Her training done, Carol is stationed aboard a military hospital ship in the Pacific.
Note: Italics indicate Daryl's letter to Carol.
"swabbie"= Navy man, usually lower ranking
It's been awhile since I updated this one-thanks for sticking with it!
USS Hope: Comfort Class Hospital Ship
AIRMAIL: Special Military Postal Rate/USO Delivery
Carol: It's so quiet here at night. Sometimes I feel like the world ended and no one bothered to tell us out here on the farm and so we just go on with our chores the same as always, hoping to hear news that never comes. It'd been three weeks since a letter from you came and then it was three all in the same day, half of the words blacked out by the censors, held up by them for weeks for whatever reason. I try to read sense into what little they leave and think that you must be in some strategic place saving people like you always wanted to do. I miss you every minute of every day.
You probably already heard this from the girls, but just in case. The big news here is that Maggie and Glenn are having a baby, due in November and Beth has a boyfriend, a good kid (tho a swabbie) from Woodbury named Zack she met at the USO, (though his hot rod drives Hershel to distraction!)
Rick and Michonne are not having an easy time of it. They spend a lot of time out here—say it's the only place they feel accepted. Her people are angry and he hasn't even tried to talk to his about her. Not sure what's going to happen with them, but they say love conquers all, right?
"The man is insufferable!" Doris, the head ward nurse threw down her clipboard onto her desk and looked about ready to spit fire.
"John Doe Number Seven again?" Carol asked, looking over at her sympathetically, folding the letter from Daryl and slipping it back into its envelope.
"I have never met a man with a worse attitude than that one has..." Doris said, her anger giving way to a defeated tone. "He refuses to even try."
"He's proud, Dorie—you can see that in the way he carries himself—that arrogant tilt of his head when he's shoving his food tray onto the floor..." Carol said with a sigh of commiseration. Number Seven was a pain in all of their respective behinds.
They had six other men who remained unidentified on their transport ship. He was one of three POWs from a Japanese concentration camp who had arrived without dog tags. All three had head injuries: one of them was comatose and another had brain damage that had reset him with the intelligence of a child.
Seven's case was a bit more complicated. He had flash burns around his eyes which had made him, hopefully only temporarily, blind. In addition, both of his hands were badly burned and had been left untreated so long that he was probably going to lose them to infection. The icing on the cake was his memory loss. Number Seven had no idea who he was.
Traumatic amnesia was a controversial topic in psychiatric medical circles and studying people with brain injuries was one of the top areas for researchers interested in the phenomenon. One theory was that exposure to sensory information from a sufferer's past could help jumpstart memory, but that wasn't possible with unknowns, people who turned up without any ID or way to identify them. The best thing to be done for then was to try and integrate them into their new reality.
That was proving difficult with this particular patient. Frustrated with his inability to see and to do something as simple as feed and bathe himself, Seven was verbally abusive to everyone on the Ward; doctors, nurses, even his fellow patients, with the exception of John Doe Number Six, the boy who spoke and acted like an innocent eight year old. The only other person whose presence he seemed to tolerate was Carol's.
"He asked for you." Doris said, "Wanted to know if you were coming to read to them today."
Carol's voice, its Atlanta cadences very much like his own, seemed to soothe Seven. He called her his "Georgia Peach." His more gravel laced drawl marked him as a son of the south, but that wasn't much to go on. In the camp where he'd been, all of the records that might have said where the captives had been liberated from had been destroyed by the Japanese and none of the more ambulatory prisoners from there had recognized any of the John Does as men from their units or ships.
"Of course—we're only halfway through Gone with the Wind," Carol smiled. In the last mail call they had been allowed, now almost a month ago, Beth had sent it to her a Care package full of reminders of their home state, including the Civil War era bestselling book that had been made into such a popular film before the war. "And it's over a thousand pages."
"I wish it was longer..." Doris said, rolling her eyes. Carol's story hour was about the only time they got some peace from Seven's tirades.
"Three weeks and we're home." Carol reminded her, running her fingers longingly over the crumpled envelope of Daryl's last letter which had come in the same batch as Beth's gift.
There was a big push to collect all the wounded from the region and evac them to the States, which led everyone to believe that the final assault on Japan was imminent. The black-out on communications was also a sign that something big was in the offing, but it made everyone antsy not to have regular mail calls. Everyone was missing that small slice of home that letters and packages brought.
She'd known being separated from Daryl would be hard, but she hadn't expected the constant dragging sadness in her heart that made just getting out of her bunk every day a struggle. His letters had been a lifeline, full of news about home and plans for their future; without the luxury of new ones, she reread the old ones, one every morning to start her day and one every night to end it. The last few days she'd taken to carrying one around with her so she could take a hit when she needed it, like some of the guys did with their cigarettes.
