On Distant Shores (5 page)

Highway 117, Sicily
July 25, 1943

On the horizon, the gibbous moon cast pale gray light on the battered landscape.

Hutch poked his arm out the truck window and twisted his wrist until he could see his watch. One thirty. The 93rd Evac convoy had been on the road for ten hours, heading north from Gela through Sicily’s rugged heart.

The truck wrenched down into another pothole. Hutch banged his helmet on the roof of the truck. Again. Height had some disadvantages.

At the wheel, Dom Bruno cussed. Beside him, Ralph O’Shea snored. How could the man sleep? And how could the equipment and medication bottles survive the journey?

Dom leaned over the wheel and squinted at the road. The hospital traveled in complete blackout conditions to prevent attack from the air. Their new location at Petralia would be only four miles from the front and twenty miles from Sicily’s north shore.

“Not again.” Dom stomped on the brakes, and Ralph’s head flopped onto Hutch’s shoulder.

“Another hairpin turn?” Hutch nudged Ralph away.

“Yeah. This road’s more treacherous than Hitler.”

“No kidding.” Hutch climbed out of the truck to help navigate the tight turn to the right.

Roads built for peasants, mules, and wagons couldn’t handle US Army two-and-a-half-ton trucks.

He jogged behind the truck and around to the driver’s side. The moonlight illuminated a steep drop-off to the left side of the truck, perhaps a hundred feet, with only scraggly bushes to break the fall. Better that Dom didn’t know.

“Ready?” He stood by the left rear tire and shivered in the cool mountain air.

Dom gave the thumbs-up and threw the truck into reverse.

Hutch motioned him backward, watching the road, the truck, and his own step. “More. More. A little more. Stop!”

The vehicle halted about two feet from the rim. Dom cranked the wheel to the right and eased around the bend. Good. Only one reverse on this hairpin. The last one took three tries.

Hutch ran around and hopped back inside. Ahead, the landscape opened up to reveal the remains of a village. Large dark letters on the first building proclaimed,
“Viva Mussolini!”
But the dictator’s name had been crossed out, and it now read,
“Viva Americani!”

The Italians seemed to have lost all heart for fascism and the war it created, and they surrendered gladly and in droves. The Germans, on the other hand, fought tenaciously.

Many of the village’s buildings had been reduced to rubble. A young woman wrapped in a shawl huddled inside a freestanding doorway and watched the convoy. A beautiful woman, sure to attract many GIs.

Hutch wouldn’t be one of them. If only he could convince Phyllis. Her last letter reeked of loneliness and anxiety.

He drummed his fingers on the rim of the truck door. Good
thing Phyllis didn’t know he’d spent a pleasant evening under the stars with a cute little nurse.

As for Georgie, she adored her Ward and wasn’t the cheating type. As for Hutch, he’d had plenty of opportunities in Hawaii and Ireland and England, and never once had a girl turned his head. He was committed to Phyllis, and nothing could shake that.

But how to convince her? She’d always been insecure in his love.

Hutch leaned out the truck window and inhaled mountain freshness, tainted by smells of motor oil, dust, and death. He looked up to the stars, but the rough ride bucked the familiar patterns before his eyes.

Phyllis had never stargazed with him. She always had an excuse. Too cold, too damp, too many bugs. She never minded him going by himself, but he wished she’d come. Something about the dark and quiet encouraged deep and intimate conversation.

After the war, Hutch would marry Phyllis as soon as he stepped off the boat. They’d spend quiet evenings at home, reading and listening to the radio. But to break the monotony, they’d need occasional evenings out. She’d balk as always, and he’d coax her. And he’d fail as always. Then Bergie would drag them out.

Hutch sighed and clenched the door rim. He and Phyllis would always need a Bergie in their lives.

Dom hit the brakes. “Now what?”

The line of trucks ground to a halt outside the village. Truck doors thumped shut toward the front of the line.

Hutch craned his head out the window. An officer approached, one he didn’t know.

“What’s happening, Lieutenant?”

“A roadblock.” He glanced at Hutch’s sleeve. “Get out and do your job.”

“My job? I’m a pharmacist.”

