K.T. sat at his desk, spinning the square wooden base of the little gold-painted trophy around in circles. For the life of him, he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. Nor could he stop thinking about Nebraska. He’d tried every waking moment since leaving the dance last night, and since crawling out of bed earlier this morning. She’d even snuck in on his dreams.
Her joy of dancing, spirited nature, and her womanly curves were damn hard to get out of his mind. He’d thought writing a letter to Betty would help, but all he’d managed to pen was the date and greeting. Though there had been no engagement before he’d left home, there was the expectation it would happen when he returned. She’d been his girl for years, and he imagined spending the rest of their lives together, but he knew that not all men returned from war, and refused to make a promise that could turn her into a widow. He didn’t expect anything to happen to him, nor want it to, but he was a realist. If anything did happen to him, he wanted Betty to go on with her life, not pine over a dead husband.
He’d changed tactics then, thought he’d write his mother a letter, tell her about the Battle of the Music, but the paper before him was completely empty, because he was afraid that if he mentioned the bands, he’d start writing about the dance-off, and how he’d won. She’d like to hear about that. The radio in their house had always been playing music and he imagined it still was that way. His mother loved music and had taught him to dance shortly after he’d learned to walk. As well as all of his siblings. Saturday nights was dance night at their house, unless of course there was a real dance happening elsewhere.
Not a single one back home could have compared to the one last night. Nor could another dancer compare to Nebraska.
It was concerning how a peculiar flicker happened inside him whenever he thought about her, and dancing with her. That had never happened before, and he’d met a lot of women since leaving Oklahoma. Betty, and knowing she was back home, waiting on him always won out, and it confused him as to why that hadn’t happened last night.
He’d never been doll-dizzy. Ever.
He probably just needed a bit of time. Last night had been more fun than he’d had in years and that was sure to stick with him for a day or two. Accepting that had to be it, and that the smart thing to do would be to just let it fade away, was exactly what he’d do. He’d been in Pearl Harbor for three months and hadn’t run into her before, so it was unlikely that he would again. Unless he attended another dance. That was an easy enough thing to avoid.
Without knowing anything except her love of dancing, and her hate of biting black flies, and a few other things, he wouldn’t even be able to find her if he went looking.
Flustered by his inability to control his own thoughts, he pushed away from his desk, rose, and strolled to the door. His unit was unique in the sense that they weren’t assigned to any ship and therefore lived in a barracks located within the navy yard’s industrial area that was still being built as part of preparation for war. His was a private room, hosting a bed, dresser, and desk. He didn’t need anything more, and would gladly bunk with his unit when construction of the upper floors was complete and these lower rooms were used for other things. He had no need for housing as other supervisors received, or even some of the married men in his unit, because he had no need for a home here. Had no family here. They were all back in Oklahoma. That’s where his home was, too.
Wearing a pair of navy-issued white shorts and button-up shirt, he walked down the hall and out of the main door. The USS Pennsylvania was in dry dock and that’s the direction he headed, to take a look at how the overall repairs were coming along. That was another thing he loved about his job. The opportunity to engineer repairs. Come up with ways to make things better than new.
Though many would still be sleeping, for that was permitted on Sundays, there was already movement happening around the base. The faint sounds of morning songs being played by ship bands could be heard, and his smile was back, remembering last night.
She was the best dancer he’d ever met. It was as if they’d known each other’s moves before they’d even happened. The way her eyes sparkled, and those dimpled cheeks, why, any man would have been enchanted dancing with her. That’s all he’d done, was dance with her, so there was no reason to dwell on it so deeply.
There was work to be done here, and that’s what he needed to focus on. Every ship had to be ready for action.
He arrived at the ship, waved to the civilian dry-dock worker who was already manning the massive crane beside the ship that moved the iron in place, and made his way aboard. The familiar, yet odd buzz of aircraft coming closer caused him to look over toward Ford Island, wondering why the flyboys were at it so early. Especially on a Sunday.
Ford Island looked quiet, and he shifted his gaze, scanning the air.
As if out of nowhere and looking like a flock of angry birds, a massive group of aircraft came into view over the ocean, heading straight for the harbor. More than he could count. His guts knotted with an odd sense of premonition, even before he saw the red dots on the planes.
