Quo Vadis?

by Paeonia

Summary:

Daniel Sousa wasn't always in the SSR.

How Sousa got that lead, and what happened afterwards.

Notes:

A combination of research, MCU dramatic license, and my own dramatic license, offered to those who asked, in the spirit of something is better than nothing and done is better than perfect.

Chapter 1: December 1944

 

 

"That was a difficult winter. A blizzard had trapped half our battalion behind the German line. Steve...Captain Rogers, he fought his way through a HYDRA blockade that had pinned our allies down for months. He saved over a thousand men, including the man who would...who would become my husband as it turned out. Even after he died, Steve was still changing my life."

―Peggy Carter (1953)

 

The snow held secrets. He was sure of it.

 

He took a couple of steps closer to the bridge and peered along its side as the remnant of his platoon fanned out along the banks. A small group was standing a few paces behind them, some of them watching the banks, some of them scouting the sides of the road, some of them consulting a map and a radio. And behind them, the first men in a weary train of a thousand were taking a moment's anxious rest as the others began to catch up.

He carefully advanced down the side of the bridge, step by step, watching for the hollow or the out-of-place bulge in the snow that could signify a booby trap. Once he'd reached the bottom of the bank, he pulled out his flashlight and started to inspect the footing of the bridge… then, walking across the ice, the middle… then the footing on the far side.

He wasn't quite satisfied, but he didn't see anything. On his way back across the ice, he looked around; the other men were on their way back as well. They climbed back up the bank. As he approached the group, one of the map-readers – the guy with the red beret – looked up.

“Bridge is in good shape,” Sousa reported. “No booby traps, explosives, or trolls. Banks look clear, too.”

The guy in the beret nodded. “Very good. Thank you, Lieutenant….” He pronounced it Leff-tenant, with a polite lift to his voice.

“Sousa. Daniel Sousa, 339th.”

“Falsworth. I suppose you could say I'm on a long-term detail.” They shook hands.

“We'll keep going this way, then,” said Falsworth. “The Americans are making cracking good time, so we should be able to meet them soon and get this lot —” he nodded towards the column – “sorted out. Although I suspect the final sorting will wait until the Germans are in retreat again.”

Sousa looked over at a couple of his men and nodded. They started cautiously across the bridge. “What about Hydra?” he asked.

“We'll just have to take them as we find them.” Falsworth's voice was confident, free of bravado.

At any other time, Sousa would have liked very much to learn more about how someone could come to speak so casually about Hydra. A Hydra blockade had been pinning down the Allies in the area for months, giving the Germans the opportunity to launch a surprise counterattack and push the Allies back. Sousa and his men had been separated from the rest of their unit, and the other men in the column had all been in the same pickle: cut off from their own units by the German offensive and the appalling weather, trapped for days in the cold and snow with only what they'd had on their backs. They'd all been able to join up with a larger outfit in the same situation, Allied soldiers under the command of the SSR. But there was no escape, no aid for any of them; any way out meant taking on the German line or the Hydra blockade.

Until last night. They'd seen flashes of light and heard the sounds of battle coming from the direction of the blockade. After the big flash and blast – big enough to shake the tops of the trees – the battle had fallen silent, and they'd prepared for the worst. But no German or Hydra soldiers came their way. Instead, Captain America himself and his team had shown up, with a little food, some ammunition, a current map, a couple of trucks – and a way out. They'd broken the blockade.

They'd loaded the most seriously wounded onto the trucks and had left again, the Captain and most of his team riding with the convoy, a couple staying behind to lead the march. Sousa had caught a glimpse of the famous shield last night; this morning was the first time he'd actually met any of them. He had no idea how they'd broken the blockade, but at the moment his curiosity was drowned out by his cold, fatigue, and hunger – and by a vague sense of apprehension.

He stared across the bridge.

“Something wrong, Lieutenant?” Falsworth asked.

“I don't know.… The trucks didn't go this way, did they?”

“No, they didn't. They swung further north – the route is longer, but they knew the roads were passable.”

“We're just going to scout ahead a little, then.”

“Right. We'll be following presently.”

Sousa crossed the bridge and cautiously walked on, looking for clues as to who – if anyone – had been there before them. The trees didn't look like they'd been scraped up by tanks, even if any could have passed through the narrow lane; the snow looked clean and even…

He looked ahead to one of his men - “Clark!” he shouted, even as the thought formed: something's wrong -  

Private Clark stopped in his tracks and waited as Sousa caught up with him. A few minutes of searching and Sousa finally spotted what he was looking for – a black device tucked at the base of a tree, a couple of yards or so in front of where Clark had stopped. It looked like some kind of a booby trap, but one unlike any he'd seen before.

Falsworth caught up with them. “What is it?” He looked where Sousa was pointing. “Ah, well spotted. Looks like Hydra's been through here and left us some of their nasty little mischief-makers. They shoot lightning. Easier to lay than mines, but also much easier to clean up. One of my colleagues calls them 'hotfoots'.” He pulled a black box out of his pocket.

“I'd ask if they should really be called 'hotfeet' but I bet someone's beat me to it,” said Sousa.

“You would win that bet, I assure you, if you could find anyone fool enough to take it,” said Falsworth. “Now, here's how we make them cold feet: the front of this box opens like so.... Turn this dial and press the button...”

He looked up. Ahead of them, the booby trap was giving off a flashing red light – along with three or four more further down the path.

“That's how we find them. And here's how we disarm them.” Falsworth showed them the setting. The flashing lights turned solid. Falsworth picked up the trap and brought it back to the group. He turned it over and showed them the recessed switches on its back for turning off the find lights and for rearming the device.

He handed Sousa the control box and the disarmed hotfoot and turned back to the group across the bridge. “Martin! Up here, please.”

He turned back to Sousa. “Lieutenant, I'd like you and your group to stay in the front. Sergeant Martin is with the SSR – I know he has a collection box for these buggers, and we'll get some other men up here as well.” Martin arrived, and Falsworth repeated his orders. “Let's clean those things up and get moving. I don't like the look of the sky.”

They made cautious, steady progress, keeping to the narrow back roads and bearing to the northwest, where the Americans had successfully fended off the Germans. Finally, in the afternoon, they arrived at an American outpost. The post was expecting them, and greeted them with a double-timed cycle of hurry-up-and-wait.

First they had to be signed in. Next came a quick medical exam - “Any wounds? Show me your fingers and toes. Take a deep breath.”

The frostbite, trenchfoot, and pneumonia cases were sent in one direction; Sousa was among those sent in the other – and after he got a glimpse of one man’s frostbitten toes, he was grateful indeed.

He was issued dry socks and pulled aside for a rapid debrief, after which he was sent to the mess tent, where he was presented with a cup of coffee, a C-ration meal, and instructions to sit in the northeast corner of the tent pending further instructions.

Sousa was so hungry, the food was almost appealing. It helped that he'd drawn one of the less vile meals. After he tracked down his men and made sure they'd gotten food, he opened his own can and started to eat.

His thoughts did not drift far; he was too tired. Relief at being out of the snow, gratitude to the men who had come out of nowhere to help them, and an assessment of the chances of a nap….

Once he'd eaten, he gave one of the cigarettes that came with the meal package to Clark. He traded the others for candy – and for a generous sip of the whiskey that someone, somehow, had produced – the story was that he'd gotten it from one of the SSR guys.… Sousa realized that he hadn't seen Falsworth or any of the other SSR men since they arrived at the post. Where had they gone? The guy with the whiskey wasn't sure; he thought they were being collected in another tent, that the SSR already had transport for them.

At least they knew where they were going. Not that Sousa was in much doubt as to where he was going; he was pretty sure that he and everyone else in the tent would be sent to help drive back the German offensive.

His hunch was soon confirmed, and a few hours later he was in a truck with Clark, his other remaining men, and a couple of dozen other soldiers on their way to the front. The truck was overcrowded, smelly, and hitting every rut and bump in the frozen road. Sousa didn't notice; like the others, he'd learned to sleep in the most improbable situations.

He woke up when the truck stopped. When he hopped out to investigate, he found that they were mired in a hopeless traffic jam – between the frantic rush to the front and the damage of German saboteurs to communications and road signs, the narrow roads were overwhelmed. He shook the men awake, ignoring the cursing and complaining. They took as much as they could easily carry from the truck and headed on on foot.

When they finally reached their destination – a village, one of the dozens tucked in the Belgian forest - they were greeted by a weary, unshaven captain from another engineering battalion. As the men sat down to rest around a little campfire, the captain showed Sousa a crude map. He quickly outlined the situation: the little town was at a crossroads, and their objective was to keep the Germans out and deny them access to the roads – or at least to slow them down. The engineers were building roadblocks and setting tank traps.

He tapped a spot on the map. “Wanna help us blow up a bridge?”

 

Sousa gathered his men and a few of the other stragglers and set off for the bridge. As they drew near, they were stopped by a couple of jumpy privates who asked the usual challenge questions and shored them up with a few of their own: World Series winners, state capitals… Sousa tried to be patient, he knew they were worried about German spies, but come on - Betty Grable's husband? And Fargo was not the capital of North Dakota. The private looked nervous, and did not seem reassured when one of the men in Sousa's group burst out that Betty Grable's husband was Harry Fucking James and did they want help blowing up the bridge or not? By this time, a couple of the other soldiers had come up to see what was going on and called off the interrogation.

Down at the bridge, a few engineers were already at work rigging explosives. A few of other men – more stragglers from who-knew-where – were digging foxholes and machine gun embankments on the near side. Sousa set some of his group to digging and took the rest across the bridge. They examined the trees and started their own work – setting explosives to fell trees and create a roadblock.

As they worked, fog began to form. They'd made a respectable amount of progress when Clark said, in a low voice, “Do you hear that?”

“Yeah,” said Sousa. It was the sound of tanks. He couldn't tell exactly how far away the Germans were, but they were getting closer.

“Finish up and let's get out of here,” he said to the group. They made their final connections and started back to the bridge. When Sousa had finished his nose count, he followed. As he crossed, tracers arced overhead.

Back on the near side, he sent a couple of the engineers from the first group back to the village to report to their captain. The other men were getting under cover and into position. The sounds of battle were growing closer.

“Lieutenant!” whispered one of the engineers. “Detonators here.”

Sousa turned, and as he did a shell exploded in the woods, hurling him into the ditch on the other side of the road in a shower of wood and metal. The world went black and silent, just for a moment. And then all he knew was the ringing in his ears and the brutal, blinding, excruciating pain erupting in his right leg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2: In medio umbrae mortis

Summary:

A wounded Daniel Sousa's trip to the field hospital.

 

 

 

Sousa's ears were ringing too loudly to hear Clark mutter Oh fuck and climb out of the foxhole, to hear a group gather around him, to hear the first-aid kit swinging open. He felt himself being lifted out of the snow and turned on his back. As he struggled to not scream, he barely noticed the hand yanking up what was left of his pants leg and giving him a shot of morphine.

He blinked back tears and opened his eyes. Someone was sticking the syringe needle in his coat collar, like a stickpin. Another guy — someone from the engineering platoon — was working on his right leg.

“What happened?” Sousa managed to whisper. He gasped as a fresh wave of pain erupted from his leg. Someone patted his shoulder. A voice, near yet weirdly far: “We've got you, it's okay, it's gonna be okay. Can you hear me?

Sousa nodded and forced himself to breathe deeply. “That's it, that's it,” the voice continued. “No, don't look, just keep your head down, lean back. A little sulfa… cover that up… it's gonna be okay… Okay. Now, we're gonna get you on the litter….”

He clenched his teeth as as three pairs of hands lifted him up and over. The voice was talking to someone else: “Not all of you, ya chuckleheads. Reilly — up front. Make sure they don't get lost.” He felt the litter lifting him into the air and then carrying him forward. It was a strange sensation. He closed his eyes and concentrated on not crying out and not being sick.

By the time they reached the village, his ears were somewhat quieter. They drew near the campfire. The captain's face leaned over him.

“Sorry,” Sousa whispered. “Blew myself up instead of the bridge....”

“Har har. Shut up and keep breathing till I can get you a medic,” ordered the captain. “Reilly, take him to the office. At least he'll be under cover there.”

 

The office turned out to be a house. They carried Sousa through the door and paused. A flashlight clicked on.

“Where should we put him?” somebody asked.

“Down!” Sousa croaked.

“Over there?”

“Not by the window, stupid, he'll catch a draft!”

“A draft. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

“No, he's right, keep him away from the windows.”

They finally agreed on a spot and lowered Sousa to the floor. The flashlight beam bobbed around the room and then approached.

“Sorry, sir,” said Clark. “It was the best I could find. I'm just gonna lift your head...” He slipped a thin, folded piece of cloth under Sousa's head and covered the rest of him with some kind of blanket.

“Cap'n says he'll check in on you,” said Reilly.

There was an uncomfortable silence, and it occurred to Sousa – was he was supposed to say something? “Go. Go on,” he said. The official word finally arrived in his brain. “Dismissed,” he added.

“Good luck, sir,” said Clark. Sousa heard the men shuffle out and close the door. He was alone.

 

He focused, as best he could, on enduring the pain in his leg. From time to time he tried to distract himself by remembering sports statistics or prayers or even the multiplication tables, but he kept forgetting what he was doing. Sometimes he would come to himself and wonder if he'd just woken up from sleep. The pain was growing a little easier to bear, as if he were somehow detached from it.

As the ringing in his ears died down, he started to hear sounds from outside the house – indistinct voices, the occasional far-off explosion. It occurred to him again that he was alone in the house. Had he been forgotten? What if they bugged out and left him behind? At least the pain distracted him from following that train of thought any further.

The door opened and he saw the beam of a flashlight. The flashlight found him and came closer. It was the captain, from the campfire.

“Just wanted to check on you. I was able to raise an ambulance but I don't know when they're going to get here. Doing okay?”

Sousa managed to nod.

“All right, hang in there.” The captain stood up and walked somewhere else in the room – maybe over to a table? Sousa gave up on trying to figure it out.

 

“Lieutenant. Lieutenant Sousa.”

Had he drifted off again? It was lighter in the room, and someone was kneeling next to him – a medic.

“Sousa. Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Sousa whispered. The medic finished writing something in a little book and tore out a tag. He pulled the needle out of Sousa's lapel and pinned the tag in its place.

“Here, take this pill,” he said. Sousa felt someone lift his head and shoulders. The medic put the pill in his mouth and offered him a canteen. “Got it? Keep drinking… little more… little more...” He held the canteen until Sousa turned his face away.

“Okay, let's go,” the medic said. Sousa felt his head and shoulders being lowered again. He braced himself; the litter rose and swayed and rounded the corner out the door, through the kitchen of the house, and back outside.

They carried him over to the waiting ambulance. As they waited for the corpsman to get ready, the captain appeared.

“Sousa, you awake? Just wanted to tell you — they set off your roadblock, right as the first tank was pulling up. Worked perfectly, there were the Jerries with a big pile of trees in front of them. We were able to get a bazooka man down there, and before they can reverse he gets a shot on one of the tanks further back and starts working his way forward. So now they're stuck, and artillery's on the way. Your guys are all okay, we'll get 'em back to your company.”

Sousa nodded, then grimaced as the litter lurched forward. “And hey...” added the captain. “If I don't see you, Merry Christmas.”

Christmas? Sousa tried to figure out the date, but was distracted by a wave of pain as he was loaded onto the ambulance. A few of the walking wounded climbed in next. The doors closed, and they were off.

It was a quiet ride, as far as any ride in the Army went; most of the men were dozing. The corpsman, though... the corpsman was undeterred by the road noise and the bouncing of the truck, he seemed determined to carry on some kind of conversation with Sousa, and Sousa could only grimace and nod – he was too tired and in too much pain to order him to shut up. If he wasn't fussing with Sousa's pulse he was yacking at him about something else. First there were the usual tedious questions – “So: Sousa – like the marching band guy? Any relation? That'd be something if you were, right? You play the tuba? How about those little fife things? Ever been in a band? Yeah, I've never been in a band. You play football? No? Baseball? How about track, you ever do track? Ya run races? Didja just run, or didja just jump over those gate things? How about those throwing things, those – whadayacallems, those long stick things?”

“Javelin,” Sousa finally whispered.

“Javelins! That's right. But that's not the only thing you throw, right? What about that... that plate thing that you throw, you ever throw one of those? Hey – I saw in a newsreel, you know who I saw? Captain. America. With that shield of his? He threw that like it was one of those plate things, like it was nothing, and that shield went flying and knocked a Hydra Jerry clean off the top of his tank, gun flying right outta his hands. And this wasn't any of that buy more bonds crap, this was the real thing. Right off the top!” He acted it out using a clipboard; some of the men chuckled. “Here, lemme see your wrist. So did you throw one of those plate things, or...?”

The corpsman blabbed on until they got to the clearing station. He broke off in mid-sentence, opened the doors, and hopped out. Sousa closed his eyes only to be immediately bothered again by... by somebody else. He opened his eyes. A nurse, taking his pulse, and behind her, someone pulling the blanket up away from his feet, looking at his leg.

“Lieutenant, this may hurt,” the nurse warned him, and of course it was horribly painful, he wasn't able to stop himself from crying out a little, she was gripping his hand, but then the other person was done, pulling the blanket back down, and leaning down so Sousa could see him.

“Lieutenant, best thing we can do for you is get you to the field hospital,” he said. “We'll have you on your way in a few minutes.”

The nurse squeezed his hand. “It's going to be okay, they'll fix you right up,” she said.

“How bad?” whispered Sousa.

“Pretty bad, I'm afraid. But we'll see what the surgeon says.” She squeezed his hand again. “Good luck.”

As they loaded another litter on the ambulance, Sousa tried not to dwell on how very warm and reassuring the touch of that nurse's hand had been, and how much he was already missing it. Another corpsman jumped in, knocked twice on the window to the cab, and they were on the way again. Sousa wasn't sure how far they'd gone when the corpsman took his pulse and said, “Lieutenant Sousa. You awake?”

Sousa nodded.

“Any relation to that guy who wrote all the marches?”

As they bumped along, the corpsman did his best to keep a conversation going — “So, you married? Got a girl back home? No?” But it was so hard to speak, so hard to follow whatever it was the guy was saying, why couldn't the guy just leave him alone? A stray thought of his mother flitted through his mind… he couldn't concentrate, and it slipped away. He just wanted to be left alone.

And then they had stopped; cold air poured over his face as the doors swung open. He felt himself being lifted out of the ambulance, being carried someplace. People talking over and around him. A glimpse of the gray sky, and then back into the dark of a heavy green tent. The sensation of being lowered almost to the floor as they set the litter on a rack.

A couple of corpsmen lifting his head and torso and pulling off his coat and shirt; Sousa winced and tried to swat them off but he couldn't seem to lift his arm very far, he was so tired, why wouldn't they leave him alone? His belt and boots and socks coming off. A blood pressure cuff and a cold stethoscope on his bare arm. The cuff tightening, slowly loosening, and finally deflating with a hiss. Someone checking his dog tags. Someone calling his name. A tall metal pole next to his left shoulder. A bottle of red liquid being hung like a lantern on the pole. A guy in a white thermal shirt kneeling next to him, inserting a needle in his arm, a needle connected to a long red tube. The guy looking up and nodding urgently at someone else.

Sousa slowly looked to his right. An officer in olive drab was there, holding a narrow purple stole, pressing it to his lips and then putting it around his neck: a priest.

And then Sousa knew.

And then he realized that he wasn't surprised: Somehow, he'd known all along.

 

 

Chapter 3: Final Instructions

Summary:

Gravely wounded in the field hospital, Daniel Sousa gets his affairs in order.

It doesn't take long.

 

(some slight edits made 6/24/15)

 

 

 

You know, after I got hit, at the field hospital, the chaplain asked me was there anybody I wanted to send my effects to should, you know, the worst happen. I told him I didn’t think my dad had much use for two pairs of green socks and an old paperback. Let him remember my life, you know? ‘Course, I didn’t die, which was inconvenient ‘cause the chaplain had already trashed my footlocker. Still missing half my stuff… can’t find my leg anywhere.

 

Sousa felt strangely resigned at the sight of the priest. He'd always accepted the fact that he might not make it back; he'd lost men from his own outfit, seen the casualties… There were almost eight million men in the Army, and there was nothing special about him; why should he expect to be spared when others were not?

And if this was it for him, he was getting off easy. He would die in a bed under a blanket instead of bleeding to death in a ditch someplace, frozen in a chunk of icy mud. His father would know his fate, would know he had a grave, would be spared the agonizing limbo of  “Missing In Action”.  His father…

His father would grieve, but he'd carry on; his sisters would miss him, but their lives would be full: Ines had her Pete and their children; Tillie had her Joe, and they'd get married and have kids someday. The rest of the family, all the uncles and aunts and cousins… they'd mourn, and then they'd move on.   He thought briefly of Laura, but there'd been no promise, never any kind of understanding; she'd probably forgotten about him long ago. He hadn't left much of a footprint on the world at all.

And as for the next world, the priest would see him off.  Odd how benign, how easy death was seeming now. It would be like reporting to a new post: unfamiliar at first, but he'd be expected, he'd have his orders in his hand, they'd show him around and then put him to work.

The priest crouched at the side of the litter. “Lieutenant Sousa? I'm Father Allen.” His voice was calm. “Now, you've been hurt pretty badly, but you're safe at the field hospital, and the doctors and nurses are going to do everything they can to pull you through. I'm here to offer you the Sacrament: It will bring you comfort and strength, and prepare your soul, and may bring you bodily healing if that's the Lord's will. Do you want to receive It?”

Sousa managed to nod. 

The priest pulled a book and a little vial out of his pocket. “Now, of course I can't hear your confession right now, so I'll say the Confiteor, and you pray along with me and tell Our Lord that you're sorry for your sins, and I'll give you absolution.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” he began. He spoke quickly but clearly, just loudly enough for Sousa to hear. “I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel…”

Sousa managed to whisper the first few words. He knew the prayer as well he knew the alphabet, but it was so hard to focus, so hard to speak, it was all he could do to follow the words as the priest recited the rest.

“...May the almighty and merciful Lord grant you pardon, absolution, and remission of your sins. Amen.”

And then the priest was gently tracing a cross on his forehead with the holy oil. “Through this holy unction may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed. Amen.”

Sousa let the Latin float over him as the chaplain continued to pray. “Salvum fac servum tuum; Deus meus, sperántem in te….

“Dómine, exáudi oratiónem meam, et clamor meus ad te véniat….

“...secúndum multitúdinem miseratiónum tuárum réspice propitius fámulum tuum Daniel quem tibi vera fides et spes christiána commendant….

“Paradísi portas apériat, et ad gáudia sempitérna perdúcat. Amen.  Benedicat te omnipotens Deus, Pater —” he signed a cross over Sousa, who reflexively tried to cross himself — “et Fílius, et Spíritus Sanctus. Amen.”

“Amen,” whispered Sousa. “Thank you.”

“Thanks be to God. Now, don't forget to offer it up! I'll be praying for you and checking in on you, and when you're recovered enough I'll bring you Holy Communion. And if I can do anything else for you, just say the word.”

Sousa nodded.  The chaplain patted his shoulder. “Let me get out of Lieutenant Robb's way, here.”

Lieutenant Robb? Who — ? As Sousa struggled to remember, he saw the… doctor, he supposed, standing up at the left side of his bed. There was some kind of conversation going on, spoken in low voices behind his head, he was too distracted by fatigue and pain to try to pay attention. Only a few words, in a woman's higher-pitched voice, floated through his ears and into his mind: ...maybe… a little… barely... surprised, a whole Syrette… Yes, doctor.

And then, as if no time had passed at all, a nurse was at his right side. “Are you Lieutenant Robb?” Sousa whispered.

“I see Father introduced me,” she said with a smile. “I also answer to Miss Edith.” She gently touched his cheeks and forehead with the back of her fingers, did something to his fingernail. As she took his pulse, Sousa tried to be polite and pay attention, but his mind seemed to wander, because suddenly she was lifting his right arm to put on a blood pressure cuff, and then just as suddenly she was taking it off.

“What...” Sousa tried to ask, but it was hard to even whisper – his tongue felt thick, stuck to the roof of his mouth – and then he forgot what he was asking.

“You sound awfully scratchy, Lieutenant,” she said. “Are you thirsty?”

Now that she'd put a word to it, Sousa suddenly realized that yes, he was thirsty. Horribly thirsty. He nodded.

“I'll be right back,” she said, and then she was back dabbing at his lips with a moist cloth. “Stick out your tongue,” she said, and patted it with the cloth. “That should help a little. Once you've recovered from surgery we'll be able to give you a proper drink.”

Time passed; the pain wore on; he felt a woman's hand lightly touching his cheek and then his forehead – was he sick? was he staying home from school today? No, that wasn't it... “Ines?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

“No, not Ines,” the woman said.

“I'm – I'm sorry, I - ” he whispered.

The nurse just smiled. “Do you remember where you are?”

“Field hospital.”

“That's right, and I'm the nurse, Miss Edith.” She took his pulse, took his blood pressure, wrote on the clipboard and looked up. “So who's Ines?”

“My sister,” he muttered.

She squeezed his hand. “It happens all the time, I promise you. And you've paid me a lovely compliment.” She leaned forward, as if she were sharing a secret. “Usually? They think it's Mom.”

She moistened his lips again, and then spread another blanket over him.  “We’re going to take you for an X-ray now. After that, you're going to the pre-op ward.” She squeezed his hand one more time and then stepped back to let the orderlies pick up his litter.

Sousa was tense on the way to X-ray — he was dreading the lifting and positioning of his injured leg — but it never came; the technician just rolled up a contraption that held the X-ray camera over the litter and the film rack beneath the litter, directly under the camera. A few adjustments, everyone stepping out behind a screen, a click, and then the tech was rolling away the camera and the orderlies were carrying him out again.

The orderlies set down the litter and a new nurse set about rehanging the IVs. Sousa turned his head to watch her. A small part of him wished Miss Edith were there.

“So, X-rays...” he asked. “Are they really that fast?  Or is my leg already inside-out?”

The nurse smiled. “No, it's really that fast. You look like you're feeling better.”

“My leg really hurts.”

“I know. You got a big dose of morphine earlier, so we have to be careful. We’ll give you some more painkiller as soon as – as soon as we can, which will be pretty soon now. You're in the pre-op ward now, which reminds me -- ” she turned to someone passing by – “Father, do you have a moment?”

“This wouldn’t be for a certain form, would it?”

“Please?” she wheedled.

“ You really have me marked as a soft touch, don’t you?” The chaplain appeared at Sousa’s side. “They always leave this form for me,” he confided. “You know the Army: a form for everyone and everything, and the first question is always the same.  Next of kin?”

“Father; last name Sousa S-O-U-S-A, first name Francisco F-R...”

“F-R-A-N-C-I-S-C-O?”

Sousa nodded.

“Address?”

“10 Winter Avenue, Taunton T-A-U-N-T-O-N, Massachusetts.”

“Taunton. That near Boston? Maybe you can tell me about it when you're up to it. I'm from St. Louis, myself.

“Now, Lieutenant, if it should come to this… do you have any personal effects we should make sure to send to your father?”

Sousa thought for a moment. “No,” he finally said.

“Nothing? No pictures, letters, souvenirs…?”

Sousa considered and shook his head. “Don't know where it is. No idea where my company is. Haven't seen my footlocker since I shipped out. I got new socks… got my old socks... and my paperback book. Don't think he can use those.” He looked down at himself and dimly remembered… “They took my stuff. I don't know where it is." He glanced over to his right leg. "Book was in my pants pocket; guess it's no good now. You know how they say… you're born naked...”

“And you leave naked. 'Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither.' ”

“Yeah.”

“So after surgery I’m sure we can find you a new book.”

“How about socks?”

“We must not presume on miracles. But we'll see what we can do.”

“A very good motto, Father,” someone said.

The chaplain looked up. “Do you -- ” he began, and then nodded. He turned back to Sousa. “Lieutenant, this is Major Taylor, our chief surgeon.”

Major Taylor appeared at Sousa’s other side. “And you, Lieutenant, are one tough son of a bitch. You got a dose of morphine that usually drops men twice your size, but here you are still awake, and putting up with what must be a hell of a lot of pain.

“We’re going to take you into surgery soon.  I need to tell you… your leg’s in bad, bad shape.  To save your life, we may have to amputate part of your leg.  

“Now, we’ll only do this if it is necessary to save your life. And if we do have to do it, we’ll save as much as your leg as we can.”

“But you sound pretty sure,” whispered Sousa.

The doctor nodded.

“After the operation, we’ll keep you here for a bit and then send you to the back – Paris, probably -- and then from there, back home.  There are special hospitals that have been set up stateside. You’ll have another operation on the leg so you can use a prosthesis.  They’ll keep you in until you’re fully recovered, get you back on your feet and walking around. You’ll be amazed.”

“How much…?”

“Won’t know for sure until we get in there. Your femur – your thigh bone – took a lot of damage. But like I said, we’ll only do it if we have to, and we’ll save as much as we can.

“Okay.” Sousa took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“Just keep your mind on the good news: you’re going home.”

“Okay. Thanks, doc.”

The doctor nodded and left.

Sousa turned to the chaplain. “When he gives that speech, does anybody ever come back with his leg?”

“I can’t remember the last time he gave that speech before the operation. Usually the men that seriously wounded are unconscious when they arrive and don’t get the speech until… after.”

The nurse arrived. “I’m sorry to interrupt. Father, I’m afraid you’re needed in triage. And Lieutenant Sousa, you are needed in the operating room.”

The priest gave a quick blessing over Sousa and hurried off. The orderlies arranged themselves at the corners of the litter. Someone counted one, two, and with a lift they were on their way.

 

There seemed to be a bit of a traffic jam in the operating room; the litter bearers were told to wait for a few minutes next to a white fabric screen. He heard voices on the other side of the screen; one of them belonged to the doctor he’d just met – he heard his own name – they were talking about him, he realized, he couldn’t catch much of they were saying but they were talking about him, and his attention was pulled to the conversation like a compass needle swinging north. We should go ahead… have a bad feeling… bleed out… fucked if that morphine gets dumped into his system….

He might die on the table. The doctors were worried that he would die on the table.

He might die. But he might not, he reminded himself, and if he did die he was ready, and no matter what he had to have the operation. So he’d either wake up in front of the Pearly Gates or in a bed with his leg cut off.

And that, apparently, was what Captain America had rescued him for: so he could turn around and immediately get his leg blown off. And wasn’t that just the berries?

The litter started to move. If he died, he was ready, he reminded himself, and started a Hail Mary.

It came to him as the litter was locked in place: He might die. But he wasn’t going to.

He didn’t know how he knew, and he didn’t wonder how he knew. He just knew: he would not die on the table.

And then he knew, with the same utter certainty, why: He would not die on the table because he was going to be given something to do.

He turned it over and over in his mind as the operating room technicians changed his blankets for surgical drapes, as they moved equipment and prepared the field. He would not die. He would be given something to do. He would not die. He would be given something to do.

A person wearing a surgical mask – a nurse – stood next to him. “Lieutenant Sousa, I’m the nurse in charge of keeping you nice and comfy during the operation. I’m going to sit right back here.” She took a perch behind his head.

I’m not going to die, Sousa thought. He briefly considered sharing this information with the nurse but decided not to.

Out of the corners of his eyes he saw more people walking into the room, just their eyes visible over their masks and under their caps, their gloved hands raised in the air.

“Lean back your head and look straight up,” said the nurse. “That’s it.”

I’m not going to die.

“I’m going to put a cloth over your nose and mouth – don’t worry, you’ll be able to breathe just fine. Just listen to me, concentrate on what I’m saying.  You’re going to fall asleep.”

I’m not going to die. I have something to do.

She put the cloth lightly over his nose and mouth. It smelled strange, sweet. "Now, I want you to count from 1 to 10."

He began to count: “1… 2…”

I’m not going to die. Something like joy fluttered in his chest.

“3… 4…”

I’m not going to die.

“5…”

 

I’m not going to die.

 

 

 

Notes:

A WW2 photo of a chaplain praying over a wounded soldier, in Italy: http://life.time.com/history/anzio-unpublished-photos-italian-campaign-world-war-ii/photo/1/#18

Translation of the Latin prayers:

Save your servant who hopes in Thee, my God… O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come unto Thee…. according to Thy many mercies look down favorably upon Thy servant Daniel whom true faith and Christian hope commend to Thee…. may He open to you the gates of paradise and lead you to joys everlasting. May almighty God bless you, Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: Job 1:21

Thank you so much for your kind comments, which are like chocolate-coated catnip and very motivating.

Chapter 4: Post-Op

Summary:

Daniel Sousa wakes up after surgery. He never suspected losing a leg would be this complicated.

(oh, and I posted some corrections to Chapter 3 right before putting this chapter up.)

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially your kind and encouraging comments!

“...Lieutenant Sousa, you are needed in the operating room.” The priest gave a quick blessing over Sousa and hurried off. The orderlies arranged themselves at the corners of the litter. Someone counted one, two, and with a lift they were on their way.  And all of a sudden he was in a different tent, the litter suspended in a high frame. Had he drifted off again? His memory groped backwards – being lifted on the litter – chaplain, nurse, doctor, leg – they were getting ready to operate on his leg – they were going to take off his leg –

“Daniel.” A nurse was standing next to him. She took his left hand. “Squeeze my hand?”

He obeyed, but it seemed to take longer than it should – he felt strangely drowsy and slow.

“Stick out your tongue? Good job. Now, lift up your head – chin to your chest – while I count to 5. 1… 2… 3… 4… 5. That's it, go ahead and relax. Do you know where you are?”

“Hospital.”

“And do you remember about the operation?”

“Yeah.”

“The operation's all over, and now we're going to take move you to the ward.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the litter-bearers filing in. “We'll fill you in once you're settled.”

The operation was over? He tried to sit up and look, but something around his hips and legs prevented him, and then his head — and stomach — swam and he had to lie back. As he was lifted and carried, the motion of the litter didn’t help. He shut his eyes.

They transferred him to a cot — he felt the odd sensation around his hip and right leg again — and then somebody lifted his head and shoulders onto a folded blanket. A cot, clean sheets, a pillow of sorts… being dry and reasonably warm instead of cold and wet… being free of the excruciating pain in his leg… as they arranged him on the cot, for a moment he was overcome with grateful bliss.

Before he could reel his thoughts back in, someone — another nurse — was calling his name.  “Lieutenant Sousa — Daniel — are you awake?”

He forced his eyes open. “Yeah. Yeah, I'm awake.”

“The surgeon is here to see you.”

The doctor stepped into view. His face looked familiar… yes, it was the same doctor as before….

“Major Taylor,” the doctor supplied. “We spoke before the operation. I don't know how much you remember; it's normal to forget things that happen right before surgery, it's an effect of the anesthesia.  Do you remember us talking?”

Sousa felt his heart sink. Here it came. “Yes,” he replied.

“I’m afraid there was too much damage; we weren't able to save your leg.  Would you like me to show you where?”

Sousa nodded.

“The amputation is about five inches above your knee.” The surgeon pointed. “You’re in a cast that goes around your hips and your right leg. The cast will protect your leg and keep it properly positioned while you’re being evacuated.

“Once you’re back home, they’ll take the cast off. They’ll check the amputation site and do any procedures necessary for it to heal properly.  It’ll take some time to heal —12, 16 weeks, maybe more; it's different for everybody.

“But one thing at a time. Does your leg hurt?”

“Not really. It's strange, it doesn't really hurt, but I… I can't describe it.”

“Okay. Well, you're going to have pain from where we operated, so when it comes back, let the nurse know so she can give you something for it. Don't try to tough it out — you need to save your strength so you can heal.

“Also: your body's going to need time to adjust to what's happened. You may feel pain in your right leg — in the part that was amputated, like in your foot or toes. If you feel it, you're not going crazy and it's not in your head. It’s something that happens to many amputees. It's real pain, and we can give you something for it.

“Any questions for me? No? Well, if you think of anything, ask. When you're awake, take deep breaths and clean your plate at meals. We'll check in on you later.”

Sousa nodded. “Thanks.”

As the doctor left, he handed off the clipboard to the nurse. “Hi there,” she said, “I’m Miss Alice.” She popped a thermometer under Sousa’s tongue and took his pulse and blood pressure. When she’d finished writing everything down, she lifted the blanket from the foot of the bed to look at his right leg. She replaced the blanket and crouched next to him.

“How are you doing?” Her voice was sympathetic.

 “I’m okay.”

“Are you feeling all right? Are you thirsty?”

“Yeah… but if I drank anything, I think I’d get sick.”

“That's the anesthesia wearing off. Here.” She offered a cup of water with a straw. “Just take a sip and swish it around your mouth. There you go.” She pulled up an empty crate and set the water within reach. “Now, take five slow, deep breaths for me… that’s the way, good work.

“Go ahead and rest. Here’s a basin for in case you do get sick. Let me or one of the corpsmen know if you start having pain, or if your nausea gets worse, or if you want something to drink. Promise? Would you like something to read?”

He shook his head, and she patted his arm. “Maybe when you’re feeling better.”

Sousa lay quietly in bed, too preoccupied with not throwing up to think about his leg. As his head slowly cleared, he became more aware of the rest of the ward – of the wounded men on either side of him, of the nurses and enlisted men hurrying back and forth; of patients being carried out of the operating room; of quiet conversations, muffled tears, occasional cries of pain. Of time passing.

The nurses and orderlies started bringing out bed trays. Sousa shook his head when the orderly reached his cot.

“Want to just try it? Are you sure? Okay,” said the orderly, and went on to the next bed. He reappeared later, though, once the meals had been eaten and the trays picked back up.

“Still feeling sick, sir? How about just a taste? Maybe it'll help settle your stomach. Here, let me give you a hand.” He pulled up a crate and sat down. “Try some of this.” He offered Sousa a tiny spoonful of canned pears. Sousa was able to manage a couple of nibbles of fruit and a soda cracker before his stomach started to lurch again.

“That’s okay. You want some more later, just flag me down.” He made sure Sousa’s basin and cup of water were handy and went on his way.

Sousa managed to doze off for a while. He woke up to find Miss Alice checking his leg under the blanket.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Leg's okay.”

“What about your stomach? You still look pretty green around the gills. You were able to eat a little bit, right? That’s good. It’ll get better, I promise. Here's some more crackers for when you feel up to it.” She put the package next to his cup of water. “My shift is ending, so it's time for me to say good night. I'll see you in the morning.”

 “Any fun plans tonight?”

“Oh, loads! A night on the town, just like every night. Dinner, drinks, dancing, the works.”

“Tell us all about it tomorrow?”

“I promise.” She smiled and went on to the next cot. As she left, the patient in the next bed caught Sousa's eye and nodded. He was sitting up in bed, his right arm sheathed from shoulder to fingertips in a cast.

“'Evening, Lieutenant. At least someone out here —” he nodded towards Miss Alice — “ 's having a good time tonight, right?” he said.

Sousa nodded and tried to smile.

“Aw, I'm sorry, sir. I'll leave you alone.  Corporal Tom Campbell, sir. 15^th.”

“Sousa, 339^th.” He hated to ignore the kid but he just didn’t have the energy to talk. He closed his eyes to try to calm his stomach.

A little while later, he was roused by the sound of his name. He looked up. A doctor and a nurse were standing by his head, discussing his case.

“Lieutenant Sousa, I'm Major Hamilton and this is Lieutenant McNeal,” said the doctor. “How are you feeling? Nausea any better?”

“A little bit.”

Hamilton looked unconvinced. “A very little bit, from the looks of it.”

The nurse spoke up. “Some Vitamin C, perhaps?”

“If you have some?  Absolutely.” He turned back to Sousa. “Pain?”

“Not much,” said Sousa.

“Okay, let’s see your leg….” The doctor lifted the blankets; Sousa steeled himself and tried to sit up. But he couldn’t bend his right leg at the hip, and the effort made him dizzy. He leaned back on his elbows. The doctor looked up at him. “Do you want to see?”

“Yes.”

They lifted the blanket so that Sousa could see his leg, while positioning themselves to give him as much privacy as they could.

Sousa craned his neck and looked. Under the blanket, he was naked except for his dog tags and the cast. The cast was heavy plaster, tightly wrapped with muslin bandages. It wound around his hips and down to encase what was left of his right leg, like a pair of pants with the crotch and the left leg cut out. A wire box frame was anchored in the end of the cast, about where his knee would have been. There was fabric tied to it that seemed to sprout from the end of the cast. And beyond that, nothing.

It didn't seem real. But it was real. Knee, calf, foot, toes… gone, replaced by this peculiar plaster and wire appendage.

 “What's the metal thing?” he asked.

“We call that an outrigger. It’s for skin traction,” replied the doctor. “There are bandages attached to your skin that extend out from the cast and are attached to the outrigger. That tension keeps the skin in place so it can heal properly.”

Sousa lay back on the cot. “I never knew getting a leg cut off was this complicated.”

“Everything in life is more complicated than it looks, right? But complicated now means easier later.”

The team moved on to Corporal Campbell in the next bed. Sousa tried not to listen as they talked, but their conversation kept spilling into his attention. Campbell was in good spirits, eager to  chat, and very pleased by something the doctor was telling him: “First thing in the morning? That's great, doc, thanks! Hey, will you sign my cast? You did? I guess I didn’t notice under all those bandages, it’s hard to see. So you drew that? And that’s what it looks like? Well, I’ll be… Thanks again.”

As the team left, Sousa looked over at the beaming corporal. “So what's news?”

“They're sending me to the back tomorrow morning!”

“Do you know where you'll be going?”

“Paris first. Then they might transfer me to England.”

Campbell started speculating about all the fun he was going to have in Paris-first-then-maybe-England: hot food, regular mail, day passes, girls…. To Sousa's gratitude, the corporal's neighbor on the other side joined in the conversation, giving Sousa the opportunity to drop out again. He was a little less nauseated but still uncomfortable, and his leg was starting to ache. It wasn't that he wanted to mope… he just didn't feel like talking to anyone. He just wanted to be quiet and not think about anything.

A corpsman turned up, introduced himself as Corporal Hubbard, and set about taking Sousa's temperature and pulse. “Lieutenant McNeal will be around again soon,” he said. “Listen, the doc really wants you to eat some dinner tonight. Anything in particular you'd like? Mess tent will be open later tonight, cook'll make it for you if he can. No? Okay, I'll be back later.”

When Lieutenant McNeal returned, she invited Sousa to call her Miss Ginny, listened to his back and chest, had him take some deep breaths, and finished up with injections of morphine and penicillin.

“Care for a drink?” she offered. Sousa was able to take a few sips of water.

Hubbard returned a little while later with a crate in one hand, a cup in the other, and a newspaper tucked under his arm. He set the crate down between Sousa and Campbell, tossed the paper to Campbell with a pointed suggestion to read himself sleepy, sat down on the crate, and turned to Sousa.

“I have something that might help settle your stomach,” he said in a low voice. “It's almost as precious as penicillin and whole blood, and out here it’s harder to come by. But I've got connections, and we look out for our patients here, y'know? We call it… Vitamin C.” He reached into his pocket.

A horrible guess came to Sousa. “Not cognac.”

“Ha! No, we gotta leave something for you to look forward to in Paris, right?” He pulled a bottle from his jacket. “Chilled this in the snow for you.” He showed it to Sousa: It was a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Hubbard poured some into the cup, dropped in a straw, and held it for Sousa. “Drink. …Sir. …Please.”

He let Sousa rest after three or four swallows, turned around to chat with Campbell about the sports pages, and then turned back to insist, with bossy deference, on a few more sips. Finally he was satisfied and took himself and his crate away.

A little later, Sousa realized to his surprise that the Coke had done the trick. He was able to eat some crackers before he fell asleep — a deeper sleep this time, and longer.  He woke up a few times in the night as Miss Ginny and Hubbard made rounds, but he was able to fall asleep again quickly.

Towards morning he was awakened again by some bustle on the ward. The orderlies and corpsmen were moving the most stable patients back onto litters and taking them out to ambulances for evacuation to the big hospitals in the rear. Campbell had a big paper tag clipped to his dog tags and a huge grin on his face. “Au revoir! Maybe I'll see you all in Paree! Good luck to you, sir.” As soon as he was out of the way, an orderly was busy getting his cot ready for someone else.  Meanwhile, Miss Ginny made her final rounds, getting ready for the next shift.

“You’re looking much better,” she said to Sousa.

“My stomach feels better, at least,” he replied.

“Good! Rest up and eat up are the words of the day.”

Miss Alice and Major Taylor made rounds a little later. The doctor was pleased with his progress: “Keep the good work and maybe you can be on your way tomorrow.”

Soon afterwards the meal trays came out.  Sousa saw the orderly approaching with his tray and tried to sit up — and was reminded again that he couldn’t, because of the cast. 

The orderly set down the tray. “Be right back, sir.” He returned with another blanket, folded it, and put it behind Sousa’s head and shoulders. It didn’t do much.

“Here —” the orderly moved the tray closer — “I need to pass the rest of my trays, but I’ll be back as soon as I can to help you, okay?” He hurried off without waiting for an answer.

Sousa did not consider waiting for the orderly to return. He could manage, he told himself, and he was certain the orderly had more important things to do: the cots left empty by the gone-to-Paris crowd were steadily filling up again.

He thought for a moment, then lifted the plate off the tray and balanced it on his chest. Little by little, with breaks to rest, he was able to eat some breakfast. He was even able to prop himself up on an elbow and drink some coffee before it got cold and before he grew tired and had to lie down.

When he woke up again, the breakfast tray was gone and Campbell’s cot was filled. His new neighbor, who looked sound asleep, had stitches on one side of his face and bandages covering most of the other half. A rubber tube snaked out from under his blanket and emptied into a glass jar connected by another tube to another glass jar.  Sousa felt a strong pang of sympathy. He wondered if the guy’s wounds were a ticket to Paris or a permanent ticket to home.

He settled back on his cot. His leg was starting to ache again. He didn’t want to say anything just yet though; Miss Alice was busy, and he could wait.

“Lieutenant Sousa?”

Sousa looked up. “Oh, hi, Father!”

“How are you doing this morning?”

“A lot better, thanks.”

“Are you able to eat? Would you like to receive Holy Communion?”

“Yes please.”

Father Allen pulled a pyx from his chest pocket. “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen. I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel….”

Sousa continued the prayer with him.  “…all the Saints, and you, Father, to pray to the Lord our God for me. Amen.”

“Misereátur tui omnípotens Deus, et, dimíssis peccátis tuis, perdúcat te ad vitam ætérnam,” continued the priest.

“Amen.”

“Dómine, non sum dignus….”

Sousa joined in: “…ut intres sub tectum meum: sed tantum dic verbo, et sanábitur ánima mea.”

Father Allen opened the pyx.  “Corpus Christi.”

“Amen.” Sousa opened his mouth and received the Sacrament.

Father Allen gave a blessing over Sousa and put the pyx away. He pulled up a crate. “Now, when I talked to you last, you were getting ready to go into surgery.”

“I remember your coming to see me.” He could tell the priest was giving him an opening; he decided to take it and took a deep breath. “Father… they had to take my leg.”

The priest nodded sympathetically.

“It’s strange, though, I don’t even feel all that bothered by it. Last night… sure, it was a shock, and I thought about it some, but what I was really thinking about was getting through that nausea. Jeez, that was awful.”

“And today?”

“Today? I’m not really thinking about my leg; I just want to get out of this cast. But that’s going to take days, so there’s no use dwelling on it.”

“You’re right. We have to be prudent, of course, but Our Lord teaches us to trust Him and to put aside fruitless worrying and fretting. God’s will for us is usually found in the task at hand.”

“What if you don’t have a task?”

Father Allen looked at him with mild astonishment. “In the Army? You always have a task, and you never admit it if you don’t. Otherwise you find yourself peeling potatoes.” Sousa chuckled a little. “No,” Father Allen continued, “you have a task, and that task is to heal. Focus on that. Everything else will follow.

“Speaking of which… Do you know where you’re going next?”

“Paris, I guess.”

“Have they told you when?”

“They’ve just said ‘soon’.”

“And have they told you what happens after that?” Father Allen started sketching it out: a flight to a clearing hospital in the States, and from there a transfer to another hospital, probably one of the specialty hospitals for amputees… full program of rehabilitation… fitted with a modern prosthesis… would be able to do for himself, get a job, lead a normal life… It sounded like a talk the chaplain had given many times before, and it had more than a touch of that Army pamphlet (So, You’ve Gotten Your Leg Blown Off) sound: corny, but useful.

“Any questions? No?” He rummaged in his bag. “Now, didn’t you tell me that if the worst happened you had nothing you wanted sent home to your father? Not even your new socks?”

Sousa shrugged. “He doesn’t need my socks to remember my life.” Not that it’s been all that memorable, he thought. “And I lost my socks, so….”

“But you didn’t lose your life. You did lose your book, though, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to find a new one for you. I do have a paper, if you’re interested; it’s a couple of days old.” He handed the newspaper to Sousa. “Do you have a rosary?”

“I had one. Gave it to one of the men a couple of weeks ago.”

“So you need a new one.” The chaplain pulled something from his pocket and handed it to Sousa: a rosary with black wooden beads and a silver-colored medal and cross. “Put it around your wrist so it doesn’t get lost.”

“Aw, Father, I can’t take —”

“Sure you can, that’s what they’re for. I could order you to, you know, though of course I won’t. You have a second task, and that’s to keep your soul healthy and pray for others.

“There’s a monk near one of the airbases in Italy — really popular with the men, they drive out to hear his Mass — and he always tells them ‘Pray, hope, and don’t worry.’ So now you’ve got four tasks: heal, pray, hope, and don’t worry.”

“That should be easy to remember.”

“Unfortunately it’s also easy to forget, so keep it in mind.” He stood up. “I’m afraid I need to continue my rounds. If I don’t see you before you head out…” He gave Sousa a blessing. “Pray for us, and I’ll pray for you.”

“Thank you, Father.”

Sousa fidgeted a little with the rosary as he pondered.  He had a feeling that, in addition to the sick call, the chaplain had just delivered something like Amputee Talk #2 per United States Army Memorandum No. 85-whatever.  So what was the Army trying to tell him, and what questions were they trying to anticipate? And what did that mean the Army wasn’t telling him? Were there really people that needed to be told that an amputee could hold a job? Or was that just reassurance for anxious new amputees? But did they have good reason to be anxious? Should he be feeling more anxious – but this was getting ridiculous, he admonished himself.

So what would he do? He tried to think about the future, but he couldn’t: it felt like being on the water on a brilliant summer day and trying to look over the horizon with the sun glaring into his painful, squinting eyes.

No, the future was too far off. He knew where he was going next, and that was Paris, and that was… that was as far as he could see. And as for when, there was nothing to do but wait. He wound the rosary around his wrist.

The "when" came far sooner than he expected. Miss Alice brought the official news after lunch – along with early doses of penicillin and morphine, so when the orderlies came for him, he was ready.  They loaded him on a litter and carried him out to the waiting ambulance. He’d never imagined it starting this way, or this early, but his journey home had resumed.

 

 

Notes:

“Misereátur tui omnípotens...” : May almighty God be merciful to thee, and forgiving thy sins, bring thee to everlasting life.

“Domine, non sum dignus…”: Lord, I am not worthy that Thou should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

“Corpus Christi”: The Body of Christ.

Chapter 5: Paris

Summary:

Sousa travels the chain of evacuation, link by link.

Sousa lay on a litter on the floor of in the entry hall of a French hospital. He was surrounded by three hundred other men, all lying or sitting on the floor while nurses, doctors, corpsmen, orderlies, and clerks sorted them out. The hall was relatively quiet; the patients were either still sedated or too exhausted after their journey to make much ruckus.

It had been around sixteen hours, Sousa guessed, since he’d left the field hospital. He and the other patients had been taken on a bumpy ambulance ride to an evacuation hospital further back. When they arrived, a doctor boarded the ambulance, quickly checked each of them over, wished them a safe journey, and hopped out again.

The next stop was the train station – another ride, another wait. When it was his turn, Sousa was lifted out of the ambulance on the litter and carried across the snowy shoulder to the tracks. The litter-bearers handed him up head-first into the waiting ward car.

The ward car had three tiers of berths running along both sides of the car. The orderlies slotted Sousa onto a bottom berth on the right-hand side, adjusted a pillow beneath his head, and went to collect the next patient. Sousa watched as the other berths filled up and as five or six pairs of feet hurried back and forth. The train lurched and began to move.

He was tired after the ambulance trip, and there were no windows on the ward car, so he was content to people-watch for a while. There wasn’t much conversation; the other patients were tired as well, and the nurse and corpsmen were busy making rounds and checking on each man. The berths themselves had mattresses and actual pillows; between that step up in comfort and the motion of the train, he soon nodded off.

He woke up to one of the orderlies announcing dinner. When his tray arrived he found thick chicken stew served over biscuits, green beans, gelatin, coffee, and a brownie. The coffee was served in a cup with a kind of spout that let him drink while he was lying down. He ate slowly, first out of caution so he wouldn’t spill, and then out of pleasure: the food was good. As the trays were collected, he overheard an orderly proudly telling a patient that dinner was cooked on the train’s own kitchen car.

After dinner the car was livelier. Someone put the radio on over the P.A. system, and a few of the patients started to sit up to listen, discuss, or heckle as the programming warranted. Sousa listened with half an ear while he read his newspaper — that day’s paper, as opposed to a paper from four days ago; truly this hospital train had all the amenities. The front page was dominated by the news of the German offensive and the Allied resistance. More American units were finding themselves behind enemy lines as the Germans, unable to dislodge them, had gone over or around them. Sousa wondered how his unit was doing, how the unit he’d been helping was doing — oh God his outfit hadn’t gone and reported him missing, had they? But if Clark and the others had made it back, they’d tell his C.O. what had happened. That eased his mind, and he flipped the paper to read below the fold.

“Cap Hits Hydra Again”
BELGIUM, Dec. 20—Captain America dashed any hope the Germans had for help in the north from Hydra. In a daring nighttime raid, the Captain and his team….”

The article was short on details, but Sousa recognized the explosion they’d witnessed from so far away.

“Worse yet for Jerry, the Captain and his team were able to get a thousand men back to safety and back into action.”

Back into action. And here he was in a body cast with his leg cut off, dammit. Ten, even just five more seconds and he would have been under cover…. He sighed in disgust and turned to the next page. Letters to the editor, jokes, a column of letters to Santa, and an announcement of a new weekly special section: “Tomorrow.” “It covers the home front—as it is today, as it shapes up tomorrow… It is presented in the belief that the sight of tomorrow will rivet our eyes even more closely on our peep sights today….”

He was not in the mood for this. He flipped past the special section, skimmed the sports page, glanced at the back page (cars buried in snow in Detroit; a picture of a starlet) and put the paper aside. He turned his attention to the radio. More news about the German offensive… Fierce fighting in the south… Nazi attacks on field hospitals… no wonder they’d been in such a hurry to ship him and the other patients out.

The news ended and a music show came on. Sousa settled back to listen. The miles clacked slowly by. More news, more music, this time with a few Christmas songs in the program. The nurse started her penicillin-and-morphine rounds, and finally it was lights-out.

They pulled into Paris early in the morning. One by one they were lifted off the train, handed off to the French civilian litter-bearers waiting on the platform, and carried off to the long line of ambulances. One, two, three, four litters secured in the back; the orderlies jumped out, slammed the doors, banged twice; and the ambulance pulled forward.

The ambulance had windows, and the driver of Sousa’s ambulance made sure his passengers got good use of them by passing and pointing out some of the sights of Paris —the Opera de Paris, the Obelisk of Luxor, the Champs-Élysées… a couple of circles around the Arc de Triomphe and they were on their way again. Sousa appreciated the little tour; it wasn’t the way he thought he’d get to see Paris, but it was better than nothing.

And finally they arrived at the hospital, where another platoon of litter-bearers met, unloaded, and carried them inside. A nurse met each patient inside the doors, asked a few questions, glanced at the chart, and pointed in a different direction based on the answers. The litter bearers gently placed their patient on the floor in the designated area and hurried off to meet another ambulance.

As he lay on the floor, Sousa could see patients trickling one by one out of the entry hall, some on litters, some in wheelchairs, some under their own power. It wasn’t too long before the clerk arrived at his spot, crouched next to him, and started asking the usual Army questions: name, rank, serial number, unit…

“Last question: next of kin?”

“Father; last name Sousa S-O-U-S-A, first name Francisco F-R-A-N-C-I-S-C-O….”

 “Middle initial?”

“M.”

“Address?”

 “10 Winter Avenue, Taunton T-A-U-N-T-O-N, Massachusetts.”

“Thank you, sir.” The clerk carefully lifted one of Sousa’s dog tags, still on its chain, and put it in an addressograph. He added his form, snapped the slider back and forth, took the form out, and tucked the dog tags back under the blanket..  He added the form to the chart folder resting on Sousa’s abdomen.

“They should have you up to a room pretty soon,” said the clerk. “Later on they’ll send a telegram to your dad letting him know what’s going on.”

“Thanks,” Sousa replied. The clerk went on to the next litter, and Sousa turned his face back to the ceiling.

After a while, an Army nurse in a white uniform arrived with four litter-bearers. She bent to look at the chart. “Hello, Lieutentant Sousa, and welcome to the 11^th General Hospital. We’re going to take you upstairs now.” She turned to the litter-bearers. “Officiers orthopédique. Trois-Bee. Trapeze bed.”

“Oui, madame,” the eldest said. They stooped to pick up the litter.

The trip up to the third floor was silent but gentle. When they arrived on the ward, they were met by two orderlies and a nurse. The nurse picked up Sousa’s chart and started to flip through it.

“Trapeze bed.” repeated one of the litter-bearers.

“Merci,” replied the nurse. “Lieutenant, I think we’ll give you bed six.”

Bed six was an honest-to-goodness bed with a mattress and spotless white sheets. A metal frame rose from the headboard, ran the length of the bed, and down to the footboard. It looked like the frame for a swingset. The orderlies and the nurse carefully helped Sousa off the litter into the bed, took his vital signs, and set him up with a bedside table, a glass of water, and the other necessities.

A doctor came by a little later. “ ’Morning, Lieutenant. I’m Captain Dixon.” A nurse caught up with him; he nodded politely towards her. “Lieutenant Wald, head nurse of this ward.”

He flipped through the chart as the nurse drew a privacy curtain. “So, your right leg….” He looked Sousa in the eye. “I’m sorry.”

“Ah, it’s not the end of the world,” said Sousa.

“No. But still a big deal.” He drew the sheets and blankets back and looked at the cast. He asked Sousa a few questions and examined the little traction setup at the knee-end.

“Let’s leave well enough alone,” he said. He examined Sousa’s left foot. “Got out of there just in time,” he commented.

Sousa looked puzzled. “You don’t have any signs of frostbite or trench foot,” the nurse interpreted.

The doctor was already donning his stethoscope. He listened to Sousa’s chest, back, and stomach. A few more pokes, an examination of Sousa’s hair, and he was pulling up the covers again.

“More good news: no lice, as far as I could see.” The doctor opened the chart and started to write. “Express him. Keep up the meds, good scrub, clean him out, push fluids, keep him turning, see if he can tolerate a little reverse T-burg. Lieutenant Sousa: Lieutenant Wald and her crew are going to put a little polish on you while you wait for your plane. We’ll let you know when we get a flight time.” He handed the chart to Lieutenant Wald, drew back the curtain, and went on to the next bed.

The polishing process began when one of the orderlies set up the trapeze – a triangular handle attached by a chain to the overhead frame – and helped Sousa start using it to move himself around in bed. Next, the orderly brought hot water, soap, and a stack of linens. He helped Sousa bathe and set him up to shave. Finally, he presented him with a pajama top, helped him flip over onto his stomach, and furnished a cup of coffee and the day’s newspaper.  Sousa was tired from the trip, and between the bath and the clean bed he was the most comfortable he’d been in days. He drank the coffee with pleasure, put the paper aside, and dropped off to sleep.

Sousa figured out what the “clean him out” part meant when his lunch included a dish of stewed prunes. “Push fluids” meant everyone passing his bed urging him to have another glass of water or another cup of coffee. And “reverse T-burg”, the nurse explained as she turned the bed crank, meant raising the head and lowering the foot of the bed without bending the mattress. “We want to get you to as steep an angle as we can without having you slide down into the footboard,” she said. “It will help you breathe more deeply. We don’t want you catching pneumonia.”

An angle of fifteen degrees didn’t seem like much of a change, but it pleased the nurse and gave him a slightly better view of the ward. There were twenty men, ten on each side, many with enormous casts held in traction off the frames over their beds. An undecorated Christmas tree, touchingly puny, stood on a table at one end of the ward.

Christmas… he kept forgetting. He checked the paper: it was the twenty-second of December. So Christmas was only three days away now.

Christmas was beginning to feel more real, and the prospect of going home (or at least back to the States) was beginning to feel more real too, crowding out his frustration. Sure, he wouldn’t be going home to sleep in his old bed, but they’d put him in the East someplace, wouldn’t they? Even if they stuck him in Florida he’d at least be on the same side of the Atlantic as his family. He’d be able to get their letters in less than a month’s time. He didn’t dare let himself imagine a visit — travel was expensive and how would they ever get off work? —but if his paychecks ever caught up with him, he might be able to call them.

A little later in the afternoon, one of the nurses came around and explained that each of the wards had been issued some paste, paint, and fancy paper; there was going to be a contest to see which ward’s Christmas decorations were the best, and would he like to help?

“Are there prizes involved?” asked Sousa.

“Never mind prizes,” said the major in the next bed. “You know somebody, somewhere, has a pool on this. If we win, we should get a cut.”

“Double share for the nurses,” added Sousa.

“We’ll have to do a little recon,” laughed the nurse.

One of the patients turned out to be a model railroad enthusiast and immediately started coming up with plans for a paper train. A few of the other patients pointed out that the contest was to decorate the ward, not the bottom of the Christmas tree. The discussion turned into good-natured bickering; Sousa let them go to it and started working on a paper chain for the tree.

It was a pleasant way to pass the time; Sousa was almost sorry when it was time to pack up for dinner. After supper there was a little more conversation. A doctor and the night nurse came on rounds; the orderlies came around to take vital signs; the night nurse came around on the penicillin-and-morphine rounds, drawing the privacy curtain as she visited each patient.

Soon it was Sousa’s turn. She drew the curtain around the bed. “Here, unbutton your pajama top, and let’s get you on your stomach again.” She helped him turn and gave him the shots. Then she lifted the fabric of the shirt to his neck, exposing his back. She poured a little alcohol from a bottle into her hands.

“This should help you sleep a bit better tonight,” she said, and started to give him a backrub. Sousa felt a little self-conscious, but that lasted only about five seconds before dissolving away along with all the tension in his back he hadn’t realized was there. He felt like a pat of butter near a warm stove, softening and melting into a contented puddle.

Finally she pulled down his pajama shirt and drew up the covers. “Sleep tight,” she said. “We’ll look in on you in a bit. Call us if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” he murmured. He quickly fell asleep.

The next day passed quietly. Twice the ward said good-bye to a few patients — they were being flown to England — and hello to a few new ones, just off the train from Belgium.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” the orderly teased as he set Sousa up to shave. “You’ll be on your way soon enough.”

“What, with all these guys in front of me? And I’m just a louey, that’s another word for ‘last’.” The orderly laughed and headed off to get more towels.

“He’s right, though,” said the major in the next bed. “They’re adding more flights to the States, and men with injuries like yours —” he nodded politely towards Sousa’s right leg — “go to the front of the line.”

Sousa got the word the next day. He was already in good spirits; he felt much more human after a couple of days of being warm, dry, rested, clean, shaved, and fed. His leg hurt, of course, but the morphine helped, both by relieving the pain and making him drowsy enough to doze through the worst of it. And he’d been able to work towards his recovery, even if it was just shifting in bed and dutifully eating prunes.

Through the morning they’d been able to hear the church bells of Paris; the chaplains had made their rounds and he’d been able to receive Holy Communion. And there was no missing that Christmas was in the air – their decorations were up, and a couple of the patients were speculating about ways to bribe the contest judges or get in on the betting pool.  Later in the day a French children’s choir had visited, singing Christmas carols and looking abashed at the applause and appreciation and gifts of candy they were receiving from every ward.

In the late afternoon, Lieutenant Wald arrived at his bedside with four orderlies. “Lieutenant Sousa, I have an early Christmas present for you. How does a plane ride home sound?”

 “Is it a present or an order?” he asked with a grin, but there was no use asking - it was really happening, the orderlies were already guiding him onto the litter. As they carried him out, the other patients waved and called out good-byes.

He was taken to a ward on the first floor. A doctor met him, gave him a quick examination, and pronounced him fit to fly. He waited, holding his chart on his chest, while the other patients were brought in.

They had been waiting about an hour when a telephone rang. A clerk answered, talked briefly, and hung up. He turned to the room and announced, “They’re ready! Let’s go!”

Orderlies got up off the floor, the French litter-bearers appeared, and the patients were carried out to the waiting ambulances. The ambulance driver did not take the scenic route this time.

They drove to the Army airfield about ten miles south of the city. In through the gates and across the installation… Through the window, Sousa caught a glimpse of a silvery C-54. Its hatch was open, waiting for them.

Two at a time, the litter patients were placed on a kind of forklift that brought them up to the level of the hatch. The ride up was a little unnerving, but the corpsmen were waiting for him and quickly had him off the lift and in the plane.

The plane had four rows of litter racks on each side; Sousa was given a spot on the second row up from the bottom. As the rest of the racks filled, the flight nurse walked from litter to litter, introducing herself as Miss Abby and passing out airsick bags. The hatch closed, the engine started, and the plane started to move. Miss Abby and the corpsmen made a final round and then strapped themselves into their seats.

The plane began to accelerate. “Here we go!” called Miss Abby.

“Watch for Santa!” one of the patients called back.

And then they were in the air. Sousa did not have a window, so he could not see Paris falling away from them.

But he knew where he was going: he was going home.

Chapter 6: Taunton

Summary:

Meanwhile, back home...

Notes:

Thank you very much for reading, for leaving kudos, and especially for your comments!

As I wrote this chapter, I realized I needed to make a couple of tweaks to Chapters 3 and 5.

Frank Sousa gazed out the window of the bus. He was on his way home from work, and he was early; the shipyard had closed early for the Friday before Christmas. Outside, there were Christmas decorations, but he could barely see them; it was late afternoon, and the sun was already almost down: they were still in the shortest days of the year. The streetlights were dimmed and shaded for the blackout, and for a fourth year there were no Christmas lights. It was necessary, but still it was a shame; the town used to be famous for its Christmas lights, all along the streets and in the trees and a big display on the town green, people would come from miles around to see them. This was yet another year of shadows and shaded lights.

There would be lights inside, though, he thought, and he smiled as he imagined the cozy living room, the lamps on and the Christmas lights lit, safe behind the blackout curtains. If Joe had been able to get a tree today, they could set it up tonight: a nice early supper, find some Christmas music on the radio, put up the tree, put up the creche, put up the Christmas village…. His mind ran ahead. They needed to confirm their plans for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.... And then there was the creche to finish at church tomorrow morning. That would go fairly quickly; he was one of a group of men who’d been doing it for years, and they’d grown practiced at pulling out and assembling the platform, adding the scenery, the Three Kings go here, the shepherd goes here, turn the donkey this way to hide where his ear was mended…

It was odd how some things stayed the same from year to year and others were so very different. Of course, things would have been changing anyway; his children were all grown up now. But the war had brought change like a hurricane brings change, scouring and scattering, on and on. It had flung his eldest daughter’s husband across the country to California; it had brought a husband for his second daughter, and it had carried his son off to who-knows-where now. This was Daniel’s third Christmas away from home. Maybe next year… He murmured a short prayer for Daniel’s protection, as he always did when he thought of his son.

The bus stopped. He got off and waited for a few of the other passengers. They started down the sidewalk together to catch their next bus, laughing and teasing.

The transfer bus was already packed, and the crowd from the shipyard ended up standing in the aisles. Nobody minded, though; it was almost Christmas, they were getting home early and they were among their friends and neighbors. A few more stops and they were approaching the neighborhood. About a third of the bus got off at the stop south of the elementary school. A couple of more stops, and then Frank pressed the bell – the next stop was his.

He got off the bus, pulled a flashlight out of his pocket, and walked up the street and around the corner. As he approached his house, he saw Daniel's blue star hanging in the window; he saw Joe’s old car pulled up in front of the house — Hope he could get a tree, he thought again. He turned to go up his walk and stopped short.

There was a bicycle propped next to his front steps.

Bicycles meant telegrams.

And telegrams meant…

Daniel.

Frank bolted up the walk and up the steps. At the door, habit took over — he couldn’t not wipe his feet — and that moment was enough time for him to come back to himself and collect himself. He took a few deep breaths and opened the front door.

Tillie was sitting on the sofa, her eyes red, tears dripping down her face. Ines sat next to her, holding the baby, her lips pressed tightly together. Joe, in his uniform, was standing off to the side of the room, next to where the Western Union boy — Gabe Costa’s boy, Sammy —sat with a cup of hot cocoa in one hand, the yellow envelope in the other, and his hat on his knee.

Joe stepped forward and took Frank’s coat and hat. Sammy set down his cocoa and stood up.  “Mr. Sousa,” he said, his voice low, “a telegram for you.” He held out the envelope.

Frank took the envelope. Habit took over again, and he started to reach in his pocket for a tip. Ines spoke up: “Pai, we took care of it.” Sammy nodded and started inching towards the door.

Frank saw the question on Sammy’s face. “Thank you, Sammy, we’ll be all right,” he said. Sammy nodded, took his coat from Joe, and slipped out the door. Joe closed the door behind him and went to squeeze in next to Tillie. He took her hand.

Frank stared at the envelope. He walked over and dropped into the chair Sammy had left, still staring at the envelope. Finally he ripped it open and unfolded the telegram.

 

 

 

MR FRANCISCO M SOUSA
10 WINTER AVE TAUNTON MASS

REGRET TO INFORM YOU YOUR SON WAS SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN ACTION IN BELGIUM TWENTY DECEMBER WILL BE EVACUATED TO UNITED STATES YOU WILL BE ADVISED AS REPORTS OF CONDITION ARE RECEIVED AND WHEN FINAL DESTINATION DETERMINED ADDRESS MAIL FOR HIM QUOTE FIRST LIEUTENANT DANIEL A SOUSA SERIAL NUMBER (HOSPITALIZED) CENTRAL POSTAL DIRECTORY APO C/O POSTMASTER NEW YORK UNQUOTE

TALBOT ACTING THE ADJUTANT GENERAL

 

 

Frank read it again. And again. And then he felt himself starting to breathe, and his ears started to work again and he heard Tillie sniffle, and he noticed the scent of soup on the stove, and he looked up.

“Daniel was wounded. He’s alive.”

Ines sighed; Joe’s face relaxed; Tillie stared a moment, turned to Joe, and started to sob with relief into his lapels. Frank wiped his own eyes and read the telegram again. REGRET TO INFORM YOU YOUR SON WAS SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN ACTION…. Wounded, yes, but still alive. He still had his son. He still had his son.

“Papai?” asked Ines. “What else does it say?”

Frank read the telegram aloud.

Tillie sniffled. “Seriously wounded. Oh, Daniel….” She took a shuddering breath. “And on the twentieth, and here….”

Joe squeezed her hand. On the twentieth, they had gotten married.

She put her hand on top of his. “It’s like something was playing a mean trick on him,” she said.

Joe put his arm around her shoulders. “Aw, look at it this way: we got a wedding present. Yeah, he got hurt, but he made it, you didn’t lose him. And now I’ve still got a chance to meet him, right? And if he’s coming back to the States, that means he’s even well enough to travel.”

It also means his injury is serious enough to send him to the States for treatment, thought Frank. Daniel’s not out of the soup yet.

He stood up. “Well, we can’t do much until we hear more. Ines, what are you doing taking that baby out into the cold like that?”

“Oh, besides running over because Tillie called me? Bringing her to see Vovô of course.” She stood up and handed him the baby. “Do you mind if I tell the Escobars?”

“No, no, go ahead.”

Ines left to go call her in-laws. Frank turned to Tillie and Joe. “So Sergeant Lovebird, how was your day today?”

Joe did not look up from the lock of Tillie’s hair he was smoothing behind her ear. “Got the tree, put it up in the corner. Got some fish."

In his haste coming in, Frank hadn't even noticed the tree, but now that he saw it.... "You sure that's a tree? Looks more like a shrub," he teased.

"That’s what I said to the fellow at the stand, and he had the nerve to ask me if didn’t I know there's a war on? There wasn’t much to choose from at all.  It was either that or the little broken branches on the ground."

“We could always get one of those artificial trees,” said Tillie, her eyes full of mischief.

“An artificial tree! Can you believe she said that?” Frank said to the baby. “Is Tia Tillie trying to give your Vovô a nervous breakdown? Is she trying to get more of the fruitcake for herself? Is that it? An artificial tree!”

Ines reappeared. “Pai, Tillie, Joe —the Escobars invited us all to supper.”

Joe and Tillie made appreciative noises, but they couldn’t quite conceal the do-we-have-to expression in their eyes. Frank couldn’t blame them.

“Did Berna cook?” he asked.

“Of course. As soon as she heard there was a telegram,” Ines replied.

Frank looked over to the newlyweds and back to Ines. “I’ll come. Let’s let Mr. and Mrs. Pierogi here have some time to themselves. You two make sure you eat that nice fish Joe brought,” he instructed them.

As they walked, Ines told Frank more about the telegram. Joe and Tillie had been at home when Sammy showed up and immediately feared the worst. Sammy had explained that he’d heard the shipyard was letting out early and he had to give the telegram directly to Mr. Sousa and could he wait there for him? And by “wait there” he’d meant on the front steps but of course Tillie wasn’t going to just let him sit out there in the cold, she’d invited him inside and put on the kettle for the cocoa and then called Ines, and Ines had had to tell her mother-in-law that there had been a telegram and could she take the kids for a bit? And then she’d bundled up the baby and hurried over and there was Joe and Tillie and Sammy and there had been nothing left to do but wait.

Frank was not particularly interested in any of this, but telling the story seemed to make Ines feel better and hearing his eldest daughter’s voice made him feel better, so he listened to her as they walked the three blocks over to her in-laws’ house. It was a two-family house; in the past the Escobars had rented out the second unit, but Ines lived there now with her children while her husband was away with the Navy. Frank had known the Escobars for years and had become even better friends with them when Ines and Pete started dating. Of course they would have been worried when they’d heard there was a telegram, and of course they would have gotten straight to work preparing to help.

He (briefly) recounted the story of the telegram to the grownups while Ines explained to her older children what had happened to Tio Daniel. He chatted a little while after supper, and then helped Ines herd the children back home. He minded the baby while the older children bathed and read a few stories before he said good night and started back to his house.

He was grateful, so grateful that he still had his Daniel, and he thanked Heaven again and again as he walked along, the snow crunching under his shoes. But what next? Was Daniel still in danger from this injury? When would he be sent back to the States, and where would they put him? How long would he be there? Would they send him back to Europe? The telegram said everything and nothing.

“I’m home!” he called as he came back in. He hung up his coat and hat, went into the dining room, and took out the box where he kept his pen and writing paper. The telegram was in his wallet; he took it out, unfolded it, and smoothed it out.

He had no idea where Daniel would be going, but a letter might have a chance of catching up with him. He chose a V-Mail form to be on the safe side. He tested his pen and began to write:

“Dear Daniel….”

 

 

Chapter 7: Christmas

Summary:

Daniel Sousa's Christmas presents, big and small.

Notes:

As always, thank you for the hits (1000 + now at this writing!), the kudos, and especially your very kind comments, which are intensely appreciated.

Chapter 8 may take a little longer than usual due to Real Life stuff.

Sousa shifted carefully on his litter. He started to wiggle his left arm out from beneath the blankets, but then he remembered: he’d lost his watch somewhere in the shuffle at the field hospital. At the moment he wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing or a good thing. It was bad because, well, it wasn’t an expensive watch, but still, it was a watch, and he’d been about to check it to see how much longer they would be in the air. It was probably good, though, that he couldn’t check it, because he probably wouldn’t like the answer very much.

He sighed. This trip had him beat.

If he had asked the nurse, she would have (truthfully) told him that it had been twelve and a half hours since they left Paris. The first few hours of the flight had passed quickly. Sousa had been in a good mood, and the other patients were in high spirits, talking across the cabin over the roar of the engines about how glad they were to be getting home, who they wanted to see, what they were going to eat, what they wanted to do…. Most of the men knew they would not return to combat, but even those who might go back knew they would be in the States for at least four months, and anything could happen in four months, right? The orderlies passed around magazines and sandwiches, and played cards with the patients when they had time.

Sousa had perked up even more when he learned their first refueling stop would be in the Azores, and when Miss Abby came on her morphine-and-penicillin rounds he asked her, with all the charm he could muster, if there was any way he could get a peek out the hatch while they were on the ground so he could tell the folks back home he’d seen it? She laughed and said she'd see what she could do, and moved on to the next patient.

A few minutes later a crew member ran out,  said something in her ear, and ran back. She quickly conferred with the orderlies and then walked between the berths.

“We’re going to be flying through some rough weather, so get ready. Pack up your stuff, and just in case, please make sure you know where your airsick bags are… Here's another if you need it….”

The next thirty minutes had felt like sixty as the plane bounced and bucked in the storm. Sousa was still a little drowsy from the morphine, just enough to make him want to doze off but not nearly enough to be able to in the jolting plane. He held tight to the sides of his litter and closed his eyes. A couple of the patients did get sick; the noise and smell set off a third, and left a few more struggling to keep their sandwiches down. Miss Abby and the orderlies kept their calm and their footing, tending to their charges, until the captain instructed them to strap in for landing. Landing was rough – it felt like the storm was skipping the plane down the runway like a stone across a pond – but finally they were on the ground.

Sousa did not get his glimpse of the Azores. The flight from Paris was supposed to take four hours, but they had lost time in the storm and the crew was working as quickly as they could to prepare for the next leg of their flight. To Sousa's relief, their preparations included leaving the cabin doors open to air out the plane.

Miss Abby had come by once they were up in the air again. “I'm so sorry we couldn't give you a peek outside,” she said. “If it makes you feel any better, there wasn't much to see – just rain, clouds, and airstrip.”

The next four hours had passed much more slowly. Sousa flipped idly through the magazines as they were passed around, and flipped through them again on their second time around. He listened to and joined in the conversations as best he could, though it was challenging to talk with someone he couldn’t see, and to hear and be heard over the noise of the engines.

About two hours in, the crew had brought out a record player and started having the patients pick the music. The usual favorites came out first —“Stardust”, “Moonlight Serenade”, “In the Mood” —and then more of a mix: Kay Kyser, Roy Acuff and his Sleepy Mountain Boys, Count Basie…. Sousa chose a Dinah Shore record, but he didn’t really care; he was content to listen to whatever was on. The thought of dancing crossed his mind. He grimaced and steered his attention back to the records.

Once the crew had played the requests, they’d brought out another, smaller box: the Christmas music. “White Christmas”, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, medleys…. Miss Abby was rounding as the Christmas music played. “It’s almost midnight Paris time,” she announced, “but we’re going west, so for us it’s still Christmas Eve!”

They’d played “White Christmas” one more time —some of the patients sang along —and then it was time to pack the records away: they were preparing to land in Bermuda for their second fuel stop.

Shortly after they’d landed and the cabin doors opened, one of the orderlies started making rounds. “Look what they sent you for Christmas!” he said, as he handed out thick slices of banana cake wrapped in wax paper. The other orderly came shortly behind, offering cups of milk.

Soon after they finished their dessert they were in the air again. Miss Abby had come around on penicillin-and-morphine rounds before lights-out, and had offered him a sleeping pill. Sousa had turned it down. Now, what seemed like hours later, fidgeting as best he could in the litter with no wristwatch to check, exhausted but unable to sleep… he was beginning to second-guess his decision. Why couldn’t he sleep? His mind was flitting all over the place; why couldn’t he think? Was it the morphine? Probably; he usually felt a little floaty after he got a shot, and usually he could drift off, but not tonight. Should he be taking this much morphine, anyway? It seemed like a lot. But the doctors and nurses would know better than he, and then… and then his leg always seemed to start hurting in that hour or so before the nurses brought the shot.

His leg. It seemed strange to still think of it that way. Maybe it would seem more real once the cast came off, whenever that would be. He cautiously imagined what it would be like when the cast was off and he’d be able to sit up and really see his right leg and see it just… stopping. When he’d swing his legs over the side of the bed and only see one knee, have only one foot touching the floor. And that’s what it would look like… for forever, for the rest of his life.

He tentatively held the the image in his mind, letting himself get acclimated to the idea, and then the image turned into a memory, a memory of his bare left foot on the sand at the beach, huge and comical next to his baby niece’s small plump foot. He was holding Katie’s right hand and Tillie was holding her left, and they were walking her up to the water for her first time. The cold water rolled over Katie’s little toes, and she squealed in surprise, and Tillie and he had said wheeee! Wheeee! to show her that this was fun, it was fun to have the sand pulling out from under your feet and the water up around your toes, and Katie had started to laugh and had plopped herself down in the sand to start splashing the water with her hands.

He smiled at the memory. What a day that had been! Tillie, his father, Ines and Pete and their kids and Pete’s family.... Just having everybody off from work on the same day had been a treat, things had been picking up lately at the mills and the shipyard. It was an unusually warm Saturday in September, so they’d packed a picnic and gone to the beach. Playing with the baby… listening to his father goofing around… shooting the breeze with Ines and Pete… stretching out for some shut-eye and waking up to find himself buried in sand from the knees down, courtesy of Tillie and their three-year-old nephew… teaching his little nephew to look for clams and buying him ice cream at the variety store… The weather had been perfect until the late afternoon, when inky clouds started piling up in the east. As the temperature dropped fifteen degrees in five minutes they’d brushed off the kids and hurried them back to the car. He’d sprinted across the sand with the last armful of towels, hopping into Pete’s car as the torrents of rain roared in. Back home under the grape arbor they ate lobsters boiled with potatoes and linguica for supper, and apples roasted with brown sugar and raisins for dessert….

That was in ’41. And now here it was Christmas Eve three years later. What were they doing tonight? Were they at home? At Midnight Mass? Hanging out with Ines and her kids and the Escobars?

It occurred to him —had they been told what had happened to him, that he was on the way home? Maybe Miss Abby would know. He asked her when she came around on rounds.

“The Army sends a telegram,” she replied. “It says you’ve been wounded and will be going back to the States. They should have received it by now. You can tell them youself tomorrow, you’ll be able to make a long-distance phone call.”

“Did the telegram say what… what happened to me?”

“You mean your leg? No.” She considered a moment. “Sometimes, some of the men like to think first about how they’re going to give… news to their families, the nurses are happy to help, and then the chaplain’s there, and the people from the Red Cross…”

Sousa nodded, and then he gave in and asked the other question he’d been putting off asking. “What time is it?”

“Oh-dark-fifty New York time,” she said with a smile. “We’re going to be landing soon.”

They were met by a litter-lift and a line of ambulances. The ambulance ride was short —just across the camp —and then they were unloaded and sorted into wards. As the orderlies slid him into bed, the nurse greeted Sousa with a whisper: “Merry Christmas, and welcome to Mitchel!” She used a flashlight to show him where the necessities were and promised a visit from the doctor in the morning. After she left, Sousa stared at the ceiling for a while before he finally dropped off to sleep.

A few hours later the nurse managed to wake him up just long enough to stick a thermometer into his mouth and doses of penicillin and morphine into his hip. When he woke up again, the breakfast trays were coming around.

“ ‘Morning, Lieutenant,” said the orderly, as he set down the tray. “And Merry Christmas! Still resting up from the flight?”

“I guess so,” said Sousa. He still felt more asleep than awake.

“You guys got in late! Your pilot trying to get a peek at Santy Claus or somethin’? Here ya go.” He helped Sousa adjust the tray and noticed his surprised look. ”Yup, a whole honest-to-God orange, all for you for Christmas. When’s the last time you saw one of those?”

“One like this? Not since I shipped out. Had a couple of those little red oranges in Italy, but that would have been months ago. They were good, though.”

“Well, enjoy your breakfast, and lemme know if you need anything.”

After breakfast, a doctor and nurse made quick rounds, promising Sousa they’d return shortly. When they came back, the nurse drew the curtain closed.

“Hello again, Lieutenant,” said the doctor. “Just wanted to look you over a little more thoroughly now that you’re off the plane. How are you feeling? Pain in your leg under control?”

“Pain’s good. I’m just… I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

The doctor shone his light into Sousa’s eyes. “Well, it might have something to do with the fact that you’ve been fighting in World War 2 for a couple of years now. Not as strenuous as bowling, but I heard it takes a lot out of a guy….” He checked Sousa’s ears. “And then I don’t know what you were getting up to right before you were wounded, but I’ve heard there’s been some excitement in that part of the world. (Open your mouth and say ‘ah.’) And then you took that hit to your leg, and you do know it takes a little while to bounce back from potentially bleeding to death, right?” He lightly rested his fingers on the sides of Sousa’s neck. “Turn your head to the left… to the right. Now swallow.”

He pulled out his stethoscope and listened to Sousa’s chest and abdomen. “And then you had major surgery, and then you’ve been hauled like freight a couple of thousand miles —almost every man who comes through here tells me that plane ride’s a bitch —okay, let’s get you on your side —“ the nurse helped Sousa turn as the doctor listened to his back —“Want to stay on your side a bit?” He helped Sousa stay in position, checked his left foot, and inquired about his elimination habits as the nurse arranged some pillows.

“And oh yes, there’s managing with that cast, and on top of all that you’re getting used to being back on New York time.  So yes, Lieutenant, I think it’s perfectly normal for a man in your situation to be tired.” He put his stethoscope away and started to write on the chart.

“And there’s not much rest for the weary here at Mitchel. We just do staging here. You’re in good shape, so we’re going to have you on your way as soon as we can.”

The doctor seemed to be expecting Sousa to say something. The nurse was looking a little weary. Sousa suspected he was being set up.

Oh, all right, he thought. “On my way to where?”

“England! …Ah, you’re not going to fall for that, are you. Thomas M. England General Hospital. It’s in Atlantic City. Best hospital for amputees in the country. They’ll help you get your strength back and start getting around again, and when you’re ready they’ll set you up with your first prosthetic.”

Sousa had another question on his mind. “New York’s closer for my family than Atlantic City. If they ask… could they come see me here?”

The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think there’s going to be enough time. I’d like to get you out of here first thing tomorrow morning.”

Sousa nodded. It had been worth a shot. He’d prepared himself for a “no", so he was a little surprised at how disappointed he still felt.

He did not have time to dwell on it, though. Before long the orderlies were coming around with bathing and shaving supplies and a couple of oddly-shaped trays, which turned out to be for hair-washing for patients who, like him, could not sit up.

“They’ll be able to get you a haircut when you get to Atlantic City,” the orderly promised as he toweled off Sousa’s hair. “But don’t worry, nobody’s gonna gig you here.”

Once the bath supplies were picked up, the orderlies passed out little booklets. The cover had a picture of a wreath ringing a little map of Long Island with a star marking Mitchel’s location. “CHRISTMAS GREETINGS/ December 25, 1944/ STATION HOSPITAL/ Mitchel Field, Long Island, New York”

Sousa flipped through it. There was a Christmas letter from the hospital commander, a formal menu for the day’s dinner (roast turkey, dressing, cranberry salad, two kinds of pie…), a listing of the hospital staff, and blank pages titled “Autographs” – for the staff, he supposed, for their greetings to and from each other.

The chaplain made rounds. Sousa was disappointed that he’d missed Christmas Mass, but at least he was able to receive Holy Communion.

Dinner was served shortly afterwards. After the trays were put away, Sousa sensed that the hospital had given up on any kind of routine. A brass quintet came to play Christmas carols. Santa Claus visited the ward, bringing gifts of candy and cigarettes and “Greetings from Mitchel Field” postcards. Three Rockettes came later in the afternoon; they didn't dance but they visited and laughed and gave out pictures and candy canes. Supper trays came around; as he poked at his food he thought about the single item on his own list of objectives for the day: his phone call.

It was just as well he was calling late; he'd be more likely to catch someone at home. Who would answer? Tillie? His father? Now that he was so close to hearing them again, he felt all the weight of homesickness pent up over almost three years pressing on his chest.

Of course he had to tell them, but how? He wasn’t worried about how his father would take it; this wasn’t the first time in his life his father had received bad news, and it certainly wasn’t the worst news he’d ever received. He knew his father wouldn’t fall apart. He just hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed.

When the orderly came to pick up the supper tray, Sousa asked him about the phone call. The nurse came a few minutes later with the telephone.

“Are you going to call your family?” she asked. “When you’re ready, here’s what you can tell them about visiting.” She handed him a piece of paper with notes on it. “You’ll be going to Thomas M. England General Hospital in Atlantic City, probably tomorrow. They usually recommend that you wait a week or two to get settled in before you get visitors. Your family can go to their local Red Cross office for help with all the travel arrangements, including finding a place to stay in Atlantic City.”

“Thank you,” said Sousa. He put the paper to the side as the nurse picked up the receiver. He gave her the phone number; she relayed it to the operator.

As he waited, the thought struck him —what if his father wasn’t in at all? What if it was just Tillie? He hadn’t thought of that —but then the nurse handed him the phone, the line was crackling and the operator was prompting him: “Go ahead.”

“Hello? It’s —it’s me, it’s Daniel.”

“Daniel!” Tillie cried. “Oh, Daniel —Merry Christmas! We’ve missed you so much! And we’ve been so worried, they sent a telegram—” the sound grew muffled, as if she were covering the mouthpiece with her hand —“Papai, you were right, it’s Daniel!” She came back on. “It was so funny, we were there in the living room, and the phone rang, and Papai looked up and said ‘That’s Daniel,’ and here you are! So how are you? Where are you?”

Daniel grinned. “Hi, Tillie. I’m okay, and I’m at Mitchel Field in Long Island.”

“Lawn Guyland? What are you doing there?”

“Stuffing myself with pie, mostly. You know how cushy it is in the Army. They’ve got me at the station hospital here."

"Well, save room, because I’ll bring you all the pie you want when we come to visit you! I have so many things to tell you — did you get your Christmas package? — oh, here's Papai —"

Daniel held his breath as the phone changed hands.

“Daniel?”

Daniel struggled to keep his voice steady. “Pai.”

“It’s so good to hear your voice. How are you?”

“I’m good, Pai, they’re taking good care of me.”

“So did I hear that right —you’re on Long Island?”

“Yeah, at the station hospital here. I’m not going to be here long, they’re going to ship me out again tomorrow, to a hospital in Atlantic City.”

He listened to his father absorb the news.

“Tomorrow. Well, when you get to the new place, can you have visitors?” his father asked. “We’d like to come and see you if it's allowed.”

“Yes.” He felt his heart leap with hope. “Yes, they said—” he fumbled for the paper “—the nurse said they want me to settle in first, for a week or so. But she said if you go to the Red Cross at home they’ll help you with all the arrangements.”

“Thanks, we’ll do that. So… did they say how long they think you’ll be in?”

“It’s… going to be some time. Tillie said the Army sent a telegram. How much did they tell you?”

His father sounded like he’d memorized the telegram. “They only said you were ‘seriously wounded’ on the twentieth and that you were coming back to the States for treatment. They gave us a temporary address for your letters.”

Daniel took a deep breath. His free hand was clenched on the blanket. “Yeah. I’m not sure exactly how long I’m going to be in the hospital, but it’s going to be… a few months, I think. Pai, I… I got hit in my leg. The doctors weren’t able to save it.” He closed his eyes. “They had to amputate.”

“Oh,” his father finally said. “Oh. Which…?”

Daniel opened his eyes again. “My right. Above the knee. The doctor said about five inches, I think. I can’t really see it, there’s this big cast on there now.”

“But you’re all right? You’re out of danger?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” Daniel heard his father sigh with relief, and he began to smile himself.

"That’s the important thing. You made it back. You’re safe. Daniel, this is... this is the best Christmas present of my life.”

Daniel’s ears felt hot and his eyes itched. He wasn’t sure what to say. “I can’t stay on too long —“

“Of course. Do you have an address? Where should we send you letters?”

“I’ll find out when I get there, I’ll let you know. But how are you all, what’s going on there?”

“Oh, we’re all fine here, and some of us are even better. When were the last letters you got?”

“Mid-November, I guess? I know Ines had the baby.”

“So we’ll know where to start catching you up. We had a quiet Christmas, went to Mass last night, had dinner at home, Ines and the little ones came over… the usual. Well, almost the usual, but we have to save some news for when we visit you, right?”

“I guess so. But don’t worry about visiting, I’ll be okay. I know it’s a long way, and I know things are tight at work—“

“Stop. I'll handle that, don't worry about it. You work on healing up, all right?”

“Yes, Pai.” Daniel smiled.

“And let us know when you get to Atlantic City.”

“I will.”

“Tillie wants to say good-bye too.”

“Okay. I’ll be in touch soon.”

“I’m counting on it. Here’s Tillie….”

“Daniel? Be good, let us know when you get there, and be sure to tell us if there's anything we can send you, okay?”

“I will, Tillie, I promise.”

“All right then. ‘Bye, little brother, I love you.”

Daniel groaned playfully. “ 'Bye, Tillie.”

“Oh and by the way I got married!”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you more soon! Merry Christmas!” Tillie laughed and hung up. Daniel was left staring at the telephone handset. He put it back in its cradle.

The nurse came back and put the phone aside. “Did you have a good visit?”

“I did. But then my sister pulled a crazy stunt on me: we were saying good-bye and she just casually drops in ‘oh-by-the-way-I-got-married’ and hangs up!”

“Really! Was she was engaged?”

“Well, yes. And she is the type who’d get married to the guy she was engaged to, as opposed to somebody else.”

The nurse chuckled. “He in the service?”

“Army. He’s an electrical tech of some kind, not sure where he’s stationed right now. There’s a point of embarkation near our town, that’s how they met.”

“Sounds like someone got a furlough. Maybe she wants to leave you on a cliffhanger, make sure you read her letters.” The nurse imitated a radio voice: “ ‘Tune in next time to the Romantic Adventures of Lieutenant Sousa’s Sister. And until then, keep infection at bay the Army way: Penicillin!”

“Already?”

“I’m afraid so. Left leg, please.”  She gave the shot, followed it up with morphine, and helped him turn on his stomach.

So the phone call had gone well. He felt better knowing his family knew, though he felt a little sorry that his father would have to tell the story to his sisters. Maybe he’d do it the same way Tillie had shared her news —“So yes, he’s fine, I’m going to bed now, oh by the way he got his leg cut off, good night!” He snickered a little at the thought.

He’d missed them when he was away, of course, but now that he’d heard their voices… Oh, God, how he wanted to see them. He was almost afraid to hope for a visit; a visit required both time and money, and he was used to those being in short supply. But his father had sounded so confident….

He looked up. An orderly and a couple of patients were gathered around a record player. “White Christmas” started to fill the ward.

He put his head back down. So tomorrow they’d put him on a train to Atlantic City. He vaguely remembered one of the doctors —the one at the field hospital? his thoughts were getting slippery, the morphine must be kicking in —one of the doctors saying something about another operation? was that right? and getting him ready for a prosthetic… He wondered how long it would take. Maybe he could be up and walking when his family came to visit….

He was starting to drift off. A new record came on, one he’d never heard before.

“Have yourself a merry little Christmas….”

Was that Judy Garland? Sounded like it. It was hard to pay attention to the lyrics but the melody was pretty. He closed his eyes to listen and quickly fell asleep.

Chapter 8: Advance to Boardwalk

Summary:

The Army sends Daniel Sousa to Atlantic City.

 

Daniel’s heart hammered. He was on the ground, on hands and knees, gravel and dirt digging into his skin, the relay baton still in his hand; the next runner was frantically calling to him, the whole team was calling to him, Coach was calling to him, but none of them could come out to help him, it was against the rules; he was dimly aware that the people in the stands were calling to him as well, maybe even some people who'd come out just to see him, he had to complete his leg of the relay, the team was counting on him, but he couldn't move; he struggled to crawl or to drag himself along the ground but he was so weak he couldn't so much as lift his hand forward a couple of inches —

He woke up. He was in his bed at the hospital – the hospital at Mitchel, he reminded himself. It was… he searched for the clock… 0312.  He was wide awake. And his right leg was beginning to ache.

The nurse would be around soon, he figured. And when she came, maybe she'd have some news about the transfer to the hospital in Atlantic City. He rearranged himself in bed as well as he could and settled back to try to get back to sleep. The ward was quiet (aside from a couple of fellows who snored.) He wondered if anyone else was awake.

He dozed off after a while, only to wake up again with a jolt. He checked the clock again: 0350. The pain in his leg was getting worse.

He took a deep breath and went back to waiting for the nurse. At least this answered his question about still needing all that morphine.

He did his best to wait patiently and keep his eyes off the clock, but finally he gave in and pushed himself up as far as he could on his elbows. To his relief he could see the nurse working her way down the ward.

As he lay back down again, he gasped as a surge of sharper pain shuddered through his right leg – a cramp, he recognized it, it was just a cramp in his calf, that was all, he immediately started to slowly, steadily straighten his knee and flex his foot at the ankle – but then of course his knee and ankle were gone so what the hell was this? Was he dreaming, or hallucinating, or —? It wasn't real, and he knew it wasn't real, so why wasn't it going away? He closed his eyes and tried to breathe slowly and deeply. He wondered if he should say anything when the nurse finally arrived.

A minute or two later, he felt a hand gently touching his shoulder. “Everything okay?” whispered the nurse. “I saw you looking around.”

“I’m sorry — I didn’t mean to bug you —”

“Were you looking for me? Is your leg bothering you?”                                                                  

Sousa nodded. “Yeah.”

“Let’s take care of that, then. Give me 30 seconds….” She took Sousa’s pulse, gave the morphine and penicillin injections, and popped a thermometer under his tongue. She consulted a clipboard and then tied a large tag to his pajama buttons. “You’re leaving for Atlantic City this morning. That’s your ticket,” she said. “Keep that outside your blanket when you’re on the train, so you don’t wind up in Richmond or Augusta or who knows where.”

Sousa watched the nurse putter and write as he held the thermometer under his tongue. His leg still hurt, but the pain was easier to bear now that he knew the morphine would be kicking in soon.  He saw her hang up the clipboard and come over to stand next to him.

“A few more seconds,” she said. She let her hand rest lightly on his, and Sousa felt himself relaxing a little more.

After she put the thermometer away, the nurse helped him turn on his right side. She put some pillows behind his back and under his left leg, came back around the bed where he could see her, and took his hand again. “All right then. They’re going to be coming for you pretty soon to take you to the station, you’ll get breakfast on the train. The morphine I just gave you should keep you comfortable until you’re well on your way.

“Now, I need to give an accurate report to the nurse on the train. Was the pain in your leg worse than usual just now? Ah-ah-ah, I can see it in your face, you were going try to tell me it wasn’t so bad. I already know you’re brave, you can be straight with me.”

Sousa chuckled weakly. “You’d be scary if you weren’t so nice. Usually it gets achy just before it’s time for the shot, but this time I guess it came early, so it just kept hurting more and more.”

“Was the pain feel the same as always, just worse? Or was there anything different about it?”

"Different, I guess".

"Meaning in a different place or did the pain itself feel different or…?”

Sousa hesitated; he was still unsure of what to tell her.

“Some of the men,” she said, “who've had amputations — almost all of them, really — from time to time they have what's called 'phantom pain'.  They might feel like their amputated limb is still there, normal and healthy — sometimes they even forget they've had an amputation. Sometimes the feeling can be odd or painful. And it can come and go. I can only imagine how strange it must feel, especially at first.”

“I think… I think I remember the surgeon saying something about it, back at the field hospital. Kind of a stupid thing to forget.”

She squeezed his hand. “I’m impressed you remember. That anesthesia can turn a man’s memory into Swiss cheese. So you know that the doctors and nurses take this kind of pain seriously, it's real pain and a normal part of recovering from this injury.”

“It was the darndest thing,” said Sousa. “There was the usual; it was getting worse, and that’s when I looked around, but then all of a sudden I felt like I was having a charley-horse in my right leg.”

“Still there?”

“It’s gone now.”

“Good.” She patted his hand again, took his pulse, and wrote on the clipboard. “Try to relax, and we’ll look back in on you a little later.” She hung up the clipboard and pushed her cart back down the ward to her next patient’s bedside.

By the time an orderly appeared to check his pulse again, Sousa was feeling somewhat better. The litter team arrived at 0445 to load him onto a stretcher. Into the ambulance, across the post, and into a ward car on a hospital train.  The nurse and orderlies started to round as soon as their car was full. The lights were kept dim under the theory that somebody might be able to get back to sleep. The train pulled out of the station, but never seemed to get up to speed, and stopped not even an hour later.

An orderly made his way down the aisle. “We’re in New York City, we’re just joining up with another train. Breakfast is up once we’re on the way again.”

The cars jolted and jerked as they were reconnected, jostling the men in their berths; Sousa grimaced as the pain in his leg kicked up, and he could hear muttering and a few expletives from the other berths. The mood in the car seemed different from when he was on the train to Paris, he thought – a little less cheerful, a little more grumpy. Maybe it was because the men on the train had all been dumped out of bed at 0-dark-hundred. Maybe it was because they’d had just enough rest to recover just enough energy to be grumpy  — the train jolted again — maybe it was because their train went straight to Paris and they didn’t have any of this song-and-dance in the railyard, dammit.

The doctor yesterday had said something about being hauled like freight. That was exactly how he was feeling at the moment: like a package being tossed from handler to handler, complete with an address label tied to his pajama shirt.

But this should be his last train ride, his last ambulance ride as a patient. When he left the hospital in Atlantic City, he promised himself, it wouldn’t be on a litter, it would be under his own power, he’d walk out on his own two —

He smiled wryly to himself as he heard himself thinking the phrase: On his own two feet. Well, it still counted if one of those feet were made of wood, didn’t it?

A couple of jerks forward and they were on the way again, only to stop again at Newark. There were a few yowls of complaint; the nurse calmly agreed with them — why, yes, this is so fouled up that we’re stopped again so soon, we really should get going; you know, you’re right, at this rate it really will be Christmas 1945 before we get to Atlantic City — as she started the penicillin-and-morphine rounds.

Once they’d rolled out of Newark, one of the orderlies came by to put up the window shades. There wasn’t much to look at, and what there was was covered in snow, but Sousa still appreciated the view and the light.

The breakfast trays came out; newspapers and refills on coffee came afterwards. Sousa unfolded the paper. Most of the front page was devoted to the struggle against the German offensive. He squinted at the map. The village where he was wounded wasn’t marked, and he couldn’t tell whether or not it was still under Allied control.

The back of the paper had photos of various units’ Christmas parties: air crews, logistics, a couple of hospital wards… Some of the photos included local children invited to the party, looking bewildered and clutching little presents. Santa had made it to quite a few of the parties; his schedule must have been pretty tight that day. Odd how he seemed to always have the weatherbeaten look of a master sergeant or a career colonel about him.

They seemed to be all from units stationed in England; Sousa supposed more pictures from Europe and the Pacific would come in over the next few days. He thought of the hotel ward in France and wondered who had won the decoration contest.

He put the paper down and looked out the window. It occurred to him that he might have come this very way before, in ’42, when they sent him to Fort Belvoir. Hard to believe that was only two and a half years ago….

When he woke up, an orderly was leaning across him to pull the window shade. “Shades down in the station,” the orderly explained. He checked Sousa’s tag again.

“Where are we now?”

“Trenton. This’ll be a short stop, and then we’ll be in Philly before you know it.”

At the Philadelphia station, their car and the other cars going to Atlantic City were shunted off and given to a new engine. Meanwhile, the patients were offered snacks. Finally, they were off on the last leg of the journey.

When they arrived at Atlantic City, they were met by the familiar line of ambulances. As they drove through the town, he saw quite a few of the buildings had boarded-up windows or were wrapped in scaffolding; he remembered hearing about a hurricane that had gone up the East Coast in September.

They pulled up in front of the hospital. Sousa looked up at the building as they lifted him out of the ambulance. The hospital didn’t really look like a hospital; it didn’t look like a new pile of bricks hastily thrown together by the Army. It was a tall, elegant brick building. As the orderlies helped him onto a gurney, a breeze caught his face, and from the scent and the feel of the air he was sure they were very near the ocean.

A civilian orderly took over steering the gurney into the hospital. Sousa looked around. High carved ceilings, potted palms…

“Pretty, isn’t it, sir?” said the orderly. “This was one of the grandest hotels in town before it got drafted.”

“I feel underdressed,” Sousa replied.  “Am I going to need a set of Class A pajamas?”

A clerk met them. “Good morning….” He checked Sousa’s dog tags and the tag tied to his pajamas. “…Lieutenant Sousa. Let’s see, where are you going?” He consulted a clipboard. “Room 8130-A. Welcome to England General Hospital.”

“8130-A,” repeated the orderly. “On the way.” He pushed the gurney off towards the banks of elevators.

“So, ever been to Atlantic City before?” he asked.

“Nope, first time.”

“Well, I hope you have a good time of it while you’re here recovering, and that you’ll come back. They’ll take good care of you here." They were approaching a bank of elevators. The orderly stopped in dismay at the sight of a waiting crowd of gurneys and wheelchairs.

“Tell you what,” he said, turning the gurney down a side hall. “Let’s take a detour, and maybe we can see a little of A.C. out the window, how’s that sound? Unless you want to go straight up to your room.”

“You’re the driver. But sure, I wouldn’t mind a little tour, if you’ve got time.”

“Well, then, first thing to know — my name’s Duck, by the way — first thing to know is that you’re going to be staying in Haddon Hall, it’s one of the biggest hotels in town; the Army took it over to make the hospital. Actually, the Army took over something like 40, 45 hotels in town. Took Convention Hall, too, folks around here call the whole thing ‘Camp Boardwalk.’ Anyway, Haddon Hall is part of the hospital. So’s the Traymore and the Chalfont.  That’s where all the patients are. And then they have Colton Manor for the nurses and the Dennis for the enlisted men to stay in….”

“So there’s three entire hotels making up one hospital?”

“Five. The Colton and the Dennis are part of the hospital too. Now the President Hotel….”

Sousa listened with half an ear as they rolled down the hall. Duck took a service elevator up a few floors and brought Sousa to a long bank of windows overlooking the Boardwalk. There were a few patients sitting by the windows, some reading, some playing cards. A couple of them greeted Duck and welcomed Sousa.

Duck moved the gurney to give Sousa a better view. “There it is! See, we’re right on the Boardwalk. That’s the Steel Pier, and down that way’s the Million Dollar Pier… Heinz Pier was that way, hurricane wrecked it….” He pointed out a few shops and restaurants popular with the men, a few spots that he thought should be more more popular with the men, his own favorite fishing spots….

Sousa noticed that many of the people down on the Boardwalk were wearing olive drab, and more than a few were in wheelchairs — out with their families, perhaps? Homesickness and longing suddenly gripped his heart and squeezed. He looked across the Boardwalk to the waves; his memory supplied the sounds of the rolling ocean muffled by the windows.

Duck let him watch the water for a few minutes before pushing the gurney away. “Have to get you upstairs sometime, I’m afraid.”

He took Sousa up a side elevator. Up on the eighth floor, they had to wait for a wheelchair race  to pass before they could turn onto the main corridor. Chalkboards with what looked like patients’ names and schedules hung at intervals along the walls; they looked odd next to the wallpaper and carved moldings.

“…And here we are: room 8130-A.” Duck stopped the gurney next to the door. “I’m just going to let them know you’re here.”

He returned with a nurse. “Good morning! I’m Lieutenant Munn. Now, let’s get you situated….”

She took Sousa’s chart from him and put it aside, and then she and Duck helped Sousa off the gurney and onto the bed. As she cranked the bed down, Duck moved the gurney back out into the hall. “Have a good day, sir,” he said to Sousa. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again.” He was gone before Sousa could respond.

Lieutenant Munn smiled as Duck left. “Did he give you the tour?”

“A short one.”

“I think he worked here before the Army took it over.” She popped a thermometer in Sousa’s mouth, took his blood pressure and pulse, and wrote in his chart. “Anyway, welcome to England General Hospital. You have a roommate, Lieutenant Grahn. He’s off to the mess hall right now; when you’re ready you’ll be able to take your meals there too. I’ll call for a lunch tray for you, and I’ll be back shortly with your medication.A little later your doctor will come to introduce himself. The clerk will come, one of the volunteers will be by…. It’s going to be a busy afternoon.” She took the thermometer, poured a glass of water, dropped in a paper straw, and offered Sousa a drink.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I’ll put it right here for you,” she said. She set him up with the other necessities and showed him how to use his bedside radio. “Now, here’s something for you to read….” She handed him a paper. “Are you all set? I’m going to go order your lunch now.”

Sousa glanced at the paper; it was a printed letter from the hospital commander. About halfway down the page, someone had written in his new mailing address. He put it aside for later, pushed himself up on his elbows, and looked around.

Even with the hospital beds and privacy curtain, the room still looked very much like a pleasant guest room. Sousa’s bed was closer to the door, so he couldn’t see out the window. On the window side of the room, his roommate’s bed was neatly made; there were a few books on his table and a framed picture next to his radio.

So this was where he’d spend the next few months. And maybe his roommate could give him more of the skinny on what to expect.  At least it looked like he wouldn’t be stuck in his room the whole time. He thought of the men he’d seen zooming around in wheelchairs instead of being instead of trundled about on a gurney or litter; that might be him soon, he thought, maybe even in the next day or two.

But that was all in the future. He took a deep breath and tried to relax. For the moment, there was nothing to do but wait.

Notes:

As always, thank you all so much for your very encouraging and motivating comments!

TheGirlFromINVISIBLE: WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER for making the hospital/ hotel connection! As Duck points out, the hospital occupies five hotels, but Daniel is staying in the building that is now the Resorts. Now: how about sharing that funny story? ;)

Chapter 9: Induction

Summary:

Daniel Sousa's first days at England General Hospital.

Notes:

Note: The medical stuff is a bit rougher in this chapter.

Thank you very much for your kudos and your kind, encouraging, motivating comments. I can't tell you how much I appreciate them.

“Next of kin?”

“My father: Sousa S-O-U-S-A, Francisco F-R-A-N-C-I-S-C-O, 10 Winter Avenue, Taunton T-A-U-N-T-O-N, Massachussetts.”

“Thanks. We’ll send a telegram to let him know you’ve arrived safely and where to send your mail.

“And that’s it for now,” said the clerk. “I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to get your pay transferred over here in time for next payday, so if we don’t make it and you need anything, contact the Office for Special Services. The Red Cross ladies can help you out too.

“Any other questions, sir?”

“Not right now,” said Sousa.

“All right then, sir. Have a good afternoon, and welcome to England General.” The clerk left.  He was followed shortly afterward by the head nurse, who introduced herself and gave a short welcome speech about the hospital and the ward. Soon after she left, a sergeant showed up from the dentist’s office. He asked about Sousa’s teeth, took a look for himself, and made a few notes on his clipboard. “See you again soon!” he said as he left.

About twenty minutes later, two privates arrived to install an overhead frame and a trapeze on his bed. After they finished, Sousa was just starting to doze off when a doctor entered and introduced himself as Captain Blaine, one of the doctors on the team who’d be supervising his care. The doctor did a quick exam, listened to Sousa’s chest, and promised to come back later with the chief doctor. Sousa nodded. He was asleep almost before the doctor was out the door.

He was dragged back out of sleep a little later. As his head cleared, he realized there were people talking outside the room. A knock sounded at the open door, and Lieutenant Munn entered with the doctor who’d been in before. They were followed by a few other doctors.

“Lieutenant Sousa….” said one of the new doctors, flipping through the chart. “Welcome to England General Hospital. You’ve met Captain Blaine, I believe….” He introduced the other doctors. “…And I’m Major Peyton. We’ll be handling your case until the happy day you pack your bag and walk out of here.

“Captain Blaine tells us you’ve been making a good recovery from your first surgery. So now it’s time to start talking about what comes next. First we need to get a good look at your leg and see how it’s healing.”

 Finally, thought Sousa.

“So we’ll get an X-ray of your leg….”

…dammit.

“…and go from there. Any questions?”

“Yes. When does the cast come off?”

“As early as tomorrow.”

“And then what? The doctors at the field hospital said something about getting the leg ready for a prosthetic — a procedure.”

“Well, first we have to see what the X-ray shows us,” said Major Peyton. “If everything’s as it should be, then we’ll open the cast and see how the wound looks. That determines everything else.  Generally we first do what’s called a revision. We shape the bone and the muscle to give you as much function as possible. Sometimes, depending on how things go, we have to wait a few weeks and do a little more work. We put a dressing on it and wait for it to heal, usually about 8 to 12 weeks. Once it’s ready, we close it up.  Another 4 to 6 weeks and you’ll be ready for your intial prosthesis.”

Sousa did the arithmetic and was dismayed by the answer. “So it could be May before….”

Major Peyton looked sympathetic. “Possibly. Possibly longer, though of course we hope not. The important thing’s to take it day by day. And of course you’ll be able to be up and around before you get your prosthesis. Which reminds me, you’ll be getting a visit from the physical therapist to explain your exercise program.”

He started to write on the chart. “So: Let’s get that X-ray as soon as possible. We’re going to put you on the surgery schedule for Thursday. Captain Blaine will come by later to finish your physical… and let’s see if we can get you to the dentist before surgery. Maybe we can get in a haircut, too.”

No detail too small, Sousa thought grumpily. They’d probably check his gig line if he had pajama bottoms. It didn’t help that Peyton was right, that he really could use a haircut.

The doctors said good-bye and left. Lieutenant Munn stayed behind a few minutes to offer him a drink and help him turn on his side, and then excused herself.

Sousa was left to think over what the doctors had said. So the cast wouldn’t come off today. Well, maybe it would come off the next day. And it could be worse, he reminded himself; he could have a cast that had to stay on for weeks and weeks. He could have casts on both his legs, or on his arms, or one of those giant casts. It occurred to him that at very moment, one of those guys with the giant casts could be consoling himself with the thought that hey, at least he still had both legs.

Another knock sounded at the door. Sousa looked up.

The knock sounded again. “Come in,” he said.

A middle-aged woman entered. She carried a basket over her elbow and wore a light gray dress and a white cap like a nurse’s cap. Both her cap and dress had the Red Cross emblem on them.

“Lieutenant Sousa? I’m Mrs. Fowler, I’m one of the Gray Lady volunteers with the Red Cross. May I come in?”

“Uh… Sure. Please.”

“Thank you.” She smiled. “The charge nurse tells me you just arrived today. I wanted to come by and say welcome to England General Hospital, but also welcome to Atlantic City on behalf of those of us who live here.

“You’ll see us Gray Ladies about the hospital — we try to visit each ward at least once a day — and we’re here to help you in any way we can: errands, letters, reading… whatever problems might come up, big or small.”

She offered Sousa paper and pencil to write a letter and a clipboard to write on. While he wrote, she stepped out to look for a cup of coffee and something to read.

December 26,1944
Atlantic City, N.J.

Dear Pa (and Tillie I guess),

Just a quick note for now. They transferred me this morning by train — had a good trip — and now I’m at the hospital in Atlantic City (Thomas England General Hospital.). It’s quite a place — it’s in a big hotel the Army borrowed. Everyone has been very kind. I have one roommate — another lieutenant — but I haven’t met him yet. It’s such a big place, maybe he got lost on his way back from the mess hall.

The doctor wants me to have an X-ray before he decides what to do next. He also wants me to get a haircut (after all it’s still the Army).

My address here is

He found the letter Lieutenant Munn had given him earlier and copied his mailing address.

Please say hi to Ines and the kids for me and give her my address and tell them I will write as soon as I can. And of course I will write again to you, PA, as soon as I can. No letters for Tillie until she explains herself.

Mrs Fowler knocked and came back in, a plate in one hand and a coffee in the other. “Take as much time as you like, I’m just going to set these down.” She set them on Daniel’s bedside table. The plate turned out to have a doughnut on top of it.

“No, I’m almost done,” said Daniel. He reluctantly finished the letter:

The lady from the Red Cross who brought me this paper has just come back with coffee and a doughnut. And of course I can’t just hurt her feelings by not eating the doughnut. So I had better close for now but like I said, I will write again as soon as I can. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours, Daniel

He addressed the envelope and tucked the letter inside. Mrs. Fowler took the letter and put it in her basket. “I’ll make sure this gets posted today,” she said, and pulled out a couple of books: New Frontiers in Science and an anthology of mystery stories. “I hope these will do,” she said. “There wasn’t much selection on the shelf in the lounge. I can arrange for a visit from the book cart.”

“No, these look interesting. Thank you. And thank you for the doughnut.”

She stayed and chatted for a few minutes while he ate — lived in Atlantic City since she was married — husband a lawyer — heard the John Philip Sousa Band here in 1931, wouldn’t it be funny if he happened to be a relation? — had a nephew and one son-in-law in the Pacific, another son-in-law in the service stateside someplace…. “And where are you from? Oh, is that near Boston?....”

It seemed very strange to be making small talk with a lady his father's age while enjoying doughnuts and coffee in bed. But Mrs. Fowler was easy to talk to, and to his relief she also knew when to stop talking.  When his coffee cup was getting empty and he was starting to wilt, she cheerfully took the cup and the plate, freshened up his water glass, left some more paper and envelopes in his nightstand, promised someone would stop by the next day, and bustled out the door.

Sousa settled back as best he could and started the mystery anthology. The first selection was a short story set in an English country house, short on gangsters and long on wit. He was well into the second story when Lieutenant Munn arrived with penicillin and morphine.

“Where’s that roommate of yours? Still at the movie?” she asked. “He’s pretty far along in his rehabilitation and he is taking full advantage, let me tell you. ” She helped Sousa turn in bed, arranged some pillows, and turned on a light for him.

About an hour later, an orderly arrived with a gurney to take him to X-ray. They passed the ward’s little Christmas tree on their way to the elevator. When he returned, the dinner tray came as soon as he was back in bed and the orderly gone with the gurney. After dinner, Lieutenant Munn was making her final rounds when a patient entered the room. He was wearing a maroon Army-issue bathrobe and walked slowly but steadily with a cane in each hand.

Lieutenant Munn pretended to be annoyed. “Lieutenant Grahn, there you are. So glad you could join us.”

“ ‘Evenin’, ma’am,” he said, with a respectful nod. “So Santa brought me a roommate? No offense,” he said, addressing Sousa, “but I asked for Chili Williams.”

“That’s too bad,” said Sousa. “Are you sure she asked for you?”

“Good point.” He offered his hand. “Henry Grahn, 9^th Infantry.”

Sousa shook it. “Daniel Sousa, 339^th Engineering.”

Lieutenant Munn took Grahn’s vital signs, reminded him that the time to go a-wandering was over, and said good night to them both; her shift was ending.

When she had left, Grahn rummaged in his nightstand. “Want some fudge? My mom sent me some for Christmas.” He brought the box over to Sousa.

“Aw, thanks.” Sousa took a piece, and then another at Grahn’s urging.

“So you just got here today,” said Grahn. “Come in from Mitchel?”

They chatted for a while. Grahn seemed like an all right fellow. He had been wounded at Cherbourg and had been at the hospital since July with a severely wounded right leg — he was still in a walking cast — and an amputated left foot. He rolled up his pajama pants and showed Sousa his prosthesis; he had gotten it a few weeks ago and was making rapid progress. As he demonstrated a couple of the features, Sousa felt very strange, as if Grahn had accepted him as a fellow member of a kind of club where it was perfectly normal for Grahn to discuss features of his artificial foot as casually as if he were showing Sousa a new fishing pole.

The night nurse came on her rounds and introduced herself to Sousa. “Lieutenant Grahn,” she said, “I’m going to attend to Lieutenant Sousa first, and then you’re next. You know what to do.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and started to unlace his prosthesis.

The nurse drew the curtain, did the pulse-and-medications routine that was becoming so familiar, and helped Sousa brush his teeth. When he’d finished, she helped him turn on his stomach and then gave him a backrub. She promised she’d look back in on him later.

He could hear water running in the bath, and the nurse and Grahn kidding each other, but he didn’t make any effort to listen in on what was going on. He thought over the events of the day and all the people that he’d met and about what was coming, about being at a hospital where patients could walk to the movies and be gone all afternoon, about the prospect of another operation, about what sounded like weeks and weeks of... of what?... until he could start walking again.

As he adjusted his pillow, his right hand brushed up against the rosary wound around his left wrist, the one the chaplain had given him back at the field hospital. He remembered what the chaplain told him: Heal, pray, hope, and don’t worry. He pondered, fidgeting with the rosary, and quickly fell asleep.

 

The doctors came to visit early the next morning. To Sousa’s relief, Major Peyton announced the X-ray results were satisfactory and that the cast would be coming off that day.

“We’ll call for him after rounds,” Peyton said to the nurse as he wrote in the chart. “No need to hook him back up, a day off won’t hurt.” Before Sousa could ask about it, they had turned to Grahn, and then were quickly out the door.

Sousa was still finishing his breakfast coffee when Lieutenant Munn came in, followed by an orderly pushing a gurney. “Guess where you’re going,” she sang.

Sousa had already put his coffee aside and was getting ready for the transfer. “Lieutenant Munn? The doctor this morning said something about ‘hooking back up’ and ‘a day off won’t hurt.’ What was that about?”

“He was talking about traction — the outrigger on the end of your cast. They’ll be able to tell you more about it after they’ve examined your leg.”

The orderly took him to a room several floors up. A technical sergeant greeted him, rolled the gurney into position, and went back to arranging medical instruments on top of a cart, as if for an operation. To Sousa, the instruments looked like something from the hardware store.

Captain Blaine entered with a few other members of the team. “Hello again, Lieutenant. Ready to get that cast off?”

The sergeant helped Sousa turn back and forth as the doctors cut away the bandages wrapping the cast, first around his hips, and then down his right leg. They took apart the setup at the end of his leg, where the fabric sprouting from the end of the cast was tied to the wire frame. Sousa supposed the next step was to saw him out of the cast. He braced himself.

But instead, a couple of the doctors took tools that looked like chisels and pliers and pried the cast open like an oyster shell. Captain Blaine noticed Sousa’s puzzled look. “After they put the cast on, they split it again when it was dry,” he said. “That way if you had any problems in transport they could get the cast open quickly.”

They lifted off the front half of the cast, extracted him from the back half, pulled the padding off the back of his leg, and eased him back on the gurney.  “Oh, thank God,” he whispered.

“Don’t go wiggling your leg quite yet,” said Captain Blaine. He was still pulling off padding.

Sousa instinctively sat up to see what was going on. Instantly the world went black as his vision drained away and his head started to swim. He heard voices from far away — “Okay, lean him back, lean him back” — and hands supporting him, guiding him to lie back down.

In a few long seconds his brain swirled back into place and the sergeant’s face came back into focus. “Whoa,” said Sousa, blinking. “What was that?”

“That was ‘orthostatic hypotension’,” said one of the other doctors, “which is Greek for ‘sitting up too quickly when you’ve been lying flat for a week.’ Not uncommon among guys who are sick and tired of bed rest. We know you want to sit up, but take it slow, okay?” The doctor looked at the sergeant. “You can raise the head of the gurney a notch.”

“I’ll go get Peyton,” said one of the other doctors.

The sergeant raised the head of the gurney about 30 degrees. Sousa felt a bit lightheaded again but it quickly passed. He watched as they pulled the last bits of padding and fluff off his leg.

His leg. He felt strangely detached as he looked at it. It was definitely his leg, it was attached to him, but it looked so odd: shaved and swollen, painted with iodine, dingy with stray flecks of padding, and missing more than half of itself, ending abruptly in a huge dressing instead of tapering off into his knee, shin, foot and toes.

Major Peyton came in. “All right, let’s see what we have here.” They started to remove the bandages, layer by layer.

When they took off the last bandage, Sousa stared, shocked. There were no stitches at the end of his leg, as he had imagined. Instead, the wound had been left open, and Major Peyton was now lifting gauze, pink with drainage, out of the end of his leg, as if he were spooning stuffing out of the cavity of a Thanksgiving turkey.

“You okay?” said the sergeant.

“Yeah,” Sousa whispered.

Major Peyton lifted the end of Sousa’s leg and examined the wound; as gentle as he was, it still made Sousa gasp with pain. “Sorry about that,” Peyton said. “Now, Lieutenant Sousa, will you please move your leg from side to side? Lift it toward the ceiling? Good. Now press it down into my hands… good. Let’s cover it up. Dakin’s solution.”

The sergeant moved to the foot of the bed and started opening packages of bandages, wetting some of them with liquid from a bottle. Major Peyton took the wet bandage, squeezed out some of the excess solution, unfolded it, and fluffed it out. Sousa flinched as the damp gauze first touched the wound; it set off a pins-and-needles sensation running all the way down to his missing right toes. He forced himself to watch as the surgeon repacked the end of his leg with the damp gauze, put a cover over the wound, and wrapped the leg with a long elastic bandage in a criss-cross pattern, securing it by wrapping around Sousa’s hips.

“So here’s the plan. The wound looks good,” said Major Peyton. “Tomorrow we’ll do the revision. You can sit up some today, but I want you to spend most of your time lying flat, either on your back or your stomach.”

“And then what happens after the revision? Will I be able to get out of bed?”

“Not very much yet. We’ll need to keep you in skin traction for a while so that the revision heals correctly.”

“Do I have to have another cast?”

“No, no cast, don’t worry.” He began to write on the chart. “Let’s get you back downstairs now, hm? Captain Blaine will see you later today, and I’ll see you in the morning.” He finished his note, left the chart on the gurney, and left the room, followed by the other doctors.

Soon after Sousa returned to his room, the dentist came to do an exam and cleaning. The dentist was followed by the barber, and the barber was followed by an orderly carrying bath supplies. By the time he had washed and shaved, the lunch trays were starting to arrive.

Sousa picked at his lunch; he was tired, and his mouth was still sore after the dentist’s visit. Soon after the tray was taken away, the physical therapist arrived. After the surgery, she told Sousa, he would have an exercise session every day in bed and be given additional exercises to do on his own. The harder he worked now, the faster he’d be able to get around on his own once his leg was ready. After that, there would be therapy in the gym, opportunities for sports and recreation…. She showed him a couple of exercises that he could start right away, promised he’d see a therapist again in the next day or two, and left him a little booklet: The Story of Rehabilitation.

Sousa flipped through the book and put it aside. He was thinking about a nap when another knock sounded at the door: a chaplain. Father Keller introduced himself and offered Sousa Holy Communion. “We’ll try to see you every day,” he said. “If not me, then one of the other priests.” He added a Mass schedule to Sousa’s growing pile of literature.

Mrs Fowler came by again, with a cup of coffee and her basket of writing paper. She gushed over how much better Sousa was looking already; he started a note to Ines but had to sign off early when Captain Blaine arrived.

Captain Blaine did a more complete physical exam and drew a couple of vials of blood.

“Any questions?” Blaine asked as he labeled the blood tubes. “You were pretty quiet this morning.”

“I’m all right. I just… Can you tell me more about the operation tomorrow?”

“Well, basically we’re going to rebuild your leg.” He pointed to a spot on Sousa’s right leg. “We’ll sand the end of your femur so it doesn't poke you. Then we'll take these muscles here —“ he indicated the outside and front of the leg “— that used to be attached further down; we’ll reattach them to your femur and create a good pad for the end of your leg.”

“But you're not going to sew it closed.”

“Not yet, no. We’ll cover it with a dressing.”

“And then the skin traction….”

“Right, and that's usually around 8 to 12 weeks. And then if the revision has healed properly, we close.”

Sousa nodded.

“All right then! I’ll send these off to the lab and I’ll see you in the morning.”

So 8 to 12 more weeks of having the end of his leg open… what was that going to look like? He tried to think about it, but he was too tired, which frustrated and irritated him, he was good for nothing but being tired and frustrated and irritable —

Grahn walked in, leaning on his canes. “Hey, Sousa, I'm going down to the HX in a bit; can I pick anything up for you?”

Sousa stopped himself just in time from snapping at Grahn. “HX?”

“Oh, sorry, the Exchange. Like the PX, but it's in the hospital, so it's the HX.”

“Thanks for asking, but I'm okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Can’t think of anything I need off the top of my head.”

“How about want?”

Sousa spread his hands. “I don’t know… and I don’t have any money on me anyway. Seriously, I’m all right.”

Grahn sat down and looked around the room. “Where’s your ditty bag? I know it’s not in the closet.”

“Don’t have one. I was separated from my unit when I got hit; lost my other stuff along the way.”

“Okay, and what’s in your nightstand?”

“Paper and envelopes. And a pencil. And that nice letter the commandant sent me. Oh, and The Story of Rehabilitation.”

“Yeah, I read that, it’s a best seller around here. Your other books are from the library and I bet the paper and envelopes and pencil came from the Red Cross. You are an officer in the United States Army, and you don’t even have a pen.”

“I also don’t have any money.”

Grahn scoffed. “Payday’s coming soon, and even if the Army doesn’t get around to paying you for another month I think I can spot you for a pen and ink. Look, Sousa, they’re going talk you to death about independence and can-do attitude and no need for self-pity. Some of it’s even true. It’s also true that we help each other out. Some times you’re the helper and sometimes you’re the guy who gets help. So if you don’t let me do you this favor, you are interfering with my rehabilitation. Do you want that on your conscience? No you do not.”

Sousa chuckled a little. “All right, if it will help your rehabilitation, will you please pick me up a pen and ink? Nothing fancy. And… ” the idea struck him — “a notebook.”

“Pen, ink, and a notebook. Thank you very much for helping me with my rehabilitation.” Grahn started to get up, then reconsidered. “You all right, Sousa? You look a little down.”

“I’m fine. I… I’m just tired, I guess. I’m supposed to have more surgery tomorrow.”

Grahn nodded. “You nervous?”

“No. Just thinking about what comes next…. Did you have to have traction?”

“Oh, are they talking about that? Yeah, I had it on both legs. It’s not fun. But you sweat it out and then it’s over.”

Grahn set off on his errand and Sousa settled back in bed. Lieutenant Munn came around a little later with penicillin and morphine. She had Sousa turn on his stomach with a pillow under his right leg. “That will help with the swelling and keep your hip muscles limber,” she said.

Sousa opened his book, but his mind was too unsettled to read. Eight to twelve weeks, and his leg wouldn’t even be sewn up…. Would he be able to go anywhere? Probably not, if the physical therapist was talking about exercises in bed.

Not that he had any right at all to mope. Sure, he’d be in traction, but it was only one leg and he wouldn’t have a cast. And eight to twelve weeks? That was less than half a semester of high school. That was no longer than any of the training sessions he’d had in the Army. It would be like basic training, with no mud, no peeling of potatoes, no being turned out of bed at five in the morning, no drill instructor. He’d been at war, for God’s sake. What was eight to twelve weeks of traction?

After dinner, Grahn turned up with his shopping bag.  He pulled a chair next to Sousa’s bedside table and sat down. “Okay… here’s your pen, hope you don’t mind green, that’s all they had. Ink, blue-black…. notebook….” He added a pad of writing paper, a box of envelopes, a few postcards, and some hard candy. “You want these, you just didn’t realize it.”

“You’re the old hand at this. Just let me know how much I owe you.”

When the night nurse came on her rounds, she moved the nightstand so Sousa could put his new supplies away more easily. She frowned as the rosary on his wrist clattered against the drawer. “You might want to put that away as well,” she said. “Don’t want it to get caught on anything in the operating room.” He saw her point, but he still felt a little bereft as he unwound it and put it away.

As the nurse Sousa up to brush his teeth, she told him to not have anything to eat or drink after midnight, and to expect to be taken up to the operating room at around 8:30 the next morning. She helped him reposition on his stomach, put a pillow under his right leg, and started to give him a backrub. His mind welcomed the distraction, and he soon fell asleep.

He had uneasy dreams that night of going back to Winter Avenue but finding a strange house at Number 10; of going in and searching, rushing from room to room, but finding nobody at home; of going to his bedroom, opening the closet door, and finding it stuffed with trash. He forgot the dreams almost as soon as he woke up, remembering only the feeling of seeking in vain, of alarm.

In the morning, the orderly came for him not long after Grahn had left for breakfast. He took Sousa upstairs to the operating suite. A clerk checked his dog tags and chart; a nurse undid the bandage around his hips and loosened it around his leg. Soon he was being rolled into the operating room itself, a brightly lit room with a vaulted ceiling. He said a silent prayer.

A technician changed his blanket for surgical drapes and finished unwrapping the bandage around his leg. A nurse wearing a cap, mask, and gown came and stood next next to his shoulder.

“Lieutenant Sousa? I’m the nurse who’ll be managing your anesthesia during the procedure. I’ll stay right here and make sure you stay asleep and comfortable.

“I’m going to put this mask over your nose and mouth. You’ll be able to breathe comfortably. When I tell you, I want you to start counting from one to ten.”

She put the mask in position. “Okay, start counting.”

I can do this, thought Sousa. It’ll be all right. “One… Two…

“Three…

“Four….”

Chapter 10: A Cup o' Kindness

Summary:

Daniel recovers from his second surgery as 1944 makes way for 1945.

“Ready?” asked Lieutenant Munn.

“Almost,” said Sousa, in between breaths. “I wasn’t always this pathetic,” he added ruefully.

“Phooey. You’re not pathetic, and you weren’t always just coming back from surgery. Take your time.”

Sousa looked over at the mattress of his bed.  About two more feet to go, and then he’d be in the middle where he was supposed to be. Why was this so difficult?

He was just back from surgery. When the orderly had brought him into his room and had offered to help him transfer from the stretcher to his bed, Sousa had waved the offer aside. He was feeling pretty good — not too much pain or nausea — and he wanted to do it himself. He’d expected Lieutenant Munn to insist on helping him, but no, she only offered to guard his right leg.

So he’d started sliding himself over to the bed. He was quickly horrified — and embarrassed — at how difficult the task was turning out to be. Now he was stuck between the stretcher and the bed.

The trapeze over his bed caught his eye. When he’d caught his breath, he grabbed it with his left hand, dug his left heel into the mattress, and managed to move himself over, a couple of inches at a time.  When he was close enough, he added his right hand. A few more hitches and at last his rear end was in the middle of the bed where it belonged.

“There you go!” said Lieutenant Munn. When the stretcher was out of the way, she helped Sousa arrange himself in bed, taking a careful look at the dressing on his right leg. There were odd fabric tabs extending from the end of the dressing.

She read through the chart and looked at the dressing one more time. “So did the doctors come to see you in post-op?” she asked.

“Yeah. They said it went well; didn’t think I’d need another revision.”

“Did they tell you about traction?”

Sousa nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay. I’m going to call the techs to bring the equipment. Are you comfortable? I’ll bring you some fresh water, too.”

When she returned, she brought a pair of pajama bottoms, some crackers, and a clipboard as well as the water. “I’ll put this—” she waved the clipboard — “in your drawer. It’ll come in handy if you want to do some writing. You’ll be able to sit up some, but it’s better for your leg to be flat as much as possible.” She left the crackers on Sousa’s bedside table and helped him put on the pajama bottoms. They were a size too large for him, which made it easy for her to roll up and pin the bottom of the right leg to expose the dressing.

The privates who had installed the trapeze turned up while Sousa finished picking at his lunch. They clamped two frames with pulleys to the foot of his bed, and left some other stuff that looked like fishing tackle. Lieutenant Munn came a few minutes later.

“Go ahead and finish eating — oh, are you done? Are you sure? All right. Do you have any books you want, anything else from your nightstand?”

She took out the clipboard and some writing paper while Sousa filled his new pen. When he was finished, she put the ink away and moved down to the foot of the bed.

“This may smart,” she warned him. She took a wooden hexagon from the pile of tackle and used tacks to attach it to the tabs on the dressing. When she’d finished, it looked almost like a cap on the end of his leg. There was a long cord attached to the middle of the hexagon; she tied a weight to the end of the cord, passed the cord over the pulley, and lowered the weight the length of the cord.

“Get ready,” she said. She let go of the weight and let gravity take over. Sousa yelped as he felt the draw of the weight.

“Are you okay?” Lieutenant Munn asked. “Does it hurt?”

“Sorry! Sorry, just a little… surprised there. It doesn’t really hurt, it just smarts a little, like it’s pulling on my skin — oh. Oh. Skin traction.”

“Exactly. It’s holding your skin in place so it heals correctly. It’s also keeping your leg in alignment. See how the top of your leg is pointing to the ceiling instead of off to the side? And how it’s in line with your hip? That’s the correct position for your leg. Otherwise the muscles will get too strong on one side and too weak on the other, and you’ll have this flappy weak leg and just all sorts of problems.” She rolled a towel and wedged it along the outside of his leg. “There, that’ll help too.” She checked again to make  sure Sousa had everything handy he might need. And then she left.

Sousa stared at his leg. This new task it was being asked to endure was the craziest one yet; for a moment he almost felt like he should apologize. He mentally traced the path: weight (and it really did look like a weight for a fishing net; he’d have to ask how much it weighed); cord; pulley; wooden thing distributing the weight to the tabs stuck to his skin. He had not seen the surgical site, but he knew it was open under the elastic bandage neatly wound around his leg. Maybe the tabs were hanging off the edge of the wound, like fringe hanging off a lampshade, and the weight….

….That was as far as he wanted to think about it, he decided. Eventually he’d get used to it. He reached for the book of mysteries to try to distract himself from the strange sensation on his leg until he was able to drop off to sleep.

His nap was fitful and short. After he’d been awake for a while, he took up his clipboard, paper, and new pen, and started a letter home.

Dear Pa,

It’s Thursday afternoon, I have a big piece of paper instead of a little V-mail, and I have time to write. I even have a new pen and plenty of ink, thanks to my roommate….

Even as he wrote, he knew the letter was rather thin soup. It had to be, though. He didn’t write anything about wandering around in the Ardennes forest and being rescued; he didn’t want to, and when he’d been debriefed, he’d been instructed to forget he’d ever seen Captain America, Captain America’s team, and the SSR soldiers. And even if he’d wanted to talk about the rest — the shell, the field hospital, the trip to Paris — he doubted the censors would let it pass.

He also did not mention the words amputation, surgery or traction. No need to worry his father; no need to write that he was confined to bed, that his skin was being stretched like a rubber band, and that he didn’t have a nickel or even a pocket to put it in. The doctors were optimistic, the nurses were kind, the food was good, his roommate was a decent fellow (when he was there), he was feeling good and would be able to start exercising any day….

He asked about everyone back home, about the relatives in Boston and New Bedford. He got in a few teasing jabs at Tillie, and tried to go easy on dropping pleading hints for letters. He did not know how long it would take for his address to get to them, and how long it would take for a return letter to make its way through the U.S. mail and then the Army system.

Lieutenant Munn came back to help him change position in bed. She disconnected the traction, helped him turn on his stomach, positioned his right leg on a pillow, and hooked the traction back up. It was trickier than he expected to write in that position, but he was able to finish his letter.

Mrs. Fowler did not come around that afternoon, but another Gray Lady did. She took his letter and brought him coffee and a doughnut. His leg was starting to ache and he was getting tired from the traction, so he was content to listen to her talk until Lieutenant Munn came back with the usual shots.

She pulled his pajamas back in place, took his pulse and temperature, freshened his water, and made sure he had his books handy. “Holding up okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, and I have a delivery for you.” She handed him an envelope – a yellow telegram envelope. “It came by Night Letter.”

He took the envelope in wonder. He wasn’t worried; Night Letter was the inexpensive, non-urgent service. But he had only received one telegram in his life, and it had been from the Army after he had enlisted, telling him where and when to report.

He pulled the telegram out of the envelope.

1ST LT DANIEL A. SOUSA
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY,  NJ

ARMY TELEGRAPHED SAID YOURE THERE SAFE GAVE ADDRESS LETTERS COMING DO YOU WANT ANYTHING TELL US RIGHT AWAY PAPAI WILL BE UPSET IF YOU DONT SO PLEASE TELL US PRAYING FOR YOU PAPAI AND INES SEND LOVE HOPE YOURE DOING WELL AND CAN WRITE SOON LOVE TILLIE

=MRS JOSEPH PRZYBYLAK

Sousa grinned as he read the telegram over and over again. That Tillie! She did not need to be wasting money on a telegram, of course, even if it was at the Night Letter rate; a letter would have reached him soon enough. But… he had to admit he was awfully grateful she had.

He was reading the telegram again after supper when Grahn turned up.

“You’re looking pretty chipper for a guy with a cannonball tied to his leg,” Grahn observed.

“Got a telegram from my sister. Just a note,” he added, seeing Grahn’s alarmed face. He chuckled. “She just got married. I think she just wanted an excuse to sign her married name to something.”

“Ah, a newlywed! Hubby in the service? Whirlwind courtship?”

“Army. I wouldn’t call it a whirlwind courtship; they’ve been engaged for a few months and they’ve known each other…. maybe a year now?”

“Oh, hometown fella?”

“No. I’ve never met him, actually. Camp Myles Standish is near my hometown, they met at some USO thing.”

“Oh. Very romantic. Well, my compliments to the happy couple,” Grahn said. Was there something odd in his voice? Sousa wasn’t sure.

“So what have you been up to?” he asked.

Grahn talked about his day for a bit. Another patient stuck his head in to say hello and then came in for a visit. They played cards for a while until Sousa, worn out from from the traction and pain in his leg, had to drop out. His listened as the other two played a couple more hands and shot the breeze until the night nurse came and shooed their visitor away. Teeth, flip onto stomach, shots, backrub, and soon he was asleep.

Traction meant the night nurse coming to turn him every two hours, whether or not he was already awake. Sometimes he was able to get back to sleep right away; other times he found himself staring at the ceiling or the headboard.

He woke again early in the morning to hear the doctors talking to Grahn. When they came to his side of the room, one of them drew the curtain as the night nurse brought a cart stocked with bandages up to the side of the bed.

“Good morning, Lieutenant Sousa. Let’s take a look and see how your leg’s doing.”

They disconnected the traction and unwrapped the elastic bandage. Sousa looked at his leg: still weirdly swollen, still painted with broad stripes of dark brown iodine…. Four strips of tape ran down his leg and past the edge of the wound, where they were folded back on themselves to make the tabs that attached to the traction. They were reinforced by more strips of tape, running from side to side.

He looked more closely at his leg. “Is it shorter?” he asked.

“Not significantly,” said Captain Blaine. “We didn’t have to take very much bone.”

So in other words, yes. Sousa steeled himself as he watched the team remove the dressing at the end of his leg and unpack the wound. They peered at it for a moment, pronounced it to be “looking good”, and said the physical therapist might start visiting that day. He had to stop himself from flinching as they started to replace the damp gauze. They covered the packing, wrapped his leg with the elastic bandage, and reconnected the traction.

“How heavy is that weight?” Sousa asked.

“Six pounds,” replied Captain Blaine. “When you’re ready we can bump you up to eight.” He said it as if he thought Sousa would be excited about the possibility.

After the doctors left, he heard Grahn humming to himself as he dressed and and washed. He came out of the bath, drying his face. “ ‘Mornin’, Sousa.”

“Good morning. So what exciting plans do you have today?”

“Ah, the usual. Think I might get a haircut today.”

“What, inspection coming?”

Grah scoffed. “No, the weekend! You know what the weekend means, right? Visitors!”

“Oh, who’s coming?”

“Well, my parents might come on New Year’s, but that’s not who I meant. I meant visitors of the eligible feminine sort.” Grahn smoothed his hair in the mirror, turned, and looked sympathetically at the foot of Sousa’s bed. “Guess you’re at anchor today. Do you need anything? Fixed for books? Paper should be coming out today.”

“The paper comes out every day.”

“No, the hospital paper. Comes out once a week, I think the guys on the seventh floor help put it out. That’s the paraplegia unit, poor bastards. They do the reporting and lay it all out and I think they might even run the printing press.”

After breakfast a physical therapist arrived, carrying a pop-up projection screen. A nurse’s aide followed, pushing a cart carrying a film projector.

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” said the therapist. “Let’s start your exercise program with a movie.”

The movie was Meet McGonegal, a day-in-the-life of a World War I veteran who had lost both forearms. It showed him using his prosthetics for all the usual daily activities — shaving, dressing, eating breakfast, lighting a cigarette, driving, typing, turning the pages of a book…. Sousa understood why he was being shown the movie — can-do spirit and all that — but he privately thought a movie about a leg amputee would have been a bit more helpful to him. There was a brief scene showing McGonegal’s neighbor walking to work; the narrator remarked that the neighbor “had no legs”. Sousa wondered what that meant; he’d lost a leg and yet he still had it: maimed, but still a leg. Still, it was encouraging to see how easily McGonegal’s neighbor strolled off to work.

The movie ended; the film end flapped until the therapist turned off the projector. “So what did you think?”

“I think I’m ready to get started.”

The therapist told Sousa more about the muscles of his leg and hip, about how it would be imperative to keep his leg positioned properly to keep the muscles strong, flexible, and balanced. She taught him some arm exercises he could do right away and left a little plan for him.

After lunch he was surprised by Major Peyton and a new group of visitors, all in Class A uniforms. Peyton introduced him to the the hospital commander, the chief surgical officer, the chief nurse, and a corporal with a camera. The hospital commander asked the usual official-on-a-visit questions — how was he feeling, was he getting everything he needed, keep up the good work — and then presented him with the Purple Heart. The commander shook his hand, the corporal took a picture, and the group went on to find their next recipient.

Sousa looked at the medal for a while. It wasn’t his first Purple Heart: he’d caught some shrapnel in Italy, nothing serious at all; he’d even briefly thought about declining the medal until his C.O. blew a gasket at him. This one, though…. There was no waving off this one. And it would be the final decoration of his stint in the Army. All for standing in the wrong place at the wrong time: ten more seconds and he would have been in that foxhole…. 

No moping, he reminded himself. He put the medal on his nightstand and spotted the telegram from Tillie. He’d said no letters until she explained herself, but…. He smiled. Grahn was right about those postcards coming in handy.

 

 

When the Gray Lady came around that afternoon, she took Sousa’s postcard to Tillie and provided him with a few new ones with New Year’s themes. She also brought him a copy of the hospital newspaper: the Review. He flipped through it after she left — hospital events, stories about patients, stories about patients who had been discharged, a picture of a pretty girl — and put it aside.

He did not pick it up again until the next morning. After the doctors’ visit, the nurse had turned him on his stomach, so he couldn’t see what was going on in the room. But from the sounds of humming and the running sink, he could tell Grahn was up, dressing, washing and shaving.

He was already getting used to Grahn’s routine, so the new whiff of aftershave caught him by surprise. He couldn’t place the brand, but it didn’t have that reek of cheapest-one-on-the-shelf.

“Hey, Grahn, tell us more about this eligible feminine visitor,” Sousa teased.

“Can’t. I haven’t met her yet,”Grahn replied.

Sousa tried to twist around to see Grahn: this tale was getting more interesting with every telling. “Someone setting you up?”

Grahn snapped the curtain back, pushed the chair to where Sousa could see it, and sat down.

“Opportunities, Sousa! It’s the weekend, New Year’s weekend. Didn’t you read the paper?” Grahn reached over to his bed, picked up his own copy, and waved it at Sousa. “There’s always something going on on the weekend. There’s going to be some kind of social this afternoon, and a big party Sunday night. The USO and the Gray Ladies’ve probably been recruiting hostesses for weeks. And on top of that this place is going to be extra-full of visitors, and you’re not the only guy here who has a sister.” Seeing Sousa’s skeptical face, he insisted, “You never know! You never know, Sousa. You could be waiting for the elevator, and some nice girl could come up, and you strike up a conversation….”

In your Army-issue bathrobe, thought Sousa. “You’re that optimistic,” he said.

“Opportunities. It’s a new year, and I’m going to be out of here eventually. So are you, by the way.

“Back at OCS one of the instructors said something that’s really stuck with me.” Grahn tossed his paper back on his bed, carefully stood up again, and started back towards the mirror. “He said, ‘Chance favors the prepared mind.’ He said it was a quote by Louis Pasteur.”

“’Chance favors the prepared mind,’” repeated Sousa. “I like that.”

“It’s true. Look at your sister’s fellow, it worked for him,” replied Grahn. There was a clink of a bottle on the sink, and another scent: hair tonic. “Of course, it also worked for the fellow who’s seeing my girl now — well, she’s not my girl any more, but you know what I mean. Think I can get one of those blue suits and fit it over the cast?” Grahn’s tone was flippant, but not quite enough.

“Aw, no. It wasn’t after you were wounded, was it?”

“Naw, I got the Dear John letter in England. Hadn’t been there that long. I guess her mind was prepared too.”

 

 

As the day went on, Sousa could hear more and more people in the hall, with the uncertain footsteps and constant “Is this it? Is this his room?” of first-time visitors. It started to wear on him after a while, and when his lunch tray came, he ended up asking the aide to close the door on his way out.

He poked at his lunch. The food was good; there was just so much of it…. When he was finished, he picked up his writing supplies and found himself at a loss. Whom should he write to, and what should he write about? The days were already starting to run together…. His gaze fell on his notebook. He opened it up and started a little log:

Mon. Dec. 25 ’44 Mitchel
Tues. Dec. 26 train to EGH - wrote P
Wed. Dec. 27 cast off - wrote I
Thurs. Dec. 28 operation (revision) - wrote P (long) - t’gram from T
Fri. Dec. 29 movie – P.H. - postcard to T
Sat. Dec. 30 “Chance favors the prepared mind” — Pasteur

It felt satisfying to write it out. Once he’d finished, he wrote the New Year’s postcards: his father and Tillie, Ines, and a couple of other relatives.

There was no visit from a Gray Lady that afternoon, which surprised him. He asked the nurse about it when she came later that afternoon.

“I think they’re all either herding the visitors or getting ready for the social,” she replied.

“Makes sense. Would you mind getting these in the mail for me?” He handed her the postcards.

“You bet.” She put them on her cart. “Now, let’s get you turned…. Okay, I’m connecting the traction again…. And there we go.” She came back around to the head of the bed. “Here are your books…. Can you reach your water? Anything else?”

“No, I think I’m all right.”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a bit then. Oh, and here’s your mail.” She handed Sousa two envelopes. “Door closed?”

“Huh? Oh, yes please.” He was still looking over the envelopes with delight. They were the first letters he’d received in weeks.

He opened the one from Winter Avenue first. There was a short note from his father and another from Tillie, both along the same lines: just got the telegram, glad to hear you’re there, what can we send you, sorry so short but wanted to get this in the mail, more letters to follow, thinking of you.

The other envelope was from Ines and brought a letter from her, a note from her in-laws, and a drawing by her oldest son. He’d drawn a picture of his family, with much attention to the details of his father’s Navy dress blues, and signed it: “BY CHARLIE AGE 6”. It struck Daniel that fully half of his nephew’s life had been spent under the shadow of the war.  Did Charlie even remember life before his father and his uncle had gone away? Well, thought Sousa, now that he had more time to write, he could send Charlie a letter of his very own. That would be fun. He smiled and went back to the first envelope. The notes could have been grocery lists and he would have still read them over and over again.

Grahn was out even later than usual that evening. As he unlaced his prosthesis and did his stump care, he told Sousa about the social: good turnout; cookies, cake, and ice cream; good music…. He didn’t say anything about Opportunities; Sousa didn’t ask.

He got into bed and thumbed through a book. “Sousa. You know anything about bridge?”

“Four people and a deck of cards, that’s all I’ve got. Why do you ask?”

“Might be fun to learn. I think I read somewhere that Eisenhower plays. Want to listen to the hockey game?”

 

 

Captain Blaine did rounds the next morning. His visit to Sousa was quick: How are you holding up? Not too much pain? feeling well otherwise? Very good, keep up the good work…. He started to write on the chart.

“I suppose you’ve heard,” he said, “that there’s going to be a New Year’s Eve party tonight. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to ask you to sit this one out. I talked to Major Peyton about it, and we agree it’s too early for you to be out of traction that long. We can see about getting some of the festivities up your way, though.”

Sousa nodded. He hadn’t really thought about the party, much less about attending. Blaine finished writing, reminded Grahn in a sharp voice “Remember! Don’t overdo it!", and left, followed by the other doctor and the night nurse.

“Sorry, couldn’t help but overhear. That’s too bad,” said Grahn.

“What’s too bad?”

“About the party. Even if you just came down in a wheelchair for an hour or so, that would have been something.”

Breakfast, physical therapy, bath, dressing change, lunch…. After lunch a chaplain brought Holy Communion. Shortly after he left, Grahn came back.

“Wait a minute. The sun’s still up. Who are you, and what have you done with Henry Grahn?” asked Sousa.

“Blaine wants me to take it easy this afternoon,” Grahn grumbled as he loosened his robe. “I’d ask if you were up for cards or something but I’m supposed to stay in bed for a while. Want me to close the curtain? How about the radio, mind if I put it on?”

Grahn had left the door open, but it was easy to ignore the visitor traffic in the hall when the radio was on and someone else was around. They talked idly off and on through the afternoon until it was time for Grahn to go to supper. He came back afterwards to shave and freshen up before he headed off to the New Year’s Eve party.

The night nurse came for the bedtime routine — toothbrush, turn, shots, and backrub. It seemed to Sousa that she spent a little more time on the backrub that evening. Was it meant to be a consolation for missing the party? Or did she just have a little more time with some of her charges downstairs? He wasn’t sure, and he wasn’t going to begrudge it either way. It was a welcome antidote to the long hours of traction.

“Are you going to be able to make it to the party?” he asked.

“I might be able to pop down for a few minutes if I can get someone to cover me,” she replied.

“Too bad you’re stuck here with us.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say ‘stuck’. Up here, nice and quiet, with you and the others… That’s how I’m looking forward to ringing in 1945.” She pulled down his pajama shirt and washed her hands, and turned off the overhead light on her way out.

Sousa opened his mystery book, but he was tired and drained, and soon his mind was wandering. He didn’t feel terribly broken up about missing the party, it hadn’t occurred to him to ask to go; at the moment the thought of a crowded, noisy ballroom full of punchy soldiers armed with party horns wasn’t very appealing.

This was his third New Year’s Eve he’d spent in the Army. Three of the longest, hardest years of his life… how could they have passed so slowly and yet so quickly?

And 1945... He didn’t want to even think about it, it was like looking over a cliff in thick fog. What would he be doing this time next year? Would he be wearing civilian clothes? Or would he still be in Army pajamas?

He felt himself starting to nod, so he put his book away and turned off his bedside light. Might as well get in some sleep before the nurse came back to turn him again.

At midnight he was awakened by the far-off sounds of car horns. Grahn came back about thirty minutes later. “Happy New Year,” he whispered, and started his stump care routine.

“Happy New Year,” Sousa whispered back. Hope you don’t get gigged in the morning, he thought.

 

Grahn did get admonished by the doctors again, but not very seriously, and he was able to mollify them even further with a promise that he’d spend most of the day quietly visiting with his parents.

“When are you expecting them?” Sousa asked.

“Around noon; the Red Cross is running buses from Philadelphia. We get to bring them to New Year’s dinner. I wish I could take them out, but between the cast and my ‘overdoing it’, there's no way I'm getting a pass.”

“You should take up some kind of pastime, prove to the docs you’ve been resting. Like crossword puzzles, or knitting. Show ‘em a sweater.”

“I’ve already decided: bridge. I’m going to learn, Sousa, that’s my New Year’s resolution. You could learn too.”  Grahn started getting ready to go to breakfast. “Mind if I bring my parents by this afternoon? They’d like to say hello.”

“If they want to come, sure, that’d be swell.”

“We’ll see you later, then. Oh: when you have lunch? Might want to save room.”

 

 

“…And so Henry said your family lives in New England?”

Sousa nodded as he swallowed his bite of cake. “Near Boston.”

It was early afternoon, and Grahn and his parents had come up to the room to join Sousa. Mrs. Grahn had brought a homemade cake, and had served thick slices for “the boys” while Mr. Grahn fetched coffee from the nurses’ station.

“Boston. That is a distance away,” Mrs. Grahn said sympathetically. “We’re much closer than Boston, of course, but still, we can’t visit nearly as often as we’d like. The first time we visited we asked the doctors, why couldn’t Henry have been sent to the hospital closer to us? They said that even if the hospital at Valley Forge had had room for him he was still better off here, that this is the best place for men with injuries like his and yours. But Henry said you weren’t expecting your family to be able to visit at all?”

“Well, they’d come if they could, of course,” said Sousa; Mrs. Grahn nodded. “But there’s the distance and the expense.… My sister has little kids, and she had a baby not too long ago. My father and my other sister both have war jobs. I don’t know if they could get the time off, they might be on travel restriction.”

Mrs Grahn tutted. “That’s hard,” said Mr. Grahn. “Well, if there’s anything we can do to help you out, you let us know, all right?”

“If they need a place to stay, they could always stay with us,” added Mrs. Grahn.

“Never mind that it’s a couple of hours in the wrong direction,” teased Henry. “Too bad Atlantic City isn’t the kind of place that has hotels and houses to rent and places like that.”

“Thank you for the offer, though,” said Sousa. “And thank you sharing your visit with me — and your cake, this is delicious.”

“Why, thank you, I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Another slice?” asked Mrs. Grahn.

“Told you to save room,” said Henry with a grin.

 

Soon it was time for Henry to take his parents down to meet the bus, and Sousa was left alone again. He lay in bed, the traction pulling on his leg, the noise of visitors in the hallway tugging at his attention. He was too tired to put on the radio to distract himself from the noise, too tired even to get annoyed.

It had been kind of the Grahns, he thought, very kind of them to come up to the room, especially since their time was so short. He wasn’t angry or resentful about not having visitors of his own, of course; it just couldn’t be helped.  But he had to admit to himself that he’d been feeling a little left out this weekend, a little down. It had been nice to be included in their visit, even if it was just for an hour.

And since Three Kings’ Day had never really caught on in the rest of America, the holidays were pretty much over. He thought of the empty days of traction stretching ahead…. No moping, he had to remind himself. No moping.

The next day, there was a sense of “back to business” in the air. Rounds; Grahn off to breakfast; his own breakfast; shots and a turn in bed. A little later, physical therapy; after that, wash and shave. Lieutenant Munn changed the dressing on his leg and the linens on his bed. A quick nap. Lieutenant Munn woke him again for shots and a turn in bed – and a letter from the morning delivery. He read it, smiling, while he ate lunch; the letter was from Tillie and brought the tale of her wedding. After lunch, a turn in bed; he read Tillie’s letter again and started a reply. Mrs. Fowler came to say hello: coffee, snack, posting his letter. After she left, he read for a while until it was time for shots and to to turn in bed. He received another a letter from the afternoon delivery; he read the letter and dropped off for a nap. Supper tray; after supper another position change. Grahn finally drifted in. The night nurse came for the bedtime routine – teeth, shots, turn, backrub. He tried to stay awake to chat with Grahn but soon fell asleep. The rhythm of turns and shots kept on all night – turning every two hours, shots every four hours, Sousa sleeping the best he could in between visits, until the doctors came early in the morning on rounds and the routine began again. Turning every two hours, shots every four hours; breakfast, lunch, and dinner; physical therapy; the wash/ shave/ dressing change/ fresh linens routine. A visit from the chaplain; a visit from the Gray Lady; the bedtime routine; and turning and shots through the night hours until the doctors came early in the morning on rounds and the routine began again….

And through it all, hour after hour after hour, the relentless pull of the traction; the ache from the wound, waning and waxing; the occasional bizarre sensation from his lost right foot and toes. The morphine helped with the pain, but it couldn’t erase it completely; and there was still the pressure from the traction and the discomfort of having to lie in bed, unable even to turn from side to side.

The doctors and nurses told him he was doing well, but he couldn’t see it. He had no stamina: physical therapy tired him out and the rest of the morning routine tired him out even further. Sometimes even sitting up for meals seemed to tire him out, and he had to force himself to eat. Nobody ever said anything about it, but it embarrassed him. He tried his best to stay awake and busy, but sometimes he was too distracted by pain and fatigue to do anything. Sometimes he was too distracted even to sleep. He did not know that the morphine, even as it made the pain bearable, was also adding to his restlessness and was suppressing his appetite.

On Friday morning the doctors changed up the routine by increasing the weight on the traction. They acted like he was getting a promotion, told him it was because he was making such good progress; he told them he’d take their word for it.

“Trust us, you’re doing great,” Captain Blaine replied.

And so the routine began again. He got through the day by focusing on the bright spots. Like physical therapy: he understood the purpose, even though he didn’t feel like he was making any progress, and it meant some time off from traction. Being turned in bed also meant relief from traction, even if just for a minute or two. Meals meant he got to sit up for a little while. After lunch he struggled to stay awake as long as he could, so he wouldn’t miss a visit from the chaplain or the Gray Lady. After supper he did his best to stay awake to be sociable with Grahn. And then there was the night nurse’s bedtime visit; there was always something calming and comforting about that time of the evening, and the nightly backrub was the cherry on the sundae.

The brightest spots of the day were the mail deliveries. His father and sisters were writing every day, so he was now receiving letters every day. That Friday he also got a letter from his uncle and aunt in New Bedford. After the nurse had finished his backrub and turned off the overhead light, he pulled out the letters and read them again until his eyes grew heavy. He switched off his bedside light to get a little sleep until the nurse came back to pick up the rhythm of turning him in bed every two hours and giving him shots every four. He slept as well as he could in between visits until the doctors came in early in the morning on rounds and the routine began again.

Grahn changed up his routine a little bit by breaking out the aftershave and hair tonic (“It’s Saturday, Sousa, you know what that means….”) He went on to the mess hall; Sousa’s breakfast tray arrived. Then it was physical therapy, wash, shave, dressing change, change the sheets....

He was even more worn out than usual after the morning routine, but was determined to stay awake. The morning mail brought a letter from his father. He started a reply during lunch, but quickly felt himself fading. Lieutenant Munn came to put the head of his bed down and help him turn onto his stomach, and he was soon sound asleep.

He woke again a couple of hours later to the sound of her voice. “Lieutenant Sousa? Sorry to have to wake you. It’s time to turn over.”

He knew the routine. Still half-asleep, he crawled as far as he could to his left and back up towards the head of the bed. He carefully rolled onto his back; Lieutenant Munn helped guard his right leg and then guided him into position at the center of the bed. She pulled up the blanket, positioned his right leg, and replaced the traction.

“All set?” she asked. He nodded groggily.

She squeezed his right hand. “I know you’re tired. But you have a visitor. Would you like to…?”

“Sure,” he said.

As she pulled a chair over, it slowly occurred to him – why didn’t she just say the Gray Lady is here or the chaplain is here?  But then she was walking to the door and saying “Thank you, you can come in now,” and then stepping aside to let the visitor enter.

 

It was his father.

 

 

 

Notes:

Last month, scullyssahnequarkbroetchen paid this fic an enormous compliment: she created and posted a fanart! Besides making me weep with joy, her art also correctly predicted one of the events in this chapter. View it here: these are the nights that never die

(So WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER, SSQB!)

Thank you all so much for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments!

Meet McGonegal, and get meta by watching Diary of a Sergeant. (Diary was made in 1945, so Daniel wouldn't have seen it. Sgt. Harold Russell went on to win two Oscars for The Best Years of Our Lives)

Chapter 11: Epiphany

Summary:

Daniel's first visitor.

Sousa stared. “Pai?” He grabbed the trapeze and started to sit up.

His father, beaming, took another step into the room and set down the bags he was carrying. Lieutenant Munn showed him where to hang his coat and hat. Then she slipped out the door, closing it behind her.

His father took a few swift strides to the bedside and pulled Daniel to himself in a tight embrace. Daniel felt his eyes growing prickly and damp; he squeezed them shut as he clung to his father. For a long, long moment both men were silent, until Daniel heard his father’s faint whisper, barely a breath: “Oh, Daniel. Oh, my son.”

Finally his father let go, a little reluctantly, and pulled the chair up next to the bed.

“Pai,” said Daniel, “I… I can’t believe it, I didn’t — I didn’t think —” For a moment, he had to close his eyes tightly again. “I… I’m so happy to see you. Thank you for coming.”

His father was still smiling. “How could I not come?”

“Well, I didn’t think you’d be able to, what with the distance and getting time off and….”

“I told you: I’d handle it. Hardest part of the trip was here, trying to convince the nice lady from the Red Cross that I could figure out how to get to the eighth floor. She insisted on escorting me all the way up.

“So how are you, how are you feeling?”

“I’m doing okay. The doctors keep saying I’m making good progress. But how are you, and how are —”

“First things first: It’s Three Kings Day!”

“Oh yeah…. I forgot to put my shoes out.”

“I think there's still something for you.” His father pulled over one of his bags, opened it, and took out a vacuum flask.  He poured something hot from the flask into a coffee mug on Daniel’s bedside table and handed the mug to Daniel. “Here, have some of this.”

Daniel took the mug. “Soup?” 

“Broth. Berna insisted I bring it.” He playfully mimicked her voice: “ ‘Tell Daniel he must drink it all!’ ”

“Yes, Mrs. Escobar,” said Daniel, in an obedient sing-song. He took his first sip and for a moment he was back at a kitchen table in Taunton. “Oh. Oh, this is so good.” He took another sip.

“I’ll tell her you said so. But she won’t care unless you empty that flask, so…”

“All right.” Daniel chuckled. He drank some more and set down the cup. “Pai, thank you so much for coming. I’m so happy to see you, I can’t even tell you…. How’s everyone at home?”

His father started to fill him in: what he’d been up to, what his sisters were doing, news from the extended family and from the neighborhood…. He paused every so often to fill the cup, hand it back to Daniel, and nag him to drink more of the broth. “Finish that up and I’ll show you what  else I brought you.”

Daniel made himself empty the cup for the last time. His father put it aside and reached into his bag again. He brought out a black scrapbook. “Your sisters sent this. They started it when you left for basic.”

The book was big and awkward. Daniel flipped quickly through the first pages:  the telegram ordering him to report for induction; a clipping from the paper, listing him among the other men who had entered the services that month; a picture of Private Sousa from when he’d completed basic training….

He turned the page and smiled. There was his little nephew Charlie dressed like a pirate. The picture was captioned “Halloween 1942”.

The next picture were from Thanksgiving in New Bedford. He wasn’t the only one missing from the picture; a couple of his cousins were absent as well, off in the Pacific. Under the picture, Ines had written, “We found out later Tommy’s ship was at Guadalcanal when this picture was taken.”

It was like having the letters from the last three years back in his hands and brought to life. Christmas 1942: the family under the Christmas tree. His sisters had pasted in an insert from the church Christmas bulletin listing all the members who were away in the service.

1943…. He ignored the picture of newly commissioned Second Lieutenant Sousa. His sisters had included letters from relatives that mentioned Daniel or had other significant family news. They’d also included clips from the newspaper, anything they’d thought Daniel would find interesting or amusing. He skipped over them for now, but one article caught his eye. It was from August of 1943 - apparently Captain America had visited Taunton for an entire twelve minutes. He must have made an impression; in the Halloween picture that year, Charlie was dressed up as Captain America. “I think half the kids in the neighborhood dressed up as Captain America that year,” his father commented.

1944… There was Pete in his Navy dress blues, home on furlough…. Easter…. A picture of Ines with her children. Daniel gasped. “Ines looks so much like Mamãe in that picture.”

“You’re right. I think it’s her expression. I haven’t said anything to her yet, but sometimes she sounds like her too – just the way she says things, her expressions.” He smiled. “Even in this world she’s still with us. I see a lot of her in you too, you know.”

Daniel wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he turned the page. His father patted his back.

A picture of Charlie captioned “First Day of School”… A picture of his father sitting on the front steps with the children. “Finally, a picture of you,” said Daniel.

“Why take a picture of me? I don’t look any different.”

A picture of Tillie and pregnant Ines. “Was that the same day?”

His father nodded. “Beautiful Sunday in September. That was before the hurricane.” He pointed to the next picture. “And there’s all our hurricane company.” Daniel nodded: it was the living room packed with New Bedford relatives, as they’d described it to him in their letters.

Halloween: Captain America again, taller than last year, and a little princess next to him. November: The new baby. The last picture was from Thanksgiving.

“No wedding pictures?” asked Daniel.

“Tillie may have decided to wait to put those in there. I think she’s worried about hurting your feelings.”

Daniel closed the scrapbook and handed it to his father. “Well, she shouldn’t be. She didn’t know.”

His father took the book. “Give it time. Where do you want me to put this?”

“Will it fit in that drawer there, in the nightstand?”

His father opened the drawer and checked. “No, it’s too big. How about I just put it on top for now?”

“That’s good.” Daniel started to carefully lie back down. “Sorry, Pai, they don’t want me to sit up too long.”

“Do what you need to do. Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“You sure? I could use some coffee, myself.”

“I think they usually have some at the nurses’ desk. I could take a cup too, I guess.”

His father lowered the bedside table and left to find coffee. He returned shortly, carrying two cups and two plates. “I forgot to ask: do you still take it black?”

“I do. Thanks, Pai.”

His father set the coffees down on the table, reached into his bag and brought out a small bakery box.

“Wait, what’s that?” asked Daniel.

His father undid the string. “Just a little something.” He brought out a couple of Portuguese sweet bread rolls —one for Daniel, one for himself —and a little package of butter: another taste of home. He set up a plate for Daniel and passed it over. A bite of buttered roll, a sip of coffee, and for a moment Daniel was speechless with delight.

 “I thought so,” said his father with a smile. He took a sip of his own coffee. “So we’ve started getting your letters and I see I’m still ‘Pa.’ Are they still censoring you here?”

“Probably. Better safe than sorry.” When Daniel had first joined up, there had been stories going around at camp of servicemen whose letters home had been rejected or confiscated by cautious censors because they weren’t written in English or used unfamiliar words. Some of the folks back home were even more nervous: what were you doing writing “Babbo” or “Oma”, your letter might not have made it past the censors and you never would have known or you might have gotten in trouble or…. Sometimes it was just easier not to start the conversation.

As they finished their rolls and coffee, Daniel kept his father talking. Neighborhood news, plans for the garden, his trip down…. Any topic was fine; he was happy just to hear his father’s voice. After years of war and weeks in the hospital, it almost didn’t seem real. But it was real.

A knock sounded at the door and Lieutenant Munn stuck her head in. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but….”

His father stood up.

“Pai, you don’t have to go, this’ll just be a minute. Right?” He looked to Lieutenant Munn. She nodded.

“I do need to check in with the Red Cross about where I’m staying tonight,” said his father. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, don’t worry.”

A scoot, a turn onto his stomach, and two shots. Lieutenant Munn made sure he had what he needed, left his afternoon mail, and then left.

He smiled, savoring the knowledge that his father would be back soon. How had he done it? He really was like a magician sometimes. And wasn’t it just like him to deflect the questions about how he had done it? How many switched or double shifts, or appeals to the ration board, or favors from friends were hiding behind that don’t worry about it? It was endearing, if a little frustrating sometimes. Funny how Pai was so good at dodging questions when he himself was so direct….

But there was something — quite a few things, but one rather significant thing in particular — that his father hadn’t asked about. Daniel himself had avoided the topic in all of his letters. It was easy to hide behind letters, but now his father was here, and there was no way to hide. But since Daniel himself had all but said don’t worry about it, his father, apparently, was going to respect that and not bring it up. It was going to be up to him.

 So how would he do it? He tried to think about it but the morphine was starting to wash over him and he was already tired. He didn’t mean to drift off, but he did. When he awoke, his father was sitting next to his bed, reading a newspaper.

“Sorry; didn’t mean to sack out like that. How long was I out?”

“Not too long, and don’t worry about it.”

“Did you find what you needed? Where are you staying tonight, anyway?”

“With a family here in town.  The Red Cross ladies have a list of families who are willing to take in hospital visitors and they matched us up.”

“Really? That’s very generous.”

“It’s a long list. There are many generous people in this town. Anyway, I gave the Dohertys a call to let them know when to expect me.”

“When’s that?”

“When visiting hours are over. When's dinner? Oh, by the way, I invited myself to have dinner with you tonight here in your room. They’re ordering a tray for me. Hope you don't mind.”

“Of course not! They usually bring the trays around 5:30.”

They sat quietly for a while. Daniel turned it over in his mind; he still couldn’t think of a good way to ease into it. He decided to just take the plunge.

“So Pai… you haven’t said anything about my leg.”

“Neither have you.” His father sighed a little, as if in relief. “And I…,” he continued, “I thought about it all the way down.

“And I still don’t even know what to say, or how to say it, so if I say something wrong, please…. I mean, yes: it’s sad that this happened to you. You’ve suffered a terrible injury and you’ve lost part of your leg, and it’s sad. But you made it. You’re safe, the worst is over. And I know you’re going to recover, and you’re going to go on and live a good life — and you have your life — and I’m so grateful.

“And then I’ve read your letters, but then I get down here and I see you in bed with your leg all bandaged up and some sort of… treatment going on, and —I’m sorry, Daniel, but to me, anyway, you look tired and uncomfortable —

“And you haven’t talked about it in your letters, and part of me wants to say, Daniel, tell me, what’s going on? What’s really going on? But another part of me says to myself, Frank, pipe down; Daniel’s a grown man, he can manage, he’s in good hands, and maybe he’s tired of thinking about this all the time. Maybe when he writes to you he wants to stop thinking about it for a little while.

 “So I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to ask or when to ask it. I need you to help me, to be straight with me.” He leaned forward in his chair.  “Just… please, don’t pretend. You’ve been walking a hard road for so long, and there’s still more to go. Whatever you might want to say to me… I’m not afraid. You’re my son, and whether it’s war stories or what’s going on now: whatever you want to tell me, I’m ready. All I ask is that you don’t hold something back because you’re worried about upsetting or worrying or protecting me. Okay?”

“Okay, Pai.”

“Shake on it?”

Daniel laughed. “Shake on it.” He reached over and shook his father’s hand. “And you’ll stop telling me not to worry about what you’re up to, right?”

His father pulled his hand back. “Of course not, don’t be silly. It’s not your job to worry about me.”

“Pai —” Daniel did his best to look stern.

“All right, you can worry when I’m ninety. A little.”

“I’m going to hold you to that, you know.”

“I know I can rely on you. Now, did you want me to ask you about your leg? Or were you just making conversation?”

“You can ask me about my leg —“

“And if you don’t want to talk about it you’ll say so, you promise?”

 “Yes, yes, I promise!”

“All right. So what’s going on with your leg?”

“Ehhh…. I don’t know if I want to talk about it right now.”

“Smart-aleck.”

Daniel laughed a little. “Well… it’s going to take a while. They did the… the amputation at the field hospital. They put a cast on my leg, and then flew me back over. Then when they brought me here they did some more work on the leg, or what’s left of it. They said it was so I’d be able to walk better. So that has to heal. And then after that… I don’t know, I can’t think that far ahead. They said it could take up to 12 weeks for it to heal.”

His father looked over the frame. “And what’s this thing they’ve got you tied to?”

“It’s supposed to help my leg heal properly.”

“Do you ever get to have it off?”

“A little bit in the morning, like when the exercise therapist comes.”

“So it stays on at night?”

Daniel nodded.

“Well, I guess you’re able to get some sleep with it, right? You were able to catch that catnap a little while ago.”

“Yeah. You get used to it.”

“So how are you passing your time?”

Books and letters, and from there it was easy to steer the conversation to more cheerful topics: what books Daniel was reading, and did he want any? what books were being read back home….  

Soon it was getting on dinner time. Lieutenant Munn came to help Daniel turn on his back. The trays came; Daniel and his father said grace before they lifted the plate lids.

His father considered the beef stew. “This doesn’t look too bad, but still… save a little room.” He lifted his glass. “To family dinners.”

“To family dinners.”

After dinner, Daniel’s father went for some coffee. When he returned, he put the cups down and pulled a round tin out of his bag. “How does a little King’s Cake sound?” He lifted the lid off the tin. “And by little I mean miniature. Tillie made it this year, and she made this little one just for you. She left out the bean.”

The cake was in the traditional donut shape, but much smaller than usual and rather lopsided, heavily armored with glistening candied fruit and dusted with clumps of powdered sugar.

“It’s beautiful,” said Daniel, and he meant it.

Daniel’s father cut a slice of cake for himself, put a few generous slices aside for Grahn and the nurses, and cut a very generous slice for Daniel. After they had finished their coffee and cake, he eyed the last slice.

“I think there’s just enough there to make you a very nice dessert tomorrow, what do you think? Will they let you keep it?”

“I should think so, just for one day. There’s enough for both of us.”

“No, it’s all for you. I’m afraid I’ll need to leave before lunch time, anyway.“

Daniel suddenly felt sick. “So soon? How long can you stay?”

“I think till around eleven; I’ll confirm it with the Red Cross folks. I’m sorry, it was the best I could do for now. I’m already working on staying longer the next time I come….”

Eleven? But when were visiting hours — he had never paid attention before —to his horror he realized that his chest was getting tight and his eyes were starting to itch — he took a deep breath and pushed the feeling away as he grabbed at his nightstand drawer.

“Daniel, what are you looking for?”

“Visiting hours.” He flipped through the pile of literature and found his introduction letter. “Pai, visiting hours don’t start until 10:00 AM tomorrow morning, I won’t get to see you —“

“It’s all right,” replied his father. “I already worked it out, they’re giving me an extension. I’ll be able to come first thing.”

“Are you sure?” A knock sounded at the door —probably Lieutenant Munn, he thought, come to check in before her shift ended —“Come in,” he called.

Lieutenant Munn came in. “I hope you’re having a good visit.”

“Very good, thank you,” said Daniel’s father, “I’m so —”.

Daniel interrupted. “Lieutenant Munn, my father has to leave before lunchtime tomorrow to catch his train. Is there any way he could come in early?”

“Absolutely. We’ve already made the arrangements,” she said. For some reason the calmness of her voice sounded a little unnatural to Daniel —a little patronizing, a little grating, and of course all these arrangements being made around him…. She means well, he reminded himself; no need to be touchy.

“Is there any way I could take my son to church?” Daniel’s father asked.

“I’m afraid not. It’s too soon to be off the traction for that long.”

“Then the things I usually do in the morning,” said Daniel, “like the physical therapy — could I do that either first thing or wait for the afternoon? I’d really like to —“ He broke off, suddenly unable to trust his voice.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Lieutenant Munn. “I’m here tomorrow, but I’ll also let the night nurse know. And I’ll make a note on your schedule.”

“Thank you very much,” said Daniel’s father. “I really appreciate all the help you’ve given us today. Would you care for a slice of King’s Cake?” He offered her the plate, with a side order of charming gab about how it was a traditional food for Epiphany, homemade, so happy to be able to bring some down for Daniel….

Daniel himself didn’t listen; he was too preoccupied with the thought of the next morning and with alarm at how close he’d just been to blowing a fuse….

“Lieutenant Sousa?”

“Huh?”

“Thank you so much for the cake! I’ll see you in the morning.” She smiled and left.

Daniel’s father stayed on for a few more minutes, putting the cake away and making small talk, until a voice came over the P.A. system announcing the end of visiting hours.

“That’s my cue, I suppose,” he said regretfully.

Daniel took a deep breath.  His father patted him on the back. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, he said. “Get a good rest tonight, all right?”

Daniel nodded. “I will.” He watched his father gather up his bags and hat and coat.

His father looked back one more time from the door. “See you in the morning!”

“See you in the morning.”

Before he had time to gather his thoughts, Grahn showed up. “Hey, Sousa.”

“Hey there.” It occurred to him that finally he had something to share with Grahn. “Want some cake?”

“Sure, I’ll take some.” Grahn started scooting the chair around. “That’s an interesting looking cake. Where’d you get it?”

Sousa grinned. “My dad brought it.”

Grahn’s eyes grew wide. “Your dad? The dad who you were convinced was never going to be able to visit?”

“That’s him. He made it work somehow, I should’ve known better.”

Grahn shifted his canes to one hand as Sousa passed him the plate. “That’s great. Jeez, if I’d known I would have gotten up here earlier.” He considered as he carefully sat down with the plate. “Or maybe not. Stay out from underfoot, you know.”

“He’ll be here tomorrow in the morning for a bit.”

Grahn swallowed his bite of cake. “Mind if I come by and say hello?”

“Sure, that’s be great.”

“This cake is interesting — delicious interesting. That big black book on your nightstand — that looks new, he bring you pictures? All right, let’s see ‘em…. No, no fair flipping past the first pages…. Aww, look at the pirate… Okay, so those are your sisters? They’re not both married, are they? Well, do they have any friends? All right, all right….”

Sousa reached to put the book back on the nightstand. It immediately slid off and fell on the floor. He bit back a curse.

“Let me get it; rehab and all that,” said Grahn. He made his way over, carefully bent to pick up the book, and put it away. “Now where is that physical therapist? I think I deserve a gold star for that.”

“How much longer are you in that cast, do you think?” asked Sousa.

“Few more weeks yet. I can’t wait: get my new Class As, check out the Boardwalk…. Maybe get a furlough….”

“You can get furloughs from the hospital?”

“When they think you’re ready. Day passes first.”

Grahn talked a bit about his day and the USO social he’d attended, and about his idea for a forming a club for learning bridge, and how Sousa could be one of the first members….

The night nurse came in and happily accepted her slice of cake, putting it on her cart for later. The usual bedtime routine, ending with a backrub…. Sousa savored the events of the day. He was sound asleep before she left the room.

The next morning, Lieutenant Munn kept her promise: the orderly came at 7:32 to help Sousa  with his bath, and she herself came soon afterwards, with his morning shots. He was ready and waiting when his father arrived at 8:15.

As his father set down his bags and took off his coat and hat, he answered all Daniel’s eager questions. The Dohertys had been very kind, put him up in a little guest room, seemed to like the King’s Cake he’d brought for them —“it was just from the bakery, though, not homemade like yours”.  That morning he’d gone to early Mass at a church not far from the hospital (“beautiful, we’ll go together sometime”).  

He went down to the nurses’ desk to get coffees for both of them. When he returned, he set down the coffees and pulled something out of one of his bags.

“Picked up a few things for you at the five-and-ten last night on the way to the Dohertys,” he said. He handed the bag to Daniel and sat down.

“Pai —”

“I told you to tell me what you needed, but you didn’t, so now you get to see if I guessed right.”

Daniel knew there was no winning this argument, so he started emptying the bag. Little things: shaving soap with a brush, lip balm; a deck of cards and a box of dominos; a little book with rules for games and a book of crossword puzzles.

“For in case you get tired of reading,” his father explained.

Daniel held up the shaving soap. “That bad, huh?”

His father nodded ruefully.

They were playing dominos when Grahn arrived.

“See, Pai, I told you have a roommate. This is Lieutenant Henry Grahn.”

Handshakes and greetings; Grahn crossed the room and sat down on his bed.

“It’s really nice to meet you, Mr. Sousa, it’s great that you were able to come so soon. Daniel’s a swell roommate: he doesn’t snore too loudly; he doesn’t act too disappointed when I come back at the end of the day….”

“Thanks, Grahn, your check’s in the mail,” said Daniel.

Grahn ignored him. “He showed me the photo album last night. If you’re looking for new material….” He pulled the hospital paper out of his pocket and handed it to Daniel’s father. “You can keep that, Daniel’s on page 5. He doesn’t always read the paper and I’m guessing he’s not one to toot his own horn.”

“Thank you!” said Daniel’s father.

“Happy to pass that on. I’ll get out of your way now.” He nodded to Daniel. “See you later.”

“See you later.”

His father put on his reading glasses and opened the paper. “Page 5, hm? Would this be it, under ‘Awards Ceremony’?  ‘Purple Heart…. 1^st. Lt. Daniel A. Sousa.’ ”

“Sounds like me.” Daniel was about to brush it off, but stopped short when he saw the expression of pride on his father’s face. “It’s in the drawer if you want to see it.”

His father found the medal box right away; it occurred to Daniel that he might have seen it the day before when he was trying to put the book in the drawer, and just not said anything. He took the box from his father and opened it. As his father peered at the medal, Daniel realized that this was the first time his father had seen any of the bits and bobs they’d pinned to his chest over the last couple of years. He turned over the medal to show his father the reverse inscription: “FOR MILITARY MERIT.”

They went back to dominoes. “It is true,” said his father as he placed a tile, “that right now I can’t get the time off to come down here as often as I’d like. Of course, if I could do whatever I liked, I could be in two places at once, I could live down here and up there at the same time. And the war would be over, and I’d have a gold-plated Cadillac… you get the idea.

“So I’ll be back as soon as I can. Meanwhile, what would you say to a visit from one of your sisters?”

“I’d say I’d love to see them, of course.”

Another tile. “Tillie thinks she’ll be able to come down in a couple of weeks. We’re trying to get Ines down here too, she really wants to come, but it’s going to be hard with the baby.”

Daniel played a tile. “Who knows? Maybe eventually they’ll let me come up there on a furlough.”

“Really!”

“Maybe. First I’d have to actually get the furlough.”

“One thing at a time. But it’s nice to have something to look forward to.” Daniel’s father looked at the dominos sprawling across the bedside table: they were out of room. “This might not have been the best idea.”

“No, it was fun. You have me beat anyway.” Daniel started to put the dominos away. He was starting to feel apprehensive; it was already past ten. He was surprised Lieutenant Munn hadn’t come in yet to make him turn onto his stomach.

They chatted for a while longer but finally the moment came. Daniel’s father checked his watch, glanced at the clock on the wall, and looked regretfully at Daniel. “I’m afraid it’s that time,” he said.

Daniel’s shoulders sank. He watched as his father gathered his things and tucked the newspaper into one of the bags. He thought of the photo album.

“Hey, Pai,” he said, “the book you brought — would you mind keeping it at home for me? I don’t have a good place to keep it here and I don’t want anything to happen to it.”

His father nodded and added the album to one of the bags. He looked at his bags and then looked at Daniel.

“Well, I’d better get back downstairs. It’s been so good to see you. I hate having to leave so soon, I wish I could stay longer. I’d move down here if I could. I’ll come back as soon as I can, I promise.”

Daniel nodded. He did not quite trust his voice.

His father came over to the bed and wrapped Daniel in a tight hug. “My son,” he murmured, almost to himself. “My brave son. You’ve endured so much, and now… I know you’ll make it. Everything will be all right. I’m so proud of you, and I know Mamãe is too.”

“Thank you, Papai. Thank you so much for coming,” whispered Daniel.

His father laid his hand on Daniel’s head. “Deus te bencao,” he said softly. God bless you.

The lump in Daniel’s throat was painful. He watched as his father put on his coat and hat and picked up his bags.

At the door, his father turned and smiled. “We’ll see each other again soon,” he promised. And he was gone.

And that was that. Sousa leaned back in bed — come to think about it, Lieutenant Munn had never bothered to put the head of the bed back down after breakfast —he leaned back in bed and breathed deeply until he felt more in control of himself. It wasn’t unusual to hear a patient crying, and he knew nobody would hassle him, but still…. he just didn’t want to.

Lieutenant Munn came about ten minutes later. She quietly put the head of the bed down and helped him turn. Once he was on his stomach, with his right leg on the pillow and connected to the traction, she lightly rubbed his back.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes.”

 

The rest of the day passed quietly. After lunch the physical therapist came. After the physical therapist left, the chaplain came. He read the letter from Ines that had come the day before and put it aside to answer later. He read for a while, played a game of solitaire, and then worked on one of the crossword puzzles in the book his father had brought him. Every so often he stopped to wonder how far along his father was on the trip home: Had he made New York yet? What about Hartford?

A Gray Lady brought him some coffee; he had it with the rest of his cake. When he started getting tired later in the afternoon, he didn’t fight it. They had to wake him up for dinner.

Grahn came back after dinner. “Hey Sousa. So how was your visit?”

Sousa’s throat tightened painfully. “It was great, thanks,” he managed to reply.

Grahn chatted about his day – he’d been to the movies — and then put on a hockey game. Sousa was grateful for the distraction, especially because he didn’t have to say anything. The night nurse came and wound the day down in the usual way: teeth, turn, shots, backrub.

“Mind if I leave the game on?” called Grahn.

“Sure, go ahead.”

The nurse turned off Sousa’s overhead lights and Sousa turned off his reading light. The curtain was drawn between his bed and Grahn’s, keeping Grahn’s lights out of his face. He lay in bed, half-listening to the game in the half-lit room, until he fell into a light doze.

The night nurse woke him up around an hour later. “Lieutenant Sousa?” she whispered. “We got a call from your father. We couldn’t put it through to your room because it was after nine, so he asked us to give you a message and let you know that he’s home and that he had a smooth trip.”

“Thank you,” Sousa whispered. She patted his arm and slipped out of the room and Sousa felt the horrible lump forming in his throat again. He couldn’t stop himself from picturing his father coming up the stairs of the house, setting his bags down, taking off his coat and hat….

His eyes started to burn and water. He did not want to, he really did not want to, he felt mortified, but he couldn’t hold it off any longer. The best he could do was to control his ragged breathing as the hot tears slid down his face and into his pillow.

Notes:

Big thanks to scullyssahnequarkbroetchen for letting me bounce some ideas off her!

Here's a recipe for Bolo Rei (King's cake) with pictures of a homemade one.

Chapter 12: Friction

Summary:

After his father's visit, Daniel Sousa tries to settle into a routine at the hospital.

 Sousa struggled awake. The doctors were standing at the foot of his bed, talking about him: rounds.

“’Morning,” he croaked. The night nurse offered him a sip of water.

“Good morning, Lieutenant Sousa,” said Major Peyton. “Sorry we woke you up. Lieutenant Keck here tells us you had trouble with a headache last night. Feeling any better?”

Sousa nodded. “Yeah, it’s better.”

“Doing okay otherwise?”

“I… yes.”

“That traction’s going to take a lot out of you. If you need to sleep during the day, then sleep, don’t fight it. All right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“See if you can catch a little more shut-eye before breakfast, hm?” He wrote on the chart, and moved on to Grahn.

Did he really look that tired? He certainly felt like it. He wished he could hide his face in his pillow and go back to sleep, but he’d just been turned on his back about half an hour ago.

The team talked with Grahn and then headed out the door. A few minutes later, Sousa could hear the familiar sounds of Grahn starting his morning routine. Grahn seemed to be making an effort to keep it down — probably for his sake, Sousa realized. It was embarrassing, but helpful, and he appreciated it.

He didn’t know when he’d finally fallen asleep the night before. But each time he’d been woken up to turn in bed, he’d had a devil of a time getting back to sleep again, and by around 0300 had developed a pounding headache. He’d stuck it out until Lieutenant Keck came for his next turn. She gave him some aspirin as well as the morphine; it worked eventually, but then he’d had to flip over again at 0600, and then the doctors came on rounds….

The day nurse came, and it wasn’t Lieutenant Munn. He knew perfectly well Lieutenant Munn got the occasional day off – she certainly deserved it – but she’d been his day nurse most often since he’d arrived, so anyone else felt like a substitute. The day was off to an unsettled start.

Grahn softly called to him on his way out the door. “Hey. Sousa.  Anything I can pick up for you today? I might stop by the HX.”

“I’m okay. But thanks, Grahn.”

“Any time.” Grahn waved and set off for the mess hall.

And thanks for not saying anything about last night, thought Sousa.

 

Breakfast came. He ate what he could and tried to catch a nap before the physical therapist came. He was still disturbed and embarrassed by how close and how often he’d come to flying off the handle over the weekend — at a time when he should have been happy! — and by how he'd broken down completely the night before. The doctor was probably right, he told himself. He was just tired, even his father had noticed it. If he went ahead and slept during the day, it would get better.

It didn't.  At the end of the morning's session, he must have looked dejected, because the physical therapist gave him a pep talk; it left him with a tight chest and prickling eyes.  When he shaved, he forgot to use the new shaving soap his father had picked up for him; for a moment he was overwhelmed by shame at having forgotten the gift and frustration at his own stupidity. That evening, as the dinner tray came, for some reason he thought of his father's visit. It occurred to him that the dinner he'd had with his father was the first and only meal he hadn't eaten alone since he'd arrived in Atlantic City.  He had to take a breath and compose himself before he could say grace.

He was genuinely happy to see Grahn return that evening, and did his best to be pleasant and hold up his end of the conversation. But how much longer would it be until Grahn got tired of hanging around in the room in the evenings, and decided to go down to the ward lounge instead?

The night nurse came in, and it wasn't Lieutenant Keck and why were they doing this to him? She’d been so kind to him the night before…. At 0400 he found himself wide awake and staring at the rails of the headboard.

Lieutenant Munn wasn’t in on Tuesday. The day seemed to get off to a better start: he managed to get through physical therapy without coming unglued; he remembered his new soap and brush (and his father was right, it was much better than the stuff they’d given him); he was able to finish his letter to Ines. When Mrs Fowler came around in the afternoon, he took a pass on coffee and a doughnut and just asked her to post his letter. The nurse came soon afterwards for the usual two shots and a turn. But after she left, instead of catching a nap as he’d planned he found himself fighting back tears. And he didn’t even know why.

 

Lieutenant Keck returned the next morning. “Three weeks on nights, now three weeks on days,” she explained with a smile.

“I’m never going to know what time it is now,” complained Sousa.

“It’s going to be time to work,” moaned Grahn. “By night Lieutenant Keck is an angel of mercy. By day she is the oldest, meanest nurse in Uncle Sam’s Army.”

“I beg your pardon! I am not at all old. Now hush.” She popped a thermometer into Grahn’s mouth.

Sousa stared at the ceiling. He hadn’t been completely kidding. The change was no big deal, so why was he feeling so unsettled?

The day dragged along. He was just able to stop himself from snapping at the orderly who picked up his lunch tray (he’d said he was done, hadn’t he?). The night nurse turned out to be Lieutenant Munn; it still felt wrong, but he reminded himself again that he’d get used to it.

One day dumped him into the next, and into the next. He had to stay on constant guard against the unpredictable surges of irritation, against the less frequent (but even more humiliating) threats of tears that seemed to come out of nowhere. Day into day, week into week… And everything else… faded. He did what was asked of him, but it was as if his body was just carrying on without him, running on manners and habit. Even the simplest comforts — bath, breakfast, backrubs — went flat: they were just something to do, or to something to endure. He read books, he played solitaire, he worked the crossword puzzles, but it there was no pleasure in it; just a sense that keeping busy was something Daniel Sousa did, so Daniel Sousa needed to keep busy until he felt tired enough to try again to escape into sleep.

When he did manage to sleep, his sleep was light and restless, and his dreams were disturbing. Sometimes he was on a precipice in Italy, surrounded by fog; he could hear his men calling to him, but he couldn’t place the direction. He couldn’t stand there forever, he knew he had to move, but one step in the wrong direction meant a plunge to his death.

Sometimes he was on his hands and knees on the track back at school. He’d fallen during a race, the baton was still in his hand, but he was too weak to stand, and sometimes — he didn’t have the strength to turn around and look, but sometimes — it felt like his right leg was somehow tied or nailed to the ground. But if he didn’t get to his feet and finish the race, he’d let the whole unit down.

Sometimes he was lying in a dark abandoned house. He could hear the BOOM of the artillery, hear the ground shake and the plaster crumble. There were voices outside, and he couldn’t tell what language they were speaking. Maybe English, maybe French. Maybe German. He was all alone, and helpless.

Sometimes he was walking through the house at Winter Avenue. The lights were off; nobody else was home. The bedroom doors were all closed. He checked the door to his parents’ room: locked. His own room looked pretty much the same, down to the neat Army cot in the corner, sheets so tight his father could bounce a quarter on them. And when he opened his closet door it was filled with a row of right legs, neatly hung on clothes hangers.

And when he woke, he felt just as tired as he had before.

And through it all: turn every two hours, shots every four hours, limits on how long he could sit up, and always, always the traction pulling on his leg.

The hospital dietitian paid him a call. Was there something wrong with his food? Was it cold when it reached his room? Was there anything special he’d like? He couldn’t think of anything; the food wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t that hungry, probably because he wasn’t doing anything.

That last part came out sounding rather sarcastic, and he instantly regretted it, but she just nodded and agreed with him. Of course it felt like he wasn’t doing anything, especially after he’d been doing so much out in theatre, but his body was working to repair itself even if he didn’t realize it and it needed fuel….

…And so on, and so forth. In other words, eat. Yes ma’am, he’d said.

There were a few things that he still looked forward to. The most important one was mail. He read his letters over and over again, and wrote whenever he had the energy. He wrote regularly to Pete, far away in the Pacific; he had nothing to write about, of course, but he knew that mail about nothing was better than no mail at all.

And he looked forward to Grahn turning up in the evening and talking about the day’s adventures. He might have a funny story about something that had happened in physical therapy, or summarize the movie he’d seen in the afternoon, or complain about the upper-extremity amputees hogging the ping-pong tables.

One evening he didn’t make it back until Lieutenant Keck was making her final rounds. She walked into the room, her step still brisk even at the end of her twelve-hour shift; Grahn followed, looking rather browbeaten.

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Perhaps we’ll synchronize watches tomorrow morning,” she said to him. She turned to Sousa, made sure he had what he needed, and said good night.

Grahn shook his head. He crossed to his side of the room, pulling his mail out of his bathrobe pocket.

“So how was your day?” asked Sousa.

“My day was… promising,” said Grahn. He flipped through his mail. “I’ll tell you more about it in a bit. Up for company? Whitford said he might stop by for some cards.”

“Sure, that’d be swell.”

“So, Sousa….” Grahn looked up from his mail. “How was your day?”

“Pretty much exactly like yesterday.”

“Yeah? You doing all right?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine.” It came out a bit sharper than he’d intended.

“Of course you are.” Grahn tossed the mail on his bed, pulled a deck of cards from his nightstand, and pushed a chair into position. He sat down and leaned forward.

“Keck’s got her eye on you,” he said in a low voice. “On our way in she was asking me how you were getting along.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means she’s wondering how you’re getting along. Not in a snitch way, but you know: Like when you get a new kid in your squad, and a couple of weeks in you ask one of your other men how he’s doing, because you want to know and because you know your C.O. is going to be asking you and you’d better have an answer.”

Sousa looked at the trapeze frame running over his head before he looked back to Grahn. “So… what’d you tell her?”

“I told her you hadn’t said anything one way or the other to me, which is the truth by the way, so she went back to reaming me for being late for the evening nose count.”

Sousa sighed.

Grahn started shuffling the cards. When he spoke again he didn’t look up. “So… have you thrown anything yet?”

“What?”

“Thrown anything. Gotten so fed up with things that you just took something handy and….” He pretended to throw a baseball.

Sousa’s closed fist bounced lightly on the mattress. “No, I can’t say that I have. Why are — “ He broke off as Whitford knocked on the door frame. “Oh, hey there!” He waited as Whitford and Grahn dragged the other chair into place, and then pulled himself up to sitting and his bedside table into position.

Grahn took out the cards again and tapped them on the table. “So, gentlemen: What’ll it be? As for me, I’m in the mood for something not poker….”

A little later, Grahn considered his hand and played a card. “So, I heard there was a little excitement up here today.”

“Up here?”asked Sousa. “Not that I’m aware of.”

Whitford tossed in his card. “It was down at the other end of the hall, you might not have heard it. One of the new guys snapped at lunch and started throwing silverware.”

Sousa put his card down. “You say it like it happens every day.”

Whitford took the cards and put down a new one. “Not every day. But maybe…. every other week?”

“That sounds about right,” said Grahn.

Sousa tossed down his card. He wasn’t sure what to say.

Grahn played. “Seriously. Guys come over, they’re in pain, they’re missing parts of themselves and the rest of them is wrapped in plaster, they were ankle-deep in a foxhole just the week before…. they’re on their last nerve, they’re like kegs of dynamite. Something sets them off – maybe they get grilled cheese for lunch one day too often — and….” He mimed someone knocking a tray off the table.

Whitford nodded. “I heard a light colonel almost beaned Peyton with a dish of pudding once.”

“What happened to him?”

“Peyton?” said Whitford. “He was okay, he saw it coming and ducked.”

“No, the guy who….”

“Ah. Probably nothing,” said Whitford. “They cut a lot of slack here, they’re always saying that everyone adjusts differently. If someone’s having a really hard time, after a while they might call in the chaplain.”

“Or the social workers, or Special Services….” continued Grahn.

“Or the psychiatrist,” finished Whitford.

Sousa did not like the sound of that. He knew that the hotel across the street had been converted into a hospital for men with what the Army called “psychoneurosis” and almost everyone else called “battle fatigue” or “shell shock.”

“You ever throw anything, Grahn?” asked Whitford.

“Naw, I’ve been a model patient.”

Whitford and Sousa scoffed.

