A PART OF HER HEART
The news came just the way Evelyn had feared. She had just finished suturing a cut for Dory Miller, the young man who felt he needed to fight to earn respect. After saying goodbye to him she looked up and froze. It was Danny in full dress uniform, his face grim. Evelyn felt time stand still somehow she knew Rafe was dead. Trembling and cold she felt Danny's arms close around her. Both of them knew they needed each other.
That was how it began, sharing memories of Rafe. This led to them spending more time together. Danny had a sweetness and a softness about him that was so markedly different to Rafe. Evelyn knew that he was as good a combat pilot as Rafe but Danny was less flashy and arrogant. When Danny suggested showing her the sunset by air Evelyn could not say no. Sitting on his lap in the small plane she felt both safe and exhilarated. The spectacular Hawaii sunset filled their small world with light and colour. Danny's arms felt strong and steady, his lean muscles moving against her back as he managed the controls.
Their coming together in the parachute hanger seemed somehow destined. Surrounded by clouds of gauzy silk Evelyn experienced something new and terrifying. Rafe's kisses had been overpowering and intoxicating. But Danny kissed her with a slowness and a thoroughness that made Evelyn's knees buckle. The warmth of his skin, the softness of his touch left her wanting more.
The next few weeks were ideal, days that included swimming at the beach. Hours of just talking, lengthy gazes and soft caresses. Evelyn felt herself truly falling in love. She knew now that her feelings for Rafe were mostly infatuation. Their relationship had been so brief, a mere four weeks of dates, laughter and kisses. Evelyn often thought it was the letters that held them together. The warm loving words, the distance and the sense of yearning that validated their feelings for each other.
Then just as Evelyn felt her heart was whole again, her world imploded. Rafe came back. Evelyn's head spun when she stepped out of the ward and he was standing there. Whole and unscathed, it was like a dream. Yet he was real, Evelyn fell into his arms just as readily as she had dreamed so many times all those months ago. The months before Danny. He began kissing her and she knew it had to stop, pulling away from him Evelyn was overcome with grief. Grief this time for the pain she was about to put her first love through. How could she tell his that really did not love him, that she was happy now. A sound interrupted her thoughts, Evelyn glanced up in relief. There over his shoulder was Danny.
But if Evelyn thought things were as bad as they could get she was about to be proved more wrong than seemed possible. Pearl Harbour was bombed, her world spun with screams and blood and horror. For the next several hours she operated mechanically, dashing from one injured man to the next. Trying to make them whole again, trying to ease their pain in any way she could. So many senseless deaths, so much senseless suffering, so much horror. Sweet little Betty, who had lived and loved with a passion Evelyn had often envied. So many friends were dead. The horror of the more than one thousand men trapped alive in the hull of the Arizona. Men who died in the most terrible way imaginable. Always at the back of Evelyn's mind the anxiety that she would not see them again, that she would not see him again. As she worked a silent prayer kept running through her mind.
When it was over, none of them were the same. As they stood gazing at the row after row of flag draped coffins all of them knew they were scarred forever. They knew America would never be the same. They had been deceived, they had been betrayed, they had been attacked viciously and unforgivably. For the next few days all of them functioned as if in a daze.
Then more terror came, Danny and Rafe were called up for a top secret mission. Evelyn felt her heart sink. She knew she could not go through the horror of losing a man she loved to war again. Losing Rafe had been horrendous, losing Danny was unthinkable. All she could do was be there waiting when he came back. All she could do was keep safe the secret she could not share with him. The secret she told Rafe, she needed to make him understand why she needed to stay with Danny. They were having a baby.
But Danny did not come back. Rafe told her Danny saved his life. Evelyn knew Rafe had forgiven him before he died. Rafe had remembered Danny was a brother to him. Rafe had held him as he died. Rafe finally told him he was to be a father.
It was three years later. Evelyn and Rafe were married. He was still a good man and Evelyn did love him. She had to think of her son, Danny's son, he needed a father. She knew Rafe would love him just as he had his father. Evelyn could never forget those idyllic weeks when she and Danny lived and breathed for each other. She loved Rafe, he was her first love. But Evelyn knew there was part of her heart he could never have. Part of her heart she kept protected and closed off. It was the part of her heart that always had been and always would be Danny's.
THE END.