He ran, shouting, and pointing to the sky. “Command battle stations! We’re being attacked!” He pounded on anything close at hand to make more noise all the while running. “Command battle stations! This isn’t a drill! Attack! Incoming!”
He ran toward the stern of the ship, to the turrets housing the battle guns as the ship came to life. Men wearing nothing but their underclothes were soon racing alongside him, shouting about the attack.
Within seconds, all hell broke loose.
The incoming planes fired at everything in sight, and bombs fell from plane bellies, creating an explosive, fiery pandemonium.
Focused on acting, not thinking, K.T. manned a gun, and began firing at the planes overhead. They flew low enough he could see the pilots. See the whites of their eyes and the smiles on their faces.
It was a full-blown attack. A life and death attack.
War.
The war had reached America, and all he could think was to defend. He had to defend his country. His compatriots. His homeland!
Men around him were firing guns, too, and the sounds filling the air were deafening, but he heard someone say something about the crane.
K.T. saw the crane boom moving back and forth and realized the cab of the fifty-foot boom gave the operator a vision they didn’t have. “He’s signaling us! Showing us where to aim! He can see the fighter planes coming before we can! Keep firing!”
Within no more than a matter of minutes since he’d first seen the planes, black smoke surrounded him and everything else, encompassing the entire harbor, making it nearly impossible to see anything. The sounds of plane engines, bombs hitting their targets, gunfire, and more, so much more, merged into thunderous mayhem.
Through breaks in the black smoke, he saw chaos, too.
Flames were everywhere, including in the water from the fuel oil being spewed by bombed ships. The water, the ships, the ground shook from the assaults that just kept coming. Plane after plane. There seemed to be no end to them.
American planes were taking flight, battling the incoming enemy planes midair, and every battle station on the ships and the ground were manned, firing back at the enemy.
Next to Ford Island, the USS Arizona took a direct hit, and exploded with a fiery inferno. Through the billowing black smoke, all he could see was the stern, sticking out of the water at a ninety-degree angle. Also hit, the USS Oklahoma had rolled onto her side and was going down. The USS California was on fire, and sinking, and other ships were ablaze.
K.T.’s gun clicked. He tried again, and again, but was out of ammunition.
The entire harbor had become a raging firestorm. Smoke, fire, explosions, in every direction. And men. Hundreds of them on the ships and in the water, trying to swim to safety through the blazing oil-coated surface while planes continued to fly overhead, firing bullets, and dropping more bombs.
He told himself to focus, not on the calamity, but on what he could do. He wasn’t a gunner. He was a diver, and could do more good in the water than up here.
K.T. turned his weapon over to a gunner who was ready to reload and ran all the way down to the dock, and leaped into one of the many lifeboats going out into the harbor to save as many as possible.
Ships were sinking, with men in them, and he had to get them out now, while there was a chance to save them. Flames raced over the top of the water, yet men jumped off ships, taking a chance on diving through the flames rather than becoming entombed in a sinking ship.
He started pulling oil-coated men into the lifeboat. Some didn’t have the strength to get in the boat, and he dove overboard to hoist them up over the edge. There was over a foot of oil on top of the water, and more men beneath it. Men who needed his help.
Time ceased to exist as K.T. dove under the water, swam downward, found men trying to swim to safety, and others attempting to escape through holes blasted in the massive hulls of the ships. One by one, he dragged them to the surface, to a rescue boat, then dove down again for another one. And another one.
And another one.
He refused to quit until every last one he could save, was saved.
The day had started out so normally, so commonplace, until a buzz had sounded. Then, just like the biting black flies back home, the attack had come out of nowhere. Totally unexpected, and far worse than imaginable.
Wendy had gone from shaking and scared out of her wits when she’d heard the first blasts of bombs striking and the blaring sirens, to being too busy to worry about what was happening outside of the hospital. She entered a machinelike routine of laying down blankets and pillows on the floor of the hallways for the men being carried in by the dozens. At first, she’d had gurneys, then cots and pads, but quickly ran out of them. When a spot opened up, all she had was a thin blanket to pad the floor and a pillow for their head.
A clearing station had been set up near the docks, to take care of the minor wounds and injuries, those sent to the hospital were the most severely injured. Injuries like she’d never imagined.
