First Steps, First.

Toronto, 1941

A small cohort of nursing students at the Toronto General Hospital meet, every Thursday, in the parlour of a small Chinese restaurant.

They had been meeting on Tuesdays, but after Sing Tom's opted to participate in meatless Tuesdays as a show of patriotic support- well, they'd had to reschedule. Molly refused to have chow mein without pork. 

Now, Molly gets her chow mein the way she wants it - and the rest of the group can contentedly order all the cold tea their hearts desire. 

Sing Tom's was one of the few Chinese restaurants on Elizabeth Street that had yet to be raided by the police, who were in the midst of a vague and ill-defined attempt to sniff out 'enemy aliens' that had yielded little in the way of results beyond terrorizing Chinese families. If this worried Sing Tom and his family, well, they certainly weren't letting it show. The kitchen was separated from the dining room by a thin cloth, hung from the doorway, and the patrons could hear the sound of the staff chatting away in excited Cantonese. 

The nursing students never bothered to make a proper reservation - but somewhere along the line, a round table near the front door became unofficially theirs. 

It's here, then, where the woman keep up to date on the hospital gossip, and each others lives. For a while, they'd talked about the war in Europe, and the loved ones that were fighting overseas - until Edith placed a moratorium on the topic.

"It's bad enough that it's all I hear about on the radio, I don't need you guys to get me down too," she'd said, and none had any heart to argue against it. 

Today is a blustery Toronto December, with sidewalks so slick it's easier to toboggan down the street than drive and naturally, the conversation shifts towards the weather. While Edith gripes about a streetcar delay, Nell frowns and pokes at her fried rice with chopsticks.  

There is a letter tucked away in her satchel, where it has been since early this morning, and it's contents are weighing on her mind.  

This would be understandable, maybe, if the contents of the letter were anything more than what they were; which is to say, perfectly mundane.  Comments on the state of the war and complaints about bunk mates and unit members made up the bulk of it. 

By all accounts, it was a perfectly ordinary letter.

What was far from ordinary though, was the surge of giddiness she'd felt upon recognizing Robert's handwriting - that tightening of her chest, the unbidden smile, and a feeling Nell could not ignore.

They'd been exchanging letters, more and more, since he'd enlisted in February and it was now the longest she had gone without seeing him. 

If Nell were more like Molly maybe she'd bring the letter out and read it to the group in a silly voice and reduce the table to near tears (it was a move Molly had done, time and time again, with her variety of sweethearts). Nell, however, is just Nell - and lets her thoughts weigh her down until she's had enough, and announces to the table:

"I think I'm in love with Robert."

This does not yield the response she is anticipating, or wanting. Instead of friendly reassurance or excitement, she's met with a sea of blank faces. 

"What?" Nell asks, when the silence draws on.

"I didn't realize this was news," Marie-Anne says. "You talk about him so fondly."

"And often," Molly adds.

"She writes to him even more, you know," adds Edith, miming a large stack of letters between her hands.

It was a mistake, Nell decides, to have invited Edith into her dorm for night cap last week. Edith had taken one look at the pile of letters stacked on Nell's desk, let out a long, slow whistle, and remarked "Jesus, Nell."

Objectively, Nell knew, it was a lot of letters. Still, Nell was embarrassed to have it pointed out. 

It's embarrassing now, too - and Nell finds her face flushing tomato red.

"So he's got no idea how you feel?" Marie-Anne asks. 

"No! I'm not sure he even feels the same way."

"Oh, bullshit," Molly pipes up, over a mouthful of chow mein. "How long have you known each other?" She doesn't let Nell answer, and instead tells the group: "It's been years. He's been mad about her since they were 11."

Some surprise must register on Nell's face, who is presently rewriting 15 years of her and Robert's history, because Molly adds, kindly:

"Did you truly not know? I've never seen either of you go steady with anyone. I assumed that you'd just been pining after each other and that you'd figure it out eventually." 

Nell's world has been rocked onto it's axis and when she speaks, it's pitched with faint panic. "Well, I didn't know - and it's not like I can just tell him, he's in occupied France. This seems like  a conversation we should have face-to-face."

"You might not get that chance," Edith says, simply, and her tone is an abrupt reminder of why the war moratorium was instated several weeks ago.

 Nell doesn't have a good response to that and lets the conversation fall to the wayside shortly after, allowing Edith and Marie-Anne begin rehashing an old argument about hockey that quickly distracts the entire table. 

Later, once she's back in the dorms, she sits at her desk and pens a letter - then scraps it.

Three pages of a heartfelt confessional seems like too much, too fast. Eventually, she settles on something simpler and a little less dramatic. 

She posts the letter first thing in the morning, bleary-eyed and shivering in the morning chill. 

It's a small little letter, only a page long, sealed with a kiss and signed with a short post script.

I hope one day I'll be able to tell you this in person, but, for now:

I love you.