Page 101 of The Girls of Pearl Harbor
‘Oh my God, these men ...’ Grace’s voice trailed off as she leaped into action, still feeling the urge to run and hide whenever she was faced with blood and gore, the smell alone making her stomach heave. But these soldiers needed her, and that was all that mattered.
‘How long have they been like this?’ Grace asked.
The two men closest to her were both wrapped in dirty blankets, their faces and bodies caked in mud and sweat and dried blood. Their faces were thickly stubbled with at least a few days’ worth of hair, and she could barely see what she needed to work on first.
Her sister took one soldier, and she turned to the other, checking his eyes first and his breathing before taking his hands to move them, wondering why they were so tightly clamped over his stomach.
‘If you could just move—’ she started, before screaming. ‘Help!’ Blood spurted from him, his hands soaked red. She could make out loose stitches that were no longer holding, and she clamped her hands over the gaping hole in his abdomen, trying not to cry as she talked to him.
‘Stay with me,’ she choked out. ‘You’re going to be fine; we’re going to look after you now.’
‘Doctor!’ April screamed beside her. ‘We need a doctor here!’
Grace was trembling, unable to look at her hands, to see what she was holding, to put a name to the slippery part of the man she was connected to, trying to stop him from bleeding to death in front of her.
‘We’re going to be fine here.’ Dr. Evans appeared beside her, his voice deep and commanding. ‘Keep your hands there, and walk with us,’ he said. ‘We’re going to save this man’s life—you hear me?’
Grace nodded, ignoring the lurch of her stomach as she hurried with them, her hands the only thing stopping the poor man’s insides from slipping straight out and onto the floor.
Eva’s eyes met hers from across Arthur’s bed as they raced past into the operating theater, where Dr. Evans’s calm voice guided her when to let go, his practiced hands reaching straight in, frantically starting to sew as more blood pumped out, as another surgeon dashed in to help him and more patients were rushed past in conditions easily as bad.
Grace walked on wobbly legs until she was away from the noise, out of sight, and leaned her back against the wall as she slowly slid down until her bottom hit the floor. She stared at her red hands, at the blood dripping down her arms, opening her mouth and letting out a silent scream that was anything but silent in her head.
Get up.
The voice in her head was insistent, but she refused to listen to it.
‘Grace?’
She took a deep breath and raised her eyes, finding Eva kneeling beside her. She hadn’t even known anyone was near her.
‘Grace, we need you. Get up.’
Grace pushed herself up the same way she’d gone down, her back against the wall, knees shuddering as they tried to collapse on her.
Eva’s warm palms were against her cheeks, and Grace slowly focused on her friend’s eyes.
‘You’re going to be fine, Grace,’ Eva whispered. ‘Come on—there’s more men coming through those doors than we can handle. They’re talking about closing the hospital if we don’t start moving through them faster.’
‘I’m going to the front,’ she whispered. ‘Me and April, both of us. They need nurses there.’
‘You can’t, Grace. You can’t deal with all the blood here, let alone—’
‘I’m going,’ she said, surprised by the strength in her own voice. ‘I have to.’
Eva took her hand, not seeming to care that it was bloodstained.
‘Well, if you’re going, I’m going too.’
Grace wanted to tell her no, that they weren’t letting her now that she was finally starting to find her way again, but Eva’s voice was full of authority, and her friend was the same Eva who’d so impressed Grace all those months ago in Hawaii.
‘Fine, but be careful. I can’t lose another friend,’ Grace muttered as they reentered the emergency ward.
‘Right back at you, Gracie,’ Eva said. ‘We’re all coming back from the front alive, no matter what.’
‘We need morphine and more morphine over here!’ someone yelled.
‘Bleeding out! Get him to surgery!’
