Lost in my thoughts while staring at the deep blue sky, I turn my face away from the blinding sun, finding a man sitting beside me. My hand flies up to my chest, startled by his presence.
“Oh my, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize I had company and here I am gazing at the ocean like a seagull looking for a snack,” I say, my cheeks filling with warmth from embarrassment.
“It’s unnecessary to apologize. We should all take a minute to drink in this gorgeous scenery now and then. In fact, Makena seems to have most of her daydreams while sitting on the beach. It must be genetic,” the fellow says with a gentle smile.
“Oh, you know my granddaughter?” I ask the handsome gentleman. I don’t recall when this fellow arrived or who he is, but he seems very curious.
The man looks perplexed by my question, but I assume he understands what I’m asking since he mentioned Makena’s name.
“It’s me, Daniel,” he says. “I’m Makena’s husband.”
Husband. I spot my journal on the table in front of me and open it to the last page to find the notes I must have left for myself, but it’s difficult to make heads or tails of my chicken scratch. When did my penmanship become so sloppy?
“Oh yes, of course,” I say in response.
“I’ve been interviewing you for an article about Pearl Harbor’s seventy-fifth anniversary. If it’s too much, we can stop or take a break,” Daniel says. He’s so kind and sweet, but I don’t recognize him at all.
“Yes, please, continue.”
Daniel takes a long moment to stare at me as if I might change my mind, but then returns his gaze to his notebook. “You must have been grateful for your education and competence in your nursing skills when the attack occurred. What would you say was the most helpful lesson you had learned prior to the chaos of that day?”
I can’t seem to stop myself from staring through Daniel, as if the answer to his question is somewhere behind him. “Oh my. If I knew what I was in for when I decided on a nursing career, I might have thought twice about my decision. I couldn’t handle a sick youngster; never mind the atrocities I would encounter.”
“A sick child is much different from—”
Daniel’s face becomes blurry as I recall a grown man crying out for his mother.
He was a grown man, per the US Navy, but he couldn’t have been over eighteen—still a child. He would not make it. I was sure. The explosion engulfed his body with flames, and yet he survived the explosive that hit his ship. “I need to say goodbye to my mother, please,” he cried.
“You will see your mother again,” I wrongfully promised, but I couldn’t bear to steal his hope when it was all he had left. His burns were too severe and covered his entire body. He was melting in front of my eyes.
“I love her so much,” the boy whimpered. “She was braver than me. I’m not very brave at all, am I, nurse?”
“You are very courageous, and you are just like your mother. I promise you she is proud of the man you have grown into,” I told him.
I’m not sure where the words came from, being a young girl myself without the experience of a mother, but it felt like the right thing to say as I watched the boy take his last breath.
“Not quite,” I respond to Daniel. “I knew I had a lot to learn before I could become a certified practicing nurse. There was no room for weakness, and that day was far from an exception.”
Daniel presses his pen down to his notepad and glances up at me. “Everyone is weak or faint of heart at some point. That’s what makes us all human, but time, knowledge and wisdom help us work around our inadequacies, I suppose.”
“To fall helpless at the sight of a sick child was not a moment I could sweep under the carpet, not then.”
“Well, how did you go about overcoming your weakness?” he asks.
“Watching a man take his last breath changes the way the world appears. The knowledge and feeling of being powerless enforces perseverance because there’s no other choice.”