“I have! Well… there was that time I got really annoyed with a magazine and kind of flung it down, and it immediately fell down the side of the bed and took some other stuff with it. I was in traction then so I had to just sit there like a dope until someone picked it up for me.”

Whitford tossed down his last card. “Washcloth. Washbasin. Soapy water. Huge mess. I don’t recommend it.”

Sousa played his last card. “Well, speaking of cleaning up….”

Grahn looked at the pile and flung down his card. “Again? Dammit, Sousa — if you join my bridge club, which you are going to, you cannot be partners with anyone else but me.”

“You and this bridge club,” groaned Whitford. “I’m about ready to throw something at you.”

“You keep your pudding on your plate. I have a plan,” said Grahn. “I talked to Recreation this morning. We’re going to try to get a couple of instructors in here during the week to give lessons —“

“Lessons?”

“Well, it’s easier than learning out of books and it will get more guys involved. So we get lessons during the week, and we practice by teaching some of the guys still on bed rest, and then on Saturday, during the socials, we put out the word that there are some of us who are interested in playing bridge….”

“I think I see where this is going,” said Sousa.

Grahn nodded. Whitford rolled his eyes.

They played one more hand. Sousa didn’t win, but he’d done well enough earlier to handily win the game. Whitford said good night and headed back to his own room.

He left the door open. Sousa felt frustration and disgust starting to bubble up — couldn’t even close his own door — even if he could unhook the traction he’d still have to get himself over there — could he hop that far and still keep his balance after all this time on bedrest? probably not, hadn’t been on his feet since he was wounded — well, on his foot….

He turned to Grahn. “So if I throw something at you, will you get off my back?”

“It would hardly be sporting, don’t you think? I’m kind of a slow-moving target right now. Although maybe I shouldn’t worry, since apparently you completely missed my point. How long have you been here now?”

Sousa started to lie back down. “What’s the date?”

“It’s the 29^th.”

“So four weeks plus one…. About five weeks.”

“And how long have you been in traction?”

“Around four weeks.”

“And how long has it been since you’ve been out of this room?”

“Around four weeks.”

“Are you getting it now? I have been in this hospital since fucking August, all right? I was only in traction around three weeks and I was ready for the rubber room. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have to have it for so long. My point is that it’s okay to let off some steam. It happens to everyone, it’s no big deal. If you don’t, you start to crack, and in ways you might not —“

A knock sounded at the door. They looked up. A private stood there holding a yellow envelope.

“Telegram for Lieutenant Sousa?”

“Here,” said Sousa. As the private came in to give him the envelope, Grahn got up and moved his chair back by his own bed and then went to brush his teeth.

Sousa took the envelope and dismissed the private. The telegram hadn’t come by Night Letter, so it was news that couldn’t wait: probably bad news. He sighed and opened the envelope.

 

1ST LT DANIEL A. SOUSA
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY,  NJ

SEE YOU TOMORROW LOVE TILLIE

=MRS JOSEPH PRZYBYLAK

 

 

Impossible. This couldn’t be — but those five words were pretty clear.

He looked over to Grahn, whose unspoken question was hanging in the air. “It’s from my sister. She says she’s coming tomorrow.”

“Is this the married one?”

“They’re both married. This is the newlywed.”

“That’s great! How long will she be in town?”

“She doesn’t say, just that she’s coming. And sorry, nothing about any friends. But I hope you’ll stop by and say hello anyway.”

“Thanks, Sousa.”

He shared the news with Lieutenant Munn when she came for the bedtime routine (“Is this the sister who sent you the cake? Tell her ‘thank you’ again for me, please….”). Later, when he was back on his stomach and waiting for the undertow of the morphine, he pondered the events of the evening.

Overall it hadn’t been a bad day: no… breakdowns, and he’d held his temper pretty well — at least until that uncomfortable conversation. He completely understood Grahn’s analogy of the older guy being asked to keep an eye on the new kid; Grahn had done exactly that through these five long weeks, kept an eye on him, been a pal. So of course he felt a little ashamed at having been so mule-headed about the whole thing, especially when Grahn had been trying to tip him off. But what was he supposed to do? Would throwing things seriously keep the headshrinkers away?

Because the mention of the psychiatrist…. That had really made him nervous. He did not want to be sent across the street, did not want that kindly label of “psychoneurosis” that would translate to “head case” in the civilian world and would follow him around the rest of his life.

And because over the last few weeks as the nights wore on and sleep eluded him… with the breakdowns out of nowhere, the dreams, the lack of interest in anything…. Sometimes, in the dark of night, as he stared at the headboard or at the traction rail, he had begun to wonder, sometimes, if perhaps he wasn’t going crazy.

And now his sister was coming, and he had new worries gnawing at him.

Would she be frightened when she saw him, lying there with circles under his eyes and his stump in mid-air? If he’d had some more notice maybe he could have managed a haircut, but…. And how would he keep her entertained, what would they talk about? Now that she was married it was like she’d caught up and joined Ines’s world, and he’d been left behind again. 

And then what if one of those mood swings hit him again?

And why all this apprehension? Where was the joy, where was the happy expectation? Daniel Sousa would be excited to see his sister. He was Daniel Sousa. Therefore, he should be excited to see his sister. But that “therefore” was about all he had. He wanted to see her, but it was all wrapped up with… with nerves.

 

What was wrong with him?

 

 

 

Notes:

Thanks again to scullysahnesquarkbroetchen for tossing some ideas around with me.

You might enjoy seeing CotyCat82's take on Frank, Tillie, and Ines in her fic "Promises."

I may be posting some other peggysous-ish fic in the weeks ahead — you'll be able to find it on my author page (or get an email when it posts if you subscribe.)

As always, thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments!

Chapter 13: Tillie

Summary:

Daniel's sister Tillie comes to visit.

Lieutenant Keck was very happy for Sousa the next morning. As she gave him the first shots of the day and set him up for breakfast, she asked all about Tillie and the family and where they grew up and did they get along when they were kids, and is this the sister that made that amazing cake? that was delicious, so kind of you and your father to share…. It went a long way towards raising Sousa’s own spirits.

He wasn’t sure when Tillie would arrive; for all he knew, she was already in Atlantic City and would pounce at 1001. He did his best to just go through the day as usual, to not listen to every footstep in the hall. He worked hard at physical therapy; he read his mail; he worked on a letter; he made himself eat lunch. After lunch it was time to lie prone. He read a few pages of New Frontiers in Science before he dozed off.

He woke up slowly: first, becoming aware that he was waking up; then realizing he’d been asleep for a while, and that he was feeling somewhat rested and comfortable…. and then realizing that his book was missing and there was an unfamiliar scent —a light, flowery scent — coming from next to his bed. He opened his eyes. There was Tillie, reading his book, her feet propped up on her bag.

“Hey, Tillie,” he said.

She looked up. “There you are. Did you sleep well? Funny, your book didn’t seem all that boring to me….” She got up and hugged him as best she could across the back of his shoulders and then scooted the chair around so he could see her better. “I’ll give you a proper hug later. Daniel, I am so, so happy to see you!”

Daniel grinned. “It’s good to see you too, Tillie.”

“So much has happened — I hardly know where to start, or what to say — ”

“Impossible!”

She lightly poked him. He grimaced. “Ow — ow — I think you broke something — oh, the pain — is it bleeding? — oh, Tillie, you’ve wounded me — ”

For an instant she looked alarmed, but then she rolled her eyes and pretended to be in a huff. Daniel laughed a little at the face she was pulling, and at her giggles when she couldn’t hold them back any more. It felt like he was speaking a language he’d learned and forgotten long ago.

“Well, I know one thing to start with,” she said. She pulled over her other bag and brought out the vacuum flask. “Can you drink when you’re lying down like that?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind putting the cup on the table for me. Is that from Mrs. Escobar?”

“Sure is.” Tillie poured a cup and handed it to him. “Drink up. Sorry, I have to do it, Papai will ask and you know I can’t fib to him.” She got up and rolled the bedside table back around.

“It’s good, I don’t mind. Thanks for bringing it all this way.”

“My pleasure.”

He made himself finish the cup and handed it back to Tillie. “You’ve got a nice Robin Hood hat there. Is it new?”

“You know, I put that feather on there just for you, so you could make that same old dumb joke.”

He chuckled a little and put his head back down on the pillow. “So I got your telegram last night — that was a surprise.”

“Well, if I’d just showed up that would have been an even bigger surprise, wouldn't it? No, it all came together at the last minute and I wanted to give you some warning.”

“Still….”

“You’re not going to fuss at me about spending money on a telegram, are you? Honest to Pete, I think I’m the only one in the family who understands we aren’t broke any more. We’re not rolling in it, of course, but we’re not broke, it’s not like it used to be. And, you know, the service is there. If it’ll come in handy, why not make use of it?”

“True. And you didn’t exactly waste words.”

“Thank you! I thought I did a good job of being succinct.”

“So what happened at the last minute? How was your trip?”

“Well…” Tillie poured another cup of broth for Daniel and launched into a complete account of weeks of pleading and negotiations at work and research into travel arrangements and trying to figure out a way she and Ines could come together (“she’s frantic to see you, Daniel, really she is”) but they just couldn’t figure out a way yet and then her boss had called her in yesterday and said he had an important task to be done in the area of procurement and he thought she was just the one to do it and if she could do it over the next two days he’d adjust her schedule and she asked him what it was and he said “I want you to go to Atlantic City and buy some salt-water taffy for me to give to a customer” —

“So is he going to pay for your travel expenses?” asked Daniel.

“I asked him but he didn’t think he could get away with it,” replied Tillie. “He did give me money for the candy. And he let me off a little early so I could make arrangements. Once it was all worked out I sent you the telegram.”

“Where are you staying?”

“With the Sisters of Charity.”

“You’re staying in a convent?”

“I don’t know why you think it’s so funny. They were on the Red Cross list, and they had room.”

“I’m just having a hard time picturing you in a convent.”

“Because I’m just staying with them, silly, and what exactly is that supposed to mean anyway? So anyway, I finished making the arrangements last night….”

She talked on, and Daniel let her, happy to just listen while he finished the broth, until a knock sounded at the door. It was Lieutenant Keck.

“Mrs. Pryzbylak, would you excuse us for a few minutes? We have some games in the lounge, if you’d like to bring some to the room, and there’s coffee at the nurses’ desk.”

“Of course. Back in a minute, Daniel.”

Lieutenant Keck helped Daniel turn onto his back and get squared away. “Having a good visit?” she asked.

“We are, thanks. I don’t know her plans yet, but if she can stay for dinner, can we get her a guest tray?”

“Certainly. If I don’t see her in the hall, just send her down to the desk.”

Tillie turned up a minute or two later. “Thank you for the invitation to dinner, I’d love to stay! I brought these — ” she showed him a box of checkers — “for later, if you like.” She put them aside. “Now….” She hurried to the side of the bed and wrapped him in a warm hug.

“I have something for you,” she said as she stood back up.

He ignored her and took her left hand. “Let’s see ‘em, Mrs. Pryzbylak.” She happily showed him her rings.

“Very nice,” said Daniel. “I hate to break it to you, but you do know he married you for the vowels, right?”

“Ridiculous. Elizabeth Gouveia was at that dance too, and he never asked her out. Now, let me show you what I brought.”

“Aw, Tillie —”

“No, no….” She lifted something big out of her bag and unfolded it. It was a knitted blanket, somewhat bigger than a baby’s blanket but smaller and narrower than a blanket for a bed, in a pattern of red, white, and blue blocks.

“Look at this. Did you make this whole thing?”

“Not by myself. Ines and I did most of it but Mrs Escobar and Mrs Pereira and some of our friends and some of the girls at work helped us. Charlie helped, too. See, those are his squares.” She pointed to four wobbly squares that had been joined into a big square.

“Impressive. How old is he now?”

“He’s turning seven this year.”

“Well, thank you. If it's anything like those socks you sent me it’ll be nice and warm.”

“Thank you! I hope you like it. Want to try it out?”

“Sure.”

She spread it out over him, draping it around his right leg. Instinctively he pulled it up to his chin and then looked down, puzzled. The blanket barely covered his left knee – it was too short. He wiggled his toes and then looked up at Tillie.

“It’s not really supposed to be a bed blanket,” she explained. “It’s more for your lap, especially once you’re sitting up more and getting out of your room….”

It suddenly hit him: It was a wheelchair blanket. His thoughts raced ahead — they think I’m an invalid, an cripple — and then doubled back — it’s just a dumb blanket, they meant well, and you are going to be using a wheelchair at some point so stop being stupid. He took a deep breath to calm himself back down. Had Tillie noticed anything? He couldn’t tell.

“When did you start making it?” he said cautiously.

“After we got the telegram,” she said. “It came the Friday before Christmas. The next day Ines and I talked about it and I picked up the yarn.”

That was before he’d told them about his leg. So it was just a you’re-in-the-hospital gift.

“…And of course, you can always use it once you’re out of the hospital. Papai’s hinting he wants one for himself.” She was looking at his foot. “I’m sorry, I should have asked — we were so focused on the blanket I forgot to ask if you needed bed socks or something. Do you need bed socks?”

“I don’t know how I’d keep them from getting lost in the laundry —”

“Well, think about it,” she said. “Meanwhile, what do you think about a snack? Let me get some coffee. I’ll be right back.”

She came back with two cups of coffee, two plates, two forks, and a knife. She carefully lifted a box from her bag, and took out something loosely wrapped in a towel. Daniel propped himself up on an elbow to look as she unveiled a little pie.

“Ta-da!” she said. “It’s apple.”

“Tillie, you’re the best.”

“Thank you! But I have to admit Ines made it. Look at all those apples she piled in there!”

As they ate, Tillie caught him up on family and neighborhood news. She brought her own perspective; she knew much more than their father did about the comings and goings of the people their own age: who had shipped out, who’d been back to visit lately; unhappy news about a couple of boys who were never coming back; happier news about weddings and engagements; some funny gossip….

There was one name she didn’t mention; Daniel decided to go ahead and ask. “How about Laura Silva?”

“Laura? Well… she’s Laura Alexandro now. I think that happened in ’43. Did… you two stay in touch at all?”

“She wrote a couple of letters when I was in Basic.”

“Boring ones, I’m sure. And then she quit writing, didn’t she?”

He shrugged. “I never understood why you didn’t like her.”

“I don’t dislike her, she’s perfectly nice…. She’s just boring. You need a girl who’s not boring.”

His face fell before he could stop himself. He had to admit it: Tillie wasn’t bothering with tact but she was right about Laura. At the rate he was going, though, it would take a miracle for him to end up with any girl, boring or not.

“Oh, Daniel, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. You’re right, Laura and I never really clicked that way.”

No indeed, her expression said. “More pie?” she asked. “Or should we save it for after supper?”

“Let’s save it.”

“How about I get these dishes out of here, and then maybe a game of checkers?” She handed him the box.

“That sounds great. Thanks, Tillie.”

When she left, he glanced at the clock. The familiar ache in his leg was coming back. The next shot would be coming soon, though. It would be uncomfortable to play lying down, he thought, so he moved his new blanket off to the side, grabbed the trapeze, and sat up, wincing a little. He pulled over the bedside table and started setting up the checkerboard.

Tillie came back with fresh coffee. “You’re going to make me go first?”

“Of course.”

“We can move the table if you want….”

“No, this is good.”

She put down the coffees, drew the chair over, and sat down, careful not to jar the table. She considered for a moment, and moved her first checker.

They chatted as they played; there was a good bit of affectionate taunting as well, especially once the captured pieces started to line the sides of the board.

“…aaand king me!” gloated Tillie.

Daniel crowned her checker and sighed, as if in lamentation. Actually he was growing more and more uncomfortable. But they were coming close to finishing the game, and Lieutenant Keck would be coming any minute, and oh, look at that — in her haste to get a king Tillie had overlooked something…. He decided to try to stick it out a few more minutes, and made a triple jump. “Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry at all.” She pretended to sulk as he scooped up her checkers.

“Nope.”

She made her next move. “So, have you made any more issues of the hospital paper?”

“I’m afraid not. Think I need a new publicity agent?” He pushed a checker forward. “King me.”

She crowned his checker. “Well, if you ever do, please save them for me, and I’ll put them in your book.” She slid a checker forward.

He moved. “Oh, don’t bother with that, save the room for the family pictures. Thank you for putting it together.”

“I’m glad you liked it — Oh, would you please king me? Thanks. — I brought some more pictures if you want to see them.”

He moved a checker and immediately regretted it – it was a blunder of a move. “Sure. Pictures from Christmas?”

She captured his checker. “Christmas and… another event that happened in December. If you’re interested.”

“Like a wedding?”

She nodded, and he felt resentment starting to simmer: was she still hung up on this? Did she really think he was that weak? It was really getting on his nerves. He took a deep breath and moved his king.

“Tillie: I mean it. I’m interested. I want to see the pictures and hear all about it.”

“Thanks, Daniel.” She sounded almost timid. “It’s just — such an emotional —”

“Stop patronizing me!” Daniel shoved the edge of the table, but instead of pushing himself back from the kitchen table, he sent the bedside table rolling away. Coffee sloshed and checkers slid everywhere. Tillie was able to catch one of the coffee cups; the other fell into the bed on his left leg. Only the knitted blanket kept it from rolling onto the floor. The coffee had spilled on his pajama pants — and on the new blanket. He felt his face grow hot. He took a deep, ragged breath.

“Tillie, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I — ”

“It's all right,” said Tillie. “Daniel? Daniel, please, hand me the cup. That coffee didn't get you, did it?”

“No. Well, a little, but it’s okay.”

“Are there any towels in here?”

“Over there.” He pointed to a supply shelf.

She took down some towels and tossed one to him. He blotted up the coffee on his pajamas and on the blanket while his sister mopped up the table and picked up checkers, cleaning up the mess he’d made. He gathered up the checkers from the bed and stared at the towel in his hands.

A knock, and Lieutenant Keck stepped in. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but….”

Tillie looked up. “I’ll be right out of your way. We just had a little coffee spill here.”

“How little?” Lieutenant Keck looked Daniel over, stepped out of the room, and came back with clean pajamas.

“Back in a minute,” said Tillie. Daniel nodded; he couldn’t meet her eyes.

Lieutenant Keck looked concerned, but didn’t press any questions. She lifted the traction weight onto the bed. Daniel started to scoot to the side to get ready to turn.

“Not yet,” she said. “Let’s get a new pair of pajama pants.” She started to pry the tacks out of the wooden spreader. He felt even worse: his stupid little tantrum had made more work for her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Pish. This is nothing, it happens all the time. Green beans, spaghetti…. Rice is the worst, it’s hard to see and it gets everywhere.”

When he had the new pants on, she rolled up and pinned the right leg of the pants and reattached the spreader. “Okay, go ahead,” she said. He turned onto his stomach and got himself back to the middle of the bed. She gave him his penicillin and morphine and then positioned his right leg on a pillow. He braced himself for the traction; instead, he felt her hand lightly resting on his shoulder blade.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Would you like your sister to come back right away, or would you prefer some time by yourself to rest? There’s a visitor’s lounge on this floor.”

He closed his eyes. “She can come in if she wants to.”

She patted his shoulder. “I’ll check in in a little bit, then. And we’ll get that coffee off your new blanket tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. He felt the skin on his leg start to stretch: the traction was back on. The door opened behind him; a woman’s voice, he wasn’t sure whose; the warm cloud of the morphine….

He blinked. There was Tillie, sitting next to the head of the bed. She was knitting.

So she came back. He closed his eyes again. He was going to have to say something, but first he wanted to just hold onto the moment. Knowing Tillie was there, hearing the gentle click of her knitting needles… it felt almost homey.

A few minutes later, Tillie started to faintly whisper. “Daniel, are you awake? I think you are…. If you want to admit it, now’s a good time, I’m about to finish a row here in three… two… one. Going once? Going twice? Okay, I’m starting a new row. That’s sixty-four stitches you’re going to have to wait. Sixty-four, that’s a lot. Gosh, I’m really working up an appetite doing these sixty-four stitches. I wonder what would happen if I ate the rest of the pie?”

Daniel chuckled a little. Tillie grinned and kept her eyes on her knitting. “All that pie,” she whispered, “and all for me.”

“Tillie — ”

“Nope, you have to wait until I finish the row.”

He propped himself up on his elbows and tried to look. “What’re you making?”

“I’ll tell you in… forty stitches.”

Forty stitches later, she put down her needles and turned to Daniel. “I am knitting a sock.” She held it up.

“Just one?”

“I only work on one at a time, silly. The other one’s at home.”

“Well, you know, some people only need one sock.”

For a moment she looked stunned. “Oh, I hear people like that often end up needing two,” she replied. “Or at least having two come in handy.”

“True.”

“Did you ever get the socks I sent you for Christmas?”

“The package came but I hadn’t opened it yet. It’s… I don’t even know where it is, I was separated from my unit when I got hit. ”

“Well, then, after I finish this pair, the next pair will be yours.”

“Is that one for Joe?”

“Yes.” She took a deep breath and turned her chair around. “Daniel, please don’t feel like… If you just want to rest quietly, that’s fine; we can put on the radio if you want; I’m just… I’m happy to just keep you company, if you like.”

“No, it’s okay.” He looked down at his hands and sighed. “Tillie… I’m so sorry about what happened. I don’t know what's come over me.”

“It’s all right.” Her voice was soft and warm, but cautious. “But when you’re ready… I’d like to clear the air on that with you.”

“I’m ready.”

“Okay. Then please, just... hear me out.

“When I said it was emotional… I know you’ve told me it doesn’t bother you. Thank you for being so understanding, so generous. What I meant was… it’s still emotional for me.

“That Wednesday was the happiest day of my life, and Thursday and Friday I was still walking on clouds, and Christmas was coming….” Her voice grew shaky. “And then that telegram came, and just like that I was sure that I'd...." She looked up at Daniel. "...that we'd lost you. And then we found out what it really said, and we were all so relieved — but still, you'd been hurt — and then Papai read the date and….

“And I know it’s just a horrible coincidence, but still.… It upsets me. There we were being happy and eating cake and meanwhile…. I don’t even want to think about what you must have been going through that day. No, no; don't try to fluff it off." Her gaze flicked to his leg and back. "Joe says I should think of it as the day two good things happened: we got married and you lived to tell the tale. Papai says I should be patient, that time will fix it, especially now that we know you’re safe; I forget how he put it but it was very Papai.” Daniel chuckled.

“I think they’re right," he said. "Everything worked out. In a few years, that day will just be your anniversary, and that’s the way it should be,”

She smiled. "Thanks, Daniel.”

“Can we look at the pictures now?”

Tillie pulled the pictures out of her bag and turned her chair all the way around, so that she was facing the same direction as Daniel. They passed the pictures back and forth as Tillie filled Daniel in on the stories behind them. Soon Lieutenant Keck came back: it was time for Daniel to turn over again before supper.

After supper they were finishing dessert when Grahn arrived, much earlier than usual, hurrying as quickly as he could with his cast and two canes. Daniel looked up. “Grahn, what’s the hurry? What do you think, Tillie, should we share our pie with this character?”

Grahn seemed distracted by the word “pie”, but only for a moment. “Why Lieutenant Sousa, I heard you had a guest and I was hoping you'd introduce me. Hey sugar,” he said to Tillie, “Are you rationed?”

His tone made it clear that he was kidding around, and Tillie played along. “Sorry, soldier. I'm not just rationed. I'm allocated.”

He shook his head. “Those fellows in the Quartermaster Corps always manage to keep the best for themselves.”

Daniel groaned. “Tillie, this big operator is Lieutenant Henry Grahn. He sleeps in that bed over there and sometimes shows his face during the day. Grahn, this is my sister Tillie Sou — ” she knocked his arm — “Sorry. Tillie Pryzbylak.”

Grahn stayed long enough to eat some pie, to chat a little, and to please Tillie by praising her brother. Then he left for the lounge, to give them a little more time until the end of visiting hours.

Daniel glanced anxiously at the clock. “So what are your plans?”

“I can come tomorrow morning, if you like. I don’t have to leave until noon. And Papai tipped me off about coming early, so I got permission today when I signed in.”

“If you can make it, that’d be aces. But tonight — how are you getting to the convent again?”

Tillie cheerfully put up with his fretful questions until the P.A. announced the end of visiting hours. She gave him a hug, promised she’d see him the next morning, and left to catch her cab.

Grahn reappeared. “So for once your day was not ‘pretty much the same as yesterday’?”

“Very much so.”

“Someone make you a blanket?”

“My sisters.” Sousa held it up. “It’s kind of short.”

“That’s going to come in handy, though. If you’re using it when you’re up, it won’t catch on anything. My mom made a quilt for me, it’s about the same size.”

Lieutenant Keck popped her head in the door. “There should be two noses in here, and one of them had better belong to Henry Grahn….”

 

The next day, Lieutenant Keck arranged Daniel’s schedule so that he was ready for Tillie when she arrived.

“Good morning! How are you doing? Did you sleep well? Did I miss that silly roommate of yours?” She dropped her bags and came over to give him a hug. Her face and coat were still chilly.

“Aw, Tillie, you’re still cold. How bad is it outside?”

“It’s not supposed to get above freezing today,” she said as she hung up her coat. “I picked up that taffy on my way over, and I got a little extra, some for Charlie and some for us. You’d better let it thaw back out before you eat it so you don’t break your teeth. Want some coffee?”

“You still trust me with it?”

For a moment she looked confused. “What — oh, that.” She scoffed. “I’ll be right back.”

When she came back she put Daniel’s coffee directly in front of him and then brought out a paper bag. “And look what I have to go with it! The sisters sent them for you.” She pulled out two muffins. “There’s a few more for later.”

“Thanks, Tillie, but I kind of just had breakfast.”

“Well, have some more breakfast. These are good.” She took one of the muffins for herself and started telling Daniel about her stay at the convent: the sisters very kind, a couple of other girls there visiting brothers and husbands; a tiny but pleasant guest room all to herself, morning prayer and then breakfast with the sisters, one of them gave them all a lift to the hospital….

“And they said they’d pray for you, and they sent you a present.” She handed Daniel a little gift box. He opened it. It was a prayer book edited by a well-known priest, just the right size to carry in a pocket.

“That’s the same book the church sent you, isn’t it?” she asked. “I went ahead and accepted it, since you’d mentioned you’d lost your things.”

“You’re right, I lost mine.” He flipped through it and put it on the bedside table for later. “Thank you.”

“Thank the sisters. Want the rest of my muffin? I’m getting full.” She passed her muffin to Daniel. “And before I forget, here’s the taffy.” She handed him a small paper bag and took out her knitting. But she just held the needles and yarn in her hands.

“Daniel, could I ask you something?”

He swallowed his muffin. “Of course.”

“Will you show me your medal?”

He chuckled a little. “If you really want to see it. Do you mind getting it out? It’s in the drawer over there.”

She poked around in the drawer for a bit until she found the medal box. She held it up. “Is this it?” She handed it to Daniel. “And what is this —” she held up the rosary he’d been given back at the field hospital — “doing buried at the bottom of the drawer? Fat lot of good it’ll do you down there.” She put it on his bedside table and came around to stand next to him as he showed her the medal. She gently touched the purple ribbon.

“So there it is,” he said. He closed the box and tried to hand it back to her; she gave him a long, tight hug before she took it.

She put it away and closed the drawer. “Why do I get the feeling,” she said in a teasing voice, “that you’ve got a whole box of medals stashed away someplace that you haven’t bothered to tell us about?”

He shrugged and started to lie back down. She picked up her knitting and sat down again.

“When I signed in this morning,” she said, “the desk clerk said something about your schedule being changed. So what would you normally be doing this time of day?”

He glanced up at the clock. “Probably washing up. I usually have physical therapy after breakfast.”

“Oh, how’s that going?”

He stared at the overhead frame. “Therapist says it’s going great. It’s just exercises in bed.” Suddenly he felt his eyes start to prickle and his throat start to tighten — great, where did that come from? He concentrated on keeping his voice steady. “How about you?”

“Oh, let’s see….” She looked up at the clock. “Something stupid, probably….” She started telling tales of quarrelsome coworkers and bewildered managers and obtuse bosses. Daniel closed his eyes. It was easy to imagine they were back home in the kitchen: Tillie keeping up a lively monologue as she dried the dishes and put them away, he half-listening as he washed, contributing a huh? or really? as needed (and perhaps occasionally flicking Tillie with dishwater)….

At last it was time for Tillie to leave. Daniel had tried to prepare himself, but he felt himself starting to choke up as she put away her knitting and gathered up her things. It didn’t help that Tillie’s eyes were starting to well up.

“Oh, Daniel.” She hugged him. “I’ve missed you so much, and now I’m afraid I’m going to miss you even more!”

“It’s been great to see you. Thank you so much for coming, Tillie, and thanks for everything.”

“Be good, all right?” She hugged him again. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He nodded. She smiled, picked up her bags, and went on her way.

He did not have much time that day to think about her visit. Lieutenant Keck arrived almost immediately with his shots; the lunch tray came soon afterward. As soon as the lunch tray was cleared away, Lieutenant Keck came back with Captain Blaine.

“Hi there,” said Blaine. “The timing was good, so I’m tagging along for the dressing change today.”

Blaine took down the traction and pried the tacks out of the spreader, while Lieutenant Keck put a pad under the end of Sousa’s right leg and started laying out the supplies. They unwound the elastic bandage.

“Lie back, please,” said Blaine. “Thanks. Now, lift your leg… toward the ceiling… okay, back down… to the left… to the right… press down….”

Sousa obeyed. He wondered what was up. Usually the doctors did this on Friday, and he doubted Blaine was just here to kill some time.

They took off the dressing and removed the packing. Blaine carefully examined the wound.

“Okay, let’s put the dressing back on, but first let’s reapply some of those tabs.”

Lieutenant Keck sifted through her supplies. “We’re going to need more tincture of benzoin. I’ll be right back.”

As they waited, something Tillie had said came back to Sousa: I was sure we’d lost you. He knew that she meant the telegram, but now he was curious.

“Captain Blaine?”

“Hm?”

“This may sound like a strange question, but… when I was hit… how close did I come?”

“You mean to… not making it?”

Sousa nodded.

Blaine didn’t seem shocked or disturbed by the question. “Let’s just say everything went your way. You lost a lot of blood, but you made it to the field hospital in time, when you still had enough strength to respond to treatment and make it through surgery.”

“Was there a chance that I might not?”

“They were concerned. Like I said, you’d lost a lot of blood, and you were probably already pretty run down. But they were ready, and you were tenacious, and that was enough to get you over the rough spots.”

Lieutenant Keck came back in; she and Blaine put new tabs on his skin for the traction and then replaced the dressing. She put the elastic bandage back on.

“Your wound is healing,” said Blaine, “but I think we can do even better. I want you to start whirlpool treatment. Let’s start with three days a week.” He picked up the chart and started to write.

“So what does that mean?” asked Sousa.

“They take you downstairs and you stick your leg in a tub of warm water. The water sloshes around and stimulates healing. It’s pleasant enough, and it’ll give you a little break from traction and a change of scenery. And of course, since you’ll be out of bed, that means we can advance your physical therapy a little.”

After Blaine left, Lieutenant Keck helped Sousa turn onto his stomach. She set up the traction again, made sure he had what he needed, and left him to rest.

When he woke up a little later, the physical therapist was moving the chair away from the side of his bed.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Exciting things,” she replied. She backed a wheelchair next to the bed. “Ready to start getting out of bed?”

They went through the usual bed exercises first, ending with Sousa sitting up straight with his left leg over the side of the bed. “Okay, now scoot yourself to your left,” the therapist instructed him. “Get as close as you can to the wheelchair. There you go. Now wiggle forward until your foot is on the floor.”

She buckled a wide twill belt around his waist. “Now, put your hands on my shoulders, like you’re teaching a kid how to dance. I’m going to hold onto the belt. I’m going to count to three and then you stand up. Do as much work as you can with your leg, try to use my shoulders just for balance. Ready? One… two… three…. ”

As he stood, he started to fall to his right, but the therapist was ready: she kept him from falling while he rebalanced himself, and suddenly he was standing up for the first time in over a month.

“What do you think?” asked the therapist.

“Room looks different from this angle,” he replied. Actually, everything looked and felt different: the cold floor on his bare foot, the sensation of weight missing on his right side and of the increased load on his left, even seeing the top of the therapist’s head instead of looking up at her from the bed. He was far from being the tallest guy in the Army, but after being in bed so long, now that he was standing up again he felt like a giant.

“Let’s sit down and do it again,” she said.

They practiced standing a few more times. Then she showed him how to pivot on his foot so that he could go from the bed to the wheelchair and back (“with help!” she insisted. “Don’t you dare try this on your own yet!”). They practiced the maneuver five or six times until she helped him pivot into the bed for the last time. She let him roll himself back into bed.

“So either tomorrow or the next day we’ll get you downstairs to start whirlpool. And then once you’re there, we can measure you for crutches.”

He arranged his face into a smile and said great! because that seemed to be what was expected of him.

The rest of the day unwound as usual — shots, dinner, Grahn, cards…. Around 2055 a private showed up with a yellow envelope.

 

1ST LT DANIEL A. SOUSA
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY,  NJ

BACK HOME SMOOTH TRIP SEE YOU AGAIN SOON LOVE TILLIE

=MRS JOSEPH PRZYBYLAK

 

Lieutenant Munn came and went, and finally he had some time to think.

He was not going to lose control that night, he told himself. It didn’t matter that at that moment his homesickness felt worse than ever, like something actually physically wrong with him, like what he imagined it might feel like to have an ulcer. It didn’t matter that he was still angry and ashamed of losing his temper and snapping at his sister — his sister — and after she’d come all that way! — or that he was disgusted with himself at how self-centered he’d been about that whole business with ruining her wedding with his stupid situation (especially since it was his own damn fault for not getting under cover faster….)

He was not going to break down that night, he was determined, no matter how… how empty and hollow he felt. It had felt good to have Tillie there, but how much of it was real happiness and how much was just… relief at being able to get out of his own head for a while, of being able to see that he wasn’t all alone? Of just having a reminder that at some point in his life he really had been happy and enjoyed things, once upon a time?

Because now when the therapist spoke with all that optimism, it seemed like she was talking about characters in a movie: nothing real, nothing to do with him. She talked about progress, but all he could remember was the feeling of losing his balance, of having to lean on her shoulders to keep from falling. All he could think of was wheelchairs and crutches, and how he’d been kidding himself.

He thought of the knitted blanket.  Once again, his sisters had known what to do.

He reached around to his back and dragged the blanket up towards the head of the bed. It was warm and just the right weight, so he’d been trying to use it in bed, but it was bugging him: if it covered his left foot, then it bunched up around his hips and didn’t cover his chest, but if he followed his instincts and pulled it up to his chin, then it didn’t cover his left leg.

He wadded it up into a kind of extra pillow and put it next to the headboard, where he could rest his hands on it. Then he pulled it down to his side, where he could use it to support his arm. He found himself fidgeting with it at first, and then just holding it, allowing himself to be distracted by the texture of the knit, until he finally drifted off to sleep.

 

Notes:

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially your comments

Big thanks to scullysahnesquarkbroetchen, for bouncing ideas around with me

and enormous thanks to Dropbox, for the nifty revision control feature that allowed me to recover the 3/4 of the chapter I accidentally deleted.

Chapter 14: Whirlpool

Summary:

Seven weeks after he gets that lead, Daniel Sousa's physical therapy gets stepped up. Reality hits. Hard.

“Okay, pivot pivot pivot…. Reach your left hand back, I’ve got you, do you feel the armrest there? There you go. Go ahead and sit down…. Here, adjust your robe a little, scoot yourself back, there you go…. I’ll get the footrest…. and you’re all set!”

“Blanket?” asked the orderly.

“Would you like to use your new blanket, Lieutenant Sousa?” asked Lieutenant Keck.

“Uh, sure,” Sousa replied. That was what it was for, he supposed.

Lieutenant Keck helped him spread the blanket over his lap and legs, tucking it so it wouldn’t get caught in the wheels of the wheelchair, and then took a step back. She looked as if at any moment she might lick a handkerchief and use it to smooth down a cowlick or give a last-minute polish to his face. She gave a little nod, as if she were satisfied with a project.

“Enjoy your trip to whirlpool!” she said. “We’ll see you when you get back upstairs.” She stepped out of the way as the orderly pushed Sousa out of the room.

Sousa glanced around as they went down the hall, at the beautiful wallpapers and moldings and lamps, at the schedules written on chalkboards and the carts piled with linens and bottles and bandages. They took the elevator down to the first floor, went down a hall, and took another elevator down one more flight to the basement. The doors opened, and the orderly wheeled him out. Sousa shivered and pulled his new robe more tightly around himself. “Thanks for remembering the blanket,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s chilly down here. It’s better in the whirlpool rooms.”

The orderly got to a set of double doors, knocked, and then turned around, backing the door open and pulling Sousa in behind him. They were greeted by a private with a clipboard.

“Let’s see…. Lieutenant Sousa?” He looked over his shoulder. “Five’s ready.”

It was like being in a laundry: warm and humid; the smells of bleach and pine oil; the sounds of clanking motors and sloshing water. Metal tubs were arranged along the sides of the room, narrow ovals that reminded Sousa of something from a farm. Some of the tubs were on legs; patients sat next to them with their arms hanging over the sides of the tub into the water. Most of the others were like the one Sousa was wheeled up to: short and sitting on the floor, with benches fitted around their narrow curved ends.

A physical therapist came up to meet them. “Lieutenant Sousa? I’m Lieutenant Ives. So this is your first time at whirlpool?”

He glanced at the tub. "Yeah. So I'm going to... just stick my leg in that?"

"We'll take the dressing off first, of course. Do you have your swim trunks?"

“Under my pajamas.”

“Then you're all set!”

She had Sousa take off his robe. Then she helped him pivot to the bench and sit down. After she helped him take off his pajama pants, she took off the dressing on his wound and removed the packing.

“Are you ready?” she asked. “Go ahead and turn on the bench… there you go… oh, good work, I can see you’ve been keeping up with your exercises. Now, just lower your right leg into the water.”

“Just like it is?”

“Just like it is. The water’s warm, go ahead….”

Sousa nervously lowered the end of his right thigh into the water. She started a motor, and the water started to move in the tub. The sensation of the moving water on his wound was odd — very odd — with little wisps of pain here and there — but after a few minutes he started to grow used to  it. He began to relax a little.

“There you go,” said Lieutenant Ives. “That will increase circulation to the area and help it heal.”

She had him keep his leg in the water for fifteen minutes. When his time was up, the whole process moved in reverse: she gently dried the skin of his leg, packed and dressed the wound, helped him get his pajamas and robe back on, and helped him pivot back into the wheelchair.

“And that’s whirlpool! What did you think?”

Sousa shrugged. “It was… wet?” He started pulling the blanket around his legs.

“If nothing else, it was a ticket out of your room, right?” Behind her, a technician started preparing the tub for the next patient. “How are you feeling? Up for an errand?” She hailed a passing orderly. “Private Hurst, can you take a patient? Lieutenant Sousa’s ready to go upstairs. Will you bring him by the gait room and ask them to do his measurements?”

“Yes ma’am. Would you mind holding your chart, there, sir? Thanks.”

“All right, we’ll see you on Monday!” Before Sousa could respond, she had turned to another patient and he was being taken away.

Up on the first floor,  the private took him down a hallway to a large atrium with a vaulted ceiling and potted palms in each corner. The atrium served several event rooms, each with its own civilian name — the Chatsworth Room, the Willow Room — and a new Army designation: EGH 1501, EGH 1502….

He took Sousa into the Stratford Room (now EGH 1506) and stopped in front of a desk. He went to look for someone; meanwhile, Sousa took a look around. The room was flooded with thin winter light from the three floor-to-ceiling Palladian windows running along the back of the room. The coved ceiling itself looked fourteen or fifteen feet high. The room would not have looked out of place in a palace — except for the linoleum floor, and the standing chalkboards gridded with schedules, and the free-standing full-length mirrors, and the gymnastics mats and sets of parallel bars, and the wheelchairs parked along the sides of the room, and the swirl of therapists in white, and techs and orderlies in olive drab, and patients in maroon bathrobes and gray pajamas and swimming trunks and undershirts.

Sousa hardly knew where to look first. In one corner, a patient was holding himself up on the parallel bars as he took slow steps on a prosthetic leg. Another patient was practicing crutch walking. He was a leg amputee as well, but he wasn’t wearing a prosthesis. Other patients were walking towards the mirrors, supporting themselves with crutches or peculiar multi-legged canes.

“Lieutenant?”

Sousa looked up. Private Hurst had returned with a corporal.

“Good morning, sir,” said the corporal. “What do you think? I bet we’ll be seeing you down here before too long.”

The corporal led them to a spot behind the desk. “The therapist wants me to measure you for your first crutches,” he said. “So please stand up, nice and tall — Hurst’ll give you a hand — and I’ll make it snappy with my ruler here.”

As he promised, it didn’t take long: as Sousa stood up, supporting himself on Hurst's shoulders, the corporal measured from under his left armpit to a spot somewhere around his toes. Hurst helped him sit back down; a note in the chart; and he was back on the way upstairs. An orderly from the ward helped him take off his shoe, get the swim trunks off and the pajamas back on, and get back into bed; a few minutes later Lieutenant Keck came to turn him on his stomach, give him his shots, and reattach the traction. He fell asleep almost immediately.

After weeks in bed, he was still adjusting to the increased activity of the last couple of days. After the physical therapist had gotten him out of bed for the first time, the staff had started having him stand up at the side of the bed for a minute or two when it was time to turn in bed. On Thursday morning, they issued him his new clothes; when it was time to wash, they’d set him up in a wheelchair and pushed him over to the sink to wash and shave.

Now it was Friday, and they let him rest for a bit after whirlpool before having him get up and pivot to the wheelchair again. As the orderly pushed Sousa over to the sink, he talked cheerfully about how much stronger Sousa was getting already, how quickly things were going to go now. Sousa nodded and thanked him, because that was what one did. As he brushed his teeth, the sunlight from the window caught his eye. It occurred to him that maybe he could push himself over in the wheelchair and take a look outside. But then he was overwhelmed with all the reasons why that wouldn’t work out — he’d need help to stand up and look, the orderly was busy, was there even anything to see, why bother…. He finished up at the sink, put his things away, and tentatively backed himself up next to the bed to wait for the orderly. A stand, a pivot, and he was back in bed to wait for whatever was going to happen next.

He knew he should be excited about this whirlpool business. They’d told him all the reasons why: faster healing, trips out of his room, time out of bed…. He suspected that side trip to the gym was probably meant to pep him up as well. And he was excited, he guessed, as much as he was able to be excited about anything these days, which wasn’t much. They seemed to expect him to be parade-on-Main-Street excited; the best he could gin up was pull-toy-on-a-sidewalk vaguely positive.

Maybe he’d be happier about the whole thing once he had some strength back. It was always a relief to get a break from traction, and it was good to be out of bed, but he was discouraged by how weak he’d grown. It had never occurred to him that just standing on one leg would be difficult.

And that morning at whirlpool, seeing his right leg when there was no dressing on it, and when he was dressed in something closer to ordinary clothing — never mind the open wound, but seeing just how swollen and…. incomplete it looked — he’d been so focused on walking, he’d never thought about just how… ugly it was going to be. Of course, this was nothing, he quickly reminded itself, compared to what the guys with facial injuries and burns were dealing with, or even the men who’d lost hands or arms. And though he’d never thought of himself as hideous, he’d never thought of himself as particularly handsome either; it’s wasn’t like his movie career was over. He would get used to it, he supposed, just like he would get used to everything else. He had to.

Lunch came, and he made himself eat; the physical therapist came, and he did as he was told. After bed exercises, she had him practice standing and pivoting again, and then started to teach him what she called “wheelchair skills.” She said it in a way that suggested he’d be needing these skills for quite a while, and it made him uncomfortable, especially when she mentioned the advanced skills he’d be learning in the gym. When the session was over and he was getting back in bed, he went ahead and asked.

“When you were talking about taking curbs and getting in and out of a car…. I thought I wasn’t going to be discharged until I was walking.”

“You won’t,” she said. “But that’s going to take a while, right? In the meantime, you’re going to want to take part in the activities here, you’re going to want to go out and take in Atlantic City.”

She waited for him to finish turning on his stomach, and then sat down in the wheelchair. She leaned over to get closer to his eye level.

“Lieutenant Sousa… when you get your prosthesis, it’s not like putting on a pair of pants, you don’t just put it on and skip away. It’s going to take time. Even getting used to having it on is going to be an adjustment. You’ll have to work up to walking with it and wearing it for long periods of time.

“And once you’ve mastered it, you’re not going to want to use it all the time. You just won’t. And you can’t anyway, it’s impossible, you’ll want to bathe and sleep and go swimming and things like that, and you’ll need to give your stump a rest during the day.

“So for times like that, you’ll be using crutches, and there may be times where you’ll find it safer or easier to use a wheelchair, that it’s your best option. Say you’re on the Boardwalk, here —” she waved in the general direction — “You might decide to use a wheelchair to cover the long distances and save your walking energy to do things like go in the Diving Bell. So that’s why it’s important to learn those skills, and that’s why the Army is going to send you home with a wheelchair of your own: so you’ll have it if you need or want it.”

She patted his arm. “Okay?”

He nodded.

“Don’t let yourself get discouraged. You really are making good progress. I’ll see you tomorrow, all right?”

“Sure thing," he said. The therapist moved the wheelchair, put the guest chair back in its place, and rolled the wheelchair out the door.

Lieutenant Keck came back a few minutes later. As she pushed the tacks back into the spreader, Sousa got the impression that she wanted him to say something. But he didn’t know what he was supposed to say.

“It’s been a big day for you,” she said. “You must be tired.”

I’m always tired, he thought, and for an instant he even considered saying it.... No moping. “I guess so,” he said.

He couldn’t see Lieutenant Keck, but she seemed… disappointed, as if he’d given the wrong answer. But what was the right answer, what was he supposed to have said?

She walked around to the foot of the bed. “Okay, here it comes,” she said. He felt the weight’s tug on the skin of his right leg. She made sure he had what he needed within reach, promised to check back in, and left him alone.

 

“Hey, Sousa.”

“Hey, Grahn. You’re back early, what’s the news?”

Grahn tossed him a hospital paper. “MacArthur’s closing in on Manila; groundhog saw his shadow; the Turtle Johnson Orchestra’s playing tomorrow; and bridge club starts week after next.”

“So it's really happening.”

“Did you ever doubt? I have an appointment with destiny, Sousa, and it's one week from Tuesday at four o’clock in the Palm Court. I will take up anew the task entrusted to me by Uncle Sam. I will once again be a leader of men, and I shall lead them in the search for knowledge and skill. There may even be refreshments.”

"Knowledge and skill. And here I thought it was a search for women."

“Well, that’s not the only —”

Lieutenant Keck stuck her head in the door. “Lieutenant Sousa — oh, Lieutenant Grahn! You’re back early.”

“Why do you sound so disappointed?”

She ignored him. “Well, now that you’re here I can tell you both. I’ll be out for a couple of days and then I’m switching back to nights, so I’ll see you on Monday evening.”

“Today’s Friday, right? Enjoy your weekend,” said Sousa. “Any exciting plans?”

“Still making them,” she said. “Have a good weekend, stay out of trouble, and I’ll see you on Monday.”

 

The weekend hours crawled by in the usual way. On Sunday afternoon the phone rang. Sousa ignored it, as he usually did; it was for Grahn, and he couldn’t reach it anyway. He closed his eyes until the phone stopped ringing.

An orderly skidded into the room. He looked at Sousa and then looked over to the phone. “Oh, that’s why. You have a phone call,” he explained, and he moved the phone to Sousa’s bed.

“Grahn’s not here.”

“Yeah, this call’s for Lieutenant Sousa,” said the orderly. “And that’s you, right?” The phone rang again. He picked up the receiver and handed it to Sousa.

“Lieutenant Sousa speaking.” The orderly caught his eye, nodded, and left.

“Hello, Lieutenant Sousa. It’s Ines.” He could hear the smile in her voice.

“Ines! I… I — How are you?”

“Green with envy: that's how I am. Papai and Tillie have both been down and I still haven't gotten to see you! I'm trying to figure out a way, I really want to see you, but until then….” She sighed. “How are you doing? I think about you every day.”

“Thanks. Thanks for all the letters, they really help.”

“Then I’ll keep writing. There’s someone else here who is desperate to speak to you. Would you like to talk to Charlie for a minute?”

“Sure! Sure, put him on.”

“Okay, here he comes.”

Daniel heard her speaking to Charlie — “Okay, it’s your turn, remember to speak up — ” for a moment he wondered if Charlie even really remembered him — what was he going to say to him, anyway —

“Hi, Tio Daniel, this is Charlie.”

“Hi, Charlie. How are you? It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to see you.”

“Thank you for the candy.”

Candy? Daniel decided to just play along. “You’re welcome, I hope you like it.”

“I have a piece for lunch every day. I like the ones with three colors the best. And then my second favorite is the chocolate, and my third favorite is the pink, and my fourth favorite is the….”

Ines’s voice sounded in the background. “Charlie, remember, let Tio Daniel have a turn to talk.”

“Maybe you can write down your favorites,” said Daniel. “Meanwhile, I want to thank you. I heard you helped make the swell blanket that Tia Tillie brought me.”

Charlie hesitated. Sousa heard Ines prompting again: “Say ‘you’re welcome.’ ”

“You’re welcome. I made four squares. Maybe I could send you some candy. Mama, I want to buy some candy for Tio Daniel with my dime. What kind of candy do you like?”

Ines broke in again. “We’ll talk about that later, Charlie. Say good-bye and then go tell Vovô his turn is coming.”

“Good-bye, Tio Daniel. I hope your leg gets better soon.”

“Thanks, Charlie. ‘Bye now.” Daniel wondered how much Ines had told him.

“Thank you,” said Ines.

“He sounds so big now. Does he really remember me? And what candy is he talking about?”

“He insists that he does, and he’s talking about the taffy.”

“But that was from Tillie.”

“Well, she told him it was from both of you, so….”

“That Tillie. Well, don’t let him spend his dime on candy for me.”

“It’s his money.” Her voice was firm.

“Ten whole cents. Where’s Charlie getting all this lettuce, anyway?”

She sighed. “He finally learned the whole poem by heart.”

Daniel groaned. “Is he getting the whole speech, too?”

“Of course. ‘When I was a little boy….’ ”

Daniel joined in: “ ‘I memorized a poem for school. And when I said it for my Vovô, he was so happy….’ “

“And so on and so forth. Anyway, Vovô told him he said it so well it was worth a nickel, but he didn’t have any nickels so if he said it again he’d give him a dime.”

“A whole nickel? We never got a nickel!”

“I think I remember you getting a nickel once or twice. But anyway, that’s how Charlie got his dime, and it’s so funny, he’s tying himself in knots trying to decide what to do with it. Maybe I can get him to tell you more about it in a letter. Oh, by the way: those letters you’ve been sending him? He’s just over the moon.

“So how are you doing?”

He shifted a little in bed. “About the same. I got to stick my leg in a bathtub….” He briefly told her about the trip to whirlpool.

“And you’ll be doing that three times a week?” she asked. “Sounds like progress to me.”

“I guess.”

“Of course it is,” she said firmly.

They chatted for another minute or two about nothing in particular.  Ines passed the phone to Tillie and then to their father so they could say hello. She told him again how happy she was to talk with him. He felt a lump growing in his throat as she promised to call again. And then it was time to say good-bye.

After she hung up, he gently placed the receiver back on the cradle. He put the telephone on the bedside table and settled back to think about his phone call and wait for the next visit from the day nurse.

 

He slept poorly that night, dreaming of lost shoes and missed trains. He was supposed to go someplace but he couldn’t find his watch, he couldn’t find his wallet, he couldn’t find his pass, nothing was where it was supposed to be, and when he went out to the hall to explain why he was running late, Lieutenant Munn and Lieutenant Keck were already walking away without him. He tried to hurry after them, but he couldn’t move, he couldn’t lift his legs….

He woke up. The night nurse was lifting the traction weight. It was around four in the morning, and the memory of the dream was quickly draining away.

He turned onto his stomach, got his shots, and settled in to get back to sleep. But he couldn’t sleep. His mind was churning — the phone call; the drag he was being on his family — would the sight of him frighten Ines’s kids when he saw them again? and when would that be, anyway? — the ass he’d made of himself when Tillie came; the way he constantly felt like he was on the verge of making an even bigger ass of himself. The way he had to force himself to be interested in Grahn’s bridge club project. The way he felt like a hollowed-out shell.

He finally managed to drop off again a couple of hours later, just in time to be woken up again to turn on his back, and then to meet the doctors on rounds, and then eat breakfast, and then go to whirlpool…. and early the next morning he found himself staring at the metal headboard again, unable to sleep, unable to quiet his mind. Older memories surfaced to torment him as well. Mistakes he’d made in Italy and France (thank God he hadn’t gotten anybody hurt or killed, but still); the sergeant back at Belvoir pulling him aside and growling Don’t fuck this up; stringing Laura along; the yearly letter from the college (We regret that we are unable to offer you….)

He was still awake when Lieutenant Keck crept back in at 0545 to turn him onto his back.

“Have you slept at all?” she whispered.

He shrugged. After she got him situated, she glanced at the clock, pulled up the chair, and sat next to his bed, her hand lightly touching his shoulder. She stayed around five minutes before she patted his shoulder, stood up, and put the chair back. “I have to go to rounds,” she whispered. “I’ll see you a little later.”

He nodded.

On Wednesday, he was finishing his lunch when Captain Blaine knocked on the door. “Lieutenant Sousa? Sorry to interrupt your lunch. I just wanted to stop by and see how things were going.”

Sousa felt a cold lump in his gut, as if he’d just been called to the principal’s office.  Blaine came in, pulled the chair around to face Sousa, and sat down.

“Let’s see… you’re about seven weeks out from your injury, and you’ve been with us for around six weeks. Your wound is looking good, healing up nicely, seems to be responding well to whirlpool. We might be able to close in another six weeks, which means you could already be halfway done. You’re doing everything the therapist asks and making steady progress. Your pain seems to be well controlled, you're tolerating the traction, you’re getting along well with the other men and with the staff, and as far as I know, you’ve been doing this all without any complaining.”

Sousa thought of Tillie mopping up coffee and gathering checkers. He didn’t say anything.

“I know you're not sleeping well; it's hard with the traction. We’re also concerned that your appetite doesn’t seem to have picked back up. Is there anything wrong with the food?”

Oh, God, not this again. “It's fine," said Sousa. "I'm trying to eat; there's just so much on the tray.”

“You're already getting reduced portions, and I'd rather you were eating double portions. I'm going to ask the dietitian to come back, and I want you to be honest with her. Don't worry about complaining. If you've got a complaint, make it. Would it help if you got up for meals? What if they sent you something that was easier to eat?”

“The food is fine. I'm just not that hungry.”

“I want you to be honest – if not with me then with the dietitian and with yourself,” said Blaine. “If there are any problems with the actual food then let's solve them.

“Which brings me to another concern. You've suffered a very serious injury, and it's going to take time to recover. And not just physically. Psychologically, as well.”

Sousa kept his face neutral.

“You were under a tremendous amount of strain even before you were injured, and now… well, being wounded and being in the hospital and undergoing this treatment are all very stressful.  Even just being back in the States after being in theatre so long requires a period of readjustment. And then added to all that, you have the work of adjusting to your new disability. These are all extraordinary pressures. And it’s normal for men to have unusually strong reactions of anger or sadness or nervousness in response to these unusual pressures.”

“Now, we all know that emotions have physical signs, right? If you’re nervous, you get a dry mouth or butterflies in your stomach. If you’re angry, you might feel hot. If you’re in love, your heart beats faster.

“Same thing here. Every man is different, of course, but as you adjust it’s normal to experience symptoms like jittery nerves, trouble sleeping, poor appetite. And these symptoms are real, it’s not hypochondria.”

Blaine leaned forward. “This adjustment is going to take patience and time, but there are things you can do to help it along and make it easier. One of those things is keeping busy; you’ve been doing well with that. And another, very important thing is just… talking to someone. Next week you’ll joining the discussion group here on the ward, but in the meantime, have you talked to or confided in anyone? Even to one of the other men? We can call the chaplain for you, or….”

He seemed to expect an answer, so Sousa nodded. “I understand.”

“Very good. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

Blaine left, and Sousa lay back down to seethe. If every man “adjusted” differently, then why the hell was Blaine after him? What was wrong with the way he was doing it? For crying out loud, a discussion group? Why couldn’t they just leave him alone?

He remembered what Grahn said, the night before Tillie came: It’s okay to let off some steam…. If you don’t, you start to crack. Maybe he was screwing this up. But what if he started talking to someone and he said the wrong thing? Chaplains... psychiatrists... a trip across the street to the psychiatric ward?

When his mail came that afternoon, it came in a stack. He flipped through the pile: all but one were addressed to him at a general Army “hospitalized” address in New York. Perhaps they were mailed before he’d been assigned to England General.

He read the new letter first. It was from his father, just a short note: not much news here, hoping to get down again soon to visit….

He smiled a little, put it aside, and turned to the stack. There were four or five from his family, and a V-mail from his old commanding officer. He opened the V-mail first.

Somewhere in Belgium
December 23 1944

Hoping this finds you somehow and that you are O.K.. Haven’t had much time to write here. Clark told me what happened.We had a laugh about you setting one last tank trap, you were always really good at those. We finally have the unit back together, everybody else is O.K., you are the only one who got really hurt on that little adventure. I wrote to your dad and I’ll ask the guys in back to send back your Christmas box and your other stuff. Maybe you will get it in time for Christmas ’45. We still have your musette bag and I will try to get that home too. I might say something nice to the Old Man for your file as well. We hope you are O.K. and will drop us a line to let us know how you’re doing.  Merry Christmas.

The letter had been written only a few days after he was wounded, before he’d had a chance to write to them. As he reread the letter, he realized that his C.O. might not have even known for sure that he’d made it. It was a disturbing thought.

He moved the letter to the back of the stack. The next one was from his father, on its original V-Mail paper.

December 22 1944

Dear Daniel,

We got a telegram tonight from the Army saying you were wounded. It gave us this temporary address for you and that’s about all it said. So at this moment I don’t know where you are, or what your condition is, or what happened, or when you’ll get this letter. I don’t know what to write. But I can’t not write, because I am thinking about you. Daniel, wherever you are tonight, I’m sitting up with you and thinking about you. I’m sitting here at the dining room table, and the lights are on, and I’m thinking about you and praying for you. I know you’ll face this, whatever it is, with the right spirit —

Sousa had to stop reading for a moment.

I know you’ll face this, whatever it is, with the right spirit. You’re a brave and steady and smart young man. No father could be prouder of a son than I am of you.

I’ll write again tomorrow. And after we finish putting up the Nativity I’ll light an extra candle for you.

God bless you.

your Pai

 

Sousa folded the letter, put it with the others, and put them on the bedside table. He put his head back down on his pillow and squeezed his eyes shut.

 

That night was the worst yet. He woke up around 0300 with his mind already going in circles. He remembered what Blaine had said — was this one of those “adjustment” symptoms Blaine had talked about? But that set off a whole new chain of thought: adjusting to his “disability”… blankets and crutches and wheelchairs… that horrible wound on his leg, still open after seven weeks… the letter his commanding officer had sent seven weeks ago.

Seven weeks later, and he was still in bed, of no use to anybody. Just a few more seconds, and he would have been under cover….

His C.O. had written to his father.  His C.O. must have had good reason to think he hadn’t made it. His father, getting that telegram — it was easy to picture him at the table, writing that letter — and not knowing for days what had happened? All that anxiety, and then all that work to come down to Atlantic City? All that worry and concern he was causing? And then that letter from his C.O. showing up back at the house, along with his other stuff?

Something else Blaine had said came back to him: “Let’s just say everything went your way…. They were concerned.” And then something the doctor at Mitchel had said, something about potentially bleeding to death.

He'd almost died.

He'd almost died. But he hadn’t, and now he was putting a lot of people to a lot of trouble. And for what?

Perhaps it would have been more convenient if he had died.

He recoiled from the thought as he would from a viper. It wasn’t true, he knew it wasn’t true. He took a deep breath, carefully sat up in bed, pulled over his bedside table, and poured himself a cup of water.

It wasn’t true, he reminded himself. It was like trying to warm himself with a flashlight, but it was better than nothing.

He took another sip of water. Everything was quiet out in the hall. Inside the room, Grahn was mumbling in his sleep again; Sousa could never make out what he was saying.

He finished the water. As he put the cup back on the table, he noticed the rosary the chaplain had given him back at the field hospital, sitting with his other things. A hazy memory came to him: the chaplain standing above him, pressing the purple stole to his lips, tracing a cross on Sousa’s forehead….

They really must have thought he was a goner.

And then the chaplain had come back to see him and had given him the rosary. “Put it around your wrist so it doesn’t get lost,” the chaplain had ordered. Now Sousa obeyed again, not really thinking about why — after all, he had a place to put his stuff now. He stared listlessly down at his wrist and sighed, too tired and distracted to whisper the words please, please help me or even form them in his mind.

He was still sitting up when Lieutenant Keck arrived a little later with the 0400 shots. He waited for her to lift the traction weight and then scooted to the side to get ready to turn. After it was over and she’d replaced the traction, she sat next to his bed again for a few minutes, her hand on his arm. When it was time for her to leave, she gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “It’s going to get better,” she whispered. “I promise you. It’s going to get better.”

 

He had whirlpool again on Friday and came back exhausted and rattled; when he’d been transferring from the whirlpool bench back to the wheelchair, he’d leaned a little too far in the wrong direction and had nearly fallen off the bench. Somebody had been there to catch him, of course, and perhaps he hadn’t been that close to falling, but for a sickening instant it had sure felt like it. When he got back to his room, he rushed through his bath, had to be ordered to shave, and hurried back to bed. After lunch came shots, a turn on his stomach, and — finally — a chance to try to catch a nap.

When he woke up, he didn’t feel like he’d been out all that long, but of course he wasn’t sure. Maybe he could get a little more sleep….

No, it wasn’t going to work, he was already waking up. He hit the pillow in frustration. He pushed himself up on his elbows and turned to his side to look for his book.

And there was his father, dozing in the chair at the side of the bed.

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thank you as always for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which I scoop up and clutch to my heart and read over and over again.

Chapter 15: Frank

Summary:

Daniel's father comes to visit.

 

“Am I being kidnapped?”

“Not so loud, son, the MPs will hear you.”

 

Daniel stared for a moment, amazed, before he chuckled a little and put his head back down. His father took a deep breath and blinked.

“Have a good nap, Pai?”

“Oh, I was just resting my eyes.” He turned to Daniel, smiled, and patted Daniel’s shoulder. “Surprised? Tillie didn’t give it away, did she?”

“No.” Daniel shook his head. “No, I am one hundred percent surprised. Pleasantly surprised,” he added, heading off the joke. “And I guess I know better than to try to ask how you pulled this off.”

“Of course you do. And of course you should know I’m always looking out for a way to get down here. So how are you doing?”

“Hanging in there. When did you get in? How was your trip down?”

“Well, first….” His father picked up the thermal flask, poured a cup of broth, and handed it to Daniel. “Drink up.”

As Daniel sipped the broth, his father told him when he’d arrived (not long ago) and about the ride down (uneventful), and shared a little of the news from home. He was in the middle of a yarn involving two neighbors, a daughter, a private from the army camp, and a chicken when Lieutenant Munn joined them.

“So Mr.Sousa,” she said, “what we talked about? Everything's all set.”

“Thank you so much, I appreciate it.”

“Staying for dinner, Pai?”

“I was hoping you’d ask, since I’d already invited myself again.”

Lieutenant Munn spoke up again. “Mr. Sousa, would you give us a few minutes, please?”

“Of course. Back in a moment, Daniel.”

Lieutenant Munn closed the door, lifted the traction weight onto the bed, and started removing the tacks from the spreader. When she was done, Daniel sat up and swung his leg over the side of the bed.

“Can I have a minute?” he asked.

“Sure.” She turned the water on at the sink and busied herself on the other side of the room until he was finished.  When she came back, she carried a washcloth in one hand and his shoe and sock in the other, with his robe draped over her arm.

“What do you say to showing off a little for your father? I think it would be a thrill for him to see you out of bed, don’t you?” She handed him the washcloth and, as he washed his hands, started laying out his clothes.

“I guess so, but I don’t think we need all that.”

“As soon as I saw your father I called Captain Blaine. He cleared you to stay out of bed for a bit this afternoon.” She took the washcloth and handed him a sock.

“So this is one of those mandatory suggestions.” He took a deep breath and concentrated on putting the sock on without falling over on his right side.

She loosened the laces of the shoe and held it in position. “How long has it been since your father was here last?” she asked.

“Little over a month.” He pushed his foot in the shoe, carefully leaned forward, and tied the laces.

“A month makes a big difference.” She handed him his robe and waited while he shrugged it on. She walked over and opened the door wide. His father came in, pushing a wheelchair.

So his father was in on this. A wave of bitterness washed over Daniel. He tried to ride it out and keep it from showing on his face as Lieutenant Munn pushed the wheelchair around and set the brake. There was a stack of blankets folded on the seat; she lifted them out of the way.

“It’s not that exciting,” grumbled Daniel. He put his hands on her shoulders and did the pivot into the wheelchair.  “Ta-da.” He adjusted his robe.

His father did not seem to be listening at all, just looking at Daniel with a fond smile. “That’s more like it,” he said.

“Isn’t it?” said Lieutenant Munn. She put the footrest down and tucked the knitted blanket around his legs.

“Will you pass us that Thermos, please? Thank you,” said his father. “And could we take a few more blankets, just in case? Some of those hallways are so drafty.”

“Wait, what’s going on?” asked Daniel.

Lieutenant Munn handed him a stack of blankets and a slip of paper. “Captain Blaine signed off on a pass. Put it in your pocket in case you need it.  You may leave the ward with your father for up to two hours as long as you stay in this building.” She released the brake, pushed Daniel forward, and handed him off to his father. “Have a nice visit!”

As they approached the door, out of the corner of his eye Daniel saw his father quietly pick up his coat. He didn’t say anything until they were on the elevator going down.

“Am I being kidnapped?”

“Not so loud, son, the MPs will hear you.”

They got off on the third floor. Daniel’s father paused for a minute before starting forward again.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“I think so.”

They went through a couple of public rooms and windowed galleries until they came to a wide room that opened out to a porch. Daniel’s father stopped by one of the doors. He started to unfold the blankets and drape them over Daniel, one at a time.

“You need fresh air,” he said. He put on his coat, opened the door, and backed out, pulling Daniel behind him. He checked the door before closing it behind them.

The porch overlooked the Boardwalk and the sea. It was deep and sheltered, with brick arches running along its length. It was chilly out, but Daniel was well bundled. His father pushed him to a spot where he could see and hear the waves while being sheltered from the wind. He pulled up another chair for himself.

“If we could light a fire, this would be about perfect,” said his father.

They sat in silence for a while, watching the waves. Daniel began to wonder if this little jaunt was as much for his father’s benefit as for his own.

“Have you gotten to the beach much this winter?”

“Not really. I don’t think I’ve been since I was down here last month.” He looked over to Daniel. “Are you warm enough?”

“I am. Thanks, Pai.” He felt his eyes prickle a little — he had no idea why — he took a deep breath to try to calm himself back down. He had a pretty good idea of what his father was going to say next; it was just a matter of time.

Finally his father began to speak:

“ ‘I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.      

“ ‘I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

“ ‘I must down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life.
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.’ ”

 

“When I was a boy, I had to memorize a poem for school —” He turned to Daniel. “Have I told you this story?”

“You might have mentioned it once or twice.”

His father smiled. “When I was a boy, I had to memorize a poem for school, and afterwards I said it again for my grandfather. I wish you could have known him, Daniel. He was a tough old man, tough like a piece of gristle, with hard, hard hands, and his face all weatherbeaten. And when I said the poem for him, I wasn’t sure how much of it he even understood. He spoke a little English, but not all that much, and definitely not that kind of English. But he knew the word ‘ship’ and he knew the word ‘whale’ and he knew his grandson was in school and had learned an entire poem by heart and by God that was enough for him. He’d have me say it for him a couple of times a week. He even had me say it for his friends once.”

Daniel looked up in surprise: the detail about the friends was new.

“I learned other poems, and he listened to them, but he would always ask me to say the one about the ship and the whale. He loved hearing that poem, and sometimes he’d give me a penny. Always the shiniest one in his pocket.”

This was where the story usually ended. “I heard Charlie got a whole nickel,” said Daniel.

His father chuckled. “Pennies went further back then. My father just rolled his eyes at the whole thing, but once Ines was born he kind of teased me about teaching her the poem someday. Well, once I saw what a smart little thing she was I gave it a try early, and she picked it right up. You should’ve seen how proud he was. Well, you did, later, when you said it for him.”

Daniel smiled a little at the memories: growing up hearing his father saying the poem whenever they went to the beach…. saying the poem himself on a Sunday afternoon at his grandparents’ house in New Bedford…. his grandfather beaming and pulling him into a hug and slipping a penny into his pocket.

“Sure you’re warm enough?” his father asked. “If you get too cold we can go back inside.”

“Really, Pai, I’m fine.”

“Then we can stay here as long as we like. Or until two hours is up, whichever comes first.”

“How’d did you find this spot, anyway? Did you go exploring?

“One of the orderlies told me about it. When I was waiting at the desk, I asked the clerk if there was a place on your floor that had a good view, and he said I was in luck because the man to ask was right there. So he called over one of the orderlies, and you could just tell he’s the kind of fellow who knows things. And sure enough, he knew a couple of places on your floor, and then he suggested a couple of other spots as well. Drew a little map and everything.” He patted his pocket. “This worked out even better than I’d hoped.”

Daniel felt a little flash of resentment — once again, people making plans for him and around him — and then frightened and ashamed of his resentment — what was wrong with him, it was his father, his father just trying to give him a pleasant surprise….

“You make it sound like a plot,” he said.

“Not at all! Well, maybe. On my way down I was thinking, if they let him out of bed long enough for that bathtub treatment, maybe they’ll let him out of bed long enough for us to go look out the window or something, get a change of scenery.

“It was worth a try, so when I signed in I asked your nurse. I thought I was going to have to beg, but she seemed keen on the idea. She said she’d call the doctor right away to get permission, and that we might even be able to get a pass. After you woke up I got in there and you had your robe and shoes on, and she told us we had the pass for two hours, and that Duck fellow had told me about this porch and how it was pretty quiet here today, and I could just feel it in my bones that it would do you good to get outside, even if it was just for a minute or two.”

“You were right, I haven’t been outside since I got here…. This is really nice. Thanks, Pai.”

His father smiled.

“So how’s that bathtub treatment coming along?” he asked.

Daniel chuckled a little.

“No, that’s what you called it,” his father insisted. “Sticking your leg in a bathtub.”

Daniel looked down at his lap. “It’s supposed to help it heal faster. The doctors say it’s working. I can’t really tell.”

“Well, they’re the ones who would know about that,” said his father. “You’re obviously getting your strength back.”

“You think so?”

“Absolutely. I could see it as soon as you woke up, even before you got out of bed.”

His father waited a long minute or two before he spoke up again.

“How are your spirits?”

“I…”

Daniel’s voice failed. He tried again to say something, but suddenly his chest was too tight. He finally managed to draw in a deep, sharp breath —

It was no good.  His eyes began to burn as the tears came. He wiggled an arm out from under the blankets and turned away, hiding his face in his hand as he fought to keep his shuddering breaths from turning into moaning, abject sobs.

His father didn’t say anything, but Daniel vaguely sensed him walking around to his other side and pulling up a chair to sit at his elbow. He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. And then for an instant Daniel was eleven years old again, weeping on the back stairs where he’d been trying to hide; his father had come looking and found him, and then sat down on the stairs next to him, his arm around Daniel’s shoulders. It was the evening of the day the last of their company had gone home, a few days after his mother’s funeral.

And the instant passed.  When he’d finally regained some control of his breathing, Daniel rubbed his  eyes with the heel of his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice choked.  “I’m so sorry, I… I don’t know why this is happening….”

“Why what’s happening?” His father’s voice was low and serene.

“Falling to pieces like this. It’s nothing you said, Pai, it’s just… everything sets me off lately.  

“It’s like I’m in a minefield, all the time, just one step away from blowing up at someone or… or….” He waved vaguely and swiped at his eyes while he tried to recover his voice. “And I never know what’s going to do it, or when, it could be anything or nothing. It just happens. Even at night.

“And I can’t sleep. I’m always tired and I can’t concentrate, all I can think about is getting some sleep, but I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep, and my mind just keeps going and going….

“And I know they’re just trying to help, but they’re always after me, I swear to God they write down how many bites of dinner I take, and if I don’t clean my plate they’re going to send the dietitian after me again.” He did not see his father’s eyebrows lift at the word again. “I keep telling them I’m not hungry but they just won’t listen to me.”

“And the worst part is, really, what do I have to complain about? I made it back. I have both my hands. I still have one good leg, there are so many men here who’ve lost both. There’s a whole floor full of men who are paralyzed. I have it easy compared to them, but here I am —” His voice broke.

“Are these the kinds of things keeping you awake at night?”

Daniel nodded.

“Does it help at all to think about the future? About coming home?”

“…No. I’m sorry. But no. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know where I’m going.

“At first I thought, okay, they’ll give me the new leg, and I’ll go back and pick things up again. But that’s not possible. I can’t go back to the shipyard — and now I don’t even know how much good the leg’s  going to do me. They said I couldn’t use it all the time, I’d also have to have crutches or a wheelchair. And I don’t want to be a burden.”

“So that idea’s keeping you up too?”

“Yes.” The image forced itself before his eyes again: himself, sitting on the front porch in a wheelchair, a blanket over his legs, a load on his family and an object of pity to the neighbors — such a shame about the Sousa boy…. Perhaps it would have been more convenient if he had died….

No, not that. He shuddered. “I feel like I’m cracking up sometimes.” The words slipped out in an anguished whisper; he pressed his hand to his face as if to try to stuff them back into his mouth.

“Daniel.” His father’s calm voice held nothing but empathy. He kept his hand firmly on Daniel’s shaking shoulder. “Daniel. You’re not cracking up.”

Daniel looked up at his father.

“You’re not,” his father insisted. “You’re sad, that’s all. Here, hand me that Thermos.” He poured a cup of broth and handed it to Daniel. “Drink.”

“Let’s see: you can’t get to sleep because your mind is racing; you can’t eat — and it’s not because you’re in love, more’s the pity…. Future seems empty, stuff coming out of nowhere, nerves….

“…And let me guess: part of the reason you don’t want to eat is that nothing appeals to you any more. Ice cream, steak, apple pie, hot coffee, cold dry toast… it’s all the same. Right? And other things too? Books not as interesting as they used to be?

“And before you tell me that you don’t feel sad… how about low and empty?”

“How….” Daniel stared in horror as he put it together. “Oh, my God… after —? Oh, Pai. I never would have suspected.”

“Good. You were kids then, and you were all going through it yourselves, in your own ways. You’d just lost your mother, you didn’t need to be worrying about your father.”

“But this is nothing like what you… Honestly, Pai, I’ve wondered before how you did it, and with this on top of it all…?”

His father shrugged. “I had a lot of help, and after a while the worst was past. And it’s true that the two situations aren’t the same, but you know, think about it: what do people say when they’ve lost a wife or a husband or a child? They say they’ve lost a part of themselves. I think I might have said it myself.  They’re comparing it to what you’re going through right now.” He pointed to the cup in Daniel’s hand. “Keep drinking.”

Daniel drank. “After Mary, too?” he asked.

His father nodded. “After Mary, too. Daniel, my point is that this is natural. Do I still think about Mary and your Mamãe, do I still miss them? Of course I do. But the can’t eat, can’t sleep kind of sorrow? In time, that gets better.

“I know you’re brave, and I know that you’re trying to keep things in perspective. And sure, there are other men who have it even worse. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve just lost your leg. It’s just… human nature to be very sad about that.

“Maybe I should have said something earlier, but… I just had a sense I should wait until you told me. I’m glad you did. I think it’ll help. I hope it does.”

Daniel nodded and pulled the blankets a little tighter around himself.

His father stood up. “Let's go inside. You look like you're getting cold, and my backside’s about to freeze solid.”

The gallery was wonderfully warm after being outside. “Still nobody here,” his father observed. “Do you want to go back to the room —”

“No,” said Daniel. “Is there anyplace else you want to go?”

“Not me. How about we just stay here then?” He pushed Daniel over to a little cluster of chairs with a view of the ocean. As he took off his coat, Daniel started awkwardly folding the blankets.

“Pai,” he said quietly, “I still can’t imagine it. You said you felt like… like this, but you were still working, you were still keeping the household running, you always seemed so… maybe not cheerful, but optimistic.”

“That was my job,” his father replied. “And, you know, in some ways I think I might have had it easier. No, I mean it. Here —” he poured the last cup of broth — “drink up and hear me out.

“When your Mamãe died, it wasn’t a surprise. I had time to prepare myself for what was coming. And when that deep sadness came, I knew what it was. From when Mary died, of course, but also from knowing other people — from my parents, from other people in the family…. I had a friend who lost his wife back in ’18, they hadn’t been married a year.

“So I understood what was happening, and of course it makes sense — you lose your wife, you lose your little girl, you mourn.

“And I was living in my own house, sleeping in my own bed, eating at my own table with my children. I wasn’t just starting out, I knew my place in the world. And I had help. My family was there, and I was surrounded by people I’d known for years, people I could count on to help me. There were people I knew I could speak plainly with if I was feeling low.

“I wasn’t coming off of a couple of years of sleeping in tents and eating out of cans and being shot at by Nazis. I wasn’t recovering after a very serious injury. I wasn’t in a hospital far away from my family. I wasn’t a young man wondering what his future was going to be. So yeah: In some ways I had it a lot easier.

“Speaking of the future, you know you’ve got a place back home as long as you need it, or want it. I doubt you’ll need it all that long. And if you say the word ‘burden’ one more time I won’t show you what I brought from home. You don’t get to decide for your old man what he sees as burdens, that’s not your job.”

Daniel chuckled a little. “Yes, Pai.”

“Besides, you were never going back to the shipyard anyway and you know it — at least not on the floor. Even then you needed something bigger. You were getting so bored and restless…. I was surprised you waited as long as you did to enlist.”

His father sighed. “I wish we could have managed college. All of you should have gone, but….”

Daniel shrugged. “It’s probably better I didn’t go. I don’t know how well I would have done behind a desk for four years. Guess I’m going to find out.”

His father perked up. “Are you thinking about going?”

“No, I meant….” Daniel waved toward his lap. “I think my future’s behind a desk.”

“Well, you could go. They’re talking about a program to help soldiers go to college once the war’s over.”

“I don’t know if I’d qualify. I might be too old now. And if it’s for the enlisted men…. ”

His father scoffed. “They’ll give you something. And then…. Let’s just say there are other funds you could draw on.”

“What do you mean, ‘other funds’?” Daniel straightened up. “Pai. Why do you look like the cat that swallowed the canary?”

His father shrugged. “I’ve just been putting something aside for you so you’d have a little nest egg when you got out.”

“You mean out of the allotment money?”

“Well, yes.”

“That’s not what that was for!”

“Well, what was I supposed to do with it?”

“Fix the roof? Get a new refrigerator?”

“Are you kidding? There’ve been no new refrigerators to buy since 1942. Besides, our old one’s fine, and I got the roof fixed. No, it was very generous of you to arrange for that, and I knew it was there if we needed it, but as it turned out, we didn’t. So it’s there for you.”

“You didn’t use any of it, did you.”

“I… did make a couple of investments on your behalf. Bought some war bonds…. bet on a horse named Dapper Dan….”

“Pai.”

“What? I did.  And he did well for you, probably enough for a a book or two.” Daniel made a mental note to confirm the story with Tillie.

“So don’t worry about it,” his father insisted. “Once you’re discharged, you can come home if you want to. You’ll have time to figure out what you want to do next, and you’ll have your little nest egg to do it with.”

“What if I can’t find anything?”

“Even if you can’t, you’ll have your nest egg. But you will. It’ll all work out, you’ll see.”

 

They got back to the ward with five minutes to spare. Lieutenant Munn helped Daniel back to bed and get comfortably positioned on his stomach. He was asleep before she’d finished resuming the traction.

 

He woke up just before supper. His father was waiting for him; while they ate, he told Daniel what he’d been up to: a cup of coffee from the nurses’ desk; a call to the family he was staying with; a stroll around the rest of the eighth floor in search of more spots with views.

After supper, he brought out a tin of cupcakes from home. They ate their own dessert and put a cupcake aside for Grahn; he put the tin away and sat back down.

“While you were resting this afternoon… I also talked to your doctors.”

Uh-oh. Daniel’s blood ran cold (though not quite as cold as the other day; odd how being comfortably tired and full of cupcake seemed to take the edge off….)

“Did you talk to them last time you were here?” he asked his father.

“No, this was the first time I’ve met them. They actually came and found me. They seemed very nice. There were two of them, but one of them — Blaine, I think his name was — did most of the talking. They said they were part of your team, with another doctor in charge. So my son rates a team of doctors.”

“Yeah, a team. Their cards for ’45 should be coming out soon. Just think, I’ll be one of their stats. — Does Charlie collect cards?”

“Not baseball cards yet. He’s got a few Captain America cards. But as I was saying, Blaine did most of the talking.”

Daniel did his best to sound flippant. “So am I in trouble?”

“Should you be? No, no, you’re not in trouble. You’re also not being trouble or headed for trouble. They just introduced themselves, asked if I had any questions, told me a little about your treatments and the therapy. They said you were being very diligent with the exercises and that it was helping your progress. They also said that the next time I come, I should ask to meet with you and one of the therapists, I forget which one, to talk about what you’d need when you get home — that in a couple of months you might be able to come home for a short visit.”

A couple of months. “Did they say anything to you about when I could leave for good?”

“No, they said it was too early to tell, but that they wouldn’t discharge you until you were fully recovered, however long it took.

“They did say — and I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to think I’m talking about you behind your back — I should say they seemed to be worried that you were having trouble. They talked a little about how sometimes men can seem different to their families, maybe nervous or moody, and I said something like oh, I’m sure, this is a huge strain, and they seemed to like that. But then I didn’t say any more; they seemed a little disappointed.” He didn’t seem very concerned.

Daniel crossed his arms and stared up at the traction frame, weighing whether or not to say anything.

“Blaine came in the other day,” he finally said. “Made a special visit. Said a lot of the same kinds of things: making progress, doing what I’m supposed to do. And then he started talking about psychology and ‘adjustment’ and… and some of that stuff we talked about this afternoon. That that’s why I’m having trouble sleeping, for example. He said it was different for everybody, but I guess somehow I’m doing it wrong.”

“Did he say what he thought you should be doing?”

“Keep busy. Talk to someone, said they’re going to send me to a ‘discussion group’ next week.” Daniel grimaced.

“Is it just me,” asked his father, “or is ‘adjustment’ just a fifty-cent word for ‘being sad’? Your doctors seem to know what they’re doing, but honestly, some of those big shots who get in the papers, talking about ‘discoveries’ they’ve made? Stuff that any old avó sitting on the porch could have told them fifty years ago?”

He caught the smile on Daniel’s face and laughed. “I meant the really old ladies, not the ladies my age.”

“Sure, Avô. Whatever you say.”

“I walked right into that one, didn’t I?” He chuckled again, and then fell silent for a minute or two, considering.

“Those things we talked about this afternoon… have you talked about that with anyone down here?”

“Not really. The docs know I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and they’re certainly on my case about meals. Other than that…. I don’t want to open up a can of worms, if you know what I mean.”

His father’s voice was casual. “And not with your roommate, or one of the other fellows.”

“They’ve got their own problems. And I don’t want to be a wet blanket, especially to Grahn; he’s really gone out of his way for me.”

“So this was the first time you’d really talked about it with anybody.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

His father slowly exhaled.  Daniel glanced over. His father was leaning back in his chair, chin in hand. He knew that expression: it was his father’s thinking face.

“Now that you've told me,” said his father, “is it… pressing on you quite so much?”

As Daniel thought about it, his father continued. “It does help to talk about it. With the right person, of course, and maybe not even with every right person. Maybe you know somebody who helps you take your mind off it for a while, so you don’t bring it up with him. But certainly with someone.

“Because the thing is,” he said, “that kind of deep sadness can make you lose your bearings. It’s like you’re walking in a fog, the kind that’s so thick you can barely see your hand in front of your face. You can’t tell where the road is, you don’t know if you’re going in the right direction, you may lose track of where you are, you think you’re all by yourself. But it’s easier if you know you’re not alone, that there are people who know you’re out there and can help you find your way until the fog lifts.

“Because another thing that can happen… well, in a fog, you can’t see, and even the sounds are muffled. So you see or hear something, and you can’t quite tell what it is, and your mind… starts to wonder, right? And you start to get jumpy and nervous.

“And then you see a bird through the fog and you wonder if it’s a bat.” He spoke quietly, carefully. “Or you see a streetlight and think it’s a tree. Or you start to think that you’re all alone, or that it’s your fault that you’re stuck in this fog in the first place, or that you’re never going to find your way out. Or that you’re being a burden on the people who want to help you.”

Daniel’s eyes stung, and he quickly turned his face away. What a slap in the face that must have been to his father —

“Daniel. Daniel. It’s all right.” He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. Things look and sound strange, remember? So that’s why you tell someone where you are and what you’re seeing, so they can help you keep from getting turned around and tell you, no, no, that’s not a bat, it’s just a bird.”

Daniel took a few deep breaths before he rubbed his eyes and looked back at his father.

“It’s all right,” his father repeated. “Just remember that you may not always be able to recognize things for what they are. Listen for the voices of the people who are helping you, and follow the directions they give you, and tell somebody where you are and what you see. You’ll be able to keep going through the fog until it lifts.”

Daniel nodded, and then instinctively looked at the clock. It was getting close to seven.

“You’re coming back tomorrow, right?” he asked.

His father smiled. “Yes. Is there anything you need? I can stop by the store for you.”

“Did you ask about coming early? What time is your train?”

“Noon.” He leaned forward with a smug grin. “On Sunday. Today’s Friday. So I’ll be able to stay much longer tomorrow, and come back for a little on Sunday morning, too.” He reached into his bag. “Before I forget: I have a present for you, but it’s not from me or your sisters.” He handed Daniel a small paper bag. “It’s from Charlie.”

The bag held a nickel’s worth of chocolate-covered peanuts. “Aw, Charlie. He didn’t have to do that.”

“No, he didn’t. That’s why he wanted to, and that’s why it’s a present.”

Daniel smiled a little. “He sounds like a good kid.”

“Of course he’s a good kid.”

As Daniel put the bag aside, a question came back to him. “How much does he know?” he asked his father.

“About what’s going on with you? He knows your leg got hurt and that you’re going to be in the hospital for a long time. Ines will tell him the rest when the time comes. It’ll be all right.” He smiled. “Trust me.”

A knock sounded, and the door started to open. “All clear?” asked Grahn’s voice.

“Come on in,” Daniel replied. “Another early night for our man-about-town?”

“Trying to stay out of trouble, that’s all.” He shuffled in and closed the door behind him. “Our dear Lieutenant Keck has been a bad influence on Lieutenant Munn — Mr. Sousa! What a nice surprise! How are you doing?”

“Hello there, Henry. I’m doing very well, thank you. And how are you? It’s good to see you.”

“I’m just plugging along, doing laps in the hall and working on my project.”

“Your project?”

“Pai,” cut in Daniel, “don’t —”

A voice over the P.A. system interrupted Grahn to announce the end of visiting hours.

“Daniel didn’t tell you? Will you be back tomorrow? If there’s time and you’re interested, I can tell you then.”

“I’ll be here in the morning.” He gently squeezed Daniel’s shoulder and stood up. “Have a good evening, both of you, and sleep well.”

“You too, Pai.” Daniel watched his father put on his coat and hat and pick up his bags. “See you in the morning.”

 

As usual, Daniel woke up around 0330 the next morning. This time, though, something was different, and it wasn’t until after the 0400 shots-and-turn routine was done, and Lieutenant Keck had rubbed his back a little and gone on her way, that he figured out what it was: his mind was quieter. Any worries that were trying to buzz around were being drowned out by the lulling memory of the sound and sight of the waves.

He opened his mind to the soothing rhythm of the ocean, the consoling meter of a familiar poem, the sound of a familiar voice. He imagined sitting on the front steps of the house on Winter Avenue on a foggy day, watching as the fog lifted and, little by little, the real world was unveiled again.

And his father would be back that morning. He clung to the knowledge as he slowly fell back asleep.

Notes:

The poem is "Sea-fever," by John Masefield.

avó and avô: grandmother and grandfather

allotment money: soldiers could arrange to have part of their paycheck sent directly to their families.

As always, thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which I tie up with ribbons and read over and over again.

Chapter 16: Passages

Summary:

Sousa gets to spend more time with his father.

 “…Lieutenant Sousa.

“Lieutenant Sousa. I’m sorry, but it’s time to wake up.”

Someone was patting his hand. He rubbed his eyes and blinked. It was Lieutenant Munn.

He blinked again and looked around blearily. Grahn’s bed was already made.

“You slept late this morning.” Her tone was approving. “That roommate of yours is long gone. Breakfast is coming any minute.” She started taking his pulse.

“Did I miss rounds?”

She finished taking his pulse. “You sure did, they’ve been through and gone. Did you have a question?”

“No… just hoping to ask about another pass.”

She offered him a thermometer. “Already done. You have two one-hour passes today.  I think Major Peyton doesn’t want you to be out of traction quite so long at one time,” she added, in response to his questioning face. She waited another minute, took the thermometer out of his mouth, and wrote on his chart.

“Visiting hours start at ten, right?” he asked.

“That’s right.” She cleaned the thermometer and started to shake it down. “And I’ll bet you want to wash up and get your physical therapy done before your dad gets here, don’t you. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do my best.”

His turn to wash up came around 0830. As usual, Lieutenant Munn disconnected him from the traction; an orderly helped him pivot to a wheelchair and set him up at the sink. He had just started shaving when Grahn showed up.

“What are you doing here?” Sousa asked. He put the razor down and rolled the wheelchair back so Grahn could get to his side of the room.

“And a very good morning to you too, Lieutenant Snooza. If you hadn’t slept through rounds, you would have heard me being instructed to report back to my bunk after breakfast for the ol’ hurry-up-and-wait. I have to go to X-ray,” he grumbled. He loosened his robe, sat down, and picked up his paper.

Sousa pushed himself forward and went back to shaving. From behind him he heard Grahn putting the paper back down.

“I know you told me you started whirlpool,” said Grahn. “But you know what?”

“What?”

“This is the first time I’ve really seen you out of bed.” Sousa could hear the grin in his voice. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

Sousa rinsed his razor as he thought about it. “You know… it does.” Maybe it was the extra sleep he’d gotten; maybe it was his father’s visit; whatever it was, he was in a slightly better mood that morning. Not cheerful but… less numb, a little more human.

“So how often have they been letting you up?”

Sousa started the other side of his face. “Just washing up, whirlpool, and P.T. so far. That pass yesterday was the first time for anything else.”

“Well, maybe they’ll let you start getting up for other things, too. You should ask!”

“I promise I’ll ask about your bridge thing.”

“That’d be swell, but I was actually thinking just even coming down to the lounge once in a while, or down to the HX.  Like I said, you should ask. Worst that could happen is they say no.”

Sousa finished shaving and started washing out his razor. “Where is the lounge, anyway?”

“It’s down by the nurse’s desk. You’ve never been, have you?” said Grahn.

“Not yet,” replied Sousa. “I have a pass today; when my dad comes, maybe you can give us both a tour.”

“How long is he in town?”

“ ‘Till tomorrow.”

“Aw, I don’t want to step on your visit. See if you can get a pass another time and we can go then.”

 

An orderly came to fetch Grahn around 0930; the physical therapist came to see Sousa shortly afterwards. After the usual exercises, she had him put on his robe and his sock, helped him put on his shoe, and had him practice standing at the side of the bed, pivoting back and forth to the wheelchair, and wheeling around in the room.

After he’d steered himself around the ends of the bed and done a few tight circles, she picked up his knitted blanket and unfolded it. “Time to pull out onto the road.” She helped him spread out the blanket and get it tucked away from the wheels, and then walked out of the room. He carefully steered himself around the foot of his bed and followed her out.

“So,” she said. “We have a few minutes left. Where are we going?”

“You’re the boss,” he said.

“I’m leaving it up to you today,” she said with a smile.

That was a little disconcerting. He looked around for a clock.

“I don’t want to go too far, if that’s all right. My dad’s coming and I don’t want to miss him.”

“That’s fine; we can stay here on the hall.”

He looked to his right. That was the way the orderlies took him to physical therapy, and the way his father had taken him the day before. He turned left and looked up at the physical therapist.

“How fast am I supposed to go?”

“As fast — or as slow — as you like.”

He started down the hall. “Are you sure you’re in the Army?”

She chuckled. “Quite sure. Enjoy it while it lasts; I’ll be mapping out routes for you soon enough. Do you know where you are?”

“Atlantic City?” He saw a few familiar names on the chalkboards — Whitford and a few of the other fellows who’d come to visit….

“Time for a little orientation, I think. We’re in the north wing of the eighth floor, and we’re coming up on the nurses’ desk….”

It was a convenient place to stop and take a look around, and to rest a little.  A couple of the clerks hurried out from behind the desk to introduce themselves and be encouraging. One of them showed him the little kitchenette where the coffee pot lived.

“Want to look around some more?” asked the physical therapist.

“Sure,” said Sousa. He pushed himself on down the hall.

“This is the lounge,” she said.

There was nobody there. It was a comfortable room, with card tables, record players, a radio, and shelves stocked with books and games and jigsaw puzzles. Sousa wheeled himself in and over to the picture window. It faced northeast, and offered a view of rooftops and other hotels and a narrow glimpse of the ocean.

He carefully wheeled himself around and out of the room, and started off down the hall again. More patient rooms, and then a small sitting area where the hallway angled around. He paused to look around.

“This is the end of your ward,” said the therapist. “The next one’s another officers’ orthopedic ward.”

Sousa peeked around the corner. “How many patients are there here?”

“In the whole hospital? More than 2500. About half are amputees like yourself.” She checked her watch. “I’m sorry, but we need to head back.”

They stopped off at the nurses’ desk again so the therapist could leave a message for Lieutenant Munn. Sousa looked around while he waited for her. The desk offered a good view of a bank of elevators.

A chime sounded, and one of the sets of doors elevator doors opened. A few orderlies emerged, pushing patients in wheelchairs; they were followed by a group of visitors who headed straight for the desk, a few more visitors who wandered out looking bewildered, and a Gray Lady herding out the stragglers.

“Right on time,” said one of the clerks. He stood up and put out a clipboard with a pen.  “Visitors for Eight-Northeast, sign in here,” he called. A line started to form. 

From behind him, Sousa heard the physical therapist. “All right, back we go.” She started back to his room; he followed, but stopped short when he heard another elevator car arrive. A few patients, and a crowd of visitors, and there was his father.

“Pai,” he called, but he hardly needed to; his father spotted him right away and beamed. He broke away from the little crowd and came over to Daniel.

“Good morning! Daniel, what a welcome this is!” he said, gently clapping Daniel on the shoulder.

The physical therapist reappeared. “You forgot all about me, didn’t you?” she teased.

“Sorry about that,” said Daniel. He introduced her to his father.

“Pleasure to meet you,” she said. “Your son’s doing very well, he had a very good session this morning. I’m afraid I do need to take him back to his room now to meet the nurse.”

His father nodded. “Go ahead, I’ll be down in a minute. I just need to sign in.”

By the time his father got down to the room, Daniel was back in bed, lying prone as Lieutenant Munn hooked the traction back up. “All this adventuring this morning’s got your turn schedule higgledy-piggledy,” she playfully fussed. “And dawdling coming back to your room? That roommate of yours is a bad influence.” She greeted Daniel’s father and checked to make sure Daniel had everything he needed. “You can use one of your passes after lunch. You should do a couple of hours in traction first,” she said. “Comfy? All set? Then I’ll see you in a bit.”

His father sat down next to the bed. “I don’t think I even need to ask how you’re doing this morning. You look like a million bucks.”

“It just worked out. I was finishing up physical therapy. I actually got to leave the room today.”

“Yeah? Did you sleep well? Which reminds me: don't feel like you have to entertain me. If you feel like sleeping, you close your eyes and sleep.”

His father filled Daniel in on what he'd been up to. He was staying with the Dohertys again: such a kind couple, had a nice visit before turning in; got to see a bit more of Atlantic City that morning; beautiful weather.... He was talking about his trip down the Boardwalk when Grahn shuffled in.

“’Mornin’, Mr. Sousa. So you got to see a bit of Atlantic City this morning? Breakfast on the Boardwalk?” He sat down.

“Not quite on the Boardwalk; more near it, I guess you could say. I was out pretty early and was able to  hook a whiting just as the sun was coming up. Built a fire on the beach and cooked it up right there, ate it with bread and butter and coffee.”

Grahn looked to Daniel — is he kidding me?  Daniel shrugged: Maybe not.

Daniel’s father looked perfectly innocent until he finally chuckled. “Ah, I’m just joshing you. I had breakfast with the family I’m staying with. But I was out pretty early. You a fisherman, Henry? Maybe we can all go sometime.”

“Sure, that sounds like fun.”

“Now what's this project you were telling me about?”

“Well –“

“-- You had to get him started,” Daniel interrupted, pretending to be annoyed –

“Hey! He asked. Be polite to your father,” ordered Grahn. He turned back to Daniel’s father. “I’ve been working on getting a bridge club started…. Yeah, we’re getting in an instructor on Tuesday…. I’m kind of counting on it, Sousa here’s the only one of my friends who hasn’t threatened to beat me over the head with my own cane if I mention it again, which is a huge relief….”

Grahn did not skimp on the comic embellishment, and his father egged him on. Daniel listened with half an ear, smiling a little as the tale grew.

He really did feel a little less exhausted and empty this morning. His father there; the relief of knowing he wasn’t losing his marbles… being able to just quietly listen to his father and Grahn, knowing that he was included in the conversation even if he wasn’t saying anything. Knowing he wasn’t all alone.

“…Well, I think it’s a great idea,” his father was saying. “I don’t play myself, but I know there are plenty of young people who do or who are learning — including Tillie and Ines, Daniel, I don’t know if you knew that.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, Tillie’s learning from a couple of the girls at work and Ines has started playing with some of her friends. If they find out you’re learning….”

Grahn gave Sousa a smug look: I told you so.

 

After lunch, Daniel used his first pass to go with his father back to the porch. It was Saturday and an unusually warm day, so they did not have the porch to themselves. But there were just enough patients and visitors involved in their own conversations to give Daniel a sense of privacy, and they were still able to get a spot with a good view of the ocean.

A breeze brought him the scent of the sea. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and let himself listen to the waves for a while.

I must down to the seas again….

He felt his chest tighten a little, and he remembered what his father had said the day before. It’s just being sad, he told himself, and somehow it helped.

“Pai?” he asked.

“Hm?”

He glanced over to his father. “Do you mind if I ask you something? About what you were saying yesterday, when you….”

“Not at all, go ahead.”

Daniel looked down at his hands and then back up at his father. “…How long did it… did it last?”

His father closed his eyes for a long moment before he sighed and looked back at Daniel. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.

“I don’t like thinking back on… that part of those days, you know? And even while it was happening, I didn’t want to dwell on it. I didn’t try to pretend to myself that it wasn’t happening — don’t ever do that — but most of the time I would just say to myself ‘yes, sad’, and go on to whatever was next.

“So that’s why I didn’t really notice when it started to lift: because I wasn’t paying attention. And when it did, it was slow, it wasn’t really something I could notice day-by-day. It’s like watching your hair grow, you don’t see it happening so you go about your business but all of a sudden you need your hair cut.

“So something might happen and I would realize, oh, that didn’t hit me like it would have a while ago. Or I’d laugh at something funny and realize later, oh, that felt really good.

“And when it did get better it didn’t happen… evenly. Some things got better sooner than others, and a lot of the time it was two steps forward, one step back.” He chuckled a little. “I remember being relieved that I was able to eat at Thanksgiving, so Tia Otilia wouldn’t get on my case.

“I know that’s not much help. I wish I could give you a better answer.”

“No, that helps,” said Daniel. “And it’s better than no answer, right?”

“That’s very generous of you.” His father’s eyes crinkled in a quick smile before growing serious again.

“Daniel… you know I miss your Mamãe every day of my life. But sometimes... something will remind me and I’ll think of her even more, or I’ll feel that ache again. You’ve never said anything to me,” he cautiously said, “but that’s happened to you too, I think.

“And of course I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this turned out to be similar. You’ll have bad days and good days, and then more good days than bad days, and then you’ll realize it’s been a week since your last bad day, and then a month…. But then something might happen that brings it all back up again. And if it does, it doesn’t mean the bad days are coming back again. It’s just….” He opened his hands. “You weather it. And you go on.”

Daniel looked out to the ocean. “When you say it, it sounds… possible.”

“It is. It’s not a picnic, but it’s possible.”

“I don’t know how you did it. I have so much less to —”

“Daniel.”

Daniel looked up in surprise.

“You've got to be careful with that,” said his father. “ ‘Oh, so-and-so has it worse.’ Well, not always! Sometimes so-and-so just has it different. And even if it’s true, and even if it helps you keep your problems in perspective, so-and-so having it worse doesn’t mean you don’t have it bad, it doesn’t take away your problem. I’m sorry I interrupted you, I just had to say something —”

“It’s all right. I just — how did you do it?”

“I don’t know. I… I honestly don’t. I had a lot of help. I was busy, so I didn't have much time to think about it while it was happening. I tried to notice things that were going right. And I just took it as it came, week by week, day by day….” His voice dropped; to Daniel’s surprise, he sounded almost shy. “Hour by hour sometimes. I’d have to say, ‘Please, if You want me to do this You have to tell me what to do.’ And somehow... somehow it always worked out. Maybe not the way I would have liked or expected, but it always worked out.

"It's hard. But you don't have to bear it alone. Nobody expects you to.”

 

Daniel used his second pass later that afternoon. He had hoped to go back to the porch, but as they approached they found an ice-cream social in progress in one of the ballrooms. The crowd had spilled out into the galleries and onto the porch. They ended up returning to the eighth floor, where they found a quiet seating area with a view.

“Just not in the mood for ice cream today?” Daniel’s father asked.

Daniel passed him the bag of chocolate-covered peanuts. “Not today. I hope I’m not boring you.”

His father took some candy. “Boring me?  Applesauce.” He passed the bag back to Daniel. “Make sure you eat some of that candy so I can tell Charlie you liked it.”

Daniel chuckled. “Yes, Pai.” He shook some candy out of the bag.

It wasn’t so much the ice cream, of course, as wanting to spend as much time as possible with his father while he was there, and not wanting to squander a single moment of his passes fighting crowds. Wanting to hold on to this time that his father was giving him, time away from the four walls he’d been staring at since Christmas, time away from the path to and from whirlpool, time away from traction and scrutiny. Time when he didn’t have to worry about what he was saying, when he didn’t have to say anything at all.

His father had thrown him a life ring, and only now, as he clung to it, did he realize just how dangerously tired he’d been getting. Now he had something to hold onto. Now, even if he couldn’t make any progress on his own, he wasn’t going to get pulled under or washed out to sea; he could feel the tug of the line tethering him to safety. And as he got his strength back, he’d be able to follow that line back to dry land. He didn’t need to worry about psychological anything. There was nothing wrong with him, his father had said so. His father had been there and back himself, his father knew him better than anyone, his father was one of the sanest men alive.

He wasn’t cracking up.

He took a deep breath and wiped his eyes.

 

They got back to the room to find it scented with shaving lotion and hair tonic: Grahn was finishing getting ready for the Valentine’s Day dance that evening.

“What do you think?” He brushed the lapels of his robe. “Pocket square?”

“Sure, a great big one in a puffy fold,” said Daniel. “Of course you’ll get gigged and spend the evening peeling potatoes somewhere….”

“They can’t make me peel potatoes, I’m an officer.”

“You’re right. They’ll make you do paperwork, probably about the potato-peelers.”

Grahn shuddered. “I think I’d rather peel potatoes.” He checked his pockets. “All right: Sousa, I’ll see you later. Mr. Sousa, are you coming back tomorrow morning?”

“For a little while.”

“Then maybe I’ll see you then. Have a good evening.”

 

Later that night, Sousa looked up at the clock as Grahn slowly opened the door. It was 2330.

“Hey, Grahn. How was it?”

Grahn sighed in frustration. “Aw, I’m sorry — I was trying to not wake you up —”

“I was already awake, don’t worry about it. Go ahead and put the lights on if you want.”

Grahn crossed the room, put on his bed light, and started back to the sink to wash up.

“So how was it?” asked Sousa. “Did you meet the girl of your dreams?”

“If I did, I haven’t dreamt about her yet. It was an all right party, and there were some nice girls there. Which reminds me — ” he scrubbed his face — “I am glad you’re awake and it’s not my fault, because I have something I want to say to you and now I don’t have to wait!” He tossed his washcloth in the sink and turned to face Sousa. “I. Told. You. So. I told you so! Ha!”

“You told me what?”

“What your dad was saying, about your sister and her little bridge club at work? This is perfect. This is exactly what I’ve been talking about. Oh, girls,” he cooed in falsetto, “Girls, do you mind if I bring my brother to bridge club? My unattached brother the officer? With the medals?”

Sousa replied in his own squeaky voice: “And the jug ears and the one leg?”

“And then another girl says, ‘Oh, yes, Tillie, please bring him, that would be swell!’ And then she thinks to herself, ‘It’s always fun to play bridge. And maybe I’ll like him! I’m not shallow like Francie over there. I’ll give a guy a chance even if he has four ears and no legs at all. And if we don’t hit it off, maybe some of my other friends would like to meet him! ” Grahn cleared his throat. “Ugh, that’s enough. But you get my point.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the point —”

“And it’s not just girls.” Grahn squirted toothpaste on his toothbrush. “Jobs, too. It’s like golf, but inside, with snacks.” He went back to the squeaky falsetto. “ ‘Oh, Tillie, does your brother have any friends? Maybe they could come too!’ Why, sure, Sousa, I’d love to come up for a visit and play bridge with your sisters’ friends. They seem like the kind of girls who would have good taste in friends.” He chuckled. “Unlike their dumb brother. ‘Oh, Daniel, you’re bringing him?’ ”

 

Sousa did not sleep well that night. It took him a long time to fall back asleep after each turn, and he found himself awake and starting at the ceiling at 0330 again, both looking forward to his father’s coming that morning and dreading the moment it would be time for him to leave.

At rounds that morning, they would not give him a pass for the morning — so no trip to the porch — though they did concede him a one-hour pass for the afternoon. Breakfast was late and so was the orderly, so to his great frustration Daniel was still washing up when his father arrived at 0820. His father took it in stride and read the newspaper aloud, complete with color commentary, while Daniel finished shaving.

The morning passed lightly and quickly, and all too soon Daniel’s father was casting a regretful eye toward the clock. Daniel’s shoulders sagged before he could catch himself.

“I feel the same way,” said his father. “Daniel, before I go…. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but can we talk a minute about something that came up on Friday?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you. I just…. When the topic of burdens came up — no — no, Daniel, it’s all right, I’m not upset. But I couldn’t get back on the train without — I want to make sure you know — you could never be a burden to me, no matter what happens. You’re my son, right?”

Daniel nodded; his throat was too tight for him to speak.

His father rested his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “And I know you. You’re the kind of man who pulls his share: and more, if you can manage it. So if that idea ever comes knocking around your noggin again, you just send it packing, all right?  It’s just trying to fool you.”

He stood up and hugged Daniel tightly. “You could never, ever be a burden to me.

“It’s been so good to see you. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“Thank you so much, Pai,” Daniel whispered.

“Deus te bencao,” murmured his father. God bless you. His father hugged Daniel one more time and then reluctantly put on his coat and hat.

“I’ll let you know when I get back,” he said. “Hang in there, okay?”

“I will. Have a good trip. Say hi to everyone for me.” He watched as his father picked up his bag, looked back, and smiled one more time before stepping out the door. He looked at the empty door for a while longer before he sighed and lay back down.

 

Lunch came; he forced himself to eat. Sleep came; he welcomed it, and clung to it as long as he could. He worked a puzzle in the new book his father had brought for him. The chaplain came and went.

He was staring at the ceiling when Grahn turned up. “Oh, hey there.”

“Hey, Sousa,” he said. His voice was cautious.

Sousa knew that tone; it meant I know something’s wrong but I know about it because you were talking about it on rounds with the docs, and I couldn’t help overhearing you.

Grahn sat down next to his own bed and pulled the curtain back so they could see each other. “So… rumor has it you got a pass for this afternoon?”

“It’s okay. Yeah, they gave me a pass.”

“Used it yet?”

“No.”

“Well, if you want, I can give you that tour this afternoon. And if you don’t, just say so, I won’t get my nose out of joint.”

The usual thoughts came bubbling up — it was a nice offer, but Grahn doesn’t have to do that, you shouldn’t drag down Grahn’s afternoon, selfish of you — but his father’s words sliced through them: ….there are people who know you’re out there… people who want to help you.

“Thanks, Grahn, that would be aces,” said Sousa. “When’s a good time?”

 

Soon afterwards, they were on their way toward the elevators. “Anyplace in particular you want to go?” asked Grahn.

“You know the neighborhood better than me.”

“Well, where have you been? We can start from there.”

“Let’s see… X-ray, the O.R. …”

“Oh, those don’t count.”

“…Whirlpool… they took me by one of the gyms once…. My dad and I went by some of the party rooms on the third floor, and then I’ve been down our hall. And that’s about it.”

The elevator doors opened; an orderly held the doors for them as Grahn and then Sousa made their way in.

“First floor, please,” said Grahn. “Let’s show you some of the fun stuff then. When we get off the elevator, turn right.”

Down on the first floor, they made their way towards the lobby. Their pace was slow. Sousa was still rebuilding his strength and stamina, but he was determined to go under his own power for as long as he could. He didn’t seem to be slowing Grahn down, though. Grahn was still weighed down by his cast; it seemed to give Grahn far more trouble than his amputation. It occurred to Sousa that this was the first time he and Grahn had ever seen each other outside their room.

When they reached the lobby, Sousa had to wheel himself to a spot by the wall to get his bearings. He hadn’t been there since the day he’d arrived, seven weeks ago. He’d been on a stretcher and hadn’t been able to see much more than the carved ceilings and the palms.

Now, though… now he could see the streams of people, coming and going: patients in maroon bathrobes and blue outfits and olive drab dress uniforms; patients with casts and slings and bandaged faces; patients like him in wheelchairs with blankets over their legs, patients hobbling, patients loping on crutches. Patients carrying overnight bags, patients coming in, patients going out, patients passing through. Hospital staff in olive and in white. Visitors, looking out of place in their civilian plumage, lining up in front of a table to get directions from the Gray Ladies. Photographs of President Roosevelt and of a Lieutenant Colonel whom Sousa didn’t recognize. And arching over it all, the incongruous trimmings of a luxury hotel.

It wasn’t just the size of the crowd that was overwhelming. It took Sousa a moment before he realized that he was seeing the crowd from a new perspective: from elbow level, not from eye level. He was literally beneath notice, and it was unsettling.

He looked up at Grahn. “So: Where are we going?”

They started with the HX and went on to the barber shop. They passed the Office of Special Services on their way to the library; Sousa made a mental note to return as soon as he could. From there they went to the Palm Court — “1600 on Tuesday, Sousa, don’t forget” — and then to the skyway to the Chalfonte. Another elevator ride took them to the rooms where the socials and parties were usually held. “There’s nothing on the schedule for today,” said Grahn, “but it’s always worth checking. Sometimes the Red Cross sets up a doughnut table.”

They were in luck: there were not only doughnuts but coffee, cocoa, and some food left over from the Valentine party. Grahn paused at the end of the serving table and scouted the room.

“What — ” began Sousa.

“Hostesses. But they’re all busy,” said Grahn. “Ah, we can fend for ourselves.”

For a moment, Sousa was puzzled — there were two or three Gray Ladies not four feet away, serving behind the table — but then he saw the young women in aprons circulating the room, filling coffee cups, and sitting and laughing with groups of patients — and he understood which hostesses Grahn meant.

After a snack and a quick rest, they were on their way again, this time to the rooms where the movies were shown. Then it was back to the eighth floor, where Grahn showed Sousa some of his favorite little nooks and haunts before they started back to their room. As they went down the ward, Grahn stopped by a few rooms to introduce Sousa to a couple of patients he hadn’t met yet — and to introduce himself and Sousa to a few newly admitted men. He stopped again by the desk to let the day nurse know they were back: “Two minutes early! Please make sure she gets that: Two. Minutes. Early.” And finally they were back at their room.

Sousa entered first and rolled himself next to his bed. “Thanks, Grahn, that was fun.”

“My pleasure. It’s about time you got to see more of the sights.” He sat down on his bed. “When are they going to let you eat with us at the mess hall? You should ask.”

“I’ll put it on the list.”

The rest of the day unwound as usual. The blues hit after dinner, as he suspected they would, but not as bad as he’d feared. And when the message came that his father was safe home… he braced himself, but he didn’t fall apart like he did the last time. So that was a relief.

He even slept a bit better that night, and when morning finally came around, he found himself waking slowly and comfortably. He’d had shots not long before, so his leg didn’t hurt at all; as he surfaced, he realized that the docs were in the room, talking to Grahn on rounds. He steered his attention away from what they were saying and settled back to finish waking up and wait his turn. It was Monday, so it would be a whirlpool day…

He jumped as Grahn whooped with joy. “Finally!” Grahn crowed. “Oh, thank God — when?”

“Keep it down,” scolded Peyton, “you’re going to wake your roommate.”

Sousa blinked his eyes open. Blaine was peeking at him from around the curtain. He waved at Sousa and returned to the group. “Too late,” he reported.

“Aw, sorry about that, Sousa!” called Grahn.

“Come back here after breakfast, we’ll call down with the schedule,” said Peyton. They moved over to Sousa’s side of the curtain. “Now, Lieutenant Sousa….”

They talked with him briefly and asked him about the passes; Sousa took the opportunity to plead for more.

“We’ll need to take a good look at your leg before we can make a decision on that,” said Peyton. “Maybe later today.”

Sousa nodded; the team went on their way. He looked over to the curtain. “So what’s going on?” he called.

Grahn snapped the curtain back. “Getting the cast off today!”

“Really? That’s fantastic!” He chuckled. “I don’t know how they’re going to keep a leash on you now.”

“Believe me: if I’d really wanted to? I could have taken off down the Boardwalk weeks ago. Of course, I wouldn’t have gotten very far very fast, and they would have sent the MPs after me…. But I could have.” He sat on the edge of his bed, grinning; Sousa could practically see the ideas turning in his mind.

“I promise, I’ll do my best not to be a jerk about it,” said Grahn. He nodded toward Sousa’s traction weight.  “It’s just….”

“Don’t worry about it! No, I’m happy for you. And you’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

“I should call my folks! Nah, I’ll wait until after the deed is done.”

Sousa couldn’t help but share in Grahn’s delight as Grahn went about his morning routine. “Attention right shoe! Prepare for deployment! Attention closet: Prepare to receive some real clothes! Hope I remember how to put them on. Sousa, I swear, I’m sick of pajamas. I could sleep in my Class As for a month, I am so sick of pajamas….”

It wasn’t until Grahn was on his way to breakfast that it occurred to Sousa: now that Grahn was getting his cast off, was he going to be moved to a different floor?

Or maybe discharged altogether?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

As always, thank you for reading, for your kudos, and your very kind comments, which I display in opulent frames in my memory palace.

Chapter 17: Ash Wednesday

Summary:

Almost two months after his injury, Daniel Sousa could do with a little less medical attention.

“If you’re blue
And you don’t know where to go to
Why don’t you go where Boardwalk sits?
Puttin’ on the Ritz….”

Sousa snickered a little: Grahn was singing in the shower. He’d started off softly but seemed to have forgotten himself — and forgotten that Sousa could hear him. His singing voice was actually pretty good….

“Doot doot doo
Do-doot, doo-doo doot-doot-doot-doo
Doo-doot, doo-doo-doo
Something fits
Puttin’ on the Ritz….”

though he didn’t have perfect command of the lyrics.

Sousa didn’t mind. Grahn was in high spirits. He’d come back from getting his cast off and immediately celebrated by taking an honest-to-goodness hot shower, his first since last June. He’d been in there quite a while, but as long as he was singing, Sousa thought, that meant he hadn’t melted away, or fallen.

“That’s where each and every G.I. Joe goes
Looking for some girls who want to find beaus
Rubbing elbows

“Blub blub blub
Bluh-blub, blub-blub blub-blub-blub-blub….”

The water finally stopped. It sounded like he was drying off as he considered new lyrics:

“Have you seen the men in green —
The Atlantic City scene —
Looking for some — whoa!”

“Hey!” called Sousa. “You all right in there?”

“Yeah, I just — dangit…. I’m fine! aw, Jiminy Christmas….”

Sousa looked around for the call light, just in case, and then turned around as best he could to try to see what was going on.

Finally Grahn emerged, looking damp and scrubbed and very, very pink. He was still using his canes, but had changed the familiar red robe and gray pajamas for the loose blue shirt and trousers that the Army called a “Suit, Convalescent.”

“Boy, that felt good!” he said. “Like my new duds?

“Have you seen the men in green
The Atlantic City scene”

He moved both canes into his right hand and carefully pretended to dance a little.

“Looking for some stuff to do
On Pacific Avenue?
Wheelchairs
And casts and crutches
Taffy
And chocolate fudges
Trying to pass the time
While spending only a dime….

“If you’re blue
And you don’t know where to go to
Why don’t you go where Boardwalk sits?
Puttin’ on the Ritz….

“I don’t know
The words that should
Go here, something some other thing
Until it fits
Puttin’ on the Ritz….

“That’s it, I’m in the next talent show.

“Dressed up in prosthetic shoes and cotton
Trying to look like General George Patton
Really smashin’

“It just writes itself!”

“Maybe it needs some supervision.” Sousa put his head down on his arms. “Will you even be here for the next talent show?”

Grahn was putting his things into the pockets of his new outfit. “Well, yeah.” He looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Well, now that your cast’s off, won’t you get to go home soon?”

“Are you kidding? I’m here for at least another eight weeks. My right leg looks like a toothpick, they’re going to be driving me like a rented mule in physical therapy. I might need to wear a brace for a while,” he glumly added. “And even if they tried to kick me out I wouldn’t go, I want to ditch at least one of these first.” He held up his canes. “And I want to get in some driving practice.

“And then there’s bridge club, of course. So, sorry! No escape for you.”

“Ah, it’s just as well. It’d take me a while to break in someone new.”

Grahn snorted. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re so hard to live with. No, you’ll just have to put up with me a while longer.” He looked at the clock. “Yikes, it’s getting late. I’d better get to dinner before Whitford hogs all the apple crisp.” He stood up, still cautious. “I know I keep saying this, but I wish they’d let you come eat with us at the mess hall."

“Maybe someday.”

“Need anything from the HX? Going to get new Class As.”

“No, I’m all set. But thanks.”

“All right. See you later, Sousa.” He hummed a little as he walked out the door.

And then the room was quiet again. Sousa adjusted his pillow and sighed. Now that Grahn had brought it up again, he found himself wishing he could go to the mess hall instead of eating in his room: there was something oppressive, almost pitiless about the quiet. Was he just noticing it because Grahn had been around so long this morning? And then he’d just had that visit from his father, though already it seemed like weeks ago….

It wasn’t that long ago that he would have welcomed quiet and time by himself. Back home, having the house to himself, even for a few hours, was a rare luxury; if he had a day off, someone else usually did too (and if that someone was Pai it was only a matter of time before he’d get drafted to work on some project). Even if he was the only one in the house, the others usually weren’t far from his mind; if nothing else, he would be in charge of cooking supper.

No, he really hadn’t been alone very often at home, and then after he enlisted…. There might have been a couple of times he’d been able to go to the john in privacy, but otherwise? Barracks, communal showers, eating in a mess hall with a hundred other men…. Everything he did, everywhere he went, was with everyone else at the same time, there was no staying behind. He thought about the men he’d gone through induction with, wondered what had happened to them all. That was three years ago; it seemed like thirty. And then school, training, field exercises, shipping out, his squad, tents, foxholes….

So yeah…. This was new for him. And maybe his father was right: maybe it was making things worse. There wasn't much he could do about it until he was done with traction, but maybe he could take Grahn’s suggestion and ask for some more passes….

 

He asked about passes the next morning on rounds; Peyton said something non-commital about seeing how his leg looked, which sounded to Sousa like a soft no. So he was surprised when Peyton and Blaine returned right after rounds were finished, with Lieutenant Keck pushing the dressing cart. Grahn finished shaving as quickly as he could, said a quick good-bye, and fled for the mess hall.

The doctors unwound the elastic bandage and the gauze, and started unpacking the wound. Sousa didn’t bother trying to look any more during the dressing changes; it was still an unsettling sight, and it always looked the same to him anyway. They peered at the wound; Lieutenant Keck handed Blaine a tape measure and wrote down the measurements as he called them out.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Peyton finally said to Blaine. “But take it slow.” He looked up at Sousa. “Lieutenant, are you eating? You need to eat, or your leg won’t heal.”

Sousa’s fists clenched, and he noticed Lieutenant Keck’s expression just in time: We know. It’s okay, it seemed to say. He took a deep breath and held his tongue. Peyton finished talking to Blaine, nodded to Lieutenant Keck and to Sousa, and excused himself.

Blaine and Lieutenant Keck repacked and dressed the wound.  They washed their hands; Lieutenant Keck started to rewind the elastic bandage while Blaine stepped out of the room. He came back in a moment later pushing a wheelchair.

“Want to get out of bed for a few minutes?” he asked.

“Sure, why not.” Sousa sat up, swung his left leg over the side of the bed, put his hands on Lieutenant Keck’s shoulders, and did the transfer.

“What do you think, Lieutenant Keck?” asked Blaine.

“I think I was only there for decoration,” she said with a smile.

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” said Blaine. He pulled over a chair and sat down. “But you know, she’s right,” he said to Sousa. “Definite progress.”

“Enough for some more passes?”

“Sort of. I think we’re ready to advance your physical therapy. Probably not quite what you had in mind, but it's a start.

“There’s two goals we’re working towards: getting you up and around and getting your wound healed up. The sooner your wound heals, the faster you’ll get to full rehabilitation.”

Sousa saw an opportunity. “What if I could go to the mess hall with the others?”

Blaine considered it, or at least pretended to. “Let's see how you do. We don't want to back off the traction too quickly.” He turned to Lieutenant Keck. “His discussion group’s today, right?”

“Yes, after lunch.”

“So you'll be able to see some of the other fellows then.”

That was not what Sousa’d had in mind at all. He made one more attempt. “Could I at least get off the ward for a little bit this afternoon…?”

Blaine looked stern. “Henry Grahn had better not be hassling you about this thing —”

“Nobody's hassling me. Not about that, anyway,” snapped Sousa. He shifted in the chair and looked away.

“Well, not today, I’m afraid, but I'll keep it in mind. Maybe in another few weeks.” Blaine hesitated, and then stood up. “Let's get a weight today,” he said to Lieutenant Keck, and turned back to Sousa. “Good work, Lieutenant. See you tomorrow.” He put his chair back, picked up the chart, and left.

Lieutenant Keck looked at the clock. “Might as well get started,” she said. “This could turn out to be a busy day for you.” She stepped out the door to wave down an orderly.

When the orderly arrived, he was pushing the chair-scale, a contraption that looked like a cross between a rolling hand truck and an ugly chair with a set of sawed-off doctors’ scales stuck on the back.

“Thank you,” said Lieutenant Keck. “Lieutenant Sousa, let’s see how you’re doing, and then you can go ahead and wash up.”

The orderly helped Sousa transfer to the metal chair and then stepped around to the back. Sousa could hear the balances sliding, and then the scratching of the orderly’s pen. It wasn’t until he was back in the the wheelchair and rolling himself toward the sink that he realized that the orderly hadn’t told him how much he weighed, which seemed kind of odd. He didn’t particularly care, though, so he didn’t ask.  It had been enough of a shock the first time they’d told him his new weight.

As he washed and shaved, he felt himself simmering down some more. The breakfast tray arrived as he was finishing;  they let him stay up to eat before helping him back to bed. It wasn’t a trip to the mess hall, but he still appreciated it

The physical therapist came later that morning. She took his through the usual exercises and had him practice a pivot to the wheelchair. A few pushups on the arms of the wheelchair, and then a pivot back to bed….

“Okay, that's good,” she said. “Now, go ahead and stand up, but this time, don't pivot. I want you to just stand there, nice and tall, and see how long you can balance. Keep your hands over my shoulders if you want to.”

“All right,” he said. He still needed her help to get from sitting to standing, but once he was there…. He cautiously shifted his weight to his foot and slightly to his left, and lifted his hands off her shoulders. He had to concentrate, but he was able to keep his balance for a second or two before he had to put his hands back on her shoulders.

“Very good!” she said. “Let’s try it again.”

He tried it again, and again. The best he was able to manage was four seconds. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m just not —”

“No, you’re doing just fine!” she said. “Let’s go ahead and sit back down. There you go.”

“Please practice this when you do your pivots,” she continued, once he was back sitting on the edge of the bed. “Meanwhile, we’re going to get you on the schedule to come down to the gym, start working on the parallel bars. How does that sound?”

“Swell, I guess.” 

“It’ll be hard work at first. But that’s how you’ll get back to walking.”

After the physical therapist left, it was back to traction. The morning mail brought something from Tillie. He opened it right away, and was a little surprised to find a longer letter instead of her usual daily note. It started off with the usual tongue in cheek complaints:

Friday, February 9, 1945

Dear Daniel,

I wish I could tell you that I’m writing on a lap desk in my bed while I sip coffee and eat a soft-cooked egg in one of those cute little cups, like the ladies in the movies, but I’d be fibbing. Instead I’m in a booth at the Broadway Dinette — I just saw Papai off at the train station — I’m having potatoes and eggs and coffee —it’s the same old Broadway, bet the food’s better on the train — not that Papai would know, of course he insisted on packing his breakfast and his lunch — I wish I were on the train too, to come and see you….

He knew the Broadway, of course, and smiled a little as she described it: Believe it or not, that cranky old waitress with the orange hair is still here! She doesn’t have my table today, though….

Lieutenant Keck came to help him turn; the lunch tray came a few minutes later. He poked absently at his meal while he read the letter. Tillie sounded a little off, as if like she was working hard to keep her tone light, and before long she let it slip why:

I heard from Joe yesterday. Still nothing official, but it’s sounding even more likely. Maybe our luck will hold out and we’ll be able to get together one more time….

Daniel sighed. He understood what she meant: Joe thought he was going to be shipped out soon.

She didn’t complain at all about Joe’s going, but of course she’d be on pins and needles waiting for the final answer. Daniel put the letter down. Poor Tillie…. And once Joe finally left, of course she’d be worried about him and…. well, there was no way Daniel would tell her this, but she’d be right to do so: even though Joe would be in the back with the Quartermaster Corps, there’d been QC troops who’d risked and lost their lives bringing food and supplies to the front.

And since Joe was just going overseas now and didn’t have any combat time or little dependents (at least as far as Daniel knew) — that meant that once the war was over, Joe’d be one of the last men home.

I hate not knowing. And I hate not being able to do anything

And boy do I know that feeling, thought Daniel —

and if it does happen, there’s not much I’ll be able to do to help him besides letters and cookies and novenas and socks, which reminds me, if there’s anything I can do for you, anything at all, please please please tell me, because otherwise I can only guess and what if I guess wrong? I am working on a pair of socks for you, and I think I’ll have them done by next week.

At least you can knit, he thought. Maybe I should learn, at least then I’d be of some use —

I’m sending the usual so if you need anything different LET ME KNOW. And I will try to send some cookies too, so don’t give them up for Lent!

Lent?  Already? He really had completely lost track of time.

Speaking of Lent…. Tillie quickly recovered her usual cheerful, teasing tone, and Daniel read on, so absorbed in the letter that he barely noticed the orderly picking up the tray.

“You sure you’re done?” prodded the orderly.

“Yeah,” Sousa grunted. He finished reading the letter. He couldn’t knit, but he could write a letter…. His routine had been upset this morning and he’d forgotten to make sure he had his pen and paper. He twisted around and back as best he could to fish his things out of his drawer; the nightstand was a little behind him, so he couldn’t reach it very well. He opened the drawer with his fingertips and tried to use the drawer to pull the nightstand a little closer to himself — it was a stretch — ouch — his right leg suddenly protested as he strained against the traction and when he gasped and flinched, he accidentally pulled on the drawer at exactly the right angle to spin the nightstand on its little wheels so he couldn’t reach it at all.

He tried to get himself situated again, knocking his call light and pillow to the floor in the process, and ended up even further towards the foot of the bed. For a moment he thought about trying to take off the traction himself. It was tempting, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it, he didn’t have the tools.

He sighed bitterly. Maybe someday he’d remember this as a funny story, but at the moment….

When he was able to think again, he pulled up his knitted blanket, twisted around to the other side to try to get his book off the bedside table, it was just within reach…. But not enough. He tried again to reach the book — he just had it — and then the book fell to the floor. He snarled out a curse. And of course, at that exact moment, Lieutenant Keck knocked on the door frame and pushed a wheelchair into the room.

He looked at her and then looked away, almost daring her to say anything. She looked from him to the nightstand, to the papers and pillow and call light on the floor on one side of the bed, to the book on the floor on the other side of the bed, and then back to him.

“It’s time for discussion group,” she said.

Oh, for crying out loud — “I don’t want to go,” he heard himself saying.

“No?” She picked up the book, put it on the table, and rolled the table out of the way.

“No. But I guess I don’t have a choice, do I.”

“It is still the Army,” she said. She pushed the wheelchair next to the bed and set the brake. “But you might decide it’s not so bad. And it only lasts around 45 minutes or so, versus the 90 minutes of argument you’d have with the doctors about not going.”

Once he’d been set free from the traction and had moved to the wheelchair, he followed Lieutenant Keck out of the room and down the hall until she stopped at the door of a room.

“Here you go,” she said.  She stepped back, and he reluctantly rolled himself in.

He moved away from the doorway and glanced around. The center of the room held a circle of chairs. There were a few gaps in the circle — for wheelchairs, he realized, as another patient backed himself into a spot.

A few of the men were clustered at one end of the room; one of them turned, and Sousa spotted the coffee pot. He thought about going to go get a cup — but once he poured his coffee, what would he do then? He’d need both hands to roll the wheelchair — maybe hold the cup between his knees? No, he had only one knee now… He gave up and found a place in the circle for himself, as far away as he could get from the spot that looked like where a leader might sit, and watched the others come in. He recognized some of them — Whitford, Breckenridge…. There were a few others wearing maroon robes, like he was; the rest were wearing blue convalescent suits.

Whitford spotted him. “Hey, Sousa,” he called. “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black,” Sousa instinctively replied. “But…”

A tall man in blue turned away from the table and limped over to where Sousa was sitting, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate with a couple of cookies in the other. “There you go,” he said. “This is your first time, isn’t it? Next week you just use that wheelchair like a tank and get what you want, all right? The rest of us’ll scatter. If Irwin there ever moves his ass out of the way you’ll be able to see where the wheelchair trays are. Actually…. Hey, Irwin — hand me a tray, will ya?” He took the tray and brought it back over to Sousa. “You used one of these yet? Here, like this….” He showed Sousa how it clipped over the arms of the wheelchair.

“Hey, thanks.”

“No problem. You know, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Fred Llewellyn.”

“Daniel Sousa.” Please don’t sit next to me, he thought.

“Nice to meet you. Hey, is this seat taken?”

A nurse in a white uniform came in and clapped her hands. “All right, gentlemen, let’s sit down and get started….”

“I’d better get my coffee,” said Llewellyn. Sousa nodded, and watched with relief as he got drawn into another conversation and ended up taking up another seat.

The nurse took a seat across the circle. “Good afternoon, everyone. We have some new faces today, so let’s start off with introductions. I’m Lieutenant Drummond….”

They went around the circle, each man saying his name and a little about his injury.  All of the men were leg amputees. Llewellyn had been there the longest; he’d been injured the previous April, in the Pacific. Sousa was surprised to hear he’d lost both legs below the knees.

And then suddenly it was his turn. “Daniel Sousa…. Right leg, above the knee; Belgium, a little before Christmas.”

A couple of the other above-the-knee men waved. One of them was wearing blue. It was kind of encouraging.

“And this is your first week, isn't it. Welcome to the group,” said Lieutenant Drummond.

When introductions were finished, she leaned forward. “Now, for those who are new: What’s said in this room is confidential. This is your group, but we do usually start off with a specific topic, just to get the discussion going. And I was thinking that since tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, perhaps today we could talk about….”

“Overpriced candy!” someone called out.

Sousa sipped his coffee while the comedians got the jokes out of their systems. Grahn should be here, he thought, this is his favorite topic — come to think of it, why wasn’t Grahn here? He counted — eleven men — that couldn’t be all the men on the ward, there must be another group, he’d ask Grahn about it this evening….

He was a little embarrassed to admit to himself that he hadn’t thought much about this at all. It was amusing to listen to Grahn carry on about his schemes to meet girls, but as for him…. it was all he could do just to make it through the day, he hadn’t been thinking of anything beyond that. If he were to go back to his room and find Betty Grable in his bed, his first thought would be to see if this meant he was off traction and could get a solid night’s sleep.

But to go back to his room and find a girl in his bed — not Betty Grable, of course, she was married — forget movie stars, period: a real girl — and forget just finding someone: that was funny in the movies, but in real life, it seemed like it would be so much sweeter to know she was there, waiting. To know he belonged there. To know he was wanted: now that would be something.

And here he was sitting in a wheelchair in Army pajamas, with circles under his eyes and his leg ending in an open wound. The contrast between that and the idea of being wanted…. He took another sip of coffee and started paying attention to the conversation in the room.

“Well, how long had you been married?” someone was asking.

“Just a couple of months before I shipped out,” said the other guy — Nash, Sousa remembered. “So yeah, I was nervous. But… when we got up there, the hotel had left us a bottle of champagne, I guess Sarah had told ‘em it was our second honeymoon or something. And I said something about how different it was from our first honeymoon and she said, yeah, a lot’s changed and then she said, for me — you know, meaning for herself — some of this has happened very suddenly, and she asked me to be patient with her while she got used to some of the changes… but that she didn’t think it would take too long because the important stuff hadn’t changed at all. So, yeah.”

The room was silent for a long moment.

“Aw, Nash, you can’t stop there,” someone spoke up.

Nash chuckled as a few more people called out. "Yeah, we’re expecting a baby. July.”

Lieutenant Drummond let the shouts and whistles die down before she spoke up again. “So Captain Nash, if your wife were here, what advice do you think she’d give?”

Sousa stared at his coffee cup. These kinds of conversations were difficult enough, but to have them with a bunch of near strangers? In mixed company? And with the woman in the room being an Army nurse who could enter everything you said into some kind of record? He wished he had a watch to check; he didn’t want to be too obvious about looking for the room clock….

“Do you know if there've been any divorces?” someone spoke up.

“I think there’ve been a couple,” Nash said quietly.

“Really? I thought just that one guy,” said Llewellyn.

“No, Jesse too.”

“Well, there were other issues.”

“Yeah, but wasn’t that caused by….?”

“I don’t think so. Just ask — We’re talking about someone we knew last summer,” explained Llewellyn. “He’s not here any more, he stayed in New York.”

“Oh,” said Lieutenant Drummond. “It is true that when a spouse suffers a significant injury, like an amputation, that it can strain a marriage. But sometimes it ends up being blamed for serious problems that were already there. Now, we’ve talked about marriage, but not everyone here is married, and I suspect that not everyone wants to stay a bachelor forever….”

“Except the ones who are already married!” someone called out. Sousa groaned. As the tedious jokes continued, he noticed Lieutenant Drummond looking to Nash and Llewellyn. Llewellyn quietly nodded.

“There’s a success story right here in this room,” he broke in. “I’m not going to name any names, Lieutenant I-Met-A-Girl-At-The-Ice-Cream-Social….”

“The ice cream social,” someone scoffed. “The hostesses know what they’re getting into, they’re here to be nice and they’re used to us. What about Out There?”

Sousa half-listened as the discussion started to swirl: define Out There — meeting girls in general — what do girls want in general, anyway? — jobs — “y’know — compatibility” — numbers in favor of the men — some girls would rather stay single — spinsters and bachelors — the elephant in the room….

Finally the 45 minutes was over. As Lieutenant Drummond promised to see them all next week, the men started helping each other fold and stow the chairs, clear the cups and plates, and pick up the wheelchair trays.

Before Sousa could escape, Lieutenant Drummond caught up with him. “So what did you think of your first time at discussion group?”

Uh-oh. He hadn’t said anything — was that going to get him in trouble? “It was good to meet more of the others,” he said.

“I’m glad to hear that, that’s an important part of the group. We’ll see you next week, then!”

“See you next week.” He rolled out and back down the hall to his room. Lieutenant Keck arrived a few minutes later to hook him back up to the traction.

 

“….And so if you ended up being the declarer, that would make me the dummy?” asked Sousa. It was evening, and Grahn had repeated the day’s bridge lesson for him.

“Yeah,” said Grahn. He put his cards down on the bedside table. “Except I’m the dummy today. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Suggesting you ask for passes. You know, for the mess hall and the bridge thing.”

“How was —? That wasn’t causing trouble.”

“That wasn’t what I was told, but okay then.” Grahn picked up the cards and started to shuffle them.

“Told by who?”

“Our dear Lieutenant Keck. I think Blaine put her up to it.”

Sousa slapped his cards down on the table and started to lie back down.

“It’s all right, it wasn’t the full forty lashes,” said Grahn.

“Oh, well, that makes it okay then.” Sousa crossed his arms. “No, I should apologize to you for getting you in trouble. I asked, and I guess I wasn’t cheerful enough when they told me no and sent me to discussion group instead.”

“Oh, discussion group!” Grahn reached over, picked up Sousa’s cards, and shuffled them back into the deck. “This was your first time, wasn’t it? What’s the topic this week?”

“Valentine’s Day. Romance. You should’ve been there, it seemed like the kind of thing you’d be eager to discuss.

“I go on Thursday, I’ll catch it then. So what did you think?”

Sousa groaned.

“Yeah. Although you can pick up some good advice from the other guys.”

“Is it really confidential?”

“We don’t blab on each other,” Grahn said firmly. “And I don’t think Lieutenant Drummond reports every little detail about what gets said, but you know she’s making some kind of report. She’s not just a nurse, she’s a psychiatric nurse.”

Sousa didn’t say anything, and Grahn looked up from the cards. “You worried about something you said?”

“I didn’t say anything at all.”

“Just say something next week then. That should keep ‘em off your case.”

“Wonderful. Seriously, who in the hell wants to discuss his sex life in front of an Army nurse?”

“You talking about Nash?”

“How’d you know?”

“Came up at dinner. If it makes you feel any better, Lieutenant Drummond asked him ahead of time if he’d be willing to say something — a couple of guys are getting their first overnight passes soon. She didn’t tell him what to say. ”

Sousa stared at the ceiling.

“Anything else exciting happen today?” asked Grahn.

“Paymaster came by — I think I’m finally going to be able to pay you back this week.”

“Pay me back? For what?”

“For the stuff you picked up for me from the HX.”

“Sousa, don’t be ridiculous. But you can buy me a drink sometime if you insist.” He went back to shuffling cards. “One of these days we will both be out of here, and then we are going to have so much fun.”

“Sure thing,” said Sousa. And when he found himself wide awake at 0300 the next morning, it was a pleasant thought to come back to: Grahn’s confidence that of course they were friends, of course they were going to stay in touch after they left the hospital.

Drinks and fun were fine, but eventually it was time to go home. What would it be like to have someone to go home to, he wondered — someone to work for, someone to belong to? Someone who was his future?

 

Sousa had whirlpool the next morning; when he returned, Lieutenant Keck gave him his shots, hooked him back up to traction, and made sure that everything was in reach. He dozed off for a while and then picked up his writing paper — he still hadn’t finished his reply to Tillie — but before he could uncap his pen a knock sounded at the door.

It was the paymaster. It took a while; the paymaster was meticulous and slow, and insisted on showing his work. There was combat pay to calculate, and then the allotment that Sousa had arranged to send home (“Sousa S-O-U-S-A, Francisco F-R-A-N-C-I-S-C-O, M., 10 Winter Avenue….”); and then there was the routine deposit in Sousa’s personal account, and the matter of getting him a new passbook and checkbook, and then his deposit on top of that…. He tried to ask if anything needed to be backed out for his new shoes, but the paymaster kept ignoring him, so he finally gave up.

“Do you have a set of Class As? No? You may not want to hold quite that much back,” ventured the paymaster.

“At the rate I’m going the war’s going to be over before I need a set of Class As.”

“Sir, if I had a nickel for every man who told me that and then needed a set before the very next payday, I’d be as rich as Howard Stark,” the paymaster insisted. “The doctors here, they never say what they’re really thinking, ‘cause they don’t want to get your hopes up, right? ‘Oh, it’ll be twelve weeks’, they say, and then it turns out to be eight. Kinda the opposite of a politician. So if they say, ‘oh, six weeks at least’, you’d better get in line at the tailor shop. And besides, if you're still here when the war’s over, you’ll still need a set of Class As.”

At last the accounting was over and Sousa was liquid again. He started writing a list for the HX on the back of his envelope — strange, it was like he was starting from nothing —  he needed a wallet and a watch, and some handkerchiefs…. greeting cards…. he could send Tillie a wedding present! But he’d want to get some advice first…. For that matter, he’d need to get down to the HX….

Another knock at the door. “Lieutenant Sousa?”

His heart sank as he recognized the voice. Sure enough, it was the dietitian. As he put his envelope away, she sat down next to his bed and took out a clipboard.

“Let’s see…. We last talked about three weeks ago, and unfortunately it doesn’t look like your appetite has picked up; your doctors are concerned....”

Sousa had to fight the urge to hide his head under his pillow as she talked about calorie counts and body building nutrients and how the scale was beginning to drift in the wrong direction. No, the food was fine, he insisted. Yes, the hot food was hot enough and the cold food was cold enough. No, there wasn’t any particular food he had a hankering for.

“Then maybe you can help me another way. How about I tell you about some of the things on our menu and you can tell me which ones are your favorites?”

Stew, gelatin, corned beef hash…. “I’m not even going to ask about chipped beef on toast, I know how much you all love that….” Fried apples, peanut butter and jelly, malted milkshakes….. hamburgers, cheese and crackers, bananas….

“What do you like to eat when you’re at home?” she asked.

“I was raised to eat what was put in front of me.”

“I think most of us were,” she said with a laugh. “But… let’s say you get a pass home, and your family’s going to cook your favorites. What are they going to make?”

“Depends on what’s on hand. Lobsters, maybe? I’m from New England,” he explained, seeing her astonished face, “so if you have a trap or know someone who has one…. With potatoes, and corn if it’s summer, and linguiça — it’s a kind of Portuguese sausage — and bread and butter…. I doubt there’s much of that down in the kitchen here.”

“Well, I know we have potatoes and bread and butter! But thank you for telling me about this. I think I’m going to start arranging for you to have some little snacks, and I’m going to ask you to do your best to finish them, just to help build your strength back up. Maybe there’s a way we can make them more appealing, as well.”

He nodded; she promised to see him next week, if not before, and went on her way. When lunch came, he felt more discouraged than ever — what was the use? No matter how much he managed to choke down, they weren’t going to be appeased. He ate as much as he could and lay back down again.

The afternoon wore on. He tried again to finish his letter to Tillie, but it was hard to concentrate. He finally managed to get something down in time for the Gray Lady to pick up and mail. It was late in the afternoon when the knock finally sounded at the door. “Come in,” he called.

To his surprise, it wasn’t one of the Gray Ladies. It was a man in a white habit — a priest — with a black cross marked on his forehead above his thick glasses. Sousa’s shoulders sank: he had completely forgotten that it was Ash Wednesday.

“May I come in?” asked the priest.

“Um, sure,” said Sousa. He grabbed the trapeze and sat up.

“I’m Father Alfons, I’m helping Father Keller distribute ashes today. I've also brought Holy Communion, if you'd like to receive.” said the priest. 

Sousa nodded. “Yes please.”

“Let’s have a reading first, hm?” The priest pulled a book out of his pocket, thumbed to a page, thought for a moment, and flipped to another.

“Hear, O Lord, my prayer: and let my cry come to thee.
Turn not away thy face from me: in the day when I am in trouble, incline thy ear to me. In what day soever I shall call upon thee, hear me speedily.
For my days are vanished like smoke: and my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire.
I am smitten as grass, and my heart is withered: because I forgot to eat my bread.
Through the voice of my groaning, my bone hath cleaved to my flesh.
I am become like to a pelican of the wilderness: I am like a night raven in the house.
I have watched, and am become as a sparrow all alone on the housetop.
All the day long my enemies reproached me: and they that praised me did swear against me.
For I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.
Because of thy anger and indignation: for having lifted me up thou hast thrown me down.
My days have declined like a shadow, and I am withered like grass.
But thou, O Lord, endurest for ever: and thy memorial to all generations.
Thou shalt arise and have mercy on Sion: for it is time to have mercy on it, for the time is come.
For the stones thereof have pleased thy servants: and they shall have pity on the earth thereof.
And the Gentiles shall fear thy name, O Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory.
For the Lord hath built up Sion: and he shall be seen in his glory.
He hath had regard to the prayer of the humble: and he hath not despised their petition.
Let these things be written unto another generation: and the people that shall be created shall praise the Lord:
Because he hath looked forth from his high sanctuary: from heaven the Lord hath looked upon the earth.
That he might hear the groans of them that are in fetters: that he might release the children of the slain:
That they may declare the name of the Lord in Sion: and his praise in Jerusalem;
When the people assemble together, and kings, to serve the Lord.
He answered him in the way of his strength: Declare unto me the fewness of my days.
Call me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are unto generation and generation.
In the beginning, O Lord, thou foundedst the earth: and the heavens are the works of thy hands.
They shall perish but thou remainest: and all of them shall grow old like a garment: And as a vesture thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed.
But thou art always the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail.
The children of thy servants shall continue: and their seed shall be directed for ever. Amen."

"Dominus tecum.”

"Et cum spiritu tuo,” responded Sousa.

The priest closed the book, put it away, and brought out a little case. He opened it, dipped his thumb into the ashes, stepped forward, and gently traced a cross on Sousa’s forehead: “Meménto, homo, quia pulvis es, et in púlverem revertéris.”

He put the case away and washed his hands. Then he led Sousa in the Communion prayers, took Communion himself, offered Sousa the last Host in the pyx, and put the pyx back under his habit.

“You’re my last stop for the day,” he said. “When the good folks at the desk heard I was coming to see you, they asked if I’d bring you something to drink, and I said of course. I could use a cup of tea myself; would you care for some company?”

“Did they tell you to visit?” Sousa blurted.

He immediately regretted what he had said, but before he could apologize, the priest gave him a long, appraising look.

“What an interesting question,” said the priest. “Tell you what: you let me come and have my tea with you, and I will give you the answer.”

“All right,” said Sousa. He was too ashamed of himself to say anything else.

When Father Alfons returned, he put a cup of hot cocoa and a plate with two oatmeal-raisin cookies in front of Sousa. He sat down with his tea.

“Don’t hold off on those cookies for my sake,” he said. “Please, go ahead. If I were you I’d be dunking them right into that Ovaltine, like that horse at the Steel Pier.” He mimed the diving horse and a splash; Sousa chuckled a little.

“Now, about your question….”

“Father, I’m sorry — that was so rude —”

The priest brushed it off. “You were worried about it, so I think it’s worth answering, hm? I was just surprised: it didn’t seem to bother you when I first showed up. But then I realized it wasn’t me; it was the idea of them sending me.

“I don’t know which them you’re worried about, so here’s my story: As you can see, I’m not a military chaplain. Father Keller put out a plea to every priest in the diocese to come and help him today, so I came down from the abbey and he handed me a list of men to visit. When I got to this ward, I showed the desk my list; they looked it over and told me who’d be in when; and they said, oh, when you see this man would you mind bringing him his afternoon snack, and there’s some for you too if you want it. And later on, when I was heading back to the room, one of the nurses asked me which room I was going to and I told her and she said oh good.”

 Sousa stared down at his cup.

“And that is all anybody told me about you or asked me to do,” said the priest. “I have no ulterior motive….”

His voice fell away, and Sousa looked up.

“Is that it?” The priest looked him in the eye. “I’ve kept my promises: I’ve taken care of my list, I brought you your snack, and I told you why I was here. The rest of our visit is up to you. Father Keller is your pastor, and I’m here to help him. But I’m here to help him with the care of your soul. And betraying ordinary confidences is a pretty poor way to care for a man’s soul, hm? So I’m not going to do that, you have my word.”

He took another sip of his tea. Sousa thought for a long minute.

“You probably already know this,” Sousa said, “but in the service, chaplains — well, they do what chaplains do, but they also do other things. You have a man in your squad who keeps screwing up, you might send him to talk to the chaplain, get to the root of the problem.

“Same thing here in the hospital, only it’s not just men who are screwing up, it’s…. men who they think aren’t adjusting.” He gestured toward his right leg and watched the priest carefully.

“So… if a doctor’s concerned that a patient’s not adjusting, he might ask a chaplain to visit a patient?”

Sousa nodded.

“And then what?”

“Well, if you say the wrong thing they might start calling in the social workers and the psychiatrists.”

“Ah. So when you asked if they sent me, you meant your doctors.” Sousa nodded. “And you were concerned that perhaps I might be coming with an agenda? That you might let something slip, say something that they’d interpret as evidence of… lack of adjustment? Or psychiatric problems, even?”

Put that way, it sounded a little silly, but… “Yes,” Sousa said quietly. He wondered if the priest would laugh at him.

“That must be very hard,” said the priest, “to not feel like you can speak freely. Do you have any family or friends you can talk to?”

“My dad was able to come down last weekend.” Sousa smiled a little. “I get along with my roommate okay; I just…. I don’t want to be a drag on him.”

“And your letters go through the censor, hm?”

“The censor’s just looking for military information. But yeah.”

He took a sip of his cocoa. “They watch everything,” he said slowly. “If I leave one bite of this cookie, they’ll write it down someplace. If I say something, they write it down. If I don’t say something, they write that down too. I wish they would leave me alone.”

The priest looked sympathetic. “How long have you been in the hospital?”

“Since right after Christmas. I was hit on the 20^th.”

“So almost two months.”

“Yeah.” He looked over at the priest, and it suddenly occurred to him that the cross on the priest’s forehead was a mirror image of the one on his own. Thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return….

“I think… I think I almost didn’t make it,” he said, almost whispering. “I don’t remember very much, but… I think I almost did die.”

When the priest finally replied, there was a touch of awe in his voice. “How strange and mysterious that must be: to come so close to the finish line only to find that no, there's another lap to run, that you still have work to do in this world.”

Another lap to run…. It was so easy for Sousa to picture it: his heart pounding in his chest and his lungs burning, being able to endure it because it was the last lap of the last race — only to find out no, that wasn’t his finish line – he’d run a sprint when he’d needed to pace himself….

Something else was fluttering at the edge at his memory….

“I wish I could….” His voice broke. “I just — everybody keeps saying the future’s going to work out, but I just…. I’m just trying to make it through the day.”

“Then you’re doing fine,” said the priest. “And your work in this world? It’s not off in the future. It’s now, it’s today. Just focus on serving God hour by hour, minute by minute. Keep your eyes on Him, He’ll give you the graces you need. Leave everything else to Him, including dealing with your doctors. And including any sadness and anxiety you may be feeling.

“Being sad and anxious when times are difficult — it’s natural, hm? But it can make things worse, and if you start thinking ‘don’t be sad! Don’t be anxious!’ you’re really going to get yourself into a mess. Like a bird caught in a net – every instinct is telling that poor bird to try to fly away, but the more it struggles, the worse it gets stuck.

“So the trick is to fill your mind and heart with words of strength. Take the words of Scripture, the writings of the saints, and store them up in your heart, so when that sadness or anxiety tries to talk to you at three in the morning or whenever, you don’t waste your time getting tangled up with it; you can think on those words of comfort and healing and just ignore it, or crowd it out entirely.

“Do you have any spiritual reading?”

“I have a prayer book.”

“Oh, the soldier book? That’s a good, nourishing, portable snack, but you need something more substantial, I think. Do you mind if I ask Father Keller to send you something?”

“Um… okay.”

The priest made a note on his list and showed it to Sousa: an arrow drawn from his name and room number to the words “COULD USE A BOOK.”

“I wish I had a book to give you. I’ve got something that should get you started, though.” He opened his briefcase and handed a folded leaflet to Sousa. “Read it slowly, let it soak in. And here’s my card. One of us may be back closer to Easter, but in the meantime, please drop me a line if I can be of help to you. If nothing else, maybe I can help you with some books if Father Keller can’t.”

“Thank you, Father.”

The priest glanced at the clock. “Unfortunately, I should probably be going. Can I take your plate for you?”

“Oh — yes please.” Instinctively, Sousa ate the last bite of the cookie and drained the cup. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

“It was my pleasure.” The priest stood up. “Let me give you a blessing….” Sousa bowed his head…. “…In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

“Amen.”

The priest picked up the dishes in one hand and his briefcase in the other. “Have a good evening. Oh, one more thing: The nurse is probably going to ask you to wash those ashes off as soon as I’m out the door. Go ahead and do it, all right? You don’t want to make a mess of your pillowcase.”

After Father Alfons left, Sousa put his card in the envelope that was serving as a wallet. It occurred to him — now that he had money again, he could order his own books. He opened the leaflet.

A MEDITATION

I am created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created; I have a place in God's counsels, in God's world, which no one else has; whether I be rich or poor, despised or esteemed by man, God knows me and calls me by my name….

The flutter came again, just at the edge of his memory….

A knock sounded at the door. It was Lieutenant Keck.

“How was your visit?” she asked.

“It was good.”

“Glad to hear it. I’m sorry to have to ask you this so soon, but would you be willing to give your face a quick swipe? It’s time to turn over and….”

“Sure thing.” He reached out to take the washcloth.

 

Lieutenant Keck also had his afternoon mail, so once he was situated, he started his letters. He did not pick up the leaflet again until early the next morning, when he found himself staring at the ceiling at 0320.

Grahn was sleeping soundly and the curtain was drawn, so Sousa took a chance and flipped on the reading light.

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his….

Necessary: the word commanded his attention. Necessary. Wanted.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness,

He had to stop reading and take a deep breath before he could continue.

If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us.

He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it —

And suddenly he knew. He knew it with utter certainty: He was going to be given something to do. And everything that had happened to him, good and bad…. It was all part of his preparation.

He could read no further. He put the leaflet away and flipped off the light. As his eyes adjusted back to the dark, he could hear Grahn stirring on the other side of the curtain. The door to the room was slightly ajar, and he could see the shadows of the night nurses and orderlies passing back and forth in the hall.

 

He knew it like he knew something he'd learned long ago: He was going to be given something to do.

 

He was going to live.

 

 

 

Notes:

Dominus tecum/ Et cum spiritu tuo: The Lord be with you/ And with your spirit.

Meménto, homo, quia pulvis es, et in púlverem revertéris.: Remember, man [human], you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

 
Thank you for your patience, for reading, for your kudos, and for your comments, which I arrange in pleasing tableaux on the writing desk and gaze at for encouragement.

Chapter 18: The Outside World

Summary:

As Daniel Sousa’s recovery drags on through February 1945, he receives unexpected presents, unexpected news, and a completely unexpected visitor.

The next morning, Sousa had barely finished washing up when an orderly arrived to take him to his new physical therapy session.

They took the elevator to the first floor. Sousa looked around as the orderly took him down the hall; Grahn’s tour on Sunday hadn’t brought him down this wing. It wasn’t until they entered a large atrium with a vaulted ceiling that Sousa recognized where he was: it was where he’d been measured for crutches a few weeks back. The orderly took him into a different room: the Willow Room, now EGH 1504.

It was another palatial room built to welcome balls and banquets and now hosting chalkboards, mirrors, mats, and parallel bars. There were only a few other men there at the moment.  He fidgeted a little as the orderly talked to someone at the desk. He was eager to finally start work in the gym, but it seemed like nothing was ever simple any more; what complications were lying in wait for him in this new project?

An occupational therapist came over to greet him. “Lieutenant Sousa? I’m Lieutenant Jensen.” She led him over to a set of parallel bars and pulled over a stool for herself.

“So this is your first time in the gym! Congratulations!” she said. “Let me tell you a bit about what you’ll be working on. Our mission is to help you get back to normal life. There are some normal things that you won’t be able to do the same way you did before; we’ll help you learn new ways to do them, so when you walk out of here you’ll be ready to get a job, further your education, or whatever else you decide to do.

“We’ll start off with the basics — crutch walking and wheelchair skills — and also general strengthening and reconditioning. And then once your prosthesis is ready, we’ll start teaching you how to use it. Let’s start by seeing where you are now….”

She took Sousa through some wheelchair exercises. Once she was satisfied, she waved down a private from across the room. As they waited for him, she brought out a wide, heavy canvas belt and buckled it around Sousa’s waist, and had Sousa position the wheelchair between the parallel bars.

“Now,” said Lieutenant Jensen, “go ahead and put the footrest out of your way and lock the wheelchair. It’ll be like the transfers you’ve been working on. Here’s two crutches; hold them together, like this, and put your right hand on the handgrips and your left hand on the arm of the chair. That’s how you’ll help yourself up. When you’re standing, go ahead and take the bars. I'm right here —” she took hold of the belt — “and Private Colman here’ll spot you from the other side. Ready?  One… two… three… and up.”

It was just like all those bed-to-chair pivots he’d been doing; the only difference was that now he was using the crutches and the arm of the wheelchair to stand, instead of leaning on another person’s shoulders. He concentrated on keeping his balance as he straightened his left leg…. He felt himself start to teeter and pulled a little harder on the left bar….

And then he was standing. “There you go!” said Lieutenant Jensen. “Now, Private Colman’s got your crutches, so go ahead and take the bar on your right…. stand up straight — pretend there’s a balloon tied to your scalp — and point your nose at the wall… that’s it.”

He felt himself start to grin: He was doing it. He was standing by himself for the first time in almost two months.

He couldn’t spare more than an instant to think about the milestone; he had to concentrate on keeping his center of balance over his leg. Finally Lieutenant Jensen spoke up: “Good work. Now let’s work on sitting down before you get too tired.” She pushed the wheelchair a little closer to him and locked the wheels. Colman handed him the crutches back, and Lieutenant Jensen guided him through taking the chair arm with his left hand and lowering himself back into the chair.

They had him do it again. As he looked around the room he caught a glimpse of himself in one of the mirrors standing around the room, or at least he thought he did. He couldn’t let himself get distracted, though; he turned his attention back to his balance until it was time to sit down again.

They had him do it again. His mind was running ahead, and once he was sure of his balance, he went ahead and asked. “So… these things are for walking, too, right?”

“Yes, and you’re dying to try it, aren’t you?” said Lieutenant Jensen. She adjusted her grip on the gait belt. “If you want, go ahead and shift your left hand forward a couple of inches. That’s it. Now your right… and now swing your leg forward to meet them….”

It was a tiny step, but it was still a step. He took another one: left, right, swing… and another… and then tried it moving both hands together: forward, swing; forward, swing….

”All those arm exercises are paying off, aren’t they?” said Lieutenant Jensen. “Now let’s work on turning around. Point your left foot to the left a little; now bring your right hand to the left hand bar… left hand to the left… now take the other bar… there you go.”

He walked back to the wheelchair and turned around again. He looked back at the end of the parallel bars — could he do it?

Without waiting for instructions, he took a few steps forward — forward, swing; forward, swing — until he had to stop to rest. He was able to take another couple of steps before he had to stop again.

“Okay, let's turn around,” said Lieutenant Jensen. Reluctantly, Sousa turned around, came back to the wheelchair, and turned again. Colman handed him the crutches. He gathered them in his right hand, took the arm of the wheelchair with his left, and carefully lowered himself back down.

“Good job,” said Lieutenant Jensen. “In the future we’re going to teach you how to fall safely and get back up, but I’d like to wait until you’re done with traction. Now, how about a little wheelchair practice?”

She had him practice some tight maneuvering while she wrote in his chart. Finally it was time to hand him off to an orderly. “We’ll see you later this afternoon,” she promised, and he was on his way.

Back in his room, Lieutenant Keck helped him transfer back to bed. “How did it go?” she asked. “Oh, on your back, please, you have a snack coming.”

“It was good,” Sousa replied. He swung himself into bed and moved into place. “It was real good.” He watched as she came around to the foot of the bed and prepared to hook the traction back up. “I was able to walk a bit on the bars,” he added.

“You did? How much?” She looked sincerely delighted.

“Just a few steps.”

“And on your first day, no less. Just wait and see how quickly you’ll build your endurance back up….” She reattached the traction spreader and then gently set the weight. “They’ve got you on the schedule again for around 1600,” she said.

A few minutes later, another orderly brought him a cup of coffee and a little dish of fruit. As he ate, he thought about what he’d just done, and imagined himself walking with crutches: forward, swing; forward, swing…. He thought a little about the reflection he’d glimpsed in the mirror. It was funny, he thought; he saw himself in the mirror every morning, when he was shaving, but that had still caught him by surprise. Was it the robe? Come to think of it, when was the last time he’d seen himself in a full-length mirror? Maybe on the trip from Italy to France? Then that meant he’d just seen himself for the first time… the way he looked now. He carefully brought the memory back up again: tired-looking face, arms straight on the parallel bars, one leg and foot beneath the hem of the maroon robe. It wasn't as unnerving as it once was, but it still felt a little strange. If it was taking him this long to get used to the sight, what was that going to mean to people on the outside?

But then, the people he was meeting now had never known him any other way…. It was a disconcerting thought. He finished the fruit, drank the last of the coffee, and lay back down.

Everyone he met now, and everyone he’d meet in the future, would know only the “after”, never the “before.” They’d never know the real him, the Daniel Sousa who’d tramped across Belgium and France, who’d scrambled up mountains in Italy; who’d helped build ships and catch fish; who’d run the anchor leg on the relay back in high school all those years ago.

Except… except they would, he thought. They would because they would know him, and he was still that person, even if he looked different and was doing different things now.

He held onto that thought for a while, and the idea of being different but still the same, until he thought of that glimpse of himself in the mirror and how it compared with the face he’d seen in the mirror that morning, and how both reflections seemed to say the same thing: he needed a haircut. He made a mental note to himself to call the barber as soon as the telephone was back in reach.

Meanwhile… He pulled over his pen and little notebook and made an entry in his log:

Thurs. Feb. 15 first day gym parallel bars

 

His afternoon session at the gym turned out to be a group session with seven other patients. He recognized one of them from the discussion group on Tuesday; there were also a couple of other men from their ward.

They started off with simple stretches and upper-body exercises before moving on to the equipment, taking turns rolling themselves between sets of lowered parallel bars to practice pushing up from the seats of their wheelchairs. While he was waiting his turn, Sousa looked around the room. Medicine balls, pull-up bars… Could he still do a pull-up? he wondered. Across the room he saw a patient lying on his side on what looked like a padded bench, using a pulley weight system to exercise what was left of his leg.

And then it was his turn again. He rolled himself forward until he was between the parallel bars. He took hold of the bars and pushed down, straightening his arms and lifting himself a couple of inches above the wheelchair seat, and then slowly lowered himself down again. He repeated the exercise as long as he could and then made way for the next man.

Once they’d all done three sets, the physical therapist had them arrange themselves in two rows facing each other. She led them through a series of trunk-twist and side-bending exercises, having them use light playground balls as medicine balls. She took four of the balls away and had the men play catch for a while, then had them arrange themselves in a circle and toss two balls back and forth, first in patterns, then at random. The time passed quickly, and Sousa found himself feeling disappointed when the session was over and it was time to go back upstairs.

 

The next day was Friday, which meant whirlpool in the morning. For his afternoon session, a therapist came to the room. She brought a pair of crutches with her and had him use them to stand at the side of the bed. This time, once he was standing, she had him move one of the crutches from his right to his left hand. He was even steadier than he’d been the day before, and was able to make the switch and then stay standing while she checked to make sure the crutches fit him correctly.

She taught him how to hold the crutches correctly, and then had him practice using them for the bed-to-chair transfer. It was work, but he knew it would get easier, and soon he had the hang of it.  After the sixth or seventh transfer, he sat on the side of his bed, contemplating the crutches.

“So are these mine?” he asked.

“Yes, they are,” said the therapist.

“Then I want to try walking with them.”

“I knew you were going to say that. Let’s give it a go.”

She took the crutches, showed him how to use them to turn in place, and handed them back. He carefully stood up, made sure of his balance, and took a little step forward, and then another.

“Before you start getting ideas about taking off down the hall,” said the therapist, “please remember that however far you go, you’re going to need to make it back.”

“Roger,” he replied. He turned and took a few more little steps toward the end of his bed, the therapist following closely behind. He noticed the window: Soon, he told himself, real soon.

He took a few more steps and then decided to try turning around: crutch, pivot, crutch. Crutch, pivot, crutch. Back a few steps, another pivot, and he sat down on the edge of his bed. The therapist took the crutches from them and propped them in a corner, well out of reach.

“Hey!” he protested.

“Just removing temptation,” she said. “You’re doing very well, but you should still have someone around until you’re a little stronger. I bet that won’t take long.”

He pretended to sulk, but he couldn’t help smiling a little. At last, it felt like he was really getting somewhere.

 

Grahn showed up late that afternoon. “Hey, Sousa,” he said, as he made a slow beeline to the closet; his pace was faster these days but he was still using two canes. A Gray Lady followed him in;  she was carrying clothes on a hanger.

“Right here. Thanks so much,” Grahn said to her. “I really appreciate it.”

“Oh, my pleasure!” she said. She hung up the clothes: Grahn’s new Class A uniform. “Do you have everything you need? Are you going to wear them this evening? Have fun!” She waved to Sousa as Grahn walked with her to the door. He closed it behind her.

“It is a good day,” he announced. He caught sight of Sousa’s new crutches and grinned. “A good day for both of us, it looks like! So how’d you do?”

“Just a few steps. I stayed on my feet — well, my foot — the whole time, so I guess that’s something.”

“That’s a big something.” Grahn went back over to the closet, took the uniform coat off the hanger, and brought it over to his bed. He sat down, pulled a bag out of his pocket, and started taking his new insignia out of the bag and pinning them to the coat, stopping every so often to consult a little book and check the placement with a tape measure. “I’ve forgotten where half this stuff goes,” he complained.

“So what are you up to tonight?”

“Out for dinner. Like out out.” Grahn sounded a little embarrassed. “I guess it’s a thing on the ward to take someone out when he gets his first outside pass.”

“Aw, that’s swell. Do you know where you’re going?”

“Probably just the Boardwalk, and not too far; I’m not the only one who’s still pretty gimpy. There’s always Woolworth’s; that’s just a couple of blocks away, I think.” Grahn held up the coat for Sousa’s inspection. “Everything look right?”

“So far, so good. And Woolworth’s makes sense; if you’re going to paint the town red you’re going to need a bucket and a brush, right?”

Grahn started pinning on his service ribbons. “Okay, so I might have been kidding about that. But seriously, there’s not going to be much town-painting tonight. A few of us have to be back by 1900.”

Sousa looked at the clock. “That soon? You’re not even going to have enough time to see a show.”

“Ah, it’s all right. First time out and all that; it’s better this way… The Boardwalk’s not going anyplace, it’ll wait for me. ”

When Grahn was finished with his ribbons, he laid the coat on his bed, went over to the mirror, and checked the state of his chin. Satisfied, he took the rest of his uniform out the closet and drew the curtain.

Sousa turned back to his book, but his thoughts drifted. It would be funny if they really did take Grahn to Woolworth’s; he pictured a line of men in green at the counter, their crutches and canes propped at their sides, Grahn probably flirting with the waitress….

And now that he had his own crutches, it seemed more believeable that someday he’d be one of those men at the counter. Looking up at the menu… The scents of coffee and cleanliness and ice cream and food from the grill… That was normal life once. Now it seemed exotic.

He pictured himself at the counter; it was Friday, so he’d probably have a tuna melt in front of him, or grilled cheese and a cup of soup. But if it wasn’t Friday? What about a patty melt? That sounded good. Or one of those turkey plates with the gravy and the whipped potatoes. And maybe some pie? With a little scoop of ice cream? His stomach gave a faint growl of approval.

The curtain snapped back: the clink of a bottle on the porcelain sink, the light scent of hair tonic, the rustle of a wool coat, the soft click of a belt buckle….

“Well?” said Grahn.

Sousa looked up. “You look like a new man,” he said, and it was true. He wasn’t sure he would have recognized Grahn; only the canes marked him as a patient. He belonged to the outside world again.

A quick glimpse at Grahn’s service ribbons hinted at what he’d done in that outside world. Some of the story Sousa already knew: the Combat Infantryman Badge; the Purple Heart; the battle star for the invasion of Normandy… But what was that Bronze Star for? Grahn had never mentioned it, or told any story about what it might have been awarded for. Sousa’s respect for him went up a few more notches.

Grahn tugged at the front of his uniform coat. “Mind if I open the door?”

“Of course not, go ahead.”

Grahn opened the door. On the way back he checked his gig line in the mirror. He took his hat and overcoat out of the closet and sat down again on the end of his bed, where he could easily converse with Sousa and still see the door.

“So who’s going?” asked Sousa.

“Oh, let’s see… Llewellyn, Irwin, Cochrane, Flores… I don’t think Nash is coming, he’s off with the missus….”

That was enough to get Grahn talking and keep him going, though not quite enough to keep him from fidgeting with his cane. Finally Irwin showed up and stuck his head in the door.

“Hey, Sousa. Grahn, you ready?”

“God, yes —” he stood up and put on his overcoat — “oh, wait….”

“You haven’t grown a third hand yet? Here….” Irwin showed Grahn a trick for carrying his hat while still holding his canes. “There you go. All right, Sousa, see you at 1900.”

“See you later!” said Grahn.

“Have a good time!” called Sousa. “Don’t spend all your money in one place!”

 

Grahn turned up at 1855, his hat in his hand and a grin on his face. “Hey, Sousa,” he said, “We brought you something.”

“What? Wait, you weren’t supposed to —” Sousa began, but he was cut off when Irwin came in.

“You were in Italy, right?” asked Irwin.

“Certamente, but —”

“Then I’ll bet you’ll know what this is.” He put a foil-wrapped plate on Sousa’s bedside table. As Sousa sat up in bed, Grahn left his coat and hat on his own bed and came over to join them.

An enticing aroma wafted from the plate. For an instant, Sousa was stunned — he knew that smell — sitting outside on a rock wall, strong red wine — Grazie, grazie — Naples?....

Irwin finished unwrapping the foil and lifted off the top plate. Sousa stared at the plate and then up at Irwin and Grahn. “Is that… pizza?”

“I told you!” crowed Irwin.

“Am I the only man in the whole U.S. of A. who’d never had pizza before?” Grahn complained.

“Not at all,” said Irwin. “But Sousa, you’d better eat that before the new convert here sneaks it away from you.”

Sousa did not have to be told twice. The first bite was a taste of heaven. It wasn’t quite hot any more, but he didn’t care, it was still good. It also wasn’t quite like what he’d had in Italy — the cheese was different, and there was more of it — but that didn’t matter either; even when he was actually in Italy, nothing he’d had in one village was ever quite like what he’d had in another.

“Wow. Thanks so much,” he said. “Pizza in Atlantic City! I never would have guessed.”

“The guy opened up just a few weeks ago,” said Irwin. “Saw how well pizza was doing in Trenton and decided to give it a try here. Between the townies and Camp Boardwalk, he seems to be making a go of it.”

“We’ll never be able to get in there once the tourists start showing up,” said Grahn.

Irwin glanced at the clock. “I’d better get back for nose count. Sousa, enjoy your pizza; Grahn, it was fun, let’s do it again soon.” Grahn and Sousa wished him good night as he left.

“So how was it?” Sousa asked. “And thanks again — this hits the spot.” He took another bite of the pizza.

“Glad to hear it,” said Grahn. “Yeah, they told me you’d know what it was. I know where we’re going when it’s your turn. I wonder if they have it in Philly?” He hung up his overcoat, put his hat away, and sat back down on his bed.

“It was fun,” he said. “I think we all had a good time; I sure did. And, you know, I see what they mean now. It really was a lot more fun this way. Or maybe I should say it was easier to have fun this way.”

Sousa swallowed his bite of pizza. “How do you mean?”

“Well, you know, this was the first time I’ve really been outside — meaning, outside of a hospital — since I got hit. That’s what, seven months now? And… well, it’s different now, right?

“So having the first time out being a trip with the other fellows made it easy, there was nothing to worry about. You trip or fall? They won’t get all flustered and panicky, they’ll just point and laugh and then give you a hand up.

“And you don’t feel like you stick out. Every so often, you know, you hear someone mention getting stared at, or getting nosey and ignorant questions. Most people are decent, of course; and from what I’ve seen and heard, the townies here are really friendly, and they’re used to us.  But like I said, if you’re in a group, you don’t stick out so much, you don’t feel like people are looking at you. And even if someone does walk up and say something stupid, it’s easier to laugh it off with someone else there.

“I don’t think I knew just how nervous I really was until we were halfway down the block — we passed a few civilians, and they just nodded, and I felt this sense of relief and I realized, wow, I guess I was a little worried about that.

“And then a few sergeants who were out saluted us, and I was so glad I still had a cane in each hand because it's been so long since that’s happened I think I’ve forgotten how.”

Sousa scoffed.

“Okay, so maybe not,” said Grahn. “But you know what? I probably sound like the most obnoxious little butterbar that ever shaved a tail, but even so, I’d be a damn liar if I didn’t admit that it felt good to be a soldier again — even if we were walking like caterpillars and holding ourselves up with sticks.

“So anyway, we just looked around a bit, and then someone suggested this pizza place, and being the dumb hick that I am I had to ask, pizza? What’s that? So of course that’s where we went. We weren’t sure what you’d want, so we brought you the plain with just the cheese on it, but we also had some with a kind of sausage on it, sliced real thin.” He looked toward the door. “I think I’m going back there tomorrow. That was so good. Anyway, we ate there, and then we took our time getting back. We thought about ice cream but it’s getting chilly.”

Sousa couldn’t resist asking. “Any opportunities?”

“Not tonight. But they’ll come.” Grahn sounded more confident than ever.

A knock sounded at the door: it was Lieutenant Keck.

“All right, Grahn and Sousa accounted for: very good,” she said. “And Lieutenant Grahn in his Class As! Stand up, let’s see you. Look at you, all squared away.”

“Some nice fruit salad there, don’t you think?” said Sousa.

“Oh, yes,” said Lieutenant Keck.

“Well, thank you,” said Grahn. “I’d also like you to note that I was not only on time tonight, but early. Sousa can vouch for me.” Sousa nodded.

“Duly noted,” said Lieutenant Keck.

Sousa thought there was something a little off about her manner. Grahn apparently thought so too. “That was awfully trusting of you,” he said. “Are you feeling all right? Everything okay?”

She sighed. “I’m getting worse and worse at this! …I’m afraid this is my last farewell to you both. I’m going home on a furlough for a couple of weeks, and then I’m being shipped out.”

“Aw, no!” said Sousa.

“What? They can’t do that!” said Grahn. “Where are they taking you?!”

“Why, Lieutenant Grahn, I’m touched. I thought you’d celebrate when I told you the news.”

“Oh, come on, I like you just fine on night shift. You’re just mean in the daytime. You should tell them that when you get there. Where is there, anyway?”

“The Pacific. Not sure where yet.”

Grahn and Sousa looked at each other with concern. Back in ’42, several dozen Army nurses had been taken prisoner at the fall of Corregidor and had only been liberated a few weeks ago: walking skeletons, but still wearing their uniforms and still a functioning nursing unit.

“Be careful, all right?” said Sousa.

“Make sure you use that bug powder they give you,” added Grahn. “Don’t go getting malaria or any of those other weird tropical diseases. And take good care of your feet!” He sighed. “We’re going to miss you.”

“I’ll miss you all too.  Drop me a line and let me know how you’re doing, will you? I have my address up in the lounge.”

She came around the end of Sousa’s bed and gave him a hug. “Keep your chin up, okay?” she whispered. He nodded. There was a painful lump in his throat.

She stood up. “Grahn? Behave yourself.” She gave him a hug.

“You too, Keck. Remember: No day shift!”

“Pish.” She went to the door. “All right, take care, you two.” She waved again before she stepped out.

Grahn took one look at Sousa and went to close the door. He made his way back to his closet, drawing the curtain along the way. Sousa carefully lay back in bed, his face hot with humiliation.

He heard Grahn hang up his uniform and go about his evening routine: doing his stump care; brushing his teeth and washing up…. He was feeling a bit steadier by the time Grahn pulled the curtain back again.

Grahn was back in his gray pajamas and maroon robe. He came around the end of his bed and lowered himself into the chair. “Well, didn’t that just drop the evening down the latrine,” he said. He looked over to Sousa. “Mind if I put the radio on?”

“Not at all.”

0300 found Sousa staring at the ceiling. Of course it was natural to be sorry that Lieutenant Keck was going away, but it frustrated him that the news had brought him to the verge of tears again (and in front of her, and in front of Grahn….) He’d thought he’d been doing better this past week, but apparently not. When would he stop falling to pieces like this?

As the weekend turned around and rolled into the week, he struggled to keep his spirits up, but it was hard; he kept sinking, feeling low and irritable again. At least he wasn’t dragging his roommate down; Grahn was a little out of sorts as well. His scheme to go out again for pizza on Saturday hadn’t worked out, and by Sunday it was too cold.

Physical therapy was a welcome distraction, but was always over far too quickly before it was back to traction.

On Tuesday Sousa was packed off to discussion group again. He reminded himself that it was worth enduring for a cup of coffee and 45 minutes out of traction. The topic that day was discharge, preparation for discharge, and practice runs: passes, overnight passes, and furloughs. He made sure to get a question in, which seemed to please Lieutenant Drummond, and spent the rest of the time half-listening to the discussion. It turned out that Nash and Llewellyn would be leaving soon; they were just waiting on beds to open up for them in a hospital in Washington, D.C.. They would transfer there to receive their “permanent” prosthetics before they finally went home.

Sousa was glad for them, of course, but the topic of discharge didn’t hold much interest for him yet. He was more interested in listening to the other men with above-the-knee amputations. A captain named Ayers seemed to have been there the longest, but he still couldn’t have been there all that long, Sousa figured; he was still using two crutches to walk with his prosthetic, while Llewellyn was only using a cane and Nash wasn’t using anything at all. His gait may have still been slow and awkward, but he was still gone before Sousa could catch up with him.

Grahn looked sober when he returned to the room that evening. “Seen the paper yet today?” he asked.

“No, what’s up?”

He tossed over a newspaper. Sousa unfolded it and frowned. 30,000 Marines had shoved the Philippines off the front page by invading a little island only 750 miles from Tokyo. The island boasted two airfields and two volcanoes. It was named Iwo Jima.

Grahn watched him sympathetically as he skimmed the article. “Your other brother-in-law’s Navy, isn’t he?” he asked.

“Yeah, him, and his brother, and three of my cousins. I don’t see any of their ships here,” said Sousa. “Of course, who knows what’s actually making it into the papers.”

“Yeah. A couple of guys from back home are in the Pacific. They’re Army,” said Grahn. “Once this whole thing is over, I bet it’ll be really something to find out who was where and when.”

“Sure will.”

Sousa finished flipping through the paper as Grahn puttered about the room and read his mail. After the night nurse came through on rounds, Grahn brought out a deck of cards. “Up for bridge?”

 

They practiced again the next evening until they were interrupted by a private with a telegram for Grahn. He seemed to be expecting it; as he read it, a grin spread over his face.

“It’s from my parents,” he said. “They’re coming this weekend.” He looked up at Sousa, and his grin faded. “I have an overnight pass,” he said, almost apologetically. “They’re going to come up on Saturday. I’m going to go stay with them at their hotel.”

“Grahn, that’s great,” said Sousa. “Where are you staying?”

“I get to decide that tomorrow. Special Services has a list — I hope I can find someplace nice.”

“Dinner? A show?”

“Dinner for sure; a show? Maybe — we’ll have to see who’s in town…. Oh. Uh-oh.”

“What?”

Grahn looked sheepish. “I’d better find a church schedule.”

 

Mr. and Mrs. Grahn turned up around lunchtime on Saturday, as they usually did; and just as they usually did, they came up to the room to say a quick hello to Sousa. This time, though, Henry had packed an overnight bag, and when they all left, Sousa knew he would not see them again until the next day.

It really hit him that evening, first when Grahn wasn’t there for evening rounds… and then when the night nurse came and went without saying anything about his being out. She was a float nurse from another ward: perfectly friendly, but not one of “their” nurses. If Lieutenant Munn or Lieutenant Keck had been on duty, it would have been different thought Sousa; they would have hung around another minute or two just to kid around with him about Grahn and his first pass, and laugh about all the ways they would heckle Grahn the next day. And yes, they’d be doing it as a shared joke with him, but they’d also hang around that extra moment to keep him company because they'd be thinking something like Sousa might be feeling lonesome and — he allowed himself to admit it — they knew him (they knew all the men), and they would be right.

Irwin and Whitford stopped by to say hello; they were on their way to the Saturday night social, so they didn’t stay long. Before they left, Sousa had the presence of mind to ask them to put the radio where he could reach it.

It was slim pickings that night. He wasn’t interested in the hockey game; he longed for distraction from the news, but the comedy programs and the popular music shows all seemed to get on his nerves that evening. He found a drama program —a new one, it was premiering that night — This is Helen Hayes…. He waited as the announcer finished talking about how Friendly Farm Fruits were canned at the peak of freshness, the best use of your precious ration points, and remember to buy war bonds… “In tonight’s presentation, Miss Hayes portrays Major Flora Fellmeth, the last nurse to leave Manila before its capture by the Japanese….”

No. He grabbed at the radio and adjusted the tuner again. Static, a wiggly squeal… and applause. He paused, his hand still on the tuner, to wait for the announcer. The applause faded to silence.

And then the music started. He must have missed the announcer, it was a classical music concert, they were playing something he’d never heard before, something… not quite sad, but somber, something beautiful and somber… and then the music paused, a horn sounded, and different instruments played the same melody, as if in reply. As if it was a quiet, serious conversation —

He jumped a little as the first section played something loud and urgent, and repeated it, insisting — the other instruments picked it up, as if in agreement — yes, yes, you’re right — the music built up, and up, and stopped for a moment, waiting —

And then another theme came in, serious and determined; resolute but realistic. His hand fell away from the tuner as he listened, his attention completely focused on the transmission. Everything else had fallen away.

Sousa had never thought of himself as being a music lover. He didn’t dislike music; he liked it okay, he didn’t mind singing in the movies and he was reasonably good at dancing. As for classical music, he wasn’t one of those people who fled the room screaming if classical music came on; he’d seen Fantasia, and though he hadn’t quite known what to make of it he’d liked the parts with the hippos and the devil in the mountain. He knew that the Lone Ranger music was classical music, and that “V for Victory” was Beethoven.

But this… he had never listened so urgently to a piece of music in his life. He didn’t know what it was, but it was as if this music had heard what was on his mind and heart and was responding to him, speaking without words, speaking deeper than words. It understood him.

The music spoke on of hard work and then paused — Do you remember this, it seemed to ask, Do you? It wasn’t always blood, toil, tears, and sweat; do you remember? Of course you do, it was real, I remember it, I remember it too….

And then the music was gathering up the memories together with the first theme, remembering, but resolute: there was still work to do. The final chords sounded: the music was over. He had not realized that he had been holding his breath. He waited for the applause from the radio audience.

It didn’t come. Instead, more music came with a new theme, slow and grave, revealing a melody of aching, consoling beauty that gave him goosebumps.

Saudade, he thought. It was a Portuguese word that he’d heard growing up. His father had tried to explain what it meant — longing, yearning, missing — “yet there’s a sweetness to it; it’s the love that remains,” he’d said — but in the end, he'd finally said there was no word in English that exactly captured what it meant.

Could you feel saudades without knowing exactly what for? he wondered. The music spoke to him deeply — of what he could not say, though he had a sense his mother was in there somewhere, as if she’d stepped forward into the present to sit with him. Could you feel saudades for someone in your future, someone you hadn’t even dreamed of yet? But he could not stop to figure it out; he hung on every note of the melody as it gave way to a new theme, a theme that playfully fluttered at first, unfolded into majesty, and then stepped aside. The first melody revealed itself once again and finally receded, like a sun setting in splendor.

And still there was no applause. Sousa listened as the music came swirling back. It slowed, slowed to a pace that reminded him of a slow, stepping dance. It brought in more dancers, grew and grew, and then caught them all up again into the tempest. It paused to catch its breath and then came back as a march of sober triumph. Sousa realized that the march was bringing in all the themes from earlier in the piece, as if to finish explaining them; even the beautiful, pining melody became a majestic fanfare — the music grew and unfurled itself until it finally came to its consummation.

Sousa sat, still spellbound, as the audience applauded. Then the announcer began to talk again. Sousa scrambled to find his notebook and pen, so he could write down the name of the music. It played in his head for the rest of the evening, and later when he woke up in the middle of the night. It was welcome company.

 

The next morning Sousa called down to the Red Cross and asked for help getting a radio schedule. It came at lunchtime, just in time for him to be able to catch a concert out of New York at 1400. It didn’t quite grab him by the lapels like the music the night before had, but he still got the uncanny feeling that the music was talking to him. The feeling was even more vivid when the music seemed to take a step back and a single piano started to play; it was as if the orchestra had introduced him to a friend and now he was in a pleasant conversation with both of them. He was sorry when the music was over. But soon Grahn and his parents turned up again; it was time to say good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Grahn, and then eat a slice of the cake they’d brought while Grahn changed back out of his Class As and told him about his first night out of the hospital.

 

And then it was back to the usual: whirlpool on Monday morning; group exercises on Monday afternoon; parallel bars on Tuesday morning… After lunch he waited to be turned back out of bed for discussion group. If he pretended to sleep, would they let him alone? Or would they wake him up and send him down the hall? Two conflicting objectives there….

Before he could try out his plan, Lieutenant Munn stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “No discussion group for you today,” she said. “Major Peyton called and told me. He said you’re going to meet with a visitor today instead.”

“What?” Sousa grabbed the trapeze and sat up, wincing a little; the motion still bothered his wound. “Did he say who?”

“No, he didn’t.” She looked him over. “All he said was you were going to have a visitor at 1300, and that you might want to freshen up a little.”

She straightened out his bed linens while he combed his hair and gave his face a swipe with a damp washcloth. When he was done, she adjusted his bed and pillows so that he could sit more comfortably, and helped him put on and arrange his robe.

“There,” she said. “I’ll see you a little later, then.”

“Thanks,” he said. What the hell was going on? He tugged a little at the lapels of his robe and glanced at the clock.

At 1259, a knock sounded at the door frame. An Army officer stuck his head in the door and then let himself in: a major. Sousa did his best to at least sit at attention as the visitor closed the door behind him.

It only took a fraction of a second for Sousa to “read” the major’s uniform: Class As, nice shiny shoes, gig line straight; jump wings, marksmanship, service ribbons for Europe and the Americas, a black and scarlet ribbon he didn’t recognize… but what was that insignia on his lapel? Not infantry, not a doctor's caduceus — an eagle with outstretched wings in front of a circle —

 “Lieutenant Sousa? Gil Tucker,” said the major. He stepped forward to shake hands. “I’ve been looking for you for several weeks now, it’s a pleasure to meet you at last.” He pulled up the chair and sat down, opened a file, and looked up at Sousa.

“Tell me,” he said. “How much do you know about the Strategic Scientific Reserve?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which are as precious as diamonds to me.

I received a suggestion about including more footnotes, and between that suggestion and the amazing job Eienvine's doing with A Lady of Value, I thought I'd give it a try. Please let me know what you think.

---

Class A uniforms: The equivalent of a business suit. This second lieutenant is wearing his Class A, but he doesn't have any service ribbons yet (they're the ribbons that go above the left pocket, denoting campaigns, awards, and medals.)

 

Gig line: the alignment of the seam of the uniform shirt or coat, belt buckle, and uniform trouser fly-seam. In order to be properly dressed, these three should align to form a straight line down the front of the body. If they don't form a line, you risk getting "gigged" — reprimanded.

Pizza: Pizza was not well known in the U.S. until soldiers who'd served in Italy (including Eisenhower himself) came home with a hankering for it.

"the most obnoxious little butterbar that ever shaved a tail" Butterbar: second lieutenant (lowest rank of Army officer.) Shavetail: an inexperienced, newly commissioned second lieutenant. The joke was sometimes they were a little too fond of being saluted and being called "sir". From The First Epistle to the Selectees (advice to draftees written in the style of the King James Bible): "Hell hath no fury like a Shavetail scorned: he walketh with a swagger and regardeth the enlisted man with a raised eyebrow: he looketh upon his bars with exceeding pleasure and loveth a salute mightily. Act thou lowly unto him and call him sir and he will love thee."

Squared away: prepared for action.

Fruit salad: service ribbons.

"several dozen Army nurses had been taken prisoner at the fall of Corregidor": The Angels of Bataan.

Iwo Jima: The flag went up on Mount Suribachi on the fifth day of the battle, but the battle would continue until March 26.

"This is Helen Hayes": The show is real, and that's the episode that aired that weekend. In real life, though, it ran on Sunday night, not Saturday.

"V for Victory": the rhythm of the opening notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony can be written as ···— :the letter V in Morse code.

Music: Daniel is listening to Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No 9 in E minor, Op 95 ("From the New World") Here's a recording from 1944 that I like.

On Sunday afternoon, the concert from New York is a piano concerto. I was thinking of Mozart; I didn't have a particular work in mind but I was listening to this as I wrote that section.

Chapter 19: The SSR

Summary:

Daniel receives a completely unexpected visitor.

 

“The Strategic Scientific Reserve,” repeated Sousa. Was this a trick question? He'd been told not to talk about his encounter with the SSR. “Am I… supposed to know what it is?”

“There's no need to dodge the question,” said Major Tucker, “but let me ask it another way. When you were wounded, you weren't with the rest of your unit.  Why not?”

Two months in the hospital vanished, and Sousa was back in the woods with his team, lost, trapped, blinded by snow, cold all the way to the marrow of his bones….

“We were out trying to slow down the Germans,” he said. “They went around us, we got caught behind their line.”

“So what did you do?”

“Tried to find a way back; picked up some other stragglers along the way.”

“And then?”

“We fell in with a large detachment of men in the same fix.”

“And?”

Who is this guy? And what does he want? wondered Sousa. “A unit connected with this detachment was able to get through to us all from the other side, and guide us on foot to an American outpost.”

“Who commanded this unit?”

“It was a big group. I never met the officer in charge,” said Sousa.

“But someone told you it was the officer known as Captain America.”

So you do already know. “You must know more than me, then. If Captain America was there I never even saw his face. It was at night and we were a little busy.”

Tucker nodded. “Did you provide assistance to the unit leadership?”

"My men and I did some scouting.”

“Find anything?”

“We did….” Sousa described a little of the terrain they'd crossed, and the evidence they'd found.

"Those booby traps you mentioned: What make were they?"

"They were Hydra."

"Tell me more about them."

Sousa described how they found the hotfoot at the base of the tree. Tucker kept on asking questions — did one of your men find it first? Which one? How did you know it was there? How did you disarm them? What else did you find? Sousa answered as well as he could, though he had the strong sense that Tucker already knew the answers.

Tucker consulted his file. "So then you and the group reached the outpost. What became of you after that?"

“They gave us some coffee and a C-ration and sent anyone who could back out again.” At Tucker’s prodding, he sketched out his last night of the war: the ride in the truck, the village, the tank trap….

“And then....” Sousa shrugged. “I got hit.”

“Any of your men?”

“I don't think so —”

“No, they all made it back from that village. Because they'd already taken cover, they were just waiting on you. Private Clark told us.

“Yes, we interviewed Clark and your other men. I know that you and your men were among the stragglers that fell in with the SSR battalion in the Ardennes. I know that you were trapped to the north by a Hydra blockade and to the south and west by the Germans. I know that Captain America and his team broke through the Hydra blockade at night, approximately 0130 on December 19, and came to your aid. I know that when you reached the output, you were debriefed and that you were instructed to not tell anyone that you’d fallen in with the SSR or that you’d seen the Captain and his team. And from what you’ve told me, I know for sure you’re the man I'm looking for, and I can see you follow orders and can keep your mouth shut.  So now I can start telling you a few things about the SSR. This conversation stays in this room, of course. First thing to know about us: we don't give up. We get what — or who — we’re looking for.

“The SSR’s a real Saturday night stew of an organization: you know, a little of this, a little of that…. We’re a civilian agency under the oversight of the War Department. We were created to keep up with Hydra (which meant getting into intelligence) and to come up with goodies for Lend-Lease. We  got a big bump when the U.S. entered the war, and then things got really exciting when Captain America decided to get out of the bond sales business.

“So with all this going on, we never got around to developing anything like a organized recruitment arm. Instead we’ve always just… borrowed and detailed and accepted the help of other organizations.” He smirked. “Sometimes we even waited until they offered it. One of our scientists cherry-picked Captain America from a recruitment office, right out from under the Army’s nose. The Captain’s kept up the tradition. He and his team treat every rescue mission like a shopping trip for the SSR, and that rescue they did in December was no exception. Of course, like you said, things were a little hectic then, and as soon as his team got your group to that outpost they had to resupply and get back out there. On their way out the door, one of them mentioned ‘that Lieutenant Sousa from the engineers, terribly helpful, ought to poach him for ourselves’ —”

Sousa frowned. So all this was because… they wanted to recruit him? But didn’t they know —?

There was no time to ask or even wonder; Tucker was still telling his story: “…and by the time someone had a minute to go look for you, you and all the others were already on your way south.

“We didn’t forget, though, and once the Germans were pushed back and everyone was back where they belonged and we had time to get a few more details from the team, we started looking for you again. We found your outfit — you been in touch with them, by the way?”

“Yeah, I wrote them.”

“Good. When we talked to them, they didn’t know if you’d made it or not. Anyway, we interviewed your men, and confirmed that you were probably the guy we were looking for. Your men said your leg looked pretty bad, so we figured that if you'd made it, you'd have been sent back to the States. I’m stationed in Washington, so that’s where I come in. Some phone calls, a few in-person visits, some patience, and here we are.”

Sousa didn’t understand why Tucker looked so satisfied. “So this whole time you’ve really been looking for me? Because….”

“Because we want you for the SSR.”

“So… I guess you didn’t know what… happened to me, then, before you came all the way here.”

“I didn’t. I found out when I talked to your doctor this morning. But you see I’m still here.” He opened one of his folders. “Let’s see… before you joined the Army you were working in a shipyard, you were directly assisting the war effort working in an essential industry. You wouldn’t even have been drafted. And yet you enlisted.”

Sousa shrugged. “Felt kind of dumb sitting around at home.”

“Seems kind of dumb to call working twelve-hour shifts in a shipyard ‘sitting around’,” said Tucker. “Why’d you choose the Army?”

“Well, I’d been on boats and I’d helped to build ships, and a lot of the fellows in our area seemed to get tapped for the Navy and the Marines. I guess I was looking for something different.”

“Yeah, I see you’ve got a couple of boats here under your past employment history. You worked at the boating club?”

“Off and on. When I was a kid I bused tables. Worked as a lifeguard when I got older.”

“Says here you did some commercial fishing?”

“Now and then, when one of my uncles was short handed.”

“Another essential industry there. You didn’t have to go…. You got decent grades in high school. Why weren’t you in college?”

“Couldn’t afford it.” That had been a disappointing year. His grades had been decent, yes, but not good enough for an academic scholarship; he was a fast runner, but not fast enough for a track scholarship....

“So you had connections to two essential industries, you were a natural for the Merchant Marine, but you enlisted in the Army. Huh…. if you’d waited another year, we might have picked you up in ’43 for a… special initiative.

“Let’s see… good marks on the intake aptitude exam, so after you finished basic they sent you down to Belvoir to learn how to be an engineer. More training… And oh, look at this: a note in your file from one of the officers. Apparently one of the non-coms approached him just two weeks into your training and recommended that you take the OCS exam — said you had ‘horse sense.’ Looks like they pushed you so they could get enough stripes on your sleeve to qualify to take the exam.”

This took Sousa by surprise. He knew a couple of the sergeants had effectively ordered him to take the exam, but he had no idea they’d been plotting that long.

“So you held up under the extra training, you took the exam and qualified, which is no small thing, and off to Officer Candidate School you went. Graduation, more training, and finally off to Italy. Let’s see… Sicily… Operation Avalanche… Always right up there on the front, weren’t you? Because your specialty was engineering reconnaissance. Always ahead of the line, scouting ahead, looking for mines and ordnance and bridges and good places to build bridges, calling in sights….

“And you did a little bit of everything, didn’t you? Your C.O. told me about that time you and your squad kept that field hospital from washing away in the mudslide. And then there was something about rappelling down and rescuing a kid goat?”

Sousa shrugged. “It belonged to a civilian who’d put us in touch with the local Resistance. Seemed only right to say thanks.”

“Of course that was small potatoes compared to rappelling down and rescuing three wounded men while under enemy fire. Or sneaking ahead and making an improvised tank trap while under enemy fire. Or… well, the list goes on; you were there and I’ve already read it. ‘Under enemy fire’: saw a lot of that in there. Also ‘resourceful’ and ‘intrepid’ and ‘hereby awarded.’ Why haven’t you made captain yet?” He seemed to be asking the file, not Sousa.

Tucker looked up. “So yeah: you are exactly the kind of man we want for the SSR.”

“What would you want me to do, though?” asked Sousa. “I’m not a scientist. I’m not even really an engineer. I mean, I know how to defuse a bomb but I don’t know how to design one….”

Tucker closed the file. “I’m talking about being an SSR agent. Something like the FBI, but more specialized. Investigation, spies, intelligence…. We’re already having problems with advanced technology falling into the wrong hands, and it’s only going to get worse. The Reich is crumbling. Hitler made a huge gamble on that Ardennes offensive and he lost, big; we've shoved him back where he came from and we're going to be crossing the Rhine in another six weeks tops. Hydra's a parasite and it's going to start looking around for a new host — if we don't kill it first, that is. All this stuff’s going to start hitting the black market, we're going to have fathead soldiers picking that crap up for souvenirs, and then God only knows what the Soviets are getting up to….”

“And you really think I’d be able to help you out?”

“Absolutely. You've got the skills we need, and in real life you need hours and hours of desk work to crack a case. If it was just running around chasing people, anybody could be an agent.”

Tucker leaned forward. “Think about it. Even if you’re sitting behind a desk, wouldn’t you rather be helping catch bad guys than writing the monthly widget sales analysis report?”

Sousa pictured himself writing a widget sales analysis report. Even the most tedious recon reports sounded better than that.

“Besides,” said Tucker, “when I was talking to your doctor, I asked him what he thought you’d be able to do once you were recovered. He said he wouldn’t put money on running or jumping, but that you might still prove him wrong — he said, ‘these guys are always surprising us.’  I bet, in the right circumstances, you’d be able to do some work in the field.”

It sounded unbelievable. But there was Major Tucker.

“It sounds interesting,” said Sousa. “It sounds real interesting.”

“Good. I think we could use you, and I sure as hell don’t want to lose you to Hoover.”

“So… how would this work?”

“Keep getting better, and then get yourself out of here long enough for an interview. After that, it's just a matter of getting  your doctor to spring you — I wonder how we could hurry that along? I can hold a place, but I can’t do it forever — and then we could transfer you from the Army to the SSR. We get you trained, we swear you in, and then? You’d be Agent Sousa.”

Agent. Now that would be something.

“Would it be out of Washington?” asked Sousa.

“Either Washington or New York.” Tucker opened the file, took out an envelope, and handed it to Sousa. “Here’s how you can get in touch with me. That’s my cover address in Washington. As soon as you can get cleared for a furlough, let me know and we’ll set up the interview. You can discuss this with Major Peyton, but otherwise keep it quiet.”

