Sisters and Friends
Chapter 11
Convergence
The number displayed on her phone was unfamiliar, but she had been expecting such a call.
"Quinn Morgendorffer?"
The voice too was unfamiliar, although she thought that tiny fragments of sound were distantly familiar, some shared genetic nuance creating a common curve or structure somewhere in the tissues of the larynx.
"This is Quinn speaking."
"Hello, Ms. Morgendorffer, this is Nathan Nichols." Quinn swallowed; she had expected some contact from the Nichols brother, the Attorney who had been responsible for the loss of Annie's Paternal inheritance.
She wasn't sure what to expect in the way of a response to her letter. Still, she could sense no overt hostility or positioning in his tone.
"I don't think I need to ask what this call is regarding."
"Well, I was wondering if you might make some time to meet with me? I'm in Oakdale right now, and I could drive to Lawndale at your convenience."
"Mr. Nichols, as you yourself are an Attorney, I'd like my legal consul to follow any discussion we may have. I'll need to check on her availability."
"Yes, of course, but this won't be a hostile meeting, at least from my side. I'd like to meet with you, along with Annie and of course her mother Sara."
"Mr. Nichols, is Annie there?"
"She's right here. Would you like to speak to her?"
"Yes, please."
A moment later, Annie came on the line. "Quinn, were you still planning on a study session tonight? Could we do it here? I'm not sure what's exactly happening, but it doesn't feel like anything bad is going to come down. Mr. Nichols has been talking to Mom, mostly, and they're being very polite to each other. I don't want to leave her at home by herself tonight."
"Of course. Let me see if I can get my Mom to teleconference in; I'll call her and come on over."
Quinn parked on the street just in front of Annie's house. She pulled out her overnight bag and backpack as Helen's SUV pulled up behind her.
Her mother was taller than Daria, but that walk and the way they hold themselves…loaded for bear. Helen Morgendorffer carried her discretely elegant briefcase like a lethal weapon, which it often proved to be.
"Mom, thank you for taking off from work so early," Quinn smiled nervously at her mother.
"Wouldn't miss this for the world, Quinn," Helen smiled. "Nobody messes with my daughter or anyone that matters to her."
Sara set two more cups of coffee on the kitchen table, which had been cleared and was now covered with documents and photographs. Several old photo albums that Quinn recognized, were open, yellow post-it tags visible on the edges.
"Quinn," Sara said softly, "Your letter has made many people reopen things we had thought were settled. We are learning new things."
Nathan Nichols held out his hand.
"Ms. Morgendorffer, I have to admit that the first reaction I had when I read your letter was anger. This was something that we had worked hard to put behind us. I didn't know who you were, and I was upset to learn that you were wanting us to look at things in the past that we had tried so hard to put to rest."
"But when I thought about what you were saying, it made me question again why Mother had made those changes to the will. We had thought that she was losing her facilities; she had become somewhat agitated and before she began to meet with her estate attorney. She had been increasingly despondent, naturally, since Father, and then her brother, Uncle Tyler, passed. Moreover, she seemed prone to extended periods of silent meditation, and never once openly questioned the will that she and Father had prepared before his death."
"Her handwriting had deteriorated to the point that it was extremely difficult to read; I admit that we didn't try as hard as we might have to go over her papers and correspondence after her death. Out of frustration, most of her letters were boxed up to be included in the family archives."
"So, after reviewing the materials you had included, I pulled out those letters again. I could see that prior to his death, Mother and Uncle Tyler had exchanged several letters. Unlike hers, we could read Uncle Tyler's handwriting, in essence confirming what you and your sister had uncovered. There were several faded photos from World War II in them, rather small; they were contact prints made from a folding camera's negatives. Most were apparently pictures of his buddies, a few of the countryside, a few rather grisly ones, mostly of German casualties, or fellow 141st soldiers being treated for serious injury. These were described, for the most part, and the few prints that were included in the letters were in pretty bad shape. That photograph you included in your email, though, made me take out a magnifying glass. One of the small photos in Uncle Tyler's letter was this one. I must warn you that it's rather graphic, but it was what made us realize that things were more complex than we had thought."
Nichols handed Quinn a small, wrinkled black and white photograph. It showed a tall, lanky medic tending to a tourniquet that had been applied to the left leg of soldier in a litter; the leg a mass of blackened flesh, pale shards of what could only be bone protruding. Much of the soldier's uniform was cut away, and what remained was dark with blood; and another solder was holding a glass plasma bottle high as the soldier in the litter was about to be transferred to a table. A hideous looking saw was waiting in a metal tray, along with other small surgical instruments.
"That's Tyler Varnell, minding the tourniquet," Nichols said quietly. "One of his friends must have taken the photo. Look on the back."
Quinn flipped it over.
PFC S. Tamashiro saved our lives, I'll be damned if we're gonna let him die without a fight.
"Annie's grandfather, 19 years old," Quinn said aloud. Trying to prove that despite the way he and his buddies looked, they were American boys fighting for their country. The same country that took their families and dumped them in a prison because they had the faces of the enemy, even though they listened to Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, even though the young Seiyei Tamashiro had been one hell of a baseball player.
And here he was, almost dead; a teenaged Tyler Varnell holding back tears of fury as he watched the exhausted surgeon try to decide how much of the leg might survive and how much would surely go gangrenous, cutting flesh into flaps to be pulled over the sawed off stumps of bone, tying off blood vessels, stitching artery to vein, staunching the flow of blood, cauterizing, praying that the units of blood and plasma allocated were enough. The intensity of his expression spoke across the chasm of time: Live, damn you, I need to thank you for saving my life.
Quinn began to feel sick, remembering all the times she had felt put upon about not having the right shoes. She handed the photo back, her fingers trembling.
Nichols handed Quinn another, this one remarkably similar to the one Daria had found on the Military database. This one was not as sharp, obviously taken by an amateur standing alongside the photojournalist. A note had been written in pencil across the back of the photograph: Seiyei Tamashiro and Tyler Varnell, American Soldiers.
"This part of our family history was lost to us until now. Our father had been severely traumatized by his experiences as a POW in the Philippines, and there were countless times that we would hear him in the grip of nightmares. Mother was always careful to avoid any mention of the war and I believe that silence carried over even after his death."
Helen stood and walked up behind her now silent daughter, placing her hand softly on Quinn's shoulder.
Nathan Nichols addressed Sara and Annie. "On behalf of my brothers and myself, I'd like to say that we deeply regret the way that we've treated you both over the years." Turning to Quinn, he nodded. "Thank you, Ms. Morgendorffer."
A/N: Catherina asked about the date of 1944 that I used as the year Emmeline and Robert Nichols married. She is correct; almost all the prisoners were rescued in 1945, but a very small number had escaped, either during the march itself or after arrival at Camp O'Donnell. The first public release of information in the US was in January 27, 1944, based on sworn statements from escapees. They had been processed before the release of information, and most likely there were an indeterminate number of days from the time of escape to reaching safety. Based on this, I theorized that it would have been possible for some escapees/survivors to be medically discharged in 1944.
No disrespect is intended in these dates; for the purpose of the story it was important to have a disconnect between Emmeline and her brother Tyler around the time of his return to the US. In this case, Emmeline would have served in some voluntary fashion that led her to meet Robert Nichols. A relationship with an escapee/survivor would certainly involve having to deal with horrendous psychological as well as physical trauma; this would create a rational for the incomplete understanding of what had happened to Tyler Varnell, including the identity of the AJA soldier he saw as a rescuer.
-M1