wings and a prayer ✮°。( band of brothers )

( preface. )

❛ ᴀɴᴅ ɪꜰ ɪ ᴘᴇʀɪꜱʜ, ɪ ᴘᴇʀɪꜱʜ. ❜
— 𝐸𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝟦:𝟣𝟨 —

It was a day like any other, only difference is the young nurse was spending her day-off at Polly's, a treasured drugstore in her hometown. A cold pop sat on the counter with a striped straw poking at the top, which she'd sip on every once and a while.

A radio played in the background with the melodies of Glenn Miller. 

Blue and white checkered tiles covered the ground from wall to wall. One side of the room housed the medicines and the like, and the other was filled with candies, pop, and ice cream. It was the hip place for kids to go after school let out and kids fought for an open seat.

Fiona Monaghan, the barely turned 18 year old, leant on her forearms, exhaling a breath that lifted her frazzled curls off her face. 

"I heard those Gleeson boys volunteered."

Peering upwards, Fiona saw the store's namesake, Ol' Polly herself, step out from the backrooms and let the curtain fall behind her. She knew first-hand what those boys were up too. It didn't surprise her none after the broadcast that played on the radio.

The United States is going to war with Japan.

She heard about the attack of Pearl Harbor and felt immense fear as President Roosevelt addressed the American people the night before. She recalled her father afterwards stepping out onto their front porch and lighting up a cigarette for the first time since the Great War.

It was truly the first time she saw her father shaken.

"Leave him be, little bird." She recalls her mother, laughter lines and equally as frazzled hair, settle her baby brother into a cradle closest to the furnace. Its embers left a red hue on the apples of her cheeks. Fiona frowned. "Come on, help me round these kiddos for bed."

And so she helped tuck in her siblings, one by one. She heard her mother slip away, but didn't think much of it when her brother, Finley, fought against sleep and pleaded for a bedtime story. This encouraged her sister and other brother, Margie and Kieran, to join them. Not even halfway through did she see their sleepy eyes droop and their bodies curl together in a cuddle pile. Smiling, she leaned over to the dresser and flipped the light out to shadow in darkness.

They didn't know or understand the words broadcasted by the president, but she did. Her brows pinched as she recalled stepping out their room and seeing her mother curl into her father's side on the porch. The cigarette smoke floated in the air like an afterthought.

"Its the memories that kill you the most," Her father told her later that night. His lips pursed under a bushy mustache, eyes lost in thought. He stayed this way for a while until he stared at his eldest daughter; brown eyes against green, searching. Whatever he was looking for he made no indication he found it, other than a soft nod of acceptance. "The worse thing about treating those boys wasn't having their flesh torn, it was that they had their souls torn out."

Her father, Cillian, never talked about the Great War. If anything it was taboo and unheard of in the Monaghan house. He spoke more with those words than he ever did before. Something clicked with Fiona that night and she couldn't stop thinking about it since.

Now with the Gleeson boys volunteering, what about her -

A clearing of a throat drew her back to Ol' Polly, the woman smiled softly with a hand on her hip. Fiona face flushed red. "You got your head in the clouds today, missy."

Fiona shot up in her seat, shaking her head. "It's nothing."

"Hmm," Ol' Polly Anderson didn't skip a beat, shrugging. "With how things are going, I'd suspect a lot of boys will be heading out. Girls too." She glances sideways at Fiona who turns her attention back on the sweating glass of pop in her hands. "I saw a flyer today."

I saw one too. Fiona wanted to say, but instead took a sip from the pop. She felt the condensation drip around her hand and onto the counter. 'It's our war, too.' It read. 'Join the Army Nurse Corps.' She felt that something like on the porch with her dad again.

"You thinking about joining?" There was curiosity in Ol' Polly's tone. "It would make sense, you being a nurse and all."

Was she thinking about joining? What would her mother say? Her father? It would leave her family behind, a new born and three other kids to care for. The eldest of them barely the age of 10. She couldn't abandon them for this, but she couldn't bare to not do anything.

And that flyer ... it meant everything to her being.

She was already a nurse working full days at St. Mary's Hospital with a group of nuns. She'd been blessed to find the job by volunteering to help put food on the table. Her family had been in a terrible spot during the Depression and the nuns were her saving grace.

It only felt right to do something with the gift she has been given.

What else would she do with healing hands if not to heal souls?

I can only pray my father would understand someday.

"Yeah," Fiona softly exhales, a shy smile lifting the corners of her lips. 

Ol' Polly's gaze never wavered from the swelling pride. "Good. We need good nurses taking care of our boys. The best of the best."

The best of the best, Fiona ponders. 

"This calls for another pop," Ol' Polly walks away to grab another bottle in this so-called celebration. 

Fiona watches her fondly, trying to remember the little things about this woman. The Widow Anderson who would hand out free ice cream to her and her friends every Friday after school. The same lady who'd accepted a basket of eggs in exchange for hand lotion that Fiona had been saving up to get her mother for her birthday. The same lady who helped her mom on the farm when her father was too sick to get out of bed. She was family to Fiona, through and through.

As Ol' Polly comes back with not just one, but two glasses of Coca-Cola, Fiona chuckles as the older woman clinks her bottle with hers. 

She was gonna miss this, but she knew where she was meant to be.

The very next day she showed up at a Red Cross recruiting station.

'If I perished, I perished.' Fiona, aged 76, says with a bitter-sweet smile in We Stand Alone Together, documentary 2001. "As long as I was saving Easy, then that's all that mattered to me in the end.'

( may 29, 2024 )

wow, this was crap.
i might edit or delete, who knows.
i just wanted an intro before getting into it.

- quinnjordan