With Love, Wherever You Are Read online

  I’ll bet Daddy expected MacArthur to rescue us, and I admit we did too. But “Dugout Doug” left a month ago. Guess he figured that captain-going-down-with-his-ship scenario doesn’t play well in the jungle.

  April has been the worst. I haven’t seen Boots for weeks. And now they’re saying he must have been with the 75,000 Filipino and American soldiers captured at Mariveles on April 9. The Japs haven’t got a prison large enough here, so they’re making the soldiers march the length of the Bataan peninsula to prison camps. A boy who escaped by playing dead is full of stories about Japanese soldiers making ours march day and night without sleep or food or water. He said prisoners who collapsed were run over by jeeps. He claims he saw stabbings, beheadings, throats cut, soldiers shot as a game.

  I think he’s making it up. I pray he is. My Boots is tough. He’ll be okay.

  I’m glad you’re praying. I’ve been ordered, along with eight other nurses, to stand ready for evacuation. After dark, a PT boat is supposed to take us out into the ocean. It’s eerily quiet today, a Japanese holiday. We’re to catch a PBY aircraft, even though we know the last PBY out caught the reefs, and the nurses barely made it back to land, where they were captured by Japanese forces and put in prisons.

  That’s not what worries me. That’s not why I don’t want to go. My husband is officially listed as missing in action. But I know better. Boots is still here.

  Wish you were here. Not really. Stay in med school.

  Love,

  Dot

  EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

  MARCH 1944

  Helen Eberhart juggled the stack of patient files as she quick-stepped to keep up with the small group of interns. Like them, she strained to hear Dr. Knight’s muttered instructions for the new mothers on her floor. Interns might be tested on what the doctor was telling them, but as head nurse on four, the only tests Helen had to pass were real-life.

  They were clustered inside Mrs. Vande’s private hospital room, a suite so large they could have held conventions in it without disturbing the patient. Helen wondered how rich you had to be to get a swell room like this.

  “Take Mrs. Lehman in 423 off IVs. And show Mrs. Friedman how to take the iron with her vitamins. I’m planning to send her home tomorrow, if she has no objections.” At six foot three and 220 pounds, the silver-haired Dr. Knight, chief of ob-gyn, made an impressive figure. But he mumbled.

  Helen edged in closer so she wouldn’t miss any instructions. She scribbled notes on the chart, knowing she’d be the one to remove the intravenous. She’d be the one to give flighty Friedman her lesson in vitamins and iron and to prepare her for going home and taking care of her baby. More likely, watching a live-in servant take care of her baby.

  “Nurse, get me a glass of water!” Mrs. Vande commanded from her hospital bed. She was surrounded by the extra pillows she’d ordered the morning she’d arrived, three full weeks before she went into labor.

  Helen glanced back at the bedside table, where a pitcher of water stood beside two clean glasses. Couldn’t she see that Helen’s hands were full? “I’ll be right there,” Helen said, her voice sounding a hundred times sweeter than she felt. “Give me just a minute.”

  “No.” Mrs. Vande made no attempt to match Helen’s sweet tone. “I want it now.”

  Helen should have been used to women like this one. The only downside to nursing in the wealthy Evanston Hospital were the wealthy, spoiled women who came here. When Helen became rich, she’d never act spoiled. Or maybe just a little. And she would be rich, no matter how hard she had to work to get there.

  “I understand, Mrs. Vande,” she said, her tone not quite as sweet as before. “I’ll get a ward boy in here soon as we step into the hall.”

  “No you will not. You get me a glass of water now!”

  Helen risked a glance at the interns, none of whom lifted a finger to help. They weren’t carrying trays and charts. Would it kill them to get the water? To hold the files for two seconds so she could get it?

  “Do you hear me?” Mrs. Vande shrieked. They could have heard her in Berlin and Tokyo.

  “There, there,” Dr. Knight offered.

  There, there? Helen swallowed the anger that rose like bile in her throat. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Vande. We won’t be five minutes. I promise.”

  Dr. Knight had apparently lost interest in the war of wills and was already mumbling dosages for the next patient. The pack of interns trailed out of the room after him, their lab coats forming the train of his royal robe.

