“Someone you knew well?” he asked her, and she nodded.
“Audrey Parker’s brother. Will,” she added. She wanted to say his name so they could hear it, and she looked up at her father with the shards of her broken heart spilling from her eyes. “I loved him, Daddy. He was a wonderful person.”
“I’m sure he was,” he said sympathetically. “It’ll be hard on his mother. She’s widowed, isn’t she?” Lizzie nodded. They had met at Lizzie and Audrey’s nursing school graduation, so he knew how ill she was.
“Audrey takes care of her.”
“I’m sorry. Let me know if there’s anything we can do, for either of them.” He didn’t react to her telling him she loved Will. He wasn’t sure what she meant by it, but it was no time to ask when she was so upset.
She did the only thing she could think of then. It was the only place she wanted to be, with the family he loved and who loved him. She belonged with them now.
Lizzie packed a bag and went to Pennsylvania Station, and took a train to Annapolis that night. She arrived at the house at eleven o’clock and rang the doorbell. Audrey opened the door and they sank into each other’s arms, mourning the boy they had all loved so much. The boy who wanted to fly and had loved planes all his life. The country was at war and he was one of the first casualties. Audrey wondered if her mother would survive it, if any of them would. He was so young and so handsome and such a good person, brother, and son. He would have been good to Lizzie, if he’d had time to do so. And now he was gone. Audrey couldn’t imagine what life would be like from this day on, without him, and neither could Lizzie. Their lives would be forever changed, more than either of them could even imagine.
Chapter 4
Lizzie spent the week in Annapolis with Audrey and Ellen. She needed to be with them. They all sat in Will’s boyhood room and cried, looking at pictures of him. It was inconceivable to them that he wasn’t coming back, and even more so to his mother. Lizzie could still feel his lips, and his arms around her. It was all so fresh in her mind, and now, three weeks later, he was dead. It had all been so brief and so powerful. She couldn’t imagine life without him, or a future she would care about. What she did now no longer mattered to her. Her father called and reminded her that she had to go back to work at the hospital, but she didn’t care if they fired her. She hated her job anyway. He used his influence to get her a leave of absence. He said he felt very sad for the Parkers, but he told Lizzie she had to be back in Boston by the end of the week to pick up the threads of her own life again. He had no idea how deeply she had loved Will, or what promises they had made each other.
They still had no news of when his body would be returned when she finally left Annapolis on Sunday, a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Everyone was talking about war having been declared, and what it meant. Boys were going to be drafted, since the draft had been instated a year before. Thousands had already enlisted that week as a patriotic gesture, and she suspected that her own brothers would join the army now too. Her older brother, Greg, could go as a doctor in the medical corps, but Henry had only just started medical school, and she had no idea what they would do with him, or where he would be sent. America would join the war in Europe now too. Some men would be sent to the Pacific, and others to Europe. The country was in chaos, waiting to hear what would happen next. Those who had enlisted would be sent to basic training soon.
The atmosphere at the hospital was somber when Lizzie went back to work. Some doctors were talking about enlisting. Others were going to wait to be drafted. Some of the nurses were talking about enlisting too, which surprised Lizzie. She hadn’t thought about the nurses that would be needed too, not just physicians.
She went through the motions at work and barely spoke to her parents at night. She felt as though a part of her had died with Will on the airfield at Pearl Harbor.
Ellen and Audrey didn’t celebrate Christmas, and Lizzie worked on the holiday in Boston. She had nothing to celebrate that year. There was a jubilant mood among those who had enlisted and wanted to celebrate before going off to basic training. Lizzie already knew how it ended, and she couldn’t let herself be swept along. She kept to herself at work, and took care of her patients, but there was nothing she cared about now.
They finally sent Will’s body back shortly after Christmas. There were so many bodies to send home to families all over the country, and others who had gone down with their ships in the harbor and remained there. Divers brought up as many as they could, but there were a vast number they hadn’t reached yet.
Lizzie went back to Annapolis for the small funeral service Audrey arranged for her brother. His classmates from Annapolis were all over the world now. His childhood friends had moved on too, and a bigger funeral would have been too much for her mother. Audrey, Ellen, and Lizzie and a few of their old friends attended the service in the church Audrey and Will had gone to as children. Ellen hadn’t been well enough to go to church for years, and Audrey no longer saw her old high school friends. She was too busy taking care of her mother. Lizzie was her closest friend. They buried Will in the cemetery at Annapolis with his father. Will’s grandfather and grandmother were there too. There would be a place for Ellen next to her husband, Francis, when she died. It was grimly depressing standing at the cemetery, as they lowered Will’s casket into the ground, and two navy pilots handed Ellen the flag from his casket. Her hands trembled violently as she took it and pressed it to her chest.
They went back to the house for a quiet meal afterwards, and Lizzie shocked Audrey with what she told her after they put Audrey’s mother to bed. Her health had deteriorated markedly since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Will’s death. It was as though she didn’t care enough to put up a fight anymore. Audrey was fighting to keep her stable, but Ellen didn’t seem to care one way or another. Lizzie could understand how she felt, and Audrey did too.
They were sitting at the kitchen table drinking a glass of wine when Lizzie told her. Lizzie looked tired and had lost weight in the last month, and the light had gone out of her eyes, as though everything was dark inside her. Audrey didn’t look much better, but she was busy with her mother. They were both young to have suffered so much loss.
“I’m going to enlist,” Lizzie said so quietly that Audrey didn’t hear her at first, and then it hit her.
“You’re what?”
“I’m going to enlist in the army as a nurse.” She said it as simply as though she had said, “I’m going to the store tomorrow to buy a quart of milk.”
“They’re not drafting women, Lizzie, for heaven’s sake.” Audrey was shocked.
“Maybe they will eventually. Probably not. I’ve got nothing else to do, and at least I’ll serve some useful purpose. I’m not doing anyone any good emptying bedpans in Boston and living with my parents. Why not use what we learned in nursing school? When you see what happened in Hawaii and what a mess it was, how many wounded there were; they’re going to need as many medical personnel as they can get. I’m not married, I don’t have kids. I have no reason to stay home. I’d rather go where they need me and do someone some good. The patients I take care of won’t miss me. They can get plenty of old nurses to do what I do. I might as well enlist now and let them send me where I’ll be useful. I’ve been thinking about it, and it really makes sense.” Nothing else did now. She was calm and matter-of-fact about it, and Audrey could tell she had made up her mind. She could also tell that Lizzie didn’t really care if she lived or died at the moment, which worried Audrey.