Woahhhhhhhh. I know it's been forever and about 5 days since my last update, so I really hope I haven't lost my awesome readers and reviewers, Ber1719,BloodUpontheRisers, and Bertha Jorkins! Ya'll keep this thing going, and I apoligize for the ridiculious time it's been since an update. I'm blaming it on Homecoming, piles of homework, soccer games, and college applications ;) Anyways, I hope that everyone can enjoy this update and I hope everyone is doing well!
PS-In case anyone hasn't already watched it- The Thin Red Line has got to be one of the best WWII movies out there. Ya'll check it out!

"Ladies, single file means single file!" Scolded Matron as she surveyed her line of 233 replacement nurses that would be added to the 233 nurses that remained on the Solace. They looked eager and ready, as new recruits always should. Their eyes, whether blue, green black or brown were all wide with anticipation as the Solace creaked at her dock, groaning, as if to protest another journey into the Pacific. They all wore crisp, white uniforms, which she knew would soon be dirtied with dirt, soot, and blood. The emblem of the Nurse Core should never have been a red and white cross. It should have been one large orange stain. Red blood mixed with white cotton, made orange. Their uniforms should have come pre-colored orange.

"What's she looking at?" Kelly whispered, her voice sliding over Tallulah's shoulder. "Why's she staring at us so much?"
Tallulah shrugged and stared out at the rickety looking mass of metal that had been dusted with a coating of white paint.
Chips of the paint were peeling away, much like her home in Alabama, to reveal the ugly, gray scrap metal the ship was really made of.
The old vessel didn't look like it should be able to float. Let alone save lives.
"Us." Tallulah answered, her voice drowned out by the groaning of taut metal.
The Solace seemed to be relaxing, finally resting after three years of service.
"She's watching us?"
Tallulah nodded and observed the matron pace up and down the line, her wringing her withered hands.
"She's done this before. She's done this too many times. Look at her, she's anxious… She wants to go."

Tallulah could see her counting, her thin mouth, scarred with smile lines courting off to 233. Tallulah studied the old woman's face, which was marred with various wrinkles and lines. Tallulah glanced at the slits that remained on Matron's cheeks even after her smile had vanished- who could have made her laugh so hard to give her scars? Who had wounded her so greatly and with so much happiness to leave her permanently marked by that presence?
But as Tallulah watched her gnarled hands fiddle with each other, she also noted the wounds- the calluses that had hardened into aged stones, the horrible disfigured arch that arthritis had given her.
But there she was, marching up and down her line of recruits- wanting to do it all over again.
Wanting to be wounded, wanting to be happy, to be worked, to be useful.
Wanting to sail.

"She worked in the Spanish War, and in the first World War on the Solace." Noted Kelly, as the gangplank to the Solace finally lowered. "And she sailed on the Mercy in the '30's to South America, doing vaccines and malarial treatments."
"It's the first time she's never sailed." Tallulah whispered, suddenly feeling pity for the 70-year-old nurse. "This is the first time she's never sailed."
The captain was making his way down the gangplank, while Kelly continued talking. "She met her husband during the First War. He was German."
"How'd that happen?"
"She spotted him in some wreckage of a German battleship. Story is- she single-handedly made the Solace turn around to get him."
Tallulah watched the old woman march up to the gangplank, her permanently hunched shoulders somehow straightening while a twisted hand somehow uncurled to salute the Captain.
"Doesn't surprise me…"
"He died a few years ago. She put his ashes back in the water."

Suddenly, Tallulah wanted to stop talking about him and about her.
All she wanted to do was climb aboard the boat.
All she wanted to do was get in the same hemisphere as Sidney.
And not think about putting his ashes in the water.

Matron turned back to her nurses, and each glanced at her with eagerness, while the Solace continued to give creaking protests.
"Ladies." Her hands continued to wring together in a frenetic fashion, and Tallulah wondered it she would someone squeeze out her arthritis.
"You will be led into the Solace in pairs, and assigned rooms."
There was sudden clamoring and talking among the group, about the pairs, and rooming arrangements. But the matron silenced them all by holding up her hand.
"You will be assigned by numbers. 1 and 2, 3 and 4."
Kelly gave Tallulah and excited smile, which Tallulah returned.
She liked Kelly. She hadn't liked another girl in a long time. She hadn't really had a friend in a long time.
Kelly would be good.

