actually die? A few weeks? A few months?” Bella asked through clenched teeth.
Colonel Atkins took another deep breath. “Eight months ago.”
“Eight months! Is that what you said? Eight months?” Bella started to wail and scream at the top of her lungs. The nurse, Lieutenant Gibson, rushed to put her arms around her. Bella shook her off but allowed the lieutenant to lead her to the sofa and sit down with her.
“Andy, and he asked me to call him Andy since I was his full-time nurse, talked about you all the time in the beginning, when he had the strength. He didn’t want you to know how badly he was injured. He hoped, and we in the medical field encouraged the hope, that something could be done for him. He said you were too young to be burdened with what he called his condition. He never called you by name until the very end. He would just refer to you as the love of his life. Or his soul mate. One time, he said that the minute he laid eyes on you, he knew you were his destiny. He loved you, Mrs. Nolan, heart and soul.”
Bella sniffed. “Not enough to trust me. I would have been at that hospital twenty-four/ seven, doing whatever I could. I filed for divorce today because I could not understand how and why he couldn’t get word to me when the other wives had FaceTime and shared messages. I thought all kinds of crazy things during all those months. I didn’t know. How could I not have known, felt something? How? Now I have to live with that.
“I had mean, evil thoughts during those months. There were days when I hated Andy for not getting in touch. The truck he loved so much has not been repaired. I can’t pay for it. I don’t have any money except my salary. And now you’re telling me I won’t even get his insurance.
“How did you find me? For eleven months you couldn’t find me, when I was living in the same place I had been when we got married, then suddenly, after I move, you show up. How goddamn convenient. This smells like a cover-up of some kind to me. Well?” she screamed again, only this time it sounded more like a frog croaking. Clearly, she was losing her voice.
“It wasn’t easy, I can tell you that. Like I said, your husband’s entire team was killed. All we had to go on was his military personnel file, an absentee sister we couldn’t find at first, and what little Major Nolan shared with Lieutenant Gibson. The last week, when Major Nolan’s condition deteriorated, he asked me to write you a letter or, if possible, to go and see you. I said I would. But before he could tell me where you lived, he died. All he told me was that your name was Bella. He did not even tell me that you were his wife. It was not until one of his buddies told us that he had gotten married on his last leave that we knew a wife even existed. Once we knew, we went back through his file and discovered the letter I had written, the one that was addressed to Bella, but we could find no one named Bella Nolan until you moved and changed your telephone listing.”
“My God. I changed everything else, but the one thing I did not do was notify the telephone company of the name change, never dreaming that it could make a difference,” Bella said, the anguish clearly heard in her tone of voice.
“All those months he . . . I didn’t have a clue . . . he really was trying to protect you and didn’t want you worrying about him. I guess it never occurred to him that not hearing from him was worse. Sometimes, men are not . . . not as . . . intuitive as women. Sad to say. The letter . . . the letter is inside the packet.
“If it is any consolation to you, Mrs. Nolan, I made sure I visited your husband twice a day when possible. I was with Major Nolan when he passed. I was holding his hand. I went to his funeral. I prayed for him. I just want you to know that. He didn’t die alone. If I had known how to find you, I would have defied him and broken my promise to him and fetched you to