A Memory Between Us Read Online Free PDF

day.”
    “At least once a day.” She slid the drawer and her confident smile back in place. “Not a week passes without some poor soul declaring his undying love, and my month isn’t complete without a marriage proposal.”
    Jack laughed. “Glad I’m above that.”
    “Are you? You’ve already proposed.”
    “What?” His jaw dropped.
    “It’s all right.” Lieutenant Doherty pulled a thermometer from her pocket and popped it in Jack’s open mouth. “It was your first day, and you were heavily drugged.”
    “Shorry ’bout dat,” he mumbled around the thermometer. What other stupid things had he said?
    “All forgiven.” The sparkle in her eyes told him she meant it.
    Lieutenant Doherty wrote on the clipboard while the mercury rose, and Jack glanced around the Nissen hut, which was like a giant tin can sawed in half. Four coal stoves ran down the aisle, with ten beds on each side, only eight of which were occupied. Jack didn’t mind the extra attention.
    After Lieutenant Doherty removed the thermometer, Jack took a sip of water to wash away the taste of rubbing alcohol. “Enough about the Novaks. What are the Dohertys like?”
    She shook down the thermometer. “I don’t think we have any unifying characteristic, except we all work hard.”
    “Your parents must have been exceptional.” She always spoke of them in the past tense, so they must have passed away.
    “They were.” Lieutenant Doherty rubbed the edge of the clipboard with her thumb. “Pa worked real hard at the plant until he fell and broke his back in ’32. He hated being an invalid, and it eventually killed him—blood clot in his lung. And Ma truly worked herself to death. She died two years after Pa, right before I graduated from nursing school.”
    Jack slid down to rest his cheek on the pillow. “And the kids?”
    “Well, I’m the oldest. Three of us are on our own. Ellen’s married with two little ones, and Harold’s in the Navy. The other four are with aunts and uncles, split up, but I had no choice.”
    “Wow.” Why had so much tragedy come to the Dohertys and so little to the Novaks?
    “But Chuck graduates next year. Then I’ll only have Bert, Anne, and Maggie to support.”
    Did they all have that gorgeous red brown hair? Jack studied the way she wore it pinned under her white nurse’s cap. “Now I know the names of all the Doherty children except you. What’s your first name?”
    “To you?” She batted her eyelashes. “You can call me Lieutenant.”
    He laughed and gave her a heartfelt salute. She had to be the most attractive woman he’d ever met.
    She stood and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm. “I know you flyboys are casual with each other, but I prefer military decorum.”
    “I can see why. Keeps a professional distance.”
    She paused and looked him in the eye. “Yes. That’s important.”
    “I understand.” With so many men attracted to her, she needed privacy. Jack kept quiet while she took his blood pressure and pulse. Unlike the other nurses, who checked their wristwatches, Lieutenant Doherty looked over her shoulder to the clock on the wall. When she turned, her white uniform sleeve rode up and revealed a crooked half-moon scar on her wrist where a watch should have been. Jack had a hunch her military decorum would prohibit discussion about that. Better stick with the family.
    “So how old is the youngest Doherty?” he asked after she finished.
    A warm smile made her even prettier. “Maggie turned eleven in April. I got a letter from her yesterday. I can’t believe how grown-up she sounds. She writes a real nice letter, and her handwriting is lovely. Want to see?”
    “Sure.” He smiled at her sisterly pride.
    Lieutenant Doherty pulled a letter from her uniform pocket and knelt next to the bed. Jack hoisted himself up on one elbow to see, and to be at her eye level for once.
    “Read this paragraph.” She pointed to the middle of the page. “She describes her teacher so well I