The Healer's War (24 page)

"He'd just sell it on the black market," Tony said.

I started to swing on him.

"Okay, okay."

"I'm sorry. You're right. But he doesn't have any place to go or any chance."

"You could say that about half of Vietnam."

"Yeah, well, half of Vietnam doesn't call me mamasan. Tony, I can't let him die like That, I just can't. Shit. If only Marge were around."

"Well, hell, if she's the answer to everything, why not take the kid down to her?"

"I can't. I-"

"I could. I go down there every once in a while. We could go down and visit your friend and you could drop the kid off."

"Is that-I mean, is it okay to carry a Vietnamese civilian?"

"I do it all the time." He grinned. "Part of my job description, babe, remember? And why do you care about okay? You're the one who needs to get around regs now. just tell me when to pick you up."

"Well, I couldn't go-I mean, I'm on duty."

"You could go after, couldn't you? You're head nurse now. Rewrite the schedule. Give yourself a day off. Nobody will know. I'll have you back day after tomorrow night, and if not, hell, what can they do, send you to Vietnam?"

"But couldn't you just find Marge once you get there and get her to admit Ahn?"

"Baby, I don't give a shit about Ahn, or Marge. I'm in this for ulterior motives, remember? I want my best girl back."

"Tony, you're married," I said wearily. "And you lied to me about it."

"Well, so what? She's not here and you are. Is it a deal or not?"

That's face flashed in front of me again and Ahn's sad, knowing eyes as Tony's scent smoked up my nostrils and his hand brushed my cheek again.

"What you say, babe? Deal? Huh?"

"Okay."

"Seal it with a kiss?" His mouth came close to mine and his arms slid up mine.

"Tony, believe it or not, I'm just not in the mood right now."

He grinned. "I bic, baby. That's okay. I know a guy in Quang Ngai I can kick out of his hooch for the night. See you tomorrow."

'Tony?"

"Yeah?"

"You think this will work?"

"Sho 'nuer, baby. No sweat."

The atmosphere on the ward the next morning was as dismal as the weather. Navy-gray clouds rolled in from the South China Sea like tons of concrete, dropping rain in thick splats. The din of rain on a tin roof can be rather pleasant if you're inside. But combine the din with the discordant notes of those same drops plonking into basins and bedpans inside your shelter and the cursing of personnel tripping over the basins, and it's too noisy to think.

Sergeant Baker glowered at me when I came in and Voorhees declined to meet my eyes. I made old Xe's bed with him in it that morning. He was still asleep when I brought his medication, but his respirations were loud enough to be heard from several feet away over the rain. His chest sounded like a rattle. Ahn sat in bed and watched, his eyes as round as if he'd never seen anyone sick or hurt before. I thought again how quickly he had begun to act like a normal child. I wondered if I had done him any favors by convincing him that he could afford the luxury of a childhood, however brief.

The sheets I bunched under the old man were damp. Ahn slid out of bed, grabbed his crutches, and helped me. Watching Mai and the corpsmen, he'd learned to make hospital corners as sharp as any probationer's, and while he tucked, I rolled Xe toward me. When I rolled him onto his back again, his eyes were open-one of them, anyway. The other lid drooped heavily over the eye and the side of his mouth tugged at the corner. I grabbed a blood pressure cuff, but there was no particular change. At some point, while he slept, Xe had had a stroke.

It could have happened to anybody his age, but combined with his amputations and the rattle in his lungs, it was ominous.

"Aw, shit," I muttered, half to myself, half to Ahn, who had moved to my side and was watching the old man as if he might explode. "Now I have to call Krupman in early." I couldn't help but take a hard look at Ahn.

"No, mamasan, no call bac si. He cat ca dao papasan, same-same Ba That, Mamasan, you make papasan numbah one."

"No can do, Ahn. Sin loi," I said, and started for the phone as Ahn continued his protests in ever-shriller Vietnamese. Xe's right hand curled over his chest like a claw, but his left one whipped out and grabbed my arm in a viselike grip.

He moved his mouth, but nothing save a dribble of spittle emerged.

"What did he say, Ahn?" I asked. "Does he need anything?"

"Papasan say he fini pretty quick."

"Give me a break, kid. You sound like Krupman now."

