Susan had looked up her patient’s record. An ace Navy pilot and instructor, he had earned the Naval Cross. His birthplace was Harvey, Illinois, a small industrial city south of Chicago. He had enlisted in the Navy after graduating from college and had trained at Pensacola. He was unmarried.
Each day, as Robert Bellamy was recuperating, walking the thin line between death and life, Susan whispered to him, “Come on, sailor. I’m waiting for you.”
One night, six days after he had been brought into the hospital, Robert was rambling on in his delirium, when suddenly he sat straight up in bed, looked at Susan, and said clearly, “It’s not a dream. You’re real.”
Susan felt her heart give a little jump. “Yes,” she said softly. “I’m real.”
“I thought I was dreaming. I thought I had gone to heaven and God assigned you to me.”
She looked into Robert’s eyes and said seriously, “I would have killed you if you had died.”
His eyes swept the crowded ward. “Where—where am I?”
“The 12th Evacuation Hospital at Cu Chi.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Six days.”
“Eddie—he—”
“I’m sorry.”
“I have to tell the admiral.”
She took Robert’s hand and said gently, “He knows. He’s been here to visit you.”
Robert’s eyes filled with tears. “I hate this goddamn war. I can’t tell you how much I hate it.”
From that moment on, Robert’s progress astonished the doctors. All his vital signs stabilized.
“We’ll be shipping him out of here soon,” they told Susan. And she felt a sharp pang.
Robert was not sure exactly when he fell in love with Susan Ward. Perhaps it was the moment when she was dressing his wounds, and nearby they heard the sounds of bombs dropping and she murmured, “They’re playing our song.”
Or perhaps it was when they told Robert he was well enough to be transferred to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington to finish his convalescence, and Susan said, “Do you think I’m going to stay here and let some other nurse have that great body? Oh, no. I’m going to pull every string I can to go with you.”
They were married two weeks later. It took Robert a year to heal completely, and Susan tended to his every need, night and day. He had never met anyone like her, nor had he dreamed that he could ever love anyone so much. He loved her compassion and sensitivity, her passion and vitality. He loved her beauty and her sense of humor.
On their first anniversary, he said to her, “You’re the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most caring human being in the world. There is no one on this earth with your warmth and wit and intelligence.”
And Susan had held him tightly and whispered in a nasal, chorus-girl voice, “Likewise, I’m sure.”
They shared more than love. They genuinely liked and respected each other. All their friends envied them, and with good reason. Whenever they talked about a perfect marriage, it was always Robert and Susan they held up as an example. They were compatible in every way, complete soul mates. Susan was the most sensual woman Robert had ever known, and they were able to set each other on fire with a touch, a word. One evening, when they were scheduled to go to a formal dinner party, Robert was running late. He was in the shower when Susan came into the bathroom carefully made up and dressed in a lovely strapless evening gown.
“My God, you look sexy,” Robert said. “It’s too bad we don’t have more time.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Susan murmured. And a moment later she had stripped off her clothes and joined Robert in the shower.
They never got to the party.
Susan sensed Robert’s needs almost before he knew them, and she saw to it that they were attended to. And Robert was equally attentive to her. Susan would find love notes on her dressing-room table, or in her shoes when she started to get dressed. Flowers and little gifts would be delivered to her on Groundhog Day and President Polk’s birthday and in celebration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.