Matron looked like she wanted to say something else, as her mouth opened. But quickly, she shut it.
The line began to file through the door in pairs, and as Tallulah climbed up the gangplank, she noted the massive metal spires and numerous lines that hung from various parts of the ship, giving the entire vessel a haphazard appearance.
The cross on the ship's side had practically faded into the chipping white paint, rendering them a target for submarines.
The ship seemed top-heavy, the decks piled high with converted patient rooms.
It seemed it should have sunken as all the girls piled into the boat; the ship certainly didn't look like it could carry any extra weight.
The matron was shaking girls' hands, praising them for their valiant efforts and dedication to service and country.
There was something awful in her eyes, some suppressed passion, and at many moments it seemed she might have been moved to tears as she ushered the girls into the ship.

But as Tallulah and Kelly neared the doorway leading into the belly of the ship, Tallulah noticed a small procession exiting the ship from a side exit. Emerging from a side door of the boat came a small party bearing a large rectangular box.
The casket was covered with a flag, as if the patriotic colors, or the simple notion of country could somehow ease the pain of a death in vain.
Tallulah watched the procession carry the coffin down the gangplank, and place it down beside another group of people who were weeping.
An older woman, and an older man, gently touched the box.
While a little girl about Tara's age wailed and clawed at the flag that shielded her mother's coffin better than the San Francisco fog.
And then Tallulah realized.
Sailors were buried at sea.
Those who died at sea stayed there.
That coffin did not contain a sailor or serviceman- it contained a nurse.
Kelly gasped at the sight, while Tallulah watched the distraught family run their hands over the mahogany wood, as if it were the actual the body of the daughter and mother.

Matron's voice served to tear them away from the scene, as she called their numbers. "465, 466?"
Tallulah and Kelly nodded, while Tallulah found her head twisting, attempting to see the family once more.
Matron clasped each of their hands, "You'll do so much good out here girls. Thank you, and God keep you."
She turned to Kelly, "You'll be rooming with the Matron of the ship."
Kelly's face dropped and she stared at Tallulah.
The numbers didn't add up.
If it were left this way there would be one girl out.
And suddenly, Tallulah understood.
She would be taking the place of the dead nurse.
Matron waved Kelly away, and Kelly sent Tallulah a pleading look as she was lead off to her new cabins.
"And 466?"
Tallulah gulped back piles of spit that had accumulate in her mouth, swallowing down liquid nervousness her body had generated. "Yes 'mam?"
Matron pointed towards a wall, "You'll be rooming with her."

From behind plastic paneling, emerged a slender figure who glided over the sooty concrete like a ghost. Her black hair fell down into her face, and it served to conceal skin that looked like Ming porcelain- her pale face serving as the base china, and little veins visible from exhaustion acting as the blue ink.
Matron gave the girl a sympathetic smile, but the girl's lips stayed frozen in a line that was as straighter than her obsidian hair.
Tallulah stuck out an awkward hand, but the aloofly elegant figure did not take her it.
Her slanted eyes blinked down at the outstretched hand, until Tallulah tucked it back into the pocket of her skirt.
Surprised, Tallulah turned back to the matron, who clutched her shoulder.

"Thank you for doing this Miss Adams." Whispered matron, her voice sliding out in little whisps like fine grey slivers of hair that had slid from her ponytail.
"We couldn't have sailed without you." Matron shook her head, and raised a crippled hand to her forehead in embarrassment. "I mean, they couldn't have sailed without you."
"I'm happy to be here." The reply sounded stupid, but it was all Tallulah could come up with as she watched the old woman.
"Save lives." Matron warned her, "And stay safe."
Tallulah was about to make note of the safety of her position. She was about to say that all nurses has to fear was exhaustion.
She was about to tell matron, what she'd told Teola- that no one gets killed nursing.
But the rousing cries of the little girl who was scratching at the coffin of her dead mother stifled Tallulah's words on the tip of her tongue.
Obviously, she'd been wrong about that.
So she mustered up a nod, and swallowed down her words.
"I'll be careful."

Satisfied, Matron gave her a final pat on the shoulder before turning and maneuvering down the gangplank.
Her steps were slow and steady, but her twisted hands clung to the railing for balance as the ship rolled with the breakers.
As she trudged away from the Solace, Tallulah had never thought she'd looked so old
When matron was no longer visible, Tallulah turned back to the black-haired girl whose face was still marred by that unreadable expression.
Her eyes were so dark, that pupil and iris could not be separated, and they were made even darker by her anger.
"This way." She finally said, gesturing that Tallulah should follow her.

