With Every Letter (41 page)

“That’s enough,” Newman said. “Gill won’t go on a rampage.”

Tom sucked in a breath. No, but he’d always be his father’s son.

The heat of his anger sizzled out on the cold stone slab of truth. Things would never change. People would either fear his name or be overly fascinated by it. For the rest of his life, his father’s reputation would color Tom’s every action.

Quincy shot Tom a snide glance, then turned to Newman. “Sir, you have to do something. He distracts the men, he attracts those lousy reporters, he gave our battalion a bad name, and he might even be dangerous.”

With his anger gone, Tom felt strangely disconnected. His career could be smashed. He’d probably never find love. Yet all around him, the land shimmered in the heat of a new day, fresh with possibilities.

God made all things new. He was a new creation.

Only Annie believed it. And Tom. But he wouldn’t let that stop him anymore. He’d act like a new man whether they liked it or not.

He marched up to his CO. “You told me if I gained the
men’s respect, you’d give me back my platoon. They respect me now, maybe too much. I want my platoon back.”

Newman retracted his chin. “Pardon?”

Quincy laughed. “You’re making demands? You can’t do that.”

He’d made a lot of demands lately. First with Annie, now with Newman. Both would lead to disaster, but he didn’t care. Tom didn’t break his gaze with Newman. “Here’s the situation. If you order me to stay away from the field, and Quincy doesn’t give me the data, I can’t do the paperwork. Then I fail. There’s no reason for me to be here. You make that order, my career is dead. Quincy knows that. So give me back my platoon or get it over with and send me home.”

“Send him home,” Quincy said. “The man’s dangerous.”

“You think so, Quince?” Tom sloughed his carbine off his shoulder and dropped it to the ground. “If you’re too chicken, I’ll work unarmed.”

“I’m no chicken, you jerk.”

Newman raised one hand. “Gill—”

“If I’m unarmed, I won’t be a distraction. I can’t be a murderous superhero without a gun.” He handed Newman his pistol.

“Gill, that’s not—”

“Let me work.” Tom drilled a strong look into his shocked commander. “I want to lead and I need to build.”

“Send him home,” Quincy said, and Reed murmured his approval.

Newman’s face twisted through a dozen emotions.

Words burned holes in Tom’s throat, but none would help. If he didn’t get his platoon back, he’d go home one way or the other—through an immediate order or due to slow failure as Quincy’s secretary. Either way, he was done here.

Tom shoved his way past Quincy and marched toward quarters.

“Gill, come back here,” Newman called.

He lifted a hand to block the command and continued on his way.

“Lieutenant MacGilliver, that’s a direct order.”

His feet thumped on the compacted dirt. He’d never disobeyed an order before, but what did it matter? He was going home. His career was over.

44

“Hiya, ducky. You the gal training me?” A nurse approached Mellie outside the airfield tent hospital. Her broad grin revealed pronounced buckteeth.

Even though the woman would replace her, Mellie smiled. “If you’re Lieutenant Gerber, I am.”

The nurse stood several inches taller than Mellie, and her unruly blonde curls made her look even taller. “Call me Goosie. Everyone does.”

Childhood nicknames could be so cruel. “Is your name Lucy?”

She let out a peal of laughter. “Nah, it’s Mary. They call me Goosie ’cause I call everyone ducky. Me mum’s British,” she said in a fake accent. “Dad brought her home as his trophy from the last war. For her looks, you know.”

Mellie nodded and gave her a sympathetic smile. It had to be hard to be plain if your mother was beautiful.

“Thank goodness I look like her and not my dad.” Goosie wiped pretend sweat off her brow. “You think I’m ugly, you should see him. Whoa, Nellie!”

Mellie laughed. If only she could joke away her looks. If only she could stay and get to know Goosie better. “Well, I think you’re fine.”

“Get some eyeglasses, ducky.” She strolled among the litters and wheelchairs lined up for loading. “What’s this about air evac-a-tu-a-cation?” she said in a loud voice. “You mean, we go on one of them there air-e-o-planes?”

