The Aviatirx's Dawn: A Wasp Story
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 3: The Washout
That evening at dinner, Bay A met a new face.
“Is this seat taken?”
Ellie looked up to find a woman about her age standing with a tray, looking hopeful and slightly desperate. She had mousy brown hair, nervous eyes, and the kind of tired slump to her shoulders that came from too many bad days in a row.
“It’s all yours,” Pearl said, gesturing to the empty spot. “I’m Pearl. This is Ellie, Sofia, Jackie, Marta, Ginny, and Hazel.”
“Ruth Kowalski. Bay C.” Ruth sat down and immediately began eating with the focused intensity of someone who hadn’t had time for lunch. “God, what a day.”
“What happened?” Ginny asked.
“Failed my aerobatics checkride. Again.” Ruth stabbed her potatoes with unnecessary force. “My instructor says I’m too timid. Says I don’t commit to the maneuvers. But every time I try to be more aggressive, I either stall or overstress the aircraft.”
“Who’s your instructor?” Marta asked.
“Lieutenant Patterson.”
Several of them winced. Patterson had a reputation for being impossible to please—high standards, zero tolerance for mistakes, and a tendency to wash out students for infractions that other instructors would overlook.
“That’s rough,” Sofia said sympathetically. “Patterson failed me twice on steep turns before I finally passed.”
“How many checkrides have you failed?” Jackie asked Ruth carefully.
“This was my third.” Ruth’s voice was small. “One more and I’m out.”
The table went quiet. Everyone knew the rule: four failed checkrides and you washed out. No appeals, no second chances. You were on a train home within twenty-four hours.
“What specifically is he saying you’re doing wrong?” Hazel asked.
“Everything.” Ruth laughed bitterly. “My entries are weak. My recoveries are imprecise. My altitude control is sloppy. He’s not wrong—I know I’m not as good as most of you. But I’m trying. I’m trying so damn hard.”
“Let us help,” Pearl said. “Come by Bay A tonight. We’ll go over the maneuvers, figure out what you need to work on.”
“Really?” Ruth looked like she might cry. “You’d do that?”
“We’re all in this together,” Ellie said. And she meant it. The competition was fierce, but they weren’t competing against each other—they were competing against the standards, against the instructors who wanted to thin the herd, against a program that seemed designed to break them.
That night, Bay A became a classroom.
They’d pushed the footlockers aside to create space, and now Ruth stood in the center while the seven women of Bay A coached her through aerobatic procedures.
“Okay, snap roll to the right,” Marta said, playing the role of instructor. “Talk me through it.”
Ruth took a breath. “Level flight, full power. Pull back on the stick to increase angle of attack, then—”
“No,” Marta interrupted. “You’re already wrong. You don’t pull back first. That’ll cause you to balloon up before you snap. What’s the first step?”
Ruth’s face crumpled. “I ... I thought—”
“Don’t think. Know. What’s the procedure?”
“I don’t remember!”
“Then you’re going to fail again.” Marta’s voice was hard. “Ruth, you can’t guess at this stuff. Procedures exist for a reason. If you don’t know them cold, you’ll kill yourself or someone else.”
“Marta,” Pearl said gently. “Maybe ease up a little?”
“No.” Marta crossed her arms. “She needs to hear this. Ruth, why are you here?”
“To ... to fly?”
“Why?”
“Because I want to serve my country. Because I want to prove women can do this.”
“Then prove it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and learn the damn procedures.” Marta pulled out a manual. “Snap roll. Read it. Memorize it. Then we’ll practice until you can do it in your sleep.”
For the next two hours, they drilled Ruth mercilessly. Marta called out maneuvers, Ruth talked through procedures, and whenever she hesitated or got something wrong, they made her start over.
It was brutal. But by 2200, Ruth could recite every aerobatic procedure without hesitation.
“Better,” Marta said. It was the closest thing to praise she gave. “Now you just have to execute them in the air. Which is the hard part.”
“I know,” Ruth said quietly. “Thank you. All of you. I know you didn’t have to help me.”
“Yes, we did,” Ginny said, giving Ruth a quick hug. “Because when one of us succeeds, we all succeed.”
After Ruth left, returning to Bay C, the women of Bay A prepared for bed in thoughtful silence.
“Do you think she’ll make it?” Sofia asked, pulling on her pajamas.
“No,” Hazel said bluntly.
“Hazel!” Ginny protested.
“I’m being honest. She’s scared. And fear makes you tentative. You can’t fly aerobatics tentatively—you either commit or you don’t. And Ruth doesn’t commit.”
“Maybe she just needs more time,” Jackie said.
“She doesn’t have more time. She has one checkride left.” Hazel’s voice wasn’t unkind, just factual. “I hope I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.”
The next morning, Ruth was absent from formation.
Ellie noticed immediately—Bay C was one person short, and there was a tense, subdued quality to the women standing in Ruth’s place.
After formation, one of the Bay C women caught up with Bay A. Her name was Dorothy, and her eyes were red-rimmed.
“Ruth’s in the infirmary,” Dorothy said. “She got sick last night. Couldn’t keep anything down. They’re saying it’s stress.”
“Is she going to be okay?” Pearl asked.