  “Nurse!” Mrs. Vande shouted. “Don’t you dare leave this room! I want that water. And I need to sit on the side of the bed. I haven’t dangled my legs all afternoon.”

  “Soon as I can,” Helen called, ducking out as if the woman’s insults were arrows she could dodge. She was missing Knight’s orders. He wouldn’t repeat them, either.

  One of the ward boys rushed by, pushing a metal tray in front of him.

  “Benny!” Helen called. “Mrs. Vande in 401 wants a glass of water. Please? And I wouldn’t wait if I were you. Tell her I’ll be in later to help her dangle her legs.”

  Helen liked Benny. He reminded her of Eugene, who had joined the Army against everyone’s wishes but his own. “And Ben?” she called, catching him before he entered the lioness’s den. “Try to get out before she throws a fit.” Or the water glass.

  “Nurse Eberhart!” Dr. Knight hollered all the way up the hall.

  She trotted to catch up before they disappeared into the next room.

  Two hours later they finished rounds, caring for twenty-eight new or expectant mothers. Helen had managed to update every chart, recording orders for the floor nurses. Some of the “patients,” like Mrs. Cox in 424, had been in the hospital nearly four weeks, and still, nurses had to help them dangle their legs. Helen’s mother had birthed her children on the kitchen table, “then rose to serve a hot breakfast afterward,” Helen’s brother Walter liked to say.

  Helen got an ice-cold glass of water from the nurses’ station and headed for Mrs. Vande’s room. She’d offer the ice water as a truce, even though she had no doubt that Benny would have taken good care of Mrs. Vande already.

  “Nurse?” Benny caught her before she reached 401. His facial contortions warned her this wasn’t good. “McCafferty wants to see you in her office.”

  “Tell me you’re kidding.” Already she’d be an hour late getting out of here. And a visit to the chief of nursing was never a good thing. So far, Helen’s record as a registered nurse was outstanding, although this wasn’t her first trip to the “principal’s office.” Never for being late or shirking duty. Even her rivals couldn’t fault her work habits or her work. It was just that it was taking a while to master the art of swallowing her words along with her pride. But everybody knew skilled nurses could have their pick of assignments, and Helen intended to see the world in its highest-paying hospitals. She didn’t need bad references.

  Benny shook his head. “I think she said ‘stat’ and ‘immediately’ in the same sentence.”

  Helen sighed, chugged the water herself, and handed him the empty glass. “Boy oh boy. Wish me luck, Benny.”

  She was admitted to the chief’s office, a corner room with two glass walls and a great view of Lake Michigan. Nurse McCafferty was facing the window, studying the skyline, when Helen entered. From the back, McCafferty’s shoulders were a match for most men’s. And when she swung her chair around, her front barely disappointed the notion. Her square-toed shoes clomped the floor with the force of combat boots. “Nurse Eberhart, what’s this I hear about you being rude to one of our patients?”

  Helen knew herself well enough to start counting to ten before she answered. She only made it to two. “Me? That’s just swell! I wasn’t the one being rude.”

  McCafferty lowered her bushy eyebrows, making it look like a woolly worm was creeping across the woman’s nose. “Nurse, watch your tone.”

  That’s all Helen did. Every day, all day, she watched her tone. She bit off wo
rds before they had a chance to break out. She hadn’t let a cross word escape her lips—at least not to her patients—for six months. It had been nine months since she’d been summoned to McCafferty’s office. Helen didn’t trust herself to speak. When on earth was she going to be the one people had to bite their tongues around?

  McCafferty continued, “Mrs. Vande says she had to beg for a glass of water.”

  “I have twenty-eight patients on my ward. Have I ever refused to do anything for a patient out of laziness?”

  McCafferty picked up a pencil and fingered it. “No.”

  “Yet I’m the one getting chewed out?” She struggled to keep her voice down. Helen knew she should stop right there. She didn’t have to justify herself.

  She didn’t have to . . . but she couldn’t help it. “That woman is a pill! She kept demanding her glass of water, even though she could see I had my arms full of charts. I had a doctor and six interns expecting me to record every word of instruction. And—”

  “And, Nurse Eberhart, you had the wife of one of our chief benefactors in need of your assistance.”