The right hand stayed hovering over the chest, but the left one steered my hand to the old man's neck and the theng, and my fingers found the amulet. Together we steered it back to its place over his sternum, and his good hand clamped mine over his bad one and the amulet. A violet-gray light oozed from him like a slowly spreading hematoma. I started to check his pupils, but suddenly life-real, knowing, painful life-leaped back into his good eye like a revived candle flame and focused on me. I felt as though we had clasped hands across a deep crevasse. I had seen, felt, such a thing from patients before, when they prepared to die, especially those who couldn't talk-this is who I am, remember me, it said. But never before with the bruising strength of will that flowed from Xe. In those eyes were my grandfather, great-grandmother, my favorite teachers at their wisest, my mother and father, Charlie Heron as I had last seen him, and another, stronger presence, a man who had been young and whom the war had made old, a man who had been even more than he was now-much more-and who was finally losing what was left. Those eyes held me fast, and then the power and the personality drained from them until only a stagnant pool was left in the good eye, which wearily closed for a moment.

I hugged Ahn close to me with my free hand. Papasan breathed a deep sigh and opened his eye to fix it on us. He seemed puzzled for a moment, then the side of his mouth that was not drooping downward twitched up. His good hand nudged mine toward his chin.

"Xe want you take his joolry, mamasan. Same-same last time."

I rallied from the impact of that compelling stare, which had made me feel almost that I was Xe instead of me. I couldn't stop to think about it until after I'd taken his pulse, called the doctor, done what I could to preserve his life. I tried to untangle my hand from his so I could take his pulse. Refusing to release my hand, however, Xe carried it with him as he nudged at his amulet again. I had to take a set of vital signs before Krupman arrived, so I did as Xe insisted and removed the amulet. If Xe died, my logical side insisted I'd save it for Heron. I was just kidding myself-I knew there was more to it than that-but for Xe it was enough that I took it. He didn't insist I wear it this time, and as soon as I stuck it in my pocket, he relaxed.

Krupman had barely begun his examination when Xe expired.

"Well, Miss McCulley," Krupman said, "looks like your hangover from your little toot last night prevented you from giving decent care even to your pet gooks. He's dead. Perhaps if I'd been called sooner-"

"If you'd been called sooner you could have sent him to Province to die, right?" I demanded.

"That's it!" he said. "I've put up with you about long enough, young lady. You're earning yourself an Article 14."

I bit back what I would have said if I could have afforded to spend my afternoon at attention in Blaylock's office.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," I said more meekly than I would have thought possible. "But I called you as soon as I could. I didn't want to leave the patient alone." Yeah, Doctor. Unlike you, I care about my patients.

"I want those other people out of here by tomorrow morning. And I'm discharging the amputee kid."

I didn't say anything. I couldn't agree with him or he'd be alarmed, and since I already knew what I was going to do, I had no reason to disagree with him. So I shut up.

"Lieutenant?"

'Sir?"

"I mean it. I expect these patients to be gone when I return in the morning."

"Yes, sir," I said, and did busy work on the other side until he left the ward to go to surgery and heal the patients who deserved treatment.

Tricking Voorhees wasn't necessary. Fortunately, Sergeant Baker had a long ward masters' meeting and a farewell party for the command sergeant major of the hospital. So I refrained from telling the corpsmen about the transfer until the end of the shift. Then I gave the fastest report in nursing history and announced that I was going to ride along in the Jeep. But as Voorhees and I rolled Ahn's wheelchair out the door of the E.R. toward the motor pool, Tony landed. He cut it a little close to suit me, but he was there.

"Oh, wait a minute, Gus, will you?" I said. "Tony will want to say good-bye to Ahn."

I had to shout over the ripple of the blades. The spin and wind of them blew rainwater everywhere and lifted my poncho up over my face.

"What's going on, L.T.?" Voorhees shouted, trailing me to the pad. I helped Ahn out of the wheelchair and handed him his crutch. I didn't want to get Voorhees in trouble, but then, it wouldn't be so great if he reported me as AWOL the minute we left the pad.

I leaned over and cupped my hands to the corpsman's ear and shouted,

"We're taking Ahn to Major Canon in Quang Ngai."

He shouted into my ear, "Krupman will have your ass."

I shouted back, "No way. He just wants the kid gone, bic?"