“Thank you.” Sousa opened the envelope and glanced at the folded paper inside. “Anything you want me to study up on, to get ready?”

“Good question. Unfortunately I don’t have anything to give you; it’s all classified and there’s not much privacy in a hospital. Keep up with the news, read up on current science and technology; if you can find anything on basic police work or detective work, that’d probably be good. Maybe the Army has one of those correspondence courses? I don’t know.

“Other than that, keep plugging away. The sooner we can get you in for that interview, the better.

“Oh, one last question: your last name — S-O-U-S-A?”

“Uh… yeah, that’s right.” Sousa pulled his dog tags out from his pajama shirt and braced himself for the wearisome any relation to John Philip Sousa? question.

Tucker just looked at the file jacket and nodded. “Just wanted to hear it from you. Part of the reason it took us a while to find you was… well, let’s just say someone misheard the message and lost some time looking for Lieutenant Di Souza. The Captain’s team and then the 339^th set us straight, but then over here I got led on a snipe hunt by a couple of clerks who weren’t paying attention and brought me to meet Lieutenant Souza S-O-U-Z-A. But you’re Lieutenant S-O-U-S-A.”

Tucker looked at the file jacket again. “Huh! All the more reason you ought to make captain.” He held up the file jacket. It was labeled 1LT. SOUSA, DANIEL ANTONIO. He covered Sousa’s rank and the first two letters of his last name with his fingers. “Because then you’d be Captain USA. See?”

Sousa forced a polite chuckle. “Sure. If you squint, I guess.”

“Ah, people who know where to look’ll see it. It’s been there waiting the whole time.  One more reason you belong with us.

“Well, Lieutenant, it’s been a pleasure, but I need to be getting back to Washington.”

“Thank you so much,” said Sousa. “I can’t believe you went to all this trouble to find me.”

“I think it’s going to turn out to be time well spent. I think this is going to work out well for all of us. Don’t wait for the furlough — drop me a line now and then, will you, and keep me up to date on your progress.”

“I will, thanks.”

“All right.” Tucker stood up and shook Sousa’s hand. “Keep up the good work, and we’ll see you again soon.”

 

After Tucker left, Sousa unfolded the paper again. It was just a typed name and Washington address, with a business name — Elliott, Terrence, and Crewe — that could have been anything. It almost seemed like Tucker had given him the wrong piece of paper, which was probably the point.

A knock sounded at the door. Sousa quickly put the paper away. “Come in,” he called.

It was Major Peyton. “How did your visit go?” he said. “Just so you know: they are not going to pressure me into letting you do anything before you’re ready.”

“Thanks for the tip,” said Sousa.

“Yes, well…” Peyton handed him a file folder. Sousa opened it up: It was hospital letterhead.

“This is a big opportunity,” said Peyton. “You should probably write and confirm your interest, thank him for coming and all that. And it’s official business, so you should have some official paper. I’ll ask the Gray Ladies to bring a typewriter down for you.”

Sousa looked up. “Thank you.” It occurred to him that the visit had only happened at all because Peyton had given permission, and because Peyton had given him a good prognosis. “And thanks for… setting it all up.”

Peyton nodded. “See you tomorrow, then.”

Sousa glanced at the clock and lay back down. If he weren’t tied to the traction, he… well, he wasn’t sure what he’d do first. Go find a typewriter? Go to the gym? Go to the library and start looking for books? Get the correspondence course catalog? Order a new Class A uniform?

He just couldn’t tell anyone about what had just happened, and in a way that taboo seemed only natural: if he told anyone, the spell might break, and this incredible opportunity would vanish. They had sought him out, and found him with most of his leg blown off, and they wanted him anyway. And Peyton seemed to think he could do it. And this wasn’t that can-do-spirit bull from the movies and the pamphlets — this was real, this was Peyton’s report to Tucker.

He’d have to keep his hopes realistic, of course. They might not be able to hold a place for him. They might decide not to accept him. He might get to the interview and decide not to take the job. But that didn’t seem very likely.

Sousa had never worked in an office and had only a vague idea of what people did in offices: carbon paper, telephones, typewriters…. He’d only begun to wonder how he would enter that world, and hadn’t thought of it with any enthusiasm at all. Even before the war, he'd been accustomed to much more strenuous work, and now…

Well, especially now that he’d been at war, sitting at a desk had seemed so… boring. Not that jobs were supposed to be entertaining, of course. But he remembered how proud and satisfied he’d been back in his lifeguard days when he’d made a save, or after a successful day’s catch on his uncle’s boat, or after a hard day’s work at the shipyard, when he and the crew could look at what they’d accomplished. And then there was opening his pay envelope and seeing the overtime pay, and an occasional production bonus.

And then… there were things he’d liked about his time in the Army.  Not the freezing cold and mud and the mosquitoes and the living in foxholes, and certainly not the being shot at — no, he was perfectly happy to leave that behind.  But the learning, and the chances he’d been given to prove himself, and the challenges, both mental and physical, and the knowing that what he was doing was important, was protecting people, was part of something big: that had been deeply satisfying.

And now he was being given a chance to keep doing it: to build on what he’d learned, to keep being the man he’d become during the war. Now he had some idea of where he was going, or at least of where he could be going. Maybe, in the end, this wouldn’t be where he’d end up, but it certainly gave him a good direction to start out in….

Lieutenant Munn knocked at the door.  “Are you ready?”

“Sure, come on in.” He waited for her to lift the traction weight, and scooted toward the side to get ready to turn.

“How was your visit?”

“It was good. It was… old business. But it went well.”

 

Once he was hooked back up to the traction, he let his mind drift back to what Tucker had told him: …Like the FBI, but more specialized. Investigation, spies, intelligence….

Sousa had been a kid when the federal government had set up special squads to bring down the big gangsters, and for a while he’d been fascinated by their stories. He'd read about them in the papers, and when he found a book about about them in the school library he’d checked it out over and over and over again. At first he was reading for the stories of the field agents, scoffing at bribes and raiding the gangsters' hideouts. But the book also talked about the work of the special agents behind the desks, poring over records with their green eyeshades looking for tiny clues, and how it was their work that did what the field agents couldn't, that brought the evidence that finally put some of the big criminals away. Integrity, bravery… and patience.  

He thought of his twelve-year-old self, his heart still aching a little with loss, reading that book night after night under the covers with a flashlight, daydreaming about growing up to become an honest, fearless government agent and going after bad guys with an axe and a gun. 

And now, in the most unexpected way, that daydream might be coming true. Maybe not with an axe — maybe with a pencil and a typewriter — but still: protecting the good guys and going after bad guys.

 

Agent Sousa.

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

First, if you'll permit me a little ill-mannered fist-pumping (spoilers for Agent Carter Season 2):

Bastogne? The Battle of the Bulge? Bomb defusing (a task for engineers)? You read it here first. @Keysburg has Daniel as being in reconnaissance, and I'll have to ask you to take my word for it that I've been thinking along the same lines for months.

(AC spoilers over)

Notes:

All the stuff about the SSR is dramatic license based on what Marvel's given us.

OCS/ Officer Candidate School: There were a few routes to becoming an officer. You could attend a service academy, such as West Point; you could participate in the Reserve Officer's Training Corps in college; you could graduate from college and attend OCS; or you could qualify for OCS by attaining a certain enlisted rank (Sergeant, I believe) and passing a rigorous entrance exam. I took some liberty in having Daniel's superiors push him so that they could promote him quickly and have him take the exam.

you and your squad kept that field hospital from washing away in a mudslide: Based on a real incident.

crossing the Rhine: Tucker is being conservative. The Allies cross the Rhine around three weeks later.

I sure as hell don’t want to lose you to Hoover: J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI. I could see there being some competition between the two agencies for funding and resources.

(spoiler for QV: Yes, Daniel will make captain by the end of the fic.)

Thanks to CotyCat for bouncing some ideas around with me and making sure this chapter (written under the haze of influenza A - I will never skip my flu shot again) made some kind of sense.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which I carry around in a silk-lined file folder in my mind.

Chapter 20: The Best-Laid Schemes

Summary:

Life goes on after the SSR guy leaves.

 

 

Sousa’s first challenge from the SSR came that very afternoon, after physical therapy, when a Gray Lady knocked on his door.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant. Major Peyton told us you needed to use the typewriter this afternoon. I can bring it down now, if you’re up for it.”

“Now would be great. Thanks.” Sousa grabbed the trapeze, sat up, and started pulling his papers together and clearing a space on his overbed table. A couple of minutes later, he heard the typewriter stand rattling and squeaking down the hall. He cringed: was this going to be attracting unwanted attention? Who’s the typewriter for? What’s Sousa up to?

The Gray Lady pushed the typewriter into the room, and Sousa quickly realized that she thought that she was going to type the letter for him. Once he politely set her straight on that issue, he discovered that that the typewriter itself was secured to the stand: he would not be able to use it in bed. If the Gray Lady knew how to get it loose, she wasn’t admitting it. As she offered again to type the letter for him, he considered his options.

He could ask one one of the desk clerks or the orderlies for help; one of them would certainly know where to find a screwdriver — or who to ask to get one, which meant more attention being drawn to this little project — was he ever going to get out of traction, this was making everything so complicated, all he wanted to do was write a damn letter — and come to think of it, maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to have that heavy typewriter on a rolling overbed table above his bad leg with the open wound….  

Or he could get out of bed, which meant talking Lieutenant Munn into helping him get up. He sighed. No matter what, he was going to have to ask yet another person for help; he might as well do it in a big way. He asked the Gray Lady to see if she could call Lieutenant Munn for him.

At least Lieutenant Munn didn’t put up a fight. Once Sousa reminded her that Peyton had put in the request for him, so of course it must be all right with him, no need to call….  that was good enough for her. A few minutes later he was sitting up in the chair, pulling the typewriter toward himself, and rolling in the letterhead.

He looked up. The Gray Lady had sat down in the guest chair. She was not going to let that typewriter out of her sight: she was going to wait for him.

Great. He hadn’t touched a typewriter in months and now he was going to have an audience.

As he thought about what he would say, another complication came to mind: the censor. For a moment he wondered if he could get around it — could he get Grahn or even Peyton to mail it for him? But that would call attention to what he was doing.… He looked again at the paper Tucker had left for him. Tucker hadn’t said anything about security beyond using the cover address.

Well, one way to keep a secret is to act like you don’t have a secret; they’d taught him that back when he was training for recon.

Dear Mr. Tucker….

Typing was slow going. He did his best to concentrate on his spelling and ignore the Gray Lady, who was making a point of not watching him, and was radiant with her desire to Be Helpful and her impatience with his two-finger typing. He kept the letter vague — thank you for your visit, I appreciate it very much; looking forward to talking with you again soon — and hoped that Tucker would understand.

Finally it was done. He rolled the platen knob and took out his letter. It wasn’t perfect-looking, but it was good enough.

He typed the envelope, signed the letter, turned the typewriter back over to the Gray Lady, and accepted her offer to mail the letter for him. His first SSR business: completed.

 

And then it was back to the usual: shots, whirlpool, mail, meals, physical therapy. He was beginning to look forward to physical therapy, and not just because it was a break from traction. He could really see his progress now, slow as it was: every day a few more steps, every day a little stronger. He pushed himself at every session and practiced at every opportunity, even if it was just a couple of steps on crutches from a wheelchair back to bed.

He was doing just that late one morning after returning from whirlpool: standing, checking his balance, walking over to the bed, turning around, and sitting down. He turned to say good-bye to the orderly and was surprised to see Grahn waiting behind him.

Grahn stepped backwards to let the orderly pass out of the room and then came around the end of Sousa’s bed. “Look at you! How far can you go now?”

“Almost to the bathroom. Give me another week or two and I might be able to make it all the way to the door and back. That’ll be something to write home about. What are you up to, back so early?”

Grahn went over to his closet. “Just picking up my swim trunks. They’re sending me to the pool.”

“I didn’t know there was a pool here.”

“There isn’t, but there are at a couple of the other hotels, they run buses. I think we’re going to the President this morning.”

Sousa slowly tapped his fingers on his crutches. What would it be like to go to the pool? To push off from the side and swim, even for just a few feet; to bounce around in the shallow end, maybe dog-paddle a little….

“This is your first time, right?” he asked.

Grahn tossed a tube of shampoo and some socks into his bag. “Yeah. I don’t know how much fun it’s going to be. I’ve got these exercises I’m supposed to do — hang on to the side of the pool and kick, stuff like that. But when I get back I can give you the skinny.” He picked up his bag. “All right, see you later!”

“See you later.”

As Grahn left, another orderly arrived with a wheelchair. Sousa carefully stood up and shifted one of his crutches from his right hand to his left. Nothing new about his schedule; it was just time to wash up.

 

He had PT in his room that afternoon. The therapist had him start off with the usual exercises, reminding him (as she did at least once a week) that he’d keep doing them once he was discharged. Then she handed him his crutches and got out of the way.

Sousa stood up, shifted a crutch to his left hand, and got started. He had a goal in mind and he thought he could reach it today. Ten, eleven, twelve steps… He stopped to catch his breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the physical therapist nodding. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen… he pushed himself… Eighteen.  He’d made it to the bathroom of his hospital room.

“Well done!” said the physical therapist. “Want to take a look inside?”

“Sure,” said Sousa.

“Okay. Get close to the threshold there, put your crutch tips on the other side, and just make sure your foot clears it…. That’s the way. There you go! What do you think?”

“Well… it’s a bathroom,” said Sousa. Still, it was the first time he’d ever seen its interior. He looked around. It had the same look as the rest of the hotel turned hospital: elegance with naked practicality slapped on top of it, like a movie star wearing a fancy long dress under a well-used rubber apron. Metal handrails had been screwed into the beautiful tile by the toilet and bath. Sousa peeked into the shower. There was a handrail in there, too, and a simple, sturdy-looking chair.

“Take a look at that shower,” said the therapist. “Once you get in there, you can shower in salt water if you want! I bet this is the only hospital in the Army where you can do that.”

Sousa looked more closely. Sure enough, there were two sets of taps in the bath: one set marked for hot and cold salt water, one set for fresh.

“Are you doing all right?” said the therapist.

“Yeah,” said Sousa.

“You can practice sitting down if you want.” She nodded toward the toilet. Sousa chuckled and took a step forward.

The bathroom wasn’t tiny, but it was still a tricky place to try to maneuver; Sousa had to stop a couple of times and think out how he was going to turn and where he would plant his crutches. When he was standing in front of the toilet, the therapist came, put the lid down, and stood next to him. He felt a heave of embarrassment. She sees this all the time, he reminded himself.

“Ready?” said the therapist. “Feel it on the back of your leg? Okay, switch your crutch, and use the handrail with your left hand.” She grabbed the twill walking belt around his waist. “Okay, go ahead. Watch out, it’s lower than you think.”

He cautiously began to sit. He felt a slight sense of alarm when there was no chair where a chair usually would be, but a few more inches and he was safe.

“When you’re stronger we’ll teach you how to do it when there’s no handrail,” said the therapist. “Catch your breath, and then stand up when you’re ready.”

A stand, a pivot, six steps out of the bathroom, and eighteen steps back to bed…. By the time he sat back down, Sousa was exhausted. The therapist pretended to chide him about overextending himself, and herself for letting him do it, and then patted him on the shoulder once he was back in bed. “Well done,” she said. “I’ll see you Wednesday.”

He had a little time to rest before his afternoon snack arrived. The tomato soup hit the spot, and he was scraping out the last bit with his spoon when an orderly arrived.

“Lieutenant Sousa? You got some mail.” He handed Sousa a couple of letters and a small parcel. Sousa took them eagerly and looked at the return address and the postmark on the parcel. It was from Ines.

“Want to open that now?” asked the orderly. He offered Sousa a pocket knife.

“Thanks,” said Sousa. He cut the string and took off the brown paper. The orderly gathered up the wrappings and the soup bowl and went on his way.

Sousa checked the other letters. One was in his father’s handwriting and one was in Tillie’s. They were postmarked after the package, so of course he would have to open the package first, wouldn’t he? It was only logical. He opened the box and dug in.

Two kinds of bar cookies…. three pairs of black socks and a pair of bed socks… the morning paper from his hometown… some pictures drawn by his nephew and his niece. His nephew’s picture was an elaborate picture of cowboys and Indians riding horses and doing… something. Were they defending the train? He wasn’t sure. His niece’s artwork was even more mystifying, giant circles and scribbles of crayon. At the bottom of the page, Ines had captioned it for him: “ ‘My house.’ Katie, Age 3 3/4”

That implied she had a birthday coming up. He made a mental note to confirm the date and kept sifting through the box. A few snapshots – the kids playing outside in the snow, Charlie standing with pride next to his snowman, and all three of them sitting on a couch with Ines, Tillie, and his father. He smiled, took out a cookie, and went on to the letters that had been enclosed in the box.

There were three: one from Ines, one from Mr. and Mrs. Escobar, and to his surprise, one from Tillie. He opened Tillie’s first.

Dear Daniel, I’m so sorry, I’ve been trying and trying to get back down to see you and bring you your socks — I hope you like them — please let me know about the bed socks, it’s a new pattern — I actually finished them a while ago but I held off on sending them because I thought I could bring them in person but now I don’t know when I’m going to be able to. It’s final, Joe is shipping out and I have one last chance to see him — I’m leaving for New York first thing in the morning — I’ll try to get to see you before I come back up but I guess by the time you get this you’ll know whether I made it or not. Ines is going to mail the socks for me  because I don’t know when I’m going to be able to get enough time to travel again  so you can start wearing them. I’ll write again as soon as I can. Love, Tillie.

He sighed. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been hoping for another visit from Tillie, especially now that he was up and around more and was a little less pathetic than when she’d visited back in January. But of course she had to visit Joe if she had the chance. Joe was her husband, after all, and he was going to the ETO and who knew when he would be back?

Still, it was one more reminder: Tillie was married now, and she’d joined Ines’s world. Their world was bigger now, they had other responsibilities: husbands, children, in-laws…. He was the only one left.

He turned to Mr. and Mrs. Escobar’s short letter.  They had some family news, including what they’d last heard from Pete and from their youngest son Ritchie, who were both in the Pacific.  It was old news; Daniel had already heard it from Ines, and in more detail. The rest of the note touched briefly on a few of their other favorite topics — the weather, their other grandchildren, their plans for their garden, the chicks they were expecting any day now — and some news about his father and Tillie, just in case he hadn’t heard it from his father and Tillie.

He smiled. It was kind of them to write to him, but then the Escobars had always been kind to him, long before Pete and Ines had gotten married. After his mother died and the aunts had had to go home, Mrs. Escobar had been one of the neighborhood mothers who’d let him stay at their houses after school until one of his sisters could get him. Daniel remembered that gloomy winter: sitting at Mrs. Escobar’s kitchen table on afternoons when Tillie had something to do after school, drinking broth or eating a bowl of soup as he started his homework and she started the family’s dinner. Ritchie was sometimes there too, if he didn’t have something going after school. They weren’t close friends; Ritchie was older than Daniel, in Tillie’s class, and was a bit of a loudmouth and a scamp — but they’d always been friendly and had gotten along well. Daniel privately suspected that in Mrs. Escobar’s eyes, he would always be in the sixth grade, having a snack at her kitchen table as Ritchie tilted his chair back on two legs and loudly talked about his day.

He went on to Ines’s letter.

 

Dear Daniel,

A quick note while the cookies cool. I’m not sure how much Tillie told you. Joe called her the other night to let her know that the orders were final and he had a date for his embarkation; he has a Class A pass but couldn’t get a pass to travel. Yesterday she begged and pleaded and scrambled, and somehow she got enough time to go see him. She’s on her way right now, she left early this morning. She’s worried that she’s not going to be able to get time off for travel again for a while, so she asked me to go ahead and mail your socks for her. And of course we can’t have a parcel with nothing but socks! That would be so dull. So I’ve tucked in some other things I was gathering to send you, and some cookies to keep them all company. I hope you enjoy them….

 

From there, Ines launched into her usual daily letter: a quick, wry summary of the previous day’s events; something funny about one of the kids….

 

No letter from Pete yesterday, so that’s all my news for today. We’re always thinking about you, and we’ll keep working to get someone down there. Maybe Papai will be able to come soon. As for me, I don’t know. I don’t think I could come with all three of the kids. I hate to impose on the Escobars, but maybe sometime the Escobars could take the older two for a couple of days and I could bring the baby and come down with Papai or Tillie. I’ll keep trying to figure something out. I really want to see you.

The cookies are ready, so it’s time to pack them up and get this box to the post office. Enjoy your package, and make sure to let us know if the socks fit!

Love, Ines

 

All these apologies for cancelling a visit they’d never promised and he hadn’t expected… it made Daniel uncomfortable, especially hearing it from Ines. Sure, it would be good to see them, but he knew it was hard for them to travel….

And besides, he wasn’t going anywhere. He put Ines’s letter back in the box and took out the letters that had come by themselves. One was from his father; the other one, and the most recently postmarked, was from Tillie. It had been mailed from Connecticut.

He opened the envelope and took out the letter. A small snapshot fluttered out onto his lap: a photo-booth picture of Tillie and Joe. There was nothing silly about their smiles.

 

Dear Daniel,

I’m writing on the train, I’m on my way back home. I did get to see Joe— he says hi, and he’ll see you when he gets back….

 

She wrote a quick account of her trip down to New York, of how she’d gotten help from the Red Cross finding a respectable place to stay, of how she’d been able to spend two precious evenings with Joe…. of how she’d tried to work in a side trip to Atlantic City, but just couldn’t manage it.

 

I guess I can tell you this now. The past few weeks I’ve been trying to plan a way for Joe and me to both come to Atlantic City — we could meet there and you could finally get to meet him (and I could give you your socks) and we could all be together. Wouldn’t that have been swell? I thought it was a real brainchild of an idea.

 

Daniel wasn’t sure how swell that would been for Joe — hanging around in a hospital visiting a bedridden brother-in-law he’d never met before — but at least he would have gotten some time away with Tillie.

Oh well. At least this way he’d be wearing clothes, not pajamas, when he finally got to meet Joe…

 

…Maybe I can help Ines get down there. It’s so frustrating! If we could all come together, we could bring the kids to see you for a little bit, and then take turns watching them and visiting you.

We’re going to stop at Greenwich soon, so let me finish this up so I can get it in the mail. I hope when I get home there'll be another letter from you telling us how you’re doing.  We’re all thinking of you —

Love, Tillie

P.S Make sure you tell me about the socks! I want to make sure they fit right!

 

He put everything back in the box, put the box on the table, and lay back down again.

It was strange, he thought, how a box from home could stir up so much, how it could make you happy and still a little bit sad. There was the simple happiness of cookies and warm feet, and the warm feeling of knowing your sisters loved you enough to go to the trouble of making and sending cookies and socks; there was the pride and gratitude that went with having smart and skillful sisters who wrote letters, and made cookies that were delicious and didn’t turn into crumbs, and who made socks that were a thousand times better than the Army’s; there was the comfort of remembering growing up, how your sisters were bossy and exasperating and left their stockings and garters dripping in the bathroom and stuck up for you and took you places and at some point, you suddenly realized, had started treating you like a grown-up instead of a little kid.

And then there was the bewildering mix of delight and disappointment at finding out that your sister had been trying to pull off a logistical feat to come see you... and that it hadn’t worked out. Would it have been better if Tillie hadn’t told him about what she’d been hatching? It was bad enough to hope for something and not get it, but to find out about something you would have hoped for that was now impossible….

No, he was still glad she’d told him. Tillie was right, it would have been fun. It wasn’t the way he would have liked to have met Joe — laid up in bed with his amputated leg tied to an eight-pound weight — but he still would have gotten to meet him. Maybe he could have gotten up for a bit, maybe he could have worked something out so he could have dinner with them sitting at a table like a normal person. Tillie and Joe could have gone to the Boardwalk and seen the sights and maybe had a bit of a real honeymoon, and come back the next day and told him about what they’d seen and done, and he would have enjoyed hearing about it and been happy for them.

So now Tillie could work on a new scheme: getting Ines to Atlantic City. He would have to ask her if there was anything he could do on his end. Grahn had said something about houses for rent….

 

The week wore on. Sousa had whirlpool again a couple of days later, but this time as he returned to his room, it wasn’t Grahn who stepped through the door; it was Captain Blaine.

“Oh, good, you’re back. Go ahead and get into bed, will you? We’d like to take a look at your leg. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

Sousa scowled. He had just had his dressing changed in whirlpool and now they were going to take it off again and poke at the wound, and it wasn’t even Thursday, they usually did this on Thursday now…. He clumsily took off his shoe and his robe, propped his crutches, and maneuvered himself back into bed.

The doctors took their time finding their way back, which gave Sousa plenty of time to get even more annoyed. They were making him miss his usual time to shave and wash up, which meant he’d have to wait until one of the orderlies had another free moment and who knew when that was going to be? As little as he had to do, he was still dependent on several other people for all of it. Those several other people all had other patients to care for and couldn’t sit around waiting on him, so it didn’t take much to throw the entire routine off.

Blaine finally showed up with Major Peyton and the rest of their squad. Sousa took a deep breath and picked a spot on the ceiling to stare at as they took off the dressing and removed the damp gauze packing the wound. He braced himself as the air hit the open end of his leg.

As usual, Blaine started presenting his case: “Lieutenant Sousa, age 24, guillotine amputation at the field hospital performed on December 20, revision performed at EGH December 28, today is nine weeks plus six days. Penicillin, continuous skin traction, whirlpool treatment three times a week; no complications….”

Sousa waited as the doctors talked about the wound and the appearance of the tissue and the amount of growth. Then came the part he dreaded the most: a couple of the doctors supported his leg while Peyton closely examined the wound. Today it was even worse; it felt like Peyton was doing much more poking and pressing on the edges of the wound than usual. Sousa couldn’t help wincing as he felt his right foot curl in on itself, like a fist.

“Almost there, Lieutenant,” said Peyton. He started talking to the other doctors about margins and padding and shaping. Sousa did not pay attention; it was the same conversation they had every other week or two about how they would someday sew up his leg. He forced himself to breathe evenly as they repacked the wound — somehow they were never as gentle as the nurses — and covered the whole thing with a dressing.

“…All right, then,” Peyton was saying to the other doctors. He raised his voice slightly. “Lieutenant Sousa: What would you say to finishing up traction in, say… another three weeks?”

“Meaning another three weeks and I’d be done? And I wouldn’t have to stay in bed any more?”

“Exactly.”

“That sounds fine to me. Unless there’s a way I could finish up sooner.”

“Well… maybe.” To Sousa’s surprise, Peyton sounded optimistic. “Though I don’t want to write any checks I can’t cash, if you know what I mean. But yes, you might be able to stop traction sooner, because your leg’s healed to the point where we’re ready to close.”

“Meaning sew up my leg? Are you serious?”

“Serious enough to put you on the schedule. Let’s try for tomorrow or Friday.”

“Oh, thank God,” said Sousa. “Wait — so even though the leg’s closed, I still need to stay in traction?”

“Just until we know the incision’s healing well,” replied Peyton. “I’d be surprised if it took any longer than three weeks, and it might take less. Then after that, once the incision can take the weight and some of the swelling goes down, you can get fitted for your first prosthesis. That’s usually three to six weeks.”

Sousa could not think that far ahead. All he could think about was three more weeks and an end to traction.

“All right then,” said Peyton. “Lieutenant Sousa, we’ll let you know when we can get you into the operating room. And we’ll see you in the morning on rounds.”

“Thanks so much. This is… oh, God, I can’t wait.”

“Sure you can. You’re a patient man, you’ve waited this long. But you’re almost there. We close your wound, you finish up traction… and then you’ll really get to work.” He wrote on Sousa’s clipboard. “See you in the morning.” He led the group of doctors out, leaving Sousa to savor the news.

 

Three more weeks — tops — and he would be free.

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which I suspend in front of the window to catch the light.

Thanks to CotyCat for bouncing some ideas around with me.

---

a Class A pass: The most liberal pass. Joe has been given permission to do as he pleases when he's not on duty.

Chapter 21: Winding and Unwinding

Summary:

Sousa's third surgery brings new changes and challenges.

 

 

“Ready?” asked Lieutenant Munn.

“Yeah,” said Sousa.

“Okay, go ahead.”

As Lieutenant Munn guided his right leg, Sousa used his arms and left leg to scoot himself from the gurney back to his bed. Once he was back in the middle of the bed, Lieutenant Munn stepped aside to let the orderly roll the gurney out of the room. She came back to the back of Sousa’s bed and gently examined his right leg.

“How does it feel?” she asked.

“Kind of tight? I don’t know how to explain it. I can tell the big dressing’s not there.”

“Any pain?”

“No, not really. Should the bandage be that tight, though?”

“Oh yes. You’ll see when the doctors come by this afternoon. Your leg’s going to be really swollen at first — that’s normal — so over the next few weeks we’re going to need to get that swelling down and get your leg ready to accept a prosthesis.”

Sousa nodded. He didn’t quite understand, but then he was still a little tired and dopey after the surgery. And they’d explain it to him again; they always did.

It was two days since they’d given him the news that he was finally going to get his leg sewn up. Today he’d had the surgery: another trip to the operating room; another round of counting to ten while a friendly nurse held a mask over his nose and mouth, and then the mask suddenly being gone and the same nurse calling his name and telling him that the operation was over and he was going to the recovery room….

Now that he was back in his own bed, Sousa took another look at his leg. It did look wider than his left leg. It was tightly wrapped in a wide elastic bandage, wrapped as snug as it could possibly be without being painful, winding in an overlapping pattern from the end all the way up into his groin and a few times around his hips. And there were those fabric tabs again, poking out from between the turns of the elastic bandage on the end of his leg.

“So how does the traction work now that it’s all sewn up?” he asked.

“Same way it did before.” She pointed to the tabs. “Those are taped to your skin, just the way they were before, and they’re stuck on there so that one end is above the suture line — the incision where your stitches are — and the other end is free for the traction spreader. The traction pulls on the skin, and that keeps the edges of the incision pulled together so it heals up faster and you have a nice neat scar. Speaking of which, let’s get that spreader on….” She started tacking the tabs back on the wooden hexagon.

Only three more weeks, Sousa reminded himself. More than two-thirds of the way there. Only three more weeks.

“Okay, onto your stomach, please.” She helped guide his right leg as he turned over. “There you go. It’ll be important for you to spend plenty of time in this position; it helps get the swelling down and it keeps your muscles limber.” She positioned his right leg, putting a rolled towel in between his legs and a folded blanket beneath his right leg.   A few moments later he felt the pull of the traction; once again he noticed the absence of the big dressing that had protected his open wound. He did not miss it at all.

Lieutenant Munn made sure he had everything he needed — water, books, bedside table — and promised to come back a little later.

Only three more weeks. He repeated it to himself as he dozed off.

 

Grahn turned up late that afternoon. “Hey, Sousa! So how’d it go?”

“Pretty well, I guess. They took me down around 1000 and I was back by…. what, 1430, I guess?”

“Yeah? And you’re feeling okay?”

“Yeah.” Sousa shrugged. “It’s not all that different; they still have me in traction. At least that big dressing’s gone, though. It feels good just to be getting somewhere.” The complaint slipped out before he knew it.

“It does, doesn’t it.” Grahn turned from the mirror, where he’d been checking his shave, and put his canes by his bed on his way to his closet. “Speaking of getting somewhere, I don’t know if you heard the news: Llewellyn and Nash got beds at Walter Reed. They’re leaving tomorrow.”

“No, I hadn’t heard that.” Sousa vaguely remembered hearing something about this in a discussion group: Walter Reed, permanent prosthesis, rehab….

“I think they just found out yesterday.” Grahn took his Class A uniform out of his closet and carried it over to the bed. “So we’re taking them out tonight. If the good Lord smiles on us and they pick pizza, you want some?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.” Grahn started to unbutton his blue shirt. “Those cookies were worth at least half a pizza. Of course, I should be offering the pizza to your sister, since she’s the one who actually sent them. When’s she coming down again?”

“That was my other sister who sent the cookies. I don’t know when either of them are going to be able to come down.”

“Well, get ‘em both down here, we can all play bridge.” Grahn pulled the curtain. Sousa heard a creak of springs as Grahn sat on his bed and started unlacing his shoes. “And — and — if they come after you’re out of traction? We can all go out for pizza.”

“Well, I’d have to get my prosthetic first.”

“No you wouldn’t. Guys go out in wheelchairs all the time. You just roll on down to the restaurant, bring your crutches if you want to use them, it’s fine.”

Sousa considered this idea. “So why’d you have to wait so long before you got to go out?”

“Well, I had that cast, remember?” Clothing rustled as Grahn changed into his uniform trousers. “Couldn’t even get the blue suit over it; forget real clothes. And then there was that whole business about taking it slow letting me off the ward again, much less out of the hospital. Honestly! One lousy little sprained knee and they never let you live it down.” Sousa snickered; he’d heard that story.

Grahn drew back the curtain and finished getting ready. He was just starting to comb his hair when they heard the doctors’ voices outside the door.

“…And that’s my cue,” he said. He hurriedly finished up at the mirror, grabbed his hat and canes, and headed for the door. “Stay out of trouble. I’ll see you later.”

“See you later.” Sousa could hear the doctors greeting Grahn as he tried to slip past them.

A few more minutes and Lieutenant Munn and the doctors were filing in and greeting him and asking him how he was feeling and telling him that they were going to take a look at his suture line. One of them lifted the traction weight onto the bed.

“Lift your right leg, please?” said Captain Blaine. Sousa lifted his right leg as Blaine unclipped the elastic bandage and unwound it, loop after loop after loop.

It was a relief to have the tight bandage off, but when Sousa looked down at his leg he felt a twist of revulsion. At first glance his leg looked even worse than it had before the surgery:  it was swollen to almost twice the width of his other leg, no visible muscle, just ballooned and… and strange-looking, with a faint texture left by the elastic bandage. It had been shaved again, and most of it was painted brown with iodine, and khaki with the tincture of benzoin they used to keep the bandages and traction tape from tearing his skin. The skin that wasn’t painted was weirdly shiny.

Sousa watched as Blaine folded back the free ends of the traction tape and removed the thick gauze dressing on the end of his leg, exposing the incision. The doctors shuffled to get a good look. Sousa himself couldn’t see it very well; it seemed to be more towards the back of the leg. He caught only a glimpse of tails of heavy black thread sticking up from the knots of the sutures.

“Your incision looks good, Lieutenant,” said Blaine. “The plan now is to keep it clean and dry and get the swelling in your leg down. So regular dressing changes.” He looked over to Lieutenant Munn. “Let’s go with every four to six hours at first and see how he does.”

Lieutenant Munn nodded, and Blaine turned his attention back to Sousa. “Pain okay? Have you been able to eat anything?”

“I had some Jell-O this afternoon. The leg doesn’t really hurt, but it feels like it’s… kind of pulling at the end.”

Blaine nodded. “Quite a few patients have that sensation. But don’t worry; your incision looks exactly as it should, nothing’s going to pop open. Let’s get you wrapped back up here….” The doctors filed out as Lieutenant Munn drew the bandage cart closer to the bed.

“I’m going to put some fresh gauze on the end of your leg,” said Blaine. Sousa started to relax a little, only to gasp as a bolt of freezing pain arced through the sole of his right foot and up his leg. For a moment he saw stars.

“You all right there?” he heard Blaine ask. Sousa tried to nod, but it was all he could do to force himself to breathe.

He felt Blaine grab his upper arm — “A little shot here” — a jab in his upper arm; soon he felt himself able to take a deep breath, and then began to feel the gentle warmth spreading through his body that meant morphine. The pain in his leg started to fade around the edges.

“Doing better?” said Blaine. “Let’s give him some aspirin.” Lieutenant Munn held his shoulders up as she handed him a tiny medicine cup with the pills and then a cup of water. She waited a bit after he swallowed the pills before she asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Thanks. Sorry — I don’t know what…”

“Happens all the time,” said Blaine. “Your body’s still getting used to the change. I’ll try to be a little more gentle this time.”

Blaine finished changing the gauze dressing. The gauze itched, and peculiar pains were still running up Sousa’s leg, but they weren’t quite so bad now.

“Okay, Lieutenant,” said Blaine, “turn on your left side — there you go — and lift your hips up off the bed, just like that.” Blaine deftly rewound the elastic bandage a couple of times around Sousa’s hips and then a few turns around his leg.

“Thanks,” said Blaine. “Go ahead and lie back down.” He clipped a second bandage to the end of the first and kept wrapping the bandage around Sousa’s leg in an overlapping figure-eight pattern, tightest at the end, around and around until the whole leg was covered, from the end of his leg all the way up into the groin.

Finally Blaine clipped the free end of the bandage. “There you go,” he said. “It’s normal for your leg to be sensitive. When you get back to physical therapy, they’ll teach you some exercises to desensitize your leg and give you a schedule. The better you keep to the schedule, the better it’ll work.”

“Will I still go to whirlpool?” asked Sousa.

“Nope, you're all done with that,” Blaine replied. “Doing better? You sure? Okay then. Have a good evening and we’ll see you in the morning.” He wrote something on Sousa’s clipboard and left the room.

 “Go ahead and stay on your back,” said Lieutenant Munn. “The dinner trays are on the way.” She helped Sousa get as comfortable as he could and put the traction back on. “Back in a bit.”

 

Grahn returned that evening with a little time to spare, but with empty hands: Llewellyn and Nash had not chosen pizza that night. He had a few minutes to jokingly complain about it before Lieutenant Munn stuck her head in the door to take the evening nose count.

Llewellyn and Nash themselves stopped by a little bit later to say good-bye to Sousa and a last good-bye to Grahn; they were leaving first thing in the morning. As they clapped Grahn on the shoulder and reminded him to stay out of trouble, Sousa suddenly remembered that when Grahn had first arrived, they’d already been in the hospital for months. And still, even after all this time, they weren’t going home; they were just going to another hospital, and he had no idea how long they would be there. It was a sobering thought.

After they left, Grahn closed the door and started his evening routine. After he’d showered and done his stump care, he filled Sousa in on the events of the evening — who had gone, what they’d all done, where they’d gone for dinner, who’d ordered what at the restaurant, the pretty girls at the next table…. As he talked, he puttered around his side of the room, packing a little bag with things from his closet and the bathroom.

“What’s that?” asked Sousa. “You running away?”

“Of course not. You know I can’t outrun those MPs just yet. No, they’re running a day trip to Philly tomorrow,  Whitford and I are going. Just repacking my little kit here. They’ll tell you about it when you get your prosthetic: when you go somewhere you want to keep a few supplies with you just in case you need ‘em — socks, laces, powder, that kind of thing. You get sweaty in these things and you have to keep your skin dry, and then if your leg swells or shrinks or you need to tighten your ankle or something….” He put the bag in his closet and went over to his nightstand. “You up for some bridge practice?” He held up his cards.

“Sure.” Sousa started adjusting his table.

“Speaking of bridge,” said Grahn, pulling up his chair, “I think we’re going to be able to get some games going on Saturdays pretty soon. I talked to one of the Gray Ladies today, and she promised she’d start spreading the word to the hostesses.”

“Oh? How soon is ‘pretty soon’? You haven’t taken all that many lessons.”

Grahn started shuffling the cards. “Then the hostesses will be able to give us lessons, won’t they?” Sousa rolled his eyes. “Besides, we have a couple more weeks to practice. I’m going to Philly tomorrow and then next weekend — well, actually next weekend I might be able to go home for a few days.”

“Really? That’s fantastic!”

“Thanks. It doesn’t seem real yet, you know? I don’t know if I’ll really believe it’s happening until I’m actually there. So I am booked for two Saturdays in a row, which means I’ll be around for the bridge thing the week after that, which will give the Gray Ladies two weeks to find us some hostesses who want to play bridge, and us two weeks to brush up some more, and you two weeks to finish up with traction so that you can come.”

Sousa shook his head. “Three more weeks.”

“If it takes the whole time. I bet it won’t.” Grahn looked up from the cards. “You’d better not finish while I’m at home! I’ll get back on Monday afternoon, so you can finish after that. If you finished on Monday or Tuesday, you might even be able to get your Class As back in time so we could go get pizza on Friday.” He started to deal the cards. “There. It’s good to have a plan, isn’t it.”

 

Sousa’s routine of shots and turns now included the unwrapping and rewrapping of his leg: first with the bedtime routine, again around midnight, and again around 0530. On morning rounds, the doctors unwrapped it again, so they could see his incision.

“It looks good,” said Blaine. “Another day or two and the physical therapist can start teaching you how to wash it and care for it.”

Sousa stared at his leg as Blaine started to rewrap it. For months now, he realized, he’d been thinking of his leg as “his” in name only, as actually being under the authority of the doctors and nurses. And now Blaine was talking about putting him in charge of it again, in charge of this poor confused leg that didn’t even seem to really belong to him. It was missing its knee and its calf and its foot, it didn’t match the other leg at all, it didn’t really match any of him.

He felt an impulse to touch it, to check if it was really connected to him, but he didn’t: Blaine was still wrapping it, and the thought of touching it made him nervous. What if he messed it up somehow?

 

It was a quiet day. Instead of going to physical therapy in the gym, as he usually did on Saturday, he only had a couple of sessions in his room doing the basic exercises. They barely let him get out of bed, and by the end of the day he felt tired and out of sorts.

He was looking forward to seeing Grahn again that evening and hearing about the day trip. 1830 came and went… 1900…

He asked the nurse about it when she came for the evening census. “We got an announcement a little while ago,” she said. “The bus is late.”

Grahn finally turned up around 2030. “Hey, Sousa,” he said, heading straight for his closet.

“There you are. How was it?”

“Swell. I’ll tell you more, I just need to get settled here.” Grahn threw his pajamas and robe onto his bed and drew the curtain. A few minutes later, the night nurse knocked on the door and came in. She went straight to Grahn’s side of the room and offered him some aspirin; he gratefully accepted. After she left he went into the bathroom and started his usual evening routine.

Finally he emerged from the bathroom. “That’s better,” he said. He drew back the curtain and started to hang up his clothes. “We had to stop on the way home — bus trouble — that’s why we’re so late.”

“Yeah? You okay?”

“Aw, I’m fine. Sorry to rush in like that; my leg’s a little sore, that’s all. Well, both of ‘em are, for different reasons.” He climbed into bed, propped his stump on a pillow, and lay back down. “We did a good bit of walking, and I had my prosthesis on for fourteen hours straight… my left leg got a little swollen, and I was worried I’d gotten a blister or something. But it’s okay.”

He launched into an account of the day’s events: the bus ride, the way he and Whitford and the other officers had been put in charge of groups of the enlisted men… the guide taking them around Philadelphia, the visit to the Liberty Bell (“Can you believe they had no dinner bells shaped like the Liberty Bell at the gift shop? Something about metal restrictions and there being a war on….”) — cheesesteaks for lunch, a nice dinner… the trip home, the bus trouble, taking over the diner in a tiny town while the bus got fixed (“they never knew what hit them, we were like a swarm of pie-eating locusts in olive drab”) — singing sarcastic soldier songs on the last leg of the trip….

As Grahn finished his tale, he sat up again and checked his left leg. He seemed satisfied; he pulled an elastic bandage out of the pocket of his robe and started to wrap his stump.

Sousa looked away as he waited for Grahn to finish. Questions were bubbling up in his mind about blisters; about Grahn, of all people, worrying about blisters; about Grahn still wrapping his stump every night, eight months after his amputation…. Of course he would never ask such nosy questions, they’d probably tell him about it later on anyway. But they were disquieting questions, all the same.

 

On Monday morning, the doctors made approving noises about the state of Sousa’s incision and said something about “getting back to physical therapy,” which pleased Sousa very much; since he wasn’t going to whirlpool, maybe they would take him to the gym instead.

He got his answer late that morning, when the physical therapist visited him in his room. She started the session by unwrapping his leg again and measuring its girth with a tape measure.

“It must be such a relief to you to have your incision closed!” she said. “And now we can get a really accurate measure of your flexibility. Please go ahead and lie back, keep the top of your leg facing to the ceiling — ” she gently positioned it — “and now point it out to your right….”

She guided his leg and then used an odd hinged ruler — a special protractor, Sousa realized — to measure how far he was able to move his leg to the side, how far he was able to lift it, how far he was able to extend it behind him…. After she finished the measurements, she took him through the usual exercises. It felt strange to do them now that the incision was closed and he could actually see his leg.

“Oh, this is very good, you’ve got good range of motion. So now that your leg is closed, it’s time for you to start learning how to care for it. First thing to know is that you’ll want to check it every day. It’s kind of swollen right now, but that’s normal. See how there are no red spots or places where the skin is injured? No crease marks from the bandage? That’s what you want to see.” She gave him a hand mirror. “Now let’s take a look at the back of your leg and at your suture line,” she said. “Go ahead, lift up your leg, use the mirror to get a good look….”

He took a deep breath, lifted his leg, and held the mirror to see the suture line.

The incision ran the width of his leg, side to side, slightly to the back, and was secured with closely spaced stitches of thick black thread. Like the rest of his leg, it was painted brown with iodine, and it looked bloated and strange.

It was ugly. It hit him like a kick to the stomach: front and back, his leg was ugly.

He made himself keep looking, and made himself listen as the therapist told him what to look for: no inflammation around the stitches, that was good; the edges of the suture line met each other all the way across, also good; no blisters or red spots on his skin, very important, very good….

“And now that you’ve checked your skin, it’s time to wash up,” she said.

She had him transfer to the chair and cover the traction tape with a towel. Then she brought over a basin of water and told him to gently soap up and wash the end of his leg.

“You want me to put soap on it?” he asked. “With my hands?”

“Not on the incision line itself,” she said. “But yes, all the way up to the end of your leg. You can be very gentle. No need to scrub.”

He tried to not let her see how nervous he was. He hadn’t really touched his leg at all this whole time, and certainly not all the way down by the amputation site; he’d always been too afraid of screwing up the traction or the dressing or the positioning of his leg, or of further injuring it somehow.

But now he had a physical therapist standing over him, expecting him to do it. He soaped up his hands and forced himself to lightly brush some of the lather on the end of his leg.

“Remember, there’s a nice thick pad of muscle and tissue at the end of your leg. You’re not going to hurt it,” said the therapist.

“Got it,” said Sousa. He was still overwhelmed at how strange it felt. When he touched the end of his leg, he felt it — it was definitely part of his body — but it felt strange and wrong. Everything seemed magnified — the feeling of his hand on his leg, the feeling of the soap, even the wetness of the water —  and his right foot was starting to tickle. He was relieved when the therapist told him he could stop.

He timidly patted his leg dry while the physical therapist cleared the bath supplies away. When she got back, she had him get back into bed.

“Now I’m going to teach you some important things about caring for your stump,” she said. “This first thing I’ll teach you, you’ll do every day around bath time.”

She pointed to the end of his leg. “As the skin on the end of your stump heals, it’s going to form a scar. You want the scar to stay just in the skin layer and not anchor itself to the tissues underneath, so your skin will stay mobile. Like this.” She loosely pinched the skin on the back of her hand and wiggled it around. “That doesn’t hurt me. And that’s how you want the skin on the end of your leg to heal up. Otherwise it’s going to hurt when you wear your prosthesis.

“So you’re going to massage the end of your leg, where the scar is forming. You’ll start near the end of your leg, and then later on — once the doctors tell you it’s okay — you’ll do it over the healed suture line. Take two fingers and put them right on the end of your leg — just like that. Now, press down and move them in a circle a couple of times, move that skin around. There you go… Now, keep doing that across the end of your leg.”

Sousa did as he was told. “And this won’t hurt it,” he said.

 “Not at all. Just the opposite.” She watched him for a few minutes as he did the massage over and around the end of his leg.

“Well done. You’re going to do that every day after you wash it. Now, the next thing I’m going to show you? You’ll do twice a day when the wrap and the dressing are off.” She pulled a cotton ball out of her pocket and handed it to him.

“This is called desensitization. Take the cotton ball and just rub it on the skin of your leg, all around, as firmly as you can tolerate. Go in circles, go back and forth, just don’t do it over your incision… just like that, good work. Keep going….”

Sousa gritted his teeth. He was not pressing very hard, but it still felt like he was rubbing steel wool over his skin instead of a cotton ball.

Finally she let him stop. “Good work. If you don’t do it in physical therapy this afternoon, then do it later when your leg’s unwrapped. But two times a day, for around three minutes each time.” Sousa nodded.

“Okay, let’s get your leg wrapped up again,” she said. She put fresh gauze over the end of his leg — Sousa tried not to flinch — and rewrapped his leg with fresh bandages, talking through what she was doing as she did it: “stretch the bandage here, let it relax here. Stretch here… stretch here… cross only in the back… all the way up… and clip. And there you go!”

She had him turn on his stomach and helped him correctly position his leg and the rest of himself. “Good work this morning,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said absently. “Do I get to go to the gym today? I didn’t get to go on Saturday.”

“Let me see what we can do. We’re still working on your new schedule,” she said.

 

They took him to the gym late that afternoon for an individual session with a team he didn’t know, which was a little disappointing; he was used to working with Lieutenant Jensen and Private Colman. But this wasn’t his usual session, he reminded himself. Maybe he’d be back in his routine the next day.

He did the usual exercises, some work in the parallel bars, and a little crutch walking. Then they led him over to a padded treatment table and helped him up. The physical therapist unwound Sousa’s elastic bandage, took off the gauze dressing, and gave him a cotton ball.

After he’d repeated the business with rubbing the cotton ball on his leg, the therapist had him tap the end of of his leg — and the suture line itself — with the pads of his fingers, very gently, for two minutes. She rewrapped his leg and then had him do the tapping again, over the elastic bandage.

“One to two minutes at a time, either with or without the bandage on, at least four times a day,” she said as he sat up again. “But you can do it more than that, as often as you like. Many men find it helps with phantom pain.”

“That’s good to know. Thanks,” said Sousa.  He gave the tapping a try as the orderly pushed his wheelchair back upstairs, and some more as he waited for Lieutenant Munn to come and put the traction back on. The tapping was a little uncomfortable, especially over his suture line, but he could live with it; he could always tap a little more lightly if he needed to, and if it helped with phantom pain, every twinge was worth it.

 

The next morning, the physical therapist met him in his room again. She gave him a sheet of paper for him to track his exercises. She measured his leg with the tape measure, took him through the usual exercises, and had him walk to the bathroom and back. Then she had him examine his leg with the mirror, wash the incision, work the scar, do the bit with the cotton ball, and show her the tapping.

“Now, one more thing to show you,” she said. “This is a kind of massage that’s different from what you’re doing for your scar. You’re going to do this for five minutes at a time, 3 to 4 times a day, with or without your bandage on. This is another one that can help with phantom pain, so you can do it more often if you like.”

She taught him how to lightly squeeze and release his leg, starting from just above the incision and working his way up. “Once your incision is healed, you can start right at the incision and start increasing the pressure to get those deep muscles.”

“I’ll take your word for it that there are really muscles in there,” he said. He was about halfway up his leg.

“I promise you, there are,” the therapist said. “That swelling’s going to go down over the next few weeks, and you’ll see. A few more minutes there….”

Finally she told him he could stop. He looked down at his legs. “When the swelling goes away, will it look like my left leg again?”

“Not exactly,” she said quietly. “A lot of the muscles that you see on your thigh —” she pointed to the front of his left leg — “are actually for moving your lower leg. Like this muscle group here, the quadriceps. Since your lower leg had to be amputated, that muscle group doesn’t really have anything to do any more; it’s going to grow smaller. And the muscles on your left leg are probably going to develop more. So no, your legs won’t be exactly identical.”

“And how long am I going to have to be worrying about swelling and wrapping my leg and…?”

She tested his old bandage and put it aside for the laundry. “Well, it’s different for everyone, of course. Men with amputations like yours, can take about a year for their stumps to reach a stable size. You’ll get a temporary prosthetic before that, of course, and that will help with the process. But you’ll always need to keep an eye out; if your stump swells a bit, you go back to wrapping it, and you may want to wrap it anyway if it helps your prosthetic fit better."

“And the thing with the mirror…?”

“At least once a day, every day. More often when you’re first getting used to your prosthetic.”

“For how long…?”

He suspected he already knew the answer; the physical therapist’s expression confirmed it. He looked away as he absorbed the information.

“It’s a change,” the physical therapist said. “But after a while it’ll be just another daily habit, like shaving or brushing your teeth.

“Let’s get you wrapped back up, okay?”

Sousa nodded and started to turn on his left side. He watched as she took out a fresh elastic bandage. “I hate to think of how many of those you go through in a day,” he said.

She chuckled. “Believe it or not, I once asked one of the fellows in the laundry. He said they wash two thousand of these bandages a day, at least. And they have to be dried flat, so they put them on racks and dry them in the hotel bakery ovens.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not! Lift up your hips, please. Okay, start here… twice around your hips….”

“But if they’re baking bandages in there, then where are they baking the bread?”

“One of the other hotels, maybe? The Chalfonte’s got a kitchen — Now, down around your leg, back up around your hips….”

“But then how do they warm it up over here?”

“You sound pretty interested. Would you like me to arrange a K.P. detail for you?”

“Oh, that’s all right. I’d hate to put you out.”

The therapist smirked and went back to talking her way through the wrapping: “…And down, and anchor it here — after you’re discharged, you can just sew two bandages together if you like — and then you take your second bandage….”

 

That afternoon they took him to the gym for a little work in the parallel bars, a little crutch walking, and a lot of sitting on the treatment table doing the desensitization exercises. By Tuesday evening, it had become a new routine: a morning session in his room, an afternoon session in the gym, and tapping or massage on his own in between, at the moments when the nurse came to take off the traction and have him turn.

He felt like he wasn’t doing as much in physical therapy, so he was surprised by how tired he was by the time Wednesday evening rolled around. He was even more surprised when Grahn turned up while he was still facing his dinner tray.

“Hey, Grahn.” He looked quizzically at the clock.

“Hey, Sousa. Yes, I’m back early tonight. Thanks for pretending you’re not disappointed, that’s big of you. I need to pack, and I should probably dot my I’s and cross my T’s and be a model patient so they don’t come up with an excuse to take my pass away from me.”

He stopped and looked at Sousa’s dinner tray. “Is it that bad? It looks like what we got in the mess hall. Mine was okay.”

“It tastes all right.” Sousa pushed at the chicken and dumplings, gave up, and put the fork down. “I'm just not hungry.”

“The lemon dessert thing was pretty good.”

Sousa’s stomach recoiled. “I’d better not.” He carefully pushed the table away and lay back down.

“You feeling all right? Well… relatively all right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m coming down with something. I hope I don’t get you sick.”

“I hope I didn’t get you sick.” Grahn pulled a bag out of his closet and started to pack.

“So what are you going to do while you’re back home?” asked Sousa.

“Sleep as late as I want, eat an enormous plate of buttered noodles, and throw sticks for the dog to fetch,” Grahn promptly replied. “Maybe some other stuff.”

An aide picked up the dinner tray, raised his eyebrows, and left. Fifteen minutes later there was a knock at the door.

“Right on time,” Sousa muttered sourly. As the nurse entered, Grahn made a point of being preoccupied with his packing.

“I heard something about not touching your dinner?” asked the nurse.

“Just not hungry.”

“Not hungry like not hungry, or not hungry like upset stomach?” she asked. Sousa nodded. The nurse laid her hand on his forehead.

“I don't think you have a fever, but let's make sure…” She shook down a thermometer and put it in his mouth.

The thermometer agreed with her. She felt his abdomen, asked about his bowel movements, and finally brought him some cola and crackers and had him turn on his stomach. By the time she arranged his knitted blanket for him and left, Grahn had finished packing.

“That didn't take long,” said Sousa.

“Oh, you know how easy it is to pack when Uncle Sam picks your clothes. Extra shirt, change of socks, extra bandages, pajamas in the morning, you're all set.”

“What, no pajamas at home? Mom and Dad trying to tell you something?”

“I'm pretty sure they kept my pajamas. But I know these ones fit over my prosthesis — and that they fit around me.”

Sousa chuckled. For all Grahn’s talk, he was still building himself back up: if anything, his old pajamas might be a little loose.

 

Despite his being so tired, Sousa slept poorly that night. His stomach was still bothering him, the pain in his leg seemed a little worse than usual, and as the night wore on he started to get chills and body aches. He wished he could curl up on his side, but that was impossible with the traction. He pulled the blanket more tightly around himself, as best he could, and tried to get back to sleep.

When he started to shiver, he gave up and pressed his call light; he didn’t want to wake Grahn. An orderly brought him extra blankets; a few minutes later, the nurse brought him some Alka-Seltzer. When it came time for him to turn, she also gave him some extra time to try the tapping and massage on his leg; that seemed to help as well, even more than the regular shots of morphine he was still getting with the penicillin.

Rounds came extra early the next morning; Sousa supposed that the doctors wanted to see Grahn before he left. When they got to his side of the bed, they asked him how he was doing and listened to his lungs.

“I think this will pass quickly,” said Blaine. “Rest up. You can do some light physical therapy, but you’d better skip the gym until you’re feeling better.

“We were planning to quit with the shots today, so let’s go ahead with that and see if that helps. That means if you need pain medicine, tell the nurse, and don’t wait. All right?”

“All right,” said Sousa. He was not sure how he felt about this news. He certainly liked the idea of no more needles every four hours, and now that his leg was closed, quitting the penicillin made sense. But as for the morphine… well, on the one hand, he’d come to think of the the regular doses of morphine as a safety net, keeping the pain in his leg from growing unbearable. What would happen without it?

But then on the other hand… no more needles every four hours, and Blaine had said he could have pain medicine if he needed it. He would just have to keep trusting them.

The doctors left, and Sousa half-listened as Grahn shaved and dressed and did his last minute packing.

“Sousa? You awake?” Grahn said softly.

“Yeah. You didn’t think you were going to sneak out of here, did you?”

Grahn drew the curtain back. He was wearing his Class As. “It wasn’t my plan.”

“Well, have a good trip and a great time at home. Say hi to your mom and dad for me.”

“Thanks, and will do. I’ll be back Monday afternoon, so hurry up and get better, will you?”

“I’ll get right on it.”

“Good.” Grahn moved his canes to his left hand, shouldered his bag, and picked up his hat. “All right, off to the bus. See you Monday.”

 

The day passed slowly. As Blaine had promised, the physical therapist didn’t work him too hard; just the most important exercises, a little walking, and his daily leg care. The kitchen sent up lighter meals —chicken soup, toast, crackers, ginger ale — and he was able to get some of it down. He slept when he could, and read and reread his letters when he couldn’t.

All day long he kept up with the tapping and massage on his leg. Between that and the aspirin the nurse brought, the pain in his leg stayed under control, and it was a huge relief to him on Thursday evening to realize that he’d made it through the entire day without morphine. He did not know that the doctors and nurses had been quietly tapering off his morphine dose all week, and that what he thought was a bad cold was actually his body adjusting to being weaned off the drug.

There were other little consolations that evening. The night nurse turned out to be Lieutenant Munn, back after a couple of days off. Whitford and Irwin stopped by; Sousa wasn’t up for a long visit, but it felt good to be remembered.

After they left, he was too tired to read but not tired enough to sleep, so he he turned on the radio. He caught the very end of a Bob Hope routine — “Bye bye! Buy bonds!” — and then the news: Iwo Jima conquered… the capture of the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine… a one-legged veteran trying out as a pitcher for the Washington Senators….

“And now, the General Techtronics Laboratories Symphony Hour, brought to you by General Techtronics Laboratories, harnessing the power of the atom in the fight against tyranny and in the service of mankind. Introducing tonight’s performance is Professor Cornelius Schaum of Empire State University. Professor?”

“Thank you. The music we’ll hear tonight springs from a tale told in a far-off land centuries ago, the tale of a powerful sultan mad with bitterness and jealousy, and of the brave, beautiful girl who outwitted him and finally won his heart… with a story. A story that lasted one thousand nights and a night, and into immortality….”

Well, there was no changing the station now. Sousa listened intently as the professor told the story of Scheherazade and the plan she cooked up with her sister to infiltrate the sultan’s palace and distract him from his plan and save all those girls: a honeypot trap, but a real highbrow one. She must have been really something, to be able to remember all those stories and make them so interesting and know just when to break them off to keep him interested….

“Tonight,” continued the professor, “listen for the theme played by the single violin and harp: that’s the voice of Scheherazade, casting her spell. As for her stories, they inspire this music, but they do not direct it. This is not program music, where each musical theme corresponds to a specific passage in a story. This music is a work of art on its own. Enjoy it on its own terms, and let it inspire your own reflections.”

Sousa thought that was a strange thing to say about music with section titles like “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship” and “The Young Prince and Princess” and “The Ship Breaks against a Cliff”, but then the applause started as the conductor took the podium, and the great ominous first chords sounded. He relaxed into the pillow as Scheherazade's beguiling theme curled around his ears, and listened with grateful attention as the music told him a story.

 

That night was somewhat easier. He still didn’t feel well, but it was reassuring having Lieutenant Munn there, and a relief to know he didn’t have to worry about disturbing Grahn. By the next evening, he was feeling a little better, and by Saturday afternoon he was back to walking around the room on his crutches.

By Sunday night, Sousa was feeling much better. He was over his cold or flu or whatever it was; Blaine had returned after rounds to unwrap his leg and take a good look at his incision, had pronounced it “looking good,” and had cleared Sousa to get back to his regular physical therapy schedule. Ines had called that afternoon and had passed the phone around, so he’d been able to talk to everyone. The gym was able to get him on the schedule late that afternoon; he found out that he’d made enough progress on the desensitization exercises to get promoted from a cotton ball to a wad of gauze. He was able to get down his dinner —a light dinner, true, but still, he was able to finish it. Spring training was starting, and the Yankees were going to be in Atlantic City, which meant that the Red Sox, not to be outdone, would do their spring training nearby as well. And that night the radio introduced him to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

The next morning, he had just finished breakfast when Blaine and Peyton showed up again with the day nurse. Blaine unwrapped his leg, peered at the incision, and then stepped aside to let Peyton have a turn.

“And what day is this again?” asked Peyton.

“Day ten,” said Blaine.

“Then definitely,” said Peyton. He looked up. “Lieutenant Sousa, go ahead and rest your leg. I’m afraid this is going to smart.”

“All right.” Sousa rested his leg on the bed and braced himself. He knew what this meant: it was time to change the traction tabs.

Blaine carefully held the skin of Sousa’s leg with one hand, and, with the other, took hold of the free end of one of the fabric traction tabs. “Here we go,” he said.

Sousa clenched his teeth as, in one resolute snap, Blaine pulled off the traction tab. And then the next one. And the next one. And finally the last one.

He took a deep breath and waited; Blaine’s next step would to be clean his leg with cold alcohol, paint his leg with sticky, smelly tincture of benzoin, and stick on the new set of tabs.

“And that’s that,” said Blaine. Sousa looked up; that phrase was not part of the routine.

Blaine grinned. “Congratulations, Lieutenant. You’re done with traction.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

In this chapter I'm taking a little dramatic license here. I know from research that at that time the Army's standard of care was to keep the skin traction on for a little while to make sure the incision held. I also know that wrapping the stump ("residual limb" is now the preferred term) was a priority to control the swelling. I'm not sure how the Army made both of those happen at the same time, so this is my best guess.

The scar massage, desensitization, tapping, and limb massage is another guess. I know that's part of the current standard of care, but I don't know for sure if it was done then. I also don't know for sure that it wasn't.

Elastic bandage: Think of an Ace wrap.

K.P.: "Kitchen Patrol" — working in the kitchen under the loving gaze of a mess sergeant, peeling potatoes, washing pots and pans....

Two thousand bandages a day, dried in the bakery ovens- I did not make that up.

The one-legged veteran trying out for the Washington Senators: Burt Shepard

Scheherazade: NPR has a nice recap of the story and notes on Rimsky-Korsakov's music.

Chapter 22: Untethered

Summary:

Daniel Sousa's first day off traction.

 

 

 

Sousa stared at Blaine. This couldn’t be real.

“I mean it,” said Blaine. “You’re done.”

Peyton chuckled a little. “You’re not dreaming, Lieutenant,” he said. “You did it. Enjoy your day, and — pay attention to what Captain Blaine’s about to tell you, all right? You want tomorrow to be an enjoyable one, too.”

“Thanks,” said Sousa. “Thanks so much.”

“I’ll see you in the morning,” said Peyton. “Blaine, I’ll see you upstairs.” He headed out the door.

“You’re probably going to wash up soon, right?” asked Blaine. “You can leave the wrap off till then.” He pulled over a chair and sat down.

“Now, here’s the score: I’m sure you’re going to want to spend as much time out of your room as possible. And I don’t blame you. But don’t get carried away and undo the all the hard work you’ve done.

“You need to keep up with your exercises. And you need to spend plenty of time lying on your stomach with your leg properly positioned: at least three sessions, spread throughout the day, at least 30 minutes each session.

“When you’re not in bed? Don’t go for more than an hour or two sitting without taking a break to lie flat.

“You’ll be going off the ward for physical therapy and for meals in the mess hall. In addition to that, you may leave the ward for up to two hours total — as long as you use a wheelchair and sign in and out at the desk. I’d prefer that you went with someone else, at least for the first day or two. Stay in this building: no taking off down the Boardwalk or joy-riding over to the Chalfonte. Not yet, anyway.” Sousa nodded.

“Showers? Bathroom?” prompted the nurse, Lieutenant Connolly.

“Sure, as long as someone’s around.” said Blaine, “and by ‘someone’ I mean a nurse or a physical therapist or an orderly. They’ll tell you when it’s okay to go by yourself.”

“So I can wash my leg in the shower today?” asked Sousa.

“Your leg and all the rest of you,” said Blaine. “Just don’t let your incision soak in water, and dry it off right away. And keep your leg wrapped the rest of the time.

“One more thing: Alcohol. It’s probably better you just stay away from the sauce for the time being; it doesn’t mix well with pain pills, and you’re not going to hold it the way you did before. Because unfortunately? There’s a little less of you to hold it now.” He glanced pointedly at Sousa’s right leg. “And getting buzzed on one leg is a really good way to get hurt; I’d hate to see you break your other leg and wind up in traction again. So be careful. If you do decide to have a drink, go real slow, and stay away from the hard stuff for now.

“P.T.’s going to be revising your schedule, they’ll tell you where you’re supposed to be and when. We’ll also start mixing in some more occupational therapy.” Blaine stood up. “All right? Any questions? Then have a great day — don’t overdo it! — and I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Thanks again,” said Sousa.

As Blaine left, Sousa sat on the bed, still dazed by the news. “I don’t know what to do first,” he said to the nurse.

She smiled. “Let me get a wheelchair and I’ll show you where to find out.”

Instead of waiting, he grabbed his crutches, stood up, and started to walk across the room. She lifted her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. She led him out to the hall and showed him the chalkboard near the room door, where his schedule was written. He’d glimpsed it now and then on his way to and from whirlpool or the gym, but had never paid much attention to it.

Now he read it attentively, from top to bottom, starting with his room number:

8130-A
1^ST LT. SOUSA, DANIEL A .
R—AKA

“What does the ‘R-AKA’ stand for?” he asked.

“Right above-the-knee amputation.”

That made sense. Sousa read on:

BLAINE
CONNOLLY

He looked up at Lieutenant Connolly; she smiled. “That’s me.”

The rest of the column was divided into rows labeled with the hours.

0900 RM – PT
1200 RM – TRAY
1500 GYM – PT (W/C)
1700 RM – TRAY

As he read, Sousa adjusted his crutches to give himself a wider stance. Lieutenant Connolly turned and waved toward the desk; a clerk caught her signal, got up, and brought a wheelchair down the hall.

“I’m okay,” insisted Sousa.

“Of course,” she said, taking the wheelchair from the clerk. “Oh, there’s a couple of changes we can make right now.” She erased the ROOM – TRAY entries and wrote in MESS HALL (W/C).

“So yes, you’ll be going to the mess hall for your meals now. The men usually meet at the elevator and go together, around 1145 for lunch,” she said.

“Okay,” said Sousa. “Anything else I should know for now?”

“Like we said, Physical Therapy is going to be having all kinds of fun filling up this board for you. Occupational Therapy too. Speaking of which, let’s head back now.”

She pushed the wheelchair ahead of them. “I know you’re eager to be up and around,” she said. “But be smart, okay? Keep this handy, so you don’t have to go out and find one when you want to go someplace.”

“All right,” he said. It occurred to him that even when he couldn’t leave the ward, he could take the wheelchair down to the desk for a cup of coffee, or go down to the lounge, or visit other patients — and he could do it whenever he wanted, and he didn’t have to wait until he was strong enough to do it on crutches.

Back in the room, he looked over to Lieutenant Connolly.  “Mind if I go to the bathroom while you’re here?”

She chuckled. “Not at all.”

A few minutes later, as he washed his hands, he was suddenly overcome by a wave of relief and gratitude: even if they still made him call for supervision, the humiliation of bedpans was over.

He shut off the water, grabbed a towel, and realized too late that of course it was Grahn’s towel. He smiled a little: time for him to start moving in. He dried his hands, hung up the towel, and went to wait for the physical therapist.

 

When she arrived, he was ready. He’d already wheeled himself over to the sink to shave and brush his teeth; an orderly had come by and stocked the bathroom for him with his own towels and soap and shampoo. The orderly had also brought new clothes for Sousa: a blue convalescent suit.

“Well, look at you, all done with traction and all ready to go!” she said. “And I heard something about wanting to do your leg care in the shower?”

She measured his leg and had him inspect his leg and do his regular exercises first. Then she had him mentally rehearse his shower, and his heart sank a little as he realized how much planning this would take: he’d have to gather his stuff, get himself and most of that stuff into the bathroom, lay it all out, hang up his robe and pajamas, position the shower chair, sit down on the shower chair, stow his crutches…. 

“Ready?” she asked.

It’ll be fine, he reminded himself. He nodded and forced himself to smile. “Can’t wait.”

She helped him collect his things and, once he’d made his way to the bathroom, showed him some tips for arranging towels and clothes on a chair next to the bath. He hung up his robe, carefully sat down on the bath chair, propped his crutches, and finished undressing.

“Okay,” said the physical therapist. “No salt-water, and not too much luxuriating, please. Though you certainly deserve it.”

And finally — finally — he got his shower. He quickly came to appreciate the hand-held shower spray the Army had rigged up in the hotel bathroom; it made the whole business of a seated shower so much easier.

He washed his right leg first, just to get it over with, and then his hair and it felt so good, so unspeakably good to wash his own hair and give it a really good scrub; and as he started to rinse his head it hit him that this was how it was going to be forever, this was how he was going to shower for the rest of his life, sitting on a chair — and suddenly, as the warm water ran over his head, he had to squeeze his eyes shut and concentrate on controlling his breathing — dammit, what was this? he’d been doing so well lately, and he was not going to fall apart in the shower, he was going to finish rinsing his hair and he was not going to put his hand over his face and betray what was happening — keep going, he reminded himself, don’t make the physical therapist late, keep going — and the moment passed, and he was able to finish his shower.

He dried off, using the towels he’d laid out on the chair, and put on the underwear and the blue convalescent shirt and the robe and the slipper he’d laid out. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, and saw the physical therapist hanging up the towels.

“Let me get those,” he insisted.

“You can get them tomorrow,” she said. “We still have work to do today.”

Back at his bed, he did the daily scar massage and muscle massage. The therapist put on the gauze dressing and then handed him the elastic bandage. “How about you give it a try?”

Even with her talking him through it, the leg wrapping was even trickier than it looked. He had to get it tight, but not too tight; he had to keep it from wrinkling; and he had to vary the amount of stretch he put on the bandage depending on where he was wrapping, so that it was tightest at the end of his leg. He kept making mistakes, and she had to keep stopping him to have him try again and then do the section herself anyway. But she just smiled and told him he was doing great, that he’d get the knack of it with practice.

After his leg was properly wrapped, she had him put on a sock and his new blue pants. She ended the session by teaching him how to position his right leg on a pillow when he was lying on his stomach. She made sure his crutches and his shoe were in reach, congratulated him, and told him he’d learn more about his updated schedule soon.

He’d originally planned to go down to the lounge after physical therapy, where he could sit at an actual table to write some letters and maybe even mooch a cup of coffee from the nurses’ desk. But the orderly had made the bed and changed the linens while he was up, and he was feeling clean and comfortable and and a little tired, so it was easy to decide now would be a good time to lie on his stomach, like the doctor had ordered him to….

He woke up with a start — something was off, the nurse should have come to wake him up and turn him by now — and then he smiled as he remembered that no, the traction was off now: no more being woken up every two hours. He glanced at the clock. It was 1115: time to start getting ready for lunch. And after lunch he planned to go to the HX.

He sat up and and got some money and his checkbook out of his nightstand. He put his shoe on, picked up his crutches, and transferred to the wheelchair. It was still a slow process, and it wasn’t until he was settled in the wheelchair that he remembered — was he supposed to call for help?

Oh well. He stowed his crutches, arranged his knitted blanket over his lap, and wheeled himself out the door.

God, this felt good. He wheeled himself down to the desk and informed the clerk he’d be leaving the ward for lunch and wouldn’t be coming back right away. 

“I’ll let your nurse know, Lieutenant Sousa, thanks.” said the clerk. “Oh, now that you’re off traction? You can stop by here to pick up your mail.”

“Thanks,” said Sousa, and turned around to wait by the elevators. He'd be leaving for the mess hall with others; that should satisfy Blaine, he decided.

A couple of minutes later, Breckenridge came down the hall. “Sousa! Joining us at last?”

“Looks like it.” Sousa grinned. “So how do you get to this joint, and what’s good there?”

“Oh, it’s fine dining, let me tell you. Here comes Flores, you meet him yet?”

Flores joined them, and then another patient rolled up — Hayes, Sousa remembered.

“Good enough.” said Breckenridge, and pushed the elevator button. “There usually aren’t too many for lunch,” he said to Sousa; “most of the fellows are already downstairs for something or another. We’ll see them there.”

They had to wait a few minutes for an elevator car with enough room for them all. Breckenridge got in first and held the door as Sousa and then Hayes rolled themselves in. Flores stepped in last, and Breckenridge pressed the button for the second floor.

 

The officers’ mess was in a dining room off the Palm Court mezzanine. Before long Sousa found himself seated at a banquet table with Flores, Breckenridge, and Hayes, with other patients from the ward filling in the empty seats around them, welcoming him as they sat down.

“Sousa! You’re here at last, blue suit and everything!” said Whitford. “When’d you get off traction?”

“Just this morning,” said Sousa.

“You just got off traction this morning? Huge relief, isn’t it?” said Ayers as he sat down. “I know we’ve seen each other at discussion group, but I don’t think we’ve met yet. Willard Ayers.”

“Daniel Sousa.”

“You’re in the above-the-knee club, aren’t you? Me too. Left leg.” Another man sat down next to Ayers.  “This is Mark Maddox,” said Ayers. “He’s one of the old hands around here, he’s on the ward next to ours now. Maddox, this is Daniel Sousa. They just sprung him from traction.”

“Well, congratulations!” said Maddox. “In a better world we’d be able to buy you a beer right now.”

“How about Friday?” said Whitford. “Let’s take Sousa out on Friday.”

“Aw, thanks! I’d just need to get a pass.”

“Ah, they’ll give you a pass,” said Ayers. “The question is clothes. You got clothes? No? Maybe you can go to the HX today and see about some Class As.”

“So how long have you been here, Sousa?” asked Maddox.

“Since the day after Christmas….”  Sousa sketched out his story, and listened as the others told theirs. The lunch hour passed quickly, and all too soon the others started stacking the plates and silverware; it seemed they all had someplace to be at 1300.

“I’d better get going too. Tip for you, Sousa,” said Breckenridge. “Between the elevators and the distance and the slowpokes in the halls? It always takes longer than you think to get somewhere in this hospital.”

“Something your roommate still isn’t clear on,” said Whitford.

“Who’s your roommate?” asked Maddox.

“Henry Grahn,” said Sousa. “You know him?” he added, seeing Maddox grin.

“Oh yeah. We were on the same ward before the hurricane, and then up at Halloran when we evacuated there. Once we got back they split us up across two wards. He’s home on a pass, right?”

“Yeah, he should be back this afternoon.”

As the others left the table, Sousa hung back a little so the men with appointments could get a head start. Maddox stayed with him, drinking the last of his coffee.

“I know Grahn gets razzed a lot about never being around and always being late for census — like any of those other fellas are such homebodies,” Maddox said with a snort. “Most of that’s just him being Grahn and us giving him the rhubarb, but part of it’s that so many of the guys he knew from before the hurricane are on other wards, and we’re all catching up after dinner. You heard the ice cream story yet?”

“The ice cream story? I don’t think I’ve heard that one.”

“We’ll get MacPhyfe to tell it at dinner tonight. Grahn’s not the only one who got into mischief at Halloran.” Maddox finished his coffee. “Where are you headed next?”

“I don’t have anything until 1500, so I thought I’d visit the HX.”

“I’m headed that way.” Maddox picked up his cane. “Mind if I tag along?”

“Not at all.” Sousa backed away from the table and followed Maddox out of the dining room to the mezzanine.

 

As Sousa rolled through the HX and looked around, he felt almost dazzled. It had been months since he’d been in any kind of store at all, and even longer since he’d made it to an Army Exchange. Full shelves with plenty to choose from… necessities and little luxuries… familiar products with labels he didn’t need a dictionary to read… making his own choices, instead of making a list for someone else…. Once he’d taken all that for granted. Now he felt like a millionaire.

And then he’d never been shopping seated in a wheelchair with a wire basket in his lap. They’d arranged the HX to be as convenient as possible for wheelchair patients, with wide aisles and low shelves and a few solicitous Gray Ladies fluttering about, ready to carry baskets or pull things down from the higher shelves.

He went to the back corner of the HX first, to get his name on the uniform fitter’s waiting list. Then he pulled his list out of his pocket and set about reequipping himself.

First thing on the list: a watch. He was surprised and pleased to find that they had some in stock; he picked a good inexpensive one and went on with his list. A wallet. Handkerchiefs. Hair tonic and shaving soap. Writing paper and greeting cards….

He heard his name being called. One of the Gray Ladies appeared and offered to take his basket up to the counter for him; he took her up on her offer and rolled on back to the fitter’s.

“So, Lieutenant Sousa. Let me guess,” said the fitter. “Finally allowed out of bed, pass on the horizon, want to be ready?”

“How’d you guess?” said Sousa. “I actually wrote to my old outfit back at Belvoir asking if they could ship my footlocker here, but I never heard back.”

“That was a good idea; it should get here by 1950, right? But even if it got here yesterday, dollars to doughnuts you’d still need a new uniform. — Go ahead and take off your shirt. Mind if I put your blanket over here?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” Sousa started unbuttoning his blue shirt. “I was thinking I could have just gotten it taken in.”

“You’d be surprised. More likely you would’ve needed to let it out, especially once they get through with you in the gym.” The fitter started to take Sousa’s measurements. “When are you getting your prosthesis?”

“Don’t know yet. You need me to stand up?”

“If it’s not a bother, sure.”

Sousa grabbed his crutches and stood up while the fitter measured his inseam.

“Okay, that’s good. Go ahead and sit down.” The fitter wrote down the numbers. “Check back Friday morning, we should be able to have it ready by then. It’s going to be a little loose. They’re going to be going all Charles Atlas on you in the gym, and then you’ve got your prosthesis harness, so you’re going to need that room. We can always do some alterations once you get it.”

“Harness?”

“What keeps it on. Kinda like garters. You’ll have a belt around your hips and straps to keep it in place.” The fitter tugged at his own imaginary hip belt. “So we’ll size up your trousers to make sure they fit over the belt. Okay? See you Friday, then! Don’t forget you’re going to need to get your belt and tie and all the other stuff.”

 

Sousa had used only one of his two hours, but he decided to go back upstairs anyway. He wanted to put his purchases away, and he needed to stretch his leg. He was beginning to see what Blaine meant about sitting for too long.

Back up on the ward, he checked in at the desk and collected his mail before going to his room. He spent some time lying on his stomach and reading his mail before it was time to go to physical therapy, where the physical therapist gleefully informed him that his new schedule would be in full swing by Wednesday.

After physical therapy he went to the library and opened an account. He checked out a book on bridge and a book of logic puzzles, and picked up a catalog of Army correspondence courses. Back upstairs, he ate his snack in the lounge as he wrote letters, enjoying the luxury of being able to spread his plate and papers out all over the table and not worry about the table rolling away from him.

He dropped off his plate and his letters at the desk and was just turning back to his room when Hayes came by and pulled up next to him.

“Hey. Sousa.” Hayes nodded toward the empty hallway. “Race ya.”

Sousa started to laugh, but then he realized Hayes wasn’t kidding. “To where that corridor branches left,” said Hayes. “Ready… set…”

Sousa scrambled to get his hands on his wheels.

“Go.”

They took off down the hall. Sousa had just enough time to be surprised at how fast he could go before he was crossing the finish line.

Hayes had won, not that Sousa cared; that wasn’t the point anyway. Though somewhere in this hospital, he thought as he turned his wheelchair around, somewhere, someone was running a book on wheelchair races.

“So where are you headed?” he asked Hayes.

“Piano lesson,” Hayes cheerfully replied. He started back toward the elevator bank. Sousa chuckled a little and followed him, waiting for the real answer.

Hayes turned to look back at him. “Wait, did you think I was pulling your leg? No, I’m really going to piano lessons. You play an instrument?”

“No, not me. I was never musically inclined.” Sousa stopped so that Hayes could pass in front of him to the elevators.

“I took lessons when I was a kid. Hated it then; wished I’d kept up with it later. It’s been fun getting back into it. Most of the men in the class are beginners. Maybe give it a go? I think piano and guitar are the most popular but they have other instruments too.” The elevator car arrived. “You should sign up, it’s fun. See you at dinner! 1730!” He turned and rolled himself backwards into the elevator.

Piano lessons? What didn’t they have here? wondered Sousa. He really would have to start paying more attention to the hospital paper.

As he wheeled himself into his room, he caught sight of the window. He tossed his papers onto his bed and rolled over.

Now that he thought about it, he still hadn’t taken a look out yet. Why hadn’t he done it in physical therapy, when he was walking around the room on crutches? Probably too focused on getting back and forth from the bathroom, or to the door of the room.

Well, why not now? He set the brakes on the wheelchair, pushed the footrest out of the way, and grabbed his crutches.

His arms ached as he stood up; he’d been a lot more active today, with a lot more wheelchair-rolling. He could do this, though; just two steps and he was looking out the window.

It wasn’t much of a view; he could see the other wings of Haddon Hall, the Chalfonte across the street, the roofs of some of the other hotels, and a sliver of the Boardwalk and the ocean beyond.

And far away, beyond the empty horizon, was where he had been just a few months ago.

 

That evening after dinner, Sousa was lingering over coffee and bread pudding and talking with the others when Maddox looked up. “Hey, look who decided to show up!” He shoved his chair over a little to make room for Grahn.

Grahn slipped into the empty place. “ ‘Look who decided to show up!’ I told you I’d be back —” He pulled in his chair, unfolded his napkin, looked up, saw Sousa and grinned. “And who’s this character? Honestly, go away for the weekend and they start letting anybody in here. How long have you been coming to this joint?”

Sousa shrugged. “It’s only my second time. Food’s nothing special, but the crowd’s all right.”

Grahn shook his head. “And then I showed up. Sorry, pal, I’m a regular here too.” He looked around the table. “So! What’s the prop wash?”

He looked tired, but as Grahn tucked into his ham and potatoes he happily answered the questions coming at him from all directions: good traveling — changed trains in Philly — everyone fine at home — train back from Philly delayed….

As their group left the dining room, there was some back-and-forth about who was going where. Sousa had to turn down a couple of invitations; even if he hadn’t already used up his two hours’ leave, he was running out of gas. A couple of other men were going straight back to their ward as well; to his surprise, Grahn was too.

Back upstairs, Grahn let Sousa enter the room first and then closed the room door behind him. He waited as Sousa rolled himself next to his bed, came in and tossed his hat and his bag on his own bed, and sat down next to it with a sigh. “Whew. I am beat.

“And you.” He looked over to Sousa, trying and failing to suppress a grin. “You low-down double-dealing traitorous skunk, getting yourself off of traction before I got back!” He started to unbutton his uniform jacket.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I feel really bad about it. I asked them to leave it on — just one more day, I told them — but they just wouldn’t listen to me.”

Grahn shook his head and took off his tie. “Well, you tried. So how was your first day of freedom?”

“It was… it was great. I don’t feel like I did anything, but it went fast.”

“Well, you must’ve done something.”

“Well, I went to the HX… and yes, I ordered my Class As —”

A knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” called Grahn.

It was Lieutenant Connolly. “Oh, welcome back!” she said to Grahn, and turned to Sousa. “Let’s take a look at your leg.”

Sousa set the brakes on his wheelchair and picked up his crutches. As he stood up, he couldn’t stop himself from grimacing a little.

“Maybe a little aspirin, too?” she suggested.

“Yeah, that might be good,” said Sousa. He hobbled the couple of steps over to the bed and sat down.

Two aspirin, one leg rewrap, and a change into pajamas later, Sousa was lying on his stomach in bed and feeling comfortably tired. Even just lying in bed was much more comfortable, especially now that the traction had been off all day; he felt better all over.

Grahn emerged from the bathroom. He’d showered and changed into his own pajamas. He pushed the curtain back, sat down on his bed, and started wrapping his foot.

“So how was your trip?” asked Sousa.

Grahn smiled. “It was so good. I was last home… let’s see… August of ’43, just for a couple of days before we shipped out. Oh, that reminds me, Mom and Dad say hi, and Mom sent some goodies. So, let’s see, when I left on Thursday….”

Sousa listened attentively: a bus to the Atlantic City train station, a train to Philadelphia, another train to Grahn’s hometown…. “I didn’t have to wait around too long in Philly, so that was all right, and the USO has a waiting area….” Parents waiting at the train station... Getting home…. “The dog remembered me, so that was nice.”

“What, were you worried?”

“Kind of. He was still pretty young when I left.” Sousa tried not to smile: Grahn looked more pleased about the dog than he seemed to want to admit.

Buttered noodles, apple dumplings; visits with relatives and the few friends still in town…. “It was weird, Sousa. My town’s pretty little, but there’s this one place where everyone goes in the evening, so on Friday I went there just to get something to eat and see who was around, and I swear I was the only man there between seventeen and fifty.”

“Opportunities?” asked Sousa.

“Not really! So many of the girls our own age are away from home too, they’re working war jobs in Philadelphia or even in Washington. There were a couple of girls that I knew there, so we got to catch up.

“Let’s see… I made the social page — ‘2^nd Lieutenant Henry Grahn, son of Mr. and Mrs. Emil Grahn of 301 Sixth Avenue, is home for a visit….’”

“Was there a parade?”

“Not this visit. Maybe next time the mayor’ll have me walk real slow down Main Street or something, behind a little kid on a tricycle with a kazoo.”

Grahn sketched out the rest of his time at home and his journey back.

“Well, it sounds like you had a good trip,” said Sousa.

Grahn fell silent and looked down at his hands. Finally he spoke up again: “I ran into Lucy.”

“Lucy?”

“Yeah. I think I told you about her. We were going steady for a while there —”

Sousa put it together: “— She wrote you the Dear John letter?”

“Yup. That’s Lucy. It was a complete surprise — I mean, seeing her — though the letter was a complete surprise, too.... I saw her in Philly, at the train station. When the train to Atlantic City was delayed I went to the USO lounge to wait and there she was, with her little apron on, volunteering.

“Well, we couldn’t pretend we hadn’t seen each other, so I said hello and she said hi back. She looked really embarrassed. And I… I was a bit mean. I just kept talking to her — friendly, but just a little bit longer than I needed to, you know? Asking about her family, and what she was up to, and was she still living at home, and about her friends…..” Grahn shrugged. “And then I just sat down and had a doughnut and coffee and waited for my train.”

“She say anything?”

“Not a thing. She kept looking over at me, but she didn’t say anything. And then some other fellows came, and she was busy, and I didn’t bug her. And when it was time for me to leave, I just told her it was good seeing her again, and went on my way.

“And you know, it wasn’t lying. It did feel good to see her. It was like… like saying what you have to say and then being done.”

“Like getting the last word.”

“No… more realizing I didn’t care any more about getting the last word. It’s funny… right after I got the letter I was upset, but I didn’t have time to think about it; we were busy training, and when we weren’t training I was trying to keep my men out of trouble, and then any free time after that?” He smiled. “English girls in the springtime? They have a way of keeping your attention.” Sousa chuckled.

“After I got hit I started thinking about it again, and of course I had plenty of time to stew on it. But once I was feeling better it was easier to be philosophical. And I’ll say this for Lucy; she told me right away, and it's better that she did. If I’d gotten that letter in France, or after I got hit, it would have been even more of a letdown.”

“How long were you two seeing each other?” asked Sousa.

“A year, maybe?”

“And you weren’t engaged?”

“Maybe she was asking herself the same question,” admitted Grahn. “I probably would’ve asked her later. I just didn’t get that feeling I should pop the question before I left. Maybe my gut was telling me something.

“Speaking of guts, you want a cookie?”

“You could twist my arm.”

Grahn rummaged in his bag and looked at the clock. “Oh, good, it’s shift change. This is a good time to ask the clerks for favors.” He moved to a chair and picked up the phone.

“Hey, Donald. Yeah, it’s Grahn. Would you? Yeah, I’ve got my foot wrapped and I’m just beat. My mail, and two cups of Sanka? And maybe a plate for yourself. I sure do. Yeah, come on in. Thanks a bunch.”

The clerk arrived a couple of minutes later with the delivery. He congratulated Sousa, passed out the coffees, handed Grahn his mail, and happily accepted first choice from the cookie tin.

“Thanks again,” said Grahn. “Who’s on tonight?”

“Lieutenant Munn. They’re still in report right now.” He waved and left with his cookie.

“I suppose we can share a cookie with her,” said Grahn. He leaned forward and offered the tin to Sousa.

Before long, Lieutenant Munn herself arrived, with a warm welcome for Grahn and hugs and congratulations for Sousa. She took their pulses and temperatures, listened to their stories, and took her turn choosing a cookie.

“This looks delicious. Thanks! I’ll have it on my break,” she said. “You should tell Lieutenant Keck about your adventures. We just got a letter from her, it’s pinned up in the lounge.”

“Really? How’s she doing?” asked Sousa.

“What’s she say?” Grahn asked at the same time.

Lieutenant Munn smiled. “You should go down to the lounge and read it for yourselves, you’re both mobile now.”

With a bleak expression, Grahn looked at his foot, at Sousa, and then up to her. He sighed. “Tomorrow.” Sousa nodded wearily.

“You really are tired, aren’t you?” said Lieutenant Munn. “Lieutenant Grahn, are you sure you couldn’t use some aspirin?”

“Oh, I guess, since you’re offering.”

She handed Grahn a little cup with the pills and waited while he took them. “Anyway,” she continued, “Lieutenant Keck wrote that she had a good visit home and that the trip to California wasn’t too bad. She wrote the letter there, tucked in a couple of post cards.”

“San Diego?” asked Sousa.

“Mm-hm. Anything else? All right, then,” said Lieutenant Munn. “Time for me to go check on the others. I’ll see you fellows later; Lieutenant Sousa, we should rewrap your leg one more time before you turn in for the night.”

“Okay,” said Sousa. “See you later.” Grahn put in his good-byes as Lieutenant Munn pushed her cart out of the room.

“Did it take you a long time to learn that wrapping?” said Sousa. “I feel like a dunce, I just can’t get it.”

“A few days, I think,” said Grahn. “But mine’s less complicated than yours. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.”

“I guess.” Sousa looked at the clock. “Would you hand me the phone? I was thinking I’d call home, give them the news.” Grahn smiled and pushed the telephone table closer to Sousa.

“They should be home now,” said Sousa as he lifted the receiver. He gave the operator his name and his father’s telephone number, and listened as the call made its way north: “Philadelphia.” “Boston.” “Taunton….” A couple of clicks, and the Taunton operator was announcing his call: “Long-distance call from Atlantic City, New Jersey.”

“Daniel?” It was Tillie; more clicks sounded as the operators left the call.

“Yeah, it’s me. Hey, Tillie. Everything’s fine,” he added, heading off her next question.

“Well, then, this is a treat, seeing as we just talked yesterday! It’s just me tonight, I'm afraid. Papai’s at work, they’ve got him back on the swing shift.”

“Again?”

“Yeah. But how are you doing? What’s up?”

“I’ve got good news: I'm out of traction.”

“Really?!”

“They took it off this morning.”

“Daniel, that’s fantastic! So you can be up and around now?”

“Yeah. I was able to spend almost the whole day out of bed.”

“So what did you do?”

“It was a thrill a minute: I went to the mess hall, bought hankies at the Exchange, got a book from the library, went back to the mess hall….”

“And you can you go by yourself? What a relief that must be! Just to be able to get out of your room, and to do what you want…. I am so happy for you. Can you go to the beach?”

“Not yet. But maybe I can go outside soon.”

“Ugh! I want to see you!” Daniel heard the familiar sound of Tillie flinging herself into the easy chair.  “You know I’d be down there yesterday if I could, right?”

“Aw, Tillie, don’t worry about it, I understand.”

“Thanks, Daniel. Oh — I’m all alone, so if you don’t mind me spending some of your money I can share some news too.”

“Go ahead. If it’s boring I’ll just send you the bill.”

“Well, then: I think part of the reason Papai’s picking up swing shifts? Is so he can come down and see you soon, maybe for Easter.”

“Easter?”

“It’s less than two weeks away. This Sunday is Palm Sunday.”

“Huh. I guess I lost track.”

“Anyway, I think that’s what he’s up to.  I did ask him about why he was pulling so many swing shifts lately but you know Papai; all he said was ‘Loose lips sink ships’. Meanwhile, I’m still working on my plan to get Ines down there — ”

“ — Does Ines know about this plan?”

“She does, actually, and I think she’s coming around. If I can work it out with Mrs. Escobar and maybe Pete’s sister, we can take the older kids while Ines goes down. And if she goes down with Papai, he can take the baby for a bit while she visits you. What do you think?”

“I think that sounds swell, I’d really love to see her.”

“All right. I’ll keep you posted. So you’re feeling all right? What’s next for you?”

“Not sure yet. But they’re dropping big hints about increasing my physical therapy schedule.”

“That’s good, right?”

“I think so.”

“Good. You are the best brother, and it makes me so happy to think of you out of bed again and doing things….”

“Thanks, Tillie. Would you mind telling the others? And I’ll write about my new schedule once they set it up.”

“I’ll tell them all about it. Thank you so much for calling.”

“Just wanted to share the news. Oh, and my roommate says hi. He’s back from his trip home. Okay, good night, Tillie.”

“Good night.”

Sousa hung up the telephone. “You know if they let babies come to visit here?”

“Babies? My, my! The joke just writes itself, doesn’t it? Well, except for the part where you haven’t been home in a couple of years —”

“Oh, for — My sister’s baby. The one she had nine months after her husband’s furlough.”

“I think so. You see kids out and about, and Llewellyn’s kids used to come up here until he could meet them downstairs. Is your sister coming?”

“Sounds like she’s trying to.”

“Well, here’s hoping.”

 

Lieutenant Munn came by a little later for bedtime rounds, which now included rewrapping Sousa’s leg. As he pulled his pajama pants back on, he found himself wondering if bedtime rounds still included a backrub. He had to admit to himself that he kind of hoped so. He got back into bed, turned onto his stomach out of habit, and remembered to stick a pillow under his right leg.

“Good positioning there,” said Lieutenant Munn. “You know… you had traction last night and you’ve been working hard today. I think a quick backrub might help you sleep a bit better.”

Sousa didn’t argue. A few very relaxing minutes later, Lieutenant Munn put her bottle of rubbing alcohol back on her cart and came around to where he could see her.

“All right, I’m going to say good night for now. But listen, if you need to get up in the night to use the bathroom, call. Also…. This may sound strange, and it may not happen to you since it’s been a while since your amputation. But be careful. It’s not unusual for men to wake up in the night and still be sleepy and forget they’ve had an amputation — and start to walk off to the bathroom and wind up splat on the floor.”

“Really?” asked Sousa.

“Oh, yes,” said Lieutenant Munn. “Usually it’s because they’re not fully awake, and they’re not having any pain in their leg to remind them, or they may be having phantom sensations that it’s still there.”

“I promise I’ll do my best to remember,” said Sousa.

“All right. I won’t be waking you up every two hours any more, but I will be checking on you. So sleep well.” She smiled, switched off Sousa’s overhead light, and went over to Grahn’s side of the room.

Sousa switched off his reading light, put his head down on the pillow, and closed his eyes. He was about to have his first uninterrupted sleep in an actual bed since… since the ship to France, maybe?... he couldn’t even think of when....

He had every intention of saying good night to Grahn, but he was asleep before Lieutenant Munn left the room.

Notes:

Thank you, as always, for reading, for leaving kudos, and especially for your comments.

Thanks to keysburg, scullysahnesquarkbroetchen, and CotyCat82 for test audience services and encouragement.

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Notes:

Halloran: We've talked about The Great Atlantic Hurricane a few times before. In September 1944 (about three months before QV starts) this hurricane caused immense damage along the U.S. east cost. England General Hospital was flooded and lost power, and all the patients had to be evacuated. They were sent to Halloran General Hospital in Staten Island for six weeks. To me it seems like that adventure would loom large in the patients’s memories, and that they would tend to think of events as being Before The Hurricane and After the Hurricane and When We Were in New York.

HX: Hospital Exchange (like the Post Exchange). A store where soldiers could buy personal items.

Watches: I think watches might have been difficult to find in civilian stores; when I looked at a Christmas 1944 Sears catalog, it offered no watches at all. Many watch factories were turned to war production, and I imagine the few watches still being made went to the services.

They’re going to be going all Charles Atlas: Charles Atlas was a bodybuilder who offered a home training course. His ads were famous; they featured the 98-pound weakling getting sand kicked in his face by a bully.

Prosthesis harness: The suction socket wasn’t developed until after the war.

Prop wash: gossip (comes from the word for the wind stream off a propeller)

The social page in the newspaper: Small town newspapers used to report on events like bridal showers (“a good time was had by all”) and visits. (Some still may; I knew a girl in the early ‘90s whose small town newspaper always carried a story when she came home from college, even if it was just for the weekend.) So of course Grahn’s visit would have made his small town’s paper. I was surprised to find, though, that during the war, newspapers in bigger cities also carried news of their service members’ visits home (and their promotions and transfers, as well as less happy news.)

Traveling must have been awful during the war. Gas was severely rationed (I think 3 gallons a week (and mileage wasn’t as good then) unless you could demonstrate vital need, like being a truck driver or farmer or a member of Congress (snort)) . It was harder to get reservations on trains, and there were fewer passenger trains running at all, because so much rail traffic went to the war effort.

Chapter 23: Bridge

Summary:

Daniel's new schedule, and connections to his future and his past.

Getty Images

Soldiers and welfare girls playing cards, World War Two, 1942. 'Adelaide consults her partner about a difficult hand. Making up a bridge four is part of the welfare girls' job, and they can play most other card games with equal skill'.

During his weeks in traction, one of the things that Sousa had longed for the most was a solid night’s sleep, and he’d been looking forward to getting it his very first night off traction.

So he was frustrated and confounded when he found himself waking up every two or three hours, as if his body was still expecting Lieutenant Munn to come and wake him up and have him turn. At least when he woke up, he woke all the way up and didn’t forget about his leg and end up splat on the floor. He still didn’t understand how that could happen; maybe he could ask Grahn about it…. And at least he was able to drop off to sleep again fairly quickly.

He was awake when Lieutenant Munn stuck her head in the door around 0450, just checking in on them. He asked her to spot him on a trip to the bathroom, and did his best to not wince as he picked up his crutches — his arms were stiff and sore.

He went back to bed, Lieutenant Munn went on her way, and ten minutes later an orderly slipped in, bringing two hot-water bottles. “Lieutenant Munn said for you to put these on your arms,” he whispered. “She also said you’d say you didn’t need ‘em and that I should say yes you do.” Sousa shook his head.

And of course she was right; the hot water bottles did help, so much so that he was able to get a little more sleep before the doctors showed up on rounds.

“Lieutenant Sousa, good morning!” said Blaine. “So how was your first day off traction?”

“Fantastic. Can’t wait for the second one.”

“Glad to hear it. Now, let’s take a look here….”

Blaine unwrapped his leg and examined the incision. “Looking good. Couple more days and we’ll take those stitches out. How’s desensitization going?” He started to rewrap Sousa’s leg as the other doctors filed out.

Sousa shrugged. “I’ve been promoted to dishtowel.”

“From the looks of those hot water bottles, you got out and about yesterday. Where’d you go?”

“No place special. Mess hall, PT, HX, library.”

“Right down to business. Order a new uniform? They want to take you out on Friday, don’t they. I think we can arrange for that if your uniform comes in….” He finished wrapping. “…And there we go.” He fastened the end of the elastic bandage.

“When do you have discussion group?” he asked.

“Tuesdays, usually,” said Sousa. Lieutenant Munn nodded.

“So today. After discussion group I’d like you to hang around the ward for a bit. We’ll be meeting with P.T. and O.T. today and I want you to be there so they can tell you about your schedule. It won’t take too long.”

“All right. I think I have PT at 1500, though.”

“Check the board to make sure, but if you’re scheduled then we’ll keep that in mind. See you this afternoon,” said Blaine, and he left the room.

“I’ll see about getting an orderly down here to help you get ready for breakfast,” said Lieutenant Munn. She raised her voice. “Lieutenant Grahn, would you mind telling Lieutenant Sousa when the men usually start going to breakfast?”

Grahn pulled the curtain back. “You can count on me, ma’am.”

“Thank you, I knew I could.” She picked up the hot water bottles. “Don’t forget to check your schedule before you leave for breakfast. We try to have it up by 0700.”

“Wilco,” said Sousa.

“I’ll see you both tonight, then.” She closed the door behind her.

“No more sleeping in!” crowed Grahn. He started to sing Reveille, in a voice imitating a bugle. Even as Sousa groaned, his legs were swinging themselves over the side of the bed, obeying the response conditioned into him back in boot camp: get up.

As Grahn started his morning routine, Sousa sat on the side of the bed. He thought about just getting up and getting started, but the orderly might tattle… he’d better wait.

The orderly showed up around ten minutes later. Sousa immediately grabbed his crutches and got going; the orderly kept an eye on him, but otherwise just made up the bed and patiently chatted about the Yankees as Sousa brushed his teeth and shaved and dressed.

Sousa followed Grahn out of their room to the chalkboard with their schedules. First up for him was 0900 RM – PT, followed by 1200 MESS HALL (W/C), 1300 8101 DISC. GRP, 1400 MTG, and 1500 GYM PT (W/C).

Grahn stepped forward and picked up a piece of chalk. 1600 PALM CT BRIDGE CLUB, he wrote — first on his own schedule, then on Sousa’s.

“Don’t forget! Though… if you don’t want to come, I won’t give you a hard time about it,” he said.

Sousa scoffed. “I’ve bought the peanuts; might as well stay for the game.” He backed up his wheelchair and rolled himself down the hall to the elevator bank. Grahn followed, singing the bugle call for Mess Call under his breath.

Physical therapy went well that morning. Sousa did a bit better with wrapping his leg, and the therapist cleared him for moving about the room on his own for everything short of a shower. After P.T., he went down to the lounge to have his snack and write letters while he listened to the radio.

He went to lunch; he endured discussion group and asked his weekly token question; he went back to his room to wait to be called to the meeting. He did not have to wait long before an orderly came to get him.

He followed the orderly down the hall and to a room he hadn’t seen before. The orderly knocked on the open door. “Here’s Lieutenant Sousa,” he said.

“Send him on in,” said Major Peyton’s voice.

Sousa entered the room. Sitting around a long table were Peyton and Blaine and a few of the other doctors; a nurse he didn’t know who still looked strangely familiar; Lieutenant Reese, one of the physical therapists he knew from his morning sessions; and another physical therapist he’d never seen before. Everyone at the table looked relaxed, with none of the phony smiles that hinted at unpleasant news.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant Sousa,” said Peyton. “Pull on up; that space there’s for you.” He introduced some of the other people at the table. The nurse turned out to be head nurse of Sousa’s ward; Sousa remembered she’d come to see him on his first day at the hospital.

The second physical therapist was actually an occupational therapist, which made Sousa uneasy. Back after Tillie’s visit, when he’d been so blue, they’d sent an occupational therapist to see him in his room. It had startled and frightened him — did they think he’d cracked up? Had they already called a psychiatrist? — and he’d made an ass of himself on her first visit. But she’d stayed cool as a cucumber, and had come back for a second visit, and a third. And once she’d given him something useful to do, her visits weren’t quite so bad.

She hadn’t come in a while, though, and he’d thought the danger had passed. So then why was the occupational therapist here?  Were they worried about his… adjustment… again? But he’d been doing what he was told and he’d been eating the snacks and he’d been feeling better — what was the problem now —

Blaine spoke up. “Every week, we all meet to compare notes on each patient’s progress and plan his care. Lieutenant Drummond and the dietitian couldn’t be here today, but they left notes: sounds like you’re doing well in discussion group and that your appetite’s picked up.

“So now that you’re done with traction, let’s talk about the next stage of your recovery. We want to make sure that your incision heals well and that the pain and swelling keep going down. Once that happens we can order your prosthetic. Meanwhile, we’re going to bump up your physical therapy some more.” He looked to Lieutenant Reese.

“We’ll start with three half-hour sessions a day, down in the gym,” she said. “We’ll keep working on caring for your scar, getting your leg strong and limber, and on building your strength and endurance back up.”

“What about the morning session I’ve been doing?” asked Sousa.

“A few more days. Then we think you’ll be ready to take that completely over, with an orderly around just in case.” The head nurse nodded.

“It’ll be good preparation for when your prosthesis comes in,” Lieutenant Reese continued. “Most of the men prefer to bathe in the evening; it’s just more convenient for your skin care. We’ll tell you more about that later on.

“Any other questions about physical therapy?”

“Nope. Just ready for my orders,” said Sousa. Lieutenant Reese smiled.

“All right then. Next up?” said Blaine. “Occupational Therapy.”

The occupational therapist leaned forward. “We’ll work with you and your doctors and with the Physical Therapy department to choose activities that you enjoy and that will aid in your recovery. We’ll start with four thirty minute sessions a week and adjust it from there.”

Peyton spoke up. “One of the goals of occupational therapy is to help men prepare to go back to active duty or to a productive civilian life. I’ve already ordered that your program include some brushing up on your typing. It’ll come in handy if you decide to resume your education or take a job in an office.” He emphasized the word office, just a touch, and Sousa caught his meaning: Peyton was referring to the SSR.

So this really wasn’t about his mental “adjustment”. Sousa started to relax a little. And if it was only two hours a week, he could live with that.

The head nurse passed him a sheet of paper. “Here’s the schedule we’ve worked out for you. As you can see, you’ll have plenty of time for recreation; we have quite a variety of activities for you to choose from.” She smirked. “We noticed that once of those recreational activities was already chalked in on your board this morning.” There were a few chuckles around the table. “We’re not sure who put that up there, but we kept that time open for you.”

Sure enough, 1600 Tuesday was open. They’d also left Sunday morning open and Sunday afternoon lightly scheduled, and had written in brief directions to the new rooms.

“I want you to keep up with the snacks as much as possible,” said Blaine. “The dietitian can set something up for you for days when you don’t have time to come upstairs.”

Sousa held up the paper. “So when does this start?” he asked.

“Tomorrow,” said the head nurse. “You have PT scheduled for 1500 today, I think.” She glanced at the clock. “We’d better not keep you any longer.”

“Any questions? Well, If you come up with any, ask them,” said Blaine. “See you in the morning, and keep up the good work.”

 

After physical therapy, Sousa headed over to the Palm Court. He was very early — nobody else was there yet — and it gave him a few minutes to just look around the room and think.

The Palm Court itself was yet another grand place, with beautiful marble floors and a mezzanine and palm trees arching overhead… and, built over the low steps, wooden ramps with handrails, for the convenience of patients like him. The room was already set up with chairs and small tables. He wondered what the room was used for when the hotel was a hotel. It suggested elegance, and relaxed conversation, and the soft clink of china and crystal, and ladies wearing hats with frilly decorations.

Come to think of it, it did seem like the kind of place a girl might like, maybe for lunch on her birthday or ice cream on Sunday afternoon….

He heard a rumble and looked up. Grahn was coming up the ramp, talking to a matronly-looking civilian lady. They were followed by a private pushing a chalkboard.

“Let’s see how many there are,” Grahn was saying. “Maybe we can have a short basics session first and then start with the more advanced stuff — Sousa! You made it!”

Sousa smiled and pushed his wheelchair forward to meet them. Grahn made the introductions: “Mrs. Lambe, this is my roommate, Lieutenant Sousa. Sousa, this is Mrs. Lambe, from the Atlantic City Bridge Society.”

They shook hands. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant Sousa,” said Mrs. Lambe. “Lieutenant Grahn tells me that you’re picking up the game very quickly —”

“So where d’you want the chalkboard?” asked the private. Grahn and Mrs. Lambe turned to give him instructions. Sousa watched as Grahn put his canes down to walk over and help the private pull the chalkboard into place and then rearrange some of the chairs and tables.

Once he was satisfied with the seating arrangement, Grahn ordered Sousa to a spot; Sousa chuckled and rolled himself over to the table. Grahn used one of his canes to reserve the chair opposite Sousa and then went to go help Mrs. Lambe.

The first men started to arrive. Sousa knew Maddox and Hayes from upstairs; Maddox hurried over and took the third place at Grahn and Sousa’s table. Hayes rolled his wheelchair over to say hello, but did not take the fourth spot. “I already play,” he said to Sousa, “so I’m going to help the rookies today.”

More men started arriving —some with crutches and canes, some in wheelchairs. Grahn reappeared at Sousa’s elbow.

“Lieutenant Brent’s our fourth today,” he said. “Brent? Lieutenants Maddox, Sousa, and Hayes. Back in a few.” He pulled out the chair for Brent and hurried off.

“Nice to meet you,” said Hayes. He leaned forward to shake hands. Brent hesitated a moment  before he reached forward and offered his split-hook prosthetic right hand. Hayes shook it, and then Sousa and Maddox. Brent sat down.

“I think we’ve seen you before. You’ve been coming a few weeks, haven’t you?” asked Maddox.

“This is my fourth week.” said Brent. “The fellow I used to pair up with just got discharged. Is this your first week?” he asked Sousa.

“Yeah. Grahn’s been repeating the lessons for me upstairs, but this is the first week I’ve been able to come.”

“Fresh off traction,” added Maddox.

“Congratulations!” said Brent.

“Thanks,” said Sousa. “It’s good to get out.”

They chatted for a few minutes, until they were interrupted by a wave of silence rolling through the room. Sousa, Hayes, and Brent looked up, and Maddox turned to follow their gaze.

“Oh, jeez,” Brent whispered. “Poor guy. His whole face.”

It was one of the burn patients, in a wheelchair pushed by a Gray Lady. His hands and part of his face were bandaged; the visible part of his face looked like a mask. Mrs. Lambe and Grahn were heading over to greet him.

Maddox turned back around. “First time I’ve seen him,” he said. “I wonder if he’s just getting off the ward, too.”

Sousa glanced over again. The Gray Lady was pushing the new fellow’s wheelchair to a table with some of the other beginners.

“I’d better go see where they want me,” said Hayes. He backed up and rolled himself over to the beginners’ tables.

Finally it was time to start. Grahn introduced Mrs. Lambe and sat down across from Sousa. She gave a quick review, got the beginners started, and then gave the day’s lesson on bidding for the more experienced players.

“Now let’s practice,” she said. “North starts the bidding.” She walked from table to table, passing out decks of cards that had already been dealt into hands, so that each table was playing the same game. Sousa and the others at the table picked up their hands. Maddox was sitting on the north side of their table; he assessed his hand and placed his first bid. Grahn, on the east side, went next; his whole demeanor changed as he as considered and calculated.

This was Sousa’s first time playing bridge with three other people. It was far more challenging than the practice hands he’d played upstairs with Grahn, and it wasn’t until the last trick was taken that he realized how utterly engrossed he’d been in the game. He’d had to judge the strength of his hand and bid accordingly, get a sense of Grahn’s hand, and cooperate with Grahn against Brent and Maddox without being able to see Grahn’s hand. He was beginning to understand how people got hooked.

When the last table finished, Mrs. Lambe took to the chalkboard again. “Now North’s hand has how many spades?  How many hearts?... ”

As she wrote, Grahn glanced over to the beginners’ tables, and Sousa couldn’t help looking too. Hayes had taken the fourth seat at another table, and was explaining something to one of the other first-timers. Everyone seemed to be having fun, including the fellow from the burn ward; the Gray Lady was sitting next to him holding his cards for him, and he and everyone else at his table were laughing at something.

Back up at the board, Mrs. Lambe started the debriefing. “Now how should North bid? How about East? ….And what happened at your tables?”  Hands started to go up as the soldiers reconsidered how they’d responded to the other players’ actions.

They had time for one more practice hand before the session was over. As Grahn dealt, Maddox spoke up.

“So, Brent: how long’ve you had your new paw there?”

Brent thought for a moment. “Six… seven weeks? I’m still getting the hang of it — I guess I’m getting used to being right-handed again.” He chuckled, and showed them how he was learning to manipulate the prosthesis. “They’ve got me working jigsaw puzzles in O.T.”

The time passed quickly, and soon they were gathering up the cards and tidying up. The fellow from the burn ward looked tired but happy as the Gray Lady pulled his wheelchair back from the table and around to the ramp out of the room.

“So what’s next?” asked Sousa.

“Dinner, once Grahn gets Mrs. Lambe squared away,” said Maddox.

“I’ll see you fellas there,” said Brent. “Great to meet you.” He shook hands around again and headed back down the ramp.

Dinner sounded like a good idea to Sousa. He looked up at the mezzanine: men were starting to gather, waiting for the mess hall to open. Back on their level, the chalkboard clattered as the private pushed it away again.

Grahn was still talking with Mrs. Lambe. “No, I don’t think we need to break up the groups,” she said. “I think I can round up a few more Society members next week to help the beginners, and for general assistance.”

“That would be great. Thanks, Mrs. Lambe.”

She turned to Sousa. “And what did you think?”

“It was a lot of fun,” Sousa replied. The group started moving down the ramp towards the hospital entrance.   “It’s a real brain stretcher.”

“It is, isn’t it? And convivial, too. I’m glad you were able to come today. Will we see you next week?”

“Don’t tell Grahn, but I’d come even if he wasn’t my roommate.”

When they reached the elevator, they said good-bye to Mrs. Lambe. She went on to the Special Services office, and Maddox pushed the call button.

“You done good, Grahn,” he said. “This thing’s starting to jump.”

“Thanks,” said Grahn. “I love being proved right.”

“So who’s going to run this after you take off?”

Sousa looked up. Did Maddox know something….?

“Cross that bridge when we come to it — no pun intended,” said Grahn. The elevator doors opened; he stepped in and held the doors as Sousa backed his wheelchair in. “Probably someone from Special Services, and by then the bridge people will know the drill.” Maddox entered, and then another couple of patients. The doors closed.

“Besides,” added Grahn, “You’re going to be out of here before me. You can start a club at Walter Reed, if there isn’t one already.”

“All those generals’ wives running around? I’m sure there’s a club already,” said Maddox.

Grahn winced. “All the more reason to start a new club with ladies who aren’t anyone’s wives yet. Oh —unless the generals’ wives bring them to their club….”

The doors opened. “You mean like generals’ daughters?” said Sousa.  “You really wanna live that dangerously?” He waited his turn and rolled himself off the elevator. “Some of those old guys are still pretty spry.”

“Now what could you possibly mean?” Grahn stepped off the elevator. “I’m a model citizen. And besides: I know better than to make trouble I can’t outrun.”

 

Sousa did not linger over supper, but went straight back to his room: he was tired, and he could tell his leg needed to be rewrapped. He was lying prone, reading his mail, when Grahn showed up.

“There you are,” said Grahn. “So, really, did you like the bridge class?”

“I honestly did. And I see what you mean about learning from a teacher instead of out of a book.”

“Makes more sense, doesn’t it? Mrs. Lambe says that some of the other members of the Bridge Society help her get all those cards ready for when we all play the same hand. You’re coming next week, right?”

Sousa chuckled a little. “I’ve got no choice. They saw that little note you made on the board this morning and practically wrote it into my schedule.” He hesitated and then decided to go ahead and ask: “Did they make you do occupational therapy?”

“Well, yeah. I’m still doing it now,” said Grahn. He sat down and pulled his mail out of his pocket. “That’s where I’m working on driving. Oh, haven’t you seen it yet? They have a whole car down there. Another week or two and I should be out on the road.” He finished opening a letter and looked up. “Why do you ask?”

“They’re scheduling me for it again. Just wondering, that’s all.”

“I always liked O.T.,” said Grahn. “They have woodworking tools that you power with your feet. I made a cutting board. Gave it to my mom for Christmas.” He started to read his letter and looked up. “Speaking of holidays, you got any plans for Easter?”

“My sister’s dropping hints that my dad might come down.”

“Oh, good! I hope that works out.”

“How about you?”

“Hoping to get a pass home. Hey: after nose count, let’s go to the lounge. You haven’t been there in the evening yet, have you? We should go. You had to bug out right after dinner, and I haven’t seen a paper today, and we haven’t read Keck’s letter. We can see who else is down there, maybe listen to the Bruins – Red Wings game. It’ll be fun.”

 

The next day got off to a good start. In his first P.T. session, Sousa had his best attempt yet at wrapping his leg; later that morning, in his second P.T. session, the therapists started teaching him how to take stairs. It was just one step — more like a curb — but he felt good about how it went, it was one more sign that he was getting somewhere. After the session, as he rolled himself back towards the elevator, after the session, it occurred to him — if his father came for Easter, could he get an overnight pass out of the hospital? Even for just one night?

He liked this idea. He’d have to master wrapping his leg, of course, but he almost had it… And he was really getting the hang of handling his crutches and taking care of himself, Lieutenant Reese had said so just that morning. It couldn’t hurt to ask.

But where would they stay? Grahn had said something about the Red Cross keeping a list of hotel rooms. Sousa looked at his watch: he had time before lunch.  He headed off to the Red Cross office and put his name on a list for a room, just in case.

After lunch he had another P.T. session. This time the therapist had him sit on a special table and took him through a new set of exercises for his leg, having him first push against her resistance and then use a kind of harness to pull weights over a pulley. It was hard work, and he was glad to do it.

Next, she took him through some desensitization exercises and the deep squeezing massage he’d learned. Then it was back to stretching, and then stretching some more, with her gently helping him to extend the stretch.

“Don’t want those hip muscles to get tight,” she said. She called an aide over and turned back to Sousa. “Now, go ahead and turn on your left side, with your right hip pointing toward the ceiling….”

She carefully massaged the muscles around Sousa’s hip as the aide helped him position his leg and talked to him about baseball: the Yankees were holding their spring training in Atlantic City that year, the Boston Red Sox were training only a few miles up the road, Joe DiMaggio himself had been transferred to the Army Air Forces Training Center just a few weeks ago, and it would all be coming together the very next day at the first exhibition game….

“There you go,” said the physical therapist. “How’s that?”

“Wow. That hurt. But in a good way,” he quickly added. The therapist nodded in satisfaction.

As he rewrapped his leg (“A little more stretch there, Lieutenant Sousa — that’s the way”), he confided his plan about Easter.

“Well, we’ll have to see what the doctor says, of course,” said the therapist. “But if this works out… how would you get to the hotel?”

“Wouldn’t that depend on where it is?”

“Well, yes, but all the hotels close by are part of the hospital now. I suppose you could take your wheelchair the whole way and hope it doesn’t rain. Or you could take a taxi. Which would mean… we should probably have you practice getting in and out of a car, and teach you how to fold a wheelchair.” She smiled, and Sousa’s heart leapt. They were on his side.

His good mood deflated when, out in the hallway after the session, he checked his schedule. Next up: Occupational Therapy.

As he wheeled himself through the halls, he reminded himself: typing, SSR, life after the hospital. Not adjustment.

But he couldn’t get his first run-in with O.T. out of his head. It had been during those horrible days when he couldn’t eat and couldn’t sleep, when he was barely keeping himself together, when he was worried that they were going to send him to the mental ward and that he might even belong there….

He’d been feeling low enough, and then a day or two after Tillie’s visit, late one morning, a knock had sounded at the door and a therapist had entered, pulling a cart behind her. She was an occupational therapist, she’d explained, and as she began a set speech about productive recreation, Sousa began to feel apprehensive. He’d read about occupational therapy in one of the booklets they’d given him, and now that the therapist was here, he vaguely remembered hearing Blaine saying something about it. But the booklet had talked about occupational therapy as preparation for returning to active duty, and he knew that wasn’t him. This wasn’t some kind of psychiatric thing, was it? And then she was saying something about “keeping the mind occupied” and “relieving tension” and he did not like the sound of that at all. He’d felt his heart start to beat a little faster with worry.

She’d drawn the cart closer to the bed and showed him an odd wooden contraption, something like a frame with strings, that looked a bit like the innards of a piano. She’d explained that it was a tabletop loom, very popular activity with the men, engaging but relaxing, something he could do lying down, would he like to try it? And before he could say Do I have to? she was setting it up for him, and explaining the warp and the weft, and this would be just for practice, he could design a project of his own, maybe a scarf or a table runner or even a blanket.

He’d bit back the words You have got to be fucking kidding me and was immediately horrified — he’d come way too close to saying it, and to a therapist, a woman — what was wrong with him?  She handed him the weaving shuttle; he reluctantly took it and started following her instructions.

He’d tried his best, he really did, but it was hard, it was so hard; he was overwhelmed with thoughts of alarm and disgust at how close he’d come to being crude and disrespectful to the therapist; thoughts of fury and humiliation at being presented with this crazy, stupid project like he was some kid in nursery school and not a grown man who’d not two months ago been disarming bombs; anxious thoughts of psychiatrists and sleepless nights and endless days of feeling like he was on the verge of cracking up….

It was too much. He was about to break down, or throw something. He carefully put the shuttle on the table.

“I can’t do this,” he said, his voice tight. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no, you’re doing beautifully, you’re picking this up so quickly —“

“No, I — I can’t do this. I just can’t.” He’d felt so ashamed of himself, being so mule-headed and rude, he’d never flat-out refused instructions from hospital staff before, but….

He’d felt her looking at him, and braced himself for a gentle lecture.

“Okay,” she’d said, without a hint of sarcasm. She’d lifted the loom and the shuttle back onto the cart, pushed it away from his bed, and sat down next to the bed.

“So tell me,” she’d said, “what kinds of things do you enjoy doing? Do you have any hobbies, maybe back home, or is there any work you particularly like doing?”

As if he were the same person he’d been back then…. He’d struggled to turn his mind back that far…

“Some people have hobbies — things like games, models, stamp collecting, woodworking,” she’d said. “And some people have work that they really enjoy doing, they enjoy it so much it’s like play for them. I know some girls who are like that with sewing or knitting — it’s work, but it’s work they like doing, and they like giving it a little extra. Some fellows love fixing cars, or they go to build a shed or something and next thing you know it’s got shutters and trim and window boxes.”

Sousa had smiled a little. “Some of the old folks back home are like that with their gardens.”

“So you know what I mean. How about you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never really had any hobbies.” What did he need to say to satisfy her and make her go away?

“How about back home when you had some free time?”

He shrugged. “Get together with friends, maybe go to a show… go to the beach if we had time…. read; listen to the radio….” It sounded like such a weak answer, but he honestly couldn’t remember much at the moment, and it probably wasn’t a good time to bring up going to the track with his father and uncles. “I built a couple of models when I was a kid,” he offered.

“Oh, really? Did you plan them, or did they come from kits….?”

“They were kits. One was a plane and one was a little boat with sails.”

“Did you like putting them together?”

“I guess so.” He’d chuckled a little. “The boat kind of put me off model kits. I got ready to put the sails and the lines on, but the instructions were wrong for the rigging, and it really bugged me. You know how kids can get stuck on things. If I followed the instructions, the model wouldn't look like a real boat, but if I put the rigging on the right way, it wouldn't look like the picture in the directions."

She’d smiled. “What did you end up doing?”

”Threw away the directions and did it the right way.”

She’d chatted with him a little bit longer before she stood up to leave. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Lieutenant Sousa,” she’d said. “I’ll see you again in a day or two, all right? And I’ll leave the loom back in the workshop.”

When she’d left, he’d sighed and stared at the ceiling. He was going to be in so much trouble.

But it never happened. Nobody said anything about it, not even the therapist herself when she’d showed up a couple of days later, carrying a basket.

“Good morning, Lieutenant Sousa. Today I was wondering if you could help me with something.” She’d sat down next to his bed. “Many of the men who’ve had hand injuries or amputations do woodworking as part of their occupational therapy, and there are a few of them who’ve really taken to it, especially toy-making. If Santa ever has openings at the North Pole these fellows would be naturals; they’re making toys so quickly we can hardly keep up.

“Anyway, you’d mentioned that you had a little experience with models. I was wondering if you could help us catch up with getting some of these toys painted.” She’d pulled a wooden boat out of the basket and handed it to him.

And that was how Sousa had found himself painting a toy tugboat a couple of times a week. Of course they didn’t really need his help, that was just sugar-coating, but it really did make the whole thing easier to swallow, especially once the occupational therapist told him that the toys would be given to a local nursery for children whose mothers were doing war work, or made available for patients to give as presents to their visiting children. So he’d gritted his teeth and painted the boat and made small talk with the therapist as she helped him manage the jars of paint

Once he’d finished the tugboat, he’d started a fishing boat, but he’d never finished it; one day the therapist didn't come, and then she didn’t come again, and that seemed to be the end of it. He’d never asked about it; maybe they’d forgotten about it.

 

But if they had forgotten about it, they’d certainly remembered it again. He pulled his wheelchair up to the door of the O.T. room and checked his schedule: this was the right place. He sighed, tucked his schedule back in his shirt pocket, wheeled himself in, and checked in the desk.

Before he had time to look around, an occupational therapist came to greet him and introduce herself. “Why don’t we start with a little tour of the department?” she said.

Sousa followed as she showed him from room to room: the leatherworking room, where a patient in a maroon robe with his left arm in a sling was weaving a leather belt… the pottery room… the door to the darkroom (“The red light’s on, we’ll have to come back another time”)… the weaving rooms, where four patients were working at full-size looms and more were seated at the table using hand and tabletop looms.

“And here’s the woodworking room,” she said. “Sergeant Doyle?”

A patient seated at a jigsaw paused, looked up, and waved.

“Lieutenant Sousa, this is Sergeant Doyle.” She turned to the sergeant. “Would you mind showing the Lieutenant how you power the jigsaw?”

“You can see it better over on this side,” said Doyle. “I put this thing on —” he knocked on an odd-looking prosthetic leg — “it fits on the pedal there —” he pointed to a bicycle pedal at the base of the jigsaw — “and away we go.”

“What are you making?” asked Sousa.

“Desk set. This part’s the letter holder,” said Doyle.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” said the therapist. She turned to Sousa. “We use those special prosthetics for several activites and pieces of equipment, so patients can get started sooner. Now, I understand you were doing some painting? We do that in the next room; I’ll show it to you another time. Now we’re going into one of the classrooms.”

The classroom was set up with drafting tables, typewriters, and adding machines. A handful of patients were already at work at the typewriters as a second therapist walked the room. She came over to meet Sousa and introduced herself as Lieutenant Watson.

“This is where you’ll be doing your typing sessions,” she said. “Let’s get started by testing your present level of skill.” She showed Sousa to a typing table adjusted to wheelchair height, and brought over a little stand holding a printed sheet of paper and set it next to the typewriter. “Type that — without looking at the keyboard —” a couple of the other men smiled — “I’ll stop you after three minutes. You probably won’t finish the page and that’s fine. Ready… set… go.”

 

Sousa left feeling a little better about O.T.. The typing made sense, especially after Lieutenant Watson gave his score on the test as “oh, don’t worry about it”; the arts and crafts stuff made sense as sugar-coated physical therapy; and the photography could be downright useful. He’d have to see about getting in on that.

The next morning, he asked Blaine about an outside pass for Easter; Blaine hemmed and hawed and didn’t say yes, but didn’t say no, either. On the other side of the curtain, Grahn cleared his throat.

“However, we can certainly say yes to a pass tomorrow afternoon if your uniform comes in,” said Blaine. “Use a wheelchair and be back by 1900. And let me know when you expect your father next. It’s too soon for a furlough home but it’s not too soon to start talking about it.”

That afternoon, every radio in the hospital — even the ones that suddenly appeared in the O.T. and P.T. rooms — was tuned to the same thing: the exhibition game between the Yankees and the Red Sox being played that afternoon right there in Atlantic City. There’d been a band, Sergeant DiMaggio had been trotted out…. A couple of busloads of patients had even been able to go.

At dinner, some thoughtful person rigged a radio to the public address system, so the men could listen as they ate. Sousa had never seen the dining hall so quiet. Finally cheers sounded as the game ended with a Red Sox victory.

After dinner, he went up and rewrapped his leg under supervision. He almost had it down now: another satisfying little victory. If they let him move his shower to the evening, maybe he could pick up another P.T. session during the day.

He was reading his mail when Grahn showed up at 1857. “I meant to ask you at dinner,” said Grahn. “Are we squared away for tomorrow?”

“Just waiting to hear on my uniform. I was going to check after breakfast.”

“Okay. Think about where you want to go, we can pick a place at lunch.”

“Aw, you guys can choose. I don’t know what’s out there.”

“Well, we usually pick someplace close by. There’s always the pizza place, and then there’s another Italian restaurant, and then there’s this place Wellington’s — that’s where we went with Nash and Llewellyn — wait, you don’t have to eat fish, do you?”

“I don’t have to, but….”

“Well, they’ve got fish. Or we could —”

They looked up as the telephone rang.

“Wonder who that could be?” said Grahn. He tossed his canes on the bed and went to answer the phone. “Hello? ...Yes, one moment.” He pushed the telephone table closer to Sousa and handed him the receiver. “Say hi for me.”

“Hello?” said Sousa.

“Hi, Daniel,” said Tillie. “I’m afraid I have bad news. The Escobars got a telegram this afternoon —”

Daniel froze: Pete. But no, not Pete, the Escobars got the telegram, not Ines — it must be —

Tillie swallowed. “Ritchie.”

 

Notes:

Quo Vadis is one year old now! Thank you very much for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which really do keep me going.

Thanks to @scullyssahnequarkbroetchen and @CotyCat82 for test reading services.

Notes:

Bugle calls: You can hear them at http://www.music.army.mil/music/buglecalls/default.asp

Bridge: Just found out that a leader of the New Jersey Bridge Club really did do classes at England General Hospital. :)

Occupational Therapy:

Research is like a pinata: you think you've found everything, and then you give it one more tap and you're showered with material you really could have used several chapters back — like finding out that there was indeed occupational therapy for bedbound patients and that there was such a thing as a tabletop loom. It was just too good to waste, and I didn't want to wait and insert a chapter later this year when the whole fic was over. Hence, the flashback.

I have the impression that at this time occupational therapy was still emerging as its own specialty, and didn't do as much with activities of daily living (dressing, eating, bathing) as it does now, leaving that to physical therapy. It seems that OT really started to flourish during World War I, when it was used to help soldiers recovering from both physical and mental wounds. It was heavily influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement.

In the World War II -era resources, it's amazing how creative and resourceful the OT staff was in coming up with activities to engage and challenge their patients — and touching how carefully they matched each activity to each individual patient's needs. They had a great deal of support from the physicians; one medical chief wrote something about how important it was for the weary, wounded men to learn to play again. And yes, they were really, really into looms, and the patients apparently really took to it. I just couldn't see Daniel getting excited about it.

I've posted more images of physical therapy and occupational therapy here

Baseball:

The Yankees trained in AC and the Red Sox trained just up the road in Pleasantville. The exhibition game is for reals; the part about the patients going to the game, and the radios in the hospital, was inference. Sgt. DiMaggio arrived in Atlantic City in February, 1945.

Chapter 24: Plans

Summary:

Out of the hospital and into the amusement park.

 

 

Ritchie. Daniel’s shoulders slumped. “Aw, no.”

Tillie’s silence confirmed it.

“Do they know when?” Out of the corner of his eye, he was aware of Grahn standing up and leaving the room.

“Last month, on the 26^th.  That’s all the telegram said. That and they’re supposed to get a letter, and not to talk about his ship.”

“How are they doing?”

“As well as they could, I guess. The girls are there, and Celia and her mom and dad, and some of the uncles and aunts, and Father Oliveira. I’m at Ines’s, I’m here with the baby and she’s over there with the other two kids. They’ll be coming back soon, I think.”

“How are the kids doing?”

“I don’t know how much Katie really understands. Charlie’s upset, but I don’t know how much of it is because he really remembers Ritchie and how much of it is because everyone else is upset….”

“Or because he knows Pete’s on a ship on the Pacific too,” said Daniel. And Pete had had that furlough just a year ago, Charlie would definitely remember that….

“What about Papai?” asked Daniel.

“Still at work,” said Tillie. “I don’t think he knows yet.”

Daniel sighed. “Can I do anything?”

“There’s not much to do, even for us here. I guess they’ll have a Mass. But… what else can we do? What can they do?”

“Yeah. You’re right.” Some distant part of him noted, and appreciated, the way Tillie said we.

“So that’s…. That’s what’s happened,” said Tillie.

“Thanks for letting me know. I’d better let you go before — ”

“Wait, I hear them coming, Ines will want to say hi. I would let the baby say hi too, but she’s sound asleep and she would just look at the phone and then try to put it in her mouth anyway.” She covered the mouthpiece. “Ines? It’s Daniel.”

He could hear Ines’s voice, growing clearer as she came to the phone — “Oh, perfect timing, thanks! — No, Charlie, not tonight, it’s bath time, I’ll be right there —”

Daniel chuckled a little. “Tell Charlie it’s bath time here too. Oh, Grahn says hi.”

Tillie groaned. “That silly! Okay, here she is. ‘Bye now.”

“Hi, Daniel.” Ines sounded drained. “I can’t talk long, but… Tillie told you?”

“She did. I’m… God, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry. Will you tell them I said so? I mean, I’ll write but —”

“Of course I’ll tell them. I think they’ll really appreciate that.”

“Thanks. How are you, are you okay?”

“I am. Thank you for asking. It’s just been a long day.”

“Well, I won’t keep you. You can tell me about it later — you know, if you want to. Are you going to be able to get some rest tonight?”

“I will. I’ll be all right.” She paused. “It’s… it’s just so good to hear your voice.”

“It’s good to hear you too. Say hi to the kids for me?” He felt bad for rushing her, but the meter was running on this phone call.

“I will, I promise. Okay. Good night, Daniel.”

“Good night.” He hung up the phone gently and closed his eyes. Ines sounded beat; she’d probably been over with her in-laws since the telegram arrived. If he were there, he’d shoo her off to her bedroom so she could kick off her shoes and have ten minutes of peace and quiet. He’d go help Tillie get the kids bathed and into bed, and then maybe they’d sit with Ines a little bit longer, and then they’d go home and wait up for Pai, to tell him what had happened….

It occurred to Daniel — would this affect his father’s coming for Easter? But that was a selfish thing to worry about. He sent the thought packing and turned to his nightstand for his pen and paper.

He was halfway through his letter to Ritchie’s parents when he heard the door open. He sat up and looked around. It was Grahn.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

Grahn just lightly scoffed and made his way across the room. “Need to get in?” he asked, and nodded toward the bathroom.

“No, go ahead.”

He was finishing the letter when Grahn came out of the bathroom and sat down on his own bed.

“So… bad news?”

“Yeah. A fellow from home. He was Navy, in the Pacific.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” Sousa finished writing the letter. He addressed the envelope, sealed the letter, and put it on his nightstand to mail the next morning. He put his pen and paper away and then sat in the middle of his bed, uncertain what to do with himself next.

“Close friend?” asked Grahn.

Sousa looked up. “Not that close.” He was about to add why do you ask, but a moment’s thought answered him: a phone call bringing him the news, his immediately writing a letter….

“I don’t know what to call it,” he said. “Ritchie rubs me the wrong way sometimes, but it’s not that we’re not friends; we’ve just always known each other. His family lives a few blocks over.

“Our parents have been friends since we were kids, and his parents have always been really good to me. And then my sister Ines married his brother, so we’re kind of like in-laws.  And that means my sister’s children, my nieces and nephew — he’s their uncle too. So that’s another way we’re connected.” And maybe that was their tightest connection of all, thought Sousa.

“Connected, but not close,” observed Grahn.

“Well, he’s a little older than me, and we’ve always been in different crowds, you know? All the times Ritchie’s been dumped by a girl, I'm not the guy he calls to come keep him company while he cries in his beer. And that’s no skin off my nose —” and why am I talking so much about this, thought Sousa, but he couldn’t stop — “But if he ever did call me, I’d go.  And if I ever needed him for anything, he’d be there. He might be really obnoxious about it, but he’d be there.”

Grahn nodded. “Like the guy in your outfit who gets on your nerves and always has your back.”

“Exactly.”

For a moment, Grahn seemed lost in his own thoughts. “Was he married?” he asked.

“Engaged.”

“Ah, jeez.”

“Yeah.” Sousa thought of Celia; Tillie said she’d been at the house, already connected to Ritchie’s parents and family even before she’d actually tied the knot with Ritchie.

“It's a shame.” Grahn shook his head and frowned in sympathy as he climbed back into bed and prepared to start wrapping his foot.

 

 

Sousa slept poorly that night; his right foot kept itching, and by 0200 it felt like pins and needles all the way down to his toes. He sat up in bed, had a drink of water, and started tapping his leg.

His thought drifted home again. Mr. and Mrs. Escobar getting that telegram…. Celia… Pete on his ship getting the news… Ines’s voice on the phone….

…The last time he’d seen Ritchie. It was at the Escobars’ house, December ’41, the day before Ritchie would leave for boot camp. Daniel and Tillie had ended up in a snowball fight in the backyard with Ritchie, Pete, and their assorted sisters, brothers, in-laws, nieces and nephews. Charlie was only three, the youngest on the field of battle, and he’d shrieked with glee as he flung little fistfuls of loose snow in the air. Back inside, Daniel had just hung his coat on a peg and turned to go into the main part of the house when he felt a yank on the back of his collar and a cold, wet handful of snow hitting his neck and sliding down his back, and he’d whirled around and there was Ritchie, laughing, and he couldn’t even chew him out in the four-lettered way he deserved because Charlie was standing right there and Ritchie’s mother was in the next room….

…But Ritchie made it up to him later. The family was crowding into the living room, and Daniel had found a spot to sit on the floor not far from where Ritchie was sitting. Ritchie and Charlie were in a deep discussion about how, when Tio Ritchie came back from working on the ship, they were going to build an igloo — a snow house — in the back yard, and they were going to eat cookies in the snow house, and throw lots of snowballs all day.

“What do you think?” asked Ritchie. “Should we ask Tio Daniel to help us build the snow house?”

Charlie giggled, as if Tio Ritchie had just asked a very foolish question. “Yes!”

“All right then!” Ritchie turned back to Daniel. “Hear that? You’re building a snow house with us.” He grinned. “Aw, you still cold? This’ll warm you back up.” He poured a generous spike into Daniel’s hot chocolate. “We can have some more of that in the igloo.”

As the afternoon wore on, the conversation had turned to what kind of ship Ritchie might serve on — a submarine? a little PT boat? An aircraft carrier? Ritchie had smiled and said, “Mr. Sousa, you’ll have to tell me where you sign your work, so I can make sure I’m on a ship that you built.”

“Well, Ritchie,” said Daniel’s father, “if you ever find my initials you might not want to write home about it, since I usually leave them somewhere in the brig.”

Mr. Escobar spoke up. “Maybe you’ll end up on a ship Daniel built.”

“I’ll leave a note in the mop closet,” said Daniel. “Between that and the brig, you should be covered.”

“That’s true, didn’t mean to leave you out. You’re building ships too,” said Ritchie. He leaned over to fortify Daniel’s hot chocolate. “For now, anyway,” he added, in a voice for Daniel’s ears alone.

Daniel was startled at how serious Ritchie’s expression was. “For now,” he murmured, and lifted his eyebrows in warning; he hadn’t said anything at home about his thoughts of enlisting. Ritchie nodded a little — thought so — and turned back to the conversation.

And a little bit later it was time for the Sousas to leave. They’d each shaken Ritchie’s hand and wished him good luck; Ritchie thanked them all and reminded Daniel about the igloo; and that was that. 

And now Ritchie was gone, and here he was in an Army hospital, tapping his fingers on his right thigh to remind it that the rest of the leg was gone….

He thought again of Mr. and Mrs. Escobar reading their telegram. That was almost Pai, he thought. He wondered if his father knew how just close he’d come. He hoped not.

He tapped his leg a little longer and then did the gentle squeezing they’d taught him until the pins-and-needles sensation was fading away and he thought he could rest.

He wasn’t sure how long it would take him to fall back asleep, though.… An idea came to him, and he turned and poked around on his nightstand until he found the rosary the chaplain gave him back at the field hospital. There wasn’t much he could do for Ritchie and the Escobars, but he could do this. He lay back down, crossed himself with the crucifix, and got to work.

 

The next day, he went back to his room after breakfast to wait for the physical therapist — and for the doctors, who’d said at rounds that they would be back to see him. He didn’t have to wait long before Blaine and Peyton showed up.

They had him walk around the room a bit on his crutches before getting back into bed. As Blaine unwrapped his leg, they told him how well he was doing; it sounded like they meant it. Once his leg was unwrapped, they had him move it up and down and from side to side, as usual, and then carefully examined the incision.

“Yeah, go ahead,” said Peyton to Blaine. He turned to Sousa. “Looking good! See you in the morning, Lieutenant.” He closed the door behind him.

“I’m going to make myself at home here for a few minutes,” said Blaine. He pulled a chair around to Sousa’s right side, opened a small bundle wrapped in cloth, and looked up at Sousa. “Time to take out your stitches.”

Sousa watched Blaine remove the stitches — snip, pull; snip, pull — one thick black loop at a time. It stung a little, but Sousa couldn’t exactly tell where — was it his thigh? his shin? It was an unnerving feeling.

Snip, pull. “Your incision is healing well,” said Blaine. “And the swelling in your leg’s going down nicely.” Snip, pull. “Another three or four weeks and we can probably get started on your temporary prosthesis.”

“Why temporary?”

Snip, pull. “The shape of your leg is going to keep changing; it usually takes about a year for it to mature — to get to the shape and size it’s going to stay in.” Snip, pull. “So first you’ll get the temporary prosthesis, and start learning to walk on it, and then later when the stump is mature you get your permanent prosthesis — the one that’ll last you.  Most of the men here go to Walter Reed for that stage.”

“So in the hospital for a year, final prosthesis, discharge?”

“Discharge or…. medical retirement.” Snip, pull…. “All done!” Blaine started gathering his supplies. “But before that, making sure that you’re dead solid on your prosthesis and know how to care for it.”

Sousa looked away for a moment. A year? What would happen with the SSR?

“ — I know you have P.T. coming up, you can leave your leg unwrapped for a bit,” said Blaine. “So yeah, it’s around a year in the hospital, but you’ll be able to get out and about before that, get out on furlough, see the sights….

“Speaking of which, I’m going to lift that two-hour restriction. As long as you’re where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there, stay in the building, and are back here by 1900, you can spend as much time off the ward as you please. And you're good for tonight.”

As Blaine left, Sousa looked over his schedule. He could check the HX before lunch, see if his uniform was in. And then, if the others were still up to it….

Well, if this thing went through, he'd be hitting the Boardwalk that afternoon. His first time out of the hospital, his first time in real clothes in months, his first time really seeing Atlantic City — his first time really seeing America again, for that matter…

…And America’s first time seeing him the way he looked now. He looked down at his leg and sighed.

 Well, there was nothing for it. If people were going to stare, they were going to stare. What was else he going to do, hide in the hospital until he got his prosthesis? He thought back to what Grahn had said — if you’re in a group, you don’t stick out as much — and wondered how big their group would be that night. They’d talk about it at lunch, he supposed.

A knock sounded at the door.  It was Lieutenant Reese, the physical therapist who came most often for his morning sessions.

“Good morning!” she said. “I see you’re already unwrapped, and oh look! Your stitches are out!”

“Captain Blaine just took ‘em out,” said Sousa. Skin check always came first; he grabbed his crutches to go get the hand mirror.

 

That afternoon found him sitting on his bed again, bending over his uniform coat, pinning on his insignia.

It had been a good day so far. Physical therapy had gone really well: Up in his room, Lieutenant Reese had finally pronounced him qualified to wrap his own leg and to shower without help (“though you should still have someone around, just in case”); down in the gym, he’d been able to take a short flight of stairs, up and down. At the HX, his uniform had been in as promised, and a Gray Lady had helped him get it up to his room. Then it was back down to lunch, where he’d been able to confirm to the group that he’d be able to go out that evening.

“I do have one question,” he’d asked. “I guess it sounds dumb, but… what do I do with my pants leg? The uniform guy gave me some safety pins, but….”

Ayers had shrugged. “It’s really up to you,” he’d said. “Some fellows pin it up, some don’t. Me, I’d rather keep it pinned, so I don’t catch it on anything or sit on it or something. I fold it up on the outside, when I’m sitting down, so I leave enough room, and just pin it on the seam. Duck soup.”

Sousa had nodded; that was exactly the kind of advice he’d been hoping for.

“A lot of fellows like to bring lap blankets,” Ayers had added. “It’s just… it can be more comfortable. Besides,” he’d added, “It’s going to be chilly tonight.”

Now, back in his room, Sousa looked up from his uniform coat to the knitted blanket folded at the foot of his bed. He felt a swell of relief: it was supposed to be chilly that night, so it would be perfectly natural to bring a blanket. No one would look sideways at him for having it, and he wouldn’t have to think about whether or not to bring it, or come up with an excuse for bringing it, or face uncomfortable thoughts about why he might want to bring it. He finished pinning his insignia — silver lieutenant’s bars on the epaulets, the “U.S.” and infantry pins on the lapels —  and checked his work with a tape measure. It was a familiar task, but he hadn’t done it in a while, and of course he wanted to get it right.

Satisfied, he moved on to his service ribbons. He had a unit ribbon for over his right pocket; he pinned it on and moved on to the others, the ones that went over his left pocket. First came the campaign ribbons. The one for the European Theatre… this one was fiddly. He consulted the little book and started pinning on the stars that stood for each of the major campaigns he’d served in: a silver one to stand for Sicily, Avalanche, Anzio, Rome, and southern France… and the last one, a new bronze one, for his brief service in the Ardennes. There was a part of him that still felt a little self-conscious about putting all this stuff on his coat; it felt a little bit like bragging. But the Army had told him to wear it, and if he didn’t, it would be like lying, so….

Next came the American Campaign ribbon, and then the Purple Heart ribbon. He had a little oak cluster that stood for his second Purple Heart, the one for the loss of his leg. He held it between his fingers and stared at it for a bit before he pinned it to the ribbon and put the ribbon on his coat.

The Bronze Star with the V for Valor.

The Soldier’s Medal. That one was for that business with the mudslide and the field hospital in Italy.

The Silver Star, and the little oak cluster that stood for the second one.

His jump wings. He wasn’t that experienced a jumper, he’d only done two outside of training…. but still, he’d done them.

When he was done, he spread the coat out on the bed and checked it over.  The uniform guy had taken care of the Overseas Service Bars on the left arm — three, for eighteen months — so he didn’t have to worry about sewing those on. Everything was in place.

So why did he feel like he was about to put on a stranger’s clothes?

He sighed. He’d better just get going, he told himself; he wasn’t sure how long it would take him to dress, and he didn’t want to keep anybody waiting. He grabbed his crutches, went to close the door, and picked up a couple of elastic bandages on his way back. He sat back down on the bed.

He unbuttoned his blue shirt, took off his shoe, took off his blue pants, and unwrapped his leg. He spent some time massaging the leg, as they’d taught him, and then started to rewrap it: around the top of his thigh, across his back, and back across his hips; around the top of his thigh, across his back, and back across his hips; keep going, clip the bandage, start the second one: around and around his leg, overlapping with each turn, tighter at the bottom, no wrinkles, around and around and clip.

He put on his uniform trousers, using a crutch to balance as he finished pulling them up to his waist. As he laced his shoe, he forced himself to not look away from the empty pants leg dangling over the side of the bed. He sat back up, adjusted his trousers, and pinned up the empty leg as Ayers had suggested.

So far, so good. He put on his shirt, tucked it in, put on his tie, and buckled his belt.

He transferred back to the wheelchair and headed over to the sink. It was a hassle to do this just to comb his hair, but he wasn’t confident enough yet to stand for long using just one crutch.

The Army had thoughtfully rehung the mirror at an angle toward the floor, much easier to see from a wheelchair. Sousa looked up and adjusted his tie, adjusted it again, straightened his gig line, and frowned. His hair was at that annoying in-between stage: too long to not need combing, too short to get the curl straightened out. A dab of hair cream and some work with a comb made it… presentable, at least.

And then… then there was nothing to do but wait.  He felt an impulse to walk around the hall, see who else was around, but he’d have to get his crutches, and he had a feeling he’d better conserve his energy for the outing. He wondered if he’d ever get back to being able to just get up and walk someplace without running the pros and cons first.

Sousa was flipping through the book of logic puzzles when Grahn breezed in and closed the door again. “Hey, Sousa! Got your glad rags on already? Let me hurry it up here, then.” He tossed his canes on the bed and pulled his uniform out of the closet.

“Thanks for picking the pizza place!” Grahn started to change his clothes. “Jiminy Christmas, that was good stuff. This is going to be a great weekend. You’re going to come to the social on Saturday, right? We might be able to get a bridge game going with some of the hostesses....”

“I hope you specified which hostesses, or it could be a disappointing afternoon for you.”

“I think they knew who I was hinting for.” Grahn paused as he carefully eased his trousers over the foot of his prosthesis. “But you know, even if they send us a couple of old ladies in gray dresses, we’ll be getting in some bridge practice, and those ladies are sharp.” He laced his shoes, stood up, and hitched up his trousers. “And you know, being nice to old ladies can pay off big in unexpected ways. They know people.”

Sousa snorted. Grahn was only half serious, but that half was ridiculous enough.

“Don't laugh! Life is full of surprises and you have to be ready.” Grahn went to the mirror, adjusted his tie, and combed his hair. He turned to Sousa. “Speaking of ready…”

“Hang on.” Sousa put on his uniform coat, picked up his crutches, and settled himself into the wheelchair. “Okay, ready.”

“Then let's go see Atlantic City!” said Grahn. He picked up his hat and canes. Sousa stowed his crutches, spread his blanket over his lap, tucked his hat next to himself, and wheeled himself out to the usual meeting spot by the elevators, Grahn following behind.

Whitford, Irwin, and Hayes were already waiting for them. Flores soon joined them, then Breckenridge and Ayers.

“Who’re we waiting for?” asked Whitford.

“Just Maddox,” said Grahn. He looked down at Sousa; Sousa realized that he’d been nervously tapping his fingers against his crutches. He pulled in his hand.

“It’s going to be fun,” said Grahn, and raised his voice. “If that that smelly old turtle Maddox ever gets here, that is!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” said Maddox. “We all here? Then let’s go.” He pushed the elevator button, and Sousa watched the pointing hand on the elevator dial smoothly trace its arc to their floor.

Downstairs, the group made their way through the press of patients and visitors to the front lobby. “Let’s take the door on the right, it’s the automatic one,” said Grahn. “Don’t worry, Sousa, you’ve got clearance.” He went through first. Sousa took a deep breath and followed. And with a couple of pushes, he was looking at the cab stand. He was out of the hospital.

He put his hat on and followed Grahn out from under the canopy to the sidewalk. It took more effort to push the wheelchair on the concrete sidewalk than on the smooth floors inside the hospital, and for a panicked moment he wondered if he’d be able to make it to the restaurant and back. He didn’t have time to brood; the others were coming out from under the canopy and joining them on the walk.

“Congratulations, Sousa!” said Whitford. “You made it!”

Sousa smiled a little. “Yeah. I guess I did.” He looked around, getting his bearings. They were facing southwest; the breeze and the scent and the soft roar of the ocean were coming from his left; and there was the Chalfonte, across the street. He’d seen it from the windows but never from the ground level. “It looks a lot different from down here. What street is this again?”

“North Carolina Avenue,” said Flores. “That big cross street to our right is Pacific.”

“And we’re going this way,” said Grahn. He turned and headed left, and the rest of the group followed. A few dozen feet; they passed under the skywalk connecting Haddon Hall and the Chalfonte; and suddenly they were at the Boardwalk.

Sousa stopped to take it all in. After months in the hospital, and years of war before that, he felt like he was dreaming: the great wide Boardwalk, spread out before him, the Steel Pier off to the left, and beyond it all the gray Atlantic rolling up to the sand… people walking up and down the Boardwalk, quite a few of them in olive drab… gaudy signs offering fudge and peanuts and photos and home cooking and souvenirs and the Best Show on the Boardwalk… a little boy eating popcorn as hopeful pigeons gathered near his feet… music, and the calls and shrieks of birds… the scent of cotton candy and hot dogs… the smell and the sound and the bright cold breeze from the sea.

“Crazy, isn’t it?” said Whitford. “Walk out of a hospital right into an amusement park. And this isn’t even with all the tourists.”

“Just wait till the Steel Pier opens,” added Maddox.

They turned left and started north. Their pace was slow. Sousa had worried about holding the group back, but instead he and Hayes had to watch their speed: they could have easily taken off in their wheelchairs and left the rest of the group behind. It gave Sousa plenty of time to look around. He began to relax as he realized that their group wasn’t drawing much attention — at least, not from the civilians. A couple of little kids stared at them with benign curiosity; an elderly couple in a rolling chair smiled and waved as their driver pushed them down the walk; otherwise, only friendly nods. There were plenty of soldiers from the Training Center and soldier-patients from the hospital out on the Boardwalk as well, which meant plenty of salutes to return.

They went a block or two north of the Steel Pier and then turned left. “There it is!” said Grahn. A green, red, and white sign proclaimed NICO’S ITALIAN KITCHEN.

Sousa looked at the sign and then at the door for the restaurant. “Have you been here before?” he asked Hayes.

“Nope,” Hayes replied. “Irwin has, though, and he said it was all right.”

“I wasn’t talking about the food. Are we going to be able to get in there?”

Hayes grunted as he took in the problem. There weren’t any steps in front of the restaurant door, but Sousa hadn’t thought to check on that ahead of time. What would they have done if there were? Would their wheelchairs fit through the door? Hayes had crutches too, would they just leave their wheelchairs outside….? These were questions he was going to have to get in the habit of asking — at least until he got his prosthetic leg….

The others went into the restaurant first, to scout the layout and request their table. Sousa and Hayes did not have to wait long before someone from the restaurant came out to greet them. “Come in, come in! You can fit through the door, we’ve had men from the hospital before. I can give you a push if you want, it’s a tight squeeze. There you go. Do you want to sit in those at the table or…? Okay, just leave ‘em right there behind the desk. Just like that.”

Sousa and Hayes backed their wheelchairs into the corner. As he pushed himself up to stand, Sousa was very conscious of his pinned pants leg. The silver-haired waiter didn’t seem to notice, though. “This way, this way,” he said, and showed them to where two tables were pushed together for their group.

The chairs didn’t have arms, but Sousa was able to use his crutches and the edge of the table to drop himself into a seat. He propped his crutches on the table and looked around. Across the table, Ayers lowered himself into his own chair; Sousa was struck by the look of relief on his face.

The waiter shuffled around the table, welcoming each of them in turn and passing out menus, his accent redolent of Brooklyn or perhaps the Lower East Side. When he got to Sousa, he stopped short.

“Paisan?” he asked.

“Sorry, not me. I’ve never even lived in New York. No, portoghese,” he added, as the waiter chuckled.

“Ah, almost as good. Connecticut? Providence?”

“Boston area.”

“Boston?! Well, we’re all outta beans and codfish, but I think you’ll still find plenty to like here.” He moved on to Grahn.

A few minutes later, the waiter was back pouring glasses of beer and passing around a basket of garlic bread and a dish of marinated olives. When everyone was served and the waiter had taken their dinner order, Maddox spoke up.

“So Sousa, how long’s it been now since you were hit?”

Sousa thought for a moment. “Three months. Almost to the day.”

“And almost all of it in traction,” put in Grahn. Ayers nodded sympathetically.

“And now here you are, enjoying the night life in Atlantic City. Setting foot outside the hospital for the first time. Taking that important first step.” Maddox raised his glass. “To your continued recovery. May you soon be back on your feet again.”

Murmurs of cheers and hear, hear ran around the table as they clinked their glasses and drank.

“You’ll have to forgive Maddox, he has a weakness for foot-related puns,” said Ayers.

It was an easy pitch. “Like it’s his Achilles heel?” said Sousa.

“Yeah, usually these jokes don’t get a toehold until the main course comes,” said Ayers. “But speaking of lame humor, I’d like to propose a toast to Sousa for finally turning around Grahn’s bad luck with roommates. Don’t worry, nobody croaked.”

“Bad luck?” Sousa looked quizzically at Grahn.

“Oh, has he not told you?” said Maddox.

“Not now, fellas,” said Grahn.

“I’m still waiting to hear the ice cream story,” said Sousa.

“To good roommates,” said Grahn. They drank.

“Speaking of good roommates: Heard from Llewellyn lately?” Maddox asked Ayers.

“I have,” said Ayers. “He’s having a fine old time at Walter Reed….”

They toasted Llewellyn and Nash and other patients who had already moved on; Lieutenant Keck and other favorite nurses; the nurses and doctors and medics back at the field hospitals who’d saved them…. For all the toasting, there was still plenty of beer left in Sousa’s glass; he was mindful of Blaine’s advice to take it slow. As he looked around the table, he saw that he wasn’t the only one taking it easy.

The pizzas arrived, and they started passing plates back and forth and trying the different toppings. As they ate, Sousa was asked about Italy, so he told the story about the goat and talked about Naples and pizza and strong red wine…. From there the conversation turned to grateful Italian girls, and from there to grateful French girls, and Sousa hesitated just a second too long and Grahn started to laugh at him. Hayes had a tale of a grateful French girl showing him the secret wine cellar in her papa’s restaurant, where he’d hid 10,000 bottles of the restaurant’s finest wines from the Nazis. (“They gave me a glass of wine, but not from one of those bottles; I think you had to be at least a colonel to rate one of those.”)

And at last the pizza was gone and the beer was gone and the check was paid and it was time to leave. They laughed and joked as they made their slow way back down the Boardwalk, stopping now and then to take a quick look at a shop window before the blackout curtains went up.

“Glow-in-the-dark corsages?” Sousa turned from the sign in the souvenir shop window. “What the hell?”

“Fake flowers dipped in glow-in-the-dark paint,” said Maddox. “So folks can see you in the dark. And so you have to stop in a store every now and then to charge the paint back up so it glows when you go back outside.”

Sousa shook his head and pushed his wheelchair forward again. A glow-in-the-dark corsage! Maybe he should get one of those for Tillie. She’d get a kick out of it. Maybe she’d be able to come down again sometime  and he could give it to her in person. Maybe they could go to a show. Maybe Ines would be with her and they could all go.

And his father might come as soon as next week. Maybe he could take him out to dinner; there were restaurants everywhere he looked, and some of them had views of the ocean…. Maybe he could spend the afternoon out of the hospital, maybe he’d even get his overnight pass. He was part of the world outside the hospital again, and it was full of possibilities….

…and there were three young women coming up the Boardwalk, wearing drab overcoats and decorated hats, and they were not altering their path, they were going to pass right by him and the rest of the group….

Grahn and Maddox were at the head of their little column; as the girls approached them, they nodded and wished them a good evening. The girls smiled back, and kept smiling as the rest of the group quietly greeted them, and when it was Sousa’s turn he could have sworn that the girls’ smiles were genuine smiles, not do-it-for-the-boys smiles or — even worse — pity smiles. There were no ominous giggles after they’d passed, either.  

He felt his own smile grow warmer.

Soon it was time to leave the Boardwalk and start up North Carolina Avenue. Back through the hospital lobby, back up the elevators to the eighth floor, back to the desk to sign in and collect their mail; a few more thanks and congratulations and then they turned back to their rooms.

Grahn tossed his hat and canes on the bed and turned to face Sousa. “So: the French girl!”

Sousa put his own hat on the bed and reached for his crutches. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Because there was kissing involved, and you won’t kiss and tell?” Grahn laughed and started to unbutton his uniform coat. “You should stay dressed for a bit, show off for Lieutenant Munn. But seriously, did you have a good time?”

“God, yes.” Sousa sat on the bed and started to unbutton his own coat. “It’s good to just do something normal. The food was great… company was all right, too, I guess.” He shrugged off his coat and put it on the hanger. “It was easier than I thought it would be. Way easier.”

“Good. Get your pass set up and let’s do it again. Not tomorrow afternoon, though, we’re playing bridge then.”

By the time he’d rewrapped his leg and changed into his pajamas and hung up his uniform and washed up, Sousa was tired. He was also still too keyed up to go to sleep, his mind full of ideas for all the fun things he could do with his father and with his sisters and maybe even his nieces and nephew when they all came down to visit.

And it could start as soon as next week, when his father came down for Easter. But to get the overnight pass, he couldn’t just wait to see if his father would show up. He’d need time to plan.

Blaine had wanted to talk to his father: that would make the perfect rationale: Dear Pai, everything’s going great here, I don’t know when you’re going to be able to make it down next, but when you do can you give me as much advance notice as you can? The doctor wants to set up a meeting, and it helps to have time to plan….

Sousa smiled and took out his pen and paper. This was going to be fun.

 

 

Notes:

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Announcement: Father’s Day is coming up in the U.S. on Sunday, June 19. If anyone’s interested, I’ll consider prompts/ suggestions for a little fic about Frank Sousa. Terms and conditions: 1) Takes place prior to Frank's meeting Peggy. “Frank meets Peggy” is for another day. 2) Selection criteria: whatever strikes my fancy. I may combine prompts, and will give credit for every one I use. 3) Multiple prompts okay. Send ‘em to me by however (but not telepathy, I don't have that app), including through tumblr at https://peonymoss.tumblr.com/ask. 4) The earlier you send, the more likely I’ll be able to use it. 5) I’ll do my best to have it up by June 19.

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Notes:

Tillie’s three-minute phone call (I timed it) probably cost today’s equivalent of $12-$15.

The rolling chairs of Atlantic City: Introduced in the 1800’s as a fancy wheelchair for invalids taking the air in Atlantic City; in 1887 an entrepeneur opened the service to anyone who wanted to pay for a ride (no vehicles were allowed on the Boardwalk.) During AC’s heyday, you put on your prettiest dress, opened your parasol, and took a ride in a rolling chair to see and be seen. The classic model seems to be wicker, with three wheels and space for two or three passengers, maybe a little canopy, the whole thing pushed by an operator. The service faded in the 60’s but was revived in 1984.

Paisan?: "Are you a fellow Italian-American?"

Beans and codfish: the waiter is teasing Daniel about Boston baked beans and about bacalau, a traditional Portuguese dish of salted codfish, similar to the Italian dish baccalà.

Grateful French girls: Now how does Daniel know about having to go all the way to France to get a hickey like that? Keysburg’s M-rated take on this: All the Way to France
(and btw let me plug her delightful amusement park fic Peggy Carter's Day Off )

Story about the fake wine cellar: based on a true story. There are a couple of books out there about how the French worked to keep the Nazis from plundering every last bottle of fine wine they had. The French Resistance was even able to derive actionable intel from looking at where the Nazis were shipping wine, intel they passed on to the British.

Glow-in-the-dark corsages: I did not make that up.

Thank you, as always, for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which I dip in glow-in-the-dark paint and arrange on my bedside table so I can gratefully gaze at them as I drift off to sleep.

 

Chapter 25: Who bringeth joy to my youth

 

 

Sousa slept soundly that night, better than he’d slept in months and months, a sleep so deep that he woke up groggy. It took him a minute or two to realize that he was awake, and another minute or two to figure out that he was awake because he needed to go to the bathroom, and still another minute or two to conclude that he needed to get out of bed and actually go to the bathroom. Blinking, he pushed the covers aside and swung his legs over the the side of the bed. The next thing he knew, he was sprawled on the floor.

“Who’s there!” cried Grahn.

Great. Falling was bad enough, but he’d gone and woken Grahn up too. “It’s just me, I —”

“Halt! Who’s there?” Grahn demanded again, in a low, harsh voice Sousa had never heard before.

Sousa looked up. From his spot on the floor, he could see Grahn sitting straight up in bed, his eyes wide open. But Grahn wasn’t looking at him; Grahn didn’t seem to see anything in the room. He was peering ahead into the dark, his unseen rifle at the ready.

So Grahn was on sentry duty. Maybe if he played along, Grahn would calm down and go all the way back to sleep. “Sousa. Friend,” he responded. “It’s just me.” He started to push himself up to sit. The floor was very cold and very hard.

“Advance and be recognized!” Grahn was still staring off at something Sousa couldn’t see, and for an absurd moment Sousa wondered what he’d say if Grahn demanded a password.

But then, Grahn wasn’t actually armed…. “Grahn. It’s okay. We’re in the hospital, wake up!”

He heard Grahn’s breathing start to slow. And no challenge word…. Good. Maybe Grahn had relinquished his post and would lie back down.

Sousa turned back to his own predicament. His pride and his right leg hurt, but everything else felt fine. He was close to the bed, maybe he could get back up that way…

“What’s… Sousa! You okay?”

Sousa grimaced as he heard Grahn click the call button. “I’m fine. You don’t need to call anybody.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” replied Grahn. “And you know damn well they’d skin me alive if I didn’t. Seriously, are you all right?”

“Yeah; landed on my side. The sergeant at jump school would be so proud.” Sousa pivoted onto his hands and knee and crawled back next to his bed.

Grahn slid out of bed and limped over. “Need a hand?”

“A leg’d probably help more,” said Sousa. “I think I can do it. You could pass me a crutch if you wanted to.”

Grahn handed Sousa his crutches, and then brought a chair.

“I don’t think it’s going to take me that long,” said Sousa. Grahn just scoffed and turned the chair around so the seat faced Sousa.

“Oh,” said Sousa. “Thanks.” Of course Grahn would know a good trick like that.

Sousa turned a little and grabbed the bed frame with his left hand and the chair seat with his right. Grahn looked a little surprised, but before Sousa could say anything an orderly knocked on the half-open door and entered the room.

“You okay, sir?” asked the orderly.

“Peachy,” said Sousa. The orderly came closer but did not interfere.

Sousa pushed up on the bed and the chair as he hopped onto his left foot, and leaned on them as he straightened his left leg until he could turn and sit on the bed. “Thanks again,” he whispered to Grahn. When he’d caught his breath, he took up his crutches, stood up, and finished his trip to the bathroom.

When he came back out, the orderly was gone, Grahn was sitting on his own bed, and Lieutenant Munn was waiting. Sousa felt his face grow hot. At least he’d been able to pick himself up before she arrived.

“You know I come to all these parties,” she said. “Come and sit down. What’s the story?”

“Woke  up, had to go to the bathroom…. Forgot I needed crutches, I guess.”

“It happens,” she said. “Let me look at your eyes. Did you hit your head?”

“No,” replied Sousa. He waited as she checked his pupils.

“Shoulders, wrists okay?” she asked. “Twist anything? Let’s take a look at your incision….”

She unwrapped his leg, checked his incision, quickly rewrapped his leg, helped him with the covers, and ordered him to get back to sleep. He did his best, trying to not dwell on his embarrassment, and on how he’d probably just wrecked his chances for any outside passes in the near future, much less an overnight pass for Easter.

 

“…And Lieutenant Sousa. Good morning,” said Peyton. “So how’d it go last night? Your pass, I mean.”

“Oh. It went really well.”

“Did it? Any trouble getting around? You didn’t run out of gas too soon?”

“No, everything went fine.” Sousa considered for a moment — he’d planned on asking Blaine — Blaine wasn’t there, but Peyton seemed to be in a good mood…. “Any chance of making it a standing pass?”

“We’ll come back to that. I heard you had another little adventure early this morning. Feeling okay? No bumps or bruises? And you picked yourself up right up again, well done. Let’s take a look at your incision….”

Sousa unwrapped his leg again and held it up for inspection.

“Looks good,” said Peyton. He turned to the other doctors. “Go on ahead, I’ll catch up in a minute.”

That meant bad news. Sousa grimaced and started rewrapping his leg.

“So: passes,” said Peyton. “Little trips with a group should be fine. Just use a wheelchair, stay close by, and keep it under two hours for now.”

“Oh. Okay. What about the Chalfonte, does that count as outside?”

“No, you can go to the Chalfonte. Skyway might be easier. You look surprised, did you think I was going to say no?”

“Maybe. I did take that spill last night.”

Peyton made a dismissive face. “It happens. I’m actually glad to hear you asking; sometimes men get nervous after they’ve had a fall. Which is understandable, but not helpful.

“I did want to talk to you about Easter; I hear you’ve been angling for an overnight pass. Sorry, but no.

“It’s just too soon. In a way you were reading ahead, because before you take an overnight you have to be able to safely take a fall and get back up. Now that your incision can take it, you can start practicing in physical therapy. There’s some other skills you need to work on as well.

“Don't take it hard. Even if you were ready for an overnight there’d be more to think through. You’ll want a place to stay where you can get around. The Red Cross keeps a list. But you know, Easter, we’re going to have a lot of visitors, and then we’ll be competing for space with the tourists…. Better to plan  for a different weekend.

“I hate to be a wet blanket but I thought I’d better give it to you straight. We could probably adjust your schedule, though. Who’s coming?”

“My dad… and I was hoping maybe one of my sisters.”

“Well, depending on how things go, maybe we can extend your pass, so you can spend more time with them out of the hospital. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“All right then. Have a good day, and we’ll see you in the morning.” Peyton raised his voice slightly. “Grahn? Don’t forget: 1100.”

“I’ll be there,” said Grahn. He did not sound excited.

“Our very own olive-drab bluebird of happiness,” he added, after the door closed behind Peyton.

“What’s at 1100?” asked Sousa.

“Peyton has some more of his little surgeon friends in town today. He wants me to be part of the dog-and-pony show again.”

Grahn had told Sousa before about how, when he’d arrived at England General, Peyton had told him that the injury to his left foot had left enough bone and tissue to make him a candidate for a Syme’s amputation, a procedure that preserved the heel bone.

He’d learned from another surgeon that he was in the right place for a Syme’s: Major Peyton had become something of an expert on the procedure. Peyton was able to save Grahn’s heel, which meant Grahn was able to learn to balance on and walk with his prosthesis much more quickly. He was also able to walk faster and with less effort than other below-the-knee amputees. And for short distances, he didn't need to use a prosthesis at all: he could walk without pain on his heel.

There were costs, of course. The Syme’s prosthesis was rather ugly. And when the Army brought surgeons from other hospitals to learn the procedure from Peyton, Grahn and the other Syme’s patients were expected to meet the visitors, to show them their stumps and prosthetics and demonstrate how easily they could walk. Grahn was acutely conscious of how small those costs were; he might grumble about being put on display and how much it cut into his leisure time, but it was just for form’s sake.

Sometimes Sousa suspected that Grahn secretly didn’t mind being paraded before the visiting surgeons; it meant novelty and meeting new people and being helpful, exactly his cup of tea. Today, though, his griping seemed a little more genuine.

“So are you going to be a dog or a pony today?” asked Sousa.

“No orders yet. I don't really care, as long as I get out of there on time. You’re coming to the social this afternoon, right? 1300, I'm counting on you.” He got up and started to gather his clothes.

“Counting on me for what?”

“For a bridge game with a hostess or two.”

“Oh. That.”

“Oh. That. Show a little enthusiasm, Sousa, this is an opportunity….”

 

After breakfast, Sousa headed off to his first physical therapy session of the day.

It was a good workout. After the usual exercises, they had him demonstrate his endurance on crutches and then practice climbing stairs. They took him through his scar massage; now that his stitches were out, he was to start lightly mobilizing the incision itself. Desensitization exercises, deep massage, rewrapping, and then on to his second session.

“We heard you were working ahead,” the physical therapist gently teased him. “So let’s go ahead and start working on falling and getting back up. Over here to the mat, please.”

Sousa had practiced taking falls in his combat training and in jump school, and it was easy to apply that knowledge to his new circumstances. The therapist told him a bit about what it would be like to fall wearing his prosthesis, and how to protect the prosthesis and his remaining right leg — and his shoulders and wrists — when he fell.

After he took his first practice fall, the therapist brought a chair over to the mat. “Now, for getting back up. Scoot yourself in front of the chair, with your legs off to the left. That’s it. Put your crutches within reach of the chair. Now cross your left leg over your right, foot flat — that’s right — and push up. When you wear your prosthetic, this’ll bring you into a kneel.”

So that’s what Grahn was getting at last night, thought Sousa. He pushed up with his left leg, leaned on the chair, and with a twist was off the floor and seated in the chair. From there he could pick up his crutches and be on his way.

“That’s a nifty trick,” he said.

“We’ve got more to teach you,” said the therapist with a smile. “For now, how about more practice? Maybe some more… realistic practice? It’s hard to make yourself fall.”

“Sure.” Sousa stood up and adjusted his crutches, and followed the therapist as she led him away from the chair. “You mean like shoving me over?”

“Oh, I don’t know about shoving! It’s not very realistic, unless you’re planning on getting into fights. A jostle on a crowded sidewalk , though —“

Someone bumped hard into Sousa’s right arm. He stumbled forward and to his left but was able to use his crutches to keep his footing. He turned around. The aide who’d jostled him looked impressed.

“Hm,” said the physical therapist. “Maybe we will have to resort to shoving.”

 

Grahn tossed his tally sheet aside and looked ruefully across the table at his bridge partner. “Oof. Miss Lilly, I’m afraid they have cleaned our clock completely.”

“Oh, it’s okay.” Lilly turned to Sousa, seated at her right. “You two are roommates, right? Daniel, you’ll be a good sport, won’t you.”

Sousa smiled. “Sure. Besides, there’s no use in my getting a big head; Mrs. Hathaway’s the star player here.” He nodded across the table to his bridge partner, a senior Red Cross hostess.

“Sousa!” protested Grahn. “Don’t tell Lilly that! She’s not going to come back if she thinks she’s going to lose all the time.”

Sousa put on an innocent face. “But if Mrs. Hathaway comes back, I’ll be sure to win again.”

“I’m not here to win —” put in Lilly.

“You’re playing with the right guys, then,” teased Grahn.

“Well then maybe I could team up with Mrs. Hathaway,” said Lilly. “That way I could be on a winning team and sit next to both of you.”

“But what if Mrs. Hathaway isn’t here?”

“Then we can either find another fourth or we can play gin rummy.” She looked up and across the room. The group of patients around the refreshment table was growing bigger. Over by the window, a few patients had set up a record player. Music started; a couple of hostesses led patients out to the middle of the room and started dancing.

Lilly looked at Mrs. Hathaway, who nodded. “It really has been fun,” said Lilly, “and I promise I’ll play with you again if I can, but for now... I do need to help out with the rest of the social.”

It wasn’t surprising that Lilly was anxious to join the rest of the party. Even if she’d wanted to stay at their table, the senior hostesses would have been on her case; Lilly and the other hostesses were expected to circulate among the men and talk to as many as possible, and not let herself be monopolized.

And even if she had wanted to stay at their table, and even if the senior hostesses had assigned her to do nothing but play bridge with him and Grahn all afternoon… events like these were planned with the enlisted men in mind, and he and Grahn were officers, and it just wouldn’t have been right. Sousa suspected that Grahn thought the same way; he’d noticed Grahn surreptitiously glancing at the crowd even before they’d finished the second hand of the game, as if he was checking to see if Lilly was more urgently needed elsewhere.

“Naturally,” said Grahn. “May I be the first on your dance card this afternoon?”

“I’d like that very much.” As Lilly took Grahn’s arm, she gave Sousa an inquiring look. Sousa smiled and shook his head no. Lilly nodded and waved good-bye, and followed Grahn’s lead across the room.

Sousa watched Grahn and Lilly as they joined the dancers. They danced well together; Lilly gracefully adapted herself to Grahn’s shuffling gait, and Grahn himself was smooth and confident. He had left both of his canes back at the table.

“How about you?” asked Mrs. Hathaway.

“Not today,” Sousa replied. “I don’t even have two left feet. Besides,” he added, before she could start reassuring him, “I haven’t even been out of bed a week, I need some practice before I hit the dance floor. And look at that stag line, it’s long enough.”

Out on the dance floor, Grahn seemed to agree. He said something to Lilly and, after she nodded, caught the eye of one of the patients in the stag line: Go ahead and cut in.  The other patient nervously stepped forward and tapped Grahn on the shoulder; Grahn smiled and stepped back, leaving Lilly to start dancing with her new partner. He walked over to the refreshment table, waited his turn, and came away carrying three cups of punch. When he returned to their table, he offered one to Mrs. Hathaway and handed the second to Sousa.

“Show-off,” kidded Sousa.

“You bet,” said Grahn, and sat down.

“I appreciate your being so understanding,” said Mrs. Hathaway. “I wish we could spare Lilly longer, but we have only so many junior hostesses, and between the base and the hospital….”

“You mean Atlantic City doesn’t have an unlimited supply of young women who have nothing to do on a Saturday afternoon but play bridge with Grahn and me?” said Sousa. “While the the men just sit around with empty cookie plates and nobody to talk to? And airmen running around loose in the streets of Atlantic City with nothing to do?”

“We can’t have that,” said Grahn. “No, we get it. Like I told Lilly, this has been a real treat. Sousa and I appreciate the trouble you took to make sure that we each had the honor and pleasure of playing bridge with a skilled and pretty bridge partner.”

Mrs. Hathaway smirked a little as she rolled her eyes. “Thank you. But you’re laying it on awfully thick there, Lieutenant.”

“You’re right,” said Grahn. “You see? I need practice being around ladies in a social setting even more than I need practice playing bridge.” Mrs. Hathaway shook her head as Sousa stifled a groan.

“Well, let me see what I can do,” she said. “Next week’s Easter, our schedule will be different, but then the week after that…. Maybe we could arrange for something then.”

“That would be swell. Thanks, Mrs. Hathaway.”

“All right then.” She stood up. “Have a good afternoon, both of you.”

“Same to you, Mrs. Hathaway. Thanks again.” Grahn sat down again, and waited until she was well out of earshot before he turned to Sousa and sighed. “Welcome to your first social. At least we got one game, right?”

“Yeah, we did. You know what? You pulled off something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.”

“What’s that?”

“You know how General Gavin says an officer should be the first one to jump out of the airplane and the last one in the chow line? I think you managed to do them both at just this one little social.”

“I don’t know about jumping out of the airplane, but here’s to being the last one in the chow line.” They clinked their punch cups.

“So what do you think?” asked Sousa. “You going to pop the question to Lilly? Picked out the ring? Talked to her old man?”

“Sousa!” Grahn pretended to be shocked. “You know the hostesses aren’t supposed to date the soldiers.”

“And nobody’s ever bent, broke, or snuck around that rule. Weren’t you planning this as an opportunity to fall in love at first sight?”

Grahn shrugged. “Some opportunities are just opportunities to play bridge with a nice girl. Nothing wrong with that. And before you start complaining, don’t forget, I won that coin toss fair and square. And you got to sit next to her.”

Sousa just smiled. His heart hadn’t gone pit-a-pat, either, but Lilly was the first unmarried woman in civilian clothes he’d spoken to in… in he couldn’t remember how long. Maybe even since Belgium.

“You have fun?” asked Grahn.

“I did.” Sitting next to Lilly, with her pretty curls and her green dress and her tiny hat with the little flowers bobbing on it, making the most general small talk — hometown, movies, books; only a little talk about the war, about where he’d been, no prying questions, and nothing at all about his leg…. It had been better than fun. It had felt good to meet someone new and feel like she was looking at him not as a patient or as a soldier but as just… a person.

 

After supper, he managed to get himself through his first solo shower and back to his bed without falling on his ass. He did his desensitization exercises and the tapping and massage; when his right leg was good and dry, he carefully rewrapped it; he finished putting on his pajamas, pinned up his pants leg, and put on his robe. He picked up his crutches and walked all the way down the hall to the lounge. He listened to the baseball game on the radio with the other fellows who were there; he played a couple of games of checkers, leafed through a magazine, and heckled a poker game; he went back to his room when he decided he was ready. He got himself ready for bed and got under the covers.

It felt so good to be done with traction.

 

The next morning, he ate breakfast quickly, so he was ready when Cochrane looked up and gave him a nod. Up and down the table, a couple of other men were already stacking their plates and silverware; the same thing was happening at other tables.

“So early?” asked Irwin.

“It’s Palm Sunday, you heathen,” said Flores. Sousa finished his own coffee, straightened his place, and followed Cochrane and Flores and the rest of the little group out the door and down the hall to the skyway. They were all going to the Chalfonte, where the hospital chapel had been set up, for Mass.

Sousa hadn’t been through the skyway before, and as they crossed, he took some time to look around. One side offered a nice view of the beach and the choppy grey ocean; the other side looked out over North Carolina Avenue. Both sides were quiet: only a few people here and there on the Boardwalk, a few people in green on the sidewalks.

The Chalfonte was another luxury hotel, and as they went down the hall Sousa took in the sumptuous decoration, the thick moldings on the ceiling, the elaborate light fixtures, the carved decorations on the railings and banisters and columns, the incongruous plain wood ramps added by the Army to bridge short runs of steps. The chapel itself was in a ballroom, with a high, lavishly decorated coffered ceiling and five floor-to-ceiling windows. A low platform had been set up against a wall to serve as a sanctuary, with an altar, chairs, two lecterns, and an altar rail around the whole thing, all utterly plain, with almost no trim and no art at all. It was already prepared for Mass, with the linens and the altar cards laid out, the candles ready to be lit, and a standing crucifix veiled in violet. A tiny little organ stood to the left of the sanctuary.

The left side of the room was furnished with rows of chairs, and a patient in blue and a private in green were ushering people to seats, sending some to the front, where there was extra room between the rows.

“Where should I park?” asked Sousa.

“I wouldn’t bother,” said Flores. “They like people to stay in their chairs, otherwise it just turns into a huge tangle and then the next thing you know someone’s taken your chair by mistake. Roll up on that side — ” he indicated the right side of the room with his crutch — “and we’ll catch you after.”

“All right, then.” Sousa wheeled himself up to the private in green who seemed to be in charge of the right side of the room. There were no chairs on that side of the room; only rows of patients in wheelchairs, forming as the patients arrived. Sousa found himself finishing off a row and sitting on the center aisle.

He could see why Flores and Cochrane and the others had wanted to get there so early. Finding a spot was a bit more complicated than spying an empty spot and sliding into a pew. That was all right; it was good to be early for Mass anyway. He tried to compose his thoughts, but kept getting distracted by the the fancy room, the other patients, the ushers going to and fro. It was all so familiar and so new.

And it felt good to be there: one more part of life that was finally back to normal. It had been… what, three months? three and a half? since he’d last been to Mass. It seemed crazy. Even at the front, the longest he’d had to go without was maybe, what, six weeks? And then the chaplain would show up and say Mass on the hood of a Jeep, or he’d be able to slip off to some little country church, or occasionally even off to a big church. Since he’d been in the hospital, though… a chaplain had brought him Holy Communion, but still, it was comforting to be back. It was a little strange to be just dropped in like this on Palm Sunday, without the lead-in of Lent, but he knew he’d quickly fall back into step.

He watched a little longer as the congregation grew. Patients, in ones and twos and threes, most of them with canes and crutches, quite a few with wheelchairs.  A few patients were even brought in on stretchers, wheeled up up to the very front. They must not have needed traction. Sousa smiled a little as he thought about how relieved they must be to get out of their room.

A couple of the wheelchair patients had family members with them; they were seated near the side aisle, with chairs brought up for their visitors. Sousa was pleased to see that: he’d be able to sit with his father next week, then, when he came to visit.

It was time to stop gawking. He took the tiny missal the hospital chaplain had given him out of his shirt pocket and paged to the prayers in the front:

…to adore Thee and give Thee the honor which is due to Thee, confessing Thy supreme dominion over all things…. To thank Thee for countless benefits received…. To appease Thy Justice provoked by so many sins….

It was impossible to not think of the war, of everything he’d seen, of how very big the world was, of the devastation and suffering that had been unleashed; of the innocent people who had lost their homes, their family members, their lives… there would be justice for them, whether in this world or the next.

To implore grace and mercy for myself, for [name]…

— for Ritchie, he whispered —

…for all afflicted and sorrowing, for all poor sinners, and for the holy souls in Purgatory.

A bell rang. Sousa looked up. It was still early, but Father Keller and a couple of men in green who were serving that morning were entering the sanctuary. They gathered around a small table holding a basket of palm leaves: Father Keller was going to start the Blessing of Palms early, so that Mass itself could begin on time. He looked up to the congregation. “Dominus vobiscum….”

 

“….Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum; sed tantum dic verbo, et sanatibur anima mea.” Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my roof; but say the word and my soul shall be healed. Sousa whispered the prayer for the third time and looked up. Father Keller was coming out of the sanctuary and bringing Holy Communion to the stretcher patients. He moved on to the rows of patients behind them, and then across the aisle to the wheelchair patients. Sousa recollected himself, offered his Communion for Ritchie, and waited his turn.

And then Father Keller was before him and saying the prayer and giving him the Sacrament.

When Sousa opened his eyes again, he noticed that a second priest was distributing communion at the altar rail — and that it wasn’t just visitors and staff kneeling there waiting their turn. There were plenty of patients there, and many of them were holding canes and crutches at their sides. He noticed the way one of the patients held his crutches with one hand and the rail with the other as he lowered himself down: another above-the-knee amputee, Sousa realized.

It was something Sousa hadn’t even thought about yet, he’d been so preoccupied with walking and showering and getting in and out of chairs. But it was an odd relief to see it, to realize that eventually he’d be able to kneel at the rail again, too, elbow to elbow with the others. Just like everyone else.

 

Sousa had a light schedule that day, and in between physical therapy sessions he had time to do something else he hadn’t done for months: go to a movie. They were showing “Meet Me in Saint Louis” that afternoon. He had a vague idea that it had been shown before at the hospital — he thought he remembered seeing it in the paper — but he hadn’t seen it yet, so he was glad to be able to catch it for the first time.

First came the newsreels: Iwo Jima; the breach of the Rhine; another Hydra prison captured by Captain America…. There was a clip of the Captain posing and shaking hands with the freed prisoners. Sousa frowned. He hadn’t thought about it before, but if the Captain hadn’t broken that blockade… he and the others might have ended up like that, prisoners of Hydra instead of the Nazis.

Next they showed a Goofy cartoon — “How to Play Golf” — and Sousa found himself laughing so hard his stomach hurt. Finally the feature started, and Sousa was immediately reassured that yes, this movie had been shown many times at England General Hospital — and that it was back by popular demand —when half the audience started singing along: Meet me in St Louis, Louis, Meet me at the fair….

They settled down once the movie started, though there was applause when Judy Garland first hopped out of the buggy, and more applause when Lucille Bremer showed up, and clapping when the dancing started, and then a full-throated singalong to Clang, clang, clang went the trolley…. Sousa himself felt a little shiver at the first notes of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, as he remembered hearing the song for the first time back at Mitchel. How could three months seem so long, and yet so short?

 

The next days went quickly. Monday marked Sousa’s first week off traction; in his physical therapy session that morning, Lieutenant Reese measured around his leg and told him the swelling was going down nicely. “You’ll find that it can fluctuate during the day,” she said, “and that’s normal.”

He practiced stairs; he did his desensitization exercises; he worked with the pulley weights. They had him practice getting up and down from the floor. They had him walk between the parallel bars as a physical therapist walked with him on one side and an aide on the other, pushing and poking him lightly, challenging his balance in a kind of good-natured gantlet.

In Occupational Therapy, he worked dutifully at his typing. Lieutenant Watson was doubling up on the exercise, having him type while perching on a backless office chair to improve his posture and strengthen his back and abdominal muscles. She kept kidding around about eventually having him type while balancing a book on his head — or at least she said it as if she was kidding around; Sousa wasn’t entirely convinced.

On Tuesday afternoon, when he arrived for his afternoon physical therapy session, Lieutenant Reese led him right back out the door again. “Change of pace today,” she said, as he followed her down the hall. “A little bird told me you needed some car practice before this weekend? Something about hoping for a pass?”

“Oh. That. I guess I should have said something,” he said. “No overnight pass. Major Peyton said I wasn’t ready.”

She made a sympathetic noise. “Well, let’s give it a go anyway, since we’ve got the time. Right in here, this is the car room.”

Sure enough, there in the middle of the room was a ’38 Ford, with a patient behind the wheel.

“This is Corporal Vasey,” said Lieutenant Reese. “Corporal, your passenger today is Lieutenant Sousa, so drive carefully!”

“Yes ma’am! Where to, sir?”

“It’s up to you, I’m just along for the ride.”

“Let’s go to Cape May, then. I hear it’s real pretty.”

“You keep driving, then,” said Lieutenant Reese. “We’ll be doing the passenger seat first.”

“Yes, ma’am. Lemme pull over and get my cane out of the way there.” Vasey signaled a right turn, checked his blind spot, and turned the steering wheel to pull the car over. Meanwhile, Sousa followed Lieutenant Reese around to the front passenger seat.

“This seat’s probably the easiest,” she said. “Have someone open the door and move the seat all the way back. Now, go ahead and stand up, and then turn around… walk backwards till you feel the edge of the seat. Hold your crutches in your left hand and take the back rest with your right hand — that’s it — now go ahead and sit down, and watch your head! Now, use your left foot there to push yourself back on the seat….”

Sousa pulled his crutches in after himself and closed the car door. “All in?” said Vasey. He checked the traffic, signaled left, put the car back in gear, and pulled back out onto the imaginary street.

“So how do you like being on the motor pool?” asked Sousa.

“It’s not so bad,” said Vasey. “At least here nobody’s yellin’ at me about what took me so long. Still… not much opportunity for promotion, you know?” He shook his head. “Feels like I’m not gettin’ anywhere.”

“Wait, are we in Iowa?” asked Sousa. “Because it feels like we’re surrounded by corn.”

Lieutenant Reese rapped on the car door. “Time to get out!”

Sousa practiced getting out of and back into the passenger seat a few more times. He took a couple of minutes to watch Vasey practice, and then started practicing getting in and out of the back seats. Back in the regular physical therapy room, Lieutenant Reese showed him a wheelchair that could be folded and put in a car trunk or back seat. “See? So that gives you more options.” Sousa nodded. Maybe not this weekend, but soon….

 

Bridge class was that afternoon, right before supper. Sousa went straight back to his room afterwards; he hadn’t been back to his room since leaving for breakfast, and he was pretty beat. He picked up his mail at the desk but didn’t look at it until after he’d showered, changed into his pajamas, and climbed back into bed.

As he flipped through the envelopes, he was surprised to see a telegram. It was from Tillie, of course. She’d sent it by Day Letter, a less expensive service for longer messages that weren’t as urgent. Maybe it was about Easter. He sorted the other letters by postmark, set them aside, and opened the telegram.

 

1ST LT DANIEL A. SOUSA
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY, NJ

AM SO SORRY BUT PAPAI CANT COME FOR EASTER AFTER ALL NEITHER CAN INES OR I WE ARE ALL FINE JUST DISAPPOINTED EXPLAINING LETTER COMING PACKAGE TOO PLEASE TELL IF YOU NEED WANT ANYTHING HAPPY TO SEND APOLOGIZE FOR MESS MY FAULT PLEASE FORGIVE THINKING OF YOU EVERY DAY LOVE TILLIE

=MRS JOSEPH PRZYBYLAK

 

 

 

Notes:

Sorry about the delay, folks. Hopefully Real Life will smile on me and the next chapter won't take quite so long. Thanks to CotyCat82 and keysburg for discussion and test audience services. Meanwhile, the Father's Day fics about Frank are up — many thanks to everyone who submitted prompts!

Grahn was elated to find himself in the last couple of chapters of Eienvine's stupendous A Lady of Value (seriously, I cannot recommend this fic highly enough). The first part of this chapter was already written when he first appeared over there, so I was tickled at how neatly Eienvine predicted what he was up to.

---

Notes:

Fraternization: I may go into this more in the final revision. In general, the officers did not socialize with the enlisted men; this was to discourage familiarity and favoritism — and to give the enlisted men a break. I don't know how that would have been handled at England General, though, and I'm kicking myself for not having thought of it earlier. My impression is that the atmosphere was a little more relaxed, and it seems unlikely that they'd have separate "big" events, like movies and concerts, but I haven't been able to find anything online about it either way. Maybe when my advance comes through I can pop up to AC and see if there's anything in the library up there.

I'm wondering if there was an Officer's Club at England Hospital. (There would have been one at the AAF base, but that would not have been convenient for many of the patients.) I did just come across some material on O'Reilly General Hospital, in Springfield, Missouri; they had an Officer's Club and a Serviceman's Club. But that hospital was also built from the ground up to Army specifications.

The skyway: I can’t find it on pictures, but every source I’ve ever found insists that there was a skyway between Haddon Hall and the Chalfonte hotels, connecting them across North Carolina Avenue. I’m sure it would be very convenient for the patients.

Syme’s amputation: Maj. Rufus H. Alldrege was the Chief of the Amputation Section at England General Hospital and was noted for his success with Syme’s amputations.

Bridge: I had a request to explain a little bit about the game. It’s played by two teams of two players. If you picture a square card table, North and South are a team, and East and West are the other team. In this game, Daniel’s at South, Lilly’s at West, Mrs. Hathaway is at North, and Grahn is at East. It’s Daniel and Mrs. Hathaway vs. Lilly and Grahn. Here’s a video outlining more of the basics of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE7gScP7n4M

Stag line: at a dance, the men who would like to dance but don’t have partners.

General James M. Gavin was known for insisting his officers be "the first out of the airplane door and the last in the chow line."

The chapel and the altar:
Here's the chapel at O’Reilly General Hospital, with a good view of the altar rail. This picture was probably taken at Easter:

Another picture from O’Reilly, taken at Christmas:

This is how you set it up in the Pacific. No altar rail here, though:

Chapter 26: Easter

Notes:

Just a note on the timeline: The last chapter closed on the Tuesday before Easter, Daniel's ninth day off traction.

Easter Sunday, 1944, Anzio

 

Easter, 1945

 

605th Artillery Battalion at Rocca Pitigliano on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945

 

The first letter arrived the next day. It was from Ines.

Daniel was not looking forward to reading all these explanations and apologies; they made him uncomfortable. Sure, it would have been swell if someone could have come for Easter, but he knew that they would have come if they could. They didn’t need to explain.

…I think you know Tillie’s been helping me try to figure out a way to get down there, wrote Ines. We were thinking maybe over Easter, but I just don’t think I can do it. It’s just so complicated with the kids, and now everything’s all upset here….

Well, no kidding, thought Daniel. Of course it would be great to see Ines, but between the baby and the two older children and the distance…. And of course now was an especially bad time; the Escobars were still in shock from the news about Ritchie, she couldn’t just dump the kids off with the grieving in-laws and skip out of town.

…Once things settle back down we’ll try it again. I promise.

Daniel frowned a little. Ines had so much on her plate already, and she had already been so thoughtful, with all the letters and working on that blanket with Tillie and all the stuff she’d sent. The thought of her going to all that trouble to visit, and how close it sounded like she and Tillie had come to pulling it off… it was almost overwhelming.

The second and third letters came on Thursday, one from his father and one from Tillie. He waited to read them until after he’d showered, when he was settled in bed. He opened Tillie’s letter first. It was dated Tuesday morning, and was ominously long.

Dear Daniel, I’m writing this at lunch. I sent the telegram this morning on my way to work. I don’t even know where to start.

I’m sorry I missed writing yesterday. I was over with Ines all day Sunday and got back late and got a late start yesterday morning. The Escobars are doing okay, but of course it’s so busy over there, they have so much company, and of course everyone is very sad. Anyway, remember how I told you I was thinking that maybe between me and some of the Escobars, we could keep Charlie and Katie and then Ines could come down with Papai for Easter? She and I talked about it again on Sunday night….

— so that fit in with Ines’s letter, thought Daniel —

…and we realized we just weren’t going to be able to pull it off for Easter. She is just beside herself, because she really wants to come and see you, but on the one hand bringing all three kids would be really difficult, and on the other hand now’s not a good time to ask the Escobars to take them, she feels like it would be an imposition. I think they would do it but I don’t blame her a bit for not feeling right about asking. I’d take the kids but my work schedule’s awful, plus Ines doesn’t feel right about leaving the kids right now anyway — they are so wound up, they’re hardly sleeping — I think you’re right, Charlie’s put it together and maybe even Katie and now they’re extra worried about Pete. Ines wants to come so bad, Daniel, I can’t even tell you (and honestly, she needs a vacation, I wish we could get her  down there for a whole week) and I think she feels bad that she hasn’t been able to come at all yet. I told her that you and I had talked about it a little bit and that of course you understood —

Thank you, thought Daniel —

—I went home and thought about it some more, and I thought, well, maybe we can still work this out. So next morning I went to work, and I tried again, I tried real hard but I couldn’t get Holy Saturday or Easter Monday off. So I can’t come for Easter either.

The door opened, and Daniel looked up. It was Grahn.

“Hey, Sousa,” said Grahn. “You done in the shower?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Grahn started to gather his things, and Daniel turned back to the letter. It was kind of like being back at home, half-listening as Tillie told a story and half-curious to see if she’d ever need to come up for air.

…I had dinner with Ines on Monday, Papai was on the swing shift so I didn’t see him until this morning at breakfast. We were just talking and he asked me about work and I complained about my schedule and said something about how all my plans fell to pieces again and he said “what plans?” So I explained to him how I was hoping that Ines or I could come with him to come see you and he said “I never said I was going” and I thought he was just kidding me so I kidded him back about how I didn’t think he was picking up all those swing shifts just so he could play golf or tiddlywinks back here while his only son spent Easter all alone in the hospital and then I realized he wasn’t kidding, he actually looked a little mad, and he said, well of course he was trying to go for Easter but he found out Monday he couldn’t, and I said, “well, we’d better tell Daniel”, and Papai said “tell him what?” and I said “that nobody’s going to be able to come” and he said “why, did you tell him we were coming?” and I said no, not exactly and he said, well he wished I hadn’t said anything —”

Here we go, thought Daniel —

“ — and I explained to Papai that I hadn’t told you for sure that any of us was coming, I’d just said we were all trying to get down there, and he said, well of course you would know we would all be trying to get down there, and that he he wished I had kept it a surprise, or at least waited until we knew for sure, so that you wouldn’t be disappointed if we couldn’t make it after all. So after that I stopped on my way to work to send the telegram —”

Daniel grimaced as he pictured Tillie at the telegraph office and then hurrying straight on to work, still smarting from that conversation, and pouring this letter out on her lunch break as she ate her sandwich.

“ — I apologize, I should have talked to Papai first — I guess I was just excited, and I thought you’d be excited to hear it and that it would be something fun to think about, and instead I stepped all over Papai’s surprise and I let you down. I’m so sorry….”

There wasn’t much to the rest of her letter; Daniel skimmed it and put it aside. He put his father’s letter away for later as well; there was something about Tillie’s letter that unsettled him, and he couldn’t help coming back to think about it as he did his evening leg routine, stretching and tapping his leg, pressing into it with the heels of his hands, and finally wrapping it back up with the elastic bandages.

So Tillie was upset because she thought telling the plans to Daniel had upset their father — there was something to be said for being 300 miles away from that popcorn fight — and had made the letdown worse for him when the plans fell through. It was true he was disappointed, but he was okay, he’d live; if anything, knowing that they’d tried so hard to come made it much easier to bear. He’d just have to keep an eye out for a way to reassure Tillie without opening the whole topic up again.

The previous weekend, when Grahn and the others had taken him out for pizza, he’d written to his father asking for advance notice of visits so he could set up a meeting with the doctors. That letter would have crossed Tillie’s telegram and letter, and whatever letters might be on the way from his father. Maybe it would calm the waters a little.