People who were injured themselves helped carry others in, and some would collapse on the spot. Despite the calamity and the speed of needed response, the hospital remained composed; everyone instinctively knew what needed to be done, and did so in a quick and orderly manner.
Wendy remained true to that, too. Tears stung her eyes, but she kept them at bay because it would be selfish to cry when so many were suffering. Many of the injured were burned. The smell of singed hair and burnt skin permeated the entire hospital. As did the smell of the fuel oil that coated the men who’d been in the water. Her heart ached for each one of them and she tried to offer comforting words and solace while seeing to their needs.
There was no time for paperwork, or to even learn the names of the injured. Charge nurses triaged patients by marking their foreheads.
Wendy, following orders of the nurses in command administered morphine shots to those marked with an M and tetanus antitoxin for those marked with a T. Those they marked with a C, for critical, she’d assign to an operating bay, and for those with an F, meaning they were fatally wounded, she’d administer sedatives as instructed and find another pillow or blanket in hopes of making them as comfortable as possible.
The nurses who weren’t able to find a marker, because they were all being used, made do by using the tubes of lipstick in their pockets to mark foreheads.
Bright red lipstick.
She’d never be able to wear that color again without thinking of today.
She also assisted the charge nurses in starting IVs, and lost count of the times that while swabbing alcohol on a man’s arm, his skin would peel away. She could only imagine the pain the patients had to be in, and it made her work harder, faster, to see each and every one of them received care as quickly as possible.
She tried her hardest to not search each patient, looking for a familiar face. Any one of them could have been someone she’d met since arriving here, or a sailor that she’d danced with, just last night even. She didn’t want to recognize any of them. Truly didn’t.
Each time she carried soiled linens to the laundry and collected clean ones to lay down in the hallways, she told herself that they’d stop coming soon.
It was a lie.
Wives and family members of sailors had come to the hospital to volunteer. Many delivered food and drinks to not only the patients, but the nurses and doctors, to keep them going.
The pace didn’t slow down all day, and when night fell, it brought along another set of concerns. A blackout was issued. There again, volunteers took on the job of covering every window in the hospital. Flashlights were the only lights allowed, and due to being limited in numbers, only specific people had them, but that didn’t stop Wendy from doing what needed to be done.
It was after midnight, when Nurse Manning told Wendy to return to her quarters, get some sleep, and return by eight in the morning for the day shift. She hated leaving, knowing there were so many who needed care, but the halls were empty, which in itself seemed implausible when she remembered how they’d been lined with the injured mere hours ago.
She left the hospital and once outside, questioned what good the blackout would do. The entire harbor was ablaze, leaving a smoky red haze in the air, along with the scent of burning oil.
It was a short walk to her living quarters, yet there were armed guards every few steps.
“That way, miss.” One of the sentries gestured with his gun, pointing it toward the opposite side of the building from where she’d been heading.
It was too dark to see beyond him. “Can’t I use the outside stairway?” Her berthing room was on the second floor, in the back of the building, close to the outside stairway.
“No,” he said quietly. “The vacant quarters building was hit, burned to the ground. The fire’s been put out, but the plane that crashed into it is in the field next to it. The area is off-limits.”
Her heart began to race. She hadn’t been aware of a plane crashing. The vacant quarters building was directly behind her living quarters. Knowing how close the hospital had been to being destroyed was frightening. Her aunt Ella’s voice sounded inside her.
“Things could always be worse.”
Aunt Ella had said that very often, and though it was hard to imagine after all she’d seen today, Wendy knew it was true. The hospital could have been hit, as well as many, many other buildings.
“Do you think there will be another attack?” she asked.
“Hard to say, miss, but our boys are in the air and any ship that could sail is out on the water. We won’t be taken by surprise again.”
Again.
She had never imagined that there would have been a first time. The repercussions of what had happened were very real. She felt guilty that she’d once looked at all of this as a vacation instead of the dire straits that it truly was and would continue to be for a long time to come.
“Good night,” she said, though it was doubtful that anyone on the island, or elsewhere, would have a good night.
The inside of the building was eerily quiet. It was always quiet this late, but tonight, everything felt eerie. The exact opposite of last night, when she’d been on top of the world carrying home her little gold-painted trophy.
