The Lieutenant's Nurse

by Sara Ackerman

  “I have no idea, but she’s with him,” Eva said.

  “No dogs allowed. Dr. Newcastle would have a fit.”

  Even though he was under two blankets, Jack’s teeth started chattering. “Us guys at Hickam are all she has.”

  Under normal circumstances, a dog would have been thrown out without another word, but Dr. Izumi just shrugged and said, “Keep it under the table, then.”

  Brandy seemed to understand what was happening and curled up below Jack’s one remaining foot. Fortunately, someone had used a belt as a tourniquet to keep him alive. But the shock was what worried her.

  “Let’s run another bag of plasma,” she suggested.

  Dr. Izumi looked at her questioningly. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he’s in shock. Look at him.”

  She thought he was going to override her, but he agreed. “Go get another bag.”

  By the grace of God, the hospital still had plasma, but how long it would last was anyone’s guess. While Eva ran the other line, Dr. Izumi drank down a glass of water that someone handed him. Suddenly, Dr. Newcastle appeared next to him. She moved to block the dog from his line of sight.

  “Do you need a break? I can take over on this one,” Dr. Newcastle said.

  Eva stiffened.

  “There’s a whole line of boys all the way out to the front lawn, so I won’t be resting anytime soon,” Izumi said.

  She almost cheered. Nor was the irony lost on her. Two surgeons. Both competent. One white. One Japanese. She would have chosen Izumi over Newcastle any day. Even today.

  Dr. Newcastle slapped him on the back with his hand and spoke in a hushed tone. “I like your attitude but we’ve been getting a lot of flak for having you here. We know you’re one of us, but all they see are those damn Nip pilots.”

  Eva couldn’t help herself. “But, Doctor, he’s already saved a half-dozen lives or more.”

  Dr. Newcastle ignored her. “They could use you in the morgue.”

  “No disrespect, Frank, but you need every surgeon on deck and then some. You need me,” Dr. Izumi said.

  The injustice of it burned at her. Helplessness was not her strong suit, and all Eva wanted to do was grab Dr. Newcastle by his bloody scrubs and shake him.

  “Not if it causes distress,” he said.

  Dr. Izumi pulled off his surgical mask and tossed it on the ground. “I’m not going to stand around here and argue. Have at it.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Dr. Newcastle shut her up fast. “Not a word from you.”

  Still reeling, Eva went about her business of readying young Jack—scraping out rocks and glass from his wounds and checking his blood pressure and pupils. He seemed to be responding well to the extra plasma, but his skin still looked dusty white. Maybe if she worked hard enough, she could reverse it.

  Dr. Newcastle put Jack under and got to work. Every time he moved to the foot of the table, Eva was sure he was going to kick Brandy. But somehow, the dog eluded him.

  Halfway through the operation, she caught sight of a man who looked like Clark being wheeled past. Same size, same chocolate hair, only it was soaked in oil and the skin on his face was charred beyond recognition. She closed her eyes, refusing to believe it was him. He would not have been out on the water. No. No. No.

  She heard the doctor say, “Why are you bringing this man here? He’s dead.”

  A stone in her throat.

  Dizziness.

  A small tattoo on his forearm.

  Not him.

  “Nurse?” Dr. Newcastle was waving his hand in front of her face.

  A shudder ran through her. “Sorry, I thought I saw someone I knew.”

  “Don’t check out on me again like that, or I’m sending you to the morgue, too,” he said.

  “I swear I won’t.”

  By now, she had been able to piece together what had transpired. Two waves of attack. A complete surprise. For many of the men aboard the battleships, the choice had been to go down with the burning ship or leap into the flaming water. Battleship Row and Hickam Field seemed to have been the hardest hit. Half my friends are stuck in the belly of the Oklahoma as we speak. They blew us up while we were sleeping. Suddenly I was looking at sky where the roof was supposed to be. I watched Andy Bustard get cut in half. Just looking out the window, down onto the mayhem of Pearl Harbor, full of rescue boats and fire engines and plumes of black smoke, was enough to cause a breakdown. She felt her armor cracking, but summoned strength by looking at all the brave souls around her.

