“I’m not even sure that nurses get a rank. And no one’s going to get rich on the pay. I think the people doing it, like me, are doing it because they figure they owe it to our country. And someone will have to take care of the wounded, so it might as well be me. There’s no glory in it, and no glamour, from everything I’ve heard. It’s a lot of hard work. That’s what I need right now.” They both knew she had a broken heart, and she was trying to put it to good use, to serve others. There was merit in that. It was an ugly war, and it had already cost them both too much.

Chapter 5

When Audrey and Lizzie had entered nursing school in September 1938, earnestly intending to apply themselves to their nursing studies, Alexandra Whitman White was on the cusp of the most exciting time of her life. An aristocratic, almost regal-looking, statuesque blonde with striking, movie star good looks, she was preparing for her first official social season in New York. Related to Astors and Vanderbilts on both sides, with Morgan cousins, and distantly related to the Roosevelts, she was going to be presented to society at the same cotillion where her mother and grandmother had come out. In the week after the cotillion, her parents would be giving her her own private ball in their mansion on Fifth Avenue. Her sister Charlotte had gone through the same process five years earlier, with considerable success. She had met her future husband at a friend’s coming-out ball in the same season. They were engaged within six months, married the following Christmas, and were now happily married with three little girls.