Over there, p.8
Over There, page 8
Ruth looked into Helene’s big green eyes, which were focused intently on her and flooded with lust. Her body answered for her. “Yes. I trust you.”
Helene nodded, pleased. Without a word, she slid her long body down Ruth’s and came to rest between her legs. There was no doubt of Ruth’s arousal now. Dipping her head, Helene had the first taste of Ruth, earning a gasp of pleasure, which was to be the first of many. Helene’s experience, both in skill and in reading the signs of a woman’s body, was Ruth’s boon. Ruth could not take her eyes off of Helene and watched as the other woman brought her to heights of ecstasy that she had never known were possible. When Helene looked up at Ruth while pleasing her, Ruth felt a swell of arousal, contentment, and physical pleasure that threatened to overwhelm her. She found herself clutching Helene’s hair, pushing her deeper all while thrusting her hips upward.
Helene was tireless in her efforts and upon feeling Ruth grab her hair in the throes of passion, moaned with her own sexual desire. She was thrilled to have unlocked such animalism in Ruth so soon and felt the familiar sense of proud sexual prowess as she made Ruth climax. Reaching between her own legs to satisfy her urgent need, she felt not an ounce of dissatisfaction. She was willing to wait for the time when Ruth would make love to her. She was willing to wait because she knew that the wait would be worth it.
****
The women’s barracks held a small common area for socializing. It wasn’t much. A well-used wicker table and chair set, a phonograph and a stack of albums, and a few mismatched extra chairs made up the recreational stores. But it wasn’t the fixtures that made the room the center of the nurses’ downtime—it was the opportunity to congregate for brief periods of time without the sometimes domineering male surgeons around, the freedom to laugh with their fellow women and the illusion, however brief, that they were not in the middle of a war. As a result, the room was in use nearly round-the-clock, accommodating the nurses who worked each shift, and all were welcome.
Ruth sat at the table with five other off-duty nurses. Three of the women were military nurses and wore their off-duty uniforms, while Ruth and the others relaxed in civilian clothes. The nurses reveled in the chance to wear apparel from home and the casual sweaters and slacks allowed them to escape their reality, even if only for a short time.
The last of the women retired for the night, leaving Ruth with just the lingering cigarette smoke and echoes of their laughter. She knew she should leave and head to bed as well. Morning would come all too soon. But something about the quiet of the small common room held her. She idly flipped through an outdated Time magazine, one of several that littered the table. Re-reading the magazine didn’t hold her interest and she soon pushed it across the table. She stretched her arms over her head.
Six months ago, Ruth had been across the Atlantic, cloistered in her small town and its small minds, with her heart broken by her first love. Now, she felt that she had lived several lifetimes and had seen more than she had ever dreamed was possible. An ocean, another country, people from all over the world, wartime atrocities, death too many times over, it was almost too much to fathom. She had grown up. Thinking back to her life in Evansville, those days frolicking on the beach, no wonder the “elders” had chastised her. She had been a child in a woman’s body. Even her love affair with Lillian had been immature in many ways. Reflecting on their time together, Ruth realized they had simply been experimenting with love, playing “house.”
Thoughts of Lillian and her first lovemaking experiences with a woman naturally brought Ruth’s mind to the present and to Helene. Ah, Helene. With Helene, Ruth certainly did not feel like a child. It had been four weeks since their first experience together and in that time, they had stolen numerous other opportunities to make love. When Helene and Ruth were together, Ruth knew what it meant to be a woman who loved women and she thanked God for it. Not for the first time, Ruth wondered if she ever would have learned the things that Helene had shown her if not for the war. Also not for the first time, Ruth felt a gnawing guilt for the flash for gratitude toward the war that had brought her this new life, this new freedom, and of course, Helene. There was so much to ponder and so much of it was so troublesome. Sometimes, it was better not to ponder at all.
Chapter Twelve
“Who’s the new girl?” Ruth asked as she watched Betty talk to a woman who was dragging a footlocker behind her.
