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As George took a seat in the flight surgeon’s waiting room, a straw-haired boy with more freckles than she’d ever seen on one face jeered, “The ladies’ is down the hall, darlin’.”

“You’d know,” a familiar voice replied. Frank Bridlemile crossed the room and sat down beside her. “Hey, George.”

“Hey, Frank.”

“Helen said I might see you here. It’s been what? Three days now?”

“Yep.” Three days watching the nurse lead one man after another back to the exam room while she sat uncalled. When she complained, the nurse had nodded sympathetically. “Sorry, hon. The major insists we prioritize the fighting men. He says the war depends upon it.”

George had considered driving down to Texas or up to Kansas, but who knew if the flight surgeons there would feel any differently. She’d decided to wait him out, and now here was Frank, waiting with her.

“Well, you’re still two steps ahead of me,” he said. “You already know how to fly.”

“If I can do it, you can.”

“Sure hope you’re right. Rather be up in the air than an infantry grunt.”

“Bridlemile,” called the nurse.

Frank stood. “Hey, you want to get a Coke afterward?”

Helen wouldn’t like that, but then again, everyone knew that Frank and Helen were a serious item, and having a soda with Frank shouldn’t make their relationship any less serious. “Sure. Sounds fun,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll meet you outside after.”

She watched the windowpaned sun patch creep across the floor.

She watched Frank stalk back through the waiting room.

He didn’t look her way, but the set of his jaw told her he hadn’t passed.

She watched men come and go through the door behind the nurse’s desk until only she remained.

She recalled Florence, striding across the airfield in her jodhpurs and goggles, dazzling Adele.

Florence wouldn’t sit politely in a chair for days on end, hoping someone would reward her good behavior by calling her name.

George stood and smoothed her skirt and hair, checked the seams of her stockings—her last pair, donned now only for special occasions—and took ten deliberate steps to the door behind the nurse’s desk.

The nurse pretended absorption in her paperwork.

George rapped lightly on the door, then harder, and when there was still no response, she cracked it open and peeked through.

A trail of cigarette smoke drifted down the hallway.

She followed it and found the flight surgeon, Major Halloran, at his desk, annotating a file.

“Excuse me,” said George.

“Miss Ector.” He didn’t look up. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Yes. I need my Form 64 physical.”

“That exam is for pilots. If you need medical attention, you should see Dr. Lattimer.”

George extended the telegram to him, hating the way her hand shook. He took a long time reading it. Then he stubbed out his cigarette and said, “Well, this is nonsense as far as I’m concerned, but since you insist. The exam room is next door. Strip down. You’ll find a gown in the cabinet.”

She changed into the thin gown, folded her clothing into a neat pile, and perched on the metal exam table.

She hopped back down, tucked her underwear and stockings beneath her skirt and blouse, and scooted back up onto the table.

The cold steel raised goose bumps on her dangling legs.

The men had to undress, too, she told herself.

Not long ago, Frank had been here, wearing only a scratchy gown.

A flip in her belly as she imagined him sitting in this exact spot.

The door swung open. Halloran strode in, looking down at a clipboard rather than at her. The nurse followed. “Step down,” he said. He took her height and weight, had her read the eye chart.

“Sit back on the table.” He clamped a hand beneath her jaw and shone a light into each eye.

Impossible not to blink. He peered into her ears, then her mouth, pressing against her teeth as if she were a horse he was thinking of buying.

Like Dr. Lattimer, he smelled of cigarettes, but with something gamy underneath.

His face was inches from hers. She tried not to breathe, made herself sit perfectly still, refused to flinch from him.

He tapped her knees and flexed her ankles, listened to her heart and lungs through the itchy gown, then told her to lie down.

He drew a small sheet over her lower half and pushed up the gown.

She stiffened. He prodded at her, the way she’d seen her mother poke at a chicken carcass at the market.

Then he pressed harder, digging his fingers into her belly, first one spot, then another.

She fought to keep her breathing steady.

His fingers marched lower, pausing at the border of her pubic hair. She clenched her teeth and stared at the nurse, whose calm eyes said that this was okay.

“Bend your knees,” said Halloran.

She hesitated.

