Page 2 of The Lies We Leave Behind
2
Kate
Somewhere in the Pacific Summer 1943
The metal frames of the bunks clattered in the cavernous metal belly of the plane as it hit a pocket of air and jerked us upward before dropping us several feet. The contents of the medical box in my hands rattled violently as the men strapped to their bunks groaned.
“Hang in there, boys,” I shouted.
I looked through the pale strands of hair now marring my sight at the handsome pilot grinning at me over his shoulder. The last amber light of the setting sun burst through the windshield in a fiery display, bathing him in a golden glow. If I were the kind of girl who swooned, that image of him would’ve done it.
But I wasn’t. At least not for a guy like Mac.
I’d met Mac my first day on the job. After he’d asked me out, his grin more leer than smile, and I’d promptly turned him down, we’d developed a brother-and-sister kind of relationship that none of the other women on base could understand.
“But he’s so dreamy” was the oft-touted opinion as they stared at his well-built physique, wavy blond hair, and pale green eyes.
But to me he was silly. A caricature of someone he’d probably seen in a movie once, studied, and tried to emulate. He was all seductive leans, slow grins, and piercing gazes. While the others fanned themselves in his presence, I had a hard time not rolling my eyes. Men like him would never turn my head. They were all show, no substance. I’d grown up around men like that. Slick specimens using their good looks and charm to persuade, lie, and manipulate. They were not to be trusted.
After my quick shutdown of Mac’s proposed date after we’d first met, he’d realized I’d seen through his game and immediately showed me another side to him. One I liked infinitely more. He had a quick wit, big heart, and was known to throw himself in the line of fire to protect his comrades. I respected him, even while still detesting the romantic methods he used on my friends.
“You good?” he shouted to me now.
I looked from him to the nineteen men lying in their bunks, bandaged, stitched, and in some cases their wounds left open due to infection or to relieve the pressure of flying on their stitched organs, muscles, and skin. None of them were okay, but no one seemed in any more pain than they’d been in before the turbulence.
“All good!” I yelled back over the noise of rattling metal.
As fast as it had started it stopped and I took in a long deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment, lifting my face toward the warmth coming through the window and stretching its way across the cold, rigid floor toward me. Despite being in the Pacific, where temperatures on the ground were often sweltering, it was always freezing at this high altitude. The cold seeped beneath the layers I’d pulled on earlier this morning in preparation for the cold ride. The pool of sweat between my breasts from two hours ago was now freezing. Regardless of the physical discomfort, and recognizing how minor mine was compared to what the men laid out before me were experiencing, I allowed myself to take in the moment of stillness. These were the moments I waited for. The reprieve from what came before, and what would surely come after. The breath that filled my body, slowing my adrenaline.
“Got some smoke up ahead,” the copilot, a man called Wes, warned. “Might get a bit bumpy again.”
I sat up and looked out the tiny window beside me, but all I saw was blue sky.
“What kind of smoke?” I asked, undoing my buckle and making my way to the front of the plane to have a look. I scanned the horizon for a glimpse of the base. “Is it us?”
“Not us, doll!” Mac said.
I made a face. I was not one of Mac’s dolls and took offense to being called one.
“Don’t call me that. You know I hate—”
But the last part of my sentence was drowned out as a loud bang erupted somewhere outside the small plane, and my bones shuddered along with the stacked beds in back. Ahead of us a plane swooped toward the earth, another on its tail.
“What are they doing out here?” I asked, hanging on to the back of Mac’s seat.
Most of the action was back in Guadalcanal, where we’d just loaded the men.
“Dammit, I don’t know!” Mac yelled, pulling us higher as another plane came into view. “Get back in your seat!”
Holding on to what I could, I moved unsteadily to the back of the plane again, noticing as I went that one of my patients was pulling at the bandage on his arm. An arm that had been partially amputated.
I let go of the wall and moved as fast as I could, grasping hold of the bed frame as the plane tilted to one side.