“Listen, pal, I don’t need any smart alecks. I don’t care if you’re a Rockefeller. Get out and remove that roadblock. That lazy bum beside you too. All but the driver.”

“Yes, sir. I didn’t mean any disrespect.” Hutch shook Ralph awake and hopped out of the truck. The last thing he needed was to be written up for insubordination.

Hutch headed for the front of the convoy with the other enlisted men, past trucks filled with equipment and other trucks filled with officers high above the riffraff.

His hands fisted, and his arms swung harder than necessary. He didn’t mind manual labor, but he did mind how some men sat and watched while others did all the work.

Wasn’t America about democracy and equality? Wasn’t that what they were fighting for?

Hutch followed barked orders and grabbed one end of a log while Ralph grabbed the other end. When he became an officer, he wouldn’t treat enlisted men like this.

Over the Mediterranean
August 7, 1943

Sergeant Jacoby stepped into the C-47 cabin from the radio room. “Landing in ten minutes.”

“Thanks, Sergeant.” Georgie scanned her flight manifest one last time. Her data was complete, every patient well cared for and in good spirits. Perhaps she could handle this job.

“All right, gentlemen. In a few minutes you’ll be in Tunisia.” She made her way down the aisle. The fighting had intensified the last few days as the Americans grappled with the Germans for Troina and the San Fratello Ridge, which meant frequent evacuation flights.

A hand grasped hers. “Please, nurse. I’m thirsty. So thirsty.”

Georgie smiled at Private Hawkins, who was recovering from abdominal surgery due to a rifle wound. “We’ll be in Tuni—”

He was too pale. Restless. His hand chilled her. Georgie leaned closer, her mind tingling with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Thirsty.” He rubbed his throat with white fingers.

She wrapped her hand around his wrist to measure his pulse—rapid as she feared. No doubt about it. He was going into shock, probably from postsurgical internal bleeding.

“I—I’ll get you some water.” Georgie dashed for the back of the plane. She knew the treatment for shock. Keep the patient warm. Put him in Trendelenburg position with feet higher than the heart—but the litter was clamped into aluminum brackets and couldn’t be tilted. Plasma and oxygen—but how could she administer them safely during landing?

Sergeant Jacoby sat on the floor behind the litters.

“It’s Private Hawkins,” she said. “He—he’s going into shock.”

“Oh wow. Lousy timing.”

“What are we going to do?” Her voice edged high.

He got to his feet and gave her a strange look. “Treat him.”

“But we—we’re landing. How can we—”

Jacoby took her by the shoulders. “Pull yourself together, Lieutenant. The patient comes first.”

“I know. I know.” She flipped open the medical chest and grabbed a plasma administration set, gauze, and iodine.

“I’ll get the oxygen equipment and some more blankets.”

“Thank you.” She tried to draw a deep breath, but it snagged on her rough throat.
Lord, help me calm down and take care of the patient.

Georgie hurried back to Private Hawkins’s litter, in the midlevel bracket at hip height. The plane’s nose tipped down. How long until landing? She and Jacoby would be bounced around like pinballs.

She knelt, ripped the tape off the cardboard box, and pulled the string to lift out two tin cans. Although her hands shook, she pried the key off the first can and opened it. Fluffy white plasma flakes filled the glass bottle like snow in a snow globe.

“Water?” Hawkins groped for Georgie’s arm.

“Oxygen.” Jacoby wedged a portable tank between Hawkins’s hip and the fuselage, and he fitted the rubber oxygen mask over the patient’s face.

The second tin can yielded a bottle of sterile water and the IV administration set. After she wiped the rubber stoppers of both bottles with iodine, she inserted a double-ended needle into the water bottle. With lips tucked between her teeth, she stilled the needle long enough to thrust it into the plasma bottle’s rubber stopper. Thank goodness the vacuum didn’t break, and water streamed over the plasma flakes.

“I’ll dissolve it.” Jacoby eased the bottle out of her hand and looked her firm in the eye. “You’re the only one who can start the IV.”

The IV. What would happen if the plane landed while she was inserting the needle? She had to hurry. She had to relax.

Daddy would tell her to roll her shoulders. Mama would tell her to pray. Georgie did both.

