“Do you feel able to tell me what happened?” she asked.
“Gosh yes,” he said emphatically. “I can get well now! Who couldn’t with Tommy’s sister for nurse? I know all about you,” he said, his eyes beginning to have a more normal expression. “Tommy read me all your letters.”
“Oh, then you’re Bruce Williams, his bombardier?”
“Sure! We were real buddies, Tom and I. No crew ever had a finer pilot. He never gave me an order I didn’t want to follow until that last command to jump and leave him alone to his fate.”
“Do you think there’s any chance he may be living?”
“We were over Jap-held territory. If he survived the jump there’re nine chances out of ten he’s a prisoner.”
“But they didn’t make you a prisoner!” she exclaimed.
“Oh, yes, they did! Three long months they held me. That’s why I’m in this fix—I broke my leg in the parachute landing and it never healed properly, and we were all but starved to death. I hoped many a time while I was a prisoner that Tommy was dead and out of such misery.”
“Oh, no, don’t say that!” exclaimed Nancy, tears starting to her eyes. “I’ve never felt that Tommy was dead. He must come back to us, sometime, somehow.”
Bruce closed his eyes wearily and turned from her a second. “I guess you haven’t seen enough, yet, Nancy. The ones who get a clean ticket to the other side are the lucky blokes!”