THE SAD FACT WAS, Virginia Gloyne had originally anticipated so much more of her brand-spanking-new military job. These days, women were constructing bombs and sewing men back together and others were even flying planes through the sky. The only thing she was flying was a desk with uneven legs.
She often found herself with her chin propped up on the heels of her hands, frustratedly daydreaming away the situation she'd become so wound up in. There was a useless feeling that came coupled with sitting behind that desk from dusk till dawn for five days a week. Captain Robert Dawes always reiterated that yes, she was important in the war effort because all paperwork must be filed! but he also kissed her neck on the job and bandaged her silky white-blonde hair around his fist.
One day though, she had her big break, her EUREKA! moment. It was no particular breakthrough, no enigma code cracked. This certainly wasn't something that was going to get her a payrise, though — perhaps she'd even get points docked for kicking up such an unnecessary fuss. This was something far more useful to come out of all that silly filing that gave her cramps in her joints and papercuts on her fingertips.
His name looked unfamiliar when she saw it in print. Typewriter. WILLIAM SMITH. So many times had she imagined that name beside her own, interlocked by a heart. She'd drawn it in her scrapbook. B & G. Ginny and Bill! Ginny Smith. Virginia Smith. Her heart swooned and her head spun at the sight of his name on that paper, but it was only partially with glee. It was far more likely he was written up for critical injury or fatality on the battlefield at this point than he was for field promotion.
Her heart rate spiked and her body flushed with a fearful heat. She'd never felt so much irrational fear towards a single sheet of paper and the words possibly printed upon it. She squinted her eyes shut, just barely peeking through her pale blonde eyelashes at the document, and holding it away from her body with repulsion.
His status was WOUNDED. He'd taken a bullet in the thigh and had been pulled instantly from combat. Artery, Ginny thought instantly. Please, not the artery. Men could die instantly from a single bullet to the leg. He was being treated for his injury in a field hospital located on The Solomon Islands but was awaiting shipment back to a base hospital in Melbourne.
And as soon as she'd received word that he had arrived at that base hospital, Ginny was off like a rocket. Her first port of call was to visit him, above anything else.