Patient care—she was good at that. She smiled at Hawkins while she swabbed the inside of his elbow with iodine. “We believe in only the finest service on this flight. The highest-quality fluids, delivered by IV, so you don’t even have to swallow. What do you think of that?”

Bushy eyebrows twitched, but he didn’t make a noise behind the oxygen mask. Lethargy was common in shock.

So were collapsed veins. Georgie palpated the antecubital area. “There. I found a vein.”

Jacoby set the end of the tubing, with needle already attached, in Georgie’s hand. “You can do it.” He didn’t sound convinced.

Georgie’s shoulders stiffened. She wasn’t sure she could do it either. The plane’s vibrations blurred the pale blue line of the vein, and the needle wiggled in her shaking grasp. She pulled his skin taut, rested the needle on the surface, and slipped it in. She missed. “Oh no.”

“Come on, Lieutenant.” Jacoby’s voice strained.

“Okay. Okay.” She switched hands, stretched out her fingers
to relax them, and massaged the patient’s vein. Before the shaking could resume, she plunged in the needle. “Got it.”

“Good.” The word poured from Jacoby’s mouth as the life-giving fluids poured into Hawkins’s body.

The plane leveled off. A mild floating sensation.

“The flare before landing.” Jacoby looped his arm around a litter support while holding the plasma bottle high. “Hold on. Watch out for that tank.”

Facing the back of the plane, Georgie grabbed a stirrup-shaped foot under the litter and leaned across his body to secure the oxygen tank.
Lord, keep us safe
.

The landing crumpled her knees, pitched her forward, wrenched her fingers around the stirrup. Pain shot through her fingers. “Ow!”

“You all right?” Jacoby hadn’t even budged.

She got her feet back under her and stretched her sore hand. “I’m all right.”

“Here. Hold this.” He thrust the plasma bottle at her. “I’ll open the door.”

Georgie grimaced from the pain and transferred the bottle to her good hand.

Fresh hot air and African sunshine flowed through the open door. Jacoby returned with a ground crewman and showed him how to unclamp the litter from the brackets. They rushed Private Hawkins off the plane, and Georgie followed alongside with the plasma elevated.

A physician stood outside the receiving tent, hand lifted to shield his eyes from the late morning sun.

Georgie flagged him over. “Doctor! We have a patient in shock.”

While she reported the private’s condition, Sergeant Jacoby recruited other men to unload the plane. Medics whisked
Hawkins to the shock ward to prep him for surgery, and Georgie discussed the remaining cases with the physician.

Half an hour later, the patients had been sent to the appropriate wards.

Georgie’s hand throbbed but hadn’t swollen. Good. She’d almost finished sewing a sundress for Mellie, and she needed to hurry. If her plan didn’t succeed, Mellie Blake would go home soon.

In front of the next tent, Vera Viviani and Alice Olson stood talking. The two nurses formed a vital part of Georgie’s plan, but she could barely stomach speaking to them after how they’d treated Mellie. Nevertheless, she set a warm smile on her face.

Daddy said privilege came with responsibility. The Taylors were blessed financially, and they had a responsibility to give financially. Georgie was blessed socially, and she had the responsibility to embrace outsiders. Vera and Alice were blessed with fine minds and gorgeous faces, but they used their privilege for power over others.

That rubbed Georgie the wrong way.

“Hi, ladies,” she said with a sweet smile. “How were your flights?”

Alice’s perfectly plucked blonde eyebrows sprang high. Vera glanced at Georgie, then down and away. Probably surprised at Georgie’s friendliness and ashamed of their own behavior, as they should be. “Fine,” Vera mumbled.

“I’m not surprised, since you two are such talented nurses.” Georgie ladled out Southern charm as thick as syrup. “That’s why Mellie wanted you to stay in the 802nd, because you’re so gifted.”

Color rose in Alice’s cheeks, and Vera stared at the tarmac. After the dirty trick they’d played on Mellie, they deserved to be uncomfortable. When Lieutenant Lambert had discovered the truth, she decided to send Vera and Alice home, but Mellie
pleaded for Lambert to give them a second chance—and to send her home instead. Mellie’s sacrifice sang of mercy, but insecurity fueled the decision.