“Hey,” I said, wrapping my free hand around the man’s remaining one, my eyes going to the name that had been fastened to his gown. “You need to leave it, Thompson. The stitches are fresh and you don’t want to pull them out.”
But he shook his head, confusion in eyes clouded with pain medication as he looked down, searching for the missing appendage.
The plane shook violently and my grip slipped, one knee hitting the edge of the bunk below before slamming into the floor.
“You okay?” Mac shouted.
“No!” I shouted back, feeling my leg, my hand coming away with blood on it. “Get us out of here!”
“I’m trying. I’m trying.”
I got to my feet again and took the patient’s hand as I looked at his bandage. There was a little blood staining the fresh wrap and I wondered how many stitches he’d managed to get to. Hopefully it was just a bit of seepage from the wound and nothing that would require him to endure even more pain.
“We’ll be on the ground soon,” I said, wincing as the initial ache in my knee subsided and a stinging sensation from the skin being ripped away set in. “Hang in there, okay? Just a little bit longer and we’ll be on the ground.”
The air began to warm and I realized it was quieter again, the shaking of the beds lessening.
“We clear?” I yelled toward the front of the plane.
“All clear. Our guys got him. Buckle in for landing.”
With a last squeeze of the soldier’s hand, I let go and hurried to my seat, strapping in and watching out the tiny window at my side for the familiar sight of palm trees rushing by, the telltale sign we were home.
A few minutes later we touched down hard, the wounded bodies on the beds across from me rising for the briefest of moments before settling again, several of the men wincing as they were violently shifted.
“Jesus, Mac!” I shouted.
“Hey! You’re alive! What do you say?”
I rolled my eyes. “Thank you, Mac.”
“That’s better, doll.”
I scowled over my shoulder at him and he winked back and then steered us across the pavement.
“Whatcha got on tonight, Lieutenant?” Mac asked as he opened the side door and then stood aside as several nurses and doctors hurried across the runway with foldable litters to collect the wounded. “Wanna get dinner in the mess? Maybe have a drink and play some cards?” He patted the bag slung over his shoulder, the sound of glass bottles clinking against one another.
I shook my head as I unhooked an IV from where it hung and helped move the soldier it had been connected to before kneeling to help the guy on the bunk below.
“Sorry, I’m beat. Plus, I’m hanging on to my winnings from last time.”
He laughed. “You cleaned me out.”
“You were drunk as a skunk.”
“You took advantage of my delicate state.”
“Damn right I did.” I did a quick check of a stomach wound and then covered it again before standing aside for the patient to be taken.
After all the men were unloaded, I grabbed my bag and limped beside Mac across the dusty, pit-riddled runway.
“I don’t know how you do all that,” he said, nodding toward the makeshift hospital the patients were being loaded into. “Some of those wounds make my stomach turn.”
“Not all of us can be as delicate as you, Mac.”
He elbowed me and I smacked him on the arm.
“Lover’s quarrel?” a female voice asked.
A pretty brunette leaned against the hood of a truck, dressed in a pair of military issued trousers and a button-down top with the top few buttons undone. And not because of the heat. I glanced at Mac who was also taking in the scenery.
“Hey, Char,” he said.
Charlene Newcomb was one of the women I bunked with on the little island of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides, and one of my best friends. There were four of us who hung out regularly together, sharing two sets of bunk beds at one end of a cramped, dusty, canvas barracks named Burlap Flats, where the air inside was so thick and stagnant, we often worried we’d suffocate in our sleep.
Charlene hailed from San Diego. Tilly from Savannah. And Paulette and I were from the East Coast. Manhattan for me, Boston for her. The four of us couldn’t be more different if we’d been born in different countries, in different eras, and in separate universes. Yet somehow we got on like we’d known each other for years, rather than only months.
“You playing cards tonight with us, Kate?” Char asked, her gaze straying to Mac, whose shirt was damp and sticking to his chest, before taking in the state of me. “Shoot. What happened to your knee?”
“Mac’s flying.”
“Hey!” he said, his face turning red as he looked to Char.