  Jack survived the surgery, hanging on by a thumbnail, and was moved to a room across the hall. The minute Dr. Newcastle left to wash up, Eva scooped up Brandy in a towel, ran her over and set her under his new cot. It was hard to tell how much of the black on her coat was real and how much was soot. Eva filled a stainless container with water. Brandy sniffed her hand and looked up at her with cautious eyes. Her tail was tucked all the way under her little body and she was shivering. Eva scanned for any signs of injury, but the dog seemed outwardly fine.

  “You take care of him now,” Eva said, rubbing behind the dog’s ears. Her hand came away black. She wished she could stay longer to comfort the poor thing but she had men to tend to. She slipped out of the room with no one the wiser. Everyone else was too busy to notice.

  They worked and they worked and they worked. Grace came back inside and Eva was glad to have her nearby. At some point, a small cocoa-skinned woman came by with a tray full of fried chicken and cups of a bright red drink.

  “What is it?” Eva asked, hardly able to understand the woman’s accent.

  “Proot punch.”

  “She’s saying fruit punch,” Grace said, taking one and handing it to Eva. “Thank you, Mrs. Mac, you’re a lifesaver.”

  “Whose bright idea was it to serve red liquid today?” Eva wanted to know.

  Grace shook her head. “Lemonade would have been a better choice.”

  “Or Tennessee whiskey. But I’ll take what I can get.”

  At least as far as drinks went. Food was another story. She didn’t think she could stomach a bite of anything right now. Especially fried chicken.

  At some point head nurse Willa came in and rounded up anyone in sight. “There’s talk that the Japanese have eighty transports off of Diamond Head and they’re landing parachute troops in the cane fields. We need to patch our soldiers up, so they can get back out there and keep fighting.”

  The nurses all stared at each other. The mood went from dark to black. At least half of these boys would not be leaving the hospital anytime soon. In fact, they would be lucky if they ever left. As for the others, many needed to be strapped down in order to keep them in place. One soldier with a jagged head wound and sixteen broken teeth told Eva, I gotta get back to the Utah to find Johnny. He went down the bilge manhole. He’s going to be trapped. She knew that the Utah was now resting on the bottom of the harbor.

  After Willa left, Grace looked Eva square in the face. “This must be what hell is like.”

  BLIND ASSUMPTIONS

  September 21, 1941

  Evelyn had spent the rest of the morning fixated on her conversation with Dr. Brown before he kicked her out of the operating room. It should not have happened, plain and simple. Top of her class in nursing school, highest accolades in nurse anesthetist training, residency at the Mayo Clinic, and yet still she was not immune. What nagged at her the most was that she had accepted her fate and walked out instead of putting up a fight. Leaving the operating room had seemed like the only option, but had it been?

  Don’t ever suggest that you know better than me. You can be excused, Nurse.

  The scene was etched on the backs of her eyelids and she replayed it every few seconds. What if she had stood up to him? Refused to budge. Or gone and found another doctor to complain to and reported him for being unfit
to operate. Would anyone have listened?

  It was hard to concentrate on anything other than the blue face of Tommy Lemon on that table. In this field, deaths were commonplace. But in all her years in the field, none had died as the result of pigheadedness. Maybe this one time, Brown had finally done himself in. Seen himself to the door, as her father would have said.

  Evelyn was taking Jimmy Dalloway’s temperature when Milly walked in with a pale face.

  “What is it?” Evelyn asked.

  “I had lunch with Madge, and she said that Jed Lemon was standing in the hallway screaming obscenities at Dr. Brown.”

  No one screamed at Dr. Brown. Ever. “He could lose his job over this,” Evelyn said, imagining how pleasant things would be around the hospital without him. But it should have never come to this. No one should have to die to get the man ousted.

