The Bungalow (11 page)

“Malaria,” I repeated. The word sounded so foreign, and yet the disease was right here, threatening to take the life of a terrific girl, one we’d just begun to know, a girl who had her whole future ahead of her, who had come to the South Pacific to start over, not to die.

“The fever broke,” Dr. Livingston said, “but I’m afraid it weakened her heart. The only thing we can do now is wait.”

My hands trembled. “But she’s going to make it,” I said. “She’s going to pull through. She has to pull through.”

Dr. Livingston looked away.

I thought of Mary, poor Mary. Tall, perhaps a little too tall. Teeth a bit crooked. Heart broken. Her fiancé had left her and she had felt alone; she’d told us so.
No, I will not let her die alone.

“Kitty,” I said, “will you run back to the barracks and fetch my reading glasses and anything you can find to read? Bring the damn
War Digest
, if that’s all there is—whatever you can find.”

Kitty nodded.

“We’re going to hold vigil,” I said. “May I pull up a bed and stay next to her tonight?” I asked Nurse Hildebrand.

She nodded in approval.

Kitty returned with two magazines, three books—two from Liz and another from Stella—a copy of the
War Digest
, and a nursing textbook, just in case.

“Good,” I said, examining a book with a tattered spine. “We’ll take shifts reading to her. We won’t stop until she regains consciousness, or . . .”

Kitty reached for my hand. “Anne, you can’t save her if she’s—”

“I won’t let her die alone,” I said, wiping away a tear. “Nobody deserves that.”

Kitty nodded.

I set down the book and picked up a copy of
Vogue
with Rita Hayworth on the cover. I turned to the first page, and began reading an advertisement: “Why not get a lovely figure for spring? If you want to dress inexpensively, and be able to wear standard fittings with charm and distinction, start now to get rid of that accumulated winter fat. With the help of nightly Bile Beans you can ‘slim while you sleep’ safely and gradually . . .”

I read for four hours, every word on every page in front of me, until my eyes began to blur. Kitty read next, turning on a little lamp on the table next to the gurney when the sun set, then passing the torch back to me a few hours later after her voice became hoarse.

We’d covered three magazines and three quarters of a novel by the time the sun’s morning rays first shone through the infirmary windows, which is when Mary’s eyes began to flutter.

She opened them slowly, then shut them again, and we watched with great anticipation as the next minute passed, and then the next, before she moved her arm, and then her legs, and then her eyes again, this time opening them and looking straight at me.

“Where am I?” she said weakly.

“In the infirmary,” I replied, tucking a strand of her blond, straw-like hair behind her ear. “You’ve been stricken with malaria, dear,” I continued, choking back tears. “But you’re going to be fine now.”

Mary looked around the room, then at Kitty and back to me. “I had the strangest dream,” she said. “I kept trying to walk toward a bright light, and there was this voice always there. It kept luring me back.”

“Did you turn around?”

“I didn’t want to,” she said. “I wanted to keep walking, but every time I took a step, the voice beckoned.”

“Good,” I said, holding a glass of water to her lips before tucking her cold arms back under the blanket. “Dear, we have all the time in the world to talk about it, but you need your rest now.”

Our care of Mary didn’t compel Nurse Hildebrand to congratulate us on our nursing skills, but she did excuse us from duty that day, and Kitty and I welcomed the opportunity to rest.

I slept until noon, when the sound of the lunch bell ringing from the mess hall woke me. My stomach growled, yet my exhaustion persisted and I was tempted to stay in bed.

“Kitty?” I said, without lifting my head. “Are you awake?”

I turned my heavy head expecting to see her fast asleep, and instead found her coverlet pulled tightly up over her bed and the two pillows fluffed and neatly stacked against the headboard.

Where is she?
I sat up and stretched, then noticed a note on the dressing table.

Boating with Lance. Of course, it was a perfectly normal thing for her to do, and yet I felt uneasy.
We were granted the day off only hours ago, so when did she have time to make plans with Lance?
I thought of the bungalow, and realized our little dormitory room was already thick with secrets.

The lunch bell rang a second time—the last call. If I dressed and ran quickly I could make it in time. But I saw a shiny red apple on the nightstand and thought of a much better idea.

I slung over my shoulder a knapsack packed with the apple, a bit of bread Kitty had brought back from the mess hall, and a canteen filled with water, then I snuck past the entrance to the infirmary, stopping briefly to glance through an open window to where Stella and Liz and a few of the other nurses were working. They looked bored, at best. A few fussed over a lightbulb that needed changing, and a small group hovered over the only patient in the building, a man who looked like he had nothing more than a skinned knee. His smile indicated his enjoyment.