“That’s Tess Davies. English girl. Probably a cold fish; they all are,” Midgie said with a dismissive nod. Midgie, besides being a smart and funny woman, always seemed to know the latest gossip.
“What do you mean?”
“You are an innocent, aren’t you, hon?” Midgie said with a laugh. “I just mean that English girls can be a little stand-offish.”
Ruth looked again at Tess. She was about Ruth’s height, which was to say, not very tall. Her eyes were a deep brown and her hair, cut short, was also a dark brown. With high cheekbones and a purposeful posture, she made quite an impression. The woman must have felt the stare because she looked up and met Ruth’s eyes. With a perfunctory nod, she acknowledged Ruth and then returned to her orientation briefing.
The sight of another new arrival brought Ruth back to her first day. Had it only been two months ago? So much had happened since then. She had always wanted to return the favor that Midgie had done, helping her settle in, to another new nurse but this nurse didn’t seem to need any help at all. She was nodding to Betty as Betty apparently finished her briefing and left the room.
Ruth watched Tess’s progress with interest. She was pulling the trunk behind her, looking from side to side at the room. There were two beds open, one close to Ruth’s bunk and the other at the opposite end. Not sure why, Ruth hoped that the new nurse would choose the bunk nearby. What would the new girl think of the sounds that Helene and I make? Ruth wondered as a naughty tingle made its way through her body. Some of the other nurses had teased the two of them when their nighttime exploits got a little loud, despite their attempt to make a privacy screen with clotheslines and blankets. Other nurses obviously disapproved but simply moved to bunks further away.
Ruth wondered if Midgie was right. Was she a cold fish?
****
“Boy, they can powder anything, can’t they?” Midgie asked, her fork limp over another desultory meal in the mess hall. “Powdered eggs, powdered milk, you name it.”
“Don’t be a complainer, Midgie,” Shorty teased. “There’s canned fruit at least. Look at these beautiful peaches.” She speared a peach on a fork and held it in the air for emphasis.
Ruth laughed with the rest of them. Despite the setting, she loved being with the other women. The camaraderie they shared was like a comfortable blanket to settle around your shoulders. “If you could have any meal, what would it be?” she asked. The women often played the game, although it served more to tantalize them than anything. Even so, it was a fun way to pass time.
“A big, juicy steak,” Ruby said right away. She was a Texas girl and lived on a cattle farm back home.
“Mmm, yes! With some fresh tomatoes from the garden, still warm from the sun.”
Others joined in eagerly, creating an imaginary meal that they would never eat.
“Corn on the cob, too. With lots of butter and salt.”
“My mother’s fresh biscuits. Nothing like the little hard bricks they serve us.”
“What about you, Tess?” Ruby asked, trying to include the silent English woman into the conversation. “What would you pick?”
Tess looked up from her coffee. “I don’t imagine that pretending I can have food that I certainly cannot have does anything but remind me that I cannot have it. I don’t want to play, thank you.”
Ruby frowned. The women fell silent, awkward after Tess’s comment. Ruth decided to continue on and ignore the statement rather than make a fuss. “And dessert, don’t forget dessert. How about a big chocolate cake, lots of frosting?”
The women groaned. Sweets were in short supply and universally craved.
Ruth completed the “meal.” “Topped with ice cream, delicious ice cream.”
Some of the women clapped at the thought. Ice cream hadn’t been seen for a very long time. With it brought images of carefree summer days, perhaps holding hands during a walk with a beau. Tess’s grumpy opinion had been forgotten.
Ruth stole a glance at Tess, who was focused on her coffee and seemed not to care that she was making herself more and more of an outsider. She wondered what went on in her head and imagined her eating a more civilized breakfast. Probably tea served in fine china and crumpets with jam. She was certainly an enigma.
The powdered breakfast continued on.