Tallulah followed her silent guide through mazes of tunnels that lead deep into the belly of the ship. Her head was spinning at all the sudden turns and twists they were making, and she gave up trying to memorize the winding passageways marked only by random valves and switches. The stairways between levels were so steep and narrow that they were almost vertical. But finally, her roommate shouldered in a door to reveal a tiny little room containing only a bunkbed and a dresser. It was smaller than the bed of Sidney's truck. Thankfully, there was a tiny porthole window on the far wall, just large enough for a head to peer out of.

Tallulah's guide motioned towards the dresser, "You can put your things there if you wish." Her English was perfect, spoken so cleanly and clearly it could have been in a textbook. But her tone was impatient. As if she had better things to do than show new recruits around.
Tallulah tossed her other two issued uniforms into a drawer, and glanced around the room.
This was far too awkward.
She was going to try again, and hopefully have a more successful reintroduction.
"I'm Teola Adams." Tallulah told her roommate, not offering her hand but offering a large smile.
Her guide sniffed and pushed pin straight stands of dark out of her porcelain face. "I'm Hisako Hayashi."
Mentally, Tallulah put the name on playback through her mind, trying to familiarize herself with the unusual syllables and sounds.
Again, Tallulah offered Hisako a handshake, but she didn't accept.
Frustrated, Tallulah's newly reddened eyebrows sunk into her face, at the apparent rudeness and complete stoicism of her roommate.

"I don't like you."
Those angled dark eyes hardly blinked, as Hisako delivered her words.
Tallulah found herself recoiling at the phrase. She wanted to believe that Hisako was mistaken in saying so, or that she meant something else.
But again, her English was perfect. She'd meant what she said.
"I don't understand." Tallulah stammered, feeling far more awkward with her words than someone who had spoken English all her life should have.
"I don't like you. You're a liar."
Tallulah blinked in surprise- she'd only known this woman for less than an hour. "A liar?"
"Yes. You are not who you say you are."
"I'm Teola Adams. I don't know who else you think I could be-"
Dark eyes dared her to continue the thought, to carry it out to its logical conclusion.
And then she understood.
Against all her wishes, she understood she had been recognized.
Tallulah flung down her purse onto the floor, "Fuck."
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing."
"Another lie."
"Less consequential."

Hisako sat down on her bed, but Tallulah felt the need to pace, although the space of the closet sized room would not allow it.
So she sat too, and prayed that her legs would remain still.
"You are not Teola Adams, are you?"
Tallulah shook her head, feeling defeated as she answered Hisako's question. "No. I'm not."
"You are Essie Jo Adams are you not?"
Tallulah stared down at the blank white sheets of her Navy issue bunk bed.
She wanted to run her fingers along the folds in the fabric, but the bed had been made so tight, that the sheets were completely taught.
This wasn't supposed to be happening.
Essie Jo was supposed to have been left behind and cast away back in Hollywood.
No longer was she supposed to carry around the scars of that superficial, material identity who was now probably lounging poolside at the Roosevelt Hotel.
No longer was she supposed to have identified with Yank's favorite pin up, or Esquire's top model.
Here, the only person she had to be was Teola.
And that job was easy.
Teola was half of her anyways.
Essie Jo Adams was none of her.
But Hisako was right- technically she was a liar.
And she was tired of it all.

"Yes." Tallulah admitted, "I'm Essie Jo Adams." It was the fastest she'd ever revealed her other persona, and her speedy confession had been made to someone she'd only met half and hour ago.
Hisako gave an assured nod, as if Tallulah's answer had only confirmed a compelling suspicion. "I knew you were."
"How?"
"Your eyes. I have never seen eyes that green."
"You read my magazines?"
"I work on a boat with many men. They read your magazines."
Tallulah hunted for the next set of words to further the conversation, but Hisako continued. "I hated your pictures, Those stupid, set-up scenes of you posing with cars and champagne. But I could not escape your eyes. Emerarudo."
Tallulah guessed the Japanese word had something to do with green, it even sounded like emerald.
"And I wish you were not here."
The simplicity and honesty of Hisako's words continued to startle and puzzle Tallulah, who was only beginning to piece together the reasons for Hisako's dislike.