This wasn’t the wartime life I’d expected. And yet, change was coming. I’d heard a rumor that Colonel Donahue had an operation planned, something big. I wondered how it might affect our work, our world.

I made my way to the path that led to the beach. Westry had said the bungalow was just a half mile north of the base. I hoped he was right.

I walked fast, and looked over my shoulder more than a few times.
What would people think of me sneaking away from the base like this, alone?
It didn’t feel like something Anne Calloway would do.

Just around the bend, I began to make out the thatched roof of the bungalow, nestled in the thicket, just as we’d left it. As I grew nearer, I could hear the sound of a saw zigzagging.

My heart pounded in my chest.
Westry is here.

“Hello,” I said, knocking ceremoniously on the place where the door had once hung precariously. “Anyone home?”

Westry looked up, wiping his brow before brushing sawdust off his hands. “Oh, hi,” he said. “Are you real or a mirage? I’ve been out here all morning without water, and I can’t tell if I’m hallucinating or if there’s really a beautiful woman standing in the doorway. Please tell me it’s the latter.”

I grinned. “You’re not hallucinating,” I said, pulling the canteen out of my bag. “Here, drink.”

Westry took a long gulp, then exhaled, handing the canteen back to me. “I’ve almost got the door in working order,” he said. “It didn’t fit on the doorframe. The weather must have warped it. I had to take an inch off the side. See? I rustled up some old hinges from the supply yard.” He held up the hardware proudly, as if it were treasure. “Our bungalow needs a proper, working door.”

I smiled. I liked to think of it as
our
bungalow.

I pulled a box of Borax and some rags from my bag. “I thought I’d give the place a shine,” I said.

“Glad you could join the work party,” Westry said, turning back to his saw.

By three, the floors were fit to eat from, and Westry had the door fastened in place.

“I almost forgot,” he said, plucking a scuffed brass doorknob from his knapsack. “It will just take me a second to fit it.”

I watched him attach the knob, carefully fastening the screws in their holes.

“Our key,” he said, holding up a shiny piece of steel. “Now, if we can just find the right hiding place for it.”

I pointed to the open-air windows. “But anyone who wants in can just climb on through.”

Westry nodded. “Sure. We’ll get the windows installed soon enough. Besides, every home needs a proper, working lock. But where to hide the key, that’s the question.”

I followed him outside the hut, and we looked around near the front step. “How about here?” I suggested, pointing to a spot in the sand. “We could bury it.”

Westry shook his head. “It’s the first place someone would look. It’s like the welcome mat—every crook knows to go there first.” He paused as an idea struck. “Wait,” he continued, running back inside and returning with a book he’d pulled from his bag. “We’ll use this.”

“A book?”

“Yeah,” he replied, pulling out the ribbon attached to the spine. Its purpose might have been to mark the page for a reader, but Westry had other plans. He tied the ribbon securely around the lip of the key, tucking it into the book. “There,” he said, sliding the book below the step. “Our secret spot.”

The waves were crashing loudly now. “The tide’s coming in,” he said. “Want to watch it with me?”

I hesitated. “I probably should be thinking about walking back.” I hadn’t left a note for Kitty, and I worried that she could be concerned.

“C’mon,” Westry said. “You can stay a few more minutes.”

“All right,” I said, caving. “Just a few.”

“There,” he said, pointing to a piece of driftwood a few paces ahead on the beach. “Our perch.”

He grabbed the wine bottle he’d found in the bungalow the day before and a tin cup from his knapsack and sat down next to me in the sand, our heads resting comfortably on the driftwood that had been smoothed into submission by the pulverizing surf. “A toast,” he said, pouring the ancient wine into the cup. “To the lady of the bungalow.”

He extended the cup to me, and I took a cautious sip, my face involuntarily contorting. “To sour hundred-year-old wine.”

A bird sang in the distance as we sat together, mesmerized by the waves.

“I don’t know anything about you,” I said, turning to him a little abruptly.

“And I don’t know anything about you,” he retorted.

“You start.”

Westry nodded and sat up. “I was born in Ohio,” he began. “Didn’t stay there long. Mother died of scarlet fever, and I moved west with my father, to San Francisco. He was an engineer, worked on the railroads. I tagged along with him, attending a different school every month.”

“Far from a proper education,” I said.

Westry shrugged. “I got a better one than most. I saw the country. I learned the way of the railways.”

“And now what? After all of this, you said you wanted to come back here, to the island, but surely you have other aspirations, other things to attend to first?”

Westry’s eyes were big and full of life, full of possibility.

“I’m not sure, exactly,” he said. “I may go back to school, become an engineer, like Pop. Or maybe go to France, and learn to paint like the great impressionists. Or maybe I’ll just stay here,” he said, motioning with his head toward the bungalow.