“I can’t complete this exam without confirming that you’re actually a girl.”

The nurse moved to his shoulder. “I can look, Doctor.” Halloran started to speak but then closed his mouth and stepped back. The nurse took a quick glance beneath the sheet, patting George’s foot as she did. “All good,” she said.

“Any history of VD?” asked Halloran.

George’s jaw was so tight, she could hardly ask what he meant.

“Venereal disease.”

“I don’t know what that is,” she whispered.

He gave a skeptical snort and told her to get dressed. He held the door for the nurse and followed her out of the room.

“What about my paperwork?” asked George.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Passing his office on her way out, she saw him close a file and lock it in his cabinet. It looked just the same as all the other folders, and George wasn’t sure how she knew it was hers, but she did. “Dr. Halloran!”

“Major Halloran,” he said. “And I’ll thank you to address me in a tone befitting an officer.”

“Major Halloran, I need that form to get to Washington or I won’t be able to fly. Sir.”

“You’re Adele Ector’s daughter, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

He tapped a cigarette from its pack and lit it. “I knew her back when she was still Adele Clemson. You probably can’t knit. Much less can vegetables. Not much of an asset on the home front, are you? Is that why you want to go off and fly airplanes?”

She thought of Mel, of his assumption that she’d stop flying if they got engaged. Of how she’d longed for him to touch her bare skin, the same skin Halloran had just touched with his nicotine-stained fingers. She would never let these men keep her from flying.

“I want to fly airplanes because I’m good at it.” Her voice rose in pitch. “Women can fly planes from factories to the air bases. And that frees up more men to fight.”

He took a drag, gestured with the cigarette at her shaking hands. “Women are too emotional to be trusted with airplanes.”

She clenched her fists, lowered her tone, spoke as unemotionally as she could. “General Arnold doesn’t think so. Which is why he set up this program.”

“Got his head turned by that femme fatale.” He picked a speck of tobacco from his teeth. “Jacqueline Cochran.”

She had endured his icy fingers, his rancid smell, his contempt. There was no way she was leaving without her form. “Give me my paperwork.”

“I didn’t quite catch that, Miss Ector.”

“Major Halloran, would you please give me my paperwork? Sir.” Halloran had known her name.

He knew she was Charles Ector’s daughter.

She’d seen the way people stood straighter when her father’s name was mentioned, the way men listened when he spoke.

She didn’t want to have to go running to him, but if she had to, she would.

Perhaps Halloran had reached the same conclusion, because he unlocked the cabinet, pulled out her file, and dropped it on his desk. “Obviously this is the only way to get you out of my office.”

She snatched up the folder and fled before he could change his mind.

“Good for you, dear,” whispered the nurse as George rushed past her.

Then she was outside, and it was done. She scanned the form to make sure it was complete, that it was signed, that she had passed.

It was and she had. She hugged the file to her chest.

She found Frank leaning up against the side of the building, digging the toe of his boot into the dust. Seeing her, he straightened and grinned. “Well, at least someone passed today. Good for you, George!”

“Oh, Frank. What was—well, I shouldn’t ask.”

“No, it’s okay. Turns out I’m colorblind. No flying for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, someone’s gotta march. Anyway, I promised you a Coke.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to—I want to. C’mon, say yes. It’ll cheer me up.”

She opened her mouth to say, “Let’s get Helen too,” but what came out was, “Sure, let’s go.”

Helen’s mother, determined to avoid a war wedding, insisted that if Helen wanted to see Frank, she’d do so in her own parlor, where Mrs. Cramer could keep an eye on things.

Every night at 10 p.m., Mrs. Cramer shooed Frank out.

And every night at 10 p.m., George applied fresh lipstick and dabbed Shalimar on her wrists, trying not to think about Helen.

Moments later she slipped out the front door and into his car.

Frank drove them out into the countryside, to this lake or that creek.

They lay on the warm hood of the car, listening to the engine tick, and talked for hours.

Her own mother caught her at the front door one night and clutched her arm. “I don’t know what this is all about, George, but it can’t be anything good.”

“We’re just friends,” said George. “He just needs someone to talk to. He can’t burden Helen with all his worries.”

