The Fire by Night

by Teresa Messineo

  “But it’s wrong,” Rosaria said timidly. She was the dark little nurse with sideburns whose Italian accent came out when she was scared. “Killing yourself, she’s a sin.” And silently, they all agreed—Catholic, Jew, Wasp alike. It was wrong and forbidden and they could never do it—they would be damned forever if they did. Then they thought of the Rape of Nanking, of what had happened to those hundreds, thousands of women and girls, young girls, at the hands of the Japanese—and they fastened in yet another hairpin.

  The concussions continued all that night. Funny, Kay thought—now that the surrender had happened, the halls and laterals were much quieter. No more racing around, no jeeps honking raucously as they used to do, swerving to miss the nurses, coming mere inches from the heads of unflinching men lined up along its sides, who slept the sleep of utter exhaustion, which is a kind of death in itself. Tonight was quiet—people were praying, or remembering, or whispering quietly in small groups together, steeling themselves for the morning, which would dawn, like all the others down here, in total blackness.

  Kay fingered the empty charts she had taken from the hospital earlier on—she would write a letter on their blank sides in a little bit, write to Jo McMahon, her best friend back home; write a letter she would never get to mail but one that needed to be written nonetheless—to clear her head, to straighten out her tangled thoughts one last time. She couldn’t die this way. But there would be plenty of time to write it later—there would be no sleep for any of them tonight.

  Kay thought back to when she had been given the chance to leave Malinta. The Japs hadn’t yet found the secret submarine dock, and one desperate attempt was going to be made to get people out. Not all of them, surely; but, in the hierarchy that existed, the more “important” of them. The ambassador’s friends and family. Allied civilian women, separated from their husbands and fathers. Douglas MacArthur himself. They were to go—along with the nurses—head out to sea and never see Malinta again. Kay had considered leaving—considered what it would be like to eat and drink and wash and sleep again, to live like a human being and not like a worm—but she could not bring herself to do it. Not that she felt any great emotion—or any emotion at all, really—for anyone anymore; she was completely numb. In the end, though, she—along with fifty other nurses—decided to stay behind to tend the wounded, to assist at surgeries, to run lines and remove casts. They would fill in the time until their own deaths with duty. She had realized, suddenly, that being a military nurse was all she had left in the world; and in the end, Kay couldn’t separate herself from that.

  She wondered where Jo was now. She was sorry that Jo would never get her letter, never hear her apologize for rubbing it in that she, Kay, had gotten the plum assignment in the Pacific. Plum assignment! How mad Jo had been—back in the hospital they worked in in New York—when she had had to stay behind and complete her second year of nursing before qualifying for overseas duty. Kay could still see her friend in her starched, white uniform, stamping her foot in frustration, one gorgeous, glossy curl escaping her cap. “It isn’t fair, Kay,” Jo had nearly shouted, her doubly sharp Irish-Italian temper getting the best of her, eyes flashing, looking all the more beautiful in her wrath. “It isn’t fair you get to go without me.”

  No, I should have stayed with you, Jo, we were stronger together. You taught me to be strong. We could face anything together.

  Kay closed her eyes and could still smell the strong antiseptic, could still feel the cold metal of the shelves as she ran her fingers lightly along them in her mind. She was back in the storeroom of their receiving hospital. It was winter, she remembered, cold down in the basement, too far from the furnaces; she shivered in her pale white stockings. She had come down alone. She and Jo had said they wouldn’t; they would stay in pairs, safety in numbers—but the tubing on one of the oxygen tanks had worn out, had crumbled in the matron’s hand, and she had told Kay to run and get a replacement, to get it now. Kay had been down there, alone, the lightbulb in the storeroom ceiling buzzing faintly, the filament twisted and glowing, the beaded metal chain still swinging from when she had pulled it. And then she hadn’t been alone, he was there, she could smell him, hear him breathing. How had he followed her? She hadn’t even known she was coming down here herself, she had run all the way, but he was down there now, between her and the door out of the storeroom closet. The shelves had begun to close in on her, squeezing her tight, she couldn’t breathe. She saw his eyes—they seemed red . . . no, black—but she saw them only for a moment; in another instant he was right there, too close for her to focus on him, a dark, hard mass pushing her back against the cement wall, against the hard shelves, she was struggling, don’t, just don’t, but the words couldn’t come out because she couldn’t breathe. She was fighting him off, his breath hot on her neck, his hands rough as they fumbled with her garter. And just as he reached above him to yank on the cord, to stop the soft buzzing sound, to disperse the last of the light and thrust them both into darkness, there’d been a sound behind him and he had turned and seen Jo, arms akimbo, another nurse at her side, and Jo was saying coolly, saying coldly, “Doctor,” just the one word—doctor.