I shrugged. “It got a little precarious up there. Mac kept us safe though.” I patted his arm. “No cards for me tonight. I’m tired.”
“Mac?” she said, taking in a long breath, the action pushing her breasts forward.
“I could probably be persuaded,” he said.
I shifted my bag on my shoulder, trying not to smirk. The two of them were ridiculously obvious. They’d been playing a game of cat-and-mouse for weeks now, but so far Char had held off on going all the way.
“I like to make a guy work a little to get all this,” she’d said one day, giving her ample breasts a squeeze and causing the rest of us to erupt in laughter.
“You two have fun,” I said, giving them a wave as I hobbled off in the direction of the barracks.
Exhaustion set in as I walked, the heat weighing on me, pressing down around me, making my body feel heavy as sweat trickled down my spine. Spring on Espiritu Santo had been almost unbearable. Summer was indescribable.
“Hiya, Kate,” a soldier called out as I passed by the make-shift hospital.
I glanced at the familiar face and clean medical scrubs. At this time of day, the only reason he was wearing clean clothes was because the last ones had been bled on. A lot.
“Hi, Chuck.”
“You look like you could use a little tending to yourself for once.” He pointed to my leg and I stopped, realizing my wound probably did need to be cleaned and I had nothing to do the job in our barracks.
I nodded, hitched my bag higher on my shoulder, and limped toward him.
“How was the flight in?” he asked as I followed him inside, took a seat, and carefully pulled up my ripped pant leg to reveal my skinned knee. I was more worried about the pants than the injury. We only had so much room for clothing, which meant I didn’t have much in the way of backup options. I’d have to sew these up as best I could, or find a patch to cover the hole. Most of the patches around these parts were for patching people though, not clothing.
“It wasn’t bad,” I said, sucking in a breath as he cleaned some grit from the delicate pink skin that was seeping tiny pinpricks of blood.
Good flight. Bad flight. Not bad. Coulda been better. It was how we asked without asking, answered without answering. It was an unwritten rule among those of us who tended to the wounded. We did the job when on the job, but we left it behind us as soon as we left the tent or stepped off the plane. Doing it any other way could make one unfit for the job, and no one wanted to be the one who quit on the wounded.
“Well, the good news is,” Chuck said, taping a small square piece of gauze onto my knee, “I think you’re gonna make it.”
He patted my other knee and held out a hand, helping me to my feet.
“You’re a lifesaver, Chuck.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
He gave me a wink and then hurried off, his shoulders carrying the weight of the world.
I walked up the two steps to the glorified tent I shared with nineteen others and opened the door, doing a quick scan of the dimly lit space. As usual, there were several women asleep in their bunks, a few others reading or writing letters, and two playing a card game.
Noting my bunkmate’s empty bed below mine, the duffel she used for work missing from the footlocker, I slid my own bag from my shoulder and stored it in my locker before stepping carefully on the frame of the lower bunk and pulling myself up to check for uninvited creatures hanging about. It was a common occurrence to find any manner of bugs, snakes, and other unwanted animals in our beds when we didn’t occupy them for a night.
“It’s like they watch us and wait for us to leave,” Paulette said one day after she’d gone screaming from our tent after finding a rather large grasshopper in her bed.
Satisfied my bunk was clear, I threw on a fresh shirt, brushed my hair and pulled it into a ponytail once more, then headed for the mess hall for dinner.
My presence was instantly noticed as I walked in the room. With so few women on base, we stood out like beacons of something the men missed, desired, or ached for. It wasn’t so much that they wanted us , but more that we reminded them of home. Of girlfriends, wives, sisters, and mothers. Our mere existence provided comfort. Soft voices, soft bodies, long hair and, except when straight off a plane after a mission, nicer smells. It was disconcerting. Uncomfortable at times. The need coming off their persons palpable. And as a woman who tended to keep people at an arm’s length at all times, it was even more awkward.
