Court Martial (4 page)

“Good! He’s breathing again!” The doctor held the oxygen mask tightly against Spencer’s face as the soldier breathed rapidly.
“Now he’s starting to hyperventilate! This is crazy!”

“Not as crazy as what’s going on inside his head.” The psychiatrist spoke from the foot of Spencer’s bed, where he could observe
his patient and not be in the way of the medical team.

“You keep Mother Kaa away from me!” Spencer’s voice rose and then lowered. “What do you want from me now, Sweet Bitch?”

The psychiatrist recognized the nickname of the female North Vietnamese lieutenant who had operated the prisoner-of-war camp
that Spencer and Colonel Garibaldi had been assigned to. Spencer had refused to talk about the camp, but Colonel Garibaldi
had given them a complete briefing, including the torture where she used the python.

“Where’s your little turncoat today?” Spencer sneered at his hallucinated tormentor while the nurse next to his bed wiped
his face with an ice-water-soaked pad. She was worried and it showed on her face. Spencer had been doing so well lately.

“James… Who else would I be talking about?” Spencer answered someone in his delirium. “I told you that I would
never
do that! One traitor per POW camp… that’s all, Sweet Bitch!” Spencer groaned and arched his back on the bed as if he had
just received a blow.
“Ugh!”
His body went totally limp. One of the doctors took his pulse as they hooked him up to a monitoring unit.

The nurse looked over at the psychiatrist, fear showing in her eyes. He closed his notebook and shook his head slowly. “He’s
exhausted and needs some fluid put back in his system.” He nodded toward the IV stand and the wide strap they were tying Spencer’s
arm down with so that he wouldn’t tear out the needle when he thrashed around on his bed. The psychiatrist smiled his reassurance.
“He’s going to be fine, Mary.”

The fear was still in her eyes. She just couldn’t lose him now that she had finally found a man she could love. Tears came
with the thought, even though she knew it wouldn’t look very professional, but she didn’t give a damn.

The scene changed in Spencer’s mind. He felt the red-hot end of a cigar against the tender foreskin of his penis. The scream
coming from deep within his chest startled even the old emergency-room doctor who was working over him. Spencer tried reaching
for his crotch with his tied-down hand and then changed and used his free hand to protect his groin from the hallucinatory
attack. He screamed again in a high-pitched adolescent’s tenor and pleaded, “Stop! Please! Stop… I won’t do it again… I promise!”
And then Spencer started crying like a small boy.

The psychiatrist ground his teeth together and watched the young soldier relive whatever had caused those scars that covered
the insides of his thighs and the end of his penis. All the doctors had agreed that the scar tissue was too old to have been
caused while he was a prisoner of war. The psychiatrist had tried a number of times to get Spencer to talk about the scars,
but on each occasion the soldier had told him bluntly that it was none of his damn business. Spencer didn’t realize the pressure
that had been placed on the psychiatrist by the hospital commander to find out as much as they could about the young Army
corporal before the President of the United States presented him with the Medal of Honor.

Spencer hadn’t yet pieced together his private room and all the extra care he had been receiving during his stay. Even Garibaldi
had been released from the hospital, and he had been a POW for years

The psychiatrist knew a lot more about Spencer than the soldier realized. He had access to all the help he needed in gathering
information on the boy—even from the FBI and the CIA. Spencer was a very hot property, and the President and the senior military
leadership were very interested in his recovery.

The nurse couldn’t take any more and left the room, followed by another of Spencer’s heartrending screams. She nearly knocked
down the head nurse when she shoved open the door.

“What’s going on in there, Mary? My God! What are they doing to that boy?” The gray-haired colonel had never heard a grown
man scream like that before and she had been around a long time.”

“They’re not hurting him. He’s having a severe malaria relapse. Would you cover for me a little while?” The young nurse shook
her head and rushed down the hall away from room 131.

“Oh… that dear, dear child.” The head nurse entered the room to replace Mary.

Spencer lowered the top half of his body down between the two chairs and grimaced when he felt the pain as he tried to rise
again. “Forty!” The word hissed out between his clenched teeth and he dropped down to the polished tile floor.

