“We just have to do everything we can for her, for as long as we can. In a year and a half, I’ll have finished nursing school, and I can be home with her all the time.” Now that she was in it, she loved nursing school, and everything it had taught her, about more than just caring for her mother. It felt like the right calling for her, just as flying was for Will. She had discovered a passion for nursing, unlike Lizzie, who still wished she could become a doctor, not just a nurse. But Lizzie was enjoying school too, more than she’d expected to, and her friendship with Audrey made it even better for both of them.
“You’ll tell me if you ever think I need to come home to see her…if…if she gets really bad…” Will said. Audrey knew he was afraid of her dying without him seeing her again.
“Of course,” Audrey said, and they hugged each other, knowing that one day, maybe not too far off, they would each be all the other had. It was heartbreaking to think about.
Ellen cried when Will left that night, and Will and Audrey had tears in their eyes. Lizzie had gone back to the dorm at the nursing school by then. She’d been totally dazzled by Will and was frustrated that she could tell he considered her a child. She felt like one with him. She wanted him to think of her as a femme fatale. He lived in a far more adult world than they did, in the sleepy safety of his hometown. Being a navy pilot had opened up new worlds to him, and he had the life that most young men dreamed of: freedom, flying fabulous fighter planes, the envy and admiration of his peers, and all the girls he wanted. True to the times and their circumstances, his life was very different from his sister’s dutiful, dedicated existence, devoted to caring for their invalid mother. But luckily for Audrey, she had discovered her passion. She loved everything about nursing. Being able to use it for her mother was an additional gift now, but no longer her only reason for going to nursing school. She had found her calling and her niche. The moment she put her uniform and cap on, she came alive. Just like Will when he got into his plane and took to the skies.
Chapter 2
Both Lizzie and Audrey were shocked by how fast the time had flown when they graduated. Three years had sped by. Audrey was twenty-one, and Lizzie twenty-two, and suddenly they were actually nurses and grown women, in proper pale blue uniforms and starched white caps that identified them by their school. They had gotten their nursing pins when they got their diplomas at their graduation ceremony. But little had changed in their lives, despite being nurses now. Lizzie had dated an assortment of young men, rarely more than a few times. Many of the girls she’d gone to high school with had gotten married, some had had their first babies. Lizzie didn’t feel ready for any of it. She wanted to live a little before she settled down. She had finally finished school, and she wanted to enjoy life and have some fun after three years of intense studies. As usual, before she could come up with a plan for herself for after graduation, her father had done it for her. He secured a job for her at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he hospitalized his patients and operated. She hadn’t settled on a specialty yet, so he had gotten her a job in a female post-surgical ward, which he thought would be good experience for her. She knew he expected her to be grateful to him, but instead she was angry, and vented to Audrey right before graduation.
“They always do that to me, always! Both of them! They decide what’s best for me, and that’s the end of it. They don’t even discuss it with me. I’m not a child anymore. I went to nursing school to make them happy, and I’m glad I did, because I met you, and nursing is a decent job, and as close to a medical career as I’m ever going to get. I’d rather do that than be a teacher or a secretary. But I wanted to apply for a job in New York, and without even asking me, my father got me a job in Boston. He doesn’t do that to my brothers.”
“Maybe he does,” Audrey said gently. She felt sorry for her. Lizzie had her own ideas and wanted to be her own person. “Greg is a doctor, and Henry is in medical school. Maybe they didn’t want to be doctors, and they did it for him,” she suggested. “It’s like Will. Nobody ever questioned that he would enlist in the navy. It was expected of him because of my father and grandfather. And if he couldn’t fly planes in the navy, he’d be miserable. I don’t think he gives a damn about ships, the way my father did.”
“My parents have my whole life mapped out for me,” Lizzie said angrily. “And just watch, if I’m not engaged in a year, they’ll be having a fit. I have a nursing degree. Now they’re going to want me to get married and have kids. It’s what my mother did. Don’t I ever get a voice in my own life?” She had tears in her eyes, but she knew that Audrey’s lot was even harder, alone with her slowly dying mother, with no one to help her, and her only brother three thousand miles away, playing ace pilot in California. It seemed so unfair to Lizzie. “It’s 1941, not 1910. Nothing ever changes for women. They say it does, but it doesn’t. I should have gone to medical school, and to hell with it if my father had a fit.” But she couldn’t have paid for it, and her parents had paid for nursing school. Her father had refused to pay for medical school for her, only her brothers.