Lois and Helen were asleep in their beds, and she quietly collected her nightclothes and walked down the hall to take a shower. The smell of fuel oil and other things couldn’t be washed away, and would live with her forever, but a shower now would save time in the morning. It would also allow her to shed the tears she’d kept bottled up all day without anyone hearing.
She had taken her training in California seriously; learned how to take temperatures, blood pressures, pulses, wrap bandages, and give shots, as well as the training she’d continued to receive since arriving in Hawaii while working at the hospital, but she’d felt so inadequate today. There had been so many times when she’d wished that she could have done more for the patients.
Beneath the warm water of the shower, she let the tears flow. All the training in the world wouldn’t have been able to save many of the men she’d seen today. It was all so sad.
So very sad.
Although exhausted when she climbed into bed, sleep still took a long time coming because her mind wouldn’t shut off. Thoughts of so many things kept circling, including wondering about people. Those she knew, those she’d recently met. Wondering and wondering if they had survived the attack.
When morning arrived, she dressed in a bleached-white uniform, including apron, hose, and shoes, attached her hat with two bobby pins, buckled her watch on her wrist, and walked to the hospital. The devastation of the base that couldn’t be seen in the darkness last night was there this morning, and though she tried not to look, it couldn’t be unseen.
Nor could the scent of burning fuel oil not be smelled.
The destruction and loss increased her determination to do all she could for those who needed help now. That was why she was here and that was what she would do.
She entered the hospital, and went to the main nurse’s station for her daily assignments.
“Good morning, Nurse Smith,” Nurse Manning greeted. “I’ll need you to assist me this morning.”
Though she was technically a Red Cross aide, they were all addressed as nurse. Wendy wanted to ask Nurse Manning if she’d been there all night, for it appeared so. Her hat was slightly askew and her hair that was peppered with gray was falling from the pins holding it up in the back, but that wasn’t her place, and she silently fell in step beside the nurse.
“A sailor was brought in after midnight last night,” Nurse Manning said. “He’d refused to come in before, insisting that others needed care first. The skin on his upper back and shoulders was severely burned by the fuel in the water, but he wouldn’t stop until others were rescued. He used a torch to cut holes in hulls of sunken ships to get trapped men out, until he collapsed and they brought him in. His burns are deep and need special attention. I used a tincture of green soap and water to cleanse the wounds last night, it was a tedious and painful process for him, even with the morphine. He will need to remain on his stomach in bed for at least two weeks and will need specific care.”
Wendy nodded as she listened. Yesterday, she’d been taught how to spray tannic acid solution on burn victims, the fastest way to cover large burns.
“We will be using a different method on this patient,” Nurse Manning continued. “I will show you the ingredients that will be mixed with mineral oil. Dressings will be soaked in that solution, then laid over the burned areas, and changed every four hours.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wendy replied. Everyone agreed that Nurse Manning was the best charge nurse at the hospital.
They entered a working station, and Nurse Manning paused near the table. She drew in a deep sigh and squared her shoulders in a way that piqued Wendy’s nerves.
Nurse Manning turned and there were unshed tears in her eyes. “I requested permission from the ward officer to be able to see to this patient personally, and I requested that you be my assistant, because I’ve seen you work. I know how precise and unwavering you are in tasks. Both requests have been granted.”
Wendy nodded, taking in how the middle-aged nurse’s hands shook. “Is this patient someone you know?” There were nurses who were married to sailors, or dating them, or had brothers and cousins stationed here with them.
“No, I’ve never seen him before last night.” Nurse Manning lifted her chin a bit higher. “But I’ve seen burns like this before. Many others in the hospital are just as serious and they will all receive the best care possible. I asked for this patient because though his burns are severe, they are confined mainly to his upper back, shoulders, and upper arms. I believe with the proper care, he will heal quickly and return to duty.”
“I see,” Wendy replied.
Nurse Manning gave her head a small, quick shake. “I will tell you what I told the ward officer this morning. Something I hadn’t told anyone in a very long time. Over ten years ago, I was living in Kansas, and I kept a small can of kerosene behind the stove, to help me light the stove fires. My son was four years old and inside taking a nap. I was outside washing clothes and don’t know what happened exactly, but I heard him screaming. I ran inside and he was completely engulfed in flames. The tin of kerosene was empty and the fire box door on the stove was open.” She paused and wiped at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips.