Daniel sighed. He did not like being the cause of all this bother.

“What’s up?” asked Grahn. He had finished his shower and was starting to pack for his trip home. “You look like you’re pondering something.”

“I guess I am.” Sousa realized he was frowning.  He swung himself around so he was facing Grahn. “Here’s a question for you: Let’s say there’s something you’d like, like… let’s say Chili Williams is in town and I ask her to the bridge club and she accepts. Would you rather I told you what was up, knowing that if she cancels out you’ll know you missed out? Or would you rather I didn’t tell you, so that if she comes you have this amazing surprise and if she doesn’t you’re none the wiser?

“Oh, I’d definitely want to know, so if she cancels I could run after her and beg her to reconsider,” said Grahn. He started rolling his clothes. “It’s kind of a philosophical question, isn’t it? Is ignorance really bliss? Do all men by nature really desire to know?” He tossed a tightly rolled undershirt into his bag and started on the next shirt. “And then philosophy’s one thing, but when the rubber hits the road? I can see both sides. You don’t want to be tantalized, but ‘'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all’, right? If it’s true for big things, it should hold true for little things. And then if everything good’s a surprise, you lose all the fun of looking forward to something.”

“True.”

Grahn tossed another undershirt into his bag. “What do you think?”

“I guess it depends on what the good thing is and maybe how much of a chance you had at it. Even if you don’t get it, at least you know it’s out there. Maybe you can try again, or be glad you at least had a chance at it.”

Grahn’s packing slowed. “It’s funny you should mention it. I was kind of thinking about this earlier today.” He put a pair of socks in the bag and looked up. “My parents and I wanted to invite you to come stay with us over Easter. They actually suggested it, a couple of weeks ago; I had to explain to them that you were still in traction, and no, the docs wouldn’t just give you a few days off. And then you got cut loose, but you told me it looked like your dad was coming and then… well, I couldn’t help but overhear when Peyton gave you that speech last Saturday about no overnight visits just yet.

“But then when the visit didn’t work out, and it has been several days since Peyton gave that speech…. I thought I’d try him again, so I caught him this morning and said, hey, if I invite Sousa to come home with me over Easter, could he get his pass? And Peyton said no, and he might have said some other stuff to me as well, but my point is that we would have liked to have had you over for Easter.”

“I… wow. Thanks so much. I would’ve liked to have come — I don’t know how I would have managed, but…”

“We would have figured something out.” Grahn tossed another pair of socks in his bag. “Anyway, since I knew Peyton’s answer was already no, I was going back and forth about whether or not to tell you.

“I’m glad you did. Will you say thanks to your parents for me?”

“Oh, sure. You know, you might be glad it didn’t work out. My hometown’s even duller than usual these days; one day in and you’d probably be wishing you were back here.” As Grahn finished his packing, he talked on a while longer about some of the boring things they could have done, and all the goings-on back in Atlantic City they would have missed.

A little bit later, Daniel picked up his father’s letter. It was short and to the point:

...It sounds like Tillie told you I was trying to come for Easter. She’s a good sleuth, that’s exactly what I was doing, but unfortunately I’m not going to be able to come after all…. I’m very sorry. I hope this isn’t too much of a disappointment. I’m going to miss seeing you. We’ll be thinking of you of Easter, and I’ll keep trying to get down there….

So that was that. Well, if his father came down later, maybe he’d be able to stay a little longer. Maybe Tillie or Ines would be able to come. And in the meanwhile, he’d be able to find something to do. It wasn’t like this was the first big holiday he’d spent away from the family, or even in the hospital.

 

Grahn left early the next morning, and Sousa started his usual Friday routine.  As he went about his day, he kept thinking back to Christmas and New Year. Even when he was stuck in bed in that cast, he’d been able to sense something in the air. That slightly giddy something was back, and now, as he wheeled himself back and forth to physical therapy, he was in the thick of it. The halls seemed emptier and busier at the same time, and every department had at least a few decorations outside its doors.

The decorations and the bustle gave him an idea, and on his way to lunch he stopped by Occupational Therapy and informed them that he wouldn’t be there that afternoon. He braced himself for a request for a pass from the doctor (which he didn’t have) or some other guff, but it never came. Instead the clerk just made a note, wished him a happy Easter, and confirmed his session for Monday. It was a little disconcerting. Sousa didn’t second-guess it; he only returned the wishes for a happy Easter and sped off to lunch.

After lunch, Sousa went back to physical therapy. He was scheduled for Occupational Therapy next, but instead he headed over to the Chalfonte for Good Friday services. As he crossed the skyway, he looked out the windows to the Boardwalk; there were more tourists than he’d ever seen before. Atlantic City must be waking up for the spring.

In the chapel, he wheeled himself to a spot and waited for the service to start. The altar was stripped for Good Friday: no linens, no candles, no cross. Two privates in Class Bs, presumably the servers for the day, were preparing the sanctuary.

That was him once, he mused. First as a kid, serving in cassock and surplice, and then, to his surprise, in the Army, when, on his very first Sunday in basic training, he and every other fellow who’d ever been an altar boy were drafted by the chaplain and put on a rotating schedule.

His thoughts drifted a bit until the bell rang and the room fell silent. Sousa bowed his head as the servers knelt and Father Keller, in black vestments, lay prostrate on the floor before the sanctuary.

 

That evening at supper, there were empty places at the tables; some of the regulars, like Grahn, were out on passes and others were dining out with their visitors. Maddox and a couple of the other holdouts were taking advantage of the extra space and had copies of the hospital paper and the Army Air Force Training Center paper and the Atlantic City paper spread open across the table.

“So let’s see… the Steel Pier’s opening tomorrow,” said Maddox. “Jimmy Dorsey’s playing there on Sunday.” He pulled a hospital paper over. “But he’s gonna be… where is it… Wait —” he looked more closely at the newspaper. “What the hell — is this in Pig Latin?”

Sousa picked up the paper and looked. “Ustjay isthay ectionsay. Aprilsway Oolsfay is on Undaysay.”

Maddox needed a second to decode the message. “Oh, is that why that page is printed upside down, too? I thought it was just a mistake. So where’s Jimmyjay Dorseyday?” He flipped through the paper    and stabbed an announcement with his finger. “Here he is. Never mind the Steel Pier — he’s gonna be here on Saturday afternoon.”

“Anything tonight?” asked Sousa.

“Last Friday of the month is the talent show. You haven’t been yet, have you? You should go, the hospital band’s really good.”

“What about the Officers’ Club? Anything going on there?” asked Cochrane. He didn’t sound optimistic.

“The Air Force Club?” asked Sousa. Cochrane nodded. As patients, their Officer’s Club consisted of the room in which they were sitting and a smaller room open to them in between meals, something like the ward lounge with drinks and snacks available. There was an official Officer’s Club attached to the hospital, but the patients avoided it: the doctors and the nurses went there.

There was always the Club attached to the Army Air Force center, but it had its own disadvantages. It was inconvenient for the patients to get there, and then once they arrived, though they were always welcomed they never really felt like they fit in — and then there always seemed to be nurses there, as well.

Maddox consulted his paper. “Let’s see… Easter dinner… and a local band for dancing on Sunday afternoon.” He shrugged. “Eh. Think I’ll stay home. We’ll have a nice dinner here, and dancing and a boodle fight that afternoon.”

Sousa took a closer look at the hospital paper. “Have you read this? Mind if I take it?”

“Help yourselfway,” said Maddox.

“Anksthay.” Sousa tucked the newspaper away and leaned forward again over the papers as they discussed their plans.

Later, back up on the ward, Sousa put his newspaper aside, showered, rewrapped his leg, and waited for the night nurse to make her first rounds. After the evening census, he headed back downstairs with Maddox and Cochrane to the talent show.

The show was being held in one of the biggest meeting rooms in the hotel. A stage was set up in front of three enormous arched windows that overlooked the Boardwalk and the ocean and were now cloaked in blackout curtains.  

A few privates in green were walking around the floor, shifting chairs around and directing traffic. The sections in front of the stage were filling in with stretcher patients. Sousa followed Maddox and Cochrane to their usual section. He waited as they sat down, and then pulled his wheelchair up next to their chairs.

A minute or two later, a Gray Lady tapped his shoulder. “Excuse me. Are you waiting for someone else? Or can another chair patient sit here?”

“Sure, go ahead. I’m not waiting for anybody,” replied Sousa.

“Thank you, dear.” The Gray Lady pushed a wheelchair up, and Sousa recognized the burn patient he’d seen at bridge club.

“This is Lieutenant Tipton,” she said to Sousa, and turned to Tipton. “I’ll keep an eye out. You let me know if you need anything, all right?” He nodded.

Sousa introduced himself and then Maddox and Cochrane. Tipton’s exposed eye crinkled a little in a smile, and he waved a little with his bandaged right hand.

“Nice to meet you. I think Maddox and I’ve seen you at bridge club,” said Sousa.

Tipton nodded. He looked a little nervous, and when he forced out a reply, his speech was slow and indistinct, strictured by the burns on his face. Sousa had to listen carefully to make out what he was saying: “I’ve only been twice.”

“Oh, same here,” said Sousa.

“So you already… know how?”

“No, I — oh, you mean why am I not at the beginner tables?”

“Yeah.”

“Grahn and I are roommates, and he taught me until I was able to come down. I just got off traction a week and a half ago….”

They shared their stories as the room filled up around them. Tipton was a tanker, wounded in January in the Ardennes. He didn’t offer anything about how he was wounded, and Sousa didn’t ask. He’d seen the grisly ruins of tanks before.

The house lights dimmed slightly and a drumroll sounded. After the presentation of the colors, the hospital commander came out on the stage. He started the show with some hospital news: 2800 patients at the hospital now; more nurses arrived this month, including civilian nurses, let’s give them a round of applause…. A simple skit, a round of knock-knock jokes with the director of nursing, and then the commander turned over the microphone to the actual master of ceremonies, a technical sergeant on the hospital staff.

It was a good show. Maddox was right, the hospital band was top-notch, and then there were other little groups: patients who were taking music lessons, patients who sang, staff who sang, staff who played musical instruments…. A couple of skits, a few soldiers on staff that did a dance routine… and then an act that brought down the house : six patients — below-the-knee amputees all — in dresses and wigs, doing  a song-and-dance routine that finished with a kick line. It was silly and ridiculous and Sousa could not stop laughing.

For the final number, all the acts came back out on the stage and led a sing-along. The room shook as hundreds of patients and staff clapped and sang, belting out a medley of popular songs, cleaned-up soldier songs, and patriotic songs. Sousa glanced over at Tipton and was happy to see him caught up in the music, tapping his feet and softly singing a little.

And finally the sergeant with the microphone announced that that was it for the night, they’d do it again in a month, always looking for new acts, talk to your buddies and then talk to Recreation…. The Gray Lady came to usher Tipton back to his room. Sousa, Maddox, and Cochrane said good night to him and, once the crowds had thinned out a little, headed back to their own ward.

Back in his room, Sousa brushed his teeth and rewrapped his leg and did his stretches and changed into his pajamas and climbed into bed. He really had enjoyed the concert, and not just for the music. Being there in the big meeting room, with all the others… it really brought home the feeling that he and the other men on the ward, and all the other patients, and the nurses and the doctors and the staff, were all still in the Army, were all one big unit.

He was tired, but still too keyed up to sleep, and it felt strange to have the quiet room to himself. He picked up the newspaper and turned to the announcement that had caught his eye back at dinner. It wasn’t about the Jimmy Dorsey concert, though he was looking forward to that, and it wasn’t about any of the other special events that weekend. It was just a small box about something on Monday and Wednesday afternoons: Polish your punches at Boxing. Walking and wheelchair patients welcome. Doctor’s permission required.

 

Saturday morning brought a new challenge in physical therapy.

“Let’s see,” said Lieutenant Reese. “You’ve been doing well with getting up from the floor… and I would say you’re doing well with falling, except you’re also doing well with keeping your balance and not letting us knock you over. I may have to fail you in falling,” she teased. Sousa pretended to cringe.

“And this is the perfect weekend to start what’s next: let’s work on some hopping.”

She led him over to the parallel bars. “You don’t want to hop all the time; it’s hard on your joints, and then if you hurt yourself you’re in a pickle, right? But it’s useful in certain situations.”

Sousa stood between the parallel bars, handed off his crutches, let go of the bars, and hopped forward a little. It was tricky; his balance was different now, and if he started to lose his balance there was no putting his right foot down to recover. He steadied himself, and hopped further.

“Like what situations?” he asked.

“Mostly retrieving your crutches, because you don’t want to make it a habit. But maybe when you’re at the beach… at the pool….”

Sousa’s heart hopped. “So what do I have to do to get to the pool?”

“Show up for the bus. You’re doing really well with this, so I’m going to ask your doctors to let us send you to the pool. I’m sure they’ll say yes. You like to swim?”

“Oh yeah.” He turned around in the parallel bars, visualized a diving board, and started hopping. He had to stop once or twice to catch his balance, but he was able to make it to the end of the imaginary diving board without having to hold on to the parallel bars.

“Were you on a swim team?”

“No. I worked as a lifeguard when I was in high school, though.” He looked straight ahead and hopped to the end of the parallel bars.

“Well done! Keep practicing, but you’ve got the knack of it.” She handed him his crutches. “So what are you up to the rest of this weekend?”

“No visitors; just living the life of leisure at England General.” He adjusted his crutches and followed Lieutenant Reese across the room.

“There’s a dance on Sunday, you know,” she said. “Some of the men like to practice before the dances, so we’ll be having a session this afternoon at 1500, across the hall. You might like to come and observe, at least; see how some of the others do it.”

She didn’t seem to be kidding…. “I’m still working on regular hopping, I’m not up to Lindy hopping.”

“Oh, there are some fellows who can really cut a rug even just using crutches, no prosthetic. But like I said, you can just come and watch, if you want. See how some of the other men do it. Test the waters.”

“Maybe.”

“All right then. See you this afternoon maybe, and tomorrow for sure.”

“Roger.” He wheeled himself out the door and down the hall, and made his way to one of the observation galleries with a view of the Boardwalk and the sea. He had some time before lunch; he wanted to think for a bit. As he pulled up to the windows, he suddenly remembered the first day he came to the hospital, when Duck the orderly had brought him on a stretcher to get a look outside, maybe even to this very gallery.

That was three months ago, three months and another holiday. And now he was up and walking….

Well, up and swinging himself around on crutches, anyway.

He looked down at his leg. Sometimes it still didn’t feel real. Sometimes it still felt like this was all something temporary, that he was going to wake up one morning and find his leg back where it belonged, and leave crutches and hopping behind.

Was Lieutenant Reese really serious about dancing?

Sousa knew there were one-legged dancers out there, like that Peg-Leg Bates fellow; he’d heard Bates had even visited the hospital and performed and visited the patients. But Bates was a tap dancer, an entertainer, and that wasn’t the kind of dancing Sousa was thinking about, and neither were those Lindy Hop gymnastics or any of that show-off stuff. Just… dancing, ordinary dancing with a girl, with his right arm around her waist and his left hand holding her right, and her left hand on his shoulder and her ear at just the right height for a whispered joke.

Could he do that on one leg and two crutches? He couldn’t see how — unless maybe he just used one crutch? But then he’d have to concentrate on not falling, instead of on dancing with his partner…. It sounded like a mess. Maybe it would be different when his prosthetic came.

He skipped the dancing class that afternoon — he could observe people dancing at the actual dance, he reasoned — and instead went out on the sun deck with Maddox to people-watch for a bit. After supper, he went back upstairs to wash, rewrap his stump, and get ready for the concert. To his surprise, when he stopped by the desk to pick up his mail, there was a little package from home waiting for him.

He opened it after the concert. An Easter card, a handful of letters, cookies, artwork from the kids, a pair of socks, and a miniature loaf of Easter bread, complete with the egg baked in the middle. He was reading the letters and eating a cookie when Lieutenant Munn came by. She asked about the concert, accepted a cookie, and admired the artwork and the socks. (“So your sister knitted those, too? Very nice! And she’s been keeping you in socks…?”)

 

Sousa and Cochrane made sure to get to church extra early the next morning, knowing that it would be more crowded than usual. As Sousa sat in his place in the wheelchair section, watching the chaplain’s assistants herd patients and visitors to their places, he found himself thinking of other Easters.

This was his fourth Easter in the Army. The first one was when he was in his last weeks of basic training; he remembered sitting in the base chapel, wedged elbow to elbow in a pew with the other greenies, wondering what would be next for him. For the second one, he was in Georgia, the farthest away from home he’d ever been in his life. He was sitting toward the back of the chapel that year, behind the enlisted men and in front of the officers, with his classmates in Officer Candidate School. The third Easter was in Italy. As he knelt behind a few of his men in a muddy field, he’d reflected that he would never, ever take a hard pew in a cold church for granted again.

And now… now he was here.

 

The day flew by. The midday meal was a formal Easter dinner, with printed menus and white tablecloths and centerpieces on the tables. As he rolled his wheelchair through the hall, Sousa noticed that a few men had brought their visitors: parents, wives, even a few children.

He pulled up to his usual spot at the table; a minute or two later Ayers came up to his own spot. “Hey, Sousa, happy Easter,” he said.

“Happy Easter,” Sousa replied. Ayers was beaming: he had his wife and their little girl with him. Instinctively, Sousa levered himself up to stand. After he’d shaken her hand and sat back down, it struck him that Mrs. Ayers hadn’t tried to stop him from standing to greet her, and that he was glad that she hadn’t.

As the conversation kindled, Sousa quickly felt very comfortable around Mrs. Ayers. She was affable and happy to be there, and she was happy to be there as a wife happy to be with her husband and eager to meet his friends, not as a volunteer there to Do Her Part For the Poor Wounded Boys. And she understood their world.

As for little Miss Ayers… children were such a rare sight in the hospital, she was like an emissary from another world. She was four years old and was having one of the greatest days of her life and was eager to talk all about it: she was getting to visit daddy in the hospital and meet his friends, she was wearing shiny shoes and her new Easter dress, and it was Easter, and the Easter Bunny had come all the way to Atlantic City to leave her a basket! And it was April Fool’s Day! And she and her mommy had taken two trains to come to Atlantic City, and mommy had a flower on her dress, and....

As she talked on, and her mother looked chagrined and her father smitten, it struck Sousa that she didn’t seem bothered at all by the wheelchairs and crutches in the room. She wasn’t much older than his niece Katie; was this what Katie was like now? And when he finally saw her again, would Katie be this comfortable around him? It was an encouraging thought.

Sousa lingered after dinner, drinking coffee and chatting and watching the kids run in circles around the room looking for the Easter eggs that he and the others were hiding again and again for them. After physical therapy that afternoon, there was more music— a few Atlantic City church choirs came to put on a short Easter concert — and then the party.

The party did not disappoint.The hospital band was good, the cake was tasty, and the Gray Ladies had rounded up an impressive number of hostesses, so many that that one was able to come over and play a couple of games of Crazy Eights with him and Maddox and a few other fellows. Maddox even got in a dance with her. Sousa smiled a little as he watched them take the floor, and a little more when Lilly, circling the dance floor with another patient, caught his eye and waved.

As he watched, he noticed a couple of men who were dancing using one cane or one crutch. They each had two feet on the floor, and it looked like they’d each gotten one of those feet from the limb shop downstairs. One of the men seemed to be using his cane just to keep his balance; he was dancing slowly but still dancing, leading his partner and keeping time with the music. The other one seemed to be leaning on his crutch; he and his partner were barely moving their feet at all, more like holding on to each other and  swaying, but they both seemed to be having fun. And then there were the other dancers; around half of them seemed to be amputees as well.

So maybe that could be him someday. He’d just need to find the right partner, someone who’d give him a chance. Someone who’d be patient with him. Someone who’d think that he was worth being patient for.

Sousa left on the early side; he wanted to call home before supper. He was able to catch his father.

They chatted for a bit, talking about what they had each been doing that weekend. “Well, it sounds like you’ve been busy,” said his father. “I’m glad to hear it. I wanted to come, I tried —”

“I know, Pai. It would have been great to see you, but I understand. Thanks for giving it a shot.”

“…I did get your letter, the one about setting up the meeting. So when I do come next, I guess it would be better if I didn’t just… show up?”

“Probably. I mean, it’s fine that you did that the last couple of times you came. But now that I’m out of bed, they’ve got me on a schedule, and I’d hate for you to come and just find an empty room. And there’s another thing….” He told his father about the possibility of an overnight pass.

“What a nice break that would be for you!” said his father. “How long until they give you one of those passes, do you think?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just something to think about. Something to look forward to,” he added.

 

That night, after he’d turned out the lights, Sousa found himself thinking of the sermon from church that morning, about what Father Keller had said about the war, about suffering, about how death had brought upon itself its own defeat. About faith and perseverance. About hope.

 

Grahn was due back on Tuesday, so Sousa didn’t see him until late that afternoon, as he rolled himself up the ramp to the Palm Court for bridge club. There was Grahn, talking to Mrs. Lambe, to a lady that looked like one of her friends… and to four young women, who were listening so attentively that if they had been WACs Sousa would have thought Grahn was giving them instructions for taking a village.

“…So that’s the plan.” Grahn looked up. “Sousa! There you are. Happy Easter! Ladies, this is Lieutenant Daniel Sousa. He’s my roommate and yet he still comes to this thing. He’ll be sitting at one of the more advanced tables. Sousa, I’d like you to meet Mrs. Seymour, and Misses Hazel, Betty, Penny, and Doris. Our special guests this evening, courtesy of Mrs. Lambe.” Mrs. Seymour nodded; the girls smiled and waved, and to his horror Sousa felt the tips of his ears getting warm.

“Mrs. Seymour and I are good friends,” says Mrs. Lambe, “and, more to the point, she’s an excellent bridge player. So I asked her to come help us out, and she mentioned that her Hazel would be home this week…. And then Hazel asked Betty, and Betty had the brainstorm of contacting a bridge club at one of the other colleges, and here we are!”

Sousa looked over at Grahn. Grahn was trying very hard to not look too much like the cat that swallowed the canary.

The other players started to arrive, and the guests began to fan out. Penny and Mrs. Seymour went to the beginners’ tables, Doris went to one of the more advanced tables, and Betty came over to Sousa’s table. Sousa smiled and stood a little as she sat down directly across from him.

“So you’ve been assigned to be my partner today?” he said.

Before Betty could reply, they saw Tipton arriving in a wheelchair pushed by a Gray Lady. Hazel and Grahn went over to greet him; Sousa couldn’t hear the conversation, but it ended with the Gray Lady pushing Tipton over to a table and Hazel sitting down next to him.

 “Sort of,” she said. “Mrs. Lambe helped us decide which tables we should go to to be of the most help.  She didn’t assign us specific partners, except that one of us should partner with either you or Lieutenant Grahn — do you play as partners a lot? That’s probably why — and then Lieutenant Grahn said that whoever sat at this table could partner with you. He said it was ‘your turn.’” Sousa chuckled.

They talked a little as they waited for the class to start. Betty told him that she and Hazel had known each other since high school and were both in their second year of college. They’d just met Doris and Penny for the first time that evening — they went to a different school — she was pretty sure Doris was a junior and Penny a senior — seemed like great girls — they were all going to have dinner with Mrs. Seymour and Mrs. Lambe after the bridge club meeting….

Sousa told her a bit about where he had grown up, but before he could decide how to handle the college question, Brent arrived, and the cycle of introductions and small talk started again. A few minutes later, Grahn called the class to order, introduced Mrs. Seymour and the girls, and hurried over to join their table. He smiled at Betty, sat down, and turned to listen as Mrs. Lambe began the lesson.

 

At supper, Grahn could hardly contain himself. “That Mrs. Lambe! Can you believe it? She is so smart. If she weren’t already married I think I’d marry her myself.”

“But what about Betty?” asked Sousa. “She’ll be so disappointed.”

“Oh, you and Brent can work that out. You can have a duel or something.”

“That could be entertaining. But still… I think Betty would be disappointed.”

“You think so?”

“She’s a nice girl. She said she’d be back once school’s out.”

“They’re all nice girls.” Grahn smiled. “We’ll have to see, won’t we? I think they all want to come back. Maybe they’ll bring more friends. And you know what? This isn’t a USO thing, so they’re not hostesses. They’re visitors. Which means….”

Sousa rolled his eyes, but he liked where this idea was going: since the girls weren’t USO hostesses, they weren’t bound by the USO rules against going out with patients.

 

As they finished supper and went upstairs, Sousa filled Grahn in on the rest of the news: talent show, Easter dinner, party....

“…and they’re putting me on the pool schedule,” he said. “I’m supposed to start Friday.”

“Friday morning? That’s my pool day too!” said Grahn. “We could sneak out the back door afterwards and have lunch in town.”

“In our blue suits. I’d wait until later and go out the front door to dinner.”

“We could do that too.” The elevator doors opened, and Grahn held the door as Sousa rolled his wheelchair out and towards the front desk.

“ ‘Evenin’, sirs,” said the clerk. He stood up and handed them each their mail. Sousa tucked his letters in his pocket and went straight to their room; he needed to rewrap his leg.

Once he had showered and had changed into his pajamas, he sat on his bed and flipped through his mail. To his surprise, he had a Day Letter telegram. He tore open the envelope.

 

1ST LT DANIEL A. SOUSA
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY, NJ

PAPAI PLANNING ARRIVE EARLY SATURDAY AFTERNOON STAY THROUGH LATE MONDAY MORNING WILL NOTIFY YOU IF PLANS MUST CHANGE PLEASE TELL US WHAT HE CAN BRING THIS MESSAGE APPROVED BY PAPAI LOVE TILLIE

=MRS JOSEPH PRZYBYLAK

Notes:

Particular thanks to scullyssahnestarkbroetchen and CotyCat88 for test audience services, and to the Empress of Excel for her consultation on the matter of the O-Club.

Thank you, as always, for reading, for your kudos, and for your comments, which I put on little stands and display like Faberge eggs.

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Good Friday/ Holy Saturday: the Friday and Saturday before Easter

Here's Chili Williams:

 

Class Bs: Basically, the uniform without the jacket, usually with a folded garrison cap instead of the brimmed hat. Here's Private Joseph C. Migliore in his Class Bs (this is a family’s genealogy page, so I’m not going to embed the photo.)

Cassock and surplice: Long black robe (the cassock) with a shorter overshirt, usually white (the surplice)

 

Altar Boy, Herbert Draper.

Bonus trivia: This guy looks like he’s serving as the thurifer: he’s in charge of the incense burner, or censer.

Pig Latin translation: Sousa says, “Just this section. April Fool’s Day is Sunday.” Maddox is not as fluent.

Jimmy Dorsey: I know Jimmy Dorsey played the Steel Pier on Sunday, April 1, 1945, so I presume he stopped by the hospital as well. Atlantic City drew huge acts back in the day, and entertainers would routinely offer to play at the hospital.

Boodle: cake, candy, etc. Boodle fight: party where boodle is served. It looks like the Philippine Army picked up this phrase; their “boodle fights” are military feasts where the officers and the enlisted sit side by side, food is served on banana leaves – no serving dishes, no plates or cutlery - and the diners eat with their hands as a symbol of camaraderie.

The amputee kick line: Based on the Amputettes, a patient troupe formed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C..

Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates lost his leg when he was 12 in a farming accident. He taught himself to tap dance and became a big star (and an entrepreneur; he founded one of the first integrated resorts in the Catskills.) He played Atlantic City and visited England General at least once. Here he is on one of his 22 performances on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Easter bread: Here’s a recipe.

Chapter 27: Preparations

Summary:

Boxing, swimming, and meetings.

 

 

The orderly knocked on the open door. “Lieutenant Sousa’s here.”

“Come on in,” came a voice from inside the room.

The orderly stepped back and out of the way as Sousa swung his crutches forward and entered the meeting room. It was the same room where Sousa had gotten his new schedule a couple of weeks ago, with the same long table and many of the same faces: Peyton and Blaine and a couple of the other doctors, Lieutenant Drummond from discussion group, the head nurse, the occupational therapist, and Lieutenant Reese from physical therapy. The head nurse was stacking charts on a cart; most of the others were standing and gathering their things. They greeted Sousa as they left the table and passed him on their way to the door.

Peyton and Blaine remained seated, and Peyton pulled out the chair at his right. “Come and sit down,” he said. “We’ve just wrapped up Thursday rounds.” As Sousa sat down, Lieutenant Reese came and sat down across from him.

“So your dad’s coming on Saturday,” said Peyton. “Thanks for letting us know. When are you expecting him again?”

“Early afternoon,” replied Sousa. “Usually he gets here by around 1400.”

“Maybe 1600, then? Just to be on the safe side?” said Blaine.

Peyton consulted a little pocket notebook. “That should be all right. We good to use this room?” he asked the head nurse.

“I’ll double-check, but it should be fine,” she replied. She wrote down the time and location and handed it to Sousa.

“So at this meeting,” said Blaine, “you and Lieutenant Reese and Major Peyton and I are going to talk with your father about getting things ready for a visit home, once you get your prosthetic.  Major Peyton and I talked to your father when he was here in February, but he hasn’t been here since then….” He sounded like he was giving Sousa an opening.

“You were expecting him for Easter, weren’t you?” added Peyton.

“I was,” said Sousa, “but his plans fell through. I don’t know whether it was the job or the ration board that put the kibosh on it; he’s on travel restriction for work, and it’s a long trip.”

A few sympathetic murmurs and grunts ran around the table. “That’s too bad,” said Blaine. “Well, the thing is, is that family members have their own adjustments to make, especially in cases like yours, and before we meet with him we wanted to ask you if you had any concerns. Anything we should know going into this meeting with him?”

“We’re only asking just in case,” added Peyton. “It happens more often than you’d think, especially among our amputees: we get patients who are adjusting far better than their families are, and they get nervous about planning a visit because they’re worried about Mom and Dad feeling sorry for them and trying to baby them to death. If they want us   to, we can help them try to head that off.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Just be straight with him,” said Sousa.

Peyton nodded. “He seemed like someone who knows his onions. He in good health? If you fall and need a hand, is he strong enough to give it to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Says here your mother’s deceased,” said Blaine. “Anyone else at home?”

“My sister.”

“Okay then. We’ll let Lieutenant Reese take it from here.”

Lieutenant Reese asked a few questions about the house (steps going up to the front porch, another flight of stairs up to his bedroom, car available), made some notes, asked if he had any other concerns, and said she’d see  him the next day.

“So we’re set for Saturday. Anything else?” asked Blaine.  He grinned. “Got your note for boxing?”

Sousa patted his shirt pocket. “Any chance a note for an overnight pass to go with it?”

“Not this time. I’m sorry,” said Blaine. “We talked about it; you’ve been working hard and making excellent progress. But still, you’re only two weeks out of traction. There’s a place we would have felt comfortable letting you go, but they’re full this weekend.”

“We’ll give your father a letter for the ration board, explaining that it would be good for you to have a longer visit with more advance notice,” said Peyton. “I’ll see if I can get a colonel to sign it. That should loosen ‘em up a little.”

“Anything else?” Blaine asked Sousa. “No? All right, then. Boxing’s this afternoon, isn’t it? You can tell me how it went tomorrow morning.”

“Go on ahead, I’ll be there in a minute,” said Peyton. He quietly signaled Sousa to stay put. Once Blaine had left, he continued in a lower voice.

“It’s a shame we couldn’t have worked out this visit,” he said. “It’s still early, but I think you would have been okay.

“We’ll talk about this more with your dad, but once you get your prosthetic and have had some time walking on it, that’s when I’d really like to get you on an overnight, get you some practice for a furlough home and… maybe a side trip. Major Tucker from the SSR called to see how you were coming along. He wants to get you in for an interview. I said probably by July; I didn’t tell him this, but depending on how things go with your prosthetic, you might be able to do it sooner.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. This is a good opportunity.” He checked his watch and stood up. “Might want to drop him a line and tell him that you’re starting boxing; I bet that would make an impression.”

He waited as Sousa stood up, and walked with him as far as the elevators. Sousa went on to his room, settled into his wheelchair, stowed his crutches, and set off for the Chalfonte.

The class was in another converted meeting room, with molded pilasters flanking the speed bags dangling from their wall brackets and the heavy bags slung on their frames. There were a couple of tables in the back of the room stocked with piles of gloves and rolls of hand tape. And to Sousa’s surprise, two sets of parallel bars stood ready along one of the sides of the room.

He signed in and presented his pass from the doctors, and wheeled himself over to wait for the class to start. Hayes showed up a few minutes later and wheeled himself over next to Sousa. He had recently been cleared to use his new prosthesis outside of physical therapy, but was still using a wheelchair for longer distances.

Class started. A physical therapist introduced herself, a couple of aides, and finally the boxing coach who would actually teach the class, a civilian. He told them a little bit about himself and shared a quick tale of getting to see Jack Dempsey train in Atlantic City back in ’26.

“But enough of that,” he said. “You guys didn’t come to hear me beat my gums, you came here to punch something, right? Who here’s been to a boxing gym before?”

He showed them the equipment and told them a bit about how the classes would run, with warm-ups and drills, and how the first thing they were going to learn would be how to wrap their hands. There were a few snorts of laughter.

“Yeah,” said the coach. “They told me. All right, so you take one of these things….”

He showed them how to wrap their hands and walked around, offering pointers. When he was satisfied, he demonstrated the proper stance and then had a couple of patients demonstrate it. One of the patients was using a below-the-knee prosthetic; the coach and the physical therapist talked about tips for adapting the stance for each man’s circumstances.

“All right, you saw ‘em: Hands up, chin down, elbows in,” barked the coach. “No chicken wings! Let’s get started! You got two feet and a doctor’s note, then up you go!”

Sousa and the other wheelchair patients waited as the others got up. The aides steered a few of the more nervous or wobbly-looking patients to spots between the parallel bars. Meanwhile, the instructor and the physical therapist walked the room, assessing each patient’s stance and making suggestions. They didn’t forget the wheelchair patients.

“So you’re right-handed?” the coach asked Sousa. “And your good leg’s your left leg? That’ll make an easier stance for you when you’re up. “ He moved on to the next patient.

The coach finished the class by introducing the jab and having each patient take a turn practicing it on the heavy bag — so they wouldn’t leave without having punched something, thought Sousa with a wry smirk. As he and Hayes made their way back across the skyway, he kept thinking back to his turn at the bag: pulling up in his wheelchair, taking his stance, and snapping out a left jab and making the bag swing, and again and again. It had felt so good.

 

The next morning found Sousa at the front of the hospital, tapping his fingers on the handles of his crutches. He was on his way to the pool. Haddon Hall, for all its amenities, did not have a pool, and neither did the Chalfonte, so he was waiting with a handful of other men for a bus to the pool at the President Hotel.

He recognized most of the faces in the group from the officers’ mess, and there were a few men from his own table. He was standing next to Grahn and Ayers, half listening to their conversation, half reviewing the plan Lieutenant Reese had gone over with him the day before: board the bus, four steps up; take the ride over to the President Hotel; get off the bus, four steps down; undress poolside; take crutches over to the side of the pool, leave crutches on the deck, and hop down the steps into the water; follow the instructions of the physical therapist; shower and dress afterwards; four steps up to the bus back; four steps out of the bus back at Haddon Hall.

“And you’ve practiced all of that,” she’d reminded him, and it was true. He’d been practicing stairs, he’d been practicing hopping, he’d been practicing getting up and down from the floor, and he’d been practicing going longer and longer distances on crutches. Worst case scenario, he’d get tired and have to rest for a minute. Lieutenant Reese said there was a wheelchair at the pool, just in case someone needed it. And of course they wouldn’t just leave him there. It would be fine.

The bus pulled up, and Sousa instinctively took a step backwards, to let the faster guys get on the bus first. Ayers waited as the doors opened, an orderly hopped down the steps, and a couple of guys in front got on. “Come on, Sousa. We’re all slow,” he said, and walked forward to take his turn. He shifted his crutches to one hand, grabbed the handrail with the other, stepped up with his good leg, and started boarding the bus.

“Your turn,” said Grahn.

Sousa stepped forward to the bus steps. Good leg up, bad leg down. He balanced on his crutches as he stepped up with his left leg, and then quickly pulled them up to the step next to his foot.

It was hard to maneuver both crutches in the narrow stairwell, so he moved them both to one hand and took the handrail with his other hand. He stepped up again with his left leg, lifted his crutches up a step, and slid his hand up the rail. Two more steps and he was standing next to the driver. He grabbed a seat back and swung himself into the first seat he could find, sliding himself and his crutches towards the window as Grahn plopped next to him.

In a few more minutes, everyone was aboard and seated. The orderly sat down, the bus driver closed the door, and they pulled away from the hospital. At the end of the block, they turned left and headed down Pacific Avenue.

Sousa had only glimpsed this part of Atlantic City from the windows of the hospital. It was one of the main streets of the town, an array of stores, clubs, hotels, houses and churches, and dozens and dozens of restaurants. They passed Babette’s Supper Club and Convention Hall, the Claridge, Dennis and the Ritz hotels, and finally took a left turn at the Knife and Fork Inn to the President.

Sousa climbed down from the bus, first sliding down his grip on the handrail and moving his crutches to the lower step, and then stepping down with his left leg, one step at a time until he was on the pavement. He adjusted his crutches and got out of the way. Once the group was together, he followed them into the hotel, through the lobby, and down the hall to the pool.

A physical therapist and an aide met them, both dressed in swim clothes. As the other patients headed over to the deck chairs, the therapist called out instructions — “Go ahead, get in the pool, no diving!” — and then turned and introduced herself to Sousa. “So this is your first time,” she said, consulting her clipboard. “And you could swim before your injury? Then you’ll be back to it again really soon. Go ahead and get in the water, and grab a spot by the edge of the pool.” She smiled. “It’s a salt water pool! So it’ll be like an ocean swim. We’ll have group exercise, individual exercise, lap time, and then some free time. No diving, please, the pool’s only three to five feet deep.”

A shallow dive would be okay, thought Sousa, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he went over to the deck chairs and sat down. He glanced around. The others were undressing, and almost all of them were working on taking off their prostheses. Most of the group were below-the-knee amputees; one of them was the first to wiggle out of his prosthetic. He pulled what looked like a long white sock off the end of his stump, stepped out of his pants, took off his undershirt, and hopped over to the steps going down to the pool. He took the handrail, hopped a couple of steps down, and pushed off into the water.

Sousa bent over and quickly unlaced his shoe. Shoe, sock, pants, shirt, undershirt; he considered for a moment and decided to leave his crutches at his seat. He hopped over to the pool steps, grabbed the handrail, and took a hop in.

The water seemed to welcome him. As he got ready to make his second hop, he heard Grahn off to his left, catching the attention of the physical therapist: “Just to be clear, I’m not diving. Okay? This is not a dive.” The physical therapist rolled her eyes as Grahn leapt into the pool.

Knucklehead. Sousa took another hop down the steps and jumped the rest of the steps to the bottom of the pool. He bounced quietly through the water until he was behind Grahn. He scooped up some water in his cupped hands and squirted it between his palms at the back of Grahn’s head, and then ducked under the water before Grahn could turn around.

He pushed off the bottom of the pool and glided under the water. The salt water felt like a caress. He took a couple of pulls with his arms and tried a flutter kick. He felt the familiar sensation of his left foot pushing against the water and… the absence of his right foot. It was disconcerting. He surfaced and looked around. Everyone seemed to be in the pool now and finding a place by the edge: the session was about to start.

He started hopping over to the pool wall and instinctively switched to a breaststroke. He felt clumsy — his stroke lacked power, and his right side was sinking — and it felt odd and wrong to feel his left leg and foot kicking out through the water, with no corresponding sensation on his right.  But still, he was swimming. Three strokes and he was at the edge of the pool.

The class started with warm-ups, stretches, and some deep breathing exercises. When it was time for each patient to work on his individual routine, the therapist got the others started and then came over to Sousa.

She taught Sousa a series of exercises to strengthen and stretch his hip muscles; many of them were already familiar from his time in the gym. Then she sat down on the edge of the pool.

“Let’s see how your swimming looks,” she said. “I saw you paddling around before class. How about you give floating a try, and then tread some water?”

Sousa floated on his back and on his stomach, and then trod water as long as he could while the therapist timed him.

“I didn’t use to have to work this hard to stay afloat,” he said after he’d caught his breath. “Seems like it should be easier now that there’s less of me.”

“You just need to figure out how best to use what you’ve got. A little practice, build your stamina back up, and you’ll be able to do that all day.  Now, when you’re ready, go ahead and do some actual swimming. Any stroke you like.”

Sousa tried the breaststroke again and then tried the crawl. When he got fed up with trying to keep his right hip from sinking, he switched to sidestroke. That seemed to work pretty well. He turned around and swam back to the therapist.

“Good job,” she said. “The next part of the session is for endurance, so swim any stroke you like, or tread water, or even just dog paddle; the important thing is to keep moving, even if you’re moving slowly.  Okay? We do laps across the width of the pool. Let me get the other fellows started.” She stood up and made the announcement.

Sousa picked a spot across the pool and started inching towards it, experimenting with different kicks.He was already dreading the end of the session. This was fun, and he felt… happy, a kind of happiness he’d forgotten about. He didn’t have to think about where his crutches were; he didn’t have to plan his movement. He could decide to go someplace and just go: slowly, for now, but that would improve.

The therapist announced free time. The aide tossed a ball into the water and immediately two water polo teams started to form. As Sousa bounced over to join the game, he tried some of the old tricks he used to do in the water, first turning a somersault, and then walking on his hands across the bottom of the pool. He thought of how strange it must look to see only one and a half legs sticking up above the surface of the water….

…But it wouldn’t be strange here, he remembered: Someone was splashing water up against his foot. He turned another somersault and surfaced, and got a splash of water in his face.

“Thought that was you,” said Grahn. “Come on!”

When the session was over, Sousa reluctantly followed the others out of the pool. It wasn’t until he started to hop up the stairs that he realized how tired he was.

When he got to the shower room, he was relieved to find that the Army had installed seats in the showers. When it was his turn, he rinsed off and hobbled out to a bench.

As he toweled off and started to dress, he couldn’t help noticing what was going on around him. Grahn had told him before about how important it was to dry a limb before donning a prosthetic; now, everywhere he looked, he saw towels and little clouds of talcum powder and thin white socks rolling onto limbs.

“Hey, Sousa: So when do you get your leg?” It was Ayers, sitting across from him.

“Don’t know yet.” Sousa started buttoning his shirt. “They keep saying ‘soon’ but they haven’t said what kind of ‘soon’ they mean.”

“Shouldn’t be too much longer, I would think,” said Ayers. He pulled his prosthetic towards himself. “Have you seen one of these up close and personal yet? No? Well, here’s what you have to look forward to.”

The prosthesis was a wooden leg — foot, lower leg, knee, and thigh — hollow at the top, like a hip boot. The top of the leg was connected by three straps and a metal hip joint to a wide, padded belt. Ayers had left the leg dressed with a sock and shoe.

Ayers put on one leg of his pants and threaded the prosthesis through the other. He had already wrapped his stump; now he slid it into the prosthesis. He stood up, made sure his leg was aligned correctly, and wrapped the belt around his hips. Satisfied, he finished dressing, and took a couple of halting steps to pick up his crutches.

Sousa went back to wrapping his leg and getting dressed. He picked up his own crutches and slowly followed the others out to the front of the hotel to meet the bus. Once aboard, he dropped gratefully into a seat.

As the bus took them back to Haddon Hall, Sousa’s thoughts drifted. Once they got back, he’d have enough time to go back up to his room, drop his swim trunks in the laundry, and get back to the mess hall for lunch. Lunch… a chance to rest before physical therapy that afternoon. That sounded appealing; he was tired — comfortably tired. Maybe it was from swimming in the salt water. He smiled a little as he thought again of swimming in the pool, of the weight and the warmth of the water, of deciding to do something and just doing it. It had been like discovering something he’d forgotten about, like finding a ten-dollar bill in a coat pocket.

And after lunch he’d have physical therapy, and over his shoulder he could hear Grahn and Ayers and some of the others talking about going out for drinks before dinner, and then the Turtle Johnson Orchestra was playing the hospital that evening….

And then his father was coming the next day.  His smile grew.

 

A telegram came for him the next morning, before breakfast.

 

1ST LT DANIEL A. SOUSA
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY, NJ

PAPAI ON TRAIN WISH I WERE TOO HAVE FUN LOVE TILLIE

=MRS JOSEPH PRZYBYLAK

 

He grinned. It was really happening. And the telegram was a real lift — he’d have to thank Tillie for sending it. She was right, surprises were nice but this was even better.

After breakfast, as he passed through the lobby on his way to physical therapy, it occurred to him — how would his father find him? He wasn’t exactly tied to his bed any more, and he had a physical therapy session after lunch.  Would they make his father wait in the visitors’ lounge upstairs?

He thought about it as he did his exercises, and after his session he went back to the lobby. The Gray Ladies at the Red Cross desk were happy to show him their timetable for the train station and for the Red Cross bus that brought visitors from the station to the hospital.

The 1230 bus seemed a little early, but just in case, Sousa hurried through his lunch and went down to the lobby to wait. The bus arrived, the visitors funneled through the front doors to the Red Cross desk….

His father wasn’t among them.

It was a long shot anyway; he’d probably be on the next train, thought Sousa. He went on to physical therapy and came back to the lobby in time to meet the 1430 bus.

It didn’t arrive at 1430. He waited, drumming his fingers and leafing through a newspaper, with a couple of other patients who’d come to meet their visitors. “Train’s probably late,” grumbled one of the other men. Sousa turned back to his paper. He’d been asking around at breakfast and lunch, and marking ads for places his father might like to see.

It was almost 1515 when one of the Gray Ladies came over to where they were sitting. “It looks like the bus is here,” she said with a smile.

The first visitors trickled in. Sousa put his newspaper aside and took up his crutches: he had a little surprise of his own in mind. He stood up and watched the doors as more visitors trudged in and headed for the Red Cross desk. A couple of the men he’d been waiting with came forward as their own visitors arrived.

And finally he saw the face he was looking for. He grinned and swung his crutches forward.

 

 

 

Notes:

Thanks to CotyCat82, scullysahnestarkbroetchen, and keysburg for test audience services and prodding.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your deeply appreciated comments.

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To know your onions: to know what’s up or what’s going on

Meeting with the physical therapist: conjecture. Worry about parents of disabled soldiers being unable to “adjust”: based on fact. I came across a story about soldiers recovering from amputations who got so tired of family members falling apart that they made a pact to never meet with a family member without another amputee present.

Boxing: I don’t know for sure that boxing was offered, but they seemed to offer everything else so why not? In researching this, I came across a rehabilitation hospital that uses boxing workouts, and that’s where I got the idea of having the parallel bars in the gym.

Swimming: The class structure itself is conjecture, but the pool situation (being bused to the President and the Ambassador, and the President having a salt-water pool) is fact.

Atlantic City: The Claridge and the Knife and Fork are still there.

Chapter 28: Show and Tell

Notes:

Short chapter this time, but I thought shorter and sooner might be preferable to longer but later.

Big thank you to @keysburg, who posted a lovely piece of Daniel fanart over at her tumblr that lists QV among its inspirations.

 

 

“In here?”

“In here. Looks like we’re a little early.” Daniel stepped aside to let his father enter the meeting room. He followed him in, led him to a seat, and started maneuvering himself into a chair. Once he’d propped his crutches and hitched his chair up to the table, he looked up. His father was just… gazing at him, half-smiling.

Daniel lifted his eyebrows, but before he could say anything, Lieutenant Jensen arrived, and as he introduced her to his father, Blaine and Peyton showed up. They greeted his father and sat down; as they settled in and pulled out their folders and papers, it occurred to Daniel that his father was the only civilian in the room.

Blaine started the meeting. “Well, Mr. Sousa: Things are looking rather different than the last time you were here, don’t you think?”

“They sure are." He glanced at Daniel and smiled again. "Thank you for taking such good care of my son.”

Blaine shook his head. “It’s our pleasure, but this is your son’s hard work.” Across the table, Lieutenant Reese nodded.

“And then there’s more work ahead, once he gets his prosthesis, his artificial leg —”

Daniel saw his father look from Blaine back to him. He just shrugged; he didn’t know when —

“Soon.” Blaine answered the unspoken question. “Now, it’ll take some time for him to get used to it, but once he’s skilled enough, he can go home for a visit. That day’ll be here before you know it, so we wanted to start talking about it now.

“First thing to know: we say this to all the families, he’s not going to need any waiting on. He won't need it, he’s not coming home an invalid, he can care for himself. But he does have some physical limitations now —" Daniel looked at his hands as his face grew hot — "and there are things you can do ahead of time to make it more comfortable for him, besides stocking the icebox. Lieutenant Reese?”

Daniel’s father opened his memo book and uncapped his pen.

“Let’s think it through together,” said Lieutenant Reese. “Before you go home, we’ll arrange to have a wheelchair delivered to the house — just in case,” she added, as Daniel started to protest. “That way, you have it if you need it, and if you don’t need it you don’t have to use it. You’ll bring your crutches with you on the train, so you’ll have those for nighttime and for when you want to give your leg a rest. Now, once you get home from the train station… Lieutenant Sousa said you live in a house with steps?”

Daniel’s father nodded. “Yes. Going up to the front porch —” he counted in his head — “there are five. And then a flight up to the bedrooms and down to the cellar.”

“So we’ll pay special attention to stairs once you get your prosthetic,” Lieutenant Reese said to Daniel. “Meanwhile, it would be a good idea to make sure that the handrails are in good repair. Okay, so once you’re in the house….”

She talked about a few obvious-sounding things like keeping clutter off the floor and securing loose rugs, and about the convenience of a hand spray in the shower and the need for a seat. She recommended grab bars and a chair or stool in the bathroom, and another chair in Daniel’s bedroom. It was all very matter-of-fact, but still... her straightforward list of things to do was another reminder that he was different now, that this was forever. Even home was going to have to change to accommodate him.

“...And Lieutenant Sousa, you’ll need to launder your elastic bandages and the socks you'll be wearing under your prosthesis. You can do that by hand in the sink with mild soap flakes,” said Lieutenant Reese. “They need to dry flat, so you’ll need to set up a place for that.”

Daniel frowned. He hadn’t thought of that. 

“What kind of a place?” asked his father.

“Each bandage is six inches wide by three feet long, and he may be using six or eight bandages a day. A spare bed will do, just lay some towels on it,” Lieutenant Reese suggested. Daniel saw his father sketching a little diagram in his book.

“Lieutenant Sousa, you’ll have everything you need to care of your leg and your prosthesis. You'll know what you can do, and what your limits are. Any questions?”

“Not right now," said Daniel. He turned to his father; his father shook his head.

“It was a pleasure meeting you,” said Lieutenant Reese. "Here's some other literature that might be helpful." She gave Daniel's father a couple of pamphlets, shook hands with him again, and excused herself.

“Any questions for us?” said Blaine. “No? Lieutenant Sousa, you want passes, don’t you.” He started to write. “Be back by 1900. Mr. Sousa, you can come early tomorrow morning to join your son for church, but he needs to attend his late-morning physical therapy session. After that… I think we can give you the rest of the day off. Mr. Sousa, you can come early on Monday, too, I know your time is limited. Lieutenant, we’ll leave orders to push back your schedule that day.” He handed Daniel a copy of the pass. “All right, then. Adjourned! Have a good visit.”

As the doctors left, Daniel’s father turned to face him. “So what’s next?” he asked.

“How about dinner?” said Daniel. He scooted his chair back, planted his right palm on the table, took his crutches in his left hand, and levered himself up. “Let’s go out. I was wondering, though — if Grahn’s around, would you mind if we invited him along? I know it’s your first day, but he’s always kind of included me when his parents come. I’d like to return the favor.”

“Absolutely. Do you have a place in mind?”

“I do. I just… I just need to get ready.” Daniel adjusted his crutches and started towards the door.

His father followed him. “Want me to wait for you in the visitor’s lounge?”

Daniel had already thought this through. He stuck to his plan. “If you want,” he said. “But you can come with if you’d rather.” If he’d gotten that overnight pass, his father would have been seeing this anyway; might as well get it over with.

Back in his room, he followed his father in and closed the door. “I need to wrap my leg before I change,” he said. “That’s that business Lieutenant Reese was talking about with the elastic bandages. Probably make more sense if you saw it.”

He went to the closet, took out his uniform, and swallowed his pride and let his father carry it to the bed for him. His next step was the linen shelf, for a couple of elastic bandages. He sat on his bed, took off his shoe, and hitched off his pants.

“The leg’s still pretty swollen,” he said quietly. “They said that’s normal. So they have me wrap it with these bandages to help the swelling go down.” As he started to unwrap his leg, Daniel heard his father pull a chair over and sit down. He did not look up.  As long as he stayed focused on the task at hand, he wouldn’t have to think too hard about what was really happening.

“How often do you do this?” said his father.

“About four times a day.” Daniel lightly tugged the bandage between his hands. It was losing its give; he’d have to use the new ones to rewrap. He finished unwrapping his leg and took a deep breath. “And that’s what it looks like.”

Daniel looked up. His father’s hands were tightly clenched, but as he met Daniel’s eyes, he smiled a little.

“And it’s healing up okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Daniel. “Yeah, the scar’s along the back. I check it every day with a mirror, and they check it too, and they say it looks good. They say the swelling’s going down, too.” He picked up one of the fresh bandages and started to wind it around his hips.

He was finishing wrapping his leg when his father spoke up again. “Nice and neat.”

Daniel chuckled a little. “Took me a while to get the hang of it.” He fastened the bandage. “There.” He lifted his uniform trousers off the hanger and started to put them on.

His father hesitated before speaking again. “Does it still hurt you?”

Daniel focused on getting his trousers over his hips. His first instinct was to say no, but he’d resolved to be straight with his father, and he knew that a lie would be more painful than the truth. “Sometimes. It’s a lot better now.”

As he tied his shoe and put on his shirt, he told his father a bit about how he could still feel his right leg now and then, and how it itched or tingled once in a while — weird, huh? — but really, it was much, much better, and the incision hardly hurt at all — all of which was true, if soft-pedaled. It seemed to reassure his father. Daniel was just putting on his tie when a knock sounded at the door.

“Hello?” called Grahn.

“Come on in,” said Daniel. “Hey, you’re just in time. Got any plans for dinner tonight?”

 

They went up the Boardwalk to the pizza restaurant. Daniel went through the door on crutches, letting his father push his  wheelchair in behind him, so he could request their table — and discreetly direct the check to himself. The silver-haired waiter smiled and tapped his nose, and led them to their table once Daniel’s father joined them.

“Glass of wine, Pai?” Daniel asked as he stowed his crutches.

“Please.”

“How about you, Grahn?”

“I’ll have what you’re having.”

“Red wine all around, then.” The waiter nodded approvingly and left.

“So, Mr. Sousa: Have you ever had pizza before?” asked Grahn.

“I don’t think so. Certainly not like this,” Daniel’s father replied. “Sure smells good.” He looked at his menu. “So what do you recommend?”

When the waiter returned, he poured the wine and set out some garlic bread and olives. He pulled out his pad, paused, and gave Daniel a long look. "I remember you," he teased. "Boston, right?"

"Near Boston."

"That's right. No codfish or beans on the menu today, I'm afraid."

Daniel's father looked up from his menu. "Codfish? Beans?" There was a touch of mischief in his voice. "If I wanted to eat that, I woulda stayed home. I see a sign out front that says 'Italian Kitchen', but I see no squid on this menu —" 

"Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me," said the waiter.

"You've got that sign, and you've got that great big ocean right out front —"

"We're already getting people in here getting the vapors about garlic, and you roll in here lookin' for squid —"

"We'd like the large pizza," said Daniel, "with the pepperoni."

After the waiter left, Grahn leaned forward. "Squid?"

"They eat it too," said Daniel's father. He held his innocent expression for another moment or two before he chuckled. "But of course I didn't seriously expect to find it on the menu."

"But it is something you eat?" said Grahn. He looked at Daniel for confirmation.

"Well, not every night," said Daniel.

"...Is it good?"

"It's not my favorite, but...."

"Maybe you'll get to try it someday, Henry," said Daniel's father. He held up his glass. "To new experiences." They clinked glasses. "So, what have you two been up to? Henry, how was your Easter? You got to go home, didn't you? How are your mom and dad doing?"

As Grahn told his tale, Daniel noticed a slow smile growing on his father's face. It struck him that though his father was listening to Grahn, he was imagining the story through the point of view of Grahn's parents, thinking of how happy they would be to have Grahn home, being glad for them and picturing the day Daniel would come home to visit.

HIs father shared some of the news from home, about how things were going and how the family had spent Easter, and asked about what Daniel and Grahn had been doing that week. He was delighted to hear about swimming.

"Will they let you swim in the ocean?" he asked.

"Sure," said Grahn. "We could probably go now if we wanted to freeze. But yeah, before it got cold there were patients on the beach all the time."

"You'll have to tell him about the hurricane," said Daniel. "That’s quite a story."

"You were here during the hurricane?"

"Yeah. I'd been here around a month."

"So you’ve been here almost eight months. How much longer...?"

"It's been like anything else, I guess; it seems slow while it's happening, and then you look back and say, wow, that went fast. Probably not too much longer." Grahn glanced at Daniel. "It depends on a lot of stuff; my case is different than his. And then they might keep me here a little extra just out of spite."

The waiter arrived. "Pizza with pepperoni," he announced, and set it down in the middle of the table. "And, for the squid-eater...." He set a small bowl in front of Daniel's father. "Compliments of the chef, who says this is an Italian kitchen, not an Italian grocery, you know? so you can't expect him to have every ingredient ever, and don't you dare come around here lookin' for octopus."

"Thank you! Please, tell him thanks for us." The waiter smiled, topped off their wine glasses, and went on his way. Daniel's father gently poked at the rings of squid with his fork as Daniel served him a slice of pizza and Grahn looked on in awe.

"It looks like he just cooked it up with some oil and garlic and pepper. Here, Henry, would you like to try some?" He passed Henry the bowl.

"Uh... yes please."

"Make sure you get one of the little legs there," said Daniel. Grahn looked apprehensive, but took two pieces as instructed. Daniel took his sample and then passed the saucer back to his father.

"So what do you think?" Daniel's father asked.

Grahn considered as he swallowed. "I... think I like it?"

"Good!"

"This is good," said Daniel. "This isn't how we have it at home, though."

"That's true, Henry, you might like it even better the way we make it," said Daniel's father. "We usually put it in a stew, with tomatoes. Sometimes we stuff it." He ate his last piece of squid and looked at his pizza. "Now, do you just pick this up to eat it?"

Grahn was happy to demonstrate. As they ate, the talk turned to how Grahn and Sousa knew about the restaurant, to trips out with the other patients, to Atlantic City itself and what they had seen.

“I was thinking we could explore some tomorrow,” Daniel said to his father. “Anything in particular you’d like to do?” His father shrugged. “Grahn, any ideas?”

“Depends on what you like, I guess.” said Grahn. “I haven’t seen that much of the town myself.”

“Really?” said Daniel.

“Really. I’ve been to a couple of restaurants, and seen a bit of the Boardwalk, but otherwise….”

“What about when your parents come?”

“They’re not much into shows. They’ll go on the Boardwalk for the fresh air, but mostly they like to go shopping when they’re here; we don’t have the big department stores back home.”

Big department stores. Daniel filed that idea away for future reference.

“I’m surprised too!” said Grahn. “When I first got my cast off I thought I’d be painting the town red every night. But there's so much to do at the hospital....”

“You’re going to lose your reputation,” said Daniel. His father lifted his eyebrows in amused curiosity.

“My reputation. Mr. Sousa, please: Don’t listen to him. Somehow I seem to have gotten a reputation as some kind of troublemaker, and it’s just not true at all.”

“Didn’t you have some project you were keeping yourself busy with? Bridge lessons, I think?”

“Why yes, and thank you for asking!” As Grahn launched into an account of the splendid success of the bridge lessons, Daniel propped his head on his hand, pretending to be weary of the topic. He’d have time later to tell his father that he was actually enjoying learning the game. Meanwhile... there was one slice of pizza left; did he want it...?

“…and Daniel’s real sharp at it, you should see him —“

“Hm?” Daniel looked up.

“Like I said before,” his father said, “your sisters are going to be so excited.”

“And I bet they have friends that they play with,” added Grahn, “and that their friends have friends. Want to split that last piece? Mr. Sousa, do you care for any more?"

“No, that's for you two. But, Henry: is this whole project just a scheme to meet young ladies?”

“Not the whole project,” said Grahn. “Just… maybe around 75% of it. And of course different men have different objectives; we’ve got a few fellows who are learning so they can play with their girls or their wives.”

“Well, I don’t think you two need to worry about meeting young ladies. I think the young ladies are already thinking about how to meet you.”

“Meeting is one thing. Catching their interest is another,” said Grahn.

“If an old buzzard like me can turn a head or two, you boys have nothing to worry about,” insisted Daniel’s father.

Daniel snorted — he knew this story. Grahn leaned forward eagerly.

“Oh, it’s nothing to get excited about,” said Daniel’s father. “There’s a few widows in the neighborhood who wave pies under my nose every now and then.”

“Mrs. Ramalho still?” said Daniel.

“Oh, yes: Mrs. Ramalho still. She’s a nice lady, but… no.”

“And you’ve never thought about having a piece of pie with one of these ladies?” asked Grahn. He immediately recollected himself. “Oh, Mr. Sousa, I apologize, I shouldn’t have —“

“That’s all right,” said Daniel’s father. “I was just joking about it, but… you’re right, there’s more to it than just meeting. At first I wasn’t even thinking in that direction, I was just… preoccupied. My wife died in ’31, I had the kids, and those were lean times, you know? Even if I’d thought about I couldn’t have afforded it.

“And then Daniel was eleven and his sisters were thirteen and sixteen, and losing their mother was hard enough, especially for the girls at that age. You can’t just bring anyone into the house and set her up as a stepmother, right? Or next thing you know, your children are out in the woods licking the windows of a candy house.

“And then later… well, I’ve been pretty busy these last few years. I've known these ladies for years, they’re good ladies, but I’ve never gone home daydreaming about having a piece of pie with them.” He smiled a little. “Maybe I’m just a one-woman man.”

A lull fell over their table. Finally Daniel spoke up. “So, Grahn: Should we find out if Mrs. Ramalho plays bridge? Just in case it doesn't work out with Betty?" Grahn scoffed and pretended to throw a wadded napkin at Daniel.

"Okay, you two, I have orders," said Daniel's father. He brought out his old Brownie camera and took it out of its case. "Both of you, get in there."

Grahn scooted his chair closer to Daniel's. A few minutes later, the waiter came by; he cleared the plates and then took a picture of all three of them.

Daniel was able to pay the check with only token resistance from his father, and soon they were heading back down the Boardwalk again.

"The light's perfect," said Daniel's father. "How about we get another picture — maybe with the ocean?"

Daniel hesitated. He wasn't going to refuse to have his picture taken, that was just childish, but he hadn't thought about being photographed in a wheelchair, and for some reason, he didn't want this to be the first time. He didn't know why; he just knew.

"Sure." He looked around. "How about that bench over there?" He pulled over to the metal handrail on the ocean side of the Boardwalk, set the brakes on the wheelchair, picked up his crutches, and headed over to the bench. 

"Henry, get in there," said Daniel's father.

"Wait," called Grahn. He caught up to Daniel as quickly as he could, using one cane and carrying Daniel's knitted blanket over his other arm. "Here, it'll make certain people happy if you get this in the picture." As he got closer to Daniel, he murmured, "You may not want to sit down with your leg smack against that cold bench."

Daniel winced at the thought: his leg was probably not that desensitized yet. "Thanks," he whispered. Grahn casually tossed the blanket on the bench; Daniel spread it out a little bit, sat on it, and arranged some of the folds over his right leg. He lay his crutches at his feet.

"We're doing it this way? Okay," said Grahn. He sat down and put his own cane on the ground.

Meanwhile, Daniel's father was walking back and forth, pigeons hopping out of his way, looking for the best angle for the pictures. Finally he was satisfied. "Ready?" he called.

"Ready!" called Daniel. To Grahn, he added under his breath, "Say 'squid'!" He looked at his father, holding the camera in front of the hotels and the candy stores and the sinking sun, and smiled.

 

 

 

Notes:

@Keysburg's started posting a terrific Jack Thompson fic over here. Go read it!

Many thanks to @keysburg and @CotyCat82 for idea-bouncing, test audiencing, and exhortation to DO THE THING.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and for your lovely comments, which I print out in the form of postcards and mail to myself.

---

The staff's exhortations to not treat Daniel like an invalid are based on Army publications of the period.

We're already getting people in here getting the vapors about garlic To get the vapors = to feel faint. Think of someone being dramatic and calling for smelling salts.

Garlic: Middle America at that time was not accustomed to strongly spiced foods. When I was researching menus of the period, one source pointed out all the menus that listed spaghetti with "Italian-style" sauce — "Italian-style" meant "not too spicy or garlicky.

I also came across this garlic story:

In 1971 I was excited to make Julia Child’s and James Beard’s collaboration recipe “Forty Cloves of Garlic May Not Be Enough” in a roasted chicken. The next morning our youngest son, Hans Peter was born. After delivery the pediatrician came into my hospital room wanting to check on the mother of “the garlic baby.” The entire hospital nursery reeked of garlic, but not me! The garlic baby is now 45 years old and still adores garlic.

Chapter 29: The Beacon

Summary:

Notes:

This map of Atlantic City is from a little later than 1945, I think, but it still should help. Click to enlarge it. Note that the map is rotated – the compass rose is at the bottom right. The Boardwalk actually runs from northeast to southwest.

 

 

The next morning, Daniel hurried through breakfast and went down to the lobby to meet his father. They went across the skyway to the Chalfonte for church. Afterwards, Daniel's father went to wait in  the visitors' lounge on the eighth floor while Daniel himself went to physical therapy. Since it was his only session of the day, he spent most of it on the treatment table. The therapist measured and inspected his leg, had him rub the end of his leg with a towel, took him through his stretches, and set him to work with the pulley weights. She finished up with the extended stretching and deep massage of his hip muscles that always left him relaxed and sore. 

When he rolled off the elevator back on the eighth floor, he was surprised to find his father standing at the nurses' desk with a cup of coffee, talking to Lieutenant Munn. Daniel pulled up in front of the desk and handed his chart to the clerk. 

"I thought I was meeting you in the visitors' lounge," he teased his father. 

"Lieutenant Munn here had some more pamphlets for me." His father patted his jacket pocket.  "She threw in a cup of coffee, too. I couldn't say no." 

"Mr. Sousa, I'll give you the rest of that information tomorrow morning," Lieutenant Munn said with a smile. "Enjoy your visit." 

"Thank you again." He picked up his coffee cup and joined Daniel. Together, they headed down the hall towards Daniel's room. 

"How was physical therapy?" 

"Invigorating," said Daniel. "So what next?" 

"You're in charge." 

Daniel rolled himself into his room and backed the wheelchair into its place. "Still up for exploring? We could go see more of the Boardwalk, find some lunch." 

"You're in charge," insisted his father. "But sure, let's see some more of this famous Boardwalk. We should have a nice day for it." 

Daniel changed back into his Class As and went with his father back down to the lobby. Once they were out on the sidewalk, he stopped his wheelchair. 

"Pai, would you do me a favor and take over pushing for a bit?" He set the brakes. "I want to try something." 

Using his crutches, with his father pushing the wheelchair behind him, he was able to get all the way down the street to the Boardwalk before he had to stop for a moment. 

"You're pretty speedy on those," observed his father. 

"Thanks." Daniel looked around as he caught his breath. It was a bright, clear spring day, almost mild, with a blue sky and cottony clouds and a biting, salty breeze — and how long had it been since he'd seen the sky looking like that?  

They turned northeast, Daniel on his crutches, his father pushing the empty wheelchair alongside. They went about a block before they got to the site of Steeplechase Pier, which had been destroyed in the hurricane. It was a good place to take a quick rest and look out at the last of the wreckage of the Pier and the beginning of its rebuilding. 

"Think they'll make it in time for summer?" asked Daniel. 

"I don't think they'll make Decoration Day," said his father. "They might be able to catch part of the season, though — if they can get the labor." 

The ocean end of the Pier might have been in ruins, but a restaurant at the Boardwalk end of the Pier had survived. It was open now, with a little clutch of tourists gathered in front of one of its large windows. Daniel and his father drew closer to see what the attraction was. 

"Go ahead," Daniel encouraged his father. He was hesitant to approach the group himself; he didn't want to hit anyone with his crutches, or have someone turn around too quickly and walk into him. 

His father took a look and turned back around. "They're frying doughnuts," he reported. He was pressing back a wry smile, as if he was touched that frying doughnuts was all it took to draw a crowd. 

A man standing next to him at the window turned around as well. "Quite an operation, isn't it? They must do...." His voice trailed off as he saw Daniel. Daniel's stomach sank. 

"Oh," said the man at the window. "Oh, come on up, let's give you some room here —" 

"Aw, no, that's okay," said Daniel — 

"No, no, come on," insisted the man at the window. A couple of the other tourists turned to see what was going on. They joined in, moving aside and urging Daniel to the space they'd opened up for him. 

"Oh, that poor man," breathed one of the ladies. 

Daniel decided that was enough. "Ah, that's all right. I've gotten to see quite a bit of doughnut-frying over the last couple of years with the Red Cross, you know?" Inside the window, one of the fry cooks looked up and gave Daniel a friendly nod.  Daniel nodded back and turned to his father. "Ready?" 

"Ready." They started back up the Boardwalk. 

Daniel's stomach was still churning. It was courteous of those people to give him room, but that other stuff.... He'd been feeling pretty good, he was taking the Boardwalk by himself, but all that stranger saw was oh that poor man.... 

"This place seems to have done a bit better," said his father. They had reached the Steel Pier. "Looks like they lost just the end of it. Still, that must be half a mile long, don't you think?" He read some of the signs: " 'Opening Decoration Day with Two New Vaude Shows... Louis Prima and Orchestra With Lily Ann Carol... Exhibit of Bombs: See the bombs we're dropping in the Pacific... ' " 

 "That's cheerful," said Daniel. 

His father kept reading. " 'Circus Acts... Baby Animal Zoo... Haunted Castle... Kiddie shows... Five Luxurious Theatres, Continuous Showings...' Do they mean for movies? Why do you need movies on top of all this other stuff? 'Dancing on Friday... One Admission For All Attractions.' " He shook his head in disbelief. "How could you possibly see all this? You'd have to come first thing in the morning and stay till midnight." 

"That might be the point. Or maybe you skip the parts you're not interested in, or come back another day." 

His father still looked dubious. Daniel smiled a little as he swung his crutches forward again. Maybe he could bring his father back once the Steel Pier opened: watching his reaction would be worth the price of admission. 

Daniel stopped again at the end of the next block to rest. "Pizza restaurant's over that way," he said.  

His father nodded. "I can see why you fellows like it so well. I wonder if we could make it at home?" 

Daniel was too focused on making it to the end of the next block to think about what might be involved in making pizza. He pushed himself the last few steps and paused. 

"You doing okay?" asked his father. 

"Yeah." The scent of roasting peanuts wafted by; Daniel felt his stomach growl. "What would you say to some lunch?" 

"I'd say yes please." His father looked up the Boardwalk and its endless chain of candy stores, souvenir shops, and restaurants.  "Just hope we can find a place." Daniel snickered. 

Choosing a place for lunch meant slowing down and going up the storefront side of the Boardwalk, with plenty of opportunities to stop and rest and read menus. It took longer than Daniel expected; some of the nicer-looking restaurants were still closed, and there was enough of a nip in the air to make him want something more than a cold sandwich and potato chips for his father and for himself. They found a promising place a couple of blocks up.  The hostess showed them a place to park Daniel's wheelchair and then ushered them to the table.  

Daniel unfolded his napkin and picked up his menu. "Hey, Pai? This looks like a nice place, but if you're looking for squid again today, I think you're going to be disappointed." 

"It's just as well. Too much squid gives you gout." He took a sip of his coffee. "I didn't frighten poor Henry too much, did I?" 

"He's all right. I'm not sure what amazed him more, your asking about it or the fact that the restaurant had it on hand. I think he thinks the waiter was kidding about the octopus." 

Daniel's father chuckled. "Are you going to clue him in?" 

"Maybe later. I asked him if he'd had snails in France and he said he hadn't had time, but he could  introduce me to scrapple someday." 

After the waitress had taken their orders and topped off their coffees, Daniel took a closer look at his paper placemat and turned it over. It was printed with a map of Atlantic City. 

"Hey, look at this. So, here we are...." He pointed to the star on the map. They were not far from the northeast end of the island. 

His father squinted at the map. "Where's the hospital?"  

"Over here, right by those the piers we saw. Is there anything you want to do or see..?" 

His father shook his head. "Whatever you want to do is fine with me. I came to see you. Atlantic City's just extra." 

"I'd rather stay outside, if you don't mind just looking around." 

"I don't mind at all. It's a nice day for it." He took a sip of his coffee. "You still haven't been out much?"  

"Not really," said Daniel. "They keep us busy." He didn't mention that he couldn't exactly dash out. "The pizza restaurant's about as far as I've been, unless you count the pool. That's way down here." He pointed to the President Hotel down on the south end of the Boardwalk, almost at the city limits. 

He pointed to a spot on the map a few blocks away from where they were having lunch. "There's a lighthouse over here; it's not being used now, but there's a little park around it. And then this channel's only a bit further up, I think that's where the boats come in. How about we head that way?"  

His father insisted again that Daniel was in charge, but Daniel could tell he liked the idea of the lighthouse and the channel. They set out again after lunch and started back up the Boardwalk. 

They walked up a few more blocks, pausing every so often to take in some of the more outlandish storefronts. Daniel was still using his crutches; he'd had a good rest over lunch, he'd reasoned. The walking he'd done before lunch quickly caught back up with him, though, and even with slowing his pace he had to stop more often to rest. He ignored the empty wheelchair his father was still pushing along: he was determined to walk all the way to the inlet. 

They turned on Vermont Avenue towards the lighthouse. It stood, orange with a black stripe, next to its keeper's house in the middle of a little park surrounded by ordinary businesses and houses.  

"Decommissioned in 1933," Daniel read off the sign. "Still has its original first-order Fresnel lens —" his father looked up in admiration — "and still the tallest lighthouse in New Jersey." 

They walked around the lighthouse and took pictures of each other, and then headed up Pacific Avenue. Only two more blocks, Daniel kept reminding himself. Two more blocks. 

Finally they reached the Boardwalk again. Daniel leaned on his crutches, breathing deeply. 

"There's a bench over there," said his father. Daniel nodded and hobbled the last thirty feet over. He almost dropped onto the bench in relief but stopped himself in time, remembering Grahn's warning. 

"Pai, would you hand me the blanket? Thanks." 

Daniel spread the blanket out lengthwise on the bench seat and lowered himself down on one end of it, leaving the other end for his father. His father braked the wheelchair close by and came and sat down.  

At first, all Daniel could think of was how tired he was, and how glad he was to be sitting down again. "How far do you think that was?" he finally asked. 

"From the hospital? A mile, maybe?" 

There was a smile in his father's voice, and Daniel couldn't help smiling a little himself. A mile. He'd made it all the way up this end of the island.  

His father shifted a little on the bench, so that he was looking out past Daniel to where the inlet met the sea. Daniel's smile grew: he knew what was coming.  

The camera shutter clicked. Daniel turned in surprise — that wasn't what he was expecting. His father took another picture, smiled, and put the camera away.  

After a few more minutes, his father began to speak. 

“ ‘I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, 
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by....' " 

Daniel relaxed into the familiar words, following the poem in his head as his father recited the poem aloud. 

" '...And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, 
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.' 

"I used to say that for my grandfather, you know." 

"You don't say," said Daniel. "Only that one, over and over again?" 

"Oh, have I told you about this before? I did know other ones — The boy stood on the burning deck; I shot an arrow into the air; The rich man's son inherits lands; I wandered lonely as a cloud — but that one was his favorite. We didn't have radio, you know, so we had to keep ourselves occupied somehow." 

The water in the inlet lapped gently against its shores. A few ducks flapped down to float, complacent and unhurried, on the surface of the water. 

"Things are looking a little different since the last time we did this, don't you think?" 

Daniel thought he had a pretty good idea of what his father was itching to talk about. He realized he didn't mind: there was none of that panicky sense of being hunted that he got when the doctors and nurses talked about adjustment. "Yeah."  

"Look at you. You've been working so hard... And you were just bound and determined to get to the end of this island, weren't you?"  

Daniel looked up and smiled a little.  His father looked smug. "Thought so.  

"You just seem more like yourself. Are you feeling better?" His father's voice was gentle. "How are your spirits?" 

Daniel took a deep breath as he thought about it. "Better, I think. Things don't seem to set me off like before. I guess it's been a while since I've had a really bad day." 

"Good to hear. I bet getting off that traction thing helped. Sleeping any better?" 

"It did, and I am." Daniel looked at his hands, and then over at his father. "What you said, when you were here last... that helped a lot too." 

"I'm glad. And, you know, you may have another bad day again, or even a few bad days in a row. It happens. And if it does, you'll know what's going on, and you can think back to good days like this and remember that they're real, and that the bad days will pass away again." His father looked at him fondly. "I'm so proud of you, Daniel." 

"Thanks, Pai." 

They sat in comfortable silence. Daniel was content to enjoy the sunshine and the fresh air and his father's presence, and to push away the occasional thought that his father would be leaving the next morning. There was still plenty of time. 

After a while, Daniel began to feel the cold beginning to seep through the blanket into the back of his legs. "What do you think?" he asked. "Ready to do some more exploring?" 

It was harder than he expected to stand up again, and as he adjusted his crutches and took his first step away from the bench, he realized that there was no way he was going to be able to walk back — not at any reasonable pace, anyway. 

Grimacing, he hitched himself over to the wheelchair and got himself situated. Meanwhile, his father brushed off the blanket and brought it over. 

"Here you go," he said. He waited as Daniel tucked it around his lap. 

"Want a push?" he asked. 

"That's okay, I can get it." 

"I know you can." He walked alongside as Daniel took the brakes off and began to roll the wheelchair forward. "I also know that you walked a mile on crutches this morning, and that means we're a mile away from the hospital now. Plus I don't know what else you're saving your energy for. So if you change your mind, just let me know." 

"I will." Daniel gave the wheels another push. His father had a good point; maybe he'd take him up on the offer in a little bit. "I don't have anything special in mind," he said. "So if you see someplace you want to stop, let's take a look." 

They passed the Garden Pier: also damaged by the hurricane, also closed. The Boardwalk itself was well supplied with candy stores and restaurants and souvenir shops, but there were ordinary businesses as well: clothing, shoes, a camera shop, a jewelry store... As they passed a florist shop, Daniel remembered the glow-in-the-dark corsages he'd seen a couple of weeks ago. There was a toy store on the next block. Daniel pulled over to look at the window displays as he took a rest. 

"Hey Pai, do you have enough room in your bag to carry a few things back for me? Maybe something little for the kids?" 

"Oh, sure. Do you want to go in?" 

Daniel felt uncertain for a moment — there was a step up to the door, and would the wheelchair fit? and would there be enough room for him inside the shop? But if it didn't work out, they could just leave. 

"Yeah, let's take a look. You'll have to tell me what they might like, though." 

Daniel's father went in first to hold the door. As Daniel entered on his crutches, the shopkeeper hurried over. She held the door as Daniel's father brought in the wheelchair, begged them to let hem know if she could help them with anything, and then got out of their way. 

Daniel looked around. "I think this is the first store I've been since I've been back that wasn't the Exchange," he said. "Selection's a little different here. So what do they like to play with now?" 

"Sticks and dirt, mostly," said Daniel's father. "Katie has a little doll that she carries around with her." 

Daniel looked at a toy steam shovel. Maybe for Christmas or a birthday, he thought.  

Something else caught his eye, and he rolled his wheelchair over to take a look. "'Captain America Play Set,'" he read. "'Includes Captain America and his friends Billy Barton, Tennessee Durkin, Gerald Jackson, Johnny Wong, Fitzwilliam Wentworth, and Pierre Lavigne.' Oh, look, it's got little tents and a jeep and everything." 

"That looks a little fiddly, all that folding and punching out," said Daniel's father. "Charlie doesn't really talk about Captain America that much any more. Maybe he's moving on to something else." 

Daniel ended up choosing some marbles in a leather pouch for Charlie, a stuffed animal  in a handled basket for Katie, and a rattle for the baby. The shopkeeper giftwrapped them for him, invited him back again, and helped hold the door as he made his way back outside.  He settled back in the wheelchair, thanked the shopkeeper again, and looked up.  

His back and arms were starting to hurt. The hospital was on the other side of the Steel Pier. And the Steel Pier was looking very far away. It hurt his pride, but if they were going to get back before sunset... 

He looked over to his father. "Mind if I take you up on that offer of a push?" 

"Not at all." His father handed him the packages, and soon they were ambling down the Boardwalk again, stopping now and then to look at some of the shop windows.  They stopped at a souvenir shop to choose glow-in-the-dark corsages for Tillie and Ines. They stopped at the Planter's Peanuts store across from the Steel Pier to watch the peanut roasters in the front windows, and accepted samples from Mr. Peanut himself.  They went into the enormous candy store that anchored the next corner; Daniel bought a box of taffy to send home, and a small box of the almond macaroons he'd seen his father eyeing. 

Daniel would have liked to have stayed outside all afternoon, but he needed to rewrap his right leg. So they turned right again once they reached North Carolina Avenue, and headed back up to his room. 

They went back out to the Boardwalk again for an early dinner, this time turning south.  It didn't take long to find an appealing restaurant, and soon they were seated and opening their menus. 

Daniel scanned the choices. He looked up to ask his father what he thought looked good, and to drop a pointed hint to order whatever he thought looked good. 

Before he could say anything, he was overwhelmed by a swell of gratitude and affection. After all the crazy stuff that had happened, there was Pai, sitting across the table from him, his face tilted back a little as he read the menu through his reading glasses. 

He really hadn't changed that much. A little grayer; a few more wrinkles, perhaps. His reading glasses might be new. As for his clothes.... 

Daniel had never been a snazzy dresser, but over the past few years he'd picked up the habit of noticing clothes. He'd learned to read U.S. uniforms in boot camp, and to inspect his own to the tiniest detail so he could escape the wrath of the drill sergeant. He'd learned to identify the uniforms of Allies and enemies. Then in reconnaissance, in his training and in action, he'd learned to look for the bulge of a weapon, or the subtle clues that said I do not belong here, or the glimpse of an innocuous scarf or handkerchief that was really a pre-arranged signal from the local Resistance. 

There was nothing at all unusual about his father's clothes. Maybe the tie was new, but Daniel recognized everything else from before he'd left. That didn't surprise him, given the war effort and his father's own habits. Daniel also wasn't surprised by the contrast between his father's clothing and some of the newer, better suits worn by some of the other patrons in the restaurant. He was used to that. 

He was struck, though, by the difference between his father's old jacket and his own crisp new uniform coat. The difference made him a little uncomfortable, and he didn't know why. And what did it mean to his father? 

His father looked up from his menu. "Hm?" 

Daniel smiled. "What looks good?" 

 

After the waitress took their orders and their menus, Daniel offered the basket of warm rolls to his father and then took one for himself. "So," he asked, "What did you think of Atlantic City?" 

"It's... quite a place." He broke his roll open. "A lot of candy stores. No, I came to see you... but Atlantic City's a nice extra. And just think, next time I come we can see more, even if it's just the rest of the Boardwalk." 

"Any idea when that'll be?" 

"As soon as I can: well before Decoration Day, I hope. When do you think they'd let you do that overnight visit?" 

"Not sure. I think they'd like me to do one after I get my prosthesis, but who knows when that will be. If I had the chance, they might let me do one sooner." 

"If I can manage it, maybe we can do both. And after that, you can come home." 

Suddenly Daniel was standing on the front walk, looking up at the house. It seemed so close, so possible now. And then he remembered how he would climb those stairs — everything was different, he was different — 

"It'll be so good to have you back, even if it's just for a short time," Daniel's father was saying. "And it'll be here before you know it." 

"I just... feel bad about all the extra work it's going to put you to," said Daniel. "You know, that stuff they talked about at the meeting." 

"That? That's nothing. A couple of hours with a screwdriver, half of it's just taking care of the house. And it's your home, right? It's what we do for each other." 

The waitress came with their wine. After she left and they took their first sips, Daniel's father spoke up again. 

"If there's anything else we can do to get ready for you, tell us, all right? Something you'd like to have on hand, or something you've picked up a taste for? ...I noticed you were sitting on your blanket when we've been outside; is that something we should...?" 

"That's just because the bench is still so cold. I didn't want to find out the hard way if it would bother my leg — you know, the incision. You can tell Tillie that blanket's still coming in handy." 

"I sure will. Speaking of Tillie, you know she's trying to get herself down here and Ines too. Would it bother you if one or both of them came along when I was coming for an overnight? They would find a place, of course, and we could meet up...." 

"Oh, no, that would be great. Let me see what kind of places we could set up for the overnight. Just let me know what your plans are, even if they might change." 

 

After dinner, they explored a little while longer until it was time to head back to the hospital.  Daniel fell asleep early that night, and did not wake up until he felt the night nurse gently patting his shoulder. 

"Lieutenant Sousa? Time to wake up. The doctors are here on rounds. Go ahead and start unwrapping your leg." 

He pried his eyelids open and blinked until his brain started to wake up. The doctors were already on Grahn's side of the room. 

Sousa started to sit up and gasped — his back and arms were so stiff he could barely move. He gritted his teeth and started to try to wiggle out of his pajama pants. 

"...All right, Grahn, we'll get back to you once that X-Ray's read," Peyton was saying. "Now, Lieutenant Sousa...." 

"You look like you're chewing a lemon, Sousa, what's up?" said Blaine. 

"Arms are stiff, that's all." Sousa winced as he leaned forward to take his pants off his right leg. 

"You overdo it yesterday?" asked Blaine. "How far did you go?" 

"Up to the lighthouse. Just one way, I had to take the wheelchair back." The night nurse handed him some aspirin and a glass of water; Sousa thanked her and downed the pills. 

"You went all the way to the lighthouse on crutches?! How long did that take you?" 

Sousa handed the water glass back to the nurse and started unwrapping his leg. "Hour and a half, maybe? I didn't exactly time it." 

They kept him talking as he unwound the bandages. Once his right leg was exposed, Blaine did the exam. He checked the incision and then gently pressed on various spots on the leg with his finger, as if he was pushing a button. The pressure left shallow dents in Sousa's swollen leg. 

"The swelling's gotten a lot better," said Blaine. "See how shallow that impression is now, and how quickly it's going away? And up here there's hardly anything." 

Blaine measured around Sousa's leg and noted something in his chart. He huddled with Peyton for a minute or two, flipping back and forth in the chart, as the nurse helped Sousa rewrap his leg. Sousa was just maneuvering himself to sit on the side of the bed when Blaine came back. 

"So what's your schedule today?" 

"You said I could change it so that I didn't start until after my dad left today." 

"Well, looks like I'm going to change it some more." He handed Sousa an envelope. "This is a work order. When you find yourself with a free hour, hour and a half, bring this down to the limb shop in the basement. They're going to measure you up for your first prosthesis." 

 

 

 

Notes:

THANK YOU @KEYSBURG for this lovely QV inspired art!

She is also writing a terrific Jack Thompson casefic: Jack Thompson is Dead*

---

Notes on the map: The hospital is at location 6, at the corner of North Carolina Avenue and the Boardwalk, catty-corner to the Steel Pier. I don't know why Steeplechase Pier isn't marked on the map, but it was just south of the Steel Pier, at the corner of the Boardwalk and Pennsylvania Avenue. The President Hotel, where the pool is, is all the way to the right at location 25.

Decoration Day: now called Memorial Day, at the end of May.

I bet Captain America came to Atlantic City to sell bonds. Depending on when he arrived, he might also have stopped by the hospital; England General (though unnamed at the time) accepted its first patients on August 16, 1943.

Frequently Asked Questions about Scrapple. I've never had it myself.

Absecon Lighthouse is still standing and still has its original Fresnel lens. Its colors went to white, blue, and white in 1948.

The section of Boardwalk that ran along the inlet, on the northeast end of the island, was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. I don't think it's been rebuilt.

The Planters Peanut Store and Mr. Peanut: http://monopolycity.com/ac_mrpeanut.html Unfortunately, it's not there any more.

Chapter 30: Ave atque Vale

Notes:

 

 

 

Daniel watched as the bus pulled away from the front of the hospital, turned onto North Carolina Avenue, and finally turned again onto Pacific Avenue and out of sight. He turned and walked back over to where he had parked his wheelchair. He took his time sitting down and arranging his blanket and stowing his crutches; it gave him time to ride out the painful lump in his throat that had started to form when it was time to put his father on the bus to the train station. He forced himself to breathe slowly and reminded himself that they'd had a good visit, they'd see each other again soon, and that he was getting ready to work on something he could show his father when they saw each other next. 

He checked his shirt pocket: he had his work order. He could go straight to the limb shop. He took a deep breath and wheeled himself back inside. 

His father had been so happy that morning. Daniel had gone back to the ward after breakfast and had met his father there; they'd gotten some coffee and headed down the hall to the spot with the view, and that's when he'd told his father that it was happening, that he was going to get measured for his prosthetic that very day. 

"It's going to take a while," he'd said. "I don't know how long; I'll ask them when I get to the shop. Some of the fellows at breakfast said it took them six weeks to get their legs. Part of that was because of the hurricane — the workshop flooded and they got really backed up." 

"Still, that's big news!" his father had said. "Maybe it won't take that long, but even if it does, you're that much closer." He looked excited, as if Daniel would be coming home in two weeks instead of maybe in twelve. 

And maybe the difference between two weeks and twelve wasn't all that much, in the greater scheme of things. Daniel pushed the call button for the elevator. Twelve weeks — that would be, what, July? And it wouldn't be as bad as all those weeks he'd spent in traction. 

He took the elevator down to the basement and followed the signs to the limb shop. He heard the shop before he saw it: the high-pitched whine of a saw, the ka-chump, ka-chump of some kind of punch or press. As he got closer he smelled sawdust.  

When he reached the shop, another sign directed him to a waiting area. Another man was already there, dozing in a chair, the sleeve of his convalescent suit pinned up just below his elbow. He opened his eyes, greeted Sousa, and closed his eyes again. 

Sousa signed in at the table and wheeled himself over to the waiting area. He found a copy of Stars and Stripes and started to leaf through it; he'd only skimmed the paper at breakfast. Noose tightening on the Nazis... Flights from Iwo Jima.... The new railroad bridge over the Rhine, replacing the ones the retreating Nazis had destroyed, those engineers had done it in ten days, good for them.... 

The drowsy arm amputee was shown into the back; two more men signed in.  A private came out and called Sousa's name, and held the door as Sousa wheeled himself through. He led Sousa into a workroom that smelled of chalk and pipe tobacco, and delivered him to a Corporal Turpin and a balding civilian named Mr. Joyner. 

"Pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant," said Mr. Joyner. "I've been in the limb business for twenty years now, Army brought me in to teach these guys. They're doin' real well. Now, there's two questions everyone asks first, and I bet you can guess what they are." 

"I'm going to guess one of them is 'What's the question everyone asks first?' "  

It took a few seconds for Mr. Joyner to work that out. When he did, he let out a guffaw.  "All right, smart guy, and what's the other one?" 

"When will my leg be ready?" 

"That's right!" Mr. Joyner looked over to Turpin. 

"About four weeks," said Turpin. "We'll try for sooner but we can't guarantee it." 

Mr. Joyner nodded. "And the other question is how did I get into the limb business." He knocked on his right shin. "As a customer. Okay, Corporal Turpin's going to take it from here." 

Turpin led Sousa to a place where he could take off his pants and unwrap his leg. Once that was done, he brought Sousa to a kind of stand that resembled bicycle handlebars stuck on a pole. 

"Stand up here, please, nice and straight, and hang on to these handles. I'm going to wrap your leg with these bandages and we're going to make a light cast. Once it dries, I'll cut the cast off and then you can wash up and get dressed again." Sousa nodded, and Turpin got to work. 

He unrolled a long strip of gauze that had been coated with petroleum jelly and started to wrap the end of Sousa's right leg. Sousa braced himself in case his leg reacted, but there was no trouble: the desensitization exercises must have been working. And Turpin was doing a good job as well, wrapping the gauze just snugly enough without pulling it too tight. 

Turpin wrapped the gauze around Sousa's leg all the way up to the groin. As he finished, Mr. Joyner limped over, holding his pipe in one hand and a newspaper in the other. 

"Doin' all right?" Mr Joyner asked Sousa. 

"Yeah," Sousa replied. 

Mr. Joyner inspected the gauze wrapping and told Turpin to go ahead. "Okay, here comes the plaster," said Turpin. He started winding the plaster-soaked muslin strips around Sousa's leg.  

As he worked, Sousa looked idly around the workroom. The drowsy arm amputee was seated at a table, waiting for his cast to dry. Across the room, a below-the knee amputee sat on another table as he was cut out of his cast. 

"So what do you do with the cast?" asked Sousa. 

"Use it as a mold," said Turpin. "We fill it with plaster, make a model leg, and use that to make the prosthesis." 

"Oh. Maybe I should've come in the afternoon, then. You know, like they say buy shoes in the afternoon, when your feet are biggest." Sousa kept his tone light, as if he were kidding around, but it was true that his leg tended to swell as the day went on. 

Turpin chuckled. "Somebody should tell that to Uncle Sam. I don't remember him looking at the clock when he gave me my new shoes." He reached into the basin and brought out another muslin strip. "Nah, we'll leave room for your leg wrap and then a little extra, so if you need it you've got it and if you don't you can just put another wrap on your leg or put another sock on. Physical therapists'll tell you more about that once you get the leg." 

A few more layers of muslin and the cast was finished. Turpin called Mr. Joyner over to sign off on his work, brought a chair around in case Sousa needed it, and then went to cast another patient. Sousa's arms and back were starting to complain, but he did not want to sit down just yet. He leaned on the handlebars and watched as the arm amputee was cut out of his cast and went to wash up.  

Meanwhile, Mr. Joyner wandered the room with his pipe and his paper, inspecting the work and chatting with the patients. At one point he wandered over and perched on a stool next to Sousa. 

"It's like watching paint dry, ain't it? Except at least you have a better view of the paint drying. You get to the game yesterday? No? Neither did I. Red Sox are going home now, aren't they?" He turned to the sports section of the paper and read some of the scores and stories to Sousa, before tucking the newspaper under his arm and wandering off to check on another patient. 

Finally the cast was dry, and it was Sousa's took his turn to sit on the table while Turpin cut the cast and carefully lifted it off.  By the time Sousa had cleaned and rewrapped his leg and dressed again, it was time to go to lunch. 

The next day was Tuesday and Sousa was back on his regular schedule. Unfortunately, that meant discussion group. He asked his token question and spent the rest of the time watching and listening to the men who had their prostheses already. Only a few more weeks and he would join their club. 

Bridge club met that afternoon. Mrs. Seymour came again, but without Hazel, Betty, Penny, and Doris; they were all back at school and wouldn't be done for another month.  Sousa held off on teasing Grahn until they were in the elevator on their way to dinner. 

"Aw, Grahn, that's tough luck. A whole month? Betty's going to forget all about you." 

"Then if I see her again it'll be like meeting her for the first time," said Grahn . "Or I'll just have to try again with one of the others. Besides, I wasn't the only one sitting at her table. Even if she forgets about me, she might remember you." 

"Are you even going to be here in a month?" asked Maddox.  "It'd be a shame if they kicked you out before all your plans came to fruition." 

"I don't know," said Grahn. "Depends." 

"You could always sprain your knee again." 

Grahn didn't laugh. "So what's keepin' you here, Maddox?" 

The elevator doors opened. Maddox held the door button as Sousa went out, and then Grahn. "Not much, actually," said Maddox. "I'll tell you once we sit down." 

They approached their usual table. "Hey, fellas, what's news?" called Maddox. 

A couple of men looked up from the newspapers spread out across the table — evening editions, Sousa noticed. The mood around the table was grim. 

"The news may put you off your dinner," said Ayers. He slid a paper across the table. "Or else bring it right back up again." 

"HORROR IN OHRDRUF" 

OHRDRUF, GERMANY, April 4 — The morning after taking the town of Ohrdruf, the 4th Armored Division made a ghastly discovery in the forest outside the town: a prison camp, abandoned by the Nazis.... hasty attempt to cover up the gruesome truth... stacked like cordwood... a few skeletal survivors, hiding in a bunk.... 

"Oh my God," Sousa whispered. 

"Think it might have been a Hydra camp at one point?" asked Grahn. 

"I doubt it," said Irwin. "Not unless it had a temperature-controlled wine vault the size of a ballroom. Hydra likes old castles and places like that, and they grabbed the best stuff in the Reich for themselves early on. They're big on sanitation." 

Sousa had seen Hydra tech in Italy, but never a Hydra base. Had Irwin? He'd been in Italy too — but from the look on his face, this wasn't the time to ask him about it. Maybe another time.  

With a jolt, Sousa remembered the SSR. If that came through, he could stay in the fight. 

The men around the table talked war stories for a while; Sousa told the story about the goat again and that was enough to take the conversation in a lighter direction. Eventually Maddox leaned back and announced his news: He had been cleared for transfer. He would be going to Walter Reed as soon as a bed opened up for him. Congratulations; teasing; questions about where he'd want to go for dinner; and soon dinner was over. 

Sousa went straight upstairs, as he usually did, so that he could shower and rewrap his leg. When he got out of the shower, he was surprised to find Grahn already back up in the room, slouched in his chair and playing cat's cradle. 

Sousa set about inspecting his incision, drying and wrapping his leg, and putting on his pajama pants. When he was done, Grahn was still staring at the string laced around his fingers. 

"Hey," said Sousa. 

Grahn looked up. 

"You all right? What's eatin' you?" 

"Oh, I don't know. I guess I'm just out of sorts tonight." He put the string in his pocket. "We need a dartboard or something. Or a football." He started to perk up. "Or a baseball." He got up, limped over to the supply shelf, took a couple of elastic bandages, and wound them into a ball. "Here: catch." 

They goofed around for a while, playing catch and crutch-ball and crutch-polo and basketball, until Grahn went to wash up.  Sousa sat on his bed, gazing at the makeshift ball as he tossed it between his hands a while longer.  

He had strange dreams that night, dreams of being back home, of looking for something in the house, of standing out on the back porch, and then he was back at school at the track meet but they kept pulling him for another team, he tried to warn them that he'd hurt his leg and he was still waiting for his prosthesis but they didn't care, they were missing some team members and wanted him to fill in, they wanted him to throw javelin and discus but he didn't have a javelin, he didn't have a discus, he hadn't been practicing because he'd been in the hospital, he told them but they didn't listen, they didn't seem to care, and then they told him they were going to put him in the relay instead, there was an extra leg on the relay and they needed him to run it, it didn't matter that he'd never practiced with the team before, all he needed to do was wait in position and get ready for the hand-off, he tried to ask if they didn't want their usual anchor runner to finish the race but they didn't listen, and then he was out on the track, waiting, and then wondering if the runner before him would even recognize him, had they even met before? He needed to start running so he could get up to speed but he couldn't move his feet, they were pinned to the ground, he was on his hands and knees on the ground and then somehow he was holding the baton.... 

He woke up with a start. By the time he fell back asleep, he had already forgotten the dream. 

 

The next morning on rounds, Sousa discovered that his schedule had been revised: his Occupational Therapy sessions were going to be longer. He found out why that afternoon, when Lieutenant Reese stopped him on his way to the typing room.  

"Time for a change of pace," she said. She led him back down the hallway, past the woodworking room and the weaving room. 

"Photography?" asked Sousa as they passed the darkroom. "I do want to learn how to do that." 

"We can make that happen," said Lieutenant Jensen. "But for now?" She stopped before one of the doors. "Welcome to the pottery room." She introduced him to Lieutenant Brill. 

So: nursery-school stuff. Sousa tried not to pull a sour face as Lieutenant Brill gave him an apron and set him up at a pottery wheel.  

"Have you ever worked with a pottery wheel before?" she asked. 

"Can't say I have." 

"Okay, then. For today, I'll work the wheel while you practice handling the clay." 

She had him scoop up a handful of clay, knead it, and plop it on the center of the wheel. The wheel started to turn.  

"Wait, how are you doing that?" asked Sousa.  

"With my feet. This is a kick wheel." 

He tried to look, but had to catch himself on the table before he fell off the stool. "I'll show you another time," she said.  "Now, dampen your hands a little in that bowl there...." 

She taught Sousa how to form the clay into a kind of tall cylinder that could be shaped into a bowl. It was much more difficult than he expected. The clay was heavy and stiff, and he had to push on it — almost leaning on it — while keeping his hands and arms at the correct angle, all while perching on a backless stool. He messed up his cylinder a few times and once almost fell off his stool.  

Sousa was soon deep in concentration, his resentful thoughts forgotten. He was determined to be the boss of that clay. He kept at it, trying again and again, until he finally had a decent cylinder. He leaned over the clay and pushed down hard on the base until it started to turn into a bowl. 

His angle was still slightly off, and the bowl started to slump on one side. He corrected himself, but it was a little too late. One side of the bowl collapsed in on itself.  

"Dammit!" He grabbed at the clay to gather it up and try again. Lieutenant Brill lightly touched his hand. 

"Let's call it a day, hm? Your session's over. We can pick it up again next time," she said. 

"Already?" 

Lieutenant Brill nodded. "Already! You're doing very well, you're getting the hang of it." She showed him where to hang up his apron and wash his hands. When he'd finished, she showed him some finished pieces displayed on a shelf. 

"Take a look at these and think about what you might like to do for your first project. I'll see you tomorrow, all right?" 

"All right." There were ashtrays and bowls and vases and flower pots on the shelf. They looked nice. Some of bowls and vases were holding fake fruit or silk flowers. Maybe he'd be able to get something a little bit useful out of this after all. 

 

The next morning, Sousa and Grahn were just getting up when a knock sounded at the room door.  It was Major Peyton. 

"Oh, good, I was hoping to catch you," he said to Grahn. "Lieutenant Sousa, we'll be out of your way in a few minutes." He drew the curtain. "Okay, Lieutenant Grahn, let's take a look here...." 

Sousa set about brushing his teeth, paying close attention to what he was doing so he could ignore what Peyton and Grahn were saying. He got out of the way for a few minutes so that Peyton could march Grahn around the room and observe his gait, and then rolled himself back up to the sink to shave. He was about half done when he had to roll back again to let Peyton out. 

"Thanks," said Peyton. "See you tomorrow." He raised his voice to address Grahn: "And remember, Grahn: take it slow!" He left, pulling the door closed behind him. 

"Yeah, yeah, take it slow. I don't know why he thinks I need to be told twice," said Grahn. He sat back down and started rewrapping his foot. When Sousa finished shaving and had cleaned up, he was sitting there still. 

"They read my X-Ray from the other day," he said. He held up his right leg, the one that had had the cast. The ankle and knee were both wrapped. "I guess the last cracks are all healed up. 

"So now I just need to finish getting some of my ligaments back in shape. He thinks another five weeks, tops. And then... they're going to kick me down to Walter Reed."  

"So is that bad news or good news?" 

Grahn shrugged. "A bit of both, maybe? So that means they cancel each other out and it's just... news? I could ask you the same question, you know. Oh, and I can start getting rid of these." He held up his canes. 

"Start?" 

"Well... officially start." He pulled his blue pants over and started to get dressed. 

 

Sousa had Occupational Therapy that day. When he reached the workroom, Lieutenant Brill led him to a different pottery wheel. "You'll be running the wheel yourself today," she said. 

She had him sit down and showed him how to operate the wheel: he'd be using his right leg in a pulley system like the ones on the weight tables in physical therapy. "You can also kick with your left foot,” she said. “Go ahead and give it a try." 

The motion was something like pedaling a bicycle. Sousa pushed down with his right leg. It felt strange to push down and not feel the motion going through his knee and right foot. But sure enough, the wheel started to turn. He was actually using his right leg again. 

He spent a minute or two spinning the wheel, and then tried adding his left foot, to try and pick up some more speed. Lieutenant Brill didn't say anything. She didn't need to; Sousa quickly found out that it wasn't going to work. He needed his left foot to keep himself perched on the stool. 

Once he was comfortable keeping his balance and keeping the wheel moving, he took a small lump of clay and got to work.  Lieutenant Brill nodded, said she'd check back in on him, and went to see how the other patients were doing.  

It was slow going. He wasn’t able to turn the wheel very quickly, and he needed to take rests. And then there was the matter of putting the pressure on his little clay cylinder so that it turned into a bowl instead of a crumpled mess. But when Lieutenant Brill finally came around to tell him that his session was over, he had an actual little bowl on the wheel to show her.  

"Very nice!" she said. "Do you want to turn that into a finished piece?" 

He considered it. "It's still kind of uneven. I think I'd rather try for a better one next time I'm here." He put the clay back in the bucket, wiped his hands on a towel, and started taking the pulley sling off his leg. 

He thought about his project as he wheeled himself across the skyway to the boxing class. A small bowl to start with; maybe his father or one of his sisters could use it to hold coins or pins or something.  

He thought about boxing class as he wheeled himself back across the skyway to dinner. They'd practiced hand-wrapping and the left jab; the guys who could stand had practiced their stance and learned the step-drag; they'd all started the right cross. There was already talk about opening the boxing room up for another practice session during the week. That would be good, to go and hit the heavy bag for a while. 

The whole table seemed to be in a good mood that night.  Over dessert, Flores shared the news that he'd just been put on the list for Walter Reed; after the congratulations and the teasing, the talk turned to good-natured squabbling over seniority. The table had just established that Ayers was the ranking officer among the patients and MacPhyfe had been at England General the longest when the P.A. system crackled on. The room began to quiet: they'd already had the evening announcements, so what was this?  

Then the bugle call for Attention sounded. The dining room immediately fell silent. 

The hospital commandant's voice came over the system. He introduced himself and then gave the news: the White House had just announced that President Roosevelt was dead. 

 

It was a somber weekend. The usual hospital weekend activities were toned down; on Saturday, every radio in the hospital was tuned to the coverage of President Roosevelt's funeral in Washington. Sunday and Monday brought more sobering news from Europe: the 6th Armored Division had discovered another camp at Buchenwald. And then there was Okinawa....  

On Monday night, after he'd showered and changed, Sousa turned on the radio in search of some distraction.  There didn't seem to be any hockey that night, and there would be no baseball for another couple of days....  

He came across some music and stopped for a moment to listen. It sounded like more sad music — the radio stations had been playing a lot of sad music over the last few days, for the President — but something about it caught his attention, and he kept listening. The music seemed to speak of a sorrow too deep for words, with no attempt at cheap comfort. It was consoling, somehow, like someone sitting by in silent sympathy. 

Was this the sorrow that God Himself felt when He looked at the world? 

He sat, listening, until the last notes of the music sounded. 

 

The week rolled on. He went to physical therapy; he went to discussion group and asked his token question; he went to bridge; he went to occupational therapy. He went to the library, and to the lounge in the evenings with Grahn to play games and listen to the hockey game on the radio. He wrote letters and read his mail.  

He got a letter from Tillie detailing the new plan she was hatching to get more of the family to Atlantic City to see him. He thought about it on his way to breakfast the next morning. Once the plans were firmer he would ask Blaine about it, catch him on morning rounds. Then he'd find a place to stay, maybe some of the other fellows could recommend a place? There was talk of going out for drinks this afternoon, where would they go? He'd have plenty of time after occupational therapy to get back and change (and come hell or high water he was going to make that bowl today and get it the way he wanted it…) 

There weren't any newspapers by the door; the morning delivery must be late. He pulled up to the table, greeted the others, and started to pour his coffee. A few minutes later, they heard the stack of newspapers being dropped on the table at the door. 

"I'll go," said Irwin. He stood up and went over to the door. Another patient was already there, cutting the string and taking off the brown paper around the bundle of newspapers. 

"Aw, no," someone burst out. 

Sousa and the others looked up. A few patients were bending over the stack of papers at the front; Irwin, his face somber, was coming back with a few papers for the table. He held one up so they could see the oversized headline. Captain America was missing. 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thanks to @keysburg and @CotyCat82 for test audience services.

Notes:

Fitting of the prosthesis: I'm having to rely a little more on putting clues from different sources together.

Yup, pottery in Occupational Therapy was (and still is, I believe) A Thing.

The hockey: the Stanley Cup playoffs were in progress. (Maple Leafs v. Red Wings; Leafs took the Cup that year.)

The music: I made a playlist! The music Daniel's listening to is a piece I know was played over the radio in the days after FDR's death. The list is made up of music specifically mentioned in the fic, with a few others added just for atmosphere. I tried to link to V-Discs and other period recordings whenever possible.

V-Discs: Records for the troops delivered through Special Services. Many of the big stars did special recordings for the V-Discs.

The timeline:
I didn't plan it this way, it just worked out: Daniel goes to the limb shop for the first time on April 9: Peggy's birthday.
I don't remember if the date of Steve's loss is given in CA:TFA. (If it was, I wasn't able to find it.) A prop newspaper in CA:WS announcing his loss is dated in March of '44. But in the spirit of the MCU, I took some liberty with the timeline.

Chapter 31: Tales and Trials

 

Sousa stood in front of his closet and frowned. How was he going to do this? 

He wanted to change into his Class As because he wanted to go out with the others that afternoon. His uniform was neatly hung in the closet. He needed to lift it off the closet rod and bring it over to the bed. He needed to bring it over to the bed because he needed to sit down while he was getting dressed, because of his stupid leg. But he couldn't just lift it off the closet rod and bring it over to the bed, because he needed both hands to walk because of his stupid leg.... 

Dammit, why did everything have to be this hard? And it would always be like this, wouldn't it? One thing after another that he couldn't just do any more... 

Even as part of his mind complained, another part assessed the situation. He knew he could stand for a few minutes using just one crutch in his right hand. He could do that and lift the uniform off the rod with his left hand. 

Then what? The uniform was awkward. Maybe he could lean against the closet door while he used his right arm to drape the uniform over his left, and then take a few vaulting steps with his crutch — maybe he could just fling the whole thing over one shoulder — no, that wouldn't work; he pictured the uniform slithering to the floor, it would be a hassle to pick up — maybe he could just toss it onto the bed? even just one piece at a time? He looked over to judge the distance and noticed the wheelchair parked at the side of the bed. He used his crutches to pull the wheelchair to the closet, put the uniform on the wheelchair, and bumped the wheelchair back over to the bed. 

He sat down on the bed and started to unlace his shoe. Life would be so much easier once he got his leg; just a few more weeks and he'd have his hands back again. 

Of course, Ayers had had his leg a while and was still using two crutches. But maybe his injury was different, they were always saying that every man was different, and maybe they had some reason for making Ayers use crutches for a long time, like Grahn with his ligaments. Grahn had finally gotten official permission to ditch his canes; maybe Ayers would be off his crutches soon too. 

Sousa was too deep in his reflections about being off crutches and about taking a proper stance in boxing class to notice how much more quickly he was able to get his uniform on, compared to his first outing to the pizza restaurant. He'd  pinned up his right pants leg and was buttoning his shirt when Grahn showed up. Soon they were out by the elevator again, ready to meet the others. 

 

They went to a place on Pacific Avenue a couple of blocks south of the hospital. As soon as the first drinks were poured, Irwin lifted his glass. 

"To Captain America." 

Sousa lifted his glass and drank. To Captain America: the man he'd never met and had barely seen, the man whose path he'd sort of crossed, the man who'd rescued him and all those other men from...  

From what? If the Captain and his team hadn't come, he and his men might have still made it to safety. He might have been sent to a different little village and not gotten hit, he might still have both legs. Or he might gotten hit and not made it at all. Or he might have survived and gotten hit someplace else.  

Or he and his men and the other stragglers might have been captured by the Germans: he could be in a Nazi POW camp right now instead of drinking beer in Atlantic City.  

Or they might have been captured by Hydra, and... and he didn't even want to think about that. 

Or they might have been killed in the cross fire, or frozen to death somewhere.... 

"So, you ever see him, Irwin?" asked Cochrane. 

"Who, Captain America? Yeah," said Irwin. The table grew quiet. "Why?" 

"Just wondering. First I ever heard of him was in a comic book. Then he's a guy in a suit in the morale shows and the bond movies, carrying a fake gun, and then all of a sudden the papers have him as a real captain doing actual fighting...." 

"So what're you saying? You want to know if he's real or not?" 

Cochrane shrugged.  

"Well, I've seen him," said Irwin, "And I can tell you: he's the real thing." 

"Oh, come on. You can't just leave it there," said Grahn. 

"Loose lips...." Irwin thought for a moment. "Okay. Let's just say his team and my outfit? Our paths crossed. I talked to some of the regulars who'd seen his team in action, and I saw the way he led his own team and how he acted when he wasn't on a stage. He's no mitt flopper; every chance he had to rub elbows with the local brass, he got himself out of it. He visited the infirmary, though." 

"And that stuff in the papers?" asked Cochrane. 

"From what the regulars told me? The papers are playing it down. It's not all him; he's put a good team together, and he never misses a chance to give them their dues." The bowl of pretzels came around; Irwin helped himself to a couple and passed the bowl on.  "Wonder what's going to happen to them."  

"To his team?" said Ayers. "Find or promote another leader and keep going. What else can you do?" 

 

The next day, Sousa got a message from the limb shop: they wanted him to come down for his first fitting. 

When he got to the shop, they showed him to another area of the workroom. He took off his clothes but, as instructed, did not take off his leg wrap. He had just put his shoe back on when Corporal Turpin and Mr. Joyner arrived.  

"Here it is," said Turpin. 

"It" was the top of his prosthesis. Sousa felt a sudden surge of revulsion. 

It was a long wooden cone-shaped thing, hollow at the wide end and roughly finished at the tapered end. There was a flat hinge on its outside surface, connecting the cone to a heavy leather belt.  As he took it from Turpin, he saw that it was lined in leather. 

"This is the socket for your prosthesis," said Turpin. "When  you put it on, it's 'donning', and when you take it off, it's 'doffing.' So first, wrap this belt around your hips, make sure the hinge here is over your hip joint — " he helped Sousa adjust the belt — "and now don it, right over your wrap. Like that. Get your leg in further. Further. Good. Now, it hooks on to the belt and the hinge... here. How does that feel?" 

"Like I've got a trash can stuck on my leg." The socket fit closely around Sousa's thigh, but the bottom of the liner was open, so that there was open space under the end of his stump. 

"A custom fitted willow-wood trash can," said Mr. Joyner. He took a turn checking the fit. "This is good. As your leg shrinks you make up the size with your wrap and your socks. And don't forget, this is your temporary. Army'll give you a new one once your stump's down to size." He straightened up. "All right, let's take you over to the stand." 

Sousa followed Turpin and Mr. Joyner back over to the stand with the handlebars. Once he was in position, Turpin crouched down and slipped an adjustable metal shaft between the bottom of the prosthetic socket and the floor. 

"Stand up real straight," said Mr. Joyner. "Like that: good. Now, we've got a pylon under your socket. Keep holding onto the bars, but go ahead and gently put some weight on it." 

Sousa carefully did as he was told. It was a strange sensation: instead of being like a stilt, or an extension of his femur, the prosthetic was bearing his weight through the sides of his leg and the metal hip joint. 

He was doing it. He was standing. And he was not at all comfortable. 

"Straighten up," said Mr. Joyner. "We're going to be measuring and leveling." 

They kept taking some kind of measurement of the bones of his pelvis and of his left knee, and then adjusting the height of the pylon — to keep him from being lopsided, Sousa supposed. As they adjusted and measured, he focused on standing up straight and enduring the strange feeling of the prosthetic around his thigh. He thought of the wooden shoes he'd seen in Belgium. 

It would be okay, he reminded himself. He would get used to it, just like the other amputees on the ward. And once he did, he'd be able to walk. 

Finally they were done. They helped Sousa down from the platform, showed him how to doff the prosthesis, and sent him on his way, with a promise that they'd call him back soon for his second fitting. 

 

The days raced by. In physical therapy, Sousa continued his desensitization exercises, tapping and lightly slapping his leg and rubbing it with ice cubes and rough towels. He hopped, and dropped to the floor and pulled himself up again; he worked with the pulley weights and at the weight bench. He did pull-ups on the chinning bar and signed up for an extra session to learn how to use the gymnastic rings. He went to the pool and was even able to score an additional pool day, so he could go twice a week. He went to the boxing club. More and more often, he made his trips around the hospital on crutches, leaving his wheelchair back in his room. 

In occupational therapy, he finally threw a couple of bowls that he thought worth keeping. One afternoon, he had just sat down to start painting the bowls when an aide brought in a patient in a wheelchair. It was Lieutenant Tipton, the burn patient he'd first met at the bridge club. 

They happily greeted each other, and the aide brought Tipton to the worktable next to Sousa. Tipton leaned to get a closer look at Sousa's work. "Y'do that on the wheel?" he asked. His speech was still affected by the burns on his face, but Sousa was getting used to it.  

"This? Yeah," answered Sousa. He showed Tipton the bowl. "It's not much, but...." 

"Looks nice. What're you —" Tipton's therapist caught his eye and made an encouraging face — "what're you — painting it?" He struggled a little to pronounce the p in painting. 

"Ocean waves. Seemed right for Atlantic City; I was thinking maybe one of my sisters could use it. What're you working on? You painting today too?" 

Tipton's therapist pulled down an extension cord and plugged in a small electric pot. To Sousa, the pot looked like it was full of liquid wax. The therapist sat down across from Tipton, and Tipton extended his bandaged hands. 

"I don't know," said Tipton. "Am I... painting?" he asked the therapist. 

"Not today. More of what we did last time," she said. She started to unwind the bandages from his hands. 

Tipton started to look a little embarrassed, so Sousa made a point of focusing on his bowl and ignoring the sight of Tipton's scarred hands. The therapist started dipping strips of fabric into the stuff in the warmer and wrapping the fabric around Tipton's hands. 

"All right, we'll let that sit for a bit," said the therapist. "Be right back." She unplugged the warmer and took it away again. 

"Fancy, huh?" Tipton lifted his hands. "Like a manicure. You ever get these?" 

"Not me. Is that wax on there?" 

"Yeah. It actually feels kind of good.  It's — wwarm. Makes 'em less stiff." 

Sousa dipped his brush in the glaze. "Huh. No, I never did that. I did whirlpool for a while." 

Tipton laughed. "My home away from home. That and now here." The therapist came back in the room, and Tipton looked over to Sousa. "I can move if this bugs you." 

"If what bugs me?" 

The therapist sat next to Tipton, opened a jar, and dipped something into the jar: a bubble wand. She held it up in front of Tipton. 

"This," he said, and carefully blew a soap bubble. 

As Sousa painted, the therapist kept Tipton going with the soap bubbles, coaching him through big bubbles and then streams of small bubbles. When the wax on his hands had grown cool, the therapist put the bubbles away, took the waxed strips off his hands, and gave him some clay — a different kind of clay than the stuff for the wheel, Sousa noticed. The therapist had Tipton knead it, pinch it, and push it back together and roll it into a rope. Eventually she gave him some simple carving tools and let him do as he liked. "You can work on something to keep if you want. We can fire it in the kiln and then you can paint it, like what Lieutenant Sousa's working on. Mother's Day is coming up," she suggested. 

"She likes elephants," said Tipton. "Maybe I could make a little elephant." 

"You could make a whole parade if you wanted to," said the therapist.  

Tipton started pushing the clay into a little sculpture. "What if I can't finish today?" 

"We can wrap it in a damp cloth and you can pick it up tomorrow," said the therapist. "Take as much time as you like."  

As she kept Tipton talking about his elephants and his family, Sousa kept his attention on his painting until his own therapist, Lieutenant Brill, showed up. 

"So how are your bowls coming along? All done? Did you sign them? There you go. I'll put them on the shelf to be fired," she said. "Back to the wheel tomorrow?" 

"Back to the wheel tomorrow," he grumbled. He accepted his crutches and pushed his stool back. 

Tipton looked up from his project. "See you at bridge tonight?" 

"See you then," said Sousa.  

 

Sousa had a nice stack of mail waiting for him that evening after dinner. He waited to dig into it until after he'd showered, taken care of his leg, and changed into his pajamas. Then he spread his mail out on the bed to decide what to open first.  

Sousa waited until Grahn was in the shower to open one of the letters, the one that bore the return address of Mr. G. Tucker of Elliott, Terrence, and Crewe of Washington, D.C.. The letter was very bland: pleased to inform him that they were in receipt of his most recent correspondence; letter had been added to his records; encouraging developments, please continue to keep them apprised; in-person consultation would still be best, please inform when it would be convenient; best wishes for his continued recovery. 

So in other words, Major Tucker of the Strategic Scientific Reserve had gotten his letter, remembered him, liked the boxing, and was still interested in bringing him in for an interview. Very encouraging. 

He put the letter away and moved on to the rest of his mail. He was smiling over a letter from Tillie when Grahn emerged from the bathroom. 

"Good mail day?" said Grahn. 

"Yeah. This one's from Tillie." 

"Ah." Grahn started puttering around his side of the room. "When’s she coming back down, anyway?" 

“I don’t know. Right now she’s trying to get our other sister down here.” He held up the page of the letter. “She’s got at least twelve different contingency plans. All she needs is a map table with little models to move around.” 

Grahn chuckled. “Why is she piddling around with that dumb war job? She should've been a WAC. Your other sister’s the one with the kids, right?” 

“Yeah. Tillie wants to give her a turn, so she's thinking she’ll help with the kids while Ines and my dad come down. But my dad’s wanting to wait until I can get an overnight pass so he can get the ration board to approve him for more time away, and that won't happen until I’ve had some time on my prosthesis, so….” 

“So it’s all down to those beavers in the limb shop, isn't it? Well, tell 'em to hurry up; I wouldn't mind seeing your family again before I go. And if they kick me out before you get your leg, I'm going to be really sore.” 

“I’ll be sure to mention that.” 

“Thank you. Seriously, it'd be like watching almost all the movie and then getting pulled out of the theater before the ending.” 

Grahn sat down and started to wrap his foot.  Sousa turned back to his mail, but had a hard time concentrating. It was suddenly very real: Grahn was really going to be leaving, and it was going to happen soon. 

 

Sousa was called back to the limb shop a couple of days later, for another fitting. They'd pulled the changing bench over next to the stand. When his clothes were off and his shoe was back on,  Turpin brought the socket over to Sousa, but this time the socket was attached to the rest of the leg. The weird-looking wooden leg and foot reminded him of a costume. 

"...So is it any different?" asked Sousa. "Should I take my shoe off?" 

"No, leave your shoe on. You never go barefoot with your prosthesis, it's built to be worn with shoes. Okay, so you don it the same way as before," said Turpin. "Try setting up the leg like this...." 

Sousa watched as Turpin showed him the trick. He hadn't thought about it before, but it was dawning on him that that prosthesis was going to be just dead weight hanging from that belt around his hips.  

When it was his turn, he slid the socket onto his stump, made sure it was secure, and fastened the belt. He sat up straight as Turpin positioned the new leg and made more measurements and had everything checked by Mr. Joyner. 

Mr. Joyner was finally satisfied. "All right, then. Let's get you in the stand. The new leg's not quite done, so we're gonna help you up with it, okay? Don't put weight on it just yet." 

"Okay then." Sousa reminded himself that this was just the beginning, that the leg wasn't even done yet, he had plenty of time.... He took a deep breath, held the stand in one hand and his crutches in the other, and used his left leg to push himself up.  

"Now, step forward with your good leg into the stand," said Mr. Joyner. "Don't worry about dragging the leg, Turpin's got it —" 

The foot of the leg had caught on the edge of the platform. Turpin lifted it up, planted it under Sousa, and straightened the knee of the prosthesis. Then it was more measuring and leveling and having Sousa look straight ahead as he shifted his weight left and right. 

Finally they helped him get down from the stand and back to the changing bench. Turpin talked him through the process of doffing the prosthesis. 

"It's looking good," said Mr. Joyner. 

"We'll call you if we need another fitting," added Turpin. "Otherwise, we'll bring it up to physical therapy when it's done. We'll make any adjustments you need and you can start learning to use it." 

"All right." Sousa started to take off his shoe. He stole one more look at the contraption. Just a minute ago it had been attached to the end of his leg. It was a little unnerving to see Turpin carrying it around. 

 

A couple of days later, Maddox got the news that his bed was ready at Walter Reed. That meant an outing to the pizza restaurant, and late that afternoon, Sousa joined the group collecting by the elevators. He was on the early side, so he sat down to wait. 

He had not been there long when Ayers sat down next to him. "Hey Sousa," he said. "No wheels tonight?" 

"Yeah, I thought I'd take it on my own three feet tonight." He bounced his crutches. "Easier to manage with the doors." He noticed Ayers's crutches: instead of the familiar wooden ones, these were short and made of light colored metal, with a leather cuff on the top . "Those new?" 

"Sure are, just got 'em this afternoon." 

"Are they better?" 

"Hell yeah. They're lighter, and —" Ayers slid his arm through the cuff on one of the crutches and lifted his arm. Instead of falling to the floor, the crutch just dangled from a hinge on either side of the cuff. "See? Frees up your hands. I'm telling you, you want these. Ask the physical therapist — and ask the docs, they might be able to put a little pressure on for you." 

But I'm about to get my prosthetic, Sousa almost said. Ayers seemed to notice his hesitation. 

"Even after you get your leg, these'll come in handy. You won't be wearing it all the time, right? Just brushing your teeth'll be so much easier." He looked at his new crutches with appreciation. "Think I could sling a musette bag off one of these?" 

"Maybe." Sousa was thinking about something else: Ayers had had his prosthesis for months. Why was he still using crutches? 

Was there a polite way to ask? Before he could think about it, Ayers started shifting both crutches to one hand. "Look's like the gang's all here," he said, and levered himself up. Sousa adjusted his own crutches to follow him. 

 

The Boardwalk seemed more crowded for a weekday evening than Sousa had seen before: a lot more tourists. A couple of them of them seemed to be sneaking long looks at him and the rest of the group. He fixed his gaze straight ahead. 

The pizza restaurant was also busier than usual. A couple of patrons who were already seated offered to change tables, so the group was able to sit together without having to wait. Soon they were pouring beer and making toasts and teasing Maddox and sharing news and cracking as many foot and leg jokes as possible. 

  

The days were getting longer, so even though they left the restaurant late, the sun was still well above the horizon as the group headed down the Boardwalk back to the hospital. Sousa was the only amputee in that evening's group who wasn't using a wheelchair or a prosthetic, and he was tired after a long day of therapy with a chaser of boxing lessons. He started falling behind. Hayes and Ayers started to slow down to keep pace with him, but when they had to stop completely so he could keep up with them, he waved them ahead. "Go ahead, I'm fine," he insisted. "I don't want to hold you up and get you in trouble." 

Maddox turned around. "What's this about getting in trouble?" He stepped to the side to let Hayes and Ayers pass and let Sousa catch up with him. 

"Being late for census," said Sousa. 

Maddox scoffed. "You're not going to get in trouble." 

"Oh, that's rich, coming from you. You rag on Grahn more than anybody." 

Maddox chuckled. "That's Grahn, though. It's not like you've made a habit of it." 

"No, I've seen how it works around here," teased Sousa. "A couple of scrapes in New York and you guys've been giving him hell ever since." 

"It wasn't just a couple of scrapes," said Maddox. He stopped as Sousa took a moment to rest. 

"Go on, you don't have to wait for me," said Sousa. "It's your last night, go ahead with the other fellas —" 

"I'll catch up with them, don't worry. And you're doing fine, look at you: seems like just the other day we were taking you out for the first time, and now here you are motoring up the Boardwalk." 

"Thanks." Sousa shook out his hands a little and started swinging himself forward again. Maddox walked next to him.  

"No, it was more than just a couple of scrapes," Maddox repeated, "and it wasn't just in New York. I guess nobody's filled you in. It started back here: I think as soon as he was off traction Grahn was trying to get himself out of his room." 

"Well, that's understandable," said Sousa. 

"Yeah, well, he had two bad legs and was coming off traction and wasn't bothering with a pass or even asking for help," said Maddox. "He didn't get very far at first, he kept getting caught, but that didn't stop him. We were on the ward with him, but we didn't know him all that well, he was new and so was his roommate, and they were both supposed to be bedfast, so at first we just heard about it by rumor, and we thought it was hilarious. We even joked about starting a book on how far this crazy kid was going to get — you know, was this the day he was going to make it all the way out to the hall?  

"Well, the doctors and nurses were livid, and they got on his case and made sure nobody left a wheelchair in the room, but then the hurricane came and we all got sent up to New York. That's when things really went nuts. Everyone was out of place and out of sorts, and one evening Grahn managed to make it out to the hall and started coming around visiting. We didn't snitch, because we didn't really know he wasn't supposed to be there, and we felt bad for the guy, you know? You could tell he was bored and blue and missing his family, 'cause they were down here and we were up there, and then it came out that he'd gotten a Dear John letter while he was in Europe, and once in a while he'd admit that he and his roommate here weren't exactly chums.... 

"After a week or two of that his luck ran out and he sprained his knee real bad. Peyton was furious, he even threatened to put him in restraints, so Grahn behaved himself for a while, but after a while he was back at it again. We tried to talk him out of it, and a couple of us even tried pulling rank on him, so he stopped coming around and we thought things had settled down...."  

Sousa stopped to adjust his crutches. Maddox glanced up ahead, and Sousa followed his gaze: the rest of the group was a good half block ahead of them. As Sousa swung his crutches forward again, Maddox kept pace with him. He dropped his voice: "But then, a couple of nights later? Everything went to hell. 

"It's the middle of the night, and suddenly there's screaming and yelling and someone's cursing up a blue streak, and we all wake up, and everyone who can is coming out to the hallway to see what's going on, and it's coming from Grahn's room, and orderlies are coming running and someone's calling for the MPs — and one of the nurses comes out and yells 'Where's Grahn?' And nobody knows. They finally found him sleeping in a wheelchair in a visitors' lounge under a quilt his mom made him. 

"His roommate was the one making the ruckus: he was completely plastered. He'd always seemed to be an okay guy, but it turned out he was a grade-A son of a bitch who'd snowed the doctors and the nurses and the rest of us and was just mean as a snake to Grahn. Grahn'd never said anything, because of course he didn't want to be a whiner or a snitch, but also because this guy was really good at getting under your skin without your realizing it. And then back in Atlantic City, the guy's wife was visiting him, and he was real mean to her as well. Grahn'd finally got fed up with listening to that and called the guy out on it, but it didn't do any good. 

"And it got even worse in New York: the guy was calling up his wife and being horrible, and then he  found someone who'd sneak him booze. He was able to keep it a secret for a while, I don't know how, but then his wife finally had enough and called it quits, and that night he got good and stinking drunk. 

"So they shipped him off to the psychiatric floor —"  

Sousa winced. 

"Yeah," said Maddox. "And they found Grahn a new roommate. The new guy was nice enough and he wasn't a drunk, which was an improvement, but he was in a lot of pain and was sedated most of the time and he had a great big family from Brooklyn who came in to visit him every single day. By then Grahn had met everyone on the ward and a few people off, and he wanted to socialize. He wasn't as crazy as before, but once his knee got better and he found himself some partners in crime... That's when some of the funny stuff happened, like that caper with the ice cream. 

"So a few weeks later, they're ready for us down here, and we all get on the train and come back. Brooklyn stayed back in New York, of course, and then once we got here they opened another officers' orthopedic ward and spread us out. They put Grahn with another guy who'd left a roommate back in New York. This guy... well, he wasn't a jerk, but he didn't really put himself out to be friendly, either, you know? He was kind of cold — aloof, that's the word. And he was halfway out the door anyway, he left right before Christmas. 

"And then you showed up," finished Maddox. "That's why we tease Grahn about his luck with roommates finally turning around." 

They were approaching North Carolina Avenue and the hospital. Sousa could see the others waiting for them on the corner. 

"So, Walter Reed: it's in Washington, right?" said Sousa. 

"Uh, yeah. We talked about it at dinner, remember?" 

"Sure. And now if someone asks we can honestly say you were telling me about Walter Reed just now." 

As it turned out, nobody asked, and nobody hassled them when they were late returning to the ward. Maddox came back around later that evening to say one more good-bye and promise again to keep in touch. He would be on his way by 0630 the next morning. 

 

The next Tuesday evening found Sousa and Grahn sitting at their usual table at bridge club, sorting and tidying the decks of cards as the other players drifted away to dinner. Mrs. Lambe and Mrs. Seymour were answering a few last-minute questions; when they were done, they came and joined them at the table. 

"So how did it go with Lieutenant Tate?" asked Mrs. Lambe. Tate was the player she had chosen to fill Maddox's empty spot. 

"Just fine," said Grahn. "We put him with Sousa." 

"We had terrible cards, but he did okay with it," added Sousa. 

"We're going to have to ask for someone else in the next week or two, though," said Grahn. "Brent just got the word: he's going to be going soon." 

"To Walter Reed as well?" asked Mrs. Lambe. "My goodness. And then won't you...?"  

Grahn nodded. "Not 'til next month, though." 

"You'll be able to set up your own alumni bridge league down there," said Mrs. Lambe. "Are you leaving too, Lieutenant Sousa?" 

"Not for a while yet." 

Mrs. Lambe started gathering up the cards. "I'll have to redo the table plan again." 

"Don't do it too soon," said Mrs. Seymour. "At the rate we're going, you'll have another table of new beginners next week. And I have news of my own." She smiled. "You remember my daughter Hazel, of course? Well, she and her friend Betty are finishing their final exams this week, and they're planning to be here next Tuesday. They're hoping to bring Doris and Penny again, and maybe even a couple of other girls." 

"Next Tuesday, huh?" said Grahn. "That's great. Will you please tell her thanks for us, and that we're looking forward to seeing them?" 

 

Grahn was able to keep the news under his hat during dinner, but once he and Sousa were back in their room that evening, he exploded with glee. All he could talk about was Hazel and Betty and Doris and Penny and the possibility of a couple of other girls: exactly what he'd been hoping for — nice girls — Betty — friends — the other fellows in the group — opportunities.... 

He was still carrying on about it the next morning, and Sousa couldn't help chuckling to himself about it as he headed off from breakfast to his first physical therapy session.  Even if the four girls brought three more friends, there would still be, what, three men for every girl? Good odds for the girls, at least.... 

The girls knew what they were getting into,and they not only wanted to come back but were inviting friends. That was encouraging. And there'd be bridge to talk about, and there wouldn't be any question about dancing.... 

He arrived at the physical therapy gym, signed in, and headed for the row of folding chairs to wait to be called. Before he could sit down, Lieutenant Reese came to meet him.  

"Lieutenant Sousa, good morning!" she said. "We're going to start work in the north corner today." 

The north corner was set up with a standing full-length mirror and a set of parallel bars. As Sousa approached, Corporal Turpin stood up, held up a prosthetic leg, and grinned.  

Sousa almost shuddered: Turpin was lifting that fake leg like it was nothing, as if it wasn't weird to be waving around a fake body part. 

And then it dawned on him. "Is that mine?" he asked. 

Lieutenant Reese smiled. "That's yours. 

"Are you ready?" 

 

 

Notes:

Mitt flopper: A soldier who is overly quick to salute his superiors and offer to do them favors. A yes-man, a suck-up, a sycophant.

WAC: Women’s Army Corps 

Ayres's new crutches are "Kenny crutches", named for Sister Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian nurse who developed unconventional and successful techniques for the treatment and rehabilitation of polio patients. Actors Alan Alda and Martin Sheen attribute their recovery from polio to Kenny treatments.

---

Thanks to @keysburg, @CotyCat82, and @scullysahnestarkbroetchen for test audience services, and to @keysburg for the consultation.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and for your comments, which I keep on a shelf above my desk.

Chapter 32: The First Victory

 

Sousa gripped the parallel bars, one bar in his left hand and one in his right, and looked up at the full-length mirror. For a moment he was distracted by the sight: there he was in his loose blue shirt and his underwear, holding himself up between the bars, with his bare left leg ending in a sock and shoe and his right leg replaced by a leg of polished wood. A sign on the top of the mirror frame ordered him to WALK CORRECTLY.

"That's it," said Lieutenant Reese. She was standing in front of him, between the parallel bars, and he was looking into the mirror over her shoulder. Corporal Turpin from the limb shop was crouched outside the bars, next to his right leg, and an aide was standing behind him. "That's it," she urged him. "Chin up, nice and tall. There you go."

It was his first time wearing the prosthetic leg. They'd brought a chair to the end of the parallel bars and had him sit down. They had him dress the leg in a sock and shoe (which was weird enough) and then don the leg. They checked his work and Turpin made a couple of little adjustments to the straps and buckles. Before Sousa had time to really think about how odd it felt to sit with his right leg wearing the wooden shell, they had him move the lower part of the leg by literally picking up the calf of the prosthesis and moving the foot forward.

Then they'd had him stand up. He'd pulled up on the parallel bars and pushed up with his left leg, same as always. But this time, he'd felt the weight of the prosthesis on the hip belt and around his right leg. He'd ignored it as Lieutenant Reese exhorted him to stand up straight.

"Okay," she said. "Without looking: can you tell where your right foot is?"

Sousa felt a little sick. The bottom of the leg could have been attached backwards, and the only way he'd know would be to look.

He took a deep breath and thought about the position of his hip and remaining right leg. "I'd guess a half step behind my left?"

"Go ahead and look in the mirror." She leaned out of the way. From what he could see in the mirror, he wasn't far off.

"Now, lift your right hip up —" she gestured — "and then forward a little —" he obeyed; the action lifted the foot of the prosthesis just enough to clear the floor — "And then raise your right leg like you're marching. Not too much — Don't look down, watch the mirror —"

The action swung the bottom half of the leg forward: he was taking a step. He watched himself plant the foot on the floor.

He'd done it. He'd taken a step. This wasn't so bad. He started to take another step, leading with his left leg. Immediately the right leg buckled, and he just caught himself on the parallel bars before he crumpled to the floor. "Dammit!" he gasped.

"Yup," said Turpin. He waited for Sousa to push himself back up. "Let me adjust that knee joint for you...." He took a small tool out of his shirt pocket and did something to the side of the leg. Sousa thought of Dorothy oiling the Tin Man in the movie. Maybe someday he'd think it was funny.

"Keep your hip down and push your right leg back a bit, that'll brace the knee joint," said Turpin. "You know, the way you're not supposed to do it at parade rest." Sousa did as he was told, pushing until he felt some resistance against the back of his leg. He looked down at the right knee; Lieutenant Jensen cleared her throat, and he looked up to the mirror.

"The knee of the prosthetic is set back a little, so when you stand up and put your weight on it it'll be all the way straight." said Turpin. "And I've tightened the bolt a little more, that'll help too. It'll take some adjustment, but we'll get it just right for you."

"Sure," said Sousa. He was still feeling a little shaken after almost falling.

"You'll be walking so soon, you won't believe it," Lieutenant Reese promised. "But before you walk, you've got to stand, right? And it's a whole different skill with your prosthesis."

She quickly talked about the center of gravity and how his had used to be a couple of inches below and behind his belly button but had now moved a little to the left, and how he'd been keeping it above his left leg when he was getting around on crutches and by hopping, and now it was time to learn to keep it above both legs and at first it would be awkward but soon it would be second nature, and he'd get the knack of knowing where the prosthesis was by how it felt on his right leg.

She had him hold on to the parallel bars, keep his shoulders straight, and slowly shift his weight until he was supporting himself evenly between his left leg and the prosthetic leg. Then she had him shift his weight back to his left leg... and then back to both legs again.

"Just take it slow," she said. "Your senses are going to be learning what it feels like to be stable in the prosthesis."

From there he started putting more weight on the prosthesis... then back to the center, and then the left... then back to the center and over the prosthesis again, holding the parallel bars all the while.

"That's it," said Lieutenant Reese. "Keep going, pay attention to your pelvis — " Sousa fought back a snicker and immediately felt his face growing hot — "Always good advice, right?" she calmly continued. "And in this situation, you're controlling your center of gravity and keeping control of your prosthetic."

She finally let him try it using only one hand — "Your left hand," she insisted. "Always opposite your prosthesis." After a couple of successful shifts back and forth, the session was over, and she had him sit down and doff the prosthesis. Turpin taught him how to check the prosthesis and clean the inside.

"You have to build up to wearing it," said Turpin. "Wear it too long, too quickly, and you'll tear up your skin."

"And your back, and your hip muscles," added Lieutenant Reese. "You can wear it again this afternoon. For now, go get a drink and then head over to the table."

 

Sousa went to lunch intending to share the news about the prosthesis, but quickly forgot: the lunch conversation was completely dominated by the news from Europe. Late yesterday afternoon, they'd learned that German radio had announced the death of Adolf Hitler, and today the tables were piled up with even more papers than usual. Every so often the room would fall quiet to listen to an update from the radio, and then buzz again with discussion and speculation: Was Hitler really dead? Was it a lie, told to buy time to sneak Hitler out of Germany or at least out of the way of the Soviets? None of them believed the official German story that Hitler had died fighting at the head of his troops. He probably hadn't been taken prisoner by the Allies; it would have been all over the news if he had. 

As lunch wound down, they started speculating about the true fate of the Führer. Had he actually been taken prisoner or even murdered by one of his own officers? Could he have been kidnapped or killed by a Hydra holdout? Maybe he'd died of sauerkraut poisoning. Maybe he'd been beaned by an old lady, or mauled to death by a dachshund, or given one too many furious speeches and popped a blood vessel. He could have come down with typhus from one of those horrible camps, or mumps or chicken pox from some of the German kids he'd given guns and told to fight. Perhaps he'd died of syphilis, or fallen into a latrine.

Sousa thought about it some more as he returned to physical therapy. He liked the idea of Hitler being held prisoner by some of his own people. Maybe there was a faction trying to bring about a surrender. Maybe they'd put him on trial and hang him, like the partisans had done to Mussolini a few days ago. Or maybe they'd hand him over to the Allies for trial. Whatever ended up happening, he hoped there would be justice, and couldn't justice in this case include some public humiliation? Just a little? Or was Hitler too sure of himself even for humiliation? Was he that far gone?

And was there any justice possible for what he had done? Sousa had thought about it before, but as he walked through the hospital, it hit him again: if it weren't for Hitler, he'd probably still have two legs. And so would Grahn, and so would Irwin and Ayers and Maddox.... Half the men in this hospital were here because of Hitler. And then there were all the men in other hospitals here in the States, and in the hospitals in Britain and France and Italy and Russia....

And all the civilians, all the innocent people who'd just wanted to live their lives, who'd had everything taken away from them! Sousa's mind boggled at the numbers: Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium and Luxembourg and the Netherlands, France, Greece, Italy, one country after another — there must have been millions of people killed, their property looted, their homes destroyed, the survivors forced to flee — England, the bombs, the fires, the sirens in the night, the people of London sheltering in the tunnels — and those camps they kept finding, God have mercy, thousands and thousands of people just murdered and thrown in pits.... And now it was Germany's turn to be reduced to rubble....

And then all the people the guy with the funny mustache had encouraged... would Hydra have taken root if it weren't for him? Would the war in the Pacific have gone any differently? It seemed incredible that one man could unleash this inferno. Could there be justice on this earth for him?

Probably not. But even if old Adolf managed to evade justice in this world, there would be no escaping it in the next. The thought brought Sousa some grim comfort as he entered the gym. He signed in at the desk, adjusted his crutches, and headed over to the row of chairs to wait his turn.

 

Sousa practiced with the prosthesis as long as he was allowed that afternoon, and came to his morning session a little early the next day. Over the next few days he practiced shifting his weight right to left, forward and backward, first with a hand on each parallel bar, then with only his left hand, then with only his fingertips. He practiced endless exercises rotating his pelvis up and down, right and left and right again.

After a few days, the therapist let him try sideways walking. He stood facing one of the parallel bars, holding it in both hands, and took a careful step to his right. It was trickier than it looked: with every step, he had to balance his weight on the prosthetic without letting the knee buckle. He started to get the knack of it, though, and by the end of the session was cautiously side-stepping half the length of the parallel bars.

In spare moments, he rehearsed the exercises in his mind again and again, remembering what it felt like to wear the prosthesis and try to balance on it. Even as he fell asleep, he half-dreamed about being in the gym.

When he wasn't at the gym or at the pool or at boxing or grudgingly throwing clay on the wheel, he was following the news with the others as the Allies closed in on Berlin.  At every meal they pored over the newspapers, and in the evenings they crowded around the radio in the lounge, spinning the dial and searching for news.

Rumors of big news started trickling in late Monday evening. The next morning, as they were finishing breakfast, the hospital P.A. clicked on and the bugle sounded Attention. The hospital commandant wished all patients and staff a good morning, and instructed them to stay where they were for an announcement from the President.

President Truman came on at 0900 sharp, his voice calm and flat: "This is a solemn but a glorious hour. I only wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations...."

The President was brief. His remarks were complete by 0903, and by 0904 the hospital was shaking with shouts and cheers.

 

It was hard to stay focused that day; it was like being a kid in school the day before Christmas vacation. As Sousa worked in the gym, he could see some of the patients sneaking over to the windows to look out at the celebrations forming on the Boardwalk, and could hear the crowds cheering them when someone spotted them.

When he got to lunch, Flores and MacPhyfe were in their Class As; they'd already been out to see the party. The others were making plans to meet up after therapy was done for the day.

"What about bridge club?" Sousa asked Grahn.

"Cancelled," said Grahn. "I already called Mrs. Lambe. All regularly scheduled recreation is cancelled — they're pulling a big party together tonight." He sighed. "Which is great, but still: now we won't get to see the girls until next week, unless the Red Cross ladies dragoon them into being hostesses tonight." His face brightened. "Or they dragoon the Red Cross ladies into letting them be hostesses."

Sousa and the others got to the Boardwalk a little before 1630. He had never seen it so crowded: people everywhere, civilians and military, all cheering and laughing and waving flags.... More patients in pajamas and convalescent suits were squeezing out onto the decks and balconies and porches of the hospital to watch the show and wave to the crowd, and grin with surprise when the crowed cheered and applauded them.

The crowd was so thick and moving so slowly that it was hard for Ayers and Hayes and the others using prosthetics to keep steady.  Their group ended up drifting out of the crowd and over to the railing on the ocean side of the Boardwalk, content to observe the show. They were not ignored, though: soldiers kept coming out of the crowd to salute, and civilians to wave at them or shake their hands or hug them — or, in the case of one trio of euphoric young women, hug them and then surprise them with kisses on their cheeks. As the girls waved and melted back into the crowd, Sousa felt himself smiling. His cheek still felt warm on the spot where the girls had kissed him. He knew that of course that kiss wasn't about him, it was about victory and shared celebration and was for the boyfriends and fiancés who were far away, but still.... 

For something mustered in less than twelve hours, the Red Cross and the hospital put on a swank shindig that night, with cookies and sherbet punch and two bands and dancing. The party continued up on the ward: Flores and MacPhyfe had managed to slip in some Scotch. They crowded into a room as far as possible from the nurses' desk, and were on their second toast when Lieutenant Munn walked in on them. She gracefully accepted their toast, drank another with them, warned them to keep it down, and slipped back out into the hall.

 

The next day, after Sousa left the ward for breakfast he did not return until after supper. He had a surprise waiting for him when he finally picked up his mail: a telegram, sent the day before by Night Letter.

 

1ST LT DANIEL A. SOUSA
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY, NJ

VICTORY DAY CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU AND FRIENDS HOPE YOU ARE CELEBRATING ARE PROUD OF PART YOU ARE PLAYING GOT LETTER GREAT NEWS YOU ARE WORKING SO HARD WILL BE READY FOR BIG VISIT SOON LOOKING FORWARD TO IT TELL IF YOU NEED ANYTHING LOVE FROM SISTERS AND PAI

=MR FRANK SOUSA

 

Daniel read it again in wonder. It was kind of his father to send that but... His father? Sending a telegram? For no urgent reason? Was this real? Did Tillie put it in his head?

ARE PROUD OF PART YOU ARE PLAYING....

The part he was playing in the hospital? Coming from anyone else that would have been patronizing, but his father wouldn't have wasted any of his fifty words on something he didn't mean. He could hear his father saying it: You're still in the Army, aren't you? He smiled a little.

So they'd gotten his letters about starting with the prosthetic. Naturally he wasn't going to tell them everything — they didn't need to know about he still couldn't walk with it yet, or about how uncomfortable the thing was, especially at the end of his afternoon session — but still, it felt good to hear them being cheerful about it. His eyes kept going to his favorite part of the telegram: READY FOR BIG VISIT SOON. His father was right. The days were flying by now, he'd already had the prosthetic for a week, and soon he'd be seeing his father again and maybe one of his sisters. And if Ines came, she might even bring the baby....

He asked about it the next afternoon in physical therapy as he practiced the weight-shifting and weight-bearing exercises. "Not that this isn't fun, but when do you think I'll be walking on this thing?"

"Not as soon as you want, probably," said Lieutenant Reese, "but sooner than you think. Want to try something new?"

She had the aide pass her a piece of wood, around twelve inches square and two inches thick, and laid it on the floor in front of him.

"Put your left foot on that," she said.

"And what?"

"Nothing yet. Just put your foot there."

Sousa drummed his fingers on the parallel bars as he eyed the block on the floor. He'd need to balance on the prosthesis and keep the knee straight while he lifted his left leg.... He thought through the motion, glanced at the prosthesis in the mirror, carefully lifted his left leg, and planted his foot on the block. "Safe," he announced.

Lieutenant Reese smiled. "Well done. Now: Can you keep your foot there while you let go of the bars?"

Sousa slowly loosened his grips on the bars and kept his focus on his posture: nice and tall, chin up, most of the weight on the prosthetic, ignore the way it dragged on his skin, trust the hinge, keep the knee locked, don't overcorrect with his left leg....

He slowly lifted his right hand. He was able to stay balanced for two or three seconds before he had to grab the bar again. He didn't last as long on his second try.

"Lieutenant Sousa —" began Lieutenant Reese. He ignored her and tried again. This time he almost fell.

For a moment he was engulfed by a flare of fury and frustration. This was stupid, why couldn't he do this? He wanted to hit something, to throw something, but he didn't have anything close by and he needed both hands to hold himself up on the bars anyway. He clenched his teeth and rode it out.

"Go ahead and take your foot off the block," said Lieutenant Reese. Sousa nodded, shifted his weight, and slid his left foot to the floor. The aide had brought a wheelchair up behind him; he carefully reached back and dropped himself into the seat.

"That was good," said Lieutenant Reese. "Really, it was: Especially when you consider that it was your first try, and at the end of your third session of the day."

"If you say so," said Sousa.

"I do say so. Let's head back over to the table and take a look at your leg...."

 

Sousa had boxing that afternoon, but wrapping his hands and hitting the heavy bag didn't do as much for his mood as he'd hoped. He still had to take a wheelchair to class — couldn't exactly practice punches and hold himself up on crutches at the same time — and he was tired of doing everything sitting down, he wanted to start practicing his stance, and he couldn't yet because he couldn't keep his balance on the stupid prosthesis.

As he wheeled himself around to wait for his next turn at the bag, he noticed Hayes stepping up to one of the speed bags. It looked so easy for him, just walking around on his prosthesis, getting himself square in front of the bag.... Of course,  Hayes had had his prosthesis longer, Sousa reminded himself, and Hayes also still had his knee.

Still... He'd had his prosthesis a week and he didn't seem to be getting anywhere.... He watched Hayes work at the bag — right, right, left, left, right, right, left, left — until Hayes made a mistake, broke the rhythm, and laughed at himself.

Sousa smiled a little. No moping, he reminded himself, and turned his attention back to waiting his turn at the bag.

After class, Grahn was waiting for them up at the ward. "You guys got plans tomorrow evening?"

"Not me," said Sousa.

"Nope." Hayes shook his head. "What, did Flores get a bed?"

"You're right, he's still waiting. What's taking so long?" asked Sousa.

Hayes shrugged. "Takes weeks sometimes, I guess they get backed up."

"No word on Flores," said Grahn. "And if he gets his bed tomorrow he's just out of luck. We're playing bridge tomorrow after supper, and we're having company. The girls are coming."

Grahn outlined the plan. Apparently he hadn't been the only one who'd been disappointed at bridge club being cancelled on Tuesday: Hazel and Betty had dropped a hint to Mrs. Lambe that they would be very interested in a rescheduled meeting. Grahn had been going back and forth all day with Mrs. Lambe and the Special Services Office, and had been able to set something up for the next evening.

"The only thing was that I had to set it up as an Officer's Club social event," said Grahn. "But that means we can chip in for some catering if we want. I got a menu."

Sousa shrugged. "Sounds good to me."

"Is there going to be any actual bridge at this thing?" said Hayes.

"Yes,”  said Grahn. He pressed the call button for the elevator.

"How about gin?"

"Sorry. I'd say 'not officially' but we have our company to consider."

"So milk and cookies? Oh, all right, I'll be there."

Down in the mess hall, Sousa and Hayes helped Grahn get the word out to the other bridge club regulars and take their votes on the menu options. As the last plates were stacked, Grahn ran through the list, making sure that they'd found everyone.

"We still need Tipton," he said, and looked around. "He's not here? Looks like we'll have to pay him a visit."

Back on the eighth floor, Grahn got the desk clerk to look up Tipton's room number, and casually left a message that he and Sousa would be back a little later.

"You're getting senioritis," said Sousa as they walked back to the elevator.

"You know, I appreciate that," said Grahn. "Anyone else would have made some crack about how I've been acting like this since I was a freshman, and it's just not true."

The door to Tipton's room was barely open. Grahn knocked.

"Hello?" called a voice.

"It's Grahn and Sousa, come to see Tipton," called Grahn. "Social call."

In a moment, the door opened a crack. Tipton was there with a nurse. Sousa wasn't sure who looked more surprised.

"There's a lounge a few more doors down," said the nurse. "How about you fellows meet there? It's okay," she added to Tipton. He walked out into the hall, and the nurse closed the door behind him.

"Roommate's busy," Tipton explained. His gait was slow but sure as he led them down the hall to the empty lounge. He sat down at the table instead of choosing one of the deep armchairs. That suited Sousa just fine. He lowered himself into a chair as Grahn pulled his papers and pen out of his shirt pocket.

"So this is a nice surprise," said Tipton. "What's up?"

Grahn quickly explained about the rescheduled bridge club.

"I don't know..." said Tipton. "Where's it going to be again?"

"The Azalea Room. Right above the Palm Court, it's got a real nice view," said Grahn. "Why? You need a ride?"

Tipton looked a little embarrassed. "Still getting my endurance back." He lifted his bandaged hands. "And still not allowed to drive myself."

"Well, you have to come," said Grahn. "Hazel and Betty asked for you. I'm serious, Mrs. Lambe was very clear on this point. If you don't make it, I'm going to be in big trouble. If nothing else, I could come up and get you, or Hayes."

"Or Hazel and Betty," put in Sousa. "If they get here a little early, they could come up before the end of visiting hours."

"There you go," said Grahn. "Sousa, you're a genius."

Tipton looked a little alarmed at the idea, but let himself be talked into looking over the menu and casting a vote on refreshments. They ignored the announcement for the end of visiting hours and chatted for a while longer before walking back to Tipton's room.

Grahn and Sousa said goodnight to Tipton and headed on down the hall to the main elevators. Grahn pushed the call button as Sousa flexed his hands on his crutch handles.

"Getting tired?" asked Grahn. "I sure am."

Sousa nodded. "Yeah." The doors opened and he followed Grahn into the elevator.

Grahn looked down at his papers again. "So that's everybody. I'll call Catering tomorrow morning with the menu...." He folded the papers and put them in his pocket. "What about the rest of the weekend? Any plans?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, you know my parents are going to be here... We were hoping you could join us on Sunday for dinner or brunch or whatever they're calling it. You know, if you're free.”

“Sure, I'd be happy to, thanks. — But isn't that Mother’s Day?”

“Well, yeah."

"I don't want to intrude —"

The elevator doors opened. Grahn went over to the desk to check back in, and then walked with Sousa back toward their room.

"It's not intruding if you're invited,” said Grahn. “Actually, if you came, you'd be doing me a favor, help me get in good with my parents, seeing as they like you better than they like me.  Okay, okay, I'm kidding. Maybe. But really, my mom suggested it.”

"Well, if you're sure...."

“We’re sure.” Grahn let Sousa enter their room first, and then closed the door behind him. “We have reservations at noon — you’re done with church by then, right? — it’s kind of a touristy place but at least we know we’ll have a table — you want to shower first?”

“Sure, if you’re offering,” said Sousa. He started gathering his supplies as Grahn talked on.

He did not like feeling this mopey. He didn't want to be a wet blanket, and he still shuddered at the memory of how blue he'd been a couple of months ago.

The business with the prosthetic would get better, he told himself. He'd try again tomorrow. And tomorrow was a pool day, so there was that to look forward to, and then the bridge club….

…And then Sunday dinner with the Grahns.

He focused on laying his pajamas, his hand mirror, and a couple of clean elastic bandages out on his bed. Next, he went to the bathroom to set out his towels and his washcloth and his soap and everything else he needed for his shower, each item in the right place, just as he did every night now.

The tasks and the routine made it easier to ignore the gnawing worry that the Grahns had invited him to dinner out of pity.

As he unwrapped his leg, he reminded himself that the Grahns had always been kind to him, had always tried to include him in their visits. They might have invited him even if Mamãe were —

Even if things were different (if he didn’t have visitors of his own that particular Sunday, of course).

He turned his attention back to the job at hand: everything was ready. He was going to have a nice hot shower. And then he was going to brush his teeth, and check the back of his leg with the mirror, and do his stretches, and read his mail, and wrap his leg, and turn in a little early. Everything was going to be fine. He pivoted around on the shower chair and reached forward to turn on the water.

Notes:

Thank you to @keysburg and @CotyCat82 for test audience services.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments.

---

Mussolini was shot by partisans on April 28, 1945. His corpse was hung by the heels from the roof of a Milan gas station.

Sherbet punch: http://www.food.com/recipe/awesome-sherbet-punch-great-for-baby-or-wedding-showers-14178

Senioritis: An affliction common among seniors in high school and college, usually manifesting in the form of an attitude of snobbery to junior students, a lapse in diligence in completing schoolwork, and an apparent belief that school rules no longer apply to them.

"We have our company to consider": The drinking age was 21.

Chapter 33: Table for Four

Notes:

Some discussion of bereavement in this chapter.

 

 

 

 

 

Physical therapy went better the next day. Sousa did better with the foot-on-the-box exercise, and was rewarded with a new exercise where he stood on his left leg and, with the prosthetic leg, stomped on imaginary bugs. Later, he held a ball in his hands as he stood between the parallel bars and shifted his weight back and forth. He finished the session tossing the ball back and forth with the therapist for a couple of minutes. 

He was tired but in good spirits when he went back to his room that afternoon. He had just enough time to shave and clean up a bit before going to supper and then bridge club. Grahn was already there. He'd already shaved, and he'd even managed a haircut sometime during the day.  

"You're looking sharp," said Sousa, as he set up his things at the sink. "You're going to make the rest of us look like hoboes." He started soaping up his face. "I'm surprised you don't have your Class As on." 

"I needed a haircut anyway." 

"No you didn't. So who's the lucky lady? Still got your sights set on Betty?" Sousa leaned closer to the mirror and started to shave. 

Grahn shrugged. "Doesn't matter, if Betty doesn't have her sights set on me.  Like I said, some opportunities are just opportunities to spend time with nice girls. The important thing's just showing up, right?" 

"Sure, all you need to do is show up. And that's why you got your hair cut and your shoes shined." 

"Well, of course there's more to it than just showing up. Your brain's got to show up too: you can't be just staring off into space like a dope, you have to be alert to your opportunity and be ready to take it. ...You're not exactly rolling in straight from therapy." 

"Just common courtesy. I don’t want to show up looking like a hobo, make you look bad." Sousa rinsed his razor and started on the other side of his face. Grahn only scoffed. 

They left the mess hall with Hayes as soon as they were done eating, and went over to the Azalea Room to see how things were coming along. The card tables and chairs were already set up, with little dishes of peanuts at each table. Two civilian employees were setting a side table with plates and napkins and trays of cookies and canapés.  Bottles of ginger ale stood in neat rows next to an ice bucket. There were a few upholstered chairs and a sofa at the far end of the room, and a record player in the corner. 

"Looks good," said Hayes. "Where do you think we can hide this?" He held up a small wrapped present. 

"Whose birthday?" asked Sousa. 

"It's just a little prize," said Hayes. "Sometimes at bridge parties there'll be a prize or two for the players with the highest scores; I thought it might be fun for the girls. My wife actually put me in mind of it." 

"You're in charge of giving it out," said Grahn. "So what'd you find?" 

"One of those sweetheart pillow things from the HX. They actually had one that doesn't say 'sweetheart' on it, it's just an Army design." 

"Here?" came a voice from the door. They looked up: an orderly had arrived, pushing Tipton in a wheelchair. 

"This is it. Thanks," said Tipton.  

The orderly brought him the rest of the way in. "And you're done at 2100, right?" 

"Yeah." 

"We may run late," said Grahn to Tipton. "We'll get you back." 

"All right," said the orderly. "Call if you need anything." He pushed Tipton up to the nearest table. As soon as he left, Tipton lifted a footrest with his toe and started scooting himself back from the table. 

"Need a brake there?" said Grahn. He braked the wheelchair so that Tipton could get out, and immediately commandeered it as a place to hide the prize. 

When more of the other patients had shown up, Grahn outlined the plan for the evening: Mrs. Lambe and Mrs. Seymour the guests of honor; Mrs. Lambe in charge of the seating arrangements, might be switching partners around; prize for one of the girls....  

A few minutes later, their guests arrived. There were seven in all: Mrs. Lambe and Mrs. Seymour; the four girls who had come the last time — Hazel, Betty, Doris, and Penny; and a new recruit, a friend of Doris named June. As Mrs. Lambe made the seating chart for the first round, the patients introduced themselves and poured ginger ale until it was time to sit down. 

Sousa was assigned to partner with Grahn, playing against Doris and Brent. Hayes was at the other table of more advanced players. Over at the advanced beginners' table, it was Betty's turn to sit next to Tipton and help him with his cards.  

They played three hands and then broke for refreshments.  Grahn and Brent went with Doris over to the refreshment table; Sousa was thinking about whether or not he wanted to join them when Hayes set two punch cups of ginger ale down on the table and plopped down next to him. 

"Having fun?" asked Hayes.  

"Oh, sure. Took two hands out of three. You?" 

"Two out of three here."  

"And are you having fun?" 

Hayes chuckled a little. "The company's pleasant; I guess I was expecting a little more bridge and a little less small talk. But it was a good game, when we got around to playing it." He took a sip of his ginger ale. "Speaking of small talk, is Grahn engaged yet?" 

"Not yet, as far as I know." 

"Yeah? And how about you?" 

Sousa scoffed. Hayes looked amused, but instead of saying something, only nodded toward the refreshment table. Sousa followed his gaze: Doris was coming back, holding three cups of ginger ale.  

"Here you go," she said, and set one of the cups in front of Sousa. Brent arrived with a couple of plates of canapes. They chatted until Grahn arrived with the next round's seating arrangement: Hayes went back to his table, Doris went to go sit with Tipton, and Sousa turned back to the table: he would play the next three hands as Hazel's partner.  

Grahn took the seat to his right. Here they were, almost forty whole minutes into the evening, and he still didn't appear to have fallen in love with any of the girls yet. As they played, Sousa could see him looking up every so often to scan the room, making sure everything was going smoothly. 

For this set, Grahn was partners with Brent, who was perfectly drawing and playing his cards using his split-hook prosthetic right hand. During the bread he'd been showing Doris and then Hazel how he could use it to pick up dimes and shelled peanuts, and pour ginger ale into punch cups. Brent didn't seem to have fallen in love with anyone just yet, either, but then he wouldn't be in Atlantic City much longer; he was just waiting on a bed at Walter Reed.  

As for Hazel, she was cheerful and friendly, and kept up a lively conversation as they played. She was also making mistakes in her play, which was costing points for her and Sousa. Sousa didn’t mind; it was just a game, after all, and he was far from being a perfect player himself. He told her so when she apologized after they lost their second game. 

“Thank you. That's very kind,” she said. 

He shrugged. “I was Betty’s partner last time you all were here, and she never said a thing when I messed up.” 

Brent nodded. “And Doris didn’t say anything when I was her partner and made a hash out of our second game.” 

"And neither of these fatheads even apologized," put in Grahn.  

She smiled. “Well, I promise to try to pay better attention." She turned to Brent: "So you've been partners with Doris —" she nodded to Sousa — "and you've been partners with Betty and now with me —" she turned to Grahn — 

"And I took a turn as Betty's partner last time, too," supplied Grahn. "So when do we get a visit from Penny and June?" 

"You fellows may not get one, actually," said Hazel. "June hasn't been playing bridge all that long herself, so I think Mrs. Lambe's going to keep her over at the beginner tables." 

"What about Penny?" asked Brent. 

"Maybe. Penny's really good, and she's good at explaining, so she's been helping with the beginners, too. But now that they've had a couple of rounds, I think she'll take a turn with the other tables." 

At the end of the next break, Betty joined them for the next round, teaming up with Grahn. Sousa had been sitting longer than he was used to, and between that and the day's physical therapy he was getting stiff. By the time he lowered himself into his chair, propped his crutches, and got himself settled, Grahn had already shuffled the cards and they were all waiting on him. Sousa opened his mouth to apologize for taking so long, but stopped short; Betty didn't seem to have even noticed. Like the other girls, she seemed completely unruffled by the prosthetics and crutches and wheelchairs and bandages and missing limbs.  

They really were nice girls, thought Sousa. And they seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves, and enjoying meeting everyone.... The evening was turning out to be even more fun than he'd hoped.  

Their table was able to play three hands again before it was time to break.  

"I can take the scores over," said Sousa. He started to ease himself up. 

"I'll come with," offered Betty.  

Mrs. Lambe was explaining something to the beginner table, so they stood by the refreshment table to wait for her.  

"Something to drink?" offered Sousa.  

"No thank you," said Betty. 

"I'm about ginger ale'd out myself." Sousa nodded to the percolator a waiter had just plugged in. "Wouldn't mind some coffee, actually." 

"That does sound good. It should be ready before too long, don't you think? We should be able to pour some by the end of the next hand." 

"Any intel on the next round? —You know: who's sitting where?" 

"Not me." She shook her head. "Before we came, Mrs. Lambe told us she wanted to keep the beginners from getting discouraged, the more advanced players from getting bored, and the people who wanted to socialize from being disappointed, so her seating plan was going to be a little based on the scores and the rest intuition." 

"Think she's been successful?" 

"Shouldn't I be asking you that? You fellas are the reason we came here." 

"And you're one of our guests." 

Betty smiled. "Well, I can only speak for myself, but I'm having a swell time. I think the other girls are, too." 

They looked out over the room. Tipton's table had finished their last game; now they were bent over what looked like a battle map built of playing cards and pencils. The beginner table looked like they were wrapping up their little lesson.  

The fourth table, where Hayes was sitting, was silent: they were deep in concentration, finishing their last hand. One of the players was Penny. From the piles of cards, it looked like a very close game.   

"Look at that. It's like you can see the gears in their brains going," said Betty. 

They turned in the tally cards and went to look at the battle map. A few minutes later, it was time to go back to their tables. Sousa and Brent were standing by their chairs, waiting for instructions, when Grahn arrived with Penny. 

He introduced Brent and Sousa to Penny again, and courteously pulled out her chair: she would be partners with Brent. Grahn himself sat across from Sousa. He picked up the cards, fanned them out, and offered them to Penny. She drew a card; Sousa, Brent, and Grahn followed. Grahn's was the highest: he would be the first dealer.  

He started to shuffle the cards. "So, Miss Penny," he said, "I hear congratulations are in order? Didn't you just graduate?" 

"Indeed I did! Thank you," replied Penny with a smile.  

Brent and Sousa added their congratulations. "What did you major in?" asked Brent. 

"Education. I'll be teaching high school history and geography this fall." 

They made small talk as Grahn shuffled the cards, offered them to Penny to cut, and started to deal. Penny had attended a small women's college  — a nice school, she'd liked it a lot — played field hockey, gave it up this year because of student teaching.... 

Sousa waited quietly for them to get done with the college talk. It didn't make him as uncomfortable as it once did, back when he was the only man in his class at Officer Candidate School who hadn’t been to college, but he was always a little relieved when the conversation moved on to something else. 

Grahn finished dealing and they picked up their cards. Penny dropped the small talk and started to sort her hand. She looked cool and thoughtful; Sousa wondered if she was a poker player as well. 

He assessed his own cards. His hand was pretty strong, and once the bidding started, he grew confident that Grahn had a good hand as well — and that Brent, at least, did not.  He wasn't as sure about Penny; she was bidding cautiously, but that could have been because of Brent. 

As it turned out, he was right — Grahn did indeed have a good hand — but Penny played her few good cards well and was able to lead Brent in a solid defense. Sousa and Grahn managed to win the round, but only barely.  

They went for coffee. Sousa hoped it would pep him up a little bit; it did, but it wasn't enough to save him. Penny and Brent won the next round, and crushed the third. Grahn pulled wincing faces as he added up the scores. "This is painful," he moaned. "I'm going to have nightmares about this tonight." 

Penny looked concerned. "Oh, no, you played well! You just had a bad hand, and then back here, in the third trick —" She started to turn the stacks of cards over. 

"It's okay," said Grahn. "I'm used to losing." Penny gave him a reproving look. "Oh, all right. But honest, my brain's worn out. Maybe we can debrief another time. More coffee? Looks like they've put the cookies out...." 

The other three waited politely as Sousa got himself out of his chair. They dropped off their tally cards with Mrs. Seymour, visited the dessert table, and brought their cookies and coffees back to their own table.  As he followed the others back across the room, Sousa tried to avoid thinking about how frustrating it was that he still had to rely on someone else to carry his cup and plate for him. At least it was Grahn at the moment, and not Penny. 

Back at the table, Penny asked them about where they'd been and listened eagerly as they told her about Britain and France and Italy and even the different bases they'd been shipped around to back in the States. She seemed interested in even their most general impressions — the weather, the landscape, the look of the houses. 

Meanwhile, the other tables were also finishing up their games and heading for the coffee and cookies. Sousa was in the middle of making a model of the Apennines out of a spoon and a twisted napkin when "A String of Pearls" sounded from the corner of the room by the window: someone had found the record player. 

Grahn looked up toward the music. "Well, what do you know," he said softly, and smiled. Sousa and the others looked around. Tipton and June were dancing; Hazel and one of the other patients from that table were joining them. 

Brent leapt to his feet. "Penny, would you like to....” She looked up from the model. “Or… maybe in a bit?" 

"Hm? Oh, oh yes. Maybe in a bit, thank you." She turned back to the model. "So Rome is here, then?" 

“Yeah, that’s Rome,” said Sousa. “And then coming up this way — that’s a valley there, you’ll just have to pretend….” He pointed out a few more landmarks. When Penny was finally out of questions about Italy, he shook out the napkin and handed it to her. 

“Your turn. How about a map of New Jersey? Shouldn’t be too difficult; it’s pretty flat, isn’t it?” he teased. 

“New Jersey has everything. Including mountains,” Penny sniffed. She started sculpting the napkin into a map. 

"I think I'm going to check on Mrs. Lambe and Mrs. Seymour,” said Grahn. Sousa and Penny nodded; as Grahn left she started to point out landmarks such as Kittatiny Mountain and Trenton and her college and Cape May.... 

"But here I am talk-talk-talking," she said. "Did you want to...." She glanced toward the window end of the room. Sousa looked up: Tipton was dancing with Doris now; Grahn was dancing with Betty, and — Sousa chuckled a little — Hayes was dancing with Mrs. Seymour. 

He patted his crutches. "Not tonight.  I don't even have two left feet." 

"I'm sorry, I should have — " 

He shook his head. "It's fine. But we can go over; you can take a spin with one of the other fellows...." 

She shrugged. "If you like. But we can stay here if you'd rather. I'm not really much of a dancer myself." 

She didn't look like she was just trying to be nice, so Sousa didn't press the idea, and she turned back to the map to show him the habitat of the Jersey Devil. 

From there it was only natural to ask if she had ever seen the Jersey Devil (she hadn't), how long she’d lived in Atlantic City, and how she decided to study history; and of course she asked about where he'd grown up.... He made a little joke about how he'd never been further away from home than Provincetown until he left for basic, and she laughed but didn't seem put off, which felt reassuring though he didn't stop to think about why.  

As they talked on and their coffee grew cold, he found himself noticing other things about Penny, like the fact that she had soft gray eyes and a nice smile. New questions started to form in the back of his mind, like So what should people see when they come to Atlantic City? and So what are you doing with your days, now that you’re out of college and waiting for your job to start?  

Something kept him from asking those questions. She was in the middle of telling him a story about her parents’ Victory Garden and her horror of snakes, and he was thinking about whether to kid her about being afraid of a little garden snake or tell her a yarn about a snake or try to get her to understand that the snake was probably eating pests, when Hayes appeared. 

"Sorry to interrupt," said Hayes. "It looks like we're going to be wrapping up soon, and we need to borrow Sousa for a few minutes here. Excuse me." He leaned in by Sousa's ear and whispered, "Come help us with the prize." 

"You don't need me for that," Sousa whispered back. 

"Yes we do." Hayes did not look like he was kidding around. 

"All right, just a minute."  

Hayes slapped Sousa on the shoulder and headed toward the table where Grahn was standing with Mrs. Lambe.  

"I guess I've been summoned," said Sousa. He started to grab his crutches and then looked up at Penny. "So... will our table get to play bridge with you again on Tuesday?" He kept his voice light.   

Penny looked as if she'd been startled awake after nodding off. Her hand jumped to the collar of her dress, as if she were missing a button.  

"I'll be here on Tuesday," she said. "And I'd be happy to play at your table again — I mean, if  you want me to.” Before Sousa could say anything, Penny lifted her necklace out from behind the neckline of her dress. It was a big ring on a chain, a class ring: a man's class ring. She fidgeted with it a little. "But... if you wanted to spend that time with the other girls, I'd understand."  

"Just a friendly game of bridge," said Sousa.  

Penny smiled. "I'd like that. If I can, I certainly will."  

Sousa started to pull himself up to stand. "You think you'll be back with the beginners again?"  

She waited as he adjusted the grips of his crutches. "Maybe. That and... well...." She lowered her voice. "You seem like a really... nice... person, and the other girls might not appreciate my taking up too much time at your table."  

He looked up in surprise as he caught her meaning, and then scoffed. "Let's get you some coffee and wake you up a little bit."  

Penny only smiled, and followed him over to the dessert table. 

As Sousa suspected, Grahn could have handled the awarding of the prize by himself; he just wanted to talk strategy. The usual thing was to just give the prize to the highest scoring person, but some of the girls had played extra rounds partnered with beginners or weak players, which would have lowered their scores. The men decided to just draw names. Betty was the lucky winner; she seemed pleased with her new pillowcase and passed it around so the other girls could look at it. The ladies had brought a prize as well; one of the fellows at Hayes's table was presented with a boxed set of playing cards and matching tallies. 

And finally it was time to tidy the room and say good-bye. Grahn and a small detachment went to see their guests to the door of the hospital. Sousa figured he wouldn't be missed, and pushed the button for the elevator back to the eighth floor.  

Hayes joined him. They rode back up in silence and signed back in at the desk. Hayes didn't say anything until they were at the door to his room. 

"Couldn't help noticing you, and Penny...." 

 "What? We were just talking. Didn't you see that ring on her necklace?" 

"Oh, sure. And Penny's a smart girl, with a good memory. It takes a lot to distract her." Hayes smiled. "All right, see you in the morning." 

 

The next day was Saturday, and as Sousa walked back to his room after his last physical therapy session, he noticed more there were even visitors in the hallways than usual: it was Mother's Day weekend. At supper, too, there were extra guests at the mess. Ayers had his wife and their little girl with him at the table. Meanwhile, several other patients were gone; they were out with their visitors, like Grahn was. Grahn's parents had arrived that afternoon, and he was spending the night with them at their hotel. 

Sousa went to the lobby the next morning after Church to wait for the Grahns. He tried to remember how long it had been since he'd seen Mr. and Mrs. Grahn — quite some time, it seemed, it was hard to remember, the days and weeks all ran together.... Had they ever seen him in his Class As? Probably not. Come to think of it, had they ever seen him out of his gray pajamas? 

The lobby was crowded with extra visitors, most of them in their Sunday best, many of the ladies with corsages pinned to their dresses. He heard Grahn's voice through the crowd: "He's right over there, Mom, see?" 

Sousa saw them through the crowd, waved a little, and started toward them. Mrs. Grahn finally saw him and gasped. 

"Oh my goodness!" she said when he reached them. "Henry said you were doing well, of course, but look at you!" 

"You look fantastic," said Mr. Grahn, "You really do." They shook hands. 

"We're so glad you could come with us today," said Mrs. Grahn. They started walking towards the door. "We were thinking we could take the jitney, Henry said it should be all right?" 

"It'll be fine," insisted Grahn. "Have you taken the jitney yet, Sousa? It's just a bus that got shrank." 

They did not have to wait long before a jitney pulled up in front of the hospital. It really was a tiny bus, not much higher off the ground than a car. It reminded Sousa of a toaster on wheels. When he got in, he saw that it held around 12 people. 

When the jitney was full, the driver turned around. "Happy Mother's Day," he announced. "Anyone here who's not going to Humphrey's?" 

The passengers looked around and smiled: there were no hands raised. "All right, then," said the driver, "we got ourselves an express here." 

The driver took them up Pacific Avenue toward the north end of town. As they approached the inlet, Sousa spotted the lighthouse. The jitney turned north-northwest and drove parallel to the inlet until it made another turn to pull up in front of the restaurant. The restaurant itself was enormous, at least a block long, with a two-story main section. 

The bus driver opened the door, and the passengers started to file out. "This is a big tourist place," Grahn said quietly. "They say they seat 3000 people at the height of the season. Kind of like a mess hall, but with table service." 

"And probably no creamed chipped beef on toast. Have you been here before?" asked Sousa. 

"No, this is our first time. My mom won't admit it, but she's been curious about it for months, so when we saw the Mother's Day dinner we decided to give it a try." Grahn glanced at the main section. "I didn't know about the stairs. You good with stairs?" 

"Yeah." Sousa planted his crutches in the aisle and got himself out of the seat, and followed Mr. and Mrs. Grahn out of the jitney. 

There was a half flight of steps going up to the restaurant door; it felt good to be able to take them with confidence. Inside the restaurant, the hostess led them through an enormous first-floor dining room. Huge windows wrapping two sides of the room let in plenty of light and a view of the sea. There were a couple of curious glances from other diners, but no outright stares; Sousa and Grahn were far from being the only people in uniform, and as Sousa waited his turn to sit down at the table, he spotted a few crutches and canes propped here and there against tables and walls. 

"See, Mom, you finally made it," said Grahn. "Going to have some raw oysters?" 

She shuddered. "I don't think so." 

"How about a lobster? They might cook it for you if you ask — No, no, I'm just kidding! They cook the lobsters." 

"People eat 'em, they must be good," said Mr. Grahn. "And this seems like the perfect place to try one. I plan to. And Daniel, no ordering from the bottom of the menu. Order what you want." 

"Thanks, Mr. Grahn. Thanks again for having me, I just hate to intrude —" 

Mrs. Grahn looked up and tutted. "No, no. It's our pleasure." She leaned forward. "Henry told us about your mother. I'm very sorry. I know it's been some time, but still: it's a shame you had to lose her so soon. Let us do her this favor." 

"That's very kind. Thank you." 

Mrs. Grahn smiled and moved on to another subject. The waitress arrived with the menus. 

"Look, Mom," said Grahn."The Mother's Day Special has lobster. You have to get it now." 

The waitress had no difficulty steering all of them to the special. Sousa ended up teaching all three of the Grahns tricks for cracking the lobster claws and getting every last bit of lobster meat. After dinner they took the jitney back to the hospital.  

And then it was time to say good-bye to the Grahns. It was harder than he expected; they had always been kind to him, and now that Grahn was leaving soon.... 

"But maybe we'll get to see you again," said Mr. Grahn. "Once Henry's done at Walter Reed, why don't you come and spend a weekend with us?" 

"In case you need a vacation from an actual resort with sea breezes and things to do," put in Grahn.  

"I'm looking forward to it," said Sousa. 

Grahn went with his parents to go meet their bus. Sousa changed back into his blue shirt and pants and headed off to physical therapy.  

As he donned the prosthetic, he told Lieutenant Reese a little about the jitney and about taking the steps at the restaurant. She was pleased to hear how easy his visit to the restaurant had been. He finished with the buckles and straps and pulled himself up to stand between the parallel bars. 

Lieutenant Reese was standing in front of him. "Go ahead and balance on both legs, right in the middle," she said. "Good."  

She lightly put her hands above his hip joints: the resistance somehow helped him sense what his right leg was doing when the did the balance exercises. "Now, how about trying a couple of steps? Lead with your right." 

He used his stump to lift the prosthesis, step on the imaginary bug, and lock the knee joint. He kept the knee straight, stepped forward with his left foot, and balanced on his left foot as he brought the prosthetic forward again. 

"Good! Good!" cheered Lieutenant Reese. 

He had to think through every motion: step on the imaginary bug, lock the knee, balance while bringing his left leg forward, and then balance while he brought the prosthetic forward, step on the bug, lock the knee, balance, balance. Step on the bug, lock, balance, balance. His steps were halting and excruciatingly slow, and he was supporting himself on the parallel bars, but he was finally able to make it to the end of the bars. 

Lieutenant Reese leaned to the side so he could see himself in the mirror. He looked at his reflection: blue shirt, long sleeves, underwear with the heavy belt over it, the metal hinge and the wooden leg, his mismatched left leg, two black socks and two black shoes planting him on the floor. He straightened up a little. 

"You're doing it," said Lieutenant Reese. "You're walking with both legs again."  

 

Sousa had some free time after physical therapy before the mess hall opened for supper. The afternoon parties and socials had ended, and he was able to find a quiet spot in one of the galleries. He was going to try to call his father before dinner. He'd been busy all day, and before he made his call he wanted some time to be by himself and think. 

So he'd taken his first real steps: that would be something big he could share with his father. And it would get easier and easier now. He'd get out of the parallel bars, he'd learn to take the stairs, he'd start wearing the prosthesis outside physical therapy and then out of the hospital. And his father would come down, and one of his sisters, and he'd have his first overnight trip out of the hospital....  

Maybe he could take them to Humphrey's? They would laugh about coming all the way to Atlantic City to eat a lobster they could have caught and eaten back home. He thought again about the restaurant, the bright cheery dining room, all the mothers — young, old, and in-between — with their best hats and their corsages. 

He tried to picture his own mother sitting across the table from him. But he couldn't. 

It didn't surprise him; he was used to it. He was eleven years old when his mother died: still in primary school, still in short pants. Now it was thirteen years later: he'd grown up, finished school, gone to war. His memories of her were elusive, and he was never able to fold them into an imagined present. 

He let his thoughts drift for a few minutes before he set off back to his room. 

 

His father was delighted to hear his news about his progress, and told him a bit of the news from home. Daniel had sent flowers to Ines for Mother's Day; they'd arrived on time, looked beautiful, Ines thrilled....  

"...And Berna Escobar told me that you sent her a card," his father continued. "She'll probably write, but she told me how touched she was that you thought of her." 

Daniel tried to shrug it off. "It was just a little note." It had seemed like the right thing to do; after all, it was barely three months since Ritchie was killed in action. 

"Well, it meant a lot to her," said his father. 

They talked a little longer before saying good-bye. Daniel went off to supper with a smile. 

 

The next day Sousa practiced walking as long as they would let him: step on the bug, lock the knee, balance, balance. He felt like he was getting the knack of it, but he had to be careful: the prosthetic was heavy and clumsy, and if he took too long or too short of a step, or walked too quickly or too slowly, he would end up holding himself up on the bars as the prosthetic knee buckled under him. When he wasn't walking, he worked on his balance, holding the ball and tossing it back and forth with an aide. 

On Tuesday morning, the therapist watched as he tried on the prosthetic, took it off, put on a stump sock, and donned the prosthetic again. "Good job on the fit there," she said.  

Part of the challenge of using was the prosthetic was getting it to fit properly: the size of the prosthetic was fixed, but the size of his leg fluctuated depending on how swollen it was. If the prosthetic was too loose, the therapists had told him, he would have trouble controlling the prosthesis. 

The answer was stump socks: thin knit covers for the end of his stump that came in standard thicknesses, so he could combine and layer them to get the degree of padding he needed. 

The first time they'd handed him one, when he'd first gotten the prosthetic, he'd felt his stomach lurch: this weird garment that he'd never seen in a store, that he'd never known existed until the first time Grahn showed him one... something about its blunt closed end was a brutal reminder that his leg had been maimed, that part of him was gone forever and what was left would always need special care. He'd grimaced, slipped it over the end of his right leg, pulled it taut, and checked it for wrinkles as instructed. Now the socks were just one more part of the routine: sign in at the desk and stop by the sock basket on the way to wait his turn. 

Sousa checked the fit of the prosthetic again, pulled himself up, and fastened the belt. "Thanks," he said. "So, what first?" 

After a trip down the parallel bars and back, the therapist gave him an appraising look. "Want to try it outside the bars?" she asked. 

"I think you could talk me into it." 

They spent a minute or two checking his standing balance. "Just like the parallel bars," said the therapist: "Move both crutches forward with your right leg." 

He opened and closed his hands on the crutch handles, tightened his grip, and swung them forward with the prosthetic. Step on the bug, lock the knee, balance, balance. Step on the bug, lock the knee, balance, balance.... 

Finally, he thought. Finally.  

 

 

 

---

BONUS SCENE: Humphrey's

since @keysburg wanted to know

 

 

Bonus scene: Humphrey's 

The Mother's Day special included a cup of clam chowder, half a broiled lobster, something called deviled crab, french fries, oyster crackers, and hot biscuits. The chowder came first; Sousa thought it was pretty good, though of course not as good as what he'd known back home. 

When the waitress came with the lobsters, Sousa suppressed a smile: Mrs. Grahn was nervously eyeing the scarlet arthropod the waitress had just set in front of her. Grahn waited until everyone else had been served and the waitress had gone away before he leaned over to his mother. "Looks like a big red bug, doesn't it?" 

"Henry!" She eyed the lobster nervously as she smoothed her paper bib over her dress. "Where do you start?" 

"There's directions on the placemat," said Mr. Grahn. 

"I'd start with the tail," said Sousa. "This is a half lobster, so it's easy. Just take your little fork here and pull out some of the meat from the tail and dip it in butter and...." He smiled as she took her first taste and her eyes lit up.  

The lobster was good, not overdone, and Sousa was enjoying seeing the Grahns learn to like it, Mrs. Grahn was especially fun to watch: she was having trouble overcoming her gentle table manners to eat with her fingers and take hammer and pick to her Mother's Day dinner. The flowers on her hat bobbed as she timidly tapped the lobster claw with the little wooden mallet. 

"Don't bother with that," suggested Sousa. "You've got a nice big crusher claw there, you'll never get into it with that. Just use the nutcracker." 

She let Mr. Grahn wield the nutcracker for her, and was rewarded with a lovely piece of claw meat. After that, there was no going back. Mrs.Grahn meticulously disassembled her lobster in search of every last bit of meat, down to the last little tail flipper. 

"So what did you think of your first lobster?" Mr. Grahn asked her. 

"I think I would like it to not be my last," said Mrs.Grahn.  "Maybe we can come back to Atlantic City this summer. We could look in on Daniel, if he's still here." 

"What about me?" asked Grahn.  

"Oh, you can come too."

 

Notes:

Many thanks to @CotyCat82 and @keysburg for their help with this chapter: beta reading, encouragement, and - in @keysburg's case - the idea of what Sousa sends home for Mother's Day.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which I arrange on a satin dresser scarf. QV has over 10,000 hits now.

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Souvenir cases for throw pillows were sold in military exchanges for the soldiers and sailors to send back home. Typically they were satin with fringe, printed with pictures and a sentimental poem to Mother or Father, or Family or Sweetheart.... Hayes made sure to find one that didn't have a dedicated poem.

Dimes were and still are the physically smallest U.S. coin.

Bridge: ;How hands and tricks work.

The Jersey Devil: Cryptid who lives in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. Namesake of the professional hockey team.

Jitney: The jitney is an Atlantic City institution right up there with salt water taffy and rolling chairs. They started out as a kind of Uber or gypsy cab service during a trolley strike, and kept going afterward. Eventually they were tamed, regulated, and corralled onto regular routes. They are still in service today. Atlantic City also had city bus service and, until 1948, trolley service.

 

Still in short pants: During the '20s and '30s, boys wore shorts or knickers until they were teenagers. Transitioning from short pants to long was a rite of passage. I think this guy might be selling newspapers in a familiar place:

 

Chapter 34: Timetables

 

 

 

Sousa followed the therapist around the gym in a large, slow circle. He had a couple of moments where his timing was off and the prosthesis felt like it was going to buckle at the knee, but he was able to catch himself and shift weight to his crutches until he could get the prosthesis back under control. 

They had him rest, and then took him for another walk. After another rest, the therapist sent him to the tables instead of another walk. "Don't worry," she said, "You can walk more this afternoon, I promise." 

"I'm going to hold you to that," he said. He knew better than to protest; he'd already learned in the parallel bars that trying to control the heavy prosthesis when his leg was tired generally ended up in a fall. 

Over at the table, he doffed the prosthesis and the stump socks so the aide could inspect his leg. He did his desensitization exercise; the aide helped him with the extended stretches; and the therapist finished with the deep massage of his hip muscles. 

When the therapist was done, she stepped back and let Sousa sit up. To his surprise, instead of handing him fresh elastic bandages to wrap his leg, she gave him the stump socks back. 

"You've been tolerating wearing your prosthesis during your therapy sessions," she said. "Time to start getting used to wearing it outside the gym. No walking on it — I'm going to hold you to that! — but go ahead and wear it around and back to your afternoon session." 

He started putting the socks on. "If you don't want me to walk on it, how am I going to get to lunch and back?" He already suspected what she was going to say, but... 

"Wheelchair," she said. "It's just for a few days as you build up to walking with your prosthesis. It's part of making progress." 

It was a bit of a letdown, but Sousa reminded himself that this was temporary, he'd seen Hayes and some of the other fellows using wheelchairs when they first got their legs.  

The therapist showed him how to dress the prosthetic in his trousers. He donned the prosthetic, pulled up and buttoned his trousers, and got himself arranged in the wheelchair. He checked the position of the prosthesis, as he had been taught, and stared for a moment: Now that he was dressed and seated... it was strange to see two knees again. 

He felt a little embarrassed wheeling himself into the mess hall for lunch, but the others immediately spotted his prosthesis and recognized the wheelchair as a sign of progress, and asked him all about how long he was wearing the prosthesis now, and what he was doing in physical therapy.... He got another round of congratulations at discussion group, even as he grumbled inwardly at being back to using a wheelchair tray. 

Back at physical therapy, they had him check the fit of the prosthesis and then get back to walking. By the end of the session, he was relieved to finally doff the prosthetic and get the weight off his leg. 

He rewrapped his leg, finished dressing, took up his crutches, and headed off to bridge club. Maybe he'd be able to wear the prosthetic to bridge club next week. What would the girls say? Would any of them notice? 

Probably; it'd be a hard thing to miss. And they'd probably be happy for him, since it meant he'd eventually be able to get around more easily. And then... they'd smile and get back to the bridge game. It was reassuring, somehow. 

 

The next morning on rounds, Captain Blaine opened the chart with a flourish. "Lieutenant Sousa! We hear you not only tolerated a full seven hours wearing your prosthesis yesterday, but said so long to the parallel bars and walked around the gym on crutches. That's great news. Well done." 

The other doctors offered congratulations as Sousa grinned. Blaine had him unwrap his leg so they could examine his skin and his now-healed incision. 

"Looks good," said Blaine. He looked at Major Peyton, who nodded. 

"We've talked before about having your family come down and your spending the night with them at a hotel down here," said Blaine, "and I know you said it would be helpful if you could give them advance notice of when you'd be able to do that. I think at the rate you're going, you're safe to tell them... two weeks?" 

"Two weeks," agreed Peyton. 

"Okay. So go ahead and get in touch with your family, and let them know that we think you'll be ready in two weeks. If it turns out you're not, we can ask them to reschedule, but I doubt we'll need to do that." 

Sousa counted the days in his head. "Do you mean two weeks from this week?" he asked. "Or two weeks from today? It's just that two weeks from today is Decoration Day, and the Steel Pier's opening and it might be hard to get in with all the crowds." 

"They could always come in after Decoration Day," said Blaine. 

"I don't think that's the solution Lieutenant Sousa had in mind," said Peyton. 

"Maybe the Monday or Tuesday before Decoration Day?" said Blaine. 

"It might be easier if they could come over the weekend," said Sousa. 

Blaine frowned. "That's only nine days. I don't know..." 

"We can try it," said Peyton. "The only thing is that if you're not ready, the overnight's off. They can still come down, of course, but...." 

"Oh, sure," said Sousa. 

"And you're up to seven hours now? ...All right," said Peyton. "Go ahead and tell them we can try for as early as next Saturday." 

"Might be easier for them to get in on Friday. More trains running and all that." 

Peyton raised his eyebrows. "I wouldn't have taken you for a gambler, Lieutenant Sousa. If you're ready on Friday you can go on Friday, but if you're not, you can't. You're going to need to be able to walk far enough to be able to manage outside the hospital. You'll want to be able to take at least a couple of stairs, and get yourself in and out of a car — " 

"But I don't have to be ready for discharge, right? Just good enough to get in and out of a cab." 

"True. Well, what you tell your family is your business, of course. Next Friday's possible, but it's a risky bet. Plan accordingly, and let us know what your plans are. Once we know what your target date is, we'll help you make a reservation. All right? Have a good day." He raised his voice. "And Lieutenant Grahn, I'll see you at 1400." 

"Wilco," called Grahn. 

The doctors left and pulled the door shut behind them. Grahn pulled the curtain back.  

"You going to roll the dice?" he asked. 

"Sure am," said Sousa. He reached for his crutches. "What time's the telegraph office open?" 

 

When he got to the gym for his first physical therapy session, Sousa told the physical therapist about his scheme. 

"Nine days! That's ambitious!" she said. "Let's take a walk, and then let's make a list of what you'll need to work on." 

Stairs, cars.... "You'll also need to work on turning and changing directions, and walking on different surfaces, and just building up your endurance," said the therapist. She stood up. "So let's go sign up for some time with the car, and then we can start working on stairs." 

She brought him over to the practice stairs and had him hold the banister with his right hand and his crutches with his left. "It's like the way you do it without your prosthetic," she said. "Lead with your good leg to go up, and your bad leg when you come down. Your good leg powers the up-and-down, your prosthetic bears your weight. And your crutches move with your prosthetic. Ready to try?" 

"Sure," he said. He mentally checked the knee of the prosthetic to make sure it was locked, planted his left foot on the first step, and lifted himself up. 

"Lift your right hip a little to get your foot up there," said the therapist. 

Sousa lifted his hip and hitched the prosthetic foot up next to his left foot. He adjusted his stance and locked the knee of the prosthesis. "It'd be easy to trip there," he said. 

The therapist nodded. "Yes it would. Always take your time on the stairs, don't let anyone rush you. Make sure your right leg is stable, and then go ahead and take another step." 

He ran through his mental checklist — knee locked, right leg in correct position, crutches stable — and balanced on his prosthesis as he lifted his left foot to the next step. It was just like that business with the box that had been so frustrating the week before. He used his left leg to pull the rest of himself up to the second step — lift the right hip, mind the step, position the right foot, and he was there. 

"That's it," said the therapist. 

Slowly, carefully, he climbed the three remaining steps to the top of the practice stairs. The therapist came around to the other side. 

"Now, this part's trickier," she said. "Lead with your right leg, and let your good leg do the work. Once you're stable, bring your good foot down to the step. Don't rush! Make sure that right leg is ready before you put your weight on it." 

Sousa took the banister in his right hand and his crutches in his left. He shifted his right hand down a couple of inches and moved the tips of his crutches to the step below him. 

"Don't bend too far forward," said the therapist. 

Sousa nodded. He lifted his right hip a little, brought the prosthesis forward, and carefully bent his left knee, lowering the prosthesis until its foot was flat on the step.  

He locked the knee of the prosthesis. Now he had three points of support: the crutches, the banister, and the prosthesis. Everything felt stable, so he brought his left foot forward and planted it on the step next to the foot of the prosthesis. 

"Good job," said the therapist. "Do you feel steady?" 

"Yeah," said Sousa. He glanced down: four steps had never seemed so steep. He reminded himself that this was practice, and he'd have plenty more time to practice. He moved his right hand down a couple of  inches on the banister, moved the tips of his crutches to the next step down, and carefully moved the foot of his prosthesis forward and down to the next step. He locked the knee of the prosthesis, gripped the crutches and the banister, and brought his left foot forward and down. 

He was able to make it down the stairs without falling. He took a rest, and then made another slow trip up and then down the practice steps before being sent on a walk to the table for the rest of his morning session. He was tired by the time the session was over, but satisfied. 

That afternoon, he worked on stairs again, and on endurance, and on a new skill: changing directions. 

"We tell everyone, don't get discouraged," said Lieutenant Reese. "It can take a lot of practice before you learn it, and even more before you can do it without thinking about it. Like dancing, or cleaning a rifle." 

"Dancing. So are there going to be shoe prints on the floor for me to follow?" said Sousa. 

"In the other gym," said Lieutenant Reese. "You'll probably be ready for that by next week. Let's work on turning left first. Turn your pelvis, and move your right leg forward and angle your foot to your left...." 

By the end of his last afternoon session, Sousa was able to walk and turn left, and was almost able to smoothly turn right. He doffed the prosthesis, cleaned it, rewrapped his leg, and headed out of the gym. 

He had some free time before supper, and he'd been planning to go back up to his room and check his mail. But as he approached the main corridors, he remembered that down a hall to the right was a small observation gallery, with comfortable chairs and a good view of the Boardwalk and the ocean....  

He lowered himself into a chair and sighed with relief. As he looked out over the ocean, he realized that his mind was just as weary as his body. He let himself watch the waves for a while, let his thoughts bob and drift on the surface of the water, until his stomach growled to remind him to get to the mess hall. 

After dinner, he took his shower, got ready for bed, and stretched out on his bed to read his mail. He grinned as he read Tillie's letter: she was more confident than ever that she'd be able to help Ines come down for a visit. Even Ines's letter was showing hints of optimism. If everything went according to plan, Tillie would care for the older two children while Ines and the baby came to Atlantic City with Pai. 

And these letters had been sent before he'd sent that telegram this morning, the one saying he'd be ready soon. When might Ines and Pai come? It seemed like a stretch to think they could come at the end of next week, but with all the preparation Tillie and their father had been doing....  

His imagination leapt ahead. It would be so good to see his father again, and then to get to see Ines?  They could go up and down the Boardwalk, they could catch a show. They could play bridge. And he'd finally get to meet the baby for the first time, little Maddie, the newest member of the family —  well, no, not the newest; she was the youngest, she had seniority over Tillie's Joe. He chuckled a little at the thought; he could tease Joe about that when they finally got to meet each other. 

And they could be here in as few as nine days. It was very unlikely. But it was possible. 

He finished reading his letters, put them away, and turned off his overhead light. His thoughts circled back to the gym, to climbing up and down the stairs, to pivoting his left foot and the foot of the prosthesis, around and around and over and over as he sank into sleep. 

 

At lunch the next day, Flores announced his news: after weeks of waiting, he had finally gotten his ticket to Walter Reed. From the buzzing going on at the other tables, he was not the only one, and soon a couple of other patients were getting up and circulating around the tables, sharing news and starting to say their farewells. One of those patients was Brent. He came over to see Sousa and Grahn and Hayes; he was leaving the next morning too. 

The orthopedics patients decided to join forces for their farewell dinners for Flores, Brent, and the other patient who was leaving. They made their way that evening to a restaurant up Pacific Avenue, where they made toasts and drank beer and swapped stories and cracked as many ridiculous leg- and hand-themed puns as they could come up with. 

