Chapters (25)
With the unit short of their best and most experienced nurses, Pru and Audrey, the commanding officer of the air evac transport unit called Louise into her office a few days before Christmas, and told her she was being transferred to active transport duty. Her days as hospital relief for patients of her own race, and caring for the German POWs, were over. They didn’t say it in so many words, but Louise understood the full meaning of their gesture. Her color had become irrelevant, even here, where she had never been discriminated against as she had been in the States all her life. The color line had been lifted and no longer existed. She was one of their best nurses, they recognized it, and she had proven what she was capable of on the complicated mission to help the French Resistance unit and their leader three months before, and she saved the leader’s life. He was the most important freedom fighter in France.
She had never had any feedback from it. They weren’t told if the mission had been successful and whether or not the nine people they had rescued had made it safely to the Swiss border, or even whether her patient had survived, or if they’d all been captured and killed. She had never heard from Gonzague again, nor did she expect to. She knew it was one of those rare onetime events in a lifetime. A French Resistance fighter in wartime, who claimed to be a nobleman, had appeared out of the mists, needing her nursing skills, and kissed her like a prince in a fairy tale. She didn’t expect to see or hear from him again, but she cherished the memory. It was one of those wartime experiences that she knew she would remember for a lifetime.
Her new job as full-time flying evacuation nurse was to begin on the first of January. She couldn’t wait to tell her parents. She had done her job well so far and there was justice in what had just happened. She only wished that Pru and Audrey hadn’t died, to leave the places vacant for her. She told the other nurses about it and savored the victory that she would be fully one of them now. They were happy for her. They didn’t know, and never would, how much more she’d had to achieve in order to prove herself worthy of what was given to them so easily. But she didn’t care how long it took, or what she had to do. It was worth it in the end, and the victory was sweet.