She fought her feelings for him, but at night, alone in her cot, she thought of him, thought, What if. It might all be a mirage, this connection between them, brought on by proximity and the horror of what they saw every day, but it felt real.
He touched her whenever he could, as casually as possible, and with a forced smile. Sometimes they found themselves standing together, or sitting side by side, just staring at each other, saying nothing, both of them feeling too much for the other and knowing that words wouldn’t ease their longing.
She peeled her gloves off and lowered her mask. Both of them had red mud in the corners of their eyes, dripping down in tears, and in their teeth. “What a day.”
“I need a drink. Maybe ten. Join me?”
Tonight, her longing for him was too sharp to hide. She needed to be away from him. “I am too tired for the O Club,” she said.
“Is that possible?” he said.
Frankie meant to smile. “Tonight it is.”
They pulled off their gowns and caps and put on their Army-issued green ponchos and walked out of the OR and into a raging rainstorm.
“Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse,” Jamie said.
Rain clattered on the walkway’s roof and fell in sheets on either side of them, riveting the thick red mud.
They walked past the mess hall, and Frankie realized with a shock that it was lunchtime. Time lost all meaning during a MASCAL, and when they were understaffed, as they were now, shifts seemed to go on forever. She hadn’t eaten since, when? Dinner last night? Her stomach grumbled. She didn’t signal her intention, just stumbled sideways, bumping into Jamie, pushing him aside without meaning to. Bypassing the urn of hot coffee （Shower was all she could think）， she grabbed two donuts and stumbled back out of the mess, where Jamie stood waiting for her.
“Glazed,” she said, handing him one.
“My favorite.”
“I know.”
They crossed behind the stage, where a sign—MARTHA RAYE COMING NEXT WEEK—had been torn down by the wind and lay twisted and ruined in the mud. Frankie tucked her donut inside her poncho to protect it.
Jamie stopped in front of the sandbagged entrance to the O Club. Wind shoved the beads sideways, made them clatter against the wall. She smelled cigarette smoke. Music rose above the din. “Happy Together” by the Turtles.
Imagine me and you, I do …
“I do, you know,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Imagine me and you. I dream of you, McGrath.”
Frankie’s breath caught. Just now, as exhausted as she was, the will it took to pretend to feel only friendship for him was hard to summon. She couldn’t smile. All she could think of was that she loved him. God help her. “Jamie, don’t…”
“If only I’d met you first,” he said.
“You wouldn’t have looked twice at me. Big college football star and soon-to-be surgeon.”
He touched her cheek in a swift caress. Her skin felt colder without his touch. “You have no idea how beautiful you are, McGrath.”
Frankie was afraid that in one more second of standing here looking at him, in this secret world where rain fell all around them, they—she—would lose this battle. If one leaned forward, the other might, too. She had never wanted to kiss a man more. The love she felt for him caused a physical ache in her chest. She had to force herself to step back. She wanted to say something clever, but nothing came to her. Flipping up her hood, she angled forward to keep the rain from sluicing down her back and ran for the nurses’ showers.
They were empty, probably because of the storm. Rain battered the elevated four-hundred-gallon water trailer, called a Water Buffalo, that fed the showers. Frankie stripped and hung up her fatigues and poncho. In the cold air, the shower water felt warm. She didn’t need to look down to see red water coming off—red blood, red mud, red sweat. Geckos climbed the wooden walls of the shower, hid behind the crossbeams.
She washed her hair and body. Without even bothering to dry off, she stepped back into her damp, dirty clothes and boots, flung the slick wet poncho back over her body, and ducked back into the rain. At the plank bridge that ran over a gushing river of mud and water, she paused, slowed enough to check her balance so she didn’t fall into the coiled concertina wire on either side, and then she was back under the covered walkway.
The hooch was rattled by the rain; water sluiced down the wooden sides, created an ankle-deep puddle of red mud outside the door. She opened it slowly, stepped inside, bringing the mud and rain with her. There was no way to avoid it. In this season of wind and rain, the hooch always smelled of mildew and mold and the floor was always muddy.