When Carol had gotten her orders to ship out on one of the floating hospitals heading for the Pacific she had been devastated. She'd hoped to be stationed stateside so she could more easily stay in touch with Daryl and the Greenes, perhaps even have visits with them whenever she got leave. But now that the war effort only had one front, most of the Navy's medical personnel were being sent towards Japan.
Maggie and Glenn's wedding had been a bittersweet celebration, everyone happy for the young couple, but well aware that Carol was leaving the next day. Standing at the altar as their attendants she and Daryl never took their eyes off of one another. At the reception Daryl told Hershel he would come work for him on the farm until Carol returned, which had made both the old minister and Carol very happy.
A month into Carol's training, on May 8th, 1945, partial victory had been declared with the German surrender in Europe. VE day had been a delirious time full of celebrations and hope. It was also the last time she had been able to see Daryl before reporting to her ship. The nurses in her unit were all given a long weekend of leave, but told to stay in California, where she'd been stationed pending shipping out. Daryl had been able to catch a ride on a military plane from Atlanta to San Francisco and she'd met him there.
She'd never forget the little hotel they'd stayed in or the seafood restaurant right on the bay they'd eaten at almost every night or the flea market in Chinatown where he'd bought her a little silver ring. It had a mother of pearl inlayed flower with five petals, so like the wild white Georgia rose whose story he'd recounted to them that he said she had to have it to remind her of home.
Carol pressed her fingers to the ring she wore on a chain at her neck, now concealed under her uniform. They weren't permitted to wear jewelry while working, but as soon as she went off duty she slipped it back on her hand...her left hand, where Daryl had placed it the last night in San Francisco, when they'd gotten married.
It hadn't been a legal ceremony, no license or preacher, their vows made only for each other's ears, but it had been as real to them as what they'd witnessed for their friends a month earlier. They had pledged themselves to one another, to their future together after the war was finally over.
Carol still shivered when she remembered their wedding night; she relived it often to stave off the dragging loneliness. She could hear his whispered pleas to come back to him between all consuming kisses, their bodies merged as one, breathing in synch. She'd never felt closer to another human being except the daughter she'd carried within her. He was her other half, her soul's mate.
"Carol?" Doris asked, interrupting her reverie, touching her shoulder.
"Sorry..." Carol said.
"You're giving Tara a hand with debriding Seven's hands now?" the head asked.
"They're deciding tomorrow, right?" Carol asked, frowning.
"Dr. Jenkins is hoping they only have to take off the one. Even if he doesn't have full use of it, it's better to have at least one hand." Doris told her. There was another ward on board with just amputees, some of them horribly maimed, missing more than one limb. "Rehabilitation" began as soon as they were deemed healthy enough, and was geared towards making them self sufficient when they returned home.
Carol nodded.
"You ready, Carol?" a voice from the doorway asked.
Carol saw Dr. Jenkin's assistant in the burn ward, Tara, a fellow RN, waiting for her there. The straight forward blunt manner of the dark haired younger woman had been a bit off putting at first, but Carol had grown to appreciate the patience she had with the men during the often agonizing treatment for their burns.
Debriding was the removal of dead skin and necrotic tissue to allow new growth and healing. It was a necessity that both medical personnel and patients despised. Carol reading to Seven was his reward for the undergoing the twice weekly process.
"You bit through your lip again." Carol admonished, lifting a damp towel to wipe the blood from her patient's chin.
"You get all prissy when I say the words that come to mind while she's skinnin' me so 'as doin' my best to keep my trap shut." Seven growled, flinching back from the towel's touch and ducking his head.
"You okay to stay, Carol?" Tara asked, solicitously as she was clearing the last of the bloody instruments, old dressings and debris from the procedure on the table beside the bed and placing them onto her cart.
"I'm fine. You go on." Carol told the other nurse.
"Okay—save you a seat at mess." Tara promised and then wheeled her cart out the door.
"You don't sound like one of them, Peach." Seven said, allowing her to grasp his chin so she could hold the towel to the puncture he'd inflicted on himself.
"One of them?" Carol asked. "A nurse?"
"A lady who likes ladies." a young sounding voice piped up from the next bed over.
"Johhnny!" Carol turned around to look at John Doe Number Six, her mouth open. The six foot blond blue eyed, broad shouldered twenty-something with a dent in his skull smiled at her conspiratorially.
"That's what Seven says." Six, who they all called Johnny, exclaimed happily. "He says sometimes ladies like men, but sometimes ladies like ladies and Nurse Tara is one of them."
"Seven!" Carol couldn't believe he would say such things, especially not to the boy.
"Kid was crushing on her—couldn't have that!" Seven defended himself. "Just get his little ol' heart broken."
"Why would you even think such a thing?" Carol asked him.
"What? Coz' I can't see her?" Seven snorted, "Don't need to see the woman—I hear how she talks, feel her touch, things she says. I know how she feels about you, darlin' and if you were so inclined, she'd take you for a spin."
"What an odd thing for you to know." was Carol's surprised reaction to that revelation.