Sousa was exhausted by the time he got back to his room. Three sessions of physical therapy dragging that prosthetic around, boxing, and then the trip up and down Pacific Avenue... he was just beat. He pushed himself to hang up his uniform and take a shower before lying down on his bed — he'd just rest for a few minutes until his leg dried off and he could wrap it.... 

When he woke up, Grahn had already showered and was sitting on his own bed, writing a letter. Sousa sat up and blearily rubbed a hand over his face. "What time is it?". 

"Time to wake up," said Grahn, "so you can go to bed." 

"Guess I better wrap up first." Sousa reached for the elastic bandages he'd left on his nightstand and started to wrap his right leg.  "This P.T.'s doing me in. Did I miss anything?" 

"Connolly's on night shift tonight, she came by on rounds," said Grahn. "Speaking of nurses, there's a new letter from Keck up in the lounge. Flores hasn't come by yet; I would've woken you up if he had." 

"Thanks." Sousa finished wrapping his leg, fastened the elastic bandage, and put on his pajama pants. Flores stopped in a little bit later to say his final good-byes. After he left, Sousa brushed his teeth and crawled back into bed. 

Grahn quickly finished his last letter and started getting ready for bed, talking with Sousa as he puttered around the room. He was as cheerful as ever, but his mind seemed far away. When he finished, he came over and sat down on his bed.  

"What's up?" asked Sousa. 

"I didn't say anything earlier because I didn't want to step on Flores's party," said Grahn, "And also... I wanted to tell you first." 

Sousa felt his stomach start to sink. He was pretty sure of what was coming next. 

"Peyton signed the orders this afternoon," said Grahn. "It's official. I'm on the list for Walter Reed."

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thanks to @keysburg and @CotyCat82 for test audience services. Special thanks to CotyCat for her insights into physical therapy.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments.

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Notes: Short chapter this time around, but I was reminded that shorter and sooner has advantages over longer and later.

"The baby": Some of you may remember that last year in "Lonely Town" Ines's youngest was named Michael. A few days after I posted that chapter, the episode introducing Michael Carter aired. I really didn't want to have two Michaels (especially because, as we all know, Michael Carter is not dead), so since the baby has pretty much just been "the baby", I decided to rename the baby and turn her into a girl while I was at it.

Decoration Day: The original name of Memorial Day. At this point it was known by both names, and was always observed on May 30.

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@keysburg paid this fic an amazing compliment: a tribute video! If I were the kind of person who cried I would be a sobbing mess. THANK YOU KATIE.

And speaking of @keysburg, are you keeping an eye on dailyenvergjokaj.tumblr.com?

Chapter 35: Three Telegrams

 

 

 

 

Sousa started to sit up in bed, and Grahn's face fell even further. “Aw, I’m sorry,” said Grahn. “I didn’t mean to wake you up there.” 

Sousa scoffed. “I asked, didn't I? So, you’re on the list. When do you think…?” 

“No idea. It could be three weeks; it could be tomorrow — meaning, they could tell me tomorrow and I’d leave the next day.” He glanced around the room. “I should probably go down to the HX tomorrow and buy a suitcase or something.” 

“Well, congratulations. We’ll miss you, but this means you’re almost healed up, right?” 

“Yeah, Peyton’s finally letting me out of his sight." 

"How long do you think you'll be there?" 

"Don't know. I have to get down there first, and then I don't know how long it'll take to get my prosthesis. Then there'll be physical therapy for that, and then Peyton wants me to do some more physical therapy on my right leg, so.... four, six weeks, maybe?" 

"There's a lot to do down in Washington," said Sousa. 

"Yeah. But still, we're living in an amusement park here; won't be quite the same." 

"And Walter Reed's an actual hospital. No more cushy hotels." 

"No more sea breezes. I haven't even been to the actual beach yet." Grahn perked up. "Hey. Let's go. Let's get a group together and go to the actual beach this weekend." 

"Meaning swim in the water?" 

"If you want, especially if this weather holds up. But even if we just rent some beach chairs and take in some sun.... " Grahn started to climb into bed. "This is going to be fun. We can put out the word at breakfast." He settled himself in, used his cane to pull the curtain a little closed, and switched off the light. "Okay, good night." 

"Good night." Sousa lay back down. 

He felt hollow, somehow. But it was okay. He'd known this day was coming. He'd known for weeks. He was resigned to it. 

But the trip to the beach? That was unexpected. He thought about walking on the sand and how that might work using one foot and two crutches, and quickly fell asleep. 

 

Grahn announced his news and his plan at breakfast the next morning.  

"Well, if you're going to swim —" said MacPhyfe — 

"Of course I'm going to swim," Grahn interrupted. "I've got to get at least one dip in before they drag me away  —" 

"Then you should do it today," said MacPhyfe. "We've barely seen eighty degrees this week, and it's supposed to cool off again this weekend."  

That afternoon they went down to the Boardwalk entrance of the hotel. Near the door was a box heaped with old tennis balls with deep cuts on them. MacPhyfe and Ayers showed them how to shove the tennis balls over their crutch tips, to keep the crutches from sinking in the sand. 

They crossed the Boardwalk, made their way down the steps, and cautiously through the dunes to the beach. It was a challenging walk. Sousa's left foot slid in the fine, dry sand, and before he'd gone a few steps the sand was trickling into his shoe and grinding under his foot. As for his crutches, the tennis balls helped, but with every step, he still had to watch where he put them, and give them a little test to make sure he wasn't going to push them deep into the sand.  

It got easier once they reached the beach face, where the sand was firmer and smoothed by the waves. Sousa and the others caught their balance and teased Grahn as he spread out a beach towel and started taking off his clothes.  

Irwin made his way to where the surf was washing up and tested the water with his hand. "I guess I'll give it a try," he said. "Peyton'll snap his cap if we let you drown." 

When Irwin was ready, he and Grahn hopped down into the water until it was deep enough for them to push off and swim. Grahn whooped when he surfaced again. "Come on in! The water's fine!" 

"Yeah, if you're a polar bear!" yelled Irwin. He and Grahn swam back and forth, splashing and teasing each other. Sousa stood with the others and watched. He hadn't worn his swim trunks under his clothes; he knew perfectly well the water was chilly, and he thought Grahn was being just a little bit crazy. But as he watched the surf and listened to the waves, there was a part of him that understood, that was yearning to push off into the water. 

Grahn and Irwin stayed in a few more minutes before they hopped back up out of the water. As they dried off and pulled their clothes back on, Sousa looked around the beach. There were only a couple of other groups on the beach, and nobody was swimming. He could tell, though, that the season was about to start. The empty lifeguard stand was freshly painted; under the Boardwalk, an unfaded sign offered beach chairs and umbrellas for rent. "Coming soon," a tacked-on paper promised. 

It was one thing to do this when the beach wasn't crowded and you were surrounded by other amputees. But what about... the rest of the time? It felt like the water was already calling him somehow, and he knew sooner or later he was going to want to answer. 

He followed the group back across the beach and up the stairs. They took turns sitting on a bench to shake the sand out of their shoes and pull the tennis balls off their crutches before crossing the Boardwalk to the hospital. Back upstairs, Sousa sat on his bed and started getting his shoe and sock off. Grahn came in and closed the door.  

"Want to get in the shower?" asked Grahn. 

"Go ahead," said Sousa. 

"Thanks." Grahn closed the window before he started gathering his dry clothes. "Yeah, that was... invigorating." 

"Well, you got your swim. You happy?" 

"I am. I'm satisfied. If we get a warm day before I leave, though, I want to go again and do it up right. And maybe we can all get in the water." 

 

The next day in physical therapy, Sousa practiced getting in and out of chairs and wheelchairs and sitting at a table. Like everything else, it was more difficult than it looked; he had to take short steps and sideways steps to approach the chair, and keep the prosthesis from dragging or catching on anything as he moved the chair forward. He was beginning to wonder if the prosthesis was really worth it. But by the end of his afternoon session, though he was slow and ungainly he was able to take a seat and pull up to a table. 

"Well done," said Lieutenant Reese. "Moving around furniture is much more difficult than just walking in a straight line. You know you'll get smoother with practice. "  

He nodded. "Anything else this afternoon? Or should I start doffing?" 

"No doffing," she said. She took a piece of paper from her clipboard and passed it to him. It was a schedule. 

"Time to bump up your wearing time," she said, "and to start wearing your prosthesis more outside the gym. You know how to clean it at the end of the day, and how to doff and don and dress it. So put it on in the morning, and use this schedule to see how long to leave it on and how much walking you can do on it." 

"So I'm... taking it home? Well, sort of." 

She smiled. "That's right, it's all yours. Take it home and walk on it. Let's get you some supplies." She stocked him up with rubbing alcohol and stump socks and sent him on his way.  

Sousa rolled himself back to the eighth floor. He needed to put his new supplies away, and he wanted to spend some time by himself before supper. It was sinking in that the prosthetic wasn't just another piece of gym equipment any more: it was his, it was going to be part of his normal routine, like combing his hair and brushing his teeth and reaching for his crutches. 

And people were going to see him walking around with it. He supposed he'd get used to that idea, too. The elevator doors opened and he rolled over to the desk to pick up his mail. Back in his room, he thought about where he'd be cleaning the prosthesis — probably by his bed, that made the most sense — and put his supplies away.  

He consulted the schedule again and decided he'd leave the prosthetic on until it was almost time to go to supper. He circled the wheelchair around, set the brakes, and carefully stood up and twisted himself into the room chair: his first solo maneuver using the prosthesis. 

He snorted. Going from one chair to another chair: big stuff. He shifted around in the chair, trying to get more comfortable, and took up his mail. 

The letters from Ines and from his father were both postmarked Wednesday, probably mailed before they got his telegram about the overnight visit. He passed them to the bottom of the pile. A letter from Tillie... postmarked Thursday. He tore into the envelope. 

 

Wednesday, May 16, 1945 

Dear Daniel, We got your telegram today and we are so excited and happy for you! We're going to start working on our end first thing in the morning. First Papai's going to see what dates he can get, and then I'm going to work on getting the same dates (if we can't make that work, we're not going to make you wait, but I think we can do it, I've already talked about it to my boss.) If everything goes the way we're hoping it will be Pai and Ines and baby Maddie!  

 

Tillie launched into a exact account of how she'd opened the telegram and how she'd immediately called Ines and what they'd talked about and how it sounded like Ines was actually beginning to let herself get a little excited and maybe Tillie could even talk her into buying a new dress for the trip and oh by the way don't forget to let them know if there was anything he wanted them to bring and then Papai came home and she gave him the telegram to read and.... 

Daniel smiled as he read the letter, picturing it all in his head, and then went on to the other letters.  When it was time, he put the letters aside, took off his shoes, unbuttoned his trousers, and doffed the prosthesis. 

When the prosthesis was off, he used his hand mirror to check the skin of his right leg. Everything looked fine, so he wrapped his leg, got dressed again, and cleaned the prosthesis with the alcohol. When he was done, he looked around the room. Where was he supposed to store this thing? It was ugly, and it seemed like the kind of... personal thing that should be kept out of sight, like underwear.  

But he couldn't exactly put in the closet; he didn't have a free hand when he was on crutches. No, he'd need to keep it near where he would be donning and doffing it: by the bed. He propped it up by the nightstand and went on to dinner. 

Grahn teased him that night, pretending to be disappointed that he hadn't worn the prosthesis to dinner or shown off his skill in walking with it. 

"You can catch the morning show," said Sousa. "It'll probably be a comedy, I'm still getting the hang of this thing." 

The next morning, Sousa was able to don the prosthesis without any mishaps. Moving around in the room, though, was awkward and frustrating. It wasn't until he was setting up to brush his teeth and shave that it hit him: now that he had the prosthesis, he could stand at the sink and have both hands free. Maybe the thing could be useful. 

Sunday passed, and Monday. He pushed himself in therapy, climbing stairs and walking and getting up and down from tables and chairs. Outside of therapy, he used the wheelchair for long distances, but walked whatever short distances he could. He wanted to walk more — maybe do some laps in the hallway — but when he had any spare time all he could think about was getting some rest. 

Rest... and the visit. Monday's mail brought more letters from home, carrying the same message as Tillie's letter: Pai coming soon, maybe Ines, maybe even the baby, they'd let him know the plans as soon as they could. He smiled as he read the letters again.  He'd go ahead and start looking into a place for them all to stay, he decided. Maybe the hospital could help them borrow a baby carriage.  

He smiled wryly: he'd probably be still using a wheelchair, so if all else failed he could be the baby carriage. 

 

Sousa didn't have time to stop by the Red Cross office the next morning; after breakfast he had to go straight to Physical Therapy and from there straight to lunch. After lunch he had to go back up to the eighth floor to discussion group. He still disliked discussion group — he would have much rather have spent the hour in the gym or the library or even occupational therapy — but at least today he had a real question about tips for the overnight visit. 

The elevator doors opened, and he rolled himself out of the elevator. As he passed the desk on his way to the discussion group, he heard one of the clerks call, "There he is! Lieutenant Sousa!" 

Another clerk hurried around the desk and caught up with him. "Lieutenant Sousa! This came for you this morning." She handed him a yellow envelope: a telegram. 

"Thanks!" He wheeled himself out of the way and eagerly ripped into the telegram. 

 

MAY 21  1035 PM   1945 

1ST LT DANIEL A. SOUSA 
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY, NJ 

 

PAPAI INES MADDIE PLAN ARRIVE FRIDAY EARLY AFTERNOON LEAVE MONDAY MORNING WIRE IF SHOULD CHANGE CANCEL LOVE TILLIE 

=MRS JOSEPH PRZYBYLAK 

 

Sousa's heart jumped. This weekend.  

First he needed his pass. Blaine and the team met on Tuesdays, after discussion group. If they could make a decision on his pass this afternoon.... 

"Hey! Sousa!" 

He looked up: Irwin was calling to him from the meeting room. 

"I'm coming," he called. He left a message with the clerk for Blaine and rolled his wheelchair down the hall to the discussion group. 

 

The discussion group had some good suggestions for him, including the skinny on some of the places around town. Some of those places were run by the Army: the Army was using three hotels for processing men who were returning to the States. Some of the rooms and suites had been set aside for visiting families, and could be equipped for convalescents from the hospital. He might be able to get a room there. 

It sounded ideal. The "equipped" part made him cringe a little inside, but there was no getting around it: his own stay would be much more comfortable with a shower chair and a grab bar.  And he could bring his family with him to the officer's dining room; that would probably be more convenient with the baby. 

After discussion group, he got the message he'd been hoping for: the team wanted to talk to him at their meeting. He waited near the desk until he was summoned. Outside the meeting room, he parked and braked his wheelchair, gripped his crutches, eased himself up and out of the wheelchair, and slowly walked in to the room. 

"Well, look at this! Have a seat, Lieutenant," said Blaine. "So, you want an overnight pass out of the hospital, you have your dates picked out, and it looks like you want to show us you're ready." 

"I do." Sousa carefully sat down and took his telegram out of his pocket. "My family's coming in on Friday and will be here until Monday morning." 

"Just like you were pushing for, isn't that strange." Blaine was having a hard time pretending to be stern. "Lieutenant Reese, what do you think?" 

"I think if he's careful and doesn't push it? Not too many steps? He'll be fine." 

Blaine looked to Peyton, who nodded. 

"All right, then," said Blaine. He reached for a form and started to write. "You can have Friday at 1700 through Monday at 0900 —" He looked up at Sousa. "...What?" 

"Nothing! It sounds great. It's just... if I can't leave till 1700 that doesn't give us a lot of time to check in and find a place for dinner. And then on Monday, their train might not leave until later in the morning," said Sousa. 

"1700? You trying to get the early-bird specials? Fine. Friday at 1600, Monday at 1200 or until your family's on the train, whichever comes first. But I want you to go through the Red Cross and Special Services to find a place to stay." 

"No second-floor walkups," added Lieutenant Reese. 

"No second-floor walkups," Sousa promised. 

Blaine stopped writing for a moment. "And if you see even the slightest bit of redness on that leg, I want you back in here P.D.Q., understood?" 

"Yes, sir." 

Blaine finished writing and held out the pass. "All right. You might as well go and set up your reservation." 

"Just call the gym and tell them you're going to be late," said Lieutenant Reese. "And keep an eye on your mail. We may revise your schedule, and if we do we'll send you an update."  

"I will, thanks." Sousa carefully stood up, took the pass, put it in his pocket, and slowly made his way out of the room. Back at the desk, he asked the clerk to call the physical therapy department and went to wait for the elevator. Downstairs, Special Services was able to book him an "equipped" suite at the Ambassador, one of the hotels the Army was still renting, and was even able to arrange a baby carriage and a crib. 

His next stop was the telegraph office. 

 

MAY 22  235 PM   1945 

MRS JOSEPH PRZYBYLAK 
10 WINTER AVE  TAUNTON  MASS 

ATTENTION SOCIAL SECRETARY FRIDAY PLANS FINE AM READY FOR ALL  

=1ST LT DANIEL A. SOUSA 

 

He smiled as he gave the form to the clerk. His father was probably aghast at the number of telegrams that were buzzing back and forth this week, but it really was the best way to handle making these arrangements, so.... 

 

Hazel and Betty and the gang were at bridge club that evening, so he asked them for suggestions on where to take his family that weekend. After supper, when he picked up his mail, he had a couple of letters from home — and a new schedule. They'd moved some of his physical therapy sessions to a new time in a different gym. He frowned: his OT sessions had been switched around as well, including the Tuesday afternoon session he'd had at the same time as Tipton. 

At least he'd still be able to make bridge club and boxing. He took out a pad of paper and started making a copy of his new schedule. 

 

He went to the new PT session after lunch the next day.  It turned out to be a group session with other leg amputees. He and the other patients took turns walking through a long set of parallel bars as a physical therapist watched and assessed each man's gait. After a few passes through, she started giving instructions. Some men were sent to the bench to adjust their prosthetics. Some were reminded to look forward instead of at the floor. Others were instructed to take longer or shorter steps, or to even out the length of their stride; there were shoe prints on the floor to guide them, just as Lieutenant Reese had promised. And a couple of men were sent to change out their crutches for canes. 

After his fourth trip through the parallel bars, the therapist beckoned Sousa aside and gave him his first instructions — eyes up, each step the same length. As she finished, a clerk stepped forward. 

" 'Scuse me, ma'am," said the clerk, "There's a major here says he wants to borrow Lieutenant Sousa for a few minutes." 

"Really? Peyton or Barrett?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Go ahead," she said to Sousa. 

As he followed the clerk to the door of the gym, Sousa wondered what Peyton wanted — they weren't going to scramble his schedule again, were they? At least he was wearing his swimming trunks over his shorts, it would be less embarrassing if Peyton had some of his doctor pals with him — and then he caught sight of the major at the door. It wasn't Major Peyton. It was Major Tucker, from the SSR. 

"Lieutenant Sousa!" Tucker reached forward to shake hands.  "My God, you look like a new man." He glanced around the crowded gym. "Let's just step out here for a minute. I won't keep you long." 

"Um, sure." Sousa looked around as Tucker turned to the door, and spotted the clerk. "Is there a robe? or a blanket?" he whispered. 

The clerk was able to find a bathrobe. He helped Sousa put it on; it was too small, but it would do. Sousa thanked him and followed Tucker into the atrium. 

Tucker had already sat down and set his briefcase on the floor. He waved to the chair next to him: "Have a seat."   

Sousa struggled in vain to move smoothly as he hitched himself around and lowered himself into the chair. Tucker didn't seem put off.  

"It's good to see you," said Tucker. "I have business in the neighborhood so I thought I'd stop by to see how you were doing, and...." He spread his hands. "Here you are! How long've you had that wooden leg now?" 

"Thanks." Sousa thought back. "I've had it around... three weeks." 

"Only three weeks! And Peyton told me those things aren't easy to walk on." 

"Eh. I still have a long way to go." 

"But you'll get there, right? When do you think you'll be able to get out for an interview?" 

"I don't know yet. I am having my first overnight pass out of the hospital this weekend — just staying here in town — but depending on how that goes...." 

It felt good to be able to offer that, and it felt even better when Tucker looked impressed. "Already?  Peyton was talking July, but maybe you could come even sooner. That's good news. Think you'll be off crutches by then? Peyton was real vague on that. What do the nurses say? I bet they know." 

Sousa thought of Ayers, still using crutches. "Well, if I were to ask the nurses or the physical therapists, they'd just say what they always say: that everyone's different. Of course... I'd probably be able to come sooner with crutches." 

Tucker didn't hesitate. "Then come with crutches. The sooner the better, no question. How's boxing going?" 

"Pretty well. Haven't K.O.d anybody yet, but...." 

Tucker chuckled. "Yeah. Might as well save it for the bad guys."  

"Anything else I can be doing to get ready? I've been reading up, and I'm looking at a distance course...." 

"You were ready last December," said Tucker. "You've already shown you're smart and observant, and that's what's important; the other stuff we can teach you. And there's no sense in me telling you 'oh, study up on this and that' and then you find out later you don't need it. The SSR's gone through a couple of changes already, and I'm sure there'll be more once the war's over." 

Tucker checked his watch. "Wish we could talk longer, but I need to get going. And I really should let you get back to work." He stood up, and waited as Sousa got himself out of his own chair. Sousa was a little embarrassed at how long it took, but relieved that Tucker didn't offer him a hand up. 

They walked back together back to the gym. "Take care, all right?" said Tucker. "You've been working hard, and it shows. Keep me posted, and as soon as you can get that furlough, you let me know." 

"I will. Thanks again." They shook hands, and Sousa watched as Tucker headed back toward the main section of the hospital. He turned himself around and went back into the gym. 

As he waited for his next trip through the parallel bars, he thought back to Tucker's visit. What was Tucker really there for? His story about being in town on business made sense: he wouldn't have come all the way up from Washington or wherever it was he was based just for that little five-minute chat. 

So yeah: Tucker was in town on other business and still took time out to stop by and see him, and was still talking about the interview. That was encouraging. 

But Tucker had also been talking to Peyton, and Sousa wasn't sure what to think about that. What was Peyton telling him? And did Tucker believe it? Sousa hoped he at least understood it.  

Tucker's question about crutches worried him. He'd never seriously thought about it, himself; life after the hospital had always seemed too far away, and like he'd said to Tucker, the answer would have been it depends or we'll see or everyone is different. The rehab movies showed fellows walking around without canes or crutches, but those fellows might be star patients, and were any of them above-the-knee amputees? He thought of Ayers again, Ayers who was not only still on crutches but had gotten fancy permanent ones. 

Maybe it would be different for him. Maybe he'd be off crutches before the interview. Then he wouldn't have to worry about explaining them to the other interviewers, or about disappointing Tucker — 

It was his turn to walk through the parallel bars. He stood up straight, looked ahead at the ears of the guy in front of him, thought about the shoe prints on the floor, and started to walk. 

 

On Thursday, all Sousa could think about was the visit the next day. He confirmed his rooms at the Ambassador and his requests for a crib and a baby carriage and a shower chair. He went down to the HX and got an overnight bag. He picked up extra stump socks and elastic bandages from PT. He grudgingly signed out a folding wheelchair (they wouldn't let him leave without one.) He got a haircut. 

He made a list of ideas of things they could do that weekend, and added to it as the day went on. He penciled in dinner with Grahn on Saturday night, but otherwise left the plan open: he wanted to talk to Ines and see what she wanted to do (and if that was sleeping in until noon and eating ice cream for lunch, that was just fine with him.) And then he had the prosthesis slowing him down, and they'd have the baby to think of....  

On Friday morning, Sousa was impatient to get to breakfast and read the morning paper. He finished dressing early and had just started to make his bed when a knock sounded at the door. A clerk came in and handed him a telegram. 

He smiled as he opened the envelope: he'd be willing to bet the telegram was from Tillie. He unfolded the telegram and saw that he was right. 

 

MAY 25  0645 AM   1945 

1ST LT DANIEL A. SOUSA 
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY, NJ 

 

PAPAI ON TRAIN INES CAN'T COME CHILDREN SICK PAPAI WILL EXPLAIN LOVE TILLIE 

 

=MRS JOSEPH PRZYBYLAK

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thanks to @keysburg and @CotyCat82 for test audience services. Special thanks to @keysburg for tossing around SSR ideas with me.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and for your comments.

---

Telegrams: I haven't been able to find an exact rate table yet, but my best guess based on ads and other references is that the base rate for Tillie and Daniel's telegrams is seventy-five cents. (The base rate was calculated by distance.) This bought ten words, transmitted immediately and immediately delivered to the recipient (classically, by the messenger boy riding a bike). Each additional word was around two and a half cents. For comparison: a cup of coffee cost around ten cents; a dozen eggs cost around forty cents; a cocktail at a mid-priced restaurant cost around fifty cents.

Tillie and Daniel are usually using less expensive services that allow the telegram company to wait to transmit the message when the wires are slow and to deliver the message when it's efficient.

Chapter 36: The Ambassador

 

The Ambassador Hotel

Foyer of Ambassador

Bedroom suite of Ambassador

 

After breakfast that morning, Sousa stopped by Special Services: since Ines and the baby weren’t coming, he might as well change his room and free up the suite and the baby equipment for someone else who could use it. His next stop was the Red Cross, where he left a message for his father, reminding him he wouldn’t need to find a place to stay. From there Sousa went on to physical therapy, where he worked with the pulley weights and practiced getting in and out of the car and put up with extra helpings of speeches about checking his leg, and changing his stump sock at least once a day, and what supplies he should pack, and what supplies he should bring with him if he went out, and how if he had any questions he could call, and how he should stick to his wearing schedule, and if he started getting red skin or blisters he should come back to the hospital…. 

The lectures were irksome, but at least they were a distraction from his disappointment. He’d been so looking forward to finally seeing Ines again and meeting the baby. And the Ambassador was supposed to be a real nice place, even after three years under Army management; it would have been a little treat for all of them. 

Now and then, a little part of himself he didn’t understand would start to kick up: it seemed to want to be angry. But it would promptly wither away again, for there was nothing to be angry about. If the kids were sick, they were sick, and they wouldn’t have gotten sick on purpose. And being sick and lonely… no. No, Ines was right, they needed her. 

When he got out of his afternoon physical therapy session, he stopped by the Red Cross desk and asked if the train had come in. It had, so he went up to the eighth floor. He extracted himself from the wheelchair, got his crutches in position, and slowly walked over to the visitors’ lounge. 

His father was sitting by a window, holding a folded newspaper but not reading it. He looked up as Daniel approached.  

“Daniel!” As he hurried over, Daniel adjusted his stance, checked his balance, and leaned his crutches against the wall so that he could welcome and return his father’s long, tight hug. 

"Oh my God, Daniel, look at you." Finally his father stepped back and looked Daniel over again. “So… this is it? You’re wearing it?” he asked.  

Daniel retrieved his crutches. “This is it,” he said. “Stylish, huh?”  

Back at his room, Daniel let his father go in first before stepping in himself. He stood in front of the door, balanced on his left leg and the prosthetic, passed both crutches to one hand, and pulled the door shut with the other. It was such a relief to be able to do that himself again. 

“So what’s the plan?” his father asked. 

“Well, I still have my overnight pass, and I’ve lined up a place....”  

“You just tell me what to do, then.” 

Daniel glanced at his watch. “I can leave in another thirty minutes.” he said. “I might as well change, and finish packing.” 

"Do you want me to...." His father glanced toward the door. 

"No, it's fine." His father nodded and sat down, and Daniel started untying his shoes. “So what’s going on with Ines?” he asked. 

His father sighed. “The doctor thinks it’s measles.” 

“He thinks? Isn’t measles kind of obvious?” 

“Well, they don’t have rashes yet. Charlie woke up early yesterday morning with a cough and a fever and then Katie started in a few hours later. Their fevers were pretty high, so Ines called the doctor just to be on the safe side. He said measles is going around and those are the early symptoms, so he was going to assume it was measles and put them in quarantine.” 

“Oh no. So how long’s that gonna last?” 

“If it turns out to be measles, two weeks at least.” 

“But what about the baby?” 

“She’s under the quarantine too. The doctor said she’s probably already been exposed, so even if we got her out of there she’d still get sick, and in the meantime she could spread it to other people.” 

 

Daniel sighed. Maybe it would have been better if his father hadn’t come this weekend. But then, his father knew the situation, and he wouldn’t have come if Ines needed his help.... 

“It’s too bad,” said Daniel’s father. “It’s bad enough the kids are sick, but... She really was looking forward to seeing you." 

"We'll figure it out. If this goes well, maybe in a few weeks I can go up there." 

His father smiled at the idea, so Daniel kept talking about it as he finished taking his shoes off. Then it was time to take his trousers off, which meant showing his father the prosthetic. 

His father didn't seem as curious about the thing as Daniel thought he would be. He seemed content to lean back in his chair, arms folded and chin in hand, as Daniel lifted the prosthetic out of his blue trousers and doffed it. 

"Is it comfortable?" he finally asked.  

Daniel shrugged. "I'm still breaking it in. Like shoes, you know?" He checked his stump sock. It was fine, so he dressed and donned the prosthetic, put his left leg through the other pants leg, and tied his shoes. He pulled his trousers up the rest of the way and started changing his shirt. 

"Have I told you about where we're staying?" 

"No, not yet." 

"It's called the Ambassador. It's down toward the other end of the Boardwalk." He started buttoning his shirt. "It won't be that much different from here, it's another big hotel the Army took over." 

"It's not another hospital, is it?" 

"No. It's pretty much a hotel. I think the furniture's Army, though; none of the fancy stuff. Sorry." His father scoffed. "Anyway, the Army Air Force is using it. When they're bringing fellas back from overseas, they put them up there for a couple of weeks, let them rest for a bit while they figure out where to send them next. Their families can come and stay with them." 

"Oh, that's nice. So I won't stick out too much." 

"I'll be the one who sticks out: two crutches and no wings on my shoulder. Though we don't have to spend the whole weekend hanging around the hotel, either." 

Daniel put his tie on and checked his bag to make sure he had everything. Change of clothes, pajamas, robe, stump socks, elastic bandages, alcohol, toothbrush.... It was all ready. He looked up at his father. "Ready to get out of here?" 

His father smiled. "Almost as ready as you are, I bet. So how are we getting there?" 

Daniel glanced over to the folded wheelchair. "Well, I have to take that with me. Might be easiest to take a cab." 

His father shrugged. "If you think that's best. But if this place is on the Boardwalk, we could always walk. It can't be more than a couple of miles. We could use that —" he nodded toward the wheelchair — "to carry the bags. Or if you wanted to save your energy, I could push if you didn't mind carrying the bags on your lap. And it's a nice day." 

Daniel hesitated. If he tried to walk to the Ambassador on the prosthetic, they'd be lucky to get there by midnight if he could make it at all. If he took it off, he'd have to carry it down the Boardwalk somehow. Either way, he'd be beat when they finally got there.  

A cab would be quicker, but getting himself and the folded wheelchair in and out of the cab would be clumsy and difficult. And the cabfare would give his father indigestion (though he'd never admit it.)  

If they took the wheelchair down the Boardwalk... well, he'd have to ride in a wheelchair with the bags on his lap: not a strange sight in Atlantic City, and probably less embarrassing than trying to heave himself out of a cab. Besides, they'd packed light. They could take stock of the neighborhood around the hotel. And, of course, it would please his father and give him something to do.  

"Boardwalk it is, then," he said. "But I'll need to take you up on your offer to push."  

 

As his father pushed him down the Boardwalk, Daniel thought he drew a couple of curious looks here and there, but no outright stares. And why would anyone stare at him when there was so much else to look at? It was a beautiful Friday afternoon in May, so there were more tourists than ever; there were more soldiers on this end of the Boardwalk; and there were more stores and restaurants and attractions open and vying for their attention. Daniel pointed out a couple of places that caught his eye, or that the girls at bridge had mentioned  — a restaurant, a theatre — as always, his father insisted that they all looked good — whatever Daniel wanted to do was fine with him....  

Daniel frowned. He knew his father was telling the truth — he really was easygoing about that kind of thing — but he also knew his father's little tells, and he wasn't seeing any of them today. Maybe something would catch his father's interest after they'd checked in at the hotel. 

Finally they reached the Ambassador. At the desk, the clerk gave Daniel the keys to room 515 and a leaflet listing the amenities and the activities planned for the weekend. Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel could see his father taking in the lobby, the marble floors and the potted palms, the lofty, deeply coffered ceiling and the massive Doric columns that supported it. When Daniel finished checking in, he turned to his father. "What do you think?" 

"It's quite a place. So where are they putting us?" 

Room 515 was decorated along the same lines as the hospital, with luxurious wallpaper and moldings and plain furniture: two small writing tables with chairs, two small dressers, two small nightstands next to two single beds with luggage racks at their feet. The modest furniture seemed out of place in the large, ornate room. As soon as his father set the bags out of the way, Daniel rolled himself over to check the bathroom. A chair and a hand spray were set up in the shower, and there was a grab bar on the wall. Everything was ready. 

He turned himself around and rolled back into the room. His father was lifting the sheets and pillows on the beds, checking for bedbugs. 

"Everything look okay, Pai?" 

"As far as I can see." He looked around. "This really is a nice room. You've got a great view out that bay window there." He took a deep breath and let it out again. "So, do you want to unpack now? Or..." 

Daniel's first thought was that he wanted to go to dinner. But his father looked tired and tense, and it would be nice to come back from dinner with everything ready for them. Unpacking was quick work, and soon they were on their way back down to the Boardwalk.  

They found a place a block or two away, recommended by Penny, and soon a waitress was setting bowls of clam chowder and a basket of rolls in front of them. They said grace, and Daniel offered the basket of rolls to his father. "So how was the trip down?" he asked. 

"Thank you." His father took a roll and broke it open. "It wasn't too bad. Crowded, though. Tillie took me to the train station...." 

Daniel smiled as he broke open his own roll: it was so good to see his father again. And as they ate dinner, every so often it came back to him that he wasn’t going back to the hospital that night. It felt almost too good to be true. But it was really, finally happening.  

After dinner they spent some more time on the Boardwalk, running a couple of small errands and then just enjoying the fresh air and the view of the ocean. Daniel couldn't completely ignore his schedule for wearing the prosthesis, though, so when he felt like he couldn't put it off any longer, they headed back to the hotel. 

"Sorry to have to bring you back in so early," he said as he rolled himself into the room. 

Behind him, his father wiggled the key out of the lock and closed the room door. "You know, son, this may surprise you, but I'm really not the carousing-all-night type any more. Besides, I came to see you, not the Boardwalk." 

Daniel chuckled and got himself out of the wheelchair. He went over to the closet to put away his hat and hang up his uniform coat and tie. "Pai? Which bed do you want?" 

"It's up to you." 

"I'll take this one, then." He sat down on the bed with the clearer path to the bathroom and started unlacing his shoes. They could go back out, he thought; he just needed to take the prosthetic off. But he really was tired.... When he sat up again, he noticed that his father already had his own shoes off, and was hanging his jacket and tie in the closet. He was tired, too. 

Daniel took a deep breath and prepared to doff the prosthesis. "Might be good if you saw this," he said to his father.  

His father pulled a chair over and sat down. He didn't say anything until Daniel had finished. "So you don't have to wrap that bandage around your leg any more?"  

"Just when the prosthetic's off. I'll wrap it before I turn in for good." 

His father frowned. "That thing looks... tight." 

"Has to be, or it wouldn't work. — It doesn't touch the end of my leg," Daniel explained. "It takes the weight along the sides. And they give me these sock things to make it more comfortable." 

A few minutes later, Daniel was laying out his things for his shower. He mentally rehearsed the whole thing, step by step, checking to make sure he had everything ready. Then he rehearsed it again. Only then did he finish undressing and sit down on the shower chair. He propped his crutches, adjusted the shower curtain, and leaned forward and started the water. 

He soon relaxed: everything was going fine. He was able to wash, check his incision, dress, and tidy up after himself just like he did back at the hospital, and he went back out into the room feeling relieved and vaguely... satisfied, as if he'd won a bet. 

His father looked up and smiled. He'd pushed the two writing tables together, and was writing the postcards they'd bought earlier that evening. Daniel went to sit across from him. "Dear Ines, wish you were here, your dumb brother is boring but at least he makes an okay baggage cart. Love, Pai." 

His father scoffed and kept writing. When he finished, he slid the postcards across the table. "Want to add a few words?" 

Daniel chuckled. "Can I borrow your pen? You know you'll get home before these do."  

"It's the thought that counts." He passed the pen to Daniel, and took out the other purchase they'd made that evening: a small bottle of brandy. He poured two drinks as Daniel wrote. 

When Daniel had finished embellishing the postcards, he brought out the box of dominoes. As they played, he caught his father up on how things had been going at the hospital. 

"So boxing and swimming, on top of all that physical therapy?" 

"Well, the swimming's part of physical therapy, so..." 

"Still." His father looked up at him and smiled. "You've come a long way, Daniel." 

Daniel fidgeted with his domino tile. "Thanks. I was kind of hoping I'd have a little more to show for it when you came down." 

"Like what?" 

"Like not having to take the wheelchair so much. It's just... I can't walk very fast on that thing yet." 

"I'm in no hurry. If we go out tomorrow you could leave it here if you wanted." 

"Maybe. We should probably still bring it along. You know, like we did last time." 

His father nodded. "That worked out real well." He played his domino. "And just think, that was only, what? a month and half ago? I can see you've gotten even stronger since then. And you haven't had that prosthetic all that long, but already you can stand and walk on it. Just — the moment I first saw you this afternoon...." 

He paused for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts. "And you know, even if you hadn't taken a step, I'd have known you're working hard and getting stronger." 

"How's that?" 

"Your appetite's better." His father smirked. "The way you demolished that basket of rolls? Tried to get every speck of butter off the plate? And then you cleaned your plate, and you still had room for ice cream with your pie. And they sure didn't skimp."  

Daniel shrugged, as if it couldn't be helped, and put down a domino. "I've got a hollow leg." 

His father stared. Daniel smiled and held his gaze until his father gave up and laughed a little. 

"I hadn't thought of it that way, but...." He put a domino down. "So tell me about these girls from your bridge club. One of them recommended this place?" 

"They're like... USO girls. And yes, one of them told me about the restaurant. ….What?" 

"I didn't say anything." 

"They're friends of the teacher. They're just there to play bridge, that's all." 

His father was pressing back a smile. "Oh, of course. I remember when Tillie went to her first USO dance as a junior hostess. Swore up and down she was only going because Mrs. Mendes asked her to and she wanted to do her part." 

"Pai." 

"Wasn't that the whole point of this thing? And how is that roommate of yours, anyway?" 

"He's doing real well. I was thinking we could meet him for dinner tomorrow night." 

"I'd like that. He knows how to get hold of you here, right? Or at least somebody does?" 

"Well, sure. Grahn knows where I am, the docs, Special Services...." It was a strange question, but the answer seemed to reassure his father.  

They played another couple of rounds of dominos before they agreed it was time to turn in. Daniel did his stretches and wrapped his leg as his father got ready for bed. 

"Looking forward to sleeping in an ordinary bed again?" asked his father. 

"And how. Can't even think of how long it's been." Daniel thought back: hospital beds, cots, foxholes, barns.... November, maybe? It must have been sometime. He was getting too drowsy to really remember.... 

"Then sleep well," said his father. "And don't worry about me. Sleep as late as you like." 

 

Daniel did sleep well that night, but not very late the next morning: if he'd been back at the hospital, he would have just missed being the last stop on rounds. His father, of course, was already up and dressed.  

They had breakfast at the officers' dining room. As he led his father to a table, Daniel could feel a few amiably curious looks coming his way, could hear a couple of quiet explanations: "no, regular Army... from the hospital, come here for family visits... a lot of amputees there.... " 

He took a quick look around once he and his father were seated. It didn't look like there were any other patients nearby, and it looked like there was only one other man there who'd brought his parents. There were a few men who had their wives with them; a couple of them had children in to visit as well. One fellow and his wife looked like newlyweds, so preoccupied with gazing into each other's eyes that Daniel wondered if their breakfast had gone cold. He turned his attention back to the day's menu. 

After breakfast, they mailed their postcards and headed out into the cool, gray, misty morning. Daniel walked as his father pushed the wheelchair beside him, matching his slow pace. The Boardwalk wasn't very crowded yet; many of the people who were out were soldiers and airmen from the redistribution center. Daniel returned their salutes with a nod and a greeting, since his hands were occupied with his crutches. 

They'd gone a couple of blocks when Daniel's father spoke up. "Mind if I take a quick look at that shop window over there?" 

"Of course not." Daniel followed his father across the Boardwalk to a variety store. 

"I was thinking about bringing something back for the kids," his father said as he searched the displays. "They're going to be miserable for days, and then cooped up in quarantine?" 

So is Ines, thought Daniel. "What about a coloring book?"  

"You have to dim the lights with measles. They might not be able to color or read." He turned from the window. "I don't see anything here." 

"We can keep our eyes open," said Daniel. 

An idea came to him after they'd gone another block or two. As they approached a Western Union office, Daniel noticed a display of form telegrams in the window: "Happy Birthday", "Wedding Wishes", "Congratulations", "To the Graduate", "Happy Father's Day"… The idea was that, for a flat reduced rate, you could send a message delivered on a paper with an appropriate design, like a greeting card. The catch was that you could only send one prewritten message, selected from a list provided by the telegram company. You chose your sentiment, checked the box, signed your name, and sent it anywhere in the country for a quarter. 

The telegrams that caught his eye were decorated in children's themes: nursery rhymes; "story land" with castles and knights and ladies fair; Captain America; cowboys and cowgirls.... Daniel looked at the menu of messages for the children's telegrams: birthday greetings, party invitations, "In Praise of Good Behavior"....  One of  the "Admonitions to Behave" was a tender promise to be home soon, but as for the rest? Why would you give a kid the thrill of a telegram just so they could open it and find a nagging message to be good? Just swap out the kid's birthday cake for a can of lima beans and be done with it. 

"Cheer-Up Messages" turned out to be a selection of get-well-soon messages. "Okay, Pai," said Daniel, "Which ones should we send? Nursery rhymes for Katie? And how about Charlie? Is he back into Captain America?" 

"No, he never picked it back up." 

Daniel thought of something. "Does he know about...?" 

"Not sure. The kids around the neighborhood still play Captain America, so I guess either they don't understand or they do and it's not going to stop them." 

They decided on "Story Land" for Charlie, and Daniel went in and filled out the forms. The flat rate included three words for the signature; he could not convince the clerk that TIODANIEL was one word, so VOVO TIO DANIEL had to do. Back out on the Boardwalk, his father shook his head in mock reproach. "More telegrams! You're getting as bad as Tillie." 

"Oh, I know what you're getting for Father's Day now." Daniel checked his watch and looked back toward the hotel. They'd come about a quarter mile. 

"I'd better take a break," he said. "I'm supposed to build up how long I walk on it." 

"Makes sense." His father stepped back as Daniel set the brakes of the wheelchair. Once he was settled, they headed back up the Boardwalk. 

They soon passed Convention Hall. The Army was still renting it for the redistribution center, so there were even more men and women in olive drab coming and going.  A few blocks up, they reached the Million Dollar Pier, its entrance gleaming with fresh paint. Huge signs touted the bands and singers and dancers and stage shows and two ballrooms with continuous dancing that would be offered next week when it opened for Decoration Day. 

They'd passed this way the day before, on their way to the Ambassador. Today they took their time. This stretch from Convention Hall to the Steel Pier, up by the hospital, was the busiest section of the Boardwalk, so there was plenty to look at: stores, arcades, candy shops, restaurants, movie theaters....  

As his father looked in a shop window, Daniel's thoughts turned to logistics. His first concern was lunch:  maybe a hot sandwich and a bowl of soup, or a patty melt and fried potatoes... They could go all the way back to the hotel, but that seemed like a waste of time when there were so many places around here.  

And then there was his leg: it felt fine now, but at some point he'd need to check it. It would be easiest to do that in the hotel room, but why should he have to go all the way back? He'd heard some pointers from the others about doing prosthetic care in men's' rooms; he'd figure something out. 

He also needed to call Grahn to confirm their plans for dinner. But first — his stomach was growing adamant on the subject — he wanted lunch. 

They found a nice place a block off the Boardwalk. After lunch, Daniel decided to get some more walking time in. He had just managed another block when he thought he sensed something different about the cool, damp weather: a shift in the breeze, a subtle change in the taste of the air. 

"You feel that, Pai?" 

"Sure do." 

"What do you think? Half an hour?" 

"If that. I don't think it'll be too bad, though." 

"Still... How does a movie sound?" 

"Sounds good. Did you have one in mind?" He looked down the Boardwalk. "We've got a lot to choose from...." 

Daniel had known his father would agree to a movie, but he was a little surprised at just how genuinely interested he sounded. "Did you see anything?" 

"A couple of thrillers. I'm not really in the mood for one of those today, though." 

Daniel thought back to the theaters they'd passed. One of them was showing serials for the matinee; another was showing "Meet Me in St. Louis": not his first choice, but he'd take it in a minute over all those "troubled vet comes home and is healed by love" pictures at some of the other theaters. 

They ended up choosing something about a horse out West. They were plenty early, so after Daniel bought the tickets he found a phone and called Grahn. Grahn wasn't around the ward, but he hadn't gotten transfer orders either, so Daniel left a message confirming their plans to meet back at the Ambassador. 

His next stop was the men's room. He was in luck: the men's room had an attendant, and the attendant offered him a chair. "We get men from the hospital all the time," he said. 

"Thanks, I appreciate it." Daniel slipped off the prosthesis and took off his stump sock. His skin looked fine, so he put on a fresh sock, spread on a little powder, and put himself back together.  

He stopped short when they entered the theater: he'd forgotten about the slope of the aisle. He hadn't done ramps yet in physical therapy. 

Well, what was a ramp but a smooth shallow staircase? He cautiously led with the prosthesis and his crutches. It took some adjustment before he felt stable enough to bring his left leg forward. He took another step. This time he misjudged his stance, and the knee of the prosthetic buckled. He was able to keep from falling, but he saw the flash of concern, quickly suppressed, on his father's face.  

"I think I'd better perch here," he said. He let his father into the row. Once he'd gotten himself into the  aisle seat, he looked over at his father. "Sorry to keep you all the way in the back here." 

"Applesauce. This seat's fine. This the first time you've been in a movie theater since you've been back?" 

"It is, actually. We usually don't need to go, they have movies at the hospital." 

Other patrons started arriving, and soon the curtains opened and the newsreels started: "German Loot Discovered"…  POWs liberated... Baseball... 

Daniel's father leaned over. "Is DiMaggio still here? Have you seen him?" he whispered. 

"As far as I know, he's still here" Daniel whispered back. "He's visited the hospital a couple of times. Haven't seen him, though." 

"Eh, that's all right. He's just a Yankee." 

An update about the battle in Okinawa... A short clip about the Hollywood Canteen, with a group of star-struck privates being served pie and sandwiches by Jinx Falkenburg, Whitney Frost, and Rosalind Russell... 

A cartoon — Bugs Bunny outwitting a short-tempered outlaw... 

And finally the feature itself. Daniel settled back into his seat as the music started to sing and the title appeared in front of white clouds billowing in the Technicolor sky. The credits finished and the camera slowly tilted down, revealing tall trees and bright green grass and a glittering pond in a pristine mountain valley, unmarred by muddy tank tracks. It occurred to Daniel that maybe he could visit a place like that someday.  

 

After the movie, they started back down the Boardwalk toward the Ambassador. As they passed the Million Dollar Pier, they saw a guy on a ladder adding to the marquee: Princess Yvonne, Mentalist... Doc Irving, Magician... Vaude Show... One Admission For All Attractions.... 

"Vaude shows?" asked Daniel's father. "Wasn't that place up by the hospital going to have some too?" 

"The Steel Pier? I think so," said Daniel. 

"I haven't been to one of those in... in I don't know how long, unless you count the talent show at the festa." Daniel chuckled.  "I didn't even know they were still around. When did the Star close? 'Twenty-eight? 'Twenty-nine? We took you kids a couple of times, do you remember?" 

In his mind's eye, Daniel saw a dark theatre, a man in a tailcoat pulling floaty scarves out of a top hat. "I think so. Was there a magician?" 

"Oh yes, I remember you liked that. All three of you did, but I think that was your favorite. You talked about it for days." 

Daniel held on to the memory a little longer: puffs of colored smoke... an impossibly fluffy white rabbit... scrambling out of his seat in amazement, his mother sitting to his left and Ines to his right.... "What else was there?" he asked. 

"Oh, the usual... singers, dancers, poodles that did tricks... You liked the jugglers, too...." 

They stopped by a few stores on their way to choose some little presents for the children and Ines and Tillie. Back at the hotel room, Daniel sat on the bed to check his leg. He'd already spent more time walking on the prosthesis longer than he was supposed to for that day. 

His leg looked all right, so he put on a fresh sock and powdered up. He thought about stretching out on the bed, just for a minute or two — but if he did, he'd probably fall asleep and there wasn't time for that. Instead, he donned the prosthesis again and went over to the sink to wash his face. When his father was ready, they went back to the lobby to wait for Grahn. 

 

The waiter finished taking their order, and Daniel lifted his glass of wine. "To freedom." 

"Hear, hear," said Grahn. Three glasses clinked. 

Daniel's father took a sip of his wine and leaned forward. "So, Henry: Daniel says you might be leaving soon?" 

Grahn made a sorrowful face. "It's true. They're going to boot me out any day now." 

"But not for home?" 

"Just one more stop.  It's to a permanent Army hospital in Washington, with a big limb shop. I go there, they set me up with a permanent prosthesis, I get the knack of it, and then my glorious time in the Army is over and I go back home. It shouldn't take too long." 

Daniel saw the unspoken question in his father's eyes. "They haven't said anything yet," he said. "But yeah, I'll probably end up there too." 

"So now that you've seen everything in Atlantic City, you can go see everything in Washington," said Daniel's father. 

Grahn chuckled. "Even if I only get to see half of Washington, that'll be more than I've gotten to see of here." 

"Really? But haven't you been able to go outside for a couple of months now?" 

"Oh, sure. But half the town still isn't open yet. I've only been swimming in the ocean once, though if it warms up before I leave I'm going to fix that. And if I'm here on Wednesday we're going to the Steel Pier." 

"We are?" said Daniel.  

"Well, sure! If I put it off, I might miss my chance. Of course, I could always come for a visit and catch it then." 

"You were here for the hurricane, weren't you?" asked Daniel's father. "That must have been something to see." 

"I didn't even get to see that! They had all the windows covered!"  

"Weren't you on bed rest then?" asked Daniel.  

"Well, that, too. And I didn't have the window bed." 

"Was that your first hurricane?" Daniel's father asked. 

"Sure was. And I hope it's my last. I couldn't see anything but I could hear it — the wind howling and that rain pounding and stuff blowing around outside — and then the lights went out so all we could do is just listen in the dark. 

"I got to see a bit of it the next morning when they evacuated us —" 

"And the electric wasn't back yet?" 

"No. The Coasties came to help out, and people from the town. The guys who could took the stairs, and the rest of us?" Grahn shrugged. "We got carried. There were people from the town in the stairwells holding lanterns and flashlights to light the way. Took nine hours to get everyone out of there —" 

"How many was everyone?" asked Daniel's father. 

"One thousand patients."  

"My God." 

"The lobby still had some puddles, and when we got outside the buses and the ambulances were still ankle deep in standing water. And there was sand — it must have been eight inches deep — driven up from the beach all the way up onto the street, almost to the skyway, and smashed wood from the Boardwalk and debris all over the place. I don't know how much shoveling they had to do just to get a path to the doors. There were branches down and damage all the way to the train station." 

"How long until you could come back?" 

"A month. The basement flooded and they had to dry it out and get it up and running again. The limb shop was down there, it took them months to catch up." 

"And you went to New York? They got hit pretty hard too, I remember, though not as bad as here." 

"Yeah," said Grahn. "Mitchel Air Field's on Long Island, and they caught some damage. We went to Halloran, that's on Staten Island." 

Daniel's father nodded. "It was weaker by the time it got up our way, but we still had some pretty fierce wind. Lost a couple of shingles." 

"And how much of New York did you get to see?" asked Daniel. 

"Pretty much nothing," said Grahn. "So as little as I've seen of Atlantic City, it's still a step up." 

 

Daniel felt a pang of unhappiness as they left the restaurant. For a brief moment, there was no conversation or ravioli or teasing or rum cake with ice cream and coffee to distract him from the sense of farewells. This was the last time. His father was leaving on Monday; Grahn would be leaving any day now.... 

"Are you heading back?" he asked Grahn. 

"If you don't mind, I thought I'd tag along to the Ambassador with you guys and just take the bus back," replied Grahn. "I haven't seen much of this end of the Boardwalk." 

"It's not that much different from the rest of it, as far as I can see," said Daniel. "Not as many movie theaters." 

There were plenty of salutes to give and return as they headed back to the hotel; men from the redistribution centers were coming out to enjoy the Boardwalk on a Saturday evening: some in groups, some with sweethearts. One smiling airman was holding hands with a girl whose face was glowing with pride. She had a stuffed animal tucked under her arm, a big bunny rabbit the color of lime sherbet.  

When the airman and his girl were well past, Daniel's father smiled. "A green rabbit! It must be love." 

"You should go win one of those for Betty," Daniel said to Grahn. 

"You should go win two of those for your sisters. —And then however many you need for your nieces and nephews." 

"I am not carrying back five green rabbits on the train," said Daniel's father. 

"How about six? I bet he could win one for you too," offered Grahn. 

 

Back at the Ambassador, as the bus approached they started saying their good-byes. 

"I guess this is it for now, Henry," said Daniel's father. As he shook hands with Grahn, he leaned forward and said something quietly into his ear. Grahn said something back, and Daniel's father squeezed his hand again.  

"Good luck to you in Washington." he said. "And come for a visit sometime, come see New England. You can stay with us, take the train to Boston or Plymouth." 

"Have some squid for dinner," put in Daniel. 

"Thank you. I'd like that," said Grahn. "And the same for you: if either of you ever want to visit a little town in the middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, you've got a place to stay. The town up the road from us is supposed to get a traffic light this year!" He turned to Daniel. "I'll call if anything comes up, but I don't think it will. See you on Monday, all right?" 

"See you then." 

Grahn shook hands with Daniel's father again. "Enjoy the rest of your visit! Mr. Sousa, have a safe trip back." He boarded the bus, and a minute or two later it pulled away. 

As he turned back to the lobby of the Ambassador, Daniel suddenly realized just how exhausted he was. Today had been the longest he had ever worn the prosthesis, and possibly the most he'd ever walked on it. He lowered himself into the wheelchair, stowed his crutches, and headed for the elevator. In his hurry, he would have completely forgotten to check at the desk for messages if his father hadn't discreetly suggested it. 

Back in the room, he forced himself to stick to the routine: shoes off; uniform off; prosthesis off; robe on; hang up uniform. Shower, and check leg: It was swollen after his long day, but there were no blisters or worrisome red marks.  He did the massage of his leg and finished showering. 

After his shower, he pushed himself on. He did his stretches, cleaned the prosthetic, and wrapped his leg. He finished putting his pajamas on and crawled under the covers. 

His father was puttering around the room. "Pai?" asked Daniel. "How far do you think we went today?" 

"One way? Little less than a mile, maybe? But don't forget we made that second trip." 

So almost two miles round trip. He hadn't walked the whole two miles, not by a long shot, but maybe all the spots of walking he did added up to a mile.... He wondered how that compared to what he was doing in physical therapy. All those trips back and forth in the parallel bars... how many feet was that? He tried to calculate it, but gave up; he was getting too drowsy, and the bed was so very comfortable. He could figure it out later. 

"Did you have a good time today?" he asked.  

His father didn't reply. Daniel pried his eyes open and looked around: his father had gone into the bathroom and hadn't heard him. 

He could ask again when he came out. He hoped his father wasn't too bored; he was still so slow when he walked, and he really did need to keep up with that, he couldn't just take a day off and go back to the wheelchair for everything, but of course his father understood that... a change from home, that should count for something, get away from the shipyard and the same four walls.... spent almost the whole day outside... look into fishing next time, must be a place to rent tackle... not surf fishing, but maybe fish off a pier?... the movie even had a racing scene, a little like before he'd left, his father bringing him along to the track with the uncles... his father talking about the old shows, have to ask him more about that... so good to be not in the hospital.... 

His father came out of the bathroom. "Sorry, Daniel. Did you say something?" 

But he would have to ask again later. Daniel was sound asleep.

Notes:

Thanks to @keysburg and @CotyCat82 for test reading. And thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments.

---

Quarantine: Laws varied. I came across an account of a family in the 1950s who was under quarantine for scarlet fever. The father had to basically move out and live with a neighbor. They managed family dinners in the cellar - mom and the kids inside, dad on the outside steps, a plate on his knees, talking to each other through the cellar door. Dad would visit his children and read them stories through the windows. This went on for six weeks. In Duluth, Minnesota. In winter.

I knew measles was contagious, but I didn't know it was among the most contagious viral diseases known. A susceptible person can catch measles in a room up to two hours after a contagious person's left it.

Western Union: the telegraph company.
Kiddiegrams: As far as I know, they only came in the nursery rhyme design in real life.

Customers soon figured out that Kiddiegrams weren't just for kids.

 

And from "The New Yorker:"

Western Union has been pushing its Kiddiegrams- form telegrams which may be sent at reduced rates. You can send a Kiddiegram anywhere in the country for twenty-five cents, and have your choice of about 30 form messages. The most popular message, however, is No. 1394, to be found under the heading "Admonitions to Behave." It runs, "Brush your teeth, comb your hair, hurry to bed and say your prayer, and before you know it I will be there." The reason for the popularity is that young men have taken to sending it to grownup little girls.

The Hollywood Canteen was a club offering food, dancing, and entertainment to servicemen, free of charge. (The New York version was the Stage Door Canteen.) Bette Davis was a co-founder and the president. The club was operated and staffed entirely by volunteers from the entertainment industry. Stars would do everything and everything from performing to dancing with servicemen to cooking and cleaning. The Canteen had served almost three million servicemen by the time it closed in late 1945.

The cartoon: "Hare Trigger"was the first appearance of Yosemite Sam.

 

You can watch it here.

Princess Yvonne, Mentalist: Mentalists are performers whose acts appear to include mind reading, psychokinesis, telepathy, etc. Princess Yvonne and Doc Irving were wife and husband. They played the Million Dollar Pier for years. Here's her scrapbook.

Vaude show: If you've seen "The Muppet Show", you've seen vaudeville. A vaudeville show is a variety show, intended to be family entertainment (as opposed to burlesque, which was raunchier.) I believe it was known as "music hall" in the UK. Vaudeville was huge in the late 19th and early 20th century. It faded in the '20s and by 1930 was almost completely gone, done in by the Depression, the talkies, and the radio. In 1945 there was still some vaudeville in the big cities — and in Atlantic City, of course; the Steel Pier ran vaudeville until the 1970s.

Vaudeville's influence lived on for the rest of the 20th century. Many (if not most) of the big stars of early radio and movies got their start in vaudeville — including Bugs Bunny— and it lived on in variety shows such as the Ed Sullivan Show and in movies, cartoons, and comedy sketches that referred to it. It also lives on in phrases like "waiting in the wings", "blue humor", "the big time", and "getting the hook".
Documentary on YouTube.

The Great Atlantic Hurricane: Newsreel

Pictures of the evacuation:

See the skywalk in the bottom photo? Finally, a picture! (and it's right where I imagined it!)

Chapter 37: Distance

 

 

 

Something was off.  

Daniel sensed it before he was fully awake, even before he remembered that he was in the Ambassador Hotel and not in the hospital room where he’d spent the last five months. 

Was it the different room? No, that wasn't it. Something was off. 

Daniel sat up in bed and blearily looked around. The room was dark and still — it was the middle of the night — and the other bed was empty. His father was sitting by the bay window, holding the curtain just open enough to be able to see out and let in a bit of filtered moonlight. He didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular. 

"Pai?" 

His father looked up. "Hm? — Daniel, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you. Go ahead and go back to sleep. I'll be back to bed in a few minutes. " 

Daniel didn't buy it: his father didn't look like he was going anywhere. He swung his left leg over the side of the bed, picked up his crutches, and started over to the window. 

 “It’s okay," his father insisted. "I woke up and I just haven't been able to drop off again yet. I’ll be along soon.” 

Daniel sat down on the side of his father’s bed. As he did, some part of his brain noticed that the sheets were cool. His father had been up for a while. 

“You okay?” he quietly asked. 

“I'm fine. I just…” His father sighed. “I’m sorry. I came down here to see you, but half my brain’s still back at home. I just can't stop thinking about Ines and the kids.” 

Were the kids sicker than his father was letting on? But if they were that sick, he wouldn’t have left for Atlantic City — would he? Daniel didn’t bother puzzling it out. “Would you feel better if you went back early? We could get you on the train in the morning. "  

"No, I don't need to do that. I can stay, like we planned — I mean, if you want me to," he added. 

"Well, sure, if you can stand the boredom. But what about Ines?" 

Daniel's father shrugged. "Even if I did go back, it wouldn't do her much good. I talked it over with her, the night before I left. I wasn't sure what to do. I wanted to see you, and I didn't want to let you down, but then three sick kids and her all cooped up in quarantine....” 

“Three? I thought just the older two had it.” 

“It’ll be a miracle if the baby doesn't catch it," his father said. "Anyway, I offered to stay — I hated to put off coming to see you, but I knew you’d understand — but Ines made it clear that she thought I should go. Nobody can come help her in the house because of the quarantine, and for groceries and errands and so on, she's got Tillie and the Escobars and her friends to help her. And then the doctor's looking in on her, and she said if she needed it the doctor might even be able to get a visiting nurse to help her out. And I was only going to be gone a few days anyway, and if something changed she could call or send a telegram. 

"It made sense, so I came. But now that I'm here... I'm so sorry, this was supposed to be a big weekend for you, and here I am being a wet blanket….” 

Daniel scoffed. “You’re not being a wet blanket. But just how bad is it? I mean, I’m sure they feel awful, but….” 

“It's not bad. Like you said, they're miserable, but the doctor wasn’t worried, and Ines had things well in hand.” Daniel’s father sighed. “It’s just hard to see them sick like that. And then they’re so little; and sure, it's not like the old days, but still, it's measles; and then if the baby gets it….” 

Daniel’s heart dropped. He could have kicked himself for not figuring it out earlier. “Are you thinking of Mary?” 

His father glanced up at him and then nodded a little. "Yeah," he said softly. 

 

Daniel was only five when it happened. Everyone in the family had gotten sick: his father and Ines weathered it well and recovered quickly; Daniel himself was hit harder, but was soon on the mend as well.  

His mother, Tillie, and his little sister Mary were not so lucky. Their symptoms were more severe; they developed serious complications and fell gravely ill. Daniel had a few fragmented memories of standing in his pajamas outside his parents’ bedroom, longing to go in and see his mother but knowing he was not allowed… of seeing the doctor coming after supper and going from room to room… Of Ines waking him up in the night and kneeling with him in the hallway; of their father coming up the stairs a moment later, carrying a lighted candle and leading Monsignor Gonsalves to their mother’s room. 

Daniel didn’t remember refusing to go back to bed. He certainly didn’t remember Monsignor Gonsalves going in to see Tillie and then giving him a blessing right there on the floor where he’d fallen asleep. He didn’t remember being carried into his parents’ bedroom to see his mother and his little sister Mary, though he was told later that it had happened, or being put back to bed. He only remembered his father coming just before dawn and telling him and Ines that Mary had died. She was two years old. 

 

"They're not in that kind of danger," Daniel's father hurriedly added. "I promise you, they're not. I was just... remembering, that's all." 

"How about we call them tomorrow and see how they're doing?" Daniel braced himself for some fussing over the extravagance, but it never came. His father only looked relieved and grateful. 

"That's a great idea. I don't know how much change I have, though. Do you think the front desk could change a bill?" 

"We can do it here in the room, whenever you want. Hey, maybe they'll have gotten the telegrams. Think the baby will be mad that we didn't send her one?" 

His father smiled a little. "If she complains we can send her one too." He looked out the window again. "But if we go back to Western Union we'll have to keep an eye out. Looks like we're going to see some more rain." 

 

The clouds were low and grey and heavy the next morning as Daniel and his father went up the Boardwalk to church, at the chapel set up in Convention Hall. Afterwards they went back to the Ambassador for a late breakfast. A few raindrops were falling as they neared the hotel; by the time they sat down in the dining room, the rain was spattering against the window panes. 

Back up in the room, Daniel placed the call to Ines, and took turns with his father talking to her. She sounded tired — sure enough, the kids had measles, and the baby had gotten sick too — but happy to hear from them. Daniel's father seemed a little more relaxed after the phone call. They passed the time indoors until late afternoon, when the rain finally stopped and they could go back out to the Boardwalk.   

They turned south this time. As they walked, Daniel tried picking up his pace a little bit. He had to pay more attention to his stride, so he wouldn't trip on the prosthetic foot or buckle the knee, and he found he had to stop and rest more frequently. But he was able to keep it up, and eight blocks later he was pointing out the President Hotel to his father. "That's where we go swimming. I've never seen it from the Boardwalk side before." A little bit farther, and they were able to look straight up Albany Avenue. Daniel pointed out the War Memorial in the middle of its little park, and the Knife and Fork Inn with its steep, stepped roofline that reminded him of some of the houses he'd seen in Belgium. 

There were only a few small hotels and a shop or two on this end of the Boardwalk. Daniel looked back up towards the Ambassador. "How far do you think we've come?" 

"More than a quarter mile, I'd say. Do you want to sit down for a bit?" 

"Sure." They found a bench looking out over the water. His father brushed off the water with a handkerchief, and Daniel spread his blanket out over the damp chilly seat. 

He was content to be still and listen to the waves. It wouldn't be much longer, he thought, until Atlantic City would be in full swing; if he wanted to listen to the waves in peace he'd have to be up with the sun. Maybe there was a silver lining to his having come here in the winter: he'd gotten to see the town when it was relatively quiet. 

He thought back to those early days, to the train ride from Mitchel, the stretcher ride up to his room, the cast and the first operation and the traction. It seemed like a long time ago now. Back then he'd had a notion he'd be up and walking after only a week or two at the hospital.... 

He'd been set straight on that real quick, of course. But now... well, it had taken longer than a week or two, but still, here he was, walking around on the prosthetic and managing outside the hospital. Soon he'd be able to manage leaving Atlantic City for a visit home. And someday he'd be discharged. That day was still far away, but it was on his mental horizon now.  

Daniel looked up. Next to him on the bench, his father was sitting with his arms crossed, gazing out over the ocean. When he finally spoke up, a few minutes later, it was as if his murmured words were being quietly, gently tugged out of his mouth by the receding tide. 

"'I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky....' " 

As Daniel half-listened to his father, he had a sense of his father's thoughts being pulled away from Atlantic City back up to Ines and the children, back to the house on Winter Avenue, back to Mary — and from there, inevitably, to Mamãe —  

— and was this what his father had been like back home, his thoughts being constantly drawn south to Atlantic City? Daniel frowned at the thought. 

" ...And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, 
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.' " 

"Think Charlie'll say it for me when I get home?" asked Daniel. "I'll have to save up, won't I? I hear the going rate's a nickel now?" 

His father scoffed. "I'm sure he'll offer to say it for you, but don't worry about the nickels. That's a vovô job." Daniel chuckled.  

"Ines sounded good this morning," he said. 

"She did. That was a good idea to call her, Daniel. Thank you again for setting that up." 

"Ah, it was no problem. And it was good to check up on her, right? Hear how everyone's doing?" 

"Sure. Though there was no real reason to worry, they were doing all right when I left. Last night... that was more... something else." 

"I just hope I wasn't keeping you up like that when I was away," Daniel teased. 

His father  smiled. "I knew you could handle yourself. You're brave and tough. Speaking of tough, how have you been doing? It sounds like you've been real busy. And here you are tromping around on your new leg, and all these changes coming up.... Are you doing all right? How are your spirits?"  

"Well, it's more dragging than tromping with the leg...." Daniel shrugged. He felt a little embarrassed that his father was still worried enough to ask that same question — and that it felt comforting, somehow, when he asked it. "Spirits've been good, I guess. It's been so busy, I've haven't really had time to think about it.  There's ups and downs, but they're normal, you know? If I get down about something, it goes away after a while. It's not like before.” 

"That's good. And you're sleeping okay?" Daniel nodded. "So what comes next?" 

"Keep working with the leg, get used to using it in different situations — like grass or gravel, or walking down a hill." 

His father's face lit up. "What about sand?" 

"Maybe. The sand's not good for the joints, so I probably won't be wearing it to the beach. But once I get better with it, I can start working on that furlough home." Daniel suddenly remembered the SSR, and how Major Tucker wanted to schedule the interview on that first furlough. Between the trip to the interview and the trip home, he'd have to make sure he was good and ready: there would be no hospital half a mile up the Boardwalk to rescue him if he messed up. 

He wished could tell his father about the opportunity at the SSR — or at least part of him wished that he could; another part didn't want to say anything just yet, and that made him uncomfortable. It was a relief to not have to make a decision, to know that he couldn’t say anything. Instead, as he got up from the bench and shook out the blanket, he told his father more about physical therapy and exercise bikes and the obstacle courses he'd be walking once he reached the advanced class. 

They walked a few more blocks south before turning to admire the view of Atlantic City and start the walk back to the Ambassador. Daniel didn't say anything, but he was relieved to get back; the weather was turning clammy again, and bizarre phantom sensations were starting to lick at the sole of his right foot. An aspirin, a fresh stump sock, and some tapping and deep massage did the trick. Unfortunately he had to explain what he was doing to his father, but he kept it light — just some irritation, happened from time to time, never lasted long — and his father seemed reassured. 

They spent a quiet evening and were up early the next morning to pack their bags. After breakfast, they went back to the hospital, dropped Daniel's things off at his room, and went back downstairs to drink coffee and wait for the Red Cross bus to the train station. 

"I'm sorry things didn't work out the way were hoping this weekend," Daniel's father quietly said. "I'm afraid I haven't been good company." 

Daniel scoffed. "Sure you have." He took a deep breath and tried to ignore the knot in his stomach: it was almost time for the bus. 

"I hope so. I really appreciate all the trouble you went to making the plans. I had a good time.  The best part was seeing you, of course." 

Daniel looked down at his knee as his father continued. "I wish I could come more often. Maybe things'll slow down enough that I'll be able to. We'll keep trying to get your sisters down here. And I promise, I'll come back as soon as I can. 

"You've come so far. You've worked so hard..." He waited until Daniel looked up and met his eyes. "I'm so proud of you." 

They were interrupted by a voice announcing the arrival of the bus. Around them, the lobby filled with the bustles of visitors standing up and collecting their things and saying their good-byes. 

Daniel's father reluctantly stood up. He waited as Daniel stood and adjusted his crutches. Together they walked toward the front doors. 

"Thank you again for coming. It's been so good to see you. Say hi to everyone for me? And just think, it might not too much longer until I'm able to come up there myself," said Daniel.  

"Won't that be something? I warn you, though — Charlie's going to ask you all about that stuff on your chest." Daniel's father patted the left side of his own jacket, indicating Daniel's service ribbons. His voice grew even more gentle. "And, you know... maybe someday you might feel like telling the rest of us about it, too. 

"But that's for another time, right? Thank you again for everything." He put his bag down, and, when Daniel was ready, gave him a long hug. “Deus te bencao,” he said softly. God bless you. 

He picked up his bag again and went out to the bus. He turned back to smile at Daniel just before climbing up the steps and disappearing into the bus. Daniel waited until the bus pulled away up North Carolina Avenue before starting back to the elevator. It was time to go back upstairs, sign in, and find out where he was supposed to be. His weekend away from the hospital was over.

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Vovô: "Grandpa"

---

Thanks to @keysburg and @CotyCat82 for test reading.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments.

Chapter 38: The Steel Pier

 

 

 

Up in his room, Sousa started unpacking as he waited for Lieutenant Munn, and thought about how he'd answer the questions she'd be asking. She'd probably want to look at his leg first. He was sure he'd pass that inspection; he'd checked his leg last night and again this morning, and it had been fine. They'd have nothing to scold him for. 

And he could truthfully say he'd had no trouble with the prosthesis. He'd kept up with the wearing and walking schedule and had taken good care of his leg and of the prosthetic every night. He'd done just fine in the hotel room. He'd even had a few ideas for how, in a pinch, he could set himself up in an ordinary bathroom, one that didn't have a chair and a hand shower. It would be inconvenient, but possible. 

And he'd been able to get around in the restaurants and shops, and he hadn't fallen in the movie theater, and he was coming back without any damage to his prosthesis or to the skin on his leg. All the objectives had been met: it had been a successful weekend. 

And he'd gotten to see his father again. That had been good.  

He waited for the tight feeling in his chest to pass and went back to unpacking.  

So, since his trip out of the hospital was a success, the next goal to work for would be the furlough. He'd needed to build up his endurance and learn to walk on slopes; what else would he need to do to qualify? 

He looked at his now-empty bag. How would he manage that? Would he be off crutches by the time he got his furlough? Even if he were, he'd still need to bring his crutches home with him. Maybe he could carry them in one hand and carry his bag in the other.... 

That sounded awkward. Maybe he could ask the physical therapists about it; they might have some sort of trick. He thought of Ayers, who was not only still using crutches but had gotten fancier ones. He should probably talk to him as well. 

 

He got his chance that evening, after supper. As he stepped off the elevator, he spotted Ayers a few steps away, waiting for him. 

"Sousa. You said you wanted to ask me something?" said Ayers. "What's up?" 

"Just something I was thinking about after my pass. You've been at this longer than I have; how long does it usually take to be done with crutches?"  They started walking away from the elevators toward the hall.  

"You mean while using the prosthesis? It's different for everyone, especially for us." Sousa knew what Ayers meant: as above-the-knee amputees, walking with a prosthetic was even more difficult for them. "And then just because you can walk without the crutches doesn't mean you have to, or even that you should, or at least I think so. The physical therapists would probably snap their caps if they heard me telling you that. They're after me to quit using crutches outside the gym. But I'd rather keep 'em." Ayers smiled wryly. "Bet you weren't expecting that, were you?" 

"No, not really." 

"See, here's the thing: you know how heavy the leg is.  Have you seen any of the above-the-knee guys walking without canes or crutches?" Ayers slipped his arms out of the loops of his crutches and propped them against the wall. "Even the strongest ones limp a little, and some of them almost waddle." 

He took a few steps, limping heavily as he went. "You see? I don't mind working on that limp in physical therapy, but I'll be damned if I'm going to kill my back and knock myself out hauling that leg around like that all day. If I use the crutches, I can wear the leg and walk on it longer without getting as tired. It's easier on the stump, and I don't have to worry so much about the knee going out on me."   

He turned around and limped back. "Maybe it'll be different when I get my permanent prosthesis. I hear they're a lot lighter, and fit better. But till then?" He made a dismissive sound and threaded his arms back into his crutches. 

"Well, you've given me something to think about," said Sousa. "Though even with crutches I'm still beat. But don't you miss having your hands free?" 

Ayers stopped, adjusted his stance, and lifted his arms. His crutches dangled from the loops around his forearms. "You were saying? I'm telling you, Sousa, you should go ahead and ask for a pair of these." 

Was Ayers just playing dumb? "What about carrying things?" 

"That's why God gave us pockets." 

"Yeah? I wasn't a kangaroo, last time I checked." It came out a little sharper than Sousa had intended, and he softened his tone. "I'm just thinking ahead. I'd like to get a furlough and go see my family, but I don't know how I'm going to carry my bag." 

"Easy: you don't carry it. No offense, Sousa, but you didn't travel much before Uncle Sam gave you a ticket, did you? Just get the baggage man or a red cap to help you. People do it all the time, nobody's going to look twice at you — and if they do, who cares? There's nothing wrong with asking for help if you need it, and it's stupid to let false pride keep you from what you want to do." 

Sousa smiled a little, and didn’t bother to ask Ayers how he intended to carry a cup of coffee in his pocket. 

 

The girls came to bridge club the next evening, and Grahn, Sousa, and Tate happily welcomed Betty to their table. She asked them about their weeks, and asked Sousa about his pass and if he'd tried any of the restaurants they'd suggested, and told him how glad she was that he'd had a good time. 

"And what about you?" she asked Grahn. "I was worried we wouldn't see you. Last week Hazel said you might be gone from the hospital by the time we came back?" 

"It's true. They kept me another week, but I might not last until next Tuesday," said Grahn. He told her a little about how he'd be finishing up his rehabilitation at Walter Reed. 

"Why can't you finish up here?" Betty complained. "You've been here all this time but you never got to see the summer season. That hardly seems fair." 

"You're right, it's not fair at all. But I still got to see some of Atlantic City. I've been to Humphrey's, and to the Boardwalk, and I've even been swimming." 

"You mean at the beach? You must have frozen! It's been so cold this spring!" 

"I didn't say I swam very long —" 

"What about the piers? The Steel Pier was open on Easter, did you get to see it?" 

"No, I was out of town." 

"Oh." She turned to Sousa. "How about you?" 

"Not me," he said. "I wasn't up to it that weekend." Tate shook his head as well. 

"Hmm. So how much longer do you think you'll be here?" Betty asked Grahn. 

"No one knoweth the day or the hour of my departure, not even the doctors, but only whosoever keeps track of the beds at Walter Reed." 

"So they could tell you tomorrow...." 

"And I'd pack my bag and be on the way first thing the next morning." 

After the first hand was over, Betty excused herself to go powder her nose. When she came back, she brought Hazel and Doris with her. 

"So Betty says you might ditch us this week?" said Hazel to Grahn.  

Grahn made a regretful face. "Unfortunately, yes. Though not because I want to." 

"Well, you can't leave without seeing the Steel Pier. It opens tomorrow, for Decoration Day. Why don't we all go?" Hazel looked around the table, making it clear that "we" included Tate and Sousa. "Us and anyone else who wants to come along. It's only a couple of blocks away. Louis Prima is playing!" 

"I'm sure every man here would love to go," said Grahn. "But not all of us are cleared to leave the hospital."  

"Then some of us can stay here and play bridge with whoever wants to," said Hazel, and Betty and Doris nodded in agreement. "Oh, come on! You have to say yes." 

She finally negotiated a time with Grahn, reminded him to make an announcement at the end of class, and hurried back with Doris to their tables for the next hand. Betty sat down across from Grahn, between Sousa and Tate. 

"You'll both come too, right?" she said.   

"I should be able to make it," said Tate. 

"I'll have to check my schedule," said Sousa. "It sounds fun." 

"I'm counting on you," said Grahn. 

"So what's it like in there, anyway?" Sousa asked Betty. "I saw the ads, they've got everything but the kitchen sink — how does it all fit?" 

"Sometimes they've even got the kitchen sink," said Betty, "if they have one of those 'Kitchens of Tomorrow' exhibitions. I don't know what they've got this year. It used to always be cars, and a couple of times they've had Stark Industries, but of course there's been none of that since the war started...." 

Sousa kept her talking, and now and then Grahn or Tate gave him a knowing look, but if Betty figured out he was gathering intelligence on the terrain, she didn't say anything. She was a good informant, able to describe the layout of the ballrooms and fun houses and arcades and ice cream stands and theaters and observation decks with benches, so that by the time bridge club broke up that evening, Sousa felt pretty confident that he could take on the Steel Pier. 

 

The Pier came to the hospital that night when Louis Prima and some of the other entertainers put on a show for the patients. The next morning, patients and staff gathered for the hospital's Memorial Day ceremony.  

As he waited for the ceremony to start, Sousa looked over his program again, without really reading it. He had even more names to remember this year: so many good guys, gone, because they were standing an inch or two in the wrong direction, or got there just a second too late or too early... now sleeping in Italy or France, or at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. 

And still he was here. It could have been him, too. It was only chance that it wasn't: twelve inches closer to that shell and he might have been done for, a gold star hanging in his father's window. But chance had left him behind to  remember. 

 

 That afternoon, Sousa put on his Class As again and went down to the lobby with Grahn. They were soon joined by a few other fellows from the bridge club. Soon the girls arrived: Hazel, Betty, Doris, and a new face, Hazel's friend Phyllis. Doris stayed back with Tipton and the other men who weren't going, and the rest of the group went down the hall to the hospital's Boardwalk entrance.  

It was cool and misty outside. Sousa walked as quickly as he dared on the damp wooden boards. He hated holding the group back — he was the only above-the-knee amputee in the bunch — but he knew he'd be even more of a nuisance if he slipped and fell. It would be easier, he reminded himself, once they reached the Pier and were under cover. 

It wasn't. The floors were dry, but the Pier held other problems. Betty had told him about the half-flights of steps connecting the lobby and the upper and lower decks; they were a little steeper than he was used to, and as he carefully got himself up and down he was acutely conscious of how slow he was, and of the way he was holding the group back and blocking traffic. 

The halls and the galleries weren't much better. The Steel Pier was almost half a mile long, and Sousa had figured that he'd be able to handle that distance, especially because they'd be stopping now and then to take in an attraction. He hadn't counted on how difficult and tiring it would be to walk that distance in a confined space choked with people. The prosthetic worked best when he walked at a steady pace, and in the crowd it was impossible to get into the rhythm of walking. People were constantly cutting in front of him, or brushing almost close enough to trip him, or stopping dead in the aisle to peer at a program or gawk at a sign or wipe a child's nose. He had to continually adjust his stride, taking small, interrupted steps without tripping on the prosthetic foot. It was physically and mentally taxing, and it meant he couldn't pay much attention to the Steel Pier itself or even to the rest of the group. He had to concentrate on keeping his footing in the crowd. 

At least it helped keep his mind off other things. As he made his halting way up the corridor, he could tell he was drawing looks. The pity looks — oh that poor man — were bad enough, but the stares — from people who looked like they should have known better, some of them weren't even trying to be discreet about it —  

He frowned and kept going — and then had to stop short again. The sudden stop caused the knee of the prosthetic to lock up. As he leaned on his crutches and straightened himself out, he sensed a couple of people pushing their way around him, crackling impatience.  

" — another one from the hospital...." he heard one of them mutter. "...not fair to everyone else, and seeing them has to be bad for public morale.... should come on the special hospital days...."  

Sousa looked up, but the people who were so put out by his presence were well ahead of him. So were Hazel and Betty and Grahn and the rest of the group: he'd gotten cut off from them and fallen behind again. He felt his face grow hot. He hitched the prosthetic foot into place, moved his crutches forward, and started again.  

In a few steps, he caught up with Hazel, who'd hung back to wait for him. "It's so crowded!" she complained. "We were just thinking, what would you say to going straight to the ballroom? We'll be plenty early for the show, but we'll have a better chance of getting decent seats." 

"That sounds swell," said Sousa.  

 

Back in the room that night, Grahn waited until Sousa had finished his stretches before he pulled a chair over and sat down. "You had some fun tonight, didn't you?" 

"Well, sure." Sousa sat up on his bed and turned around to face Grahn. "Got to see Louis Prima again, didn't we? And's it's always a hoot watching you and the girls." Grahn snorted. "Betty'd better watch out," added Sousa. "I think Hazel has you in her sights now." 

"I doubt it. That girl's got binoculars, she's up on the high ground watching the whole field." 

"Speaking of fields, that was really something watching you carrying on to them about the cow." One of the exhibits at the Pier featured Elsie the cow, and Grahn had been surprisingly excited to see her. He'd bought a couple of postcards, and talked on and on afterwards about cows and breeds and how Elsie was a Jersey and dairy and.... 

"Well, of course," said Grahn. "Cows are important. And Elsie's a celebrity." 

They talked about some of the other things they'd seen: the hula dancers; the boxing kangaroo; the wax figures in the "March of Time"; the water show with the high divers and synchronized swimmers; the sea lions barking for fish, and the way the girls had enjoyed watching them.... 

Grahn sighed. "I'm just... I'm sorry about the business with the dancing," he said."I hope it wasn't too —" 

"It was fine. Really."  

Grahn didn't look convinced. "Still, I feel bad about it. You kind of got put on the spot, and on top of everything else being such a chore...."  

After supper, someone had suggested going to the Marine Ballroom at the ocean end of the Pier, to enjoy the beautiful views and the continuous dancing, and by the time Hazel caught wind of the idea it had already picked up enthusiastic support. She'd looked nervously over to Grahn and Sousa. 

"Sure, let's go," Sousa had said, because what else could he say? He didn't want to be selfish or a wet blanket. When they got to the crowded Ballroom, Sousa couldn't see any vacant chairs on the main level, and he hadn't felt like climbing the stairs to the gallery in hopes of finding a seat there. He'd ended up finding a bench outside on the north deck. He'd only been out there a few minutes when Hazel turned up, sat down next to him, and ignored him when he urged her to go back inside to dance. She and Betty took turns staying outside with him until the rest of the group was ready to leave. Sousa felt a little embarrassed, but he appreciated being remembered. 

Sousa shrugged a little and glanced away. "It's just the way it is. It was a good time, don't worry about it." 

"I'm glad. It wouldn't have been as much fun if you hadn't come. And we wouldn't have gotten to see you at the shooting gallery! I had no idea mole-rats had such good aim," Grahn teased. "I always thought you fellas just heaved some TNT and called it good enough." 

"You've got to use the right tool for the job. Sometimes it's an M1, and sometimes a toy rifle's all you need." 

They had finished their trip to the Steel Pier with a visit to the arcade. As they passed a shooting gallery, one of the men noticed one of the girls noticing a fluffy purple duck; it wasn't long before all the men were taking turns, competing with each other to win stuffed animals for the girls. When they finally made it back out to the Boardwalk, they were all laughing and smiling, and the girls' arms were filled with ducks and teddy bears and bunnies and two pink velveteen creatures that looked like a cross between a puppy and a deer. 

Grahn looked thoughtful. "If we did that well with the toy rifles... how many stuffed animals could we get with M1s, do you think?" 

 

Sousa had trouble falling asleep that night. He couldn't stop thinking about the Steel Pier; he'd thought he'd do better, especially since the weekend with his father had gone so well. Crowds and tight spaces: he'd just have to practice more.  

At least he hadn't fallen. And he'd made it all the way to the end of the Pier.... 

...to sit on the bench outside the Marine Ballroom.  

That had been hard. Even outside he'd been able to hear the band, they'd sounded first-rate. He'd felt the music calling him...  

Lively music, a girl's hand in his hand, his other hand on the small of her back, whispering something in her ear to try to get her to laugh. A shared moment of joy (or even of possibility, once upon a time....) 

He'd been a decent enough dancer; would he ever get that back? Any of it? He remembered Ayers limping down the hallway, and felt loss like a lead blanket covering and then crushing him. 

When he could think again, his thoughts drifted to the arcade, to the girls laughing as they were presented with one stuffed animal after another. To when he took his first turn at the shooting gallery. He'd felt unsure at first, but once he was standing comfortably and took up the rifle he grew more confident, and then he'd lifted the rifle and it all came back to him. He was himself again, the same guy he'd been for the two and a half years before he got hit. He pulled the trigger and hit the third ring of the target. 

Three turns, three prizes. On his last turn he'd shot a bullseye that won one of the crazy deer creatures.... 

At least he hadn't lost that. 

He was finally drifting off to sleep when it occurred to him: The SSR. 

Marksmanship. 

 

He made a note of it the next morning: they had everything else at the hospital, surely they'd be able to help him get in some time at a range. Maybe he could try several weapons, see how much recoil he could handle. 

He was back to his regular schedule, so after breakfast, he headed off to physical therapy. He told Lieutenant Reese a bit about the trip to the Steel Pier; she congratulated him on sticking with it, and promised to get in more practice walking in crowds and tight spaces. She also cleared Sousa to start leaving off using the wheelchair in the hospital, as he'd hoped she would. 

Next he had occupational therapy. They had him doing woodworking now, using tools powered by bicycle pedals. As usual, it was harder than it looked; he was still getting the hang of the actual pedaling, and of keeping the foot of the prosthetic on the pedal. Once he'd mastered that, he'd start an actual project: maybe something easy to start with, he thought, like a kitchen cutting board for each of his sisters. For now, he made do with scraps of wood, concentrating on keeping the power from the pedals steady and even.   

When physical therapy was over, he started back across the hospital for lunch, reviewing the rest of the day's schedule in his head: another long physical therapy session after lunch, boxing that afternoon.... Maybe he'd get a letter today with an update on Ines and the kids.... He took the elevator up to the second floor. As he reached the mezzanine, he was surprised to see Grahn, leaning on the balcony rail looking down to the Palm Court. 

"Hey there," said Sousa. "What's up?" 

"Hey, Sousa. Nothing in there —" Grahn nodded toward the dining room — "just yet, but I think we'll be treated to some chicken à la something pretty soon." 

"Makes sense; it's Thursday." 

"And as for me...." Grahn looked to the palms again and then to Sousa. "Well... Peyton gave me the orders this morning. I'm going to Walter Reed tomorrow."

 

 

Notes:

Many thanks to @keysburg and @cotycat82 for test reading, and to @keysburg for kicking me over a rough spot.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which I display with gratitude next to my snow globes and souvenir plates.

---

Mole-rat: an engineer

 

 

Elsie was (and is) the mascot for Borden dairy products, and she was indeed a celebrity. After her calves were born, they went on the road with her.

Elsie was featured with her husband and their calves in popular print advertisements. When Borden figured out a way to make a household glue out of the milk protein casein, it was only natural that Elsie's husband Elmer help introduce it.

Pink velveteen creatures inspired by this eBay listing.

 

Chapter 39: The Bed by the Window

 

 

 

When Sousa got back from boxing that afternoon, Grahn had already finished most of his packing. His patchwork quilt was gone from the foot of his bed; the top of his nightstand was clear except for a single envelope. Grahn himself was changing his clothes: it was the night of his good-bye dinner. 

Sousa changed into his own Class As, and soon they joined Irwin and Whitford out in the hall by the elevators. 

"Nice and early," said Irwin. "Grahn, you'd better fill up tonight, I don't know if they have pizza in Washington." 

"Maddox says they do," said Grahn. "And if they don't, I'll just hop the train back up here." 

"Speaking of filling up," said Sousa, "that part of the Boardwalk's going to be lousy with tourists. Does Nico's take reservations?" 

Irwin hadn't thought of that, and Sousa ended up getting chosen to call Nico's (as he knew he would.) He was glad he did: the pizza restaurant didn't hold reservations, but they would take advance notice, and by the time the group had collected itself and made it up the Boardwalk, a table was ready for them in the front of the dining room.  

They ate olives and pizza and drank beer; they made toasts and teased Grahn and swapped yarns and made terrible jokes. As they walked back down the Boardwalk after dinner, Sousa thought back to the first time he'd been at the restaurant, right after he'd gotten out of traction. He'd still been in a wheelchair, and as they'd gone back up the Boardwalk the sun was already setting. Now sunset was still a couple of hours above the horizon and it didn't even matter: the war in the Atlantic was over. No more blackout curtains, no more silly fake flowers dipped in glow-in-the-dark paint. The lights were on, gaudy and bright against the evening sky, above the rooflines and down to street level, stretching all the way up and down the Boardwalk and half a mile out to sea over the Steel Pier, their reflections rippling on the water. 

Back at the hospital, Grahn went to go visit Tipton, while Sousa went back to their room to start his evening routine. He was practiced enough now that the tasks didn't need his full attention, so no matter how closely he focused on what he was doing, thoughts of what was really happening curled into his brain like smoke under a closed door. 

He had finished his stretches and was lying on his bed reading his mail when Grahn returned, escorted by Lieutenant Munn. 

"Still can't seem to tell time," she playfully scolded. 

"Oh, I knew you'd want to get one last lecture in; I didn't want to let you down." 

Lieutenant Munn rolled her eyes, checked Sousa's leg, and went on her way. Grahn carefully hung up his uniform and went into the bathroom. In a few minutes, Sousa could hear the water running as Grahn started to wash. 

He closed his eyes for a moment as the sound of the water dragged him back to his early days in the hospital, back when he was in traction. He'd been so tired and uncomfortable and out of sorts... That sound of the running water in the evenings had been welcome. It had meant that he'd made it through another day, and that the nightly backrub was coming soon. And it had meant that he wasn't alone. 

When he got out of the bathroom, Grahn checked his nightstand and closet drawers, leaving each one open a crack, before he sat down on his own bed. 

""Looks like you're all set," said Sousa. 

"Yeah. Packing's about done — just a few last-minute things in the morning — and I've got my orders and my ticket." Grahn nodded toward the envelope on his nightstand. "Turned in my library books... Called Mrs. Lambe... Hayes has what he needs for the bridge club — you sure you don't mind?" 

"Not at all. He wants to, and he's got seniority on me anyway."  Hayes had volunteered for the task before Grahn had had a chance to offer it to Sousa, and that was just fine with him: he had other things he wanted to focus on. 

"All right. Just keep an eye on him, okay? Don't let him start getting mad with power. I'll expect regular reports." 

Sousa snorted. "Any other instructions?" He reached for an elastic bandage. 

"Just keep me posted." 

Sousa started wrapping his leg. He waited until he was halfway done before he spoke again. "So what time's your train?" 

"The bus starts loading at 0545." Sousa winced in sympathy, and they complained for a while about the early hour and breakfast on the train and the cruelty of the Army until Grahn was able to wrap his foot and go out to make his final good-byes. 

 

Grahn's wake-up call came at 0500 the next morning.  Sousa waited as Grahn washed and dressed, and when the orderly appeared to pick up Grahn's bag, Sousa shrugged on his robe, grabbed his crutches, and went with them down to the lobby. Grahn checked in with the clerk with the clipboard, watched his bag get tagged, and then joined Sousa in a spot out of the way of the other patients. He was carrying both of his canes in one hand. 

"Shouldn't be too much longer until it's your turn, right?" asked Grahn. "Have they said anything to you about when you'll be ready to go?" 

"Not a word." 

"Well, don't wait too long. I'll probably be there through August, we can go see the sights — you were at Belvoir, right? You can show us around." Grahn looked smug. "But I'll probably see you before then." 

Sousa looked up in surprise. 

"My mom and dad are talking about taking an actual vacation here this summer. And then Peyton's threatened to bring me back up here next time his doctor friends are in town. You didn't think you were getting rid of me that easily, did you?" 

Sousa chuckled a little. "I'm just surprised you'd ever put up with seeing this place again." 

"It wasn't all bad." 

"Well, it's not going to be the same. ...We're going to miss you." 

The rumble of an engine announced the arrival of the bus. Waiting patients started to stand up and drift toward the doors as the clerk called out instructions. 

"All aboard," said Grahn. He turned to Sousa. "I'm going to miss you, too. Take care of yourself, all right?" They shook hands, and then to Sousa's surprise, Grahn leaned in for a quick, strong hug, mindful of Sousa's crutches and his own canes. " 'Bye for now." 

"Grahn... Thank you for everything," said Sousa. 

"Eh." Grahn tried to shrug it off, and glanced over to the clerk. "I'd better get in line before she wallops me with that clipboard. I'll drop you a line when I get there; hopefully I can find Maddox and the others soon. Keep in touch!" 

Sousa smiled and nodded, and Grahn got into line. He turned and waved again before he went out the door to climb onto the bus. Sousa stood and waited until the bus pulled away, and then stood there a little longer, before he turned to take the elevator back to his room. Back on the eighth floor, he glanced at the schedule board. Grahn's name and schedule had already been erased, and his section of the board washed clean. 

 

At rounds, the doctors asked Sousa how he was doing; a minute or two later they asked him again. When they left, Lieutenant Munn stayed back.  

"As soon as you're dressed," she said, "please let the desk know so we can get housekeeping in there. They'll do a deep clean on that side of the room, and then we'll move your things over there and clean this side to be ready for a new patient. And then you'll have the window bed!" 

"One of the perks of seniority?" 

"That and mobility." 

"Makes sense. Do you know who's moving in yet?" 

"Not yet. But a train's coming in from Mitchel today, so we want to have the bed ready P.D.Q." 

 

Late that morning, Sousa went back up to his room to see how things were coming along. He'd already done his own preparations; he'd stopped by the HX and picked up some candy, to have something on hand to share. Now he could see that the housekeepers had come and gone, leaving the room gleaming and scented with pine oil and the fresh, cold sea air pouring from the open window. 

It was odd how clearly his bed was no longer his, how that side of the room had gone from tidily occupied to scrubbed and empty. His new bed was freshly made, with his knitted blanket folded at its foot. They'd moved his nightstand and bedside table to this side of the room as well: all of his things were right where he'd left them. Even his clothes had been moved to the other side of the closet. The telephone and the radios were in their usual places. 

He sat on his new bed and took in his new perspective. He wouldn't be able to see the room door as easily, but that meant he'd have more privacy, especially if he drew the curtain. He was closer to the bathroom.  

And he was further away from the supply shelf. He remembered how Grahn had kept a little cache of supplies in a nightstand drawer. In a few minutes he'd stocked one of his own, with a few elastic bandages and stump socks in the sizes he wore most often. 

He put the candy away, smoothed out his bedspread, and went back out to catch the elevator to lunch. One of the desk clerks was working on the schedule board outside the room. She'd transferred Sousa's schedule to where Grahn's had used to be, and had just finished washing the section where Sousa's schedule had been posted. 

"Any news?" asked Sousa. 

The clerk looked down from her stepstool. "Oh, hi, Lieutenant Sousa," she said. She started to climb down; Sousa instinctively extended a hand. She smiled and took it. "No new roommate for you yet. We haven't heard anything yet; I'm surprised. Maybe we won't get a train today after all." 

 

After physical therapy that afternoon, Sousa asked one of the therapists about brushing up on his marksmanship. He was pleased to hear that it would be no trouble at all. The convalescent center at the Traymore housed patients who were preparing to return to active duty, and their reconditioning included trips to the range: He could go with them. A clerk at the physical therapy desk promised to set it up for him — perhaps he could go as soon as next week. This would be good, he thought. He'd been thinking about sending an update to Major Tucker at the SSR; maybe he'd wait until he'd had a day or two at the range, so he could tell him about that, too. 

The SSR... What else could he do to prepare? He remembered what Tucker had said last week: You were ready last December... You've already shown you're smart and observant.... 

It was nice of Tucker to say that, but Sousa didn't like the idea of not doing more to prepare for the interview. Observant... He remembered some of the games and exercises they'd taught him back when he was training for recon. Maybe he could start brushing up on some of those.  

When he went back to his room after dinner, there was no new roommate waiting for him. He did have some mail from home, a letter from Tillie and another from his father. He saved them for after he'd showered. But once he was dressed in his pajamas and sitting on his bed, he had a hard time settling in to read. He was not used to being alone. He opened the door to the hall, switched on the radio, sat back down, and opened the envelopes. 

The letters had been mailed a few days ago, and were mostly reports on the measles situation. The children were doing well, with no complications — Ines holding up — children loved the telegrams — Ines had to keep the telegrams put away, so the children wouldn't strain their eyes trying to read them over and over again — would deliver the presents from Atlantic City the next day.... 

Sousa smiled and glanced up at the calendar. It was hard to believe that this time last week, he was unpacking his suitcase in the Ambassador Hotel. 

 

The next day passed quickly: a trip to the pool, another session of physical therapy.... There was enough time to catch a movie in the afternoon. From there he went to dinner. 

As they started to eat, Whitford shared some news: the train had come, and had brought two new patients to their floor. He hadn't caught their names, though, or any other useful intel. 

"Grahn made it to Washington, he sent us a postcard," he continued. "The clerk'll put it up in the lounge." 

"What else did he say?" someone asked. 

"That was all," said Whitford. " 'Here in Washington, more soon.' I think he sent it from the train station." 

 

Back up on the eighth floor, Sousa stopped by the desk to get his mail. There were a couple of letters from home — and a postcard of England General Hospital. Puzzled, he turned it over. It was from Grahn. 

If you get this, I made it to Washington train station. More soon. Did they give you the window bed? — HG 

"Oh, Lieutenant Sousa, I'm glad I caught you." Sousa looked up: it was the day nurse.  

"You have a new roommate," she said. "I’m going in there now, I can introduce you if you like." 

"Sure, that'd be swell." He started following her down the hall. 

"He came down from Mitchel this afternoon. Just so you know, they had a rough trip, lots of delays on the train. And he's going to be in traction for a few weeks, so he's got the frame and the trapeze set up." 

"Thanks." As they passed the chalkboard outside the room, Sousa glanced at the new entry. 

8-130A 
1st LT. CONOVER, JAMES K.  
R — BK-FX — TX 

 

He didn't have time to puzzle out the abbreviations: they were walking into the room.  

"How are you doing? Feeling any better?" asked the nurse. 

The new guy sighed, as if he were about to deliver bad news, but the nurse kept talking. "And look who I found! This is your roommate —" 

"Hi," said the new guy, and turned his attention back to the nurse. "Not really. My leg still hurts. Are you sure the traction's set up right? ...No, the food tasted all right, I just couldn't eat much, stomach's still bothering me...." 

As he talked on, Sousa went over to his side of the room and drew the curtain. The traction frame clamped to the bed, the trapeze dangling overhead... it had given him an unpleasant jolt. He wondered if it had been like that for Grahn as well, to walk in and have the big metal frame staring him in the face again. 

And then there was... the other thing. He'd noticed it right away. The new guy didn't have a traction cast; there was already had a traction weight hanging over the end of the bed, just like one he'd had, and the weight was connected to his right leg, just as it had been for him. But instead of being tightly wrapped in elastic bandages, the new guy's right leg was cradled in an elaborate splint, and instead of ending above the knee or in the middle of his calf, it ended in five toes, just like his other leg. 

So: not a member of the club. 

Which was good for him — of course it was — Sousa smothered a flare of worry and embarrassment. It would be fine, he reminded himself. He went about his business, laying out his things, keeping an ear out for his turn to talk to the new guy. 

Finally he heard the rattle of the radio table and then the telephone table being pulled into position. The nurse explained the shift change and said good-night to the new guy and then to Sousa. Sousa walked her to the door and closed it. 

"Wait, why are you closing the door?" asked the new guy. 

"Well, I'm going to take a shower in a few minutes. I can leave it open for now if you want." 

"No, that's all right." 

Sousa came around to the side of the bed and extended his hand. "Daniel Sousa, 339th." As the new guy shook his hand, Sousa was struck by how soft it was: like a desk worker's, or a hospital patient's.  

"Kip Conover. I was attached to the First Army for the AG's office." 

The Adjutant General's office: so, a pencil-pusher. Sousa didn't have any particular grudge against the men in the back (well, aside from those rat bastards who only sent supplies on to the front after they'd taken the best stuff for themselves — Sousa knew, with moral certainty, that there was a special place in Hell for those guys, or Purgatory at least, where they could sit in the snow with cold wet feet and C ration lima beans to pay back all the socks and canned spaghetti and meatballs they'd taken away from the guys in the front who needed them —)  

Conover wouldn't have been a sock thief, though, and Sousa knew that the bureaucracy was necessary — he'd always been told it took five men in the back to support one man in the front — and he knew many of the men doing those jobs would rather have been sent into combat. He wasn't going to look down on Conover for not having been in action. 

But he couldn't help wondering what the guy had done to his leg, and how he'd managed to do it. 

"So... you come in from Mitchel?" asked Sousa. 

"Yeah. That train ride was a real treat. No offense, but I'm not really up for a chat right now, and I don't want to keep you from your shower." 

"...Sure." Sousa nodded, and headed off to his side of the room. He sat down on his bed and started the process of getting his prosthesis off. 

He took his time in the shower. When he came out, he heard Conover talking: he was on the phone. 

"...Yeah. Yeah, they're giving me stuff for it... Just one... Yes, I've had dinner... Really? That's just fantastic, I can't wait... I don't know yet. Oh, that's a good idea... Okay. You too, Mom. Good night."  

Conover hung up the phone. Sousa waited for a moment; Conover didn't say anything, so he turned to his mail. He was deep in Tillie's letter — she was recounting what Ines had told her on the phone about how much the kids had liked the presents from Atlantic City — when a knock sounded at the door. He reached for his crutches. 

"Come in," called Conover. 

"Telegram for Lieutenant Conover?" 

"Right here. ...Close the door on your way out, will you? Thanks." 

Lieutenant Munn arrived a few minutes later to start her shift. She counted Sousa's nose and looked at his leg, and then spent some time with Conover, doing a quick exam and letting him know what to expect. Soon after she left, another telegram arrived; another fifteen minutes, and the telephone rang. 

"Conover. Oh..." His voice began to sweeten. "Oh, baby. Oh, it's so good to hear your voice. Yes, yes, I'm okay...." 

Sousa suppressed a smile. It was too bad he didn't know Conover well enough yet to tease him: this would be 18-karat material. 

"...Really? Well, I know I'll like it, whatever it is. I can't wait... You too.  Love you. Good night." 

Sousa waited, but Conover didn't say anything to him, so he went about wrapping his leg and getting ready for bed. Lieutenant Munn came back again to see Conover and give him his shots. After she left, Sousa said good night and turned out his light.  

 

As the night passed, Lieutenant Munn slipped in and out of the room every couple of hours to see Conover, but Sousa barely noticed; he was dog-tired, and if he woke up at all he fell back to sleep quickly. Before he knew it, the sun was peeking around the window shade.  

When he got out of the bathroom, Lieutenant Munn was on the other side of the curtain talking to Conover. "...So you've had your pain medicine and you're all squared away for now. I'll be back in a bit when the doctors come on rounds." She raised her voice slightly. "Good morning, Lieutenant Sousa." 

"Good morning, ma'am. Good morning, Conover." 

Sousa waited until she had left before making his way to the supply shelf to pick up some stump socks. As he passed in front of the other bed, out of the corner of his eye he saw Conover's eyes widen. 

They hadn't said anything to Conover about his being an amputee, had they? Well, it made sense; they hadn't said anything to him about Grahn. He kept his face calm. Might as well just get it out there. 

"They keep all the supplies here," he casually said. "These are the special socks for under my prosthesis." He tucked them into his pajama pocket and turned around. "So, your first night. Did you sleep well?" 

Conover shrugged. "I guess. So... how long've you been here?" 

Sousa pushed the chair over so he could sit at Conover's eye level. "Right after Christmas. I got hit in Belgium." 

"The Ardennes?" 

"Yeah. How about you?" 

"France. So where are you from?" 

"Near Boston." 

"Yeah? And where'd you go to school?" 

That sure came up quickly. Sousa kept his voice light. "Fort Benning." 

Conover chuckled a little, but looked expectant. 

"Before that, Fort Belvoir, and before the Army got me? Taunton High School. Go Tigers." 

"So you qualified. Hm. I've heard of Taunton. Big mill town, isn't it?" 

Before Sousa could mention that Taunton was more of a small city than a big town, and had other industry besides the mills, Conover started talking about how he'd gone to Princeton and was from Trenton, helpfully mentioning that Trenton was the capital of New Jersey and was not far from Atlantic City. Sousa thought of asking him which of Trenton's factories his family worked in; instead, he bit his tongue and asked if his family still lived there. They did — mother, father, older sister; younger brother serving in Burma...  

Was he married? Conover smiled and reached for his wallet. He opened it up and showed Sousa a studio picture of himself in his uniform with a pretty young woman, who was posed with her left hand — and the diamond ring she wore on it — clearly visible. "Molly. My fiancée." 

"Congratulations." 

"Thanks." As Conover put his wallet away, Sousa weighed his options — try to drag the conversation along a little longer? Or ditch? He was saved by a knock at the door: the doctors had arrived on rounds. 

They greeted and welcomed Conover, and one of the doctors introduced him to Peyton. 

"Good to meet you. Sorry I missed you yesterday," said Peyton. "Let's see how Lieutenant Sousa's doing, and then we'll back to visit." They took a look at Sousa's leg, asked a few routine questions, and went back over to Conover's bed. Sousa set about getting ready to dress, but there was no way he could avoid overhearing the conversation on the other side of the privacy curtain. 

"This is 1st Lieutenant James Conover," said the first doctor, "24 years old, past medical history unremarkable. Compound fracture right tib-fib in a motor vehicle accident — " 

"Let me guess," interrupted Peyton. "Front passenger side of a jeep?" 

"Yes," grunted Conover. 

"Today is day 5," continued the first doctor. "Open reduction on the day of the accident, evac'd from Paris Wednesday night, transferred to EGH yesterday." 

"All right," said Peyton. "Let's unhook that traction and take a look at your leg...." 

Meanwhile, Sousa tried on the prosthesis, took it off and put on a thinner stump sock, and tested it again. Satisfied, he seated his leg in the socket, fastened the belt around his hips, stood up, and pulled his trousers up the rest of the way. Then he made his bed — an awkward task, but he was getting better at it — and sat on the bed to wait for the doctors to leave. 

Once they'd gone, he brushed his teeth, shaved, and put on his shirt. It was Sunday, so he put his missal in his pocket. Then he pulled the privacy curtain back a little. 

"That'll give you a bit more sunlight," he said. "I'm leaving for breakfast soon, but do you need anything? I'd be happy to stop by the Exchange for you." 

"Thanks, but I think I'll be okay." 

"Are you sure? Writing paper? Gum?" Conover just shook his head. "Well, if you think of anything...." 

"Sure. So how's the food here?" 

"Well, it's just like everything else, you can always find something to complain about if you look hard enough." He thought of the snacks they'd sent him when he was still on bed rest, and how they'd taken care to never send up the same thing two days in a row. "But they do a good job. The tray meals are usually the same as what they're serving in the dining hall. I think it's French toast this morning." 

 

"Here you go, Sousa." Whitford passed Sousa a small pitcher of syrup. "So how's your new roommate?" 

"Thanks." Sousa took the syrup and started to pour it over his French toast. "Not much to say. His name's Conover. He was with the AG, broke his leg in France. He's got all ten toes, family's local, he's engaged. Other than that, not much to say. Maybe he's still a little pogled." He passed the syrup to Irwin. 

 

Sousa left breakfast early, to leave himself plenty of time to walk to the Chalfonte for Mass. He went back to his room afterwards; he wanted to drop off his missal and rest a bit before going to his first therapy session of the day. 

He had not even sat down when a hesitant knock sounded at the open door. "Kip? Oh, Kip!" 

Sousa turned to see a middle-aged lady in a blue hat and gloves swoop in and embrace Conover. As she showered him with greetings ("Oh, how are you, we've been so worried...."), she was followed into the room by a young woman carrying a vase of flowers. The young woman — not the girl in Conover's wallet photo — looked to be around his and Conover's age. A middle-aged man in a navy blue sport coat came in next. 

They took turns hugging Conover and asking him about his journey and how he was feeling; Conover addressed them as "Mom", "Dad", and "Florrie." When Mrs. Conover wasn't hovering next to her son, she stood in the doorway and dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. 

 Sousa sat down on his bed to watch for a chance to escape. 

"It's so great to see you," Conover was saying. "So what's —" 

"Oh, but we have a surprise for you," said Mrs. Conover. Florrie smiled, stepped out into the hall, and returned with another young woman: the girl from the photo. Conover's face lit up, Molly blinked back tears and hurried to his side, and Sousa busied himself reading a letter as Conover and Molly kissed and cooed and oh baby-ed each other. 

Finally Molly came up for air. Conover patted the left side of his mattress, and she sat down next to him on the bed. "Mom, sit down," he said, "I know there's a chair in here somewhere, we can probably get some more at the desk." He looked around and seemed to notice that Sousa was in the room. He raised his voice a little. "This is my roommate, Lieutenant Sousa. Sousa, this is my mom and dad, my fiancée Molly Murray, and my sister Florence." Sousa put his letter in his pocket and stood up to shake hands. As he did, somewhere in the back of his head he noticed how... matched the ladies looked: Mrs. Conover's blue hat looked pristine and expensive. It was the kind of blue that wasn't easy to match, but it was the exactly same blue as her gloves and the trim on her dress and even her shoes. Florrie and Molly were also turned out in perfectly matched hats and gloves and dresses, like models in ads... or like some of the ladies he sometimes saw at the boat and country club, back when he was a kid waiting tables. 

Mr. Conover shook his hand. "So: Sousa. Italian?" 

Sousa forced himself to keep smiling. "No." 

Mrs. Conover smiled and took her husband's arm. "Like John Philip Sousa, dear. He wasn't Italian, now, was he?" She turned to Sousa. "Any relation?" 

"I'm afraid not." Sousa adjusted his crutches. "Well, I need to keep an appointment, so...." Mr. and Mrs. Conover took the hint and got out of the way. "Pleasure to meet you all. Have a good visit. Conover, I'll probably see you later this afternoon." 

"Okay," said Conover. He turned his attention to the vase of flowers that Florence was now showing him. 

 

It was fine. Sousa worked it out in his mind as he walked down the hall. He'd go to physical therapy, and if they couldn't let him start early, he could wait in the atrium. It wasn't until he was in the elevator that he remembered: when he first came to England General, they'd told him to wait a week or two before having visitors.... 

Well, they'd recommended it, so that meant it really wasn't a rule. Or maybe this guy's case was different. He should probably feel glad for him that his family lived so close: only 70 miles away, instead of 350, and on a direct train line.  They'd probably be able to come to see him often. Maybe even every weekend. And wouldn't that be swell. 

 

Sousa took his time coming back from supper, but when he reached his room the Conovers were all still there. They'd brought in chairs for everyone, crowding the room and blocking Sousa's path to his bed.  

Mrs. Conover noticed him first. "Oh, goodness. You need to get by, don't you?" She popped up from her chair and bustled about, moving her chair and urging others to move theirs (even if they were already moving) until she'd cleared a path far wider than he actually needed. "There you go," she said. 

"Thanks," said Sousa, and made his way to his side of the room. He pulled the privacy curtain and sat down on his bed.  

What was with that big production Mrs. Conover had just made? A simple "scoot over" to the others would have done the trick — but maybe she'd made a production of it because she'd wanted to it to be seen, and appreciated. It smelled of... pity. He wondered if Conover had told them he was an amputee. 

A few minutes later, the voice on the P.A. system announced the end of visiting hours. Sousa could hear chairs being taken out of the room as Mrs. Conover talked about how they hated to have to leave already.... 

"So where are you staying again?" asked Conover. 

"At the Strand. It's not the best hotel in town, but it's very close, and we were able to get a good suite." 

More good-byes — Florrie and Molly talked about how they'd be back next weekend — Mrs. Conover promised to be back the next day — and finally they were gone. 

Sousa didn't see them right away the next day; he went straight to physical therapy from breakfast and was gone all morning. Now that he was walking everywhere, it took him longer to get places, so he was among the last to arrive at lunch. As he approached the table, he could tell that there was a funny story going around. 

He sat down and got himself situated. "So what's up?" 

Some glances went around the table. Finally Hayes spoke up. "Well, a letter from Grahn came this morning with his address. And if I were you? I'd write back and skin him good." 

"What for?" 

"For leaving you his lousy luck with roommates! We thought you'd broken whatever jinx he had going, but apparently not." 

"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't remember complaining about anything." 

"Oh, you haven't," said Hayes. 

"You don't need to," added Irwin. A few snickers went around the table. 

"So which is it?" asked Ayers. "Drunk, cold fish, or six dozen relatives from Brooklyn?" 

"Something new," said Irwin. "We haven't had too many of this type yet." 

"What —?" said Sousa. "Okay, it's true we haven't exactly hit it off yet, but...." 

Irwin leaned forward. "Apparently your new roommate's mother was up at the desk this morning talking to the charge nurse, about how she hated to be a bother — " his voice drifted into a mocking falsetto — "but she wanted to know if her poor son could possibly be given a different roommate. Nothing against the young man he was rooming with now, of course, he was perfectly nice, but his... well, you know, his condition....  she was just concerned about how it would affect her son's spirits...." 

There were some snorts of laughter. Sousa felt his ears getting hot. "So how'd that go over?" 

"Like a lead balloon. The charge nurse said something about it wasn't possible to move patients around like that, but not to worry because that had never been a problem for any of the patients before. Mommy didn't like that, but before she could get going again Peyton came out — he'd been in that back office there and had heard the whole thing. And he just looked at Mommy and said, 'Did your son ask you to make this request on his behalf?'  

"Mommy said no, and before she could get started again Peyton said, 'Does he know you're here?' 

"She said no, and Peyton said something about how of course she'd want the best her your son, and that she should remember that her son is an officer in the United States Army, and  knows that this is an Army hospital with 2800 patients, not a summer camp or a pleasure cruise. 

"And then he said some nice stuff about you, Sousa, and how you'd be a good roommate for him, and he pointed out that you're far enough along in your program that you weren't even going to be around that much and so there really was no need for her to worry."  

"That's quite a recommendation: 'Swell roommate, he's never around.' " 

"Smart roommate, in this case," said Irwin. "You watch: she's going to be here every weekend." The talk turned to the six dozen relatives from Brooklyn — meant well, but there were just so many of them — other well-meaning family members — useless items in care packages....  

Sousa took a roll and passed on the basket. He was confident that Conover hadn't sent his mother out to the nurses' desk or even dropped her a hint: Conover had been with the A.G., he knew how things worked, and after that initial surprise, he hadn't seemed too nervous about the amputation. Whatever Mrs. Conover thought, she was just a guest, she wasn't his actual roommate. And it was true that it should be easy to avoid her. 

Still, that look of pity, the way she'd made sure someone saw how considerate she was being, the idea that the sight of him might be depressing... all those worries were supposed to be for the world outside the hospital, and now she'd dragged them in where they didn't belong, right into his very room. All she needed to do was point and shriek to make it complete. 

 

She was still there when Sousa finally got back from dinner. At least she was the only one there, so he had a clear path to his side of the room and an empty chair to sit in. She didn't leave until the P.A. announced the end of visiting hours. 

"Now, don't worry about me, I'll be just fine. The sun's up and I can take the streetcar down Pacific Avenue. I'll see you in the morning." Sousa's eyes widened at the words "in the morning," but he didn't say anything. He waited until she was good and gone before he closed the door and set about his evening routine. 

He had just finished his shower when the phone rang. Conover picked up; from what he was saying, Sousa guessed it was his mother telling him that she'd safely arrived wherever it was she was going, and from the tone of his voice Sousa guessed he hadn't been particularly worried. 

Conover answered the phone with more enthusiasm later that evening. After a few minutes of gooey endearments, he caught Molly up on the news: Everything had gone fine... yes, they'd found a place, and his mother had moved in that afternoon... she'd told him all about it, close to the streetcar, several guest rooms, one for Florrie and one for her... His father coming that weekend with more of her things... Yeah, he'd never thought his parents would be taking a house in Atlantic City!... maybe they could take a day trip to Cape May once he was recovered enough.... 

They had taken a house in Atlantic City. Sousa gave up on ignoring the conversation, put his mail in his pocket, and headed down to the quiet lounge down the hall, the one with the good view of the southeast.  The sky was deep blue, with the bellies of a few clouds still streaked in pink, and the lights of the Boardwalk reflected in the water. He remembered being at this spot a couple of times with his father, watching the waves: the memory knocked the wind out of him. 

He took a deep breath and started flipping through the day's mail. The usual two envelopes from home, something from Grahn... and a business envelope from Mr. G. Tucker at Elliot, Terrence, and Crewe: Tucker at the SSR. He tore into that one first. He hadn't planned to write to Tucker until after he'd been to the range for the first time.... 

The letter was bland, as usual: pleased to be able to speak with him recently, delighted to hear that his recovery was going so well... In light of his rapid progress and of anticipated trends, interested in an in-person consultation as soon as medically possible — please consult your physician — we will provide any documentation necessary — provide date of availability as soon as possible — please reply at earliest convenience. 

Sousa stared at the letter. Of anticipated trends... He'd rested a lot, but still, he'd taken on a mile of Steel Pier without falling... Could that be enough? He read the letter again, folded it, and put it in his pocket.  

He'd talk to Peyton the next day.

 

 

 

Notes:

Special thanks to Annie+MacDonald for wardrobe consultation, to @keysburg for kicking around ideas for Conover, and to @keysburg and @CotyCat82 for test reads.

Thank you for reading, for leaving kudos, and especially for your comments, which are as precious as letters from far-away friends.

---

"R — BK-FX — TX": Right below-the-knee fracture; traction

The Office of the Adjutant General handled administration, including inductions, discharges, service records, medals, the Exchange system, and of informing next-of-kin of the status of soldiers who had been wounded, killed, or captured.

"Compound fracture right tib-fib": Conover broke both of the bones of his right lower leg, the tibia and fibula. Compound - the fracture broke the skin.

"Open reduction" - Surgery to set the fracture.

Missal: a book containing the prayers and readings for Catholic Mass, for the use of the laity.

"So you qualified": See the notes for Chapter 19. Daniel doesn't have a college degree, but was able to qualify for Officer Candidate School by passing a rigorous exam.

Pogled: dazed and confused, slap-happy, shell-shocked.

"I'd write back and skin him good": to skin was to issue a reprimand.

Chapter 40: The Itinerary

Forest Glen Annex, Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Jack McMillen, 1944

 

 

“Have a seat, Lieutenant.” Peyton waved toward the empty chair. “How are you doing? Therapy going all right? Heard from Grahn?” 

Sousa carefully sat down. He’d asked Peyton that morning for a quick meeting, and Peyton had set a time for that very afternoon. “Therapy’s going real well. And yeah, Grahn wrote us, just to let us know he made it and give us his address. He said he’ll write more once he’s settled in.” 

“Good. And how are things settling in with your new roommate?” From his expression, it looked like Peyton had a pretty good idea. 

“He seems to be doing all right. Hasn't complained to me about anything.” It was the truth: Conover still hadn't had much of anything to say to him.  

“I see. So: what’s on your mind?” 

“I wanted to ask about a furlough.” 

“Funny you should say that; someone else just asked me the very same thing, about a furlough for you. Major Tucker, from the SSR. I just got a letter.” 

“I got a letter from him yesterday,” said Sousa. “But, you know, I've been thinking about it too.” 

“Yes, and for some time. You've been just as determined to escape as Grahn was, though maybe a little more sensible about it. When were you thinking?” 

“As soon as Major Tucker wants me there. I think I could go tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow. You’re that confident you’re ready?” 

Sousa was prepared for this question. “Yes. I did just fine on that weekend pass, and I've been handling longer and longer distances. Did the Steel Pier last week, to the end and back; that’s about a mile.” 

“And how many rest breaks?” 

“Not enough to be a problem.” 

Peyton looked dubious. 

“It shouldn't be too bad,” said Sousa, “I take the train to Washington, I go from the platform to the cab stand, and then to wherever Major Tucker wants me to go. He knows I'm still reconditioning, he’s not gonna expect me to walk to the Pentagon. And after that I get on the train and come back. Maybe I could even make it back to the hospital the same day. But if not, there’s gotta be someplace in Washington for a lieutenant to rest his weary head.” 

“That’s ambitious,” said Peyton. “I’d rather your first trip out of town be a family visit,  someplace you know.”  

“Washington’s closer than my hometown. And I know people there.” 

“You mean besides Tucker? And the guys at Walter Reed?” Peyton pulled a memo book out of his pocket and looked at the calendar on the back. “You practiced walking on carpet yet? Gravel? How about grass?” 

“Carpet.” 

“What about cars? Have you practiced with your prosthesis?” 

“A little. I get on and off the bus just fine.” 

Peyton did not look up from the calendar. His lips were pursed in thought. “Cars are different.”  

Sousa waited as Peyton stared at the calendar a little longer.  

Peyton finally gave an annoyed sigh. “I suppose we can work on setting a date. Not tomorrow, but maybe in a couple of weeks. I’ll get in touch with Tucker.” 

“Thank you.” 

“In the meantime, you’ll need to work double-time to get ready. Surfaces, trains, cars, crowds, distance.” 

“Got it. There was something else I've been wanting to ask about.... Ayers has been talking up his crutches with the arm straps; any chance I could get a pair and try them? Seems like they'd make traveling easier.” 

"Sure, we can check with Lieutenant Reese. But, you know, I think you're better off using the wooden ones at the interview. To be blunt, they don't draw as much attention, and they don't suggest lasting disability the way that the aluminum ones do. 

“As long as we’re on the topic: if this goes well, I bet you’ll want to turn right around and get a furlough home.” He picked up Sousa’s chart and opened it to the front. “10 Winter Avenue, Taunton, right? Army supplies you a wheelchair, so we’ll have it sent there like we talked about, it'll take around a week. You probably should let the folks back home know to expect it.” 

“I don't need one of those. I thought that was the whole point of my being here.” 

Peyton folded the chart and put it back down. “Sort of. It’s true you’ve been getting along well without one, and it's true that we want to get you back to walking as much as possible. 

“It’s also true that you’re a man with one leg. What happens if something goes wrong with your prosthesis? Or if you turn your other ankle? What if you’re just tired at the end of the day and need a break from crutches? If you don't need it, don't use it. But it's something you need to have on hand.  

“Besides: Army says you need one. You really want to bother arguing with the Army? Just write and tell your folks what to expect.  Write to Tucker if you want, but don't give him any dates. I'll send up a smoke signal and see what he's got in mind.” 

 

Sousa walked out of the meeting jubilant. He was tempted to skip occupational therapy to go write his letters, but he didn't want to risk provoking Peyton, so he went and pedaled the saw to make the rough cuts for his cutting board project.  

It didn't occur to him to skip bridge club. Sousa might have started learning the game as a favor to Grahn, all those weeks ago, but since then he'd grown to like it for its own sake, and to look forward to Tuesday afternoons and seeing everyone else.  

This would be the first meeting without Grahn, and as soon as Sousa sat down, a few of the men came over to talk to him: So it was true, Grahn had left? When did it happen? Anyone heard how he was doing? 

Hazel and Betty came over too: they'd already heard the news from Mrs. Lambe. "Good thing we went to the Steel Pier when we did!" said Hazel. "Maybe we can go again later this summer when more of the other guys can come." Sousa noticed Betty's instinctive glance toward Tipton's usual seat. 

Tipton himself arrived a few minutes later, but before Sousa could go over and say hello, Hayes got up and stood in front of the blackboard. He called the room to order, read a short note that Grahn had left, introduced the two newest men, and turned the class over to Mrs. Lambe. She began the day's lesson, with Hazel writing on the board. It was a small relief to Sousa to turn and pay attention, and look away from the empty place at his card table. 

He took his time going back to the room after supper. Mrs. Conover was still there, talking to her son; they acknowledged him as he came in and went back to their own conversation. Sousa went around to his own side of the room, drew the curtain, and sat down to read his mail and wait for Mrs. Conover to leave so he could shower. So far he'd managed to avoid having to change clothes or tend to his leg while she was around, but that couldn't last forever. 

When he got done with his shower, Conover was lying back with his eyes closed and his headphones on. Sousa couldn't tell if he was asleep, falling asleep... or just avoiding conversation.  

He put the question aside: he had stuff to do. He folded some letterhead and some regular writing paper so it would fit in his robe pockets, added his pen, and headed off to find a typewriter. 

 

The next morning, Sousa went down to the lobby before breakfast, to get his letters to his father and Major Tucker out with the first mail pickup. He spent the morning in physical therapy. He had just finished working with the pulley weights when Lieutenant Reese pulled him aside. 

"Major Peyton's talking about an out-of-town pass for you!" she said. "Let's start getting ready." 

She took him over to the car room. As before, another patient was practicing driving. "We need to get you started on that, too," she remarked. "But today we'll work on just getting in and out. There's more to think about when you're wearing your prosthesis." 

She started him on the passenger side of the car. He backed up to the seat and sat down, as he'd practiced before, and lifted his left leg in. 

The challenge was his right leg: He had no muscle control over the lower section of his prosthesis. He had to get his crutches out of the way and then use his hands to literally lift his right leg into the car. 

"Now, to get out, just do it in reverse," said Lieutenant Reese.  "Lift your leg out, and make sure your foot's clear of the door frame, so you don't trip... That's right, pivot around... and then bring out your crutches. There you go." 

The front seat proved to be easier than the back seats — he had more room to maneuver — and, front and back, the passenger side was easier than the driver's side — he could get his left leg in first and then lift in the prosthesis. The trickiest part was getting out of the car without catching the foot of the prosthetic on anything. As long as he was careful, and didn't dwell on the fact that he couldn't get into a car without physically lifting his sort-of leg aboard like a piece of luggage, it wasn't too bad. 

 

After lunch, Sousa went back down to the main lobby, found a seat, and pulled two pieces of paper out of his pocket: instructions and a letter from the physical therapy department. He was going to the shooting range for the first time. 

He boarded the bus that would take him to the Traymore, one of the other hotels that now comprised England General Hospital. The Traymore housed the convalescent patients who were expected to return to active duty. He'd passed it a couple of weeks ago when he and his father were going down the Boardwalk — it was hard to miss, even by Atlantic City standards it was gigantic — but he'd never been inside. 

The bus turned southwest on Atlantic Avenue and went around seven blocks before turning again to drop them off at the Traymore. Sousa found a clerk in the lobby who showed him where to wait. Twenty minutes later, he was back on another bus with a group of convalescing officers, heading to the range at the Naval Air Station. The Traymore crowd gave him an eager welcome when they found out he was from Haddon Hall; they were all alumni themselves, and were very impressed that he was already coming to shoot with them. Sousa didn't mention that he was an amputee, and nobody asked.  

The range officer knew most of the other patients already, and sent them off one by one to their assigned bays. He turned to Sousa last. 

"Major Peyton let us know to expect you," he said. "You were infantry?" 

"Engineering recon," said Sousa, but the rangemaster was already leading him to a bay. Sousa gripped his crutches and followed. An M1 rifle was waiting for him. 

"Thought we could get you started with something familiar," said the rangemaster. 

"Thanks," said Sousa. He put his crutches aside and started to adjust his stance. Once he felt secure, he loaded the rifle — amazing how he hadn't forgotten how to do it — lifted it, and took his first shot.  

 

When it was time to unload the rifle for the last time and board the bus, Sousa was feeling cautiously optimistic. He wasn't quite up to Expert Marksman yet, but he'd done respectably, and he'd be back in a couple of days to practice again. 

Back at the Traymore, a few of the others on the bus pointed out that it was a chilly day, and maybe he should come in and warm up a little before getting back on the bus? They took him to the Officer's Club and bought him a drink and asked after pals who were still back at Haddon Hall, and about favorite nurses and staff. None of them were amputees, of course, but a couple of them were recovering from serious fractures and had been on the other orthopedic ward. Sousa knew, or at least knew of, a few of the patients they'd known on those wards and was able to bring some news of who was still at Haddon Hall and who'd gone on to Walter Reed.  

It was a good time, and it was a good feeling when they asked him when he'd be back. He promised to come back on Friday and caught his bus back to Haddon Hall. He would have walked back, but he didn't feel like crutching seven blocks up the Boardwalk in his convalescent suit. 

That evening at dinner, there were two big pieces of news: a letter from Grahn to the whole ward, posted in the lounge; and the announcement that Breckenridge and Ayers were on the list for Walter Reed. Afterwards, when Sousa picked up his mail at the desk, he found a letter from Grahn. He waited to read it until after he'd showered. He thought about going down the hall to the quiet spot by the window, but he needed to lie down on his stomach for a while.  

And if his spending the evening resting on his own bed somehow ended up making a point of some kind to Conover... well, that was all to the good.  

Hey Sousa, 

So here I am at Walter Reed and I am about ready to demand my money back because they've already kicked me out into the outbuildings in the country, someplace called the Forest Glen Annex. It used to be a women's college until the Army bought it and the dairy farm and the tobacco farm next door. Now? No co-eds, no cows, and no tobacco (except what's sold at the PX). Plenty of nurses and WACs, though, and sometimes even co-eds from the universities around here, or so they say. We'll have to see if they're telling the truth. Walter Reed is way uptown anyway, and is a big post of its own surrounded by a brick wall, so you can't exactly look out the window and see the sights. At least here we have a fountain in the courtyard.... 

Sousa smiled as Grahn chatted on: limb shop the next day; roommate decent, food decent enough, plenty to do, streetcars and buses to downtown Washington.... I found some of the old crowd, I put that in the letter I mailed to the lobby, so I'm going to cheat and tell you to read it there.... Say hi to everyone for me, and don't get too comfortable in that window bed. Hurry up down here. HG 

 

The next day, after Sousa spent a little time getting in and out of the car, Lieutenant Reese brought him to a small gym he hadn't seen yet. The floor of the gym looked like a board game, covered with large carpets of different colors and thicknesses. One of the rugs was very thick, with a long, shaggy green pile. "Let's see how you do with these," she said. 

Sousa had walked on low carpet before. The thicker ones had a little bit more give when he planted the heel of the prosthesis, but they didn't take long to master. Even the weird green carpet wasn't too bad, once he got used to feel of it brushing the tips of his crutches. 

"Good job," said Lieutenant Reese. "That fake grass isn't much of a challenge, is it? We should get you outside this weekend, practice on real grass." 

After the carpets, they had him work on a ramp. Going up wasn't so bad, but going down... it was just as frustrating as it had been in the movie theater a couple of weeks ago. He didn't want to lock the knee of the prosthesis, because then he couldn't bring his good leg forward, but if he didn't lock the knee it buckled. One of the therapists taught him how to go down a ramp by walking sideways. Sousa wasn't crazy about it — it was slow and very conspicuous — but he had to admit it would do in a pinch. 

He worked hard all afternoon and then went to boxing, so by the time he made it back to his room after dinner he was about beat. As he pulled the privacy curtain between his bed and Conover's, he could just hear Mrs. Conover: "Poor thing," she breathed. She went back to her conversation with Conover — something about weekend plans — as Sousa went back and forth between his closet and the bathroom, brushing his teeth and getting his things ready so that as soon as she left he could get in the shower. 

Finally visiting hours ended, Mrs. Conover left, and Sousa continued his evening routine. After his shower, he stretched out on the bed, read his mail, reviewed his next day's schedule (physical therapy in the morning, a trip to the range in the afternoon) and dozed until the ring of the telephone woke him up again (Molly, judging from the tone of Conover's voice.) He roused himself just enough to wrap his leg and put his pajama bottoms back on. He turned out his light and went to sleep for real. 

 

The next day, Sousa had just started his lunch when a clerk from the ward approached the table. "Sorry to bother you all; just a few messages," she said.  

This wasn't unusual; it was the best way to get messages to patients who were away from the ward most of the day. Usually the clerk brought telegrams or last-minute schedule updates or the occasional phone message. To Sousa's surprise, today she had something for him. 

 "Thanks," he said. It wasn't a telegram or a phone message slip — they weren't cancelling his session at the range this afternoon, were they? But it didn't look like the usual schedule-change form.... 

He unfolded the paper. It was a memo from Peyton summoning him to a meeting at 1400. 

So much for his session at the range. His disappointment, though, was forgotten in his curiosity. Was this about getting a pass for the interview? 

 

"Well, it took a few days, but I was finally able to talk to Major Tucker," said Peyton. "I told him that you should be able to travel soon, provided certain medical considerations were met, and he was very understanding. He said he could see you in Washington in four weeks." 

Four weeks... not as soon as Sousa had been hoping, but if that was what Tucker was offering.... "That's a lot of time to prepare," said Sousa. "Maybe I even could go home first, like you were saying." 

"Yes, you could," said Peyton. "But he had another idea that I wanted to talk to you about. What would you say to seeing him in New York?" 

"Meaning New York City?" 

Peyton nodded. "Apparently he's going on travel and could conduct the interview there. He said it might even be better than doing it in Washington. And now that I've had some time to think about it, I think this could be a very elegant solution. It's got something for everybody. If you go to New York, Tucker can see you sooner, and that'll make him happy and it'll probably make you happy too. New York's closer to here and easier to reach, a lot more train connections. You could go there in the morning and be home for a late dinner, and that makes me happy." 

"Sounds good to me," said Sousa. "How soon?" 

"That's the part I wanted to talk to you about. This would be late next week. I'm not thrilled with it, but I talked to Lieutenant Reese and I'm willing to give it a try." 

"And the choices are go next week or wait four weeks to go to Washington?" 

Peyton nodded.  

"I think next week, then." 

"I thought you'd say that. I'll let Tucker know." 

"So... you'll give me the pass?" 

"If the travel plans meet with my approval. This is official business now, so we'll see what Tucker can come up with. Between the three of us we should be able to work something out." 

As Sousa walked down the hall to the elevator, his mind raced ahead. It was happening. It was real. The interview, the SSR... This time next week he'd be in New York.... 

...And New York was halfway home. 

When he got off the elevator, instead of going to physical therapy he went to the Red Cross office and asked to look at the train timetables. As he spread them out, he started building a plan in his head: he'd have to get to New York... get off the train and get to the interview...  the interview itself... and then back to the train station.... When was the last train to Taunton? There was that local from Providence.... it would be tight, but if he left New York by 1500.... He picked up another timetable. Even if he missed the last train out of Providence, he'd have options: there might be a bus; he might be able to catch a ride; somebody might even be able to come and get him. And if all else failed, he'd find a place to stay in Providence and then finish his journey the next morning. 

They'd have to say yes. Why wouldn't they? Peyton was already talking about his going home. As for Tucker, his going home could only be further proof of how well he was coming along in his recovery. And it would be the perfect way to explain why he was going to New York. 

He made a few notes, returned the timetables, and went to the telegraph office. 

WOULD FURLOUGH LATE NEXT WEEK BE OKAY 

As he counted his words on his fingers, he remembered — were Ines and the kids still quarantined for the measles? He added WHAT ABOUT QUARANTINE and gave it to the clerk. He'd wait for a reply before he brought it up to Peyton. 

 

The next day was Saturday, and at lunch the table was buzzing about a trip to the beach that afternoon. Sousa had to pass: he was already scheduled for a trip outside with physical therapy. He wasn't worried about encountering grass or gravel on the way to the interview, now that it was scheduled for New York City instead of Washington. But it couldn't hurt to get in some practice, just in case. 

Walking on the grass wasn't as bad as walking down the ramp, but it was difficult in its own way. How had he never noticed just how uneven a grassy lawn could be? Little hills everywhere, waiting to trip him or knock against his crutches; shallow little valleys for him to step into with his prosthesis so the knee would buckle. If he hadn't had his crutches, he would have fallen again and again. 

He had to pay close attention to every step he took on the gravel path as well: he could not feel the gravel under the foot of the prosthesis, so he couldn't sense if he was stepping on a stone that would cause the foot to slide sideways or backwards. 

A therapist came over to remind him to stop looking at the ground and keep his eyes forward. She walked backwards and had him follow her, watching her eyes and warning her about any obstacles. Once she was satisfied, she taught him a way to save himself from a stumble, by taking a quick little hop on his good leg.   

As the session wound down, he watched the other patients make their way up and down the gravel walk, some still cautious, others more confident; some with a cane or single crutch, others without any walking aid at all. That would be him before too much longer. And until then, he could use two crutches, and have a successful trip next week. 

Next week. On the bus ride back to the hospital, he let himself start to think about what he'd need to do to prepare for the interview. He would not think about the trip home afterwards. He didn't even know if they were ready for him. He wouldn't mind just going home and making the best of it, but his father would have insisted on following the instructions from the hospital about a shower chair and tightening the banisters and so on.... They might take some time to reply, they might want to talk things over first....  

No: he would not expect a reply today. When he got back to the hospital, he would go upstairs, check his mail, and see that there was no reply (just as he'd expected.). Then he'd go down the hall to his room and throw out the Conovers so he could tend to his leg in privacy. 

Back on the eighth floor, Sousa waited at the desk as the clerk fetched his mail. 

"Here you go, sir," she said. 

Sousa's heart skipped a beat — the envelope on the top was bright yellow: a telegram. He got himself out of the way and ripped into the envelope. 

 

SILLY QUESTION HURRY HOME QUARANTINE OVER SEND PLANS LOVE TILLIE 

=MRS JOSEPH PRZYBYLAK 

 

He took a deep breath. The rest of the mail could wait. 

"I have a question for Major Peyton," he said to the clerk. "What's the best way to get him a message?" 

"We can let him know you're looking for him," she replied. "Or you could write a note and we can send it up in the tube." 

"Will you do that, then? I'll come back in a bit with the note." Sousa tucked his mail into his shirt pocket and went down the hall to his room. He wanted to write the memo immediately, but he didn't want to put off his leg care any longer. 

When he excused himself and said that he needed some time to change his clothes, Mrs. Conover was quick to assure him he could just pull the privacy curtain and do what he needed to, it wouldn't bother them at all. 

"Mom. Come on," said Conover. "Sousa, how much time do you need? Forty-five minutes? An hour? That should be enough time, right?" He looked at his father.  

His father was already standing up. "Come on, Sal. You can stretch your legs, and I have an errand in mind. Kip'll be fine, won't he?"  

"That's right." 

Mrs. Conover looked doubtful, but her husband shepherded her out the door, and Florrie and Molly followed as if they were blocking her from coming back. 

"I don't need an hour," said Sousa. He picked up some stump socks from the shelf and started back to his side of the room. 

"I figured. But I sure could use one," said Conover. "She means well, but you know how mothers are." 

Sousa did not reply; Conover talked on as if he hadn't noticed. "But if you don't need an hour and you happened to see Molly out in the hall after you were done, maybe you could let her back in." 

"Sure." Sousa made sure he had all his supplies, pulled the curtain, and sat down on his bed. He bent forward and started to unlace his shoes. 

"Hey, Sousa? What do you do all day? My dad was asking and I couldn't really say." 

So: he was a topic of conversation for the Conovers. "Depends on the day," said Sousa. "Mostly physical therapy, down in the gyms." 

"Sounds boring." 

"Yeah, it's a real three-ring circus." Sousa took off his shoes, stood up, dropped his pants, sat down again, and unhooked the prosthesis and eased it off. 

Overall, the swelling in his leg was slowly going down, just as Blaine had predicted. And just as Blaine had also predicted, his leg tended to swell and shrink over the day. Walking tended to bring down the swelling, and after his afternoon outside, the prosthetic was getting loose. 

He took off his stump socks. His skin looked fine, so he rolled onto his stomach and read the telegram again as he let his skin get some air and his hip muscles get a stretch. A few minutes later, he powdered his leg, put on a fresh stump sock, and put himself back together again. 

As Sousa left, Conover asked him again to keep an eye out for Molly. He left the door ajar and went straight to the lounge, where there was a typewriter. He was going to send a message to Peyton; he might as well do it up right and send it as a typed memo. 

 

The next morning, Peyton pulled Sousa aside after rounds. He was surprisingly receptive to Sousa's idea. "I'll just need to pass it on to Major Tucker," he said, "so he can work that into the plan. I don't want you staying home for too long — you need to get back to therapy — is ten days too long? No? All right, then. I'll set up the pass once we get a date from Tucker." 

 

Sousa sent a message home that afternoon — ARRIVE LATE THURSDAY OR FRIDAY STAY TEN DAYS MAY NEED RIDE FROM PROVIDENCE IF MISS LAST TRAIN — and, at dinner, started getting some advice from the others on how to get ready.

He squeezed in a visit to the HX the next morning, where he bought a second uniform shirt and a bag with a shoulder strap. He ate lunch with one eye towards the door, wondering if there would be a message from Peyton; there wasn't, so that afternoon he boarded the bus and went to the range as planned. 

He was shooting with a pistol that day, and he was not doing well: his shots kept drifting to the right, and he could not seem to correct it. The rangemaster thought he might be putting too much weight on his good leg, and suggested he shoot kneeling.  

Sousa had practiced kneeling in physical therapy, and after a couple of tries he was able to lower himself down to the ground. The rangemaster was right: soon he was doing much better. He stood up for the last part of the session; now that he was back in practice holding the pistol, it was easier to focus on his stance, on keeping his weight evenly balanced and his hips squared to the target. 

"That's better. You just needed the right kind of practice. You're back on Wednesday, right?" said the rangemaster. "Maybe try that again, warm up kneeling and then go to standing." 

"Actually, I was going to ask — any way you could write up a score that day for me?" 

"Well, that depends. Is there money riding on this, and do I get a share of the winnings? — I think we could do that. We might have to keep you later, though." 

"That's fine." 

Sousa went straight back to Haddon Hall, hoping to find a message from Peyton. It was waiting for him with his mail, calling him to a meeting at 1730. 

"I heard from Major Tucker," said Peyton. "He wants to bring you in on Thursday. Leave here first thing in the morning — you can take the 0600 bus to the station — they'll have someone pick you up from the station and bring you back in enough time to catch your train." 

"Thank you. What should I do about my tickets?" 

"They'll take care of your tickets to New York. The Red Cross can help you with the rest. So if you leave Thursday... let's see, ten days... that brings you back on Monday the 24. And before you ask if you can stay through the Fourth of July, the answer is no." He signed a form and handed it to Sousa. "Here's what you'll need for the Red Cross. They'll help you at the train stations, too." He capped his pen. "Congratulations, Lieutenant. Not even six months since you were wounded, and look at you now. If everything goes as planned, in seventy-two hours you'll have interviewed for a job and be on your train home." 

"Which gives me about sixty hours to get ready." 

"Ah, that's plenty of time," said Peyton. "Go get some dinner." 

Sousa went to the Red Cross office instead. He checked the train timetables again and then went to the telegraph office. 

THURSDAY PLAN SEVEN PM TRAIN FROM PROVIDENCE WILL WIRE IF EARLIER TRAIN OR NEED RIDE 

 

Between the regular schedule and the preparations for the trip, the next two days flew past.  On Tuesday morning, Sousa was able to squeeze in a haircut; by lunchtime, he'd heard from Major Tucker and from Tillie, both confirming the arrangements.  Some of the men who'd already had furloughs gave him practical tips, down to the best place to stand on the Atlantic City platform. 

"Your people are up near Boston, right?" asked Irwin . "That's what, six, seven, hours on the train?" 

"Yeah, but I change trains in New York," said Sousa. 

"Couldn't you get a direct?" 

"You might be better off with the changeover," said Ayers. "It'll give you a chance to walk around and stretch out your hip. If there's a parlor car, they might offer you a seat there, just to be nice. If they do? Take it. You'll have more room, and it'll be easier to get up and walk around. Some of them have reclining seats." 

"I don't know if I've ever seen a parlor car," said Sousa, "but I'll take your advice." 

The Red Cross got his ticket from New York to Providence, and his return ticket back to Atlantic City; his ticket to New York was delivered late that afternoon, courtesy of the SSR. Neither the SSR nor the Red Cross said anything about a parlor car, and Sousa didn't ask. He arranged them in order in an envelope, put them in his nightstand for safekeeping, and made his list of things to do and things to pack. 

He started packing the next morning: socks and underwear, shirt and trousers... He remembered what Grahn once said about pajamas, and packed his extra pair just to be on the safe side. Elastic bandages; stump socks.... Some of the leg supplies went in the outside pocket of his bag, so he could easily get them during the day. 

He went to the range that afternoon. The rangemaster had set up the range for scoring and had even brought an assistant, so that Sousa and anyone else who was interested could get a written score sheet. Sousa warmed up by shooting kneeling at first, and then standing. He did even better than he had on Monday, and at the end of his session, he had a completed scoresheet to show the SSR. 

"Congratulations, sir: Qualified," said the rangemaster. "And that's after just a few days back, and with a bum leg to boot. We'll get you to Sharpshooter in no time." 

"Thanks," said Sousa. "I'll try to come back in a couple of weeks." He put the scoring sheet in his pocket, promised the others that he'd come with them for drinks next time for sure, and went back to Haddon Hall.  Back in his room, he drew the curtain and sat down on his bed. He took out the envelope with his tickets and flipped through everything again: the scoring sheet, and then his tickets — Atlantic City to New York; New York to Providence — he'd have to buy his connecting ticket there but he could do it on the train — and then his return tickets — Providence to Philadelphia; Philadelphia to Atlantic City.... 

He went down to get his shoes shined — he couldn't count on having enough time to do it in the morning — and to cash a check and get some change. After dinner he went upstairs to pay a quick visit to Tipton.  

And then there was nothing to do but go through the evening routine, and check his bag, and lay out his clothes for the morning. He had what he needed to get on the train. He had what he needed for the interview. He had what he needed to go home.... He pictured it in his mind: pulling up to the house, going up the front steps.... 

But first he had to get there, and before that he had the interview. He'd been reading up on current trends in science, he'd brushed up on some of the science and math he'd had to take for engineering training and for OCS, and some of the intelligence training he'd done for recon. He'd wanted to prepare more, but Tucker had been so vague, and he was sure it wasn't going to be just Tucker at the interview.... Hopefully he wouldn't turn up looking too rumpled. 

When Lieutenant Munn came back in, she promised to wake Sousa up in plenty of time for him to catch his bus in the morning. He went to bed on the early side; he was tired, and he needed to be up earlier than usual. It seemed to take a long time before he finally fell asleep. 

 

He woke to the thin light of dawn and the sounds of Lieutenant Munn walking around on the other side of the room. He turned over to look at the clock, and saw her peeking around the curtain. 

"It's that time," she said softly. He nodded, rubbed his face, and sat up. He swung his left leg over the side of the bed, reached for his crutches, stood up, and started for the bathroom. 

Teeth, shave, wash, hair cream... He'd been thinking about this day for months; now that it was here, he felt calm. He'd done everything he could to prepare, and he had a plan to follow. Prosthesis, trousers, belt, shirt, uniform coat.... 

He checked his bag one last time, closed it, and put his envelope of papers and tickets in his uniform coat pocket. He brought a wheelchair into the room to use as a luggage cart.  He paused on his way out the door. 

"So long, Conover. See you in ten days." He spoke quietly; he wasn't sure if Conover was even awake. 

"So long," Conover mumbled. "Have a good trip." 

As Sousa signed out at the desk, the night clerk fussed at him for not calling for help with his bag, and an orderly came out to carry his bag for him downstairs. Lieutenant Munn came out to say good-bye. 

Down the elevator, out to the lobby; a short wait and then onto the bus. The bus went three blocks and turned left on Arctic Avenue. Sousa watched out the window; he had not been in this area of town before — no, that wasn't true, he would have passed this way back in December, on his way from the train station to the hospital. 

He was on the second train out, so he had time to have some coffee and force himself to eat a muffin from the canteen. Soon enough it was time to go to the platform. Walking with his bag slung over his left shoulder was difficult; he was relieved when it was his turn to board the train and he could hand it up to the conductor. He handed up his crutches next. He reached up, took the  handrails, and got himself one steep step at a time onto the train car. The conductor handed him his crutches and guided him to a seat.  He sat down, and waited as the other passengers boarded and the car filled up. 

"All aboard!" 

The sound of stairs being stowed and doors slamming shut, up and down the train. The shrill whistle of the platform master, and two blasts from the train horn in reply. A jerk, and the train began to pull forward. Sousa watched as block after block of Atlantic City rolled by, until the last block disappeared and they turned toward the bridge to the mainland. 

He took a deep breath and settled in his seat. He was on his way.

Notes:

Thanks to @CotyCat82 and @keysburg for test audience services
and big thanks to lethal cinnamon roll @keysburg for her help with the scenes at the shooting range.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments.

 

The three levels of Army Marksmanship Qualification are, from lowest to highest, Marksman, Sharpshooter, and Expert, and are earned for proficiency for various weapons (rifle, pistol, mortar, etc.) To qualify for the infantry, one had to score at the Marksman level in rifle and bayonet. The tradition in the Army is that officers are not expected to wear their Marksman Qualification Badges on their dress uniforms.

Parlor cars offered upgraded seating and services.

 

Chapter 41: The New York Bell Company Building

 

 

 

 

 

Even without a parlor car, the train to New York seemed luxurious to Sousa. Maybe because it was a civilian train? A comfortable seat, a quiet car, a quiet neighbor who was absorbed in the morning newspaper.... Sousa looked out the window for a while, and then fell into a light doze as the miles clacked away behind them.  

Their first and only stop was Trenton.  As they pulled into the station, Sousa felt a little surprised at the sight of the platform until he remembered: the shades were up. This wasn't a troop train, so there was no need to close them. He took advantage of the stop to walk around in the car and stretch his legs.   

Soon they were on their way again. As they drew closer to New York and entered the tunnel, Sousa felt his stomach start to float. Just nerves, that was natural, no need to let them be a distraction.  He turned his attention to the tasks ahead with the ease of years of practice: Stay calm, and stick to the plan. He'd get off the train, he'd look for Major Tucker. One step at a time. 

The train slowed, and sighed a whistle as it came to a stop. Once the car had emptied out a little, Sousa stood up and looked around.  

There was no baggage man to be seen. And he didn't feel like waiting.  

He adjusted his stance and locked the knee of the prosthetic, held on to the overhead rack with his right hand, and used his left to pull his bag off the rack and lower it to his seat. He slung the strap over his left shoulder, picked up his crutches, and managed to get himself into the vestibule and out onto the platform. He took a few more steps to get out of the way and stopped to look around. As the crowd moved away towards the stairs, he saw Major Tucker striding down the platform, a private following close behind.  

"There you are!" said Tucker. "At last! Welcome to New York — what the hell are you doing with that bag? Katsaros'll take that for you."  

"Thanks," said Sousa. He handed off his bag to Private Katsaros. Tucker shook Sousa's hand and started leading him up the platform.  

"So how was your trip? Looks like everything went all right on the train, on time and everything. You're good with stairs, right?"  

Sousa looked ahead at the enormous staircase rising from the platform to the concourse: three flights, it looked like. He wondered if this was part of the interview.  

"Still getting up to speed," he said. "But yeah." 

"After you, then."  

Sousa slowly climbed the stairs, with Tucker and Katsaros following him. At least they were keeping people from crashing into him from behind.  He was able to make it up to the concourse without needing any long, obvious breaks.   

Tucker and Katsaros led him out of the station to a waiting car, and in a few minutes they were driving south through Manhattan.  

"Ever been to New York before?" asked Tucker.  

"Not really."  

"Yeah, this isn't exactly the scenic route." Tucker raised his voice to address the driver. "Which is good, Durkin, it's exactly what we need."  He turned back to Sousa. "Maybe another day when we're not so pressed for time."  

They pulled up in front of a New York Bell Company building. "We'll get out here," said Tucker. "We're renting a temporary office in this building."  

Tucker led Sousa through the lobby to the elevators; Katsaros followed, carrying Sousa's bag. The elevator carried them up a couple of floors and opened to a half-finished corridor. Ladders and drop cloths leaned against the unpainted left wall; the entire right wall was paneled with what looked like switchboards in varying states of assembly. A couple of the base cabinets had upturned men's legs and feet poking out into the corridor, like pedals on a piano. Extension cords snaked around the floor and into the cubbies where the wiremen were working.  

"Coming through!" Katsaros hollered. The workmen drew up their knees but did not emerge.  

The last two switchboards were already functional. One of the operators kept her eyes on her work. The other operator kept working, but looked up as they turned her corner. She had red hair, glasses, and an air of unassuming authority that reminded Sousa of some invaluable sergeants he'd known.  

"Welcome back, Major Tucker," she said. "Everything here's been quiet. Your three o'clock called and confirmed he'd be here."  

"Thank you," said Tucker. "We're going up. Let Mr. Bailey know I'm here, will you?"  

"Right away."   

They stepped into a second elevator and stepped out into a hall in just as much disarray as the one they'd left. The air was heavy with the smell of sawdust and wet plaster. Tucker excused himself to go find Mr. Bailey, leaving Katsaros to show Sousa to the bathroom.  

The bathroom was half-completed as well; it looked like they'd knocked down a wall and were planning on doubling its size. The important parts were working, though, and Sousa was glad for the chance to freshen up and comb his hair. He stood up, adjusted his gig line, and took a deep breath. He'd done everything he could to prepare. Now... it was time.  

Katsaros was waiting for him out in the hall. "They're ready for you in room 4. I can keep your cover for you."  

"Thanks." Sousa took his hat out from under his elbow and gave it to Katsaros. He followed him down the hall to an open door.  

"Lieutenant Sousa," announced Katsaros. 

"Come on in," someone said. Sousa entered the room, and Katsaros closed the door behind him.  

Major Tucker came out from behind a table. "Mr. Bailey, I'd like you to meet Lieutenant Daniel Sousa. Lieutenant Sousa, this is Mr. John Bailey, a civilian with the SSR. To be precise, he's the Special Assistant to the Deputy Administrator for the Strategic Scientific Reserve." He glanced at Bailey; Bailey nodded, as if he were pleased that Tucker had remembered all the parts of his title, and extended his hand to Sousa.  

"A pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant." He shook hands with Sousa, waited as Tucker shook hands, and then gestured across the table to a chair. "Please, have a seat."  

Sousa could feel Bailey's eyes on him as he sat down. He placed his crutches on the floor, instead of propping them on the table, and adjusted his chair.  

Bailey and Tucker were sitting across the table from him. As Bailey opened a file folder, Sousa took the moment to try to get a read on him. Handshake had been good, maybe a little tentative; soft, office-worker's hand. Reading glasses — late fifties, maybe? Light gray three-piece suit, well-tailored; white shirt, conservative tie, French cuffs, cuff links matched the tie. Good-looking watch.  

"Lieutenant Sousa...." Bailey looked up. "Any relation to the March King?"  

Sousa forced himself to chuckle, as if the idea had never occurred to him before. "Not that I know of."  

"Wouldn't that be something?" Bailey put down the file. "Before we get started, just a reminder that this meeting is official business of the Strategic Scientific Reserve and the Department of War, and that what we discuss is classified. Your commanding officer, Major Peyton, is aware that this meeting is taking place. Any further information he may need will be provided only by Major Tucker or myself." 

"I understand," said Sousa. 

Tucker spoke up. "You may discuss the details of your service in the Army and your previous encounters with the SSR with Mr. Bailey. He has the necessary clearance." Bailey pulled a badge out of his pocket and showed it to Sousa. 

"So," said Bailey, "I know Major Tucker's seen you a couple of times in Atlantic City. He tells me you were first introduced to the SSR in Belgium, you've kept quiet about that meeting (as you were ordered), and that he's told you a little bit about us."  

"No more than I'm allowed to know, of course." said Sousa. "But what he could tell me sure was interesting."  

"As you know, we're part of the Department of War, like the Army and the Navy," said Bailey. "We started off small and specialized, and civilian, but we found ourselves growing quickly, and in unexpected directions. Now we're looking ahead. The war will end, but these are strange and uncertain times, and we don't want to get caught flat-footed again.   

"When we expanded in response to the war, it was largely thanks to personnel detailed from the Army. In peacetime, though... well, the work of the SSR doesn't really fall within the purview of the armed forces, does it, Major Tucker?"  

"We have our own fish to fry," said Tucker.

"Important fish," said Bailey. "So we need to recruit more civilians. And not just for the laboratory: it's turned out that our work includes intelligence, and sometimes even law enforcement. We need agents, not just scientists.  

"I've reviewed your war record with Major Tucker. You've had an impressive career."  

"Unfortunately, it was interrupted when you were wounded," said Tucker. "You've been recovering very quickly, but.... well, some people might wonder how a man with such a serious disability could contribute to the SSR as an agent. What would you say to that?"  

Sousa had prepared himself for a question like this, though he was a little surprised that Major Tucker was asking it, and so early in the interview. "Well, first I would say it's obvious the SSR's being very fair and open-minded about the question, and doesn't want to overlook a man who can be part of the team. I'm grateful that you brought me in.   

"It's true I can't exactly run around the block right now, but I'm also still reconditioning. That includes athletics — weightlifting, gymnastics, that kind of thing. I've been boxing —"  

"Really!" exclaimed Bailey.  

"Yeah. Including sparring. And there's going to be a self-defense class starting up again next month. So I'm not as disabled —" he kept his voice steady — "as some people might think. 

"And then there are always equalizers. I've been able to get to the shooting range with some of the folks who are returning to duty, and I got scored yesterday." He drew the score sheet out of his pocket and handed it to Bailey. Bailey nodded, as if he knew what the numbers meant, and handed it to Tucker.  

"So he's already passed the first round of SSR pistol qualification," Tucker said to Bailey.  

Bailey looked duly impressed. "Can you drive?" he asked Sousa.  

"I know how to drive," said Sousa, "and I'll start practicing again in another week or so. But going back to Major Tucker's question — if all you need is a guy who can drive a jeep and run fast and shoot a gun, well, there's plenty of guys who can do that. You could go down to the Port of Brooklyn and take your pick. 

"But you want more that that. I can help you. I'm not a scientist or an engineer, but before I enlisted I had some job experience working from technical drawings, and then I went through engineering training in the Army. I've built bridges, put up tank traps, looked for land mines, and disarmed quite a few bombs. I've seen Hydra technology in Italy and Belgium. 

"You mentioned that the SSR's grown in unexpected directions. I was a reconnaissance scout, so for us, the unexpected was every day. We were ahead of the line, so we'd go in, look for clues, get any intel we could, call in sights, figure out the best way to get our own guys in there." 

"Do you have any experience with interrogation?" asked Bailey.  

"Not like the intelligence officers," replied Sousa. "I'd talk to any prisoners we took, and to civilian friendlies. For the civilians sometimes the hardest part was figuring out how to ask the question."  

"Tell us again about your encounter with the SSR in the Ardennes," said Bailey. Sousa retold the story — leading his stragglers, finding the SSR troops; the rescue in the night; scouting the next day as they marched to safety; the Hydra booby traps....  

Tucker asked him about a couple of other missions — the field hospital and the mudslide; that business in France with the bridge, when they got cut off — Sousa didn't like thinking back to that one, he'd had nightmares about it for months, it was a miracle they'd made it back —  the Hydra tech he'd seen in Italy and France.... 

"I'd like to hear more about your education," said Bailey.  Sousa braced himself for the college question.  

"So you graduated high school, got excellent marks on your Army intake exams, and either remembered or learned enough math to pass the exam for Officer Candidate School. A lot of an agent's work takes place at a desk. Have you ever taken any classes or had any experience with bookkeeping, or accounting?"  

"No. But I'd be willing to learn."  

"How about languages?"  

"A little French and Italian — what the Army taught me, and what I picked up along the way."  

"I see you grew up in New England. Any Portuguese?"  

"I can understand some, but it's mostly shipyard and fishermen's words, if you know what I mean."  

"Perfect for parlor conversation, I'm sure," said Bailey.   

Bailey asked him more about the courses he'd taken in the military; Tucker asked him more about what weapons he'd qualified in....  

"Yes, well, one never knows, but I doubt you'll need to renew your bayonet qualification for the SSR," said Bailey. "My next question: If we were to offer you a position as an Agent... when could you start?"  

"As soon as my current Commanding Officer approves."  

"And when do you suppose that might be?"  

"He hasn't said anything to me about that yet. He's really not big into making predictions."  

"Do you think maybe August?"  

"I honestly don't know. We'd have to talk to him —"  

Bailey glanced over to Tucker. He did not look happy. " — Because we're trying to get this thing up and running here, and then with the end of the fiscal year — "  

"Even if he could start tomorrow, we might not be ready to start in August," said Tucker to Bailey. He spoke casually, in a tone that suggested that Sousa was not in the room. "And that's still six weeks away. That gives us plenty of time to work with Lieutenant Sousa's C.O." He glanced at his watch. "Did you have any other questions not fit for public ears? Because it seems to me that one way we can stay on that C.O.'s good side is to make sure Lieutenant Sousa gets some lunch." 

 

They took him to a chophouse a couple of blocks away. As soon as they were seated, Bailey ordered an old-fashioned; Tucker followed suit and, with a look, encouraged Sousa to order a drink as well. Sousa took the hint and had what Bailey and Tucker were having, and let their lunch orders guide his as well.  

They kept the conversation light, as Sousa assumed they would. They also kept him doing most of the talking, and Sousa couldn't help thinking he was still being interviewed, even though they were just talking about baseball and asking him about Atlantic City. At one point the topic of golf came up, and Sousa had to admit he didn't play. He felt relieved when Bailey didn't seem surprised or put off, and then quietly pleased when Bailey casually suggested he learn, as if there were no reason he couldn't. Maybe Bailey knew that amputees could play golf. Maybe Bailey had forgotten for a moment that he was an amputee. Either way, it was encouraging. 

It wasn't until they were walking back from the restaurant that Sousa remembered something Grahn had once said, months back, about bridge being like golf. 

Back at the Bell Company building, Bailey waited with Sousa in the main lobby as Tucker made a phone call from the desk. 

"So it's off to the train station with you," said Bailey. "It shouldn't take long to bring the car around. Major Tucker says you're going on to see your family? That's terrific. When was the last time you were home?" 

" '42." 

"And how long will you be there?" 

"Ten days." 

"That's all? I should think you'd be due at least a month!" 

Sousa shrugged. "I've got to get back to rehabilitation. Harder I work now, the sooner I'll be... ready for other things." 

Bailey seemed to like that. "Any big plans for your leave?" 

"Not really. Sleep late; eat home cooking; get roped into playing bridge with my sisters, if they can find a fourth." 

Bailey took the bait. "Oh, do you play?" 

"Yeah. Well, I'm still learning, but...." 

"Huh!" Bailey looked as if he were about to ask something else when Tucker arrived. Bailey whispered something to Tucker, and looked dissatisfied with Tucker's answer. 

"Well, that's easy," said Tucker. He handed a notebook and pen to Sousa. "Lieutenant Sousa, make sure we've got the address and phone number of where you're going to be next week, just in case." 

"Sure." Sousa wrote in the notebook and handed it back to Tucker. 

"Thanks. Oh, here's the car. Katsaros'll see you to the platform."  

Outside, Katsaros saluted, showed Sousa his bag ("so you know we didn't forget!"), and opened the back passenger door for him. A handshake for Bailey ("A pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant"); a salute for Tucker ("Good seeing you again, Lieutenant. Have a good trip"); Sousa got himself into the car as gracefully as he could manage; Katsaros closed the door; and they pulled away from the Bell building. 

Back at Penn Station, Katsaros stood by while Sousa got himself out of the car, and then took Sousa's bag from the trunk. He waved, and the driver pulled away. "Where to, sir?" he asked.   

Sousa checked his watch. He needed to tend to his leg, but he had enough time. "Let's stop by the USO first," he said. 

 

The chief hostess at the USO showed Sousa to a little office. He had Katsaros put his bag on one of the chairs, sent Katsaros himself off to have a doughnut, took off his uniform coat, and sat down on another chair to check on his leg.  

He was a little worried; he hadn't checked it since he got dressed that morning. It looked all right, though. He changed his stump sock to be on the safe side, powdered up, and put on the prosthesis. 

It was too snug. He checked the stump sock again: It was the same thickness he usually used in the afternoon, but this afternoon it was too thick. His leg was more swollen than usual, probably because he'd been sitting so long. He massaged his leg, changed the sock for the next size down, and got dressed.  

He collected Katsaros out in the USO lounge. Katsaros gulped down his last bite of doughnut, collected Sousa's bag, and followed him out into the terminal. They found the departures board listing Sousa's train and made their way through the crowds and down three flights of stairs to Sousa's platform. 

When he reached the platform, Sousa took a second to adjust his crutches while Katsaros caught up with him. His train was at the platform, but had not started to board yet.  

"There's a bench over there, sir," said Katsaros. "I'll hold a place in line if you want to sit down. Which car do you want?" 

"Thanks, but I'd rather stretch my legs. I'll have plenty of time to sit on the train. You can go on if you want." 

Katsaros shook his head. "Against my orders. Major Tucker told me to put you on the train." 

Sousa couldn't argue with that. He picked a car and waited with Katsaros. Every so often he looked around to admire the station itself and its glass and steel greenhouse ceiling arching one hundred and fifty feet above the platform.  

He checked his watch again and then the station clock: it was getting very close to their departure time, and they still hadn't boarded the train. He took his book out of his bag and put it in his pocket. Finally a shrill whistle sounded and the car doors started to open. Sousa stepped into the car and chose a seat on the aisle; Katsaros stowed his bag in the overhead rack, wished him a safe journey, and elbowed his way back off the train. 

The car filled rapidly, and before long a middle-aged man in a suit was asking Sousa if the seat next to him was taken. Sousa did his best to get his knees and his crutches out of the way, and soon enough the man was settled in. The conductor appeared, helped a passenger with her bag, and scolded the other passengers jamming the aisle about Just Finding A Seat And Sitting Down Already. Sousa checked his watch again and tried to keep from getting fidgety. They weren't that late yet, and he had plenty of time to make his connection in Providence.  

When the train finally lurched forward, twenty minutes late, there were still people standing in the aisles. The conductor came through again, making his way down the aisle. Sousa got his ticket punched and leaned back in his seat. He had his book in his hand, but he didn't bother opening it. His mind was flitting between the interview and his longing to get where he was going. Only five more hours, and he'd be home. 

The first stop was New Rochelle. The man sitting next to him folded his newspaper excused himself and got into the aisle; Sousa saw several passengers in olive drab getting ready to exit as well: for Fort Slocum, he supposed.  The train stopped, the passengers exited, and the standing passengers went for the empty seats. 

Sousa's new seatmate was another middle-aged man in a suit. He waited until the train was well out of the station before he started to try to make conversation with Sousa. 

"So, where are you headed? New Haven?" 

"Providence." 

"Yeah? Fort Adams?" 

"No, headed home on a furlough." 

"Good for you." The man's eyes swept over Sousa's uniform — insignia, service ribbons, service stripes — and to Sousa's crutches. "Sure looks like you've earned it. Europe, right?" He patted the left side of his suit jacket, mirroring Sousa's service ribbons. "Normandy?" 

"No, I missed that, actually," said Sousa. "I was in the invasion from the south."  

"And you've got the little bronze star on there, right? How many battles does that stand for?" 

Sousa wondered what happened to talking about the weather, but he couldn't help being a little impressed: this fellow had been reading up. "Five. So six in all." 

The man kept going: Six? Had he been in Italy? What about the Ardennes? And the next ribbons up — those were medals, right?  

"Yeah." Sousa kept his voice and expression flat. Hopefully the guy would take the hint. 

"And the purple one — that's for....?" The man glanced toward Sousa's crutches. 

Sousa didn't say anything, but the guy didn't wait for an answer. "So... what happened?" 

"Excuse me?" 

"You know...." The guy looked towards Sousa's crutches again. 

Sousa kept his voice level. "Oh. That. I got hurt. Slipped on a banana peel." 

The man looked expectant, and Sousa felt his stomach curdle.  

"Oh, it's okay," insisted the man, in a tone meant to be friendly. "No need to be embarrassed." 

Sousa pressed his lips into a thin sour smile. "Of course not."  

"Hmph." The guy gave Sousa a look of disdain. "Well. I hope you have a nice restful furlough, with plenty of time to adjust to being back home." He snapped a newspaper open and started to read. Sousa turned, leaned back, and closed his eyes as if he were napping. He breathed slowly and deeply until his face had cooled off and his hands, hidden by his crossed arms, were no longer clenched. 

The guy got off around half an hour later, at Bridgeport. To Sousa's relief, nobody took his place. As the train left the station, he checked his watch again. They were now running thirty minutes late. 

By the time they reached New Haven, Sousa had been sitting for almost two hours, and he was getting uncomfortable. Once they were out of the station, he tried walking up and down the aisle. The wobble of the train car made it a challenge to keep his footing; he had to walk slowly and pay close attention to each step. 

As he made his way up the aisle, he was conscious that he was drawing looks — mostly quick, polite looks, a friendly nod or two. A couple of passengers gave him longer, concerned looks, but Sousa didn't mind; as soon as they saw he was all right they went back to their books or newspapers. Two people asked if he needed help; when he thanked them and said he was fine, they didn't look convinced, but they left him alone.  

It was the long stares that annoyed him, especially when he turned at the end of the car and could see the round eyes of the gawkers. He was about halfway back when a man leapt up and offered to help him to his seat. For a moment, Sousa wondered if the man was going to grab his elbow and forcibly help him, and if stabbing him in the foot with a crutch would be enough to shake him off. But the guy sat down and let him pass, and didn't bug him when he went for another walk a little later.  

The next stop was New London. The car filled back up again; about half of the new passengers were sailors. Sousa looked out the window at the empty platform, and then checked his watch: a little over an hour, and they'd be in Providence.   

The new passengers found seats; the sailors got up and started switching seats with each other; the train sat at the platform. The conductor came through, promising they'd be on the way shortly, but when the train finally pulled out of the station, they were fifty minutes behind schedule. At the next stop, they picked up more passengers and lost more time. Sousa tried not to think about what would happen if they were so late to Providence that he missed his train home. 

After the conductor came through, Sousa tried to take another walk, but it was difficult going. The train was more crowded, and groups of sailors were passing back and forth through the car looking for their friends. They did their best to get out of his way, but still, it was bothersome to try to step around them, or see them waiting politely at the end of the car as he inched back to his seat. 

Walking wasn't doing that much good anyway. It helped a little with the stiffness, but not with the swelling in his leg. What he needed to do was doff the prosthesis and change his stump sock, and there was no place to do that on the train. Instead, he stood a while longer, holding on to the luggage rack, until he sat back down and tried in vain to catch a nap. 

Finally they arrived at Providence. Sousa grimaced as he pulled himself out of his seat and into the aisle: the prosthetic was really bothering him. Any other time he might have waited until the crowd had thinned out, but there was no time for that tonight. He had to hurry if he was going to make the last train to Taunton. He adjusted his crutches and turned to get his bag, and found two sailors standing in the aisle. One of them jerked his head toward the luggage rack. 

"Which one of them bag's yours, sir?" he asked. 

 

Sousa went as quickly as he could through the station. The sailor carrying his bag strode along next to him, with a spring in his step that spoke of the joy of a three-day pass. The other sailor had taken off to meet up with their pals. 

Sousa knew his train hadn't left yet, but he couldn't help stopping and sighing in relief when he reached the platform. He adjusted his grip on his crutches and stepped forward again. 

"Which car, sir?" asked the sailor. 

Sousa indicated the car directly in front of them. "This one's fine." 

The sailor got into the car first. When Sousa stepped out of the vestibule, his shoulders sank: the car was packed, and there were already passengers standing. 

The sailor was shouldering his way down the aisle. "Ground-pounders ahoy!" he called. "Yeah, I'm talking to you, Private Yard Bird!" 

Civilian passengers started to look up and smile as a small group of privates rose from their seats. "What do you want, squid?" one of them demanded. 

His neighbor elbowed him and nodded toward Sousa. The group immediately pulled themselves together, and one of them took Sousa's bag. 

"Thank you, sailor," said Sousa. 

"You're welcome, sir. Have a good trip. Bon voyage, ladies and gentlemen!" The sailor exchanged a few more pleasantries with the soldiers and left the train. 

"Where would you like to sit, sir? Window or aisle?" said one of the privates. 

"Aisle would be better," said Sousa. 

By now it seemed like half the car was watching the show. A civilian in the first row offered Sousa his seat; Sousa swallowed his pride and accepted. As he sat down, Private Three stowed Sousa's bag overhead and Private One offered the civilian his own seat. Sousa concentrated on finding a somewhat comfortable position for his right leg. 

The man sitting next to him looked up from his newspaper. "Long day?" 

"Yeah." Sousa looked at his watch. It was thirteen and a half hours since he'd left the hospital, so he'd had the prosthesis on for around fourteen hours now. That was the longest he'd ever worn it. 

"Taunton your last stop?" asked the man. 

"Yeah. Thank God." 

The man smiled. "We'll probably be late getting in. But still, you're almost there." 

 

They were fifteen minutes late leaving the station. Sousa was too wound up to do anything but mentally will the train to go faster. Home, home, home.... 

They had been traveling around twenty minutes when the doors to the car opened and someone came in. Sousa glanced up, and then looked up again. The man who'd just come in was standing in front of him. An old man, a little stooped, thick glasses, white hair combed straight back, full white mustache. He looked familiar. 

"Say," said the man. "You're Frank Sousa's boy, aren't you?" 

Sousa smiled. "That's me." His memory supplied a name. "Mr. Ligeiro?"  

Mr. Ligeiro grinned. "Ah, I haven't changed that much, have I? How long's it been now, when'd you leave? '41? '42? But look at you! I heard you might be coming home for a visit. You home for Father's Day? That's terrific." He looked up. "I'd better get where I'm going before we get home. You got someone meeting you at the train station? Well, if something happens and you need a lift, you come find me." He patted Sousa on the shoulder. "Your Pai's going to be so glad to see you. He's not the type to brag, but you can just tell, he thinks the world of you. All right, see you on the way back." 

A few minutes later, Mr. Ligeiro threaded his way back between the standing passengers. "See you around!" he said to Sousa, and disappeared into the vestibule. Another ten minutes, and the train started to slow. Sousa leaned forward and looked out the window. His breath caught as he saw the first familiar sights of the town, the cheerful lights of the shops and houses.... 

The train whistle sounded and they passed through an intersection, he could see the cars waiting for the train to go by. And then the train slowed even more, they were in the yard, and then they were pulling up to the platform. The brakes wheezed, and the train stopped. 

The man next to him stood up and leaned over. "The four musketeers back there are playing one-potato two-potato to choose who gets to carry your bag," he quietly told Sousa. "I think there's a corporal they're trying to impress." 

"I wonder if the corporal's a WAC," replied Sousa. "Go ahead, I'm going to wait until the crowd empties out a little." 

The man nodded. "Good luck to you. Have a good visit home." He edged around Sousa, got himself into the aisle, and made his way out of the car. 

A minute or two later, Private Two showed up at Sousa's elbow. "Ready, sir?" 

Sousa nodded. He scooted himself forward on his seat, put his right hand on the prosthesis and took his crutches with his left hand, and stood up. He adjusted his crutches, took his first step forward, and gasped. His right leg was terribly sore, and he could feel his missing right foot going numb. 

He stepped out onto the platform and got out of the way of the doors. Private Two followed with his bag. Sousa looked around. People were still streaming up the platform, and he didn't even know who he was looking for. 

And then he heard a familiar voice: "Daniel?" As he looked around, he heard the voice again: "Charlie, look, there he is! — Daniel!" 

It was Ines. Her father-in-law was right behind her; Charlie was slithering out of his arms back down to the platform. She hurried forward the last few feet, and Daniel had just enough time to see her face suffused with piercing joy before she stepped into his open arms. Ines was half a head shorter than him, but still she did her best to scoop him up into a hug. 

 

 

Notes:

Many thanks to @keysburg and @CotyCat82 for test audience services, and to @keysburg for discussion and good ideas about interviews and bureaucracy.

Thank you for reading (we just broke 12,000 hits), your kudos, and especially your comments.

---

Port of Brooklyn: Brooklyn was the site of headquarters and two terminals for the New York Port of Embarkation, a massive staging area for transporting troops and supplies overseas (and receiving troops when they returned). New York was the busiest Port in World War II.

New York's old Penn Station (demolished in 1963 to make way for the current architectural gem: 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 42: Winter Avenue

 

 

Ines finally let go and took a step back. "You remember Charlie, right?" 

Daniel scoffed. "Of course I do!" He didn't have time to take in how Charlie had not just grown but transformed; Mr. Esocobar had lifted the boy and was holding him up so Daniel could hug him. 

"Hi, Tio Daniel," said Charlie. He sounded nervous, but his face was eager. 

And then Mr. Escobar was putting Charlie back down and stepping forward. Daniel was prepared for a kind hug instead of a mere handshake, but he was not prepared for the way Mr. Escobar clapped a hand on his arm and just... looked at him for a long moment, with relief in his eyes and a sorrowful smile, and then for the intensity of his embrace. 

Mr. Escobar stepped back and patted Daniel's arm again. "I'm so glad you're back," he said, his voice rough, and it hit Daniel like a punch to the stomach. Ritchie. 

"So where's your luggage?" asked Mr. Escobar. Daniel turned, and Private Two lifted his bag.

"I can get it!" said Charlie. "Let me."  Daniel grinned and nodded, and Private Two handed the bag to Charlie. Charlie had to hug the bag around its middle and bend himself in half to keep from dropping it, but strictly speaking, he was carrying it. 

"Look at that!" said Private Four. "Buddy, you're almost as strong as Captain America!" 

Charlie looked as if he'd been slapped in the face. "It's an expression, Charlie," Ines said quickly. "It's a compliment, and we say...." 

"Thank you." Charlie still looked hurt.  

"You're welcome," said Private Four, bewildered. 

"Thanks a bunch," said Sousa. "You men have been lifesavers." 

"Any time, sir," said Private One." They saluted, Sousa nodded, and they strode off up the platform to join their friends. Sousa could just hear them talking: "...Didja see, he had two of 'em..." 

Charlie was losing his grip on the bag. "Let me get that for you," said Mr. Escobar. "That's why your mommy let me come, remember? So I could get the bag? You and her can lead the way." Charlie nodded, gave up the bag, and looked up to Daniel. 

"They saluted you!" he said. 

"Yes, they did." 

"Why didn't you salute back?" 

"My hands are full." Daniel indicated his crutches. 

"Is that everything?" asked Ines. "Then let's get home. Daniel, you must be exhausted. Have you had supper yet?" 

"No, I haven't, actually." He tried not to wince as he followed Ines up the platform. 

"Well, there's something ready for you." 

"Is Vovô Sousa back yet?" Charlie asked his mother. 

"I don't know, honey. We'll find out when we get back. — Papai wasn't back from work yet," she said to Daniel.  "Tillie's back at the house with Mom Escobar and the girls. It's way past their bedtime but I thought you might like to at least see them." 

"Absolutely," said Daniel. It hurt that he couldn't feel more excited about seeing everybody, about meeting the baby for the first time, but at that moment all he could think about was getting to the car, getting home, and taking off the prosthetic. And then he could go back downstairs.... and then.... 

The Taunton station wasn't nearly as large as Providence, but he still had to stop and rest a couple of times as they walked up the platform and through the concourse. When they got out of the station, Mr. Escobar suggested that he bring the car around. Daniel didn't protest. Ines stayed to wait with him as Charlie hopped around nearby. 

"I'm real sorry," Daniel said quietly, "but as soon we get back, I'm going to need to go upstairs and... and take my leg off. The prosthetic. After that I can come down and see everyone. I just... What about the kids?" 

"I think it'll be fine," said Ines. "I started talking to them about it a couple of days ago. I told them the truth, in a simple way; and I told them that you were okay and that if there was anything we needed to know, you'd tell us. I did my best...." She looked over at Daniel, and he nodded. "...But they still may come up with some questions that we could never expect. Who knows how those little brains work?" 

 

When they pulled up to the house, Charlie was sent in first to announce their arrival. Ines waited on the sidewalk as Daniel got himself out of the car. Once he was standing, he looked up at the house. It seemed smaller somehow, yet just as he remembered it, deep blue in the fading light with its windows glowing in welcome. 

Well, almost just as he remembered it: there was his service star.  

As he climbed the front steps, some part of his brain noticed and welcomed the sturdy handrail (had it always been there? it must have.... ) When he got to the porch, he adjusted his crutches and looked at Ines. She smiled, went in the house, and held the door open. He walked in. 

And there was Tillie, holding the baby; and Mrs. Escobar behind her, holding Katie; and Charlie, waving a flag; and everyone smiling and saying Welcome home!  

At first he could only stand there and grin. "I... I'm so happy to see you. Let me go upstairs for a few minutes and freshen up, and then I'll come down and talk to everybody." He took a deep breath, and was smote by a scent from the kitchen, a scent redolent of garlic and tomatoes and onions.... His mouth began to water as he realized just how keenly hungry he was.

"Do you need your bag?" asked Ines.  

"Yes, please." He started for the stairs. 

"Dinner?" asked Tillie. 

"Yes," said Ines. 

As Daniel took the stairs, one by one, he reminded himself that it was only one flight, nothing like Penn Station, and his bedroom was waiting for him. Behind him he could hear Charlie desperately begging to show Tio Daniel where his room was, and Ines reminding him that Tio Daniel knew where his room was and would he please go help Tia Tillie in the kitchen? Now? 

Upstairs, Daniel paused to catch his breath. Ines came up behind him, carrying his bag. "In your room?" she asked. Daniel nodded, and followed her into his room. 

It was just as he'd left it, except for a simple, sturdy chair that had been left beside his bed, and some kind of contraption in the corner that he didn't bother to look at. He sat down on the bed and used a crutch to pull the chair closer. "Right there would be perfect," he said. 

Ines put his bag down on the chair. "What can I do?" 

"I'm all set." 

"Glass of water?" 

"Thanks, but that's okay. This won't take long, I'll be back down in a few minutes." 

"All right then. Yell if you need anything. Papai should be home soon." She left the room, closing the door behind her. 

Daniel immediately set about unlacing his shoes, peeling off his coat and tie and trousers, and doffing his prosthetic. When he got his stump sock off, he was relieved to find that his leg didn't look as bad as he'd feared. He put on some powder and a fresh sock, got dressed, and pinned up his pants leg. 

In the bathroom, his same old blue towels were hanging in the same spot they always had, but he quickly noticed some changes. A new wooden bench, gleaming with varnished white paint, was fitted across the top of the old claw tub. Next to the tub stood a kitchen stool and a handled basket. A grab bar that looked like something from a boat was attached to the adjacent wall. 

After he'd washed his face and hands, he went back down the hall. Tillie was sitting on the stairs. 

"What are you doing?" he asked. 

"Didn't Ines tell you to yell if you needed anything? We talked it over and figured we should have someone where we could hear you." She stood, and went down a couple of stairs. 

"I was fine." He gathered his crutches in one hand and took the banister in the other. 

"I figured, seeing as you didn't yell. Come have some dinner and make your appearance, so Ines can get those kids to bed." 

They were all waiting for him in the kitchen. As he came in, he thought he saw Mrs. Escobar start to tear up, but then Mr. Escobar was pulling out a chair, and Mrs. Escobar was giving him a hug and saying how happy she was to see him, and Tillie was putting a plate of hot stew on the table in front of him, and Charlie was bringing him a fork and a knife and three napkins, and Ines was bringing her daughters to see him.  

"So here's Katie. Katie, here’s Tio Daniel. Remember him from Vovô's pictures from Atlantic City?" 

Katie nodded. "When I had the measles, did you send me the telegram?" 

"I sure did. Vovô and I sent it together." 

"I'm four," she informed him. "I used to be three, but now I'm four. Are you going to sleep upstairs in  Vovô's house?" 

"I think so. I hear you're a big sister now?" 

She nodded. "Our baby is Maddie." 

"And here she is," said Ines. "Would you like to hold her? Maddie, here's Tio Daniel." 

Daniel held out his arms. Maddie eyed him, and held on to her mother's dress. 

"No? — She's just tired," said Ines. 

"We made you some dinner," said Charlie. 

"I see! It looks delicious." It smelled even better. Daniel's stomach growled, and he picked up his fork. 

"I think there are a lot of tired people here," said Ines. "It's time for the littlest ones to —" 

The front door opened. "Hello?" called Daniel's father. 

"— to go home," finished Ines. 

Daniel's father appeared at the kitchen door, and Katie scampered to meet him. "Vovô! Vovô, su bencao." Grandpa, your blessing. 

Daniel's father rested his hand on Katie's head. "Deus te bencao." God bless you.  

Charlie seemed to hesitate. He looked at Daniel. 

"Go on," said Daniel with a smile. Charlie looked relieved, and hurried to Daniel's father for his blessing. 

"Vovô, look, Tio Daniel is here!" said Katie. She took her grandfather's hand and led him into the kitchen. 

"Yes he is," said Daniel's father. And before Daniel could stand up, his father was standing in front of him and folding him into a hug.  

“Welcome home, Daniel,” he said, and patted Daniel’s back. “Now: eat!”  

“You too, Papai,” said Tillie. She put another plate on the table. 

“Thanks, Tillie.” Daniel’s father held out his arms to the baby; Maddie only curled closer to her mother. He kissed Ines on the cheek, accepted a glass of water from Tillie, and greeted the Escobars. “Thanks again for helping with all this.” 

“Oh, of course!” said Mrs. Escobar. 

“Besides, this way we get to go to the front of the line to see Daniel,” added Mr. Escobar with a grin. "But you know who got to see him before any of us? " 

"Who?" 

"Stinky Ligeiro." 

"You're kidding." 

"Nope. Saw him on the platform. Ines was ahead of me, so he didn't see her, but he spots me and I say hello and he says hello back and then he says, 'Hey! You'll never guess who I saw on the train! Spotty's boy, home from the Army!' "  

Daniel and his sisters held back snickers. The men in the neighborhood all had nicknames; their father had been "Spotty" ever since the year a deep suntan faded into freckles.  

"I did see him on the train," said Daniel. "I was surprised he remembered me." 

“I'd better get these kids home," said Ines. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Daniel.” She gave him a quick hug around his shoulders. “Charlie, Katie?” 

“But he just got here!” Charlie protested . 

“Buddy, as soon as I finish dinner I’m going to bed,” said Daniel. “We’ll see each other tomorrow, all right?” 

“All right.” Charlie gave him a hug, and then Katie. The Escobars said their good-byes and followed Ines and the children out.  Daniel and his father said grace and began to eat.  

Dinner was a stew with chicken and tomatoes and beans and parsley  and a bit of sausage and plenty of garlic, served with the good kind of bread that could be used to chase down every last drop of sauce. Daniel's father took a couple of bites and looked up. "Tillie, have you eaten?" 

"I have." Tillie poured herself a glass of water and sat down with them. "It's not much of a homecoming feast," she said regretfully. "We just didn't know who was coming home when, and...." 

"Trust me," said Daniel. "This is a feast. Thank you." 

Tillie smiled. "So how was your trip?" 

"Not bad. Just long. A lot of delays coming out of New York. " 

For dessert, there was a simple unfrosted cake, served with sliced strawberries. 

"So, anything special you want to do while you're home?" Daniel's father asked him. 

"Just enjoy being here. I didn't have anything else in mind." 

"I'm working tomorrow, but I don't think I'll be as late as I was tonight —" 

"—They'd better let you go home on time," grumbled Tillie. 

"—And then I'm off until Tuesday." 

"I'm working tomorrow too," said Tillie, "but Ines will be around. And I was able to get the weekend too!” 

"Now, this is up to you, of course," continued their father, "but we were thinking... the New Bedford folks are going to want to see you, and folks from around the neighborhood. What would you say to letting them come over on Sunday?" 

"You know: just get it over with," said Tillie. 

"Sounds fine to me," said Daniel. 

"Then we'll start putting the word out tomorrow," said their father. "Now: you've had a long day, and I'll bet you want to wash up. Why don't I show you where things are?" 

"Sure, after we're done in here." 

"It's your turn to dry," said Tillie. 

Daniel perched on the kitchen stool and dried the dishes as Tillie washed them. Back upstairs, Daniel's father followed him into his old bedroom. "Can I help you unpack?" 

"That's be great. Thanks." Daniel unzipped his bag. 

"Oh, I found this thing...." said his father. Daniel looked up. His father pulled a shabby old wooden tea cart out of the closet. It looked like a junk shop find that had been cleaned and polished. 

"Thought this might come in handy for you to get stuff back and forth." He rolled it over and put Daniel's bag on it. "Like this." He put Daniel's uniform coat on the cart and rolled the cart back to the closet. "Try it out, see what you think. If you don't like it we can find a new home for it." 

"Sure, I'll give it a try." As his father hung up his coat, Daniel started pulling out the things he'd need right away: pajamas, underwear, elastic bandages. 

His father hung up Daniel's other shirts and trousers. "You packed light." 

"Didn't think I'd need to pack heavy. You didn't throw all my clothes away, did you?" 

"Throw away perfectly good clothes? Are you kidding? We gave 'em to the clothing drive. — Nah, I'm just kidding. But you should try them on and make sure they still fit the way you want 'em to. Now, over here...."  

He went over to the contraption in the corner and unfolded it into a long, narrow rack for flat drying. "For your elastics." 

"Did you make that?" 

His father shrugged."I adapted a clothes rack. And I had help." 

"That's nifty. Thanks, Pai." 

 

A few minutes later, Daniel gave the tea cart a try, using it to get his supplies across the hall. It was a little awkward pushing the cart in front of him, but it beat trying to carry everything while using crutches. He got everything ready, undressed, and carefully pivoted himself onto the tub bench and his left leg over the side of the tub. He scooted the bench forward a little, reached forward, and turned on the water. 

Everything went fine, and soon he was toweling himself off, putting on his pajamas, and cleaning up after himself. As he went back to his room, his father came out of his bedroom. "All set? Did you find everything?" 

"Sure did." 

As his father went into the bathroom, Daniel put his things away. His leg was still swollen, and he wanted to elevate it for a while before he wrapped it for the night, so he put on his old bathrobe and went back out to the hall. As he pulled a pillow from the linen closet, Tillie opened her door and came out of her room. 

"Done in the shower?" she asked. 

"Yeah, Papai's in there now. I'm just getting an extra pillow. — Hey, did you do something to your room?" 

"Oh, yes! Want to see?" 

He was a little curious, and Tillie obviously wanted to show it to him, so he tossed the extra pillow onto his bed and followed her into her room. 

It was the same room she'd shared with Ines growing up. When Daniel had left, it had looked as it always had: light green walls, checked curtains, twin beds with matching bedspreads. 

That room was gone. Now it was blue, with long blue curtains with flowers on them. The furniture and the trim had been repainted, and the vanity had a new skirt. Some of the old pictures were missing; the survivors were in new places. And the twin beds were gone, replaced by a double bed with a new bedspread and throw pillows that matched the curtains.  

"What do you think?" asked Tillie. 

"It looks swell." It was a little unsettling – it looked like a room in an ad, the way everything kind of matched, but of course he wasn't going to say that to Tillie. "When did you do all this?" 

"Last summer. I wrote to you about it." 

"I don't remember your telling me about the paint and everything. Might have slipped my mind, though." Last summer he had been in training for the invasion of southern France. 

"I'd been thinking about it for a while, but I started working on it after we got engaged. I talked to Papai and we decided that instead of me moving into the guest room, we'd just move the guest bed in here because this room is bigger...." As Tillie talked on about wallpaper and deciding not to use it, and how she chose the curtains and painted the furniture, and how Joe had said any color you want except olive green, and how she got it all done before the baby was born so in plenty of time for the wedding, Daniel noticed something else new: two framed photographs. The one on the vanity was of Joe; the one on the dresser was from their wedding. 

"….Anyway, it was a fun project and I'm so happy with it. Maybe I'll work on the guest room next. Or we could do your room!" 

"My room's fine as it is." 

"For now." 

 

Back in his room, Daniel wrapped his leg as tightly as he dared. He opened his door again, climbed back into bed, and elevated his right leg on the extra pillow to help with the swelling. He turned around to pull a book from his bookshelf headboard, but instead of reading, he let the book lay in his lap. 

His father knocked on the door and poked his head in. Daniel smiled and sat up a little straighter. "Come on in, Pai." 

His father hesitated, as if he was taking a moment to drink in the sight of Daniel back in his own bed, and then came in and sat down. "So I guess you're finding everything okay?" 

"Everything's great." 

"Good. If you need anything, you know what to do. Now, tomorrow morning you sleep in as late as you want. Don't worry about us early birds." 

"I don't want to miss you completely. Maybe you could just chirp or something on your way out?" 

"I suppose we could do that. Ines'll be by sometime tomorrow morning, but if you want to sleep until five in the afternoon, then you do that." 

"Encouraging someone to sleep in? Are you feeling okay? This doesn't sound like you at all." 

"Well, it is your first day back. You can get up early on Saturday. We can go work in the garden, there should be enough light by 5:20 or so. You used to love that, remember?" Daniel rolled his eyes and pretended to scowl. 

His father took a deep breath. "As for tomorrow... I don't know what you had planned, if anything. But just to let you know what to expect... I haven't told many people around here exactly what happened to you. The family, of course, and the Escobars, and Father Oliveira, and Mr. Winslow." Mr. Winslow was his father's boss. "But as for the others, I told them you were badly injured in your leg and would have a long recovery. And that's all I told them. 

"I figured it's really none of their business. And then you know how stories get bigger and bigger as they get passed around. I didn't want anyone asking nosy questions, or assuming things about you. You know how funny people can be." 

"I hope you don't mind. I just want you to know what my reasons were, and to make it clear that it's not because I was embarrassed or anything." Daniel scoffed at that; his father looked pleased. "And in the end," he continued, "it's not my story to tell. It's yours, to tell when and how you want to." 

"No, that's fine. And like you said, I'll know what to expect." 

His father stood to leave. "I'd better hit the hay. Sleep well, Daniel." 

"You too."  As his father reached the door, Daniel thought of something. "You know, Pai... with people not knowing? I bet we could pull off some pretty good pranks."  

His father laughed. "It is so good to have you back."  

Tillie turned up a few minutes later. "Still up? Oh, good. Before you turn in, I have a present for you." 

"Aw, Tillie, it's not my birthday." 

"Good, 'cause it's not a birthday present." She handed him a box tied with a bow. 

He pulled the ribbon and opened the box to find a stack of — not socks, they were too wide for that —  

He lifted one up. "Are these stump socks?"  

"Yes they are." 

Daniel did not know what to think. He realized he'd always thought of stump socks as being in the same category as underwear, something to be kept out of view. But they weren't, were they? They were socks, and there was nothing embarrassing about socks.  

"I hope it's all right." Tillie sounded nervous, as if she were afraid she'd hurt his feelings. "I just thought maybe you could use them, I'm sorry if I —" 

"Oh, no. No, it's okay. I was just surprised." Daniel took out another white sock. "Wait, did you make these?" 

"I did. One of the nurses sent a pattern home with Papai — not his last visit, but the one before. These first ones are supposed to be the kind you wear under your prosthesis." 

The last one was made of thicker yarn, in blue and white stripes.  "That one's meant to be worn on its own," said Tillie. "The pattern said that some men like thicker socks for when they're not wearing their prosthesis, so their legs don't get cold. Like a bed sock or a slipper. 

"So let me know if they fit right, or if there's any way I can make them better. I'd be happy to make some more. But if you don't want me to...." 

"No, I'll try them on tomorrow. Thanks, Tillie." 

"You're welcome." She yawned and stood up. "Well, speaking of tomorrow...." 

"Yeah." He put the box and his book on the headboard shelf. "Hey, if I sleep in tomorrow, don't go running off without saying goodbye, okay?" 

"I promise. And I'll make sure you're good and awake to hear me say it." 

"Gee, thanks." 

"Any time. Good night, Daniel." 

"Good night." 

Tillie looked back one more time, burst into a smile, and headed off to bed. Daniel sat on the edge of the bed, used a crutch to pull the chair closer to himself, and propped his crutches on the chair. If he woke up in the night, he figured it would remind him where he was. Once his chair and crutches were in position, he switched off the light, put his leg back on the pillow, pulled up the covers, and lay back in bed. 

The room was dark — no fully lit corridor outside his door — and for a moment he felt on edge. But as his eyes adjusted, he saw the familiar outlines of the closet door and the picture frame, and the faint glow of the moonlight through the window shade, and he began to relax. 

And the quiet: no nurses and orderlies pushing carts and walking back and forth outside the door, no roommate fidgeting in bed, no faint but constant traffic noise from Pacific Avenue. Just the occasional bus from two blocks away; a distant train; the whisper of trees. 

He'd never expected his coming back to look like this. But after three years and thousands of miles, he was back home in his own bed at last. His heart ached with gratitude.  

A memory flitted through his mind: the memory of climbing the stairs at Penn Station, of reaching the vast concourse; of the platform and the tracks far below, like a valley seen from a mountain path. But before he could think any more about it,  he sank into sleep. 

Notes:

Congratulations to SnowyMary and LadyKes for spotting and commenting on the second cameo in Chapter 41!

Many thanks to @keyburg for idea-bouncing and test reading.

Thank you so much for reading, for leaving kudos, and especially for your comments. 

---

 
Honored to report that Chapter 41 has inspired two short fics:
Nightmares by @LadyKes
and
Relief in Waking by @keysburg

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A review of the Sousa-Escobar family tree, for those who want it: 

Ines is the oldest of the Sousa kids. She is married to Pete Escobar, who's away in the Pacific. Their children are Charlie, Katie, and Maddie. 

Pete's parents (and Ines's in-laws) are Berna and Teo Escobar. Pete has a few older siblings and one younger, Ritchie, who was killed in action in the Pacific in February. 

"Stinky" and "Spotty": When I was researching Portuguese-American life, neighborhood nicknames (and a general fondness for diminutives and pet names) came up more than once, in communities from New England to Hawaii. 

Chapter 43: Ines

 

 

 

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A quick note on the Portuguese:

Avó (note the accent on the "o") = grandmother; Vovó = grandma

Avô (note the circumflex on the "o") = grandfather; Vovô = grandpa

 

 

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He heard footsteps, but they sounded different, the rhythm was wrong. The air smelled and felt different too... and then Daniel awoke enough to remember: He was at home, in his own bed, and instead of hearing the nurses and orderlies and aides, he was hearing his father getting ready for work. A few minutes later, a quiet knock sounded at the door. His father looked in and smiled. 

"Have a good day, Daniel. I'll see you later." 

 "See you later," said Daniel. He managed a drowsy smile. 

