Sister Golden Hair Delight Ch. 24

While I didn't remember exactly what happened, I did remember meeting two men in the bar. 'They did this to me... what did they do? My ass feels on fire... oh, shit! They butt-fucked my ass! And, I wasn't even awake for it... my life totally sucks, now.'

I turned to the old woman, not so much in a traveler's type of friendship but because I thought I might need the old woman's help when the plane landed.

"Look, I'm sorry. I had a bad reaction to the medication I was taking. My name is Beverly and I'm a Navy nurse. I just got transferred from Hawaii to the Aleutians."

I stopped talking as my head reminded me it was still there.

"Here, dear, have some of this."

The old lady uncapped a small bottle of vodka and poured it into the orange juice. As I took the plastic glass, she gave me a wink.

"I've been there myself, dear. Drink up." She opened another bottle and drank it straight up. "When we land, I'll help you meet your connecting flight."

After we left the plane, we met a Navy seaman holding a placard with my name on it. As I approached, he saluted. "Lieutenant Lismonde, welcome to Alaska. Do you have any luggage?"

"Oh, shit, I left everything behind. How fucking dumb was that?"

He looked at me, probably wondering what kind of a nurse I was, aside from being really hot and really hung over. He walked me slowly out to the waiting Hummer and took me to the other side of the airport to catch my connecting flight to Attu, the frozen island from hell.

**********

I looked out the window of the Coast Guard C-130 heading west to one of the smallest islands in the Aleutians. All I saw was gray sky, gray clouds and gray water. Somewhere down there, I would spend the next year.

'I've got to get my clothes and stuff sent here. Man, getting blasted was a big mistake. I've nothing to wear... and I smell of sex... the station commander is going to kill me. I better try and wash up before I meet him.'

I felt the plane descending and checked my seat belt. The landing was uneventful and the plane taxied over to the buildings nearby.

As I deplaned carrying my paperwork, a cold wind nearly knocked me over. Wearing nothing but my nurse's uniform, I was immediately chilled.

"Here, let me help you."

I started to say 'thank you' and then looked at his face. 'He has the nicest blue eyes.' "Where do I report in at? I've never been here before."

"I'll take you over. You must have had a rough trip from Hawaii. I think I'll take you to wash up before you meet the boss."

"Thank you." I followed him to the clinic and he showed me where the showers were and where I could get my uniform quickly cleaned and pressed. "I'll tell the boss that you'll see him in a couple of hours. You don't have to officially report in until 1400 hours, so you've plenty of time."

"Thank you so much. What's your name?"

"Jerry. Now get yourself together. The boss is a stickler for neatness in the clinic."

I watched him walk away. Maybe this won't be so bad.

**********

The loneliness place in the world

"I'm Ensign Beverly Lismonde; I've come to report for duty."

Standing in my newly cleaned and pressed uniform, I waited for a response from the young and very cute dark-haired ensign behind the desk.

"I'll see if he's available right now. Just a second, please."

The ensign buzzed the lieutenant and listened while he spoke.

She hung up the phone and told me to sit down and wait and then went into the lieutenant's office and closed the door.

Lieutenant Jerry Gruener....

"So, is she cleaned up?" I asked, smiling.

"Yes, sir... and looking well considering she's here from Hawaii. Must be quite a shock to her system."

"Let me know how she treats you."

"Yes, sir."

On my desk was the email from Hawaii outlining the problem that Beverly and her two friends had created. I had replied that I would address the problem in the best possible manner. I assured the Navy captain that I would teach her personal discipline and try to save her career... if she wanted.

'Hopefully, she can be saved... only time can tell, I guess.'

There was a knock on my door. "Enter," I said, pretending to look at her service record. During the last two hours, I had practically memorized the documents.

Beverly walked in, saluted and said, "Lieutenant Beverly Lismonde, reporting for duty, sir!" When I finally looked up, she was taken aback. She immediately recognized me from the plane.

I looked her over with the critical eye of her superior officer.

'Cleaned up and in the light... she doesn't look too bad, thinking of how she looked leaving the plane.'

I returned her salute and motioned her to sit down. Warily, she waited until I spoke. "So, Lieutenant, tell me about yourself... not what's in your jacket."

So, for possibly the first time in her adult life, she was truthful to someone other than herself. Starting with her foolish jealousy of Sayomi Nakamura, outrageous behavior at the hospital to finally getting drunk before boarding the plane, she told him everything.

The wild scandalous sex in the motel she was unable to remember but knew she had been thoroughly used.

