She was impressed by how mature they seemed on the first day of school. They were going to spend much of the first term in the classroom, which Will did during his flight training too, learning about aerodynamics and the complicated calculations he had to know how to make. And even during their first term, Audrey would be meeting and dealing with real patients under close supervision.

On Audrey’s first day of classes, she glanced around the room and saw half a dozen girls she would have liked to meet. They all looked older than she was and seemed very sophisticated to her. She suddenly felt small and inexperienced at life. She felt like she might have a panic attack as she observed the girl sitting next to her. She was beautiful and seemed so poised and adult. She was wearing a gray wool skirt, a white blouse, and plain, simple black high heels. She looked more like a secretary in an office than a nursing student. She had blond hair and big blue eyes. There was a halo of soft curls near her face, and her hair was pulled back tightly in a bun. Audrey was wearing an old navy blue suit of her mother’s that Ellen had loaned her when she’d turned sixteen and needed something to wear when her school took them to a performance of Swan Lake in Baltimore. Her mother had let her keep the suit afterwards. She was wearing a small string of pearls her mother had just given her when she turned eighteen, as a symbol of her adulthood. The pearls said she was no longer a girl but a woman.

Audrey glanced sideways at her neighbor, who smiled at her. They didn’t speak to each other until the first break, and then she turned to Audrey with a warm look.

“Hi, I’m Lizzie Hatton. From Boston. Where are you from?” Some of the girls were local, but many weren’t, like Lizzie.

“Here. I’ve lived here all my life,” Audrey said shyly.

“Everyone in my family is a doctor or nurse. I didn’t get in to nursing school in Boston, so I wound up here.” She seemed mildly embarrassed as she said it. Her grades had slipped a little during senior year. She was having too much fun and didn’t really care about nursing school. She mentioned that she was living in the dorm.

“Mine are all sailors,” Audrey said with a grin. “My father was a captain, my grandfather was a vice admiral, and my brother is a navy pilot.”

“That sounds interesting. What does your mom do?” Lizzie was intrigued by Audrey, who seemed very self-possessed, cool and collected, much more so than Lizzie felt.

“Nothing. She’s sick. But she didn’t work before that.”