Page 13 of The Lies We Leave Behind

13

After delivering Sergeant Mitchell and the other men aboard that first flight to my base in England, I was immediately put on another plane, returning to the same field to bring back another group of wounded. This time there were no prisoners and Theodore and I gave one another a look of relief.

There were several men in casts, the plaster still wet, and I marveled at the quickness at getting them immobilized, a move crucial to their survival, but hard to manage under such dire circumstances.

I took in one man covered from neck to toe in plaster, his face bloodied, head wrapped in bandages stained with blood, mud, and something else I couldn’t identify but didn’t bode well for the young soldier. If I were a religious woman I’d have prayed for the man. Instead, I gripped the bottle of morphine in my pocket.

“Ready?” the pilot shouted from the cockpit.

I looked to Theodore beside me, who nodded.

“Ready!” I yelled over the roar of the engines, and we were off.

As soon as we landed back in Fulbeck and the men were unloaded, I grabbed my bag and strode wearily across the tarmac to where my bicycle was parked.

It was evening, the sun just making its way down for the night, the air thicker than usual and warm. I breathed in, smiling at the green hills beyond and a lamb following behind its mother as I pedaled home, hoping in the dimming light that I didn’t miss my turn.

“How was your first day?” asked a woman sitting at the kitchen table when I entered in search of a snack before heading upstairs.

I couldn’t remember her name. Olivia? Olive? Ellen? I’d met so many the day before, first at lunch, then in the evening as they returned from missions and began filtering in, exhausted and bleary-eyed.

“Busy,” I said. “But good. Didn’t lose anyone.”

“That’s the goal,” she said and went back to the letter she was writing.

I grabbed an apple and smiled at the others I passed on my way to my room. A few were playing cards, a couple reading, and several others were sprawled about chatting quietly.

My bunkmate, Hazel, was fast asleep in the cot across from mine, her dark hair splayed across her pillow, a stuffed dog nestled in her arm. She’d gotten in this morning as I was heading out, having been sent to another base nearby to unload injured before catching a ride back before the sun came up. We’d had a brief introduction and then I’d hurried out as she’d fallen fully clothed into bed where she still lay, taking full advantage of a day off.

Grabbing my towel, toiletries, and a fresh set of clothes, I padded to my assigned bathroom where someone had just left, the mirror still covered in condensation and the air steamy and warm. With a sigh, I peeled off my clothes and stepped into the pristine tiled shower, luxuriating in my surroundings, and for the first time truly thrilled I’d been sent to England instead of the New Hebrides.

While I stood under the warm water, letting it wash away the grime of the day, my mind drifted to the soldier I’d had to stitch up and his woozy marriage proposal. I grinned under the spray, remembering how handsome he’d been, though pale and barely conscious. Char would’ve stood by his side the entire plane ride, and by the end of it, would’ve had a date. Sometimes I wished I was a different sort of girl.

But thoughts of him reminded me of the other passengers we’d had onboard that same flight. The German prisoners. My heart sank as I remembered letting them get the best of me.

“Stupid,” I whispered, my eyes filling with tears. I couldn’t let that happen again. It was too dangerous.

“What time is it?” Hazel asked when I returned to the darkened bedroom.

“Twenty-three hundred hours,” I said, turning on the small lamp on the crate serving as a makeshift bedside table. “Have you been asleep all day?”

“No,” she said, sitting up, turning on her lamp, and rubbing her eyes. “I got up around noon and ate and took a walk around the gardens.”

“That sounds lovely.”

“It was. It’s such a great spot. I heard you were in the Pacific before. What was that like? Beaches and palm trees?”

“And rats,” I said with a laugh. “Sometimes snakes. A storm that carried away the tent we lived in. And had to take Atabrine so we wouldn’t get malaria, which turned our skin a not very attractive shade of yellow.”

She wrinkled her nose, and I nodded and got into bed.

“You going to sleep already?” she asked. “I’m usually wired after a shift. Except for yesterday. That was too long.”

“I want to get up early. There’s a patient I want to check in on before I fly out for the day.”

“Uh-oh,” she said, a smile in her voice.

I grinned and shook my head. “It’s not like that.”

“It never is, hon.”

She swung her legs over the side of her bed and stood.

Hazel and I were about the same height, but opposites in every other physical way. Her long hair was raven black, skin olive, eyes a reflection of her name. Where my figure was slender, hers curved. Where my skin was free and clear of what my mother had deemed imperfections, hers was beautifully marked with the freckles my childhood self had read about in books and dreamed of having.

