The Lieutenant's Nurse

by Sara Ackerman

  “You weren’t the only one,” she said.

  “Things sure went south, but I gotta say that I’m not complaining at this very moment,” he said, shifting around on the cot and bringing her leg over his.

  This time, she kissed him. All of her worry and fear wrapped into it somehow made it more real. Fire beneath her skin. She had wanted him all the way across the Pacific, too, and now here they were, a tangle of love and limbs.

  Then, from the corner, Brandy growled. Clark immediately went rigid. His hand covered her mouth. Eva looked to Brandy, who was sitting up with her fur in a high ridge along her back.

  “A wild boar,” he whispered.

  With all the wind and rain and thrashing of branches, sounds all blended together. If there was something out there, or someone, they wouldn’t know. If the man in the Model A had indeed followed her, she would never forgive herself.

  A shadow emerged at the screen door. “I’ll shoot the dog,” a voice said flatly.

  The world froze.

  Eva cracked.

  That voice.

  “No!” she cried.

  “Hold the dog or it’s dead, I mean it,” said the voice at the door.

  Eva was beside Brandy in less than a second while at the same time trying to make sense of what was happening.

  “What are you doing here, Billy?” Eva gasped.

  This was a man she had spent the past two years pining for. His letters had sustained her across space and time and an empty heart. The screen creaked open and Billy stepped inside. His gun was pointed at Clark.

  She had the sudden, horror-filled thought that he was going to kill them right then and there, and she and Clark would simply never be heard from again. Just another statistic of missing in action.

  “So, you’re behind this,” Clark said.

  Her eyes bounced between the two men. What was he talking about? Billy leaned against the concrete wall and put a cigarette between his lips, gun hand never wavering. With his free hand, he lit it. The look on his face was twisted and ugly.

  “We were going to let you be and just keep an eye on you, but then you had to go and put your dick where it doesn’t belong,” Billy said.

  Clark was sitting up now, looking pale but collected.

  Eva felt the blood rush to her head. “You have it wrong.”

  Billy waved the gun around. “Oh yeah? You two half-naked, don’t bullshit me.”

  Smoke poured from his nose and formed a hazy wall between them. Eva was torn between wanting to march up to him and slap him in the face, and staying alive.

  “Too late, Irving, I already told Ford about the signals,” Clark said.

  Had he?

  Eva paused. “Wait, how do you two know each other?”

  “He’s the guy I handed the report in to after we docked. The one who made sure our admirals never saw it. Lieutenant William Irving,” Clark said.

  Shock waves rippled through her. Billy knew! The radio signals, the advancing Japanese fleet. He knew and he kept the information from getting out. Lord have mercy. This was not a breakdown in communication, it was an all-out conspiracy.

  “Just following orders,” Billy said.

  “Orders from who?”

  “That’s on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know.”

  Eva was still in disbelief. “But why?”

  “This isn’t a social visit. Get up, Spencer. We have somewhere to go,” Billy said.

  Over his uniform he was wearing a thick black raincoat, like a gangster. The look on his face was somewhere in between loathing and fear, and he had the air of a man who was coming to pieces. He stomped his boots to shake off the mud. This was a stranger, not the Billy she once thought she loved, and her mind tried to call up signs that she’d missed. Driven and focused had morphed into fanatic and desperate.

  Brandy still rumbled, but Eva held her tight. “People already know,” she said, close to all-out panic.

  “No one else knows, besides Wilson, and he won’t be talking. If Ford knew, I would have heard by now.”

  Clark was sitting up, with his elbows on his knees. “We could have gone out there and bombed the hell out of that fleet and their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor would never have happened. Why?”

  “People like you are too dumb to understand.”

  Her pulse nearly stopped. The face of every sailor, every casualty that she had treated played in her mind. The sound of their fear and the smell of their agony. Each man facing his own personal nightmare. Avoidable. Eva wanted to reach out and claw at Billy, but all she could think was, Keep him talking. In the most polite voice she could muster, she said, “You always were the smart one, perhaps you can explain it to us so we’re on your side.”

  “War with Japan was inevitable. We just orchestrated it on our terms, lured them in like fish to bread. I don’t see anything wrong with that,” Billy said.

  Clark opened his mouth to speak, but Eva shot him a silencing look. “How’d you manage that?” she asked gently.

  “Once Germany and Italy signed the Tripartite Pact with Japan, it was blindingly clear that was our ticket into the war. And they were so easy to provoke, they’re not as smart as you think. Japan is only a pawn, Germany is the king and we are the queen that will take him down,” Billy said.

  The gun was still leveled at Clark, but his eyes hopped back and forth to her. He was gloating.

  Clark jumped in. “But we backed Japan into a corner.”

  “It had to be done.”

  “Who did the orchestrating?” Eva said.

  “Washington.”

  Eva swallowed hard. “The president?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Billy snarled.

  The air in the bunker was too thick. Eva trying to talk Billy out of whatever he had in store, Clark sitting pale faced and motionless. If ever there was a time to send a prayer up to Heaven, it was now. A prayer for themselves, a prayer for all the people killed in the attack, a prayer for their country.