Wendy had a hard time breathing, imagining the scene just described.
“We didn’t have a telephone or automobile. Just a tractor and my husband had taken that to town. I wrapped my son in a wet sheet and ran two miles to the neighbors. They gave me a ride to town, to the doctor who worked out of his house. We stayed there for three days, then he told me to take my son home. That there was nothing more that he could do for him. I kept putting lard on the burns, like the doctor had done, but infection had already set in, and within days, my son died.”
“I am so sorry,” Wendy whispered, holding back her own tears.
“Three months later, my husband took me to town, where I signed divorce papers that I had known nothing about, and then he took me to the train station, purchased a ticket, and gave me three one-dollar bills.” Nurse Manning cleared her throat. “He said that he couldn’t be married to a woman who would let her own son die.”
“But you didn’t let him,” Wendy whispered, her voice shaky. She couldn’t imagine a husband treating a wife like that. Couldn’t imagine anyone being so cruel. Until she remembered her own father, who had left her mother before she’d been born. A bitterness filled her at how a man could ruin a woman’s life. Turn it into something she’d never wanted. “You did everything you could.”
“But it wasn’t enough—my son had died.” Nurse Manning drew in a breath. “I ended up in Kansas City, went to work at a hospital and earned enough money to put myself through nursing school, so I could save lives. When I heard nurses were needed for the war effort, I enlisted immediately. And though I would never have wished that all of my studying of burn patients would be needed, it is now. If I can prove my therapies work with this one patient, they may be incorporated into the care of others, helping many, many more.”
Wendy’s determination to help increased tenfold and she listened carefully as Nurse Manning explained they’d work overlapping sixteen-hour shifts, with each of them working eight hours alone while the other one slept. She also gave permission to call her by her first name, Gloria, and said they both would still need to complete duties with other patients.
“Of course,” Wendy replied. “I fully understand.”
Nurse Manning then turned to the table. “All right then, I’ll show you what needs to be mixed with the mineral oil. We will be using sulfa drugs, tannic acid jelly and solution, picric acid, gentian violet, and triple dye, with and without silver nitrate, and sulfanilamide powder, but not all together and in different quantities.”
Wendy paid very close attention, and made a few notes while watching the process so she’d be fully prepared when the time came for her to do the applications by herself. She also listened carefully as Gloria told her about their patient. He was from a specialty unit. Underwater welding and his ability to return to duty was critical for the rebuilding of all the damaged ships. His name was Lieutenant Kent McCallister, and he had saved numerous lives yesterday, even after his clothing had been burned off his body. Besides his shoulders, arms, and back, he had smaller burns on the backs of his calves.
After the sterile dressings were put to soak in the mixture, Gloria instructed Wendy to collect another basin for the dressings they would remove and to follow her. The patient was in one of the smaller wards, with only three other patients, who would also be under their care.
Rolling white curtain walls separated the four patients. An IV bottle was hung on the pole at the top of his bed, which was near the wall, and he was lying on his stomach, with both arms laid at his sides, bent at the elbows so his hands were on the mattress near his ears. His upper back, shoulders, and upper arms were draped with dressings, and a sheet covered him from his lower back to the back of his knees, then more dressings covered his calves.
“We’ll keep him strapped to the bed so he doesn’t try to roll over in his sleep,” Gloria said, lifting the sheet enough to show that two sets of bed straps went across his lower back and thighs. “And will keep administering morphine for several days to keep the pain from being too excruciating. Which means he’ll sleep most of the time.”
Wendy pushed the wheeled cart up next to his bed and the moment she looked down on the man’s face, her breath stalled in her lungs. Even with one side of his face lying on the pillow and his eyes closed, she recognized him, and her heart constricted tightly inside her chest.
“Oklahoma,” she whispered to herself. “Oh, Oklahoma.”
He had been the main sailor that she hadn’t wanted to recognize yesterday. Refusing to let tears form or think of other outcomes, she sucked in a deep breath and vowed that she now had even more reasons to make sure that Gloria’s treatments worked. She would have wanted that for any sailor, but as selfish as it seemed even to her, she wanted it even more for Oklahoma.