  Milly suddenly became interested on a crack on the wall. “That’s the thing.”

  “What do you mean?” Evelyn said.

  A long pause.

  “There seems to be uncertainty over what the cause was.”

  “His heart stopped beating due to the fact that he was already in shock when given sodium thiopental, that’s what happened,” Evelyn said.

  “Dr. Brown will never admit to any fault.”

  A rush of horror sucker punched Evelyn in the gut. She felt panicky and guilty and began explaining herself to Milly over and over again, as if Milly was the one who needed to know. “I suggested to use ether instead and he refused to even consider it. You know how he is. Tommy Lemon would have had a chance if he had listened to me. I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty that he would have lived. But I have a hunch he would have, he was young and strong and full of life.”

  Milly gave her a sorry look. “Oh, Evelyn, I know you did your best. We all do. Accidents like this are the downside of the business. They happen to the best of us.”

  Evelyn threw her hands up and began pacing. “This was not an accident. I’m going to go talk to him.”

  Milly grabbed her arm. “Wait. Madge said he’s hysterical. If you show up, things could get ugly.”

  “But I need to explain what happened. Don’t I?” Evelyn said.

  Milly sighed. She had been around long enough to know how things went. “Give it a little time, let things settle, and, anyway, what are you going to say? Dr. Brown killed your son because he was negligent?” she said.

  Evelyn fought the urge to crumple to the floor in resignation. “What if I talk to Mrs. Lemon? She’s a kind and reasonable woman from what I’ve seen of her.”

  Milly shrugged. “Anything is possible, I suppose.”

  That was about as unlikely as Dr. Brown coming out and admitting his mistake.

  “I need to try,” Evelyn said. She ran out of the Woods Wing and into a blast of cold air.

  Later on, she wondered if things might have turned out differently if she had listened to Milly’s advice, but the need to tell her story burned so brightly she could not ignore it.

  THE LITTLE FELLA

  December 7

  At two o’clock, the prostitutes showed up. Eva was in the supply closet looking for more tannic acid when she heard unfamiliar female voices. Peering out, she saw three women standing around the nurses’ station talking animatedly to Willa. Two white women and a copper-skinned beauty, all dressed like they were going to church. The way Willa was shaking her head, Eva could tell she was upset. She walked over to see what the fuss was. One with balloons in her blouse—or so it looked—said, “We’ve already donated blood and we can help in any way you see fit.”

  “This is a hospital, not a brothel,” Willa said.

  No wonder the room suddenly smelled like a perfume factory. First a dog, and now a group of call girls. Yet Eva supposed there was no rule book on how to react when ambushed by the Imperial Japanese Navy. All normalcy had gone out the window at about 7:55 this morning.

  One of them put a hand on Willa’s arm. “Nurse, we want to be of service. Even if it’s just to sit with them and pray. Please.”

  Willa noticed Eva standing there. “Why don’t you give these gals something to do?” she said.

  Eva turned around, hoping to God there was someone behind her.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Take them to Burns. They can spray and pray.”

  One of the ingenious nurses had found a shelf full of flit guns for insect repellent and decided it would make a handy spray device for the tannic acid. Eva had been impressed. Not only about that, but how the whole world had come together to help these poor boys. Laundry trucks as ambulances, regular people off the streets dragging the injured in and now the prostitutes. What was next?

  “Do any of you have any kind of first aid training?” she asked, unsure what to expect, having never been in the company of a call girl before.

  “I do,” the Hawaiian one said. “I’ve, uh, serviced one of the heads of the Red Cross here. He told me they’re all stocked up since they knew this was coming. I bet they’ll be sending out some Gray Ladies soon.”

  The words stopped Eva cold. “Who knew this was coming?” she asked.

  “The folks in Washington.”

  “And your friend knows this for certain?”

  “Apparently. All the money and supplies got switched to wartime levels. He told me it was imminent, but not to breathe a word. I guess the secret is out now.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Eva said.

