by Helen Wells
Charlie explained. “You see, when I was a gunner, I was staff sergeant, still an enlisted man. Then I was a gunnery officer, and a second lieutenant. Now they transferred me to the ATC and I’m not a gunner for now——”
“But isn’t that an awful waste, to train a gunner and then not let him, uh, gun? I mean, shoot?”
“Honey, when the Army needs men for a particular job in a hurry,” Charlie told her, “they have to take the first men they can find. Right now, I’m more needed in supply work than as a gunner. The wounded flier, Lieutenant Grant, is trained both as a gunner and as a pilot, but he’s needed more urgently to supervise the shipping of guns. Even more than he’s needed in combat just now. See? Come on over and meet the crew.”
As they walked over to the young men around the plane, Cherry said happily, “It certainly is a coincidence that you landed on my island.”
“Coincidence, nothing!” Charlie said coolly. “I figured out from your APO address and from what other fliers knew that you must be on Island 14. So when I got a chance at this assignment, I jumped at it. Gentlemen, this is my sister, Lieutenant Cherry Ames, Chief Nurse—” Charlie could hardly keep the pride out of his voice. “Captain Keller, Lieutenant Brown, Lieutenant McCarthy——”
Cherry shook hands with her brother’s crew and smiled into six friendly, intelligent young faces. She noticed that they all had the same keen look about the eyes. Fliers’ eyes.
“Tell us, Lieutenant Cherry,” said Captain Keller, the pilot and commander of the plane. “Will Gene—Lieutenant Grant—be all right? The wounded man? He’s an awfully valuable man. He’s a specialist in charge of gun cargo and he’s copilot of our transport.”
Cherry saw the anxiety in their faces. She replied, “No one can guarantee that. But I promise I’ll do everything in my power for him.”
They all had to move aside, for the ground crew were hitching the plane to a truck and were slowly dragging the great transport, still half-loaded, off to the woods. Cherry guessed there must be a concealed hangar, where repairs and overhauling could be done. She was wondering how long Charlie and his crew would be here, feeling reluctant to ask, when Charlie asked the same thing aloud.
“Our cannonball will be in and out of here several times in the next few weeks,” the pilot said. “We’re going to be ferrying a lot of gasoline, ammunition, and machinery in here. But mum’s the word!”
Cherry grinned happily at her brother. They’d be seeing each other a few times! The pilot added that they probably would be gone again, immediately, for a few days, and their appearances and reappearances here would be extremely irregular. Cherry did not mind—Charlie would be here! She was so happy that she failed to realize, for the moment, what all that extra gasoline and ammunition would be used for and the reasons for the secrecy.
It was only on her way back to the hospital that she began to think—about this, and about what the injured flier’s strangely exhausted condition might mean. If it was mystery she wanted, here it was.
CHAPTER VI
Bessie
RIGHT OFF, THE GIRLS ALL LIKED BESSIE. THEY COULD not help liking someone who was always laughing and poking fun at herself, even though Bessie Flanders’ generous size undoubtedly crowded the Ritz Stables.
“You should have provided a skyscraper for me,” Bessie said the evening she had moved in. “I’m nearly six feet tall and proportioned to match. I’ll dust the rafters for you, with ease. No extra charge, either! Yes, sir, there’s plenty of Bessie!”
“Never mind,” Cherry said, helping her unpack her footlocker. “I think we’re going to like every inch of you.”
“And every pound,” Bessie reminded her, laughing. “Say, girls, I’ll bet I weigh more than any two of you put together.”
“Bet you don’t,” said plump Bertha Larsen, but she looked hopeful.
“Bet I do,” said Bessie. “Look at this!” Gingerly she eased herself down on the cot assigned to her. The cot squeaked loudly in protest, sagged, swayed, and one wooden leg slipped. “See?” Bessie demanded. Her face twinkled with humor, and she brushed her soft brown hair off her damp neck. Cherry bent to help her fix the cot leg. “Now what are you girls going to do with all this woman? That is, if I don’t melt away in all this heat first.”
The girls looked at her uncertainly, unwilling to join her jokes about herself for fear of hurting her feelings.