  It was a good thing Helen had her nursing degree and knew hearts couldn’t actually pound out of chests, or she would have sworn hers was doing just that. “I sent a ward boy the second I left the room. And I was on my way back to her room—with another glass of water, I might add—when you called me in.”

  “That’s fine then. Go back and apologize, and I think—”

  “Apologize? Me?”

  McCafferty’s tiny bird eyes flashed.

  “You’re not serious,” Helen tried. But of course, she was serious.

  Helen strode purposefully out of the office and took the stairs up to four, muttering gypsy curses with every step. She exploded into the hallway and stormed past the nurses congregating at the nurses’ station. Then she turned on her heels, dashed into the patient kitchen for a tall glass of water, and headed up the hall. She’d handled seven wise-guy brothers and three lazy sisters, dozens of married doctors and keen-to-go interns. What was one spoiled woman, right? Besides, maybe by this time, Mrs. Vande had cooled off and come to her senses.

  Helen halted in front of room 401, shot up a quick prayer for peace, straightened her cap, and whisked into the room, the ol’ Eberhart smile casting light before her.

  “There you are,” Helen chirped. “Thanks for your patience, Mrs. Vande. Did I tell you that’s my favorite dressing gown? Talk about the cat’s pajamas.” The fur-trimmed pink silk nightgown probably cost more than Helen’s entire wardrobe.

  Mrs. Vande didn’t acknowledge the compliment. “My water?”

  “Ah. The water.”

  Helen started to hand her the glass when Mrs. Vande snapped her fingers. The woman couldn’t dangle her own feet off a bed after lying in it for weeks. She couldn’t pour herself a lousy glass of water, but she could snap her fingers?

  Helen kept her smile frozen as she handed over the now-sweating glass. “There you go.”

  “I hope Mrs. McCafferty gave you a good talking-to, Nurse. Your behavior was inexcusable. That’s simply not the way my husband’s hospital treats its most important patients.” She barely sipped the infernal water and held it out for Helen to take.

  “They taught us in nurse’s training that all of our patients are our most important patients,” Helen said sweetly.

  “Don’t be insolent with me, Nurse.” She made a show of leaning up from her pillows. “Well?”

  Helen set down the full glass of water and started pulling out pillows from Mrs. Vande’s back. She had to press her lips together to trap the names that wanted to come flying out: Dumb Dora. Pickle puss.

  Loose lips sink ships, Helen told herself. You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing that wartime poster. Well, this was her ship. Without a word, she tried to pull Mrs. Vande to a sitting position, but Helen weighed 105 with her shoes on, and Mrs. Vande was twice that, with little of it owing to the birth of her daughter. The woman did not budge.

  “Careful, you foolish girl!” Mrs. Vande jerked her arm away, making Helen stumble backward.

  “Let’s try that again,” Helen said, amazed at the softness of her voice. She should get a Purple Heart for this.

  After a few minutes of shuffling, nudging, and cajoling, Helen finally had Mrs. Vande sitting on the side of the bed. “Now, can you move your legs a little?” Helen couldn’t bring herself to use “we” the way most of the nurses did, although the word actually fit with this woman, who never did anything on her own.

  “Of course I can’t move my legs. That’s what you’re here for.”

  Helen wanted to ask who moved her legs for her in the Vande mansion, but there probably was some poor gal whose sole job was to move the woman’s tree-trunk gams. Helen took an ankle in each hand, no easy task. “Here we go.” She lifted one foot a few inches, then the next.

  “Careful!” Mrs. Vande kicked, barely missing Helen’s nose. “You have no idea of the terrible ordeal I’ve been through. You obviously have never given birth.”

  “I’m not married,” Helen said. Not that she hadn’t been asked. Ray Scott had asked her to marry him a dozen times since Valentine’s Day. But she had no intention of getting married for a long, long time. Maybe never. She wasn’t sure she knew any happily married couples. None of the women on this floor got visits from adoring husbands. They were lucky if they got flowers sent by secretaries. Besides, there was too much of the world to see.

  “Like not being married ever stopped a nurse from having a baby,” Mrs. Vande muttered.