  Donna, Mary Ann and Lehua were their names and they were genuine in their desire to help. Just the fact that they’d come to the hospital spoke volumes. She led them down the hallway, stepping over patients and ignoring the catcalls. Wounded men were still men.

  “The burns are the worst,” she warned them. “It’s like someone dipped them in a chicken fryer and left for the afternoon. They lose a lot of fluid and then are in danger of going into shock. So keep an eye on the IV bags and let us know if you see one empty.”

  In the burn ward, the smell about knocked you over. Mary Ann held a handkerchief to her face. Donna turned gray and braced herself on the wall. Across the way, Judy was rubbing ointment on a skinless man. Eva went to her and attempted to hand off the women.

  “I’ll take ’em. At least we know they have experience in comfort,” Judy said.

  Lehua wasted no time in sitting on the edge of a bed. “What’s your name?” she asked softly.

  Eva left them. What a strange twist of fate that she had been sitting in the auditorium this very morning waiting for a lecture on burns. Traumatic surgery, back injuries and burns of all things. As with the timing of the Red Cross supplies, it seemed oddly coincidental. Was it possible Dr. Wallace had been brought here based on foreknowledge of the attack?

  Inconceivable. And yet...

  * * *

  Back in the operating room, Dr. Newcastle singled her out again, calling out as she tried to sneak on by behind him.

  “Nurse! I want you to help me on this one. He’s critical,” he said, and Eva didn’t know whether to be flattered or frightened.

  Cyanosis is something you can’t imagine until you actually see it. People can be lots of colors, but blue should not be one of them. In all her years, she had never seen a person be this purple and still have a pulse. Not only that, he was swollen from head to toe, as though someone had put a straw in his mouth and blown him up like a balloon. He was thrashing around. Shrapnel had torn apart his chest, leaving the air to bleed out into his tissues.

  The man was gasping for air. They had to do something on the double. “Just cut him there. I’ll aspirate,” she said, pointing to a spot just above his sternum.

  He surprised her by taking his scalpel and slicing right where she had indicated. No anesthesia. A few moments later, the patient’s breathing eased, and a minute after that, a hint of color returned to his skin. />
  They worked in silence, she drawing fluid from the patient’s trachea and Dr. Newcastle controlling the blood. By the time they finished, her hands were trembling and her legs wobbly. She needed fresh air and sunshine. She needed a hug. Where was Grace?

  Dr. Newcastle walked away without a word.

  * * *

  Over in Jack’s room, Eva found Grace tending to a soldier with a bandage around his whole head. “She sure was pretty. Bird boned, shiny black hair. We were going to go roller-skating this morning,” he was saying.

  Grace held his hand. “You just worry about getting better so you can skate again.”

  “No one will talk to me if I associate with a Japanese girl.”

  “Seeing that more than half the island is Japanese, I think they may forgive you, Don,” she said.

  Eva wasn’t so sure. Anything Japanese would always remind these boys of today, December 7, for the rest of their lives. Be it short or long. She bent forward to make sure Jack was breathing. He was, with Brandy still tucked under his bed.

  Eva knelt down. “Hi, sweetie.” The desire for ear scratches won out over fear, and the dog soon rolled onto her back and offered her spotted pink belly up for petting. The doctors were all out of the room, so Eva invited the dog over to see Jack.

  Brandy stood on her hind legs and sniffed the whole of his body. Not a big dog, she was about knee-high and narrow like a whippet. Her eyes were dark and inquisitive and rimmed in coal. When she got down, she moved on to the next bed, and the next. Don was the only one alert enough to notice her.

  He whistled her over. “Brandy? Come here, girl.”

  At the sound of her name, Brandy ran over and leaped onto the side of his bed, careful to avoid landing on him. The maneuver was pure love. A spot of sunshine on a thunderous day.

  Grace watched in utter surprise. “Horsefeathers, there’s a dog in here!”