“Oh, don’t be so polite,” Bessie teased them, as she struggled out of her too-tight slacks. “I know I am—er—monumental!”
“We-ell,” Ann said carefully, “because of your size, you may suffer more than the rest of us from the heat here.”
“We won’t feed her,” Gwen said promptly, with her careless humor. “Then she’ll be thin—and comfortable.”
Bessie wailed. “I just love to eat!”
“Certainly you do,” Cherry said a little sharply. “I want you to eat properly, and keep well and strong.”
Bessie flexed a bicep in her smooth white arm. “I’m strong, see? I don’t need to eat. I’ll diet and become thin and graceful as a string bean.”
“No dieting. You eat! That’s an order,” the Chief Nurse told her. “And here’s another order. Please come over to Headquarters tent first thing tomorrow morning, and we’ll go over your records and get you assigned to duty.”
The next morning, Cherry learned several interesting things about her new nurse-anaesthetist, as she interviewed her. As Chief Nurse, Cherry had to find out what this nurse’s training and experience had been and what branches of nursing work she could do. For the anaesthetist work in Operating hut probably would not fill all of Lieutenant Flanders’ eight daily working hours. A well-trained nurse should be able to treat any sort of medical case.
“Sit down, won’t you?” Cherry said pleasantly to Mrs. Flanders in the Medical Headquarters tent that morning. She added hastily, “Not on that box—I think you’d be more comfortable on this folding chair.”
“You mean the box won’t hold me,” Bessie laughed at herself. “Do you know what happened this morning? I sat down on little Mai Lee’s bench, in Nurses’ Quarters, and now there’s nothing left of it but splinters!”
Cherry could not help laughing.
“And the splinters are mostly in me!” Bessie added. “Now, boss, what do you want to know about me—besides what I weigh? The girls are already calling me Skinny!” She fanned herself as she talked, her pleasant face flushed and perspiring.
“I want to know practically everything about you.” Cherry smiled back at the woman’s good humor. She took Mrs. Flanders’ records out of her file. “Where did you have your training?”
The new nurse told her that she had trained, about ten years ago, at Birdwing, a small hospital. Then she had married, and except for helping the Red Cross in emergencies, she had done no nursing since. A year ago, her husband was killed in action. Bessie’s first thought had been to return to nursing. She had wasted no time on grief, she only wanted to serve. Since she had no children, she was free to nurse anywhere. At first it was hard, for she had to take refresher courses and to learn new techniques which had been discovered in the years of her retirement from the profession. Bessie, for all her joking, was very serious and realized that medical and nursing science had improved, in some branches had changed completely, since she had trained.
“So I went back into a civilian hospital at first,” Mrs. Flanders told Cherry. “They certainly do need more nurses! My, there are lots of older, retired, patriotic nurses returning to help out in this shortage. Some of them grandmothers, that’s how shorthanded we are. The real young student nurses are a great help. Well, then I thought I’d like to get into the Army Nurse Corps. So I applied, and they nearly marched the feet off me, and taught me how to crawl on my tummy under fire and—and, well, here I am.”
“Here you are, and we certainly are glad to have you,” Cherry said. “We need you for everything from doing dressings to assisting at neurosurgery.”
B
essie rolled up her sleeves and pushed back the curling tendrils of brown hair. “Just tell me where to start,” she said, her eyes very blue and eager. “You know, it’s a new experience for me, having a boss as young as you are. I’ll bet you youngsters look on me as an old fossil. Well, let me tell you, ma’am, I’m not as young as the rest of you but there’s plenty of work left in old Flanders yet!”
Cherry leaned toward her across the rough desk, genuinely pleased. “I’m glad you feel that way! We need nurses terribly, you’ll see for yourself. And I—I personally am glad to have a mature nurse here. There’s many a time I could use an older and wiser head than mine.”
For a moment, a motherly look softened Bessie’s pretty, round face. “I don’t know how wise my head is, but I—I’m not just a clown, for all my fooling and my—my size.”
Cherry stood up to indicate that the interview was at an end. “I do wish you’d stop making fun of yourself,” she said gently. “Let’s see, I’ll have your schedule for you by late this afternoon. In the meantime, would you please go to the Operating hut and make supplies and drains? And if any of the ward nurses ask, you might give them a hand till you have your own ward.”