  Helen pretended not to hear.

  “Ow!” The woman batted at Helen’s hands, like a child protesting bedtime. “Stop it. That’s enough.” Her thick calves became dead weight, and Helen released the ankles.

  “I’m waiting for your apology, Nurse.” For the first time, Mrs. Vande actually focused on Helen. She had the art of looking down her nose at the same time she stuck it in the air. “Well?”

  Loose lips sink ships. Loose lips sink ships. “I apologize for upsetting you earlier, Mrs. Vande. If I did or said anything you interpreted as rudeness, I’m very sorry.” There. That wasn’t so bad really.

  “Hmmpf.” Mrs. Vande tried to scoot back, without success.

  Helen jumped to the rescue, easing her onto the pillows. “But you must have known that reporting me to the head of nursing was overkill. You saw that my hands were full. I had to write down the doctor’s orders.” She wanted Mrs. Vande to understand, and she knew her voice was reasonable, her words filled with logic and respect. She plumped the last pillow and placed it behind Mrs. Vande’s head. All she wanted was a peaceful end to this conflict. After all, wasn’t peace what they all wanted, especially with the whole world going nuts?

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Mrs. Vande began. “This hospital should pay me for educating you nurses in the common decencies of the civilized world.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ah, there you are.” Mrs. Vande stared past Helen.

  Nurse McCafferty entered the room and beamed at the patient. “Is everything all right? Satisfactory?”

  Helen waited for Mrs. Vande to answer. She wasn’t worried. She’d done exactly what her boss had demanded, and more.

  “No. Everything is not satisfactory.”

  “What?” Helen felt betrayed. She’d given everything to this woman—water, pillows, apologies—and what did she get?

  McCafferty turned to Helen. “Nurse Eberhart, didn’t you apologize for your behavior earlier?”

  “Yes! I apologized!”

  “See? See what I mean?” Mrs. Vande demanded, sounding—for the first time—satisfied. “Now you’ve seen it for yourself. Her attitude is despicable. I simply will not tolerate it.”

  Helen studied her boss and thought she caught the hint of a struggle in her eyes. Margery McCafferty was no dupe. She had to know the score. For a brief instant, Helen watched her boss battle with herself . . .

  And lose. “Nurse Eberhart, i
t appears you need to apologize again, perhaps with a better attitude?”

  “Exactly! She needs to know her place.” Triumphant, Mrs. Vande lifted her chin at Helen. “Well?”

  My place? My place! Because I come from podunk Cissna Park, Illinois? Because my entire wardrobe cost less than your nightgown? Because you spend more on cigarettes in a day than I make in a week?

  A calm, or maybe it was a kind of peace, swept through Helen like a Lake Michigan breeze. Helen Marie Eberhart knew her place, all right. And it wasn’t here.

  “I quit.”

  EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

  It felt grand strolling out into the brisk chill of early March. Helen’s only regret was that she didn’t have a photograph of Mrs. Vande’s face when Helen made her dramatic exit. One day Helen Eberhart would have that fur coat and walk right up to Mrs. Vande—preferably when the woman’s hands were full—and ask for a glass of champagne. Life was too short to play nursemaid to spoiled rich women. There was a world out there to be seen and experienced. She stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and twirled on the sidewalk.

  “Whoo-hoo!”

  The wolf whistle didn’t faze Helen. She was used to them and usually paid no attention. She had to cross some rough neighborhoods to get to the nurses’ dorm, but there was nothing to be afraid of as long as she was wearing her uniform. She still had her cap on, and she hadn’t buttoned her coat, so they’d see she was a nurse. Nobody ever threatened a nurse.

  “Hey, babe! I’m talking to you!”

  Surprised, Helen turned to see two men who were definitely not together. A withered character straight out of a Dickens novel sprawled on the steps of a dilapidated warehouse. His black hair fell in greasy strands over deep eye sockets with no more than black dots to fill them. He clutched a brown bag, and she could see the dark-green neck of the wine bottle. Next to the old man stood a young sailor, his white uniform starched to the nines. He looked keen when he flashed his smile. She wondered how long it would take him to dress down the old man for disrespecting a nurse.