"You are probably just here for publicity for your magazine. Another USO effort to raise the moral of the troops."
Tallulah wanted to protest.
She wanted to deny everything in one rushing string of speech that would fly out on a hurried breath, as if her fervor could prove her innocence.
But the space between Hisako's patient sentences led Tallulah to believe that she was not finished.
"But you can't raise the morale of dead men…" Hisako's dark gaze flashed to Tallulah's. "So, we need nurses. Not models."
"I promise I'm not here for publicity."
"No promises from you yet." Hisako warned, her voice strained as she pressed a hand to her forehead. "Not yet from you."
Tallulah's eyebrows pinched together, and she gave her roommate a pleading glance. "I was not trying to be dishonest with you."
Hisako glared down at her. "But did you really think you were fooling anyone? Did you really think that you could disguise a face that has been plastered to everything American?"
Tallulah's helpless fingers fiddled with her reddened curls, stroking her last defense. "My hair is red now. I thought-"
"You thought, but you did not succeed. It takes much more than hair color to change the appearance of the most photographed Pin-Up Yank has ever featured. The entire pacific knows that face. You'll have to do a better job of hiding it if you wish to deceive anyone else."
"Deceiving was never my intention."
"It was your every intention."

Tallulah felt more dishonest and more contradictory with every statement- but Hisako didn't understand.
Or did she? Hisako had already figured out so much of what Tallulah had wished to leave unsaid.

Hisako's unwavering gaze held steady, as she delivered her final objection. "And for whatever reason you are here. You are taking the place of a good nurse. A good nurse that we need so badly."
"I've had training. I've been in classes since the beginning of August-"
Again Tallulah's words sounded stupid, when she finally was able to register the emotion that was guarding Hisako's gaze- it was grief.
Without even an arch of her dark eyebrow, her eyes were welling with grief, expressed as a saddened, tired anger.
"Training or not. You are replacing a good nurse. A good nurse, and a good friend."
"I'm so sorry about your friend."
"So is everyone. Especially her daughter."
"it must be unbearable for her daughter."
There was actually a furrowing of Hisako's paralyzed eyebrows, as for the first time they dipped with emotion. "Denise left her when she was only two to come on the ship. Her daughter is five now."
Tallulah shook her head, and tried to push the harrowing image of the child clawing at the flag-covered coffin out of her mind.
"I'm so sorry."
"Be sorry for Lucy. She has no mother anymore."

Tallulah hung her head, and fought back the words that were beginning to swarm up her throat- those stinging, biting phrases that demanded to be released into the patient silence Hisako had created.
"I-I- didn't come for publicity." Tallulah began, fumbling with the wooden ring that encircled her finger. "I can promise you that much. I've been at training for weeks now, and I think I at least know a little about nursing. I'm not here for esquire, or Yank, or a USO trip. I'm here to help."
"You were helping. Your pictures were help enough."
Tallulah glanced up into those unfathomable black eyes.
"I couldn't take it anymore…"
"You are here for you?"
"In some ways."
"Aren't we all?"

Tallulah fingers found their way into her mouth, as she began to chew on her nails.
"I'm not here for publicity. I really wanted to help. So I didn't call myself Essie Jo- I didn't want that at all."
Hisako's tone was a bit lighter, more interested. "You are disguised now?"
"Apparently not very well." Muttered Tallulah, spitting little bits of nail onto the concrete floor.
And then Hisako laughed. A melodious, joyous sound bounced off the walls of the tiny room, and Tallulah was once again shocked.
The unbridled sound did not seem like it could come from someone so restrained- but it had.
"You will tell me of your escape?"
The question seemed like it could be a possible bridge to friendship, as it was asked in a kind enough way.
But Tallulah was unsure of whether she was ready to re-hash the entire sequence of events, as complex and complicated as they were.
"Well, it's a long story…."
Hisako seemed to sense her uncertainty, and she blinked, her heavy lids descending upon her eyelashes.
"No matter. We have two weeks until we reach Pavuvu. Plenty of time."

Tallulah stood, and straightened her skirt in preparation for stepping out into the ward.
Hisako reclined onto her bed, and stared patiently up at the ceiling. "The ward is empty." She advised. "There is nothing to be done."
Biting her lip, Tallulah sat back down on the bed and stretched out upon the cardboard mattress.
The whitewashed walls suddenly felt like they were encroaching, and with every second the room felt smaller and smaller.
She rolled over onto her side, to stare blankly at the adjacent white wall. But something caught her eye, a little flicker of color upon the cotton sheets.
Tallulah stared down at a very blonde hair that shimmered in the small amount of sunlight that streamed in through the porthole window.
It wasn't hers, and it certainly wasn't Hisako's.

