I set my bag at the base of the stairs, checked the tidy entryway table for mail, smiling when I saw my aunt’s handwriting on one of the envelopes, and headed for the kitchen, tucking the letter in my pocket, my stomach grumbling as the smell of someone’s dinner wafted throughout the house.
“Kate!”
I smiled wearily at Luella, who was standing at the stove, one hand on her hip, a wooden spoon in the other, stirring something in a pot.
“The mess hall was gonna throw out a huge box of tomatoes,” she said. “There were still plenty of good ones in it so I took ’em. I’m making spaghetti. You want some?”
“You have enough?”
“I think I’ve made enough to feed the entire base,” she said with a laugh.
“Well then, I’d love some. I’m starving.”
The smell was delicious and brought several of the other women in from wherever they’d been enjoying the evening.
With so many of us eating, we gathered in the grand dining room, giggling as we sat around the massive table, more than half of the women in pajamas, the rest of us still in uniform, or at least parts of it. Hazel had removed her shirt and was wearing just a camisole. I’d peeled off my button-down and was in a T-shirt, sitting with one leg folded beneath me, something that would’ve earned me a stern look from my mother could she see.
I ate while listening to the others talk, sharing details from their day and telling of their plans for their next day off. Summer was ending and everyone was trying to take advantage of the nice weather while they could.
“I am not looking forward to the rain,” someone at the far end of the table said.
Not that we hadn’t had a few rainy days in the two months since I’d arrived, but from what we’d been told, fall and winter could be quite miserable. Gray, windy, wet, and seemingly never-ending.
“And how’s our newly engaged member doing?” I heard someone ask and didn’t realize they meant me until Hazel nudged me with her foot under the table.
“Oh!” I said, my thumb rubbing against the band around my ring finger. There was a smattering of laughter. “I’m...okay?”
“Any word since he’s been gone?” Beatrice asked, twirling a strand of strawberry blond hair around her finger.
Beatrice, I’d learned, was always twirling her hair. A nervous habit, she’d told me one evening while we drank beers with the small group we’d become part of by accident.
The group had formed one night after William and I had hurried into a pub to escape the rain and found Beatrice and Shirley, another nurse from the mansion, already bellied up to the bar. I’d introduced William to the two women just as the door opened and two soldiers from the base came in. When someone suggested we pull two tables together, the rest of us agreed it was a good idea, and the group was born.
There were others who had joined us on occasion. Hazel, Luella, Theodore, and a surgeon named John, who once nearly fell asleep in his meal. But usually it was just the six of us meeting up whenever we were all on base at the same time and not too tired.
I smiled at Beatrice now.
“He left a letter for me at the airfield,” I told her. “Had one of the guys give it to me the day after he left. There was another the second day. And the third. But none today.”
“It’s sweet that he thought to do that,” Edith said. “My fiancé remembers to write so infrequently, I’ve started to tell myself he’s dead. That way if a letter never comes, I’ve prepared myself. And when one does, it’s a wonderful surprise.”
“Edith,” Hazel said. “That’s awful.”
“Maybe,” Edith said. “But it’s easier than panicking every day, like I was doing.”
There were several nods around the room as everyone understood the plight of a woman whose man had gone off to war.
The talk turned to other things then. Someone hadn’t followed the chore schedule and the trash in the kitchen hadn’t been emptied. Someone else had tracked mud on the main staircase.
“And there are beer bottles and cigarette butts outside the back door off the kitchen,” Marlene, the head nurse said, her golden blond hair pulled back in its usual unyielding bun. “We have to keep the house clean, ladies. They could do an inspection at any time.”
“I mean, what are they gonna do to us?” Betty was from Alabama and as usual, her easy-sounding drawl made at least one of the women around the table giggle. She had a way of saying things that made even the most important information sound un-rushed and not important.
“Can you imagine her in an emergency situation in the air?” Hazel had said to me once, making me purse my lips so as not to burst out laughing. “She talks slow as molasses. By the time she asks her tech for help, the patient will be dead.”
I didn’t mention that Hazel spoke so fast it was sometimes hard to understand what she’d said. Which could also result in a dangerous outcome. So far, thankfully, neither woman seemed to have any trouble with their patients. And neither of them would be here if the instructors at Bowman hadn’t found them fully capable.
Marlene gave a small huff in response to Betty’s question and pasted a smile on her face.
