“I’m not the right friend for someone like you.”
“You fought as hard as I did,” Rio insists. “You put as many Krauts in the ground as Geer or Cat or me.”
Jenou nods, accept
ing this, and even smiles in gratitude. “Let me make it clear for you, Rio. Like I said, I don’t expect I’ll make it through this war. I used to. I used to think . . . hell, we all did, didn’t we? Used to think it couldn’t happen to us? I don’t believe that anymore. When I catch it, I don’t want you to be the one who sent me.”
“You think I’ll get you killed?” Rio feels hurt by the suggestion, but it’s instantly clear that she hasn’t understood.
“No, I don’t think that. I mean, sure, it could be you, but it could be anyone or anything. But if it is you, it’ll eat you up inside. That’s part of it. The other part is that I’ve been leaning on you.” She straightens her spine and holds her head high. “I’m ready now.”
“Ready for what?”
“Ready to stop leaning on you, my best friend. My brave, fearless best friend. The sister I never had. Funny thing is, once you accept the fact of death, you stop being afraid.” She sighs and tilts her head back to look at the stars and says, “I don’t like any part of this whole goddamned war, but I’m ready now to pull my own weight. You’ve become a hero, Rio, and to my amazement, I, Jenou Castain, have become a soldier.”
Rio parts the next morning, with tears from Jenou, and the inevitable jokes and gibes and nonsense from the others.
Rio, seated in the back of a truck, waves to Jenou and Cat and, coming to stand beside them, Jack.
Jack makes a fist, places it over his heart, and bows to her. Then he disappears as the truck column obscures Rio’s view.
35
FRANGIE MARR—US ARMY HOSPITAL, PORTSMOUTH, UK
“Just hold it still, Frank. How many times do I have to tell you to hold it still?”
“Well, it hurts, Miss Frangie!”
“Nonsense. Goodness, you’d think you were the only person here with a bullet wound. Look at me!” She holds up her right hand, now with just four fingers and a tiny stump. “When I got hurt, I was a perfectly obedient patient.”
A nurse walking by says, “Uh-huh,” in a sarcastic voice.
Frangie cuts the old, yellowed bandage with a pair of blunt-tipped scissors. The wound was a through-and-through on Frank’s right arm, with the bullet managing to pass between the ulna and the radius, chipping the ulna but not breaking either bone.
Frangie uses gauze, alcohol, and distilled water to carefully clean the wound, teasing away dried blood and shreds of cotton.
“How’s it look?” Frank asks.
“How’s it look to you?” Frangie teases. Frank is a staff sergeant, a tough soldier by all accounts, but he does not like the sight of his own blood, not even a little. He keeps his head averted, arm propped on the little tray that Frangie carries from bed to bed. “Looks good to me,” Frangie says after he refuses to respond. She leans close and sniffs the wound. “Smells good too.”
This is a trick she’s picked up from one of the doctors, a pacifist from Cincinnati with too much experience with gangrene. You’ll smell it before you see it, he’d told her.
Having long since become stiffly ambulatory, Frangie has begun to help out on the ward, replacing bandages, taking temperatures, doling out medication, and holding hands and offering reassurance.
Her broken leg still aches when she stands or walks for too long, but she is long past the need for morphine. There’s a new, smaller cast on her leg, but aside from that, and the missing finger, and some shrapnel scars scattered around her body—little arcs or twists or dimples of pinkish flesh against the black—she shows no obvious signs of her near-death experience. She has lost fifteen pounds—quite a lot on her small frame—but paradoxically this makes her seem larger, somehow, harder and stronger.
In fact she has taken advantage of the sketchy rehabilitation equipment to begin a regime of strengthening her arms, legs, and back. Her wounds, and the subsequent illness, have left her feeling vulnerable. Her experience has also had two seemingly contradictory effects on her thinking: on the one hand she feels the pain of her patients with exquisite sympathy, sympathy so deep it almost seems to make their wounds hers.
But on the other hand, she now knows the difference between serious pain and the mere discomfort Frank is feeling. And while she is patient, she is not above teasing the less stoic patients.
“Yep, looks fine. Should be no problem now having Dr. Stuart saw that thing right off.”
“What? What are you . . . Oh, dang it, Miss Frangie! You’re trying to get under my skin.”
She grins as she finishes winding a new bandage around his arm. “There you go, you big baby.”
They call her Miss Frangie. She’s not a nurse, she’s not a doctor, nor is she an orderly like Harder. She has no official position in the hospital and is essentially a volunteer, but far more capable than the barely trained British women who so generously volunteer. Somehow “Miss Frangie” has become her title, position, and name, all in one.