After another fifteen or twenty minutes, he'd woken up enough to hobble across the hall to the bathroom. While he was there, he took some aspirin for his stiff back. Back in his own room, he rewrapped his leg and quickly fell back to sleep, a sleep so deep and intense he was barely able to nod to Tillie when she came to say good-bye. 

When he woke again, it was gradual: first being conscious of being comfortable, then realizing he was awake, and then remembering again that he was home. 

Home. He dozily reveled in the knowledge as he took his time waking up, until the sound of a voice caught his attention: a little voice, coming from the bottom of the stairs. 

"I'm just going to check and see if he's awake yet...." 

Daniel grinned. It was Katie, doing her best to sound nonchalant.... 

"No." 

...and there was Ines, her voice low and firm as she intercepted Katie and walked her back to the kitchen. Daniel couldn't make out what else she was saying.  

He sat up and looked at the clock: it was 0920. Back at the hospital he'd be halfway through his first session of physical therapy by now. 

His stomach reminded him that back at the hospital, he also would've had breakfast by now. He decided to put off donning the prosthesis for later, and put on his robe and brushed his teeth. As he started down the stairs, he could just hear Ines again: "Katie. Come back in here and leave Tio Daniel alone!" 

"Is he going to sleep all day?" moaned Katie. 

"Probably not. But if he wants to, we're going to let him." 

Daniel smiled, and made a point of landing with a thud and bumping his crutches against the wall as he took the next couple of steps. Immediately he heard Katie pelt out of the kitchen and run around to where she could see him. 

"Good morning, Katie," he said.  

"Hi," she said, suddenly bashful. She waited as he went the rest of the way down, and watched him readjust his crutches at the bottom of the stairs.  

"Where's your shoe leg?"  

Shoe leg? She'd said it so calmly, as if it were an everyday question....  but did she mean the prosthesis?

"It's upstairs," he said. "I'll put it on later. Where's Charlie?" 

"Charlie's at school, and Mommy's in the kitchen with baby Maddie," she said. "This way." She lightly rested her hand on his and guided him to the kitchen. Ines, wearing an apron over her dress and a scarf over her hair, was sitting at the table, cutting out a paper doll. Maddie was sitting on the floor, playing with measuring spoons and a pot. 

"Mommy! Mommy, look," announced Katie. "Tio Daniel's up! He's wearing pajamas!"  

"There you are," said Ines with a smile. "Did you sleep well?" 

"Like a log. I don't think I heard you come in." 

"Good. Coffee?" 

"Yes please." 

"I was hoping you'd say so. I want some too." Ines went over to the stove. "Some breakfast?" 

"I'd love some. I can get it —" 

"I know. But you can let me fuss over you a little bit, right?" She held up an egg. "How does a five-minute egg with some toast sound? We might even have some butter.  " 

"An honest-to-God cackleberry that's not being scooped out of a vat? Ines, you're the best." He pulled out a chair and lowered himself down. Katie climbed onto the chair next to him and passed him a sheet and a pair of scissors; he took the hint and started cutting out a dress for the paper doll. 

"So Katie was asking me about a shoe leg?" said Daniel. 

"A what?" 

"You know, Mommy," said Katie. "A leg that's a shoe. Like the one Tio Daniel has upstairs." 

"Oh," said Ines. "A couple of days ago I talked to the kids about what to expect, and I told them about your prosthesis being something you could take on and off, like a shoe." 

"Ah," said Daniel. "Makes sense. I've even got socks for it. You know Tillie knitted me some?" Ines smiled and nodded. "I still need to try 'em on." 

Maddie started banging her measuring spoons against the side of the pot. Daniel looked down and caught her eye. "What are you doing?" 

She sat still and stared at him. He made a little popping noise with his lips, like a fish. She looked even more interested, so he made the noise again. A grin spread over her face; he could just see her two tiny teeth. 

Now he had her. He blew a little raspberry and she started to laugh. A little more and she was holding out her arms and making little eh! eh! noises as she laughed. 

"Oh, there you go," said Ines. She picked up Maddie and handed her to Daniel. 

Daniel played with Maddie and was introduced to Katie's baby doll, until Ines moved Maddie to a high chair, sent Katie for silverware and a napkin, and brought over his egg and toast and a cup of coffee. 

"Thanks!" he said. As Ines poured coffee for herself, he quickly said grace and started peeling his egg. He took a moment to admire the orange yolk flowing out onto his toast before he started to eat. 

"This is amazing. So what's the plan for today?" he asked. 

Ines sat down with her coffee. "It's up to you," she said. "But I was thinking if you wanted to do any shopping, today might be a good day for it. I can go along, if you like; Mom Escobar said she'd take the girls." 

"Shopping for what?" 

"Whatever you want. Maybe some new clothes?" 

Daniel made a face. "Did Papai put you up to this? He was on me last night about clothes." 

"He mentioned it earlier this week. He does have a point. It's been years since you had your old civvies on, and you're not going to want to wear your uniform the whole time you're home, are you? Especially if we go to the B-E-A-C-H." 

Katie's eyes lit up, and she put her hand on his arm. "That means the beach!" 

"Really?" he asked Katie.  

She nodded eagerly. "Do you like the beach?" 

"We're not going today," Ines said to Katie. "If we go, it'll be when Vovô and Tia Tillie can come." She turned back to Daniel. "Anyway, if you do need or want anything, you can get it today and we can take care of any alterations and then you'll have it. Or you can go tomorrow with Papai, or whenever. It's up to you. " 

"No, you're right, it makes sense to go today. Papai was dropping hints about working in the garden tomorrow.  But let me try my clothes on first, see if I even really need anything." 

 

Daniel finished his breakfast and had another cup of coffee. He tidied the kitchen with Ines and Katie and then went upstairs to shave. Back in his bedroom, he pulled out some clothes he remembered as fitting well, and used the tea cart to bring them back over to his bed. He unwrapped his leg and checked it with a mirror. It looked fine, so he dressed and donned the prosthesis. To his relief, it fit comfortably: the swelling in his leg had gone down. 

His old pants were a different matter. He could get them over the prosthesis and the hip belt, but even without a full-length mirror in his room he could tell they didn't look right. They were also snug in the waist, which he didn't understand — he didn't think he'd put on any table muscle.... 

He tried on another pair, with the same results. There was no getting around it: he needed new pants.  

Next he tried on one of his civilian shirts. He could button it, but just barely; it pulled across his chest and arms. He tried on another shirt, with the same results. It made him feel better about the pants. 

He doffed his prosthesis and tried on a few more things. He could fit into his old swim trunks, but the ones he'd brought with him from the hospital were more comfortable. His old underwear and pajamas were still wearable, even if they weren't as loose as he remembered.  

So he'd need a shirt and a pair of pants, and it wouldn't be as easy as going to the tailor's at the HX: he was going to have to try them on, which would mean doffing and donning the prosthesis in a fitting room. 

And as much as he hated being a bother, it would be much easier if someone could go with him. He could ask his father to take him tomorrow, but they probably had plans, and if his father was serious about working in the garden in the morning.... 

He donned his prosthesis again, got dressed, and made his bed. He put some leg supplies in a pocket and headed downstairs to find Ines. 

"Looks like I need some new clothes after all," he said. "If you don't mind, can I take you up on that offer?" 

"Absolutely. Where do you want to go?" 

"Someplace with a good sized fitting room, I guess." He sighed. "I'll have to... unbuckle it, and take the shoe off and all that." 

"So it would be good if you didn't have to try on very many." Ines pursed her lips as she thought. "Are you happy with the way your uniform's fitting?" 

"Yeah. But Army sizing...." 

She nodded. "We could always measure your uniform trousers. Then we can measure the clothes before you bring them into the dressing room." 

Daniel thought that sounded like a good idea, so back upstairs they all went. He took his spare shirt and trousers out of his closet and let Katie use the little cart to bring them over to the bed. Meanwhile, Ines brought a tape measure. Daniel measured the waist and inseam of his trousers and the neck of his shirt as Ines wrote down the numbers. He could tell she was itching to take a few more measurements, so he gave her the tape and let her have at it. As she measured and made notes, he took a moment to try on a pair of his old shoes. At least those still fit. 

"There," said Ines. "That should help give you a head start. Ready? Let's get these girls over to Vovó's and get me looking decent, and then we'll be on our way." 

"You already look decent," protested Daniel.  

Ines scoffed. "With you looking so sharp? I don't want to embarrass you." 

 She scooped up the baby and herded Katie downstairs, letting Daniel follow at his own pace. "Katie, please put Maddie's blanket in the basket — good girl, thank you —Do we have everything? Katie, do you have your dolly?" She started toward the kitchen. "I wasn't sure what you'd want to do, so I drove just in case," she said. "The car's in the driveway." 

"This way," said Katie. She rested her hand on Daniel's to guide him through the kitchen to the side door.  

"Katie, you know I've lived here for a long time, right?" said Daniel. 

Katie only looked up at him and giggled a little, as if he'd said something ridiculous. 

 

They dropped the girls off with Mrs. Escobar. Katie protested until she was reassured that Tio Daniel was not being taken back to the train station. 

"You haven't seen the apartment here, have you?" asked Ines, as Daniel followed her down the Escobars' front steps. "You were already gone when we moved in." 

"That's right. You'll have to give me the grand tour." 

"Well, not that I'm complaining — this has been a lifesaver — but the grand tour won't take very long." She led Daniel around to the side of the house to the door of her apartment. Inside, she showed him around — living room, kitchen, bathroom, her and Pete's bedroom, and Charlie and Katie's room.  

"Like I said, it's small, but you can't beat the location. The Escobars have always taken good care of it, and we painted it before we moved in." 

"I like it. It's cozy," said Daniel. 

"Do you want to sit down? I'll go change. Where are we going, have you decided?" 

"Barclay's, I guess. As long as we're doing this, let me take you to lunch. Can Mrs. Escobar take the kids that long?" 

"Oh, thank you, Daniel, that sounds wonderful. And yes, she can take them. She told us to take our time, right? I think she'd be disappointed if we came back too soon." 

"Okay, so where do you want to go? Drugstore? Broadway Diner? The Taunton Inn?"  

Ines chuckled: the restaurant at the Taunton Inn was a fancy place, the kind of place you might take someone for a very special dinner.  

So why not a special lunch? Daniel began to warm to the idea. "Yeah. Let's go to the Taunton Inn for lunch today." 

Ines looked startled. "Really?" 

"Sure, why not?" 

Ines smoothed her dress. "I... well... I guess I'd better change, then! I'll be as quick as I can." She hurried down the short hallway to her bedroom and closed the door. 

Daniel idly looked around as he waited. He recognized most of Ines and Pete's old furniture; funny how different their stuff looked here, all rearranged in a new place. There were a couple of new photos. Maddie's baby picture had joined her brother's and sister's pictures in the hallway, along with a family picture taken during Pete's furlough the year before. A world map was pinned on the living room wall. 

A few minutes later, Ines came back down the hall, wearing a hat and a different dress. To Daniel, it looked like she'd done something to her hair and her makeup as well. She was carrying a pair of gloves. 

"Eh. I guess that'll do," Daniel teased her. 

She rolled her eyes and smiled. "Are you ready?" she asked. 

"I'm ready to get this over with so we can go to lunch." 

 

As they drove downtown, Daniel looked around as Ines caught him up on some of the stories and changes he'd missed. She took a loop around the town green before driving down Main Street to Barclay's.  

Inside, the store looked... not exactly empty, but certainly not the way he remembered it. The racks of clothes didn't look as full, the neat stacks of boxes weren't as tall as they used to be. The arrangements in the glass display cabinets were simpler, and fewer clerks stood behind the cabinets. 

When they reached the men's department, Daniel stopped and surveyed the racks and tables of clothes. There were no salesmen in sight: only a matronly lady with a tape measure draped around her neck, waiting on other customers. He took a deep breath, and opened and closed his hands on his crutches a couple of times.  

"Might as well look for pants first," he said. 

The selection was thin. Once Daniel had chosen a style, Ines started measuring until they found a pair of pants with the same waist and rise as his uniform pants. 

"The inseam's too long," said Daniel. 

Ines flipped through the other pairs. "I'm not finding anything closer. If you want to try that pair on, we can always take them up." 

The saleswoman appeared. "May I help you?" She seemed to be talking to Ines. Ines turned and looked to Daniel. 

"I'm looking for these in a shorter length." He showed her the pants. 

"I don't know.... I'll have to see. Would you like me to hang these in a fitting room for you while you browse?" 

To his surprise, Ines shook her head in a tiny "no." 

"Not just yet," he said.  

"All right then. I'll be back in a jiffy." The saleswoman left, and Daniel looked quizzically at Ines.  

"I only saw one other pair of these pants in your waist size," she said, and glanced toward some of the other shoppers approaching the table. "We are not letting this out of our sight until you've tried it on."  

By the time the saleswoman found them again, Daniel had chosen two shirts and was ready for a fitting room. The saleswoman unlocked one for him and hung up the clothes. "Are you going to be all right, dear?" 

"Yeah, I'll be fine." He latched the door shut. Under the bottom of the door, he could see the saleswoman's shoes walking away. 

He tried on the shirts first. They both fit fine, so he hung them up again, sat down, and turned to the pants. 

Off with his shoes, off with his prosthetic — he balanced it carefully against the wall and prayed it wouldn't fall over — off with his uniform trousers. He redressed the prosthetic with the new pants, donned the prosthetic, put on the left leg of the trousers, and pulled them up and fastened them. 

They fastened easily over the hip belt of the prosthetic, so that was a good start. He sat down, turned up the cuffs of the pants, put on his shoes, and then stood up again and looked at the mirror.  

The pants looked all right: his prosthesis didn't seem to show. He used his crutches to lower himself into a crouch, moving carefully in the small fitting room. He stood up again, opened the door, and peeked out. Ines was looking at clothes on a nearby rack. 

"Ines. What do you think?" He leaned against the door frame, took a couple of cautious steps forward, and stood up straight. 

Ines looked him up and down and nodded. "I think they look good." 

"I guess I'll take 'em, then." He steadied himself in the door frame as Ines marked the cuffs with tailor's chalk, and then turned himself around and got himself back into the fitting room.  

When he was dressed again, he opened the door. Ines came over and picked up his new clothes. "Anything else you want to look at?" she asked. 

"Not really." On their way to the line for the register, he noticed a small stack of wrapped gift boxes in front of a sign reading For Father's Day. "Not for myself, anyway. Does Papai need anything?" 

"Not if you ask him." 

Daniel sighed and shook his head, and Ines nodded in sympathy. "But really, if you did ask him," she continued, "he'd probably say something like having you home for Father's Day was the best present you could possibly give him, and I can kind of see his point. And then your card came yesterday, so you're all set."  

"Anything else planned? I hardly got to talk to anyone last night, I just ate and went to bed." 

She gave him a sympathetic look. "That trip must have been awful. We'll make a pie, of course — strawberry-rhubarb, probably — but then we'll have all that company.... We can talk about it some more with Tillie this evening." 

The line crawled along. Daniel began to wonder if he'd spent more time in line than he had doing his actual shopping. Finally he was able to pay for his clothes, and go back out to the car with Ines.  

They drove further down Main Street and turned onto Summer Street. As they passed City Hall, Ines frowned. 

"What's up?" asked Daniel. 

"Parking." She sounded almost apologetic. "What do you want to...." 

Daniel saw what she meant: they were approaching the Taunton Inn, all the parking spots on the street were full, and she was fishing for instructions. "I don't mind a stroll." 

"Okay. And if you change your mind, just let me know." They passed the Inn, and she looked over to Daniel and smiled. 

She made another turn and was able to find a parking spot behind the Inn. As she checked her lipstick and the pitch of her hat, Daniel started getting himself out of the car. Together, they went in the back door of the Inn. 

 

At the restaurant, the hostess was able to seat them right away. Daniel got himself into his chair and his crutches out of the way, and took a moment to look around. He wasn't the only one there in olive drab; Camp Myles Standish received soldiers returning from Europe through the Boston Port of Debarkation. Daniel wondered how many of the men there would soon be on their way to the Pacific. 

The restaurant itself hadn't changed at all. It was a cozy, comfortable place, all dark wood with an exposed beam ceiling. The back wall was painted with a mural of a country landscape, and in the corner a splashing fountain turned a water wheel. 

"So when was the last time you were here?" he asked Ines. 

"Last year when Pete was home. We went out for dinner." She smiled at the memory. "How about you?" 

"You know? I honestly don't remember." 

"They gave us a nice table," said Ines. "We've got a view of the water wheel and everything." 

"They must really like your hat." 

"I don't think it's me they want to show off." 

Daniel scoffed and opened his menu.  

The waitress brought their drinks and took their orders; Daniel handed her their menus. He turned back and caught Ines watching him. 

"What?" he asked. 

She smiled, and shrugged a little. "I'm just... happy." 

"That's... great, we haven't even gotten our food yet." 

"I'm happy we're here. That we're here," she added, forestalling the obvious joke. Her face grew more serious. "I wanted so badly to come and see you in Atlantic City. I wanted to come. I really did." 

"It’s okay. I understand." 

"And now, here you are, and we're here, and there's nothing we have to do or talk about right away, and... and I hardly know what to say. You've been all the way to the other side of the world, and you've had these titanic experiences, and now... here you are, and we're just sitting across the table, and I'm so happy to see you, I... I don't even know how to say it." 

Daniel looked down at the table. This gushing wasn't like Ines, and he wasn't sure what to make of it. 

"I hardly know what to say myself," he finally said. "Part of that's because of your letters, you know, especially since I've been in Atlantic City and could actually get them on time. You've kept me so up to date I don't know if there's anything left for me to ask about." 

"There's not that much to tell you about. How was your trip yesterday? I never heard." 

Daniel started telling the story, playing up anything funny he could think of and carefully glossing over his layover in New York. They took their time over lunch, laughing and talking. Over dessert and coffee, Daniel found himself wondering — had he ever done this before? done something with Ines that wasn't a task or a chore, just the two of them? 

As they left the restaurant, Daniel was concentrating on threading his way between the tables when he heard his name: "Daniel Sousa?" 

He stopped and looked around. A man in a suit and tie was half standing at a table, staring at him with a searching expression. 

"Well, I'll be!" said the man. He got up from the table and came over to meet Daniel. "I thought that was you! All grown up and in the Army. Remember me?" 

"Mr. Millette!" said Daniel. They shook hands. "Ines, Mr. Millette was one of my bosses back when I worked at the boat club. Mr. Millete, this is my sister, Ines Escobar." 

"Pleasure to meet you," said Mr. Millette. "I was thinking you might be a sister." He shook Ines's hand, turned back to Daniel, and looked pointedly at the stripes on Daniel's sleeve and the ribbons on his chest. "Looks like you've been busy. Get a little banged up there?" He nodded towards Daniel's crutches. 

"A little. Hopefully I'll get off crutches soon." 

"Ah, you'll make it. So are you at the Camp now, or passing through?" 

"No, I'm just home for a week while I heal up." 

"If I'd gotten here earlier, I would've bought you a drink. You're old enough now, right? Here — " he pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to Daniel — "If you have time, stop by the club sometime and let me buy you a drink there. Bring your sister." He gave Ines a friendly nod and clapped Daniel lightly on the arm. "Enjoy your time at home." 

"Thanks, Mr. Millette," said Daniel.  

As he started forward again, he could just hear Mr. Millette as he rejoined his table: "Back before the war... Tables, lifeguard... great kid...." 

"What a nice surprise," Ines remarked as they left the restaurant. 

"That was quite a while ago. I'm amazed he even remembered me," said Daniel.  

"I'm not. — Is there any more shopping you wanted to do today?" 

"Not downtown. Would I get in trouble if I took Charlie to Jigger's for ice cream when he gets home from school?" Jigger's was the neighborhood variety store. 

"I'm afraid you would. Katie would be crushed at being left out, and then you'd get all the way there and find out there's no ice cream." 

"You're kidding." 

"He stopped carrying it, for the duration. With the ration it's too hard to keep it in stock. You'll have better luck downtown." 

 

Ines drove back home up the east side of town. The road came close to a bend in the river; as Daniel looked out over the water, he thought of their father at the shipyard further south. 

"So what's the plan? Is Papai getting out at a decent hour tonight?"  

"He's going to do his best. I was planning to go back over to the house with the kids by around 4:30, and then we can all have dinner together. I can let you off if you'd rather go back now, or.... 

"I'd rather invite myself back over to your place, if that's all right." 

Ines smiled. "It's more than all right. Do you need to stop by the house for anything?" 

How much had their father told Ines and Tillie about the prosthesis? Maybe he could ask later. For now, Ines seemed to be hinting that she was ready for whatever he wanted to tell her. 

"I should check my leg pretty soon," he said. "I brought some stuff with me, though, so if you don't mind me using your bathroom for a few minutes...." 

"Of course. Or use my bedroom, if it's more comfortable; there's more room in there." 

"Thanks. Then I'm all set." 

She turned onto the street that led to their neighborhood. "We can take care of your new pants this afternoon, too, before we go over to the house." She checked her watch. "And then... you know, things might be busy this weekend, especially on Sunday, and then I don't know what Papai's got planned...." Her voice was growing cautious, almost shy. "I was thinking... If you wanted, we could make a quick stop and visit Mamãe and Mary. We have the time." 

"Sure, let's do that." Daniel's answer fell out of his mouth before he could think. Of course he wasn't going to say no, but her suggestion had caught him by surprise; the usual weekly visit was Sunday morning after church, led by Papai. As Ines turned north toward the cemetery, he found himself wondering why it felt so different to go with just one sister in the middle of the week, and if this visit was as much for her sake as for his. 

They drove through the gates into the cemetery, and Daniel remembered that the gravesites were a distance away from the road. He didn't think it would be too much of a problem. The ground was flat, and he'd practiced walking on grass back in Atlantic City.  But still.... 

"I should probably have a bit of road on this side when we stop," he said. 

"Okay," said Ines. A minute or two later, she pulled to the other side of the road and turned off the car. She got out and waited for Daniel as he got himself out of the car, and then walked with him as he haltingly picked his way across the grass.  

"Papai's not going to be sore that you showed me the new marker before he got to do it?" he teased. 

Ines pretended to wince. "Maybe you can just pretend you're seeing it for the first time. Had he ordered it yet when you left?" 

"No, he was still deciding on the design." When their mother died, there was no money for a headstone, and it was years before their father was able to start saving for one. He'd finally been able to order it while Daniel was in basic training. It had made for some interesting letters.  

When they were about ten feet away from the site, Daniel took a moment to rest before walking the rest of the way to the new granite headstone. 

SOUSA 

HUSBAND 
FRANCISCO M. 
1890 - 

WIFE 
CATARINA MARIA DELGADO 
1894 – 1931 

DAUGHTER 
MARY EMILIA 
1923 – 1926 

 

"Eternal rest grant them, O Lord...." He murmured the prayer with Ines, and stood with her in silence for a while. 

"It looks nice," he said. 

Ines nodded. "I think so." 

He admired the geraniums planted at the base of the stone, and then carefully walked over to Mary's little marker, placed when she was buried. It was a carving of a lamb, no bigger than a loaf of bread, with Mary's initials and dates engraved on the plinth. Ines came around and stood next to him.  

"I wish I remembered her better," he said softly. 

"Me too," said Ines. "You know, Mamãe once told me she was always tagging along after you and calling you: Dah-nyo! Dah-nyo!" She imitated a toddler's voice, and Daniel smiled a little.   

They stayed a few minutes longer and then started the slow walk across the grass to the car. 

 

Back at the apartment, Ines changed her clothes and then offered Daniel the use of her bedroom, so he could tend to his leg. "Do you have everything you need? Then while you do that, how about I go get the girls from Mrs. Escobar? If you get done before we get back, come find us if you like, or stay here and enjoy the quiet while it lasts." 

Once she had left, he closed the bedroom door in case they came back before he was finished. He sat on the bed, laid out his things, and set about taking off the prosthetic. His leg looked good and the swelling was improving. He changed his stump sock and donned the prosthetic again.  

After he dressed, he went back out to the living room.  He thought about going next door, but he was still tired from the previous day's journey. Ines and the little ones would be back in a few minutes anyway. He decided to just sit down on the sofa and wait for them. 

He woke up around half an hour later. Katie was curled up on the other end of the sofa with a thin blanket over her head, looking at a picture book. 

"Hi, Katie," he said. "When did you guys get back?" 

"We got home a long time ago. You were sleeping again!" 

"I was?" 

Katie nodded and slid off the sofa. She pulled the blanket off her head and spread it over the coffee table. "I used to take naps when I was three. But now I'm four, so I don't have to take naps any more." 

"Really," said Ines from the hallway. Katie said nothing, but started to set up a tea party on the blanket. 

"Katie tells me you've been back a long time," said Daniel. 

"Ten, fifteen minutes maybe? I hope we didn't wake you up." 

"Oh, no. And I promise, I don't sleep like this all the time, no matter what Katie here seems to think."  

Katie put a toy teacup in his hand. "Now, it's very hot. So be careful," she said, in an unconscious — and uncannily perfect — imitation of her mother. Daniel suppressed his laughter and took an obedient sip of tea. 

They moved the party to Ines's bedroom, where her sewing machine was set up. Ines altered Daniel's new pants while the baby played on the floor and Katie served pretend tea to Daniel, her doll, and her mother. When Ines finished, they moved back out to the living room. Soon, through the open window they could hear children laughing and calling to each other. 

"Here comes Charlie," said Ines.  

But before they saw Charlie, they heard him yelling out on the sidewalk.  "No!" he was yelling. "Because it's dumb and I don't wanna! And I'm busy!" 

Ines frowned and went to meet him at the door. "Charlie, what's going on?" 

"Nothing." 

"Charlie." 

Charlie's thin shoulders drooped. "Gene and Harold wanted me to play Captain America and I didn't want to, and they wouldn't leave me alone." He noticed Daniel, and his face brightened. "Tio Daniel!" He ran over and gave Daniel a hug. 

"Hi, Charlie," said Daniel.  

"Charlie, go change your clothes," said Ines, "and then you can have your snack." 

"When I'm done, can I show Tio Daniel the chickens?" 

" 'May I?' " 

"May I show Tio Daniel the chickens?" 

"If he wants to see them, then yes you may. Now, go change." 

 

When Charlie was ready, Daniel followed him down the front steps of the apartment and around to the Escobar's back yard. He didn't seem to notice how slow Daniel's pace was as they walked across the lawn; he just hopped alongside, telling Daniel about the chickens and how many were there and how some of them laid eggs for Vovô Sousa and Tia Tillie, and some of them laid eggs for his mother and sisters and himself, and some of them laid eggs for Vovó and Vovô Escobar and his aunt and cousins who were living with them.... 

"...and after school I check their food and their water," he said.  "And on the weekends I help bring in the eggs." 

"Those are important jobs," said Daniel. "I had those jobs when we had chickens at your Vovô Sousa's house. Sometimes you helped me feed them, do you remember?" 

Charlie looked blank. "Was that before the war?" 

"Yeah. You were a little guy then." 

Charlie did his chores and then started introducing Daniel to the flock: Myrna, Judy, Rita, Ginger, Whitney.... Mrs. Escobar came out to say hello, and to ask Daniel about his day and how it felt to be home and if he was recovered from the trip. By the time he and Charlie made it back to the apartment, it was time to head back over to the house. Ines put Maddie into the baby carriage and tucked in a large envelope, four eggs, and something that looked like a fish wrapped in white waxed paper. Katie and Charlie were given Daniel's folded clothes to carry. Together, they set off down Floral Avenue. 

It was a slow procession; they were constantly being met by neighbors running out to greet Daniel and welcome him home. When they reached the house and turned up the walk, Daniel's first instinct was to run ahead, grab one end of the baby carriage, and help Ines get it up the front steps, the way he'd always helped her when Charlie and Katie were babies. 

The grips of the crutches in his hands kept him in the present. He forced himself to breathe steadily until the cramped knot of frustration and humiliation in his stomach faded away. 

By that time Ines was halfway through what looked like her usual plan: leaving Maddie on the porch with Charlie and Katie while she pulled the carriage up the steps. As Daniel followed her up, she unlocked the door and held it for him. He stepped out of the way as Katie and Charlie came in with his folded clothes. They went back for the fish and the eggs and went straight to the kitchen.  Finally Ines came in with Maddie. 

"There! I think that's everything," she said. "Tillie should be home in about forty-five minutes, and we'll just have to see when Papai turns up. What should we make for dinner?" 

Before he could answer, the phone rang.  

"Think that's Papai?" said Daniel. 

"Or maybe somebody calling about Sunday?" Ines walked over and picked up the phone. "Sousa residence... Um, sure. Just a minute, please." She muffled the mouthpiece and turned to Daniel. She looked worried. 

"It's long distance. For Lieutenant Sousa," she said. 

 

Notes:

Table muscle: fat.

---

Thanks to @keysburg and @cotycat82 for test audience services.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your kind comments, which really do keep me going.

Chapter 44: Points and Medals

 

 

 

Daniel made his way across the living room, sat down, and accepted the phone from Ines. "Lieutenant Sousa speaking."  

"Thank you, Taunton," said a woman's voice. The local operator clicked off.  

"Sousa? Gil Tucker." Another click as the long-distance operator left the call. "So, you made it! How's your first day back home?"  

"Hello — um, it's going great."  

"Good, good. Say, are you alone, or do you have an audience?"  

"The... second one."  

"Ah! I'll keep it brief, then. I'm calling to let you know we're going to make you an offer. Letter went out today, you'll find it when you get back to Atlantic City. Congratulations!" 

Sousa took a deep breath, and kept his voice neutral. "Thank you."  

"You're welcome. Now, here's the dope. Job title's Agent, and the offer's for the New York City office. I know it's not Washington, but if that's what you wanted, maybe you can transfer once there's an opening." He told Sousa the starting salary; it wasn't princely, but it was enough. 

"Here's the tricky part. This thing isn't buttoned up until you get a start date. Bailey's dead set on August, and that's what he put in the offer letter. We're going to need to work with Peyton. 

"But don't worry about it. There's plenty of time to make everybody happy. Here's what I want you to do: Have you written a letter to Bailey thanking him for the interview?" 

"Not yet."  

Tucker grunted. "Do that right away and get it in the mail. Write it as if you wrote it before I called you. Then write him a second letter. If you know you're not going to take the job, go ahead and tell him then. But you're not going to say that, right? So tell him that you talked with me, and you're looking forward to reading the letter and formally replying or something like that. You want him to think, 'Yeah, that Sousa fellow wants to get here as soon as he can.' 

"Then once you get back to Atlantic City, write him a formal reply. We'll let you know what we need. Until then, just enjoy your leave, okay? Got all that?"  

"I do. Thanks very much."  

"You're welcome. Take care now."  

Peyton hung up, and Daniel placed the receiver back on the cradle. 

He'd made it.   

He wanted to yell out his good news, but of course he couldn't, he needed to keep this quiet, and it wasn't in the bag yet anyway. They wanted him to start in August, but Peyton and Blaine hadn't even said anything about when he was going to Walter Reed, much less about being discharged. Would they still take him if he could start later? Maybe in September —  

"Is everything all right?" asked Ines. "They're not calling you back early, are they?"  

"Oh, no. No, everything's fine. Just some stuff for when I get back." He grabbed his crutches. "I do need to get a quick note in the mail. Writing paper still in the dining room?" 

 

He wrote his letter and walked it to the mailbox around the corner, with Charlie and Katie tagging along. Back at the house, he joined Ines in the kitchen. 

"Now what were you saying about dinner?" he asked her. "I know you have a plan already...."   

"Well, we've got that fish, and I was thinking salad and rice, and the rest of that cake for dessert. Want to get the fish ready?" She gave him a wheedling smile.   

"Sure, if I remember how." He looked around the kitchen. He used to do this job outside, but now....  

Ines scoffed. "It'll come back to you. — What's up?"  

"Just figuring out where I want to do this. You guys didn't go moving stuff around, did you?"  

"Everything's right where you left it. Want me to get anything out for you?"  

"Not just yet. But thanks."  

Daniel went over to the sink, rolled up his sleeves, and washed his hands. Over at the counter, he propped his crutches and got himself balanced. He braced himself against the counter and carefully bent over. He managed to get a bowl and a cutting board out of the cabinet and onto the counter without buckling the knee of the prosthetic.   

Now he needed a knife. He used the counter like he used the parallel bars back and the hospital, and stepped sideways until he could reach the drawer. He found his favorite knife and slid it across the counter as he side-stepped back.  

Meanwhile, Ines got the fish out of the refrigerator and brought some onions from the cellar stairs. Daniel was getting ready to unwrap the fish when she came and stood next to him.  

"Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked with a smile. She handed him a neatly folded fabric bundle: his old apron. He chuckled a little as he took it, and held on to the counter as he took a step back. He checked his balance, shook out the apron, and put it on. He took a quick step back to the counter, balanced himself again, and unwrapped the fish.  

He wasn't really worried, of course, that he'd forgotten how to fillet a fish. But as he picked up the knife and made the first cut, a warm, happy feeling came over him. He was home, and he hadn't lost any of his old skill, and he was doing something useful. Meanwhile, Katie and Charlie had dragged chairs from the kitchen table and climbed up to watch him work.  

"What's that?" asked Katie. 

"It's a fish," Charlie said.  

Daniel picked up another fish and used it as a puppet. "I'm tonight's dinner," he made it say, in a suitably fishy voice. "Blub, blub, blub." Katie and Charlie giggled, and Daniel went back to work.   

The work itself was easy: the fish were already scaled and gutted, so Daniel only had to behead and fillet them. Doing it while staying balanced was the challenging part. He had just split the third fish when, for a sickening moment, he felt like he was about to fall backwards. He dropped the fish and grabbed at the counter.  

When he felt steady, he adjusted his stance and picked up the fish again. Katie had already gotten bored and left, but Charlie was still there, looking anxiously up at Daniel.  

Daniel forced a smile and started back in on the fish. "So, do you do this job when you go fishing with Vovô?"  

"He says he'll teach me when I'm older." Charlie sighed. "We never go any more."  

Ines spoke up. "Charlie, you went a few weeks ago, remember?"  

"But that was a long time ago, before I got the measles."  

"Where do you go fishing?"  asked Daniel. Charlie perked up a little and started talking about some of the familiar spots, and Daniel got back to work.   

When Daniel was done with the fish, Ines took the heads and bones for broth and brought him tomatoes to chop. Over in the high chair, Maddie was starting to fuss; Ines gave her a wooden spoon and a teething biscuit. "This probably won't hold her for long. I'll feed her after we get this rice on the stove," she said.  

Sure enough, a minute or two later Maddie's spoon and teething biscuit hit the floor, and Katie's attempts to entertain her were rejected. The broth was done, though, and soon rice, broth, tomatoes, onions, salt, pepper, and some leftover cold beans were simmering together on the stove.   

"I'll get the dishes," said Daniel automatically.   

For a moment Ines looked surprised. "...Thanks," she said. "Let me just get them to the sink for you." She gathered the dishes, got the soap out from under the sink, checked the rice, and went to see to Maddie.  

Daniel got himself over to the sink, shook in some soap flakes, and ran the water. Maybe they should be doing stuff like this in occupational therapy, he thought. It would be more useful than pottery and woodworking.   

It would also cause a mutiny: too much like K.P.. And maybe the pottery and woodworking were paying off after all; he really wasn't having trouble keeping steady on his legs while working with both hands. He'd only felt unsteady one time, when he was working on the fish; maybe he'd just leaned too quickly or something. This wasn't so bad.  

Charlie came to help dry the dishes and put them away. "So now what?" Daniel asked.  

"Nothing," said Ines. She was sitting by the kitchen table, feeding Maddie. "We can do the fish and the salad later."  

"Okay. I guess I'll take my stuff upstairs, then. Maybe Charlie will help me?" Charlie nodded eagerly.  

Daniel let Charlie carry his new clothes upstairs, and hold them as he hung them in his closet.   

"Thanks," he said, "that was a big help. You want to go play now? I have to wash some stuff in the sink."  

"Can I watch?" blurted Charlie.  

"It's not that exciting," said Daniel. He thought of the long bandages — what would he say if Charlie asked him what they were? he didn't want to scare him — and it was kind of personal — and why would Charlie want to watch him do hand laundry anyway? that was weird — and yet the kid looked so hopeful —  

"But yeah, you can come if you want. Let's see if we can find where Tia Tillie hides the soap flakes."  

The soap flakes were on the same shelf they always were. Daniel shook a few into the sink, ran the water, and took the bandages out of his pocket. Charlie watched as he put them in the sink and sloshed them around, but didn't say anything, even as Daniel arranged them across the rack in his room to dry.  

"You look like you're thinking about something," said Daniel.  

Charlie took a deep breath. "Can we look at your medals?" he asked.  

"What medals?" Daniel said cautiously. His second Purple Heart was back in Atlantic City. As for the others, he'd mailed them home over the years, addressed to himself. His father had put the little packages, unopened, in his dresser, where he'd found them last night.  

"The ones in your closet," said Charlie. "You know, from the race."  

"Oh! Those. Um, sure. Do you know where they are?"   

Charlie nodded.   

"Go ahead and bring 'em on over." As Charlie went over to the closet, Daniel sat on his bed and put his crutches aside. "How did you know they were there?"  

"Vovô showed them to me. He was cleaning out your closet and I was helping, and the box fell off the shelf, and he showed them to me, and he said when you came back I should ask you about them." Charlie stood close by and watched as Daniel opened the box.   

"Ah. I kind of forgot about them," said Daniel. "I got these when I was in high school. That was just before you were born. I was on the track team, and we went to a meet. That's where teams from different high schools get together and have contests. Did Vovô tell you about the track team?"  

"He said you mostly had races, but you also threw things and jumped. I can run fast. But I'm not the fastest."  

"Yeah, that's how I was on the track team." Daniel picked up one of the little silver-colored medals, and Charlie came a little closer. "This was for a running race. It means I wasn't the fastest, but I still did pretty good." He lifted out a bronze medal. "Same thing here. This one was for our whole team. We didn't win enough races to win the meet, but we still did good." Not good enough to go to the state competition, though. They'd been hoping all season, they'd worked so hard, they'd come so close. He'd moped for days. And then he'd forgotten about it.  

"Now the gold ones!" said Charlie.  

Daniel lifted the third medal out of the box. "This was for the relay race. Do you know what that is?"  

"Vovô said it's when four runners take turns in a race and they hand each other a stick."  

"That's it."  

"And you were one of the runners that won? Did you go first?"  

"No, I was the fourth one."  

"But that means you were last! You should have been first," Charlie complained.   

Daniel smiled at his loyalty. "Running first doesn’t always mean you're the fastest. All four turns are important."  

"Now this one?" Charlie eagerly leaned forward to look in the box and suddenly recoiled. He'd already backed a couple of steps away before Daniel realized he'd brushed up against the prosthesis.  

"I'm sorry!" cried Charlie. "I didn't mean to!"   

He looked frightened, and Daniel felt sick. "Charlie. What happened?"  

"I bumped into you! It was on accident. I'm really sorry."  

"C'mere." Daniel reached out and guided Charlie next to him. "It's okay. Your mom told you about... about what happened to my leg, right?" Charlie nodded. "And that I wear something on it to help me walk?"   

Charlie nodded again. "She said it's a prosthetic?" He pronounced the word slowly and precisely. 

"That's right," said Daniel. "So when you bumped into me, that's what you felt. That's all. It's okay."  

"But your leg underneath it —"  

"It's just fine." Daniel knocked the prosthesis.   

Charlie looked relieved. "So it doesn't hurt too bad? I didn't mean to —"  

"It doesn't hurt at all." Daniel knocked the prosthesis again.  

"Even with the bandages?"  

"Those? Oh, I wear those when I sleep. They're like a sock to keep my leg comfortable. I just wind them around so they stay on better. Did you think I had a broken bone or a cut or something?"  

Charlie nodded a little. "I heard Mommy tell Vovô Escobar that your leg got hurt on the train."  

"Oh, no. No, it was just a little sore. You know, like when you've been wearing your good shoes all day and you're ready to take them off. My leg feels better now. And if you brush up against me like that when I'm sitting down? It doesn't bother me. Okay?"  

Charlie nodded again, and Daniel hugged him around his shoulders. "Now, which one of these did you want to see?"  

"The gold one!"  

Daniel lifted the last medal out of the box. It was gold-colored, with a little picture in relief of an athlete about to throw a discus. Charlie reached out and ran his finger over the face of the medal.  

"So this is for discus," said Daniel. "It's like a heavy plate, and you throw it."  

"And you threw it the farthest? So this one is all for you?"  

"I guess you could say that," said Daniel.   

He gently rubbed the medal with his thumb. He'd been surprised he'd even made the track team; it was his first time going out for any of the school teams, he'd finally been able to back off enough on his after-school job to make the practices. So when the coach had tried him out on discus, and had him start training on it? That had been a real twist. He'd practiced and practiced in the backyard, ignoring Tillie's token heckling; he was chosen to represent the team at that event, which meant even more practice.... On the day of that big meet, that medal had been a crazy dream come true.  That and the relay medal.... 

And then the dream was finished. Two days after the meet, back at school, people were telling him congratulations, and they were sincerely happy for him, but of course it wasn't as important to them as it had been to him. Two months after the meet, he was starting work at the shipyard, and even if he'd remembered the medals, he'd never have dreamed of mentioning them; they didn't matter there. And now here it was seven years later and he'd forgotten they were even in his closet.  

"Want to try it on?" He slipped the ribbon over Charlie's head. Charlie looked down in awe at the medal on his chest.  

"Will you teach me how to throw a discus?" he asked.  

"I can try. But it might be hard to find a discus your size. Maybe we can start by playing catch or something." Immediately he realized how stupid that sounded — how was he going to play catch on crutches? But maybe he could find a way, and Charlie wouldn't be too disappointed....  

Downstairs, the front door opened and closed. "Hello?" called Tillie. "Where is everybody?"  

"What do you think, should we go see Tia Tillie?" asked Daniel.  

Charlie laughed. "Yes!" Daniel helped him get the medal off and back into the box. Charlie put the box away, and they headed downstairs.  

They found Tillie in the kitchen, putting the fish in the oven. “There you are!” she said as they came in. “Hi Charlie, how was school?” 

Charlie shrugged. “It was okay.” 

“Is Tio Daniel behaving himself?” Tillie gave Charlie a knowing look. Charlie looked up at Daniel and smiled but didn’t say anything. 

“I hear you had a real nice lunch," she said to Daniel. "Couldn’t wait until I could come too? Humph.” 

“Hey. I treated you to dinner in Atlantic City, remember?” 

“That’s right,” said Ines. “It was my turn.” 

“So when do I get to see you in your new duds?” asked Tillie. 

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know. Papai and Ines were the ones who told me to get them. I don’t know what plans you’re hatching up.” 

“Well, speaking of plans,” said Tillie, “I brought a paper.” 

“Oh, good,” said Ines. “Why don’t we work on it while the kids eat, before Papai gets home?” 

"Work on what?" asked Daniel. 

"Oh, just you wait," said Tillie. "You'll see what a crazy time we have on Friday nights." 

Soon, they were all gathered around the dining room table. Katie and Charlie were eating dinner; Daniel sat between them, since they'd both begged to sit next to him. Across the table, Tillie spread the newspaper open and took two little cardboard notebooks out of her purse. Ines sat down next to her and took four more of the same little books out of the envelope she'd brought from her apartment. Daniel pulled one over to look at it. Inside were pages of red and blue stamps and a little pocket of red and blue cardboard tokens.  

"That's our ration book," said Katie. "We bring it to the store. One for Mommy, and one for Charlie, and one for me, and one for baby Maddie, and one for Tia Tillie, and one for Vovô. Where's your ration book?" 

"The Army keeps it for him, right?" said Ines. 

"Sure," said Daniel. 

"We need to make a shopping list," said Tillie. "We need to figure out what we're going to have on Sunday. And then we were thinking we could have Papai's Father's Day dinner on Saturday night. I asked him about it this morning, and he said he didn't mind having it early." 

"We've been saving our points for a pork roast," said Ines. "We haven't had one of those in a while."

Tillie ran her finger over an ad in the newspaper. "Still eight points a pound. If we can get a big one, it'll last for a few days. But what should we do for Sunday?" 

"So if that pork roast is 4 pounds you have to give up 32 points?" asked Daniel. "How many points do you get again?" 

"64 meat points in a month," said Ines. "Less for the kids. And fresh chicken and fish don't count — if you can afford the chicken. It's gotten so expensive." 

"So one pork roast could wipe out half your points for the month?" 

"Sure, if you ate it all yourself," said Tillie. "Which would be dumb, unless you spread it out over two weeks. But if you take 16 points from my book and 16 from Papai's...." 

"And then some from my book and the kids' books...." added Ines. "And then the way the points work, we still have some from the last point period and next week we can use some from the next." 

"So we've got enough points," said Tillie. "And don't you dare start making noise about not using points on you. We saved for that, too. You didn't use any on him today, did you?" she asked Ines. 

"Nope," said Ines. She turned back to the newspaper. "Daniel, what do you think? Anything special you've been wanting?" 

"It's funny... I used to think all the time about what I'd to eat when I came home. Now? I'm just glad to be here." 

"Aww," said Tillie with a smile.  "That's so sweet. Now, for real, what do you want?." 

"Maybe some rice pudding?" said Daniel.  

"Oh, then I bet Tia Otilia's got you covered," said Ines. "But we can have rice pudding every day this week if that's what you want, and we've got some bacelhau in the pantry." 

"So pork roast for Papai? I'll call the butcher," said Tillie. 

 When Tillie got back from the phone, they finished their Father's Day plans and started working on Sunday's menu: sliced ham... maybe some cheese... bean soup, made with the ham bone... rolls... angel food cake with fruit... Daniel's mouth watered as they made their plans. His mind kept drifting to the pot of rice on the kitchen stove. 

The kids had just been turned loose to play when the front door opened.  "Vovô's here!" Katie cried. She and Charlie ran to meet him and escort him into the dining room.  

He beamed as he walked in. "Ah... All three of you together again." 

 

Over dinner, they took turns talking about the events of the day; as they ate dessert, they started talking about the weekend. They cleaned up the kitchen and went out to the living room. Daniel lowered himself down to his old spot on the sofa; immediately Charlie and Katie plopped themselves next to him, one on each side. 

"Look at that," Tillie grumbled playfully. "They've forgotten all about me." 

"Can I sleep over?" asked Charlie. 

"I want to sleep over too," Katie piped up. 

"Not tonight," said Ines. "We didn't bring pajamas, and we didn't ask Vovô." 

"What about tomorrow night?" asked Charlie. 

"We can think about it," said Daniel's father. He was sitting in his favorite chair, holding Maddie on his lap. "Tomorrow's going to be a busy day."  

"Are we going to the beach?" asked Katie. 

"Not tomorrow. We're getting ready for our company on Sunday. That's in two sleeps," said Ines. 

"What company?" asked Charlie. 

"All the other people who want to see your Tio Daniel while he's home," said Daniel's father. "Tio Marco, and Tia Rosario —" 

"Is Tia Otilia coming?" asked Charlie. 

"Yes, she is."  

Charlie sighed. 

"Aw, is she still pinching cheeks?" asked Daniel. Charlie nodded wearily. 

"— And your cousins and the rest of the family, and then our friends," continued Daniel's father. "It'll be a big party, and we're going to get ready." 

"So let's make a plan," announced Tillie. "I'll start the rolls first thing, and then I'll go to the store...." She started writing in a notebook. 

"Is that a timeline?" asked Daniel. 

"A timeline and a shopping list." 

"What time do you need me?" asked Ines. 

"Whenever you feel like getting here," said Tillie. "Daniel and I have it covered. Right, Daniel?" 

"Sure, Tillie." 

Daniel's father spoke up. "So, Charlie, Katie: what do you think of your Tio Daniel?" 

"I like him. He's funny," said Katie. "He made the fish talk. He sleeps a lot." 

"Thanks, Katie," said Daniel. 

Ines stood up. "Well, speaking of sleep...." 

Katie and Charlie protested, but eventually let themselves be herded out the door. Daniel's father helped Ines get the baby carriage down the steps and left to walk her part of the way home. 

"Up for some cards?" asked Tillie. 

"Sure. Let me wash up first." 

Daniel went through his usual routine. He was tired, but comfortably tired, like back at the hospital: nothing like last night, when he'd almost fallen asleep in his dinner. Back downstairs, he found Tillie and their father waiting for him in the dining room (which reminded him, he still needed to write that second letter to Mr. Bailey....)  

"So you had a good first day home?" his father asked him as he sat down. 

"Oh yeah. Even if I did have to go shopping. So, Tillie, what are we playing?" 

"Gin rummy." She started to shuffle the cards. "You know, Papai, if you just would let us teach you bridge, then the four of us could play." 

"Oh, I don't think I have the brains for bridge," said their father.  

"That's your silliest excuse yet," said Tillie. She offered the cards to Daniel to cut, and then started to deal. 

"You should ask one of your friends," their father continued. "Maybe one of the girls from work." 

Daniel closed his eyes. "Pai." 

"You see what I'm up against?" Tillie picked up her cards and started to arrange them in her hand. "I'm just talking about a fun family game. Daniel's only here for a week, and having someone over takes planning, and invitations, and making little sandwiches.  

"Besides: there's too much potential for misunderstanding. I know these girls. They're nice enough, but they're not good enough for Daniel."  

Daniel looked up from his cards. "What?" 

"You heard me," said Tillie. "Oh, and it's your turn." 

 

Back upstairs, Daniel wrapped his leg, put his pajamas back on, crawled into bed, and turned out the light. 

It had been a good day, he thought. The clothes shopping was a chore. But he'd gotten it done, and wasn't too tired afterwards. And he'd gotten to spend time with Ines and the kids... and the kids didn't seem upset by him. 

So tomorrow he'd wear his new clothes — he'd have to get up early if he wanted to help his father in the garden....  

And then the news about the job. They were offering him a job. He had a job to go to, and not just any job. Of course he was going to take it. He needed to write to Bailey, maybe first thing in the morning.... 

But before he could start, Peyton had to release him. He thought about Ayers: he was hit in what, October? September? And he still wasn't discharged; he still had to finish up at Walter Reed.  

And how long did it take to get through Walter Reed anyway? Would Peyton let him go early? Even if he went early, would he be done in enough time to start in August? What if Peyton said he could go early, but he had to wait a long time for a bed? 

If he couldn't come in August, would the SSR wait for him? Or would they give the job to someone else and pass him over? 

No use borrowing trouble. There was nothing he could do until he got back to Atlantic City, nothing but get through his furlough so he could show Peyton he could do it. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Many thanks to @keysburg for test reading and for consultation on fish and the government.

---

Thank you for reading, for leaving kudos, and especially for your comments.

 

Here's a good photo from the Ames, Iowa Historical Society showing an assortment of U.S. ration books, stamps, tokens, etc.

Chapter 45: Saturday

 

 

 

Daniel slept soundly that night, and when he heard his father out in the hall the next morning , it was like he'd never been away. He didn't have to stop to wonder what time it was, he didn't have to even really wake up, this was his signal, this was the routine, get up and start the morning, get in the bathroom before Tillie beat him to it — 

— He fell to the floor. His crutches clattered next to him. Before he could gather his wits, his father burst into the room. "Daniel!"  

"It's okay, Pai. I'm okay. I just... forgot for a second there." As he sat up and turned around, he heard Tillie's door open.  

"What's going on?" she called. In a moment, she appeared in the doorway. 

Daniel sighed. "Everything's fine, Tillie." She lifted her eyebrows but didn't say anything. 

Daniel's father was standing by the foot of the bed, looking pained and uncertain. "Do you need a hand?" 

"I'm okay." Daniel pushed the crutches over to the chair and then, in one smooth motion, got himself up and seated, just as he'd learned in physical therapy. "See? No harm done." He mentally checked himself over. His right arm hurt a little, but the pain was already fading, and otherwise he was fine. All those practice falls in jump school and physical therapy had paid off. 

His father did not look reassured. "Did you slip on something?" He scanned the floor. 

"No, I really just forgot." Daniel kept his voice light. "I think it happens to just about everybody sooner or later. Tonight I'll put the chair closer to the bed to remind me." 

"So how long... until...." 

Daniel shrugged. "Different for everyone, probably." 

Tillie spoke up from the doorway. "Well, you were obviously up before me, so I guess I can play fair and let you get into the bathroom first." 

"Thanks, Tillie, that's big of you." Daniel picked up his crutches from the floor. 

"You're sure you're all right?" his father asked. 

"I'm sure." Daniel stood up and adjusted his crutches. "I'd better go quick here before Tillie changes her mind."    

 

When Daniel got downstairs, his father and Tillie were already in the kitchen. 

"Ooo, are those your new clothes?" said Tillie.  

Their father grinned. "They look good." 

"So how's it feel to be in civvies again?" Tillie asked. 

"A little strange," said Daniel.  "So what can I do here?" 

"Want to pour some coffee?" Tillie brought the coffee pot over to the table. The cups were already out, so Daniel set to work as Tillie and their father brought over plates of toast and eggs.  

They did not linger over breakfast. When the dishes were put away, Tillie left for the store, and their father took out the flour canister and the big mixing bowl. "We should get these rolls going before we head outside," he said. 

"Mind if I work on something else while you're doing that?" asked Daniel. "It's not exactly a two-man job, and I have to write a couple of letters. It's just hospital business, but I'd like to get them done and in the mail." 

"Of course, go ahead. There's paper in the drawer." Worry flitted over his father's face. "This isn't about what happened this morning, is it?" 

"Oh, no. No, this is just routine stuff. It shouldn't take long." 

As his father scooped flour, Daniel went to the dining room and took the writing paper out again. He wrote to Bailey — thanks again for the interview, talked to Major Tucker, looking forward to writing a formal letter of acceptance — and then wrote a similar letter to Major Tucker. When he was done, he told his father where he was going and set off for the mailbox around the corner.  

As he walked back, he found himself thinking about the job again. The August start date worried him. Peyton had made it clear that if he didn't think he was ready, he wouldn't let him go. 

But Peyton knew it was a good opportunity, he'd said so himself. There had to be a way to work it out, Daniel felt it in his gut. He'd just have to show Peyton he was ready. 

He stopped short as he reached the house. His father was cutting the grass.  

Why hadn't his father waited? Cutting the grass was his job — but of course, his father had gotten used to doing it himself these past three years — 

And he couldn't really do it anyway, at least not now. He couldn't walk without crutches, and he couldn't push the mower quickly enough to cut the grass. He wouldn't even be able to run the edger. 

He stayed put for a moment and watched his father work. Maybe someday he'd be able to mow the lawn again: get off crutches, speed up his pace.... The physical therapists hadn't said anything yet about walking without crutches. Maybe it was time to ask them about it. 

His father had left the grass shears on the porch steps. Daniel considered, and then used his crutches to lower himself down to a kneel. He'd practiced kneeling back at the hospital, but it was still clumsy moving from spot to spot as he trimmed the grass around the steps and the house. He'd made decent progress by the time Tillie returned from the store. 

"Papai, you keep doing what you're doing," she called. "Daniel and I'll take care of the groceries." 

Daniel looked up in surprise; Tillie just gave him a well, come on, I'm waiting look. He grabbed the porch rail, pulled himself up, and followed her to the driveway. 

"I don't know how much help I'm going to be," he said. 

Tillie scoffed. "You can always hold the door," she said. "And you can help me put things away." She dropped her voice. "And if you don't come, Papai will, and he doesn't need to be snooping. I want to try to keep it a surprise." 

"Keep what a surprise?" 

"Remember? I'll show you when we get inside." 

Back in the kitchen, she lifted a package out of one her bags. The package was wrapped in white butcher paper, and she handled it as carefully as if it were a crystal vase. 

"I was able to get the pork roast! I think there was only one more left. Wasn't able to get much ham for tomorrow, though. Maybe we can make it into ham salad or something. Here, let's sort these...."  

As Daniel unpacked the bags, Tillie staged the groceries around the kitchen, leaving them in little caches near where they belonged so that Daniel could finish putting them away.  

"I am so glad you're back," she said, watching him put a can of shortening on the top shelf. 

"Gee, thanks." As the tallest one in the family, Daniel was used to being pressed into this service. "Anything else you need?" 

"No, I'm okay for now. Oh — I picked up some film for Papai's camera. We should take plenty of pictures while you're home. Want to put your name on it for a Father's Day present?" 

"That'd be swell, thanks." 

Tillie peeked under the towel covering the bowl of rising bread dough. "Ooo, these are ready to go." She pulled the towel off and started taking out the baking pans.  

Daniel looked into the bowl. "Oh my God," he said. "How many are we making?" 

"Four dozen, maybe? Five if we make 'em small? We'll need at least two dozen for you, and that'll leave enough for everyone else. We can have some today, and if we have any left over we can use them for lunches. Want to shape these with me?" 

Daniel grumbled at the idea of needing two dozen rolls just for him, but as he followed Tillie to the sink to wash up, he couldn't help thinking about how those rolls would be fresh out of the oven just in time for lunch....   

He stood across the table from Tillie, and together they started shaping the dough.  Daniel was feeling more comfortable keeping his balance while working with both hands. The bread dough was cool and springy, and he could almost taste the finished rolls. 

"It's been a long time since I've done this," he said. 

"Well, you'd never know it," said Tillie. "You're just as slow as you ever were. But they still look good," she added. 

"Thanks for noticing. Does it make you feel better? Ines is still the fastest?" 

"Not by as much. We'll catch up to her one of these days." She put the first filled pan aside, covered it with a towel, and brought out another pan. 

"So... this morning," she said. "You weren't just saying that to Papai, were you? You really just... forgot?" 

"Yeah," said Daniel. He kept his eyes on his work. 

"It makes sense," said Tillie. Daniel looked up in surprise, and she shrugged. "Well, think about it. After New Year's, look how long it takes for people to stop writing the old year on their checks. And the old year was only twelve months long.   

"Getting out of bed, you were doing it the old way for twenty-four years — well, twenty-three, if you take out before you learned to walk — oh, and then you slept in the crib at first — twenty-two years, maybe?" She considered as she took a handful of dough. " — Anyway, however long it was, that's a long time, and you've only had six months to get used to the new way. Less than that, if you take out when you had to stay in bed." She put the shaped roll on the pan and took another handful of dough.  "So after we set these to rise, we can pick some rhubarb and look for some strawberries, for the pie. If you don't mind. Poor Daniel. I bet you thought you were coming home to rest!" 

Daniel's father had left a chair out by the garden that turned out to be to be very useful. Daniel was able to use it to get up and down from the ground when he was picking rhubarb and strawberries with Tillie, or weeding the garden and thinning carrots with his father; he was able to sit down when he was working on other tasks or just needed to rest. It felt good to be outside, surrounded by green and the scents of cut grass and growing things.  It felt good to let his mind relax as he tied vines and poked through the stalks looking for beans, working in contented silence. 

When he was ready to move to a new spot, his father helped him move the chair. It annoyed him to need the help, but it was easier than trying to drag the chair across the grass with his crutches. When he'd gotten himself settled again, Daniel felt his father's hand on his shoulder. 

"It is so good to have you home," his father said, and patted his shoulder again. 

The time flew, and soon Charlie and Katie were running down the back steps and across the lawn. They collected hugs and blessings from their grandfather and flung their arms around Daniel. 

"Are we going to water the garden?" asked Charlie.  

"Not today," said Daniel's father. "I think it's going to rain this afternoon." He glanced toward the clothesline. "That reminds me — Daniel, do you have any laundry that can't wait? Or can you wait till Monday?" 

Daniel mentally counted his clothes. "I'm good till Monday. Charlie, Katie, one of you want to help me pick beans?" 

As they worked, Katie described the entire backyard to Daniel and told him where everything was — the clothesline, the gardens, the grape arbor, the grill — and all about how sometimes they ate outside on the table, and sometimes they ate outside sitting on the ground, and what was growing in the garden, and how she helped Vovô pull carrots, and about how grapes grew on the grape arbor and got made into jam — 

"Only jam?" asked Daniel. 

"Some of the other ways too," said his father. "I haven't done any in years, I just haven't had the time, but last year old Mr. Costa did it. I gave him some grapes and he put up a few bottles for us." 

Soon it was time to put the tools away and bring in the morning's crop.  Ines and Tillie had the first rolls in the oven and a pot of soup on the stove for lunch. Daniel went upstairs to check on his leg and then reported downstairs. 

There was much to be done. There was the bread in the oven and all the rest of the cooking to be done for their dinner that night and their company the next day. There were the usual daily chores: getting lunch together, caring for the baby, and keeping an eye on the older kids. And then there was getting the house company-ready, cleaning and dusting until it could pass the inspection of the aunts.  

Daniel did his best to be useful. He worked in the kitchen, creaming the shortening and sugar for the cookies, and then went to help with the cleaning. First he took care of dusting the highest places, just in case Tia Otilia took out a ladder and ran a white-gloved finger over the top of the door sill. Ordinary dusting was slow and awkward: a lot of small steps, of adjusting his balance as he stooped and stretched, of constantly trying to figure out what to do with his crutches. 

Katie and Charlie helped keep his mind off his frustration. Ines had issued them dustcloths and sent them to ask Tio Daniel to teach them how to dust "the Army way," so Daniel had fun inspecting the folds of their dustcloths and making them fold them again. He had them crawl on their tummies and elbows to dust the rungs of chairs and the feet of furniture, and to sneak quietly up the staircase to clean the baseboards and balusters. Katie wandered off after a while, but Charlie stuck with Daniel until the job was finished and it was time to set the table for lunch. 

After lunch, Ines handed the baby off to their father and suggested that he read Katie a story. Charlie tagged along. Twenty minutes later, all four were cuddled up on the living room sofa, napping. Daniel smiled at the sight and wandered into the kitchen. The first raindrops were sliding down the windowpanes. 

"They're all asleep in there," he reported. 

"Perfect," said Ines. "Let's enjoy the quiet. Want some coffee?" 

"And how about a plate for that roll I see you eyeing?" said Tillie. She waited for him to put the roll on the plate and then carried it over to the table. 

"Thanks," said Daniel. He pulled out a chair and lowered himself down. "With these crutches... I just don't have enough hands." 

"Well, don't go trying to grow another pair," said Tillie. "You'll have to get all new shirts and they might keep you in the hospital longer." 

Ines brought three cups of coffee over to the table. "Have the doctors said how long you'll need them?" she asked. 

"Not yet. If I ask them, I already know what the answer'll be: 'It's different for everybody.' It's what they always say. So, what's next on the to-do list?" 

"Papai did the bathroom, so cleaning's about done," said Tillie. "We can vacuum later." 

"And we don't need to start dinner for a couple of hours," added Ines. She turned to Tillie. "When do you want me to do your hair?" 

"After dinner's fine. Oh, Daniel — the kids want to sleep over tonight. Do you mind?" 

"Um... I guess not. Do I have to do anything?" 

"Not unless you want to. Charlie doesn't need much help, and I'll take charge of Katie. Bath and bed tonight, and then church in the morning." 

The image of the church popped into Daniel's mind: walking in the side door and seeing everyone turn to look at him.... 

"You guys really haven't told anybody exactly what happened?" he said. 

His sisters looked at each other and shook their heads. "Father Oliveira knows," said Ines, "and the Escobars. And that's about it." 

She took a sip of her coffee. "We talked about it the day after you called us, the day after Christmas. We didn't say anything because we didn't know anything, and because..." She shrugged. "Once we knew more, we figured you should stay in charge of that." 

Daniel looked down and away. There was a question hanging in the air: Are you nervous? And he wasn't quite sure of the answer.  

Back in Atlantic City, it was easy. He was surrounded by fellow patients and by other soldiers. The townies were used to the patients. The few rude people he'd run into were strangers, or people whose opinion he didn't care about. 

Here, though... these were people who knew him. Some of them had known him almost all his life. And here he was, coming home so... different.  

But, really, what was there to worry about? Everything had gone fine with the neighbors he'd met. Rationally, he knew he had nothing to be embarrassed about. And nobody was going to try to hurt his feelings on purpose. He'd just have to remember that they meant well. 

"So," said Tillie, "if you were back in Atlantic City, what would you be doing right now?" 

He glanced at the clock. "Pulley weights in the gym, probably...." 

He was always writing about hospital life in his letters, of course, but it was different to talk about it in person with his sisters, sitting at the kitchen table at home. He grew more relaxed, less worried about causing worry: the hospital was three hundred miles away and they could see that he was all right. 

The afternoon passed quietly. Daniel played with the kids for a while and then helped in the kitchen. When the time came, he supervised the kids as they set the table and noisily negotiated who would sit where.  

And finally it was time to sit down. They said grace and started to pass the serving dishes around the table: pork roast and potatoes and gravy and rolls and carrots and beans and salad.... 

"Well, thank you all," said Daniel's father. "This looks delicious. And just having you all together again...." He turned to Daniel and smiled. 

"And now Maddie's here," he continued. "Now all we need is to get those two sons-in-law of mine home again. Maybe next year, God willing." Glasses clinked around the table. 

After dinner, they washed the dishes and then brought out the pie. Daniel took care to eat it slowly, enjoying every bite. 

The rest of the evening slipped by. In the kitchen, Tillie sat on the kitchen stool and knit a sock while Ines sectioned her hair and put it up in pin curls. Katie stood by and watched for a while, and then started sneaking pins out of the dish to pin into wads of her own hair. Daniel hung around for a while to heckle, and then went out to the living room. His father and Charlie were sitting on the floor playing with Maddie, letting her hold their hands and pull herself up to stand.  

Eventually it was time for Ines to go home. After she left with Maddie, Tillie gave Katie a bath. Charlie went next. By the time Daniel was done with his shower, Katie was sitting in bed, begging for a story from Vovô and a story from Tia Tillie and a story from Tio Daniel. Fair was fair, so when Charlie went to bed a little later, he got three chapters of a book.  

"Oh, I remember this book," said Daniel, when it was his turn to read.  

"Vovô showed me! See?" said Charlie. He opened the front cover of the book and pointed. 

For Daniel 
September 1927 
Love from Mamãe and Papai 

When the chapter was over, Daniel moved the bookmark and gave the book back to Charlie. "Is it Vovô's turn now?" Charlie nodded. "All right then, buddy. I'll see you in the morning." 

Charlie yawned. "Can we look at your medals tomorrow?" 

"Sure, we can do that. Not while the company's here, though." Daniel scooted himself forward on the chair, took both crutches in one hand, and stood up. 

"Are you going to wear your Army uniform tomorrow?" Charlie asked. 

"That's the plan," said Daniel. "I'm going to go find Vovô now, okay? Sleep tight." Charlie nodded, and Daniel went out to the hall, where he found his father waiting. He handed off the book and went back downstairs to find Tillie. 

 

It was easy the next morning for Daniel to ignore the vague nervous feeling floating around his stomach. He needed to get himself ready, and then he needed to help make sure Charlie and Katie were up and dressed on time and got a bite to eat and didn't walk out the door with crumbs on their faces. With Tillie, he herded them out the kitchen door and waited on the driveway as his father locked up. 

"Are we driving?" Katie asked in wonder. 

"We sure are," Daniel's father said cheerfully. 

"Why?" 

"Lots of reasons. For one thing, it might rain, and we don't want to get raindrops on your little hat, do we? Hop in, and we'll go get your mommy and baby Maddie." 

Daniel got himself in the front passenger seat and pulled the door shut. He, of course, was at the top of the list of reasons they were driving. The church was barely more than half a mile away — less if you took the short cut — but it would take him a long time to walk that far. He'd been relieved when his father suggested driving before he could bring it up himself. 

They went the couple blocks to the Escobars' house and sent Charlie running up the walk to get his mother. As they waited, Daniel noticed again the service stars hanging in the window: Pete's blue star and, above it, Ritchie's gold. 

In a couple of minutes, Ines was in the back seat. "Good morning!" she said. "Charlie, Katie, were you good at Vovô's house?" 

"Of course they were," said Daniel's father. He turned left and started driving towards School Street. 

"Good," said Ines. "The Escobars say hi and that they'll see us at church and then later today at the house. Daniel, Mrs. Escobar says to make sure and save room for what she's bringing." 

"Why, what's she bringing?" 

"Something you'll want to save room for." Daniel sighed as, in the back, his sisters started talking about dresses and Katie started telling her mother how Tia Tillie had done her hair. 

As his father turned onto School Street, Daniel felt the nervous feeling coming back. Maybe it wasn't coming back with half his leg gone that was giving him the jitters, he thought. Maybe it was just... coming back. 

As they approached the church, his father spoke up. "Side door, I think?" 

"Yes please," said Ines from the back. Daniel caught his father's eye and nodded. The squat little church was like a basement for a big church that had never been built. It was half underground, and the front entrance from the sidewalk led to a steep flight of stairs down to the church itself. The stairs were much shorter coming in from the side entrance. 

His father nodded and turned the corner to park the car. Daniel got himself out, put on his uniform hat, and adjusted his crutches.  

He felt a small hand resting on his left hand. He looked down. It was Katie.  

"Church is this way," she said. 

"Katie, honey, Tio Daniel knows the way," said her mother. Katie only smiled and gently led Daniel to the door. As he approached, Charlie bolted ahead to open it.  

He stepped into the cool vestibule and stepped aside to let his sisters go in first. A few steps down; his sisters and Katie went in; his father held the door for him. 

"Charlie?" he whispered. "Will you hold my hat for me?" 

Charlie's eyes filled with awe, and he reached up to take the hat.  Daniel took a deep breath, and swung his crutches forward to enter the church. 

 

 

Notes:

Many thanks to @keysburg for test reading.

Thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments.

---

If you're looking for more about Frank, Ines, Tillie, and the rest of the QV OC squad, @LadyKes very kindly has set up an AO3 collection.

I also updated Lonely Town a few days ago.

Chapter 46: Sunday Morning

       

  

 

 

The moment he entered the church, Daniel was greeted by the familiar, distinctive scent of incense and beeswax and orange polish. He touched the fingers of his right hand to the holy water in the font and quickly crossed himself. He gathered his crutches again and got out of the way so that his father and Charlie could come in behind him. He eyed the pews. Had they always been this cramped? 

"Where do you want to sit?" whispered his father. 

"Wherever you want," Daniel whispered back.  

"I want to sit next to Tio Daniel," piped up Katie. 

"I  need to!" hissed Charlie. "I'm helping him with his hat!" Katie opened her mouth to argue;  Ines lifted her eyebrows and the children fell silent.  

Daniel's father led them to a pew in their usual area. He let Tillie enter first, herded the children in, and then looked at Daniel. Daniel nodded, and his father entered the pew and sat down. 

Ines was standing next to him. "Do you want the aisle seat?" she asked.

Maddie was twisting in her arms, and Daniel remembered that Ines might appreciate a quick escape route. "Why don't you take it?"  he said. He turned towards the pew and assessed the situation.

There wasn't enough room for him to really use his crutches, but... He turned himself until he was sidelong to the opening of the pew. He moved both crutches to his left hand and leaned with his right hand on the back of the next pew. He moved the prosthesis into the pew and shuffled a little until he was sure of his stance. Then he brought in his left leg and, using the back of the next pew as a parallel bar, took a few more steps sideways and then lowered himself down to sit. 

The children watched the process intently. The moment he was seated, Katie stepped carefully over his feet and inserted herself between him and Ines. Charlie stayed on his right, still holding his hat. Daniel gently took his hat and hung it from the pew clip, and Charlie knelt down and folded his hands.  

Daniel remained seated, holding his crutches loosely at his side (there was no place to leave them on the floor and out of the way.) He knew from the hospital about how long he could kneel, and he knew he needed to pace himself. He bookmarked the day's readings in his missal and did his best to concentrate on the prayers. 

He felt a friendly squeeze on his shoulder and turned to look.  It was Phil and Al Pereiras' dad. Mr. Pereira smiled, patted his shoulder again, and went to go sit next to his wife. Mrs. Pereira caught his eye and gave him a big smile and a little wave. Mr. Pereira seemed to whisper something in her ear; she nodded, and then they both knelt and bowed their heads. Daniel turned back around. 

Phil and Al weren't there, of course. Absently, Daniel opened and closed his hand on his crutches. It occurred to him that this might be easier if someone else were home on leave as well. At least he and his family were sitting a few rows in front of the door, so he didn't have to watch people's faces as they came in.  

The altar boys came out in their vestments and started setting up, lighting the candles and setting up the cards and cruets. He didn't recognize any of them. Next to him, Charlie leaned forward, watching the altar boys carefully. With a jolt, Daniel realized that in another year Charlie would be old enough to serve. 

The boys finished their work, genuflected, and disappeared into the sacristy. A few minutes later, the bell rang. The altar boys emerged from the sacristy, followed by Father Oliviera; the congregation rose; Daniel scooted forward on the pew, took his crutches in one hand and the back of the next pew in the other, and got himself standing. 

 

Daniel's next big opportunity to draw stares from the rest of the church was at Communion. He had already steeled himself, so when Ines gave him a questioning look, he nodded and started to push himself up from the kneeler. When he was standing again, he adjusted his stance and stepped sideways back down the pew to the aisle. He moved one of his crutches to his right hand and joined the slow line to the front of the church.  

He picked a spot at the left end of the altar rail and waited. When his turn came, of course the knee of the prosthetic acted up; he had to shift his weight around before he could get it to bend. He cautiously lowered himself down. To his right, Tillie knelt, and next to her, their father. Daniel took a deep breath and recollected himself. 

And then Father Oliviera was coming back down the rail: to his father, to Ines.... and then to him. He opened his mouth and received the Sacrament. 

Steadying himself on the altar rail, he used his good leg and his crutches to get himself back to his feet. Some part of his brain noticed that Tillie and his father had waited to stand until he was standing again. He got himself turned around and followed Tillie and their father back to their pew, keeping his eyes on the back of his father's collar. He got himself in the pew, moved his crutches back to his left hand, and stepped sideways again until he was back at his place. He took a deep breath and then knelt down again. 

 

The handshakes and greetings started as soon as he stepped into the vestibule, and followed him outside. His father's friends, his sisters' friends, his friends' parents.... 

...And one girl his own age. "Evelyn?" 

"Hi Daniel!" She looked a little flustered, as if she didn't know what to do, and settled on squeezing his forearm. "It's good to see you." 

"It's good to see you too. I'm kind of surprised. Weren't you and Eddie living in Raynham?" 

"Oh, I moved back home for the duration." 

"Yeah? And how's Eddie?" 

"Eddie's doing great. He's down in Norfolk. He'll be thrilled to hear you were home." 

Daniel didn't know about thrilled — Eddie was a good guy, but Daniel hadn't seen him since, what, 1940? And even back in school, he and Daniel weren't really chums. But Daniel wasn't going to bring that up with Evelyn. 

"So, uh...." She looked Daniel up and down. "It looks like you've been busy in the Army?" 

"Yeah." 

She dropped her voice. "I was real sorry to hear about your leg. Gosh, you've been in the hospital since Christmas, right? It must be pretty bad." 

Before Daniel could decide how to answer, Tillie walked up. "Hi," she said. "Evelyn, I'm so sorry, I need to drag my brother away. But if you'd like to stop by this afternoon? We'd love to see you." 

"Sure, that'd be swell."  

"Bring anyone else who wants to come, okay?" added Tillie.  

"Thanks for the extraction," Daniel muttered to Tillie as they walked away. "I owe you one." 

"Self-interest. I'm hungry," replied Tillie, "and I bet you are too. But, yeah, that conversation was starting to look painful." 

 

Daniel had intended to ask Tillie for a quick reminder of who in the neighborhood was around and who was away. But when they got home, there was coffee to brew, and bread to slice and toast, and Father's Day cards and gifts to present, and kids to order upstairs to change into play clothes, and a table to set and furniture to arrange....  

He was working in the kitchen with Tillie and their father when Ines stuck her head in the door. “We’ve got a car full of Sousas pulling up out front,” she reported.  

Their father glanced over to Daniel; Daniel nodded and started pushing his chair back. As Tillie and their father went outside, Daniel followed Ines to the living room and stationed himself at the far end, away from the door where Ines was standing. 

It was only then that he noticed the homemade banners that someone had pinned up in the entryway: "HAPPY FATHER'S DAY" and "WELCOME HOME DANIEL." But before he could ask Ines about it, she was leaning forward to embrace Tia Otilia. 

"Ines, querida! How are you? Look at the baby, so big now!"  

Ines turned Maddie around. "Maddie, can you say, 'Tia, your blessing'?" 

Tia Otilia rested her fingers on Maddie's head. "Deus te bencao." She gave the baby a kiss and gently pinched her cheek. "Now, where's —" Ines took a step back, and Tia Otilia's hands flew to her mouth. 

"Oh! Daniel!" Her eyes grew wet as she hurried over to meet him.  

Daniel smiled. "Hi, Tia Otilia." He carefully bent forward to kiss her, first on her right cheek and then her left, and gave her as warm a hug as he could manage on crutches. She seemed even shorter than she'd been before, though just as sturdy. 

"Oh, querido, we're all so happy to see you. We were so worried! But here you are, safe and sound at last." She patted his cheek and looked him up and down. Her face grew severe with disapproval. "But so thin! They're not feeding you enough!" 

Daniel chuckled and straightened up. "No need to worry, they're feeding me plenty." 

She scoffed, but before she could argue Tio Marco appeared. "Daniel." He shook Daniel's hand. "Don't want to knock you over here, but —" He wrapped Daniel in a cautious but affectionate hug. 

Another aunt, another uncle, a cousin or two and their children.... Half an hour later, they were joined by the Delgado aunts, uncles, cousins, and children. Tillie and one of their Delgado cousins thought it would be a good idea to take pictures right away, and somehow managed to herd and prod and nag everyone into the living room to make it happen. The Delgado side of the family crowded around and behind the couch while one of the Sousas took pictures; the families switched places for more pictures; and finally the furniture was pushed back into place, the aunts and his sisters vanished into the kitchen, and the children were shooed into the backyard to play. 

It was threatening rain, so instead of heading out to the back yard to start the grill, the men gathered in the living room. "Come on over here, Danilho," said one of his uncles.  

Nobody else was moving to sit down: they were waiting for him, letting him choose his spot first. As Daniel walked across the room, he realized they were a little nervous.  

But they also weren't going to offer help he didn't ask for. As he sat down, his uncles started arranging themselves around him. His father was there, too, leaning on the back of a chair. It felt wrong. Daniel had been folded into these conversations only a few years before he'd left, and as a junior he was used to sitting more towards the edge of the circle, doing more listening than talking. 

"You look good, Daniel," said Tio Marco. "Doesn't he?" he asked the others. They all agreed, and he nodded toward Daniel's right leg. "And that's the wooden one they gave you?" 

"Yeah, this is it." 

"Looks like you're doing real well with it. How long've you had it now?" 

Daniel had to stop and think. "Got it at the end of April." 

Tio Marco pulled an impressed face.  "Not even two months. And here you are." 

One of his other uncles leaned forward. "So how's it work?"  

He said it exactly as if he were asking Daniel about a new tool or gadget, and Daniel found himself describing the suspension belt around his hips, and how the prosthetic took the weight, and how the knee worked, and about the different kinds of wood and the leather liner. He told them about the limb shop, about how they'd put the cast on his leg to make a mold — it seemed so long ago now — and how he'd stood in the frame as they matched the joints of the prosthetic to the joints of his left leg.  

He was telling them about physical therapy when Ines came out to the living room. "I think we're ready to set up." 

His father and a couple of his uncles headed for the kitchen, and Daniel felt a knot in his stomach: this was one of his jobs, to bring up the folding tables and chairs from the basement. 

"Come on, Daniel," said Tio Marco. "Let's go make trouble in the kitchen." 

 

The kitchen was full of tempting smells, but there wasn't much room to snoop, so Daniel went to the dining room and managed to make himself useful by unfolding a couple of chairs and helping set the table. As always, somehow there was a spot for everyone. The family said grace, and started to pass the food. 

The serving bowls and plates kept coming, left to right, one after another after another. Daniel took a little bit of everything, because of course he didn't want to risk hurting anyone's feelings. There were molded gelatin salads, with the layers; fresh vegetable salads; fresh cheese; bacelhau with potatoes and olives; rabbit from his uncle's backyard hutch, stewed with beans and a little sausage. There was lobster salad and peppery stuffed clams. And there were homemade rolls to eat it all with. 

As he ate, he did his best to be part of two or three conversations at once. A couple of his uncles joshed him about Army food and hospital food, and how much better the food was in the Navy. A couple of cousins asked him about Atlantic City, and listened eagerly to his stories about the big acts he'd seen at the Steel Pier and at the hospital itself. And everyone shared and discussed the news about Daniel's brothers-in-law and his cousins: the ones who were still far away. 

After dinner, Tia Otilia did her best to shoo him out of the kitchen — this was his vacation, he didn't need to be in there — but Ines and Tillie stuck up for him, pulling up the kitchen stool for him and setting him up with a dishtowel. As he wiped dishes, he was included in the quick-moving conversation, but he was also having fun just observing his sisters and cousins and aunts in action. It reminded him of an experienced platoon with a few too many corporals. Tia Otilia and a couple of his Delgado aunts each seemed to think she was running the operation; the rest of the group seemed to be humoring the aunts while looking to his sisters as being in charge. But who was in charge? The eldest sister, or the sister still living at home? Ines and Tillie themselves seemed to have decided they were both in charge, working together and avoiding bossing each other. 

It took a while to clear the table and to wash and dry all the dishes and silverware and serving bowls, and by the time it was all done, it was time to brew coffee and put the plates and the silverware back out for dessert. Daniel decided to slip upstairs and check his leg. 

It had started to rain, and as Daniel went through the living room to the stairs, he noticed the kids had come inside to play. Katie and a couple of the littler ones had roped an uncle into playing store; they were taking turns pretending to hand him their money and their ration books. The older kids were playing a board game that seemed to involve a map and many tiny pieces. There were red-white-and-blue shields on the corners of the game board. 

Upstairs, he closed his bedroom door, grabbed a couple of socks out of his drawer, and went to take off his prosthesis. He changed into a fresh sock, powdered up, and got himself dressed and tucked in again.  

As he stepped back out into the hall, he heard a soft noise in the guest bedroom and went to investigate. It was Charlie. He was sitting on the floor, reading a book. 

"Hey, Charlie. What's up?" 

"Nothing." 

"You're not playing with your cousins?" 

"I will later." 

Daniel frowned. "Are you getting along with them? They're letting you play, right?" 

"Yeah." Charlie ran his finger along a pattern on the rug. 

Daniel sat down on one of the beds. "But you're up here all by yourself." 

Charlie shrugged. "Robbie brought that new game he got for his birthday and they all wanted to play with it. I asked if we could please play one of the other games instead and they said no." 

“And they won’t let you play that game? Are there too many players?” 

“They said I could be on someone’s team.” 

“So you just didn’t want to play that game.” 

Charlie nodded. 

Daniel almost started to say something about taking turns, but caught himself. His gut told him that wasn’t the problem (and even if it was, Ines could take care of the lecturing.) He remembered the shields on the game board. “Is it a Captain America game?” he asked. "Is that why?" 

Charlie nodded again. 

“Vovô told me that last year you dressed up as Captain America for Halloween. But now it seems like you don't want anything to do with him. I mean, it's okay. I was just... wondering, that's all." 

Charlie seemed to be weighing his options. "If I tell you something," he said, almost in a whisper, "will I get in trouble?" 

Daniel thought fast. "Depends what it is," he said. "We may have to talk about what to do next. But when you tell the truth, it's always less trouble in the end. And I promise I won't get mad." 

Charlie went back to running his finger over the rug. Suddenly the words burst out: "I hate Captain America." 

Daniel kept his surprise off his face. "Yeah?" 

"Yeah. He saves all those other people; why didn't he save Tio Ritchie? Why didn't he help you keep from getting hurt?" 

For a moment, Daniel was back in the snowy forest. He took a deep breath and led himself back to the present. 

"Well... you know that there's a real person who's Captain America?" he asked. Charlie nodded. 

"The things they show him doing in the comics and the movies — that's all make believe. They won't show what he really does, because they don't want to give anything away to the bad guys, right?" 

"Right." 

"He really is strong and brave, and he really has saved people. But he can't do everything by himself, and he can only be in one place at a time. And the war's going on around the world, and the world's really big, isn't it?" 

Charlie nodded again. 

"He was probably miles and miles away from Tio Ritchie's ship, maybe even all the way on the other side of the world. So even if he went as fast as he could, he couldn't have gotten there in time to help." Charlie inched across the rug, drawing closer to Daniel. "But if he could have gotten there in time, he would have helped."  

"Would he have helped you?" 

"Sure, if he was around." Charlie stood up. "But there were other people who were there to help me." 

"But you got your leg hurt!" 

"Yeah, and how do you think I got to the hospital? I sure couldn't have walked there." Charlie looked frightened and drew close to Daniel's elbow; Daniel put his arm around his shoulders. "No, lots of people helped me."  

All those people — the soldiers, the medics, the nurses and doctors — who'd held his life in their hands.... 

"And you know, if you think about it... Captain America might have helped one of them once. So because he helped them before, they were able to help me. It's how helping works." 

Charlie seemed to ponder the idea.  

"But you don't have to play that game if you don't want to," added Daniel. "Say, do you want to help me with something?" Charlie perked up. "I think they're putting the dessert out. Why don't you come help me decide which ones to taste first?" 

Notes:

Pew clips: Like decorative clothespins, used to hold hats and gloves. You still might be able to find them in old churches that haven't remodeled. Here's a picture.

Communion at the altar rail: Here's a picture.

Querida/ querido: dear, darling 

Danilho: Diminutive for "Daniel". 

bacelhau: salt cod, big in Portuguese cuisine.

Rabbit: during the war many households took to raising rabbits for food, but Daniel's uncle may have been keeping rabbits long before that.

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Thanks to @keysburg for the test read

and to you for reading, for your kudos, and for your kind comments.

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Shorter chapter this time around but shorter and sooner, etc.

Chapter 47: Sunday Afternoon

Back in the dining room, Daniel let Charlie lead him around the table to survey the desserts and the other refreshments. The aunts had not let him down: a platter of pastéis de nata and a big bowl of rice pudding waited for him at the head of the table. Soon he was back in the living room, a plate on his lap and a cup of coffee nearby. Aunts and uncles and sisters and cousins streamed around him, coming in and going out, carrying plates and setting up folding chairs and stepping over children, standing up and sitting down, pulling out knitting and passing baby Maddie around. A knock at the door, and the Escobars came in: the first of the neighbors.

Mrs. Escobar glanced at his plate and pretended to be hurt. "Oh, Daniel. No room for what I brought?"

Daniel hastily rearranged his plate to create an empty spot; she filled it with a pastel de nata from the covered plate she was carrying. "There you go. I promise I won't ask you which one's the best. I don't want to get you into trouble with your aunts." She winked, and went on to the dining room to add her plate to the array of desserts.

Another knock at the door: Mr. and Mrs. Pacheco, from across the street. Another knock: Daniel looked up, and pulled himself to his feet to greet Father Oliveira.

Mrs. Ramalho arrived, bearing a pie. "I hope you like strawberry-rhubarb," she said. She opened the box to show the pie to Daniel.

"It smells amazing. Thank you, Mrs. Ramalho."

"You're very welcome, dear." She showed Daniel's father the pie, giving him plenty of time for a good look, and then carried it to the dining room.

Daniel had planned to break the news about the amputation at the first good opportunity, just to get it out there. But to his surprise, as more visitors arrived, no opportunity presented itself. By the time he greeted each new arrival, made any necessary introductions, and got through the preliminaries — great to be home, got in Thursday night, ten days off, nephew and nieces so big, home cooking — someone else would show up. The first visitor would give way to the newcomer and wander off to the dining room, and the whole conversation would start over again from the beginning: introductions, got in Thursday night, ten days off....

So he was caught off guard when the topic gate-crashed the party. He'd needed a stretch, and had gotten it by paying another visit to the dining room. He'd admired the newest contributions, visited with the aunts and neighbors lingering in the room, and snuck a couple of cookies. He picked his way back through the crowded living room and lowered himself back down to his spot on the sofa.

Mr. Valado, one of the neighbors, spoke up. "You're getting around there real good, Daniel. Say: what exactly happened with your leg, anyway?"

Daniel looked up. His right leg wasn't quite comfortable, and he wanted to reposition it, but he'd need to use his hands to pick up and move the lower leg of the prosthesis, and he was suddenly feeling very self-conscious.

Mr. Valado barreled on. "I never really heard. What was it? A really bad break?"

"Sure. That's a good way to put it." Daniel didn't see the need for details: Mr. Valado was more an acquaintance of his father's than a friend, and didn't know Daniel well.

"Well, that's a relief! I'd heard you'd lost the leg. I’m glad it wasn't as bad as all that — what?"

Daniel followed his gaze: A couple of the other neighbors were giving him warning looks.

Mr. Valado looked confused. "You mean —?" He looked back to Daniel. "You did lose it?"

The other neighbors leaned forward to hear Daniel's response. Daniel took a deep breath. "That what it said in the paper?"

"Oh, it wasn't in the paper. No, it's just... what I'd heard, you know?" He glanced over to the other neighbors; they didn't support him, but they didn't contradict him either. Around them, the other conversations in the room continued.

"I... guess they gave you a wooden leg, then?"

Daniel's jaw clenched. It was a stupid question, but Mr. Valado meant well, and at least he was up front about the gossip. But these other old birds — they'd probably fed him the story in the first place, and here they were letting him flounder on and do the work of confirming the rumors, while they got to sit back and act concerned and innocent.

And they all seemed to know, anyway.... Might as well get it over with. "It's more of a loan," said Daniel. "If my real leg turns up I have to give it back."

Mr. Valado gave an uncertain chuckle. "That's great. I guess they won't send you back in, then?"

"Ah... no."

"But you were at the front, right? Heard you had a lot of stuff pinned on your coat at church this morning." He patted the left side of his jacket. "Must be some stories behind those, right?"

They were party favors, Daniel almost said. He reminded himself to be patient, and shrugged a little.

Mr. Valado looked a little disappointed, but didn't push the issue. "So what's next for you?"

"Haven't decided yet." Daniel glanced toward the dining room. "I've been thinking about some more rice pudding, but someone's got a lemon pie in there that's been calling my name."

Mr. Valado laughed. "You always were quick with an answer, weren't you?" He picked up his coffee up, considered, and set it back on the saucer. "They're going to give you a pension, right?"

Daniel felt a flare of anger and humiliation. So that was all they saw for him? Living on a pension in his father's house for the rest of his life — a cripple, unable to work?

His first instinct was to get up and leave, before he said something nasty. But getting himself up and balanced would just draw attention to himself....

"I'm just trying to get them to let me go," he said. "Hey, is there going to be a festa this summer?"

"First weekend in August, just like always," said Mr. Valado. "You gonna come? You know, the Saint Anthony festa was just last weekend. We sure could've.... um... well, it would've been good if you coulda been there, right?" He fidgeted with his coffee cup. "I better take this back to the kitchen. Can I get you something?"

"A glass of water would be great. Thanks, Mr. Valado."

Mr. Valado looked relieved to have an errand, and Daniel thought he had a pretty good idea why. For the Saint Anthony festa, it was a tradition for a team of young unmarried men to carry the statue of the Saint in the procession. Daniel had been asked for the first time in '41; by '42 he was gone, and, well... were there any young unmarried men left in the neighborhood? There might have been a couple of guys still around who were 4-F or were working in essential industries, but Daniel couldn't think of who they might be....

They could have gotten some teenagers, but it wouldn't have been the same. St. Anthony was a matchmaking saint, and the idea was that the young men who carried the statue were eligible young men. Daniel was pretty sure that Mr. Valado had started to say something like We sure could've used you — until he'd remembered that Daniel couldn't have helped carry the statue —

— More like assumed it, Daniel thought resentfully; there was nothing wrong with his arms — though he probably couldn't have kept up, certainly not for the entire procession — still, it would have been nice to have been asked —

A knock at the door, and someone came in; while everyone else was distracted, Daniel went ahead and rearranged his right leg and got himself settled a little more comfortably.

It was stupid to let this bug him, he told himself. He hadn't even been in town.

But still... if he had been, it would have been nice to have been asked, even if he would have had to say no. It would have been nice to know he was still on the list.

"Daniel!"

He looked up: the newest arrival was coming over to talk to him. He pulled himself together and forced himself to smile.

He was glad when it was Mrs.& Pereira's turn to take the seat closest to him. The Pereiras had known him since he was a kid; he was around the same age as two of their sons. He and Al had been on the track team together.

"Daniel, it's so good to see you," she said. She reached out and gave his hand a quick squeeze. "You know, it's funny; I always thought you took after your father, but after talking to your uncle in there, I can really see your mother in you too." She turned as her husband approached. "Don't you think so? I see a lot of Kitty in him, don't you?"

Mr. Pereira handed her the plates and cups of coffee he was carrying, and looked Daniel over. "Oh, yeah. I see it. Good to have you back home again." He shook Daniel's hand, sat down, and took his plate and his coffee cup back. "So you got in Thursday night, right?" He shook his head. "That must have been something, managing that train ride on crutches...."

They got through the usual questions — great to be home, ten days off, nephew and nieces so big, home cooking — and caught Daniel up on Phil and Al's news. Phil engaged — girl he met in California — Navy had him in Washington State now, just beautiful — Al with the Army Air Force in Nebraska...

"They'll be glad to hear you got home," said Mr. Pereira.

"Al was home last summer, but before that he was in Atlantic City," said Mrs. Pereira.

"He was? I didn't know that," said Daniel.

"Yeah? He said they put him up in style," said Mr. Pereira. "Your dad said the same thing about the hospital, by the way. Al was just there a week or so, when they brought him back from England. He said they were deciding what to do with him. They ended up sending him home for three weeks and then to Nebraska."

"He's been concerned about you. Both of them have, but Al especially," said Mrs. Pereira. She leaned forward. "We told him your father said you'd gotten hurt in your leg, and that you were in Atlantic City. He said that the big hospital there is a center for amputees."

"And he worried that's why I got sent there?"

Mrs. Pereira nodded, and Daniel wondered if she or Mr. Pereira had mentioned it to anyone. That one piece of information, carelessly repeated, would have been enough to spark a rumor.

"Well... you can tell him he's right: that's why I got sent there," said Daniel.

The Pereiras' faces fell. "Oh, no. Oh, I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Pereira.

Mr. Pereira shook his head. "It's too bad," he said with a sigh. "But you're getting around real well! They letting you explore Atlantic City?"

It was easy to talk about Atlantic City, and compare it to what Al had said about his short time there. He was telling them about the hurricane and what Grahn had said about the evacuation when the front door opened.

It was Evelyn and a few other girls: the first visitors Daniel's age who weren't cousins and weren't there because they were his sisters' friends. The Pereiras turned back to Daniel with knowing smiles.

"It's been wonderful to see you," said Mrs. Pereira. "But I think we'll get out of the way and let you talk with your friends. Maybe we'll get to see you again while you're home."

As the girls came over, Daniel felt a little nervous. It had nothing to do with romance, no matter what the Pereiras seemed to think. He just hadn't seen any of them in at least three years. But as the girls took turns giving him awkward little half-hugs and gushed about how happy they were to see him, he could tell they were nervous too.

"Daniel, look who I found!" said Evelyn. "It's like a little reunion!"

"Oh, don't listen to her. We found her," said Carla. "We've been rounding up everyone we could find."

"Well, it's good to see you all," said Daniel. "So what have you been up to?"

They caught him up on their own news and the news from their friends and classmates. There'd been a few engagements and a couple more weddings (he'd heard about Laura, Daniel reassured them; no, they weren't that serious; happy for her; really, no hard feelings.) All the guys were gone (even Art Pearson, he was 4-F, remember? something about his back — anyway he got an alphabet job in Boston) but Daniel was surprised at how many of the girls were gone too. Some had joined up; some of them had taken war jobs in Boston or Providence (Muriel Shaw got a promotion, they sent her to Washington); one had moved to Pennsylvania, following her husband in the Army.

When it was Daniel's turn to talk, they congratulated him on Officer Candidate School, but didn't push for any war stories. As he told them a yarn about sleeping in a haystack in Italy, he noticed Barbara trying not to look at his right leg. He tried to think of a way to get the girls talking again — maybe asking them about the festa would work — but as soon as he finished his story, Barbara spoke up.

"And you've been in the hospital since Christmas?"

Daniel pretended to think about it. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

"How much longer do you think you'll have to stay in?"

He shrugged. "No idea. The Army's not real big on giving advance notice."

"Is it true about your leg?" Before Daniel could say Is what true, Barbara pressed on. "That it... had to be amputated?"

Daniel had to glance away before he could even try to force a smile. "Does it matter?"

Barbara hesitated, and he took the opportunity. "Let's go see what's in the dining room. I heard there was some pretty good pie."

In the dining room, the girls showed Daniel what they'd brought and sampled some of the other contributions. They chatted with Tillie and some of the other people hanging out in the dining room; they cooed over baby Maddie, who turned away and buried her face in Tillie's shoulder. When the word came through that some of the relatives were getting ready to leave, they carried their plates to the kitchen, said good-bye to Daniel, and left.

It took a while for the cousins to collect their children and figure out which aunts and uncles were leaving with them, and to do the arithmetic to make sure there were drivers and room in the cars for everyone who was staying on. By the time they settled on a plan, some of the children had gotten bored and wandered off and had to be rounded up again. Finally the operation was set in motion, and Daniel stood in the living room to say his good-byes and kiss aunts and hug cousins and uncles as they filed out the door to the cars. More of the neighbors left as well, and when the front door was closed again, the house seemed much quieter. Daniel had just settled himself back on the sofa when a knock sounded at the door.

"Oops! Too late!" Tillie called from the dining room. "They'll have to wait for the next furlough!"

Ines gave Daniel a questioning look. He shrugged and made a "sure, why not?" face, and she went to open the door.

"Oh. — Hello," he heard her say. "Come on in." She held the door open, the visitor stepped in, and Daniel's stomach made an unpleasant flop. It was Laura.

Notes:

Sorry for the delay in posting, but real life, etc. Figured shorter and sooner better than longer and later. Hoping to be able to post more regularly again now.

Thanks to katiekeysburg for test reading (and for the idea of the teenage boys being drafted to carry the statue)

and thank you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments.

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Notes

pastéis de nata – a Portuguese egg custard pastry

An alphabet job — a government job, from the way so many government agencies were known by their initials.

Chapter 48: Homecomings

 

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Daniel picked up his crutches and got himself to his feet. When he was sure of his stance, he looked up and gave his friendliest smile. "Hi, Laura." 

"Hi, Daniel." 

Her little smile was sincere, but nervous. Before Daniel could think of what to do, Tillie and their father joined them; once they'd greeted Laura, Daniel introduced her to the other relatives who were nearby. They sat down, and to Daniel's surprise, Charlie came over to join them, squeezing himself next to Daniel on the sofa. 

"You remember my nephew Charlie, don't you?" said Daniel. 

"Oh, yes. He's a big kid now," Laura marveled. 

"Charlie," said Ines, "this is Mrs. Alexandro." 

"And how'd that happen, anyway? I haven't heard this story," said Daniel.  

There was a lot to catch up on. Laura had moved to Providence in '42 to help her married sister and take a war job. She'd met Jimmy Alexandro at a dance — he was from Connecticut, in the Navy — wedding here in Taunton — transferred to Pensacola last year — couldn't find housing, might as well stay up here, went down to see him earlier this year — Florida amazing, so beautiful, palm trees, soft sand, so strange to be on the beach in a bathing suit in February....  

She asked about Daniel's family's news, and listened with genuine interest to the story of Tillie's wedding. And then Daniel's father stood up and told Laura how nice it was to see her again, and excused himself to do something in the kitchen; the aunts and uncles left with him; Ines needed to go feed the baby and Tillie came up with some other excuse to leave and take Charlie with her.  Daniel was left alone with Laura. 

"Well, I'm... glad things worked out for you," said Daniel. "Jimmy sounds like a good guy. I know he's a lucky one." 

"Oh, Daniel."  Laura's smile was still the sweet, ingenuous smile he remembered. "That's so nice of you. And you're really not mad?" 

"Mad? About what?" 

"About... the way things worked out." 

"No." He shook his head. "If anyone had a right to be mad, it was you." He pretended to be frightened. "You're not mad at me, are you? Or were you?" 

"I was never mad at you. I felt bad, though. I didn't mean to stop writing; it's just — I was working things out with my sister, and then I moved, and then I was looking for a job, and then all of a sudden they were giving me lots of hours, and I was just — real busy — not as busy as you, of course, but still — and then all of a sudden it was November —" 

"That's a lot to do," said Daniel. "Moving's a big deal." He was relieved that Laura wasn't angry with him, and he wanted to leave well enough alone and not get into a discussion about their feelings from three years and another life ago.  "What are you up to now?" 

"Actually... not many people know this, but I've just moved back home this week."  

"Is it a secret?" 

"Sort of. I'm not ready to tell a lot of people why just yet. But I can tell you because I know you won't blab it all over the place." She dropped her voice and leaned forward. "We're expecting a baby!" 

"That's... that's great! Um... when?" 

"November." 

"Well, congratulations." 

"Thank you! We're so excited," Laura said, and smiled again. 

Daniel tried to remember what he was supposed to say or ask next — he didn't want to ask anything too personal — 

"So, um, Daniel...  I was real sorry to hear you were wounded. My mom wrote me when she found out, and then later on she told me she'd heard it was in your leg. She said you got hurt around Christmas?" 

"The week before Christmas, yeah." 

"That's awful! I mean, it's bad enough that you were hurt, but right before Christmas! What happened?" 

"Well, if I tell you, you can't tell anybody, because it's kind of embarrassing." 

"I promise." Laura leaned forward so Daniel could speak quietly. 

"It was a roller skating accident." 

As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn't. He'd forgotten his audience. Laura looked shocked. "But how?" she asked, keeping her voice low. "You were always so good at skating! Was it some kind of... freak accident?" 

He sighed. "I'm kidding." 

She laughed a little. "Oh, Daniel! You got me again! I never know when you're kidding and when you're not."  

He shrugged. "The real story isn't very interesting. Just some cranky Germans, that's all." 

"Oh." She looked at her hands and then up again. "I lit a candle for you, after my mom told me." 

"Thanks. That was sweet of you." 

"Well, it was the least I could do. I was worried about you — oh, don't you make that face! My mom said they flew you back in an airplane, and that she'd heard you were going to be in the hospital a long time, and that some people were even saying you'd lost your leg. She didn't know if that was true or not, though." Daniel tried not to sigh too loudly as she talked on. "Either way, it sounded really bad. We went to this real pretty church in Pensacola when I was there in February, so I lit a candle for you there, too." 

"I'm sure it helped." 

She smiled. "I hope so. How long until you're recovered?" 

"Not sure." He took a deep breath, in and out. "I might as well tell you; everyone else seems to know. What your mom heard? That's... what happened." He dropped his gaze, and forced himself to look back at Laura. 

Laura gasped. "So — you really lost it?" 

"Yeah." 

His heart sank: she was starting to cry.  

He should have known this would happen. She'd always been tender-hearted; how many times had he seen her cry at the movies?  

And now what? Should he put an arm around her shoulders? but that would be awkward, and anyway he couldn't exactly leap up and stand next to her —  

"Hey. Laura. It's okay." 

She nodded from behind her handkerchief, and after a couple of sobs she was able to speak again. "I'm sorry. I bet that was the last thing you needed. Even little things get me going lately." She sniffled. "There was something in the paper the other day about some Marines on an island who found a teeny little kitten in the mud under a tank and nursed it back to health." She tried to laugh. "I must have bawled for an hour! Oh, Daniel, I'm so sorry. " 

"It's okay." He glanced toward the dining room, desperately hoping for reinforcements — Ines, Tillie, Mrs. Escobar or Pete's sister or even one of the aunts. But no one was there. There were all in the dining room or the kitchen, giving him the privacy they thought he'd want. 

Laura sniffled again and wiped her eyes. "It's just... it must have been awful, and then all that time in the hospital...  

"And all those things you're good at — that makes it even more sad." 

He kept his tone gentle and jokey. "Ah, it's just roller skating."  

"I wasn't thinking of roller skating, but sure. And bowling, and things like that. Oh! Remember when we were playing volleyball at the beach, with Carla and Phil and Al and everyone, and you made that crazy save where you jumped over Al and hit the ball and made the point?" 

"And plowed my face in the sand?" 

"No, you landed on your side, remember? You did get a lot of sand in your hair." She smiled. "And then dancing, of course."  

"Okay, now you're just being nice." 

"No! You're a good dancer, you're fun to dance with. You know the steps and you're not always trying to show off and do turns all the time. " 

Daniel felt his ears getting warm, and decided it was time to change the subject. "So what else have you been up to? Seen any good movies lately?" he asked.  

Laura looked surprised, but followed his lead and started talking about finding a short term job and working on something she called a layette. A few minutes later, Laura turned the subject again; Tillie was approaching, carrying a little plate of cookies. As Tillie sat down to join them, Daniel could see a few of the others drifting back into the room. 

Laura ate a cookie and chatted a little longer before she stood to leave. "It was wonderful to see you again!" she said. "Who knows? Maybe we'll run into each other later this week." 

"Long visit home?" asked Tillie. 

"Oh, I've moved back for the duration," said Laura. She said good-bye to everyone, gave Daniel one more smile, and walked with Tillie to the door. Tillie saw her out, and stood for a long moment looking out the door. 

When she turned back, she wore a look of weary despair. "Old Mr. Ligeiro's coming up the walk," she said. "I thought we were done." 

 

Mr. Ligeiro didn't stay long. After he left, the family sat down to a light supper of leftovers. When the dishes were washed and put away, it was time for the New Bedford relatives to head back home; Daniel went back to his spot in the living room to kiss aunts and hug uncles as they made their way out the door. 

Tio Marco was the last in line. "Daniel..." he began. He hesitated, as if he wasn't sure what to say, and then just smiled and carefully folded Daniel into a hug. 

Instead of letting go, he spoke quietly into Daniel's ear. "Do me a favor." 

"What's that?" 

"Tell your Pai about that stuff on your chest that the Army gave you.  Doesn't have to be much. But it would mean a lot to him. All right?" He clapped Daniel on the back and moved on to say good-bye to Tillie. 

As soon as they were gone, Tillie steered Daniel into the kitchen. Ines was already there. 

"Looks like everything went okay with Laura?" asked Ines. 

"Yeah. Why wouldn't it?" 

His sisters exchanged one of those looks that seemed to contain an entire conversation that didn't include him. 

"I'm glad. She seems happy," said Ines. 

Tillie dropped her voice. "Did she tell you when her baby's due?" 

"What, were you listening?" 

"Of course not. Don't be silly." 

"She's wearing a maternity dress," said Ines. "McCall's 7336.  It's a nice pattern, I've used it twice. She's not showing that much — I'd guess she's three, maybe four months along? So maybe November?" 

"Don't worry," said Tillie. "We won't tell anyone. And when she gets around to telling us, we'll make sure to be very surprised." 

Ines and the children left soon afterwards with the Escobars, and Daniel went straight upstairs to doff and clean his prosthesis and take a shower.  He needed to stretch his hip muscles, but he didn't want to stay in his room, so he went back downstairs and stretched out prone on the floor. When Tillie came back downstairs, she teased him about reverting to his high school habits, and then sat on the floor next to him to play checkers until it was time to go to bed. 

Back upstairs, he wrapped his leg, pulled the chair into position, propped his crutches, and climbed under the covers. The house was quiet; the room was dark except for his reading light. 

He felt unsettled, vaguely empty; it reminded him a little of being back at the hospital after the end of a visit from his father. Maybe it was from seeing the rest of the family again, and then watching them leave. Maybe it was seeing so many of the neighbors, and realizing how he really wasn't part of their world any more.  

And then there was what Tio Marco had said. Daniel had intended to tell his father about his service ribbons... sometime; he just hadn't thought about when. "It would mean a lot to him": the words made Daniel's gut ache.  

And in a couple of months he might be in New York — and nobody knew but him. 

He pulled a book from the shelf and read until his eyelids felt heavy and he could drop straight off to sleep.   

 

The next morning, Daniel made it downstairs just in time to say good-bye to Tillie. His father poured him a cup of coffee and asked him what he wanted for breakfast. 

"I'll get it," said Daniel.  "It'll be good practice." 

His father waited patiently, sipping coffee at the kitchen table, as Daniel maneuvered his way around the kitchen.  It seemed to take about four times as long as it needed to, but Daniel was finally able to get a plate of buttered toast and a glass of tomato juice to his place at the table.  

"Probably should have put my leg on first," he said as he sat down.  

"You can wear it when you make lunch," said his father. He offered the coffee pot to Daniel. "Warmup?" 

"Yes please." He waited as his father refilled his cup. "So what's the plan for today?" 

"You're the reason I'm home. Anything in particular you want to do?" 

"Can't think of anything." 

"Up for some fishing? Might have better luck if we waited till later in the day. If we went this afternoon, we could take Charlie." 

"Sure, that sounds like fun." 

"How about a trip to the yard? Winslow asked me to bring you by while you were home —" 

"Mr. Winslow? Really?" Mr. Winslow was his father's boss. 

"Yeah. And of course the fellows would be real happy to see you — you know, the old-timers."  He put on an innocent expression. "Some of the newer hands might like to meet you too."  

Daniel scoffed: the "newer hands" were women. "Sure, I'll come down. But not on your day off. I'll figure out a way to get there later this week. What needs to be done around here?" 

As Daniel expected, his father had a list, and the first task on the list was laundry.  

Laundry turned out to the be most difficult chore yet. Three beds needed new sheets; that meant bending and stooping and balancing and taking small steps from side to side, and he knew he was slowing his father down instead of being a help. He couldn't carry the laundry basket downstairs; there might have been a way to slide or even toss it down, but he decided it was a better idea to just let his father do it. 

And then there was the actual washing. He had to keep his balance as he bent over to fill the tub of the old washing machine, plug it in, and pull the knob to power the agitator — all in a tight space, where it was difficult to maneuver with the heavy prosthesis. When the washing was done, at least he could stand in one place as he fed the laundry through the mangle, one piece at a time. 

He drained the tub and did the whole thing again, rinsing the clothes. After he finished sending them through the mangle again, his father picked up the basket of damp laundry and added the bag of clothespins, and Daniel followed him out the back door to the clothesline. 

Daniel quickly grew frustrated. He had to keep his balance as he bent over to fish a wet garment out of the basket, straightened up again, and reached up with both hands to the clothesline — all of while juggling two crutches, a pair of wet socks, and a mouthful of clothespins. By the time he'd pinned up his fourth pair of socks, his father had finished the rest of the basket. As he followed his father back into the house, he reminded himself to be patient, that this was the first time he'd done this since he'd gotten back.... 

But still: it was yet another ordinary thing that he couldn't just do. 

 

Later that morning, as Daniel was putting his clean clothes away he came across the medal boxes in his dresser. 

He tossed them on his bed and went out to the linen closet. His father was there, putting folded sheets away. 

"Hey, Pai, could you hand me the scissors?" 

"Here you go." 

"Thanks. I... found that stuff you put aside for me, and I figured there was no sense letting them sit around in their envelopes. Anyway, if you want to take a look at them...." 

"...Sure." 

Daniel sat down on his bed and cut open the first envelope. "So on my coat, the bottom ribbons stand for Europe and the Americas. And the other ones stand for these doodads." 

He handed the presentation box to his father. The lid was labeled BRONZE STAR MEDAL. 

"You can open it if you want," he said. "That was in Italy." 

"If you haven't already, you should write down something about them — at least the dates," said his father. 

Daniel nodded and opened the next envelope. SILVER STAR MEDAL. He checked the postmark. 

"France," he said, and handed the box to his father. 

SOLDIER'S MEDAL. "Italy." 

PURPLE HEART. "Italy." 

"Another one? You never told us —" 

"Ah, it was no big deal. A little tailoring set me right up." Daniel opened the last envelope and passed the SILVER STAR MEDAL to his father. "Italy." 

He took the medal boxes and arranged them by precedence, with the two Silver Stars stacked at the top. "So that's what they look like." 

His father was silent for a time. 

"Thank you," he finally said. "You know... as long as you're opening things, there's that package that came from your unit, and your Christmas package that got sent back, and your other envelopes." 

"Oh, yeah. I wonder what my C.O. sent." A cold morning in Belgium, before sunrise; his commanding officer shaking him awake — Sousa, the Germans broke through the line, we gotta go — he'd grabbed a change of socks but there was no need, no time, no room for anything else. 

Not that he'd had much to leave behind: any little souvenirs he'd managed to pick up and hang on to had been sent back home at the first opportunity. He thought of the envelopes in the closet. "Ines'll be here for dinner, right?" 

"That's the plan. Maybe we can all watch you open your Christmas package after dinner." 

 

After lunch, Daniel tidied up the kitchen and started opening envelopes while his father did some ironing. Then they gathered up the fishing rods and the tackle box and went over to see Ines. They helped her sort and fold laundry and match impossibly tiny socks as Katie and Maddie napped in a bedroom.  

When Charlie got home from school, they took him fishing. Daniel's father picked a spot that was off a firm, clear dirt path and near a bench.  

They caught nothing. Charlie was still learning to cast his little fishing rod, and Daniel had to relearn how to cast while balancing on his prosthesis and standing on dirt, so Daniel's father spent the whole time either helping Charlie or holding Daniel's crutches. They didn't stay out long, but Daniel's last cast was respectable, so they went back home satisfied. 

They picked up Ines and the little girls and went back to the house to start supper and wait for Tillie. After they'd all eaten and the dishes were cleaned and put away, Daniel's father made good on his threat: he herded the family into the living room and brought out Daniel's Christmas package. 

"Well, this is exciting," said Tillie. "It's been so long since we put that together I think we've all forgotten what's in it." 

"Merry Christmas," said their father. Charlie and Katie looked up, perplexed, but before they could say anything they were distracted by Daniel cutting the string around the box and unfolding the brown paper wrapper. 

First came a small packet of cards and letters and drawings. Daniel admired the cards and the drawings, put the letters aside for later, and went back into the box. 

He looked up and grinned. "Best thing you coulda sent me." He held up the socks: a few store-bought pairs, and two pairs knitted by Tillie. 

Katie giggled. "Are socks a funny present?" Daniel asked. She nodded. 

"Thanks for the other funny clothes in here," he said. "The other best thing you coulda sent me." His father smiled, and Daniel pushed the underwear aside to see what else was in the box. Shaving cream and razor blades... some candy and gum... 

He brought out an object about the size of a brick, wrapped in aluminum foil. He opened the foil and sniffed. "Fruitcake?" 

"That's right," said Ines with a smile. 

"Well! Let's see if it's still good." 

In the dining room, they took turns inspecting the fruitcake. It passed the look and smell tests, so Daniel cut a thin slice. 

He looked around. "Anyone want to be the guinea pig?"  

"Meeee!" cried Katie. 

"You want to be the guinea pig? Do you even know what a guinea pig is?" Daniel asked her. She just smiled. 

"Oh, we don't need a guinea pig. That cake's fine," said Daniel's father. Daniel took the hint and cut slices for the others. When everyone was served, he took his first bit. 

"Definitely still good," he pronounced. 

His father nodded. "A little dry, though. It could have used another drink; wish I'd thought of that." 

"Well, speaking of things that have been sitting around for a while...." Daniel turned and brought out the envelope he'd left on the sideboard. It was one of the last ones he'd sent. 

"Last fall... when we were going into Belgium —" 

Around him, the room fell silent as the others gave him their full attention. 

" — we were following the Germans — they were falling back to the east and we were coming along behind.  Our job's to make sure nothing's — you know, make sure everything's safe for the guys following us. So we're out in the country and we're approaching a village and we start seeing bits of debris blowing around here and there — paper, mostly; sheets of piano music, book pages.... 

"And then we come up on this big house — really, it's more like a small mansion, or it used to be: now it's just a burnt-out ruin.  It looks like the Nazis had been using it and burned it down when they left." 

"They burned down a house? Why?" asked Charlie. 

"Well, maybe they were using it for their headquarters, and they were in such a hurry to leave that they didn't have time to pack all their stuff and didn't want us to find it. Or maybe they didn't want us to be able to use the house ourselves. It was a nice house, and our side could have used it as a place to sleep or to put our headquarters or even set up a small hospital." 

"But what about the people who lived in the house?" Charlie was indignant. "Where are they going to live now?" 

"That's a good question." 

Tillie spoke up. "Remember what Tio Joe said in his letters? That's part of his job in the Army, to help the people whose towns were wrecked in the war." 

"So the house is burned down and there's debris scattered around and it's starting to rain again and there's mud everywhere, and it looks like the Nazis ran down some of the bushes in the gardens around the house so they could get their big trucks through. And as we're walking around I see some white stuff caught in a bush. So I go to see what it is and it's... handkerchiefs. It looks like they came from the house and survived somehow. 

"But they weren't going to survive much longer. One good wind would blow them into the mud. Or else they'd be stuck in that bush all winter, getting rained on and snowed on and torn up.  Even if I left them in the house under a rock, they'd get ruined, it was going to be months before the owners of the house could come back. So... I brought them with me. It seemed a shame to just leave them out there." 

He brought out the handkerchiefs. Tillie and Ines gasped, and leaned over the table to get a closer look. The three handkerchiefs were made of delicate linen, with deep borders of exquisite lace. 

"Now, I don't know from lace," said Daniel, "but that looks...." 

"Magnificent," said Ines. Tillie nodded. 

"Lace hankies really aren't my style, so I thought you two might like them. There's three of them and two of you, so you'll have to decide what to do with the third one." 

"Oh, I think we can work something out," said Ines. "I might even have an idea." 

"We'll come up with something," added Tillie. "Thank you so much, Daniel." 

Ines glanced at Daniel's watch. "I should get these little monkeys home soon. What's the plan for tomorrow?" 

"Back to work for me," said their father. "I'm sorry, Daniel. At least I'm not on the swing shift this week. I don't know how late I'm going to be," he said to the group. "So don't wait for me for dinner." 

"I'm still trying to get Friday afternoon off," said Tillie.  

"Ines, I hope you don't get sick of me," said Daniel.  

"Applesauce," said Ines. "You just make your plans." 

"Well... Pai, you were talking about me coming by the yard. Maybe I could take the bus down tomorrow." 

"That'd be fine," said their father. 

"You don't have to take the bus," said Ines. "I can take you down there."  

"Thanks. But I don't want to put your out, or mess up your routine —" 

"It's no trouble at all," said Ines. 

"You could visit too," their father said with a smile. "And maybe even some other members of the family." 

"So it's settled. Late morning okay? Provided Daniel wakes up on time, of course," said Ines. Daniel pretended to roll his eyes.  

"Oh, and Daniel?" Ines added, "Believe me: I really don't mind having my routine changed up. I've actually been looking forward to it. And it was all going to go to pot this week anyway." She glanced toward Charlie, and Daniel caught her meaning: Thursday was Charlie's last day of school. 

 

At the shipyard the next morning, it felt strange to go to the front desk instead of around to the locker room. It felt even more unsettling to see a new secretary and to realize, as she looked up from her desk, that he was a complete stranger to her. 

"May I help you? Mrs. Escobar, I'll be right with you — Oh!" The secretary looked from Ines to Daniel. "Oh, you must be Lieutenant Sousa!"  

Daniel looked around to see if there were any other Lieutenant Sousas in the room, but the secretary didn't notice: she was already picking up her phone. "Mr. Winslow told me you'd be coming," she said. "I'll let them know you're here."  

Mr. Winslow arrived a minute or two later. "Daniel Sousa!" He hurried over to shake hands, greet Ines, pat Katie on the head, introduce the secretary to Daniel, comment on how Daniel looked more like his father than ever, and get in a few more look-at-yous and good-to-see-yous.  

"How about we go down to the lunchroom — uh, that's not too far for you, is it? good, good — and let folks come and see you there?" 

"Wouldn't it be easier if I just came out to the yard?" 

Mr. Winslow shook his head. "Afraid not. We can't let visitors come into the yard any more, we've got... special contracts. I can't even bring you to the drafting room to see your dad." As they walked to the lunchroom, Daniel could see that Mr. Winslow wasn’t kidding. Almost every door was now labeled AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, or bore a poster warning KEEP QUIET — YOU NEVER KNOW WHO’S LISTENING.  

There was a small crowd of people waiting for them in the lunchroom. His father was there, beaming, with a couple of the other draftsmen and Daniel’s old foreman. There were a few fellows from Daniel's old crew  — the rest had gone away to war —and old-timers who'd known him as “Frank’s boy."  Some of the newer hands had come as well, the ones who wore lipstick and rolled their hair and tucked their pincurls under bandannas and flowery scarves. 

Daniel chatted with as many people as he could before the whistle blew and it was time to get back to work. When they'd returned to the front office, Mr. Winslow asked for a few more minutes and led Daniel past the partition into his own small office. 

"Thanks again for coming," he said. "We were hoping to get to see you." He took a deep breath. "We were sorry to hear you'd been wounded. Your dad told us — you know, management — about... what happened.  

"Have you given any thought to what you're going to do once you're home for good?" 

"A little bit," said Daniel. "Haven't made any decisions yet." 

Mr. Winslow nodded. "I don't know if you've thought of coming back here.... We'd love to have you, of course. It's just... with your injury being what it is... well, you know.  

"But even if that weren't an issue... I just — I have no idea how things are going to look here after the war." He shrugged. "We're gonna lose contracts. Now, looking ahead, I think we'll have some good business. Guys'll be coming home, they're going to have money and they're going to want to spend it. But I don't know how long that's going to take." 

"You weren't with us all that long before you left, but you were a damned good worker.  And of course your dad's been with us a long time, through thick and thin. Maybe we could get you into the machine shop," he mused. "Or you could take up drafting. Point is.... if you want to come back, we'll do everything we can to find you a place." 

"Thanks, Mr. Winslow." 

"Any time." Mr. Winslow stood up and held the door for Daniel. "How long are you home again? Through Sunday? That's great. Your sisters must be thrilled...." 

 

There was more socializing that afternoon, when Daniel went with Ines to see Charlie's end-of-the-year program at the elementary school — the same elementary school he and Tillie and Ines had attended.  As he made his way down the hall, Daniel felt like he was in a doll's house. Everything felt so small, even the things he remembered as being big, like the bulletin boards and the water fountain.  

There was even more socializing the next day: Ines's friends had all but ordered her to bring Daniel with her to their weekly bridge lunch.  Daniel wasn't sure what to make of being the special guest at a hen party, but he quickly felt at ease: it was a small group, he vaguely knew some of the other guests, and it was easy to talk about bridge. 

Lunch was a potluck buffet. Daniel noticed that almost every food on the buffet table was pretty — neat arrangements, little garnishes, cookies and sandwiches cut into hearts and spades and diamonds and clubs — and seemed to involve ingredients chopped in little pieces. Egg salad, ham salad, macaroni salad, a tuna salad formed into the shape of a fish (complete with an olive for an eye.) Chunks of fruit suspended in a layered gelatin mold. Bread pudding.  

The menu made sense when they sat down and started to play: everything stayed on the plate and could be eaten without a knife, so it was easy to eat while playing cards. And it was all very tasty. Daniel didn't find it very filling, but that was all right; he knew he needed to save room, for the whole family had been invited to dinner at the Escobars' that evening. 

Daniel had been itching to take the kids out for ice cream, and he got his wish Thursday evening. His father had gotten home from work at a decent hour, and since there was no school the next day, Ines agreed to the idea. So, after supper, Daniel suggested going for a drive. That in itself was a thrill for Charlie and Katie — getting to do something with the grownups after supper instead of going home to bed!  

And then driving downtown, and seeing the streetlights glowing in the twilight and the shop windows and people walking back and forth, and Tia Tillie pointing the way to her job and Vovô pointing the way to his.... They had to stop for a train, so they counted the cars and wondered where the train might be going.... 

The caboose passed and the bells rang and the gates lifted; Daniel looked over to his father, and his father gave a little nod that said yes, now.  Daniel turned to the back seat. "Hey, Tillie," he said. "I see stores that sell clothes and stores that sell records.... is there any place around here that still serves ice cream?" 

He couldn't help grinning at the childrens' astonished silence. Tillie smiled and suggested a place, and twenty minutes later a waitress was bringing two large sundaes, four coffees, and seven spoons to the table.  Charlie and Katie thanked him for the ice cream; before he could ay anything Ines and Tillie and their father added their thanks; and soon they were all enjoying ice cream and coffee and talking and laughing. Maddie got her first taste of ice cream; in the blink of an eye she went from stunned and bewildered to grabbing at the spoon and demanding more, and protesting when it wasn't coming quickly enough. Daniel smiled as he watched his father reassure her — see? oh, yes, there you go, you like that, don't you, querida —  

— and for a moment Daniel felt deeply grateful. Things weren't perfect, but he'd made it back, he was home with his family, they were eating ice cream together in a restaurant instead of sharing cold rations from a relief box in a ruined house. 

 The children's spoons grew slower and slower. "So what do you think, Charlie?" asked Daniel's father. "Has it been a good day?" 

Charlie nodded.  Across the table, Katie was still holding her spoon, but was leaning against Tillie. She lifted her head. 

"Are we going to go to the beach?" she asked. 

"Not tonight, silly!" said Tillie. 

"No. Tomorrow." 

"Not tomorrow," said Ines. "But we'll talk about it later. Spoon on the table, please." 

 

That night, after he showered Daniel went back downstairs to lie on the floor and stretch his hip. Tillie came over and sat on the floor next to him. 

"So what do you think about going to the beach?" she asked. 

"Meaning in general, or..?" 

"Meaning Saturday," said their father. "If we're going to go while you're here, Saturday's the day. We don't have to decide right now; I think we're all tired." 

"We can't make a final decision right now anyway," added Tillie. "Ines isn't here." 

 "You and Ines can talk it over tomorrow and decide what you want to do," said their father. "Just to save time, I can tell you now that I'd go." 

"Me too," said Tillie. "And I promise I won't pout if we don't go. So it's up to you two." 

 

Back up in his room, Daniel took off his pajama pants, sat down on his bed, and took an elastic bandage out of his shirt pocket. He made the first two circles around his hips, lifted his right leg to start wrapping it, and stopped short.  

His leg was looking better these days, but it still wasn't a pretty sight. If he went to the beach.... 

He'd done cold water and even ice cubes as part of his desensitization exercises, so he wasn't worried about how his leg would react to the water. He could pack some aspirin, just in case. As for other reactions... 

He forced himself to think it through. If he went to the beach... well, he didn't necessarily have to wear swim trunks, would he? He could always just stay dressed. But then he wouldn't be able to swim, or play in the water with the kids. And he'd get sand in his clothes. 

If he wore swim trunks... Well, his father had seen his leg, and his sisters would be insulted if he tried to "protect" them from the sight. That left the kids. He'd just need to talk to Ines. 

And as for the others at the beach.... He could wear a stump sock, but it would either pick up sand or fall off in the water. He could wrap his leg, but again: sand.  

And those wouldn't stop rude people anyway. No. His leg might be ugly, but if anyone had a problem with that, then the hell with them. He was going to go to the beach with his family.  

And if he got a case of nerves on Saturday morning, he wasn't going to let that stop him either.  

He tugged on the elastic bandage and went back to wrapping his leg. He'd talk to Ines in the morning. 

 

 

Notes:

Thanks to katiekeysburg and to Annie+MacDonald for test reading, and to Annie for the handkerchief story.
Thank you for reading, for your kudos, for your comments, and for sticking with it.

---

Notes

 

The washer looks something like this.

 

The handkerchief story: based on a real event, supplied by Annie+MacDonald. Daniel's handkerchiefs look something like this. Belgian handmade lace was - and is - world famous.

"I don't know from..." - I don't know anything about...

"Hen party" - I guess now people use it to mean a bachelorette party, but it was also used to mean any women's social (or political) meeting.

Chapter 49: The B-E-A-C-H

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

Daniel leaned to his left and pointed out the car window. "Hey, Charlie. See that sign up there?" 

Charlie straightened up to look. "It's the beach!" he exclaimed. In the back seat, Katie started to cheer. 

"That's right, we're almost there," said Daniel's father. He glanced at Daniel. Are you ready?  his expression asked. 

Daniel smiled a little: I'm ready. His smile faded as he looked back out the window.  

In another minute or two, they reached the parking lot. Sand grumbled under the car tires as Daniel's father slowly drove to the beach end of the lot and pulled into a parking spot. 

As the others piled out, Daniel opened his door and brought his crutches around. He took the tennis balls he'd brought from the hospital, stuck them on the tips of the crutches, and started getting himself out of the car. He'd left his prosthetic back home — no sense getting it full of sand — and he didn't miss having to use his hands to lift the heavy thing out of the car. 

He did miss it when it was time to stand up, and he had only his crutches and his left foot to keep him up and balanced in the narrow space between the car and the open door.  By the time he was out and able to close the car door, the others were unloading the trunk. He waited as they distributed the baggage; everyone had something to carry except him and Maddie.  

He ignored his frustration. When everyone was ready, he followed them out of the parking lot and into the sand.  

The sand was a little firmer here than it had been in Atlantic City, but Daniel still had to walk slowly and carefully.  With every step, he had to test his crutches to make sure they weren't going to sink into the sand or slip out from under him.  His family matched his pace. When he stopped to rest for a moment, he realized the kids were hanging back without complaining, without even being asked. He shook out his hands, gripped his crutches, and started forward again. 

They picked a spot and set down their things. Daniel watched, resigned, as Tillie picked up the small shovel he'd always packed for setting up the beach umbrella: clearly she'd taken over his old job while he was away. 

She looked over to Daniel. "Well? You're in charge." 

"Oh. Well...." Daniel checked the direction of the wind, considered the position of the sun, and used a crutch to draw a diagram in the sand. "Let's set it up in this direction."  

Tillie pointed to a spot. "Here?" 

"Yeah." 

Tillie stabbed the shovel into the sand to mark the spot. "Now what? I brought the big trowel, if you want two people digging." 

Daniel lowered himself down to the sand. With Tillie, he dug the hole for the umbrella while Ines held it in position. Meanwhile, their father and the kids brought up buckets of water. Daniel showed them where to pour the water around the umbrella shaft so that the wet sand would help hold it in place. He and Tillie shaped the wet sand and then backfilled more sand around the umbrella shaft.  

Once Daniel was satisfied with the angle and the anchorage of the umbrella, he helped spread out the blankets and secure them with the bags and the jug thermos. He made sure his crutches were on the blanket but out of the way, and finally sat down. Baby Maddie was sitting nearby, wiggling her legs and waving her hands as she took in the new sights. A cool breeze came in from the water; Daniel chuckled as her face puckered in surprise. 

His father sat down in front of them. "Come here, Charlie." Charlie hopped over and sat down, and Daniel's father put his arm around the boy's shoulders. " 'I must down to the seas again...' " he prompted. His voice was low and inviting. 

" 'To the lonely sea and the sky," Charlie joined in. " 'And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by....' " 

They recited the poem together, Charlie taking the lead. Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel could see Katie holding her little bucket and shovel, squirming in impatience as Tillie stepped out of her sandals and took off the dress she was wearing over her bathing suit. The moment Tillie was ready, Katie took her by the hand and hurried her down to the water. 

"...And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.’” Charlie leaned into his grandfather's hug and then turned to Daniel. "Vovô said that poem for his Vovô, and now I can say it for him." His face fell when he saw that Daniel was still wearing street clothes over his swim trunks. "Aren't you going to swim?" 

"Oh yeah. In a few minutes," said Daniel.  

Charlie waited, with heroic patience, for forty-six seconds. When he could wait no longer, he politely invited Daniel to come swim when he was ready and headed for the water. Daniel's father went with him. 

Daniel watched them go. When they were about halfway to the water, they stopped. Charlie looked like he was asking a question; Daniel's father seemed to answer, and gave Charlie a reassuring pat on the shoulder. They ran the rest of the way into the water, whooping and splashing. 

Ines sat down next to Daniel. "Everything okay?" 

"Yeah," he said. "Just enjoying the breeze. You're not waiting for me, are you?" 

"Haven't decided yet. Just enjoying the peace for now." 

Daniel looked around the beach. A few new groups had arrived and were putting out their blankets. 

He'd talked to Ines yesterday about... his leg, and swimming trunks, and the kids. She'd promised she'd talk to the kids, but she wasn't worried about how they'd react.  

Which left everyone else on the beach. 

The beach was only going to get more crowded; he had nothing to gain by waiting. And he'd had enough of a rest after the walk from the car.  

He took off his shirt and his old sneaker and hitched himself out of his pants. When he was done, he reached for his crutches; Ines stood up and moved the baby out of the way. 

Getting himself standing again was difficult on the sliding sand, but Daniel managed it. When he'd adjusted his crutches, he glanced at Ines. Her expression was an odd mix of sorrow and admiration — and then the moment passed and she'd collected herself. 

Daniel nodded toward the water. "You coming?" 

"Sure." She addressed the baby: "Do you want to come too? Do you want to go play in the water? Yes? Let's go with Tio Daniel and play in the water." 

As they approached the water, the kids ran up to meet them. Together, they all watched as Ines and Tillie held Maddie's hands and walked her up to the water. The water splashed over Maddie's little toes, and she squealed; when she saw her brother and sister laughing and cheering for her, she laughed too. She let go of Ines and Tillie and plopped herself down to sit in the sand and splash the water with her hands. 

Katie put her hand on Daniel's. "Are you going to take the crutches into the water?" she asked. 

Daniel pretended to be unsure. "I can't decide. Do you think I should?" 

"Hmm." Katie pursed her lips as she thought. Her expression was so like her mother's, Daniel had to hold back a laugh. 

Daniel's father joined them. "I'm going to get the camera. Want me to take those back with me?" 

"Sure." Daniel got himself turned around, handed his crutches to his father, and hopped into the water. It was chilly, but he kept hopping; he couldn't just stand there like a flamingo while he got used to the water, and it was better to just get wet and get it over with. To his relief, his right leg didn't react to the cold. He stopped when the water was deep enough to help support him, but still shallow enough for Katie and Charlie to safely play. When they came splashing up, he was able to lift them up, one at a time, and gently toss them back in the water as they shrieked and laughed. 

Tillie, Ines, and their father joined them, taking turns playing and passing the baby and the camera back and forth. Daniel worked on teaching Katie to float and helping Charlie improve his swimming. He played shark and submarine with them, and stood on his hands while they splashed water at his left foot.  

He had no idea how long they'd been out when Ines finally ordered the kids back to the umbrella for a drink and a snack.  Daniel stayed and did some actual swimming before following them back. 

His father had stayed in the water to wait for him. As they approached the shore, Daniel noticed that the beach had grown much more crowded.  Kids were scattered along the shoreline, digging in the sand. The beach face and the backshore had become a checkerboard of blankets and umbrellas. 

When the water was hip deep again, Daniel's father waved. Back at the umbrella, Tillie waved back, stood up, and set out across the sand carrying Daniel's crutches, Charlie tagging along behind her. Daniel could see a few heads popping up — crutches at a beach? odd —and then turning back to magazines or conversations or the view of the water. 

He waited until Tillie was close before he started forward again. A few more hops and his leg was exposed; a few more and he was nearing the edge of the water. He was aware that some of the nearby kids were looking up and staring. He kept his focus on Tillie. When he was far enough in that he thought his crutches would be usable, he reached out a hand. Tillie handed the crutches to him, and with a couple of quick steps, he was out of the water.  

As he made his way back across the beach, he knew he was drawing even more stares: most of his right leg was gone, of course, and what was left was still puffy and odd-looking, with a bright pink seam where they'd sewn him up. Most of the gawkers seemed content with just getting a good look before going back to their business, but he was pretty sure he heard a couple of gasps. All that chin-up-and-eyes-forward the physical therapists had nagged him about was coming in handy now, and not just for keeping his balance. 

Back at the blanket, he sat down and put his crutches aside. The breeze made him shiver, and he gratefully wrapped himself in the towel Tillie tossed at his face. Charlie and Katie brought him a drink of water and a peanut butter sandwich, and watched him as he ate and drank; the moment he finished, they begged him to come play again, and led him down to the water to build sand castles. 

 

Daniel found himself thinking about the sand castles as they drove home. Katie had heaped up a mound of sand and promptly forgot about it; she’d been more interested in digging little pools and connecting them with canals, watching them fill with water and flow into each other.  

Charlie had been more ambitious: he wanted to build a big castle with a moat. Daniel had quickly become absorbed in the project, making sure their castle was sited well and that its walls and access points could be easily defended. It was fun, and it was fun seeing Charlie working with such care, following Daniel's instructions and carefully shaping the walls and the gate. 

He’d known he was still getting a few stares. Most were easy enough to ignore. Every so often he'd notice that a kid or two had waded out to a spot where they could play in the water and get a good look at his leg. He didn't mind; kids were just curious, and once they'd watched him for a while, they grew more interested in watching the castle take shape, and finally wandered off again. 

Those girls, though.... 

That had stung. It had happened so quickly. He'd looked up when he'd heard them laughing; they were walking along the surf, shrieking and giggling as the water rolled up around their ankles. Their path would take them between him and the water.  

As they approached, one of them whispered something to the other two, and he realized he'd caught their eye. They looked pleased. He got ready to smile. 

Suddenly, another one whispered, glanced at him again, and exchanged nervous looks with the others. Daniel felt his stomach start to curdle. He knew exactly what was going on: they'd seen him, they knew he knew they'd seen them, and they knew that if they changed direction he'd know they were avoiding him.  

So what would they do? He worked on the castle for a moment or two before he looked back up. 

They didn't walk away, and they didn't ignore him, but they gave him plenty of room as they went past, and their smiles were small and forced and timid. Daniel gave them a calm smile in return, and then turned back to carving battlements on the castle wall as he waited for the hot feeling in his face to fade away.  

His father and Ines had been around; he didn’t know if they’d noticed what had happened. He hoped not. 

And really... it was just a few girls he didn’t even know, and it could have been a lot worse. Things like this could happen even in Atlantic City: there was a reason that the Army had reserved a section of the beach for the hospital patients. He needed to be realistic, and not try to fool himself. This was his life now. 

He was just going to have to get used to it. 

 

The next day was Sunday: Daniel’s last day at home. 

Church first, with handshakes and greetings afterwards, and answering the questions everyone kept asking: Yes, his last day; yes, heading back tomorrow; the week sure did go quickly; hope to stay longer next time; doctors haven't said yet; looking forward to it.... 

Next, the usual Sunday morning visit to the cemetery; waiting as his father tidied the geraniums at the base of the headstone.... 

Sunday dinner at the Escobars' house... a couple of rounds of bridge with his sisters and Pete's sister.... 

And then back to the house. Daniel went upstairs to check on his leg; when he came back down, he found his father waiting in the kitchen. 

"There you are," his father said. "Let's go outside for a bit. What do you say?" 

"Sounds good," said Daniel. He'd been wondering when his father was going to get around to inviting him for a chat on the back steps. 

His father made an after-you gesture, and Daniel made his way through the kitchen to the back door. He shifted his crutches to his left hand, gripped the stair rail in his right, and carefully went down the porch steps. When he reached the bottom, he took a couple of steps to the left, switched his crutches to his right hand, and sat down in his spot.  

He smiled as he heard the back door open and close.  His father sat down next to him, opened two beers, and offered one to Daniel. "Saúde." They clinked their bottles and drank. 

"It sure has been good having you home again," said Daniel's father. "Hope it hasn't been too dull for you." 

"It hasn't been dull. Maybe ordinary," said Daniel. "And I couldn't ask for anything better than that. It's going to be hard to go back." 

"It's going to be hard to send you back. Again. At least this time — "  

His voice broke off. Daniel held his breath, thinking of what his father wouldn't or couldn't say — 

"Well... at least this time we'll know where you're going, and that you're not so far away. Not like the last time." 

"And it shouldn't take too long before I can get another pass." 

"That would be nice. So what've you got planned for when you get back?" 

Daniel thought of his room — and of all those Conovers — and of the nurses and doctors and therapists waiting to debrief him — of pulley weights and parallel bars — 

And of the letter Tucker had said would be waiting for him. 

"Probably a lot more of the same," he said. "I think there's going to be driving lessons soon." 

"Oh good! How's that going to work?" 

Daniel told him what he'd learned about the driving program: the practice car in the gym, the adapted cars with the shifted pedals.... 

"Any talk of when they might send you to Washington?" 

"Not yet." 

"Once all this is over, they're going to send you home, right? They're not going to try to keep you in the Army somehow?"  

Daniel chuckled. "No, I think the Army'll hand me a paper and send me on my way." He took a sip of beer.  

"Any more thoughts about what's next?" His father's tone was light, as if he were asking about whether Daniel wanted mustard on his sandwich. 

"What, are you thinking about renting my room?" teased Daniel. 

"Not just yet. Your sisters may have been making some noise about subletting, but I told them they had to talk to you." 

"Thanks." 

His father took a sip of his beer. "Mr. Winslow called me in on Friday," he said. "He asked after you — how you were doing, and how your week home was going.... 

"He said he talked to you about coming back to the shipyard. He asked me to tell you that if you were ever interested in coming back, to give him as much notice as possible." 

"Thanks," said Daniel. "That's good to know." 

"If you don't mind me asking... did he offer you a job?" 

"Not really," said Daniel. "He said if I ever wanted to go back, he'd do everything he could. But I... kind of got the sense he wasn't sure how much he'd be able to do." 

"Yeah. There's been talk about things starting to slow down." 

Daniel took a drink of beer and thought again of the letter waiting for him back at the hospital. 

"This needs to stay between us for now," he said quietly, "but actually... I have a lead on a job." 

His father kept his voice low. "Really? That's fantastic! Doing what?" 

"Well, it's not in the bag, so I don't want to say too much yet, you know? It's good, though — a good opportunity." 

"And where is it?" 

Daniel hesitated before he answered. "New York City. I would've liked something closer, but...." 

"But what? If' it's a good opportunity, of course you want to snap that up. And New York's not that far; it's closer than Atlantic City, right? Compared to Europe, it's right around the corner. — So you'd start after you finished up in Washington?" 

"I guess so," said Daniel. "There's a lot to work out yet, and it's not a sure thing." 

"Well, don't worry about it," said his father. "I wasn't planning on giving your room away, but if this doesn't pan out? You'll find something even better. I know you will." His smile was fond and proud, and Daniel couldn't help smiling too. 

 

Earlier in the day, Daniel had promised Charlie he'd show him his service ribbons. He kept the promise after supper. Charlie eagerly brought him his uniform coat and climbed up on the chair next to Daniel. Tillie immediately passed some paper and crayons to Charlie, but before Daniel could ask what that was about, the other members of the family had gathered around. 

He started with his lieutenant's bars and the insignia on his lapels, the unit ribbon over his right pocket, and the service bars on his left sleeve. 

"Now these —" he pointed to the service ribbons — "are what we call fruit salad." 

Charlie giggled. "My daddy calls them that too."  

"So this one shows that I worked in Europe, and this one shows I worked in America." 

"What did you do in America?" 

"Soldier school, mostly." 

"What do the stars stand for?" 

"Oh, I got those in potato-peeling contests." 

Tillie leaned forward. "It looks like the stars are different colors." 

"Sure, one's for second place and one's for third place." 

Daniel went on to explain that the purple ribbon was for not complaining when he got shots in the hospital, and that the next ones were for brushing his teeth, keeping his tent tidy, and winning spelling bees. Charlie laughed, but didn't demand a more plausible story. He pulled over the paper and crayons and began to draw the service ribbons, with all the precision a six-year-old could manage. 

 

Ines waited until Charlie had recorded every last detail of the uniform coat before she looked at the clock. “Time to get these little monkeys home,” she said sadly. Charlie looked up from his drawing, and Daniel’s heart grew heavy.  

It was hard to say goodbye. It was even harder when Katie suddenly understood what was happening and started to cry. Daniel promised he'd see her one last time in the morning if she was awake, and that he'd come back again — not sure when, but he would come back, he promised. And as she sniffled and tried to pull herself together, he realized how close he'd come to saying he would come back to visit. 

He thought about it again that night as he lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep. His bag was packed; his clothes for the next morning were ready. He was going back to the hospital, back to the Army, the next day. 

The hospital was familiar – almost comfortable – but it wasn't home. This was home. But could it be home if he was there only to leave again, never there to stay? 

That's how it would be if he got the SSR job. He'd live in New York, would have to find a place there. 

Of course, there'd be no sisters around, no nieces and nephew. No Pai.  

He knew he could survive; he'd had three years of being pulled up and tossed down, again and again, into all kinds of new situations. But he'd always known he would be coming back home at the end of it.  

Maybe he'd just thought he'd known.  

His father hadn't seemed surprised or disappointed at all when he'd told him about New York. Maybe his father had always known. Maybe he'd known all the way back when Daniel got the train for boot camp. 

 

Early the next morning, Daniel had a quick breakfast with his father and Tillie. He managed a little joke about how spoiled he'd gotten, and how hard it was going to be to go back to powdered eggs. 

"Well, hurry up and get yourself discharged," said Tillie. "We can probably get another hen or two if you get back early enough. We can name them Betty and Barbara: what do you think?" 

They drove over to the Escobars and found both households waiting on the front stoop. Daniel said one last good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Escobar and Pete's sister, and then to Maddie and a drowsy, sobbing Katie. Ines and Charlie got in the car, and they left for the train station. 

At the train station, they all came in to wait with Daniel. Charlie sat next to Daniel on the old wooden bench, Daniel's arm around his shoulders; Ines and Tillie knitted; their father held Daniel's bag and kept glancing at the clock. 

"You'll let us know when you get there, right?" asked Tillie. 

"Sure will," said Daniel. "Hope Ines doesn't mind me bugging her." 

"I'll try to be patient," said Ines. 

"And you've got everything you need to make your connections?" their father asked. 

Daniel patted his pocket. "It's all set up. If everything goes well, I might even be able to catch a direct from New York to Atlantic City." 

The station master announced the train. Daniel stood up and, with his family, made his way out and down the platform.  

He chose a car and stopped. "I think this is it," he said.  

A hug for Ines: "We're going to miss you," she said, her voice tight.  

A hug for Tillie: "Be good, and hurry back!" 

A handshake and then a hug for Charlie. "We'll see each other again soon, okay?" said Daniel. Charlie could only nod. 

Daniel turned to his father. "I think we're ready." 

As he started toward the train, a couple of privates approached. One of them was carrying two bags; the other saluted. "I can get that bag, sir," said Private Two. 

"Thanks, soldier. I think we're good here, but I could use your help at the other end." The privates nodded, and stepped aside to let Daniel and his father enter the car.  

As Daniel nabbed a window seat on the platform side, his father stowed his bag on the overhead rack.  

"Well, son, this is it. Have a safe trip, all right?" He wrapped Daniel in a tight hug. 

"I will. Thanks for everything, Pai. It's been so good to see you. I'll be back as soon as I can." 

Daniel sat down, and his father threaded his way back out to the platform. A few minutes later, the whistle blew and the doors slammed shut. The train began to inch forward. Daniel waved out the window; out on the platform, he could see his family waving back to him. Ines had her lips pressed tightly together; Tillie was frantically waving with one hand and wiping her eyes with the other. Charlie managed a couple of waves before he turned to his grandfather and hid his face; Daniel's father pulled Charlie closer to himself as he waved good-bye.  

The whistle blew, the train picked up a little speed, and in a moment the platform was out of sight. Daniel took a deep breath and sat back in his seat. Ines would take their father and then Tillie back to work, and then she'd go back home with Charlie. It was Monday, so she'd probably start the laundry. Tillie and their father would be back to their usual routine. 

And by late that afternoon, he'd be back at the hospital, unpacking his things. Dinner at the mess hall. Mail at the desk. His hospital bed by the window. Everything back to normal. 

Not home. But normal. 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thanks to katiekeysburg for test reading and idea bouncing

And to you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your invaluable comments.

---

Notes:

Saúde: "Cheers"; "to your health"

Chapter 50: Independence Day

 

 

 

Taunton to Providence; wait, and wait some more; Providence to New York.... At Penn Station, Sousa swallowed his pride and accepted a wheelchair ride from a redcap so he could make it across the station in time to catch the express train to Atlantic City. By mid-afternoon, he was getting off the bus at the hospital. 

He wasn't as knocked out as he'd been on the trip home, but he was still pretty beat. He skipped the telegraph office — he could just call his message down — and went straight to the elevators. Back up on the eighth floor, he signed in at the desk, picked up his mail, and went to his room. 

Nothing had changed. There was Conover, leg suspended in traction, looking bored. Mrs. Conover was sitting next to the bed. 

They looked up as Sousa came in. Conover seemed to perk up a little. "There you are!" he said. "How was your trip?"  

Next to him, Mrs. Conover seemed to be working hard to ratchet her smile from polite to warm. For a moment, Sousa wasn't sure if she recognized him. 

"Hey, Conover," said Sousa. "Hello, Mrs. Conover. Trip went fine; had a good time at home.... " He crossed to the closet to put away his hat and his uniform coat. 

"Poor dear," said Mrs. Conover. "You must be exhausted." 

Sousa pressed back a groan and hung up his tie. His blue shirt and pants were hanging in the closet, ready for him; he tossed them over his shoulder and went to pull the privacy curtain.  

"You're right, Mom. Let's give him some quiet, okay?" said Conover. "Maybe a couple of hours? And could you pull the door shut on your way out? Thanks."  

When she'd closed the door, Sousa sat down on the bed and started to undress. As he unbuttoned his shirt, he was conscious of the silence on the other side of the curtain. Anyone else would be asking him more about his trip, and about how his family was doing.    

He wondered, briefly, if Conover was over there feeling awkward because he knew he should be asking. Maybe he was realizing he didn't know what to ask, because he'd never asked Sousa about his family before. 

Well, if Conover was feeling awkward, he could just lie there and feel awkward until he decided to do something about it.  And if he wasn't, that was fine too.  

Sousa had just taken his prosthetic off when a knock sounded at the door. It was Lieutenant Munn. She welcomed him back, stuck a thermometer in his mouth and took his pulse, and asked about his trip as she looked at his leg.  

"Don't wrap yourself up just yet," she said as she wrote on the clipboard. "Captain Blaine will be by soon." 

After she left, Sousa called the telegraph office and dictated a message to Ines: 

BACK HOSPITAL EASY TRIP MISS YOU ALL ALREADY LOVE DANIEL 

A few minutes later, Blaine showed up. He gave Sousa a quick exam and looked at his leg. "When'd you catch your first train this morning? ...And then you had two train changes? You look like you weathered it okay. You tired?" 

"A little. Not too bad." 

"And how was the trip up? Any problems getting home?" 

Sousa let his leg rest as he answered Blaine's questions: journey home just long and late; everything in order at the house; no problems with the prosthetic.... 

"Sounds like a success," said Blaine. "Glad to hear it went so well. You're going to get asked all the same questions again tomorrow, you know: morning and afternoon."  

"You mean that afternoon meeting?" 

"Yeah. Nothing's free, and that's the price of a furlough." 

Sousa didn't mind; it made sense that the team would want to debrief him, and by going to the meeting he could get it done at once. And it would be a good time to ask about advancing his therapy. 

After Blaine left, Sousa wrapped his leg, donned his prosthesis, and unpacked. When he was finished, he sat down on the bed again and brought out his mail. 

The first envelope was hospital mail. Sousa opened it right away: it was a note from Peyton, ordering him to a meeting tomorrow. Probably about the SSR job... and the August start date. Sousa hoped there wouldn't be trouble. 

He flipped to the next envelopes on the stack and smiled: they were from home. His family had slipped letters in the mail while he was there so he'd have something waiting for him when he got back to the hospital. 

A letter from Grahn, and finally the envelope he was looking for: a letter from Elliot, Terrence, and Crewe. Fruitful discussion... results highly satisfactory... documentation forwarded to attending physician as discussed.... 

Sousa frowned. There was not a word, not even a heavily veiled hint, about the actual offer. 

 

He understood the next day, when he reported to Peyton's office. Peyton waved him to a chair, waited for him to get settled, and handed him an envelope.  It was sealed with reinforced tape and stamped CONFIDENTIAL. 

"You'll need this," said Peyton, and handed Sousa a pair of scissors.  

"Thanks." Sousa cut into the envelope. 

It was his offer letter, written on SSR stationery and signed by Bailey, with all the points from Tucker's phone call: job title Agent, starting salary, New York office.... Start date of August 6 highly desirable.... Aware of current status in the Army, further correspondence to be conducted through your commanding officer.... Complete and sign the enclosed form indicating your decision and return it to your commanding officer.... 

August 6. That was even sooner than he'd expected, how could he — 

"Congratulations," said Peyton. "Tucker called and told me." 

"Thank you." 

"Do you want to accept it?" 

"Sure. If the Army lets me." 

"Oh, you'll be allowed; it's just a question of when. I know you've been working hard, but August...." Peyton shook his head. "That's just too soon." 

Sousa stopped himself from asking if Peyton had said that to Tucker. "Well, is there anything I'd be doing here that I couldn't be doing there?" 

"You mean besides working on a plan of treatment customized to your needs and supervised by the finest physical and occupational therapists in the United States Army?" 

Sousa shrugged. "If I went to New York, that'd free up a bed here for a fellow who might need it more." 

"That's very unselfish of you. But it's no good if you need the bed too." Peyton tapped his pen on his desk. "The other problem is that it's simply against Army regulations to discharge you before you get your permanent prosthesis. We can't provide that to you until your stump's mature, and — as I think you know — in a case like yours that takes about a year." 

"Did you tell Major Tucker that?" 

"I did. He was understanding. And he's still hell-bent on getting you there in August. He seems to think he can work out a way. He's not a quitter, I'll give him that." Peyton handed Sousa his pen and a clipboard. "Go ahead and fill out that form. That should give him something to work with." 

I ACCEPT THE OFFER OF EMPLOYMENT WITH THE STRATEGIC SCIENTIFIC RESERVE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF WAR. IN ACCEPTING THIS OFFER I AFFIRM THAT I AM NOT A MEMBER OR SYMPATHIZER OF ANY INTERNATIONAL OR DOMESTIC PARTY OR ORGANIZATION THAT IS AN ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES OR OF ITS GOVERNMENT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO HYDRA; PARTIES SYMPATHETIC TO THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY OF GERMANY (NAZI PARTY); ANY COMMUNIST PARTY OR ORGANIZATION; ANY ORGANIZATION, INCLUDING SECRET SOCIETIES, WHOSE ACTIVITIES CONTRAVENE STATE OR FEDERAL LAW....  

I WILL COMPLY WITH ALL REGULATIONS AND DIRECTIVES CONCERNING SECRECY AND THE CLASSIFICATION OF INFORMATION AND EVIDENCE. I UNDERSTAND THAT FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE REGULATIONS IS A CRIME AND SUBJECT TO PROSECUTION UNDER U.S. FEDERAL LAW.... 

Sousa dutifully read through the rest of the boilerplate. He wrote down the date and signed his name. 

"And now you give it back to me," said Peyton. "I add the letter to your file, and lock your file away...." He turned back from the file cabinet, slid Sousa's response form into an envelope, and took out a new-looking roll of reinforced tape.  "...And then I send your response back by Army courier. You know, I never had to do any of this stuff until you and Tucker showed up." He addressed the envelope, taped it up, put it in another outer envelope, addressed and sealed the outer envelope, and put the package aside. "Speaking of Army regulations, did that wheelchair make it home in time?" 

"Sure did." 

"Yeah? What'd you do with it?" 

"Left it folded up in the back entry." 

Peyton chuckled. "Thought as much. Tucker said he watched you take three flights of stairs in Penn Station like it was nothing." 

"I wouldn't say it was nothing...." 

"Good. You can tell us all about it this afternoon. Just skip the part about your little detour in New York." 

 

A few hours later, Sousa took his seat in the meeting room. The usual crowd was there — Peyton, Blaine, the other doctors, the head nurse of the ward, and the lead physical and occupational therapists.  

They started with a few friendly questions: how did it feel to be home? How was his father and the rest of his family? Any good home cooking? 

Sousa remembered the Sunday afternoon feast and smiled. "Plenty of it. But I'm sorry to say one of my aunts was very dissatisfied with the care I've been getting here. She thinks you haven't been feeding me enough." 

The head nurse of the ward nodded. "We hear that a lot." 

"Is she going to write to her Congressman?" asked Peyton. "She wouldn't be the first."  

"Probably not," said Sousa. "But if I could get up there again soon, that might help put her mind at ease." 

"So give us your report," said Blaine. "Let's start with your trip home. You caught the train here to New York; how did that go?" 

Sousa told the whole story, answering their questions along the way: making it through the train stations, carrying his shoulder bag, late trains, got home tired but a good night's sleep set him up... errands, walking on grass, walking around the neighborhood... working in the garden and around the house....  

"So your family didn't try to baby you?" asked Blaine. "That's good." 

He told them about his trip to the beach, but didn't mention the little incident with the girls.  He did make himself admit accepting the wheelchair ride in Penn Station on the way home. They were unconcerned. 

"I'm glad you did," said Blaine. "Independence is important, but sometimes being smart means accepting help. You saved yourself several hours of hanging around train stations eating donuts and feeling your leg swell up. Looking back on it, anything that would have made your trip go more smoothly?" 

"Yes. Those crutches with the cuffs," said Sousa. "And not having to use crutches at all. I want to start working on that...." 

Peyton nodded and started writing in the chart.  

"...And get back to driving. Maybe I could quit woodworking, free up some time in my schedule." 

"I thought you were enjoying woodworking," said the occupational therapist. 

"Happens all the time," said Peyton. "A fellow goes home, he gets tired of having family members chauffeur him around, comes back itching to get behind the wheel. Let's go ahead and get him on the schedule."  

The occupational therapist nodded and started to write. "It'll take a few days," she said. 

"That's okay. I can finish that cutting board I've been working on," said Sousa. 

 

Sousa had bridge club that afternoon, and as he walked up the ramp to the Palm Court, he saw Hazel and Betty waiting for him. They welcomed him back, hurried him over to the table where Doris and Penny were sitting with Tipton, and cheerfully ordered him to tell them all about his trip home.  He sketched it out for them, keeping it as light and funny as he could, and then listened as the girls and Tipton caught him up on the news. 

When he got back to his room after supper, Mrs. Conover was back in her usual spot. Lieutenant Munn was there as well, doing something with Conover's traction. Sousa greeted them all and picked up some leg supplies from the shelf on his way to his side of the room. He tossed the elastic bandages aside — he didn't wrap his leg until just before he went to sleep — and drew the privacy curtain. 

He started laying out his things for his shower: underwear, pajamas... and one of the stump socks Tillie had knitted for him. He still preferred the thin machine-knit socks from the hospital for under the prosthesis, but he was growing to like Tillie's socks for the hours in the evening when he wasn't wearing the prosthesis and didn't have his leg wrapped. 

On the other side of the curtain, Lieutenant Munn was finishing up. "Are you comfortable?" she asked Conover. "All right then. I'm getting ready to go give report, so I'll see you both tomorrow." She washed her hands and walked over to Sousa's side of the curtain. 

"And how are you doing, Lieutenant Sousa? I don't think I've seen you all day," she said. "Getting ready to wash up?" 

"In a couple of minutes," he said. He indicated the curtain, where Mrs. Conover was sitting on the other side. Lieutenant Munn nodded in weary understanding. 

"Now what's this?" she asked, pointing to the sock. "That doesn't look like Army issue." 

"My sister knitted that for me," he said. "She said one of the nurses gave a pattern to my dad when he was here."  

Lieutenant Munn grinned. "I wonder who that could have been? — May I see it?" 

"Sure." 

She looked it over. "This looks beautiful: no knots anywhere. And it fits okay?" 

"Sure does."  

"Good. Don't be surprised if it starts getting loose in a few months, though, as the swelling goes down." She admired some of Sousa's other socks from Tillie, both the stump socks and the ordinary kind, before she left for rounds. A few minutes later, visiting hours ended, Mrs. Conover left, and Sousa gathered up his things and went into the bathroom. 

As he sat on the shower chair and washed his hair, he thought about what he wanted to do for the rest of the evening. He had some letters to answer; maybe he could go down to the lounge to answer them.... 

His thoughts drifted back to signing the form in Peyton's office to accept the offer, and to the meetings he'd had that day with Peyton and the team. How soon could they advance his physical therapy? Maybe he could start working on walking without crutches as soon as tomorrow. He could always just start doing it in the room, but that seemed unwise; better to wait and try it in physical therapy. He pictured himself standing between the parallel bars, hands at his sides, lifting the prosthesis forward to take his first step.... How long until he could walk the length of the parallel bars? The length of the hallway? Could he do it by August 6?  

What difference would it make, if the Army wouldn't let him leave the hospital? 

There was no use worrying about it; it was out of his hands. Back out in the room, he put on his bathrobe and started to stock his pockets with writing paper. On the other side of the curtain, he could hear the rustle of a newspaper. 

"Hey Sousa," said Conover. 

"Hey. What's up?" Sousa pulled the curtain back a little. 

"I couldn't help overhearing, but... does your sister really make you socks? Meaning, ones you can actually wear?" 

"Yeah." 

"Huh. I knew a fellow whose girl knit him a sweater. When he took it out of the box we didn't know what to make of it. It was too big for a sweater but too small for a shelter half. I don't know what he did with it but he sure couldn't wear it." He folded his newspaper. "I don't think I ever asked you how your trip home went." 

"It went all right. The train ride wasn't too bad. Got to see everyone." 

"That's nice. Think you'll be going back once the Army's done with you?" 

"I always assumed so." 

"Any leads on a job?" 

Sousa was taken aback by the question. He was even more surprised at Conover's tone: it was sincere — almost friendly, even. 

"...I talked to a couple of contacts," said Sousa. "Can't really start looking for real until the Army lets me go." 

"And then if the Army doesn't let you go before the war's over.... Well, it's going to be hard enough for a man in your position — you know, crippled, with no degree — and then with all the other men coming back looking for work?" Conover shook his head sympathetically. "I'm glad you've got those leads. I hope they come through for you." 

"Yeah. Hopefully." 

Conover went back to his paper; Sousa finished getting his stuff together. Instead of going to the lounge, he went the other way down the hall, to the spot with the picture windows. He lowered himself into a chair and let himself take in the sights: the bright, busy Boardwalk and, beyond it, the sparkling sea. 

 

"Ready?" said Lieutenant Reese. 

Sousa took his right hand off the bar. "Ready," he said. 

It felt familiar now: standing in between the parallel bars, a gait belt around his waist, an aide standing just behind him, a physical therapist in front. It was just like when he was first learning to walk on one leg, and then when he was learning to walk with the prosthesis.  

Now he was going go down to only one crutch. And once he got the hang of that.... 

He took a step forward with the prosthesis. At the same time, he moved his left hand forward on the parallel bar. The knee of the prosthetic felt like it was in the right place, so he went ahead and brought his left foot forward. Another step with the prosthesis; left foot forward. Another step; left foot forward. 

"How does it feel?" asked Lieutenant Reese. 

"Lopsided," said Sousa.  

"I can see. Straighten up a little, put more weight on your prosthetic and less on your left arm. Pretend you've got a balloon tied to your head." 

"Okay." He took a few more slow, careful steps. 

"That's better." 

As Lieutenant Reese watched, Sousa slowly walked to the end of the parallel bars. He turned himself around to face the other way. 

"Good job," said Lieutenant Reese. "Now, go ahead and lengthen your stride a little." 

Sousa nodded. He took a step forward with the prosthetic and moved his hand forward on the parallel bar. As he shifted his weight forward, the knee of the prosthetic buckled. 

He still felt a little jolt in his stomach when that happened, but that was all. After hours of practice, it was automatic now to take a quick little hop with his good leg and rebalance himself. He shifted his weight a little more to the left to make up for the missing crutch on his right. He collected himself and tried again. 

He made it to the end of the parallel bars, carefully turned around, and started again. As he walked up and down the parallel bars, Lieutenant Reese stared tossing in couple of challenges — having him walk heel-to-toe as if he were on a balance beam, or having him walk backwards. 

"Don't go leaving that crutch in your room yet," she finally said, "but you can practice this outside the gym. Just be smart and take it slow: you don't want to push yourself too fast and get into bad habits. You might get tired more quickly for a while until your leg and your left arm get used to the extra work." 

Sousa practiced walking with one crutch again at his afternoon physical therapy sessions. Back up on the ward, he practiced some more, walking up and down the hall, close to the handrail. He woke the next morning to stiff hips and a sore left arm; he took some aspirin and went to breakfast. 

 

That Saturday, the ward nurses organized a trip to the beach. As he crossed the Boardwalk with the others, Sousa thought about the trip to the beach with his family, exactly one week ago. He'd been a lot more nervous then. Maybe it would have been easier if he'd had a chance to go to the beach here, in the section reserved by the Army, surrounded by other amputees, other patients, other soldiers; where the girls were Army nurses and WACS, and the civilians were all family members. It had been a cool spring in Atlantic City, and the timing just hadn't worked out. But today was a perfect beach day: a clear blue sky, a brilliant sun, and almost 100 degrees. 

The group picked a spot. Crutches dropped to the blankets spread out on the sand, followed by shirts and trousers and shoes, some in pairs, some single. 

"Ready?" called Lieutenant Munn. She looked so different in her sunglasses and bathing suit, her neatly styled hair visible instead of tucked under her white cap. Sousa and the others who were planning to swim gathered around and, as a group, jogged and hopped across the hot sand down to the cold, welcoming ocean. 

 

The days flowed quickly. In physical therapy, Sousa continued to work on walking with one crutch, and went to the pool when he had time. In occupational therapy, he finished his woodworking project — a kitchen cutting board shaped like a pig, for Tillie's future home. He went to bridge club and to Breckenridge's farewell dinner.  

He wanted to get to the firing range, but he wasn't able to go that week: that Wednesday was the Fourth of July, and it was screwing up the schedule. On Tuesday, he found that the Fourth had brought yet another unwelcome change to his routine: when he went back to his room after dinner, Mrs. Conover was in her usual spot and Mr. Conover, Florrie, and Molly had come to join her. 

They greeted Sousa as he came in. "Good to see you," said Mr. Conover. "We hear you got a furlough home?" 

"Yeah. Got back last week," said Sousa. 

"And you went all that way by yourself in your... condition." Mr. Conover nodded benevolently. "Shouldn't be too long before they let you go home for good, hm?" He didn't wait for a reply, but went back to his conversation with the others. Sousa went over to his own side of the room, drew the curtain, and took out his mail. 

Great: all the Conovers. How long were they going to stay? He didn't want to ask Conover; he didn't feel like faking any friendly interest. Maybe they'd go back on Thursday.  He read his mail and did his best to ignore the conversation on the other side of the curtain. When they left, he went to shower.

The hospital ran on close to its usual schedule the next day, but there was a holiday feeling in in the air. The Boardwalk outside was thronged with tourists; inside the hospital, the halls were decorated with red-white-and-blue streamers and filled with extra visitors. In the treatment rooms, radios were tuned to baseball games. 

The real festivities started that afternoon, when Gene Krupa and his orchestra took a break from the Steel Pier to give a concert at the hospital. The Red Cross was putting on a big bash after supper, with cake and ice cream and the hospital band and the Turtle Johnson Orchestra and junior hostesses. 

Instead of going straight to the party, Sousa went with a group from the ward to one of the sundecks, to get a good spot to watch the Steel Pier and the fireworks. It was a good time. They sat and drank beer from the HX and talked about the last time they'd seen fireworks — 1941, for most of them. Every so often, someone down on the crowded Boardwalk would look up and wave, and yell something friendly, and the men on the deck would wave and yell back. A cool wind blew in from the ocean, as the twilight deepened into dark and the first stars came out. 

By 2030, the deck was crowded with patients. A small group of nurses and even a doctor or two were squeezed in along the walls. 

"Any minute now," said Hayes. Sousa's memory flitted back to fireworks at home — sitting on a picnic blanket with Laura and Carla and Phil and Al, enjoying that moment of suspense before the show started — 

A stream of white light arced up over the Steel Pier — flashes of light in the sky —  

Hit the dirt — Sousa looked around for cover — where? — his heart pounded, something wasn't right — was he dreaming? The shell whistled and popped as his thoughts finally caught up with his reflexes. It was all right. He was at the hospital. It was just fireworks: he could hear cheering from the crowds at the Steel Pier and the Boardwalk. 

He heard a couple of nervous laughs around the deck: he wasn't the only one rattled. He tensed again as another firework streaked the night sky. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the patients stand up and go inside, and one of the nurses casually follow him in. 

Sousa turned back around. He forced himself to breathe slowly and evenly as he reminded himself that he was back, that foxholes and mud were behind him, that this was celebration and joy and play. He listened to the crowds' oohs and ahhs, and watched the lights pop and twinkle and cascade like the branches of a willow, and he began to feel himself relax. 

 

The Conovers did not go home on Thursday. They did not go home on Friday or Saturday, either. Sousa spent as much time away from his room as he could, in physical therapy or at the pool or at boxing or at the beach or just walking back and forth in a quiet hallway. He was feeling somewhat steadier using one crutch, as long as he walked slowly and paced himself so he didn't tire out too quickly. The extra effort was worth it to have a free hand. But how long would it take him to be able to stop using crutches at all? 

He tried to get time on a practice car at occupational therapy, but without success. He made do by asking the one of the therapists for some tips and then sitting down in an ordinary chair and pretending. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. 

The extra Conovers finally left for Trenton late Sunday afternoon, and on Monday everything was back to normal around the hospital. At lunch, and again at dinner, Sousa found himself watching the clerks as they brought messages around: maybe there would be one for him, letting him know that his schedule had changed and he'd get to start driving. 

But there was nothing. And August 6 was now less than a month away. So the next morning, when Peyton quietly passed him a note after morning rounds, Sousa didn't let himself get his hopes up, even when he opened the note and found it was calling him to a meeting after lunch. At least he'd get out of discussion group. 

 

"You look tired," said Peyton, as Sousa entered the room. "Come on in and sit down. How about you leave one of those crutches there by the door and show me how you're getting along?" 

Sousa carefully threaded his way through the small office towards the guest chair. "It's getting easier," he said. 

"Well, don't push yourself too hard," said Peyton. "And make sure you get enough rest, or you'll just fall behind." 

He opened a file folder. "It's going to be a busy month around here. I don't know if you saw in the hospital paper, but we're hosting a conference later this month on some particular surgical techniques. We usually have some patients available to talk to the visitors, even bring some guys back up from Walter Reed if we can manage it. We're still waiting to see who can come up this month. 

"Speaking of visitors, you might want to talk to your family about coming down around the end of the month: the 26th, to be specific." 

"What's special about the 26th?" 

"I'll tell you in a minute." Peyton glanced at his desk calendar. "Holy Hannah, that's only two-and-a-half weeks." He leaned back and opened another folder. 

"Major Tucker called me yesterday. He has come up with a plan that should meet the needs of the SSR and still satisfy the Army." 

"So I could start in December?" 

"Oh, well before December." Peyton looked up from his folder. "August 6th , to be exact." 

 

 

 

Notes:

Many thanks to @keysburg for test reading

and to you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments. QV is three years old now! Thanks for sticking with it.

Chapter 51: Details

---

 

 

Sousa couldn’t believe his ears. "August 6th," he repeated. "So how would that work?"

"We set it up as a detail," said Peyton. "You stay in the Army, and we loan you to the SSR until you're ready to be discharged from the medical service. Once that happens, we sign you over and they keep you for good, or at least until you get sick of each other."  

"Sounds good," said Sousa. "What do I need to do?"  

“Well, hold on," said Peyton. "There are conditions, for both you and the SSR. If they aren’t met, the deal’s off.  

"You'll still be under medical supervision. We'll transfer you to Halloran, under Major Klein; I talked to him this morning. You'll report to him and work out a plan of care. He'll probably want to see you every couple of weeks.   

"When he thinks you're ready, you go to Walter Reed for your permanent prosthesis. Depending on their workload, you may need to go twice, once for your first fitting, and once when it's ready. Hopefully you won't have go back a third time.  

"You'll need time for all this, and Tucker swore up and down that the SSR will give it to you. "  

Peyton's face grew stern. "As for you: you must keep up with physical therapy and occupational therapy, at Halloran and on your own. You cannot fall behind. If you do, Major Klein has the option to recall you from the detail."   

"Will I have to go to physical therapy every day?" asked Sousa.  

"You ought to," said Peyton. "If you can't, you'll just have to do it outside the gym. We can give you a program to get started, and Halloran can tune it up as needed."  

He looked at his desk calendar. "The 6th is a Monday. We're still working things out with Halloran, but I'm thinking we send you up on the 31st. That'll give you a few days to get settled and learn your way around before you report to the SSR."  

"So I'll stay at the hospital and commute from there."  

"That's up to Halloran, but at least for a little while," said Peyton. "I don't know how long they'll be able to put you up. Tucker thinks you won't want to stay there anyway; he says it's not convenient to the job. You'll be drawing your SSR salary, not your Army pay, so that should cover your room and board.   

"Think you'll be ready to take that on in three weeks?"  

Ready or not, he was going, so... "It'll be a big change, that's for sure," said Sousa. "It would help if I could get some driving practice in. I can't seem to get on the schedule."  

"Driving practice," snorted Peyton as he made a note. "Men with your injury usually don’t start driving until they’re at Walter Reed. Oh, all right, I'll call down to the department. By the way, Tucker and I cooked up a cover story for you. Don't say anything to anyone until just before you leave. Halloran's a neurological center, so if the question comes up, you're being sent for some kind of program that has something to do with the nerves of your leg. You're not entirely clear about what's going on; they just handed you your orders and told you to get on the train."  

Sousa shook his head. "That's the Army."  

"Exactly." Peyton wrote something in the folder. "Later on you can feed them something about a trial program working outside the hospital, maybe some kind of occupational therapy extension. A couple of hospitals have been allowing some of their convalescents to do some work in defense plants. It's worked out real well; that's what gave Peyton the idea.  

"So you're sure you want to go through with this plan?"  

"I'm sure. Though if the Army's sending me on a detail, I can't really say no, can I."  

"Not really. But I can," said Peyton. He leaned forward. "I'm serious. If you change your mind and realize you need or want a little more time, just say so and I'll hit the brakes. We'll talk to Tucker and work something out.   

"This plan's ambitious. It's almost reckless. I only signed off on it because you'll be close to Halloran and keeping up with Klein, and because even though you've pushed yourself you haven't done anything too stupid, at least up to now. If you find it's too much too soon.... well, better to cut your losses and fall back than to put your recovery at risk."  

"Understood," said Sousa.  

"All right then," said Peyton. He closed the folder and opened another. "Now, about the 26th: I don't know whether it's because the fighting in Europe's over or because Tucker shook something loose, but some long-lost paperwork finally made its way here. Congratulations. You're being promoted to captain.   

"It was actually approved back in December, but it looks like the news didn't make its way forward before you got hit. We'll make it official at the awards ceremony on the 26th. So go ahead and invite the family. We've got some printed invitations you can send them. How many do you need? You usually get up to five guests, but it's usually no problem if you want to invite more."  

"One's fine," said Sousa. "Thanks. So what new responsibilities come with this promotion?"  

"To be communicated in the future," said Peyton. "Now, don't go getting a big head. Remember, Blaine has seniority. And don't even bother trying pull rank on the nurses and therapists. That never ends well."  

 

As he walked back to the gym, Sousa’s mind ran ahead, double-time. August 6th… three weeks… report to Halloran… figure out how to get back and forth to the SSR office… could he make the commute without crutches? Probably wouldn’t be a good idea…. Technically it was a civilian job; could he wear his uniform, or would he need new clothes?  

He signed in at the gym, reported to the physical therapist, and dropped a hint about walking without crutches. She was agreeable, and, after the session was over, beckoned him over to the parallel bars. He stepped between the bars, put his crutch aside, and made sure he was balanced. He took a deep breath and looked straight ahead at the mirror.  

He made sure the knee of the prosthetic was stable, took a quick, short step with his left leg, and then moved the prosthesis forward. He put the foot down and checked his balance: there was no crutch to help him keep from falling if the knee of the prosthetic buckled.  

When he was certain of his stance, he stepped forward with his left foot and took another quick, careful step on the prosthetic. A long pause to make sure of his balance, another short step with his left, another quick, small step with the prosthetic....  

He could feel himself growing a little nervous. He ignored it, and forced himself to keep his eyes forward.  

Another step. He was barely making progress, he was barely even walking — he paused to catch his breath and then took another step — he knew he was lurching to his left, to balance the weight of the prosthetic, the therapist was probably going to get on his case about it —  

Another step. Without the crutch, he was taking more of his weight on the prosthetic, and he could feel the difference.   

He had to stop again to rest. The therapist spoke up behind him: "Don't feel like you have to push yourself too hard. This is just the first time, you've got plenty of time to practice."  

He didn't, really, but he wasn't going to explain it to her. He took another step, made sure of his balance, and then took another. He took another, and then faltered — the prosthetic felt wrong, and for a moment he felt like he was about to fall — and before he could stop himself he grabbed the parallel bar. 

"Let's stop there," said the therapist. "You've had a good day's work, and I need to set up for the late session."   

Sousa accepted his crutches. "Some more tomorrow, maybe," he said.  

"Maybe," agreed the therapist. "I'll write a note. Maybe you can pick up with Lieutenant Reese again in the morning."  

 

Sousa didn't even think about the promotion until he was back in his room after dinner: as he emptied his pockets, he found the invitation for the awards ceremony. After his shower, he addressed the invitation  and wrote a letter to go with it. He explained a bit more about the promotion and the awards ceremony and made it clear that everyone was invited (he was allowed five guests, and Katie and Maddie added together couldn't possibly equal one full guest, could they?)   

He wrote a few more lines and then stopped to think. What could he tell his father about the job?   

He could write something like you know that thing we talked about the night before I went back to Atlantic City? But if his letters were being censored, something like that would call attention to itself and still not get his message across to his father.   

In the end, he decided to not say anything. If his father came down for the awards ceremony, he could tell him in person. And if not, he'd figure something else out.  

As he dropped off his envelope at the desk, he took a look at the calendar. The awards ceremony was in sixteen days.  That gave him sixteen more days to practice walking with one crutch. And maybe... if he worked hard enough, maybe when they called his name at the awards ceremony he'd be able to leave his crutches at his seat and walk — really walk — those few steps on his own.  

He tried walking without crutches again at physical therapy the next morning, without any improvement. Lieutenant Reese said something encouraging, ordered him to practice only when supervised in the gym, assigned him extra time with the pulley weights, and had him go back to practicing using one crutch.   

The next day at lunch, he received a note with a change to his occupational therapy schedule. Tucker had kept his promise: Sousa was to report for driving practice that afternoon.  

A therapist's aide greeted him and led him toward the waiting car. "So you're ready to start driving! Have you had any practice on this car yet?"  

"No, I've only been to that '38 Ford. I hear there's no, uh, modified one?"  

"No, the only modified car we have is for the paraplegic patients.  We've found that each man's needs and preferences are so different that it's just easier to keep the practice cars unmodified. And that way you're ready for anything! We can make recommendations, of course, and as you practice you'll think of what modifications you'd prefer for your own car.  It's easy to find a mechanic that can do the work. Some garages will even do it for free." She patted the driver's door. "Why don't we go ahead and get started?"  

Getting into a car on the driver's side was a hassle: Sousa had to open the heavy door and keep it open; get the prosthetic in first, without catching it on the door frame; and then move the prosthetic over so he could get the rest of himself in — all without dropping the door on himself.  

Getting into the driver's seat, with the steering wheel and the pedals, proved to be even more difficult. On Sousa's first try, he caught the toe of the prosthetic on the brake; he had to shift himself around on the seat and use his hands and his left foot to unhook the prosthetic and free himself, without banging his head on the steering wheel.    

When he was finally in the seat, he reached out and closed the car door. The aide went around the front of the car and got into the passenger seat.  

"Well, now what?" said Sousa.  

"Just try it out."  

Sousa stepped down on the clutch, put the car in first gear, and glanced down at his right leg. "Now I need gas," he said.  

"Do you want to try your right leg?"  

Sousa put the car in park, lifted the prosthetic forward, and placed the foot on the gas pedal. He moved his leg in the prosthesis and watched. The gas pedal did not move.  

"Okay, so that won't work," said the aide. "So let's try something else. Like we talked about, every man is different, especially when it comes to driving."  

"Sure, but every car's the same when it comes to needing gas to get anywhere."  

"Can you reach the pedal with your left foot?"  

"I kind of need it for the clutch."  

The aide glanced toward the back seat. "Could you use your crutch for the clutch pedal?" She pulled the crutch from the back seat and handed it to Sousa.  

“I’d be worried about it slipping," he said. He took the crutch anyway.   

"Might as well try it," agreed the aide. "Here, move your right leg out of the way so you can practice using your left leg for the gas."  

As Sousa picked up and moved the prosthetic, thoughts of the calendar forced their way back to the front of his mind. How in the hell was he going to relearn this in just three weeks? He ignored those thoughts and focused on trying the gas pedal with his left foot.  He shifted his left foot between the pedal and the brake until he felt more comfortable. Then he stepped on the brake, pushed the clutch pedal with his crutch, and put the car in gear.  

"We're off!" chirped the aide. "So, where are we going?"  

Sousa couldn't even pretend to match her cheerfulness. "Oh, I don't know." He carefully stepped on the gas pedal. "Somewhere."  

The driving lesson was his last therapy session of the day. From there he went to boxing, where he spent a pleasant half hour punching things. 

  

That weekend, Ayers got his orders for Walter Reed. His farewell dinner was Monday. Sousa had managed to get on the schedule for another driving session late that afternoon, and he had to hurry to join the group on time. He went straight from occupational therapy to his room, where he had to wait for Mrs. Conover to be shooed away. After she left, he changed into his Class As, freshened up, and went out to the elevators.  

Dinner was a good time, but after the walk to and from the restaurant following a long day of physical and occupational therapy, Sousa was relieved to finally get back to his room and take off his prosthetic. He showered and had just changed into his pajamas when someone knocked at the door, inviting him down to the lounge to join the others in saying a last good-bye to Ayers.  When he finally made it back to his room again, Conover was asleep, or at least pretending to be, and he himself was about beat. He had to push himself to wrap his leg before he got into bed and under the covers.  

He still wasn't ready to turn off his light. Between occupational therapy and the send-off for Ayers, he hadn't gotten a chance to read his mail.  And he had a letter from home.  

He smiled as he started to read: the first lines were congratulations on the promotion. His smile faded as he read on: his father thanked him for the invitation, would be thrilled to come, would certainly do his best, but it wasn't looking good.... would all do their best to get somebody down there – Tillie already scheming....   

Sousa finished the letter and turned out the light.  It would have been nice if someone could have come, but he knew better than to expect it. It wasn’t that big a deal anyway; the only real difference it would make would be new insignia and a raise, maybe a little back pay. 

But it was… satisfying, somehow, to know that what he’d done last year had been noticed and acknowledged. 

 
 

There was a note for Sousa at breakfast the next morning. It was from Peyton, calling him to another meeting that afternoon. 

“It’s too bad I have to mess up your schedule again,” Peyton said as Sousa entered. “But I have some more papers for you, and since they’re stamped in red ink I have to bring you up here to read them.” 

“I understand,” said Sousa. The change to the day’s schedule actually suited him just fine; it was a pass out of discussion group. He wasn’t sure if Peyton knew that or not, but he wasn’t going to start a conversation about it. 

“I have paperwork to catch up on, so I can give you about an hour before I have to kick you out and lock up.” He handed Sousa a sealed envelope and a pair of scissors. “Let me know if you need anything else. Oh, before you get started: how’s driving coming along?” 

“So far, so good. I’ve only had two sessions. Thanks for getting me in there.” 

“And I hear you’ve been practicing walking without an aid? How’s that going?” 

“Slowly.” 

“That’s all right. Some men find it gets easier once they get their permanent prostheses.” He reached for a file from his inbox. “You know, many men — I’d say most men with injuries like yours — decide it’s just not worth the trouble, that they do better using a walking aid. It’s like glasses: some people don’t want to wear them, and other people like being able to go about their day without squinting and getting headaches.” He opened his file, and Sousa turned his attention back to his own envelope.  

The SSR had sent him a letter confirming his start date and telling him when and where to report: 0900, Monday, August 6th, to an address in Manhattan.  

....Our office is located in the New York Bell Company Building. Enter the building and tell the receptionist that you are there for Mr. Preston.

— so it wasn’t a temporary office after all — 

...civilian attire strongly preferred…. 

More clothes shopping. Maybe he could get some of that done in Atlantic City. Sousa read the letter again, asked if he could read it again closer to his departure, made a mental list, and excused himself from the office.  It was obviously far too late to go to discussion group, so he went to the library instead and found a reasonably recent guidebook to New York City. He located the office’s address on a map of Manhattan; it was on a bus line, across from a subway stop, and not far from an elevated train line. And Halloran… he remembered Grahn saying that Halloran was on Staten Island, there was Staten Island on the map... and Tucker wasn’t kidding when he'd said Halloran wasn’t convenient to the office. Maybe there was a bus or something.  

That afternoon he had another session of trying to walk without crutches, failing to make  progress, and being sent to work at the weight table and then practice walking with one crutch. When the session was finally over, Sousa stopped off at the HX soda fountain for a lemonade and then made the trip to the Palm Court for bridge club. 

At least someone there had good news: Tipton had the bandages off his hands. He was pretending to be sad about it — no more having Hazel or Betty or Doris sitting close by, holding his cards and playing them for him; the girls playfully promised not to forget him, and he pretended to be somewhat consoled. 

He'd also been cleared to walk around the hospital on his own instead of waiting to be pushed in a wheelchair, so when the meeting was over he was able to hang around with the others, chatting with the girls and waiting for Hayes and Mrs. Lambe to finish the usual debrief. That was when he mentioned that he'd be taking his first meal in the mess hall that evening. Sousa and the others congratulated him, and then teased him all the way up the elevator and across the mezzanine, warning him about the awful food and the dull clientele until they'd delivered him to his table. 

 

Sousa's next driving session was scheduled for Thursday afternoon, but at lunchtime he got a note telling him he'd been moved to a later slot. Even so, when he arrived, he still had to wait for the instructor to finish with the previous patients — something about Army surgeons from other hospitals taking a tour and coming to the car room earlier in the afternoon, talking to a couple of the patients and being impressed and getting in the back seat of the practice car and asking the instructor questions — and sure, it was swell that they were so impressed by the program, but it threw off the schedule, and by the time Sousa was finished it was too late to bother going to boxing. 

He decided to go to the library instead. He had to pass the HX to get there; as he passed the tables set up for the soda fountain, he heard his name. He looked up. It was Tipton, standing with Betty and Doris by one of the tables.  

They waved him over; Sousa grinned and picked his way between the tables. "Well, this is a nice surprise," he said as he approached the table. 

"It certainly is," said Doris with a smile.  

"And you're just in time for another one," added Tipton. He looked toward the counter. Hazel was coming toward the table, carrying an ice-cream soda in each hand; her face lit up as she spotted Sousa. And behind her, carrying napkins and spoons, was Henry Grahn. 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thanks to @keysburg for the test read

and thank you for patiently following, for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments.

---

The detail: The part about convalescing soldiers being permitted to take work outside the hospital? Real (though I don't remember which hospital that took place at.) Halloran was a neurosurgical center, similar to the way Thomas England was a center for amputees. The rest of the business about the detail and the transfer is made up.

"It's not convenient to the job": Halloran's location caused frustration and discontent for many of the patients; they knew they were technically in New York City, but they couldn't get to any of the attractions or even see them out the window.

Cars: a lot of handwaving going on here, starting with Daniel even starting to drive at England. I came across a short film from another Army hospital that said all its amputee patients left the hospital knowing how to drive unmodified cars. I know that EGH had at least one practice car; I also came across a story about an EGH patient – a bilateral above-the-knee amputee – who did not start driving until he was at Walter Reed waiting for his permanent prostheses. A car salesman visited the ward to tell the amputees about the civilian cars coming back into production and the programs to install adaptive equipment at no extra cost. Our patient was so eager to drive, he took delivery on the car without waiting for any modifications and taught himself to drive in the Walter Reed parking lot, using his two canes to operate the pedals. (I have no idea how he was doing this while operating the gear shift and steering the car at the same time.)

The remarkable Sir Douglas Bader, another bilateral leg amputee, was thinking about driving even before he got his prosthetics. He didn't like the idea of hand controls, so he went with rearranging the pedals. Since he had his left knee, he had the brake and gas pedals moved to the left and the clutch pedal to his right. He also had "...a wedge shaped wooden board [put] in front of the clutch pedal so that my right foot stayed in position and when I depressed my leg my foot slid down the wedge on to the pedal."

More recently, a veteran with an injury similar to Daniel's uses his sound left leg to operate the clutch and the brake pedals. He says he uses his right prosthetic leg for the gas but doesn't go into how he's able to do that.

Chapter 52: Short and Shorter

 

 

 

 

"Sousa!" Grahn tossed the napkins and spoons on the table and hurried over to shake Sousa's hand and pull him into a back-slapping hug.

They all sat down. Sousa looked around the table. "Talk about surprises! How did this...."

Hazel beamed. "Well, Betty and I were both free this afternoon," she said, "and we thought maybe we'd come by to see Bill —" Betty nodded — "so we called Doris to see if she was free, and then we called ahead here and Bill was free, so we came, and he met us in the lobby and said well how about we go get some ice cream? So there we were, having our ice cream, when this fellow —" she turned to Grahn — "shows up!"

"Peyton’s got some of his surgeon friends in town, and he brought me up from Walter Reed to put on exhibition," said Grahn. "I got in this afternoon, checked in at the Ambassador, and came straight over here. I didn't think I'd be able to catch anybody before supper, so I thought I'd go get a drink, and look who I find. Surprised to see you, though. Don't you have boxing or something?"

"Therapy session ran late," said Sousa. "Some doctors were visiting: part of Peyton's group, I guess."

Grahn told them what he knew about the conference: opening reception that night (he wasn't invited); presentations Friday and Saturday....

"Will you have more time for socializing?" asked Hazel.

"I don’t think so,” Grahn said regretfully. “If I do, it's already spoken for."

After the girls left, Grahn went to supper with Sousa and Tipton, where he sat in his usual seat at his old table and caught up with the patients he’d known from before and met the new fellows who’d been admitted since he left. He took some time to wander the mess hall, visiting pals at other tables; when supper was over, he went with Sousa and the others back up to the ward to say hello to the nurses and clerks and orderlies. He stayed long enough to greet the staff arriving for the night shift — and draw a token reprimand for staying past visiting hours, just for old times’ sake — before he had to go back downstairs to catch the bus to the Ambassador.

Sousa went with him down to the lobby. Grahn waited until they were off the elevator before he asked, "No introduction to your new roommate?"

"Sorry. Didn't know you were interested."

Grahn snickered. "That's all right. Irwin filled me in.”

“You could come by tomorrow, meet the whole gang.”

“Maybe I could come up before dinner. Which reminds me.... Irwin was talking about going out tomorrow night, but if I get a vote I was thinking maybe we could stay in and do something through the Officers' Club. That way we can get Tipton and some of the other fellows who don't have outside passes.”

“Makes sense. You’re heading back Saturday, right?”

“Actually, not.  I'll get to see you all at lunch, and then my part of the act wraps up that afternoon, but then my parents are coming for the weekend, so I'm going to stay with them for a couple of days. They're going to want to see you, you know. You free for dinner on Saturday?"

 

When Sousa came back to the ward after his Saturday afternoon therapy session, he found more Conovers than ever crowded into the room. The usual weekend visitors were there — they'd actually arrived on Friday — joined by some new faces. Some of the new faces were staring at him in surprise.

"Oh, hi," said Conover. "This is my roommate, Lieutenant Sousa," he said to the visitors.

"That's his roommate," Florrie loudly repeated to an elderly man. "His roommate."

Conover caught his father’s eye; his father quietly said something to his mother; his mother said "Oh, yes! Of course!"; and with ostentatious courtesy, the visitors were ushered out.

Sousa closed the door behind them. Conover immediately started in about mothers and relatives and too much of a good thing — "you know how it is...."

"Mm?" Sousa propped one crutch on the end of his bed, went over to the closet, and used his free hand to take out his Class A uniform. He put it on his bed and went over to the sink to shave.

"Oh, you going out?" said Conover.

"Yeah."

"Where to?"

"Meeting a friend."

"Kind of early. Are you catching a show? Oh, that reminds me, someone was looking for you earlier. Didn't catch the name, though."

Sousa almost thanked Conover for that incredibly useful information. Instead, he rinsed his razor and kept shaving. It was probably Grahn who stopped by, anyway. He finished up at the sink, put on his uniform, and went out to wait by the elevators.

Grahn was already waiting by the desk. He smiled as Sousa approached, and nodded toward the room door. Sousa turned just in time to see Molly slip into the room.

"Who's that?" asked Grahn.

"Fiancée."

"Ah." They started toward the elevator. "I’d just started down the hall when I saw the whole gaggle come out of the room. They all got on the elevator except that girl; she doubled back and went to those chairs on the other end of the hall. Are they all here every day?”

“Mom’s here every day, but the big crowd just comes on the weekends.”

“The maids, too?" 

"Maids?"

"I’m pretty sure they were maids, anyway. Two ladies who didn't exactly match the rest of the family, wearing plain dresses and kind of sitting by themselves." Grahn pushed the button for the elevator. "I stopped by earlier when I had a break from the conference, to see if you were in, and that’s when I saw them. They must have left early. My roommate back in New York had a big family that all came every day. Never brought maids, though."

The elevator doors opened and they boarded the car. "They sure kept you late this afternoon. What do they have you doing?!"

"The usual. I'm trying to get rid of these." Sousa indicated his crutches.

“And trade ‘em in for the kind Ayers has?”

“Well, that, but also just get rid of them.”

"Yeah? How's that going?"

"Slowly."

“Maybe it’ll be easier once you get your permanent prosthesis,” said Grahn. “A lot of the fellows say their new ones are easier to manage.”

When they reached the lobby, they didn't have long to wait before Grahn's parents arrived. After warm greetings all around, they went back out and caught the jitney to Humphrey’s.

There was plenty to talk about: the Grahns’ journey to Atlantic City, when they’d arrived, where they were staying, what they’d done during the day... the menus and the orders and exactly which lobster dish Mrs. Grahn should choose... Grahn’s trip from Washington and his time at the conference.... the latest news from home; the latest stories from Walter Reed; Grahn’s new prosthesis and when it might be finished...

“And speaking of the limb shop —” Grahn nodded toward Sousa —

“That’s right!” said Mr. Grahn. “Henry told us you’d gotten your prosthesis. How long have you had it now?” Sousa had forgotten that the Grahns hadn’t seen him using his prosthesis before. Mr. and Mrs. Grahn were full of compliments about how good Sousa was looking and how well he was walking and how he was even stronger since they’d seen him back in May.... They’d also heard about his furlough home, and were full of kind and eager questions about his journey and his time with his family.

“And then where are you going next?” asked Mr. Grahn. “Are they going to send you to Walter Reed?”

“Not sure. Nobody’s said anything to me about it,” said Sousa. “Not yet, anyway.”

“They’d better hurry up,” said Grahn. “It’s bad enough they’re keeping me this long; if they spring me before you get down there I’m going to be really annoyed. Now, are you going to tell us about your big news?”

For a moment, Sousa was startled — New York? But Grahn couldn’t possibly know. He kept himself relaxed. “What big news?”

“The news in the hospital paper? That you apparently still don’t read? Or do you delegate that to your staff now? This time next week,” Grahn explained to his parents, “Lieutenant Sousa here is going to be Captain Sousa.”

Mr. and Mrs. Grahn congratulated Sousa; Sousa thanked them and tried to explain that it was just something a slow-moving bureaucracy had coughed up; Grahn pointed out that promotions often meant transfers, so obviously Sousa should put in a request for a transfer to Walter Reed....

Later, back on the jitney, Sousa thought about telling Grahn about New York. He decided not to: it would only give Grahn extra time to think of questions. Soon it was time to say good-bye to the Grahns and promise to take good care of himself and do his best to come for a visit. As he made his way back to his room, he found himself thinking about the first time he’d met Grahn’s parents, back in January. Back then, he’d been the one in traction in the bed by the door, where Conover was now.

He stopped by the desk to pick up his mail at the desk and went on to his room. The door was closed. He knocked lightly but there was no answer, which meant Conover was alone and asleep.

Sousa opened the door and got himself, his prosthetic, and his two crutches through the doorway as quietly as he could. It wasn’t quiet enough, though: as he closed the door, Conover drowsily spoke up. “That you, Sousa?”

“Yeah. Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

Conover grunted in a “don’t worry about it” way. He seemed to notice Sousa’s uniform. “Oh yeah, that’s right, you were out. How’d it go?”

He didn’t look like he was expecting an elaborate answer, so Sousa didn’t bother. “It went well. We had a good time.”

“That’s great.” Conover idly watched as Sousa filled a pocket with bandages from the supply closet, turned, and adjusted his crutches. “So... one of the orderlies said you’re getting your railroad tracks next week.”

“That’s what the poop sheet said.”

“You were hit in December, right? That’s, what — eight months?” Conover looked disgusted, and Sousa remembered that he’d been with the AG’s office. “Eight damn months. And God only knows how long it was diddling around before that.  At least it showed up before you were discharged. You’ll go out at the rank you should be, and it'll be a little more in your disability pay.”

“Gee. I hadn’t really thought of it that way,” said Sousa. Conover looked satisfied, as if Sousa had just thanked him for a favor.

 

After his shower, Sousa went out to the quiet spot down the hall. He settled into the chair he liked best and took out his day’s mail.

His father’s letter brought disappointing news: it confirmed that he wouldn’t be able to come for the promotion ceremony.

Tillie’s letter was more optimistic. She was confident that she or Ines — or both — maybe even some of the children — but somebody — would be able to come. She sketched out half-a-dozen contingency plans for how she was going to pull it off — arrive Thursday, leave Saturday or maybe even Sunday, go through Red Cross for a place to stay unless Daniel sent other instructions....

Daniel frowned. He’d been so preoccupied with physical therapy and his move to New York that the promotion ceremony had almost completely slipped his mind. It was less than a week away now. It would be more fun if he could stay with whoever showed up — they’d be able to spend more time together — but he’d have to move fast if he wanted to get a spot at the Ambassador . 

And then it hit him: the day of the awards ceremony was the next Friday: the last Friday of July. The following week was August. And the Monday after that was August the 6^th: his start date at the SSR.

He had — at most — two weeks left at Thomas England General Hospital.

 

The next day, Blaine signed off on a pass and Sousa went down to the Special Services office to book a room at the Ambassador. Luck was with him: he was able to book an “equipped” suite for the weekend.  He called home that evening to tell them about the reservation.

“Is that where you and Papai stayed the last time he was down?” asked Tillie. “That'll be so nice! And I have something to tell you: we worked it all out today, and Ines will be there on Thursday afternoon.”

Daniel grinned. “You sure?” he teased. “There’s no mumps or chicken pox going around? Maybe the kids should go in quarantine until she’s safe on the train.”

“I’ll make sure to suggest that! I’m afraid it’ll just be Ines. Papai and I tried but we weren’t able to get the time, and then with it just being her everybody thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring any of the kids. She was talking about coming back on Saturday but we told her that was crazy and so did Mr. and Mrs. Escobar. That should be okay, right? And then go home on Sunday.”

“Should be fine. I have a pass.”

“Great! So it’s all settled: she’ll meet you at the hospital on Thursday afternoon.” Daniel could hear Tillie’s smile in her voice.

Their father took a turn on the phone, congratulating Daniel again on the promotion and apologizing for not being able to come for the ceremony and promising to tell Ines everything she needed to know for the journey. “And just think: she’ll be the first one in the family to get to call you Captain Sousa.”

 

The next morning, as Sousa went from breakfast to his first physical therapy session of the day, his mind was running ahead: only three and half days before Ines arrived and the party started. He’d already sent his uniform to be cleaned and pressed; maybe a haircut on Wednesday? Irwin was making noise about going out to celebrate the promotion, and Sousa had dropped a hint about his sister’s being in town... maybe take in a show? One of the big acts at the Steel Pier — or at the hospital, if the big act came to visit? The talent show was Friday night, she might get a laugh out of that — pizza for sure — what about the weather? —

A clerk called his name; he went over to where Lieutenant Reese was waiting for him.

“Good morning,” she said with a smile. “And congratulations! I have something for you. Despite the timing, it isn’t a promotion present.” She picked up a set of short aluminum crutches with cuffs at the top.