  “Why are you here, Lieutenant Irving?” Clark asked in a tired voice.

  “You two are my garbage to deal with.”

  As if on cue, the rain pounded the roof and the branches outside in a deafening rush. Eva had to yell to be heard. “Leave us alone, Billy. Your little plan worked. We’re at war. Let it go.”

  Billy waved the gun at Clark. “Get up, Spencer. We’re going.”

  At least outside, they could break off and run, but Billy was a crack shot, and he was certain to hit at least one of them. Her mind went off in a hundred and one directions trying to think of anything she could say to sway him.

  “What would your dad think if he could see you now?” she asked.

  “Shut up. Move.”

  Clark stood.

  Eva stood. “Where are we going?”

  Billy backed into the downpour and let the screen slam shut behind him. “Somewhere with a view.”

  She stole a look at Clark, who seemed to want to go for his backpack but thought better of it. Billy meant business. You could tell by his cool demeanor.

  “We have to bring the dog,” Eva said.

  “Enough with the dog. It stays or I shoot it, your choice.”

  Eva kissed Brandy on the top of the head, told her to stay and followed Clark out the door.

  Billy pointed toward the valley wall, where a thin path switchbacked up. “Follow that trail and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Clark paused so Eva could go first, but Billy wouldn’t have it.

  “Nope, she goes between us,” he said.

  By the time they reached the base of the cliff, they were soaked. Neither she nor Clark were wearing shoes, and mud squished between her toes and rocks tore at her flesh. As they climbed higher and higher, Eva got the notion of what Billy’s plan was
.

  Clark must have, too. “Think about what you’re doing, man. If we disappear, people are going to start nosing around.”

  “As far as anyone knows, you died from your injuries at Pearl Harbor, and Evelyn only has a half-dead sister, so no one’s going to notice her gone,” Billy shouted from the rear.

  His words caused a boil in her blood. “Ruby is not half-dead, and why don’t you just get it over with, then? Be a man.”

  Oh Lord, what was she doing? Keep your mouth shut, Evelyn!

  “Easier if you do it yourselves,” Billy muttered.

  Had they been anywhere other than on a switchback trail with a steep drop on one side and a rock face on the other, they might have had a chance to escape, to bolt off into the trees. It would have been worth the risk.

  At a bend, Clark stopped and bent over to catch his breath. Beads of rain covered his entire body like tiny crystals.

  “Keep on going,” Billy said.

  “Heavens, let him rest for a second, will you?”

  When Clark glanced back, his face was pale. His breath came in short bursts. They’d be lucky if he even made it to the top, which was now hidden in clouds.

  Eva turned to say something to Billy, but he shouted, “Keep your eyes ahead, I don’t want to see your traitor face.”

  They trudged on until the ground leveled out. Rain stopped falling. The silence of clouds surrounded them in a milky, eerie whiteout. Ahead, trees emerged one at a time from the mist. Now would be as good a time as any to run, but she couldn’t leave Clark behind. He muttered something, not quite loud enough for her to hear, but it sounded like Japanese. Again, he spoke, this time a little louder. “Gomen, Utsukushıˉi kimi ni boku no kimochi wo tsutaeru koto ga dekinakatta.”

  All she understood was “beautiful.”

  “Quiet up there, Jap lover.” Billy prodded them forward a bit farther, then stopped them. “Here’s good.”

  Out of breath herself, Eva felt her heart spin out at two hundred beats per minute. Now was their only chance.

  Clouds lifted.

  A sheer drop twenty feet to the left.

  The gun in her pocket.

  “Billy, please,” she said.

  “It’s not my fault that you two wandered off the trail in the fog. Happens all the time. Go on,” he said, nodding toward the edge.

  The whole way up, Eva had been asking herself if she could shoot Billy when the time came. The best answer she could come up with was maybe.

  “You want to live with this on your conscience?” she said.

  “Sometimes we do what we have to.”

  She glanced over at Clark, who stood poised to do something foolish. If he even so much as leaned toward Billy, he’d be shot. That much was clear. Eva turned so she was sideways to Billy, one hand slipping into her pocket, unlocking the safety. He stood about ten feet behind them, wide-eyed and fidgety.

  “Let’s talk this out. There’s got to be another way,” she said.

  He waved the gun around carelessly. “Give it up, there’s nothing you can say. Now get to the edge.”

  “How about this, Billy?” She paused for a moment to catch her breath, which was hitched and shallow. “Clark is a far better kisser than you.”

  His face flashed red. “What the—”

  At the same moment, Clark made his move and lunged, torpedoing his body at Billy’s lower legs. Eva watched in horror. The distance between them was simply too great, especially in Clark’s weakened state. Billy stepped back and raised his arm to shoot.

  In one motion, Eva whipped out her gun and fired, gripping it tight with both hands. A split second after her shot, another one rang out. Her focus was locked onto the barrel, and she swore she saw the bullet leave it, spin through the air and collide with Billy’s shoulder. He staggered back, unsure of what had just hit him. Pain twisted his features. His gun fell and then he did, but when she turned her attention to Clark, he was also lying facedown in the dirt.