Bessie stooped to duck under the tent doorway. “Yes, boss. And if you hear any laughing from the ward, you’ll know who’s in there!” She went out, knocking over a pile of supplies on her way. She turned around to Cherry, making a face. “You see?” she called back. “Dainty as an elephant—that’s Bessie!” And she patiently picked everything up.
Cherry did indeed hear laughter from some of the wards and from Operating hut. She could hear Bessie’s booming, hearty voice, too. Bessie, or “Skinny” as everyone was promptly calling her, must be at her nonsense of joking about her size. Whatever it was, the laughter was a good thing.
Later that day, Marie Swift, who was still weak from her recent illness, came to Cherry and said, “That new nurse is a darling! Do you know that she did almost all my ward work for me this morning? And how the patients enjoyed having her around! Bessie Flanders is worth her weight in gold—even all that weight!”
Cherry learned, too, that Bessie was quick and handy in Operating hut, getting things ready for operations. “She’s so big,” one of the nurses said, “you’d think she’d be slow. She did knock a few things over, but she’s surprisingly fast and light on her feet—for such a big woman.”
Major Pierce, too, found the new nurse a real asset to the unit.
Everyone, within a few days, was calling the good-humored and pretty Bessie “Skinny.” It puzzled Cherry a little, for Bessie was not really fat. She was, rather, a tall, big-boned woman, well-covered with solid flesh, and not fat at all. In fact, Cherry thought, Bessie was a majestic Amazon of a woman, who might have been queenly if she had stood up straight and proud. Instead, Bessie stooped, as if ashamed of her size, when she should have walked like a goddess. This stooping did make her appear awkward, and besides, she constantly made derogatory remarks about her appearance. The others naturally took her at her word. Bessie said that she was fat and funny-looking, and she said it so often, and she believed it so firmly herself, that everyone else believed it too. Except Cherry, who secretly thought Bessie handsome.
But within the next week, even Cherry had to laugh. Bessie really did have comical troubles. Every night, regularly as lights out, her cot collapsed. There would be creaks and groans in the dark in the Ritz Stables, half-humorous, half-disgusted mutterings from Bessie, and then, sooner or later, the inevitable crash. On would go the lights, the girls would spring up from their cots, and there, grinning up at everybody from the floor, would be Bessie in a tangle of sheets and mosquito netting.
“Well, that was a short night’s sleep,” Bessie would say, unwinding herself from the debris and scrambling to her feet and her full height. “I’ll take a lower berth, conductor. And a larger. Ah, well, I’m getting used to this.”
It was true that Bessie’s cot had collapsed under her on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The girls had been sympathetic at first but by now, even the Chief Nurse had to admit, Bessie’s predicament was just plain funny. The girls put two cots together and after that, Bessie slept on those. The two cots survived her but Bessie announced that the crack where they joined, in spite of the thick padding over it, was leaving a permanent ridge down her spine.
“Remember the princess and the pea in the fairy tale?” Bessie joked, “That’s me, just a delicate little thing!”
Bessie stumbled and fell in the stream. The girls fished her out and peeled her wet, tight uniform off her. Then they found that all her other clothes were in the laundry, and none of theirs were big enough to fit her. Bessie spent the rest of that afternoon in a uniform borrowed from one of the infantrymen. It was the oddest fit ever seen on Island 14.
“I look like a comic valentine!” Bessie declared, giggling. “My patients are going to get a good laugh out of this!” They did, too, and Bessie did not seem to mind. But Bessie did not show up at Mess for supper that night, Cherry noticed.
That night, for all her enjoyment of Bessie’s antics, Cherry had more serious matters on her mind. This was the evening when she had “made time” to spend with the wounded airman.
Cherry had been to see him briefly, several times each day, with Captain Willard. The doctor had said, “Exhaustion—flier’s nerve strain,” and prescribed sedatives so that the tense man could fall asleep. Cherry saw to it that he had plenty of milk and good food when he awoke. She assigned Ann, who was calm and cheerful, and a dependable corpsman, to look after this patient.
