Clint’s lives, of her own paralysis under pressure.

“You’ll do fine.” Mellie stood beside Georgie next to the pool, where Kay Jobson and Alice Olson assisted mock patients into inflatable life rafts.

“Thank you.” She had no reason to panic. Unlike in a real ditching, the plane couldn’t sink, she’d be within easy reach of dry land, and no lives would be at risk. “You did great.”

“Thanks. Louise made a good partner. I like her.”

The nurses worked in pairs, one in place of the technician. Georgie clamped off a comment about having to work with Vera Viviani. Mellie didn’t tolerate gossip.

Besides, Vera stood only a few feet away, arms crossed tight over her chest. Was she nervous? Georgie stepped closer. “Ready, Vera?”

“Ready for our performance, you mean?” She glared across the pool, where Captain Maxwell stood with his wife and two darling little daughters, who were staying at Bowman this week. “I do not appreciate being on display. Honestly, this is a training exercise, not a ballet recital.”

“Hmm.” Georgie hiked up one eyebrow. She thought it was sweet that the flight surgeon was showing off to his family. And Vera never avoided the spotlight.

Mellie cleared her throat and beckoned her.

“Yes?” Georgie returned to her friend.

“I think . . .” she whispered. “I think it’s that time.”

Of the month? Why hadn’t she thought of that? Vera certainly had been cranky today.

“By the way,” Mellie said in full voice, “thanks for bringing us home with you again last weekend. Kay and I had fun.”

Georgie chuckled. “I’m surprised Kay didn’t break her neck horseback riding.”

“I am too. But it was so relaxing after a week at Bowman.”

Relaxing? Not for Georgie. She sighed and brushed a curl out of her face. At least her friends had served as a buffer.

“Are you and Ward all right? Things seemed tense.”

Georgie tried to concentrate on watching the ditching practice, but how could she? “He has a friend in city hall who’ll bend the rules for us. He wants us to get our marriage license next weekend and get married as soon as we legally can.”

“Next weekend? So soon?”

“We’ve been dating since the ninth grade.”

“Yes, but it seems . . .”

“Rushed. It’s rushed. He wants me in a family way and out of the ANC.”

Mellie pulled her full lips between her teeth and searched Georgie’s face. “What do you want?”

“More importantly, what does God want?”

“Mm-hmm. Any thoughts?”

She jutted out her chin. “For the first time in my life, it bothers me that someone wants to make a decision for me. For the first time in my life, I want to push myself, to grow, to—”

“Lieutenant Taylor, Lieutenant Viviani.” The officer running the drill read from a clipboard.

Georgie headed over and tossed one more comment back to Mellie. “And I honestly believe I could do good things as a flight nurse.”

A smile crept up Mellie’s face, and she shooed Georgie off.

She entered the half-fuselage, set up with men strapped to litters and lounging in their seats, sporting various fake injuries.

Vera nudged her. “You play the technician. I’ll be the nurse. I’d like to pass.”

Georgie gave her a stiff smile. Some women ought to go into hiding once a month.

It didn’t matter who played which role anyway. They’d have to work in unity at lightning speed, taking care of patients and medical supplies while the crew dealt with the plane, rafts, and emergency equipment. The nurses couldn’t interfere with the crew’s work or ask for help.

“Prepare for ditching.”

Georgie’s heart lurched, and she hated the fact that it did so. Vera dashed to the front of the plane and talked over the ditching procedure while she helped the ambulatory patients into their life vests. Georgie wrestled life vests onto the litter patients, checked their securing straps, and spoke words of comfort.

Meanwhile, crewmen tied down life rafts and other equipment by the cargo door, and Georgie scooted to allow them to pass.

The bell rang six times.

Georgie and Vera took seats near the back of the plane, put their heads between their knees, and clasped their hands under their thighs. The aerial engineer and navigator mirrored their positions on the other side of the aisle, closest to the cargo door.

Georgie put on her cheery voice. “Any of y’all done this in real life?”

A smile cracked the navigator’s long face. “No one does it and lives.”

The engineer grunted. “Baloney. Heard of a fellow who ditched off Guadalcanal, got his whole crew off in time. Another plane ditched off the Pacific Coast. The C-47 never did sink. The only fellows who died had chosen the water rather than the rafts.”

