Two months from now, she’d be leaving for her assignment, wherever it was. She wondered how hard the classes would be, and she hoped she’d pass them. Lizzie had said that some of the training would be physically rigorous, from what she’d heard. But Audrey was ready to face anything. She knew she was on the right path now, and didn’t doubt it for an instant, nor did Lizzie and Alex. The dangers and potential discomforts didn’t even occur to them. They had a job to do, and could hardly wait to get started.
* * *
—
Audrey finished packing and closing her parents’ house. She left Will’s room untouched. Her mother had slept there, but left all of Will’s belongings as he had had them. It still felt like a shrine to her, and she wanted to leave it that way until she came home. She wasn’t ready to put his things away, even after two years. Her mother had never wanted to either.
She said goodbye to Mrs. Beavis, who was taking some time off before taking on a new patient. Ellen’s death had hit her hard after so many years of caring for her, and Ellen had been such a sweet person.
Audrey took a train to Boston the morning of Christmas Eve, and Lizzie picked her up at the station. It had been twenty-one months since they’d seen each other, although it felt like only yesterday. Nothing had changed between them, and Lizzie felt like even more of a sister now that they would be army nurses together. On the way to the house, Lizzie said that she had told her parents the day before when she arrived, and they were upset that she was hoping to ship out to England, and was joining the air evac squadron. The war would be close at hand if they were sent to England, as they hoped, and the risks greater than being safely on American soil in San Francisco, as long as the Japanese didn’t bomb them again. There was no sign of it so far.
“They never thought I’d get shipped out. I hope we will be. I told them you’re coming too, and that just made my mother cry harder. I think my father is proud of me, but he won’t say it in front of Mom, or she’d get angry at him. But all three of their children will be on the front lines now.” It seemed like a lot to Audrey too, and she suspected her mother wouldn’t have liked it either, but there was nothing to stop her now.
* * *
—
The holiday at the Hattons’ was tense, with Lizzie’s new assignment looming. She hoped she’d get a short leave to see them when she finished training, but she wasn’t sure. She promised she’d come home to say goodbye if she could. The four of them spent Christmas Eve together, and went to midnight Mass. They spent a quiet Christmas Day.
Lizzie saw a few of her old friends, but all the boys she knew were in the army, many were in the Pacific, and some had been killed. She took Audrey with her when they visited. Dr. Hatton opened a bottle of champagne for them on New Year’s Eve.
“Let’s hope that 1944 is the year this terrible war ends,” he said solemnly, and they toasted Greg and Henry, and “absent friends,” which had new meaning now. Lizzie and Audrey added, “And Will.”
The next morning, the two young nurses left the Hatton home, with Lizzie in uniform. Audrey didn’t have hers yet. They were on their way to join their unit in Kentucky and begin their air evacuation classes the next day. They had much to learn.
Lizzie’s parents stood on the platform waving at them, as the train pulled away. There was no stopping them now, or changing the world from the dangerous place it had become. But neither of the two young women, standing tall and straight, were afraid of what they were about to face. And they had each other, which made them both feel brave.
* * *
—
Alex’s visit to her family in New York was no easier than Lizzie’s in Boston. Her parents were in shock that she had joined a Medical Air Evacuation Transport unit, and would be shipping out afterwards. Charlotte had had her fourth daughter by then, and still thought her younger sister was insane.
“Can’t you change your mind, and refuse to go?” Astrid White said plaintively. “I’m sure we can find a doctor to say you’re not well enough,” she said, glancing imploringly at her husband, expecting him to change their daughter’s mind, or forbid her to go.
“I’m in the army, Mother. This isn’t a volunteer job at the Red Cross. I’ll be a deserter if I don’t show up. And I want to go. They need nurses to bring the wounded back from the front lines.”
“But you enlisted, didn’t you?” her mother insisted. “You should never have done it. But that’s like volunteering. Surely, you can quit.”
“I can be released if I’m unfit for duty, for some valid reason,” Alex said quietly. Her news had not been well received, and as usual, she felt like she was facing a firing squad at home.
“Does insanity count as valid?” Charlotte said snidely, sipping a glass of champagne at Christmas Eve dinner. As always, their parents had invited a wide circle of friends. They were twenty-four at their dining room table, with the women in evening gowns and the men in black tie. Her parents didn’t hesitate to challenge Alex in front of all of them. Only her brother-in-law, Eustace Bosworth, whispered his support after dinner, but would never have dared say it out loud.
“Well done, Alex. Good on you. You’re braver than I would be.” He was 4-F due to his football injuries from Harvard, where he had had a serious knee injury and damaged his spleen as captain of the football team. He was sitting out the war at home, and thought Alex’s enlisting as a nurse was impressive, although he was relieved that his wife didn’t have the same patriotic ideas.
Alex’s volunteering as an Army Air Forces medical evacuation nurse gave rise to considerable comment during dinner, but by dessert the conversation had moved on to the war in Europe, how difficult it was to buy a car these days with wartime production on, how sad that no one could travel to Europe, and a cousin of Astrid’s said that her sister-in-law in San Francisco had lost all their Japanese domestic help and gardeners, when they were sent away to internment camps. Several of the men commented on how fortunate it was that Robert’s wine cellar was so well stocked with French wine, and hoped it would last through the war, until France was liberated and he could stock up again.
At one point, Alex’s father caught her eye during dinner and saw the look on her face. It was one of sad dismay, listening to the people she had grown up with and how insensitive they were to what the war really meant to the people suffering in Europe, and dying in the trenches. She felt as though she was constantly out of step with them, and she knew they considered her pathetically eccentric, and a rebel, to have enlisted to do whatever she could to help turn the tides. To these people she had known all her life, and no longer had any respect for, it was only about buying cars, French wine, and the unavailability of Japanese domestic help on the West Coast. She found it profoundly shocking and realized that she’d had nothing in common with them for years. Her parents had wanted her to select a husband among them, and she couldn’t even remotely imagine it now. Even Eustace, who was a decent guy, only thought of himself and his spoiled self-indulgent wife. They had a house full of maids and nannies and a butler in Connecticut. Charlotte never lifted a finger for anyone but herself. She was beautiful, but Alex didn’t think that was enough. She didn’t care about her own looks, and never thought about it.