I pasted on a smile and made my way to the food, grabbing a tray and plate and perusing the evening’s choices. The scent of fresh-cooked food made my mouth water. I was starving, my last meal eaten in a hurry as the sun rose this morning before loading injured men onto the plane. I grabbed two rolls, spooned a pile of potatoes on my plate, some chicken, corn, and piece of pie before circling back to grab two more rolls.
“Where you gonna put all that?” asked a soldier at the opposite end of the table where I sat.
I shoved a huge forkful of potatoes into my mouth and smiled. I hated being underestimated.
A loud crack of laughter echoed throughout the room and I glanced at a table at the far end. Mac was holding court, gesturing wildly as he told some story, probably of his own heroism, while Char sat beside him, a coy grin on her pretty face. She may have been obvious in her desires for him, but she was also in on the joke.
“Oh, I know he’s obnoxious and incredibly high on himself,” she told me in private one day when I woke to find her sneaking back into our tent after curfew. “But when he stops talking and gets down to business, he really knows what he’s doing.”
I’d wrinkled my nose at that and she’d laughed and climbed into her bunk fully clothed.
She caught my eye from across the room now and gestured with her head to join them, but I gave an exaggerated yawn and she nodded her understanding before turning her attention back to Mac’s antics. I stared down at my plate of food and pushed the potatoes around, images of the day before seeping in from the place in my brain where I hid them at the end of each mission. They always found me no matter how hard I tried to forget, haunting me in the quiet hours, which was easily done in my constantly exhausted state.
I took another bite, but the food was tasteless now. I was tempted to throw it away, but for the two things stopping me: guilt for wasting and the idiot who’d challenged my ability to eat my weight in food. Sighing, I shoved a forkful of potatoes in my mouth.
After finishing nearly everything on my plate, I dumped the scraps and made my way through the dark along the familiar path back to the barracks. Most of the women in attendance were asleep, a few with lanterns hanging above their bunks as they wrote letters or read books.
I changed into a pair of pajamas I’d purchased in the men’s department of Bloomingdale’s, as everything offered in the women’s department had ruffles and lace and long, flowing sleeves that ended in elastic at the wrists that irritated my skin. The men’s options were far cozier. Wide legs, roomy tops, and fabrics that were soft, not satiny. I’d bought three pairs of men’s pajamas in the smallest size they had, and every one of the women I bunked with had commented with envy about them.
“I still can’t believe no one’s swiped those from you.”
I glanced over my shoulder to the woman in the bottom bunk next to the one I shared with Tilly as I climbed up to mine.
“It’s not like they could hide it if they did,” I said, pulling back the covers and checking under my pillow for creatures before tucking the mosquito netting around my mattress.
“I’d put them under my nightgown,” she said and I laughed. Paulette was a no-nonsense kind of soul. The kind of woman my aunt would say spoke “from the gut.” She wasn’t mean or harsh, just said whatever she was thinking, and was honest about it.
“Well,” I said, “if I find any of them missing, I’ll look up your skirt first.”
She grinned.
“How’d today go?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said and she nodded and went back to the book she was reading while I lay back and stared up at the ceiling of our large tented home and debated if I wanted to pull out my own book, kept beneath my pillow.
But as my eyes blurred with tiredness, I decided against it and rolled onto my side, pulling the thin sheet and blanket I slept with over me and mulling over the word fine .
“A word to mask what you’re really feeling, because all you feel is numb,” my aunt once told me after I’d given the word as an answer to how my first day at my new school had gone.
Some days it was all one could say though. No one had died on my watch, but there had been near misses. Moments when I thought I might fail the men in my charge. Seconds I thought the plane might go down, killing all of us.
Good days weren’t ever truly good. They came laced with small miracles, and battles fought and sometimes lost. And no matter how well a flight went, there was always the possibility that we wouldn’t make it through the rest of the day or through the night. So fine was all we got. And fine I would take, because it was a gift that I got to say it at all.
I drifted off to sleep then with the hope that tomorrow would be fine as well, the distant sound of gunfire like a lullaby in the background.