“Have you told your parents yet?”
“No, I’m sure they’ll have a fit when I do. But I don’t really care. They won the battle against medical school. They won’t win this one. I know I’m right. The army is going to need as many nurses as they can get. Lots of nurses are married and have kids and can’t go. I can. I have nothing to hold me back. My brothers will be going, so why shouldn’t I?” And she wanted to honor Will in some important way.
“Aren’t you scared, Lizzie?” Audrey asked her, and Lizzie shook her head. She looked like a different person since Will had died. She seemed empty and cold. All the joy and life and hope had gone out of her.
“No, I’m not scared. They probably won’t put nurses on the front lines anyway. I’m going to tell my parents when I go back to Boston now, and then I’ll sign up.” Audrey wasn’t sure if she was right or not, but she didn’t want to lose her closest friend. She couldn’t think of joining her, because she had her mother to take care of.
“Where would you go?”
“Wherever they send me. They’ll probably send a lot of the wounded back to the States. They might not send me anywhere, except an army base somewhere in the U.S. Either way, I’m willing to go.”
“I’m impressed,” Audrey said quietly.
“It just feels right. The country is at war. I think young people should go. Women as well as men.” She believed in equality for men and women, which wasn’t a popular point of view.
They talked about it some more that night, but Audrey could tell she’d made up her mind. It wasn’t entirely a patriotic decision. It was more of a practical one. She felt useless where she was and wanted to serve the men who would fall in battle in the coming months. She saw a need looming on the horizon, for nurses as well as soldiers, and she wanted to make her contribution to fill it. And she was wasting her abilities in her current job.
Audrey hugged her tight when Lizzie left to go back to Boston. She suddenly had the feeling that she didn’t know when they would see each other again.
“Let me know what you’re doing,” Audrey said, and Lizzie smiled at her for the first time in days.
“I’m not going to go sneaking off. I’ll come see you before they send me anywhere.”
She left a few minutes later.
Her parents were talking in the kitchen when she got home that night. She walked in and sat down with them with a serious expression.
“I have something to tell you,” she said quietly. She suddenly looked older and more grown up. Something about her had changed in the last month. She had already been different when she came back from Honolulu with Audrey, and her parents didn’t know what it was. “I’m going to enlist in the army, as a nurse.” She said it calmly and waited for their reaction. She knew there would be one and the storm hit quickly.
“Are you crazy? They’re not going to be drafting women,” her father told her.
“Maybe they should, Dad. I want to do my patriotic duty. They’re going to need nurses, lots of them, to treat the wounded.” She figured it was a better tack than saying that she hated her job and had nothing better to do, and that she didn’t mind risking her life, now that Will was dead. She didn’t care about her future without him now anyway. “I’m young. I’m a nurse. People like me are the ones who should go. I don’t have kids, I’m not married. They’ll need medical personnel. I just wanted to let you know that’s what I’m going to do.” Her mother was too amazed to even speak.
They both looked shocked as they stared at her and couldn’t seem to come up with a convincing argument to dissuade her. “When are you planning to do it?” her father asked in a hoarse voice. She was enlisting sooner than either of her brothers.
“Soon. In the next few days. I’m not vital in my job. They can manage without me. I’ll let you know as soon as I know when I’m leaving,” she said calmly, and then reached out and held their hands.
“I think it’s a crazy idea, Lizzie,” her father said quietly. He knew that arguing with her wasn’t going to work. Not this time.
“Yeah, like my wanting to go to medical school was crazy, huh?”
“Are you punishing me for not letting you go?” he asked, looking worried. She was a headstrong girl, and he knew he had underestimated her before, even though she had given in and gone to nursing school. And now look at what she was doing.
“I’m not punishing you.” Life had done that to her more than any human could have, when she lost Will. Now she had to find a way to live without him, without their dreams. She had no dreams now, just a job to do. She was well equipped for the job as a nurse, so why not do it?
“You’re not scared of where they’ll send you?” her mother asked her finally.
She shook her head in answer. “Not at all.” They could see that she wasn’t, and they admired her for it. She was a gutsy young woman. Her father had spoken to both his sons since war was declared, and both were afraid of where they might be sent and what would happen. His daughter wasn’t, and she was willing to offer herself up. He wondered if maybe she was right, and he was sure they wouldn’t send nurses too close to the battlefields, so he wasn’t too worried about her. His sons would be in greater danger, but he thought it was brave of her anyway.
“Let me know what they tell you, Lizzie,” he said, as her mother dabbed at her eyes. Lizzie stood up and hugged them both. And as Ben Hatton hugged her, he couldn’t help being proud that his daughter would be the first in their family to enlist, even before his sons. She was quite a girl. He said as much to Lizzie’s mother that night. She thought it was a terrible decision, and was angry at her husband for not stopping their daughter.
“We can’t fight her on everything, Alice. We stopped her from going to medical school, which just didn’t make sense to me, even if she might have been a good doctor. I’m sure she would have. And now she wants to do her patriotic duty and serve her country when we’re at war. I’ll tell you something. If we tried to stop her on this, she’d walk right past us and out that door anyway.” He had seen it in her eyes that night, and he wasn’t wrong. Nothing was going to stop Lizzie. She had no reason to be there, and nothing worthwhile to do at home. She was going where she was needed, which actually sounded like the right idea to him. She was the youngest of his children, and just a girl, but she had more guts than any of them.
* * *
—
Lizzie called in sick to work the next day and went to the recruiting office. It was jammed, and she had a three-hour wait before they called her number. She signed up and filled out all the papers she had to. She had brought her nursing certificate with her, and proof that she had graduated as a registered nurse. They told her to come back in two weeks for her physical. She would be notified after that if she was acceptable to be inducted into the army, then given a date to report for four weeks of instruction and training in military protocol and procedures. She would be sent to a military base after that. It all sounded very simple and very direct. She notified the hospital the next day, and told them that her leaving would depend on whether she passed the army physical, but there was no reason why she shouldn’t. She was athletic and in good health. The nursing supervisor was impressed when Lizzie told her she had enlisted.