The Weeping River

Chapter 1: Mist

1600 hours, 9th August 1942

I've decided to record the events of this day both for the sake of posterity and for the wellness of my own mind, because what I've seen is both unbelievable and incredible. I feel like I must've hallucinated all of it. Some part of me supposes that if I write it all down, I'll somehow be able to discern fact from fiction. Ridiculous, I know, but I don't know what else to do.

Deciding where to begin will be difficult. I suppose the gist of it is that I was stationed on four different field hospitals in the Pacific for the last three years. At first, I couldn't believe how many soldiers and marines were just sitting there waiting for someone to have time to see to them. They were like sardines in a can for a while, but the beds had a nasty way of clearing themselves up. There weren't enough doctors or nurses to go around.

I was transferred from the 7th Evacuation Hospital on Tongatabu to the USS Respite to serve as chief nurse. The Respite was a passenger liner that had been refitted into a hospital ship that was participating in the raid on Guadalcanal. Her mission was to receive injured sailors and marines, provide them with medical care, and maintain a calming atmosphere all throughout. To be completely blunt, the Respite was falling apart when I arrived. No one ever told me what exactly happened, but the crew was working short staffed, including the medical personnel. People kept dying without anyone close by to replace them, I suppose.

Then came August 9th, the day on which I begin to write this journal. Just before it happened, I was in the dining hall-turned infirmary trying to get on top of all of the casualties that hadn't been processed yet. I remember that it was a pain in the neck to concentrate, more so than usual. I may have gotten used to seeing people come and go, but screaming still had a way of hanging onto me and never letting go. I found that tapping my feet and humming a song helped a tad.

I was seeing to Private Meyers at the time. He had a gunshot wound to the shoulder, thankfully nothing a little penicillin and morphine couldn't put right. If it wasn't for the blood pouring out of his side and the bullet that I yanked out of him, you wouldn't have been able to tell there was anything wrong with him. He peered around at the stream of nurses, doctors, and patients like an excited puppy and would barely sit still for his shots. I remember telling him, 'Mister, if you keep jittering around, I'll do the Japs a favour and finish the job for them'.

Despite the moaning coming from the rest of the infirmary and the sound of planes screeching by our ship, he looked me in the eye and smiled. 'I'd like to see you try', he said to me. Men. Somehow, by the grace of God, I managed to not stick him like a pig.

What happened next is hard to describe. It was like the Respite passed into a bubble. All at once, all of the noise from the battle popped out of existence. My first thought was that we'd been hit by a torpedo and my eardrums were bleeding all over the place. But the groaning of the other patients didn't stop and my fingers were dry when I rubbed them against my ears. If I wasn't dead, then I had no reason to stop what I was doing. I moved on to the next fellow, then the next.

Eventually some sailors rushed through the infirmary, spewing some hogwash about something or rather. The other nurses, particularly that Kelly Mason and her friend Rachael Alves, turned into stunned meerkats whenever the strange conversations drifted in. I gave them both good smacks on the backs of their heads and told them that a woman doesn't gossip or eavesdrop, not when there's work to be done. Kelly is a good girl, just easily distracted. Rachael, though, is bad news, I tell you. They went back to caring for the wounded marines, as did I. I didn't think anything of it. Not until I decided to take a look for myself. I supposed that if the girls had any trouble, they could go to Doctor Klein. Make him work for once.