Mellie stared at her. Goosie wore the official new flight nurse uniform the women in her squadron craved—gray-blue trousers, a matching waist-length “Ike” jacket, and black Oxfords. Low-heeled Oxfords. She’d come through Bowman Field’s School of Air Evacuation and probably knew more about flight nursing than Mellie did.

Goosie clapped her hands on top of her garrison cap, which made her curls spring higher on the sides. Then she dropped to her knees beside one of the litters and leaned toward the patient. “An air-e-o-plane? In the sky? I ain’t never flown before. Will you help me? Will you be brave for me? Will you hold my hand?”

The soldier laughed. “Sure thing, toots.”

“Oh!” She hugged his arm. “I’m indebitacated to you forever and ever. Indebitacated.”

A smile of wonder crept up Mellie’s face.

“You know what that means?” Goosie sprang to her feet and pressed her hands over her heart. “We’re engagitated. Soon’s we land, you and I are getting hitched. Yahoo!” She danced back to Mellie as her “fiancé” shouted his protest over his fellow patients’ laughter.

“You’ve done this before,” Mellie said.

“As often as I can.” She hooked her arm through Mellie’s. “You going to show me the ropes?”

“I think you should show me the ropes.”

“Just relaxing the fellas, taking their minds off their troubles. Sorry, ducky. I didn’t get your name.”

“Mellie Blake.”

“Mellie Blake?” A serious look darkened Goosie’s pale gray eyes. “You’re the one going home?”

She nodded.

“They say it’s because you don’t fit in.” Goosie set her hands on her hips. “Well, if you don’t fit in, what’ll they do with me?”

Mellie gazed at a woman who’d been dealt as bad a hand as she had—but chose humor. “What’ll they do with you? They’ll bake you in a moderate oven with a nice orange sauce. Goose à l’orange.”

She whooped with laughter. “I’d look good in orange.”

Sergeant Early poked his head out of the cargo plane. “Lieutenant Blake, we’re ready to load.”

“Thank you.” Theirs was the last plane to load.

Medics brought patients to the cargo door, and Mellie showed Goosie how she greeted each patient, checked his Emergency Medical Tag against the flight manifest, and decided where he would be placed based on his medical needs. Then the medics and Sergeant Early assisted the patient to his seat or clamped his litter in place.

After the last patient was loaded, Mellie and Goosie climbed into the plane to make sure the patients were secured and comfortable.

“Lieutenant Blake!” Captain Maxwell beckoned her from the door with a concerned look on his face. He’d been disgustingly nice to her since her decision. He got to keep his mistress and be rid of the one person who knew of their affair.

“Yes, Captain?” She joined him outside the plane, where a patient lay on a litter, his torso swaddled in white gauze.

“Do you have room for one more litter case? The other planes are full.”

“Yes. Two actually.” She stared at the unconscious patient. Bloody streaks painted his face, arms, and khaki pants.

“Emergency situation. Private Jenkins and a buddy were playing football in a local field, fell headlong on a land mine. His buddy didn’t make it. The nearest hospital’s in Cefalù, a long ambulance ride over rough roads. By air he’ll be in Mateur in two hours. He needs a thoracic surgeon.”

Mellie frowned. “Is he stable enough for flight?”

“Honestly, no. His left lung’s collapsed, shrapnel dangerously near his inferior vena cava. We gave him whole blood, hung plasma for the flight, patched him up a bit, put in a chest tube.”

“Chest tube?”

“Yes. He’s a lousy candidate for air evacuation, but this is not a normal circumstance.”

“We’re his only hope.” Mellie gazed down at the young man with his matted sandy-blond hair and solid build. If Tom were in a similar situation, she hoped someone would give him a chance. “I’m training a nurse on this flight, so we have extra hands. We can ‘special’ him.”

“Knew I could count on you.” He clapped a hand on her shoulder and gave her a cheesy smile.

Although bile rose to her throat, she managed to thank him. She never thought she’d miss the old antagonistic Maxwell.

During takeoff, Mellie talked Goosie through in-flight duties. While Mellie gave Private Jenkins the special one-on-one care he needed, Goosie would care for the others.

