“That definitely wouldn’t survive,” I said and we moved on.
My cast came off a week later, a removable splint put on in its place. The pain was bearable, but then I had to begin the task of strengthening my leg once more, my aunt hiring someone to come in daily to work with me and my calf, which had diminished in size, the muscle weak and inflexible.
“Not to worry,” my therapist Alexander said when he took in my pale, skinny lower leg. “We’ll have it back in shape in no time.”
It didn’t take as long as I’d feared, my determination to get back on a plane and to the soldiers in need driving me to work harder and longer, pushing myself to my limits until Alexander had to stop me every day, for fear I’d injure myself again.
“What’s the rush?” he asked at our seventh appointment as I blew past the number of repetitions he’d set for me.
“I have to get back to work.”
He gave me a placating grin and patted the knee of my good leg as if I were merely missing shifts as a shopgirl. “I’m sure whatever job you were doing can spare you a little longer.”
“I’m a flight nurse,” I said. “For the military.”
His smile faltered, his hand sliding from my knee.
“You were overseas?” he said, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized.”
“Obviously.”
He sat back, considering me.
“That’s pretty dangerous work for a girl.”
“It’s dangerous work for anyone.”
“Right. Of course. Well...” His eyes narrowed, taking me in as if really seeing me now, and my injured leg. “I can work you harder. But you have to promise to listen to me. If you don’t, you could set yourself back, understood?”
“Understood.”
And so we worked harder.
In between appointments, I finally gave in to requests from friends and neighbors who had called asking to see me, and sending flowers and gifts when I said no. I was in too much pain, I’d had my aunt tell them, not wanting to admit that I just didn’t have it in me to act interested in their simple lives of keeping house and attending luncheons, even when they were in support of the war effort.
“You’re sure?” Aunt Victoria asked, still dressed in her uniform for volunteering at the hospital. “I can keep them all at bay longer.”
“I should see Janie and Claire at the very least,” I said.
Janie and Claire had been my best friends in high school when no one else wanted to get to know the strange girl who’d arrived midyear of eleventh grade and barely said a word for fear someone would hear something not American in her pronunciations, despite practicing for months before entering the private school her aunt had registered her in.
Both were married now, Janie a mother of one, Claire biding her time.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to raise a child yet when I still throw tantrums myself,” she’d said once while watching Janie bounce her crying infant in her arms.
Of course, now with her husband in the war, she was worried she might not get the chance to have a child with the man she loved. It was something she had spoken of often in the letters she’d sent me.
“It will be my biggest regret,” she’d said. “To never see my husband reflected back in our child’s face.”
I’d tried to reassure her, but when you’d seen so much death, it was hard to be positive. Thinking of that now, I was anxious to see both women and felt terrible for having put them off.
“Shall I ring them and set up a lunch here?” Aunt Victoria asked.
“Yes, please,” I said. “For as soon as it’s convenient for them.”
The following day, the three of us cried when we saw one another, the two of them hurrying across the sitting room, shedding purses as they went, to hug me.
“You’re very thin,” Janie said with a hint of envy, looking me over from where she sat in one of two matching armchairs after we had settled in for the afternoon.
