She made introductions and I smiled and nodded, taking a seat and surveying the situation. Clearly, she hadn’t made her choice as to which man she wanted to spend her evening flirting with yet, so I politely engaged in conversation with both men and tried to keep my eyes from glazing over as they boasted about being in battle and how many kills they’d made.
After a few hours of idle chitchat, warm beers, and lackluster flirting, Char finally called it a night, her interest in both men waning as they got drunker and stupider and we, in response, sobered and became less tolerant.
“That was...fun,” Char said as we walked back to our barracks after catching a ride with a couple of friends from base who had shown up halfway through the evening.
I made a noncommittal noise, words for how the night had gone failing me.
“I know. It was awful.” She laughed, linking her arm through mine. “Thanks for coming with me though.” I rested my head on her shoulder. As much as I dreaded these nights out, I knew she needed them. For survival.
“It keeps me hopeful,” she’d told me one night when we’d walked home after she’d had a particularly flirtatious evening. “The thought of finding love. Or even just companionship while I’m here.”
I’d nodded, understanding, but not feeling the same. For me, the thought of finding love out here would only complicate things. Would give me more to worry about. I didn’t want or need the distraction a man would provide. Not that the idea of having someone hold me after a particularly harrowing day in the air didn’t sound appealing. But knowing I could lose them within moments of saying goodbye wasn’t something I was willing to risk. I needed to keep my wits about me so that I could not only keep my patients alive, but myself as well.
Morning brought rare June storm clouds and wind, the flapping of the canvas door, whipped free of its ties, slapping against the bunk frame nearest it and kicking up the ever-present sand and dust on the floor.
Char made a sound from her bunk beside me and I looked over to see her bury her head under her pillow.
“Someone shut the damn door!” Paulette yelled from where she was huddled beneath her blankets.
“I’m trying!” someone else yelled back as several other women shrieked at both the noise and the wind causing the sides and roof to billow and snap, the netting around our beds working its way loose.
“What is all the fuss?” Tilly said from below me. “It’s just a little wind.”
But it wasn’t. This was the kind of tropical storm I’d been warned about when still stateside.
“I thought this shit only happened in the winter months!” Char shouted over the noise.
“Welcome to the Pacific,” someone said. “If the malaria doesn’t get you, the surprise storms will.”
Less than an hour later, every one of us was dressed and damp, securing what we could as rain pummeled down outside, the noise thunderous against the canvas and whipping inside in small, violent bursts through the flimsy door.
“Shit,” someone yelled as a small family of rats scurried down the center of the barracks, followed by a stream of water trickling in from a small tear in the roof. “If you have anything on the floor, throw it on your bed!”
But even that wasn’t going to be enough to save most of our belongings.
“Get to cover!” a man shouted from outside. A moment later the door flew open, a gust of wind, rain, and palm fronds flying inside as several soldiers gestured for us to get out. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”
“Char! Leave it!” I yelled, seeing my friend trying to shove some of her precious dresses into a knapsack as a large cracking sound filled the air. “Go! Go! Go!” I said, shoving her toward the front of the tent at the same moment a tree fell through the roof onto hers and my beds.
“Shit!” she screamed as we ran outside with everyone else, shielding our heads and faces as sand pelted our skin. Trees bowed low, branches cracking and falling, and supplies of all kinds tumbled across the base. Beyond us, the narrow river that usually ambled calmly, bucked and thrashed, its waters rising.
“Where are we going?” Paulette yelled, her voice nearly swallowed by the rain.
But nobody answered. Nobody knew. We just kept our eyes on the ground and followed the feet in front of us.
“In here!”
I didn’t look to see who said it or where “here” was, I just went, hurrying inside a building with actual walls and gathering with my roommates and several dozen soldiers at the center of what turned out to be the mess hall.
The tables and chairs had been pushed to the perimeter of the room, and the men moved when they saw us, making room in the middle and then shifting so they surrounded us, providing cover should the storm find its way past these walls too.
Someone tapped my arm and I turned to see a familiar face as we sat on the floor.
“Hi, Joe,” I said.
“Hiya, Kate. Fancy meeting you here.”
Joe Dunning was one of the first people I’d met when I landed on the island. He was also one of the happiest people I’d ever known, despite having what my uncle called a “hound dog face” and being in the middle of a war. When he wasn’t being sent off to fight on the front lines, he could often be found with his back to a tree and a book in his hands.
