The end of the beginning.
Rebecca, the only American nurse on the island, waited with increasing despair and desperation for the coming invasion, or for her continuing murderous efforts on the wounded Japanese in the hospital to be discovered.
She wondered how much longer she could put up with what Mashito did to her. This feeling of hopeless inevitability was what had come over Madison, the American nurse who had been here when Rebecca first came, with her forever waiting for the rescue that never came, eventually losing hope, giving up, but never giving in, fighting to the very end.
Rebecca began to take some comfort from the changes she saw each day. More wounded were coming in with fresh wounds no more than a day or two old. Some of them very severe. The war was drawing closer.
She also saw more prisoners coming in to the camp to die of neglect and starvation, or to be executed if they did not learn to stay quiet and remain in the background. It would be a hard lesson at first. She was not allowed to attend to them. Her duties were confined to the hospital, and to Mashito’s hut.
Everyone knew that a coming attack and invasion was inevitable, and she had weeks to think about what she could do, and to prepare for it.
She would die, of course, as Madison had, and like her she would take as many of them as she could with her, and so it needed careful planning, or the ability to quickly take advantage of any opportunity that might be presented.
She had rehearsed killing as many men in the hospital as possible and, as quickly as it could be done before discovery, and then her own inevitable death. She had deliberately eased many of the wounded out of this world, despite her ingrained professional ethics, which still nagged at her—difficult to submerge entirely—as she treated them, but had not yet had the courage to do anything that would be so decisive, or obvious, as Madison had done. Nevertheless she had contributed to the early deaths of tens, if not a hundred or more of those who came into the hospital, never to leave.
There were many changes she could have made to save lives, rather than taking them, but she changed nothing.
When Mashito lost his sexual interest in her, near the end for them all, he would be the one to kill her, even as he raped her for the last time. Would he be sorry to be no longer sexually assaulting her as often as he did? She would die, be killed, just before he would expect to die himself in the coming invasion. She must anticipate him, and be ready to pre-empt him.
She had seen that intent in his eyes once, when he had looked at her with his hands on her throat at one of those times when he had difficulty coming. There was too much on his mind, and he took more than five minutes to ejaculate, when he normally took only one or two in his eagerness with her, or even just seconds if he had thought about her all day. He had received continuing bad news about the war over the camp radio, and had been as distracted from what he was doing to her, as she tried to be with him. She knew that when the time came, Mashito had to be the first to die before he gave any order about executing all of the prisoners, as they usually did upon being invaded, and before he killed her.
She could see from the map on the wall of his hut as he raped her across his desk in a daily ritual, that war was getting closer with each day that passed. She now had an idea of where they were, which island they were on as the map slowly shrank ahead of the advancing forces, but it did not help. The island was clearly too small to show up on the large map of the Pacific that she could see: a National Geographic map. It seemed strangely out of place here.
More, recently-wounded Japanese, dejected and downcast, were being brought in more often, their wounds just hours old, so the conflict was getting closer, with smoke visible on the horizon.
Those still conscious, were mentally and physically exhausted, bloodied and beaten, and showed it in their dejected manner that they could not hide from her. They felt defeated and were almost hysterical at being beaten, openly crying in their shame at being alive.
They suffered cruelly, but not cruelly enough to her way of seeing it, with their horrific wounds and extensive burns where they had been subjected to flame throwers. They feared them, scorching them out of their caves, more than they feared anything else.
For every burn victim who managed to come into the hospital, she knew that ten or twenty, had died where he had come from, or were shot when they tried to get out with their clothing on fire, or had suffocated for lack of oxygen. She understood most of the body language where she did not understand the spoken word.
They had been surprised, taken off guard by the ferocity of the American assault. Their greatest shame, which they were made to feel, was that they still lived.
That was why Mashito did not care about them, but despised them for their dereliction of duty, and their weakness. They should not be here, but should have died fighting to the very end. When the time came he would show them how a true warrior died.
Rebecca smiled. She would try to help them recover their honor, to see them eased out of this world, but slowly, and not as obviously as Madison had done. Not yet.
The smell of gangrene was not as noticeable as it once had been. They did not live long enough.
With each death, Mashito was less and less caring, but made preparations for the end. He did not care. War would soon overrun them all. More prisoners of war were present too. They were even more poorly fed than before, with supplies dwindling. One day’s rations had to feed two Japanese, and was not to be wasted on the prisoners who would soon be dead anyway.
Another few days? Hours? Who could know when the invasion would come? It had better come quickly or they would all be dead by attrition, and from disease.
Mashito knew when the invasion might come, or could guess, but he did not say. He visited her less of a night now, as she became more busy, and he became more and more morose and impatient with his own officers and soldiers. So there was one benefit to be thankful for.
Rebecca prepared.
When the invasion began, provided they had warning, Mashito would order all of the prisoners to be murdered, no matter what the Geneva Convention might say. If he could evacuate the wounded Japanese on one of the few craft that still were useable, he might take her with him to tend to them, or to see to his own personal needs until she was no longer useful to him, or they managed to come close to Japan, and then he would put her overboard.
One morning, Rebecca noticed a subtle change in him. News had come over the camp radio. Orders. Everyone was issued more ammunition, and sandbags were built up higher around the machine gun nests and the single functioning AA gun. There was a heightened state of readiness, less strutting, less arrogance. More agitation.
There would be no evacuation. They were ordered to prepare for an invasion and to fight to the death. That was always the order when there was an imminent invasion. To the death!
The doctor had told her that. He had spoken good English from his western education and he had been as kind as he dared to be. With him now dead, murdered by his own commanding officer, that one linkage for her to understand what was happening and changing around them had been severed. She would have to rely upon her keen observation to understand changes, even as they happened.
Rebecca noticed that the wounded in the hospital were given weapons and grenades. They would be given another chance to make their ancestors proud of them. They were careful to keep any weapons out of her way as she tended to them, knowing what she might be capable of. They had all heard what the previous nurse had done to them.
There was greater tension; raised voices, officers suffering more humiliation, being slapped several times, even in her presence, the ultimate humiliation, before Mashito dismissed them contemptuously, and turned to attend to her.
Invasion seemed to be only hours away.
She knew that Mashito would soon come to her for the last time. She saw the way he looked at her, with knowledge of his own coming defeat and death in his eyes, and knew the way his mind worked. He would assault her body one last time before he killed her, and then would give the order to kill every prisoner. It fitted with her own suddenly formulated plans now. She knew what she would do.
When he next came into the hospital, he just pointed, as he dismissed her guard, sending him off to a machine-gun-post just outside of the hospital to await his summoning him again. She went into her room knowing that Mashito approached behind her.
He closed the door this time, wanting some privacy where he had never bothered before, intending to take his time about it with it likely being the last time he would be able to have her.
Unlike those previous times, she did not wait for him to undress her but got rid of her coat, herself. She wanted an end to this too. She stood proudly, defiantly naked before him. He did not notice that, seeing only her body, with growing sensations and an excitement he was helpless to ignore or to hide. He began to undress himself, laying his swords and his personal things aside as he put his clothing; all of his clothing, carefully folded for once, onto the desk. Today, he intended to take his time fucking her, kill her, and then he would die as a soldier should. Or so he thought.
His own wife in Tokyo had never excited him as this woman constantly did. He was angry with himself over his lack of control with her, this despised American, but could do nothing about it. He was besotted with her. This one was always on his mind, and not his wife or daughters.