She found herself crying for the first time, she said, since her prom date had left her at home and went with someone else. I opened a desk drawer and reached for a box of tissues. "Here," I said, pushing the box toward her.

"Thank you," she sobbed, wiping away her tears and then blowing her nose. "I have made a mess of my life and career, haven't I?"

"Well, Beverly, you've been honest with me, from what I have been told a rare occurrence from you, so I'm going to be honest with you. Back in Honolulu, they were ready to make you walk the plank for what you did. I understand your former companions were transferred to Gitmo and Nevada."

She shifted in her seat, uncomfortable under my gaze.

"Now, here's what we're going to do, Lieutenant. No one here except me and the ensign will ever know what happened before you came here... unless you tell them. I'm giving you a fresh start. That's why I met you at the plane.

"I knew you had a rough flight. I also know you arrived with nothing but your travel orders. You'll have to wash out your uniform each night until your other clothes catch up with you.

Make arrangements for that to happen. The ensign will show you how to do that. If you have any problems, tell the ensign immediately. Don't let it get out of control, Lieutenant. Are we clear?"

"Yes, sir. I will do my best, sir."

"Look, I know this isn't Waikiki, but the people here are nice and we are a very small community out here in the cold, and the tour is only one year. Any questions?"

"No, sir. Thank you, sir."

"Dismissed."

Beverly....

In the hallway, I met the waiting ensign, who took me to the Officers' Quarters.

"I'm going to get you some survival gear, just in case we lose our power. Two months ago, we had to snuggle up to keep warm."

The ensign had a smile on her face as she told me about those two days.

"I've been asked to loan you some underwear until your clothes arrive. We'll be sharing a room. I was lucky; I had it to myself for five months but it'll be fun having someone to talk to... that's if you want to."

Years of selfishness had left me jaded and I almost said something unkind to the young ensign but remembered what he said, 'a new start.'

'It might be fun to actually have a real friend, I thought, realizing the installation was minuscule compared to Pearl or Barbers' Point and to be an outcast, to be alone under these conditions was deadly.

The island of Attu was almost 2000 miles from Anchorage. It was so far west in the Aleutians that it caused a jog in the International Date Line.

Due to the weather, walking from one area to another was done indoors; all the buildings were connected.

"Well, here we are... all the comforts of home."

I looked around the small room... opposite walls had single beds and between the door were two closets. There was a small desk with a lamp between the two beds.

The girl pointed down the hallway. "The showers and toilets are at the end of the hall. If you want any special stuff like a nice shampoo for your hair, you punt in an order to Anchorage and it's shipped out on the next flight. It takes a while so plan ahead.

"Let's go around the place and I'll show where everything is. We'll start off with the clinic and go from there. Most of the time, you'll be in our room, the clinic or the cafeteria.

"There's a lounge but you'll probably want to get up to speed with this place first. There's not much to do outside most of the year because it's either too cold or too dark.

During the summer, we used to get bird watchers and they stayed some buildings near the airstrip, but that's over now."

Entering the clinic, I walked around the room getting a feel of the place. With the nearest hospital about 2000 miles away, I understood that people's lives would depend on my abilities to either help them heal or keep them alive until a plane could fly them out.

The enormity of my position terrified me. I no longer had a doctor telling me what to do or a nurse like Nakamura showing me how to do it.

The medic returning to the mainland left a detailed inventory of drugs and other supplies and I went from cabinet to cabinet checking off each item one by one.

Several hours later, there was a knock on the open door.

"Well, Lieutenant, how's it going?"

"I'm almost through checking the inventory. What may I do for you?"

"I just dropped by to see if you needed any help, that's all. Rodriguez was a good medic but he wasn't an ER nurse and we were lucky this past year there was nothing worse than a couple of bad cuts, some sprained fingers and frostbite. That's the bad one; you must really watch for that."

"The surgery needs to be thoroughly scrubbed down and then I would like to put together an examination schedule for the personnel. I would like to get my own baseline. Rodriguez's records show the last one was done eight months ago. If you can give me a copy of the duty roster I can start on that immediately."

"Fine. I'll have Cassie bring them over right after lunch. Maybe... no, that wouldn't work... forget it."

"What's that?"

"People here have their own stashes of comfort food... and to try and take that away, to even suggest... we'd have a full-scale riot going on." He laughed. "I'll see you later, maybe." Without waiting for a reply, he went down the hallway.

And my life on the ice started.

*

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