Flying Angels(39)

“He should have been a doctor,” Pru said to Lizzie as they took their jump seats for takeoff and strapped in.

“I wanted to go to medical school,” Lizzie said conversationally as they taxied down the runway. “My father wouldn’t let me. He’s a cardiologist and my mother is a nurse, or was until she had children. My brother is an orthopedist now, and my younger brother left medical school to enlist after Pearl Harbor. My father thinks being a doctor is too much for a woman, and they should get married, stay home, and have kids. So I went to nursing school, which was what my parents wanted. But I wanted to be a doctor, not a nurse.”

“Maybe you can do that after the war,” Pru suggested.

“Do what?” Ed entered the conversation. He’d been talking to Charlie Burns about going up to London on the weekend. Someone had told him about a jazz club that was a great place to meet women, and he wanted Charlie to come too.

“We’re talking about medical school,” Pru filled him in, and he looked immediately interested.

“I couldn’t afford to go before the war, but there should be educational opportunities for veterans after the war. My mom needed my help with my brothers and sisters, so I took a lot of jobs to help her out. But they’ll all be old enough to work by the end of the war. I still have my dream about becoming a doctor.”

   “You’re lucky,” Lizzie said quietly. “My father wouldn’t let me go.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a woman.”

“So? How many women do you know willing to jump out of an airplane with a parachute or take on a job like this?” he asked, and she smiled.

“No one I can think of who would be crazy enough.”

“Exactly. So I think you could handle being a doctor. That’s pretty tame, if you can stand the years of studying. Were you a good student?”

“Good enough,” she answered. She liked him. He was direct and easy to talk to, and he thought the same thing about her. He didn’t know anything about her history, but he thought she was a very pretty woman.

“Where are you from?” he asked as they leveled off, heading for the battle lines on the border of France.

“Boston,” she said, and he smiled.

“I have a cousin there, a crazy guy, he owns a fish restaurant. He’s been there for years, and he’s 4-F, so he’s still there, doing a booming business while we’re here risking our asses with the damn Germans. Why are you here, by the way?”

“It made sense. I was stationed in San Francisco before this, and I didn’t feel like I was doing enough, so I signed up for air evac transport in the air forces.”

“Good girl.” He nodded as his eyes searched the sky for oncoming fighter planes. “I had the same idea. I lost my fiancée in the first year they bombed London. Driving an ambulance didn’t seem good enough after that.”

   “I lost someone too,” she said softly, “at Pearl Harbor.” He nodded, and neither of them spoke for a few minutes after that. The pilot had just warned them that they were ten minutes from their destination. Both corpsmen left their seats and checked the beds and supplies again. They were ready. They started their descent a few minutes later, and the pilot warned them that getting in might be tricky, and getting out even more so. They were close to the German lines.

“I’m not in the mood to become a POW with the goddamn Jerries today, Reggie, so make it good. I want to be back at the pub tonight, not at a beer garden.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” the pilot said, expertly handling the big plane, and they touched down on another old, abandoned runway a few minutes later. Ed and Charlie threw open the doors and lowered the ladder as Pru and Lizzie watched, at the ready. Soldiers on the ground ran toward them and handed the litters up to them. Ed and Charlie both had powerful arms, and the copilot helped them, while Reggie stayed in his seat, ready for a fast takeoff. In less than ten minutes, they had all twenty-four patients strapped in, in their litters. Pru slammed the doors and locked them, ran to her seat in the front, and they took off again. Miraculously no one followed them. They could see the German battle line from the air, and Pru left her seat immediately after takeoff to check on the men. Ed filled her in quickly, standing in a little bay where they could talk.

“We’ve got two critical chest wounds, and a serious head wound. The head wound is unconscious, dosed on morphine at the field hospital. One of the chest wounds is having trouble breathing, it could be the altitude. We have a gangrenous leg and an amputated arm.” He went down the list, including severe burns and a soldier who had lost his eyes in an explosion. There was every possible kind of serious injury, and listening to them, Lizzie stepped into the exchange.

   “What can I do? I’ll check the chest wounds if you like. I can sit with the one who’s having trouble breathing and keep an eye on him.”

“That would be a help,” Ed told her as Pru went to check the man with the gangrenous leg and the soldier with the amputated arm. The one with the leg needed an amputation too, but they hadn’t felt prepared to deal with his other complications at the field hospital, and wanted it done at the base.

All four of them were busy for the rest of the flight, dealing with the wounded men they were transporting. The boy with the worst chest wound started gasping for air halfway through the flight and his heartbeat was irregular. Charlie administered a shot of Adrenalin with Pru’s permission. Lizzie watched him closely, and then moved among the other men, taking vital signs where necessary, and administering a dose of morphine IV to the boy who’d lost his arm. It was touch and go for several of them, and they had to follow a circuitous route on the way back, which took longer. By the time they reached the ground an hour and a half later, none of them had died or were worse than they had been when they were put on the plane. The ambulances were waiting for them on arrival, and in fifteen minutes, all the patients were on their way to the hospital, and the boy with the open chest wound was doing better. He was going straight into surgery when he got to the hospital. They were ready for him.