****
After breakfast, Ruth headed to the hospital areas. Her confidence in her skills had grown. She could make a difference. She did know what she was doing. She would help. After all, wasn’t that why she was here?
Triage was worse than the OR. With triage, one never knew what one would find on that gurney. It could be a simple flesh wound or a gruesome head injury. You never wanted to show any shock or revulsion when you first encountered a patient. While many were unconscious, many were not. Ruth knew that the comfort of a woman’s voice and a gentle hand on the chest during the initial examination could make the unthinkable a little easier to bear. At least that’s what she told herself. Given the looks of appreciation she often got, thankful eyes of young men with shattered bodies, she thought she was probably right.
The day’s latest wounded, however, would need more than gentle touches and kind words. Whatever battle they had come from had been especially fierce. There were dozens of men on litters, taking up every available spot in the hallways of the hospital and more kept flowing in, making keeping up impossible. Even the more experienced nurses wore grim faces of worry and stress as they moved from man to man, trying to determine which men needed treatment first.
Ruth knelt beside a soldier who was groaning and holding his stomach, which leaked blood despite the field bandages that had been applied. She noticed a mark on his forehead. It looked like the letter “M” had been written on him. Confused, she looked at the patient on the opposite side of the hall. He too had a letter written on his forehead but this time it was the letter “T.”
“Helene,” Ruth said as the Frenchwoman hurried through, her arms full of medical supplies.
“Yes?” Helene’s voice was all business but her eyes were kind. They always were for Ruth.
“These letters. An M on this one and a T on the other. What does it mean? Have they been assigned to certain doctors?”
Helene smiled. “No, cherie. M means the patient needs morphine. T means tetanus. The medics in the field have no time for charts so they make do.” Helene continued walking quickly toward the other end of the hall with her supplies but turned over her shoulder as she did so. “You’re learning, cherie, don’t worry!”
Ruth nodded, filing away the tidbit with the seeming endless amount of new information she gathered each day. She worked with the first man, administering morphine, which was immediately effective and brought her a smile of immense gratitude from the recipient. The young soldier had a gap between his teeth that made him seem impossibly young. But then, Ruth thought, she probably seemed just as young to her patients.
She moved to the next gurney, empowered by her work. She knelt beside the man, a dark-haired fellow with his eyes closed. “Soldier, I’m Nurse Carroway,” she said softly, feeling a burst of pride. She was making a difference, one patient at a time. She felt for the man’s vitals and frowned. Nothing. Maybe she was feeling in the wrong place. She tried again and felt nothing. A sweat formed in an instant on Ruth’s brow. She looked again at the man’s face and noticed that his mouth was slightly open, as were his eyes. Peeling at one of the eyes, she saw the lifeless, brown eyes, fixed in place. The man was dead.
Ruth leaned back on her heels and stared at the newly deceased. Had he ever had a chance? Did her exchange with Helene cost the few seconds that might have saved his life? Ruth knew it was unlikely but still, the unpleasant feeling persisted. The poor boy. He had a family somewhere that didn’t know he was dead. In fact, at that exact moment in time, Ruth realized, she was the only person in the world who knew that this man, this PFC David Williams per his dogtags, was not coming home, not ever.
The loud cry from a nearby soldier shook Ruth from her reverie. She was needed. She couldn’t help PFC Williams, but perhaps could help the others. Saying a silent prayer and pulling a sheet over the still-warm man, Ruth moved on.
Chapter Thirteen
Nights were the hardest. The bunkroom was always cold and invariably one or the other of the nurses would be coming from or going to a nighttime shift. The beds were not plush but simply served the utilitarian purpose of a place to lay your head. There was no sense of real privacy and no place to call your own beyond the tiny twin bed and the footlocker at its end. And always, always there was the tension of being ready for the alert signal that all nurses were needed to tend to a new batch of shredded young men after a particularly brutal battle.
