Helen

Evanston, Illinois

Dec. 7, 1941

What now? Helen Eberhart elbowed her way through the mass of student nurses crowding the hospital bulletin board. If she were in charge, she would come up with a better system for assigning duties and shifts. Couldn't this top-notch hospital afford more than one bulletin board, at the very least? Student nurses had to check several times a day, and heaven help the would-be nurse who missed one duty, one time change, one announcement.

She scanned the list until she got to her name. "Swell," she muttered. Extra duties and extra hours. When was she supposed to study for her anatomy test?

She turned and stood on tiptoes to relay the bad news to her roommate. At five feet eight, half a foot taller than Helen, Lucille was easy to spot. "Lucille! Get coffee! We've both pulled extra —"

"Shhh! Shush, everybody!"

Helen wasn't sure who'd said it, but the whole group quieted to a murmur. The PA system crackled and screeched — another thing she'd see to if she ever got to run things. Two white-jacketed interns strutting up the hall stopped and stared at the metal loudspeaker as if waiting for God — or the chief of staff — to issue at least ten commandments.

True, they didn't get many announcements, but Helen didn't have time to gawk at a disembodied voice. "Coming through!"

"Quiet!" Nurse Benchley frowned at her.

Helen didn't appreciate being shut down. If Benchley weren't one of her instructors, she wouldn't get away with it either.

"... Hawaii from the air."

She'd missed the announcement, but she caught enough to know this wasn't a page from the chief of staff. The hospital was relaying a radio broadcast.

"Just a moment. ... I'll repeat that."

The hallway froze, interns transformed into wax statues with identical stunned expressions. Old Dr. Laban, his glasses crooked as always, dropped his arms to his sides like broken twigs snapping from a tree trunk. His clipboard dangled from one hand. Everybody seemed to move farther away from Helen, although nobody had budged. Sound froze too, leaving an eerie silence decibels below hospital-zone quiet.

Only the voice from the loudspeaker filled the hall, filled the hospital, filled the world:

"President Roosevelt says the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from the air...."

Helen couldn't hear any more because suddenly the silence became a buzz. She thought the buzz must be in her head, growing louder and louder, like locusts in Cissna Park on a summer's night.

Then the space around her exploded in cries and questions fired at random, aimed at nobody. The chaos was so rampant that Helen would have believed it if someone told her a bomb had struck the hospital.

"Did they say bombs? Actual bombs dropped on us?"

"I can't believe it!"

"Dear God in Heaven!"

"Where's Pearl Harbor?"

"They'll come here next. You'll see. What do we do now?"

"Chicago will be a target for sure."

"I want to go home!"

"Jimmy's in the July draft. What if they send him over there?"

"So we're at war? I mean officially at war?"

"I always thought it would be the Germans. Why Japan?"

The questions bounced off Helen. She wouldn't let them in. Not yet. Not when she was so close to becoming a real nurse. War would ruin everything. Besides, as long as she could remember, there had been wars somewhere, or people talking about them.

Her war had been to make a tin of corn bread stretch for a family of thirteen during the worst days of the Depression. Her battles had been standing up to big brothers who weren't so sure she belonged in their family and to a father who said her place was on the farm, not learning how to take care of sick strangers in Chicago.

"Helen? Did you hear me?" Lucille shouted above the cacophony of voices that echoed in the halls. She elbowed her way to Helen's side. "Come on. They're showing us where the bomb shelters are."

The crowd of nurses and doctors and patients flowed like floodwaters down the hall toward the stairwell. Lucille got pulled in with them, but not Helen. She shoved in the opposite direction, a lone fish swimming upstream.

"Hey! Where are you going, Eberhart?" Lucille shouted after her.

"Where do you think?" Helen called back. "I've got extra duty. I'll be in room 301 if you need me!"

"Helen!"

"Nurse? This way." An intern grabbed her arm and tried to spin her around and take her with him.

She jerked her arm away. Nothing was going to stop her. Not him. Not the Japanese. Not Roosevelt. Not the Germans.

She was going to graduate from nurse's training. She had come here to live in a city where people danced to the big bands and wore furs like women on the covers of magazines. But most of all, she'd come to be a nurse, the best nurse Chicago had ever seen.

Helen Eberhart had known since she was nine years old what she'd do with her life. It had been a drizzly fall day when she'd hurried home after school, as usual, to do her chores.

"Look out, Gypsy!" Her brother Eugene rammed her from behind, nearly knocking her off her feet. They were both small for their age, but he was two years older, wiry and tough.

"You look out!" She didn't mind being called Gypsy, not anymore. She'd never really believed her brothers when they told her gypsies left her on their doorstep when she was a baby.

"Race you home!" Eugene shouted, passing her on the left.

Helen hiked up her skirt and ran, following Eugene through the Weinigers' lawn, over the flower beds, and up the street to home. But her brother the athlete pulled farther and farther ahead.

She was breathing hard by the time she reached home and spotted Eugene in the garden, standing by the roses. "Guess I win!" she shouted, heading for the back door, the official end of every race.

Eugene didn't move. Helen thought he was shivering, but that was dumb. It was stove-hot outside. She called to him, but he didn't answer.

"What's the matter with you?" She plodded back to the garden, braced for one of his tricks. "Eugene? Why are you standing —?"

And that's when she saw her mother. Ma was lying on the ground, one leg twisted under her, her hand still wrapped around cut roses. A dark pool spread around her, a growing red puddle shaping the dirt beneath her legs. From one leg, bright-red blood spurted like a fountain being shut off and on.

"Ma!" Helen dropped to her knees and held her mother's head in her lap. Mom's lips moved, but nothing came out. Her mother's kind brown eyes twitched. There was too much white in them.

Helen shouted, "Call Dr. Roberts!" Eugene didn't move. His cheeks were wet from crying. "Eugene, go call the doctor!"

He dropped to his knees.

Helen set down her mother's head and barked orders at her brother. "You wait with her, hear?" She didn't stick around for an answer but tore into the house, up half a flight of stairs to the kitchen. She cranked the phone on the wall and screamed into it, "Get me Dr. Roberts! Fast!"

"'Lo?" came Doc's slow, deep voice. "Dr. Roberts here."

"Dr. Roberts, this is Helen Eberhart. You have to come. Quick!"

"Which one is it? What's the matter?"

"It's Ma, Doc! She's bleeding. Her leg. She's in the garden and —"

"You...