"Maybe 'coz I feel the same way...'bout you... Seven said softly, reaching out for her hands with his heavily bandaged ones, his mouth set in a downturned line.
Carol felt tears prick her eyes and sat on his bed so she could gently grasp the man's forearms just above the dressings that rose almost to his elbow on the right and to his wrist on the left. His breath hitched and she let him draw her closer, into a careful hug. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled his head to her shoulder.
"They probably gonna cut off my hands tomorrow." Seven said, his voice hoarse. "What woman's ever gonna want me after that? Blind son of a bitch with no hands who don't even know his own name?"
They'd been taught to keep the men's spirits up at all times; to not dwell on their shortcomings or injuries; to encourage them to look ahead not back...
"Do you want me to tell you the truth?" Carol asked him.
"I trust you." the soldier said.
Carol released her hold on him and sat up straight, keeping her hand on his left forearm.
"The burns look like you reached into a fire—the right hand went deeper as your dominant hand and that's the one they'll probably have to take. Best case, you'll have partial use of the left hand when they take off the bandages." Carol explained.
"And my eyes?" Seven asked her. "I could see light and shadows before I got here—gonna be the same when they take these bandages off?"
"The optometrist has had good outcomes from this course of treatment." Carol told him carefully, "So it could be even more than that."
His lips twisted at that, struggling not to call bullshit.
"And my memory? Am I ever gonna know who the fuck I am?" he grated out bitterly.
"I...I don't know..." Carol said, shocked into honesty by the pain in his voice.
"Ah, so now you all about the truth?" He laughed then, an ugly sound. "Then I'll return the favor." he pulled his arm from her grasp and held up his hands, "If I could use these? Or find my way outa this locked room? I'd be done. Cut my throat, hang myself, go over the side—anything-any way I could." he dipped his head towards Johnny, "Tried to have his dumb ass break my neck, but all he did was cry when I asked him."
"I'm not going to hurt him. He's my friend." Johnny said stubbornly, crossing his arms across his chest, tears forming in his eyes.
"That's right; he's our friend." Carol assured the younger man, feeling out of her depth. How had she not understood her patient's despair? Battle fatigue, combat neurosis, whatever Dr. Monroe the military psychiatrist called it, how couldn't it be so much worse for these men who believed they had no past nor future?
"Yeah, that's my luck—my only friend's literally got a hole in his head and the gal I'm sweet on only comes around here coz it's her fuckin' job." Seven barked.
"That's not true." Carol protested quietly. "You're my friend."
"We get off this boat it's adios, John Doe Number Seven..." he said bleakly. "You go back to your real life with whoever writes you all them letters always cracklin' in your pocket."
She couldn't argue with the truth of that. Carol didn't know what would happen to these men when they made it back to the States; what would happen to any of the soldiers who had sacrificed their bodies and minds for their country?
It's good here, on the farm. I'm glad I said yes to Hershel. Since I lost Merle I hadn't had any sort of family other than Rick, Shane and Glenn. They're my brothers as much as he was after all we went through together and this place, this family has welcomed us all, made it feel like home.
When we're all here, when you're back, I want to have our wedding here, is that okay?
"He's waiting for me, back in Atlanta." Carol said quietly, pulling Daryl's letter from her pocket. "He was a Marine—we met at the USO—he's a good man..."
"Jarhead? Shoulda known. Those assholes always get the best women." Seven complained, gently teasing her now, his attitude more resigned.
"Seven?" Johnny piped up.
"Yeah kid?" the older man responded.
"When we get off the boat I'll go with you." the boy said stoutly, standing up and moving to the side of Seven's bed and then with soft compassion and a hand to his shoulder added, "I don't want you to be alone and make yourself dead."
Seven barked out a rough laugh that became a sob. Carol put her arms around him again and then Johnny put his around them both.
"We'll get you through this." Carol soothed, already planning on how she'd convince him to talk to Dr. Reg Monroe about his fears. The psychiatrist was one of the kindest people she'd ever met—he reminded her a lot of Hershel—and she hoped he could help this broken man. "We will."
Hope this finds you well, and sooner rather than later. I know you're doing good and helping save all my other brothers in arms wherever you are. We're all Praying for you and for an end to this war that's keeping us apart. Be safe. ILYMW. Daryl
ILYMW: I love you my wife.
The USS Hope was built, commanded and crewed by the Navy for the Army. These ships, unlike the Navy hospital ships, were intended for evacuation and transport of patients after primary care had been given. She sailed to support the ramping up in the Japanese theater in the spring of 1945.
In 1947, the U.S. Army released a documentary, entitled Shades of Gray, about the causes and treatment of mental illness during WWII. This documentary indicates the consensus at that time that no one is immune to mental illness, and that environmental factors play a large role in the development of psychological problems. Combat exhaustion was thought to encompass such symptoms as hyper-vigilance, paranoia, depression, loss of memory, and conversion.
Thanks for reading!