The Bungalow (20 page)

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Authors: Sarah Jio

Tags: #General Fiction

BOOK: The Bungalow
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We all scattered to our stations, and when the men began coming, it was like nothing we’d seen before. The wounds were more critical, the screaming louder, the intensity stronger than in past days.
Mary and I worked the doors, directing traffic and admitting the men, many of whom shrieked and pleaded for help, some weakly, others with such force that it was terrifying to witness. A young soldier with a head injury pulled my arm so hard he tore the sleeve of my dress. “I want my mama!” he screamed. “Mama! Where is Mama?”
It was harrowing to witness. All of it. The blood and the misery and the pain, and especially seeing men reduced to children in their suffering. But we kept on. We drew upon on our reserves of strength as Nurse Hildebrand had instructed. And when that ran out, we found more.
It was two thirty in the morning when the last plane came in. Nine men where wheeled into the infirmary. I heard Mary scream at the door. The horror in her voice told me why.
I ran to her side, and there on the stretcher lay Lou—limp, lifeless, and very badly burned.
The soldier at the door shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “This one died on the way over. We did all we could for him.”
“No!” Mary screamed, shaking her head violently. “
No!
”
She ran to the soldier and gripped his shirt in her fists. “Did you not try to help him? Did you not do anything?”
“Ma’am,” he said, “I assure you, we did everything we could. His wounds were just too great.”
“No,” Mary said, falling to her knees. “No, this can’t be.” She stood up and lay her head on Lou’s chest, sobbing into his blood-soaked shirt. “Lou, Lou!” she cried. “No, no, Lou. No.”
Liz ran to my side. “We have to stop her,” she said. “Will you help me?”
“Mary,” I said. “Mary, stop. He’s gone, dear. Let him go.”
“I won’t!” she screamed, pushing me away. Her face was covered in Lou’s blood. I gestured to Liz for assistance.
“Honey,” I said, taking her left arm in my hands. Liz took her right. “We’re going to take you to bed.”
“No,” Mary moaned.
“Liz, grab the sedatives,” I said.
She nodded and handed me a syringe. Mary hardly flinched as I jabbed the needle into her arm. Moments later, her body went limp.
“There,” I said, letting her down softly onto a nearby bed. The sheets had a smudge of blood on them. Someone else’s blood. But there wasn’t time to change them. “Lie down, dear,” I said, wiping Lou’s blood from her face with a damp cloth. “Try to rest.”
“Lou,” she muttered weakly before her eyes closed.
I watched her breathing for a few minutes, thinking about how unfair this was. After all she’d been through, she had found love again, only to lose it in such a tragic way. It wasn’t right.
Kitty and I walked back to the barracks together in silence. We had now seen war, or, rather, the aftermath of war—its ugliness, its cruelty.
We fell into our beds and listened to the airplanes flying overhead for a long time. I prayed for Westry, and I wondered who Kitty was praying for, or thinking of.
“Anne,” Kitty whispered to me after the skies had been quiet for some time. “Are you still awake?”
“Yes.”
“I have to tell you something,” she said. “Something important.”
I sat up. “What is it?”
She sighed, looking at me with eyes filled with sorrow, with hurt that I could not understand. “I’m pregnant.”
Chapter 10
I
gasped, running to her bed. “Oh, Kitty!” I cried, shaking my head in disbelief.
“I’ve known for a while now,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears. “I’ve been so afraid to tell you.”
“Why would you be afraid, Kitty?”
She exhaled deeply. “Partly because I feared admitting it, even to myself, and also because I knew it would disappoint you.”
“Disappoint
me
?” I ran my fingers through her curls and shook my head. “No, I’m only disappointed that you’ve had to carry this burden alone.”
Kitty pressed her face against my shoulder and wept so intensely her body shook with grief. “I don’t know what to do,” she cried. “Look at me.” She indicated her belly, which was obviously swollen. “I’ve been hiding under girdles for months. I can’t go on like this anymore. Everyone will notice before too long. The baby’s coming in a month, maybe sooner.”
I gasped. “We’ll speak to Nurse Hildebrand,” I said.
“No!” Kitty pleaded. “No, we can’t go to her. Please, Anne.”
“It’s our only option,” I countered. “You can’t be working such long hours in your condition, and the baby will be coming soon. We must plan for that.”
Kitty looked frightened and lost. I knew by the expression on her face that she hadn’t considered the reality of what lay ahead—delivering a child on an island thousands of miles away from home, unwed, in disgrace, uncertain.
“All right,” she said. “If you think it’s best, tell her. But I can’t bear to be there when you do.”