“I don’t see why not. And you make sure that he doesn’t burden you with any worries , either, hear?”

George yanked free of her mother’s grasp. “Don’t be crude, Mother. We’re just talking.”

“Maybe you should spend more time talking to Helen and less time talking to her boyfriend.”

But George was already in Frank’s car, shutting the door on her mother’s voice, wishing she could shut the door on the guilt that dogged her.

The night Frank finally leaned over and kissed her, George kissed him back. This went on for longer than she meant to allow before she gathered herself enough to say, simply, “Helen.”

“Georgeanne”—he traced a finger along her collarbone—“let’s not do that.”

“Do what?”

“Bring Helen into it.”

And even though George knew there was no way to keep Helen out of it, that Helen was already very much in it, she kissed him again.

On the nights that followed, neither of them spoke much at all.

Peeling off her girdle took so long, they didn’t bother with taking off much else.

The pain took her by surprise, shook her from her want.

But Frank went slow. The pain subsided. Her want reared up stronger.

The skirt bunched around her waist was nothing.

The armrest jammed against her head was nothing.

The tingling in her arm, pinned between him and the seat back, was nothing.

There was only the weight of him, the rush of his breath on her neck, the urgent need to press closer, closer, closer.

When they finished, all she wanted was to start again.

Had he done this with Helen, she wondered as he wiped her belly with his shirt. It seemed unlikely, with Mrs. Cramer standing watch. George felt a flash of triumph, quickly dampened by guilt. But Frank was right. They had so little time left. Why bring Helen into it at all?

Frank bused out, and a week later, George kissed her parents goodbye at the train station, doing her best to ignore her mother’s teary eyes and her father’s labored breathing.

The guilt she felt at leaving her parents behind was outweighed by her relief to be leaving Enid.

Not just for the opportunity to fly, but because Helen’s tragic heroine-in-mourning act had become unbearable.

“He hasn’t even reached the action yet,” George said to Helen.

“Georgeanne Ector, I can’t believe you. You sound as if you wish he had!” Helen dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. George rubbed Helen’s back and murmured some pap about how Frank needed her to stay strong, and tried not to picture Frank holding Helen the way he’d held her.

In Washington, DC, in the waiting room outside Jacqueline Cochran’s office, George found more women crying—women walking out, rattled speechless. Not all of them—just the softer-looking ones.

The interview began before George even settled herself into the plain wooden chair facing Jacqueline Cochran’s polished desk. “Miss Ector. I have not received your Form 64 results.”

George produced the brown folder. “I brought them myself.”

“That’s quite unusual,” said Cochran, setting the file to one side and staring intently at George.

As she hadn’t asked a question, George offered no answer, just sat receiving the full bore of Cochran’s gaze.

“The standard procedure is that the flight surgeon sends it in. That way we can be certain it hasn’t been tampered with. ”

“I assure you, I haven’t tampered with it, ma’am. I’ll take another physical if necessary,” said George.

“I’m interested to know, Miss Ector, why you deviated from the standard procedure.”

“He was going to lock it up in a cabinet,” said George. “He wasn’t going to send it at all.”

“And why was that?”

There was no way that George was going to say Halloran didn’t think she was qualified. There was no way she was going to put that idea into Cochran’s head.

“I couldn’t say, ma’am.”

“You couldn’t say?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Did Major”—Cochran flipped open the brown folder—“Halloran perhaps not think women fit for this sort of duty?”

Cochran stared at George, smiling slightly.

George recognized the smile as an invitation to complain about Halloran.

She smiled back. Cochran was perfectly coiffed.

Perfectly made up. The files on her desk were perfectly stacked and aligned.

The seams of her blouse were perfectly pressed.

Instinct told George that this was no accident, that Cochran did not make, nor did she accept, excuses for anything less than perfection, that Cochran was allergic to complaints of any sort, no matter how valid.

Jacqueline Cochran hadn’t gotten where she was by complaining about men trying to stop her.

“I couldn’t say, ma’am.”

Cochran flicked the folder closed and extended her perfectly manicured hand across the desk to George. “Welcome to the WASP training program, Miss Ector. You’ll report to Sweetwater in January.”