Together, they attended weekly meetings at the Bristol Women's Institute just to see the prudes in charge bluster impotently at Romana accompanying Jordie as her plus-one. Between complimentary tea and biscuits, they steadfastly ignored the organizers' passive aggressive suggestions to depart the premises for more hospitable environs. Romana offered to knit blankets for the less fortunate on behalf of the local WVS division. Jordie offered to bake scones, a holdover from her childhood penchant for sweets. Their offers were accepted with ill grace. They toasted their victory over cottage pie and wine. Nights like those, Jordie was late home.

Once their children were off from school for winter holiday and their respective shifts at surgery had been further curtailed, they took to driving in the country to enjoy the beauty of the glistening snow covering the formerly green hills. Dawn helped Troy build his forts whilst Madeline bossed Daniel into building a snow army to fight for her honor. The ladies exchanged sensible skirts for trousers and sensible heels for snow boots. When Romana tripped over a gnarled tree branch embedded in the snow, it was Jordie who hauled her up, smacking the wet slush from her backside and checking for injuries. She was all intact. Nevertheless, she held on to Jordie's arm, for the remainder of the trip, primly declaring she needed a big, strong, army woman to defend her from the elements. Ever the gentlewoman, Jordie was happy to oblige.

Jordie and Romana bundled the children up in blankets once they'd become caked in snow and ferried them home to Jordie's warm house for an afternoon thaw and mugs of drinking chocolate sprinkled with cinnamon and nutmeg.

They got into the habit of completing their weekly shopping at the same time. They often argued over who would buy what to be shared so their ration coupons might stretch twice as far. They spoiled their children as much as their resources permitted. They spoiled each other more, regularly swapping small tokens without explanation. Romana embroidered Jordie a shawl to wear with her finest silk dress.  Jordie unearthed a bottle of fifteen-year-old wine stored for safekeeping in a family friend's bomb shelter. She presented it to Romana tied in a bow.

The day Veronica refused to acknowledge Jordie after she espied her browsing the cereal aisle at Romana's side, Jordie considered their friendship void. They each knew where they stood. Jordie had made her choice, she chose Romana; she stood by it.

At home, Elliot offered no complaints regarding the treasure trove of homemade meals Jordie would plate up for dinner when he returned from work in the evenings. Never mind that Jordie herself was busy with errands or even her own turns in theatre during the day, she was playing the role he wanted her to play. Jordie wasn't prepared to argue or to call things off right away, she wasn't that chockfull of courage just yet, so she simply enjoyed the cessation of hostilities and passed on Elliot's compliments when she and Romana met up again.

On one of the rare days Romana was summoned into surgery, this time to handle a spate of vascular complications suffered by returning soldiers, Jordie turned to her former WTS comrades for a distraction. She hadn't spoken to them in months and it was good to touch base from time to time. Good to remember where she'd come from to appreciate where she was.

Like Veronica most had done their best to reacclimate to civilian life. They had put what they had seen behind them to pick up where they'd left off with their families. Some had lost husbands, others children. Some had left parts of themselves on the front lines, literal and figurative. There was plenty to rebuild.

Jordie appeared at former Captain Kelly Carter's home bearing contraband long-necks and a covered plate of Romana's glory buns. The door was answered by one the woman herself. She looked much the same out of uniform that she had looked in: haunted but capable. Bearing the weight of the world.

"Speak of the devil..." said Kelly, blowing her umber hair out of her eyes.

"Sorry?"

"It's been months since you showed your face at the weekly card games."

"Elliot doesn't like it that I gamble, so I've cut back." Elliot still had his weekly gathering at the gentlemen's social club, to say nothing of his after-work get-togethers with the boys. Jordie didn't throw up a fuss. She wanted to keep the peace in her home for as long as she could knowing she'd be the one to shatter it once and for all.

"Still taking orders? That doesn't sound like the Jordie I remember from Normandy."

"Bristol isn't Normandy, I haven't got a bayonet to fight my battles. I'm trying diplomacy on for size." She followed Kelly inside and greeted the others with hugs and updates on the kids. Of Elliot she spoke little. Her head was full of someone else, as was her heart. They were dealing her into the next hand of poker when she could hold back no longer. "I've been getting to know a fellow medic, a civvie surgeon named Romana Gentry."

"I know that name," said another medic, this one named Hugo. Hugo had driven ambulances with Jordie before she'd been plucked from the line to run a hospital when the head surgeon became their most famous casualty.

"She's married to—"

"Edgar Gentry, the head anesthesiologist at Bristol Hospital."

"I believe so."

Kelly and Hugo shared a worried look. "There's a sordid mess in the making. Is that wise, the two of you getting so chummy?"

"Was it wise signing up to join the army in the biggest war the world's ever seen?" Her friend went mum at Jordie's chiding tone. "She's—I don't know, she's kind and doesn't ask the wrong questions. I haven't felt like myself in ages and I feel like she sees me. Isn't that worth something?"

"Elliot won't like it," another remarked. Sandra. She'd lost her ex-husband Henry out there. He'd been a morale officer, a conscientious objector pressed into service. He had died bringing joy. That was her cross to bear. Elliot's disapproval of Jordie's lifestyle and many of her personal choices was well-known. Where he'd been drafted, Jordie had gone voluntarily. Elliot hadn't forgiven her for leaving their children to his mother's care, then, and when a skirmish led to his injury and an early medical discharge, he'd only grown more resentful of her commission. Jordie battened down the hatches on her swelling discomfiture. This was her life, she was entitled to defend it.

"Elliot has already explained his feelings, at length. He doesn't know her like I do. She isn't the kind of trouble he thinks she is." She wasn't 'unnatural' the way Elliot saw her. There was nothing unnatural about Romana. She was effortlessly good in all the ways Jordie had to try to be. Anything but perfect, temperamental, teasing, and grudge-holding. Prone to excess drink. Given to lie by omission. A flirt to the utmost, fit to tempt a saint. Jordie was anything but saintly.

"It could be seen as taking sides, you against Edgar. Might cause strife on the home front," Sandra opined, the opposite of helpful as the dealer was prompting them to raise or call.

"It's nothing I'm going to concern myself with." Not in mixed company, nor aloud. She was taking a stand. It was friendship with Romana over almost anything. "I'm sorry I've gone AWOL, you lot. It's, I don't know, nice having someone who isn't always wanting me to be somebody else."

"Be careful," Kelly advised, all seriousness as Jordie trounced her with a royal flush.

"I'm always careful."

They were famous last words.