“Physically, yeah. But she’s supposed to have her re-check today. If she can’t fly, it counts as a failure. And that’s number four.”
“That’s not fair,” Ginny said. “She’s sick. They can’t wash her out for being sick.”
“They can and they will.” Dorothy’s voice was bitter. “The rules don’t care about fair.”
Ruth flew her checkride that afternoon.
Ellie was on the flight line when Ruth’s aircraft took off. She watched it climb, watched it enter the aerobatics practice area, watched it begin the maneuvers. From the ground, everything looked fine—clean rolls, smooth loops, precise recoveries.
Maybe she’ll make it, Ellie thought. Maybe we helped enough.
But when Ruth’s aircraft landed thirty minutes later, Ellie could see Lieutenant Patterson’s body language from across the ramp. Stiff. Angry. He climbed out and walked away without a word, leaving Ruth sitting alone in the cockpit.
Ruth didn’t move for a long time.
Finally, she climbed out, removed her parachute with shaking hands, and walked slowly toward the administration building. Her shoulders were shaking. She was crying.
“Oh no,” Sofia breathed. She was standing next to Ellie, watching. “Oh God, no.”
That evening, Ruth came to Bay A one last time.
She was wearing civilian clothes—a simple dress and cardigan—and carrying a small suitcase. Her eyes were red and swollen, but she’d stopped crying. Now she just looked empty.
“I wanted to say goodbye,” she said. “And thank you for trying to help.”
“What happened?” Pearl asked gently.
“I froze.” Ruth’s voice was flat. “We were doing a loop, and right at the top—inverted, looking straight down at the ground—I just froze. Couldn’t remember what to do next. Patterson had to take the controls. He said if an instructor has to save you from your own incompetence, that’s an automatic failure.”
“That’s harsh,” Jackie said.
“That’s the standard.” Ruth managed a weak smile. “He’s not wrong. If I freeze like that in combat, or during a ferry run, I could die. Or kill someone else. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”
“That’s not true,” Ginny protested. “You’re a good pilot! You just had one bad moment!”
“One bad moment is all it takes.” Ruth set down her suitcase and pulled out a small envelope. “This is for you. All of you. Letters to my family, in case ... well, in case something happens to you and you need someone to know your story. That’s what we do, right? Tell each other’s stories?”
Pearl took the envelope with careful hands. “We’ll keep it safe. And Ruth—you tried. That matters.”
“Does it?” Ruth’s voice cracked. “I failed. And now I get to go home and tell everyone I wasn’t good enough. That I washed out. That I couldn’t cut it.”
“You lasted seven weeks,” Hazel said quietly. “Seven weeks longer than most women would even attempt. That’s not nothing.”
“It feels like nothing.” Ruth picked up her suitcase. “There’s a truck taking me to the train station in ten minutes. So this is goodbye.”
They hugged her one by one. Ginny was crying openly. Jackie’s eyes were wet behind her glasses. Even Marta’s expression had softened.
When Ruth walked out of Bay A for the last time, they stood in the doorway and watched her go. Watched her climb into the truck with three other women who’d washed out that day. Watched the truck drive away in a cloud of dust.
“Jesus,” Sofia said finally. “That could have been any of us.”
“It still could be,” Marta said. “We’re not safe yet. None of us are.”
The washout hit Bay A hard.
That night, they were subdued at dinner. Quieter than usual. The mess hall felt oppressive, and everywhere Ellie looked, she saw empty seats—women who’d been there yesterday and were gone today.
“How many have we lost now?” Ginny asked.
“Forty-seven,” Marta said. She was keeping count, had been since day one. “Out of two hundred fourteen. That’s twenty-two percent.”
“Jesus.”
“And we’re only halfway through training.” Marta’s voice was grim. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
Back in Bay A, they tried to study, but no one could concentrate. Finally, Pearl set down her navigation manual.
“We need to talk about this,” she said.
“Talk about what?” Sofia asked.
“About the fact that we’re all terrified. About the fact that Ruth washed out, and it shook all of us, and we’re pretending it didn’t.”
Silence.
Then Jackie spoke up, her voice small: “I almost failed my aerobatics checkride too. Yesterday. I barely passed. And the whole time, I was thinking—this is it. This is where I wash out. This is where it ends.”
“I think that every time I fly,” Ginny admitted. “Every single time. What if today’s the day I screw up? What if today’s the day I’m not good enough?”
“I think that too,” Sofia said. “Even when I pass checkrides, I think—that was luck. Next time, I won’t be lucky.”
Ellie found herself nodding. “I wake up every morning wondering if this is the day they realize I don’t belong here. That I’m just a farm girl who got lucky with a crop duster.”
“I wonder if they’re looking for an excuse to wash me out,” Hazel said quietly. “If they’re grading me harder because of how I look. If one mistake from me is worth three mistakes from someone else.”
They all turned to look at her. It was the most vulnerable thing Hazel had ever said to them.
“Are they?” Jackie asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. But I can’t afford to find out.” Hazel’s expression was carefully neutral. “So I have to be perfect. Which is exhausting. But it’s the only way I stay.”
Marta hadn’t said anything. She was sitting on her bunk, staring at her hands.
“Marta?” Pearl prompted gently.
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