As gently as possible, Wendy assisted Gloria in removing the dressing from the backs of his arms, shoulders, and neck. The severity of the burns had the ability to take her breath away, but she didn’t let it. This was her job, therefore, she examined his injuries carefully, so she could keep track of healing, and watch closely for infection.
She and Gloria discussed his condition, including how having his head turned to one side wouldn’t allow the back of his neck to heal well. Through their conversation as to what could be done about that, Wendy had the idea that a hole needed to be cut through the mattress for his face.
The idea had come to her because several years ago, Mrs. Gardner, their neighbor back home, had slipped on the ice and broken her tailbone; Aunt Ella had sewn Mrs. Gardner a pillow with a hole in the middle for her to sit on and take pressure off her tailbone. It was an odd comparison, and she and Gloria agreed to not tell anyone from where the idea had originated.
“It’ll mean moving him again,” Gloria said, “but it’s necessary for proper healing.”
After they’d seen to all of Oklahoma’s needs, they went over the other patients in the ward before Gloria took her leave to find out about having a mattress equipped.
Wendy completed a round of the other three men, and made a point of getting to know a little about each one of them.
John Taylor was nineteen, with a happy-go-lucky personality from New York, and had a broken left leg and arm, caused by being blown out of his bunk. He’d had surgery early that morning to have the bone set in his leg.
Wes Henderson was thirty-two, nice and polite, from Wyoming, with bullet holes in his shoulder. He’d been hit while reloading his machine gun and had gone through surgery yesterday to have three bullets removed. He was married, his wife, Faye, lived on the base with him and was an active volunteer at the hospital. Wendy shared that she’d met his wife on numerous occasions in the past and liked her bubbly personality. Wes grinned from ear to ear, hearing that.
The last patient was eighteen-year-old David Gomez, from California, who had a long and deep gash on his right thigh from shrapnel when the USS West Virginia had been hit. His brother Robert had also been on the ship, and David was still waiting to hear if his brother was alive or not.
Once Wendy made sure all of their needs were seen to, she walked back over to Oklahoma’s bed, checked that his dressings were still all in place, and then leaned down, whispered in his ear, “Expect another trophy, Oklahoma. We are going to win this one, too. I promise.”
Then, although she would like to wait by his side, just in case he needed something, he was only one of the many patients in the hospital and she left the room to complete other duties while awaiting the arrival of the new mattress.
She’d never had a personal connection to a patient before, but already recognized that it made her job more difficult. Waiting for healing to occur wasn’t an easy task for anyone, not patient or nurse, and right now, she wanted nothing shy of a miracle.
K.T. tried to open his eyes, but they were too heavy. The room was spinning. Or maybe he was spinning. Or just being moved. He wasn’t sure. His head was foggy and his body ached. More than ached. It hurt, a lot. Parts of it. Other parts, he couldn’t feel. It was as if they were numb and he didn’t have the ability to concentrate enough to know what was numb and what hurt. All he knew was the sensation of being moved made the pain unbearable and he gave in to the darkness pulling him downward.
There was no relief in the darkness. He was under the water, searching for a way into the submerged hull where he could hear men knocking on the other side. They were trapped and he had to get them out. But he couldn’t. He tried and tried, but couldn’t. Couldn’t save them because he was being held down. Held down under the water.
His lungs were burning, in need of air, and he had to surface, but when he broke through his confinement and swam upward, he was no longer in the water. He was back at home. In his family’s living room, with the radio playing. His mother was dancing with him. They waltzed around the furniture, laughing.
She was happy, as usual, which always surprised him considering her unhappy childhood. She’d been eleven when her father had left. Just up and left his wife and five children. Ran off with another woman, is what his mother had said, and that they never heard from him again. His mother had never been shy about sharing that story, and said that a man like that wasn’t worth spit. She’d told all of her children how difficult that had made her life. How she’d had to leave school and work as a laundry maid to help feed her siblings.
She’d drilled into them how important it was to keep promises, and remain committed to those who depend upon you, and she’d told them to never forget that they were a McCallister. As if the name held great significance. It was why he couldn’t promise to marry Betty when he knew he might not return.
Then, suddenly, he was dancing with Nebraska. Having the time of his life, until the dance floor became flooded, then he was trying to find her, to save her.