After the plane leveled off, Mellie went down the aisle and knelt beside Jenkins’s cot. She wrapped her fingers around his cool wrist and had to shift them twice to find his pulse—rapid and thready. His respirations were shallow.

Although the patient’s cot was tilted in the Trendelenburg
position, with his feet higher than his head to promote blood flow to his heart and brain, he was going into shock.

Mellie sang “Abide with Me” while she adjusted his oxygen mask and the flow of oxygen from the yellow tank.

She sang “Softly and Tenderly” as she opened two plasma cans, transferred sterile water from one bottle into the other, dissolved the life-giving flakes, and exchanged the new bottle for the almost-empty one hanging on the litter rack above.

She sang “He Leadeth Me” as she used a rubber bulb to suction the chest tube, and then administered more morphine and adrenaline.

But Private Jenkins was dying.

Both his heart rate and respiratory rate grew irregular and faint. His eyes were open and glassy. And Mateur still lay an hour away.

Mercy led to the death of her career and dreams. Mercy would lead to the death of her relationship with Tom. And mercy couldn’t save the young man in front of her.

An ache grew in her chest, a gaping raw hole as if she’d fallen on the land mine herself, but no matter what, she’d choose mercy again.

She gazed around at the other patients. Goosie occupied most of them with her antics, but the man across the aisle eyed her movements carefully. The most merciful thing she could do was to keep Jenkins’s condition secret.

“Here. Let’s clean you up a bit.” Mellie moistened a gauze pad with water from her canteen, turned Jenkins’s head toward the fuselage wall so no one could see his blank expression, and cleaned his cheek and neck. His carotid pulse fluttered beneath her fingers. “I’ll be right back with more fluids.”

She passed Goosie and Sergeant Early. “Come with me, please, so I can hear report.”

At the rear of the plane, Goosie flipped pages on her clipboard. “Everything looks—”

Mellie held up one hand. “Private Jenkins is dying,” she said in a low voice.

“Oh no.” Shock registered on Goosie’s face, but her voice remained low too. Behind the comedienne lay a competent nurse.

Early cussed under his breath and wiped his hand over his mouth.

“I don’t want the patients to know,” Mellie said.

“Yeah,” Early said. “Don’t want that.”

“I’ll pretend to tend to his needs. You two keep the men distracted.”

Goosie raised half a smile. “I’m good at that.”

Early cast a glance down the aisle. “We’ll unload him last so no one can see.”

“Thank you.” Mellie pulled gauze pads and a bottle of normal saline from the medical chest and filled a rubber basin with water from a spare canteen.

She returned to her patient. His arms twitched, and his respirations hopped around. The end would come soon.

Mellie sang “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go” and replaced the empty plasma bottle with normal saline. Then she bathed the young man, gently cleansing his arms of dried blood.

Some twenty years before, another woman had cleansed these limbs, then small and pudgy and pink. In a few days that woman would receive a telegram that would rip her heart inside out.

As she sang, Mellie prayed for that woman and the boy’s father and his brothers and sisters and sweetheart and friends. With so much death around, she wanted to remember, needed to remember, that each man was precious and cherished.

The life of Private Jenkins eased out with a long breathy whisper and a relaxation of muscles and the extinguishing of light in his eyes.

Still Mellie sang. She didn’t even know what she sang, but she had to continue for the other men, for those who lived. She adjusted oxygen flow and IV flow and bathed his limbs, now muscular and limp and pale. Never again would he throw a football or clap to music or hold the woman he loved in his arms.

A quiver entered Mellie’s voice and she stretched her neck to clear her vocal cords.

Tom said he wanted to hold the woman he loved in his arms. Mellie had chosen to deprive him of that.

Mercy yanked her in two directions. Was it more merciful to give him the chance he wanted, even if it meant deep disappointment for him and devastating rejection for her? Or was a sudden end more merciful?

Mellie cleansed blood from the sandy blond hair framing her patient’s face.

Yes, a fast death was best. She couldn’t put it off any longer. Tonight she’d unsheathe her dagger and write her final letter.