“You aren’t supposed to exercise until the doctor tells you it’s all right.”

Spencer inhaled deeply and looked out the window. “I’ll turn into a wimp and wear my hair in a ponytail before these hippie
doctors let me work out.”

Mary set the glass down on the table next to Spencer’s bed; then walked up behind and helped him to his feet. She laid her
hands on his sweaty shoulders and rubbed them in small circles. “You smell good.” She kissed his back.

Spencer turned around and hugged her against his wet chest. The top inch of his hospital pajama bottoms was soaked with sweat.
“I’ve got to take a shower.”

“Would you like me to join you?” Mary teased.

“Sure…” Spencer started unbuttoning her uniform.

“Spencer! Stop that! Dr. Martin is coming to see you!” She struggled with his hand. “Spencer! I’ll be court-martialed for
promiscuous conduct with an
enlisted
man!”

“Don’t play with what you can’t handle.”

“Spencer! The doctor
is
coming… any minute now!” She felt a warm glow in all of her erogenous zones at the same time.

“Who’s getting court-martialed?” The lieutenant colonel stepped into the private room.

Mary blushed and Spencer answered for her. “My nurse is afraid that she’s spending too much time with me and is ignoring her
other patients.”

“She’s too good a nurse to court-martial,” the Army psychiatrist complimented the nurse. He knew that a love affair was developing
between the two in spite of the age difference. Spencer was seventeen—almost eighteen, and she was a very young-looking twenty-one,
graduating a year and a half ahead of her class. “But there is going to be a court-martial that you might be interested in…”
the lieutenant colonel added.

Spencer paused in the doorway of his bathroom. “Whose?”

“Special Fourth Class Mohammed James… Does the name ring a bell?” The psychiatrist noticed the tendons bulge out on the hand
Spencer held against the doorjamb.

“You know damn well it does.” Barnett untied the drawstring of his blue-green hospital pajamas and let the loose-fitting pants
drop to the floor. He used the toes on his right foot to flip the garment up to his hand. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“I’ll wait.” The doctor’s voice sounded very patient.

“It’s going to be a
very
long shower.”

“That’s fine. Take your time.” The lieutenant colonel looked over at the nurse. “Would you mind bringing me a cup of coffee
on your way back with his clean pajamas?”

Mary nodded and left the room. She sensed that Spencer didn’t like the psychiatrist.

Spencer took his time in the shower and brushed his teeth and shaved while he let the water run in the shower stall. He had
been in the bathroom over a half hour before he opened the door with a towel wrapped around his waist. “Did the nurse bring
me some clothes?”

The doctor looked up from the magazine he had been reading and nodded toward the neatly folded hospital pajamas lying on the
foot of the bed. Spencer walked over and picked them up. He started pulling the towel away from his waist and then changed
his mind and went back into the bathroom to change. Normally he wasn’t shy, but the psychiatrist’s eyes were always trying
to penetrate; they were nosy eyes.

“Take your time, Spencer. This is a good article I’m reading.” The psychiatrist knew how to play the game also.

Spencer looked at his reflection in the mirror and flexed his jaw muscles. He hadn’t been broken yet, and some mighty powerful
people had tried. He opened the door too fast and stepped out of the small bathroom. “So! What brings you around here today?”

“First, let’s talk about the court-martial.” The doctor looked up at Spencer over the top of his glasses, which had slipped
down his nose. “What do you think about James’s court-martial?”

Spencer went over and opened the window. It was getting very stuffy in the room. “Fine with me. He was a traitor.”

“Well, that’s what the court-martial is for... to see if he was a traitor.”

Spencer dropped down in a chair near the window and looked out. “He
is
a traitor.”

“Hmm…”

“What the fuck are you humming about!” The anger boiled out of Spencer.

The psychiatrist flashed an angry look at the soldier. “Try to remember that I’m a lieutenant colonel… okay?”

“Right,
sir.”

The medical doctor with the extra years of psychology realized that he had just screwed up with his patient. “Well, not
that
much of a lieutenant colonel.”

“Make up
your
mind what you want to be…
sir.”
Spencer grinned. “You’re confusing me.”