Sousa had already moved his old wooden crutches to one hand. “A present’s a present. So how do these work?” He slipped his left arm through the cuff — the metal ring was lined with leather, that should be more comfortable — and grabbed the handle. There was no extra length to contend with: these crutches were going to be a lot easier to manage. He traded his wooden crutches for the second metal crutch.

As Lieutenant Reese watched, he took a couple of steps forward. “What do you think?” she asked.

He stood still and lifted his left hand. The crutch dangled from the cuff. “I’m not giving them back.”

"Well, let’s see. Take them for a spin.”

Sousa walked across the gym. The new crutches were lighter: he liked that, but he'd have to get used to the change in momentum. They also didn’t support his upper arms the way the wooden ones did, and he could feel the difference in his shoulders.

He still wasn’t going to give them back. He turned, checked his stance, and walked back across the gym to rejoin Lieutenant Reese.

“So far, so good,” she said. “I’m not crazy about the length, though.” She waved; an aide came over and adjusted the length of the shafts of the crutches and the position of the grips. Sousa walked a few steps; the tech made a few more adjustments; Sousa walked a few more steps and then across the gym and back.

“That’s better,” said Lieutenant Reese. She had Sousa walk towards a mirror and watch his reflection as she walked alongside and corrected his gait. After a few rounds of that, Sousa hinted that he was ready to go to the parallel bars and practice walking without crutches. Instead he was sent to the treatment table for stretches, and from there to the pulley weights. His afternoon session went the same way: plenty of time on both of his new crutches, with plenty of commentary on keeping his head up and his eyes forward and not walking too quickly, and the rest of the time at the treatment table and the weights.

Back on the ward after dinner, he got in a little more practice on one crutch, walking up and down the corridor next to the handrail. It was still slow going. How long was it going to take to get up to speed? It stung to admit it to himself, but the way things were going he wasn’t going to be able to walk without crutches before he left for New York.

That was bad enough. But to still be hobbling along like this on one crutch? He had to do better.

He took a moment to steady himself and check his posture. He noticed a couple of nurses arriving and glanced at the wall clock. It was almost 1900, which meant that the hall was about to be  be crowded with patients arriving for census and visitors leaving for the day.

He had time for a couple more lengths. Ignoring his fatigue, he crossed the hall, stood with the handrail to his right, and moved the prosthesis and the left crutch forward.

As he walked, he tried to lengthen his stride a little without slowing down. He could hear the physical therapists’ voices in his brain — Eyes forward! Chin up! Back straight!  — and fixed his eyes on the sign at the end of the hall.

He reached the end of the hall, crossed to the other side, and started back toward the main desk. Eyes forward — he felt himself wanting to reach for the handrail but he wasn’t going to let himself, he was going to keep his pace up — even if his prosthesis was growing heavier with every step — he let himself pause for a moment and catch his breath.

The P.A. system crackled and announced the end of visiting hours. 

All right. This would be his last lap for the night. He checked his posture, stepped forward with his left leg, and brought the crutch and his prosthetic up and forward, pushing himself to lengthen the step a little. Without pausing, he took a step with his left leg and then with the crutch and prosthetic. A step with the left — no pause, step forward with the crutch and prosthetic — no pause, step forward with the left — no pause, step forward with the crutch and prosthetic —

The prosthetic dragged on the floor. Sousa hopped with his good leg to try to recover but it was too late. As he fell, he tried to let go of the crutch — no, his arm was in the cuff, he had to lift the crutch so he woudn’t wrench his shoulder — right arm close to the body, no broken wrists, try to twist to the right —

As far as falls went, it wasn’t too bad. But the timing was terrible: as he sat up, he realized that he was surrounded by a group of visitors. Most of them were staring in horror. A few of them were whispering to each other — and of course, there was Mrs. Conover, her eyes wide and her hands to her mouth. One man hurried forward and crouched next to him. “You all right, son? Do you need a hand?”

“I’m okay, thanks.”

A few patients joined the group. “Hey, a new member of the Gravity Club,” someone teased.

“Dammit! Who left their banana peels lying around again?” called Hayes.

A few spectators stepped aside to let a nurse and an orderly through. “Oh! Must be a Monday,” cracked the orderly. “Come on, folks, everything's under control here, and you don't want to miss the elevator....” He herded the visitors away.

The nurse crouched down next to Sousa. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” He looked around for his crutch and pulled it toward himself.

“Where’s your other one?”

“It’s outside my room.” Sousa nodded toward the door. The nurse stood up and took a step back. Sousa turned so he was on all fours with the prosthetic extended behind him. He used his hands to walk himself up and backwards until he could use his left leg to stand up the rest of the way. When he felt steady, he bent over and picked up his crutch.

The nurse scanned the floor. “What happened? Did you trip on anything?”

“My own foot, probably. The fake one.”

“Anything hurt?”

“Just my pride.” Around them, the other patients turned and went on to wherever they were going.

The nurse playfully scoffed. “Then you’re fine. You’d never say that if your pride had any significant injury.” She walked with Sousa as he hobbled back to his room door. “Let me give you a look-see so I can give report to Lieutenant Munn.”

Sousa sighed: argument was futile. He knocked and, when Conover answered, opened the door and entered.

“There you are,” said Conover. “Look what I got today!” He gestured toward his leg, which was now encased in a thick cast from his toes to the middle of his thigh. There was still a trapeze hanging over his bed, but the traction setup was gone.

“Very nice. Custom tailored?”

“You bet. Maybe you can sign it tomorrow.”

On the other side of the curtain, the nurse had Sousa lift his arms, bend his elbows, turn his palms up and down, and extend his left knee. She took a quick look at the prosthetic — no obvious damage — said good night, and went to give report.

Sousa patted his shirt pocket: at least he’d remembered to pick up his mail. He put the envelopes on his nightstand, unbuttoned his shirt, and sat down to start unlacing his shoes.

Lieutenant Munn turned up around twenty minutes later. She came to see Sousa first and asked a few calmly curious questions about the fall and what happened, and why exactly one of his crutches had been neatly propped fifteen feet away, and was he having trouble with his prosthetic? In the morning, the doctors had the same questions when they came on rounds.

“Well, it looks like you’re feeling confident with your new short crutches,” said Blaine. “Just remember to pace yourself, all right? See you tomorrow.” The group filed around the curtain to Conover’s side. Peyton went last.

“See you later,” he said. And sure enough, a message from Peyton was delivered at lunchtime, ordering Sousa to a meeting.

 

Peyton watched Sousa close the door to the office and make his way to the guest chair.  “You’re liking your new crutches?”

“Sure am.” Sousa carefully sat down.

“So much so that after a complete day’s program of physical therapy you went and tried to squeeze in one more session on your own. I told you not to push yourself too hard.” His scolding seemed to be merely for form’s sake.

“How am I going to know how hard is too hard unless I push myself?”

“With an attitude like that, maybe the news I’m about to give you won’t seem so bad after all. I see Blaine gave you a pass for the weekend. I need to take some of it back.”

“What? But we’ve made plans, my sister’s coming down —”

“Some of it,” said Peyton. “Not all of it. Let’s see, he’s got your pass starting late Thursday afternoon. That should be fine. Friday’s going to be a complete wash, so we’ll leave that alone.  As for Saturday... I want you to report for your scheduled therapy. You can come and go as you please the rest of the time, including sleeping out of the hospital. Same for Sunday.”

“My sister leaves Sunday morning and I want to see her to the train.”

“Then put her on an early train and get back here as soon as you can. You’re going to miss a solid day of P.T. on Friday, and you can’t afford to miss any more.

“The paperwork from Halloran’s gone through: your transfer is set for August 1^st."  One week from tomorrow, you will be saying good-bye to England General Hospital.”

 

 

 

 

Notes:

I didn't intend that long a hiatus! I just was tied up with... stuff.

Thanks to katiekeysburg and lillianmmalter for test reads and idea-bouncing
and thanks to you for reading, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which I reread and reread again.

---

Notes:

Railroad tracks: Captain’s insignia. Here’s a chart from the period (click to embiggen); the Captain’s insignia is down at the bottom left, next to the 1^st lieutenant’s silver bar and the 2^nd lieutenant’s gold colored bar (a.k.a. the “butterbar”.)

You can see it on this guy’s epaulets. 

The AG’s office: The Office of the Adjutant General handled administration, including inductions, discharges, service records, medals, the Exchange system, and informing next-of-kin of the status of soldiers who had been wounded, killed, or captured.

“Poop sheet”: A written sheet of up-to-date information.

"Short crutches": That's what an Army pamphlet of the period calls them.

Chapter 53: D-Minus-Eight

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

One week.  

A transfer: a brief bubble of nerves, swept away and lost in a swell of anticipation: tasks, checklists, hurry-up-and-wait. It was a familiar feeling, almost exhilarating. Sousa took a deep breath. “Well. That’s way more notice than Walter Reed seems to give. What do I need to do?” 

“I’ll discuss it with physical and occupational therapy this afternoon.” 

“What about the other stuff? You know: papers, equipment... shots....” 

Peyton snorted. “I don’t think you need shots to go to New York. Nothing special, anyway. Some men may need shots after they go to New York, but you strike me as the type who knows better.” He glanced at the inside front cover of Sousa’s chart. “You’re all set for smallpox, typhoid, and tetanus. There's been no yellow fever in New York City that I know of, but Halloran would know more about that, so if they think you need a shot they can tend to it themselves.  

“I’m going to say a bit to Lieutenant Reese about your going on a work program and see if there’s anything you should concentrate on before you leave. So keep an eye out, in case she changes your schedule. I’ll probably say something to Blaine, too, seeing as you’re his patient.  

“The fellows are going to want to take you out so I’m thinking we make the announcement Tuesday morning.  Wednesday morning we hand you your paperwork and put you on the train. And that’s it.” 

 

As he left Peyton’s office, Sousa’s thoughts sprinted ahead. If he was leaving next Wednesday, that made today D-minus-eight. 

Tucker probably knew about the plan, but it wouldn't hurt to drop a note, just in case. He’d need to fill out a change-of-address card, so he’d need his new address at Halloran. He’d need to pack... 

Clothes. Civilian attire strongly preferred, the offer letter had said.  

He pressed the button for the elevator. 

Civilian attire: Did that mean a suit? He didn’t have one. He’d never owned one, had never needed it.  Would he even need one? Bailey had worn one at the interview, but that was a interview, and Bailey was higher up in the War Department. 

Could he even get a suit in time, anyway? Maybe he could get away without a suit, at least until he saw what the office was like. He had clothes — they were all back in Taunton, but he could ask Ines to bring them down with her — it shouldn't be too much trouble, right now his entire civilian wardrobe consisted of two shirts, one pair of pants, and his two old ties.... 

But he’d still need a coat to go with the pants. A new tie, too, and a second pair of pants.... 

The elevator doors opened. He boarded and, as the doors closed, carefully turned himself around to face the front of the car. 

Suit or coat, he’d need his new clothes before his first day at work. His first day at Halloran would be lost to doctors and paperwork, and after that he’d have only two business days and the weekend before his first day at the SSR. That didn’t leave much time to find and buy a handkerchief, much less a suit, especially when he wouldn't know his way around. Better to get his shopping done here in Atlantic City and arrive in New York somewhat squared away. 

The doors opened to the first floor. Sousa got off the elevator and turned down the hall to the gym. As he went, he considered his options. He could go shopping today after he was done with therapy — he’d have to skip bridge club — but by the time he changed into his class As and figured out where he was going, would he be able to make it before the stores closed?   

When he got to the gym, he signed in, took off his trousers and hung them on a peg, and started his usual routine: lap after lap in the gait lanes, first with two crutches, then with one; work at the pulley weights; a session at the treatment table; more time at the weights. He was just finishing a set when Lieutenant Reese came over to join him. 

“Wait, how long have I been here?” asked Sousa. Usually he only saw her at his morning session. 

“Long enough for now. Don your prosthesis and let’s see how your gait’s coming along.”  

She watched Sousa walk the length of the bars and back twice with two crutches, and again using one crutch. Next she had him try it without crutches. He managed six slow, small, halting steps before he had to grab a parallel bar.  

“Hang on —” he began. 

“That’s all right. Let’s sit down,” said Lieutenant Reese. She led him to a couple of vacant chairs by the wall.  

“Major Peyton told me about the transfer,” she said quietly. “I’m sure they’ll take good care of you at Halloran, but still, I hate that we’re losing you so early.  I really wanted you to go horseback riding once we got that set up.” 

“If they have it at Halloran, I promise I’ll try to get on the schedule,” said Sousa. “I don’t think I’m jockey material but maybe I can go out for the polo team.” 

“You do that. And I’m sure they have some things there that we don’t do here yet. Maybe you can pass on any good ideas you come across.” 

“Sure, if I see any that weren’t copied from here.” 

“Good unit morale there! Oh, and guess what?” She dropped her voice. “He also told me that they might pick you for a program where you’d get detailed to a job, on day passes from the hospital, and I think that sounds right up your alley! But if you do it you won’t be in full-time physical therapy. So it’ll be extra important to keep up with your exercises on your own.” Sousa nodded. 

“Now since you only have a few more days with us, it’s best you to concentrate on walking with one crutch and building up your endurance —” 

“— Why not without crutches?” 

“Because you won’t make enough progress in a week to make it worth your while.” 

Sousa looked away as he pressed back a scowl.  

“It’s okay," said Lieutenant Reese. "You’ve made a lot of progress, but remember, you’re still reconditioning and getting used to using your prosthetic. And, you know, even after you get your permanent prosthetic you’re still going to be building yourself back up. It takes time. 

“Which reminds me, I’m going to work on getting you more driving time. I might be able to get you behind the wheel tomorrow afternoon —” 

“Meaning a real wheel?” 

“On a real car on a real road. So keep an eye out for a schedule change.” 

 

When his session was over, Sousa went on to bridge club. He had an idea. When he reached the Palm Court, the Atlantic City ladies were all there: Mrs. Lambe was writing on the chalkboard and Hazel, Betty, and Doris were talking to a couple of patients. At one of the tables, Mrs. Seymour and Penny were getting the cards ready for the players. Sousa went over to join them. 

“No peeking!” Penny held her hands over the cards. 

“Oh, right.” Sousa made a show of looking away. “Mind if I join you?” 

“Not at all,” said Mrs. Seymour. Sousa pulled out a chair and sat alongside the table, turning to face Mrs. Seymour. 

“I need some advice,” he said. “What’s a good place for a fellow to get some civilian clothes? I’ve got family coming in soon, and I was thinking I could get something here and send it back with them for when Uncle Sam finally evicts me.” 

“That’s a good idea,” said Mrs. Seymour. “It depends, of course; there’s always the budget to think of, and then what did you have in mind?” 

“Something I could wear to start work in an office, if that’s where I end up.” 

“Do you have a place?” asked Penny 

“No. Just thinking ahead. As for budget, not Hollywood, but not....” 

Mrs. Seymour nodded. “We don’t have anything Hollywood level here, so don’t worry about that,” she said. “There are several good mens’ shops on Atlantic Avenue, but to be honest, they’ve been hit-or-miss with the war on. It’s hard for them to get help, and it’s hard to get quality materials. When is your family coming in?” 

“This weekend, actually.” 

“Oh. Then I’d try Blatt’s, for sure,” said Mrs. Seymour.  Penny gasped a little in excitement, but did not interrupt. 

Mrs. Seymour smiled. “It’s a department store, just over on Atlantic and South Carolina. They have a good selection, and they look out for the servicemen — and servicewomen.” 

Sousa checked his watch. “Do I have time to pop over there now?” 

“I don’t know how much time you’d have to pick anything out. They close at five,” said Mrs. Seymour.  

“And we’d miss you,” said Penny. “They’re open late tomorrow, though. Wednesday’s Shopping Night here.” 

“Then I’ll go tomorrow,” said Sousa.  

 

He called Ines that night. He waited until Conover was distracted by the nightly phone call from Molly. Then he put on his robe, took up his crutches, and went out to find a private place with a telephone. 

The long-distance operators handed off his call: “Philadelphia.” “Providence.” “Taunton.” “Long distance call from Atlantic City, New Jersey....” 

“Daniel?” 

“Hi, Ines. Got a minute?” 

“Sure, what’s up? Is everything still all right for Thursday?” 

“Well, I think so. I wasn’t able to get out of my physical therapy on Thursday and Saturday, so I’ll be tied up on those days till around four. I’ll be free after that, but just in case you don’t want to hang around Saturday....” 

“You mean leave early? Applesauce. I’ll bring a book. And I hear there’s stuff to do around Atlantic City.” 

Daniel chuckled. “Also: I need to ask a favor. Those new clothes I picked up when I was home? Would you mind bringing them with you, if it’s not too much trouble? And a couple of my ties?” 

“It’s no trouble at all. But just out of curiosity, I thought you weren’t supposed to have civilian clothes?” 

“Not usually. It’s kind of a long story. I promise to tell you about it when you get here.” 

“Now I’m really curious. So: clothes and ties. Anything else?” 

“That’s it. So when you get here on Thursday....”  He filled her in on what to expect and where to meet him when she arrived at the hospital. 

“Got it,” said Ines. “And thanks for making all those other arrangements. I’ll make sure to pick up your clothes tomorrow, and then I’ll see you in a little less than two days!” 

 

The next day was D-minus-seven. At breakfast, Sousa got a change-of-schedule notice from Occupational Therapy, and at 1325 he and eleven other patients were delivered by bus to the front of a garage at the Naval Air Station. They were accompanied by three aides, who began collecting the patients into their assigned groups, and an occupational therapist with a clipboard. 

Sousa found the other two patients in his group. One of them had already been driving for a couple of weeks, and was talking big about how he was going to drive them all back to town, when the fourth member of their group joined them: the occupational therapist herself. Sergeant Joyride’s face fell. 

“Good to see you too,” teased the therapist. “Tell you what, you can drive first. Lieutenant Sousa, why don’t you take the front passenger seat, so you can observe?” 

To Sousa, there wasn’t much to observe. Sergeant Joyride, as it turned out, was a double below-the-knee amputee, and once he fixed his ankle joints he was able to drive normally. The therapist directed him through the main parts of the base, so he could practice braking and shifting gears smoothly and quickly, and then had him drive to a service road and stop.  

“Your turn,” she said to the second patient. 

Joyride got out and held the car door open, and the second patient came up to the driver’s seat. Sousa immediately recognized the way he took short, clumsy steps to maneuvered himself to the car, the way he grabbed the door frame in one hand and his crutches as he sat down, the way he used his hands to lift his left leg into the car: Corporal Two was an above-the-knee amputee. 

When Two was situated, he pulled his crutches into the car and passed one to the back seat. The therapist scooted forward so she could see what was going on. “Go ahead up the service road here,” she said to Two. “I’m also going to be showing Lieutenant Sousa some of what you’re doing.” 

“No pressure,” said Two. He used his left crutch to push the clutch pedal, put the car in gear, and pulled forward. 

As they drove around the service roads and a couple of the bigger streets, Sousa barely noticed the views of the control tower and hangars and runways. He was too busy watching Corporal Two and trying to be discreet about it. Two had his right leg, so he was able to use the brake and gas pedals normally, but he couldn’t use his prosthetic left leg to operate the clutch. Sousa needed to use his left leg for the gas and the brake, so he paid close attention to the way Two managed the clutch and the gearshift and the steering wheel all at more or less the same time. 

The therapist directed Two back to an empty service road and had him park the car. “Only two stalls this time,” he grumbled. 

“That’s right, you’re getting better and better at it,” the therapist insisted. “Lieutenant Sousa, are you ready for your first drive?” 

“If I only stall five times I’ll call it a win,” he said. He opened the car door, lifted his prosthesis out, and got himself out of the car. As he went around to the driver’s seat, Corporal Two went around to the back seat and the occupational therapist to the front passenger seat. When everyone was in place, Sousa used his crutch to press down the clutch. He put the car in first, took his left foot off the brake, and carefully let the clutch up until he felt the gears engage. 

The car slowly moved forward. 

He crept along the road, concentrating on relearning the pedals. He didn’t go beyond second gear, and he didn’t get very far, but he had only a couple of rough starts and stops and only stalled once. When his time was up, he switched places with Sergeant Joyride, who drove them back to the garage. 

 

Sousa thought back to his drive as he rode the bus back to the hospital. The therapist had been pleased, and he himself was feeling more optimistic. He counted the days in his mind: depending on what Lieutenant Reese could manage, he might be able to get as many as five more behind-the-wheel sessions before he left for Halloran. Maybe that would be enough to get him really driving again — or at least close to it — would it be a problem at the SSR if he couldn’t quite drive yet? Bailey and Tucker hadn’t asked about driving.... 

The SSR: clothes. Sousa glanced at his watch. He'd get back in enough time to catch the end of his afternoon physical therapy session. After that he’d go upstairs, change into his Class As, sign out at the desk... and go find his new uniform. 

 

When he got back up to his room, he found it crowded in a new way. Mrs. Conover was there, of course, standing off to the side and looking concerned.  Conover himself was awkwardly sitting with his right leg extended on the bed, toes sticking out of the heavy cast, and his left foot on the floor. A physical therapist was standing in front of him and an aide was standing at his side, holding a set of crutches. There was a wheelchair pushed up next to the bed. Nobody noticed Sousa standing in the doorway. 

The therapist put her hands under where Conover’s right ankle was hidden by the cast. “Everybody ready?” 

Conover took the crutches and put an arm around the aide’s shoulders. “Ready.” The aide nodded. 

“All right, then. One... two... three.” 

She lifted Conover's cast off the bed and guided it over the side. Conover himself leaned forward and, using his left leg, his crutches, and support from the aide, stood up. Mrs. Conover clasped her hands in anxious joy. 

They let Conover stand for a moment and then helped him pivot into the wheelchair. When they were satisfied with his posture, the aide and the therapist lifted his leg onto a support that stuck straight out from the wheelchair. 

Conover grinned. He glanced about the room, as if he was planning a route to the door. “Oh! Hi, Sousa!” He gripped the wheels of the chair and tried to move it forward, but the chair only wobbled in place. The aide leaned forward and showed Conover how to release the brake. 

“Ah.” Conover rolled forward a couple of inches. “Look, I’m mobile again. I’ll be going to the mess hall now.” 

“And to the lounge, and assemblies, and fun places like physical therapy,” added the therapist. 

“That’s swell, Conover,” said Sousa. “Congratulations.” 

“Thanks.” He looked at the physical therapist. “Let’s give him the room.”  

The therapist smiled knowingly. Sousa stepped out of the way as the aide pushed Conover out to the hall, followed by the therapist and Mrs. Conover. He closed the door behind them and went to get ready for his errand. 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Many thanks to AnniePlusMacDonald for invaluable help with research (including finding Blatt's!) and for test reading.

Sorry so short, but shorter and sooner is better than longer but (even) later, and you guys are awesome and have waited long enough. Thank you for reading, for being patient and sticking with it, for your kudos, and especially your comments, which I arrange in a glass case.

---

"D-minus-eight": June 6, 1944, is the most famous D-Day, but it isn't the only one. D stands for Day or Departure (I've heard both.)

Driving: sheer handwaving on my part; see the notes for Chapter 51. Sending them to the Naval Air Station for practice is more handwaving.

Chapter 54: D-Minus-Seven

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

Sousa had a three block walk to the M.E. Blatt Co. Department Store, and every step was unpleasant. The muggy air was close and oppressive, and hinted at storms massing behind the horizon. The summer sun hung in the late afternoon sky at just the right angle to produce a malicious glare off the streets and cars and shop windows. The only relief was the occasional awning over the sidewalk or stray ocean breeze. When Sousa reached the store, he got himself through the heavy glass door and stepped to the side to catch his breath, let his eyes adjust, and get his bearings. 

He was in a large atrium. Long lines of sales counters with gleaming glass cases stretched before him, punctuated by columns rising toward the lofty ceiling. When was the last time he’d even set foot in a big department store like this? '41? '40? 

A floorwalker appeared at his elbow. “May I help you?”  

Sousa was a little surprised: he’d always thought this job went to the more experienced clerks, but this girl looked young enough to be Hazel’s kid sister. "I’m looking for the Men’s Department?” 

She pointed out the elevator (Sousa talked her out of escorting him), directed him to the second floor (“Not the Mezzanine level — the actual second floor, with the two”), and promised assistance from the store with anything he needed, including carrying his purchases and even delivering them to the hospital.  

Up on the second floor, it was easy to find the path to the men’s department. Before he had taken two steps toward the suits, a clerk appeared, led him to a chair, promised someone would be with him soon, and hurried back to the counter. 

From the look of the line at the counter, Sousa thought “soon” was optimistic, but it was all right; he was glad of a chance to take a short rest. As he waited, he looked around the department. It was far better stocked than the store back in Taunton, yet it still looked a little lean: there was plenty of space between the coats and trousers hanging on the racks, and between the neat arrays of ties in the display cases. An entire counter was dedicated to FOR THE SERVICEMAN, with a display of socks and wallets and handkerchiefs and writing paper, and the pens that fit in a uniform coat pocket. Off to the side, mannequins stood ready for inspection, one in an Army officer’s Class A uniform and the others in the Navy and Marine equivalents. A framed sign on the wall behind the main counter proclaimed that WE ARE A VICTORY STORE — ALL CIVILIAN CLOTHING MEETS OFFICE OF PRICE ADMINISTRATION GUIDELINES. 

He got up again before he got too comfortable and went to look at the suits. Up close, he could see just how sparse the selection was. He wasn’t sure what his civilian size was, but he found a likely candidate and looked at the suit jacket. It looked... shrunk, somehow. As he looked for the price tag, he noticed there were no buttons on the sleeve cuffs.  

He found the price tag, braced himself, and turned it over. 

It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. It felt strange, though, to be the kind of man who might consider spending that much money on a suit. 

For this suit, though? And it was only one suit — how ridiculous would he look coming in to the office wearing the same suit, day after day (and what would he wear when it was being cleaned?)  

He could get a second suit. But then what if the SSR job... didn’t work out? He’d have spent a lot of money on two suits he wouldn’t need and that he honestly didn’t like all that well. 

Instead of a second suit, he could get a sport coat to wear with the clothes he already had. Or maybe he could just get the coat and wait to see if he actually needed a suit at all.... 

He went over to the rack of sport coats. He had just started looking over a gray one when a salesman arrived. “I’m very sorry about the wait. How can we help you today?” 

“I’m looking for something to wear to the office.” 

“Oh! Discharge coming soon? Congratulations!” 

“Thanks. Thing is, if I were to pick something tonight, do you think it could be ready by Monday? I know it’s short notice but...” Sousa put on a resigned, you-know-the-Army expression.  

“I think we can do that for you,” said the salesman. He led Sousa to a fitting room, took his uniform coat and hung it up, and set about taking measurements. "Were you thinking about something in particular?” 

“Well, I was thinking about a suit, maybe one of the blue ones.” 

“Let’s see what we can do.” The salesman gestured toward a chair. “Please, make yourself comfortable.  I’ll be right back.” 

The salesman left and closed the door behind him. There was a small table against the wall of the fitting room; Sousa made himself comfortable by moving a pincushion out of the way and leaning back against the edge of the table, so he could take some weight off his leg but easily stand up again when the salesman came back.  

When the salesman returned, he was carrying two blue suit coats and another one in brown. He pulled the chair in front of the mirrors. Sousa balanced himself, propped his crutches on the chair, and put on the suit coat the salesman was holding for him. He adjusted the front and looked in the mirrors. 

He couldn’t tell exactly how, but the coat looked wrong. It felt wrong, too, not quite too small but not quite comfortable.  

“Not enough ease,” said the salesman. “Let’s try a size up.”  

The second felt roomier, but when Sousa tried his crutches, it pulled across his back and cut into his arms. The third coat was no better. 

“Let me see what else I can find,” said the salesman. When he came back, he was carrying one of the gray sport coats. He looked annoyed. 

“I’m very sorry. I was hoping we could try a larger size in those suits, but we just don’t have anything in stock that would work. We might get a delivery on Friday, or we could go up another size or two and cut down a bigger coat — that would take longer, and it wouldn’t be the best option, but we could ship it —” 

Sousa knew better than to depend on promised gear. “Afraid that won’t work. I need to be ready to start next week.” 

“That is short notice.” The salesman looked thoughtful. “What about that sport coat you were looking at?” He took the gray coat off its hanger and helped Sousa put it on. “How’s that?” 

Sousa swung his arms. “Better.” He picked up his crutches and took a few steps around. 

“That does look better. And it’s a good weight, you’ll be able to wear it now, and that color will take you well into the fall.” The salesman folded a pocket square and tucked it into the breast pocket. He tugged on a sleeve cuff and considered. “How long do you think you’ll be using crutches?”  

Sousa's stomach lurched. But the salesman had asked the question in such a casual and matter-of-fact way — discreet without being timid.... He felt his embarrassment retreat a little. “For a while yet.” 

“Maybe just stick with sport coats, then. They’re cut with more room around the shoulders and arms, give you more freedom to move. I’m sure your office will understand if you don’t turn up in a suit, especially since the ink’ll barely be dry on your discharge papers.  

“And this one.... It fits, and with a little tailoring we can make it look better. See how the sleeves bunch up a little here on the cuff of your crutch? We can add a bit more length on the sleeve to make up for that. And the back here.... You don’t need to look like you’re wearing a tent. We can give that more shape.” He pinched along the seams of the coat to demonstrate. 

Sousa looked at the mirror, trying to focus on the coat itself and not on how bizarre it looked over his Army shirt and tie. “How much is this?” 

The salesman quoted the price. “That includes a little extra to guarantee it’s ready by Monday.” 

Sousa considered and nodded. “I’ll take it.” 

The salesman started to pin and mark the coat. “This’ll work well for you. Honestly, if I were you? I’d put off buying a suit as long as possible, hold out until the war’s over and things start getting back to normal. Even if you buy made-to-measure — and I think you’ll find that’s worth the investment, you’ll get a better fit — it’s so hard to get quality fabric these days. Our buyers are pulling their hair out.” He helped Sousa take off the coat. “Your name, please?”  He wrote out a tag with Sousa’s name and the necessary alterations, attached it to the coat, and put the coat back on its hanger. 

"Now, what are you going to wear with your new jacket? We have some white shirts in stock in your size; those go quickly, so you might want to snap some up.” 

Sousa thought back to the half-empty display cases, to what Mrs. Seymour — and his sisters, back home — had said about shortages... to his two shirts and one pair of trousers. He had to admit the salesman had a point. 

“Sure, let’s take a look at those,” he said.  “And I don’t know how well this gray goes with the old olive drab, so I could probably use a pair of trousers.” His grip tightened on the back of the chair as he made himself say it: trousers meant measurements. 

“Good thought,” said the salesman. “What do you have in mind?” 

“Something that’s good for a guy on a budget. Maybe in blue.”  

“Budget and blue….” The salesman consulted his notes. “Anything else?”  

His tone was calm and matter-of-fact: he could have meant gray trousers, or new socks…. 

Or something else.  He was leaving it up to Sousa. 

No use putting it off. Sousa forced his voice to sound easygoing. “Something that’s good for a guy who wears a belt under his clothes to keep his leg on.” 

The salesman was unruffled. “I think we can find something like that. Under budget and maybe even in blue.” He unfolded his measuring tape, and Sousa started unbuckling his belt.  A few moments later, the salesman had gone back out to the floor, and Sousa was leaning against the table to wait. 

He was relieved at how well that had gone, though he didn’t know why he’d gotten so edgy; he'd reminded himself that the salesmen probably would have seen other patients like him, or ordinary amputees before the war — and that if anybody did get upset it was their problem, not his.  Maybe being nervous was another thing that would fade in time. 

The salesman came back with the shirts and a pair of blue trousers that came in just under budget. After trying on and approving the shirts, Sousa sat down and began the tedious process of trying on the new trousers. He took off his shoes, undid his uniform trousers, doffed the prosthetic, and finished taking off his uniform trousers. He dressed the prosthetic in the new pair of trousers, donned the prosthetic again, and put on his shoes. Finally he was ready to pull up and fasten the new trousers and call the salesman back in. 

“You weren’t kidding about these being big,” he said. He held the waistband out a couple of inches to demonstrate. 

“Like I said, the more we start off with, the more we can take in and make it perfect,” said the salesman. He set about marking and pinning and making notes. As he worked, he kept up a pleasant patter about what he was doing — “we’ll take it in on this seam.... a little looser here, so it won’t catch” — interlaced with small talk about the weather and baseball and where was Sousa from and what he thought of Atlantic City. He had Sousa walk around a little bit and then sit down. 

When they were both satisfied, Sousa carefully got himself out of the new trousers and back into his uniform. As he buttoned and buckled his coat, the salesman put the new trousers on a hanger and attached a string tag with his notes. “What else can we show you today?” he asked. 

Sousa picked up his hat from the table. “Is there anything left? Might as well finish off with a tie.” 

They went over to the ties. As the salesman went behind the counter, Sousa peered into the display case and blinked: the top shelf was all strong colors and bold patterns, jostling for his attention. Some of them were hand-painted, according to a little sign. He’d never faced a selection like this for himself before. Were ties like this really worn to an office?   

The salesman appeared. “Anything catch your eye?” 

“Yeah, but these have a little more pep than I need.”   

The salesman smiled. “How about in this case?” 

The next case had a small selection of solid ties. They were nice-looking, and would be a safe enough bet, but Sousa ignored them: after three years of his plain Army tie, he was ready for a change. The rest of the ties had patterns that didn’t look like they would be visible from a mile away. He considered his new gray coat and blue trousers, and the clothes Ines was bringing, and where he was going, and how much he still didn’t know; he looked over the ties in the case, and started to pick a few candidates. 

As the salesman brought out the ties, Sousa became aware that he was also carrying on a quiet discussion with a second salesman — or a manager. It sounded like they were reviewing his ticket; he caught a few words like tailoring and rush charges and special.  

Well, he’d known what he was getting into: that was the price of dressing for New York, and on short notice. 

He ended up choosing a maroon tie with little diamonds on it and a blue-and-green striped tie. A couple of pocket squares, and his shopping was done. As the salesman collected his purchased and started to ring them up, he looked over his sales slip. Coat, slacks, shirts, ties... To his surprise, the only lines for tailoring were for the rush charges. “Wait, what about the alterations?”  he asked.

The salesman glanced at the ticket. “That’s correct.”

“Even with all that work on the trousers?”

“We’re just happy to help,” said the salesman. “Now, we can deliver your coat and slacks, but it would be better if you could pick it up in person and give it one more try-on.”

For a moment, Sousa considered taking delivery, but he immediately saw all the things that could go wrong, and all the rumors that could be launched. “That’s all right, I’ll come and get it,” he said. “I just need as much notice as you can give me. And if you leave a message, just... don’t leave too many details.”

“Ah.” The salesman wrote out a ticket. “Do you have more time on Saturday? Why don’t you call us after lunch? I can’t make any promises, but I’ll see what we can do.” He handed Sousa the ticket and wrapped the shirts, ties, and pocket squares. “Thank you very much. We’ll see you again soon. Congratulations.”

“Thank you very much.”

As Sousa boarded the elevator, he felt cautiously satisfied.  He’d gotten his shopping done, with enough time to make it back to the hospital for dinner. He had clothes to get him through his first days at the SSR, and he hadn’t blown his budget. 

And if the SSR didn’t work out, he could always wear the jacket to church and other people’s weddings.

The elevator stopped at the Mezzanine level. On a whim, he decided to get out and take a quick look around. Candy... gifts... something called “art needlework” — was that like the pillowcases his mother had embroidered? A restaurant: a real sit-down restaurant, not just a lunch counter, with views of the streets of Atlantic City and the atrium of the store. 

He caught a whiff of something hot and delicious, and his stomach rumbled. He could stop off here for dinner.... 

But he’d probably better go back to the mess hall for dinner. He’d just dropped a wad of money, anyway, and would probably have to drop another wad in New York. And he had a sister coming to town. 

Maybe he could bring her here. He smiled at the idea, and checked the posted menu on his way out. 

Back at the hospital, he went straight to his room. He was startled to find it empty and then remembered: Conover was probably taking dinner in the mess hall. 

And now that Conover was getting out of bed, he was going to have a robe and a slipper and a change of pajamas to keep in the shared closet, with people putting them away for him. Sousa hastily rearranged the contents of his nightstand and hid his package in the bottom drawer — he’d figure out later what to do with his other clothes — and hurried to catch the elevator before dinner service ended. 

 

The next day was D-minus-six for New York. It was also D-minus-one for the awards ceremony. And as Sousa shaved and dressed and got ready for breakfast, he thought about the coming day and happily counted the hours: it was H-minus-nine for the beginning of his pass, and as little as H-minus-six for Ines's arrival. He did as much as he could to prepare his overnight bag until two orderlies arrived with a wheelchair. 

“’Morning,” one of them said, and turned to Conover. “Ready?” 

Conover was already throwing his blankets aside. “Hell yes.” 

Sousa slid his arms into his crutches and headed for the door. “Let me get out of the way here,” he said.  

“See you at breakfast,” said Conover. “Say, you’ve got family coming in today, right?” 

“Yeah, my sister.” 

“That’ll be nice.” Conover turned his attention back to getting himself and his cast out of bed. Sousa went to the desk to check for messages (there weren’t any) and then down to the mess hall to wait for breakfast service. 

When he'd finished breakfast, instead of hanging around to chat he went to the Red Cross office. He double-checked his reservation for the Ambassador — one small suite, “equipped”, everything was ready — and asked the Gray Ladies to keep an eye out for Ines — it was her first visit to the hospital, wouldn’t know her way around, he’d likely be in therapy when she arrived, he’d be there as soon as he could.... The Gray Ladies smiled and promised they’d look out for her, and Sousa went on to his first therapy session. 

Lieutenant Reese sent him to his usual appointments with the pulley weights and the treatment table before she introduced the main attraction of the morning: a program of daily exercises for him to keep up with in New York. He knew most of the exercises already, but she had him demonstrate them again, just in case he’d forgotten anything, and then again and again until she was satisfied that his form was perfect. After that came gait challenges on one crutch: backwards, forwards, carpets, steps, crowds. It wasn’t until he was finally sitting down to lunch that he realized how tired he was. 

A clerk appeared and started passing out the midday messages. "And... one for Lieutenant Sousa?” 

Sousa’s heart lifted a little — a telegram from Tillie, crowing INES ON THE TRAIN? He raised his hand. “Here.” 

The clerk handed him an envelope: hospital stationery, not telegram yellow. Well, no news was good news.... He opened the envelope to find a message from Lieutenant Reese, switching his afternoon occupational therapy to another behind-the-wheel driving session. An hour later, he was on his way again to the Naval Air Station, mentally rehearsing his driving as the bus rattled its way toward the outskirts of the city, trying not to wonder if Ines had come in on the early afternoon train. 

He was with a different group that afternoon, but the procedure was the same, and soon he was in a car with an aide and two other amputees. He was the newest driver again. He observed the others as they drove, learning from their mistakes and their successes, and when it was his turn to get himself into the driver’s seat he was feeling pretty confident. 

He felt even better after making it the entire length of a service road without stalling, He’d even managed to take the car up to third gear and back. But when he tried to make a turn, he stalled the car. His turn was all but over by the time he successfully crept the car around a corner.  

On the bus ride back, he went over what had gone wrong and what had finally worked, and reminded himself that it was still only his second time behind the wheel. Practice and patience, just like for everything else. He’d have three or even four more chances to practice before he left for New York, and he should be able to finish up at Halloran. It would all work out. 

He checked his watch as the bus pulled up to the hospital: it was time to put worries aside. In the lobby, he stopped off at the Red Cross desk — yes, there had been a bus from the train station — he took the elevator to the eighth floor and checked the ward desk. Ines had signed in.  He hurried to the visitor’s lounge. 

He spotted her right away. She was already putting aside her knitting.  A few more quick steps, and Daniel was catching his sister into a hug.

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Big, big thanks to AnniePlusMacdonald for all her help with this chapter, including research (we have her to thank for Blatt's), consultation, and test reading.

Thank you for reading, for being patient and sticking with it, for your kudos, and especially your comments, which I arrange in pleasing displays in a glass case.

---

"Floorwalker": a free-range clerk who would assist where necessary, instead of standing behind a counter to wait on customers.

Clothing wasn't officially rationed in the U.S., but most fabric went to the war, leaving less fabric (and lower-quality fabric) for civilian use. Styles were restricted to avoid waste of fabric. Men's "Victory" suits were made of a wool-synthetic blend, with a shortened single-breasted jacket, narrow lapels and trousers, and no pleats, cuffs, patch pockets, non-functional buttons, vests, or additional pair of pants.

White shirts: during the first months after the war, white men's shirts were almost impossible to find.

Sousa's gray sport coat: There may have been some meticulous research into his clothing of Season 1, with much poring over screencaps. I miss this show so much.

 

Chapter 55: Captain Sousa

 

 

 

The Ambassador Hotel

Lobby of the Ambassador Hotel

Bedroom suite, the Ambassador Hotel

View from porch of Ambassador Hotel

Capt. E. H. Lowe pins insignia on 2nd Lt. James B. Morris of Des Moines, Iowa,
at OCS graduation exercise held at Camp Columbia, Brisbane, Australia. (June 29, 1943)

---

 

“So how are you?” asked Daniel. “How was the trip? Did everything go okay?” 

Ines smiled. “Well, I’m here, I’m in one piece, and my bag didn’t get too squashed, so I’d say everything went just fine.” 

“I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.” 

“Not long at all. Besides, this room has a nice view, and I’m finally making some progress on that sock. How are you? You look wonderful.” She patted the sleeve of his convalescent suit. “Are these what they give you for dungarees?” she teased. “Oh, are these the new crutches you told us about?” 

“Yeah." He lifted his right arm to show her the crutch attached to its cuff. “A little easier to keep track of.” 

“That must be a lot easier. So are you done for the day? If you’re not, don’t let me keep you —” 

“No, I’m all done.  And I’m ready to get out of here. Just let me go change.” He glanced around the room. The other visitors were minding their own business, and none of them were Conovers. “Actually —” he lowered his voice — “were you able to bring those things I asked you about?” 

“I was,” Ines quietly replied, “but they’re not at the top of my suitcase. I’m sorry, I wish I’d thought of that. Do you need them now? I can fish them out —” 

“Aw, don’t worry about it. I can put them away later. Be right back.” 

Daniel went to his room to change his clothes and finish packing his bag. He signed out at the desk. As he walked back to the visitors’ lounge, he passed a short row of telephone booths. One of them was occupied by Mrs. Conover, wrapped up in her conversation. When he entered the lounge, Ines stowed her knitting and gathered her things. Together they went back down to the first floor. As they made their way down the busy main hall to the lobby, Ines admired the paneling and moldings of the hotel.  “You weren’t kidding about their putting you up in style,” she said. 

“It’s all right,” teased Daniel. “You’ll get to see more of it tomorrow. I just hope the place where we’re staying isn’t too much of a letdown.” 

The bus to the hotel arrived; Daniel did his best to ignore his frustration at having to watch the driver hand up Ines’s suitcase — and his own bag. He waited for Ines to board and then hauled himself up the steps behind her.  

As the bus took them down Pacific Avenue, Ines looked eagerly out the window as Daniel pointed out some of the sights that had grown so familiar to him: Convention Hall, and Babette’s Supper Club across the street; the Claridge, Dennis and Ritz hotels; a couple of the restaurants he’d been to with some of the fellows from the ward.  A few more blocks brought them to Brighton Avenue; a left turn and a couple of more blocks, and they were at the Ambassador Hotel. 

Daniel checked in and they went up to their room. He closed the door behind them, dropped his bag in the first convenient spot, and turned to find Ines gazing around the room with wide, appreciative eyes. They were in a sitting room, with elegant trim and plain Army-issue furniture. 

“Think this’ll be okay?” he asked. He started taking off his uniform coat. 

“It's lovely!” She walked over to the windows. “Look, we even have a view!” 

He laid his coat on a nearby chair and topped it with his hat. “We’re supposed to have beds, too. Do you see any?” 

“Maybe this way?” Ines walked to a door on one end of the room, opened it, and discovered a bedroom. Meanwhile, Daniel found two more doors on the other end of the room, one opening to what looked like another bedroom and the other to the bathroom. He walked to the bathroom and took a peek behind the shower curtain. The suite was “equipped” as promised with a shower chair and a grab bar. 

Ines appeared at the bathroom door. “Everything good?” 

“Yeah.” Daniel turned and followed her out. “So which room do you want?” 

“You pick. Either one’s fine with me.” 

“I’ll take this one, then.” He nodded toward the bedroom nearer the bathroom. 

Ines hesitated. “The other one’s bigger.” 

“And you’ll need that space for all those clothes you brought,” teased Daniel. 

“I didn’t bring that much. And some of what I brought isn’t even mine. So what’s on the schedule? Do I have time to unpack?” 

“Take all the time you want. I didn’t make any plans, I figured we could just come up with something.” Here, let me get that suitcase for you , he almost said — and then he realized Ines might offer to carry his bag — 

He was on short crutches now, though, and he could free up a hand. Ines’s suitcase would probably be too much, but....  

He leaned his right crutch against the wall and, using only his left crutch, walked over to where he’d dropped his own bag. 

“So you’re down to one crutch now?” asked Ines.  

“Sometimes. As long as I don’t push it,” said Daniel. 

He maneuvered himself so his bag was on his right side, bent over, and carefully lifted his bag from the floor, holding it by its short handles instead of slinging it over his shoulder. He mentally checked his stance, considered his center of balance, and took a step and a quick second step.  

He didn’t knock the bag against the prosthetic, and he didn’t lose his balance. He took another step, and another. A few more careful steps, and he heard Ines pick up her own suitcase and take it to her room.  

He was able to get his bag to his room without mishap. He lifted it onto the luggage stand and set about unpacking. He’d just finished putting his supplies in the bathroom when Ines came over. 

“Here are your clothes,” she said. 

“Thanks a bunch. This is a big help.” He took the neatly folded stack and put it on his bed. “I can slip those in on Saturday or Sunday.” 

 “ ‘Slip them in’ ? Now I’m really curious.  Have you made me an accomplice to something?” 

“Technically, no. But I do need to ask you to keep this on the Q.T.. It’s nothing bad,” he added quickly. “And I promise I’ll explain.” 

“All right.” She pretended to be stern. “If you say so.” 

Daniel quickly finished unpacking. He went back out to the sitting room. Ines was still flitting between her suitcase and the closet and the dresser, so he sat down to wait. He unfolded a newspaper, intending to see what Atlantic City was offering that evening, but instead of opening the paper to the ads he closed his eyes and let himself sink back into his chair. It was nice to be someplace quiet, even if it meant realizing just how tired and tense he was after his morning of physical therapy and his afternoon at driving practice. 

His thoughts ticked ahead. First, tonight. Ines wasn’t the kind of person who’d demand to see every nightclub in town, but he didn’t want to just hang around and play checkers, either: it nettled his pride, somehow, and he didn’t feel like thinking about why. Tomorrow was the awards ceremony; Hayes was hinting about doing something afterwards. Saturday he had to go to therapy and Ines would have to fend for herself; he didn’t like it, but she understood, and she could manage. He wanted to check on his clothes at Blatt’s somewhere in there.... Sunday, Ines would go back home and he would go back to the hospital... Monday, Tuesday, more therapy and he’d need to pack; and then Wednesday: Halloran.  

Halloran, and New York: When should he tell Ines? He could tell her tonight, but it would feel strange having that secret hanging over both of them all weekend. Tonight he just wanted to hang out with his sister and enjoy being away from the hospital....  

Something in his mind slid into place. “Hey, Ines?” he called. 

She came to the door of her room. “Yeah?” 

“In that enormous wardrobe of clothes you brought —” he pressed back a smile as she rolled her eyes — “did you happen to pack a bathing suit?” 

“I did.” She smiled herself as she caught his meaning. 

 

 

The day was still oppressively hot and humid, and it was a relief to get in the water. Once they were dressed again, they started up the Boardwalk. It was the rush hour: parents herding exhausted, sandy children; wilted tourists perking up in the evening breeze; soldiers from the hospital and the relocation center; WACS enjoying an evening pass; the occasional rolling chair.  

Over dinner, Ines caught Daniel up on all the news from home; he caught her up on his hospital doings, as much as he could. They looked over the newspaper ads touting the shows and entertainers in town that weekend. The biggest name was Harry James, headlining at the Steel Pier. 

“So we wouldn’t have to get tickets?” asked Ines. 

“Just the admission to the Steel Pier.” Daniel grinned. “You want to go, don’t you.” 

“It would be really something,” Ines admitted.  

“Let’s plan on it, then. What about tonight?” 

“I’m not really up for a big night on the town, but other than that?” She smiled. “It’s your party. And you know what’s here way better than I do. Do you have something in mind? We could even just go back if you wanted to.” 

“It’s still kind of early, don’t you think?”  Even as he said it, Daniel realized that part of him was weighing the idea against the distance back to the hotel, and the time he’d been wearing the prosthetic, and his usual dinner-shower-leg care-bedtime routine.  

But he wasn’t in the hospital, and Ines was on vacation, and in a little over a week he’d be back in the civilian world again, at work.... “How about we just take a look around?” 

“That sounds nice.” 

“We can go to the shooting gallery at the arcade and you can win me a teddy bear.” 

Ines snickered. “Well... I can try .” 

 

One hundred and forty minutes later, Daniel was sitting in a movie theater wondering just how long much longer it was going to take for Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra to square themselves away, pair off with the right girls, get Kathryn Grayson to the audition, and get back to their ship. His leg was getting uncomfortable in the prosthetic, and the end credits were nowhere in sight. He shifted in his seat, trying to avoid disturbing Ines. 

After dinner, they’d explored the Boardwalk some more. Ines bought a few postcards; Daniel offered to win stuffed animals for her and Tillie and all three of the children (Ines tactfully declined). They’d passed a theater; Ines noticed the poster; Daniel got her to admit she was interested in the movie; there was a showtime coming up: it was an easy decision.  

And the right one, Daniel insisted to himself. He was just out of his routine, that was all. He picked up the prosthetic, moved it a couple of inches to his right, and settled back into his seat. 

When the movie finally ended. Daniel waited for the first rush to leave the theater before getting himself standing again and out of the row of seats. He adjusted his crutches, took a deep breath, and started the walk back up the sloping aisle. Back out on the Boardwalk he had to stop again to adjust his stance. 

“Are you okay?” Ines quietly asked. 

“Oh yeah.” He moved his crutches forward. “Did you like the movie?” 

“I sure did. How about you?” 

“It was okay. It would’ve been better if it had been about the Army.” 

“Maybe.” Ines considered. “Army uniforms don’t look as nice on camera.” Daniel pretended to be hurt. “But they do look  very nice  in person,” she reassured him. “Anyway, I liked the way it turned out and that Susan ended up with Joe. But why did they give Clarence a girl from Brooklyn? He’s been around the world and now he’s on the other side of the country and somehow he still ends up with a girl from New York.” 

“Wait, where’s Pete from again?” 

“That’s different . I met him here, not all the way in Hollywood.” 

Daniel paced himself and took a couple of short rest breaks as they walked, so he was able to make it back to the hotel without being completely spent. As he took off the prosthetic, he thought back — this might have been the longest or latest he’d ever worn it. It was good to know he could go that long now. He showered and did his leg care and then stayed up a while longer, shining his shoes and listening to the radio and teasing Ines as she wrote her postcards, until he could wrap his leg and go to bed. 

 

They slept in a little the next morning, but not too late; they were both used to being up early, and they needed to be on time for the awards ceremony. After breakfast, Daniel checked over his uniform coat one more time, making sure his insignia and service ribbons were perfectly placed and his gig line was plumb. He picked up his bag of leg supplies and went to the little sitting room to flip through the paper and wait for Ines.  

“Will this be all right, do you think?” 

“Sure,” said Daniel. “You always look nice." He turned to look at her. "That’s quite a hat. Did you borrow it from one of Katie’s dolls?” It was a little straw thing trimmed with flowers and a bit of blue ribbon, perched forward on Ines’s head. Daniel had no idea how she was keeping it in place. 

“I’ve never been to anything like this before,” said Ines. “Not that anyone’s going to notice me when I’m standing next to you.” She put on her gloves and picked up her purse. “I’m ready when you are.” 

 

Back at the hospital, Daniel showed Ines to the ballroom where the awards ceremony was going to be and went on to the room where he’d been instructed to report. A corporal with a clipboard met him and led him through a corridor to the ballroom stage. She showed him to a chair. 

“Will this be all right?” she asked. 

His chair was at the end of a row, with plenty of room between his row and the row of chairs in front. “This is great, thanks,” he said. He sat down, accepted a program from Corporal Clipboard, put his crutches on the floor out of the way, and looked around to get his bearings: the worn wooden floorboards and heavy curtains of the stage; the little groups of chairs arranged so patients on crutches could get in and out. A small band was setting up music stands in front of the stage. 

Over on stage left, another WAC was arranging small boxes in the center of a table: insignia boxes. Sousa idly wondered which one was for him.  On one end of the table, he could just see the arcs and chevrons for the new sergeants and corporals and privates first class. A few larger boxes were stacked at the other end of the table: some patients were going to be receiving medals. He looked out towards the room and saw Ines; she had been ushered to a good seat toward the front. She put her knitting down and gave him a little wave. 

Around him, other patients were trickling in and being seated. A couple of them were rolled on stage in wheelchairs. Most of patients were robes and pajamas, or in their blue convalescent suits, but there were a few who were in their Class A uniforms, like Sousa. 

There were also a few people in Class As who weren’t patients: hospital staff. A woman in olive drab excused herself as she passed in front of Sousa. Her uniform coat told Sousa she was a second lieutenant and a nurse.  She took the empty seat next to him, smoothed her skirt over her lap, and turned and smiled. “Congratulations!” 

He smiled and congratulated her. Before he could think of what to say next, another nurse sat down on her other side, and the WAC with the clipboard walked out to the front of the stage. “It looks like everyone’s here. You should all have programs  — does anyone  not  have a program?  We’ll have the flag ceremony, the commandant will give a little speech, and then we’ll start the pinnings. We’ll signal you when it’s almost your turn. You’ll stand up and walk to the center of the stage, where this little mark is. Private Bronzini: will you please demonstrate?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Private Bronzini stood and walked to his spot, and looked expectantly to the corporal.  To Sousa, Bronzini seemed barely old enough to shave. 

“One of the officers will pin you,” continued Corporal Clipboard. “and the photographer will take your picture. You salute, and then you sit down.” She gave Bronzini a teasing “move along” look, and he went back to his seat. “After the ceremony, stay here on the stage for more pictures, and then we’ll go to the luncheon. Now, some of you have special instructions....” 

As she walked around with her clipboard, Sousa turned to the nurses. “So what qualifies someone for  special  instructions?” 

The nurses shrugged. “Your guess is as good as ours,” the nurse who sat next to him said with a smile. “Every other time we’ve been at one of these, we’ve been in the audience.” 

“From the looks of it, you’ve been to more of these than we have,” added the other nurse. 

“Probably not,” said Sousa. “And it’s been a long time since I’ve been to anything near this fancy. Last one I went to was under canvas. No band, no fancy printed programs....” 

“Aren’t these nice?” said the other nurse. “There’s a unit on the seventh floor — the men there print them.” 

“They do the newspaper too, don’t they?” 

The nurses nodded. “So how long....” Sousa began. 

Before he could finish his question, Corporal Clipboard arrived to talk to the nurses.  When she was finished, she turned to Sousa. “You’ll go after Lieutenant Tunison here,” she said, “so when she’s saluting, you can start getting ready to go.” He thanked her and turned back to the nurses. They were conferring with each other, so he turned around to wait.  

They were still talking when Corporal Clipboard walked to the front of the stage and said something to the band. The leader nodded; the band picked up their instruments and began a cheerful, loud march; and Sousa gave up on the idea of small talk with the nurses.  

He didn’t feel nervous about the ceremony, but it felt weird to be up on the stage.  At least he wasn’t in the row closest to the audience. There looked to be around seventy people already seated, most of them civilians: family members, Sousa figured. More people were still arriving, including a good number of patients and staff.  

He looked for Ines and her little hat, but he couldn’t catch her eye. The seats around her had filled in, and he couldn’t see what he was doing.   

Two marches later, a captain walked out to the microphone, and the audience grew quiet. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “and welcome to the Promotions and Awards Ceremony.” He introduced himself and then the hospital commandant, the chief surgical officer, and the chief nurse. “A warm welcome to all of our guests, especially the families and friends who have come to join us today for this special occasion. 

“Please rise and remain standing for the Posting of the Colors and the singing of the National Anthem.” 

Sousa picked up and positioned the right foot and lower leg of his prosthesis and then stood to attention: chin up, shoulders back, feet as close to the correct position as he could manage. As the band played and the color guard approached the stage and the familiar commands rang out, he was struck by how soon he would be leaving this life — hospital life, Army life — behind.  

When the flag ceremonies were over and everyone was seated again, the hospital commandant came to the microphone and made a little speech about the hospital and serving those wounded in combat and those who were injured or fell ill in the course of their duties... like a special brigade of its own, still in the Army, accomplishments recognized.... “It’s a tribute to the speed of our evacuation system that wounded men are often here beginning their recovery before their promotions and medals can catch up with them....” Hospital staff, dedication... proud of all those being recognized and honored today: a real privilege. 

The commandant stepped away from the microphone and joined the division chiefs in the middle of the stage. The WAC who’d been arranging the boxes returned to her table, and Corporal Clipboard reappeared to stand next to the row of chairs in front of Sousa. When everyone was in position, Captain Special Services read the first name: “Private Joseph Angelo Bronzini, Medical Equipment Maintenance Technician. Hereby promoted to Private First Class.” 

Private Bronzini went to the middle of the stage. His expression was much more solemn this time. The WAC was ready; she handed two chevrons to the chief surgical officer, who pinned one on each of Bronzini’s sleeves.  Bronzini saluted; the three officers returned his salute; and Private First Class Bronzini returned to his place.  

“Private Ira Gittings, Medical Technician, hereby promoted to Private First Class....  

“Private Jacob Louis Baumann, previously with the 77th Infantry, hereby promoted to Corporal....” Instead of returning to his place, Corporal Baumann stepped to the side as another private became a corporal. The new corporals raised their right hands and repeated the NCO Oath before saluting the officers.  

When they were seated, a corporal became a sergeant. Then it was the nurses’ turn. After Captain Narrator read their promotion orders, the chief of nursing unpinned the gold bars on their shoulders and replaced them with single silver bars like the ones on Sousa’s coat. As the second nurse saluted, Sousa leaned down to pick up one of his crutches.  

“Lieutenant Daniel Antonio Sousa,” read the captain, “previously with the  339th Engineering Battalion.” He waited for Sousa to reach the center of the stage, and then continued: “The President of the United States of America has reposed special trust and confidence in the patriotism, valor, fidelity, and abilities of First Lieutenant Daniel Sousa. In view of these qualities and his demonstrated potential for increased responsibility, he is therefore promoted to Captain with date of rank December 15, 1944. By order of the Chief of Staff.” 

It was all boilerplate, of course; Sousa had heard it plenty of times before, including when he’d been promoted to First. He focused on his balance and posture as the chief of surgery unpinned his silver-colored lieutenant’s bars from his epaulets and replaced them with his new captain’s railroad tracks.  The chief of surgery stepped back, Sousa saluted, the senior officers returned his salute, and it was over. 

There were no other promotions, so the next part of the program was the presentation of medals. Bronzini and Gittings were presented with the Good Conduct Medal; the rest were Purple Hearts and a couple of Bronze Stars to patients who had recently arrived from the Pacific. Captain Narrator didn’t skimp on reading the citations for the medals, but kept everything else moving along without a wasted minute.  

When the last Purple Heart was pinned and the recipient wheeled back to his place, Captain Narrator wound up the ceremony: ticketed family members to the door in the back, honorees would join them after pictures; please stand for the Retiring of the Colors. The band struck up another march; as the audience filed out, Sousa had just enough time to see Ines making her way to the door before the corporal with the clipboard was urging him to move to a new spot on the stage for a group photo. Next he was sent backstage, where photographer had set up a backdrop with a flag. He waited his turn to perch on an adjustable stool, let the photographer adjust his hat and the lift of his chin, and hold the pose and watch the birdie as the shutter clicked and clicked again.  

“There we go,” said the photographer. “Just fill this out and bring it to Special Services to get a copy, don’t forget to send one to your family, out the door to the right for the reception. Here you go.” He passed Sousa his crutches. Sousa carefully got to his feet — the pivoting seat of the stool added an unexpected challenge — and went out the door to the right.  

The corporal with the clipboard steered him to the back of the group, behind the nurses, and then led the group to the room where the luncheon was being held. Sousa waited again until it was his turn to go through the receiving line. 

“And here’s our new captain!” said the commandant with a grin. “Except you were a captain this whole time and we didn’t even know it. And when’d you get here? Christmas? And you’re on Peyton’s service? Well, it looks like you’re making excellent progress. And you’ve got family who was able to come? Good, good.” 

When Sousa finished going down the line, a chart on an easel told him which table he'd been assigned to. He looked up and found it — there was Ines’s hat, and Ines, and an empty seat next to her; as he made his way across the room he saw they’d been seated with one of the nurses and her family. When he reached the table, before he could pull out his chair Ines stood up and lightly tucked her arm through his. She looked up at him and smiled. 

“This is my brother,” she said to the others at the table. “Captain Daniel Sousa.”  

Notes:

First: I'm really sorry it took so long to post an update.

Thanks to @keysburg for test reading, and to @AnniePlusMacDonald for fashion advice

(UPDATE: and to @keysburg for kicking me through being stuck on what Ines and Daniel were up to, and reminding me of the Atlantic Ocean in the side yard of the hotel)

and thanks to you for reading, for your kudos and comments, and for sticking with it.

Grahn and Tipton have been up to shenanigans in some of @writethisway's fics.

The Winter Avenue Sousas show up in California in Operation Thanksgiving by @Cuppa_tea_love.

---

Notes:

Dungarees — Navy term for heavy work clothes

“Keep this on the Q.T.” — keep it quiet

When I was checking candidates for a movie and found that "Anchors Aweigh" came out that week, I couldn't resist. In Portuguese, “Anchors Aweigh” is known as “Marujos do Amor”, which a Portuguese-speaking Person of Tumblr helpfully translated for me as “Sailors of Love” (as if love were a sea)

WAC – Women’s Army Corps

Arcs and chevrons: shoulder stripes for the corporals and sergeants.

The awards ceremony and reception: pretty much made up; I couldn’t find anything period. I drew some inspiration from present-day programs

 

Just for nice: That Scene with Gene Kelly and the telephone

Chapter 56: Programs

Notes:

Movie?

What movie?

 

 

 

---

 

Lunch went well. The food was good; the nurse and her family were friendly and included Daniel and Ines in their conversation. There were only a couple of token questions about where Daniel had served, and nothing foolish or prying about his injury and how he got it.   

There wasn’t much time to linger and chat over coffee and fruit crisp, though.  Orderlies arrived to push the wheelchair patients back to their rooms, and a couple of busboys started weaving among the tables, alert for idle forks and emptied plates. The hint was clear: the party was over. Daniel and Ines exchanged handshakes and good-byes with the nurse and her family, and followed them out to the hall.  

“So what’s next, Captain?” asked Ines with a smile.  

“Captain? I thought we were on a first-name basis,” said Daniel.  

“Just helping you get used to it. You might as well resign yourself, you’re going to hear it from everyone else, too. We’re all so happy for you. And now we’ve got a Captain Sousa on our side of the family!”  

"Eh, just a land captain, without a command.  — Before we do anything else, I should go upstairs and see if any of the fellows left a message about tonight. You’re sure you don’t mind? You’ll probably be the only lady in the group.”  

“And an old married lady at that! No, I’m looking forward to it.”  

They took the elevator up to the eighth floor. Daniel collected his mail from the desk clerk. A message from Hayes was on the top of the stack:  

 

Leave 1700 from elevators.  Asked some of the bridge crowd too. Majority seems to hope you’ll pick Nico’s. Then back here for concert.  

 

“Pizza all right with you?” he asked Ines.   

“Where you took Papai? Yes please!”  

“Okay, it’s a plan. After that it looks like they want to come back here for the talent show. We don’t have to stay for that if you don’t want to; a lot of it’s just... soldier jokes. The band is good.”   

“No, that sounds like fun.”  

Daniel wrote a return note for Hayes and handed it back to the clerk, and then flipped through the rest of his mail: a telegram... a note from Lieutenant Reese with his weekend schedule for PT and OT... a couple of letters from home. No message from the department store, but that was all right; his clothes weren’t due until Monday. He tucked the letters in his pocket for later.  

“Now, what’s this?” He tore open the yellow telegram envelope.  

 

CAPT DANIEL A. SOUSA 
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY, NJ 

CONGRATULATIONS WILL ONLY BUY DRINK IN PERSON SO HURRY DOWN HERE  

=2NDLT HENRY GRAHN  

 

Daniel grinned. “It’s from my old roommate.” He showed Ines the telegram. “He’s in Washington now.”  

“Are they still planning to send you there too?”  

“They haven’t said anything about it yet, but that’s what usually happens.” He folded the telegram, put it in his pocket, and gripped his crutch handles. “We can kill some time until the others are ready, but I should probably check my leg while we’re up here. It won’t take long.”  

He left Ines in the waiting area and went back to his room. Conover was asleep; Mrs. Conover was sitting by his bed, reading a magazine.  

“Oh!” she said. “What are you — ” Her  voice honeyed as she collected herself.  “We weren’t expecting to see you. I thought you had a pass.”  

“I do, but I have business here today.”  

“Mm. Well, we’ve had a busy day here: out of bed all morning and then lunch in the mess hall….”  

“That’s great. Uh — I need a few minutes….” 

“We don’t usually see you this early in the afternoon.”

Sousa shrugged a little. “My schedule’s different today.” He propped his crutches against the wall and started taking off his coat.   

Mrs. Conover stood up and gathered her pocketbook. “Well, let me give you some privacy. Will we see you again later?”   

“Maybe.”  

She made sure Conover’s call button was near his hand and left the room. Sousa grabbed a crutch and went to close the door behind her. Back on his side of the room, he sat down on his bed and unbuckled his belt. It was a hot, sticky day and he’d been sitting a long time, so it was a relief to take his leg out of the prosthesis, change his stump sock, and powder up. Once he’d put himself back together, he got himself out of the room without waking Conover and went to go meet Ines.  

Ines had been dropping hints about not minding seeing the hospital itself; Daniel didn’t understand the appeal, but he took her to one of the parlors with good views of the Boardwalk and the ocean, and then showed her a few of the other local sights: the walkway to the Chalfonte, the library, the Palm Court, the HX and soda fountain. They had to stop every so often to yield right-of-way to a wheelchair race, or to a noisy squad of amputees on their way to the beach.  

They whiled away the time until it was time to go back to the eighth floor to meet the others. Hayes and Irwin and a couple of other people were already there; Sousa was still doing introductions when the elevator doors opened and delivered a small group of passengers. Most of them seemed to know where they were going, but out of the corner of his eye Sousa noticed someone hanging back, looking around: a first lieutenant in Class As. 

And then  Sousa  recognized him. “Tipton?” he called. Tipton looked relieved and came over to join the group.  

“Well, look who made it!” said Hayes with a grin. “Tipton here’s on a different ward from us,” he explained to Ines. “Sousa and I know him from bridge club.”  

“This is my sister, Ines Escobar,” Sousa said to Tipton.  

“Bill Tipton. Nice to meet you,” said Tipton. He hesitated, and extended his hand. Ines smiled and shook it.   

Sousa was a little curious about how long Tipton had been approved for outside passes, but he figured Tipton himself could bring it up. They all made small talk as more people arrived — a couple more from bridge club, a few more from the ward — until Hayes announced it was time to launch.  

 

There was plenty for Sousa to think about as they walked up the Boardwalk. There were the sights to point out to Ines; there was the contrast between today and his first trip up the Boardwalk, less than four months ago, when he’d made the trip in a wheelchair.  

There was no time, though, for him to think about that or much of anything else. The Boardwalk was as crowded as he’d ever seen it, and he had to concentrate on managing his pace and keeping up with the rest of the group in their instinctive formation.  A few men in the group had only just started venturing out of the hospital — Tipton was probably one of them — and there was reassurance, if not safety, in numbers.  

At the restaurant, the silver-haired waiter saw to the men in wheelchairs and then turned to the rest of the group. “Hey, I remember you,” he said to Sousa. “Sorry, no beans or codfish today. And no squid .”  

“Oh, good, we were getting worried,” said Sousa. “We’ve got some guys here for the first time and we promised them pizza.”   

They arranged themselves around the table. When the waiter left with the order and everyone was supplied with drinks and garlic bread, Hayes tapped a fork against a glass and leaned forward.   

“This is a special treat,” he said, and gave Ines a friendly nod. “It’s not often we have a guest of honor who outranks the guy we’re taking out. So here’s to a sister who not only took the trouble to come down for Sousa’s promotion, but is willing to be seen in public with his pals.” He raised his glass before Ines could protest, and the clink of glasses went around the table. “Don’t worry, Sousa, for her sake we'll be careful about which stories we tell about you. Though maybe she’s got some good ones about you! We’ll have to ask.  

“Now, usually when we take someone out,” he continued, addressing Ines, “it’s because he’s just gotten cleared to go out on a pass, or is getting ready to be transferred or discharged. Like Irwin, here: he just found out today that he’s on the transfer list to Walter Reed, so Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll be taking him out in the next week or two. But promotions? We don’t get too many of those; this is the first on our ward since I’ve been here. So you could say your brother’s.... got a leg up on all of us.”   

Before Ines could react, Irwin nodded solemnly. “It’s an important step in his career.”  

“And we didn’t want to drag our feet about marking the occasion,” someone else added.  

Ines looked stunned. Sousa could see Tipton, a couple of seats down, holding back a laugh.  

“Shake a leg, Hayes,” someone called, and Hayes raised his glass.   

“Sousa, you always struck me as the kind of officer who had both feet on the ground,” he said. “This promotion may have been long delayed, but I’m sure you deserved it. To Captain Sousa.”  

As glasses clinked around the table, it struck Sousa that this might also be a farewell dinner. And nobody knew it but him.  

The toasting went on until the pizzas arrived. Daniel waited for Ines to have a few bites before he asked her, “So what do you think?”  

“Delicious. Thank you!”

“Have you had pizza before?” asked Hayes.  

“No, this is my first time. Daniel’s told us about it.”  

Hayes smiled. “Didn’t we come here for your first dinner out of the hospital?” he asked Daniel. “I think that was my first time coming here too. It’s one our favorite place.  

“So how long are you in town for?” he asked Ines.  

“I leave Sunday morning.”  

“Yeah? What do you have planned for tomorrow?”  

“I’m not sure yet,” said Ines. “It depends on Daniel’s schedule.”  

“They wouldn’t let me take the day off therapy,” explained Daniel. Hayes looked disgusted.  

“But we were talking about going to the Steel Pier to hear Harry James,” said Ines.  

“And see Elsie The Cow,” added Daniel.  

“Oh, you haven’t heard!” said Hayes. “I hope this doesn’t wreck your plans, but there’s going to be a special guest at the talent show tonight. And it’s not Elsie The Cow.”  

 

Sousa, Hayes, Irwin, and a few of other patients were no longer required to check in for evening census, so when the group returned to the hospital, they went straight to the ballroom to hold seats until the others were able to rejoin them. As they waited and talked, Sousa noticed some extra microphones and a big setup in the back of the ballroom that made him think of a radio transmission set. Thick black electrical cords ran along the sides of the ballroom, tucked out of the way behind chair legs. Something special for Harry James, he guessed. Maybe they were going to recording the concert.   

The program itself began in the usual way, with the presentation of the colors and some pleasantries and hospital news from the commandant.  “This  is  unusual,” Daniel murmured to Ines. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him twice in one day.”  

“Does he not come out of his burrow that often?” Ines whispered back. “Maybe you should make a wish.”  

“Probably just means six more weeks of winter.”  

“Now, I think you’ve all heard that we have a special guest tonight,” said the commandant. “Well, we have some more exciting news. A portion of the concert is going to be broadcast around the world on Armed Forces Radio, right here from England General.” He waited for the whoops and cheers to settle down and introduced a visiting lieutenant from Special Services. The lieutenant explained how the broadcast was going to work — watch the signs; don’t applaud until you see the sign, you want your buddies to be able to hear — anything in particular you’d like Harry James to play?  

The hospital band played a few numbers. Then the stage curtain went up to reveal Harry James’s band, seated on risers behind their band stands. One of the Special Services guys held up a SILENCE PLEASE sign. There was a long pause — it seemed to Sousa that only the men in the audience were nervous — then the ON AIR sign lit up and the lieutenant leaned toward his microphone. “Harry James and his Music Makers!”  

The band played a flourish, and the sign guy held up the APPLAUSE sign. The audience did their part until the SILENCE PLEASE sign went back up. “For our G.I. audience here at the Thomas M. England General Hospital,” announced the lieutenant, “Harry James and the Music Makers come on with ‘Carnival’....”  

It was interesting seeing the precision of the broadcast — stand here, clap here, hardly a second wasted in silence — but Daniel was glad when the ON AIR sign went dark and he and the rest of the audience could clap without waiting for orders. After an intermission, Harry James and his band played a few more pieces. The concert ended with both of the band’s singers leading the hospital’s usual boisterous sing-along medley.  The audience was in high spirits, and with each song the singing grew in volume and enthusiasm, building and building to the thunderous final chorus of the final song — when the amputee troupe, in their dresses and wigs, came out on stage to perform a kick line. For a moment, Daniel was laughing too hard to sing. He glanced over at Ines; she had her hands over her mouth, too astonished to laugh. Maybe he’d tease her about it later, he thought, and turned his attention back to the stage.   

At last the final chords sounded. The ballroom shook with applause as the singers, the amputee dancers, and the musicians took their bows. Harry James finally took his bow; he and the others took one last bow; and the curtain came down on the ballroom stage.   

 

The next morning, Daniel and Ines had breakfast at the Ambassador and then took the bus back up to the hospital. They made plans to meet in the afternoon, and Daniel went to change into his convalescent suit for physical therapy. He took a long look out the window: he did not like the look of the lowering sky and the fretful sea, and he felt even worse about leaving Ines to explore Atlantic City on her own, but he couldn't risk messing up his transfer to New York by playing hooky from therapy.    

In the gym, Lieutenant Reese congratulated him again on his promotion and set him to work some more on walking with one crutch. She’d also managed to get him into driving practice that afternoon, so he left lunch early and went up to the ward to check his mail and his messages before he had to board the bus to the Naval Air Station.  

On the top of the stack was a telephone message:  QUESTION ABOUT ORDER  CALL 4-1219  

He checked his room and found it free of Conovers, so he sat down and called the number. As he’d suspected, it was the department store: his order was ready for pickup — or for delivery, they had an arrangement with the Gray Ladies of the Red Cross, it would be better if he could try his clothes on first, though — yes, he could come this afternoon; store closed at 6:00.   

He left a message for Ines at the desk, warning her that he might be late getting back from occupational therapy, and went downstairs to wait for the bus, watch the rain, and think about his plan. Every instinct was pressing him to go try on his clothes and pick them up today —  always secure your gear as soon as it was available, and tie it down quick — might not be as much time tomorrow, and then what if there was a problem? He’d have lost a day.  

As for Ines...  this errand would be  exactly  her cup of tea.  She’d probably be disappointed if he didn’t bring her.  And as much as it grated on his pride to admit it, he could use her help getting his clothes back to the hospital.  

Driving went all right. He was able to handle the car in the rain and on the wet road, and he did much better on taking the car around corners without stalling. He felt confident enough, by the end of his turn, to slowly  drive  the car back to the hangar that served as a garage.   

The rain was clearing up by the time he got back to the hospital. The sky still looked ominous, so he stopped by the HX to see about an umbrella, only to find that they were sold out. Up on the eighth floor,  Ines was waiting for him in the visitors’ lounge near the ward.   

“There you are,” said  Daniel.  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”  

“Applesauce,” she said  with a smile.  “You told me you would be busy, and I was ready to come inside for a bit  anyway.”  

“You didn’t get too wet, did you?”  

“No, I just ran between the raindrops. I did go to Woolworth’s first thing to look for an umbrella, but they were out. Looks like you got a little damp. So what have you been up to  today?”  

“Just driving again.  About today —  I know we were talking about the Steel Pier, but ... there’s something I should do this afternoon, and —” he took a deep breath — “I was wondering if you would come along and give me a hand. We could still go to the Steel Pier after, if you wanted to.”  

“Sure, I’d be happy to.  What’s up?”  

“Something along the same lines as what we did when I was home last month. Except the taking to lunch part, it’s kind of late in the day for that.”  

Her eyebrows rose in surprised interest. “I think you could twist my arm . And, you know, there’s always dinner .”  

“Thanks. We’ll have to get going, the place closes at six, so let me go change.”  

Ines had done a little shopping, so he offered to keep her bag in his room while they were out. He carried her bag and one of his crutches in his right hand and was able to slowly walk back to his room using only one crutch. The room was full of Conovers — mother, father, Florrie, Molly, and a few more.  

“Well, hello! This is a strange pass they’ve given you,” said Mrs. Conover.  

“You’re still on your pass, right?”  asked Conover.  

“Yeah,” said Sousa. He made a point of being preoccupied with threading himself and his crutch through the room to his closet.   

“Need some time?” Conover asked. Without waiting for an answer, he signaled his visitors out of the room. Florrie was the last out; she pulled the door shut behind her.  

“So I guess you had therapy today,” said Conover. “Your sister still in town?”  

“Yeah,” said Sousa.   

“That’s great.  Is she here, or are you meeting her someplace else?”  

“We’re meeting here,” said Sousa. He drew the privacy curtain. “So what’s been going on?”  

Conover rambled a bit about going to the mess hall for meals and what they’d served and who he’d talked to, and about which nurses had been assigned to the room and how Lieutenant Munn had the weekend off and was switching back to day shift, and about Molly and what she was up to and something about too early to tell and it’s hard because of course it’s Molly’s decision and you want to do it up right, but you don’t want to wait forever, you know? Still....  

Sousa wasn’t really paying close attention, especially once the Molly part started, but then Conover wasn’t really asking his opinion anyway. He checked his leg, changed into his uniform, and stowed his convalescent suit and Ines’s bag in the closet.  He said good-bye to Conover and went back out to the visitors’ lounge to find Ines.  

The rain was still holding off. Ines waited until they were well up the block before she asked, “So: more clothes?”  

“Good guess.”  

“And you’re still keeping it quiet?”  

“That’s right.”  

“And you are going to tell me at some point what’s going on, right?”  

Daniel grinned. “Maybe.”  

“You’ve got me on pins and needles!”  She seemed to think about it for a minute, and then changed the subject. They turned the corner onto Atlantic Avenue, and soon they were approaching Blatt’s. Ines looked at the window displays appreciatively as they passed them by, and Daniel felt a stab of embarrassment. He hoped this wouldn’t come across as showing off.   

“Here we are,” he said. He leaned forward on his good leg and his right crutch and awkwardly opened the door for Ines. After she went through, he got himself around the heavy door and followed her in. He stopped for a moment to adjust his stance, and then led Ines between the long glass cases to the elevator.  

Up in the men’s department, Sousa was shown to a fitting  room, where a salesman brought his new clothes. He put on his new trousers and jacket ,  slipped his left arm into a crutch , and stood up in front of the mirror.  

For a moment, his reflection surprised him. He wasn’t used to seeing himself in civilian clothing, and these clothes were nicer than anything he’d owned before the war. And with the pins out and the alterations done, these clothes were unmistakably his.    

They looked good to him, and passed muster with the salesman, so he changed back into his uniform while the salesman packed up the clothes. Together, they walked back out to the sales floor to find Ines.  She seemed a little disappointed when she saw the package, but she didn’t say anything until the salesman left.  

 “Can I at least take a peek?” she asked. Daniel relented, and she opened the box just enough to see the jacket and the trousers folded inside.  

“Oh. Those look very nice,” she said, and closed the box again. “Now what?”  

Daniel shrugged. “I’m all done here, so it’s up to you .”  

“Do we have time to... look around a little?”  

“Sure, if you like.”  

They wandered around the second floor for a while — Men’s Clothing, Women’s Shoes.... “Oh, look, Yard Goods,” said Daniel. “And some comfortable-looking chairs right over there. What a coincidence.”  

“You don’t mind?” said Ines.  

“Go ahead,” said Daniel. He lowered himself into a chair to wait as Ines went to go look at the bolts of fabric.  

She was gone longer than he expected, and when she came  back  she carried her own small package. “I couldn’t resist,” she said apologetically, and showed him a glimpse of her fabric. It was deep green with flowers: a fall dress for herself, she explained. “I’ve kept you long enough, so I’m ready when you are.”  

“All right.” Daniel started to get himself out of the chair. “Let’s drop my stuff off at the hospital, and then we can think about dinner and the Steel Pier.”  

“I don’t have my heart set on the Steel Pier, I promise,” protested Ines. “We got to see Harry James last night, and what could top that?”   

They were about halfway to the elevators when a clap of thunder sounded, a boom so loud it rattled the windows. Daniel froze. Another clap sounded, nearer and sharper, and then a thick curtain of rain swept over on the building.  

Daniel took a deep breath and shook off the goosebumps. “Guess we're staying a little longer. Anything else you want to look at?”  

They browsed the Gift and Art Needlework departments on the Mezzanine level and then went to the restaurant. Over coffee and muffins, they chatted a bit about what Ines had seen and done in Atlantic City that day, and about her impressions of Blatt’s. She glanced at Daniel’s package but didn’t say anything.  

“That was nice of your old roommate to send that telegram,” she said. "Do you hear from him often?"

“Grahn? Sure, he keeps in touch with everybody. I actually saw him just last week, his parents spent the weekend here and he came up to meet them. He’s doing  real well.”  

“How much longer is he going to stay in the hospital?”  

“Another six or eight weeks, maybe? I’m not sure.”  

Ines took a sip of her coffee. “You don’t talk that much about your new roommate."  

Daniel glanced away. “Well, you know.... sometimes you can live in the same room with a guy and still be living in completely different places.” He fidgeted with a spoon. “We’re on different schedules, doing different things, and he’s got family in all the time. Half the time I’m not even there, and when I am he’s busy with other stuff. Why do you ask?”  

“Just curious.”  

“Maybe you’ll get a look at him when we drop that off.” He nodded toward his package. “Looks like the rain’s about done. Think we should make a break for it?”  

 

When Daniel entered his room, he found a confusion of  Conovers, most of them standing out of the way of the two aides helping Conover into a wheelchair.  Molly was the first to notice Ines and Daniel. Her face lit up, and she tapped Florrie’s arm to catch her attention.  Meanwhile, the aides finished checking over Conover and released the brake on his wheelchair. He thanked them and looked up towards Daniel.  “ Oh, hi. You must be Sousa's sister, nice to meet you. Kip Conover. This is my mom, my sister Florrie, my fiancee Molly; my dad....” He named the other uncles and aunts in the room.  

“Ines Escobar.”   

“Escobar. Is that Italian?” asked Mr. Conover.  

Before Ines could reply, Molly spoke up. “It’s exciting to meet you in person.”

“You’ve gotten me in so much trouble,”  Florrie eagerly added .

“Really,” said Ines.  

“Oh yes. A few weeks ago we were here with Kip and I forget how but knitting came up — "  

“It was something in a magazine,” put in Molly —  

“And Molly and I were teasing each other because neither of us can knit —”  

“Someone tried to teach me when I was young and I just couldn't do it.”

“I see other people doing it and I’m just amazed,” said Florrie, “and all I can think is, ‘oh, I could never  do that.’  I was saying so to Molly, and all of a sudden Kip said , ‘Sousa’s sisters knit for him.’”

“I didn’t say it like that,” said Conover.  

“Yes you did.”  

“She 's not  in trouble," Conover insisted. “Come on, we should all get to dinner. Have a nice evening,” he said to Ines.  From his wheelchair, he herded his family out the door. Daniel closed the door behind them.   

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what that was all about.”  

“You didn’t tell me I was famous,” said Ines.

Daniel grimaced.  “Apparently when you run out of things to talk about you start talking about the roommate and his family.”

“I suppose. I didn’t tell you earlier, but when I was waiting for you this afternoon, I was knitting and.... you know how sometimes you get the feeling you’re being watched? There were two girls by the door to the waiting room: those girls, as it turns out. They were whispering to each other, and I could just hear one of them say, ‘Oh, definitely. That’s  got  to be her.’ I couldn’t help feeling like they were talking about me.”  

She smiled a little. “I should tell them Tillie’s the one who makes most of your socks, but I’d hate to disappoint them. I’ll tell Tillie your roommate’s envious, though, she’ll get a kick out of that. — Where do you want your package?”

“Tell her everyone’s envious of what you send me. And if they’re not, they should be. That box’s too big for the nightstand; I guess it’ll have to go in the closet.” Daniel put his right crutch aside, took the package from Ines, and tucked it into the closet behind his bathrobe and convalescent suit. He finished the job by putting his bag on top of it: that should be enough, he thought, to discourage casual snooping. He closed the closet door.  

“There,” he said. “And this is my half of the room.  Now you’ve seen my luxurious Army accommodations.”  

“They’re even more splendid than I imagined,” Ines declared.  “You even have a view.”  

Daniel glanced out the window and frowned: the wind seemed to be picking up. “We’d better decide what we want to do.”  

By the time they got outside,  it was clear that another wave of storms was about to arrive .  Daniel was getting hungry and was in no mood to trudge around Atlantic City in the rain. He suggested just going back to the Ambassador for the evening, and was relieved by how quickly and warmly Ines agreed to the idea.  

They had dinner in the hotel dining room. Back upstairs, as soon as they entered their room Ines got out of Daniel’s way and stepped out of her shoes. “Much better!” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She picked up her shoes and went to her room.

Daniel went to his own room and closed the door. He took off his shoes and his prosthetic, pinned up his pants leg, and went back out to the sitting room. Ines was already there, sitting at one end of the sofa. Daniel sat down on the other end and put his crutches aside.  

“I hope you had some fun today,” he said.  

“Well, of course I have,” said Ines. “I got to explore Atlantic City, and spend some more time with my brother... You took me to Blatt’s, and that was fun, and now we’re inside not getting soaking wet.”  

“Do you want to use the shower first?”

"Maybe in a bit.” She shifted on the couch to face him. “But first —” her voice was cautious — "I'm sorry, I just have to ask — Are you about to be discharged?”  

Notes:

Reality lined up beautifully with the QV chronology: Harry James really did play the hospital on July 27, 1945. You can listen to the broadcast here. (He also really played the Steel Pier that weekend.)

---

Real life has still been a little busy for me (everything's okay, don't worry) — thank you for your patience, for reading and sticking with it, for your kudos, and especially your comments.

Many thanks to @keysburg and @AnnieplusMacDonald for test reads.

Chapter 57: Advance to Go

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“No,” said Daniel. “Not discharged. It’s... complicated.”  

Ines nodded.  

“And a lot of it’s confidential.” Daniel scratched the back of his neck as he thought again about where to start.  

"None of the guys here know this yet,” he said cautiously. “I’m going to be transferred to a hospital in New York. Once I'm there, the Army’s going to detail me to a civilian agency — it’s like... lending me. But even though I’ll be working at the agency, I’ll still be in the Army.”  

“A government agency?”  

“Yeah. But not military. That’s why I need the civilian clothes.”  

“Why don’t they just discharge you and let you work at the agency?”  

“They won't discharge me until I get my permanent prosthesis, and that's going to take a few more months. It just takes time, there’s nothing anyone can do to speed it up. So this gives me something to do while I wait, and it helps the agency out.  And then once the Army finally cuts me loose, I might be able to stay on permanently.”  

"Oh!” Ines’s face brightened at the idea of a job. “So why all the hush-hush?”  

“Part of it’s because of the detail — it’s, ah... the kind of work I can’t really talk about.” Ines nodded. “And then just sending a hospital patient on a detail is kind of an experiment. I’m lucky they picked me.”  

Ines smiled warmly. “Then congratulations again. When do you go to New York?”  

“Wednesday.”  

“Wednesday ?!” Ines counted in her head. “That’s only three more days!”  

“That’s the Army,” said Daniel. “Sometimes you’ve got to leave on short notice.”  

“It couldn’t have been all that  short if you had time to shop for your clothes and get the alterations done.”  

“They’ve been talking about it for a while, but it only came together this week. I had to get rush service on the alterations.”  

Ines considered the news. “Well, it does sound like a good opportunity. But what about your physical therapy?”  

Daniel was suddenly very conscious of his pinned-up pants leg, and the empty spot next to his left knee. “What, you think I still need it? —It’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll be attached to a hospital, so I can keep doing it there.”   

“Oh, that’s good. So the detail’s part-time work?”  

“No, it’s full-time.”  

Ines frowned. “But if you’re at this detail full time, when are you going to get to physical therapy? I mean, you only have so many hours in a day. And right now you’re in therapy most of the day, right? How can you keep that up —”  

“It’ll be fine,” Daniel said firmly. Ines started getting that look on her face that meant she was folding, reminding herself not to be bossy or overprotective, and he felt his stomach twist. Growing up, he’d always felt a quick thrill of victory at that look, invariably followed by the disquieting thought that she might, after all, be right....  And now, there was so much she didn’t know about and he couldn’t tell her. Her doubts were reasonable, and they were an unsettling reminder of the doubts and worries he wasn’t letting himself think about....  

“It’s all worked out,” he said, a little more cheerfully. “I’ve already made a plan with the physical therapists. Besides, the whole point is that the detail  is  therapy, you know? I’ll just be walking around there instead of in the gym.”  

Ines looked unconvinced. “Have you said anything to Papai?”  

“Just a bit when I was home about the possibility of the detail.”  

“Should I keep this quiet, then?”  

"For now. I’ll try to call once it’s official, so if he asks you about it, go ahead and tell him.” 

 

 

After Daniel showered, he laid out his clothes for the next morning and packed his bag. Ines joined him in the sitting room once she had finished her own packing. They spent the rest of the evening listening to the radio, playing cards, and chatting. Every so often Ines would burst out with another question — “You’re really starting a week from Monday?” or “How are you going to keep this a secret if you’re staying in the hospital and wearing civilian clothes to the detail?” Daniel answered what he could and evaded the rest. Ines didn’t push the issue. 

They were up early the next morning to finish their last-minute packing, check out of the Ambassador, and catch the jitney to early Mass. The church was on Pacific Avenue, a few blocks away from the hospital.  

“Papai was here when he came down in January,” said Daniel as they walked toward the church. 

“I remember him talking about it.”  

The steps up to the front door were an easy climb. Daniel followed Ines into the church and through the vestibule into the nave. 

For a moment they stood in silence. The vaults of the church, deeply carved in pale stone, and its walls and art were all awash in color — roses, blues, violets, greens — by the stained glass windows, set alight by the early morning sun.  

“Where do you want to sit?” Ines finally whispered. 

Daniel picked a spot. As they settled in, he took another look around. He’d always intended to come here, but somehow he’d never made it, not even when his father had come back to visit. This had probably been his last chance.  He was glad he’d taken it. 

Only three more days. 

 

After Mass, they went on to the train station. Daniel waited on a bench with their bags while Ines squeezed up to the crowded luncheonette counter for a quick breakfast. As he waited, his mind hurried to the days ahead of him: back to the hospital, change clothes, check schedule — would he be driving again this afternoon? — get to breakfast, go to the gym....  

He looked up as Ines sat down. “All set?” 

“I think so. Thanks. Are you sure you don’t want to get breakfast?” 

He shook his head. “I can get something back at the hospital. When do you think you’ll be getting in?” 

“It all depends. I should be there in time for supper.” 

“Sure you don’t want to stay another day?” 

Ines smiled. “I don’t know what I’d do with myself. Don’t you have work to do? Though I suppose I could help you pack.” 

“It won’t take that long. I probably had more when I shipped out for the first time. I do have some things I made in occupational therapy; I shoulda showed them to you. I was thinking I’d send them on home. Maybe you and Tillie could see if you want any of them. There’s a cutting board in there I thought maybe Tillie could use when she and Joe set up housekeeping.” 

“I know she’ll love it. But you should come tell us about them in person! How about this weekend? The festa  starts Saturday,” Ines wheedled teasingly. 

“Don’t think I’ll be able to make it this weekend. Maybe next year. But I promise: once I get settled in, I’ll come as soon as I can.” 

The train was announced, and Daniel went with Ines out to the platform.

“Thank you for everything," she said. "It’s been so good to see you.”

"You too. Thanks for coming."

"Thanks for inviting me. " She let him pull her into a hug. “I made it just in time," she added quietly. "Good luck, Captain! Keep us posted, all right?” 

"I will, don’t worry. Have a safe trip.” He hugged her again, and watched as she handed up her bag and climbed up into the train.  

He waited until she was out of sight before he gave in to a tense sigh of frustration: his instincts had been prodding him to take her bag, to follow her to her seat and stow it on the luggage rack for her.  And of course, even if he didn’t have his own bag slung over his shoulder, he would have been no help. It wasn’t his fault, Ines understood. He understood. Everyone understood. It was just the way things were. 

But it still bugged him. 

He walked slowly back up the platform until he spotted her waving to him from a train window.  He stopped to wait. The conductor made the last call, the steps were stowed and the doors shut; a whistle shrieked and the train horn called its reply. The train started forward. Ines waved again and he waved back until she was out of sight. Then he adjusted the strap of his bag and went back into the station to catch the jitney. 

Back at the hospital, he went straight to his room. Conover was at breakfast and visiting hours hadn’t started yet, so he was able to unpack his bag, change out of his Class As, and tuck away his civilian clothes in peace before he hurried down to get some breakfast before the mess hall closed. 

The day flew by. Therapy, lunch; no driving that afternoon, so more therapy....  

He hadn’t seen the doctors since Thursday morning, so Blaine and Peyton spent some extra time with him at rounds the next morning. They congratulated him on his promotion, asked all about the ceremony, asked a dozen questions about how his weekend had gone, and carried out a long examination of his leg. They even got out the tape measure. As the group of doctors filed to Conover’s side of the room, Blaine stayed back. 

“We do want to hear more about how your pass went,” he said. He handed Sousa an envelope and followed the others around the curtain. 

Sousa opened the envelope.  Inside was a memo ordering him to a meeting at 1300. Besides the room number, there was no other information. 

After breakfast, he headed off to his usual therapy session. He had just finished his first round at the pulley weights when Lieutenant Reese appeared.  

"Good morning, Captain,” she said with a grin. “How about a stroll? I can carry one of those crutches for you.” 

They went to the parallel bars first. As Lieutenant Reese held his other crutch, Sousa positioned himself between the bars, checked his stance, lifted his face to the mirror at the other end of the bars, and began to walk. He managed six short, waddling, lurching steps before he had to grab a parallel bar to keep from falling.  

“That’s all right; keep going,” said Lieutenant Reese. 

On his next try, Sousa was able to take another four steps before he had to stop and recover his balance. He tried to take a fifth, faltered, and had to grab for the bar again. Lieutenant Reese waited as he got himself together, and walked alongside the parallel bars as he made his next attempt, and his next.  

Sousa knew he wasn’t doing very well. Try as he might, he wasn’t able to make more than six steps at a time; his average was more like four, and the further he went, the more often he was only able to manage three or even two steps before he had to reach for the bars for balance or support. Lieutenant Reese didn’t say anything, not even about the steam he was sure was coming out of his ears. But she also didn’t have him make another trip through the bars. Instead, she handed him a crutch and walked with him out of the gym to the atrium. 

The prosthetic, by design and adjustment, worked best when Sousa walked with an average stride length at an average speed. Out in the atrium, Lieutenant Reese put him through his paces, holding his second crutch and watching his gait as he walked slowly or quickly, or with longer or shorter steps, in clear areas and amid clusters of furniture. 

“All right,” she finally said. "Let’s head back.” 

Sousa nodded. “About my schedule this afternoon — I’m supposed to meet with the docs at 1300. I guess that knocks out driving.” 

“It does,” said Lieutenant Reese. “But I wasn’t going to send you driving anyway. You’re doing well enough that you can pick it up at Halloran, and we need you here in the gym so we can write a nice long note about everything you’ve accomplished. That way, if you backslide, it’ll be their fault. Just promise me you won’t, all right? Don't let yourself fall through the cracks.” 

 

At 1300, Sousa reported to Peyton’s office as instructed. The small office was even smaller that day: another guest chair had been squeezed in for Blaine. 

Peyton waved to the empty guest chair. “Come on in, Captain Sousa. Have a seat. I’ve just been bringing Captain Blaine here up to date.” 

“A bit of a surprise there,” added Blaine. “But still, congratulations.” 

“Your transfer orders are signed and we got your paperwork from Halloran,” said Peyton.  He handed Sousa a form. “Bring that down to Special Services and they’ll arrange for your transportation. They can also take your change-of-address form and all the rest of those little details. That’ll set the rumors going, if they haven’t started up already, so you should probably go ahead and tell your friends.” 

“Going to Halloran, some sort of program, the docs said something about the nerves on my leg,” said Sousa.  

“Maybe throw in something about how later on you might be sent back here, or straight on to Walter Reed,” said Blaine.  

“Which is true,” said Peyton. “For your permanent prosthesis, if nothing else.” He handed Sousa another sheet of paper. “You might as well look this over while you’re here.” 

It was a list of instructions from Halloran for Wednesday: Detrain at Penn Station, meet the Army bus, report to intake clerk for room assignment, report to Major Klein for intake examination.... 

Peyton held out his hand, and Sousa returned the instructions. “We’ll put it with the rest of the papers you’ll be bringing with you,” said Peyton.  “Mostly records. Don’t give ‘em to anybody but Klein.” 

“Physical Therapy should give you a copy for yourself of the program they’re recommending,” added Blaine.  “I can’t tell you how important it is that you keep up your exercises every day, especially if you can’t get to the gym every day....” 

The two doctors took turns lecturing Sousa a little longer about physical therapy and leg care and making sure his prosthetic was fitting and working properly. “I think they’ve got a small limb shop there,” said Peyton. 

“Worst case, you could always come back down here for a day or two,” said Blaine. “Klein can set it up.” 

 

Sousa’s first stop after the meeting was Occupational Therapy, to see about sending his little projects home. He gathered them into a box, wrote down the address, and handed everything off to a Gray Lady.  

She went through the box, writing an inventory on his address slip. “These are very nice,” she remarked as she counted the bowls. She picked up the pig-shaped cutting board. “And look at this big fella! — Don't worry, we’ll pack everything  very carefully .” 

"Thanks. I’m counting on you,” he said teasingly. 

She gave him a warm smile. “We’ll take good care of your beautiful work.” 

“Well, I don’t know about beautiful, but nobody wants broken, right?” said Sousa. The Gray Lady laughed and moved the box to another table.  

 It felt strange to hand that stuff over to her, and as Sousa went on to physical therapy he couldn’t quite shake the feeling off.  The sight of the sign-in desk was a welcome distraction. 

It was an afternoon of official-looking measurements. An aide followed him from station to station, counting and writing down the number of laps Sousa walked correctly using one crutch; the number of pull-ups he did; the number of repetitions on the pulley weights he was able to do, and at what setting. At the treatment table, the aide measured the girth of his stump in three different places. Next, one of the therapists used the big protractor with the hinged arms to measure how far he could move his leg to his left, his right, his front, and his back. 

"...And that’s it,” said the therapist. “You can go ahead and don your prosthetic.” She handed him a towel, a tin of powder, and a few stump socks. 

“Thanks.” He started to powder his leg. “Sure there’s nothing else you need to measure? What about my left leg? I don’t think anyone’s ever measured that.” 

“I can measure it really quick if you want,” said the therapist. “No? Okay. If we do need it, we’ll page you.” 

After therapy, Sousa’s next stop was Special Services. He presented his form and waited as they shuffled papers behind the counter, until a clerk came out with a new stack of forms for him to complete and sign: change of address, next-of-kin, banking.... He asked about a new duffel bag; that was another form. As she added the completed form to another clipboard, the clerk promised that the bag and the tickets would be delivered sometime the next day. 

“You sure?” said Sousa. “One’s no use to me without the other.” 

“We’ll stencil the bag tonight after supper,” promised the clerk.  

 

Back at the mess hall, Sousa listened as the conversation bounced around the table: the war in the Pacific; the British elections; a letter from some of the fellows at Walter Reed; stories from a couple of the nurses about their trip to Cape May; advice from Conover about the best places to go in Cape May; hospital gossip; more about the war — devastating hit against the Kure Naval Base, was there any Japanese navy left? How much longer did they think they could hold out? 

He saw an opening in the conversation as dessert was being passed around. He poked at his fruit cup and said, casually, “I got some news from Blaine and Peyton today.” 

“Yeah?” someone said. 

“Yeah. They’re sending me to Halloran on Wednesday.” 

“Halloran ?”  

Sousa fielded the questions with the answers he’d prepared: there’d been some talk about some kind of program but it was only confirmed today, wasn’t clear on the details, wasn’t asking questions — New York that much closer to home; wasn’t sure how long he’d be there; Walter Reed eventually, might even get bounced back here first…. 

“Wednesday, huh?” said Hayes. “That’s more notice than Walter Reed usually gives out. You’ll have plenty of time to finish packing before bridge club tomorrow.” 

“Oh — that reminds me. Excuse me for a minute.” Sousa finished his last spoonful of fruit and went to go find Tipton. 

 

After his shower that evening, Sousa shut himself into a phone booth, placed his call with the operator, and waited as the call was relayed north. Tillie picked up. She congratulated him on his promotion and teased him about how he was playing favorites between his sisters again, what with all the places he’d taken Ines while she was down to visit. “Here’s Papai. Papai, it’s  Captain Sousa .”  

Daniel could hear his father’s chuckle as he took the receiver from Tillie. “Daniel?”  

“Yes, it’s me, Daniel, and thank you for that, Pai. How are you?”  

“We’re all fine here. Ines had a good trip back. Sounds like you two had a great time. She told us how well you’re doing. What’s up?”  

“Some big news, actually. I’m going to be transferred to another hospital, in New York. I’m going on Wednesday.”  

"That soon? I thought it wasn’t going to be for a few months. And weren’t they going to send you to Washington?”  

“I might still go to Washington later,” said Daniel. “This is for something different.” He spoke slowly and carefully. “That thing I told you about when I was home? It’s connected to that. And it’s... too much to explain over the phone. I was able to tell Ines about it when she was here, and now that the orders are final she can pass it on.”  

“Oh. Should we run right over and talk to her, or...?”  

“That’s up to you and how bored you are. It’s not an emergency, and it’s nothing that the kids need to know about. Or the rest of the family, or the Escobars, or anyone else. At least not for now. Anyway, I’ve sent you my change-of-address card, and they’ll forward my mail. I’m going to be at Halloran General Hospital. It’s on Staten Island, so not the exciting part of New York.”  

“Hope it’s not too much of a let-down after Atlantic City.”  

“Yeah, there’s that. But it's a little closer to home, so that’s a plus.”  

“Is this connected to your promotion at all?”  

“No. That’s just a coincidence.”  

“Well. This is very... interesting. I hope everything works out. You’ll let us know when you get to New York?” 

“Sure will. And once I get settled, I’ll come up as soon as I can and tell you some more.” 

 

At rounds the next morning, Blaine listened to Sousa's heart and lungs before doing the usual exam on Sousa’s leg, checking the incision line and then pressing two fingers on various spots to check the swelling. 

“Looking good,” he said. “I don’t know when or if we’re going to get to see that leg of yours again, so take good care of it. And the rest of you, too.” 

“It’s been a pleasure, Captain," added Peyton. 

Sousa grabbed his crutches and stood up; Peyton and then Blaine shook his hand. “Thanks for everything,” said Sousa.  

“You'll get your papers sometime today,” said Blaine.  “Good luck to you.” 

“And let us know how it works out,” said Peyton.  They moved around to Conover’s side of the curtain, and Sousa set about getting dressed. When he was done, they had already left, so he went over to the sink to finish getting ready for the day. 

“So today’s really your last day,” Conover said, a little drowsily. 

“Yeah,” said Sousa. “Last day here, anyway.” He propped his crutch, checked his balance, and started putting toothpaste on his toothbrush. “It’s hard to believe.” 

He brushed his teeth, washed his face, and started to shave. He had just rinsed his razor for the first time when Conover suddenly spoke up. “They’re not going to experiment  on you, are they? Up at Halloran?” 

“Experiment? You mean like a lab rat?” Sousa shook out his razor. "No, nothing like that.” 

“They told you at least that much? That’s good.” To Sousa’s surprise, Conover seemed almost genuinely relieved.  

He spoke up again when Sousa had finished shaving. “Are they taking you out tonight?” 

“Nobody’s said anything to me,” said Sousa.  

A knock at the door announced two aides arriving to help Conover get up. Sousa finished buttoning his shirt, made sure he had everything he needed for the morning, and got out of the room and out of the way. 

There was no talk about his transfer over breakfast that morning, except for a token question about his travel arrangements for the next day. That was fine with Sousa; he was already feeling a bit like a visitor. It was strange to know that when he left, he’d leave by himself, instead of as part of an outfit or even a group of fellow patients.  

His morning physical therapy session went as usual. So did lunch, until Irwin informed him that he was not to make plans for dinner — and was not to worry about changing into his Class A uniform. Sousa promised to follow instructions and pretended not to notice Conover, down at the end of the table, following their conversation and looking smug: probably looking forward to having the room all to himself, at least for a day or two. 

After lunch, Sousa stopped by the ward desk to check his mail and then went to his room. Conover was already there; so were the two aides helping him back to bed, and Mrs. Conover. But as Sousa had hoped, there something for him as well: his new duffel bag, waiting for him on the end of his bed, with his name, his new rank, and his serial number stenciled in glossy, barely-dry black paint.   

It would be smart to pack right away. He’d just have to miss discussion group: and on his last day, too. What a shame. He drew the curtain and opened his new bag. 

He packed his civilian clothes first, while everyone else was focused on getting Conover settled. He didn’t have many personal possessions to pack — he’d tried to avoid accumulating them over his months in the hospital, he didn’t have much storage space and he knew he’d be leaving someday — but there was his knitted blanket, the box of dominos, some letters he’d saved, and a few other things he wouldn’t need that night or the next morning. 

He had his smaller bag for the things he’d need right away — his tickets, his papers.... He’d need some supplies for his leg. He grabbed a crutch and went over to the supply shelf. 

Conover had dozed off. Mrs. Conover was in her usual spot by his bed, reading a magazine. She watched as Sousa gathered his supplies and tucked what he could in his pockets. 

“Kip tells us you’re leaving tomorrow,” she said. “To a hospital in New York?” 

“Yeah.” 

“He says the hospital’s on Staten Island. I haven’t been there myself, of course, but from what I hear it should be nice and quiet, much more like what you’re used to from where you grew up.  You won't have the advantage of the sea air, though. That’s a pity.” Her face brightened. “But, you know, parts of Long Island are just lovely . Maybe there’s a way you can spend a weekend up there! The Army might have some sort of program, or the Red Cross.” 

“Sounds like something to look out for,” said Sousa.  

“Oh yes. It would be an excellent opportunity for you,” she said earnestly.  

Sousa managed a nod. “Well, I’d better get back to packing.” He started back towards his half of the room. He could feel Mrs. Conover still watching him, and had the sense that she was on the verge of saying something else, but he knew once he was behind the curtain she’d forget about it and about him, at least for the moment. 

Eventually he finished, and had to cross the room again to go to his afternoon therapy session. Mrs. Conover put down her magazine. “Oh, are you leaving? Well, if I don’t see you later this evening, have a good trip, and best of luck at the new hospital.” 

Something seemed odd to Sousa — was she leaving early today or something? and there was something off about her usual coldly sweet smile — but he was not interested in asking about her plans. He thanked her, said good-bye, and left for his last physical therapy session at England General Hospital. 

When he signed in at the gym, the aide consulted a list and told him to report to the sundeck. Sousa was surprised — they usually ran group exercises on the sundeck, and he hadn’t been sent there in weeks. He was even more surprised when he arrived and was informed by an aide that he was sent there to go rollerskating,  

He chose a pair of skates from a rack, carried them over to a chair, and laced them on. He nervously waited until it was his turn to be collected by a therapist. 

“So did you have to qualify on skates to get this job?” he asked. She laughed, and, standing on his left, coached him as he carefully rose from his chair and straightened up. When he was up and standing, she put an arm around his waist. 

“Go ahead and put your arm across my shoulders,” she said. An aide delivered another patient to her other side; Sousa thought of three-legged races — so would this be a four-legged race? — 

“Ready?” said the aide. “Let’s start with the right foot." 

Sousa focused on his posture. He shifted his weight towards his good foot and carefully rolled the prosthetic foot forward a couple of inches — 

“And now the left,” said the therapist. 

Sousa shifted his leg in the prosthetic to lock the knee. He gingerly shifted his weight toward the prosthetic and rolled his left foot forward — 

The other patient whooped in triumph. “We did it!” cried the therapist. “Okay, right foot....” 

The trio crept across the sundeck until they got to the chairs at the other side. Sousa was glad to sit down for a few minutes, but he was already looking forward to his next turn. 

When his session was over, he found Lieutenant Reese waiting for him by the door. “I saw you on your last run,” she said. “Looks like you were getting the hang of it. How’d you like it?” 

“It was fun.” Sousa followed her back into the hall. “I’ve been thinking so much about walking I guess I forgot all about skating. I was surprised, I thought I was going to be in the gym this afternoon.” 

“There was an opening, so I thought we could try it out, do something fun for your last session here. I would have sent you in a week or two anyway if you were staying. So if you see them offer skating up there, take it! That and horseback riding.” 

They reached the hall that led to the gyms. “Here’s my stop,” said Lieutenant Reese. "Have a good trip to New York. Take care of yourself, all right?” 

“Yes ma’am.” 

“I mean it. Keep up with your leg care and make sure they get you scheduled for physical therapy. You’ve worked too hard to let yourself fall behind.” 

Sousa was getting tired of this lecture, but he didn’t say anything. “I promise.” He took a deep breath. “Thank you for everything, you and... everyone else.” He offered a handshake before he knew what he was doing, and immediately felt silly, but Lieutenant Reese took his hand and smiled.  

“Good luck,” she said. “You’re going to do great.” She gave his hand a squeeze and a pat before letting go, and gave him one more smile before turning and going back down the hall to the gyms, leaving Sousa behind in the hall. 

He turned and set off to the other end of the hospital for bridge club.  

As he made his way through the busy corridor, he mulled over how he’d tell Mrs. Lambe and Mrs. Seymour and the girls that this was his last meeting, and how he’d say good-bye to the fellows at his usual table. Occasionally his thoughts drifted back to the sundeck, and roller skating, and how it was the closest he’d come to dancing since... forever. But when he reached the Palm Court his thoughts shattered: a wheelchair was drawn up by one of the tables — a wheelchair containing Conover. 

Conover spotted him immediately. “Sousa!” he called. “You never told me you played bridge!” 

Sousa crutched over to where Conover was parked. “Neither did you,” he said. “Funny. I guess it never came up.” 

“We could have played with Molly and Florrie.” 

“Yeah, I guess we could have.” Sousa glanced around in search of an escape route. 

“I had to find out from Hayes,” continued Conover. “We were talking about... schedules —” a touch of the smug look came back over his face — “and he mentioned he was in this bridge club and you were too. So I thought I’d give it a try.” He glanced around the Palm Court. “First time I’ve been down this way. Looks like you get a good crowd.” 

“Yeah, it’s a good group.” Sousa was about to excuse himself when Hazel and Betty appeared.  

“What’s this about your leaving tomorrow?” demanded Hazel. 

He quickly explained himself to Hazel and Betty and introduced Conover. Hayes came over with Mrs. Lambe, presumably to introduce Conover to her, and Sousa took the opportunity to go sit down at his usual table. 

He had not been there for long when Mrs. Lambe came and asked if he’d mind moving to a new table — new people meant new partners, awkward to move the wheelchairs.... Sousa promptly levered himself up and followed her to his new table. Two of the men there were in wheelchairs, and sure enough one of them was Conover. Mrs. Lambe had even assigned Sousa and Conover to be partners for the first round, and it was clear she thought she was doing them a favor.  

Conover, at least, seemed to take it that way; he thanked her again as Sousa sat down, and then started introducing himself to the other two men at the table. As he talked, Sousa felt a sense of detachment from the rest of the room coming over him. He knew that feeling from all the other departures he’d made over the last few years: he was going to a new place, and life here would carry on. Any small holes left by his departure would quickly fill in: they’d put someone new in his bed, the people who knew him would turn to their work and eventually go to their own next stations. Soon it would be as if he was never there.  

 

The time passed surprisingly quickly. Conover didn’t have much time to talk before Hayes and Mrs. Lambe started the session, and he was too serious about the game to do much chatting when it was actually time to play. He was also an experienced player, and he and Sousa won the round they played as partners. They switched partners for the second round; Conover and his partner won that time, but Conover didn’t gloat and Sousa didn’t care.  

When the session ended, Sousa said good-bye to the girls and to Mrs. Lambe and Mrs. Seymour, and then hung back to wait for instructions for Hayes.  Tipton and a few other fellows that Sousa was friendly with stayed as well. When Hayes was ready, they took the elevator up to the second floor, but instead of going to the dining room, they steered Sousa around the mezzanine to the Azalea Room.  

Conover greeted them at the door. “Everything’s ready!” he announced. “Sorry, Sousa, we couldn’t get steak on such short notice, but....” 

The room was set up for a private dinner. Irwin, Whitford, and the rest of the men from the ward were already there. 

“Are we waiting on anyone else?” asked Conover. As he consulted with Hayes, Irwin came over and walked Sousa to a spot toward the head of the table. 

“We had a couple of requests to stay in so more people could come,” said Irwin. “And we figured it would be a nice change from being dragged to some restaurant in Atlantic City and having to eat something that isn’t Army food cooked the Army way, especially when we did that to you that just a few days ago.” 

“One last chance to enjoy the ambiance of England General,” said Sousa. “No, this is aces.” 

The doors at the back of the room swung open, and two civilian employees pushed in carts laden with dinner plates and pitchers of drinks. Around the room, the patients who were still standing began to take their places at the table. 

“Well, let’s see how the evening goes. If the food’s all right you can thank your roommate.” Irwin pulled out a chair for Sousa and another for himself. “He took care of getting this all set up.” 

“Celebrating getting the room to himself,” observed Sousa. 

“More wanting to be in charge of something, I think.” 

The menu was the same served to the rest of the hospital, with one significant difference: the choice of beverages included beer. When everyone had been served, Conover gave Irwin a nod. 

Irwin was already standing up. The room grew quiet. 

“Well,” said Irwin, “we all know why we’re here. I still can’t believe it. Just last Friday we were celebrating Sousa’s promotion, right? Never knowing that another shoe was about to drop and they were going to send him away. I know I was caught flat-footed when you told me,” he addressed Sousa. “I really thought you were pulling my leg.” 

“I know better than to put my foot in my mouth like that,” Sousa replied. 

“And now they’ve got you jumping the line to leave,” continued Irwin. “Well, to your continued recovery at Halloran.” He raised his glass. “May you soon be kicking it around New York.” Clinks sounded around the room. 

Sousa took a deep breath. “Thanks. Thanks to all of you,” he said. “It’s been a long seven months, but you couldn’t ask for a better group of guys to go through this with.” Even as he said it, the familiar faces around him were already feeling like faces from the past. He ransacked his brain for a joke but came up with nothing, so he raised his glass. “Cheers.” 

As the dinner plates were changed for coffee and dessert, the toasting started again: Grahn and the others who had already left... favorite nurses and therapists....   

And finally it was time to leave. Sousa filed out with everyone else, saying a few final good-byes on the way. 

Back up on the eighth floor, he stopped by the desk to pick up his mail. He was expecting an envelope to deliver to Halloran, but there was nothing like that waiting for him. There was nothing waiting back at his room, either. Sousa frowned: if this paperwork was late, or lost, was it going to hold up his transfer? He thought about asking the nurses, but they still were in report, so he went about his usual evening routine. After his shower, he put on his robe and went to say his final good-byes, starting upstairs with Tipton and finishing back down on the ward. 

There was still no envelope waiting for him when he returned, either at his desk or back in his room. He did his best to distract himself by checking his packing and double-checking his tickets and orders, half-listening as Conover talked about how well the dinner had gone and about his adventures reserving the room and planning the dinner menu — what he  could  plan, anyway, not much choice with such late notice, occasion really called for steak and good whiskey instead of meatloaf and a ration of beer — “At least the pie was good, right?” 

“Huh? Oh yeah. Delicious.” Sousa checked the pockets of his robe — he’d been so worried about that envelope he’d forgotten to pick up some elastic bandages. He walked across the room to the supply shelf. 

“Oh, I forgot — Lieutenant Munn’s looking for you.” Conover clicked the call button.  “Yeah, I told the kitchen that it shouldn’t be hard to get fresh berries for the pie, they’re still in season — my mom even checked with Wilma back home, just to make sure. She makes the  best  pies. If you were staying longer, I’d ask my dad to bring a piece for you next time he came.” 

Lieutenant Munn arrived a few minutes later. She gave Conover his medicine and helped him get settled in for the night, and then came around to Sousa’s side of the curtain. 

“You weren’t here when I came on rounds,” she teased. “I had to find out from your chart that you went roller-skating this afternoon. It sounds like the fellows had a nice dinner for you. Are you all set for tomorrow?” 

“Almost.” He nodded toward his empty drawers and almost-empty closet. “There’s an envelope I was supposed to carry.” 

“We have it with your chart,” she said. “I'll give it to you in the morning.” 

She turned off the overhead light on her way out. A few minutes later, Sousa pulled up his covers and turned off his reading light. 

His mind ran ahead to the next morning: shave, dress, bags, downstairs, bus, train — just like he’d done when he'd gone home last month. At Penn Station he’d meet the bus to Halloran.  He’d find out what to do with his bag and where to go to meet Major Klein.  

And then in four days he’d go to Manhattan — maybe taking the bus to Penn Station? — and go back to the New York Bell Company Building. He’d be wearing his new civilian clothes, the ones hidden away at the bottom of his bag. And he wasn’t going to be a patient any more. He was going to be doing real work again. 

But he’d still be a patient, in a way, and he’d still technically be a soldier. Would he be a patient pretending to be an agent? A soldier in disguise? Or would he be an agent who pretended to be a patient or soldier as needed?  

He pictured the Bell Company Building again in his mind: the subway stop across the street and the elevated train tracks a few blocks up; the lobby, the room where they were building the switchboards, the elevators; the corridor leading to the room where he’d had his interview. Tomorrow plus five days, D+5.... 

 

Sousa was up before dawn the next morning, and by sunrise was ready and waiting when a porter arrived to take his bags.  

“Good luck, Sousa,” Conover said drowsily. 

“Thanks. You too,” said Sousa.  

He followed the porter down the hall to the front desk. “Do I need to sign out?” he asked the clerk. 

“If you want,” said the clerk. 

“Hang on,” said Lieutenant Munn. She came out from behind the desk. “Here’s the file for Major Klein — see, there’s the address on it. Don’t let any of the clerks take it.” She waited as Sousa put the envelope with his other papers.  

“Have a good trip,” she said. “And please write — we’ll be eager to hear how you’re doing.” 

“I will,” said Sousa. He took a deep breath. “Thank you.” 

Lieutenant Munn smiled. He heard the elevator doors chime, and turned to follow the porter. Once he was in the elevator, he turned around for one last look. Lieutenant Munn waved. So did the clerk and a couple of nurses and orderlies who had gathered by the desk. He waved back, and the elevator door closed. 

On the first floor, he followed the porter to the lobby and checked in with the clerk with the clipboard.  

“Sousa....” repeated the clerk. “And where are you going?” 

“New York.” 

“Oh, that’s right.” The clerk wrote something down and handed the porter a string tag for Sousa’s big duffel bag. 

“That tag says Washington,” said Sousa. 

“Oh, for —”  The clerk hurried after the porter and gave him the correct tag. “Sorry about that,” she said to Sousa. “Okay, the bus is leaving in fifteen minutes.” 

 

At the train station, Sousa kept a close eye on his bag. He was relieved once it and he were in the same car on the train to New York. He gathered his crutches and tried to relax into his seat. Soon Atlantic City would be behind him — for good, he hoped.  He thought ahead again to New York, to Penn Station, to Halloran... to the SSR. 

“All aboard!”  

The conductor strode down the center aisle of the train. A moment later the stairs were stowed, the doors slammed shut. Sousa did not look back to the platform; there was nobody there seeing him off. The platform master’s whistle, the train horn sounding in reply: a couple of jolts, and the train pulled forward. He was on his way. 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thanks to @keysburg for test reading and to @cuppatealove, Annie+MacDonald, @lillianmmalter, and everyone else who provided encouragement

Welcome new readers! Thanks to all of you for reading, and for your patience, your kudos, and especially your comments.

@LadyKes recently posted a little one-shot about teen Daniel and Ines and Tillie: Tempests

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Notes: "Kicking it around" = carousing

The first photo - that was really taken at England General! I've been holding on to it for so long and I couldn't not work it in there somehow.

Chapter 58: Halloran

 

 

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Sousa took a deep breath as the train slowed to pull into the station. The first leg of his journey was over, but he knew the next leg — Penn Station — was going to be difficult.

It wasn’t unfamiliar terrain, though, and he could count on help: a redcap took his bags for him and led him through the vast station to a group of benches by a door, where he could join a couple of dozen other people in olive drab to sit and wait for a bus.

The first Army bus to arrive turned out to be going to Brooklyn by way of Grand Central Station. It took most of the waiting soldiers with it. Another bus arrived around twenty minutes later. Its door swung open and a WAC bounded down the steps.

“Halloran!” she yelled. “If you’re going to Brooklyn or Grand Central, this is not your bus! You need to wait! This bus is going to Halloran !”

She caught sight of Sousa and his bag. “You going to Halloran, sir? This yours?” She picked up his bag. “Let’s get this aboard. Are you okay with those steps?”

Sousa followed her to the bus and let her go in first. By the time he’d pulled himself up the steps, she had stowed his bag on the overhead rack and was back in her seat. He got himself and his crutches into the seat under his bag, directly behind hers.

“You okay, sir?” she asked.

“Fine, thanks.” He checked his watch. Everything was on schedule. He had plenty of time before his appointment with Major Klein.

“We’ll be leaving in a few minutes,” the driver assured him. She turned to greet a couple more passengers boarding the bus. “This bus is for Halloran. If you’re going to Brooklyn or Grand Central, you need to get off and wait for the other bus.”

“Yeah, I wish I was going to Grand Central,” grumbled a passing private.

“That happen a lot — people getting on the wrong bus?” asked Sousa.

“Sometimes. It’s not so bad in the daytime,” said the driver. “But some of these guys from the Port? I swear they left their brains on the ship. One guy managed to ignore every single thing we said and fell asleep in his seat. Boy, was he in for a surprise when he woke up at the hospital!”

Sousa chuckled. "You drive this run every day?”

“Naw, just when it’s my turn.”

It wasn’t hard to get her talking about life on the Halloran motor pool — the Penn Station run, the ferry run, the special trips to Manhattan or Brooklyn. She broke off when it was time to leave, and turned in her seat to address the passengers. “Anyone here not going to Halloran?” she called. “Last chance!” When she was satisfied, she shut the door. The bus pulled forward.

When he'd come to New York for his interview back in June, Sousa had been too busy listening to Major Tucker to notice much of the city itself. Now, he watched attentively as the bus left Penn Station and entered the stream of New York traffic.

“You must know the city pretty well now,” he said to the driver.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said the driver modestly. “It’s a big city. But it helps to know more than one way to get where you’re going, y'know?”

Sousa followed her route on his map: north and west, north and west again, and then down into the Lincoln Tunnel. The gleaming tiles on the tunnel walls whisked by, and a few minutes later, they emerged in New Jersey.

As they made their way south through Hoboken and Jersey City, they passed block after block of warehouses and smokestacks and squat round tank towers that suggested water and chemicals. They passed massive banks of train tracks tightening together into terminals. In the distance, Sousa could see tall cranes loading cargo on and off ships. He wondered idly about what was in the crates, where it had all come from and where it was going.... Now and then he could catch a glimpse of the skyline of Manhattan. He caught his breath when, in a gap between two buildings, the Statue of Liberty first slipped into view.

A turn to the southwest, and soon they were crossing the Bayonne Bridge to Staten Island. Their road took them through a tightly packed downtown area to a neighborhood with a little more breathing space, with trees and patches of grass and then actual lawns. The driver turned south into what looked like a park; an Army sentry waved her through. Once they passed the guard house, there were no other buildings in sight, only grass and trees, no sign at all that they were actually in New York City.

The road curved around a hill, and a brick building, eight or nine stories high, came into view. It was an odd shape, with long wings sprouting like spokes from a central tower — though it only looked like a tower compared to the smaller buildings and the wide green lawn that surrounded it. It was nowhere near as tall as Haddon Hall, or even the Chalfonte, back in Atlantic City.

Haddon Hall.... How many hospitals was this now? The field hospital, Paris, Mitchell, Thomas England, and now here.... At least this time he could see what he was getting into: his first sight of all the others had been from a stretcher as he was pulled out of the back of an ambulance.

In another few minutes, the driver pulled the bus up in front of the hospital. Sousa waited for the other passengers to leave before getting himself up and into the aisle, slinging his bag awkwardly over his shoulder, and lowering himself down the bus steps. The driver brought his bag and followed him into the front lobby to the reception desk.

“Thanks,” said Sousa. He turned toward the desk clerk and pulled his orders out of his pocket. “Daniel Sousa, transferring in from England General. I’m supposed to check in with the intake clerk....”

 

 

Three hours later, Sousa was in one of the long wings of the hospital in a small examination room. A knock sounded and the door opened.

“Ah, Captain Sousa, there you are. Sorry about the wait. I’m Major Klein.” They shook hands. “How was the trip up from England?”

“Everything went fine.” Sousa knew better than to comment on the fact that this meeting was starting ninety minutes late, and that he’d spent thirty of those minutes sitting on the exam table in his underwear. He picked up his file and handed it to Klein.

“Oh, very good,” said Klein. He opened the chart. “Let’s see, initial amputation on December 20th with revision on the 28th. So you’re almost seven and a half months out.... I’ll peruse this later, but first I want to see for myself how you’re doing.” He put the chart aside and did a quick exam: eyes, ears, mouth, heart and lungs, stomach....

“Now let’s take a look at that leg,” said Klein. “Any problems with the prosthetic?”

“None.” Sousa lifted his leg over the edge of the table, doffed the prosthesis, and peeled off his stump sock. When he was ready, Klein took a look at the incision site, poked at the still-swollen leg, asked him about his endurance, and had him go through the usual checks for strength and range of motion.

“Looks good. You can go ahead and get dressed,” he said. He started to flip through the chart. “When do you report to the SSR?”

“Monday morning.”

“Yeah? And what room did they give you?”

“Ah... Nowhere, yet. The intake clerk had me on some kind of list, but didn’t know where I was supposed to go.”

"What? Dammit—” Klein smacked the chart down, went over to the room phone, and dialed. “It's Klein. I need a word with Captain Young, please. P.D.Q..”

As Klein waited, he asked Sousa about England General and Major Peyton and the rehab programs and what was it like to recuperate smack in the middle of a resort, until he broke off mid-sentence to return to his phone call. “Hey. It's Klein. My transfer from England’s here, and Intake doesn’t have a bed for him. What the hell’s going on?”

Sousa began to dress. He kept an ear open to Klein’s phone call but didn’t glean anything useful. He was just buttoning his shirt when Klein hung up.

“We’ve got your bed,” he said. “370 West, check in at the desk.” He wrote the room number down and handed it to Sousa.

“We had a hard time deciding where to put you, you know, since we’re all trying to keep this little... arrangement under wraps. Looks like Captain Young’s found you a room on a debarkation ward, and that should be just the place: All the patients there are fresh off a boat or a plane and are on their way somewhere else, so no one's going to have time to wonder what you’re up to.

“The staff'll know what to expect. I have in your admission orders that you can come and go as you please. After you check in, report to Physical Therapy and set up your schedule, as much as you can. — Oh, they’re going to need a form, aren’t they.” He walked over to a rack of file folders, pulled out a piece of paper, and began to write. Sousa finished dressing and perched on the edge of the exam table.

“Here you go.” Klein handed two forms and a pen to Sousa. "Give that big one with all the carbons to Physical Therapy. The little one needs your John Henry. Keep it with you in case anyone squawks.” It was an officer’s pass granting Sousa complete liberty.

“Thanks.” Sousa signed the pass and gave the pen back to Klein.

“So what's the dress code at that detail? Tucker said something about civvies?”

“ ‘Civilian attire strongly preferred’ is what they told me,” said Sousa.

Klein shook his head. “I don't know how you’re going to work that, but there’s no way you can wear civvies around here without causing trouble. Not on the bus, either. Maybe you can change at work.”

Sousa kept his voice cheerful. “Should be able to figure something out.”

“The guys in the comics manage it, right? Mild-mannered small-town doctor by day, Black Rider by night?" Klein opened the chart and began to write. “I’m looking forward to seeing how this works out. I'll check up on you in a week or so. If you need anything before that, send word through the nurses.”

 

One of the clerks found an orderly to help Sousa with his bags and guide him up a long corridor, up two floors in an elevator, and down another long corridor to the ward desk of 3 West. 

"Oh! Captain Sousa! Captain Young said you were coming," said the desk clerk. "I'll let your nurse know you're here. 370's down that way, on your left."

When he entered Room 370, Sousa found himself in a narrow vestibule, with a sink and table at one end and windows on either side looking into the room and out to the hall. The orderly squeezed in behind him and opened the inner door. "Right through here, sir. Where do you want these bags?”

“Big one on the chair, little one on the nightstand. Thanks.” Sousa headed straight for the bed, sat down, and put his crutches aside. The orderly dropped off the bags and left; Sousa lifted his leg into a more comfortable position, took a deep breath, and looked around.

Room 370 was indeed a single room. Hospital bed, nightstand, telephone, chair, sink and mirror, and a small closet: all the amenities, with just enough room to steer a wheelchair or stretcher next to the bed. There were curtains at the windows to the little vestibule. The sink was next to a door — a door to a bathroom, Sousa supposed. He took a few more minutes to rest before he stood up to check it out.

The bathroom had a toilet, a shower stall, and an empty towel hook for towels. No chairs, though there was just enough room for one; no handheld shower head. He sighed, turned himself around, and went back out to the room. He checked the bed: it was made, with sheets. At least he could use that right away.

He unzipped his duffle bag and fished out his convalescent suit. He considered a moment, and pulled out his swimming trunks as well, just in case the new physical therapist decided she wanted him to watch him walk around a gym in shorts. Maybe if he came prepared she wouldn’t ask, like bringing an umbrella to ward off rain.

He drew the curtains over the windows to the vestibule, changed into his convalescent suit, and hung up his Class As in the little closet. He took out his personal copy of his physical therapy program, folded it up with his physical therapy form, and tucked the papers in his pocket. The nurse hadn't arrived yet, but it was getting late and he knew he needed to make it to the physical therapy department. Back at the ward desk, he got directions and left a message for his nurse. The clerk seemed surprised, but didn’t balk.

“I’ll also need a hand shower attachment and a shower chair,” Sousa continued. “And a bar of castile soap, a bottle of talcum powder, towels and a couple of washcloths, and six 4-foot elastic bandages. I’ll need all of it by 1900. And another chair for the bathroom, if you can get one.”

“... Six 4-foot elastic bandages and an extra chair, ” echoed the clerk. “So that’s two chairs? Anything else?”

A hollow feeling in his stomach reminded Sousa that it had been many hours since his small breakfast, and that he’d skipped lunch in his haste to make the bus to Halloran.

“How about directions to dinner?” he said.

 

The Physical Therapy department was two floors down in another wing. Once he found the right desk, Sousa presented his form to the clerk.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you’re not on the schedule,” the clerk insisted.

Sousa took a deep breath. The clerk seemed docile enough — no need to bring out the vinegar when honey would do — he put on a sympathetic, that's-the-Army-for-you kind of face. “Maybe someone forgot to put it on the schedule. Major Klein told me just a couple of hours ago that I was to report here.” He saw a flicker of uncertainty in the clerk’s face: a little more pressure ought to do the trick... An idea came to him. “I know he talked to Captain Young.”

The clerk pushed her chair back from her desk. “I 'll go check.”

“Thanks. I’ll be right here.” As the clerk disappeared behind a partition, Sousa lowered himself into a chair. Maybe someday he’d be able to buy this Captain Young a drink, to make up for the name-dropping.

When the clerk reappeared, she promised that someone would see Sousa as soon as possible. That turned out to be about forty-five minutes later, when a physical therapist came out and introduced herself as Lieutenant Olsen. She took him down the hall to a gym and led him to a table.

“ So, let’s take a look at that leg of yours,” she said. “Go ahead and take off your trousers....”

A few minutes later, Sousa was walking around the gym in his shorts with the other patients. He was not the only one on crutches, but he quickly noticed that he was the only amputee in the room, and that his prosthetic was drawing a few amiably curious glances: a big change from England, where half the patients were amputees.

After he'd walked a few laps using both crutches, Lieutenant Olson had him walk a lap with one crutch, and then the next lap with no crutch. Sousa managed four small steps before he had to stop and recover his balance, and then another two before he had to stop again.

Lieutenant Olson handed him his crutches. “Tired?”

“Yeah.” He slipped his hands through the cuffs. “But....” He shrugged a little.

She nodded. “Let’s get you back up on the table.” She had him do a few exercises with his prosthetic on and a few more without, taking measurements now and then with a protractor. She took a look at his leg, and read the papers he’d brought from England as he got dressed again.

“Any problems with phantom pain?” she asked.

“Sometimes. It’s not too bad. That tapping thing seems to help.”

“Good. Now, for your schedule.... Have you started the detail yet? Is it in the morning, or afternoon?”

“I start Monday. Standard office hours, as far as I know.”

“It’s full time? ...Well. Once you know the hours we can make a schedule, but until then I guess we’ll just have to squeeze you in. For tomorrow....” she pored over her clipboard — “you can report to this gym at 1600.”

As Sousa started back across the hospital, he sent his thoughts running ahead: dinner, and then he could go back to his room and take the prosthetic off for the night. Maybe the shower chair would be ready....

It stung a little, that reminder of just how important having a damn chair in the shower had become to his daily life, and when he reached the hospital lobby, he stepped aside and let himself be distracted a little by the crowd as he took a moment to rest and get his bearings. Groups of patients on their way to dinner; nurses and therapists and aides in white uniforms, and clerks in olive drab; civilian visitors looking like they’d come straight from work, with Gray Ladies rounding up the ones who looked lost....

On his way through the lobby, he stopped by the information desk to pick up a schedule for the bus to Manhattan , and at the Red Cross desk to pick up timetables for the ferry and for the city trains and buses. From there, it was up to the third floor to find his dining room.

It was easier now to get a good look at his new surroundings. The building looked very plain and practical, especially after seven months living in Haddon Hall: no Palm Court here for the bridge club meetings. But there was still a cheerful feeling to the place: comfortable looking furniture for patients and visitors, bulletin boards listing the day’s activities and diversions, patients’ artwork hanging on the walls.

He had to pass through another patient ward to get to his dining room. Hanging outside the door of the first room was the familiar chalkboard of patients’ names: the census board for the ward, he assumed. Back at England, the boards outside patients’ rooms only had two or three names, maybe four or five at the most, and this board must have had twenty.

There was another board like it with another fifteen or twenty names, hanging immediately across the hall by the door to another room. The doors to both rooms were open, and in each room Sousa could see one bed after another with their headboards to the wall, mirrored by more beds against the opposite wall. Another row of beds ran end to end down the middle of the room.

Well, it made sense – these weren’t little hotel rooms pinch-hitting as hospital rooms. He passed a couple of smaller rooms that looked like they had only six or ten patients, the ward desk, and then another two of the big patient rooms before he reached the dining room. He double-checked the room number and went in.

It felt strange to walk into a room full of tables and patients and not know where he was supposed to sit, to not have anyone to look for. A civilian aide pointed him to the table where the other patients from his ward were sitting. He wasn’t the only one who’d arrived that day, and it was easy to steer the conversation away from himself and back to the others: where they’d come from, why they were there, where they were going next; travel stories and Army yarns.... The food itself looked just like it had at England; the only difference was that Halloran served ham and scalloped potatoes on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday, and with prune whip for dessert instead of strawberry gelatin. A few more weeks and he’d know how long it took for the menu to repeat itself.

When dinner was over, he walked with a few of the others back to the ward. He said good-bye to the men who were leaving the next day, checked in at the desk, and went back to his room.

He was pleased to find a shower chair, a stack of folded towels, and all the other things he needed ready and waiting for him. There was also a slim paperback (HANDBOOK — Halloran General Hospital ), a welcome letter from the hospital commandant, and an index card with his new mailing address. He put the book and papers aside and finished unpacking . As he stowed his bag with his civilian clothes away in the closet, he thought again about having to bring them to the office — what a nuisance that was going to be — but he couldn’t see a way around it: the Army didn’t want to see him in his civvies and the SSR didn’t want to see him in his uniform.

He’d manage somehow. For now, it was finally time to doff his prosthetic for the day and start the evening routine.

An hour or so later, Sousa was sitting on the bed in his pajamas and going through some papers when a knock sounded at the half-open inner door. “Come in,” he called.

A nurse entered. “Could it be?” she exclaimed. “The mysterious Captain Sousa?”

"Sorry, wrong room. I’m the not-mysterious Captain Sousa.”

The nurse entered the room. “We weren't expecting more than one. I'd better check your tags.”

When he realized she wasn’t joking, Sousa pulled his tags out from under his pajama shirt. She compared them to a clipboard and handed them back to Sousa. “You’re the mysterious one all right,” she said. “When I went to take report from the day shift, the nurse you were assigned to said ‘Report ? I never even saw him! ’ ”

“Yeah, I didn’t mean to skip out like that but Major Klein wanted me to check in with physical therapy right away.”

“They told us you’d be pretty independent. Did you get what you needed? Settling in all right? How was the trip up from England? I hope this isn’t too much of a let-down after those fancy hotels.”

He glanced about. “This room seems pretty deluxe to me.”

“Don’t get too comfortable. This is an isolation room, so you’ll have to move if we get a patient who needs it.”

She took his temperature and his pulse, and asked to see his leg. She gently pressed on it, assessing the swelling, and looked at the healed scar on the back.

“It looks good,” she said. “You know, since we’re a receiving ward we never get to see these all healed up. We just see the ‘before.’ Maybe you can show us how your prosthetic works so we can tell the new guys about it — another time, of course. Are you all right for now? Do you need anything to help you sleep? No? If you change your mind, let us know.” She poured a fresh glass of water, said good night, and left.

Sousa slowly drew his pajama pants back on as he turned his focus back to his papers. He moved his writing paper and envelopes off to the side — he’d write a note home later, letting them know he’d arrived — and set out the timetables he’d picked up downstairs for the hospital bus, the Staten Island ferry, and the city buses. He unfolded his map and found the location of the Bell Company building. It was time to plan his reconnaissance of New York.

Notes:

Thanks to @keysburg and @cuppatealove for test reading

a big welcome to new readers!

and thanks to you all for reading, for your patience, your kudos, and especially for your precious comments.

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Notes:

First: I honest to goodness didn't mean to be gone so long but Real Life has been throwing some curveballs. (Don't worry, everything's okay.)

In our universe, the Sixth and Ninth Avenue elevated train lines were gone by 1940, but it looks like they hung on longer in the MCU: you can see an elevated train up the street from the SSR building. Angie mentions the Third Avenue El.

The building and grounds that became Halloran General Hospital were intended and built to be a facility for intellectually disabled children, but when construction finished in 1942 the Army took over the building for the hospital. After the war, the Army returned the property to New York State, which opened the Willowbrook State School in 1947. The School later became infamous for its deplorable conditions, and was closed in 1987. The grounds are now the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. I think the original main building is still standing.

P.D.Q. — pretty darn quick

"your John Henry" - your signature. Originates in cowboy slang, apparently

Chapter 59: New York, New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sousa leaned forward in his seat: off to port, the Statue of Liberty was gliding past. He thought of her greeting all those immigrants who'd come through Ellis Island, and now all the soldiers and sailors who were coming in on troop ships and hospital ships from Europe and Africa. What a moment it must have been for them to first see her stepping forward to light their way. 

And now it was his turn, though he was seeing her from a smaller vessel after a much shorter voyage. Around him, a few of his fellow passengers were also taking in the sights: the birds, the boats, the morning sun glittering on the water, the Statue. The rest were preoccupied with knitting and newspapers.

It was Friday morning. Yesterday Sousa had scouted a land approach to Manhattan, taking the hospital bus to Penn Station and then catching a city bus to the SSR building. He’d made it, but if it had been a real workday he would have been late for work.

Today he was testing the water route. He’d taken the hospital bus that morning to the St. George Terminal on Staten Island. Walking through the busy terminal to the waiting area wasn’t fun, but he’d had plenty of practice walking in crowds back in Atlantic City. The ferry itself, though... It was a big boat, but still, it was a boat, and he hadn’t been on a boat since... he couldn’t really remember, it seemed so long ago now — last October, maybe? Definitely not since it happened.

Before he’d had time to dwell on his apprehension, or to distract himself with thinking up a joke about sea legs, boarding for the next ferry was announced, and Sousa had joined the herd of other passengers moving out of the terminal and down the dock. Suddenly he found himself standing at the gate to the ferry deck itself. He mentally checked his stance and stepped across to the deck, leading with his crutches and his right leg.

He felt a subtle, familiar lift under the sole of his left foot. His body automatically shifted to keep his balance in the way it had done back when he had two legs, and he almost stumbled over the prosthetic. When he was secure again, with both feet and both crutch tips on the deck, he headed straight to the first open seat he saw, on a bench on the deck. As he was turning himself around to sit down, the boat bobbed, and he’d almost fallen into his seat. The man in the next seat hadn't even looked up. He’d just slid over to make room for Sousa’s bag and crutches, and turned the page of his newspaper.

Sousa glanced at his watch. This wasn’t as easy as yesterday’s commute, when all he’d had to do was change from a hospital bus to a city bus and then walk a couple of blocks to the Bell Company building. But already it was looking quicker: this time yesterday the bus was still creeping through Jersey City. And it was nice to be out on the water.

The boat left the Lady behind and rounded Governor’s Island. Off to starboard, Sousa caught another glimpse of the Brooklyn waterfront as the boat turned again towards Manhattan. The city grew larger and larger; the other passengers started putting their things away and forming lines by the gates on the foredeck. The boat glided into its place in the slip and bumped up against the dock.

Sousa waited until most of the crowd had gone before he stood up and made his way across the deck to the gate to the ferry slip. He followed the other passengers through the ornate terminal back into the bright August sunshine. There the stream parted: some of the passengers headed for the waiting taxis, some turned down the walk toward the subway station, some toward the terminal for the elevated train. Sousa watched them go, noting the ways to the stations. The El and the subway could both be good options for him to get to work, at least according to the map; the Bell Company building was only a few blocks away from an El station and was right across the street from a subway station. But both stations involved stairs, and he wanted to play it safe today and pace himself. He’d try the El or the subway later. He went to join the group waiting at the bus stop.

His bus came, and enough people let him ahead in line that he was able to get an aisle seat near the front. As the last of the other passengers boarded, he realized that he was the only one on the bus in military uniform.

Before he could decide how he felt about that, the driver closed the door and pulled away from the terminal. Sousa watched out the window with keen attention: a couple of blocks of squat buildings; a quick glimpse of the Statue of Liberty before the bus turned to follow the curve of Battery Park around the tip of Manhattan. A few more blocks north and then the bus started working its way east again. The buildings grew more impressive, or at least their entrances; it was hard to tell how tall they were from inside the bus.

Another turn to the north: Sousa checked his map and started getting ready. When it was time, he extricated himself from his seat and got himself off the bus as quickly as he could. As bus pulled away again, Sousa crossed the street and continued east. As he walked, he recognized a few of the signs and buildings from when he’d been there the day before. He crossed the street at the end of the block: there was the Bell Company building, and — he checked his watch — he’d made it in plenty of time.

And unlike yesterday, he didn’t have to get right back on the bus to Penn Station, because he wasn’t on the schedule for physical therapy or for anything else. He had the whole day to spend as he saw fit.

He decided to start with checking out the Bell building itself. The heavy front doors were open; he pulled one open and got himself around it and into the quiet lobby. 

Unfortunately, there was someone sitting at the front desk. She was deep in conversation with another woman standing at the desk, though, and didn’t even look up. It was really more a monologue than a conversation: the receptionist clearly had a great deal of information to convey, and the tone of her voice and pace of her discourse suggested that it wasn’t information about work. The other woman didn’t seem very interested, and Sousa couldn’t help feeling some amused sympathy. Probably worked in the building, he guessed, and didn’t want to hurt the receptionist’s feelings.  He took a quick glance around the lobby: elevators — a couple of big doors that looked like the main entrances to offices — no directory for him to browse to see who else was in the building. Was that a hallway tucked behind the bank of elevators there? If there was a restroom, maybe he could change clothes there — probably easier than finding a place at the ferry terminal —

The other woman looked up — glasses, red hair — and Sousa recognized her: she was one of the operators he’d seen when he came in for his interview, the one who seemed to be in some kind of authority. With all the secrecy around the office, he decided to play it safe. He kept his face neutral.

“Oh, hello,” she said. She stepped back from the desk.

“May I help you?” added the receptionist. She looked a little surprised as she noticed his crutches, but her smile did not fade.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt —”

“Not at all,” said the red-headed woman. “I was just saying, it’s time for me to get back upstairs.” She smiled blandly, but did not move to leave. Sousa wondered if she remembered him as well.

“Well, I don’t really need anything,” he said. “I have an appointment here, but it’s not till next week, so I just wanted to stop by and make sure I know where I’m going. You know?”

“Oh, sure.” The receptionist looked like she was about to ask a question, and he decided to head her off.

“As long as I’m here... is there a men’s room on this floor?” he added.

“Right around the corner there.” The receptionist nodded toward the back.

“Thanks.  And, ah, what time does the building open? My appointment’s in the morning, so I want to get here early, but not too early....”

He said it in a joking way, and the receptionist tittered along, as he’d hoped she would, but before she could say anything the red-headed woman spoke up. “If you’re wanting to straighten up before your appointment, most of the offices in this building have their own facilities,” she said. “And their staff all get here well before their first appointments of the day. I’m sure someone from the office you’re visiting would be happy to come down and let you in early —even, say... half an hour early. I know I’d be happy to do that for someone who has an appointment at my office.” She gave him another bland smile, as if she hadn’t just offered him a huge favor.

“Good to know. Thanks. One last question, if you don’t mind: any tips on where a guy can go around here to get a good cup of coffee?”

 

They suggested a place around the corner. As he sipped his coffee, he let himself take a minute to reflect on how well the morning had gone before he turned back to his various maps and pamphlets. When he was done, he paid for his coffee and set out to explore the neighborhood. This seemed to be an area of the city that didn’t make it into the movies: no skyscrapers, no swanky department stores, no theaters with blinking lights and enormous marquees; just ordinary people doing ordinary work.

The Bell building was one of several office buildings in the area, including a big federal office building, all of them low- to mid-rise. Then there were all the businesses that served the office workers: coffee shops and diners and luncheonettes and restaurants, delis and drugstores and newsstands, a florist and a couple of barber shops.... He spotted a laundry: that was another thing he’d need, unless he wanted to be washing his civilian shirts in a sink somewhere. Luckily, it opened early, and it wasn’t far from the office.

Without thinking about it, he was also taking in the traffic: which way the streets ran, and where the foot traffic seemed to bunch up and spread out; where the alleys opened and where the buses stopped, where the manhole covers were.  He also looked up: which buildings were the tallest? Which ones had good views of the street? How were the street signs and the utility poles? At one point he found himself reaching for the binoculars he’d left in Belgium eight months ago

He saw a gray roofline topped with a cross, and found the church it sheltered a couple of blocks east. A sign by the front door listed the times for Sunday and daily Masses. This was good to know about — there was a holy day coming up — he looked up and saw a statue of St. Anthony in a niche above the front doors. His parish back home in Taunton was St. Anthony’s, too, and for the first time since he’d arrived in New York he felt a sense of arriving at a place he belonged. He climbed the front steps, stopped in the entry to take off his hat, and went on into the nave. He blessed himself at the font by the door, went over to the very last pew, got himself in and seated, and settled his crutches and his bag.

His mind was too full for anything more than a wordless swell of relief and gratitude. He’d gotten the job. He’d made it to New York. He was going to make the start date. Somehow, everything was coming together.... The image came to him of a little marker on a map table, being picked up and placed in a new position.

He stayed around ten minutes before he got himself back out of the pew, blessed himself again, put on his hat, and went back outside. He took another street back to the area around the office. There was a public library a couple of blocks up the street from the Bell building that had just opened its doors for the day; he spent some time skimming the day’s newspapers from New York, Boston, and Washington. It was a nice change to get something besides Stars and Stripes or a day-old picked-over local paper. One of the New York papers had a list of all the ships expected that day bringing troops home from Europe — almost 3000 soldiers in all — with more ships expected that weekend. Some time to rest and regroup, and then... Japan.

The sports sections of the New York papers held a pleasant surprise: plenty of news about racing, which had resumed only a few months ago. He hadn’t realized there were four tracks in the area. Maybe he could pick up a Racing Form on the way back to the hospital and start catching up.  As he read on, he was amused to notice that a couple of the papers seemed preoccupied with the tracks out on Long Island — including the famous Belmont — while the others were more interested in the two tracks in Queens.  Maybe someday he’d be able to get out there someday.

When Sousa was finished with the newspapers, he looked at his maps again and set back out. This was a more residential neighborhood, mostly rowhouses, with the occasional laundry or grocery or liquor store.  This afternoon had seemed like a good time to take in some of the famous sights of the city — it was Friday, so maybe it would be a little less crowded than over the weekend, and who knew when he’d have time once he started at the SSR? He noticed a diner on the next corner and decided to get some lunch before taking on the tourist part of down.

Bells clattered and jingled as he got himself and his crutches around the front door, and again as he let the door close behind him. He adjusted his crutches, made sure of his stance, and looked up. The hostess at the stand was staring at him and trying not to. He decided to not notice — it was easy, after the successes of the morning — and approached the stand. The hostess welcomed him and offered him a seat; he walked around the stand to follow her and stopped short: someone had started clapping. He looked around as someone else joined in — what was going on? — and then the whole restaurant seemed to be clapping, he couldn’t tell for what — he stood, confused, until he noticed someone at a table making very earnest eye contact. The applause, he realized, was for him.

Maybe they thought he was one of the guys fresh off the troop ship, and they were welcoming him back. He did his best to make a joking little bow, and that seemed to do the job: people smiled back and quit clapping and turned back to their plates.  He was conscious of a few lingering stares as he followed the waitress to his booth, but those were easy enough to ignore, and in a minute or two he was scooting into the booth and pulling his bag and crutches in after himself.

He was about a third of the way through his tuna melt when the bells at the door clattered again and another soldier came into the diner. Staff sergeant, 1^st Infantry; overseas since ‘43 or even ‘42, judging from the service bars on his sleeve. Sousa put down his fork and knife and got ready to clap.

The hostess led the sergeant to a booth at the other end of the diner. None of the other customers so much as looked up.

Sousa watched the soldier sit down and open his menu, and then turned his attention back to his own lunch. He stared at the tuna melt and finally forced himself to pick up his fork and knife again.

He was almost finished when the waitress reappeared. “How was everything?” she asked. “Having dessert today? We’ve still got some lemon meringue pie.”

“No, thank you. Just the check.” He waited as she wrote. Across the restaurant, another waitress was setting a plate in front of the sergeant.

The waitress put his check on the table. “Thanks,” he said. “Say: that soldier who just came in, sitting in that fourth booth over there. He a regular?”

The waitress took a step back to get a better look. “I don’t think so,” she said. “At least, I’ve never seen him before. You know him?”

“No. Just wondering, that’s all.”

The waitress left; he left his payment on the table and got himself back out of the booth. When he got to the front, he caught the hostess’s attention and paid for the other soldier’s lunch. “Just tell him someone wanted to welcome him back,” he explained. The bells on the door clattered as he pushed the door open and left the restaurant.

He kept his mind on his plan: Find the bus stop, wait for the bus, get on the bus, watch the city out the window, get off at the stop closest to Times Square. Find the office for the tour bus company. Buy a ticket. Find a men’s room and tend to his leg.

He still had some time before the tour started, so he went around the corner to get a look at Times Square: the enormous signs stacked one over the other, the gigantic marquees, the news ticker creeping around the narrow skyscraper at one end of the Square, the cars and taxis and buses, and the crowds of people, looking so tiny next to everything else. He stood there for a moment, taking it all in, before he went back to the waiting room for the tour.

When it was time to board, he dropped into one of the front seats and waited as the bus filled up around him. There were a few older couples, and some dolled-up young women in twos or threes, but most of the other passengers were servicemen, soldiers and sailors eagerly introducing themselves to each other and comparing notes on which ships they’d come in on, and where they’d come from, and what outfits they were with, and how long they’d been in town, and how long their passes were, and what they’d done so far and what they wanted to do next. The seat next to him was taken by the last person to board: the tour guide.  She smiled at Sousa and turned toward the back of the bus.

“Who’s ready to see New York?” she called.

The bus erupted in cheers and whoops from the soldiers and sailors, and a few of the civilians getting caught up in the excitement.

The guide grinned. “All right then! Let’s go! Of course we’re starting in the famous Times Square....” She pointed out some of the most notable sights — the Times building, the statue of Father Duffy, 42^nd Street.... As the bus started south, she started asking the civilians where they were from, interrupting herself as needed to point out some place of interest, stopping so they could get off the bus and look up at the Empire State Building. After they’d rounded Penn Station and Grand Central Station, she turned to the servicemen: Where was home? What ships had they come in on?  “Coming up on our left, you’ll see the main branch of the New York Public Library. The lions were first named Astor and Lenox, but after Mayor LaGuardia took office in 1933 he changed their names to Patience and Fortitude....”

She finally got around to Sousa after they’d seen Rockefeller Center. “Massachusetts! And right now?”

He shrugged. “Halloran.”

“Halloran! That’s on Staten Island,” she explained to the others, “a short ferry ride away. It’s the largest hospital in the U.S. Army, completely modern — now, look to your left and you’ll see the famous sculpture of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders, that building’s part of Rockefeller Center, and on your right you’ll see St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of the New York. This is actually the ‘new’ Cathedral, built in the neo-Gothic style and opened in 1879. We’re going to keep going north now. Who remembers what’s up and what’s down in New York City?” She looked expectantly at the passengers.

A few of the civilian girls took their cue. “The Bronx is up, and the Battery’s down!” they sang.

“That’s right! None of you fellas know this?” She pretended to be disappointed in the servicemen. “That’s from On the Town, the hit Leonard Bernstein musical now playing at the Shubert. You won’t want to miss that. We’re heading up on Fifth Avenue, going north towards the Bronx. Let’s turn here: this is the world-famous Stork Club....”

They didn’t get to the Bronx, but they passed Central Park and saw the fancy houses and hotels up Fifth Avenue. They passed through Harlem (“Over there you can see the famous Apollo Theater, so many famous performers, that’s where Ella Fitzgerald got her start....”)

Their itinerary included a stop at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for a short guided tour. The tour guide went first, walking backwards through the nave as she pointed out the most famous works of art; next came the civilian couples, clutching hats and pocketbooks and spouses’ arms. The little groups of civilian ladies were attended by larger groups of the servicemen, every man with his hat under his arm and a look of reverent awe on his face (with an occasional hopeful glance toward the ladies). Sousa himself stayed toward the back. He wasn’t in the mood to be constantly worried about being bumped into from behind, and he wasn’t in the mood to get sucked into any conversations.

Back on the bus, they worked their way down the west side: Columbia University and Barnard College; Grant’s Tomb; a beautiful view of the Hudson River, the George Washington Bridge, and ocean liners — now troop ships — at their docks. Central Park West, more splendid residences, and finally through the theater district to their starting point in Times Square. As the other passengers got off the bus, the tour guide pelted them with last-minute suggestions (last minute Broadway tickets sometimes available, including to On the Town; Toffenetti’s right around the corner, Times Square landmark and a great place to dine, finish in plenty of time for your show.)

Meanwhile, Sousa read through one of this bus schedules. He’d been planning to stay in town the entire length of the workday, but now he just wanted to start back for Halloran: he’d explored enough for one day, and he couldn’t think of anything to do worth hanging around for.  He double-checked his route with the tour guide, found his stop, and caught the bus back to the ferry.

He kept his mind occupied on the bus ride with looking out the windows and following along on his map. When he got to the ferry terminal, he stopped by the newsstand and bought a few postcards and the Racing Form. On the ferry ride, he took in the scenery; on the bus ride he read the Racing Form. Back at the hospital, he changed his clothes and went to dinner. After dinner he hung out in the lounge for a bit, joining a card game or two and listening to the radio. He stopped by the desk to check his mail: today he finally had some, a couple of letters from home. He read them back in his little isolation room, after he’d checked his leg and taken his shower. Then he took out his stationery and the new postcards he’d bought that day to write his replies.

He had plenty of material — the ferry, the bus ride, the buildings — and the words flowed as quickly as he could write.

“Had lunch at a diner....”

He didn’t say anything about the weird clapping; he just wrote about his tuna melt and moved on to describing Times Square. But the memory nagged at him, especially once he’d gone to bed and turned out the light. It was pretty obvious why the people in the diner had clapped for him and ignored the sergeant who’d come in soon after: they weren’t clapping for him at all. They were clapping for his crutches.

 

The next day was Saturday. Sousa skipped breakfast and took the first bus to the ferry. When he reached the Manhattan terminal, though, instead of connecting to a bus, he took the upper platform to the elevated train. The El would get him across the city faster, but it also meant two flights of stairs and a few blocks’ walk. He knew he had to manage his energy, and he wanted to see if the time savings would be worth it.

Even if the El worked out perfectly, Sousa was beginning to suspect that living at Halloran wasn’t going to work in the long term.  He'd need to talk to Klein, though, and if he did he wanted at least the beginning of a plan in hand. Today would be a day of more focused scouting.

He looked out the window of the El. It wasn’t much of a view – just the train tracks, the guard rails, a few billboards, and the top floors of buildings, with only an occasional glimpse of the street.

He got off at the Bleeker Street station and took the two flights of stairs down to the street. He crossed Houston Street and went west until he reached St. Anthony’s. Inside the church, he chose a seat on the main aisle near the back, sat down, and propped up his crutches: he had a plan in mind, but for it to work he might need to draw a little attention to himself.

He was early enough to have some time to look around and admire the interior of the church and get a sense of the other people who were there. Plenty of gray hair – this was promising – and a squad of very old ladies wearing black dresses and, over their white hair, long black lace scarves. Sousa thought of their counterparts at the church back home in Taunton and couldn’t help smiling.

After Mass, Sousa waited as the rest of the congregation began to leave. A couple of kind looks and friendly nods, and then an older man reached out to shake his hand. “Welcome back, son,” he whispered, and jerked his head toward the door. “Come get some coffee with us.”

It was exactly what Sousa had been hoping for. “Us” turned out to be six men ranging in age from older than his father to older than George Washington, and ten minutes later they had Sousa surrounded and sitting at a table in a nearby restaurant. They plied him with strong coffee and Italian pastries as they peppered him with questions: Was he from around here? No? Then where? Did he know so-and-so? How about the thus-and-such family, out on Long Island? How about Carlo’s boy – well, no, I don’t remember which outfit, but he’s in the Army....

They didn’t seem to mind that Sousa didn’t know anybody they were asking about, wasn’t Italian, and wasn’t even from New York. They were clearly hoping for a war story or two, so Sousa told them the story about the goat and a couple of other yarns. They listened raptly and didn’t demand any gory details. Finally they got around to asking him how he ended up here at St. Anthony’s on a warm August morning.

“I’m at Halloran,” Sousa said ruefully, indicating his crutches, “and they’re going to be cutting me loose soon. I might have a lead on a job up this way, so I thought I’d start looking around for a place to live.”

The men had strong opinions on the topic. This neighborhood was the best, of course, though there were some other acceptable options. They looked over the paper Sousa had been reading on the ferry and the ads he’d circled, and told him which ones to pursue and which ones to forget about. They drew maps of the neighborhood in the margins of the paper, with notes on which blocks were noisy and which ones were sunny and which ones had the best shopping and which one had a good place for pizza that wasn’t overrun with students. And they shared gossip about a couple of the big apartment buildings: overpriced, unreliable hot water, notorious landlord.... They finally let him go with an order to be back at church the next Saturday and a promise to call him at Halloran if they heard about any leads.

After the party broke up, Sousa spent some more time exploring the neighborhood, comparing what he saw to what he’d gleaned from the newspaper and to the intel from the men at St. Anthony’s. It was still bigger and denser than Atlantic City or anyplace he’d known growing up, but it wasn’t as overwhelming as some of the rest of the city. There was even the occasional tree. He walked back to the Bell Company building, just to get a sense of how that block looked on a Saturday. Then, after a quick bite to eat, he caught a bus going crosstown.

He spent a few hours just riding around, choosing bus routes that took him places the tour bus hadn’t visited. The Lower East Side was a world in itself: Stores and businesses packed shoulder-to-shoulder, block after block, with their offerings piled on tables on the sidewalk in front of their front windows. The racket of the Third Avenue El and the shadows cast by its tracks. Tall signs, wide signs, signs painted on windows; signs in English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, in languages he didn’t recognize using alphabets he couldn’t read. As the bus crawled along its path, Sousa could see an occasional cross street lined on both sides with pushcarts — and even the occasional horse-drawn cart — peddling fruits and vegetables and candy and hats and probably more, he just couldn’t see.  And every block was as crowded as a summer Saturday on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

The bus took him on across the Bowery to Chinatown and then through Little Italy. He changed buses and went north to Grand Central Terminal, where he poked around a little bit until it was time to catch the Army bus to Brooklyn. He didn’t have any business there; he just wanted to get a look at the Brooklyn Army Base — or at least the bus stop, the vast base itself would take half a day at least to explore — and at Brooklyn itself.  He stayed on the bus for the ride back to Penn Station and then changed buses to go back to Halloran. When he got back, he changed out of his uniform, took it to the laundry, and took himself to the gym to squeeze in some time with the pulley weights while the gym was still open. And he sent a note to Klein requesting a meeting.

He did not go in to Manhattan the next day. It bothered him to stay at Halloran; it was Sunday, his last day before starting the job, and he could have used it for more practice and exploration.  But he also needed to pace himself, so he’d be ready for whatever Monday might bring.

So he went to breakfast; he went to Mass at the Halloran chapel; he did a little work in the gym. He would have like to have gone swimming, but the sign-up sheet for the new pool was full and had a waiting list, and there was no ocean conveniently across the street. There were announcements about a concert and a social and movies, but those were all in the afternoon, and it was still only 1115. He got a cup of coffee at the HX and found a place to sit down. For the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, he had some time on his hands.  It felt odd, especially after the rush of the last few weeks.

It was hard to believe that only a week had gone by since Ines had visited him in Atlantic City.

His thoughts turned towards home. This weekend was the parish festa of the Holy Ghost, the biggest festa of the year; he’d forgotten all about it until Ines reminded him. It was four years now since he’d been to one. Saturday afternoon sitting at a picnic table eating soup and bread and beans and grilled meat... a band setting up on a platform as the evening turned to twilight... dancing — he could watch, at least.... And then the procession on Sunday morning — he checked his watch — probably happening at that very moment.  If it hadn’t been for the job, he might have been able to go. Maybe next year he’d be able to make it.

After lunch he took off his prosthetic and enjoyed the luxury of a long nap in a quiet room that he had all to himself.  Later in the afternoon he went to the library and went through the newspapers, making sure he was caught up on both Europe and the Pacific. Back in his room after supper, he went through his usual evening routine, laid out his uniform for the next day, and packed his civilian clothes and plenty of leg supplies. Pen, wallet, ID card, pass, money…. He checked over his supplies again and reviewed his instructions: 0900, tell the receptionist he was there for Mr. Preston….

And then there was nothing more to do. He’d trained as much as he could; he’d practiced his route; he’d prepared his gear. This was just another mission, and tomorrow would probably be mostly paperwork anyway.

 

He was ready.

Notes:

Many thanks for your patience - real life has been most rude about cutting into my writing time, and then Involution wanted to be written - and for reading, for your kudos, and especially your comments, which I place in gilded frames and hang on the walls of my memory palace.

Thanks to @Cuppa_tea_love and @AnniePlusMacDonald for test reading, and to Annie for some research help.

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For general locations in New York City, I'm letting tumblr user mcumeta be my guide.

The El: By 1945 the 9th and 6th Avenue elevated lines were gone, but we see an El in the background in Agent Carter's first episode as Peggy's walking to work. So apparently it's still in operation in Peggy's MCU.

Daniel's bus tour is based on a real tour pamphlet, and Toffenetti's was a real restaurant in Times Square.

Chapter 60: Agent Sousa

 

 

 

 

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In the mild morning light, Sousa could just see his reflection in the glass of the doors to the New York Bell Company Building. He checked his gig line and the angle of his hat one more time, brushed his uniform coat with the palm of his hand, and pulled open the door. He held the door open with his left foot, got the rest of himself around it, and entered the building.

The receptionist looked up — the same one who'd been there on Friday. Good, that meant less explaining.

She smiled as he approached the desk. “Good morning!”

“Good morning. I have an appointment with Mr. Preston at 9. Is there a place I could...?”

The reception was already nodding. “Your name, please?”

“Daniel Sousa.”

She picked up the phone. “Early arrival for Mr. Preston. Yes. Thank you, I’ll let him know —” and smiled again. “Someone will be here in just a minute.”

“Someone” turned out to be the red-headed operator. “Captain Sousa? Right this way.” She led him around a corner to a smaller elevator and pushed a button, but didn’t say anything until they were in the car and the doors were closed. There were no other passengers.

“You'll take this elevator first.” She pointed to a button and then pressed it. The car started to move. “I had a feeling you were coming to see Mr. Preston today. I’m Rose Roberts.” Her voice and manner were much friendlier now, though still businesslike.

“Daniel Sousa. Though I... guess you knew that already.” He glanced toward her hand, wondering if she’d invite him to shake it.

She looked a little surprised, but extended her hand for him to shake. “Well, I do have the list,” she said with a smile. “You were here a few weeks ago, weren’t you? With Major Tucker and Mr. Bailey?”

“In June. I remember seeing you in the switchboard room.”

She smiled. “That room’s looking a little better these days.” The doors opened, and she led him out.

She wasn’t kidding. The walls were painted, the floors were clean, the switchboards along the wall were all assembled. There must have been eight or nine operators now, each busy at her switchboard with her back to the passageway. Out of the corner of his eye, though, Sousa could tell they were taking quick peeks at him over their shoulders as he followed Miss Roberts down the hall.

She stopped by the last switchboard. “The operator at this station will let you in to our elevator. Miss McGill, this is Agent Sousa. We’ll have more introductions later.”  The elevator doors opened, and Sousa followed Miss Roberts in.

“This is the button for this floor,” she said. “And we’re going here, to the office level.”

The doors opened to the same floor where he’d had the interview. Miss Roberts led him to the bathroom.

“Here you are.” She dropped her voice. “Just in case, I went ahead and pulled your locker assignment.” She handed him a sheet of paper. “I’ll wait here.”

“Thanks a bunch. That’ll come in handy.”

Back in June, the bathroom was a work barely in progress: an internal wall had been knocked out, making an opening to an empty room. The empty room was now a finished locker room. Sousa found his locker, tested the lock, and sat down on a bench to change. Pants, shirt, tie, jacket.... When he was done, he made sure he had what he needed and stowed his bag and his uniform away. He took a quick look in a mirror, smoothed his hair, and gave his shirt a tug.

Presentable, at least. It didn’t occur to him to take a longer look at his new clothes. He washed and dried his hands, gripped his crutches, and went back out to the hall.

She didn’t say anything about his new look, but seemed pleased. “All ready? Then let’s go to the office.”

She led him back down the hall and into a large, open office. The first thing he saw was the SSR eagle, open wings spanning a good four feet, centered on the back wall between two sets of tall windows. Around twenty desks were arranged in columns running from the back wall to the front of the office. There were a few doors on the right wall of the room and a bank of file cabinets on the left.  On the other side of the file cabinets, another row of windows ran to the back of the room, looking into another office. A row of clocks hung along the top of the left wall, each set to a different time: Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, London....

A few men were already at work, scattered at the various desks. They looked up as Miss Roberts showed Sousa across the front of the office to the doors on the left wall to the side office. It was a meeting room, furnished with a single long table. At one end of the room, a current map of Europe and a large photo of President Truman hung on either side of a pull-down map of the United States. The other end of the room had windows looking out to the street. A movie projector on a cart was tucked into a corner.

“Have a seat,” she said. “I’ll be up soon with the others.”

“Any particular place?”

“Any place but the end. The Acting Chief likes to stand there.”

Miss Roberts left, and Sousa made his way around the table. As he pulled out a chair, a couple of the men in the office appeared at the door.

“You one of the new guys?” said one of them, and came in. “Butch Wallace.”

“Daniel Sousa.” Sousa leaned across the table to shake hands, first with Wallace and then with Andrew Yauch and Mike Li. He pretended not to notice the curious glances at his crutches as he sat back down and put them on the floor. He had decided to say no more than was necessary about his situation, and to not offer information. He didn’t want to look like he was fishing for special attention.

“Welcome aboard,” said Li. “So where are you from?”

They made small talk for a few minutes. Li was from New York City, Wallace from Pennsylvania, Yauch from Buffalo; all sure glad to see Sousa and the other fellows starting today, only nine New York agents at the moment, a few guys from Washington up to help....

“They’re all pretty clear that they want to go back to Washington,” said Wallace.

Li took a quick look back over his shoulder, as if making sure someone wasn’t there. “Except the Acting Chief,” he said quietly. “He seems to want to stay on as Chief. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”

“I heard we’re going to get our real Chief this week,” added Yauch.

Miss Roberts appeared at the door. “Good morning. Right this way....” Wallace, Li, and Yauch stepped out of the way as three more men entered the room.

“How many new guys are we getting today?” asked Li.

"Six in all,” said Miss Roberts. A few minutes later she was back with the last two.

The introductions and handshakes started up again. The other new men were Comden, Fisher, Hass, Ramirez, and Wyckoff. Other agents who were coming in to start their workday — Brogan, Mayer, Varano — came straight to the conference room to greet the newcomers and introduce themselves. “Is the A.C. here yet?” one of them asked.

“Since 0500,” said Wallace. “Holed up in his office the whole time. The A.C. is the Acting Chief,” he explained to the new men. “A.C. Kerr.”

“Speak of the devil....” muttered Brogan.

Another man appeared at the conference room door. He wore a light gray suit, a green tie, and a sour expression. “All right, let’s get this show on the road. Briefing later this morning.” He made his way in and toward the top end of the table as the other agents edged around him to the door. When they were gone, Miss Roberts came in and handed him a stack of file folders. “Thanks,” he said. “Close the blinds on your way out, will you?”

He turned to the group. “Welcome to the Strategic Scientific Reserve,” he said. “I’m Douglas Kerr, the Acting Chief of the New York office. I’ll have more to say about that later. We’ve got a lot to do today.” He looked expectantly at the man on his left. “Your name...?”

“Jay Fisher.”

Sousa was next. “Daniel Sousa.”

As they introduced themselves, Kerr checked their names against a paper.  When they were done, he turned to the pull-down map hanging behind him, gave it a tug, and rolled it up to reveal a standing chalkboard with writing on it. The title read Oath of Office. “Read this.”

“Now: if you’re ready to accept this charge, stand up and raise your right hand.”

Chairs scraped as the six men stood up. Sousa rested his left hand on the table to steady himself as he raised his right hand.  In unison with the others, he said the oath:

“I, Daniel Sousa, solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; to bear true faith and allegiance to the same; to take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and to well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

“Congratulations. You are now Agents of the Strategic Scientific Reserve,” said Kerr. “First thing to do is take care of your badges. This way.”

He walked out of the briefing room and waited at the door of the office for them to catch up with him — most of them, anyway; Hass was still approaching the door and Sousa was still rounding the front corner desk when Kerr turned into the hall.  By the time Sousa got out of the office, the rest of the group were standing halfway down the hall.

“We’ll have a more complete tour later,” said Kerr, “but this —" he waved— "is where the interrogation and evidence rooms are. The infirmary’s this way, too, in Room 10.” He knocked on a door and opened it. “You ready?” he asked someone inside.  “Okay.”

He turned back to the men in the hall. “Go in there and get your picture taken for your badge, and then come back to the briefing room when you’re done. Agent Comden, you’re first.” Kerr went back down the hall, leaving Comden to go and get his picture taken and the others to look at each other.

When it was Sousa’s turn, he was greeted by a man in a white coat: Quinn, worked in the lab downstairs, would see it on the tour later that day — look over this form, everything look right? name spelled correctly? — sit on that stool, look here and hold still — one... two... three.... a flash, and now one more: one… two… three… another flash, and that should do it, badge ready later that day.

Back in the conference room, someone had brought in a pot of coffee. Sousa poured himself a cup and slid it over to his spot before sitting down. When the new agents had all returned, Kerr talked a bit about schedules: agents took turns on the evening shift and the night shift, usually a day or two to recover after a stretch of nights, core hours during the day but would need flexibility depending on the demands of cases; vacation time; calling in sick; completing and submitting timesheets; expense reports. Next he passed out file folders, one for each man, labeled with his name.

“Start filling out the forms in your folder.  Your locker assignment’s in there – you can pull that out and keep it with you. Meanwhile, you’ll get your intake medical exam and interview. Agent Comden, go on down to room 10. Agent Wyckoff?  You’re with me. Bring your folder. The rest of you get started. All-hands briefing at 10:45, in here.”

Sousa opened his folder and leafed through the sheets of paper. Personal information, tax and salary forms.... He flipped back to the first one and got started. Address, Halloran General Hospital; Home Telephone Number.... He considered for a moment and wrote Halloran General Hospital again; probably the safest, since he could be kicked into a new room or even a new ward at any time. Marital Status, Single; Dependents, none; Next of kin, Francisco M. Sousa, Taunton, Massachusetts....

The door to the briefing room opened, and Quinn came in, pushing a kind of wheeled desk. “I’m here for fingerprints,” he announced. “Might want to roll up your sleeves.” They watched, curious, as he set up his equipment. He had just started taking Fisher’s prints when Wyckoff returned.

“Sousa? You’re up,” said Wyckoff. “He says bring your folder.”

As Sousa stood up, he thought about leaving one of his crutches in the conference room, pictured someone tripping over it, and decided to just take them both. He pinched his folder between his knuckles and crossed the bullpen to Kerr’s office.

Kerr raised an eyebrow when Sousa handed him the folder, but didn’t say anything. He flipped through a different file as Sousa closed the door and lowered himself into a chair.

“Daniel Sousa,” Kerr read. “Hm. Any relation to John Philip Sousa?”

“Not the famous one,” said Sousa.

Kerr didn’t really seem to be listening. “Our detail man,” he mused. “Wasn’t sure whether to even swear you in or not, since you’re just on loan, but I figured you’ll be doing at least some Agent’s duties, so you might as well take the oath. You really lost a leg?”

Sousa stopped himself from saying something about the report he’d filed with the lost-and-found: he was feeling uncertain about Kerr’s sense of humor, or the existence of it. “Part of it,” he said.

Kerr was already looking at Sousa’s folder. “And you're really living at Halloran.  So if we need to call you in when you’re off duty, we call the hospital and hope they can find you and give you the message. How are you getting here, anyway? Can you drive?”

“I can drive. Today I took the ferry —”

“— Though even if you could drive, you’d have to find a car somehow and get the Army to let you keep it at Halloran,” groused Kerr. “This arrangement is crazy. But here you are, and God knows this office needs all the help it can get. Your, ah... handicap... that wouldn’t prevent you from taking an off shift, would it?”

“No.”

Kerr asked a couple of token questions about Sousa’s experience with Hydra tech and interrogation, but before Sousa could volunteer any information about his marksmanship and his rehabilitation, Kerr dismissed him. “Send Ramirez in next. Tell him to bring his folder.”

 

Back in the conference room, there was another item of paperwork: a menu from a local deli. Sousa added his order to the lunch order list, put his money in the envelope, and worked on the papers in his folder until Quinn called him for fingerprinting. Sousa made his way around the table to the desk, made sure of his stance, slipped off his right crutch, and propped it against the desk. Following Quinn’s instructions, he held up his right hand and looked away from the fingerprint card to the map on the wall.

Quinn inked the tip of Sousa’s index finger and rolled it neatly on the card, side to side, to make the print. He inked and printed the next three fingers, one after the other, and then pressed all four fingers flat to the card at the same time.  “…Okay, hold your right hand there and don’t touch anything. Left hand.”

Sousa started to lift his left arm out of his crutch, and Quinn suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Oh. Will you — uh — be okay?”

“Sure,” said Sousa. He propped his crutch and held out his left hand.

Quinn started to ink Sousa's index finger. “So what happened?”

“The usual: just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Quinn nodded, as if in knowing commiseration, and got back to the fingerprinting. When he was done with Sousa’s left fingers, he inked and printed each thumb, rolling it side to side and then pressing it flat on the card. When the prints were done, Sousa cleaned the ink off his hands, signed and dated the card, thanked Quinn, threaded his arms back into his crutches, and went back to his seat.

After that there wasn’t much to do but help try to keep a conversation going until it was his turn to go down the hall to the infirmary. The door to Room 10 was open; an Army doctor — a captain — waited inside.

“Sousa? Go ahead and strip to your shorts, and then hop on the table,” said the doctor.

Sousa glanced around the room. “All right if I use that chair there?”

“What? Yeah,” said the doctor absently. He opened a folder. “Oh. Sousa. You're the one at Halloran, aren’t you. I guess you’re wearing your prosthetic. That’ll need to come off too.”

As Sousa unbuttoned his shirt, the doctor read in the folder with what looked like genuine interest, and then started to ask about Sousa’s medical history: General state of health? Illnesses as a child — measles, mumps, scarlet fever? Any asthma? How about in the family?

When Sousa had finished undressing, he grabbed his crutches and went over to sit on the table. The doctor started the exam, asking more questions as he went: Glasses? Hearing problems? Teeth all there? Any fillings? Which ones? This scar on your arm, where did that come from? 

“Lie down on your back,” he instructed Sousa. He patted his pocket, put down the folder, and went over to a drawer to get something.

Meanwhile, Sousa got himself all the way on the table. As he lay down, he noticed the folder lying open on a table. He’d snuck peeks at his medical record before — page after page of writing, with an occasional word he recognized — but this was different: it was a line drawing of a naked man, front and back. The doctor was adding in notes (“no missing teeth; no tattoos”) and a little drawing of the scar on his arm. It was unnerving, seeing himself translated onto a blank-eyed diagram that looked nothing like him.

The doctor came back and listened to and poked at Sousa’s abdomen. “Any trouble with hernias? No? All right, go ahead and turn on your stomach.”

Sousa turned over and waited as the exam continued. He could just see the doctor making some quick notes on the diagram: the scars from the splinter wound on his left leg, probably.

“The notes from Thomas England said your leg was amputated on December 20th?” said the doctor.

“Yeah.”

“Not even eight months ago.”

Sousa felt the doctor poking at his right hipbone; he pushed himself up a little and looked to see what was going on.

“Just measuring,” said the doctor. "That knob right there is your greater trochanter, it’s part of your femur.”

Sousa felt the doctor hold something against his hip and then touch something to the bottom of his right leg. When the doctor was finished, he walked over to the chart; Sousa turned and saw him folding a tape measure.

“You can get dressed now,” said the doctor. As Sousa sat up, he stole another look at the chart. The doctor was drawing a line across the middle of the figure’s right thigh. AMPUTATION, he labeled it, and wrote in the measurement. He started drawing the surgical scar on the back view of the figure. Sousa watched for a moment and then sat the rest of the way up and reached for his crutches.

He sat back down in the other chair and started to don his prosthetic. A few minutes later, the doctor perched nearby and started to make friendly small talk: How long had Sousa been at Halloran? What did he think? Had he come in through Mitchel when he was evacuated? What was it like at Thomas England? 

It was a comfortable conversation – shooting the breeze with a fellow officer from the old, familiar world.

“Does it feel strange being back in civvies again?” the doctor asked.

“Yeah. Especially since I’m still in the Army.” Sousa finished his tie and shrugged on his jacket. He pulled himself up with his crutches; the doctor stood up as well, and watched as Sousa threaded his arms through the cuffs of his crutches.

"Do the others know? The other agents?” asked the doctor.

“I don’t know,” said Sousa. “If they do, it’s not because I told them.”

The doctor nodded. “Well, good luck to you.”

“Thanks.”

The doctor opened the door for Sousa. Wyckoff was waiting outside; he looked at his watch and stepped back a little to let Sousa pass.

“You’re the last one, aren’t you?” the doctor asked Wyckoff. “Relax, you’ll be done in time for that meeting.” He let Wyckoff in and closed the door, and Sousa started back down the hall toward the office.

 

At 10:45, the quiet in the briefing room was shattered by a klaxon. The new agents looked up, startled; the more senior agents started to arrive, in ones and twos, taking the rest of the seats at the table and then standing around the walls of the room. Kerr made his way to the head of the table and had someone pass the telephone to where he could reach it. The last ones to arrive were Quinn and two other men in white coats.

“Good morning, gentlemen.  First order of business: we have six new agents starting today for the New York office.” He quickly named them. “Introduce yourselves and show ‘em the ropes.

“Now, old business. No news yet on the permanent Chief of the New York office. Operation Hercules: no new developments to report. Still waiting on word on when to expect the next shipment.

“Project Sandlock: There’s four troop ships coming in today. One team goes to Camp Shanks today, you can leave right after the briefing today. Five teams tomorrow, one to Shanks and one to Kilmer. The rosters have been posted.

“Project Clipper: Agent Edwards, what’s the status?”

Nobody bothered to tell the new agents about what Project Clipper was, but from the report Sousa guessed it involved transporting important and dangerous objects — Hydra gadgetry, maybe?

There were a couple of other status reports from other agents. At 10:58 the telephone rang; Kerr grabbed the receiver. “Yeah? He did? Okay.” He hung up again and picked up a file folder from the table.

“We have a special statement from the President,” he said. “The Secretary of War has just released it to the public.” He opened the folder, took out a sheet of paper, and began to read:

“Sixteen hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. ....

“It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power....”

Atomic: it felt like something from a vague, far-off future had turned up early. Sousa had read up, or tried to, on the science of the atom, back in Atlantic City. He knew the discoveries had been coming quickly before the war, but it had all seemed very abstract to him. Turning one kind of uranium into another kind of uranium, for example: interesting for its own sake, and a good party trick to impress the other scientists. The book had said energy was released in the process, and had talked about the possibility of capturing that energy someday. He had not even imagined that “someday” could mean “later this year” and “that energy” would equal more than 20,000 pounds of TNT.

Kerr kept reading: achievement of scientific brains... the knowledge of many men in many fields brought together.... Three plants where the workers didn’t even know what they were working on.... “...further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction.... a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace.”

Kerr went on to read another statement from the Secretary of War.

“So now it’s public knowledge,” he said, after he'd finished reading. “This project was more than any one agency could have attempted. The SSR had its part to play; it was revealed this morning that some of our scientists who were detailed to the Army Corps of Engineers were working on this project. And there’s no doubt that we’ll be dealing with this technology in the future.

“I’ve asked Mr Doobin to tell us more about the science behind this new weapon.”

Mr. Doobin turned out to be a member of the white coat squad. When he got to the head of the table, he turned the chalkboard over to its empty side.  “Let’s start with a review of the structure of the atom....”

 

Kerr adjourned the meeting as soon as Doobin had finished, which was just fine with Sousa: he was hungry, his brain was swimming with elements and isotopes and neutrons, and he was getting fed up with a couple of the senior agents who were dragging out the meeting asking what they thought were intelligent-sounding questions. A few minutes later, Yauch stopped by the briefing room with the lunch orders. He and a couple of the other senior New York agents stayed in the briefing room to eat lunch with the new guys.

The conversation over lunch was dominated by the morning’s news: what would 20,000 tons of TNT even look like? And would it be enough to convince Japan to surrender? When he’d finished his sandwich, Sousa watched for a promising moment and quietly retreated to the locker room. It was empty, as he’d hoped. He checked his leg and changed his stump sock, donned his prosthetic again, and went back to the briefing room. Nobody looked at him twice as he took his seat again and rejoined the conversation.

After lunch, Kerr collected the new agents from the briefing room and took them for a tour. They started with the bullpen itself: files, coffee maker, pneumatic tube station. From there he led them around the floor: the locker room, the file room, the evidence room; the interrogation rooms with their one-way mirrors; the lock-up; the infirmary.

They walked around the hall to the entrance to the lab. Doobin met them and showed them around, pointing with pride to some of the equipment: the new hood, the new microscopes, the new darkroom, the new spectrophotometer. Sousa tried to spell the word in his mind so he would remember it.

“A spectrophotometer,” repeated Kerr. “Whatever the hell that is. I told him to name it Betty, after the secretary we could’ve hired for what that thing cost.” Doobin managed a sort of smile.

When they had seen the lab, Kerr took them on the elevator down to the switchboard room. “Remember, these girls aren’t secretaries,” he said. “They stay at the switchboard. In addition to our calls, sometimes they help handle switchboard traffic to and from the federal building.”

“You may be wondering why an office just opening up is expected to share some of its limited resources with a large, established group of offices down the block, most of which are under a completely different Department,” Kerr continued. “Apparently rerouting calls to keep the traffic moving happens all the time with the main phone company, or so I’m told. And when you help someone, doesn't it often end up helping you as well?”

Work in the switchboard room paused for a minute as Kerr brought the agents out and introduced them to the operators. The ladies all looked friendly and greeted them warmly, but Sousa could the quick, furtive glances they were exchanging, and he knew that he and the other six agents would be the main topic of conversation for the rest of the afternoon. He resisted the urge to stand up a little straighter and tug on his jacket: it would only make things worse.

Kerr knocked on a door leading off the switchboard room and opened it. “Mike! The new guys are here.” He stood back to let the new agents crowd into the little office. A shortish man in his shirtsleeves sitting behind a desk jumped to his feet and switched off his radio.

“Gentlemen, this is Mike Higgins. He keeps the heat on and the water flowing and makes sure the cleaning ladies get here. And he’s also in charge of the staff cars.” He introduced the new agents. “Let's do the garage first,” he said to Mike. “Then back up for the desks.”

“You got it,” said Mike. He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocked and unclipped a ring of keys from his belt. “First up: this'll get you into the SSR elevator from the garage level. It also opens the front door after hours.” He consulted his list, squinted at the keys, and selected the one he was looking for. “Agent Comden?”

After he’d given each agent his assigned key, Mike herded them out of his office and back onto the SSR elevator, pointing out the emergency staircase on the way. Once they were aboard, he showed them the button for the garage level.

 “We have five staff cars — three of ‘em are out right now,” said Mike. “I keep the keys during the day. You need a car, you just come to me and I’ll set you right up.”

“At night, the agent in charge can get the keys,” added Kerr.

The elevator stopped and they exited into the cool garage. Sousa was a little surprised at how few cars it held.

Mike led them over to two cars parked by themselves. They looked like ordinary cars — except for the window decal exempting them from the gas ration.

“Now, watch this!” Mike opened the door to one of the cars, reached into the glove compartment, and brought out a black box a little smaller than a walkie-talkie unit.

“There’s a code for this, we change it every so often. Turn these switches like so —” he demonstrated — “press this button, and —”

Across the garage, a door rolled up, revealing the alley outside. Mike grinned. When he was satisfied that the agents were properly impressed, he showed them how to press the button to close the door again. He showed them the parking spots for the three cars that were out.

“The rest of the spots are all ours to use. If we ever run out you can always park at the federal building. Just show ‘em your badge.” As Mike led them back to the elevator, they passed the empty spot marked CHIEF.

Back up on the office floor, Mike unhooked the ring of keys at his belt and took a piece of paper out of his pocket. “So I’ve assigned everyone a desk and I’ve got your keys here. One’s for your desk and one’s for the front door on the right. Agent Comden? You’re in desk two....” He handed Comden a key and pointed out where desk fifteen was.

“Mike's the only one who knows the desk numbers,” said Kerr. “The rest of us'll just be calling it Comden’s desk from now on. Go ahead and test your keys while Mike’s up here, and then meet me back in the briefing room.”

Mike kept going down the list and passing out keys. “Agent Sousa: lucky seven!” He handed Sousa a key and pointed to the desk.

The desk was halfway down the center aisle.  There was a side chair on its aisle end — for someone who wanted to come and talk to him, he supposed. His desk chair was on wheels — he’d have to be careful with that — and had a swivel. He propped his crutches, took the arms of the chair, and carefully lowered himself down.

So this would be his spot. He took a quick look around. The desk wasn’t convenient to the coffee pot, but he had a good view of the front door and of the clocks on the side wall. There was a column on the left between his desk and the guy on the other side. He liked it, it gave a sense of privacy.

He unlocked the desk and checked the desk drawers. Someone had stocked him up: a bottle of ink, a couple of pencils, an eraser, a magnifying glass, empty file folders ready for use. He closed the drawers, locked the desk, and tested the drawers again. Satisfied, he pocketed the key, carefully stood up again, and headed off to the briefing room.

Everyone looked up as he came in, and he realized he was the last one to enter. He grabbed the first seat he could find.

Kerr was standing at the head of the table, in front of a pull-down screen.  He waited for Sousa to get settled before he began to speak. “Now that the boring stuff’s taken care of, it’s time to start your training. Sorry, no popcorn.” He nodded toward Hass, who was standing at the foot of the table next to a film projector.  Hass flipped a switch, Kerr turned out the lights, and the film’s leader lit the screen: the scribble, the 3... 2... 1... the title card warning that the content of the film you are about to see is CLASSIFIED.

Sousa had seen dozens of these kinds of films in the Army, so this was almost comforting in its familiarity: the rousing music, the emblem... “OFFICIAL TRAINING FILM, WAR DEPARTMENT”.... “STRATEGIC SCIENTIFIC RESERVE” over the SSR eagle, with small print at the bottom: “WITH THE COOPERATION OF THE ARMY SERVICE FORCES SIGNAL CORPS, MCMXLV”....

And then the main title: “THE STRATEGIC SCIENTIFIC RESERVE”

The film started with a clip of the Secretary of War, seated behind a desk. “I am pleased to welcome you to the S. S. R.: the Strategic... Scientific... Reserve. The SSR is a unique organization.  Unlike the Army, the Navy, and the Marines, it is a civilian organization. But like the uniformed services, it is under the direction of the War Department, and it stands as a defense against those who would endanger our nation and our nation’s friends. In these films you will learn more about the SSR: its history, its mission, and where you’ll fit in. You’ll learn about how the SSR cooperates with military, law enforcement, and civilian agencies. And you’ll learn the special skills you’ll need to safely and effectively carry out this important work.”

A different announcer took over, narrating over a series of stills: Seeds of the SSR planted in 1939, when farsighted scientists warned the British and U.S. governments about the danger of Hydra... British operatives carrying out daring missions to extract imprisoned scientists... British and U.S. collaboration... officially formed in 1940... top civilian scientists, engineers, and executives....  The camera slowly zoomed in on a group photo. Some of the men were in white lab coats, a few of them were in uniform; the rest were in coat and tie. Howard Stark was standing in the middle of the group — made sense he’d be involved — and there in the back was John Bailey, who’d interviewed him for the SSR back in June.

First dedicated SSR project lab built in 1942 for an audacious top secret project... Role of the SSR expanded in 1943, with specially trained SSR operatives and soldiers detailed to the SSR bringing the fight to Hydra... capturing and studying enemy technology, especially Hydra technology....

“For now, the war continues against Hydra and against the Axis powers, and the SSR is continuing the fight! And soon, by advanced research and brave action, the scientists and agents of the SSR will be helping to secure the peace, ensuring that the mighty instruments of science and technology are used no longer for the oppression of man.... but for his service.”

The music swelled, the end card appeared, and Hass turned off the projector. Kerr returned to the head of the table.

“This was made before V-E Day, obviously,” he said. “It’s important to remember that Hydra split itself off from the Nazis in ‘43 and became an independent belligerent. A few weeks before V-E Day, the SSR achieved a major victory in the fight against Hydra. We still have troops over there mopping up.”

Sousa raised his hand. “You mentioned that the British were involved with the beginning of the SSR; are they still?”

“Mostly in collaboration, though we do have some of His Majesty's soldiers and agents on detail.”

“What about the Soviets?” asked Ramirez.

“Not involved. We’ll cover that in the next movie. Going back to the film, that lab they mentioned? It's right there in Brooklyn. We still own it, though we don’t have anything going on over there right now. Some of the New York staff you’ll meet started out at the Brooklyn facility.

“And something the film didn’t mention. The officer known as Captain America?” Kerr almost smiled. “SSR.”

It was an afternoon of movies. The next feature was “Know Your Enemy: Hydra,” which was more up to date and had more detail than the Army version Sousa had watched in ‘42. When it was over, Kerr added that the Soviets had been... less than forthcoming about whether or not they’d come across any Hydra bases as they’d pushed west, and had turned down the assistance of the SSR.

After that came “Keep It to Yourself!: Handling Classified Documents and Other Information.” That one was longer, and Kerr had more to add afterwards about clear desks and establishing good habits from the beginning.

“You don’t have to be paranoid, of course. But in this line of work, you can’t always share everything you know, even with your fellow agents. Or with the scientists,” he added. “And they can’t always share everything with you. It’s like having a pet rabbit or something. The more often you take it out of its hutch for show-and-tell, the more likely it is to escape and run off.”

Kerr let them take a short break; Sousa was glad for the chance to get up and stretch, though he didn’t have enough time to check his leg. A couple of agents who’d arrived for the evening shift took advantage of the break to come and introduce themselves.

After the break, they watched a film about some of the different kinds of records used at the SSR, and which ones needed to be completed by filling in circles with a special pencil, and which ones needed to be completed in special ink, and which ones could be completed using ordinary ink, and which ones ought to be typed. There was a long segment on the importance of writing clearly and legibly, and forming letters and numbers properly to avoid confusion, and on filing reports correctly.

The last film of the afternoon was “An Introduction to Questioning and Interrogation.” Nothing about clever tricks; just memory, tact, patience, and knowledge. When the movie was over, Kerr promised that they’d be working with specialized instructors.

“You’ll also be observing,” he said. “Starting tomorrow. You'll go out with the teams for Project Sandlock.” Sandlock, he explained, was about catching debarking soldiers who’d encountered Hydra and might have some intel to be gleaned — or Hydra souvenirs to be safely confiscated.

“So get here by 0700,” Kerr concluded, “and we’ll assign you to a team.” 

Kerr finally declared the first day over and went straight back to his office. The main office had emptied somewhat; four or five agents were still bent over their desks, and another three or four were waiting for the new agents, to invite them out for drinks.

Sousa didn’t like having to beg off, but at least he wasn’t the only one. He went over to his desk and looked busy until everyone who was leaving was actually on the elevator. Once they were gone, he quietly went to the locker room and changed back into his uniform. He was able to get back on the elevator without being noticed by anyone in the office.

As he expected, he was not able to make it through the switchboard room without being noticed. There were only three operators at work now, and none of them was Miss Roberts, but they still recognized him, introduced themselves, and hoped he’d had a good first day.

Down the elevator, out the door; he gauged his energy and decided to go ahead and walk to the El. Up the two flights of stairs; wait on the platform for the train; rattle across New York City, looking at the backsides of buildings, until he caught the glitter of the sun on the Hudson River that meant they were passing over Battery Park. Off the El; walk across the platform to where it connected with the ferry terminal. Wait twenty minutes; board the ferry without getting shoved over; find a seat. Around him, the other passengers’ evening newspapers bore blaring headlines about the atomic bomb.

The horn sounded; the ferry pulled away from the slip. Sousa let himself just watch the water for a while as it rippled behind the ferry.

The day hadn’t gone too badly, he thought. A lot of paperwork and practical details, just like any other first day. Kerr seemed like a bit of a sourpuss, but he also hadn’t sent him packing. And then there was Project Sandlock the next day — only his second day on the job and he’d be out with the project team….

Sousa smiled a little. Mike Sandlock was catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers that year, his first year playing catcher and his first year playing for Brooklyn. A new job with a new team in a new city, and he was having a solid year. It was encouraging.

But 0700.... How was he going to get there that early? The ferry and the El would be running, and if he made the 0600 ferry, he’d be fine. It was just getting from the hospital to the ferry that was the problem. He was pretty sure that the bus ran early enough, but if it didn’t, he’d need to make another plan, which meant he needed to get back to Halloran before the offices he might need closed before the evening. That was why he hadn’t gone for drinks with the other agents.

That was an important part of the job, though; he needed to be able to accept those invitations, at least some of the time. And then there was the question of their being able to reach him at Halloran, and working off shifts, and being able to get to the office in a hurry — it wasn’t like he could just hear a bugle call, jump into his uniform, and run across post. And then there was the nuisance of changing in and out of uniform….

No, today had made it clear: he had to find new quarters, ASAP. He’d write a memo to Klein requesting permission to move out of the hospital: he’d write it that very evening. Klein was sure to sign off on it right away: it would a lot less trouble for the hospital and it would free up a bed.

Besides, he wasn’t a full-time patient any more: the Army itself had said so by detailing him to the SSR. He’d accepted the mission, he’d taken the oath.

He was an Agent now. And since he was an Agent, he was going to live like one. 

Notes:

Thanks to @AnniePlusMacDonald and @Cuppa_tea_love for test reading

Thank you for reading and sticking with it, for your kudos, and especially for your comments, which I pull out from my desk drawer and gaze at for encouragement and inspiration.

---

Truman’s complete statement was first issued in print. It had been prewritten, needing only a few details to complete before being issued. Truman himself was at sea when the news broke, coming back to the U.S. by ship from the Potsdam Conference. Later, he read the statement for the media.

 

Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s statement:

 

I first wrote about the SSR staff cars and Mike the Key Man in my short fic Parallels

The “special pencil” - IBM began selling the 805 Test Scoring Machine in 1938

Chapter 61: The Art of Questioning

 

 

 

---

 

The next morning, Sousa caught the 0500 bus to the ferry terminal. He was able to catch the 0530 ferry, and by 0610 he was on the El. At 0640 he was letting himself into the Bell Company building, at 0648 he was hurriedly changing into his civilian clothes, and at 0659 he was joining the other agents in the office. Most of them were standing around drinking coffee. He joined the clump standing nearest his desk. “'Morning,” he said. “So... what’s the dope?”

“ ‘Morning," said Wyckoff. “I guess we’re just waiting for the team assignments.”

“Yeah, Kerr’s making some last minute changes. You one of the new men too?” asked one of the other agents. There was another round of introductions, and then the conversation turned back to baseball.

Kerr emerged from his office, followed by Doobin, another agent, and Mike the Key Man. “Twelve thousand men and more later this week,” announced Kerr. “The lab boys are packed and ready, so let’s get this show on the road.

“Team One? You're going to Shanks. Mr. Doobin and Agent Gale are lead.” He started calling off names, finishing with Comden, Fisher, and Hass from the cohort of new agents.

“Team Two: You’re going to Kilmer first and then to Shanks if time allows. Agent Slater and Mr. Quinn are lead....” Another list of names, finishing with Ramirez and Wyckoff. They looked quizzically at Sousa but didn’t say anything. Sousa shrugged his shoulders.

“Meet down in the garage in ten minutes!” called one of the agents. The room began to bustle as agents went to their desks to make phone calls and get ready to leave.  Someone started to brief the new agents — bring a spare pen, sunglasses if you have ‘em; call the wife, tell her you might be late getting home tonight....

Sousa made his way as quickly as he could around the desks to Kerr’s office and knocked on the half-open door.

“Come in,” said Kerr. He finished writing something and looked up. “Agent Sousa!” He looked surprised.

“Good morning, sir. You said yesterday that us new guys were going to be going along with the teams for Project Sandlock...”

“Yes....”

“...but just now you didn’t mention which group I was assigned to.”

