One morning at the end of July, tired of herself, of sitting in her room, Tatiana decided to take a walk down the corridor while Anthony was sleeping.
She heard groans from the corridor and followed the groans into a ward filled with wounded men. Brenda was on duty—the only one on duty—looking less than pleased with her lot and showing the wounded men exactly how she felt. Grumbling, curt, displeasingly surly, she was washing out a wound on a soldier’s leg despite repeated and loud pleas from the soldier to either do it more gently or to shoot him.
Tatiana walked over and asked Brenda if she needed help, to which Brenda replied that she certainly didn’t need a sick girl making her prisoners sicker, and could Tatiana immediately go back to her room. Not moving, Tatiana stood, stared at Brenda, stared at the raw hole in the soldier’s thigh, at the soldier’s eyes, and said, “Let me bandage leg, let me help you. Look, I have mask over my nose and mouth. You got four men screaming for you on other side of hospital. One just lose a tooth in his morning coffee. One have raging fever. One is oozing blood through his ear.”
Brenda let go of the bucket and the soldier’s leg and left, though Tatiana could see that for a moment Brenda had struggled with what actually gave her more displeasure: taking care of the soldiers or letting Tatiana have her way.
Tatiana finished washing out the wound; the soldier never peeped, looking soothed and asleep; either asleep or dead, Tatiana concluded as she bandaged his leg, still without motion from him, and moved on.
She disinfected an arm wound and a head wound, started an IV, and administered morphine, wishing for a bit of morphine for herself to dull her inner aching, at the same time thinking how lucky the German submarine men were to have had the luck to be brought to American shores for imprisonment and convalescence.
Suddenly Brenda appeared and, as if surprised that Tatiana was still in the ward, asked her to immediately go back to her room before she infected all her patients with TB, sounding almost as if she cared what happened to the patients.
As Tatiana was heading back, out in the corridor by the water fountain, she saw a tall, slim girl in a nurse’s uniform standing and crying. Long-haired and long-legged, she was quite beautiful; if you didn’t look at her mascara-streaked, tear-streaked, swollen eyes and cheeks. Tatiana needed a drink of water, and so with great discomfort she proceeded past the girl, stopping just half a foot away from her to get to the fountain. The girl sobbed loudly. Tatiana put her hand on the girl’s elbow and said, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” the girl sobbed.
“Oh.”
The girl continued to cry. She held a slightly moist cigarette in her hands. “If you only knew how freakishly miserable I am at the moment.”
“Can I do anything?”
The girl looked out of her wet hands at Tatiana. “Who are you?”
“You can call me Tania.”
“Aren’t you the TB stowaway?”
“I am better now,” Tatiana said quietly.
“You’re not Tania. I processed your documents myself. Tom gave them to me. You’re Jane Barrington. Oh, what do I care? My life is in shambles and we’re talking about your name. I wish I had your problems.”
Trying quickly to find the words to say something comforting in English, Tatiana said, “It could be worse.”
“That’s where you’re so wrong, missy. It’s as bad as can be. Nothing worse can happen. Nothing.”
Tatiana noticed the wedding band on the girl’s finger, and her sympathy flowed. “I am sorry.” She paused. “Is it about your husband?”
Without looking away from her hands, the girl nodded.
“It is terrible thing,” said Tatiana. “I know. This war …”
The girl nodded. “It’s the pits.”
“Your husband … he is not coming back?”
“Isn’t coming back?” the girl exclaimed. “That’s the whole point! He is very much coming back. Very much so. Next week.”
Tatiana took a puzzled step away.
“Where are you going? You look like you’re ready to fall down. It’s not your fault he is coming back. Don’t look so upset. I guess worse things have happened to girls at war, I just don’t know of any. You want to go grab a coffee? Want a cigarette?”
Tatiana paused. “I have coffee with you.”
They sat down in the long dining room at one of the rectangular tables. Tatiana sat across from the girl who introduced herself as Viktoria Sabatella (“But call me Vikki.”), shook Tatiana’s hand vigorously and said, “You here with your parents? I haven’t seen any immigrants come this way in months. The boats are not bringing them in. So few—what? You’re sick?”
“I am better now,” said Tatiana. “I am here with myself.” She paused. “With my son.”
“Get out!” Viktoria slammed her coffee cup on the table. “You don’t have a son.”
“He almost month old.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“God, they start early where you’re from. Where are you from?”
“Soviet Union.”
“Wow. How’d you get this baby anyway? You have a husband?”
Tatiana opened her mouth, but Vikki went on as if the question had not been asked. Before she drew her next breath, she told Tatiana that she herself had never known her father (“Dead, or gone, all the same”) and barely knew her mother (“Had me too young”) who was in San Francisco, living with two men (“Not in the same apartment”) and pretending to be either sick (“Yes, mentally”) or dying (“From all that passion”). Vikki had been raised by her maternal grandparents (“They love Mumsy but they don’t approve of her”) and was living with them still (“Less fun than you might think”). She had originally wanted to be a journalist, then a manicurist (“In both professions you work with your hands; I thought it was a natural progression”) and finally decided (“Was forced to, more like it,”) to go into nursing when the European war looked like it would suck the United States into it. Tatiana was listening quietly and attentively when Vikki suddenly looked at her and said, “Got a husband?”
“Once.”
“Yeah?” Vikki sighed. “Once. Would that I had a husband once—”
At that moment their conversation was interrupted by a painfully angular, very tall, immaculately dressed woman in a white brim hat, walking briskly through the dining hall, swinging her white purse and yelling, “Vikki! I’m talking to you! Vikki! Have you seen him?”
Vikki sighed and rolled her eyes at Tatiana. “No, Mrs. Ludlow. I haven’t seen him today. I think he is still cross-town at NYU. He is here on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.”
“Afternoons? He’s not at NYU! And how do you know his schedule so well?”
“I’ve worked with him for two years.”
“Well, I’ve been married to him for eight and I still don’t know where the hell he is.” She came up to the table and towered over the two girls. She eyed Tatiana suspiciously. “Who are you?”
Tatiana pulled up her cloth mask from her neck to her mouth. Vikki stepped in. “She is from the Soviet Union. She barely speaks English.”
“Well, she should learn, shouldn’t she, if she expects to earn her keep in this country. We’re at war, we have no business supporting wards.” And swinging her purse, nearly hitting Tatiana on the head, the woman swept from the dining room.
“Who