Tallulah reached out a finger and touched the hair that obviously belonged to the dead nurse, whose cot Tallulah now lay in.
She felt as if she were trespassing in some sacred area, dedicated to someone far more important and skilled than herself as she glanced down at the starched sheets. She didn't feel she had any right to remove the hair, which was a dead as its owners. But as the image of the orphaned daughter sprung up in her mind, Tallulah rolled over, unable to look at the shed strand of blonde any longer.
But the image before her averting was no less painful than the blonde streak. She glanced over to see a steady stream of tears pouring out the corners of Hisako's ebony eyes, and wetting the sheets below. Tallulah waited a few moments, deliberating on what to do. She could see the girl's shoulders racking with sobs that she struggled to keep silent as she cried over her dead friend.

Finally Tallulah stood, and stepped over to Hisako's bed.
The other nurse instantly shot upwards, and attempted to wipe the tears from her pale cheeks.
For the third time that day, Tallulah offered Hisako her hand.
And for the first time that day, pale hands as worn as the Matron's slipped into a soft, grasp whose nails still retained remnants from a previous manicure.

And when Hisako's tears subsided, her voice was as calm and level as it had ever been. "Thank you Emerarudo…"

x.x.x.x

"I don't rightly think I can recall anything weirder than walking out on this damn beach and seeing you."

Sidney Phillips noted as he trudged up to his friend who was sitting on the sandy beach of Pavuvu.
Eugene grinned up at him, his eyes squinting as he stared up at his friend, whose blonde curls had turned blindingly white in the sunlight.
"I don't rightly think that I can recall anything weirder than sitting on this damn island in the middle of the Pacific."
Chuckling, Sid plopped down onto the sand next to Eugene, and in a swift motion, pulled out a pack of Luck Strikes from his dungaree pocket. He held out the box to Eugene, but the redhead shook his head, visibly shifting away from the carton of repulsive habits.
"No thanks."
"You'll change your mind soon enough!" Sidney warned, "You'll get bored and tired and angry as the rest of us. You'll smoke."
"I ain't never gonna."
"That's what they all say."

Sidney stared down at his arms, which had turned russet from his summer in Alabama, and return to the Pacific. He glanced at the scratches on his forearms from his tussle when he and Eugene had first met.
Some things never changed.
He could still whip his ass in a wrestling match.

"You're a damn fool to come out here Eugene." Sidney scolded, almost cringing at how condescending he sounded. He felt ten times older than his best friend, and ten times more separated than they once had been. But he continued. It was all he had to say. "You shoulda stayed at home. Nursed that murmur for all it's worth."
Eugene's dark eyes stared out at the ocean, and he didn't look back at his friend. "It's gone now. When I went to the station they said it was gone."
Sidney laughed, sending rings of his smoky breath floating out into the hot air. "And you always used to say that you'd die before me…" He clapped Eugene on the back, and felt muscles that had developed primarily due to boot camp.
Eugene gave him a sly stare. "I'll still die before you. But only because I have more fun drinking, fucking, and adventuring…'"
Sid grinned. "You ain't never done any of those things."
"Neither have you."

Oh, but he had.
How Sid wished he could have admitted everything to his best friend, his new comrade, and his old brother.
But he couldn't- not when Eugene needed to focus only on his own survival as a replacement.
So Sid shook his head- denying the late summer nights, and hot afternoons he had spent lying with Eugene's would-be wife.
"Nope…"

Eugene tossed a small stone into the surf, and watched a crap flit away from the splash. "Everyone's talking about the Solace coming here from San Francisco. I've never seen men so excited about getting inoculated again.."
Sid grinned at the thought of it, the thought of standing on something other than jungle leaves, hot sand, or rough palm planks.
He couldn't wait to feel the cool solid hard concrete under his feet. "Yeah. Hey, if you'd been here as long as some of these guys have…"
Eugene held his hands up. "I'm just sayin.' And you weren't even here all summer."
"Yeah."

"So How was being back in ol' Mobile?" Playfully, Eugene threw his shoulder into Sid's arm. "How was that July Ball?"
Again, Sid swallowed back the truth of his evening with Tallulah, feeling further away from her by restraining.
"Oh, it was okay. A long story."
"A long story huh?" Eugene countered, tossing another rock into the waves as Sidney sucked on his cigarette. "You've got two damn weeks with nothing better to do!"
Sid grunted and lifted the cigarette to his lips once more as he stared out at the steady tide, wishing he could see all the way to Los Angeles.