“I’ll be back in one minute, I promise,” she said to him. “I’ve got to give that man a shot, he’s been waiting for hours.”
“You’re American,” he said with a smile and a look of surprise. “I thought everyone here was British.” He was American too.
“Not everyone.” She freed her arm from his firm grip, hurried to administer the morphine, and returned as promised a few minutes later.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. He had dark hair and warm brown eyes. His leg was broken and in a cast, and he had burns on his arms and shoulders.
“I’m a nurse.” She smiled at him, anxious to make the rounds to check on her patients. She had thirty assigned to her, several of them severely wounded and waiting for transfer back to the States, but they’d lost two hospital ships the month before. The men they were caring for were all U.S. Navy and marines.
“Why are you in England?” She could see he wanted to talk, and she didn’t have time. He looked desperately uncomfortable on the gurney that was too short for his long legs, with one of them broken, but he wasn’t complaining.
“I’m U.S. Army Air Forces, attached to an RAF Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron,” she told him. “And now I’m taking care of you brave men after your brief visit to Normandy.” She smiled at him again.
“Do you have a smoke?” he asked her, and she shook her head.
“Not on me. You’re not really supposed to smoke here in the halls. Fire hazard.”
“Do you suppose you can find me one, and wheel me somewhere where I can?” he asked with a look of mischief. There was something rough about him, but he wasn’t rude to her, and he wasn’t complaining about the pain he was in, which impressed her. She’d been dealing with crying men all night, and some screaming in agony. There was too little she could do for them with their extreme injuries, and some had terrible burns.
She thought about it for a minute before she answered him. “I’ve got a break in an hour, if I get my medication rounds done. I’ll see what I can do then. I wish I could find you a longer gurney.”
“It’s better than where I was lying on the beach when they found me and dragged me into the landing craft. I nearly got run over by two tanks and a bulldozer.”
“That would have been unpleasant.” She winced at the thought. Others had been hurt, and some even killed, by the vehicles on the beach, as the injured and dying littered their path.
“Where are you from?” he asked her. He seemed lonely and hungry to talk after all he’d been through.
“New York.”
“That’s a pretty fancy accent you’ve got,” he said, and she looked uncomfortable. No one in England recognized it, and even the American nurses never paid much attention. It was a problem Pru had with the British too, like with Emma when they first met and she instantly heard Pru’s upper-class diction and hated her for it. Emma had a chip on her shoulder about the aristocracy.
“I don’t think so,” she said vaguely, itching to get back to her med rounds for her patients.
“What’s your name?”
“Lieutenant White,” she said formally, and he laughed.
“I’m Petty Officer Third Class Dan Stanley from Pittsburgh.” He seemed to want her to know who he was, as though he needed to be more than just an anonymous injured soldier, a broken body with no name.
“Hello, Officer.” She smiled at him. “I’ve got to get back to work, or I’m going to have thirty very angry patients without pain meds.”
“Do you have a first name?” he asked her boldly, but he wasn’t fresh, just persistent. He needed a friend and someone to talk to.
“Alex,” she said. “Are any of the men in your unit here, do you know?” She wondered if she could have him moved, so he’d have someone to chat with. He was wide-awake and wanted company.
“They got sent to another hospital. I got separated from them on the beach when I broke my leg. And I got sent here from the ship that picked me up. It might have been my lucky day,” he said with a glint in his eye.
“I’ll come back with a smoke if I find one,” she said, and hurried away before he trapped her into further conversation.
It took her an hour and a half to make her rounds and hand out all the meds she was supposed to. She remembered the petty officer who wanted the smoke then, and asked one of the corpsmen if he had a spare cigarette.
“Can you smoke on duty?” He looked surprised, and she laughed.
“I’m overdue for my break and it’s for my patient.”
He smiled in answer and handed her one with a book of matches, and she made her way back to the hallway where the navy officer was lying on the gurney, staring at the ceiling and still awake. He smiled broadly as soon as he saw her.
“You’re back.”
“And I’m taking you for your dressing change,” she said officially, and he looked disappointed.
“They changed them earlier,” he said, as she carefully moved him away from the wall and pushed him slowly down the hallway. She made a somewhat perilous left turn, took him down another hall, and stopped there. There were no treatment rooms, and no patients on gurneys, as she reached into her pocket and pulled out the cigarette and the matches. He laughed as soon as he saw it.
“You’re a sharp one,” he said as he put the cigarette to his lips gratefully, and tried to light it from a prone position, which looked awkward and dangerous. He already had burns. He didn’t need more. She took the matches from him and lit the cigarette, then handed him back the book of matches.
“If you set yourself on fire, I’ll be court-martialed and sent home, and I like my job here. Most of the time, when I’m flying.”
“Thank you for the cigarette. I figured you’d forget about me.” It would have been hard to do, he had a definite personality, and she could see he had a sense of humor, despite his injuries. They had been through hell on the beach, but he seemed in surprisingly good spirits, and grateful to be alive. “What do you do in real life, Alex, when you’re not here?” He wanted to know her, and he wanted someone to know him, and remember him, as though to prove he was still alive, which he very much seemed to be, in spite of what he’d been through.
“I go to parties and fight with my mother,” she said with a grin. “Actually, I’m a nurse in ‘real life’ too, which is how I wound up here. I was stationed in San Francisco with the army for a while, and then volunteered to come here for the air evac transport unit, which is kind of a flying ambulance that brings men back from the front lines.”