A Promise Kept - Segment #2
May 8, 1945 VE Day
The nurse on duty ran to the front of the tent when the medics brought in a soldier in critical condition. Blood from a shredded shoulder and a shrapnel-laced, mangled leg oozed life. The stench of open wounds emanated from his body; death hovered nearby ready to take his soul. She had seen men with less severe injuries not make it. From first glance she wasn’t at all sure that this one would either. He moaned as the doctor and medics lifted and moved him onto a narrow hospital bed. The doctor began checking his injuries while the nurse started cutting off his bloodstained uniform. The young man groaned, agony filling his voice, as he faded in and out of consciousness until the doctor instructed the nurse to give him a shot of morphine to relieve his suffering. They worked long into the night to clean the carnage, remove the embedded shrapnel and sew up his wounds. As the next day dawned they started him on penicillin treatment, gave him another shot of morphine and wrapped him in warm blankets. The rest they left up to God. The exhausted nurse settled into a chair at his bedside to keep watch.
Over the next few days the soldier woke for fleeting moments to see the young nurse at his bedside. She gave him sips of water, shots of morphine and penicillin, wiped his brow with a cool cloth and tucked in his covers as he fell back into a stupor punctuated by brief nightmares of bombs exploding around him.
A few days later the doctor tapered off the morphine and Jack Marino began to awaken, wincing at the sharp stabs of pain. The war could not have ended soon enough, Jack thought as he lay on the military hospital bed. Another few days, heck, another few hours and he would have been dead from his shrapnel injuries. At least that’s what the nurse had told him, a young woman with flames of sunny red hair, curls tucked under, a few stubborn ones escaping her nurse’s hat.
“Are you the one who’s been taking care of me?” he asked her in a raw voice that hadn’t spoken for days. She nodded. “Don’t you ever sleep? Or eat?”
“Of course I do,” she answered, moving his blankets to expose his leg.
“Naw, you’ve been right here every time I woke up,” the soldier protested. “You haven’t left my side since the medics brought me in here.”
“A lot of people have been taking care of you. You probably remember waking up only when I was here,” she said, keeping her voice as flat and emotionless as possible. She maintained a cool demeanor with the patients. She knew it was necessary in order not to get too attached to them; sometimes they couldn’t save the young men despite their best efforts.
Jack attempted a small grin, small because any muscle movement made him hurt. “I think you’re sweet on me. That’s why you haven’t left my side,” he joked.
The nurse’s cheeks flushed a light shade of pink. The soldier was almost right. The nurse was drawn to him from the moment the medics brought him into the tent and for some reason she couldn’t explain, more so than other patients. The irony of his arrival struck her right away. On the very day that the war of all wars ended, hours before the final shots rang through the air, gunfire and a bomb nearly killed the soldier. A few more hours and he would have walked off the field, whooping it up with his friends and looking forward to returning home. Seeing his mangled body during those last moments of the war made her heart lurch. He was so close. She had the time to make him her priority because most of her other patients had left. Though she didn’t admit it to the solider, she hadn’t left his side except to get food and take an occasional cold shower. She slept in short fits in the chair at his bedside.
“When can I go home?”
Annabelle Pearl gave Jack an injection of penicillin, and then gingerly began removing the dressing around his leg, trying not to pull off the new skin beginning to grow. “It’s not for me to say,” she responded without looking up, her attention focused on his wound. She blew at a wayward ringlet of hair that kept creeping out from under her nurse’s cap. “I suppose the doctor will give you an all-clear when the danger of infection passes. Right now, you’re still in pretty bad shape.” She dabbed at the wound, cleaned off dried blood, and applied a salve.
Jack let out a long sigh. “I suppose I should be grateful I’m alive.” He studied her wrapping new gauze around his leg. When she pressed it on the open wound, he winced, and an involuntary spasm shuddered through his body.
She stopped and looked at him. “Are you okay? I do need to secure the gauze.” He nodded, and bit his wide lower lip.
“You know, you’re lucky to even feel this,” Annabelle admonished him, never taking her eyes off of his leg. “Many boys have gone home in boxes and others are returning without arms and legs. You’ll get out of here in one piece, with wounds, of course. And scars. You’ll heal though and live a normal life.” She finished dressing the wound and moved up to his torso to begin removing the bandage covering his shoulder and chest.
Jack reached up and placed a large hand over hers. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“For what?”
“Taking good care of me.”
“I’m doing my job; I would do the same for anyone in this tent.”
Jack narrowed his eyes. “I think you’re doing a little bit more. A lot in fact. If I survive this, honey, it will be because of you. You’re one hell of a nurse.”
A slight smile crept across Annabelle’s narrow lips as she removed the dressing with slow, careful movements, one inch of the bandage at a time.
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