Michael Lister - Soldier 03 - The Big Hello Read Online Free

it happen?”
    “What? No. I caught a glimpse of her when they were trying to revive her. There was so much blood.”
    “Who did it?”
    “We don’t know, but everything happened after you … after the night of your wreck. That’s when it all started. I heard some of the other girls talking. They said it had something to do with you.”
    “What else has happened?”
    “Just strange stuff. It’s in the air. Something’s going on. Everybody’s on edge. Whispering. Speculating. Acting so different. One of the other nurses went missing.”
    “Who?”
    “Doris,” she said. “Doris Perkins. Didn’t show up for her shift one day. Hasn’t been seen or heard from since last week.”
    “You were working the night I arrived, right?”
    She nodded.
    “There was a woman with me,” I said.
    “Yes, Lauren,” she said. “I’m awful sorry for what happened. It was so sad. It was obvious how much you loved her. I can’t tell you how many times you said her name––called for her, reached for her––half-conscious, unconscious, awake, asleep. Didn’t matter. I don’t know what y’all were mixed up in, but I know real love when I see it. Hope somebody loves me like that one day.”
    “What exactly happened to her?” I asked.
    “Well … whatta you mean? She died, mister.”
    “Was she dead when we arrived?”
    “She was in real bad shape, but she wasn’t dead. I heard her moan and say something about a soldier.”
    Something inside me broke open and I felt like I took my first real breath since waking from the coma. I knew I shouldn’t let myself hope, knew how counterproductive, even dangerous, to my mission it could be, but I couldn’t help it.
    “She was alive when we arrived?”
    “For a little while, yes.”
    “What happened?” I said. “Tell me everything.”
    “All I know is what we did to you. I was assigned to your surgery. When we took you to the operating room, they hadn’t really moved her yet.”
    “Why do you think she died?”
    “They told us she did,” she said. “When we came out of surgery. I have no idea if they even got her out of the car before it happened. Don’t know exactly what happened to her.”
    “Who would?” I said. “Who was working on her?”
    Her eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped open in realization.
    “Let me guess,” Clip said. “Busybody Betty and Disappearing Doris.”
    She nodded. Slowly. Deliberately. Devastatingly.

Chapter 5

    “Wait,” Nancy said. “We had a negro on the ward that night.”
    “Congratulations,” Clip said.
    “No. I mean there was a negro nurse because of it. Army nurse. Brought in to take care of a negro serviceman. It was … Everything happened so fast. And we were short staffed. She shouldn’t have, but it was crazy––she … I saw her helping out with Lauren.”
    It was no surprise that it stood out to her. There were very few negro nurses in the army, but a negro serviceman would require a negro nurse.
    “She wasn’t here long, because he wasn’t,” she said. “He should’ve never been here at all, but it couldn’t be helped.”
    Black nurses were rare, but so were black servicemen. Though many tried to enlist, few were allowed to, especially by the local draft boards run by whites in the South. The general perception by white people in our area was that blacks were disloyal, lazy, cowards, intellectually inferior, unfit to serve.
    For the few actually accepted, they were mostly assigned non-essential roles and menial duties, becoming waiters and cooks, janitors and maintenance workers, and musicians in service bands. Segregation laws and the Jim Crow system in the South meant that white and black servicemen had not “closed ranks” as W.E.B. DuBois had encouraged during World War I. “What’s her name?” I asked.
    “Bernice Baker.”
    “Where can I find her?”
    Her eyes narrowed and her pointy chin jutted forward a bit and she looked at me like I had just asked her to consider joining the Nazi