Ruth lay in her bed and considered how different her world here in England was from Evansville. If she closed her eyes, she might pretend she was in her own comfortable bedroom, with her childhood things surrounding her, her family down the hall, her entire world within the square mileage of the city. In Evansville, the only dangers were the occasional gossip and perhaps an auto accident. Not like here, where things were truly life or death each day.
Thinking of Helene and of the freedom she had to be with her, Ruth knew, though, that Evansville had its own kind of danger and that danger had been smothering Ruth. The inability to be herself, to explore the sexuality that was in fact so central to who she was becoming and was meant to be—was that not a danger that threatened Ruth as much as the bombs of London?
The sound of soft crying interrupted Ruth’s thoughts. One of the nurses crying at night was not unusual, not at all. The things that the women saw daily were enough to bring any of them to tears, even after being hardened by war. And of course, there was the loneliness, the separation from boyfriends, fiancés, and families. Along with that, the inevitable string of notifications of loved ones lost to the war, as had been the case in the Great War and every war prior to that. No, there was no shortage of reasons for the women to weep into their pillows before drifting off into exhausted sleep in the bunkroom. It wasn’t the fact that someone was crying that grabbed Ruth’s attention—it was the fact that it was Tess.
The “cold fish” Tess, who the other nurses thought to be hard and unreachable, was softly weeping in the bunk next to Ruth. Ruth could make out Tess’s form, with her back turned towards her. Eyes wide open and fully awake, Ruth stared in the darkness at the beautiful, if enigmatic, woman who had been slowly drawing her in. Every piece of her wanted to cross the few feet between their bunks and crawl into the bed with Tess. Ruth could imagined herself fitting her body behind the other woman’s and wrapping her arms around her, holding her close and taking her pain from her, even if for just a moment. A wave of emotion and tenderness swept through Ruth with such power that it nearly lifted Ruth from her bed to put her imaginings into action.
But Ruth stayed in her own bunk. The distance between the two women might well have been the ocean that divided their home countries. Her instincts told her not to push, not yet. Instead, Ruth took the lumpy pillow from beneath her head and held it in her arms, her Tess for now.
****
The next morning, Ruth awoke to see Tess efficiently making her bed, having already dressed in her nurse’s uniform. Her eyes were dry and her face impassive. She gave no clue that she had been the vulnerable woman of the night, alone and crying. Now, she was the Tess that all of the others knew—the no-nonsense, “typical” English hard case. Ruth felt a tingle of excitement…and something more, because she now had a glimpse of a different side of Tess. If only she could find out the rest.
****
“Man on the floor!” a nurse yelled.
The nurses glanced to the door of their bunkroom, more curious than alarmed. They saw not a man but Gabriel in the doorway, his eyes wide and a sweet grin spread across his face. He was eight years old, an English boy orphaned in one instant by the cursed war, his parents obliterated in a bombing raid. Their only son had been out of the house, spared a violent death only to be left parentless. All of the nurses knew Gabriel; he was a sweet boy who eked out an existence by begging for food from the most reliable source—the good-hearted nurses of the hospital. He was a bright spot in an often dreadful existence. Ruth especially had taken an interest in the boy.
Ruby, a bosomy woman from deep Texas, carried on the tease. “Oh no, it’s a man in here with all of these ladies!”
Several of the women played along, emitting faux cries of alarm. Gabriel’s smile threatened to wrap around his head.
“It’s not a man! It’s me!” he said with a laugh.
The nurses swarmed the young boy, showering him with hugs. Their hearts broke for his plight, a boy orphaned suddenly in the most horrific manner possible (right in front of his own eyes some said in hushed tones). But they always welcomed his presence in the bunkroom. When Gabriel was around, it was easy to pretend there wasn’t a war going on outside, that perhaps the sweet, polite boy was a young brother or cousin at a family gathering where the biggest concern was whether the lemonade stayed cold and there was enough potato salad. Everyone engaged in these fictions; it was necessary to keep one’s sanity and good spirits.