“So,” she said. “Who is he?”

I shook my head. “He’s just a patient who had a rough flight. Nothing untoward.”

“Well then, that’s a damn shame. We could all use a little untoward. Unless you’re married, of course.” She glanced down at my left hand.

“I’m not.”

“Me neither!” she said and clapped her hands, reminding me of Char. “Maybe I should come with you. Is he cute? Or do you think he maybe has a cute injured friend for me, in case you change your mind? Preferably one on his way home so we can write letters and he’ll wait for me, but won’t get in the way while I check out other options.”

She was definitely like Char.

“Hazel,” a woman walking by our open door said. “For goodness’ sake. Give it a rest already.”

“That’s the problem, Beez,” Hazel said to the woman I now remembered was named Beatrice. “I’ve been at rest for far too long.”

I laughed as Beatrice walked away.

“I’m gonna shower,” Hazel said, giving her armpit a sniff and grabbing some clothes off the floor. “You really off to bed?”

“I am.”

“Alright. Guess I’ll see you in the morning? Unless you’ve left to see your love before I wake.”

“He’s not—”

“Nighty-night!” she called, disappearing down the hallway.

The house was silent when I woke the next morning, no one wanting to wake before they had to.

I crept quietly from my bed to the bathroom where I got dressed in a hurry and pulled my hair back into a bun. Staring at my face in the mirror, for once I wished I owned a bit of rouge or lipstick, my pale skin like a blank sheet of paper compared to Hazel’s sultry looks.

I rode through the quiet of the early-morning hours to base, listening to leaves rustle softly in the breeze and the metallic scent of rain in the air. As I parked my bicycle, a drop landed on my cheek and I hurried inside the hospital.

A gentleman sitting at a desk in the entryway glanced at the insignia on my shirt and gave me a tired smile.

“How can I help you, Lieutenant?” he asked.

I’d never checked in on one of the soldiers I’d brought in before, but this man didn’t know that. For all he knew, I always followed up with my patients the day after flying them in.

“I’m looking for a First Sergeant William Mitchell. I flew him in yesterday. It was a rough trip. I just wanted to check on him.”

He nodded and grabbed a clipboard, scanning the list of names.

“Two rows over and five beds down,” he said, pointing me in the direction.

“Thanks.”

I made my way past nurses and doctors, taking in the wounded, many of them in casts, their heads and appendages bandaged, the floor bloodstained and scrubbed to no avail.

William was right where I’d been told, his eyes closed as I bent to look at the clipboard attached to his bed.

“Am I gonna make it?”

I grinned, my eyes still on the paperwork.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” I asked, glancing around before finally meeting his gaze.

“Give it to me straight, doc,” he said.

“The good news,” I whispered, “is that you are going to make it. The bad? They didn’t remove your terrible sense of humor.”

“It’s my secret weapon,” he said. “It’s why they sent me to fight. Thought I’d annoy the Jerries into giving up.”

“How’d that go over?”

“Turns out they don’t understand American humor.”

I pursed my lips together, trying not to laugh, and set the clipboard back down.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Like I got shot in the arm, leg, and stomach.”

“I have news for you, Sergeant.”

He smiled and something low in my belly lit on fire. I’d thought him handsome on the plane, even with his chapped lips and his face half-covered in dirt. But cleaned up he was a bit dazzling with his dark hair and light eyes. He had a smile that could make a girl’s knees weak, something I’d only read about, scoffed at, secretly hoped to experience, and doubted existed.

“Can you sit for a while?” he asked.

I looked around, worried I’d get in trouble for fraternizing. It was discouraged because of the distraction it could cause. Distractions caused accidents, and I was not a rule breaker. But the way he was looking at me...

“For a few minutes,” I said, tucking a lock of hair that had come loose behind my ear and pulling up a chair that had been left at the foot of his cot. “I just wanted to check on you after that harrowing stitch job I had to do in the air. I have to fly out again soon though.”

“I appreciate that,” he said. “Any chance I get to know your name? I think it’s only proper. Since we’re to be married and all.”

I laughed softly. “I’m surprised you remember that. You lost a lot of blood. And were on a lot of morphine.”

“I never forget my proposals.”

“Have there been many?” I asked, feeling absurdly jealous.

“Just the one. Which is why it’s so memorable.”

His eyes held mine and I nodded.

“I’m Kate,” I said.

“Kate,” he repeated. “I’ve always liked that name.”

“No, you haven’t.”

His eyes widened as if he were appalled I’d question this. “I have. It’s a sensible name. But also feminine and strong. It suits you.”