  He fixed Jo with eyes filled with hatred, filled with nothing at all. “You’ll say nothing, nurse, nothing, if you know what’s good for you. Remember what happened to the last nurse who spoke up. No one believed her. It’s only your lousy word against mine, and you’re nothing, you’re nobody. If you talk, you’ll never work in this city again.” He shoved Kay from him as an afterthought, and then in an instant the man had changed, his mask back in place. Suddenly, it was impossible to believe that this dignified man straightening his tie, preparing to ascend into the light of his reputation and his godlike skill, was the brute of a moment before. He walked quickly past the nurses, buttoning his long white coat, his polished shoes making a clicking sound on the painted concrete floor. Kay slid down the rough stone wall, hugging her knees to her chest, and Jo was there, holding her, smoothing her hair and holding her, crying softly and saying, “We’ll do something, sweetheart, we’ll do something. We’ve got to think of something.”

  KAY SHOOK HERSELF. She wouldn’t think about that, about what had happened next, about what had bonded them together so closely that even now, half a world apart, they were still part of each other’s lives. Jo had been by her side, had gotten her through it; they had both helped each other, been there for each other, but then Kay had left, gone overseas. No, Jo was right, it wasn’t fair that Kay had gotten to go to the Pacific.

  And the letters Kay had sent back—half out of friendship, half just to show off—they weren’t fair either, were they? The volcanic beaches, the swaying palms, the beautiful blue of Pearl Harbor. “This is where I’m stationed, Jo,” she had scribbled to her friend, biting the pen between thoughts in her excitement. “We only have four-hour shifts because of the heat and, get this, Jo, we don’t have to wear any stockings!” That had seemed wicked enough to Kay, and she was running out of room anyway. She didn’t have space to write about their bungalows standing storklike over the shimmering, crystal waters; about their servants and private cabins; about the officers at the nightly dances, thrilled at the new infusion of American women—Kay had three suitors for every dance. “Poor Jo, stuck in dreary New York,” Kay had sighed, trying to be somber for her friend’s sake, failing, then laughing at herself for her incredible luck; at a poor girl from upstate Pennsylvania blossoming into a Cinderella, against a backdrop of paradise no less. Now if only she could decide whether to wear her blue chiffon or organdy to the ball.

  There had been a time when that was her biggest problem.

  Kay passed one of the nurses, coming off of her shift.

  “You okay, Elliott? You’re not due on yet.”

  “Hmm? Yeah, sure. I just need to walk a bit. Can’t sleep.”

  Kay walked aimlessly along those halls she could never get lost in, halls she knew so well by now that they would always be a part of her—like a cancer, deep-se
ated and malignant. She wandered around the tunnel built with Baguio gold mining equipment, condemned powdered TNT wrapped in old magazine pages, and a thousand convicts from Bilibid Prison. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had constructed the whole nightmarish labyrinth, never imagining for a moment that this wraith of a woman would be flitting around it in the dark, awaiting her own death in the morning; never imagining that a storage bunker they constructed would become the last bastion of freedom against the Nipponese Empire (hell, the Corps had bought the cement for the project from the Japanese themselves).

