“These masks belong at the training center. They’ll issue us new ones at the port. We have to test them out,” Ida explained.
The weather had turned warm and Nancy was glad to get back to their quarters and have a good shower when the day’s classes and drills were over.
Mail came twice a day, and the nurses always haunted their boxes right after breakfast and just before the evening meal. Nancy talked with her parents every Sunday over long-distance telephone and had letters from them and friends back home almost every day. Letters had never meant so much to her in all her life. She could now appreciate how important they were to Tommy and the other boys out there.
That evening Nancy was thrilled to find a letter from Tommy, which had been sent on from home. “One from the South Pacific!” she cried, waving the letter at Mabel, who was just opening her own box.
“And I have one from my Jake!” exclaimed Mabel. “What a red-letter day for the long and short of our unit!”
The girls moved out of the milling crowd at the mail boxes and opened their letters near a window.
Nancy stopped in the midst of her reading to tell Mabel joyfully, “He has only a few more missions to fly and then he’ll be coming home. Now wouldn’t that be something if I got sent out there while he comes back!”
“Surely fate wouldn’t play you such a mean trick as that, Nancy!”
“Is your sweetie all right?” asked Nancy.
“He is now, but the poor chap’s been in the hospital. He didn’t say what for. Isn’t that just like a man?”