Page 25 of The Girls of Pearl Harbor
Grace bent low and vomited again, not able to help it, but there was barely anything left in her stomach now, and she hoped she’d be able to get through the rest of whatever she needed to do without fainting. Her hands trembled so badly that she could barely hold the next needle. But then a hand found hers, a warm, sticky hand that left a print of blood on her skin.
‘Sing to me,’ the soldier whispered, his cracked, bloody lips barely moving. ‘Please, just sing.’
She took a deep breath as his hand slipped away, administering more morphine and trying to think of something,anything, to sing. The only thing that came to mind was their national anthem, and she started low, barely able to remember the words, but slowly they came to her, and she stopped stumbling over them, the verses clearer, helping her to concentrate.
The corpsman was back at her side, passing her what she needed, and they started to make progress as eventually every single bed in the ward filled. He took to printing clearly on their foreheads with a pen, sometimes the only part of their bodies that was free of grime and blood when they wiped enough space to write, and she injected pain relief into each body, checked for pulses, administered tetanus shots to those who needed it, and called out to corpsmen and helpers to find out what had already been given to each patient. But as she came back around, almost to where she’d started, still singing, still using her voice to calm her patients and keep herself focused, not letting her mind wander, her voice stuttered and died in her throat. The man who’d asked her to sing, the man who’d touched her arm and left his mark, was dead, his eyes rolled back in his head.
She took a deep breath, wishing for fresh oxygen, wishing she could run to the beach and gulp down the salty air, cleanse her body in the water and wash the day away.
‘Incoming!’
The call that more patients were arriving, the shudder of the building again as the terrifying aerial assault continued, jolted her back into action. And as fear threatened to take hold, she held her head high and started to sing again, as much for herself as for the patients crying out in pain around her.
Poppy.Her name echoed through Grace’s mind, over and over, but she pushed it away, blinking furiously every time that image came back to her.
‘Go away,’ she whispered.
‘What was that?’
She jumped as a head peeked out from beneath the bed, a patient she’d forgotten about who was lying there to save space.
‘Sorry, nothing,’ she said. ‘Are you still all right under there?’
He nodded, but she saw his grimace as he pulled himself out a little more. ‘I’m fine. Just wish I could get out there and help.’
Grace was about to keep walking and tell him to tuck his legs back under, when she realized there was something he could do.
‘Would you mind making your way to the office?’ she asked. ‘I can help you there, and we could put you on the front desk. Then you could try to get on the phone to Hickam and anywhere else you can get through to—you know, to see what’s going on.’
He scrambled out, reaching his good arm out to her, as his other was in a cast. ‘I’d rather be helpful than stuck in here, that’s for sure.’
She remembered when he was upright that he also had an ankle sprain—she’d treated him only a few days earlier—so she waved over the corpsman who’d been assisting her.
‘Can you get him to the desk? He’s going to help with communications for us.’
The corpsman nodded, and she gave the patient a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thank you. And please, if you can, would you try to make contact with the USSSolace? I’m desperate to know if my friend Eva Branson is safe.’
Grace turned back and glanced around, the number of patients growing every few minutes, the casualties more horrific with every arrival. But she had to do this; she couldn’t give up. And besides, if she wasn’t doing initial assessments and injections, she’d have to be working in surgery or with the burn victims, and the thought alone made her stomach turn.
Poppy.Her friend’s name, the look on her face, hit her hard again, out of the blue like a fist to the stomach. But she steeled herself as tears trickled down her cheeks. If Poppy were here, she’d be giving her a kick up the backside and telling her to get on with her work, that there were lives to save, and that was exactly what she was going to do. She thought of Teddy and prayed that he was okay, knowing that he’d be doing anything in his power to save Poppy if he could.
As she checked a new patient’s pulse, her fingers to his neck, she realized that he was already gone and signaled for him to be taken before moving on to the next man. Only it wasn’t a man—it was a woman, a civilian woman who was clutching her baby to her breast. Her lifeless, blood-smeared little baby boy. Grace reached for her, stroking her arm as she gently wiped her forehead clean. The woman was covered in dirt and blood, which made it almost impossible to see what was wrong with her, and then she saw her leg, the bone visible, skin peeled back like a banana. She swallowed down bile and turned to get the morphine at the same moment a radio fuzzed and crackled nearby, before a broadcast played.
She carefully slid the morphine needle into the woman’s arm, administering it as quickly as she could, but she doubted her patient even noticed. She was staring at her baby, and Grace didn’t know whether to try to pry the infant from her arms or let her hold him, grieve for her child as long as she could. Grace stood and listened, and as she glanced around, she realized the rest of the room had gone still too. Aside from the odd groan from a patient, they were all listening as a voice projected through the room.
‘We have witnessed this morning the distant view of a brief, full battle of Pearl Harbor and the severe bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy planes, undoubtedly Japanese. The city of Honolulu has also been attacked and considerable damage done.’ Grace felt as though her body had frozen as the reality of what had happened went through her like a shock wave. The radio crackled and then came back on, the words making it all seem so real. ‘It is no joke. It is a real war. The public of Honolulu has been advised to keep in their homes and away from the army and navy. There has been serious fighting going on in the air and in the sea.’
A hand reached for hers, and she looked down to see the woman gripping her, her eyes wide, panic setting in.
‘We’re at war?’ the woman cried. ‘Is it true?’
Grace nodded and kept hold of her hand, as much for herself as for her patient. ‘Yes,’ she said, finding it hard to breathe. ‘Yes, I think we are.’
‘Help my baby!’ the woman cried. ‘Please, just make sure he’s okay.Please.’
Grace bravely nodded and held out her arms, taking the baby and holding him close, her hands shaking as she patted him, knowing she was being watched.
‘I’ll take him to get help,’ she said, smiling and wishing that there was something she could do. But he was ghostly pale, dead probably from the moment he’d been struck. It was incredible that the mother had even made it to the hospital with her leg shredded like that.