“Yeah.” The navigator jerked his head back toward the patients. “They didn’t have to evacuate eighteen incapacitated folks.”

Vera looked up, swung her dark hair off her face, and gave them a coy smile. “They didn’t have a trained flight nurse.”

The men’s eyes rounded in appreciation.

Oh brother. How could Vera make a simple sentence sound flirtatious?

One long ring of the bell. “The plane has hit the water. Evacuate.”

The men got to their feet and flung the life rafts out of the cargo door into the pool and inflated them. While they loaded the emergency equipment into the rafts, Georgie and Vera recruited the most able-bodied ambulatory patients to help those bound to litters, and sent the rest to the rear to enter rafts when available.

Georgie unclamped litters from supports, carried them down the aisle, assisted men out of the plane, and lashed litters across the rafts.

When it was her turn, she stepped gingerly into the boat and tied down one litter in front of her and another behind her. She rowed out a few feet, still anchored by rope to the plane.

Vera, the copilot, and the pilot evacuated into the last three rafts with two more patients each. They cut the rafts loose from the plane, all tied together in a giant circle.

The man lying on the litter in front of Georgie reached his hand into the pool and splashed her, a mischievous look on his face.

She laughed and wiped her cheeks dry. “If you’re feeling so chipper, you should have gotten up and helped.”

He rolled onto his side and propped his handsome face in his hand. “I’m feeling chipper, all right. What are you doing Saturday night?”

“Going home to marry my boyfriend.” She batted her eyelashes at him, even though she’d told a whopper of a lie.

A whopper indeed. She waved to Mellie on the pool deck. Mellie applauded and gave her a thumbs-up.

Georgie returned her grin. She’d succeeded. Of course it wasn’t a true emergency and no lives were at stake, but she’d made decisions and acted quickly, and now she knew exactly what to do in a real emergency.

Mellie was proud of her. Would her family be proud? Would Ward?

She tipped her face to a sky speckled with clouds. None of it mattered. She felt the Lord’s approval.

93rd Evacuation Hospital, Piana di Caiazzo, Italy
October 26, 1943

Rain pelted the Pharmacy tent, and Hutch snugged his helmet into place for the dash to Mess. After dinner, he’d visit Lucia, then head back to his tent to write letters.

He sent Ralph a good-bye nod. “You should have a quiet night. Tons of casualties, but Dom and I got a lot done today.”

Ralph winced. “Are you trying to jinx me, saying that Q-word?”

“What Q-word?” Hutch winked. “Quiiiii-et?”

The tent flap flipped open, splattering droplets over the damp dirt floor. “Who wants mail?” Corporal Blevins reached into a leather satchel. “Let’s see . . . Hutchinson and O’Shea?”

“Right.” Hutch passed mail to Ralph and took some for himself. The latest
Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association
with news on the trials of penicillin in US Army hospitals in Britain. His sister Mary had written, so had Grandpa Hutchinson, and Phyllis too.

He took off his helmet and sat on a crate. He’d rather read here under the lightbulb than in the crowded mess. And he needed to read Phyllis’s letter, although he really didn’t want
to. Her repetitions and melancholy concerned him, and her pleas to stay faithful irked him.

He opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. Shaky handwriting made his skin prickle. What was wrong?

“Dear Hutch,” she wrote.

Hutch? She never called him Hutch. She disliked the nickname.

Some woman is here, a nurse who claims to be a friend of yours. But how can she call herself a friend, when she’s forcing me to do something horrible?

Something horrible? His frown deepened. That had to be Georgie. What on earth had happened? What had Georgie done?

First, I want you to know that everything I did, I did because I care about you. I believe high morale is vital, and writing to you is the best way to keep up your morale. Your so-called friend cares nothing for you, and is forcing me to deliver bad news via letter. Not only is that poor form, but I’m concerned the news will cause you to put yourself in a dangerous position. I planned on telling you everything when you came home.

Acid dribbled into Hutch’s stomach. Bad news? Concerned? A dangerous position? He read as fast as he could.

I do hate to tell you this way. You see, after you abandoned me to go overseas, I was so sad and lonely. My boss, Ted Richards, often took
me out dancing to cheer me up. He was kind to me and made me smile and laugh. You must understand that neither of us intended for this to happen, and I certainly didn’t want to tell you in a letter, but Ted and I fell in love. We were married in June 1942, and our dear little Donald is now four months old.