Georgie planned to rectify it.

She pulled a sheet of paper from her trouser pocket. “Speaking of Mellie, I knew you two would want to be involved in this.”

“With—with what?” Vera’s gaze darted to Georgie.

“A petition.” She handed Vera the paper with a flourish. “To keep Mellie in the squadron. You know what a good nurse she is—so brave and caring and smart. And you know how she helps us with her knowledge of living in the field. She’s such an asset, don’t you think?”

“Yes.” Alice didn’t raise her head. No one whined about Mellie’s survival tips more than Alice.

Georgie pressed her hand over her heart. “She’s kind and giving, which is even more special since she was so shy when she joined us. She’s changed so much, don’t you think?”

“She has.” Vera chewed on her full lips as she read the petition.

“As you can see, you two are the only ones in the entire squadron who haven’t signed it yet. I wanted your signatures to be last, big and bold like John Hancock himself. Only fitting after all Mellie’s done for you.” She tipped her head to the side and raised her sweetest smile.

Vera blinked in a flurry of long black lashes. “I—I still don’t understand why she did that.”

Georgie’s heart softened, and she rested a hand on Vera’s stiff forearm. “Because she loves the Lord, and she shows her love by being merciful to others.”

Alice crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“There’s another reason. She honestly thinks she doesn’t
belong in the squadron, that everyone wants her to leave. I can’t imagine why she’d think that.” Georgie gave them an exaggerated puzzled look. Vera and Alice had done everything possible to make Mellie feel unwelcome from the first hello.

In tandem, the two beauties glanced at Georgie, at each other, then down at the ground.

Georgie wrestled down a triumphant smirk. A little guilt would do them a lot of good.

She waited a moment to let the guilt sink in, then tapped the petition in Vera’s hand. “See? I left a big space at the bottom for you. Feel free to add a personal note. Most everyone did.” Was it wrong to enjoy this so much?

Vera and Alice signed the petition and handed it back.

Georgie tucked it in her pocket. “Thank you. You don’t know how much this means to me, and how much this will mean to Mellie. She deserves to know she’s loved.” A bit much, but it was fun to watch Vera and Alice writhe.

She headed for the mess tent to grab lunch before the planes headed back to Sicily, loaded with supplies.

“One question,” Alice called out.

“Yes?”

Alice frowned. “There can only be twenty-four nurses in the squadron, twenty-five if you count the chief. Two replacements have already arrived. So . . .”

So one nurse would have to leave. The selfish little twerp, still only concerned with her own job.

Regardless, she smiled. “We’ll leave that to Lieutenant Lambert.”

A single lightbulb dangled over Lieutenant Lambert’s field desk and illuminated the faintest lines around the corners of her eyes.

Georgie clasped sweaty hands before her stomach and waited.

“No one told me a chief nurse needed juggling skills.” She flipped through papers. “Mellie volunteers to go home, Sylvia needs to go home to recuperate from her malaria, you bring me a petition demanding Mellie stay, Wilma—oh, for heaven’s sake. Now this complaint from Sergeant Jacoby.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The words stumbled over Georgie’s thickened tongue. “I failed today. I’ll take Mellie’s place. Please let her stay. She’s an excellent nurse.”

A harried expression crossed the chief’s face. “Now you’re volunteering to leave?”

Georgie nodded, but a heavy sensation pressed on her heart. Why? Wasn’t her deepest longing to go home?

Lambert gathered her papers into a pile. “It’s not that simple. Wilma came in earlier. She and her husband are expecting a baby. She’ll take Mellie’s place. You’ll have to stay.”

“Oh.” The pressure on her heart eased, then bore down again. What would happen the next time she faced a crisis?

“I don’t know what to do with you.” The chief rubbed her forehead. “You’re such a good nurse, but you’re jittery. I can’t have you endangering patient lives.”

Shame drifted down on her, dark and suffocating. “I understand, ma’am.”

“I’ll ground you for a while, give you other duties, maybe some easy flights, see if you adjust.”

Georgie straightened her shoulders. Something deep inside her wanted to find the strength to adjust.