Voorhees seemed to think this over for a split second, then pulled back and gave me a wide grin and a thumbs-up sign. "All right."

I climbed aboard the chopper, pulling Ahn in after me. Lightfoot, Tony's crew chief, handed me a pair of earphones, and the avalanche of noise around me dulled to a vibrating thunder. A splatter of CB-style radio talk passed between Tony and the ground and then we lifted off the pad like a pregnant hummingbird.

"Welcome aboard, babe." Tony's distorted voice crackled into the mike.

"Want to sit up front? It's more comfortable."

"Nah, I'd better stay back here with the kid in case he gets scared."

"A gook kid? Scared of a little chopper ride? You gotta be shittin'

me." But he didn't repeat the offer. Lightfoot knelt by the open door, watching the country go by. Gusts of rain swept in and I tugged my poncho tight around both Ahn and me for warmth.

Tony kept to the coastline at first, the sky drab pewter, the beach pale, the rain and sea shiny, and the jungle a brilliant ribbon of variegated green. Perfect squares of fishnets were suspended above the water all along the coast, isolated from the shoreline. I wondered how they caught fish in them. Ahn kept shouting curious questions at Lightfoot, who grinned and pointed at things.

I settled down amid the olive-drab-painted metal and webbing. Whew. So far so good. We were getting away with it. A little rush of excitement and anxiety zipped through my nervous system, only to be replaced by depression. Out of all those people I'd cared for all those months, I could save just one. Maybe. Xinh gone, That gone, and now Xe. When that guy said war was hell, he wasn't just whistling Dixie. I was racking up a body count a marine would envy. Ahn flipped water from a fold in my poncho and smoothed it across my lap, before laying his head in it and falling asleep.

Seeing little but sea, most of my hearing blunted by the roar in my earphones and the occasional staticity chatter, I soon grew sleepy, too.

Some time later, Tony's voice crackled in my ear. "Hey, babe?"

"Yeah?" I mumbled into the mouthpiece.

"You know that guy you told me to ask about-Heron?"

"Yes," I said, a little more alert. Heron would want to know about Xe.

He'd be glad I saved the amulet. Even if he didn't want to use it himself, he'd know who should have it.

"I kinda found out and I kinda didn't. He's off in the field somewhere, but the mission is classified, no contact. Sorry 'bout that."

And after another minute, "Babe? You okay?"

"Yeah, sure, I'm fine, Tony. The old man died earlier today, did I tell you that? I just wish Heron could have been around." I fingered the cloth of my pants pocket where the amulet lay. The headphones went staticity-silent for a moment, and then Tony was humming "The 59th Street Bridge Song."

I was sleeping again when we got hit. I felt the chopper lurch and snapped awake, thinking for a moment we'd landed. It was too noisy to hear the round striking the bird. But when my eyes flew open, I saw Ahn's head raise up for a split second. His eyes glittered like a trapped animal's then his skinny little arms covered his burr crew cut and he curled into a protective ball.

The round hadn't wakened Lightfoot and I thought it should have. Surely when Tony started dodging bullets the crew chief would have duties. And sure enough, Tony's voice called, "Tonto? Hey there, kemo pabe-Ben?"

and he started to turn around. But I realized it was too dark for him to see anything and too dangerous for him to let go of the controls, so I unbuckled myself and crawled over to the crew chief, shaking his foot to wake him, as I had learned to do with the combat troops.

The foot flopped and I noticed that one of Lightfoot's arms was dangling out the door. I thought we ought to close that sucker anyway. I started to tug on him, and then I noticed the blood on his chest. I dragged him in and felt for a pulse, found none. I didn't expect to.

"Lightfoot's hit," I told Tony. "I think he's had it."

"Well, do CPR, for Chrissakes, while I try to find Quang Ngai.........

I was way ahead of him, working on Lightfoot even as I tried to remember what I'd been drilled on with a plastic doll but had never had to do to a human being-clear the airway, tilt the head back, pinch his nose, take a deep breath, and cover his mouth with mine. His mouth smelled sour, and when my finger came away from feeling for the airway, it was smeared with blood. I breathed in anyway, and pumped on his chest, but all that did was force more blood out the mouth and the wound. God, Lightfoot, you could give a girl a little help here, I thought, but I knew I was working on a dead man.