She never would have done it normally. It wasn’t in her makeup to do such a thing. So why? Why would a woman of her age do such a thing? She had always had standards, even though she was so lonely that sometimes she wanted to die.
Joan is a plain woman, she has never attracted a man and since the war was now over and the men were returning beaten and broken, she wanted to help. So volunteering at the local hospital seemed a charitable act.
Joan had no skills to speak of so the only thing she could do was to write letters or read to the men who were unable to do it themselves.
She never expected to meet someone so special, so brave, so kind. Tom was American and too ill to be repatriated home, he had temporarily lost his vision and was heavily bandaged, he had also lost his lower leg and was in terrible pain.
Joan was spending more and more time at the hospital and most of it with Tom. She was falling in love.
She knew he was married, she had written a lot of letters to his wife on the days when the pain was better and he could say what he was feeling. The knowledge that he desperately loved his wife made no difference to Joan, she couldn’t help herself. She had been lonely for so long and just made up this fantasy world for herself. She bought pretty dresses, changed her hair and wore makeup to try to look pretty for him.
When his health improved and it was time for him to go home Joan couldn’t face it. She saw his head swaddled in bandages but beaming with a smile, happy he was going home at last.
She said all the right things, how happy she was for him, even though she felt like her heart was breaking. She said goodbye to him, and after he left she walked home slowly. After all of the months of day dreaming about him, about how their lives would be together, now she felt there was nothing. Her desire for a different life all gone.