He couldn’t find her, couldn’t save her, there were too many people.
His heart was pounding, his lungs burning, and he tried harder, but he couldn’t move.
It had to be a dream. He had to be dreaming and he tried to wake himself, but his eyelids wouldn’t open. He couldn’t breathe either; it was as if something was holding him down, keeping him lying on his stomach. Even his head was confined.
He fought harder, tried to move, tried to wake up, until he heard Nebraska’s voice. It had to be her because she was calling him Oklahoma, and telling him to lie still, that everything would be okay. That he just needed to sleep.
Her hand was holding his, and his entire body relaxed, knowing he’d found her. He gave up his futile attempts to open his eyes and let the overpowering darkness surround him again. This time, though, it was more like a heavy, warm blanket that offered comfort and a dreamless sleep.
That occurred over and over again. Where he tried to wake up, only to be sucked deep into nightmares filled with water and fire, and dancing, and trying to find people.
He had no idea how many times that happened before he’d finally been able to open his eyes, only to wonder if he was deep inside yet another nightmare. Attempting to clear his vision, he blinked several times. Nothing changed. All he could see was a tile floor, through a grid of springs.
That’s what they appeared to be, but it was dark; there was barely enough light to see more than shapes. He tried to move, but sharp pain, concentrated across his upper shoulders, stopped him. He was lying on his stomach, and couldn’t lift his head more than half an inch, certainly not enough to see anything besides the floor.
His mind was foggy and he closed his eyes, struggling to focus on what he last remembered. As memories formed, his heart began to race and he tried harder to move. The attack. The entire harbor ablaze. Ships sinking. There still had to be men to save. To find.
“Whoa,” someone said quietly.
It was a female voice, but not the one from his dreams.
“It’s all right,” she continued. “I’m Nurse Manning. You’re in the hospital. We’ve been lessening your morphine doses and waiting for you to wake.”
“Why am I in the hospital?”
“You have burns on your neck, back, shoulders, and the backs of your arms and legs. That’s why you’re on your stomach.”
His throat plugged. It had happened. This was why he’d never made promises he couldn’t keep. “How bad is it?”
“Serious,” she said quietly, and then continued to explain his burns in detail.
While taking it all in he said he remembered rescuing men, and more, but he still needed to collect all of his bearings. “Can I sit up?”
“No, not for a while yet, and then only for short times. How bad is your pain?”
He questioned what to say. If he said it wasn’t bad, would she let him up?
As if reading his mind, she said, “You aren’t getting up whether you lie or tell the truth. I need to know in order to regulate your morphine doses.”
He’d heard enough about morphine to know that was part of the reason for his strange dreams. The other part was simply his mind. Reliving what had happened. “The others. The men in the ships, have they all been rescued?”
“From what I heard, you rescued a fair share all by yourself,” she replied.
There were still more. He knew that for certain. Growing more frustrated, he asked, “How long have I been here?”
“This is your fourth night,” she answered. “How bad is your pain and where does it hurt the most?”
“Not too bad,” he replied honestly. But as soon as he admitted that, the pain intensified in specific areas. His shoulders and back, but his neck was the worst. “The back of my neck feels like it’s on fire.”
“The skin on the neck is very sensitive. Nurse Smith came up with the idea to cut a hole in the mattress for your face, and it’s worked out very well to keep the pressure off your neck. I’ll change the dressings on your neck and the coolness of the solution will help. So will the morphine.”
“I don’t want more morphine.” Though some parts of his memory were vivid, the rest was hazy at best. This woman sounded nothing like Nebraska. His frustration grew even more, knowing he had no way of finding her. No way of knowing if she had survived the attack. “I need to be able to think straight.”
Other people and names were entering his mind. Men from his unit and others. So many others that he needed to know about. It was hard to stomach his condition and the fact that he was in the hospital rather than out in the harbor helping to save others. Rather than being out there with his unit, rebuilding ships that needed to be able to sail, to defend America.
“Right now, the only thing you need to think about is getting better,” she said.
How could he focus on getting better when there were things he needed to do? He felt her removing something, a blanket, or bandages from his back, but the grogginess was returning. He fought against it, but it soon was enveloping his mind again, and he was losing feeling again, like parts of him were going numb.
Then, he could no longer keep his eyes open.