You mustn’t worry about me. Ted is a good man with an important job at the shipyard, so he’s exempt from the draft. We have a lovely flat, I don’t have to work anymore, and he treats me like a queen.

But I do worry about you! Please take care of yourself and don’t do anything dangerous! I feel horrible that you have to hear this way. I vowed to keep writing, to keep up your morale out of patriotism and my concern for you. After all our years of friendship, it was the least I could do.

I’ll always treasure our years together. If it weren’t for the Army, things might have turned out differently.

If it weren’t for the Army?

If it weren’t for the Army,
he’d
have Phyllis,
he’d
have the good job,
he’d
have the baby.

The acid roiled in a full-blown storm in his belly, and his chest heaved from the force of it. The Army had stolen everything—his marriage, his career, his masculinity, every single shred of respect.

“Hutch? You all right?”

He jerked his gaze to Ralph, to the pharmacy shelves in
their blasted disorder. This was no way to work, no way to live. “No. But I’m going to make things right.”

He bolted from his seat and behind the counter. He yanked bottles off the top shelf.

“Hutch, what are you doing?”

“I’m making things right.” He cleared the top shelf, started on the next one down. She was married? She had a baby?

A firm hand clamped on his forearm. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you can’t do this. You’ll get us both in trouble.”

Hutch wheeled on Ralph. “This is
my
pharmacy. I will not practice like this anymore. I refuse to.”

“But Kaz—”

“Who cares about Kaz?” Or Phyllis either. She’d betrayed him. She’d lied to him. He grabbed two more bottles off the shelf.

“Why don’t you get some dinner, think this through on a full stomach?”

“I don’t need to think this through. I’m sick of this. Either help me or get out of my way.”

Ralph backed up, hands in front of his chest. “I ain’t taking the blame for this.”

“I’ll take the blame. It’s my pharmacy.” The one place he needed to be in control, deserved to be in control. All his years of education and training. He would not let a florist order him around anymore.

“So I should wait to make that terpin hydrate?” Ralph eased himself down onto the crate.

“Yes.” The same blasted crate where Hutch read that stinking, blasted letter. She’d duped him, made a fool of him. She’d been married since June of ’42? That was a year and—July, August, September—four months? Almost a year and a half. She’d been writing all that time, saying she loved him, saying she couldn’t wait for him to come home.

Saying she worried about him cheating on her.

Pain doubled him over.

“Hutch? You okay?”

He straightened up and motioned Ralph away, while his stomach tangled into a bigger mess than the pharmacy shelves.

All those letters, so worried about him cheating on her, when she was married to another man, kissing him, sleeping with him, bearing his son.

A groan issued from the mess in his stomach. She’d made a fool out of him. He grabbed the boxes of capsule shells. They belonged under the counter.
Under
the counter.

Someone coughed loudly on the lab side of the tent, behind the flap of canvas that divided the two departments.

“Hutch! Cough. He’s coming.”

Cough. Kazokov. A chill shot up his arms and froze his thoughts in place.

The lieutenant shoved aside the flap. “Good evening, O’Shea. Hutchinson, shouldn’t you be off now?” A frown narrowed his tiny eyes. “What are you doing?”

The chill iced up his plans, his one remaining dream. He needed Kaz’s letter to get into the Pharmacy Corps. Worse, if he received a reprimand, he’d lose Currier’s recommendation, lose his chance entirely.

“I—I—”

Kaz stepped closer, his frown deeper. “You’re not demodernizing, are you?”

“De—no, sir. No, I’m—I’m cleaning. It’s dirty here. It’s not sanitary.”

“Yes, sir, we’re cleaning.” Ralph sprang to his feet. “Hutch likes things spic and span. The Army way.”

Kaz brightened, and he clasped his hands behind his back. “That’s what I like to see. A young man who keeps a clean shop.”

“Yes, sir.” Bile filled his throat. A pharmacy was more than a shop.

Kaz surveyed the tent with a series of nods, then headed outside into the rain. “Carry on.”

Hutch pressed his hand over his stomach, and his eyes drifted shut.

“I won’t say it.” Ralph returned bottles to the shelves. “But I told you so.”

He turned back to the counter, weak in defeat.

Phyllis was right about one thing. Her bad news caused him to put himself in a dangerous position.