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The warning sirens wailed. Ruth groaned and pulled her helmet from beneath her cot.

She didn’t put it on, just held it, eyeing her hoochmates.

At the first blare of the siren, they were supposed to immediately rush to the bunkers.

The first time she’d heard the warning, she’d made it halfway to the sandbagged entrance, helmet snug on her head, before she realized no one else had made any move toward safety.

“Back so soon?” asked a laughing Terrence when Ruth sheepishly reentered the hooch.

Today none of them moved. The perfume bottles in Lewis’s footlocker tinkled against one another, a light, musical trill punctuating each boom.

Lewis was the most beautiful of all the nurses.

Men on leave often brought her back a little something from Tokyo or Clark.

(Ruth had no idea whether the gifts got them anywhere; the nurses and soldiers weren’t supposed to fraternize.) She wanted to steady the bottles, but no one else in the hooch seemed to notice.

“Once the dust clouds look close, we go,” said Terrence, noticing the helmet in Ruth’s hands. She didn’t define close.

“And you don’t want to be first in,” Lewis added. “First in stirs up the rats before they’ve had time to hide.”

What did they do? Stand around outside the entrance waiting for someone—someone new like her, someone who hadn’t been warned—to chase out the rats? Sometimes she wondered how anyone could survive this place.

And yet, she loved it. She felt vital. Nurses had power here.

Not just Stanich, who decided who went to the operating tent, who went to a medic, and who got put Over There, but all of them.

There were never enough doctors. No one had time for questions and requests for approval.

If you saw something that needed to be done, you did it, or you told a medic to do it.

And the medics, all men, jumped when she issued instructions.

She’d done a few months in a stateside hospital before starting her tour, months during which she’d been forbidden to do more than check a patient’s vitals without a doctor’s orders.

So many times she knew what a patient needed, knew that the patient needed it quickly, and yet she’d had to wait for a doctor’s approval.

If she offered her own opinion, the doctor might be tempted to dispute it.

They had to be handled delicately, sometimes more delicately than the patients, those stateside doctors.

In Vietnam, delicacy was an unaffordable luxury.

She was expected to think and act for herself.

And if she was wrong, well, there would be another wounded soldier in front of her shortly, and no time to dwell on mistakes.

Another reason, she suspected, no one wanted to shelter in the bunker. Sitting in the dark with no distractions other than the boom of shells echoing in their throats gave everybody too much time to think.

“Up and at ’em, ladies. This one’s for real.”

Ivy, wearing civvies, swung her helmet by its strap, whapping it against the wooden doorjamb of the hooch. A clutch of Donut Dollies hovered behind her. The nurses groaned, and Terrence ventured, “No dust, Shaw.”

“There will be. Let’s go.”

They strapped on their helmets as they ran.

Ruth stumbled across the trembling ground.

Puffs of dust rose beyond the perimeter of the base, dimming the afternoon sun.

Ah, she thought, so this is close. When they reached the sandbags, no one dithered.

Certainly not Ruth. Being the first one to meet the rats seemed a small price to pay for shelter.

Mail call. The other women in her tent received care packages and thick letters. “Oooh! Hershey’s!” crowed Terrence, who wasted no time tearing open her box. “And new underwear. God bless my mother!”

“Another postcard, Rutledge?” asked Lewis as Ruth plucked at the corner of her paltry mail haul.

“That’s my dad. King of the postcard.” But at least he sends me something, she thought.

Him and Aunt Vivian. Her mother hadn’t written in weeks.

Ruth flipped the card over, expecting her father’s usual upbeat report.

In tiny, precise penmanship, he gave her the latest weather in Enid.

“Hot, but nothing compared to the heat over there, I’m sure.

” This he followed with cheerful advice about dry socks, eating properly, sleeping when she could.

“Keep your strength up. Those boys need you well.” And his usual closing: “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.

All my love, Dad.” What she hadn’t expected was the print scaled down to squeeze in an extra two sentences.

“Understand Ivy is there. Glad you two are together again.”

She felt like a child who had been caught out.

No wonder her mother hadn’t written her.

How long had they known? How had they known?

Had Ivy written to them without warning her?

Then she remembered Frank Jr. Naturally he’d written his parents and told them he’d crossed paths with Ivy.

Aunt Helen would have wasted no time letting their mother know.

She’d better write all of them and explain.

But what explanation would get past the censors?

Ruth suspected her sister’s name would get redacted regardless of the words around it.

She’d send postcards herself, she decided.

Each with the simple confirmation: “She’s here.

She’s safe. More later.” They’d all know what it meant.

And if the censors got suspicious and redacted even that?

Well, at least she’d tried. Better late than never.

She rummaged in her footlocker for stationery.

A surprisingly refreshing breeze blew through the hooch.

She didn’t go on duty for another two hours.

After she got her postcards written, she planned to lie on her cot and listen to the birds calling and the jeeps whirring around the base and the other women in her tent talking.

She did this sometimes. I hear this, she would think (usually engines).

I smell this (usually garbage and fuel).

I feel this (usually sticky and hot, but today, thanks to the breeze, a little less so).

And it restored her, more than any nap ever did.

But before she even picked up her pen, her rib cage vibrated with the rhythmic thrumming of Hueys.

I hear helicopters, she thought. So much for postcards or restoration.

She pulled on her boots, tied up her hair, and ran.

Deep in the middle of the night, after she’d sutured and bandaged and soothed the wounded, she made her way out of the hospital.

Passing Over There, she heard a familiar voice and peeked behind the screens.

None of the nurses had been able to spare much time for the lost souls Over There on this particularly bloody day.

Ruth’s boots were sticky; blood had soaked through the cloth covers.

She planned to wipe them down in the latrine because bloody boots would only upset the wounded soldiers when they woke up.

Funny how after the terrible things these men had seen, something like a woman in bloody boots just felled them.

She peeked behind the screen and saw Ivy sitting beside a man—odd age for a soldier, late twenties, Ruth guessed, rather than the more typical nineteen.

Ivy held his hand through the rattle of his final breaths.

When his chest no longer rose, she kissed his forehead.

Then, starting with the breast pockets and moving systematically downward, she removed every single item he carried.

The photo of a woman, the money, she put back.

But a few odd bits that Ruth couldn’t identify, Ivy pocketed herself.

Ruth stepped outside and waited. Moments later, Ivy joined her.

“Someone you knew?” asked Ruth.

She expected her sister to deny it, but Ivy nodded. “I’ll write his wife,” she said.

“Will that be a comfort to her?” asked Ruth.

“I can be comforting. When I want to be.”

“Well, it may be time for that,” said Ruth. “They know you’re here.”

“I know. I got a postcard from Dad. And a letter from Adele.”

“But not Mom?”

“No, nothing from Mom.”

“Me neither. Not in weeks. Guess I can’t blame her,” said Ruth.

“I suppose you want me to write them.”

“Only if you can find it in you to be comforting.”