I looked away, unsettled by this man and the feelings he was stirring in me. I knew I should leave, but for some reason I found I couldn’t move.

“Where are you from, William Mitchell?” I asked, attempting to make innocent conversation.

“Seattle, Washington. And you?”

“Manhattan.”

“I was based there before I flew out. Fun city, although a little too big for me.”

“Is Seattle not big?”

“It is. But it’s also not.”

He rested a hand on his abdomen, winced, and laid it on the bed beside him instead.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Do you need more pain medicine?” I looked around for the nearby doctor or nurse in charge of his care.

“Not yet,” he said, his voice quiet as he took in a couple slow breaths. “Tell me what you like to do when you’re not taking care of patients. When you’re not in the English countryside, flying back and forth to France to save lives like a heroine in some novel.”

I shrugged, ignoring his heroine comment. “I like to walk. Take in the city. Sit in cafés and read. Meet my friends for lunch. Sit in parks and feel the sun on my face.”

“I didn’t hear mention of a boyfriend or husband.”

“Of course not. I’m to marry you, remember?”

“Right,” he whispered, his smile faint.

“William?” I moved to the edge of my seat, slipping my hand into his as I did so. He squeezed. Hard. “You’re in pain, damn you. You should’ve said.”

“But then I’d have fallen asleep and you’d have left.”

I huffed and he smiled faintly.

“I’m mad at you,” I said, turning to wave down a nearby nurse.

“Is the wedding off?” he asked.

But I ignored his joke as the nurse hurried over.

“Yes?” she asked, glancing from me to William.

“He needs something for the pain,” I said.

She glanced down, noticed the sheen of sweat that had arisen on his brow, checked his chart, and nodded.

“I’ll be right back,” she said and hurried away.

“Don’t go,” William whispered to me, his hand still in mine.

I squeezed his fingers. “I’ll stay until you’re asleep.”

He nodded, his brow creasing from the pain. A moment later the nurse reappeared and administered morphine.

He fell asleep quickly, his eyes on me until he could no longer keep them open and his hand went slack. With a sigh, I removed my hand from his and laid his arm beside him, put the chair back where I’d found it, and stood at the foot of his bed, watching this soldier who, while in the throes of extreme amounts of pain the day before, had seen me. Had been selfless enough to notice I was dealing with my own internal pain.

Sure, my curiosity in him was helped by the fact that he was handsome. But there was more to him than looks. Something deeper in those faded denim-blue eyes of his. A knowledge. A wisdom. And a warmth that had permeated and enveloped me on that plane, cementing in me a need to see him today. To know he was okay. Beyond that, I couldn’t pinpoint what the feelings running through me were. But I wasn’t stupid enough to get myself wrapped up in a situation that would most likely end in heartache. War, as I’d seen time and time again, was cruel. It didn’t care who it took.

“Goodbye, William,” I whispered, and then hurried out into the burgeoning morning to await my flight out.

I was up the following day at four thirty, on a plane less than an hour later, and before I knew it was landing in the same field I’d seen twice in the two days before.

Theodore and I made the rounds on the men waiting to be loaded onboard, checking the papers pinned to their shirts, pants, and blankets, depending on where they were injured. There were at least two men who most likely wouldn’t make it home, but I’d do my best to at least keep them alive so they’d have a fighting chance back at base.

Not long after we’d landed in Fulbeck I was informed we would be heading back out.

“Already?” I asked Theodore, who merely shrugged and headed back toward the plane we’d disembarked only an hour before. It was rare to have two shifts in a day, but if they needed us, we weren’t about to claim our exhaustion. Not when there were men out there fighting for the rights and freedom of others.

By the time I fell into my bed it was midnight.

“You on again tomorrow?” Hazel asked from her cot across the room.

“Oh five hundred,” I said, covering my mouth as I yawned.

“See you and the sun in a few hours then,” she said and turned over.

The pang of sadness I’d been keeping at bay all day crept in as sleep pulled me toward it. I wondered how William was doing. I’d wanted to stop by the hospital, but I’d made myself resist. He was lovely. Funny. And had a mischievous glint in his eyes, when his bullet wounds weren’t making him wince. And while many of the women I knew would’ve jumped at the chance to spend time with the charmer, I had to keep my wits about me. Being distracted while flying into war zones and trying to save lives wasn’t an option.

But as I left the waking world for the unconscious one, a vision of those pale blue eyes filled my mind and I heard his voice in my head ask, “Are you okay?”