I kissed her forehead and smiled. “You don’t have to, dear,” I said. “I’ll take care of everything.”
There was little time the following day to find even a minute alone with Nurse Hildebrand, but by the final hour of my shift, I had managed to run into her in the storeroom.
“Nurse Hildebrand,” I said, quietly closing the door behind us. “May I speak to you about something?”
“Yes, Anne,” she said without looking up from the crate she was unpacking. “Quickly, please; I must get back.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s about Kitty.”
Nurse Hildebrand nodded. “I already know,” she said simply.
“What do you mean, you know?”
“Her pregnancy,” she replied without emotion.
“Yes, but I—”
“Anne, I’ve been a nurse for a very long time. I’ve delivered babies and had children of my own. I know.”
I nodded. “She needs your help,” I said cautiously. “The baby’s coming soon, and she can’t keep working like this.”
For the first time, Nurse Hildebrand turned to me. Her face softened in a way I hadn’t known it could. “Tell her not to worry about the work here. If the others ask, I’ll say she has a bout of the fever going around, that she’s been quarantined. You’ll need to bring her meals up to her. Can you manage that?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling. “Yes, of course.”
“And when the time comes, come to me.”
I nodded. “But what will become of the baby, after—”
“I know a missionary couple who will take the baby,” she said. “They live just over the hill, on the other side of the island. They are good people. I’ll speak to them in the morning.”
“Thank you, Nurse Hildebrand,” I said with such emotion, tears fell from my eyes. “I didn’t expect you to be so—”
“Enough,” she said. The softness, now gone from her face, was replaced by the stern expression I knew so well. “It’s time to get back to work.”
The day Mary left the island was sad for all of us, particularly for Kitty, who remained trapped in the barracks, unable to join the other nurses on the airstrip for her farewell.
The island had been hard on Mary, perhaps harder on her than on any of us. It had given her malaria and nearly taken her life, and then it broke her heart.
“Farewell, friend,” Stella said to her.
“We’ll never forget you, dear,” Liz chimed in.
Mary looked like a shell of a woman standing there before the open door of the plane, thinner than ever, with wrists still bandaged from her self-inflicted wounds, the wounds that had almost ended her life.
She retrieved a handkerchief from her bag and dabbed her bloodshot eyes. “I’ll miss you all so much,” she said. “It doesn’t feel right to leave. You’ve become my dearest friends, my sisters.”
I squeezed Mary’s hand. “It’s your time, dear. Go home. Take care of yourself.” I remembered the letter from Edward, which was now in my pocket. I hadn’t anticipated keeping it from her this long. Was she ready to read it now? It didn’t matter, I reasoned. The letter belonged to her.
“I guess this is it,” she said, reaching for her bag.
The other women choked back tears as Mary turned toward the plane.
“Wait,” I said. Mary looked back at me with a confused expression.
I pulled the letter from my pocket and tucked it in her hand. “This arrived,” I said, “for you. I hope you will forgive me for keeping it from you. I wanted to protect you from any more pain.”
Mary’s eyes brightened when she saw the name on the return address. “My God,” she gasped.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, stepping back.
Mary extended her hand to take mine. “No,” she said. “Don’t be. I understand. I do.”
“I’ll miss you so much,” I said, wishing that things could be different—for her, for Kitty, for all of us. “Promise you’ll look me up in Seattle when the war’s over?”
“I promise,” she said. And with that, Mary and her letter were gone from our lives—forever, perhaps. And the island was lonelier because of it.
For a long time it felt like Westry might never return. The island was different without him, especially now that Mary had left and Kitty was bedridden. But then one morning in late May while working in the infirmary, we heard the loudspeaker at the center of camp announcing that the men had returned.
“Go,” Nurse Hildebrand said to me.
I didn’t stop to thank her; instead I ran out to the pathway and didn’t pause until I’d reached the edge of the airstrip. Men trudged with heavy bags and even heavier hearts toward camp. Lance, Colonel Donahue, and some of the other men I knew.
But where is Westry?
I looked around for a familiar face. Elliot had gone home earlier with some of the other men whose service was up.
Would someone else know of Westry’s whereabouts?
“Have you seen Westry?” I asked an unfamiliar soldier. His head hung low.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t know him.”
I nodded, then noticed one of Westry’s bunkmates from the barracks. “Ted,” I said, approaching him. “Where’s Westry? Have you seen him?”

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