“It must be hard for you, being so far from home, and injured. What happened in Normandy sounds terrifying. You must be a very brave man,” she said gently.

“Not really,” he said, honest again. “You do what you’re called on to do, to the best of your abilities. The rest always takes care of itself.”

“I like to believe that too. There’s a lot of luck involved in having a good life. My parents are very fortunate people. They have a very nice life, and so does my sister. They don’t realize it, they aren’t grateful for anything. I’m grateful every morning when I wake up.”

“I had a feeling like that about you when I first met you.”

“Well, I’m going to have a very bad life, if I don’t do my med rounds, my patients won’t have pain relief, if my supervisor catches me at it.”

“I like it when you stop by to see me,” he said with a shy smile. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I don’t care what you come from, or who you are. I like you. I wanted you to know that. I like teasing you about your fancy accent. But it doesn’t matter to me. I’m a butcher from Pittsburgh. I’m nobody. Just a guy in a hospital, with a broken leg.” She didn’t care where he came from either. There was something wonderfully masculine about him. He was like a big teddy bear. Her parents would have hated him if they’d met him, but she didn’t care about that either. This was another world. And it was real.

She stopped to see him every night on the way in, and she came to chat with him during her break. She dropped by to say good night when she left. It became a comfortable habit, and she liked talking to him.

When they took his cast off, she was startled by how tall he was. He was just a hair under six-five, and he looked more like a teddy bear than ever. He invited her to lunch on her day off, and they had a lively conversation about baseball, which he was passionate about. They talked about her work with the air evac unit, and her going back to nursing after the war. He had an older brother he had no respect for, who never worked and had lived off the family business all his life. She could tell Dan worked hard when he talked about their business.

“When we get to Paris, and we will, and kick those damn Nazis back to Germany where they belong, can I come back here to see you?”