  “Clark!” she cried. Another injury would do him in for sure. “Are you hit?”

  No sign of any holes. He rolled onto his side and pushed himself up, eyes on Billy. “Missed me by an inch. Looks like you’re the better shot.”

  Billy groaned as blood seeped out beneath him. “Evelyn, why?” he gasped.

  A numbness washed over her, as though she was watching this on a movie screen. Someone else had done this, not her, yet there Billy lay crumpled on his side, turning white before her eyes. Her stomach went sour and she fought back the urge to vomit.

  “This was your doing,” she said softly.

  Clark slid over and picked up Billy’s gun. “Irving, this never had to happen.”

  Eva was afraid to get any closer, and yet she felt a responsibility to save him. That was her job—nurses saved people. “What do we do?” she asked Clark.

  “Judging from the amount of blood, you hit him in the heart or an artery. Not much we can do.”

  Eva knelt next to Billy with one hand on his back and one on his chest. He was hot and trembling and wheezing. Clark was right, he was beyond help. Eva sat with him. She prayed for him. And in the end she cried for him, big heaving sobs. She had to steady herself on a spindly tree. Her lungs seemed void of air, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t suck in a breath. The bullet meant for Clark must have somehow hit her and she hadn’t even realized it.

  “Am I shot?” she suddenly asked.

  Clark came over and wrapped her in his arms, kissing the top of her head. “Sweetheart, you’re in shock.”

  The clouds returned and they stood that way for a long time, clinging to each other and blind with tears. It might have been a minute, or an hour, she wasn’t counting.

  A LONG WAY DOWN

  That she had killed a man—Billy, no less—played in her mind like a silent film on repeat. She tried to block it out, but with no success. On the walk down to the bunker, Clark had pointed out the obvious, that it was either Billy or them, but she still felt like a cold-blooded killer. All those women back home had been right, after all.

  Murderer.

  They had no idea who or what would be waiting for them when they got back to Pearl Harbor. Eva insisted on driving, and forced Clark to lie down in the reclined passenger seat, to which he reluctantly agreed. Brandy must have sensed something had happened, and refused to get in the backseat, so they let her curl up on the floor beneath his legs.

  Eva’s teeth chattered the whole way back. Here she was, on the run again. She could scarcely think straight, but they managed to agree that they should tell Ford the full story and go from there. It was time to let someone else in on what they knew, and what that had resulted in. Not everyone could be involved in the cover-up, and Clark trusted Ford with his life.

  Clark dropped off Eva at his house and left to track down Ford. She passed the hours languishing in his bed like a dying fish, flipping and flopping and sobbing in between fits of sleep. Her mind was spent, and yet it refused to rest. Everything in the room was an ugly shade of reddish purple, like blood, that even after several showers, she still couldn’t wash away.

  There was also the matter of Billy’s associates. Every slamming door or creak in the hallway sent her nerves scattering. If she had been jumpy after Pearl Harbor, now she was a shaky, jittery mess. For all she knew, they might be storming in at any moment to haul her away for murder and lock up Clark for working for the Japanese.

  This new nightmare, the one that would follow her to her last breath, was deep enough to drown in. Facing Dr. Newcastle would be nothing compared to this. So what if he knew who she was? Time to come clean on the small stuff. She would find a way to pay for Ruby, as long as they didn’t arrest her and have her court-martialed.

  When Clark returned late in the night, he looked gray in the face and ready to drop. He lay on the bed next to Eva and pulled her in,
kissing her as though she were a tragic, broken thing.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “As good as could be expected. A lot of unanswered questions. The radio signals were news to him. Which means, when I dropped that report to Irving, who knows what he did with it after that. I don’t know if we’re dealing with a small group of conspirators, or a whole secret branch of intelligence that I’m not privy to.”

  “Billy would have wanted to be in control. A piece of information like this he would have kept close,” she said.

  Clark coiled her hair around his finger. “I should have told Ford right away.”

  “You thought you were doing the right thing.”

  “Irving demanded that I not tell a soul. I should have seen that he was manipulating me.”

  His head rested in his hands and he stared up at the ceiling. Eva felt the guilt, too, haunting her. To have known and not done anything about it. This was the bitter truth they would have to live with.

  “There was no way you could have guessed how he was going to handle that report,” she said.

  “The intoxication of power,” Clark said.

  “Billy was always driven, but somehow I missed the faulty wiring that led him to this point,” Eva said.

  “He took a wrong turn, maybe starting off thinking he was doing something important for his country. That’s where people get dangerous. When they begin to believe the end justifies the means,” he said.

  Eva sighed. “What next?”

  “Ford said he would handle the situation with Billy. But I’m sure they’ll want to talk to us. Until then, we wait, and we do our darnedest to right the wrongs that have been done here. You have patients to heal, and I still have codes to break.”

  “Will they believe us? That’s what I’m worried about.”

  “I guess we’ll find out. There are already rumblings and fingers being pointed. Army blaming navy, navy blaming army, that kind of thing. It seems like the powers that be have bigger things to worry about right now. Ford is going to talk to Wilson and find out if he wrote a backup report,” Clark said.