"...Oh." For a moment, Kerr looked almost confused. "Well, that’s because I hadn’t assigned you to a team today. I had no idea you’d be able to get here by 0700.” He almost sounded as if he were blaming Sousa for surprising him. “I wasn’t expecting you until nine. Besides, there’s not enough room in the cars for all six of you to go. You’ll go with the next team. And there’s plenty  to do here; someone’s got to mind the store, right?

“I was going to put you with the Project Clipper team, but there’s no sense having you just twiddle your thumbs until they get here. You can start off with the guys on the day shift.”

Kerr led Sousa back out through the almost empty bullpen to the briefing room. The table was covered with newspapers. “Brown? Wallace? Sousa here’s with the group that started yesterday. He’s going to be on Clipper today, but until that team gets in, why don’t you go ahead and show him the ropes.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Brown. “I’m one of the loaners from the Washington office.” He glanced over to make sure Kerr was going back into his office. “Last minute assignment from the A.C., huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, your timing’s perfect. The manual says when you’re on duty you don’t leave your partner by himself in the office, but now that you’re here, I can go to the bakery. Want anything?”

Sousa was a little surprised at how casually Brown was talking about leaving the office, and how Wallace wasn’t even blinking at the idea, but he wasn’t going to squawk — he hadn’t had breakfast. “That’d be great, thanks. How much...?”

Brown scoffed, but accepted a nickel from Sousa and a nickel from Wallace. “Wallace knows everything about the day shift now, he can tell you everything you need to know. Back in a jiffy.”

“Happy second day on the job,” said Wallace.  “You’ve signed in already?”

The shifts, Wallace explained, were to cover the office and take care of routine tasks — “answer the phones, keep the log, that kind of thing” — and started at 0600, 1400, and 2200.

“So let’s say you’re coming in for the 0600,” he said. “You sign in, and you check to see if there’s coffee – usually the outgoing shift makes it, unless they got busy or they’re being lazy bastards. Might as well start a fresh pot....”

As Wallace got up, Sousa unthreaded his right arm from his crutch and propped it against a chair. Wallace nodded toward the crutch. “So what happened?”

“Just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Wallace grunted sympathetically. “At least you don't have a cast any more. How much longer are they going to make you use those?”

“Haven’t told me yet. Not too much longer, I hope.”

The coffee maker was on a credenza outside the briefing room. Wallace opened a cupboard door. “Here’s the coffee. When it gets down to here —” he pointed to a clumsy line painted on the jar — “send Mike a note.” He showed Sousa how to work the coffee maker, and the notes about how much water and coffee to use for how many servings.

“You take report from the offgoing shift and then call down to the switchboard to let them know you’re the big man for the next eight hours. Then you make your plan for the day, schedule your check-ins, get ready to brief the boss when he gets in—”

“I guess you’ve done that already this morning?” asked Sousa.

“Yeah, Kerr got in around the same time we did and just sat in on shift report. It’s not like the guys in from Washington have anything else to do, right?”

A thump sounded in the pneumatic tube station. Wallace opened the hatch and pulled out three tubes. They contained the morning’s newspapers from Boston, Providence, Hartford, Philadelphia, and Trenton. There were also a few pieces of mail. Wallace showed Sousa the agents’ mailboxes and quickly sorted the envelopes. “Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s the shift team’s job to sort the mail,” he said. “We’re all supposed to pitch in and keep the tube clear.” He pointed to six freshly labeled mailboxes. “Looks like Mike’s got you all set up.”

Sure enough, one of them was labeled SOUSA. Sousa couldn’t help taking a quick look. It was empty.

Back in the briefing room, Wallace tossed the newly arrived papers on the end of the table. “Another shift job is reading the papers — just basic surveillance. We’re looking for anything about advanced science and technology, especially if it could involve people being up to no good or just being stupid. We also check the classifieds and see if there’s anything fishy in there. We're behind today, we’re still working on the New York papers.”

Brown arrived, carrying a brown paper bag labeled Baumler's Bakery. “We have a lot to get through today, all about the atomic bomb.” He started unpacking his bag. “A little good news, though,” he added wryly. “I got the last of Danishes in the place.”

They got to work slogging through the newspapers, pausing every so often to compare notes on how the different papers covered the same material. In addition to all the stories about the bombing itself, there were stories about the secret cities involved in the project, about the test in New Mexico, about the possibilities for atomic energy....

There was very little about the effects of the bomb itself. The few stories about the test in New Mexico sounded almost unbelievable — visible from miles away, test tower vaporized.... Japanese broadcasts were saying only that the damage in Hiroshima was significant; more ominously, an American recon plane had been unable to take pictures because of the dust and soot.  But there was no word at all about surrender.

They had been working around half an hour when a phone rang in the bullpen; Wallace used the phone in the briefing room to call the switchboard and have the call transferred in. It was the Camp Kilmer team, reporting that they’d arrived. Wallace made a note in the log. The Camp Shanks team called in around forty-five minutes later; Sousa took that call and logged it in: his first report as an agent.

The other agents started to arrive around 0830. A few of them stuck their heads in to introduce themselves to Sousa and razz the day shift for not being done with the papers.  One of them, Driscoll, came back around 0850.

“I bring tidings from Kerr,” he announced. “He says briefing at 0930, and he wants me to start Sousa on Clipper.”

“Now?” protested Wallace.

“I’m sure that’s what he meant.”

“What, did someone miss his prunes this morning?” Brown said scornfully.

“A high index of suspicion, as the lab rats say,” said Driscoll.

Sousa pretended to look at the wall clock as he looked out the window of the briefing room. Across the bullpen, he could see Kerr, in his office across the bullpen, watching the briefing room.

Driscoll looked over the newspapers spread open on the table. “Criminy, what’s taking you guys so long?”

“Bomb stuff,” said Wallace.

“Clipper’s not going anywhere,” said Brown. “You can have Sousa when we’re done with the papers.”

“And you guys are on Clipper too, aren’t you,” said Driscoll. “Well, no sense getting started until I can show Sousa all of what’s going on, right? Be right back.” He went to get a stack of folders, took a seat, and set to work. Meanwhile, Sousa, Brown, and Wallace finished going through the newspapers. Wallace showed Sousa how to enter their findings in the log and compile a summary for the Acting Chief.  Sousa hadn’t expected his first mission as an agent to be reading newspapers, but it was still real agent work, even if it wasn’t in the field. 

At the morning briefing, Wallace gave a quick summary of the morning’s work: both of the field teams checked in; papers full of the news about the atomic bomb but nothing that suggested leaked information. Kerr reported that there was evidence that the Japanese were downplaying the damage from the bomb; waiting on further reconnaissance....

“...And that’s it for now.” He glanced at the clock. “Wallace, how about you and Sousa take care of the lunch orders?”

 Wallace did not seem particularly excited by this assignment. “All right, get ‘em in,” he called. “Today’s McCreary’s.

“Not a bad day to get this job,” he added to Sousa.  “It’s easy when half the office is out.” He picked up the phone and called the lab. “It’s Wallace. McCreary’s for lunch today. ...All right, see you in a bit.”

Driscoll started opening folders. “So, Sousa: Think you can pencil me in to get some actual work done?”

 

Project Clipper turned out to be, as Sousa had guessed, cataloguing, transporting, tracking, and storing important and dangerous objects: Hydra gadgets. And for the agents, it was almost all administration. Driscoll showed Sousa a flowchart of the whole project: the collection point in France, the transports to New York, the sorting and describing and tagging, the transfer to Washington.

“What is Hydra up to these days, anyway?” asked Sousa.

“Running for cover, what’s left of it,” said Driscoll. “Operation Hercules — they’re the Hydra hunters in Europe — captured the last known base back in the spring, and it’s looking like they’ve found the last of the little holdouts — at least in territory we have access to. I don’t think we have any intel on any Hydra bases in areas the Soviets control.”

After some introductory paperwork, Wallace took Sousa to the lab. Most of the scientists were out on Sandlock; the one who’d stayed behind showed Sousa some of the work the lab was doing for Clipper.

“Think any of this stuff’ll be ready for the Friday ship?” asked Wallace.

“I think we’ll have a couple of crates for you.”

Wallace nodded. “So what do you want for lunch?”

 

Back in the office, Sousa got back to work with Driscoll. Other agents stopped by from time to time to give him their lunch orders and their money. Around 1045, Wallace stood up at his desk. “Last call!” he announced.

Sousa went over to Wallace’s desk. “Here’s my list,” he said. "And here’s the funds.” He took the money out of his pocket.

“Thanks.” Wallace turned a used envelope over to the blank side and started writing a combined list.

“I can do that,” Sousa offered.

“I know.” Wallace nodded toward the chair at the end of his desk. “Go ahead and sit down, this’ll take a few minutes. Yeah, I don’t know why Kerr thought we needed to buddy up for this. You don’t seem like the kind of guy who needs to be taught how to order sandwiches.”

“It’s only my second day. I’d hate to order from the wrong place.” Sousa carefully maneuvered himself around to the front of the chair. As he began to sit down, the knee of his prosthetic locked up, and he had to stand up and start over again.

“You also don’t have a hand free to carry the bag back,” said Wallace. “Sorry, I shoulda thought of that earlier. I’ll go.”

Sousa pulled the menu over to check the address. “It’s around a block and a half away,” added Wallace. “Past the federal building”

“Mind if I tag along anyway?” said Sousa. “Might as well see where the place is.”

 

It was a clear, warm day, and it felt good to get outside. Wallace didn’t seem bothered about slowing his pace a little so Sousa could keep up. He pointed out a few useful things as they walked to and from to McCreary’s: a good barber shop, a favorite diner.  Back at the office, they passed out the lunches and ate their own back at Wallace’s desk.  It felt a little strange to Sousa to be eating something he’d chosen instead of whatever was on the day’s menu, at a time that he’d chosen, at a desk in a quiet, half-full office instead of a full table in a crowded mess hall.

After lunch he checked his leg and changed his stump socks. Back in the office, Driscoll and Wallace showed him some of the other tasks they were working on for Project Clipper; Driscoll was able to peel off a small part of his project and give it to Sousa. For the first time that day, Sousa went to his own desk. He carefully sat down in the rolling chair, propped his crutches, and pulled open the pen drawer.

Except it didn’t open. He gave it another sharp, unsuccessful tug and then remembered his key. He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the key, and unlocked the desk, hoping all the while that nobody else had noticed. The pen drawer was stocked with the few supplies he needed — a pencil, an eraser, a bottle of ink and a blotter; he took them out, filled his pen, and got to work.

 

At 1345, Brown invited Sousa to sit in on report to the afternoon shift. They made a pot of coffee and set up in the briefing room. Agent Tindall was the first to arrive; he was another of the agents from Washington. A few minutes later, a new voice could be heard out in the bullpen. The voice grew louder as the speaker walked over to the credenza to pour a cup of coffee, and louder yet as he approached the door and kept talking over his shoulder about baseball. Finally he ambled in. He was big, like his voice. He wore a light gray jacket and a rumpled white shirt. His tie was loose around his neck and tied in an uneven, stale-looking knot.

“Where is everybody?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he plunked down his coffee cup, dragged out a chair, and sat down. “You one of the new guys?” he asked Sousa. Tindall smirked a little but didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, I’m one of the group that started yesterday,” said Sousa.

“Well, where’s everybody else?” He took a pencil, notebook, and wadded-up paper napkin out of one of his pockets.

"Sousa, this is Agent Ray Krzeminski,” said Wallace. "And this is Agent Daniel Sousa. Everyone else is out on Sandlock today. Pipe down and we’ll tell you all about it.”

Meanwhile, Krzeminski had unfolded the napkin to reveal a donut with a single bite taken out of it. He dunked it in his coffee and took a bite. “Ready when you are.”

Report went smoothly and soon Krzeminski was accepting the log from Wallace. “So: Susie? Sousa. Wasn’t there some… music guy with that name?”

The other agents looked at each other. “You mean John Phillip Sousa?” said Tindall.

“Yeah! Him,” said Krzeminski. “You know him?” he asked Sousa.

“You mean, do I know who he is?”

“Everybody knows who he is. I mean do you know him personally,” explained Krzeminski.

Tindall raised an eyebrow. “Krzeminski, you do know the March King has been playing the great bandstand in the sky for… it’s got to be, what, ten years now?”

He glanced over to the others to confirm the date, but before anyone else could reply, Krzeminski burst in. “So what’s that got to do with John Phillip Sousa?”

“Never mind,” said Tindall. “Come on, let’s get to work. And try not to leave too many crumbs on the table, Krzeminski? It gets Kerr all up in a lather.”

 

It took another hour or so for Sousa to finish the work Driscoll had given him. He cleared and locked his desk, carefully got up from the rolling chair, and brought the gathered papers over to Driscoll’s desk.

Driscoll quickly looked them over. “Looks good. Thanks, this is a big help.”

“So what comes next?” asked Sousa.

“Hmm....” Driscoll looked at the papers and folders spread out on his desk and then glanced at his watch. “What time'd you get here this morning?”

“Seven.”

“And it’s almost four now. There’s nothing here that needs to be done by tomorrow; why don’t you go ahead and clock out?”

“The other guys who came at seven haven’t clocked out yet.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to wait up for ‘em,” said Driscoll. “Believe me, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to work late. So when you have the chance to leave on time? Take it.”

Just to be on the safe side, Sousa checked in with Kerr; Kerr told him to report by 0900 the next day and waved him out the door.

So that was it. Sousa headed off to the locker room, changed into his uniform, and took the elevator back downstairs.

It was just as well he had the extra time: he needed to run a few errands. On his way to the El, he stopped off at a laundry and dropped off his shirts. At the ferry terminal, he bought an afternoon newspaper. And back at the hospital, he stopped by the HX and bought a couple of candy bars to tuck away as an emergency ration.

Back in the little isolation room, he put on his blue convalescent suit and went to the mess hall for dinner. He made conversation with the other men and did his best to be friendly, but for some reason he felt more out of place than ever that evening. He excused himself as soon as he’d finished dessert and went back to the ward to pick up his mail, shower, and change into pajamas.

He had a nice little stack of envelopes waiting for him, with return addresses from Taunton and Washington D.C.. There was also a Halloran inter-office mail envelope. He opened that first. As he’d hoped, it was from Klein:

 

Glad first day went well. Permission granted to sleep off hospital grounds. Keep me and ward desk informed as to your general whereabouts. Set up schedule with physical therapy and make appointment with me for two weeks from now.
Klein

 

That was one obstacle out of the way, at least; now he could really work on finding a place. He put the memo aside and opened the letter sent from Washington. Grahn got straight to the point:

 

NEW YORK? What the HELL?? Did you get on the wrong train??? You were supposed to come HERE! 

 

An emphatic arrow on a little sketched map pointed to Washington D.C.. Grahn went on for another half page or so about Sousa’s poor sense of direction before he got around to asking why the Army had sent him to New York — and to Halloran of all places, the worst of both worlds, none of the fun of Manhattan and none of the fun of the country — all that green grass and not even a goat to look at — when he’d been exiled to Halloran last October after the hurricane, he’d heard talk about plans for gardens and a chicken coop for occupational therapy, had anything ever come of that? There were gardens at Walter Reed, out in the Annex — melons and tomatoes now....

From there he went on to what he’d been doing in physical and occupational therapy: new permanent prosthetic, just as ugly as the old one but much easier to walk on, might be playing softball on it in another week or two....

They’re talking about kicking me out for good by the end of September. Perfect Army timing, exactly too late to enroll for the fall semester....

“The fall semester” — that startled Sousa for a moment, but it made sense; Grahn had been in college when he was called up, of course he’d want to go back and finish his degree. It was just strange picturing Grahn going from fighting in Normandy to sitting at a desk in a classroom in a sheltered college campus. He’d have to tease him about it when he wrote back.

Sousa read through the notes from home and then put his mail aside. He did his stretches, wrapped his leg, and took out the newspaper. He skimmed the sports section and then turned to the section he’d been looking forward to the most: the “Apartments — for Rent” page of the classifieds. He took out his city map and a pencil and began his hunt.

 

The next morning, Sousa and the other new agents started their day in the briefing room, with a few words from Kerr and then a screening of “Asking the Right Questions: Interviews and Interrogation.” When it was finished, the rest of the office started to file in for the morning briefing.

Once again the briefing was dominated by news about the atomic bomb. The Japanese were reporting staggering numbers of casualties; the fact that they were admitting those numbers at all was itself sobering. Recon flights were reporting that a little over four square miles of Hiroshima had simply vanished.

Even Project Sandlock had been affected by the bomb. The team yesterday had had a difficult time getting the returning soldiers to talk about Hydra or illegal souvenirs — or girls, or apple pie, or anything else. All they’d wanted to talk about was the bomb and the possibility of Japan’s surrender.

And now there might be more pressure on Japan: Kerr’s last piece of news was that the Russians had just declared war.

After the briefing, Kerr introduced a major who’d been detailed from Army intelligence to the SSR.  Major Lloyd lectured the new agents on the art of questioning and interrogation, expanding on what had been taught in the training films and lacing his talk with plenty of stories about interrogations in Africa and Italy and France, for the Army and then for the SSR.

At lunchtime, Kerr came back to collect Lloyd. The new agents had lunch together in the briefing room and then scattered to take care of various tasks and errands before the afternoon training session started. Sousa went to the locker room to check his leg. He took his time going back to the briefing room, taking the long way back around the lab and stopping off to check his mailbox. Back in the briefing room, he left one of his crutches at his seat and went back to get a glass of water from the cooler. He walked back cautiously, focusing on keeping, as best he could, his gait smooth and steady and the water contained in the glass.

When he got back to the briefing room, he found Hass there, settling back into his own spot.  Hass looked up as he came in and nodded toward the glass of water. “You got that okay?”

“Yeah.” Sousa put the glass down and started making his way around the end of the table, pausing now and then reach over and slide the water glass toward his place.  He was conscious that Hass was observing him, though not staring or gawking.

Hass didn’t say anything until Sousa was seated. “Bet you're looking forward to getting rid of those crutches,” he observed. He glanced up at the clock. “Guess we’ve got a few more minutes.” He took out a small, well-worn cigarette case and held it open for Sousa.

"Not a smoker, but thanks,” said Sousa.

The case contained all of four little cigarettes. Hass considered for a moment and then put it away.

“I've practically quit myself,” he said. “It’s hard to find any to buy, and even harder to find any worth buying. Not that I mind, of course! Nobody should. Of course the services should come first.”

He hesitated.

“Are you... still in the Army?” he asked. “I thought I saw you in uniform this morning when you were going in the building. I was across the street, getting ready to cross.  I checked with the switchboard girls when I came in and they said it was you.”

Sousa took a deep breath. Of course he wouldn’t have been able to keep this quiet forever.

“Yeah. It’s a long story, with a lot of paperwork. It’ll get easier once I find a place closer to the office. How long have you been in town? Any ideas where I should start looking?”

“Oh, there’s all kinds of places to live around here. Trouble is they all seem to have people living in ‘em already. I just kept reading the papers and jumped the second I saw something. Finally managed to get in a place up on 53^rd. I don't know how long we’ll stay there —  the rent’s higher than I would have liked — but it's four walls and a roof, and my wife likes it.”

The others joined in the conversation as they arrived. Nobody had any suggestions for Sousa that he hadn’t thought of already, but there was plenty to talk about until Kerr came back with Lloyd. With them was Agent Slater, the Washington agent who’d led one of the Sandlock teams the day before.

“Good news, gentlemen,” announced Kerr. “We were able to get an extension on Major Lloyd’s lease, so you’ll be able to keep training with him for the rest of the week.”

“And this afternoon we’ve got Agent Slater helping us out,” added Lloyd. “I think some of you were with him in the field yesterday? Well, today you get to see how he does in the hot seat.” He consulted a list as Kerr left and Slater sat down. “Agent Wyckoff, you’ll be our first questioner. Your sandwich went missing from your desk, and you want to see what Slater here knows about it. What's your approach?”

“Well...” Wyckoff reached into his memory for the lessons taught in the training films and the lecture. “First I need to know how much I know....”

Lloyd let Wyckoff and the other agents ask questions about the scenario and suggested a few more questions for them to ask. Wyckoff chose a strategy, explained his reasoning, and began the interview. Lloyd let him go fifteen minutes before calling a time-out. The group teased Wyckoff a little on his lack of success and then discussed the interview — what had gone well, what had been unsuccessful, what to try the next time. Lloyd called a short break; they took a few minutes to stretch their legs and get some water from the cooler before sitting down again for the next practice session.

Lloyd consulted his list. “Let’s see: Sousa. You were on a different assignment yesterday, weren’t you? These guys have had time to observe, so we’ll let you get some in too before you step up to the plate. Ramirez, you’re up. And your sandwich is missing.”

Ramirez drew on what they’d learned from Wyckoff’s attempt and was able to lead Slater into dropping some clues. After fifteen minutes, Lloyd stopped the interview and led the agents in another discussion. When they’d finished, he called another break.

As the new agents lined up at the water cooler, the other agents in the office started wandering over, asking how the afternoon was going and if they’d broken Agent Slater yet. Someone proposed drinks that evening, when the new guys were finished with training — maybe the bar at the Hudson Grand?

The Washington agents liked the idea of drinks at any place but the bar at the Hudson Grand. A few more suggestions — Hannigan’s, Dutch Uncle’s, that place on Bedford.... Krzeminski, who was standing near the water cooler, suggested a place called Lyle’s; the other agents reminded him that Lyle’s was too far away, and he didn’t even get a vote that day since he was on the evening shift.

Krzeminski sulked. “That’s not my fault.” 

Sousa didn’t say anything; he was too focused on keeping his balance as he filled his water glass, and didn’t think Krzeminski needed a response anyway.  As he finished and straightened up again, he realized Krzeminski was staring at him.

“What happened to you?” asked Krzeminski.

Sousa indicated his water glass. “I got thirsty.”

“I meant your leg.”

“Nothing interesting.” Sousa gripped his crutch and moved away so the next person could get a drink. Krzeminski looked miffed, but went back to following the main conversation.

 

Back in the briefing room, the new agents went back to conducting interviews about the missing sandwich, first with Agent Gale, then with Agent Driscoll. Sousa’s turn came last.  As he walked around the table to sit across from Driscoll, he didn’t feel too nervous; he’d watched all the other interviews and paid attention to what had worked and what hadn’t. It just seemed a shame that all this practice and playacting was necessary, that some subjects didn’t seem to understand that that just telling the truth right away was in their best interest.

He decided to invest more time in the building-up-rapport phase of the interview, to find out what might appeal to the character Driscoll was playing. Avoiding paperwork seemed promising; Sousa was successfully nudging the interview in that direction when Lloyd stopped the interview. He was quietly pleased when, during the discussion, Lloyd recognized and praised his strategy.

Training ended for the day at 1700, and the new agents who were going for drinks filed back out to the main office to wait for the others. Sousa went straight to the locker room. He wanted to give his leg a quick check, and he wanted to avoid Krzeminski, who struck him the kind of guy who couldn’t — or wouldn’t — take a hint. He also needed to pick up his bag with his uniform. Dragging his bag around would be a nuisance, and he’d have to find someplace to change along the way home, but he did not want to skip the after-work drinks a second time. When he was ready, he went out to the elevator to meet the others.

Dutch Uncle’s was a couple of blocks from the office. It was just small enough to feel welcoming and just big enough to feel like a real restaurant, where the customers who were already seated didn’t look up every time someone new came in. It had a good-sized menu, too. The Washington agents and a few of the New York agents went ahead and ordered dinner. Sousa did too; he was hungry, and he had no idea if he’d make it back to Halloran before the dinner hour was over, or what would happen if he didn’t.

The conversation around the table touched on baseball, the news of the day, and New York in general before settling into shop talk and scuttlebutt. Sousa began to feel a little uneasy; there were references to the outing for drinks on Monday night — which he’d had to skip — and to the trips to Camp Kilmer and Camp Shanks — which he hadn’t been on. That was a lot of time the other new agents had had to get to know the senior agents, and for the senior agents to get to know them. Only three days in and he was already at a disadvantage. But still, it was only three days. He paid attention and asked questions and worked on learning names and tried his best to relax and enjoy the company.

He mulled it all over again on his way back to Halloran, first on the train, then at the ferry terminal as he changed his clothes, and then on the ferry itself: the tales, the rumors, the advice.… “Wait till you get your first case,” one of the Washington agents had said. “That’s when the real fun starts.”

As he’d expected, he didn’t reach the hospital until well after the dining room was closed.  At least it was one less thing he had to do before picking up his mail and retreating back to his little isolation room.  

He checked his leg, showered, changed into his pajamas, dropped on the bed, and opened the newspaper to the apartment ads. If he found any leads, when was he going to have time to chase them? He’d have to get some advice tomorrow.

 

The next morning, when Sousa entered the switchboard room, he was relieved to see Miss Roberts at her post by the other elevator. He went over and waited; she finished her connection, looked up, and smiled. “Good morning, Agent Sousa.”

“Good morning. I was wondering — if someone on the outside needed to call me, is there a particular number I should give him?”

“Oh, of course.”  She wrote it down and handed it to him. “Are you expecting a call?”

“Not yet. Just thinking ahead.”

She nodded. “You know, if you’re ever expecting a call but know you’ll be tied up in a meeting or going to Brooklyn or something, we’d be happy to just take a message for you instead of routing it to another agent.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that. Actually, I’m looking for a place closer to the office to hang my hat, so if you or one of the other ladies hear something….”

Miss Roberts smiled again. “I will keep my ears open. And I’ll make sure they do too.”

Up on the office level, Sousa went to the locker room and started to change into his civilian clothes. He had to doff his prosthetic to change his trousers; as he donned it again he noticed that it was a little loose.

It was normal for the prosthetic to get tight or loose over the course of day, though it didn’t usually start to loosen up this early. Correcting the fit was just a matter of adding or taking off a stump sock or two. He doffed the prosthetic, put on a second stump sock, and tested the fit of the prosthetic again. When he was satisfied, he finished getting dressed and went to the office.

His first stop was Kerr’s office, to confirm his schedule for the next few days — finding a place closer to the office, had cleared it with Halloran, just needed to know when he’d be free to go look?

Kerr seemed pleased with this news. He confirmed that Sousa and the new agents would be in training with Lloyd for the rest of the week, Saturday included; could probably take time sometime next week, depending on how things looked with Sandlock. “Briefing at 9:30 sharp this morning. Thanks for coming by, Sousa.”

The morning briefing brought big news. The Russians had moved against Japan, invading Manchuria with a million men on three fronts. And the U.S. had dropped another atomic bomb, on the Japanese town of Nagasaki.

After the briefing, the new agents stayed in the briefing room for more training with Lloyd. He showed them a training film (“Interrogation: Know Your Subject”) and then lectured the rest of the morning. His lecture was good, but the breaks were shorter and fewer, to recover some of the time lost to the long morning briefing; as he talked, Sousa felt the prosthetic growing loose again. He was glad when it was finally time for lunch, and he could go to the locker room. He eased off the prosthetic and tried on another sock. That made the prosthetic too snug, so he took off the sock, donned the prosthetic again, and went back to the office.

Over lunch he was able to get some advice from the senior agents about looking for a place to live, and about the etiquette of taking personal phone calls and taking care of personal business during office hours. By the time they were cleaning up their sandwich wrappers and making a fresh pot of coffee for the afternoon session, Sousa could feel a plan forming in his mind.

Lloyd had Agent Slater play a subject again, but this time Lloyd himself conducted the interview. He kept it short and had the new agents discuss the subject — what personality type did he seem to have? what were the clues? — and what approaches Lloyd had used, or should have used.

It was an interesting and helpful discussion, but Sousa was having trouble giving it his full attention. His prosthetic still felt a little loose, and now his stump sock felt like it had wrinkled in the socket and was pressing into the back of his leg. There was no discreet way to fix that. He repositioned his right leg, shifted his weight to his left, and did his best to ignore his discomfort until Lloyd called the next break and he could get back to the locker room. He got out his bag of supplies, sat down on the low bench, propped his crutches to the side, and doffed his prosthetic and the layers of stump socks.

That was when he heard another locker door swing open and clang against its neighbors. Who could that be? He listened for a moment, but didn’t hear anything else — so he went back to what he was doing. Hopefully whoever else was in there would mind his own business.

He took a mirror out of his bag and checked his skin where the socks had been bothering him. There were some red marks, but they didn't look bad — so he reached into his bag for a fresh sock. A crutch slipped and clattered to the floor. He left it there as he powdered up his leg and put on a sock.

He tried on the prosthetic. The fit wasn't great — why was it so loose today? — better not try layering socks again, just use a single thicker one.... He had to rummage in his bag to find the sock he needed — would have to bring some more from Halloran.... He put the bag aside, donned the sock, and adjusted the fit, smoothing it out so there weren't any wrinkles —

“Oh my God.”

Sousa looked up. The agent standing at the end of the row of lockers, staring at him, was Agent Krzeminski.

Notes:

Thanks to @AnniePlusMacDonald and @Cuppa_tea_love for test reading and encourage ment
Thanks to you for reading, for your kudos and comments (which I keep polished and displayed on the mantelpiece), and for sticking with it!

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Chapter 62: Dead Ends and Doubling Back

 

 

 

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Sousa took a deep breath. Of all the people to walk in on him, it had to be this guy.... 

And of course Krzeminski had to stand and stare instead of excusing himself and getting out of there. “You lost it?” he blurted. 

Sousa kept his voice cool. “Misplaced. It might still turn up.”  

Krzeminski didn’t seem to hear the joke — or take the hint.  

“Do you mind ?” Sousa finally snapped. 

Krzeminski backed up a couple of steps and walked away. Sousa turned back to the task at hand, smoothing out the stump sock and checking the fit of the prosthesis. 

It was going to get out eventually, of course. He’d always known that. He should probably have felt lucky he’d been able to keep it quiet this long: somebody else could have walked in on him or figured it out, or Kerr could have said something on the first day. 

Still — he pulled up his pants — did it have to be this  way? And Krzeminski, of all people — not that he really knew the guy, but he had a feeling that tact and discretion weren’t exactly Krzeminski’s strong suits. 

Sure enough, when he got back to the office, Krzeminski was standing the back corner, deep in conversation with a couple of the New York agents. They didn’t notice him as he made his way to the briefing room, but he knew what they were talking about. At least nobody in the briefing room gave him a funny look as he came in and sat down.  

The next session of practice interrogation ran for almost two hours before Lloyd finally called a quick break. When Sousa went out to join the line at the water cooler, he pretended to not notice the four or five surreptitious stares coming from various points in the bullpen. Too bad he wouldn’t be able to trace who told what to who, he thought; that might have been interesting. 

They had another two-hour session before Lloyd declared them done for the day. Kerr came in to remind them that they were meeting again the next day at 0900.  

“Should we plan to be here through 5:00?” asked Hass. 

“That’s up to your boss,” said Lloyd. “I have to leave by 1400 to catch my train.” 

“You men can go then, too,” said Kerr.  “Major, we appreciate your being able to give us this extra time.” 

Sousa went to his desk to lock up his notes and then went straight to the locker room to change into his uniform. He hadn’t heard any talk of going out for drinks that night, but he had other plans. 

He stopped by a newsstand, bought an evening paper, and went to the diner Wallace had pointed out. Over dinner, he went through that evening’s apartment ads and added the new candidates to his list. He paid his check, got change for a couple of dollar bills, settled into a phone booth, pulled out his lists, and started calling. 

Many of his calls weren't answered at all. That didn’t surprise him; it was the dinner hour at the end of the work week. When he did get answers, most of them were disappointing:  Sorry, it’s taken... Too late, I just rented it this afternoon.... Nothing else opening up....   

As for the apartments that were still available, it didn’t take long to find out why nobody else had snapped them up yet: sixth-floor walkups, shared bathrooms.... He wasn't desperate enough to consider any of those — not yet, anyway. 

He did have some success, though, and at the end of his evening’s hunting, he had three decent-sounding prospects, with appointments to see them the next day. 

 

The first one was at 0800, in a neighborhood north of the office. Sousa had seen a bit of the area the week before, when he’d been exploring, and he had enough time to take a good look around as he made his way from the El station. The building was an easy walk from the office, and there were useful businesses close by: a laundry, a grocery, a bakery.   

He found the building, checked the address, and went in. There was only one step up to the front door — another point in this building’s favor. He went past the narrow staircase and knocked at a door in the very back. As he waited, he surveyed the hall. Old and plain, but clean; twenty mailboxes mounted in the wall; three other doors. He wondered which one was to the apartment he’d be seeing. 

The guy who opened the door seemed friendly enough, but before he’d finished introducing himself as the superintendent of the building, Sousa knew something wasn’t right. 

“So, ah....” The guy fumbled with a ring of keys and nodded towards Sousa' uniform. “How long’ve you been back?”  

“A few weeks,” said Sousa. 

“But you haven’t been discharged yet?” 

“No. It’s a long story, but at the end of it I’ve got a pass to live off post.”  Sousa took a few steps back from the door to lure the guy out. “This looks like a nice place. So which apartment...?” 

“Oh. You were looking for the one on this  floor?”  

“Yeah. The one I called about last night,” Sousa reminded him. 

“Yeah. Geez. Um... I’m real sorry, but I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a mix-up. That one’s no longer available.” 

“Really. Did that happen last night, after I called? Or just now, when you opened the door and saw me?” 

“Yesterday sometime.  Before  you called. The guy you talked to last night, he must not’a heard the unit was already taken. Anyway, I do have a place that’s just opened up that I could show you. Real nice, got a view of the park. Thing is —” his gaze flicked nervously to Sousa’s crutches — “it’s on the fourth floor. But maybe....” 

Sousa shook his head. “No. That’s not what I came here to see, and it’s not exactly something I can use right now. I won't waste any more of your time. Thanks anyway.” 

 

As Sousa walked back to the office, he tried not to think too long about the two other apartments he had on his list, and how he might have been able to see one of them if he hadn’t been off on this snipe hunt.  He had another unwelcome topic waiting for him, anyway, as soon as he entered the switchboard room: the operators’ smiles were as cheerful as ever as they greeted him, but their eyes looked uneasy. 

So they knew too. And from the looks he was getting as he crossed the bullpen to the conference room, so did the agents on the day shift. And — he entered the conference room — so did the agents in his class who’d already arrived.  

Well, if it bugged them that much, they could be the ones to bring it up. He said his good mornings, put his notepad down and propped a crutch against the table, and went to get a cup of coffee. 

 

Once class got started, the awkwardness of the morning faded a little, so by the end of the work day Sousa was feeling a little less annoyed. He changed back into his uniform and headed off to his next appointment, northeast of the office. 

He arrived to find a trim brick building, with ten stone stairs leading up to the front door. There was a window to the side of the steps, with its bottom edge only inches above the sidewalk: maybe that was the apartment he’d come to see, the guy on the phone had described it as a basement apartment. There was a break in the pavement in front of the window, and he walked over to take a look. Four steps descended to the space under the front stairs and another door into the house — the door to the apartment, he supposed. Four steps up and down wasn’t too bad; he’d just have to watch his head walking under the stairs to get to the door.  He walked back around to the stairs, took the railing in one hand and his crutches with the other, and climbed up. 

The entry was pleasant — polished wood, newer wallpaper, wider staircase — but it had an odd, closed feeling. There were only two doors, one next to the staircase and one on the side wall. The one on the side wall was labeled “OFFICE” and had a knocker. Next to it were five mailboxes and a pinboard. 

He knocked on the office door. It was opened by a middle-aged lady. 

“You must be Mr. Sousa — or, uh —” She brushed at imaginary stripes on her sleeve. 

“Captain,” Sousa supplied. 

“Captain,” she repeated, and smiled. “I’m sorry, my husband didn’t write it down. I think you talked to him last night?” 

Sousa nodded. He was starting to get an idea of what was coming next. 

“And he told you you weren’t the only person who was coming to see the apartment today? I’m afraid it’s already rented.” 

Sousa opened his mouth to say something, but she cut him off. “Everyone always asks me this: we don’t have anything else opening up, and I don’t know of anything else in the neighborhood. I’m sorry.” 

“Thanks,” said Sousa. As he turned to leave, the woman’s face furrowed in genuine concern. 

“Oh, dear. Are you all right on those steps?” 

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”  

She hurried over to hold the door for him. “Well, good luck. I hope you find something soon.” She waited at the door until he reached the sidewalk. 

 

Sousa didn’t hold out much hope for his third appointment of the day, but he went anyway. This was a newer apartment building, a few blocks to the south. As he expected, the apartment he’d wanted to see had been rented earlier that day. The superintendent thought he  might  have one opening up in September — could take Sousa’s name, but couldn’t guarantee anything.... 

“How many people in front of me?” 

The super consulted his list. “Six. It’s a nice place, a two-bedroom.” 

“Six? Ah, don’t bother. It’s more than I need anyway.” 

 

Back up on Houston Street, Sousa found a spot on the sidewalk where he could stop out of the way and get his bearings, but really to rest for a moment. It had already been a long week; today he’d covered a lot of ground, and done it in a hurry. Walking outside wore him out more quickly than walking the same distance inside, even more so here in New York than it had in back in Atlantic City. Disappointment and frustration pulled at him, like a heavy pack.. And the afternoon was growing uncomfortably hot. 

Instead of turning to take the El, he found himself walking toward St. Anthony’s. He climbed the stairs, crossed himself at the font, and got himself into an empty pew.   

He sat for a while, appreciating the relief from the noise and heat outside, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light and his mind adjusted to the quiet.      

There were more people in the church than he’d expected, and it took him a moment to remember that it was Saturday afternoon and time for confessions. Penitents waited, with varying degrees of patience, outside the confessionals at the back of the church, or knelt in prayer, scattered about in the pews. 

Halfway up the church, one of the penitents rose, genuflected stiffly in the aisle, and turned to exit the church. Sousa recognized one of the old men he’d met last Saturday. The man recognized him, too, and with a nod and a jerk of his head, instructed Sousa to follow him to the entry of the church. 

“There you are! You were supposed to meet us this morning,” he scolded Sousa. 

“I know. I'm sorry, I couldn’t make it this morning. I had to work,” Sousa said apologetically. 

“Oh!" The man seemed pleased. "So you got that job then?” When  you’re still in your Army uniform?  his face added. 

“Yeah. The Army’s lending me out for now.” Sousa lifted his crutches a little. “It’s a long story.” 

The man nodded. “You find a place yet?” 

“No. I must have made two dozen calls and got all of three leads. I went to look at them today and they were all gone before I could get there.” 

The man nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, they go like this.” He snapped his fingers.  “We’ll keep asking around. You got a better number where we can reach you?” 

"Yeah." Sousa wrote down his name and the number Miss Roberts had given him; the man put the paper in his wallet. “You’re in the right place, son,” he promised. “St. Anthony’ll find you something.” He shook Sousa’s hand, ordered him to be at the church next Saturday morning, and went on his way.  

Now that Sousa was standing up, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go to the trouble of getting in and out of a pew again. He might as well get back to Halloran, pick up a paper on the way and see if there were any new ads. He hesitated and went back into the church.  

Three candle racks stood around the base of the statue of St. Anthony.  Sousa put a coin in the box, lit a long match from a burning candle, and touched it to the wick of a new candle. Once the flame had caught, he stuck the match in the little box of sand. Almost all the candles in the racks were already lit; he could feel their warmth on his face, and smell the sweet scent of their melted wax, as he watched his own candle join the silent, flickering chorus.  

He felt funny lighting a candle for himself, and for such a small thing, but he’d take any help he could get. 

 

As he traveled back to Halloran that afternoon, Sousa decided to put the apartment problem aside for the rest of the weekend. There wasn’t much very much weekend left, and — though it annoyed him to admit it — he needed some rest.  

He went to bed early that night. The next day, after lunch, he went to the physical therapy gym. It was his first time there since the previous Sunday, which wasn’t great. But as he set up to use the pulley weights, he reminded himself that it was just his first week, and once he'd settled down at the office, it would be easier.... 

Except how would he do it once he found a place in the city? After work? How late would they let him use the gym, anyway? He didn’t want to think about asking Kerr to leave work early. Maybe he could just come on his days off.  So far, Halloran had been very understanding. 

 

In the morning, he bought a paper at the ferry terminal on Staten Island and read it on the way in. Still no news from Japan.... He opened it to the rental ads and resumed his search. Maybe he could make a couple of phone calls before the work day got started. 

As he walked through the switchboard room, he could sense that he was drawing more sidelong looks from the operators. He kept his eyes up and forward. 

Miss Roberts had the spot by the elevator. When she looked up from her switchboard, there was something sober and understanding about her expression. Her smile, though, was broad and genuine. 

“Good morning, Agent Sousa. Any luck with your hunt?” 

“Not yet, I’m afraid. Three strikes this weekend.” 

She shook her head. “You know, Bernice here —” she nodded to one of the other operators — “had a good idea. There’s a big bulletin board outside the cafeteria in the federal building. You could check there to see if anyone’s got something up, or post something yourself.” 

“That is a good idea. Thanks,” said Sousa. “I’ll try to get over there today.”  Miss Roberts smiled and pressed the button to open the elevator. 

 

The morning briefing didn’t take long: rumors and speculations about Japan’s surrender, but no solid information yet; training for the new men; troop ships expected that week, expect to be sent out on teams.... 

Agent Edwards gave a short report on Project Clipper: a last-minute shipment going to the Brooklyn Army Terminal that morning for a transport leaving for Washington that afternoon, transport team to include Mr. Doobin from the lab and Agents Tindall and Krzeminski.... 

“So you’ve got room for one more,” said Kerr. “Take one of the new men.” He looked around the table. “Sousa. Take him.” 

Sousa’s eyes darted to the clock. He’d been thinking about going to the federal building for a very early lunch, to post his notice in enough time for the rest of the lunch crowd to see it.  That wasn’t going to work out now. But they’d probably get back in enough time for him to catch the late lunchers.... 

As soon as Kerr adjourned the meeting, Krzeminski stood up. “I’ll go sign out the car.” 

“Leaving the important stuff to us,” Tindall said to Sousa. “Get your badge and let’s go to the lab. Wait — have you been issued a weapon yet? We’ll do that first.”  

They caught up with Krzeminski at the elevator, and together they went down to the switchboard level to Mike’s office. After Krzeminski signed out a key, he and Tindall looked on and offered opinions as Mike issued a revolver to Sousa and offered a choice of holsters, and as Sousa put on and adjusted the holster and put away the gun. 

Back in the elevator, Krzeminski pressed the button for the lab level. The elevator began its climb. 

“Does it feel a bit more real now, Agent Sousa?” asked Tindall. 

Sousa considered — the word  responsibility  floated to the top of his mind — but before he could say anything, Krzeminski spoke up. “How does a guy with one leg get into the SSR, anyway?” 

“Front door, usually,” said Sousa.  “Same as everyone else.” 

“That’s not what I meant.” 

Sousa ignored that, and Krzeminski didn’t push any further. They rode in silence the rest of the way. 

Mr. Doobin was waiting for them at the lab. Sousa and Tindall watched as he packed a piece of Hydra equipment and a sheaf of papers into a crate, hammered down the lid, and sealed the crate. Then they signed and countersigned a form stating that they’d seen the object go in the box and that the object, its papers, and the box were all labeled with the same number. Doobin and Krzeminski lifted the crate onto a hand truck, Tindall showed Sousa which papers they needed to bring, and together they went down to the garage level.  

As Doobin and Krzeminski loaded the crate into the trunk of the car, Tindall motioned Sousa toward the front passenger door. “Krzeminski can drive,” he said. “He wants to anyway. How about you ride shotgun, there’s more room for your crutches.” 

Sousa opened the car door. “Should I have signed out an actual shotgun?” 

“Nah. We haven’t had any trouble and we don’t have reason to expect any. Just taking precautions.” 

 

The drive to Brooklyn was as informative, in its own way, as the Manhattan bus tour had been. Like a tour guide, Krzeminski kept up a running commentary on their route: streets where the traffic moved quickly, streets that always seemed to be torn up, good places to take girls, good places to meet girls, intersections with overly long lights — “What’re you doing with that map, Sousa? I know the way” — a building his uncle worked on, places to avoid left turns, City Hall, avoid this street on Saturday, a good place to find parking in a pinch, a particularly good place for a pastrami sandwich... the best way to reach the Brooklyn Bridge. Sousa took in the view as they crossed from city to city. The morning sun glittered on the water of the East River. 

As he took them south through Brooklyn, Krzeminski directed Sousa’s attention to various points of interest: a favorite Italian restaurant; the best way to get to Ebbets Field; Red Hook; a bar that was better than it looked; the various wharfs and yards. They approached an Army guardhouse; the four agents showed their badges; the sentry raised the gate and let them pass.  

It was an astounding sight. As they passed the administration building just inside the gate, Sousa saw another brick building, eight stories high and stretching almost a quarter of a mile long, across the street from a twin building that was even wider. All three of the buildings were linked by enclosed brick bridges that looked sturdy enough to span rivers. Train tracks wound everywhere, in parallel, braiding together in switching areas, and then parting directions again. 

Krzeminski pulled up to the smaller of the two buildings. A civilian worker came out with a hand truck to meet them; Krzeminski and Doobin unloaded the crate again, and they all followed the worker into the building. 

It was a warehouse, a warehouse with a train platform running the length of its interior. A entire train was pulled up along the platform; some of the cars had open doors and were being loaded right from the platform, with cargo brought by hand truck, dolly, and forklift from the stores in the warehouse.  A crane was at rest along an interior wall; Sousa noticed balconies jutting out from each level of the building, and realized that the crane was used to move loads from the balconies down to the platform. 

The SSR crates going to Washington had already been loaded onto a dedicated train car. Doobin and the platform master supervised as the civilian worker loaded their last crate and secured it. Then Doobin, Krzeminski, and Sousa had the tedious, exacting task of counting crates and checking them one last time against a triplicate manifest. When all the crates were accounted for, the platform master locked the car, posted a guard, signed the form and took his copy. A civilian worker escorted them back to the car. 

“And that’s it for us,” said Krzeminski. “Time for lunch. We’ve got time today, let's go to The Pines.” 

Doobin and Tindall both liked the idea. Sousa, outvoted and a supernumerary anyway, resigned himself to the plan and started getting himself into the car. He let his mind run ahead as the car pulled up to the gate and out to the street. If lunch didn’t last too long, maybe he’d still be able to get over to the federal building before the cafeteria closed.  

Mr. Doobin leaned forward. “We usually have lunch in Brooklyn when we go to the Terminal,” he explained to Sousa. “It’s a change from the usual places around the office, and a chance to see some old favorites again.” 

“They told you about the old facility, right?” said Krzeminski. 

“The SSR lab in Brooklyn?” asked Sousa. “Kerr said it’s not being used right now?” 

“That’s the one,” said Krzeminski. “I used to work there. So did Doobin here.” 

“Not together,” said Doobin. 

“Yeah, he was in the lab. There were some good places, but The Pines was everybody’s favorite.  Great lunch special.” 

“The rest of the menu, too,” added Doobin. “Ever had lasagna? They don’t have it every day, so when they do, you don’t want to miss it.” 

“See? Making the Brooklyn run isn’t all bad,” said Tindall. 

 

Sousa’s lunch of soup and ravioli was the best-tasting meal he’d had in a while. Back in the car, Krzeminski drove a couple of blocks and then pulled over. “You might as well see it while we’re here,” he said.  

Sousa looked out the window. “An antiques store?”   

"That's the cover entrance, of course. There’s a loading dock in the back.” 

Sousa peered at the door. A handwritten sign announced that the shop was  “OPEN” BY “ APPPOINTMENT ONLY!! "   The lack of a phone number, the superfluous punctuation, and a slight quaver in the handwriting all suggested the kind of peevish owner who detested customers and wasn’t worth the effort of contacting. 

“Nobody noticed customers going in and never coming out?” he asked. 

“You make it sound like there was some kind of axe murderer in there,” said Krzeminski. 

“There were other cover entrances,” said Doobin. “There was never any trouble, as far as I know. But I agree, the phone company’s more plausible.” 

Krzeminski drove a couple of blocks west and turned again. “See that bridal shop over there? Captain America crashed through their window.” 

“What ?” Sousa turned to look at the building. 

“He was running so fast he crashed right into the window.” Krzeminski drove a few more blocks and then pulled up to a street that led to a pier. “And that’s where he dove in the water and chased down a submarine.” 

“Did you... see this?”  

“Well, no,” admitted Krzeminski. “I wasn’t assigned here till later.” 

“Neither was I,” said Doobin. “But it’s all true.” He told the story (with occasional interjections from Krzeminski) as they drove back to Manhattan: secret lab built for one of the SSR’s first big efforts, Project Rebirth... famous scientist rescued from Europe... Howard Stark, other big names (hadn’t met Stark personally but had attended a briefing) …. Captain America somehow involved, his real name still a secret.... Hydra spy breached the lab (“not because  we  let him in,” Krzeminski bitterly added, “some  politician  brought him”) … Captain America giving chase, in bare feet, through the streets of Brooklyn (and atop a few cars) and into the river.... no success keeping Rebirth going; project closed, lab turned to other purposes, inactivated a few months ago. 

As they crossed the bridge, it occurred to Sousa that, once again, and without intending it, his path had crossed a place where Captain America’s had been. 

Even back in Italy, come to think of it: all those times he’d arrived at some headquarters and discovered in passing that he’d missed a USO show by two or three days, including the ones with the Captain. And today: Captain America was the only reason he was in this car at all, because of that rescue in the snow, because someone in the Captain’s SSR team had noticed him afterwards. And now he’d just seen streets where that famous man — that man he’d never met, but who’d saved his life and then sent it in a new and unexpected direction — had been running in his bare feet. There was something odd — almost eerie — about the way he kept coming across the Captain’s trail, as if one of these days he’d turn a corner and find he’d somehow caught up with Captain America and they would meet at last. 

 

As they approached the office, Sousa checked his watch and frowned as he considered his options. He’d missed the lunch hour, but he still wanted to get to the federal building as soon as he could; he also ought to check his leg. He had a gut feeling that Kerr might grouse about his being late back to the office, but Kerr was the one who’d sent him on the trip to Brooklyn in the first place. Kerr also knew that he was trying to find a place in town.... 

Worst case scenario, he’d just stay later that night. He got on the elevator with the others, but instead of going all the way to the office level, he said something about a couple of things he needed to and got off on the switchboard level. 

As the elevator doors closed behind him, he turned the corner. Miss Roberts looked up. “Oh, good, you’re back! You have a message.” She handed him a folded piece of paper. 

It was an address on Sixth Avenue, with a phone number and the message “Apartment. Call as soon as possible. Ask for Gus Galasso." 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thank you for reading, for your patience, for your generous kudos and your previous comments.

Many thanks to AnniePlusMacDonald, Cuppa_tea_love, and keysburg for cheer-reading and idea bouncing.

Oh, if you're interested: Posted a little ficlet set in 1913 — Introductions — which is getting some comments consisting entirely of hearts and will probably be continued....

Also had the pleasure of beta-ing @Cuppa_tea_love's Going Deeper. Try it, you might like it.

---

The Brooklyn Army Terminal
- built during World War I. Rail connections and sidings, gigantic warehouses, piers and float bridges - train platforms and piers under cover so loading could go on even in bad weather, gathering and sending out supplies in staggering numbers. Troops, too: follow the link for the coverage of Private Elvis Presley's departure to Germany, and, on a more somber note, the 1947 repatriation of the remains of 5200 soldiers. If the Howlies had gone in a different direction, or if Daniel had been standing another twelve inches in another direction....

Chapter 63: Pied-à-terre

 

---

Sousa took the note from Miss Roberts, thanked her, and immediately went back down to the lobby of the building. He got himself into a phone booth, closed the door, and made the call.  

A woman answered. “He was just here. Let me find him for you.” She muffled the mouthpiece of the phone, but Sousa could still hear her shouting: “Gus?...  GUS! YOU’VE GOT A PHONE CALL! …. ABOUT THE  APARTMENT !” 

“He’s coming,” she assured Sousa. 

“Thank you.” As Sousa waited, he unfolded his map — an awkward job in the small telephone booth — and looked for the address. It was only a few blocks from the office, not far from the El station. 

“ Here he is,” said the woman. 

“Hello?” said a man’s voice. 

“Mr. Galasso? This is Daniel Sousa. I’m returning your call about an apartment.” 

“Yeah, I’ve got a studio opening up, if you’re still looking.” He quoted the rent; it was on the high side, but still well within Sousa’s budget. “New building, good neighborhood. You can be in in two weeks, maybe sooner.” 

"What floor’s it on?” 

“First floor. But the building’s got an elevator. Interested?” 

“Sure. When can I come to look at it?” Sousa’s mind raced ahead — could he get some time this afternoon? How long would it take him to walk over there? — 

“Can you get here by five-thirty? Six?”  

“Yeah. I could try to get there earlier,” Sousa cautiously offered. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t rent it out from under you. It’ll be easier this way anyway.” He gave Sousa instructions on how to find him. “All right? We’ll see you then.” 

Sousa hung up the phone. As he folded his map and put it away, he half-wondered if he was dreaming. An actual promise that he’d have a chance to rent the apartment! One of the men from the church must have given his name to Mr. Galasso. If this worked out, he’d owe them big. 

He also owed Miss Roberts one, and told her so on his way back up to the office. She scoffed at the idea, but as she turned back to her busy switchboard, Sousa thought she looked pleased. 

Upstairs, he found a new learning opportunity waiting for him: Krzeminski had generously left him the task of filing all the paperwork from that morning’s delivery to Brooklyn. As Sousa worked, he took some time to poke around, getting a sense of what the office files held and where they held it.  

Meanwhile, Krzeminski and Tindall followed him around and caught him up on the office news. There had been a sharp increase in Japanese diplomatic and military communications traffic, and the Allied intelligence services were trying to figure out whether it augured a surrender or a desperate counterattack. Kerr had put extra agents on the evening and night shifts, just in case SSR support was needed, and Krzeminski and Tindall were speculating about how the SSR might get involved if there was a counterattack — maybe reverse engineering Hydra technology? — and what a counterattack might look like: probably no superweapons, they would have been used by now, bamboo spears and banzai charges more likely.... 

It was a grim topic, and memories of another counterattack were starting to slip into Sousa’s mind like curly wisps of smoke from under a door. All that ground lost, all those hard-fought, hard-won battles to be fought again, all that weariness and misery and dread coming back for an encore, cold and mud and snow.... 

Kerr called another quick briefing later that afternoon just to report that there was no news... yet. “We’ll see what happens in the next few hours,” he said. “It's getting on breakfast time in Tokyo.” Toward the end of the day, he said something about bombing raids leaving from Iwo Jima, but he didn’t assign any more agents to stay late, and Sousa was able to slip out on time and unnoticed. He changed into his uniform and set out for Sixth Avenue. 

 

His destination turned out to be a brick building, six stories tall. It looked new: the bricks were dark red with crisp corners; the trim around the windows was still bright white; the sturdy-looking fire escapes were in such discreet harmony with the building that they looked like trim. There was a little park across the street; behind its trees stood the bell tower of a church. It looked like some of the bell towers — the  campanili  — that he’d seen in Italy.  

The street level of the brick building housed businesses. One of them was the kind of shop that sold newspapers and tobacco and magazines and a little of everything else; its neighbor to the right was a beauty parlor. In between their storefronts, set back from the sidewalk, was the main door to the building.  

Sousa went in. Mailboxes, entrance to the stairwell, a notice reminding residents about saving metal and paper.... He found the door labeled OFFICE and knocked.  

A different door, unlabeled, opened and a woman in an apron stepped out. “You here for the apartment?” she asked. Before Sousa could answer, she turned to call someone; before she could shout, a shortish man in shirtsleeves emerged. 

“You must be Daniel,” he said. “Gus Galasso.” They shook hands. “And this is my wife Tina.” 

He waited as Sousa shook hands with her. “Ready to see the place? Right this way.” Mrs. Galasso stayed behind, but the scent of garlic and fresh tomatoes rolled out her open door and followed them down the hall. Sousa felt a sharp yank of nostalgia even as his mouth began to water.  

As he led Daniel down the hall, Mr. Galasso explained that he’d gotten his name from a plumber he knew who'd done work around the building, Carlo Rinaldi, who’d gotten Sousa’s name from  his  brother-in-law at to St. Anthony’s — timing perfect, just heard from the current tenant that he needed to move out — good place, building went up in ‘41, everything up-to-date.... 

He stopped at the last door in the hall and started flipping through the keys on his ring. “He’s not home yet, but he knows we’re coming,” he assured Sousa. “We’ll knock first just in case.” He cycled twice through knocking, yelling, and waiting before he unlocked the door and let Sousa in. 

Sousa immediately understood why the rent was so moderate: he’d seen bigger tents. He could survey the entire apartment right from the entry: a little kitchen opposite the front door, and a main room off to the right, which held a small table, a small desk with a tele phone, a shabby armchair, a bookshelf with a radio on top, and a single bed pushed against a side wall.  

Small was fine, though. The important words were  available  and  not many stairs  and  easier commute . This place more than fit the bill, and it didn’t smell of damp or bedbugs. This tour was almost a mere formality.  

“It’s not furnished, though, right?” he asked. Even if it weren’t, he’d probably still take it — he could always figure out furniture later. He could even sleep on the floor for a while if he had to;  at least he wouldn’t fall out of bed. 

“Not officially,” said Mr. Galasso. “But the current tenant bought the furniture from the guy who was here before. You might be able to work out the same kind of thing with him.” 

“Good to know,” said Sousa. He walked forward into the kitchen. It was snug, but it had a sink and a stove and —  

“An  electric  refrigerator,” said Mr. Galasso proudly. “With a freezer compartment!” He opened the refrigerator door to demonstrate. The refrigerator wouldn’t exactly hold a prize Thanksgiving turkey, but it held two ice cube trays, a quart of milk, and a few bottles of beer with room to spare. It was a luxurious answer to a question Sousa hadn’t even thought to ask. 

There were a few shelves and a drop-leaf work surface. One of the shelves was more like a ledge, extending into the bottom of a short, deep niche in the wall between the kitchen and the main room. “What’s that?” asked Sousa. 

“It’s a pass-through,” said Mr. Galasso.  “You put the food here on the ledge and then pick it up from the other side.” He led Sousa around into the main room and showed him two little shutters set into the shared wall, just above the table. The shutters opened up to reveal the pass-through. “See? Like the Automat.” 

Sousa walked over to one of the windows and peeked through the Venetian blinds. He was greeted by the sight of metal bars on the other side of the glass. Beyond them was the service alley. The room, he saw, was partly below grade: inside, the windowsill was a few feet above the floor, but outside it was only six or eight inches above the pavement, putting him at eye level with the fender of a truck parked outside. The room wasn’t as deep as a foxhole or a cellar, but still deep enough to be beneath casual notice. There were the bars, of course, and the windows could always be barricaded if necessary.... 

Mr. Galasso jerked his thumb toward a passage on the other end of the room. “Bathroom’s through there.” 

Sousa went to investigate. The passage was to a small space with two doors, one opening to a good-sized closet, the other to a modern bathroom with an alcove tub.  The bathroom was compact, but it looked big enough to at least get a chair in there; even if he couldn’t rig up a hand spray and a shower chair, he could figure something out. 

“And I could move in in two weeks?” he asked. 

“Maybe sooner,” said Mr. Galasso. “Depends on when this fellow here can clear out.” 

Sousa pretended to mull it over. “I think I’ll take it, then.” 

“I figured you would. It’s a nice place. You’ll like it. Ready to sign the papers?” 

 

On the way back down the hall, Mr. Galasso pointed out the trash room and a couple of other points of interest along the way. “This is my place,” he said, indicating the unmarked door. "But don’t come banging on my door after hours unless it’s a real emergency.” The door was ajar; he stuck his head in and called “We got a new neighbor!” before leading Sousa on to another door labeled SUPERINTENDENT.  

He unlocked the door and held it open for Sousa. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said, pointing to a chair in front of the desk. Sousa started pivoting himself around on his crutches, and Mr. Galasso stopped short. “That chair going to be okay for you?” 

“Just fine, thanks.”  

As Sousa lowered himself down to the chair, he could sense Mr. Galasso keeping an eye on him. When they were both seated, Mr. Galasso turned on a radio, put on his reading glasses, opened a file folder, and started taking out papers. 

“Just going to leave the radio on here; they were saying earlier there might be some news about Japan.” He looked up at Sousa. “Did you hear anything on the way over?” 

“No, nothing yet.” 

“Ah. Well, this is going to be a little different. The fellow who’s in there now — “ 

The door to the office swung the rest of the way open and Mrs. Galasso came in. “So you’re going to take it?” she asked Sousa. “Have you eaten yet?” Before he could say anything, she put a small plate of lightly toasted bread and a glass of water in front of him.   

Meanwhile, Mr. Galasso kept talking. “The fellow who’s in there now got a new job out West someplace and needs to move out. Trouble is, his lease isn’t up till March. But if you cover his deposit and take over his lease, you can get in fast without an application and without getting stuck with a rent increase. And he doesn’t have to pay a fee to get out of the lease. We need him here to finish the papers, but he should be back soon.” 

“I’ll keep an eye out for him,” Mrs. Galasso assured them, and took up a post by the open door. 

“You go ahead and eat,” ordered Mr. Galasso. Sousa obediently took a bite of the bread. It was real, substantial bread, laced with olive oil and carrying a whiff of garlic and cheese. For a moment, he was someplace else.... and then the spell ended and he was back in the office. As he took a sip of water and then another bite of bread, he felt a sense of approval radiating from Mrs. Galasso. 

It didn’t take long for him to sign the papers and write the checks to cover the deposit and his first two week. After that, there was nothing to do but wait for the current tenant as Mr. and Mrs. Galasso told him about the building, about the neighborhood, about Mr. Galasso’s office hours; about their grown daughters and their grandchildren; about Carlo Rinaldi, his wife, their children, and their extended family; about the laundry service many of the tenants used; about the current tenant — nice fellow, but very quiet, must have grown up on a farm or something. “4-F,” Mr. Galasso explained regretfully. 

Mrs. Galasso shook her head. “When he first got here he couldn’t eat anything good. Always something with his stomach, you know? Some pastina, that seemed to help him, though.” 

Soon enough they started in on Sousa: where was he from? Had he been overseas? He must have seen action? (Mr. Galasso looked meaningfully at his crutches.) Where had he been?  

Sousa admitted to getting a little banged up — wrong place at the wrong time, you know? — doctors weren’t sure how much longer he was going to have be on crutches — and changed the subject to Italy. The Galassos listened eagerly, as Sousa suspected they would. He was still telling them about Sicily when Mrs. Galasso interrupted. “Here he comes! — Tim! Tim, in here.” 

“Hi, Mrs. Galasso,” said a voice from the hall.  

“In here. Look who we’ve found for you to meet.” She ushered in a fellow around Sousa’s age. He was on the tall side of average, slender, wearing a brown suit and carrying his hat. 

Mr. Galasso looked up. “Hey, Pencils. I told you I’d be able to fix it all up. Daniel, this is Tim Wilson. Tim? Daniel Sousa.” 

Before Sousa could pick up his crutches, Wilson came over to shake hands. He seemed friendly but wary.  

Mr. Galasso explained the paperwork again to Wilson; Wilson picked it up and read it through for himself. He seemed to be taking a long time, and for a moment Sousa worried that he’d find something wrong and scuttle the deal. But when he finished, he took out his pen and signed off on everything. 

“And that’s that,” said Mr. Galasso. “We can fix the dates if you decide to move out earlier. Oh, I told him about the furniture.” 

“I’m interested,” added Sousa. 

“Oh!” said Wilson. He seemed surprised and relieved. “We could talk about it... now, if you have time.” 

“I’ve got time,” said Sousa. “Maybe we could grab some dinner.” 

Mrs. Galasso spoke up from the door. “We’ve got food here. It’s on the stove, nice and hot, all ready for you.” 

Sousa looked over to Wilson and was surprised at how nervous he looked. He gave an encouraging, sounds-good-to-me shrug. 

Wilson seemed to relax a little. “Looks like we’re having dinner here, then. Thanks, Mrs. Galasso.” 

 

Back at the apartment, Wilson dished up in the kitchen and handed silverware, two glasses, two filled plates, another plate of sliced bread, and two bottles of beer through the pass-through to Sousa. He came back around carrying two towels to serve as napkins and a small dish of shredded cheese.  

When they were both seated, he lifted his glass of beer. “May the surrender really happen, and  soon . To victory.” 

"To victory,” said Sousa. They clinked their glasses. 

“So what did Mrs. Galasso send us?” asked Sousa. 

“Seashell macaroni and something in between a stew and a sauce.” said Wilson. “It’s chopped vegetables. I didn't know if you’d like it, so I put it on the side there. I don’t know what it’s called, I didn’t ask. Half the time when I ask she says it doesn’t have a name, it’s just cooking.” 

Sousa started spooning the sauce over the pasta. It looked like diced eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes cooked with basil and parsley. He sprinkled some of the cheese on top and took his first bite. It tasted like summer, and something like home, and nothing like hospital food or the sandwiches the office ordered in.  

He noticed that Wilson had served himself a much smaller portion, pasta on one side of the plate, vegetables on the other, and was cautiously poking a pasta shell around in the vegetables before finally taking his first bite. Maybe saying something about how good the food was wouldn’t be the best way to get a conversation started.  

“You’re interested in the furniture, then?” Wilson asked. “How much did Mr. Galasso tell you?” 

“Just that you bought it from the guy who lived here before you, and that you might be open to selling some of it.” 

“You can see it’s nothing elegant. I think the guy I bought it from got it from the guy who was here before him, and that guy got it secondhand. I wrote up a list, I can show you after we eat.” 

“Thanks, I appreciate it. This is going to be a huge help. Any advice about the apartment, or the neighborhood?” 

“Let’s see: you’ve got a roof and a bed, so next you’ll need food. There’s plenty of places to eat around here; if you like Italian food you’re in clover. There’s a big grocery store further up on Sixth, and a lot of little Italian markets.” He chuckled a little. “When I first moved here I thought I was in Little Italy! But that’s southeast of here, closer to the bridge. 

“And if the Galassos treat you like they’ve treated me? You’ll never go hungry.” 

Sousa grinned. “They feed you a lot?” 

“At least twice a week. Italian food, mostly. And there's no such thing as ‘no thank you.’ If you ever want to just to slip in the building without getting into a conversation? Fibber McGee.” 

For clothing, Wilson recommended a laundry service that he and most of the other tenants used — reasonably quick, could pick up and drop off at Mr. Galasso’s office twice a week — another laundry up the street — barbershop he couldn’t say, he usually went to a place near the office.... 

He was looking less tense, but he hesitated before he cautiously asked, “Are you from New York? Or around here?” 

“Not me,” said Sousa. “I’ve been here less than two weeks, and never before that. I’m from Massachusetts.” 

“I’ve been here almost two years. My first time in the East. It’s a little different from Dayton.” He hesitated again, and nodded toward Sousa’s emptying plate. “There’s more in the kitchen if you want it.” 

There was the usual polite back-and-forth — no, you’re welcome to all of it; I can get it, but thanks — but Wilson didn’t drag it out, which Sousa appreciated. He put his empty plate in the pass-through and used one crutch to get to the kitchen, fill his plate, put it in the pass-through, and come back out to the main room. 

When he was seated again, Wilson had a little more advice for him on the unwritten rules of tipping, especially as it related to Mr. Galasso: the customary Christmas gift; perhaps a cut of the fee Sousa hadn’t had to pay an apartment broker.... 

“I don’t mean to imply that they’re greedy,” said Wilson. “It’s just how things work in New York. I think the...  extra  superintending is just because I’m their neighbor.” 

“So what brought you to New York?” asked Sousa. “War job?” 

Wilson shrugged. “Pencil-pushing.” 

“They brought you all the way from Dayton to push pencils. Or is it the kind of job you don’t talk about?” 

“Well, Dayton by way of Cleveland. It’s the kind of job you can talk about; you just don’t want to because it’s not very interesting. Procurement.” 

“Anything in particular?” Sousa took a sip of beer. 

“A lot of Plexiglas. Getting the materials, getting them to the plant, getting the Plexiglas to the factories to be shaped, that kind of thing.” 

“That’s what they use in airplanes, right? For the canopies and the turrets?” Sousa thought about it for a moment. “What’s it made of, anyway?” 

“Petroleum, ultimately. One of the byproducts when petroleum’s refined into gasoline.” 

Sousa thought this was interesting, and it became even more interesting as Wilson got into the details of raw materials and transportation and industrial chemistry. There were even international considerations; one of the necessary components came from a chemical plant in Canada. Wilson himself seemed to grow more relaxed and confident as he talked about his work.  When his tale ended, the Plexiglas was at the fabricator to be turned into aircraft parts, and the glasses of beer and the plate of bread were empty. 

“...And that’s what I’ve been doing,” he concluded. 

“Where’s the office?” 

“The Federal building, over on Varick.” 

“Oh, sure. And now they’re sending you do the same thing somewhere else?” 

“Pretty much the same thing; not as much Plexiglas, probably. But it’s a civilian job, in Detroit. Demand’s been going down since V-E Day, and it was only a matter of time before Uncle Sam told me my services were no longer required. So when the offer came, I took it. — More beer?” 

“No thanks, but don’t let me stop you.” 

Wilson didn’t get up. “And what brings you to New York?” 

“The Army’s loaning me out to a government agency until the docs are done with me. The commute from Halloran’s a little much, so I was looking for a place closer to the office.” 

“What do they have you doing?” 

“Pencil-pushing, mostly. But the kind you don’t really talk about.” 

Wilson nodded and glanced at his watch. “This has been a real pleasure, but if you need to get back to Staten Island, we’d better get down to business.”  

Wilson’s list would have been comical if it weren’t so clear and helpful. It was written government style:  

BED (Twin) 
NIGHTSTAND 
TABLE 
CHAIRS for table (2)… 

He also had included things like 

BEDSHEETS (4) 
PILLOWS (2) 
PILLOW CASES (4) 

As well as things like 

TOWELS (Bath) (3)  

And even things like 

PLATES (Dinner) (2) 
and  
FRYING PAN (medium size) (1) 

 

He’d even made a carbon copy of the whole thing. The price he asked was more than fair, so Sousa didn’t haggle. They agreed to have Mrs. Galasso clean the apartment before Sousa moved in, and split her fee. Sousa would only have to walk in, turn on the lights, and hang up his clothes. 

“...And I think that’s it,” said Wilson. 

“Thanks again,” said Sousa. “If I don’t see you again before you leave, good luck in Detroit. If you ever need a government contact, you know where to find me. This way’s faster, though.”  He wrote down his name and the cover phone number for the SSR and gave it to Wilson. “Let's keep in touch.” 

“I appreciate that,” said Wilson. He took Sousa’s number and put it his wallet. “I’ll send you my card when I get it. It’s always good to have contacts in the private sector. Seems like it might be even more important if you have one of those jobs you don’t really talk about.” 

 

There was a watchful, hopeful tension in the air that evening: on the El, in the terminal, on the ferry, on the bus, and in every hallway of Halloran. Sousa woke up early the next morning and immediately turned on the radio. There was news: During the night, Tokyo News had announced that an imperial message was coming, and long, coded messages had been detected being transmitted from Tokyo to Switzerland.  

“IT LOOKS REAL NOW,” crowed the newspaper headlines. On the ferry and on the El, strangers wanted to shake his hand and congratulated him. As he walked from the station to the office, he saw flags and bunting being hung up outside windows and doors.  

In the busy switchboard room, he waited by Miss Robert’s station until she had a moment to look up. “Just wanted to let you know I’ve found a place, so we can call off the search.” 

She smiled. “Oh, good! How soon can you move in?” 

“Week from Saturday at the latest.” 

“It’ll be here before you know it.” She pressed the button to open the elevator door and turned back to her work. 

Upstairs, not much was getting done. When Sousa entered the bullpen, the agents who were already there were gathered around the coffee pot, comparing notes about the news and about the party that was already starting around the city. The Tokyo News announcement had been reported around 0150; the fireworks in Chinatown had started at 0200, and the dragon dance had begun at dawn. People were already gathering in Times Square. 

Kerr held a briefing first thing. Secretary of State already at the White House; Japanese reply confirmed to have been received in Bern, Switzerland.... “But who knows how long this is going to take,” he said. “It could be days before it’s official.” 

“Speaking of official, we have some news from Washington: an official Chief of the New York office.” As a murmur went around the table, Kerr’s expression clearly said who the new Chief was not.  “He’s coming on Monday. Name’s Dooley. Army intelligence, detailed to the SSR. Looks like he stayed. 

“...And in two weeks we’ll have another group of agents starting, so it’s going to be even more tight in here for a while. Be patient. And don’t overdo it at lunch. 

“Finally: there have been rumors that when the surrender happens, the President may declare a Federal holiday. I do not know if these rumors are true, but as agents of the SSR, our work is essential. We will therefore all be reporting to the office as scheduled.” None of the agents seemed particularly pleased by this compliment. 

Sousa and the other new agents spent the rest of the morning viewing the film “Evidence: The Critical Chain of Custody” and talking about it with Kerr. The early-afternoon matinee was a little more interesting: “The Safe Handling of Hydra Technology.” It was frustrating to be cooped up in the briefing room watching films, but as Kerr reminded them, if something happened, they would know immediately, so they weren’t missing anything.  

On their breaks, the other agents filled them in: still no official news yet, but the gatherings outside were getting bigger. Sousa remembered the Boardwalk back in Atlantic City on V-E Day, and how difficult it had been to get around in the crowds, so when Kerr finally announced the end of the training day, Sousa didn’t wait to see if someone would invite him to hang around. He changed into his uniform and started back to Halloran. It felt like a kind of defeat, but he didn’t want to get stuck in the city. 

Back in his little isolation room, he took off his prosthetic, changed into his blue convalescent suit, and went to dinner. Afterwards he went to one of the biggest lounges, found a comfortable chair, and settled in to read his mail and wait for something to happen. 

He did not wait long. At 1855, Attention  sounded over the P.A. system. The hospital commandant wished all patients and staff a good evening, and instructed them to wait for an announcement from the President. A few loud whoops went up; the room fell silent again at 1900 as the President was announced. 

“I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese Government in reply to the message forwarded to that government on August 11th. I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam declaration which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan. In the reply there is no qualification. 

“Arrangements are now being made for the formal signing of surrender terms at the earliest possible moment....” 

A few minutes later, the statement was complete, and the hospital was erupting in roars of joy. At long last, the war was over. 

Notes:

Thank you for reading, for your patience, for your generous kudos, and your treasured comments.

Huge thanks to AnniePlusMacDonald for her enormous help with research for this chapter (including New York real estate and Plexiglas) and for idea bouncing and cheer-reading.

If you're interested, Introductions has another chapter up.

---

President Truman announces the surrender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcjwtTHdAZI

---

I gave Daniel a Murphy bed in Lonely Town because they are cool, but this bed's a twin pushed against the wall because that way he can have a sort of sofa without having to pull down the bed first or having the bed always down and taking up all the room in the place, and AnniePlusMacdonald really wanted that little break for him.

Chapter 64: The Next Chapter

 

 

 

 

Sousa was up extra early the next day. It was a holy day, and the first Mass at the hospital wasn’t until 0800, so he was going to take the first bus in to the city and go to an early Mass at St Anthony before continuing on to the office.  

Funny how the first full day of peace happened to fall on a holy day, he thought as he dressed the prosthetic. Probably just a coincidence; the war had never respected holy days or any other days before.  Like last year, when he just clean forgot about the holy day because — 

Because it was the beginning of Operation Dragoon. This time last year, to the very day: The jump, the fog; chill and damp and the scent of pine as he cut himself out of a tree in Southern France. Finding the rest of his men, finding that they’d missed the drop zone because of the fog; finding where they were supposed to be and walking twenty miles to get there.... 

How was that a year ago already? 

 It wasn’t a memory he cared to get lost in. He finished dressing, made sure he had everything he needed for the day and left to catch the bus. 

 

The victory celebrations had lasted till dawn. In the city, only a few straggling revelers were still out, wending their ways past the drifts of streamers and confetti on the sidewalks and streets. But the weary, bleary city still had a cheerful air about it as it opened the new day.

Sousa arrived at St. Anthony’s just in time to get one of the last seats. By the time Mass started, the back of the church was packed with standing people, with more people standing along the walls of the side aisles. The church stayed full after Mass ended, with worshipers hanging back to kneel in the pews or at the side altars. Even the candle racks were full, with every candle already lit; people were lined up to take their turn to light their own candles and place them on the floor, next to the rest of the overflow of candles and wrapped bouquets and jars of flowers. There were a few photos tucked among the candles and flowers, portraits of servicemen in uniform. 

Sousa didn’t stay to add his own candle, but on his way to the office, he stopped by a Western Union desk to send a telegram to Ines and the rest of the family. At work, he checked his leg, changed his clothes, and headed to the bullpen. 

At the morning briefing, Kerr announced the assignments of the day and the schedule for the rest of the week. With the war effectively over, Operation Sandlock was only going to get busier; bigger interview teams going out on Thursday and Friday and probably every day after that; report to the office at 0700.  He left the briefing room before Sousa could catch up with him. 

Sousa spent the rest of the day working on Clipper. He arrived at 0700 the next morning to discover that — despite Kerr’s promise last week — he’d been assigned to the skeleton crew covering the office instead to one of the interview teams. He was the only New York agent staying back. 

He kept his face neutral as he went to his desk. Getting this assignment again was frustrating, but complaining about it would only make things worse. At least this time Kerr had remembered to put him on a team.  

Kerr remembered him again a couple of hours later, at the conclusion of the morning briefing: “...And that's it. Sousa, you can take care of lunch.” He closed his file. “Wait. No. Jenkins: you do it.” He left the briefing room. Jenkins lifted his eyebrows but didn’t say anything. Sousa focused on closing his notebook, capping his pen, picking up his crutches, and waiting his turn to leave. 

 

On Friday, Sousa was assigned to the office team again. After the morning briefing, he went back to his desk and started on his first assignment of the day, matching reports against inventories of Hydra artifacts. The sounds of the bullpen, and the sense of time passing, faded as he grew absorbed in the work.  

A phone rang, loudly, startling him. On its second ring, hi realized it was the phone sitting at his elbow. 

He picked up. “Sousa.” 

“Local call for you, Agent Sousa,” said the operator. “Mr. Galasso.” 

Sousa hesitated. She prompted him: “Shall I put it through?”

“Sure. Please.” Sousa braced himself as the call connected. He wasn’t about to lose the apartment, was he? 

“Go ahead,” said the operator. 

“This is Daniel Sousa.” 

“Hey, it’s Gus Galasso. How are ya? Great news, right? Listen, I don’t mean to bug you at work, but I think you’re gonna like this. Pencils — y’know, Wilson — just called me. He said now that the war’s over, his job’s going to let him leave early. Today’s his last day. He’ll be out of the apartment either tonight or first thing in the morning. How soon do you wanna move in? We can have the place ready for you tomorrow.” 

“You’re kidding. That quickly?” 

“Oh, sure. Pencils started packing even before you signed the papers, and he don’t have much anyway.” 

“Well, thanks, this is  good news,” said Sousa. “Are you serious about tomorrow? What time?” 

“Oh, let’s say... four o’clock, just to be on the safe side.” 

“Four o’clock. I’ll see you then.” 

“We’ll be ready for you! If you don’t see me, come by the office. Hey, are you gonna need any help unpacking?” 

“Thanks, I’ll be all right. I’ll only have a couple of bags. If there’s a cart or a hand truck or something I could borrow to get them back there, though, I’d appreciate it.”  

“You got it. Don’t worry about a thing. See you tomorrow!” 

Sousa said good-bye, hung up the phone, and let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He still had the apartment, and he was moving in tomorrow. No more bus at the crack of dawn, no more ferry and elevated train, no more changing clothes in the locker room. Today was his last day for all of that. 

And after eight months, tonight was his last night as a hospital patient. 

 

Of course, it wasn’t really his last night as a hospital patient; he was merely on an extended pass, and officially still the property of Halloran and the United States Army. Sousa knew everything would go more smoothly if he kept the bureaucracy appeased. He ate his dinner quickly and went back to the ward to begin his preparations. 

First, he sent a memo to Klein outlining his plans. After shift change and the evening census, he explained everything to the charge nurse and put it all in writing for her, with a carbon copy for Captain Young.  He took his shower and did some packing before he finished his leg care and went to bed.  

The next morning, he ate a quick breakfast and went to the gym. He was about halfway through his routine on the pulley weights when a physical therapist came over. It was Lieutenant Olsen, the therapist he’d met when he'd first arrived at Halloran. 

“Captain Sousa!” she said with a smile. “Long time no see.” 

“I’ve been coming as often as I can.” Sousa eased his right leg out of the leather sling connected by a cord to the stack of weights. "It hasn’t been that  long, has it?” 

“It’s been two weeks since I saw you last,” said Lieutenant Olsen. She pulled a stool over and sat down. “You missed your appointment last Saturday.” 

Sousa thought back: the morning in the office, the apartments.... Was that really only a week ago? “Yeah, I guess it has been two weeks. I came in on Sunday, though.” 

“Good. And during the week?” There was no tinge of accusation in her voice. 

“I'm afraid not. I’m lucky if I get back in time for dinner. But I swear I’ve been keeping up with the stretches.” 

“I believe you,” she said with a smile. “This thing’s in Manhattan, right? And you’re going in every day. Any trouble getting around? — Besides  the obvious?” she added, heading off the joke. 

"So far, it’s been fine,” said Sousa. 

“Good. And if something makes it.... less fine, you’ll tell us, right?” 

"Right.” 

“Also... Major Klein said something about your sleeping off post, closer to the detail —” 

“Yeah.  That actually just got settled, I guess the memo hasn’t made this far down the tube yet. I'm starting that tonight.” 

“That’s big news! Army place? Or civilian?” 

“Civilian.” 

She nodded. “Are you ready?” 

“Almost. Just a little more packing to do, but....” He shrugged. 

“What about you?” she asked gently. “Are  you  ready? I know you’re pretty independent, but still, you haven’t officially graduated from physical therapy yet. And it’s a big change.” 

Sousa’s first impulse was to point out that if he didn’t feel ready that he wouldn’t be doing this, and that the Army used to send him off to all kinds of new places without asking if he was ready. But Lieutenant Olsen had a clipboard and the power to stand between him and the three o’clock bus to Manhattan. 

“I think I'm ready,” he said. “I got a furlough home back in June, so I got in some practice being in a civilian dwelling and doing civilian things.” She chuckled. “But like you said, I haven’t graduated yet, and I don’t plan to be a dropout.” 

"Glad to hear it!” she said. “Meet me at the desk once you’re finished with the weights, and let's work on your schedule.” 

The schedule didn’t take long: Sousa could only come on his days off from the SSR, and the gyms had the most open slots in the middle of the day and the early afternoons. 

“...And yes, parallel bars, and I will do my best to get you on the schedule for the pool,” Lieutenant Olsen promised. “Anything else?” 

“The therapists back at England told me to ask about horseback riding.” 

He said it as a joke, but to his surprise, Lieutenant Olsen took it seriously. “That's a good idea. It would just take some planning. It’s a day trip, and I don’t think it’s ever been on the weekend.  How much notice would you need? The next trips are already full, but if we got an opening I bet we could squeeze you in.” 

“That’s all right. I don’t think I could get the time just for that.” 

“This isn’t recreation, this is honest-to-goodness physical therapy. Let’s see what we can do.” She smiled. “Good luck with everything. We’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” 

 

After lunch, Sousa picked up a few things at the HX before going back to his room to clean up and finish packing. At 1440 he picked up his mail at the desk and said good-bye, and at 1500 he boarded the bus to Manhattan. 

He felt no nostalgia or even ambivalence as the door folded closed and the bus pulled away. Halloran was only a transfer station for him, and he wasn’t really leaving anyway. He watched as the now-familiar sights rolled past:  the driveway’s broad curve away from the hospital; the green lawn; the baseball diamond, this time with a game in progress; the long lane of trees leading to the guardhouse; the city; the ferry stop. This time he stayed on the bus as it made its way around the island to the bridge, up through Jersey City, and on to Penn Station. At Penn Station he caught a cab. Twenty minutes later, he was standing at the front door of the apartment building. 

“You goin’ in?” asked the cabbie. “Here, open the door.” He carried Sousa’s bags in and set them on the floor. 

“Thanks.” Sousa handed him the fare. 

“Good luck to you,” said the cabbie. “And welcome back.” 

“Sousa!” Mr. Galasso arrived, pushing a hand truck. He gave the cabbie a friendly nod and, before Sousa could protest, loaded his bags on the truck. “Come on back. Here —” he pulled something out of his pocket and bounced it in his cupped hand — “Oh. Better not make you catch that. Here you go.” He handed Sousa two keys on a ring. “That little one’s for your mailbox there.” 

Sousa tested the mailbox key (the mailbox was empty, of course) and followed Mr. Galasso down the hall past the office, past the Galassos’ own apartment, past the back door to the building, past the trash room and the utilities room, to the apartment. The door was ajar. Mr. Galasso pushed it the rest of the way open and pushed the truck in. “Look who's here!” he announced. 

Sousa followed him in. Mrs. Galasso was in the kitchen, folding a towel. “There you are!” she said. “Everything’s all ready.” 

“Let’s get the official stuff done first,” said Mr. Galasso. He rolled the hand truck out of the way, picked up a clipboard from the table, and led Sousa the around the apartment, flipping light switches, lighting the stove, opening and closing blinds and windows, and pointing out the condition of the walls and floors and baseboards. In the bathroom, he demonstrated the taps in the sink and the bath alcove and showed Sousa how to work the diverter for the shower. “You probably knew that, but, you know, just in case.” 

The shower.  Sousa had been so focusing on avoiding trouble back at Halloran that he’d forgotten to ask Lieutenant Olsen for advice when he had the chance. He held back his question as Mr. Galasso offered him a form to sign and started the unofficial part of the tour: clean towels hanging in the bathroom, clean sheets on the bed, the rest back from the laundry on Tuesday — closet ready too, Pencils left the clothes hangers — he also left the phone going for a few days, left you a note about it.... 

As he talked, Sousa glanced at his watch: it was getting late. If he was going to do this, he needed to do it soon, before the stores closed. 

“Tim left some food in the kitchen, too,” said Mrs. Galasso. “Come take a look.” 

 “I will, thanks,” said Sousa. “But first, I could use some advice. Is there a hardware store around here? Or even a five-and-dime?” 

“Oh, sure,” said Mr. Galasso.  

“There’s a real good one up near the Square,” added Mrs. Galasso. 

“That one’s more of a variety store, you know?” said Mr. Galasso. “But what do you wanna go running to the hardware store for? You haven’t even unpacked. You want to hang up a picture or something? I got nails and a hammer.” He waved his hand. “I’m the super, I got all kinds of tools. And don’t you ever go thinking you need to fix anything. That’s  my  job.” 

“It’s not really something I can borrow,” said Sousa. Mr. Galasso would probably see this anyway if he ever had to come into the apartment for something.... 

“It’s actually part of this.” He indicated his crutches. “The docs want me to use a chair in the shower and use a hand spray —” 

“So you don’t have to worry about slipping?” said Mr. Galasso. “That makes a lotta sense. What about the chair, does it have to be anything special?” 

"They make special ones — ” began Sousa. 

“Probably don’t have ‘em at the hardware store, though,” said Mr. Galasso. “So you need something to tide you over.” He exchanged a thoughtful look with Mrs. Galasso. “You think...?” 

“Oh, yeah. If it’ll fit,” she said.  

Mr. Galasso headed for the bathroom. When Sousa caught up, he found him kneeling next to the bathtub. 

“Twenty-two inches,” announced Mr. Galasso. “Be right back.”  He put his measuring tape back in his pocket and hurried out of the apartment, taking the hand truck with him. 

“There’s a couple of stepstools in the office,” Mrs. Galasso explained. “People have been coming and going so quickly, and sometimes they just leave things. Perfectly good things! — Do you need any help unpacking?” 

“That’s all right. By the way, thanks for making up the bed.” 

She scoffed, but looked pleased. “One less thing for you to do while you unpack. And don’t worry about dinner tonight, either. You’re eating with us.”  

“Thanks, but I don’t want to hold you up —” 

“No, you go and do what you need to do, and we’ll eat when you get back. Tim left a few things in the kitchen, but not enough for a proper dinner, of course — not that he ever did that much cooking anyway, the poor thing — and this is a busy day for you, and you must be so tired of Army food and restaurant food....” 

A few minutes later, Mr. Galasso turned up with a wooden stepstool, the kind that was tall enough to serve as a chair and had a second folding step. He carried it into the bathroom, lifted it into the bathtub, and checked to make sure it didn’t wobble. “Think that’ll work for ya? At least for a bit?” 

“I think so. Thanks a bunch, this is a huge help. When do you need it back?” 

“Keep it, it's yours. I just wish I had one of those hand sprays to give you. I looked around in the office, but no luck. Maybe I should get one, it sounds like something that could come in handy.” 

Sousa thanked the Galassos again, got directions to the stores they recommended, promised one more time he’d be there for dinner, saw them to the door, and finally managed to see them out. He glanced at his watch. He had some time before stores started closing. 

He took a few minutes to poke around the kitchen. The various cupboards held salt, pepper, a spice jar of dried parsley, a half-full box of macaroni, and an almost-empty box of saltine crackers. A frying pan, a toaster; a coffee pot, but no coffee. In the refrigerator, Wilson had left him a stick of butter, a small jar of mayonnaise, and — he smiled at the sight — a bottle of beer.  Out in the main room, he emptied his bag on the table, slung the strap over his shoulder, pocketed his keys, and set out on his errand. 

 

His first stop was at the hardware store on the next block. He had no luck finding a hand spray there, even after a clerk scoured the stockroom for him, so he hurried as quickly he could another couple of blocks north to the variety store.  He looked in the hardware department and came up empty, but a clerk was able to find one for him in the baby department. He checked out, stowed the coiled hand spray in his shoulder bag, and headed back to the apartment. 

He saw several interesting-looking shops and restaurants along his way; he’d definitely come back another time to explore. For now, he had one more place he wanted to visit before it closed for the evening: the small grocery store up a block from the apartment building. Bells jingled as he pushed the door open and got himself and his crutches inside.  

“Closing in ten minutes!” called the clerk at the counter. 

Sousa didn’t bother replying; the clerk was too busy waiting on other customers to even look in his direction. He picked up a basket, grappled its handle between two fingers and a crutch grip, and glanced around. The sign for the meat case caught his eye. He was halfway across the store by the time his thoughts became conscious: thoughts of the next morning’s breakfast, of his first meal in the new apartment; of something a little special, a little celebratory: thoughts of bacon and eggs.... 

The butcher was already emptying the meat case for the night. He did not look up from his work. “Can I help you?” 

Sousa looked at the case. “I was hoping for some bacon, but....” 

The butcher shook his head. “Sorry, pal. No bacon since Thursday.”  

Meanwhile, Sousa noticed a poster on the wall — OFFICIAL TABLE OF POINT VALUES — that informed him that BACON was 9 points per pound.  

He’d forgotten about the ration. He couldn’t have bought any bacon anyway: he had no ration book. 

“Do I need a ration book to buy eggs?” he asked. 

“Yeah.” The butcher stood up. “ Ah . You just get back — ?” He seemed to notice Sousa’s crutches for the first time. “Or on leave? You’re not from the hospital, are ya? Did someone put you up to this?” he demanded. “Eggs and bacon on a Saturday night with no ration book?” 

Sousa shook his head. “I’m on my own for a bit. Just looking for breakfast.” 

“Good,” grunted the butcher. “Because if it was a joke? It’d be  lousy .” He looked at the clock, at the line at the counter, and scowled. He rinsed and dried his hands, came out from behind the meat case, and grabbed Sousa’s shopping basket.  “Well, what do you want? Hope it’s not toast, we’re out of bread.” He began to lead Sousa around the store.  “Want some milk? Don’t need points for that, and look, here’s the last one in the case, just for you. — Listen, until things get back to normal, you gotta get here early. ‘Early in the day, early in the week. —  It’s really bad today; don’t know if you saw, but right after Victory Day, they took some stuff off the blue point list, so we had people in here buyin' all kinds of things just because they could. That’s why we’re out of juice.” He led Sousa to the front and put the basket on the counter. “It ain’t exactly bacon and eggs, but this should tide you over. — Hey! Marty!” he called to the clerk. “Make sure this man gets some coffee!” 

 

Back at the apartment, Sousa put his groceries away — milk, coffee, peanut butter, strawberry jam, a box of shredded wheat, and an orange — and then went into the bathroom to test the hand spray. To his relief, it easily fit the tap: one big problem, solved. He combed his hair, freshened up, and headed back out and down the hall to the Galassos. He had barely knocked before Mr. Galasso opened the door and started shooing him in.   

“There you are!” Mrs. Galasso emerged from the kitchen. “We’ll be ready to eat in around fifteen minutes.” 

“Thanks, Mrs. Galasso.” He handed her the wrapped gift he’d bought at the HX earlier that day. 

“You shouldn’t have.” She carefully removed the paper and gasped as it revealed a big box of chocolates. 

“Thank you ,” she said. “We can have some for dessert. Go, go ahead and sit down.” She went back into the kitchen.  

Mr. Galasso led Sousa to the dining table and pulled out a chair for him. He poured wine as Sousa lowered himself into the chair, and offered him a glass once he was settled. “Salute ,” he said, lifting his own glass. 

Sousa lifted his own glass. “Salute. ” He braced himself — the only label on the wine bottle was a handwritten “1940”— but the first sip proved that the homemade wine had made good use of its four years in the cellar.  

Mr. Galasso grinned. “What do you think?” 

“This is the good stuff, isn’t it.  Yours?” 

Mr. Galasso shrugged modestly. “A team effort.” 

Sousa took another sip of the wine. “How long have you been the super here?” 

“Since '41, when the place opened up. Before the place opened up, actually. They hired me while the building was still under construction, and finished our apartment first, so we could move in right away.” He’d been a super before, he explained, but not in a modern building, and certainly not one still under construction — keeping track of all the workers coming and going — plumbers, electricians, plaster men, painters — really helpful to get to see everything going in, make sure everything was right from the start — even got to help pick some of the appliances, brought the missus along for that.... 

As he talked on, Sousa glanced around the apartment.  It was much larger than his, large enough for a living room and a distinct dining area. Both rooms were hung with flowered wallpaper, had matching curtains at the windows, and were full of things to look at: furniture from three or four different decades; trinkets, and plants in pots; pictures and family portraits hanging on the walls and displayed atop doilies on almost every flat surface. It felt warm and familiar and cheerfully busy — and oddly, faintly disorienting. He couldn’t place why until he realized that since his furlough in June, he’d known almost nothing but hospital rooms and offices. This was the first real, settled home he’d been in for months.

Meanwhile, the scents floating from the kitchen grew stronger. Mrs. Galasso brought out a green salad and a plate of bread; a few minutes later, she announced dinner and brought out a wide bowl of steaming spaghetti sauced with tomatoes, parsley, and clams. 

“That looks fantastic,” said Sousa, as he spread his napkin over his lap. 

Mr. Galasso grinned. “They feed you clams in the Army? Or do you have to make do with all that meat we save for you?” 

They said grace; Mrs. Galasso served out the spaghetti and passed the bread around; she and Mr. Galasso asked Sousa how his shopping had gone, and rejoiced at his success. They gave him more suggestions for shopping around the neighborhood — best bakeries, best markets, the best markets for seafood, the place where they got the clams.... As for church, he didn't need to go all the way over to St Anthony’s any more; it was... okay, they conceded, but the church across the street just beyond the park was much  better — he’d seen it, right? with the bell tower? of course he had — good people over at St Anthony’s, though; glad they’d been able to send him their way.... 

“Now, what’s the story with you and the Army?” asked Mr. Galasso. “The way Carlo told me, you’re up for discharge soon, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of someone moving in before they get their papers. Not that I’m worried you’re breaking the rules or gone AWOL or anything like that.” 

“No, don’t worry, there won’t be any MPs coming around looking for me,” said Sousa. “It’s all regulation. It’s just out of the ordinary, kind of... an experimental program.” The Galassos nodded solemnly. "I belong to the Army until the docs decide I'm done. A lot of that’s just waiting, so instead of having me kill time at Halloran, the Army’s lending me to a civilian agency here in the city. That’s why I have a pass to live off post, and why I’ll wearing civilian clothes sometimes. And then on my days off I go to Halloran for treatment.” 

The gentle hypnosis induced by the words Army Experimental Program  was snapped off by the phrase go to Halloran for treatment.  Mr. Galasso had strong opinions on having to go all the way to Staten Island — if the Army was going to insist on Sousa’s doing that, they could at least help him get there and back! — a bus from Penn Station? Well, it was better than nothing, he guessed....

Meanwhile, the word treatment drew Mrs. Galasso’s attention to Sousa’s almost-empty plate, and confirmed to her that he needed  the last spaghetti and sauce in the serving bowl, and more bread to go with it. She told him so as he refilled his plate: all that treatment, and all that going back and forth? Of course he needed it.  

“At least we don’t have to teach him how to eat,” said Mr. Galasso. “Remember when Pencils first got here? I don’t think he’d ever seen a clam in his life.” 

“Do they even have clams in Iowa?” said Mrs. Galasso.  

“Maybe not,” mused Mr. Galasso. “He knew about fish, though. How about you, Sousa? You come from someplace with clams?” 

“Not right in the backyard, but pretty close by.....” Sousa had been expecting this turn in the conversation, and the benign but blunt interrogation that followed. Clams – Rhode Island Sound, Providence, Taunton — father — oh, that was too bad about his mother, how old was she? — sisters, nephew, nieces.... They especially appreciated his description of the house on Winter Avenue, with its garden and the occasional flock of chickens — wished they could keep chickens, Mrs. Galasso’s sister lived in Brooklyn and kept a few....  So he joined in ‘42? All that training! Sicily, Naples, France — not Paris, different direction — Belgium.... 

“Your leg must have got hurt pretty bad,” observed Mr. Galasso. 

“Yeah,” said Sousa. “But, you know... it could have been worse.” 

 "And thank God it wasn’t,” added Mrs. Galasso. 

Over salad, the Galassos moved on to the topic of work. This experimental program... an office job, then? Government? Something permanent? What did he think of New York? Did he think he might... settle down here?  

For dessert, Mrs Galasso served out quivering slices of a fruited gelatin mold and then ordered Sousa to take a chocolate from the box he had brought. He took a small piece to humor her and watched with satisfaction as she happily took her time selecting her own. Mr. Galasso waited until she was ready before introducing the next object of inquiry: Was Sousa seeing anybody? No? And no sweetheart waiting back home?  “Huh. Well, all in good time.” He exchanged a knowing look with Mrs. Galasso; Sousa pretended to be too preoccupied with dessert to notice. 

 

Back at his own apartment, Sousa thanked Mr. Galasso again, saw him to the door, and said good night. He locked the door, turned back around, and surveyed his new quarters. At last it was time to unpack. 

He started in the kitchen, with the food Mrs. Galasso had insisted on sending and Mr. Galasso had insisted on carrying. The tomatoes from the Galassos’ rooftop garden and the generous slices of bread, loosely wrapped in paper, stayed on the counter; the bowl of gelatin went into the refrigerator, as did the two eggs from the Brooklyn chickens and the small chunk of hard cheese the Galassos had added when they’d realized that Sousa had no ration book. (Sousa had protested, but to no avail.) 

Next he hung up his clothes: uniform on one side of the small closet, civilian clothes on the other. It felt good to see everything in one place, all neat and ready. He put his toiletries in the bathroom, set aside the pajamas and the leg supplies he’d need that evening, and stowed the rest in the small chest of drawers.  He didn’t have much else; a few supplies for the desk, the knitted blanket on the foot of the bed, the empty bags in the closet, and he was done.  

Now he could finally get out of his prosthetic. As he went to get a chair, his attention was caught by the world outside the windows, and he went over to look. He couldn’t see much — his view was of the building’s service alley, empty on a Saturday night — but in the distance he could hear New York: the low rush of traffic, the occasional car horn, the footsteps and voices of passersby. The wall was roughly perpendicular to the street, so noises grew louder or softer as the noisemakers walked toward or away from his listening post. He lingered a little longer before he closed the blinds on the windows.    

He dragged one of the kitchen chairs to the little dressing area outside the bathroom and started his evening routine, doffing and cleaning his prosthetic and laying out what he’d need to wash. It was awkward to maneuver in the small bathroom, but he was able to perch himself on the stepstool, shower with the hand spray, dry off, get his pajamas on, and tidy up, all without slipping. 

Back in the main room, he put on the radio and brought his letters and his writing paper over to the table. He went back to the kitchen — his  kitchen — and made a small pot of coffee, exactly to his taste. He poured a cup and used the pass-through to get it to the table on the other side of the wall. He lowered himself into the chair, scooted up to the table, and took his first grateful sip of coffee. 

Life was going to be so much easier now. 

He started flipping through his letters. He’d been so busy, he owed letters to everybody now.... But how much could he tell them? Like the guys from England General — could he tell them about the detail, and about moving off post?  

He put those letters aside and took out his most recent mail from home. They knew about the detail, of course, and he felt comfortable telling them about his new situation — and his new address. Maybe in a few days he’d find something in his mailbox by the front door. He uncapped his pen and began his letter. 

There was quite a bit to write about, and once he’d finished the letter and sealed the envelope, he was ready to call it a night. He wrapped his leg, thought for a moment, and got up again to drag the chair from the dressing area to a spot near the bed, just in case he needed a reminder. He wound and set the alarm clock he’d bought at the HX earlier that day, climbed into bed, and turned out the light. 

He was ready to sleep, but his mind kept pacing the apartment: it felt enormous after his weeks in the little isolation room at Halloran, and his months in the crowded hospital room in England General. And then there was the awareness of there being no nurses walking the corridor outside, and the stout lock on his door.... of being half-underground instead of a few stories up.... of the noise from the streets outside, of the harsh light of the streetlights spilling around the edges of the window blinds... of the kitchen, of freedom from the mess hall, of the refrigerator humming as it kept the milk and beer cold, and just for him. Finally his mind slowed its pace and he fell asleep. 

 

Notes:

Welcome to our newest readers! And thanks to you all for reading, for your patience, for your generous kudos, and especially your treasured comments, which I display atop crocheted doilies on top of my radio console.

Big thanks to AnniePlusMacDonald for her enormous help with research for this chapter, and to her and Cuppa tea love for idea bouncing and cheer-reading.

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August 15 is the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (known as the Dormition of the Theotokos in the Eastern Churches.)

"Five–and–dime" store — also known as a "five–and–ten", a "ten–cent store", a "dime store", or a variety store. The U.S. ten cent coin is called a dime, and when these stores started out, everything cost five cents or ten cents. By the '30s, the five and dime pricing system had been phased out, but the nicknames stuck. The biggest chain of this type of store was Woolworth's. In the U.S. a "variety store" now implies a smaller store that carries a broad range of household goods, including weird but useful things that you can't readily find other places. Replacement knobs for the top of a pot lid? Rubber hand spray that fits over your tap? A spool of thread and some hand needles? Try a variety store. (No groceries except candy, though.)

Chapter 65: Chief Dooley

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sousa slept poorly that night and woke up earlier than he’d intended the next morning. He lay in bed for a while, watching dawn slowly flow from the street into the little apartment, before he set about the day, washing and shaving and donning the prosthetic and putting on his uniform.

He went to early Mass at the church across the square. Afterwards, he caught a bus to Penn Station, found a quick bite to eat, and boarded the bus for Halloran. There was no thought of playing hooky from physical therapy; he didn’t want to fall behind, and he didn’t want to antagonize the Army any sooner than necessary.

And really, now that he was moved in, what else did he have to do?

 

Back at the apartment that evening, he lifted a plate of warmed-over spaghetti, a small plate of gelatin, and a glass of water, one by one, out of the pass-through and put them on the table. He carefully arranged himself and his crutches between the table and the chair, took a deep breath, and lowered himself down to sit.   He propped his crutches, scooted the chair forward, said grace, and began to eat.

He was feeling a little down after his day at Halloran. He’d worked extra hard in physical therapy that weekend — really pushed himself — but he wasn’t seeing any improvement, whether in walking without crutches or with only one crutch or in anything else. All he had to show for his efforts were stiff, sore muscles and a bruise to his ego from when he’d fallen.

He’d also taken some time to ask around about getting a ration book. He’d gone to Special Services and the Red Cross, and no matter how he phrased the question, the answer was always the same: He didn’t need to know where to apply to get one; he didn’t need to worry about anything; he’d be provided one when he was discharged.  Which didn’t help him now, but of course he couldn’t explain that.

He did manage to find out that for civilians, getting a ration book was somehow connected to the post office. There was a post office in the Federal Building near the SSR, so at least he had a convenient place to start.

His stack of unanswered letters caught his eye. Maybe that was another problem that could be solved at the post office.

 

On Monday morning, Sousa was able to sleep later than 0500, make his own breakfast of coffee and toast, dress in his civilian clothes instead of his uniform, do it all at his own pace, and still arrive bright and early at the post office in the federal building.

As soon as he uttered the words “ration book”, the clerk wearily interrupted him with instructions to go to the Ration Board Office on the fifth floor to make an appointment, and, yes, that was all she could tell him. She perked up somewhat after he went on to ask about a post office box, and didn’t give him a hard time when he asked for a box as close as possible to eye level and insisted on double-checking its location. Once he was satisfied, he signed the form and added the key to his ring. Now he could get his mail without going all the way to Halloran, while still keeping quiet about living off post.

He walked out of the post office and around to the main entrance of the Federal Building. It was a fairly modern-looking building, with a smooth face of light brick; some understated carved ornamentation; tall, crisp-cornered windows; and an air of placid, stable authority. 

The lobby wore its authority somewhat differently. Sousa was greeted by a line of stanchions and thick blue rope that steered him to a ticket machine and a sign reading VISITORS TAKE A NUMBER — for those who couldn’t take a hint, presumably. He took a ticket, just in case, and looked around to get his bearings.

The dividers funneled him into a section of the lobby furnished with benches and chairs and sectioned off from the rest of the lobby by another line of rope and stanchions. A sign blocked the way from the benches to a wide reception desk: VISITORS WAIT HERE UNTIL YOUR NUMBER IS CALLED. Four or five people were already waiting.

There were more benches and chairs on the other side of the divider, arranged in clusters around tall signs whimsically labeled  A, B, C, and so on. That side of the lobby also held the only visible doors to elevators and to the rest of the building. The doors were under guard. There was no directory to steer him to the ration office or anywhere else.

As Sousa considered his options, a voice spoke up from behind him. “Excuse me.”

He twisted around. A woman was standing behind him, waiting for him to get out of the way. Another woman was catching up with her.

“Oh — sorry.” He took a few steps forward. As they passed, he noticed the government badges they wore on chains around their necks. An idea came to him, and he pulled his own badge out of his jacket pocket. “Would you mind if I asked you something?”

A glance from his badge to his face, and the two women were all warm attention. “Not at all,” said the first woman.

“I just started at an office around the corner,” said Sousa — the women nodded knowingly — “and I heard we could come to the cafeteria here…?”

“I don’t know why you’d want to,” said the first woman, “but if you get that desperate, just show your badge over there.” She indicated one of the doors.

“Hope you’re not looking for this morning’s breakfast,” said the second woman. “They’re usually cleaned out by now.”

“Ah. Could you point me to the ration office then, if it’s open? I’m having trouble with my book. I know it’s on the fifth floor, but beyond that….”

The two women looked at each other.  “Can’t do that,” said the first woman, regretfully. “Building rules. You can go to the cafeteria with just your badge, but for anyplace else you need to sign in at the desk.”

Sousa thanked the women; they went on to their door, and he went to the visitors’ waiting area and found a seat.

The split-flap sign on the desk buzzed and flipped to number 14. A woman sitting nearby put her knitting away and presented herself to the desk. The receptionist made a phone call, had the visitor sign something, and pointed to one of the clusters of benches on the other side of the room. The visitor went to sit down, and the sign buzzed and flipped again: 15.  A man in a blue suit looked at his ticket and stood up.

Sousa instinctively checked his pocket. His ticket was still right where he’d put it — number 17, like his birthday — that was coming up soon, wasn’t it? Funny how it had snuck up like that.  He steered his mind away from his last birthday (mud; France; that nerve-wracking Jeep ride…) and back to his reconnaissance.

On the far side of the lobby, a woman wearing a badge emerged from an elevator, found one of the waiting visitors, and escorted the visitor back to the elevator, just like Miss Roberts had brought him and the other new guys up to the SSR on their first day. He remembered that Tim Wilson had worked in this building; had that involved secrets? What other secrets might this building hold?

The sign finally buzzed and flipped to number 17. At the desk, Sousa showed his badge to the receptionist and began to explain his situation.

As soon as he said the words ration book, the receptionist cut him off. “So this isn’t official business?” she asked in a low voice.

“Well, no. But —”

Her eyes flicked to his crutches. “And you don’t have an appointment?”

“Well, since I was here, I was hoping to —"

“They take walk-ins on Thursday and Friday. Otherwise you have to make an appointment,” she said, not unkindly. She circled a number on a brochure and handed it to him. “They’re usually able to take phone calls after ten.”

Sousa tried to gently press his case; the receptionist was sympathetic but firm — strict schedule in that office, didn’t want to waste his time — and he quickly saw it would be of no use. He thanked her — no sense making an enemy, she was just doing her job — and headed on to the Bell building.

As he walked past the switchboards, the operators gave him their usual smiles, and quite a few looks of friendly surprise: he was arriving in civvies today instead of in uniform. He suddenly remembered Kerr mentioning that the operators sometimes handled calls to the federal building.

“ ‘Morning, Miss Roberts,” he said, when he reached her station. “What’s the good word? The new Chief here yet?”

“He sure is,” said Miss Roberts, her eyes on her work. “The A.C. brought him through, said ‘This is Chief Dooley’, and took him straight upstairs.” She plugged in a wire and turned to look at him. She seemed to approve of what she saw. “A little change in routine today?”

“Yeah, I was able to move on Saturday. Just need a ration book and I’ll be all set.”

He said it lightly, but Miss Roberts looked concerned. “You don’t have a ration book? Not at all?”

“Not yet. It’s a long story,” said Sousa. “I went over to the federal building this morning and they gave me a number to call. Any hoops to jump I should know about?”

“Let me see what we can find out,” said Miss Roberts, and pressed the button to summon the elevator.

 

Upstairs, the door and the blinds to Kerr’s office were closed. The rest of the bullpen seemed oddly empty, but as Sousa went to his desk, he saw that most of the agents were collected around the water cooler and the coffee maker. He left one of his crutches at his desk and went to join them. The topic of conversation was the new Chief, who’d been glimpsed but still hadn’t been introduced. The weekend shift had not been idle, though, and had gleaned some intel from the Washington office: New York Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Counter Intelligence Corps, SSR, Europe; got along with the politicals but wasn’t a suck-up.

Once Sousa had caught up on the news and speculation, he poured half a cup of coffee, covered it with a saucer, and carefully brought it back to his desk. He had not been at his desk fifteen minutes when his phone rang. The switchboard girl announced a call from Mrs. Tyler, at the ration office.

Mrs Tyler introduced herself. She understood he was in need of a ration book? He’d been in the armed services, she took it, or he’d already have one; hadn’t gotten one at discharge? Poor thing, he must be hungry. And he was working in a Federal civilian office? A letter from Personnel or from a supervisor that attested to his need for a ration book would be fine. The office closed for lunch at 11:30 and reopened at 12:35; other than that, he could come any time and just ask for her at the reception desk. Yes, they usually made appointments but they could squeeze him in, it was no trouble. He was very welcome.

Sousa thanked her again, said good-bye, and hung up. A glance at the clock told him there was still time before the 9:30 briefing. He took out some letterhead, rolled it into the typewriter, consulted the style reference at his desk, and began.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN….

He finished just as the others were starting to head to the briefing room. He rolled the letter out of the typewriter, locked it in his desk, grabbed his crutches, and went to find a seat.

 

The briefing room fell silent as the new Chief entered. Average height; not young, but not ancient either, an experienced-looking face with only the beginnings of gray hair. New-looking double-breasted suit the color of blue-black ink; white shirt, red tie with flourishes, immaculate white pocket square. He calmly surveyed the room as Kerr came in behind him.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Kerr. “I’d like to introduce the new Chief of the New York office: Roger Dooley.” He quickly named the agents.

Dooley nodded. “Pleasure to meet you.” There was a gravelly hint to his voice. “I’ve heard good things about the agents in this room.

“I’m not much for long speeches, and we’ve got a big job ahead of us, so let’s get started. —With Agent Kerr presiding.” He nodded to Kerr as if he’d just given a compliment instead of a directive. Kerr, looking surprised and mollified, began the meeting.

 

When the meeting ended, Kerr and Dooley immediately left the bullpen to go visit the labs. Sousa didn’t see them again until a couple of hours later, when Kerr loudly summoned Edwards to the office for a deeper briefing on Project Clipper. On his way to the office, Edwards collected a couple of the other agents who had been working on Clipper; he went out of his way to pass Sousa’s desk and rap it with his knuckles. “You too,” he said.  Sousa got to his feet, put his letter in his jacket pocket, and followed Edwards to the office.

The briefing went well. Kerr’s expansive exposition was quickly elbowed aside by Dooley’s direct questions to Edwards and the other agents, and the time he gave them to actually answer. Edwards made a point of mentioning by name the New York agents on the project and talking up the good work they were doing; even if he was only trying to ingratiate himself with Dooley – or get himself released back to Washington earlier – his praise was sincere, and gratifying.

When the briefing was over, Sousa awkwardly got out of the way of the other agents and then stepped back into the office. “Do you have a minute?”

“This is Sousa,” Kerr explained to Dooley, in a voice that was low but not low enough. “That special case I was telling you about.” He raised his voice again to address Sousa: “Sure, what’s up?”

“Just some housekeeping,” said Sousa. “I was able to get a place off post and moved in this weekend. This is my new address. I’ll bring my new phone number as soon as I work it out with the phone company.” He offered a sheet of paper.

Kerr instinctively reached for the paper. Dooley leaned over to look at it; he said nothing but seemed to approve. Kerr put the paper in the to-file box.

“Now that I’m off post,” Sousa went on, “I could use a ration book. The office at the Federal Building says they can set me up if I bring a letter saying I’m employed in a civilian job. I wrote one up in case it would be helpful —” he took the letter out of his pocket — “or drafted one; I wasn’t sure whose name would go on it….”

Kerr looked annoyed, but reached out and accepted the letter. “What do you need a ration book for? Just go to the Automat like everyone else. —Sure, I’ll take a look at this.” He reached to toss it into the inbox.

Dooley shot Kerr a withering look and intercepted the letter. “Any idea when they can see you?” he asked Sousa.

“As soon as today.”

“Good.” He read the letter. When he was finished, he drew a line through the typed signature and replaced it with a quickly printed ROGER P. DOOLEY / CHIEF, NYC OFFICE. He signed the letter and handed it back to Sousa. “Go get that taken care of – now, if they’re open. Don’t let ‘em skimp you. If they have any problems, tell ‘em to call me.” He capped his pen. “An SSR agent oughta be able to buy a can of tuna fish if he wants.”

 

 

Sousa went to the Federal Building after lunch. On his way back to the office, Miss Roberts looked up when he got to her station. “You got back quickly,” she observed. “Success?”

“Success.” Sousa showed her his new ration book.

“Good! And not too much trouble?” An edge to her cheerful voice suggested her question wasn’t a mere pleasantry.

“It was a breeze,” Sousa assured her. “They all but rolled out the red carpet. I’m… guessing I have you to thank for that, or someone in this room?”

“Us?” Miss Roberts shook her head modestly. “Oh, no. We just made some connections.” She pressed the button to open the elevator.

“Well, it feels like you cleared the way, like the Army Engineers say. Thanks. I owe you one — Another one,” he corrected himself as the elevator doors opened.

 

 

Chief Dooley spent the rest of that day and most of the next morning dug in with Kerr behind the door to the office. After lunch, Kerr emerged from the office carrying a stack of folders and set up shop at the empty desks in the bullpen. Dooley stayed in the office and started calling short meetings: first with the Washington agents in twos and threes, and then with the New York agents, one by one.

Sousa’s turn came late in the afternoon. When he knocked at the door frame, Dooley did not look up from his work. “Agent Sousa. Have a seat,” he said, nodding toward a chair.

The floor was stacked with file boxes. As Sousa considered his approach, Dooley glanced up. “Oh. You all right there?”

“Yeah.” Sousa threaded his way to the chair. As he lowered himself down, Dooley finished what he was doing, closed a folder and put it aside, and opened a new one.

“Sousa…” he read aloud. “….Any relation to the March King?” His wry tone and his lifted eyebrow added, Can you believe there are really people out there who would ask such a stupid question?  “— Did you get what you needed yesterday?”

“I did. Thanks.”

“Good. Buy a steak on the way home?” He did not seem to expect an answer. “Let’s see… you’re in the group that started two weeks ago, seem to be settling in all right…. Now, about these terms and conditions you came with — ”

“Not from me,” said Sousa. “I’m here to be an agent.”

 “It’s hard to be an agent if you’re not getting whatever medical treatment it is you need, or if the Army takes you back to make sure you get it,” Dooley observed. “How much time are we talking about?”

“I can do most of it on my days off,” said Sousa.

“We play enough games in this business. We don’t need to play games with this. What the Army’s asking for is reasonable, so if it means getting a good man for one of my desks? I’ll give it to ‘em.  I’m going to start looking at the schedule tomorrow, so find out what times you need and let me know.”

Dooley moved on to what Sousa had been doing in his first couple of weeks: training, Clipper (“What about Sandlock? Not yet?”), day shift… already qualified on marksmanship…. So far, so good.

“There’s going to be more training, of course,” he said. “We’ll see about getting you some experience on Sandlock. And then we’ll see what else we catch, or get dumped in our laps. Looking forward to working with you.”

 

That evening, back in his apartment, Sousa checked his balance, held the handle of the little skillet with his left hand, and used his right to spoon its contents onto a plate. He set the plate and a glass of water in the pass-through, went around to the other side to collect them, and sat down to say grace and eat supper.

He hadn’t bought steak or anything else yesterday, when he’d gotten the ration book; he’d gone out for drinks after work with the other agents. Today he’d stopped off at a grocery on the way home. It was slim pickings in the meat case — no bacon; a few bony lamb chops — but there was some sausage that looked better than Spam and seemed worth a couple of ration points. He’d used a few more points on eggs, some sharp cheese, and — because he could — a can of tuna fish. Oil, an onion, and a couple of potatoes — no points needed for those….

…And now he was sitting down to a dinner he’d cooked for himself, without help. Nothing fancy, just tortilha with potato, onion, sausage, and eggs, and none of it as good as the food back home, but still…. It was a reminder of home, if not quite a taste of home. 

His memory offered up a picture of the kitchen back home. He did not dwell on it, but turned his thoughts back to the present. After dinner, he’d wash the dishes, make sure everything was ready for tomorrow…. 

….Tomorrow he could get a better sense of his schedule. After that talk with the new Chief, he’d called Halloran right away and booked his (overdue) check-up with Klein. The appointment was on a weekday, but it sounded like Chief Dooley wouldn’t give him a hard time about that or any of his other leg business. It was a load off his mind, and only now did he realize how heavy a load it had been.

What a difference just a couple of days had made! And then just being in the apartment: no more dragging back and forth to Halloran, and changing in and out of uniform….  Going out last night with the others for drinks, without a second thought… And tonight, coming back to the little kitchen and getting himself some dinner instead of being at the mercy of mess halls and restaurants….

Getting himself some dinner: he allowed himself a moment of pride in that. And maybe…

…Maybe now that things were settling down, he’d start making some progress in his physical therapy again. Maybe soon be able to go longer with just one crutch, or even start being able to go without. Maybe someday he’d even be done with physical therapy, and never have to go to Halloran again. That was still far off, of course. But it was starting to be easier to imagine.

Tonight, he’d wash the dishes, get his clothes ready for the next day,  and then start his evening routine. He’d be able to get his prosthetic off earlier — that was a plus — and he’d have more energy for his shower and his stretches. Afterwards, he could write a few more letters. Maybe by next week he’d start getting some mail at the apartment.

 

Maybe things were looking up.

Notes:

Many thanks to AnniePlusMacDonald and Cuppa_tea_love for cheer-reading and suggestions

and thank YOU for reading, for sticking with it, and for your lovely kudos and comments

---

Ration books: The war might be over (or, officially, almost over - Japan still needs to sign the papers) but meat, cheese, butter, margarine, and sugar are still being rationed. There's an explanation of how it works in Chapter 44.

Daniel's dinner: He's made tortilha: potato and onion and egg and sausage. He'll make it again for someone else in my fic "First, Do No Harm."

Image of "How to Shop with Ration Tokens" poster: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of David and Zelda Silberman

Chapter 66: Out of the Office

Notes:

This chapter starts on Thursday, August 23, 1945.

Project Sandlock: First mentioned in Chapter 60. The SSR is taking the last opportunity to catch soldiers coming from Europe who've encountered Hydra to debrief them - and confiscate any Hydra souvenirs. Mike Sandlock was the catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers that year: his first year playing catcher and his first year as a Dodger.

 

Soldiers returning home on the USS General Harry Taylor in August 1945

---

"Captain Sousa. No, no; stay there." As Sousa resumed his perch on the examination table, Major Klein opened the chart and flipped through the top pages.

"Not quite perfect attendance." He gave Sousa a stern look. "Are they giving you any problems about getting here?"

"None at all," said Sousa. He'd had to ask for half a day to make this appointment; Dooley had given it to him without hesitation.

"All right. Let's see how you're doing." Klein carried out the usual exam, poking and measuring the leg and examining its skin and having Sousa demonstrate its strength and range of motion.

"Looking good," he said. "How are you feeling? Getting around okay? Any pain?"

"No real pain," Sousa reported. "Nothing a couple of aspirin can't handle. As for getting around.…" He shrugged. "I'm doing better on one crutch. I'm doing the exercises."

"How's the prosthetic fitting?"

"All right. Seems like I'm using the thicker socks more often."

Klein nodded. "Your stump's maturing. And how's living off post?"

"It's working out real well."

"You live alone?"

"Yeah. The super lives down the hall, though, and I think he keeps an eye on me."

Klein chuckled. "All right, then. Call us if you need anything — except if you get a blister or a bruise or some redness that doesn't go away, then just get your ass over here. Otherwise, come back in a month."

 

Sousa's next stop was the physical therapy department, where, as he'd hoped, he was able to catch Lieutenant Olsen and ask her about his schedule: new boss at the detail, big changes possible…. She was unbothered: he just needed to give them as much notice as he could.

"As long as we're talking about schedules…" She reached for a file. "You asked about horseback riding? We've got some more dates opening up."

"Well, sure. …though I've never ridden a horse before. Unless you count maybe a pony ride when I was a little kid."

"No experience necessary," said Lieutenant Olson. She opened the file, took a piece of blank paper, and started copying out dates. "Here: if you can make any of these days, call me as soon as you can. The bus leaves at 0830, but you need to be present and accounted for by 0810, or you'll lose your spot to someone on the waiting list. The bus gets back around 1230."

"Thanks," said Sousa. He folded up the paper, put it in his pocket, and reached for his crutches. "I'll let you know as soon as I can. And if nothing changes, I'll see you on Saturday."

 

The next morning, Sousa savored the luxury of being able to sleep later than 0500, eat breakfast, and still make it to the office by 0645 for Project Sandlock. He still hadn't gone out with a Sandlock team, but Dooley had hinted at changes to the assignments, and hadn't excluded him when ordering everyone in early. So at 0700, when Dooley emerged from his office, Sousa allowed himself a little optimism.

"All right, gentlemen," said Dooley. "Here's today's lineup. Agent Kerr will manage the office with the scheduled day shift." Sousa wasn't on the day shift: his optimism grew.

"Camp Kilmer…." Dooley read off the names: a different combination from the last team, but still a lab guy teamed with an assortment of New York and Washington agents. This time Brogan — one of the senior New York men — was named lead agent, with a Washington man as backup.

The Camp Shanks group also had a different mix, with a New York man as lead agent. Sousa's name wasn't on this list either. He felt his stomach sink with disappointment, even as he realized there were several other agents who hadn't been assigned to a team.

"We're opening a third Sandlock team this morning," announced Dooley. "We finally convinced the Army to let us make our rounds before the guys go on to the camps, when they first come into port. Today it's Brooklyn. Doobin, Corcoran, Driscoll…" He ended the long list with "…Sousa, Varano, and Yauch. " With a jerk of his head, he sent them to the briefing room, where he divided the group into teams and handed out file folders.

Most of the teams were assigned to board the ships, meet up with the security detail, and bring in any persons — or objects — of interest. Sousa was assigned to the smallest team, the one that would stay back and support the others. He was a little disappointed, but still, he was finally on a field team, and he had to admit that, at the moment, he probably wasn't the best guy for managing ships' ladders and bulkhead doors. And Dooley himself was leading the support team, so there would be plenty of real work to do.

 

At the port, the agents were grudgingly given the use of a tiny, cluttered office. Dooley looked around with a lifted eyebrow, but only started to give directions: "Get that crap off the desk – no, don't worry about it, we can't make it any worse — walkie-talkies and base unit over there. — At least that's ready for us." He nodded toward a crate of Coca-Cola bottles, a wide pail of ice, and a case of cigarettes.

"What's all that for?" asked Hass.

"Carrots. Stick them over there by the desk and get the sodas on ice."

Once the space was set up, Hass and Sousa gave out the walkie-talkies to the ship teams and settled in to monitor the radio, take instructions from Dooley, and review reports. It was a dull couple of hours before the team from the Galena Victory radioed in and told them to expect five soldiers for further questioning.

"Only five on that whole ship?" said Hass.

"That's pretty good," said Dooley. "You gotta go through a lot of haystacks in this job. Hass: you're with Doobin and me. Sousa, you soften ‘em up while they wait, just like we talked about. Make it clear that they're not in any trouble: we just want to get a little more information now so we don't have to bug ‘em later at camp. Don't let them talk about where they saw action, and don't let them talk about Hydra."

 

The five soldiers, as the agents had expected, were not at all pleased to be there. Sousa welcomed them and offered them drinks from the water cooler. Meanwhile, he paid close attention to their behavior: Who slouched in his chair? Who leapt up to help him pass out cups of water? Whose complaints seemed merely for form's sake?

He made a big deal of making sure their names were spelled correctly in the thin files that had come with them. As he shuffled the files in the stack, he arranged them as Dooley had ordered: tractable and talkative on top, sullen and balky at the bottom. When he was done, he asked a few idle-seeming questions about the weather on the voyage across the Atlantic.

Finally Hass opened the door and accepted the files. "Thanks," he said. "I'll give these to the Chief."

The soldiers looked at each other. Sousa pressed on with casual questions about the voyage until Hass called the first soldier in. A few minutes later, Sousa and the other soldiers could hear genuine laughter behind the closed door. The mood began to lighten.

A quarter of an hour later, the door opened again. The soldiers looked up with interest as the first soldier emerged.

"Can't say anything," he answered, with a friendly glance toward Sousa. "But it wasn't bad." He sat down and took an appreciative drag on his cigarette.

Two minutes later, the door opened and Hass called in the second soldier. Sousa kept the other men talking: any entertainment on the ship? How was the chow? The first soldier, much more relaxed after his interview, helped draw the others out as well. It seemed only a few minutes before the second soldier joined them again.

Hass followed the soldier out of the office and came over to Sousa. "Your turn," he said, in a low voice, directly in Sousa's ear.

Sousa pretended to be surprised. He nodded, stood up, and went into the office.

"How's it going out there?" asked Dooley.

"So far, so good."

"How about this guy?" Dooley pulled the file at the bottom of the stack and showed it to Sousa. "How's he looking?"

"A little less sore, I think."

Dooley nodded. "He's had some time to calm down, and he's seen two other guys coming out looking relaxed. So we'll call him in now, before he has time to really get bored and cranky."

Sousa called the soldier in. When the door was closed, Dooley took care of the pleasantries: showing the soldier to a chair; offering a cigarette; introducing himself, Doobin, and Sousa; reassuring the soldier that though they were from the War Department, they weren't Army. Meanwhile, Sousa picked his way through the cluttered office to the open chair, carefully sat down, and picked up the clipboard and pen that Hass had left for him. His job would be to take notes.

Once everyone was settled in, Dooley began the interview. He was friendly and blunt: appreciate your being here, try to keep it quick; you have information that can help us and we want to make sure you have a chance to make a good report.

The soldier seemed receptive, and Dooley got straight to the point. "We hear you saw action in Italy?"

"Yeah. Spent almost my whole war there."

Dooley had the soldier outline where he'd been, tracing his fighting path north up the peninsula and then northeast, towards the Alps.

"How about Trento?" asked Dooley. "See any action around there?"

The soldier had. A few more questions confirmed that some of that action had involved Hydra. Dooley pulled out a more detailed map; Sousa wrote furiously as the soldier pointed out what he'd done and where and when he'd done it.

Finally Dooley moved on to Hydra itself: had he seen any Hydra soldiers? How about weapons? Anything else that wasn't Allied and wasn't German?

There were the familiar reports of rifles that shot blue lightning… enormous tanks rolling at terrifying speed… captured German soldiers almost weeping with relief at being prisoners of the Allies and not Hydra…

His voice trembled as he described a village where they'd found a small crater in the town square — a few broken windows, otherwise almost no damage — but every man, woman, child, and animal within a hundred yards' radius lying dead as if they'd dropped where they stood. Sousa shuddered – he hadn't seen anything like that in Italy or France – but he saw Dooley and Doobin give each other a quick, knowing look.

Dooley turned the subject back to weapons: Had he seen any up close? Any other Hydra stuff he might have come across – perhaps things that had been dropped? Had he ever picked anything up to get a closer look? He spoke casually, as if they were just swapping yarns over beers in a bar, and the soldier's tongue grew looser, so when Dooley leaned forward and asked, in an "I-can-keep-a-secret" way, if the soldier had brought any souvenirs home… the soldier had reached for his pocket before realizing what he'd just admitted.

"Just show us," Dooley advised him.

The thing was smaller than a matchbox, embossed with the Hydra skull and tentacles. Dooley examined it, showed it to Sousa, and passed it to Doobin, who put it in a case he'd brought.

"Guess I'm not getting that back," said the solider uneasily.

"Guess not. Trust us, we're doing you a favor," said Dooley. "You got anything else? You sure? ‘Cause I promise you, it's easier to work with us than get tangled up with the MPs." He leaned forward, as if he was confiding in the soldier." And even if you did get it home… do you really want something like that in your home? Around you? Your family? Hydra was running experiments on everything it touched, and some of their guys we took prisoner looked pretty bad. You really want to find out the hard way after a month or two that thing's been giving off some kind of rays or something?"

The soldier looked suitably disturbed. Dooley told him how smart he'd been to give up the souvenir, and thanked him for his help. He even gave him a business card before shaking his hand and sending him out the door.

As soon as the door closed, Dooley's face grew thoughtful. "What do you think, gentlemen?" He glanced over to Sousa's notes, read a few lines, and then picked up the notebook and continued reading.

"It's a nice belt buckle," said Doobin. Sousa looked up in surprise. "We can study the alloy," Doobin explained.

"And keep the sample away from anyone else," added Dooley. He did not look up from the notebook. "Sousa: what do you think?"

"I think he's being straight with us," said Sousa. "I'd want to cross-check —"

"Yeah. But it'll check out. — You were in Italy, weren't you? You make it to that area?"

"Not Trento. I was further west. What about that story with the village?"

"I'll brief you guys on it sometime." He looked up at Sousa and handed back the notebook. "Good work."

"Thanks." Sousa took the notebook and turned to a fresh page. "What do you think?"

"I have a feeling we're going to see him again sometime," said Dooley. "All right, let's get Number Four in here."

 

The last two interviews went quickly, and soon the five soldiers were sent off with port security to rejoin their shipmates. The agents took the opportunity to bolt down some sandwiches and coffee from the canteen; Sousa was able to get in a quick leg check and change his stump sock. When the radio crackled on and the Yakima Victory team checked in, they were ready.

The Yakima team brought seven soldiers for interviews. The soldiers were reasonably compliant, but it took time to get them settled and signed in, and they were only on the third interview when the radio announced four more soldiers from the Edgewood….

 

 

It was almost 2200 when Sousa finally got back to his apartment. He let himself in, locked the door behind him, and went straight to the bathroom, tossing his mail on the bed as he went by. The letters were the first he'd received since he'd moved out of Halloran, but as eager as he was to read them, he was in even more of a hurry to get out of the prosthetic. He forced himself to hang up his jacket and tie and belt before he finally sat down to untie his shoes.

It had been late in the afternoon when the Brooklyn team had finished their interviews. Then they had to pack up and get back into Manhattan and take all the equipment back upstairs and put it away. There'd been paperwork to finish and more to begin; as they'd worked, the teams from Kilmer and then Shanks had rolled in. He was tired enough, but then someone had suggested a visit to Dutch Uncle's, and that was a big part of why he'd moved to the city, so of course he'd accepted that invitation….

It had been a good day, but a long one, with a very long time in the prosthetic, and it was a relief to unbuckle the belt around his hips and finally lift his leg out of the socket. His leg was sore, but the mirror showed that all was well. He went through the rest of his routine as quickly as he could, got into his pajamas, brushed his teeth, grabbed his crutches, and headed back out into the main room.

As he puttered around, getting a glass of water and turning out lights, Sousa vaguely remembered something Peyton had once said back at England, something about possibly being tired at the end of a day and wanting a break from crutches… about the mandatory wheelchair issued by the Army. He was pretty tired now, but not that tired, of course; and even if he had one, how much good could it really do him in this little place? Would it even fit in the kitchen?

He climbed into bed and reached for his letters: one from Ines and one from his father — and Tillie. As he opened the first envelope, he thought about his own day — finally getting on a field team, keeping up with the others, that "good work" from Dooley, going out, no red marks on the back of his leg.… Every one of his little wins was either too important, and therefore secret, to write about, or too trivial to bother anyone with: the better his day, the less he'd have to write home about. He'd had that problem before. It felt good to have it again.

Notes:

It's, um, been a while, and I regret it; it's been a busy year for me, and the Muse took a sabbatical, I think, but HERE WE ARE.

Many thanks to @keysburg for the beta read (and doing it on short notice so I could post in 2022) and to @AnniePlusMacdonald and @cuppa_tea_love for cheer-reading

and to YOU for reading, for sticking with it, and for your kudoi and comments, which really do keep me going.

Chapter 67: Adjustment

 

The Queen Mary arrives in New York Harbor, 1945

---

 

 

 

 

The next day was Saturday. Sousa welcomed the chance to sleep in a little— he was still tired after his long day at Brooklyn — but at 0900 he was back in the briefing room with the rest of the new agents for another training day.

Dooley himself ran the training, joking that it was getting him out of painting the windows on his house. He shored up the movies and manuals with well-chosen anecdotes, tersely told, about cases from both before and during the war.

As they broke for lunch, he called Sousa to his office. A draft of the staffing schedule lay unfolded on his desk. “If I start you on the evening shift next week, am I going to get any flak from Halloran?”

“No,” Sousa said firmly.

Dooley gave Sousa a quick look of wry approval before he peered down at the schedule and made a note. “All right. Take tomorrow off and come in Monday at 1345.”

 

There were fewer newspapers to read for the evening shift, and they came up in the tube at around 1600 or 1700, but otherwise Sousa found the evening shift to be very like the day shift. He read the papers, kept the log, took check-in calls from agents in the field, made coffee, and worked on Project Clipper. At 2200 he gave report to the oncoming night shift, and by 2300 he was letting himself back into his little apartment.

As the week went on, he began to appreciate the quiet of the office after the other agents had left for the day, and the way the light from the big windows changed colors with the setting sun, a little earlier every evening as August prepared to give way to September.

He had a day off on Friday, and spent most of it on a trip to Halloran. When he got back, late in the afternoon, as he checked his mailbox he was buttonholed by Mr. Galasso — where had he been , hadn’t seen him for days …. He ended up sitting in Mr. Galasso’s office for an hour or so, listening to a week’s worth of news about the building and the neighborhood and the borough and the Galassos’ daughters and sons-in-law and nieces and nephews and grandchildren and tomatoes, and inquiries about his plans for the weekend, and a little more about the nieces, until he was finally allowed to go to his apartment.

Saturday was the first day of September, and another training day. As they broke for lunch, Sousa took a moment to ask Dooley about moving his day off next week to Wednesday. “Something at Halloran,” he explained.

“Next Wednesday?” Dooley stared at the schedule and frowned. “Well, if you have to, you have to. But if they can take you on a different day, it would really help us. I think we’re going to need every man we can get that day.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” said Sousa. “I’ll give them a call.”

“Thanks. But remember — keep us out of trouble.”

 

That night, the radio brought the news of the official surrender of Japan. Sunday morning’s papers brought the photographs. The war was officially over at last…

 

“…which means more work for us,” Dooley said on Monday morning. “More guys coming home who’ll need their pockets checked.

“There’s been a change to the schedule, so make sure you check it, especially Wednesday: we’re going to need every man available for Sandlock. We’ve got four ships coming in that day. And one of ‘em’s the Queen Mary .”

 

Sousa was at the office bright and early Wednesday morning. He listened with the others in the crowded bullpen as Dooley assigned the agents to their teams, took notes as to who was teamed with who, and then said good-bye as, group by group, they left for Brooklyn. When the last group had left, he turned to go back to the briefing room.

He took a seat at the table and glanced at his watch. If he’d had the day to go to Halloran as he’d planned, at that very moment he’d be on a bus to a stable in New Jersey to go horseback riding.  But after Dooley had asked him to reschedule, he’d called and canceled. And now, instead of going to meet the ships with the rest of the Operation Sandlock teams, he was left behind in the office to cover the day shift.

Left behind — and, for the first time, left in charge of the shift, which meant being left in charge of training in Patterson, one of the three agents who’d just started the day before.

It didn’t seem odd to Sousa to be given these tasks when he’d been there less than a month himself — he was used to that kind of thing from the Army — so it didn’t occur to him to wonder if this was some mark of favor from Dooley. And it was easy to ignore any stray worries about Dooley already thinking he wasn’t up to the job. Somebody needed to do this work today; it might as well be him. 

He looked up as Patterson entered the room. “You’ve got the log? Good. We’re going to be here a while, so call the switchboard — yeah, just pick up the receiver — and tell them to send all the calls to the briefing room.”

Sousa’s shift was over at 1430, but he decided to hang around until the Brooklyn teams checked in later in the afternoon, to see if any extra help would be needed when they returned.

“Dooley says thanks, but go home,” Mayer reported as he hung up the phone. “He says you’ll have plenty of opportunities to stay way too late at work.”

Dooley hinted again at those opportunities during Friday morning’s briefing: the War Shipping Administration had announced an acceleration of Operation Magic Carpet, the effort to bring millions of troops around the world back home as soon as possible. “We’re going to be spending a lot more time in Brooklyn.”

 

Sousa was assigned to the Brooklyn team a couple of times over the next week, and each time he was put on support duty. He resigned himself to it; he knew he was of more use running the radios and helping with the interrogations. He hadn’t needed a reminder of why, but he’d gotten one anyway on the first morning, setting up the base office for the day. He was making his way down a narrow, cluttered corridor and the leg caught on something. He didn’t fall, but it had taken him a minute or two to get himself unstuck. That evening, as he cleaned the prosthetic, he told himself he’d get out to Halloran more often.

He did make it, a couple of days later. He was expecting Lieutenant Olsen to chew him out about how long it had been since his last visit, but she only teased him a little about missing out on horseback riding before starting in with the usual questions. Sousa was able to truthfully report that he’d been keeping up with his home exercises. When she asked about how he was doing at the gym that day, though, he braced himself for a lecture as he gave her his numbers: he was pretty sure they were no better than the last time he’d been there. She seemed unconcerned as she wrote them down, and moved on to asking about the prosthetic — how long he was wearing it? how was his skin looking? good, and how was he doing living off post? Cooking, daily chores, very good….

“Do you have a wheelchair there?” she suddenly asked.

“No, but —”

“You know the Army gives you one.”

“Yeah, it’s at —"

“Is it at the place where you’re living right now?” She caught his eye. “Yes or no?”

“No,” he admitted.

“You should have one. For safety, if nothing else.” She wrote something down.

Sousa decided to try to change the subject. “Looks like you’ve got a full house today. Did I just catch the rush?”

“Oh, just you wait. We got a full train from California a couple of days ago. We’re still doing assessments, sorting them all out, but we’ve got the first few down here now.” She nodded across the gym, where a therapist was teaching an exercise to four skinny, tired-looking men.

“So when are we going to see you again next?” she asked.

“Not sure. My schedule’s a bit of a mess right now,” said Sousa apologetically.

“Well, call us as soon as you know something. I’d like to get you on a horse, or even in the pool, before it gets too cold.” She smiled. “Now: back to work!”

 

After Sousa was done at the gym, he stopped by the HX and then boarded the bus back to Manhattan. Back at his apartment, he changed out of his uniform, took off the prosthesis, and went to bed to try to catch a nap: that night he was starting a week on the night shift.

He arrived at the office at 2145. Brogan, one of the senior New York agents, was already there; he was in charge that night and would be training Sousa in. A few minutes later, one of the Washington agents arrived, and at 2200 Sousa and the other agents gathered in the briefing room.

The night shift began just like any other shift, with coffee and shift report and the passing on of keys. When report was over, Brogan called the switchboard; the agents from the evening shifts locked their desks, said good night, and left. The three night shift agents had the office to themselves.

The big built-in radio in the briefing room was already tuned to Armed Forces Radio; Brogan showed Sousa which switches to flip to pipe the sound out to the bullpen. The sound of the radio only emphasized the quiet of the office, just as the bright overhead lights made the dark windows even darker. The office was a little island of wakefulness in a dark world asleep.

It was not a lonely island, though. As midnight passed and the new clock day started, Sousa was surprised at how often the phone rang. There were no agents in the field that night making check-in calls; the calls were all from the Washington SSR office, about routine matters that could wait until the lines were less crowded.  The telex machine by the mailboxes was constantly chattering as well, with messages from the Washington office and from other government agencies, both stateside and in Europe. Some of the messages needed to be decoded; all of them needed to be logged in and prepared for Dooley’s attention.

The phone calls and messages began to slow down around 0200, but there still was plenty to do, even if it was fairly dull. There were a few office tasks that were the responsibility of the night shift, and a few things that the day shift and evening shift hadn’t been able to wrap up that day, and then Sousa had his own ongoing work…. 

Around 0330, Sousa realized he’d read the same paragraph two or three times in a row. He capped his pen and rubbed his hands together: the office had grown cold, and the world outside felt even more dark and still. He picked up his crutches and levered himself up out of his chair. “Be right back,” he called to Brogan.

Brogan leaned back in his chair and stretched. “Yeah, it’s time for a break,” he said.

The walk and the leg check helped Sousa wake up and warm up a little, as did a cup of coffee and a snack back in the office. Around 0400, the telex started up again, clacking out messages from Denver, Los Angeles, and even the Pacific.

Around 0430, Brogan had Sousa call the Brooklyn port to double check which ships had come in and which were expected. When Sousa had finished his notes, Brogan showed him the new messages from the telex: coded reports from the SSR soldiers and Military Police on the troop ships, letting them know what to expect. Sousa and Brogan decoded the messages and compared them to the notes Dooley had left about the plans for the Sandlock teams the next day. Dooley himself called in at 0500.

“We’ll keep the plan as is,” “Who’s on call?” he said after they briefed him. “Li? Yeah, better go ahead and call him in. See you soon.”

Sousa had the dubious honor of calling Li at home to let him know he was coming in two hours early for a long day at Camp Shanks. Soon, the tube thumped with the first newspapers; the first hints of dawn brightened the sky. At 0600 it was time to brief the day shift. Dooley arrived as they were finishing up; he checked with the night shift to make sure no more last-information information had come in from the ships or docks, and ordered them to go home and get some sleep.

By 0700, Sousa was back in his apartment. He was actually feeling pretty awake, especially after his walk in the fresh air and sunshine, and he thought about what to do next — some breakfast, maybe?  Maybe he could even get to Halloran that day — take the bus there, be back in time to get some sleep before going in again that night…

First he wanted to get the prosthetic off; he’d had it on for a while now and his leg wanted a rest. Habit carried him through the next steps of his routine – cleaning the prosthetic, checking his leg — but he ran out of gas as he was taking his shower. He was able to run on fumes just long enough to make it to bed and crash into sleep.

 

He didn’t make it to Halloran that day, or any day, until early the next week. It was his first day off after a string of night shifts, and even after a pot of coffee and a nap on the bus, he still felt pretty pogled when he arrived at the gym.

As he signed in, he looked around. The gym was crowded again, with more of the recently arrived Pacific veterans. He went over to the pulley weights, started his exercises, and braced himself for a cheerful scolding from Lieutenant Olson.

It never came: Lieutenant Olson was out that day. The physical therapist in charge had a vague idea of who he was, though she didn’t quite seem to understand his situation. But she was friendly, and let him do his usual exercises in peace, and didn’t fuss at him about looking like he was about to fall asleep on the treatment table, or about his numbers that day and how they compared to his last session, or about how often he was or wasn’t showing up, or even about when he expected to come back.  

After he changed back into uniform, he stopped at the HX as he usually did and caught the bus back to Manhattan. Back at his apartment building, as he got himself and his crutches and his bag through the front door, he said a quick, silent prayer that he might avoid the Galassos. He checked his mail and found a couple of large envelopes that suggested greeting cards. Only then did he remember that it was his birthday.

He did get caught by Mr. Galasso as he walked back to his apartment: a package had come for him that day. Mr. Galasso followed him from the package room back to his apartment, carrying the package and cheerfully speculating about what it might be — anything special? All the way from Massachusetts, something from home? did they take good care of him during the war? glad to hear it — all right, there you go, enjoy your package there — you look like you’re about to fall asleep on your feet, son, you know that? You stay awake, you need something good for dinner…. 

Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Galasso arrived with a plate of spaghetti, which Sousa received gratefully. After he ate, he washed up, took his shower, and settled in to open his mail. It was all from his father and sisters, the only ones who had his address at the apartment. He opened the birthday cards first and then cut the string to open the package.

Cookies — he ate one immediately — and then a wrapped gift that turned out to be a shirt, a tie, a dark red sweater vest, and a few pocket squares. The last part of the gift arrived later that evening, as soon as the telephone rates dropped. Between the new clothes, the cookies, the letters, and the phone call from home, as Sousa lay down to sleep that night he had plenty of pleasant things to think about and distract him from thoughts of where he was on his last birthday, and of being twenty-five years old, and of wondering where he was going and when he’d ever get there.

 

He wrote home the next evening, thanking everyone for the birthday box: cookies delicious; clothes fit well, would come in handy; weather getting cooler, would be wearing the vest any day now…. Physical therapy going well (which was true, he told himself, the therapists said so, even if he wasn’t seeing any improvement)….

Work busy, just routine stuff, nothing to write home about…. This was also true, and as September wore on, he wrote it again in every letter home. More and more troopships were arriving from Europe, packed to the gunwales with returning soldiers, which meant even more visits to Camp Shanks and to Brooklyn, and even more of the work that supported those visits, and even more reports on those visits to send to Washington. And there was no more help from the Washington agents; they were all either back in Washington or detailed to other ports of debarkation.

Dooley was pressing for a budget increase to hire more agents and staff, but it hadn’t come through yet, and any new agents would need to go through training anyway. Meanwhile, Sousa and the other newer agents were still in training themselves. They watched SSR instructional films; they went in small groups to the firing range; they took turns going to the lab to learn how to dust for fingerprints. There were guest lectures – a federal prosecutor, a medical examiner from the New York State Police. And there were field trips: whenever Dooley left the office on business, he took an agent or two with him, sometimes choosing them as he walked across the office to the door.

Sousa was never chosen. He sometimes thought about saying something, but his gut warned him not to. He reminded himself that he was getting his work done and all his hours in; he was taking regular turns as the charge agent and getting sent to Brooklyn; and Dooley kept tapping him to work on the Washington reports -- that had to count for something. He was holding up.

Between work and Halloran, though, he didn’t have the energy for much else. By the time he got home, took his prosthetic off, found some dinner, and got through his evening leg routine, he was beat.

Mail was as welcome as ever, and when he had it, he liked to save it to read after everything else was done, as a little treat.  Sometimes there was a postcard from Atlantic City in his box at the post office, with a few penciled lines on the back in Tipton’s careful handwriting. Tipton always included something about how boring New York must be and how much Sousa must be missing all the fun in Atlantic City, and liked to add to his little joke by always sending the same postcard from the HX with the same photo of the hospital, so a postcard from Cape May, New Jersey, was even more of a pleasant surprise. A day trip on the trolley, Tipton wrote; perfect weather, Cape May real pretty, some friends here who want to say hi…. The extra signatures were from Hazel, Betty, and Doris. Sousa’s smile grew.

One evening, he was surprised to find an envelope with a Detroit postmark in his mailbox. It was from Tim Wilson: a short note — hope you’re settling in well — and a business card. Sousa wrote a quick reply and put the business card in a safe place.

Not long after his birthday, a letter arrived carrying a Pennsylvania postmark and an address in Grahn’s handwriting. The letter began, as usual, with several paragraphs reproaching Sousa for having been tricked into going to New York instead of Washington and Walter Reed, where he belonged — I waited as long as I could but the Army finally decided it was done with me and tossed me out…. Back home, looking for something to do; a little news about some of the Atlantic City crowd; greetings to Sousa’s family; a few broad hints about getting a furlough from Halloran to come visit, see what a peaceful time in the country is like….

Letters from home brought the usual family and neighborhood news and, as October approached, more and more about a new topic: homecomings, and when they might be happening, for the guys around the neighborhood, the cousins, and especially Pete (and, speaking of homecomings, any possibilities of a furlough soon…?)

Late one evening, when he checked his mail, he found a letter from Ines. He tucked the letter in his pocket, locked his mailbox, gripped his crutch handles, and started slowly walking down the hall to his apartment. He’d been trying to get information for her about Pete. He’d asked the guys on the night shift to ask around when they got calls from out west; they hadn’t minded, they knew what it was like, but they hadn’t been able to find anything for him. Today he’d been on the Brooklyn team, running support as usual. He’d kept his eyes and ears open, but hadn’t had any luck – not that he’d been expecting any, why would the Army Port of Debarkation have any dope on what the Navy was doing on the other coast? Still, he could tell Ines he was doing his best, maybe she’d heard something….

As he stopped for a moment to rest, he chose not to add up how long he’d had the prosthetic on that day. He’d reported to the office first thing in the morning for the trip to Brooklyn; they’d gotten back late and then had to spend another couple of hours at the office with the paperwork. He’d gone out with a couple of the other agents afterwards for a quick dinner…. Fibber McGee was on that night, so there was no danger of getting waylaid by the Galassos. Just a few more minutes and he’d be back in his apartment, taking the prosthetic off.

As he passed the Galassos’ door, he noticed it was open a crack. He could hear the radio from inside their apartment. Before he could figure out what this meant, Mrs. Galasso appeared at the door. “Daniel! There you are. You’re just getting back now? It’s so late! — Gus! ” she called behind her.

She looked genuinely worried, and when Mr. Galasso appeared, he looked serious too. “You got a delivery today, it looks important,” he said. “It’s in the office. You can wait here if you want, or….”

“No, I’ll come.” Sousa followed him to the office, wondering why they weren’t going to the usual package room, and waited as Mr. Galasso unlocked the door.

“Come on in.” He led Sousa into the office. “I thought it must be some kind of mistake, but the fellow insisted.” A folded wheelchair stood next to Mr. Galasso’s desk. He picked up an envelope and handed it to Sousa.

A glance at the envelope and at the tag on the wheelchair told Sousa everything he needed to know: DANIEL A. SOUSA and UNITED STATES ARMY MEDICAL DEPARTMENT. He sighed. “Yeah, it’s for me.”

“Is… everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine. It’s just an Army rule, doesn’t matter whether or not I actually need it. I might as well take it on back, I can’t exactly return it."

Mr. Galasso insisted on taking it back for him, so Sousa showed him how to unlock and unfold the wheelchair and let him push it along.  Mrs. Galasso watched, wide-eyed, as they passed her. When they reached Sousa’s apartment. Sousa unlocked the door and let Mr. Galasso push the wheelchair into the main room.

“Thanks again,” said Sousa.

Mr. Galasso did not look reassured. “You sure everything’s okay?”

“I promise. Like I said, it’s just Army rules. They don’t care if I don’t need it.” He saw Mr. Galasso out, closed the door, and immediately went to sit down on the bed. He set his crutches aside and undressed just enough to get his leg out of the prosthetic. As he let himself rest for a moment, he caught sight of the wheelchair — Lieutenant Olsen’s doing, no doubt — thanks a lot , he’d told her he didn’t need it, or at least he’d tried to…

But the Army had rules and she had to follow them, and even though she’d had to send it to him, he didn’t have to actually use it. She probably didn’t even expect him to. —That thought cheered him a little. He started undoing his tie.  — He could just fold the wheelchair up and stick it in the back corner and forget about it.

And what did it matter, anyway? He had nothing to prove. (Not outside of work, anyway.) The Galassos would be talking about it to each other, of course: he was sure he could look forward to even more supervision .  And as for those hints they’d made on and off about nieces… so far he’d been too busy to even think about accepting one of those invitations. But it would be interesting to see if they dried up.

He finished unbuttoning his shirt. He caught sight of the wheelchair, sitting empty, waiting patiently.

Well, he thought wearily, it was here. He might as well use it for something. As he settled himself in, he had to admit that even a short break from crutches was going to be a relief. He steered himself over to the bed, gathered his clothes, and headed toward the closet and the bathroom to put his clothes away and start his evening routine. Tomorrow would be another long and busy day.

Notes:

The Queen Mary - this magnificent passenger cruise liner, in her life as a troopship, could carry more than 15,000 passengers and crew by 1945.

Tim Wilson - a.k.a. "Pencils", the guy who was living in Sousa's apartment before he was.
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I'm okay. I've just had a lot going on. Thanks for sticking with it.

Big thanks to @Cuppa_tea_love and @AnniePlusMacDonald for cheer-reading, help with research, and beta-reading.

Chapter 68: Interviews

 

 

 

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T A B L E  O F  I N T E R V I E W S

Sousa peered at the paper in the typewriter. His subtitle was centered correctly (more or less), so he hit the lever to return the carriage and start the next line.

B R O O K L Y N   P O R T   OF  D E B A R K A T I O N

He’d typed up a few of these reports for Washington now. He was still working on getting them to look right — headings in the center, columns plumb, that kind of thing — but as long as the actual information was correct and the report was legible, Dooley was satisfied. “Done is more important than perfect,” he said. “And if they want perfect, they can give me the budget for a typing pool.”

Now that it was October, it was time to submit a summary report for September. Sousa’s task was to prepare the first draft. He’d gotten a solid start that morning; now, after lunch, a break to tend to his leg, and a fresh cup of coffee, he was ready to get back to it.

He had been working about half an hour when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the door to Dooley’s office open. Dooley strode out of the office and looked around. 

“Krzeminski, ” he announced, “Yauch, and…” — he looked around — “…Sousa. In here.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Sousa saw Krzeminski stare at him with surprise, and then look to Dooley. Sousa focused on putting his papers away and locking his desk. He grabbed his crutches, stood up, and headed for Dooley’s office.  

As soon as Yauch closed the office door, Dooley began his briefing. “You know Orange Industries, how they’re analyzing some Hydra tech for us. This morning I talked to the guy in charge, George Pearson. Seems one of the scientists on the team’s been acting funny lately — work hours getting erratic, that kind of thing —  and he’s getting concerned. So we’re going to take a field trip out to White Plains to pay him a little visit.” He handed a folder to Yauch and, with a nod, prompted him to open it. 

“His name’s Russell Haring,” Dooley continued. “We’ll look around, talk to him, get a sense of what’s going on. — Take the toolkit. Pearson’ll show us around, we won’t need a warrant.” Yauch passed the folder to Krzeminski; Krzeminiski opened it, glanced at it, and handed it on to Sousa. 

“You should probably call home before we leave,” added Dooley, mostly in Krzemnski’s direction. “We might be late getting back. Let’s get going. Sousa, you can look at that on the way up, it won’t take long. You’re in charge of it.”

Sousa had to pull a few leg supplies from his locker - just enough to fit in a pocket - so he was the last one to arrive at the elevators. As he approached, he could see Krzeminski giving Yauch a knowing look (or at least attempting one). Yauch made a little shrug of resigned agreement; that seemed to be the kind of guy Yauch was. Sousa kept his face neutral as he joined the group. Together they rode down to the garage.

At least he was assigned to ride with Yauch instead of Krzeminski. They followed Krzeminski and Dooley up through town. Once they were on the Hutchison Parkway, Sousa opened the folder on Dr. Haring. It was very thin. There was only a carbon copy of a form with the most basic information — name, education, previous employment, address, wife’s name — and an unflattering photo of a unmemorable-looking man. 

He closed the folder again. Going out to a new place, not knowing what he’d find, not always sure even what he was looking for…. He felt that sense of readiness begin to well up again in his gut, so familiar after Italy, France, Belgium…. But today, he felt somehow lighter than he’d felt back there. He wasn’t carrying a pack - that might have something to do with it — and there were no mines or booby traps waiting for them along the roads, and probably not at Orange Industries, either.  There was nothing outside the windows but the scenery of fall’s first act. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he looked at the outcrops of gray rock, at the trees turning scarlet and gold against the sharp blue sky.

 

They showed their badges at the front desk of Orange Industries. A few minutes later, Dr. Pearson arrived to greet them. 

“Thanks again for coming,” he said in the elevator. “Like I was saying, he’s getting his work done, but then there’s the coming in late and the leaving early….” They reached their floor; he led them down a hallway to a closed door with a sign reading AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He took a card from the pocket of his lab coat and inserted it into a slot in the wall. The door buzzed; he opened it, let the agents through first, and closed the door behind them.

“And yes,” he said, in a lower voice, “as you said, it might be something… personal . That would be none of my business, but then there’s that briefcase. He only brings it in sometimes, and when he does he tells us it’s just personal business he’s taking care of after work. Personal business ,” he clarified. “But his wife says he’s been bringing work home sometimes, and that’s not right. Everything has to stay here in the lab, which, here we are.” He used the key to open another door and let them in.

“I’d love a tour, and I’m sure my agents would too,” said Dooley, “but we’ve got a job to do first. He’s still in that meeting? Let’s you and I go get him and start talking with him. Meanwhile, these gentlemen can search the lab.”

“Of course. Just… don’t touch these things.” Dr. Pearson indicated something that looked like a wall safe, and a few large machines making soft humming and bubbling sounds. “And don’t open anything in the cupboards.”

“Be thorough,” added Dooley. “And don’t worry about being discreet. We want Dr. Haring to know we’re serious.” 

Pearson looked uncomfortable but didn’t argue. He left with Dooley, leaving Krzeminski, Yauch, and Sousa alone in the lab.

Sousa looked around the lab at the vast black countertops; the tidy, bewildering arrays of glassware; the metal contraptions with their soft green lights.

“Maybe we should have brought one of the lab rats,” said Yauch. “How are we going to know what to look for?”

Krzeminski scoffed. “Easy. We just look for what he’s hiding”. He grabbed a stool, climbed easily onto a countertop, and opened an overhead cabinet. “Come ‘ere, Yauch.” He pulled a brown glass jar out of the cabinet and waved it impatiently until Yauch came to take it and set it on the counter. 

Well, at least Kreminski wasn’t throwing them, thought Sousa. He thought about checking the drawers and the base cabinets, but his attention was drawn to a desk in the corner. The surface of the desk was clear except for a cardboard box.  An old typewriter sat nearby on a typing table.  

Start there , his gut said.

He opened the box first. It was just office supplies: ink, pencils, thick notebooks with heavy brown covers, a boxed typewriter ribbon at the bottom. The pencils were unsharpened; the notebooks brand new and empty. He pulled out the pencil drawer: nothing of interest there.

The file drawers were locked the old-fashioned way, with a metal key. Sousa got the lockpicking set from the tool bag, sat down on the desk chair, and set to work. The locks were old and weak, and quickly yielded. He rolled the chair around so he could fully open the top left drawer. As he did, his crutches slid from where they were propped on the desk and clattered to the floor.

“Huh?”

Sousa looked up. Krzeminski and Yauch had stopped their work and were looking at him.

“Oh. It’s nothing. Just — ” He gestured toward his crutches on the floor. Krzeminski and Yauch turned back to emptying the cabinets. As Sousa picked up his crutches, he heard Krzeminski mutter something that sounded like Told you he wouldn’t be able to keep up . Sousa took a deep breath and started emptying the drawer.

The files and notebooks he found could have been in code for all he knew - complex diagrams, a lot of math - they’d have to get the guys in the lab to look at them. He wouldn’t know if anything was missing, but nothing in the drawer seemed out of place. 

He turned to the left drawer. These files were less tidy and looked even less interesting - supply records, mostly. In the very back of the drawer, there was a brown file wallet, the kind with a flap and string closure. He pulled it out. It was labeled “HARING - Personal.”

Sousa opened the flap. The wallet had some files in it, but, to his surprise, the middle pocket held… typewriter ribbons. Three of them — no, seven, carefully arranged in a folder so they wouldn’t cause a bulge on the outside of the file wallet. 

He used his handkerchief to lift them out of the file. The boxes looked pristine, as did the ribbons inside. Still… He put the file wallet on top of the desk and, with a push of his foot, rolled over to the typewriter desk. A quick look inside the machine revealed that its feed spool was full: this typewriter wouldn’t need a new ribbon for months.

It didn’t make sense. There was probably some reasonable explanation, but he couldn’t think of what it could be. He rolled back over to get a crutch, stood up, and went to start on the drawer furthest away from where Krzeminski and Yauch were working. He was about halfway through when he heard raised voices on the other side of the lab door. 

The door opened, and Dr. Pearson came in, followed by a loudly complaining Dr. Russell Haring. Dooley, looking somewhat amused, brought up the rear.

“...and you have no right,” shouted Dr. Russell, “no right at all, to be — flinging these kinds of allegations around, and — Who the hell are these men and what are they doing in my lab?!” He strode angrily to where Krzeminski and Yauch had strewn several cabinets’ worth of brown glass jars and sealed metal cans across the countertop. “Do you even know what you’re doing? This is classified research! I could call the U.S. Marshals on you, and —”

“And when they came we’d just shake hands,” Dooley interrupted. “As I’m sure you remember, we’re federal law enforcement too. And we all have the clearance to be here.” 

“You can’t just come in here and throw things around like this!”

“We’re being careful,” said Krzeminski. “We only dropped a couple of jars, and we cleaned it all up right away.” 

As Haring quickly looked around, Dooley smirked a little, just enough to reassure Pearson — and to give the agents permission to keep provoking Haring. Sousa went back over to the desk, as carefully as he could, and sat down again.

“It’s nothing to joke about!” snapped Haring. “We are doing important work here, for the War Department , and —”

Sousa held up a typewriter ribbon. “You do a lot of typing, Dr. Haring?”

For an instant, Haring fell silent. His face flushed. “Well, of course we do a lot of typing! We —”

Using his handkerchief, Sousa began to pull the typewriter ribbons out of the file folder, one at a time. Pearson turned and stared, incredulously, at Haring.

“That desk is private !” Haring barked.

“That’s a lot of typing,” Dooley said casually. “You do it yourself? On that typewriter there? …Do those ribbons even fit that typewriter?”

Haring opened his mouth to say something, and closed it again.

“Agent Sousa,” said Dooley, “go ahead and bag those as evidence. Dr. Pearson, is there a place where we could talk to Dr. Haring privately? Away from his office?”

 

Pearson led them to an empty conference room. He waited for Haring to enter before quietly offering to send some coffee, which Dooley accepted. When Pearson had left, Dooley gave the agents some  quick instructions: Sousa to go in first, sit at the end of the table and take notes; Yauch second and sit next to Dooley, Krzeminski last and stand by the closed door.

When they were all in position, Dooley took the evidence bag from Sousa. He contemplated it, but said nothing. Sousa could feel the weight of the silence.

Finally Haring spoke up. “Well?”

Dooley looked up from the evidence bag. “Let’s start with these. Agent Sousa, how many typewriter ribbons were there again?”

“Seven hidden in the file and one more in the box on the desk.”

Dooley let the answer hang in the air for a moment before he continued. “Now, I’m not a scientist, but this seems like what you’d call an anomaly. What the hell do you need eight spare typewriter ribbons for?” Haring started to speak, but Dooley cut him off. “Agent Sousa, where were those ribbons again?

Sousa described the file wallet.

“...Hidden in a file, marked ‘Personal’,  in the back of a bottom drawer of a locked desk,” mused Dooley. “Now, you’re a top scientist, aren’t you? You expect me to believe you do your own typing? No, you’ve got someone to do that for you. And she can get her own ribbon when she needs one. So… what are you really doing?

“‘Cause here’s the thing: if those ribbons are being charged against your contract and they’re not actually being used on the contract, then that’s fraud. You’re defrauding the federal government. Last I checked, that was a federal crime.

“And then what are you really doing with them? Office supplies are still pretty hard to come by. I practically have to make my agents put down a deposit for a rubber band, and we’re a government agency. I bet typewriter ribbons are worth something on the black market. Of course, if you’re going to do that, you’re going to have to get involved with the kinds of people who’re involved in the black market. And if you’re selling them typewriter ribbons… what else are you selling ‘em?”

Dooley let Haring absorb the thought.

“You may be in more trouble than you realize,” said Dooley. “But if you start talking —” he reached into his jacket pocket, drew out a raw carrot, and placed it on the table — “I might be able to help you get out of it.”

Haring took a deep breath. He did not seem to notice the carrot. “They’re gifts,” he said cautiously. “For a friend.”

Dooley leaned forward. “Yeah? Tell me about your friend .”

 

Haring’s friend turned out to be a girl from Yonkers named Thelma. He’d met her in town, about a year ago. She liked perfume and flowers and candy as much as any other girl, but she also appreciated typewriter ribbons — like Dooley had said, they were hard to get, and if she didn’t need one herself she could trade it for something she did need — it was just to help her do her job, it wasn’t like she was selling them on the black market or anything like that — 

“You sure about that?” asked Dooley. “What, did she get a receipt or something and show it to you?”

Haring hesitated a moment before he scoffed at the idea — Thelma not that kind of girl at all — what did Dooley mean, where did she work? She worked in some kind of office, an insurance company, something like that. Of course he was sure! Was Dooley implying that she was some kind of spy , from Roxxon or something? Ridiculous! And no, they didn’t talk about his job — well, no, they didn’t exactly talk about playing checkers, either — and no: Thelma was not friends with his wife. Nor did his wife know Thelma. And no, he hadn’t been planning to introduce Thelma to his wife, or to tell his wife about Thelma at all. He glared resentfully at Dooley. 

Dooley was unperturbed. “So you've been having an affair with a girl who was a stranger to you. You don’t talk about work — how romantic — so you don’t really know where she works. You have no way of knowing what she’s really doing when you’re not together. You’re passing her stolen property that could easily be sold on the black market. You’re trying to keep all this a secret from your wife. And you’re working with dangerous equipment captured from the enemy on a top-secret government contract. Oh, and then there’s that little problem with possibly defrauding the U.S. Government.

“You’re a smart man. So why are you being so stupid ?”

Dooley pressed his point: Haring was now vulnerable to blackmail, to extortion, to aiding and abetting criminal activity.... Once he had Haring thoroughly frightened, he questioned him closely about any information he might have sold or let slip. Haring insisted that the files he’d carried out of the building had been full of office supplies, not secret information, and that he hadn’t let slip or sold anything. Dooley seemed convinced. He offered Haring an out — come clean to Pearson, break it off with Thelma — and Haring gratefully accepted. Before he could change his mind, Dooley turned around in his chair. “Agent Yauch, call Dr. Pearson and let him know we’re ready for him.” He turned back around to Haring. “Piece of advice: come clean to your wife. She probably knows anyway, and you’ll sleep better. While we’re waiting? I’d be real interested to hear what you know about Roxxon.”

 

Krzeminski grumbled as they left the building. “All this way for typewriter ribbons and a tootsie from the Bronx.”

“Yonkers,” said Sousa.

“This was a good day’s work,” said Dooley, cutting Krzeminski off. “Little problems grow up to be big problems if you don’t catch ‘em early. We got this one nipped in the bud, got a new lead and a new source, and we’ll still get home before dinner gets cold.”

“Think Pearson’s going to tell the other guys in the group what happened?” asked Sousa.

“Might depend on how quickly Haring can get the lab cleaned up,” said Dooley. “But like we told him, nothing’s as embarrassing as getting marched out in handcuffs.”

When they got back to the cars, Dooley announced that they would head straight back. “The report can wait until tomorrow, so turn in the car key and go home. Sousa,” he added. “Good work.” Sousa nodded his thanks.

Sousa rode back with Yauch again. The sun was setting, muting the splendor of the trees and leaving a nip in the air. It was a good night to come home to a warm house and a hot meal.

At first the two agents were quiet, but once the car heater had warmed up and they were back on the highway, they started talking about the case: Pearson calling it in so early; how trivial it had turned out to be; Thelma as a possible danger….

“I guess I really never thought of scientists as having girlfriends,” remarked Yauch.

It sounded stupid, but Sousa understood his point. “They put their pants on one leg at a time just like everybody else,” he said. “Wonder what the attraction was?” 

Yauch shrugged. “Who knows?” 

Sousa shifted in the seat. His leg was getting uncomfortable, and he wasn’t in the mood to try to carry a conversation all by himself. 

Yauch finally spoke up again. “Are you seeing anybody?” he asked hesitantly.

“Nope.” Sousa could have added, Still settling in or I think my super wants to fix that, but he only said, “You?”

“No.”  

Another half-mile went by before Yauch observed, “Krzeminski’s married.”

This was common knowledge around the office; Sousa wondered why Yauch was bringing it up. “How long?” he asked. “Do you know?”

“June. They went to Niagara Falls for a honeymoon. He talked about it when we were in training.”

Sousa was not sorry to have missed out on that. “So four months. Still a newlywed.”

“Yeah.” Yauch’s cautious tone caught Sousa’s attention. He waited, but Yauch didn’t say anything more until a few miles later, when he brought up sports. Between the end of the World Series and the beginning of the new football season, there was enough to eke out a conversation to last the rest of the way back.

 

A couple of days later, Dooley took Sousa and Agent Nolan back to White Plains to interview Dr. Haring and some of the other scientists about Roxxon and other rumors. None of them, it turned out, had ever actually been approached by a buyer of secrets or actual Hydra tech, but Dooley pared away enough of the vague rumors and big talk to get a small amount of actual information. At the next morning’s briefing, he announced a new subproject under Sandlock to follow those leads and any others they might uncover. Nolan would be in charge.

Sousa was a little disappointed that Dooley hadn’t tapped him for the job. But Nolan had seniority, he reminded himself, and he’d been assigned to the subproject. Work quickly became even busier, with more interviews to conduct and more phone calls to make, and piles of SSR files to comb through for background information. Somehow, Sousa found himself doing most of the research. It was annoying, but it also gave him more freedom to do it properly in the way he thought best. And it wasn’t as if the other agents weren’t doing their fair share; everyone was working long days, including Chief Dooley. 

“Make sure to log all your hours,” said Dooley. “It’ll prove my point to Washington that we need to fill those last empty desks.”

 

In the meantime, Sousa did his best to get to Halloran for physical therapy at least once a week. Every visit, though, felt even more like a waste of time and energy. The therapists kept telling him he was doing well, but he couldn’t see any improvement at all. Were they just trying to encourage him? Did they really understand his case? Would they even notice if he didn’t turn up? He didn’t blame them; he was only coming in once a week and didn’t need much help, and they were busy with the guys coming in from the Pacific. So he did his exercises and stopped by the HX and caught the bus back to Manhattan, and kept his doubts to himself. 

He was thinking about those doubts, and some other ones, as he returned home from Halloran late one afternoon. He maneuvered himself through the front door — it seemed like more of a hassle than usual that day — into the lobby. He closed the door behind him, turned, and stopped short. 

There was something… 

…something that was reminding him of something else. What was it?

And then it came to him: it was the warm, thin autumn light slicing through the windows into the lobby, reminding him of a place he’d been before, a place….

A place in Belgium. The front room of a building. The front windows were broken, and the warm, thin autumn sun pierced the gloom, showing him the floating motes of dust and the shards of glass and chunks of wood and ceiling littering the tiled floor….

And then he was back in the lobby. That would have been around this time last year, wouldn’t it? He took a deep breath and went to check his mail. There was a letter from Tillie. 

Back in the apartment, he left the letter on the table, doffed his prosthetic, and hung up his uniform. For a moment he was tempted to change directly into his pajamas. Instead he changed into his most comfortable pair of pants, pinned up the leg, and went into the kitchen. He had just pulled out a frying pan when the telephone began to ring. 

It was Agent Wallace, from the office. “Sousa, we got a hot tip. Chief’s calling for all free hands on deck. How soon can you get here?”

“I can try for thirty minutes.”

He could hear Wallace cover the mouthpiece and talk to someone else. “Great. We’ll fill you in when you get here.”

“See you then.” Sousa hung up the phone. He sighed a little, thinking of the pork chop in the refrigerator that he’d been planning for his dinner. Back in the kitchen, he put the frying pan away and made a peanut butter sandwich, which he ate leaning against the counter. He rinsed the plate, picked up his crutches, and went to go don his prosthetic again.

 

“This is why it pays to lead with the carrots,” said Dooley. “A couple of months ago, we talked to a soldier in Brooklyn — poor guy, straight off the gangway, didn’t even have his land legs back and there we were taking his stuff away. But we treated him nice, I gave him my card, we shook hands and parted as friends. And guess who I heard from this afternoon? 

“There’s a rumor going around about a collector looking to buy Hydra souvenirs. He’s supposed to be meeting someone tonight, at the Automat by Grand Central. We’ve got a description of the seller but not of the buyer….” He flipped the chalkboard, sketched in floor plans and a map, looked around the table at the assembled agents, and began to write in names. "So here's what we're gonna do...."

 

As planned, Sousa was among the first to arrive at the Automat. He scanned the dining room, spotted an open seat in the section he wanted, and went as quickly as he could to claim it with his coat, his newspaper, and one of his crutches.

Now it was time to get something to eat and carry it back to his spot. Walking with one crutch was still slow and clumsy; it also gave him time to look around the dining room as he went to get a glass of water, to the kiosk to get some nickels, and to the steam table to get a cup of soup. After he had paid for his soup, he gripped the saucer and carefully started toward his seat.

Suddenly Agent Varano appeared at his elbow. “Here, lemme take that for you,” he said. He took the soup and followed Sousa back to his seat. “See anything yet?” he murmured as he put the soup down.

“No, not yet,” Sousa quietly replied.

“There you go,” said Varano, in a more normal voice.  “This seat taken?” 

“Sorry, I’m waiting for someone,” said Sousa.

“Thanks anyway.” Varano headed to the kiosk. Sousa sat down, opened his newspaper, and began to eat. The other agents, one by one, began to take their places in the dining room. There was nothing to do now but watch and wait.

Around 1950, a corporal came through the revolving door. He seemed to fit their description, and he was carrying a bag. The silent signals began to go around the dining room. The corporal went over to the sandwiches; Brogan wandered over to the same section and was even able to engage him in a little conversation. As the corporal turned towards the pies, Brogan turned and made another signal: It’s him. Sousa reached into his coat pocket, found the walkie-talkie, and used the button to send the Morse signal. In another minute, Ramirez came into the restaurant. 

By now the corporal had filled his tray. He found an empty table on Sousa’s side of the restaurant and sat down. His back was toward Sousa, so it was easy for Sousa to point Ramirez to the right table. Sousa watched without watching as Ramirez asked the corporal about an empty seat. The corporal shook his head no and Ramirez left, in a plausible, friendly manner, to look for another spot.

Dooley’s source had said the meeting was supposed to happen at 2000. By 2030, the corporal was still alone, and seemed to be getting nervous. He pushed his chair back, stood up, and picked up his bag. Sousa stood up as well and pulled out his handkerchief, a signal to the other agents. But the corporal left his coat at his seat and, instead of going toward an exit, went to look at the pies again. Sousa put his handkerchief in his pocket and went to get a cup of coffee.

Sousa couldn’t see exactly when the corporal finished his second slice of pie, but at 2100 he seemed to decide he’d had enough. He stood up and started to put his coat on.

Sousa stood up as well. He took out his handkerchief and pretended to wipe his eye. Ramirez pushed back from his table and started talking to the corporal again; around the dining room, the other agents casually moved into position. Varano drifted over toward the revolving doors that opened to 42nd Street, chose a spot where he would be in everyone’s way, and began to peruse the menu poster. Dooley got up, walked toward the restroom, and took a detour to the Madison Avenue doors.

The corporal finally got himself away from Ramirez and crossed the dining room toward the Madison Avenue doors. Dooley re-entered the restaurant, now with a red carnation newly stuck in his buttonhole. The corporal stopped; Dooley came up to greet him. Sousa couldn’t hear what Dooley said, but it ended with his discreetly showing the corporal his badge. Fisher joined them and, with Dooley, led the corporal to the Madison Avenue doors. Sousa put on his coat, picked up his crutches, and, with the other agents, followed them out. 

Back at the office, they booked in the corporal. Dooley and Nolan conducted the first interview; Sousa took notes, sitting with some of the other agents in the adjacent room, watching through the one-way mirror. It didn’t take long to convince the corporal that cooperation was in his best interest. Unfortunately, he couldn’t provide much in the way of actual help: he insisted that he didn’t know the name of his buyer, and Dooley and Nolan weren’t able to prod anything loose from his memory. Finally Dooley called it quits for the night. The corporal was escorted to the lock-up, and the agents were sent home.

 

Sousa finally read Tillie’s letter the next morning over breakfast. 

"...First: I don’t know if Ines has told you yet, but Pete’s going to be back soon! He was able to call Ines from Hawaii last night. They go to California next and they’ll discharge him there. Then he has to get here. So it doesn’t sound like he knows when he’ll actually show up .

Second: There’s going to be a festa. It’s Saturday, November 3. They only just decided to have it, and they want to do it while the weather holds up. We know you’re busy and this isn’t much notice, but what do you think of coming up for it? Even just for a day or two? You could be in the procession! They want everyone who’s gotten home so far to be in it, so if Pete makes it home in time you could both be in it….”  

He read on. The rest of the letter was short: family news… neighborhood news… still trying to find a new job before she was let go, no luck yet — maybe you can find me one in New York, ha ha!   — hadn’t heard from Joe since her last letter — and finally another exhortation to come for the festa .

P.S. If you are able to come, could I ask a huge favor? Could you keep your eyes open for a few cards of snaps and hooks-and-eyes, and bring them with you? They’re like hen’s teeth around here! If you have time, of course. Any store that stocks sewing notions will have them. Or wants to have them. You know what I mean. But only if it’s convenient!  Don’t go out of your way! Thank you!

After he got dressed, he wrote a short reply: I got your letter about the festa. Thanks for letting me know. They sound really all-out for this. Has there ever even been one in November before?  Things are busy here. I’ll try to come, but I might not know for sure until the last minute, or even until I’m on the train and out of the city. But I’ll do my best. More soon.

He capped his pen, sealed the envelope, pushed his chair back, and stood up. It took a couple of tries to scoot the prosthetic into place so he could leave the table.

 

The corporal never was able to provide a name for his buyer, but Dooley and Nolan were able to get a few other leads out of him before they let him go. They sent him on his way with handshakes and thanks (and no mention of the two agents tailing him home.) Meanwhile, his information was added to the file.

Phone calls, research, interviews, surveillance…. The days sped by. Sousa didn’t ask right away about taking days off for the festa — he’d want at least three — but he found himself thinking about it more and more often. It would be a good break. There would be the festa itself — what would a November festa look like anyway? Usually almost everything was out of doors…. He wasn’t thrilled about the idea of being in the procession, but if Pete and some of the other guys were back, it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe they'd put him on a float (drawn by a mule, with his luck.) And the food — what did festa food look like under rationing? Whatever it was, it would still have that festa touch — even beans, broth, and bread would be delicious….

There was something else gnawing at Sousa’s attention, though: no matter how faithfully he did his exercises, no matter how many stump socks he added and layered to get a good fit, he was getting clumsier with the prosthetic. Something was…

Something was wrong. And it clearly wasn’t going to go away by itself. 

He didn’t want to bring it up at Halloran; they might pull him off the detail and send him back to the hospital full time. And then what would happen? Would he be able to come back to the SSR? Would Dooley even want him back?

But if he didn’t bring it up, he was going to end up tripping over himself in the office and falling flat on his face. That probably wouldn’t be great for his future in the SSR, and he’d still end up going back to Halloran. 

No, he’d just have to bite the bullet. It had been a while since he’d seen Klein, anyway.

On Monday morning, he arrived at the Bell building a little early and called Halloran from a phone booth in the lobby. He was able to get an appointment with Klein for Wednesday. As he rode the elevator upstairs, he made his plan: he’d ask Dooley for the time for the appointment and then check the current state of the schedule. Maybe he could swap a shift or two….

He stepped into the switchboard room. The switchboard girls were talking to each other in every free moment between calls, and from the quick, hushed lilt of their voices, it sounded like it was about something more exciting than the usual Monday morning report.

Miss Roberts was on duty at the post by the other elevator. She seemed calmer than her neighbors.

“Good morning,” said Sousa. He nodded toward the rest of the switchboard. “Busy morning? Something up?”

“Just a Monday morning,” Miss Roberts cheerfully replied. “So far, at least.” She smiled in a no-further-comment way and pushed the button for the elevator.

Sousa stopped by the locker room first to adjust his stump socks. When he reached the bullpen, Dooley’s door was closed and the shades were drawn, so he got a cup of coffee, went to his desk, and started work. He had hardly opened his first folder when Dooley opened his office door and announced morning briefing in ten minutes.

 

When Dooley arrived in the briefing room, he was followed by a man who Sousa immediately assumed was a new agent. This must have been what the switchboard girls were buzzing about. He was tall, with blond hair, a calm, confident expression, and a nice suit. His white shirt looked crisp and new, Sousa noticed; white shirts were all but impossible to find these days, with all the guys coming home looking for civilian clothes.  The suit looked loose, though, and there was something about the guy's look — a fading suntan, a little too skinny, something off about his eyes and face…. And then Sousa understood. This guy had the same look as the new fellows from Halloran. He was back from the Pacific. And from the look of him, he hadn’t been back all that long.

When the last agents were seated, Dooley started the meeting. “First order of business: we have a new agent. This is John Thompson.”

“Jack,” the new guy added.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Thanks to @AnniePlusMacDonald and @Cuppa_tea_love for test reading and encouragement
and thank you for reading, for your kudos and comments, and for sticking with it!

---

In the U.S., when we talk about the Automat we're talking about the Horn and Hardart chain, which opened its first Automat restaurant in Philadelphia in 1902 and expanded to New York City in 1912. They weren't the first coin-operated restaurant in NY, but they were by far and away the most successful and famous. In the pictures we see the signs for PIES and SANDWICHES and CAKES, but they also served hot food from a steam table. (In the 50's, I think, they developed a coin-operated cubby system for hot food.) And the food was good, made from scratch.

Chapter 69: Marking the Days

 

 

Sousa looked at his watch and then up at the clock. They both told him the same thing: three minutes had passed since he’d last checked.

He let out a long, tight-lipped sigh. Twenty minutes now of sitting around in his underwear waiting for Klein. It wasn’t that long in the greater scheme of things, especially by Army standards, and at least the exam room was warm. But he’d long finished the newspaper he’d brought, and there was a stack of work waiting for him back at the office  — on a day when half the men were out meeting the eight troop ships arriving in Brooklyn. 

Another five or ten minutes passed before a knock finally sounded and Klein entered the room. “Captain Sousa.” He flipped through the chart. “Last time I saw you, you were supposed to come back in a month. Last time I looked, a month lasted only thirty days…. Well, at least you made it to P.T. a couple of times.  They really keeping you that busy? Yeah? What about your exercises? Well, that’s good. Let’s take a look.”

Klein did the usual exam and asked the usual questions: Skin care? Getting around okay? Any pain? He listened as Sousa explained the trouble he was having with the prosthetic, and watched as Sousa donned it and walked around the exam room.

“I’ve been doing the exercises,” insisted Sousa.

“You told me. And I believe you,” said Klein. He nodded toward the exam table. “You can get dressed. I don’t think this is about the exercises, or playing hooky from physical therapy. It’s been, what, a little over ten months since your surgery? Looks like your stump’s about ready for your permanent prostethic.” He looked up from the chart. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks, I guess.” Sousa sat down and started untying his shoes. 

“You’ll need to go back down to your doctors at England,” continued Klein.  “We’ll set it up with them. They’ll take a look, and if they agree you’re ready, they’ll set you up to get fitted.”

Sousa looked up. “Atlantic City? Why can’t I do it here?”

“Because you’re the property of the amputee specialty service. I can make a recommendation, but they make the final decision. You’re better off going there anyway, their limb shop’s one of the best.”

“So it’s possible I could go down there and they could decide that I have to wait longer?”

Klein shrugged as he wrote in the chart. “It’s possible. I wouldn’t put money on it.”

So he might end up going there for nothing…. “How long do you think I’ll need to be there?”

Klein looked up from the chart. “As long as it takes. You’d better not be worried about getting a pass. This is for medical treatment, not a vacation, and the only reason you’re on this detail at all is because the Army’s doing them a favor. If the Army wants you back in Atlantic City, then you’re going to Atlantic City. And you’ll go as often as the Army wants you to go, and you’ll stay as long as the Army wants you to stay.”

He closed the chart. “This is a big milestone, you know. That prosthetic’s the only thing standing between you and discharge. Any Halloween parties for you tonight? No? All right. Be careful layering those socks, and if you haven’t heard from us by next Tuesday afternoon, call us.”

 

Sousa waited until he was on the ferry to start stewing over this new complication.  He’d been planning to try to go up for the festa, but today was Wednesday, the festa was Saturday, and — at least the last time he’d checked — he was scheduled to work.

Taking an actual vacation day was out of the question: it was just too busy right now. He’d been planning to try to trade a weekend with someone, but he’d put it off because the schedule was changing so often, and then this appointment came up and he’d really needed to keep it, and now the Army was going to send him back to Atlantic City on some unknown date, and for some unknown length of time, and almost certainly on very short notice. What if he managed to get out of working this weekend only to have to be out again as soon as next week? He’d be gone all that time, and wouldn’t be able to pay back the favor he owed. It might look like goldbricking — or like he couldn’t pull his own weight.

Maybe it was just as well he was going to skip the festa. Everyone would be busy and he wouldn’t get to talk to anybody and what could they do in November anyway? No eating the traditional soup at tables under canopies, no little kids running around, no dancing as day faded into evening…. He wouldn’t be missing much, he told himself.

What about Atlantic City? He’d only left less than three months ago, but it felt like forever. What was it going to be like to go back? And how he was going to explain this to Dooley? As he pondered, he watched the reflection of the sinking sun glitter in the rippling wake of the ferry.

 

The next morning, as early as he could, Sousa asked Dooley for a few minutes to discuss his schedule. 

“Sure,” said Dooley. “You’re only the fourth guy in line for that today. You’re getting in before the rush.”

He found out what Dooley meant at the end of the morning briefing, when Dooley announced that it was time to start thinking about the holiday schedule. “Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year. One for the family, two for here. Let me know your preferences A.S.A.P.. There’s no guarantees, but I’ll do my best.”

As Sousa went back to his desk, a memory of last year’s Thanksgiving flitted through his mind: Cold, wet eastern Belgium with the rest of his outfit; a turkey dinner cooked over a field stove. He unlocked his desk, and pulled out his folders.

He’d been working for about an hour when his telephone rang. To his surprise, it was Halloran: he hadn’t expected to hear from them this soon. The WAC on the other end of the line got straight to her point, and in a few minutes, Sousa’s most pressing questions were answered.

 

It was mid-afternoon when his turn came up to meet with Dooley. He explained the situation as briefly as he could: check-up yesterday, all well, but was going to need some time off….

“They want me to follow up with the specialists,” he said, “and they’re not here in New York. So I’m going to have to go out of town.”

“Army efficiency strikes again. Where’re they sending you?”

“Walter Reed, in Washington.”

That was why Halloran had called him back so quickly. They’d explained that the limb shop at England General Hospital was still backlogged, even as the Army was looking ahead to drawing down and decommissioning the hospital, so he was being sent to Walter Reed instead. 

“I don’t have to stay there the whole time,” Sousa explained. “But I’m going to have to go at least twice over the next couple of months. They said the first time I’ll probably need to be there for three or four days, maybe less. The second one will be longer, seven to nine days. That doesn’t include the travel.

“I’m real sorry, I know this comes at a bad time. But they said after it’s all over, I’ll be officially discharged.”

“That’s something to look forward to,” said Dooley. “And they haven’t told you when you’re going?”

“Not yet. I might not get much notice.”

Dooley looked resigned. “Well, if you need to go, you need to go. At least we know it’s coming. You ever hear of anyone’s appendix filling out a form in advance? Just let me know when you get your orders. Anything else? What about the holidays, which ones do you want?”

“I’ll put in once I know what’s going on.”

“All right. While you’re here… you’re on Saturday, right? I’m gonna need you on the evening shift. You’ll take charge.” Dooley made the change on the schedule. “Send in Krzeminksi, will ya?”

 

On his way back to his apartment, Sousa stopped by the Western Union office to send a telegram home:

SORRY CANT MAKE IT DANIEL

Back at the apartment building, he found a letter from his father waiting for him in his mailbox. He read it over dinner:

Maybe when you read this you’ll already know, but we have some news. Pete is home! I found out after work. He and Charlie were waiting for me at the bus stop….

Just in time for the festa, thought Daniel — he’d have to tease Pete about that. He read on: from the bus stop straight to the Escobars’, Tillie already there; Ines happy of course; Pete looking good, Charlie and Katie hanging on him like barnacles…. He asked about you and how you were doing, and said he hoped he’d get to see you soon….

As Daniel finished the letter, he felt a slow twist in his stomach. Maybe he hadn’t realized just how much he’d been looking forward to a trip home after all. Maybe once this Walter Reed business was finished.

 

That Saturday, the evening shift began quietly. The day shift had mentioned in report that Dooley had come in for a few hours that morning — stayed in his office with the door closed, barely said anything, gone by lunch time — so  Sousa was surprised when, at 1530, Dooley turned up again. He left his coat and hat in his office and strode toward the briefing room. With a sharp jerk of his head, he signaled Sousa and Rollins, the other agent on the shift, to join him.

“Enjoy the quiet, it’s not gonna last much longer,” said Dooley. He pulled the chalkboard into place and started drawing a street map. “We’ve got a lead on someone trying to buy something he shouldn’t even know exists from someone who shouldn’t be selling it. They’ve got a six o’clock reservation at Keen’s. We are gonna invite ourselves along. You’ll get the briefing along with the team.  They’ll be here at four.” He glanced toward the coffee maker; Rollins took the hint.

The coffee was about half done when the men on the team began to arrive. Sousa took some time to square everything else away — checking the tube, calling down to the switchboard, making a note in the log — before he went to the briefing room.

He was the last to sit down at the table. Once he’d settled himself in and put his crutches away, he noticed the new guy, Thompson, sitting across the table… and noticing him.

Sousa hadn’t worked with Thompson yet — their schedules had been so different they’d barely even spoken — but he’d learned a little more about him through the office grapevine: a Marine in the Pacific; saw a lot of action and had a chest full of medals — including the Navy Cross. At the time Japan had surrendered, he’d been in the hospital for some kind of tropical illness and had been discharged from there.

God only knew what Thompson had learned about him through that same grapevine, reflected Sousa. Thompson wasn’t staring or gawking, but it wasn’t exactly a friendly look, either: it was cool and appraising. With a flash of irritation, Sousa wondered who exactly the hell Thompson thought he was. He did not notice his hand lightly bouncing his pencil on the table.

Dooley called the meeting to order and explained the plan:  a listening device planted under the table; agents posing as dinner guests; more agents posted outside; the mobile base posing as a nondescript delivery van. Another agent — Hass — would stay back at the office with the evening shift team, to stay in touch with the team in the field or even join them if needed. 

Which left Sousa with his regular work and the usual evening shift chores. The only thing he’d be doing for the operation would be an occasional note in the log book. 

Well, somebody had to do it; it might as well be him. And at least the agent staying behind was Hass and not Krzeminski.

The field team left; the agents remaining at the office got back to work, each with one eye on the clock. At the expected time, Hass’s telephone rang: it was the operator downstairs, announcing his connection to the van. He went over to the office base unit and put on the headphones. In a few minutes, he swiveled his chair and relayed what was happening: Van in position; first agents entering the restaurant to place the bug…

The evening wore on. Hass’s updates were infrequent but regular: all agents in place… the buyer and the seller arriving and sitting down at their table…. “Still drinking Scotch and talking about nothing,” Hass reported. “Oh, they’ve ordered oysters….. And one of them just said something about seeing the file….”

In another twenty minutes or so, there was a burst of excitement — from what Hass could make out from all the cross-talk, it sounded like one of the suspects had tried to make a break for it — but by 1900 it was all over. At 1930, the elevator doors opened to reveal two civilians in handcuffs, who were steered out and down the hall by Krzeminski and Thompson. Dooley followed them, jingling keys. 

The other agents started to return, and soon everyone was back in the bullpen, filling in Sousa and the other agents who had stayed behind. Everything had gone smoothly, and as soon as the money and the file changed hands, Dooley and Krzeminski had approached the table to make the arrest…

…and one of the suspects panicked. He’d dashed like a rabbit through the crowded dining room, somehow evading the other agents, but before he could make the lobby, Thompson stepped into his path and ordered him to stop. And he’d stopped — stopped, according to the other agents, by Thompson’s sheer air of authority.

“Just plugging the hole,” Thompson insisted. But he didn’t seem to mind the back-slapping.

“It was good work,” said Dooley. “All of you. And the night is still young. You —” he turned to the agent who’d been in the van — “grab yourself a bite to eat and then write your report while it’s still fresh. Hass, you can help him out. Brogan, Ramirez… and Thompson: we’ll let our friends rest a little longer down there before we go in to see them. The rest of you can go on home.”

“I still think we would have blended in better at the restaurant if we’d brought dates,” said Krzeminski. Thompson looked incredulous.

“Noted. Again,” said Dooley. “Sousa: Anything happen while we were out?”

“All quiet here,” said Sousa.

“Good.” 

“We could always bring some of the switchboard girls,” suggested Krzeminski.

“The switchboard girls need to be running the switchboard. And the agents need to be running their operation,” said Dooley. He took a sip of coffee. “You know, ever since I got here I’ve been pushing Washington for money to hire a secretary. Lately I’ve been feeling like they’re about to give. Between these two arrests and then any leads we’ll be able to get out of ‘em? Maybe we won’t have to wait till Christmas to get a nice present.” 

He put down his coffee cup, pulled over a stack of files, and began to reorder them. Sousa noticed that one of files was from the Orange Industries case. He felt his stomach shrink.  He’d helped crack that case. It looked like it had somehow led to that night’s arrests. And he hadn’t been included on any of it.  

This was all a team effort, of course, and it was Dooley’s prerogative to decide who worked on what. 

But still: it stung.

Dooley stood up. “Let’s go see what our new friends have to say.” He left the bullpen, followed by Brogan, Ramirez, and Thompson. Sousa shifted himself in his chair and got back to work.

 

Sousa was on the evening shift again the next day. The report from the day shift was upbeat: good results from the first interrogations; suspects transferred to federal prison; Dooley on the phone with Washington most of the morning, finally left around lunchtime. 

Things were quiet, so Sousa was able to spend a little time staring at the schedule, wondering when Walter Reed was going to order him down. Would they want him to show up at the beginning of a week? At the end?  He picked a few hypothetical dates, counted out how long the new prosthetic would take, and then how many more days he’d owe them after that, and then the discharge paperwork… It would be tight, but could he be out of the Army by the end of the year? What about Christmas?

Memories of last Christmas shoved themselves to the front of his mind: Christmas dinner in a body cast at Mitchel. He pushed them away again, rolled his chair back, levered himself up, and headed to the mailboxes to put the schedule away. He could speculate all night, but it wouldn’t do any good. It was all up to the Army.

If he hadn’t heard anything by Wednesday, he would call Halloran. Or he could always just make plans to go home for Thanksgiving. That should be enough to provoke the Army into wrecking them somehow.

 

He called Halloran on Wednesday morning and left a message with a clerk. He stayed late that afternoon, but they didn’t call back. He finally gave up and headed home.

There was a letter in the mailbox. The handwriting told him it was from Tillie; the date on the postmark and the thickness of the envelope suggested that it was her complete and unabridged report on Pete’s homecoming and on the festa.  When he got to his apartment, he put the letter on the table to read over dinner. He wasn’t sure what dinner was going to be but he knew he’d be able to scare something up. His prosthetic had been even more uncomfortable that day, and his first priority was taking it off.

Once it was off, he sat on the chair for a few minutes, relaxing and letting his skin breathe and wondering if there was an indoor pool at Walter Reed.

He started a little – when a sharp knock sounded at the door. “Telegram!” someone shouted.

“Coming!” He pulled his pants back on, tucked the right leg into his belt, and hurried to the door.

He balanced on his left foot as he took the clipboard and signed for the telegram. He had just handed the clipboard back to the delivery boy when he heard another voice down the hall: “Daniel! Oh, good, you’re in!”

The voice belonged to Mrs Galasso. Sousa accepted the telegram from the delivery boy, gave him a tip, and resigned himself to his fate. It would have happened sooner or later anyway. He maneuvered himself backwards so he could hold the door open.

Her voice was coming closer. “There you are! I was hoping I’d find you, we’ve hardly seen you lately, and then Ronnie came and said he had a telegram and I thought, what good luck, he can knock on the door for me.  — Ronnie, you tell your nonna I said hi, all right? — You know, Daniel, Mr. Galasso says you’re either getting up so early or coming home so late you might as well be a milkman. I know it’s not quite that bad, he’s just talking. But still. Now, listen: I know it wasn’t so cold today but it’s not getting any warmer. And I made a big pot of soup — see, it’s still hot —”

By now she had reached Sousa’s door. She was holding a little bundle wrapped in a kitchen towel and, without looking at Sousa, walked straight through the open doorway—“and there’s a little something special in there, I was at Di Mauro’s this morning and he had it, I was so surprised”—and into the little kitchen— “And there’s some bread here….”

Sousa closed the door and followed her to the kitchen. She’d unwrapped her bundle and put a small pot on the stove. “Now, we’ll put that on to warm”—she turned on the burner—"You still have some of that cheese, right? The good kind we told you to get? Don’t you go wasting your red points—"

She turned around. Sousa saw her eyes widen as she took in the sight.

“Oh, honey,” she said softly. “You never told us.”

“Well… it’s not exactly —”

“Don’t worry about it. You don’t say anything unless you want to. Oh, you poor thing.” She sighed. “Now, what was I…? Oh, yes, the cheese. You still have some?”

“I have plenty.”

“Good. You can put a little bit on this soup. Just a little, that’s all you need. And you’ve got some bread here, and then over here there’s some nice baked apple.

“And everything’s okay? You’re doing okay?”

“I am. Everything’s going fine.”

“Okay then. I’d better let you read your telegram. But you let us know if you need anything, all right? And when you bring that pot back you can tell us what you’ve been up to. Don’t let them work you too hard.”

“I won’t. I promise. Thanks for the soup, it smells amazing.”

He closed the door behind her. Then, without leaving the entry, he pulled out a pocket knife and tore into the envelope of the telegram.

 

CAPT DANIEL A SOUSA

REPORT FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT
1200 TUES NOV 13 1945
THOMAS ENGLAND GENERAL HOSPITAL, ATLANTIC CITY,  NJ

COL WILLIAM H MCCULLOCH COMMANDER

 

 

 

Notes:

I know, it's been a long time coming - real life, Muse off on some walkabout, writing Investigations, building a retaining wall in my back yard, etc., etc, etc. But I didn't give up!

Thanks to @Cuppa_tea_love for beta reading and kicking me over the finish line

and thank you, as always, for sticking with it
and for your comments, which I keep in a velvet-lined box when I'm not bringing them out to read over and over again.

Suggestion: read the telegram closely.

---

Keen's is a real restaurant and it's still in operation! I couldn't resist.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Quo Vadis: The Extended Edition