  Kay passed a few clerical staff walking quickly up the corridor, sheaves of paper heaped in their arms marked “FEAF” and “U.S. Air Force Far East.” Most of the classified stuff would have been burned by now—this would be the last of it. She passed some men prying open expired cans of sardines, ripping open with difficulty packages of crackers sealed tight against the tropical humidity. “Would you like some, miss?” they offered. “Better us tonight than the Japs tomorrow.” She smiled and shook her head, feeling sick and light-headed all of a sudden, and they went back to their last supper. Kay thought of the submarines that had been sunk trying to bring them food—out of the half dozen or more that made the attempt, only one had ever made it through. She had overheard the sailors saying that they’d removed all the torpedoes except the ones already in the tubes and then packed forty to sixty tons of food onboard. Forty to sixty tons. And all those laden submarines, with the exception of one, had been destroyed by the Japanese. She thought of all those inaccessible packages, boxes, cans full of meat, and rice and coffee and chocolate that must have survived, even if the men trying to deliver them had died; food that must have washed up somewhere by now on some remote island, or might still be bobbing, uselessly, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

  Kay stopped at the open area of the main tunnel that had served as their receiving dock during their first few days in Malinta. In the half-light of the lamps, she could see that the concrete was still stained with blood. The nurses had been overwhelmed, it had been even worse than the panic and chaos of December 7. So many men, so many wounded, seriously wounded. Kay remembered screaming, almost delirious, “Just bring me the live ones,” as she bent over corpses still warm and bleeding. And the refugees running by, silent, wide-eyed, pouring into the tunnel before the door was shut, hundreds of them, young, old, babies jogging on the backs of older siblings, pregnant mothers holding toddlers’ hands, scuffling along barefoot and blessing their luck at getting past the Japanese, at making it this far. Of course, they could not know what awaited them months later, could not know that the Japanese had not only witnessed their flight to Malinta but facilitated it, opening up their lines, allowing the streams of desperate humanity to pour through, knowing their soft-hearted enemy would foolishly let refugees into its stronghold, each additional mouth bringing the Americans that much closer to surrender.

  Even their mercy was a cruelty.

  The receiving dock was empty now, the refugees huddled in a different lateral, praying to their gods, to the god the missionaries had brought them, to any deity that would save them, that would listen, that could hear them buried beneath the great rock that was Corregidor. Kay thought of the first time she had been underground, when her chest had constricted in panic in that unnatural world. Her father had worked the main coal mine for years, for pennies that would somehow raise his family. But to heat their own home, he and Kay’s brother had dug out a “bootleg” mineshaft coming off of their uncle’s property, burrowing into a lesser vein on the far side of town. One sweltering July day her brother had taken her down into their shaft’s chilly interior. At first, it had been alright, in the light of their father’s lantern, the coolness seeping into their bones. But as they descended deeper and deeper, Kay lost all sense of proportion and perspective, her ears ringing, a dead weight resting on her chest. “I need to get out, Pete,” she had said in a small voice. He didn’t take her seriously at first, telling her not to be a girl. But the claustrophobia, the irrational fear—not of the mine collapsing, not of bats or pitfalls or even poisonous gas, no real fear she could put her finger on and contend with, but a fear she could not name and could not stop—grabbed her, possessed her, and she turned and ran blindly. Her brother called for her to wait for him, to wait for the lantern, to quit being a sissy, to stop it already, you’ll get hurt. And she—her heart pounding in her throat, words failing her, trying to breathe—scrambled toward the slanting afternoon sunlight, her panic lasting long after the warmth and humidity had touched her face again and frizzed the little blond wisps of her hair. I need to get out.

  Now, after weeks of being buried alive, she was about to get out. But this time Kay knew there would be no warm Mount Carmel waiting for her when she emerged from the inky blackness, no sleepy Pennsylvania town nestled high in the mountains, no onion-domed or sharply peaked steeple to ring its bells and wake her from her nightmare, no dusty road to lead her to the places she had known and loved all her life.

  This was war. And Kay Elliott was about to become its next casualty.

  3

  Jo McMahon

  Spring 1945, The Western Front

  Jo opened the tent flaps to let in the dawn’s early light. The rain had stopped, but the canvas was still wet; as she untied the straps above her, icy cold water ran down her arms. She stood rooted in place, staring at the rough fabric in front of her, not wanting to turn around, unable to face the new day. They all were dead. The captain had said they all were dead. All the patients they had struggled so hard to save; the surgeons with their skilled hands, now motionless; the nurses, lying crushed under the weight of the trucks, the weight of stone and dirt and rubble. Grandpa had collapsed when he heard, put his hand to his heart and collapsed. Jo had revived him, her own world swirling unsteadily in front of her. Although he was now up—up even before Jo on this steel-gray morning, moving silently from patient to patient—Grandpa was not himself. He had asked her twice when the next batch of post-op patients was due, what was keeping the surgeons. In his day, he proclaimed, doctors had known not to dilly-dally around. She had caught him talking about the Battle of the Sambre as if it were happening now.

