*ON HOLD* Cora Crawley had another brother. Her brother married and had a beautiful daughter named Evelyn Levinson. When a mysterious fire burns the Levinson home, 6-year-old Evelyn was the only survivor. Cora takes in her orphaned niece - and this...
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1 year later - August 1915.
Evelyn's tongue poked through her chapped lips in intense concentration - flicking every once in a while as her shoulders would jerk to the left or the right providing her with a better angle. She shivered a bit as a result of the chilly August air wafting through the poorly lit hospital. Her hands were blood-stained, not severely but enough to notice the unnatural red hue. The tailoring to her nurse's uniform didn't last very long as she had lost a bit of weight while she was here - either from stress or neglecting to eat in the wake of all of her reading on human anatomy. Her cheeks sunk in ever so slightly; however, it wasn't that which made her look sick but rather it was the dark circles under her tired eyes. She wasn't sick - but a few did wonder.
Her shaky hand worked quickly and skillfully on the bandage, lifting the man's heavy leg in her hand as delicately as she could. Her body shifted from side to side to access the correct tucks and to assess her own work. Reaching the end of the bandage, she folded it in and gently stuffed it through the gap at the heel.
When she was finished, she took and step back and laced her hands in from of her while her eyes left her work and focused on a small group of nurses at the foot of the hospital cot. An older nurse stood by Evelyn and tugged at the bandage in several places. The 1-minute inspection felt like an hour to Evelyn, but her anxieties were waived when the nurse nodded.
"Excellent, Evelyn. As usual."
She sighed. "Thank you."
"Why don't you go get some rest, hm? You've been up here all day and it's late."
Evelyn nodded. "Ok. Goodnight." She wasted no time leaving the room, rubbing her nose on her sleeve in a failed attempt to warm it.
The head nurses watched the girl leave before speaking amongst themselves.
"She's going on the list as well?"
"Of course she is, she's one of the best we have."
"She has family in Europe...some of whom might end up on the Western Front which she'll be likely to see. My only concern is that she sees something awful."
"It's war...we're all going to see something awful."
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Evelyn's stomach rumbled furiously but she had already missed dinner so there was no point in dwelling on it. This hospital - Saint Ivan's - certainly did not compare to Saint Francis in Newport...especially the food. This hospital was much larger but lacked a warm hospitable atmosphere. Evelyn thought of it more like an asylum.
Five months into her training, Evelyn was one of twelve volunteer nurses chosen from Saint Francis to be moved to Saint Ivan's in Milford, Delaware. The few were chosen because they had already exceeded the lengths of their training and would be able to be called for transfer if the time came. The American Ambulance Service ship docked in the Delaware Bay, thus that is where many nurses and volunteers, or VAD (volunteer aid detachment), nurses were sent to further their training until called into duty.