“We can’t have that, can we?” The lieutenant colonel smiled. “Why don’t you just call me Colonel Martin?”

“Fine with me, sir. You can call me Corporal Barnett.” Spencer was tiring of the mind game the doctor was playing. “Look,
I’ve got to take a nap.

“Sorry, Corporal Barnett, but we’ve still got some things to talk about.”

“Like what?”

“Some things you talked about during your malaria attack last week.”

“Look, Colonel Martin…” Spencer’s voice filled with anger. “What I talk about when I’m sick, I can’t help, and I can’t help
it if a bunch of
very
sick people sit around my bed and listen in on what I’m saying… that’s not my fault. I don’t want to be here and I don’t
want
you
to be here.” Spencer went to the windowsill, hopped up on it, and looked out. He leaned as far out of the window as he could,
holding on to the bottom of the wooden frame.

“You know it’s against regulations to do that, Spencer.” The psychiatrist lit a cigarette and rested his head against the
back of the chair. He waited until Spencer came back into the room before continuing. “I’m not spying on you. I’m here to
help you put some things back together again.”

“Oh? Like what?” Spencer sighed. “I feel fine.”

“General Garibaldi told us a quite a few things about what went on in your POW camp, and quite frankly we’re a little worried
about what it might have done to you mentally.” The psychiatrist inhaled a lungful of smoke and paused.

“Mentally I’m fine.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” The doctor exhaled.

“Okay… what do you want to talk about?”

“The snake.”

“The snake…” Spencer placed his index finger against his bottom lip and looked up at the ceiling. “The snake. Let’s see… the
snake. Oh yes… you mean that huge motherfucking python? The one the prison commander would use to scare the shit out of us
with?
That
snake?”

The psychiatrist nodded.

“Well…
that
snake was very big, over
thirty feet
long.” Spencer looked at the doctor to see if he believed him. “Really! Ask Colonel Garibaldi.”

“He’s a major general now,” the psychiatrist corrected Spencer.

“I know, but he said that I can call him Colonel as long as I want to… it’s a little thing us POWs have. You know—a mental
block
or something like that.”

“General Garibaldi has confirmed that the snake was well over thirty feet long.”

“I know that. I just didn’t want you to think I was exaggerating.” Spencer smiled.

“So tell me about the snake.”

“I just told you. It was big.”

“How did the NVA use the snake to torture people?”

“They put the people in the snake’s cage overnight.”

“That was torture?” The psychiatrist was trying to get Spencer to talk about his experience in the cage.

“You are one
dumb
motherfucking colonel!” Spencer got up and pulled open his room door. “Get out of here!”

“Sorry, Spencer… Corporal Bamett, but I’m calling the shots today. I’ll leave when
I’m
finished talking.”

Spencer slammed the door shut, sending a loud echo down the tiled hallway.

“Come back here and sit down. You’re acting like a spoiled brat.”

Spencer took a seat again on the window ledge and wrapped his arms around one of his legs. He rested his chin on his knee
and looked down at the free people walking in one of the hospital’s large parking lots.

The psychiatrist knew that Spencer wasn’t going to cooperate and talk openly to him so he tried changing his tactics. “Answer
my questions, Corporal.”

Spencer kept staring out the window. He felt the old wall inside him begin to close its gates to the outside world. Mary had
opened them for him, but this doctor was closing them again.

“Did Specialist James take part in torturing you while you were a prisoner?” The doctor’s voice sounded like a tin echo.

It took Spencer so long to answer that the doctor was about ready to ask another question. “Yes.”

“Did Lieutenant Van Pao beat you with a bamboo rod?”

“Yes.”

“Did they bury you in a pit with a dead Montagnard child?”

The pause was longer. “Yes.”

“Did Specialist James admit to you that he killed white soldiers in combat?”

“Yes.”

“Did Specialist James take part in torturing you?’

“Yes.” Spencer squeezed his leg and bit down on his knee.

“Does any of this bother you?”

“No.”

The doctor sighed. “Spencer, please cooperate with me. I’m here to help you!”

“I thought we were going to call each other by our military ranks, sir.”