Twenty-Four

“NURSE,” THE MAN SAID again. “Nurse.”

He’d called it out the last time Lottie walked past, carrying a wad of bandages down to the other end of the overflowing hospital ward. And now that she was returning, coming back down the seemingly endless rows of wounded men, in bed after bed, he called it again—even though she wasn’t a nurse. But she, like many of the women on the island, was spending all her spare time trying to ease the burden of caring for the huge number of wounded who continued to pour into the base.

Lottie had thought that there wasn’t much that could tug at her heart anymore these days. Not because she didn’t care, but because her heart was so tired. She’d seen men crying out in pain and men missing limbs, men with their eyes bandaged who might never see again, men crying out for their mothers or wives or girlfriends, men who just sat and stared, men who cried in silence, over wounds that were all too obvious, or perhaps others that not even a doctor would be able to see.

Lottie, like most of the women on the base, had been there for all of it—after working all day in the repair shop, which was overflowing now with planes that had been battered to bits in the fighting.

Putting the planes back in action took up her days. But for all the other waking hours she still had between eating and sleeping, she volunteered what time she had in the wards with the wounded, just like many of the other WAVES. Hawaii was the closest US holding to the fighting in Japan, so a great portion of the wounded had been landed there.

And the number of wounded was huge.

The Allies had won the battle of Iwo Jima. But the Japanese, as Pickman had observed, were tough fighters. It had taken the Allies several weeks to declare victory. And in the meantime, the losses had been terrible.

Over seventy thousand men had landed. Almost seven thousand of them had been killed in fighting. Over twenty-five thousand more were wounded.

And to Lottie, it sometimes felt like every single one of them had landed here, back in Pearl Harbor.

It was hard to feel anything, when there was so much suffering.

But what struck her about this man was that he didn’t seem to really expect that anyone would answer him. He kept saying “Nurse,” again and again. But his eyes didn’t fix on anything as they roved the ward. And he didn’t say it as a command, or even a plea. It was almost a childlike tone, as if he were a boy who had just learned the word and was repeating it to himself, half wondering what it meant.

Over the past few days, the women working in the wards had realized that if they stopped to talk to everyone, they’d never be able to help the ones in the most distress. And this man didn’t look to be in any kind of immediate danger. So under normal circumstances, Lottie would probably have walked on herself.

But something in his tone made her stop. Maybe because the exhaustion and the loss of hope she could hear in his voice reminded her of something in herself.

“Yes,” she said, going over to his bed.

She hadn’t looked closely at the man before she stopped. You couldn’t afford to, not if you wanted to get anything done. And so much of what you saw when you looked closely, either at the men’s wounds or at their faces, was unbearable. So she’d gotten in the habit of keeping her eyes forward, on where she was going, not all the suffering around her.

But now that she looked at the man, she could see that he wasn’t much more than a boy. Maybe not even as old as she was, with freckles on his pale face and a mop of straight brown hair over brown eyes.

It took him a moment to realize that someone had stopped for him, finally.

“Nurse,” he said.

Lottie took his hand, scanning the man for his wound. She didn’t immediately see one, which wasn’t a good sign. If his arms and legs were still whole, that meant he was suffering from some kind of internal wound. The doctors might have patched him up, but that didn’t mean they’d really been able to patch up whatever the bullets or shrapnel had torn up inside him.

When she took his hand, he met her eyes. Suddenly, his face lit up in a beatific smile. It had been so long since she’d seen a smile like that that Lottie felt her knees begin to buckle. Quickly, she sank down on the bed beside him.

“Nurse,” the young man breathed, as if it were the name of an angel.

“I’m Lottie,” Lottie said matter-of-factly. “What’s your name?”

“Ben,” the young man said. “I’m from Detroit. Where are you from?”

At this simple question, tears sprang into Lottie’s eyes. Embarrassed, she blinked them back. What was she doing, letting herself cry, when this man was in so much more pain than she was?

“Detroit!” she said, trying to make her voice sound as cheerful as it would have if she’d just met him at a party. “That’s impossible! I’m from Detroit.”

She wouldn’t have thought Ben’s smile could get any bigger, but somehow it did. “I think there’s room for both of us in Detroit,” he said. His eyes wandered a bit, and Lottie wondered if he’d just had a flash of pain. But then they connected with hers again.

“Only thing I can’t understand,” he said, “is how I never met you before.”

“What do you do in Detroit, Ben?” Lottie asked.

“I’m gonna work at Palmer Stamping,” Ben said, pride flaring in his eyes. “That’s where my dad works. He says when I get back, he can get me a job, for sure.”

Lottie’s heart turned over at the name of her father’s company. If Ben’s dad had any trouble finding him a spot, she resolved then and there, she’d find him one herself.

“It sounds like you’ve got a lot to look forward to,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it. “You’ve just got to concentrate on getting better for now.”

Ben gave a wry smile. “If you tell me how to concentrate on growing myself a new stomach, I’ll do my best,” he said.

Lottie had a sinking feeling. He had internal wounds. And to a vital organ.

“You rest,” Lottie said.

“And pray,” Ben said.

“That’s a good idea, too,” Lottie told him with a smile.

Lottie managed to make it down to the end of aisle before another man called her name. This time, the voice was coming from the next aisle over, just a few beds from the end.

Lottie gave her head a little shake. She couldn’t get in the habit of stopping for every man who tried to get her attention. Nothing would ever get done around here if all the women did that. The best thing was just to get back to what she’d been doing before, toss a little smile and nod that direction, and keep moving on, unless it became clear something was really wrong.

And if she did that, she thought to herself, maybe she’d be able to shake the aching sensation of loss, even as she walked away from the bedside of one of her hometown boys.

But then she realized: Whoever it was wasn’t calling for a nurse, like the boy from Detroit had been. He was calling her name.

The instant Lottie turned her head, her eyes locked on the only face in the whole place that she recognized.

Eugene lay on a cot several rows over.

And he was smiling.

The sensation of seeing his familiar face, safe and sound, in this ward full of hardship and suffering and hard work, was overwhelming.

She completely forgot any semblance of professional demeanor and rushed over to his side just like she might have when the two of them were kids.

A moment later, she was kneeling beside his bed to give him an awkward embrace, the two of them laughing and talking at the same time.

“How did you—?” she began.

“I’m so glad—” he started.

They both stopped, looked at each other, started again, stopped again.

“You first,” Eugene finally said, his eyes crinkling around the edges as they always did when he smiled.

“What are you doing here?” Lottie asked.

It was a familiar question, one she’d asked him a thousand times. But as she asked it this time, a feeling of dread washed over her.

There was only one reason that Eugene would be here: he was wounded.

And the fact that as she drew back from his arms and looked at him, he looked just as solid as he ever had wasn’t necessarily a good sign. Was he suffering from internal wounds, just like Ben?

Lottie turned her head, looking for the answer to her own question.

And found it, with a sickening lurch that seemed to knock the whole world off its axis.

“Eugene,” she said, reaching blindly back for his hand.

“It’s all right, Lots,” Eugene said as she took in the sight of him and everything it meant. “I’ll be okay.”

But Lottie was already shaking her head. How could he be okay? What could he possibly mean?

Because under the fresh sheet, where Eugene’s left leg should have been, was nothing but empty space.