  “But that was the last war, doctor,” Jo had said quietly, looking into his tiny eyes hidden behind his glasses.

  “Don’t you presume to tell me what war I mean, you little—” and then he had caught himself, caught himself in his own mistake, his mind seeming to clear for a moment. But not an hour later he had told Jo she had worked long enough, her shift was over; to go get one of the other nurses to take over for her, she needed her rest; the other girls were getting lazy.

  Now Jo stood stock-still. She could hear the doctor humming a little tune under his breath, hear the snap of canvas as he walked out of the tent, headed God knew where; hear the men beginning to shift and moan and complain in their beds. They would be hungry, cold, needing their bandages, their bedpans changed; they would need medicine, and some of them would need surgery, and all of them would need a miracle to get them out of there alive. Jo was out of miracles.

  “Miss,” came a shaky voice. “Miss.”

  Jo swallowed. She could not bring herself to turn around. The tent would be empty of personnel, and she needed to see it full and bustling again, with orderlies, surgeons, dentists, doctors, nurses—above all else the nurses, dozens of nurses keeping soul and body together by their skill and their sheer determination. She looked out of the corner of her eye and saw Gianni standing there, watching her, the back of his thumb pressed to his lips pensively, impatient. He had been there all night, hovering just out of reach, not replaying his last moments for her as he always did but waiting impatiently. Waiting for her. Queenie and the other nurses had joined him already but, by a twist of fate, not her, not Josie. He was waiting for Josie.

  “Miss.” The voice was higher now, in pain.

  What did they want from her? Her youth and her beauty and her health were all gone; her very will to
survive had left her. What did it matter now if the Germans won? Would it be that different? The Germans were cold and starving and dying, just like they were. Their women had lost their babies; their mothers had lost their sons. Die here or die at home, you are equally alone . . . come to me, come to where you will never be lonely again.

  Jo was shivering. Not from the cool air coming through the small flaps, not from the water that had snaked down her arms and spread out, making dark outlines in the armpits of her faded green shirt. She was shivering all over, her teeth chattering, her hands shaking; she closed her eyes tightly, shutting out the world. She was lost. She had lost everyone in her life. America was losing the war. If she died, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference, not to anyone; everyone who would have cared was gone by now. Then, suddenly, she was outside herself, thinking of herself in the third person, seeing herself again as the noble, tragic heroine pushed beyond all endurance. It was easier to think about it that way, so much easier. It didn’t hurt anymore because she wasn’t a small, lost stranger, just a character in a play who was to be pitied, poor thing. Jo stopped shaking. Breathed deeply. She had made up her mind. She would do it, end her life; she would join him. Gianni smiled and started toward her, with that long, lanky walk of his. Jo’s only fleeting regret was that there would be no one left among the living to mourn her. She turned to face her brother.

  “Miss.” This time, it was more a yelp than anything else. Jo whirled around angrily, a curse on her lips at this final interruption.

  “Good God in heaven,” she said instead.

  What she saw would have been comical anywhere else at any other time. Jonesy had unhooked his leg from the wire above his bed and was half out of his cot and half into his neighbor’s. There he was fending off the accursed Scotsman, who had decided, in his delirium, to teach the asthmatic a lesson. He was bringing his bedpan down again and again on the helpless man, who was wheezing audibly, hands upraised against the Scot’s fury, silent and relentless. The major in the next bed watched them with glazed eyes, threw up, and rolled over, disinterested. One of the postsurgery patients was staring straight up at the tent ceiling, moving his lips silently in prayer or hallucination; the other, head and eyes bandaged, had tried getting out of bed and fallen over the surgery kits still stacked on the tent floor. Grandpa was nowhere in sight.