When Cherry tiptoed into the flier’s quiet isolation tent that hot evening, she whispered to Ann, “How is he?”
Ann shook her head. “He won’t talk. I wish he would talk! I try to encourage him to get things off his chest, but he hasn’t said a syllable. It seems hopeless.” She turned over the chart to Cherry and prepared to leave.
Hopeless. That was the word Mrs. Flanders had used, too, when Cherry asked her what she thought of the patient’s condition. Neither Ann nor Bessie Flanders were persons to use that word without thought.
After Ann had left, Cherry sat down by the flier’s bedside and studied him. He had a finely modeled face, smooth satiny brown hair and brows, a nervous, sensitive mouth. He was in his early twenties. Even with his eyes closed. Cherry saw in his face uncommon intelligence and feeling and dignity. His shoulder was heavily bandaged. X-rays showed that the shoulder would require an operation. Cherry was delicately examining the bandage when she had the curious feeling that he was staring at her. She turned slightly. His dark blue eyes, heavy with fatigue, were open now and looking at her.
“Hello,” Cherry said, mustering up a poise she did not feel. “Are you feeling better? You look better,” she said untruthfully.
His gaze did not flicker. Had he understood her?
“Gene,” Cherry said gently. “You know Charlie Ames in your crew. I’m Charlie’s sister, Cherry.”
Still there was no reply, no sign of response, though those heavy-lidded eyes registered perfect comprehension. There was a terrible silence in the tent. The footsteps outside seemed to come from another world.
“Gene,” Cherry insisted, fighting down her own fear “It’s me, Charlie’s sister. It’s Cherry. Don’t be afraid.”
But it was not fear in those eyes that followed the slightest bend of her head, the smallest quiver of expression on her rosy face. It might have been memory, lost and dim, which dropped a screen of silence between the flier and Cherry. He did not speak, he did not move, only followed her with those haunted eyes. He was so tired it was work for him to breathe. Cherry gave him a sedative. Presently he slept.
Hopeless, Mrs. Flanders had said, and Ann had said. But she refused to accept “hopeless” as the verdict. She had promised his crew to get him well! Perhaps he would be better after more rest and after an operation on his shoulder. Perhaps then he would talk. Cherry began to look forward to the day the flier would be strong enough t
o endure surgery.
Meanwhile there were other operations. Cherry began to spend more and more of her time in the Operating hut, working as O.R. supervisor with the new anaesthetist, and the surgeons and assisting doctors and other operating nurses who were scheduled on any particular day. Bessie Flanders turned out to be an excellent anaesthetist, cooperative, almost intuitive, in working with the doctor. Over a period of time, wounded soldiers were brought in from the fighting forward islands. The most amazing surgeries were performed.
The most common surgeries were the removal of shrapnel fragments from exploding shells. But there were also a perforated ulcer, a delicate skin graft, fractured arms and legs, an arm with lacerated nerves which had to be tied together again. There was even, in this jungle hut, one infected brain wound, where the team of doctors and nurses held their breaths while Major Pierce cleansed the wound, grafted leg tissues over the skull gap, and saved the patient from paralysis and blindness. No finer neurosurgery could have been done in the most modern hospital at home.
Cherry found her work an inspiration. But there was still one discouraging factor. The Commanding Officer still continued his daily, seemingly unnecessary rounds of the evacuation hospital. For the past few days he had been concentrating his fretful comments on Major Pierce. The harassed unit director hinted several times that Colonel Pillsbee’s endless inspections wasted a great deal of precious time. But there was no getting rid of his stalking, birdlike figure.
After one particularly trying session with Colonel Pillsbee, Bessie announced flatly, “I think he ought to leave it to Major Pierce to inspect!”
“Hmm,” said Cherry, and Major Pierce said, “Very interesting,” and strolled resignedly away.
And then, rather abruptly, Bessie changed. The older nurse seemed to lose some of her high good humor and to change her mind about Colonel Pillsbee, too. The climax came one night in the Ritz Stables, when Mrs. Flanders delivered quite a lecture to the girls. It came out of a blue sky, and the girls all were amazed to hear her say, crossly:
