The Summer Garden (118 page)

Was there less return fire, or was Alexander just deaf? No, he wasn’t deaf. He heard his son loud and clear:

“Fuck. Clip, Dad.”

Very soon there would be no more clips.

Richter had been right. Tens of thousands of rounds of ammo was not enough.

Moon Lai had been right. They were willing to lose every man to the last, while Alexander wasn’t willing to lose even one.

He had to hold them off long enough for Anthony to get on the hook. Grabbing his son and pushing him away from the trees, Alexander started backing him slowly out to the small clearing, while he continued to walk backwards, firing into the jungle leaves in three-round bursts. Take that, you motherfuckers. And that. Another three rounds.

“Anthony!” he yelled in desperation over the noise of the blades and his rifle. “Please! Can you just get on the fucking hook? Run, I’m covering you. Run. I’m right behind you.”

“Yes, but who is covering you?”

“The gunner. Tojo from the hook. Go, Antman. Go.” Pushing his son, shoving him with his body, continuing to fire. Finally, reluctantly Anthony went.

How long did Alexander’s mad minute last? Fire on all burners at maximum intensity, at maximum velocity? How many magazines had he gone through, how many grenades? How many rounds did he have left before he ran on empty? Go, Anthony, go. Go, son.

Suddenly Alexander wasn’t running. Just like that. He was standing, firing one second, and the next he didn’t even blink and was on the ground. He wondered if he blanked out, blacked out for a moment, maybe got tired, lay down and didn’t remember. He didn’t know what happened. What the fuck, he said, and tried to get up. He could barely sit up. He felt something bubbling up in his throat. Frowning he looked down—and threw up. Blood poured out of his mouth onto his combat vest, oh no, and instantly he was wheezing for breath. He ripped open his vest, his tunic. Blood was coming out from a hole in his chest. Alexander opened his mouth, but he couldn’t breathe; he was choking. His mouth and nose were full of blood he kept trying to cough out, to clear his breathing passage. He reached behind to feel his back. Bits of his battle fatigues mixed with blood and bone came off on his hand. The fucking round went right through him. Alexander became overwhelmed; his eyes clouded; he didn’t know where his son was, if he was all right, if he was on the hook, where he himself was, where the Sappers were. He didn’t know anything. He couldn’t find his emergency kit, and he couldn’t breathe, and he was seriously fucking bleeding.

And he panicked.

And it was at the moment that he was overpowered with fear and anxiety he could not control that from behind him he heard a soft calm familiar voice, a voice not a face—and as soon as he heard it, he said in his own calm, very loud voice,
No fucking way, no, Tatiana. Get away from me
, and started rummaging wildly for his ruck with blind man’s hands pawing the ground, while her unrelenting voice from behind him blew her breath in his ear and whispered,
Alexander, calm down, slow down, and open your eyes. Just calm down, and open your eyes. And you will see.

He crawled back on his haunches, hoping to find a tree to press his back against and tripped over his ruck! Instantly he stuck his hand inside, pulled out the field dressing kit, and with one fumbling hand, managed to get the pressure bar around his chest and pull the rip cord that tightened automatically. The kits were supposed to be worked one-handed by the wounded: that was their purpose in the field. The pressure bar was better than nothing. He pressed his back against a tree, gasping for breath. Suddenly he saw again—Anthony’s desperate face. I’ve been hit but it’s okay, son, Alexander wanted to say. Please—just get on the fucking hook.

Now he knew what the most important thing was: to get on the hook. Everything else they could fix.

With one hand, Anthony was tying a plastic trench around Alexander’s back and chest, wrapping gauze around him, screaming something, holding him up. Alexander thought he saw Anthony mouth to him:
Close your eyes, Dad, smoke bomb incoming.
Anthony covered Alexander’s mouth and nose with wet gauze, there was a whooshing pop, and suddenly Alexander really couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t see Anthony for all the coal-tar suffocating tear gas around him.

Anthony
lifted
him up—how did he do this, with one arm?—lifted him and ran through the smoke! Oh,
now
he runs. Two hundred pounds on top of him—and now he runs.

Was that dimming sound the rotary blades? And wind? And sudden loud fire? Now that there was no one in the woods but the Sappers—Alexander the last man out—the hook opened some serious fucking smoke from the mounted M-60. And then—finally!—the boy was in the bird.

Alexander saw the gray interior of the chopper, saw Anthony above him, as if his head were in Anthony’s lap, and though he couldn’t breathe at all, he could almost breathe now.

Because his boy was in the bird.

And the bird lifted off, whup-whupped in the air with its rotary wings, tilted once toward earth, once toward the bright sun, and flew away.

Alexander wished he weren’t lying down, but obviously he could not sit up anymore or Ant would have sat him up. Anthony knew how much his father hated lying down. There were gravely tense faces around him, Tojo, Elkins, unfamilar faces, a medic. He was being turned over, something was being pressed to him, done to him, then he was on his back again, his tunic was being torn off. He felt great commotion around him.

But Ant was right above him. In such relief Alexander looked at his son’s injured face, but when he turned his head again and opened wide his eyes, he didn’t see Anthony.

Alexander saw Tatiana.

They stared at each other. Every ocean, every river, every minute they had walked together was in their gaze. He said nothing, and she said nothing. She kneeled by him, her hands on him, on his chest, on his heart, on his lungs that took air in but could not move air out, on his open wound; her eyes were on him, and in her eyes was every block of uncounted, unaccounted-for time, every moment they had lived since June 22, 1941, the day war started for the Soviet Union. Her eyes were filled with everything she felt for him. Her eyes were true.

Alexander didn’t want to see her so
desperately
that he turned his face away, and then he heard her voice.
Shura,
said Tatiana,
you have young sons. You have a baby girl. And I am still so young. I have my whole life still to live. I cannot live another half my life on this earth without my soul. Please. Don’t leave me, Shura.

He heard other things, other voices. His arms were raised, sharp things prickled his forearm, something was dripping in. A sharp thin long thing went in his side, it felt like he was stabbed from his rib straight to his heart with an ice pick. He couldn’t see anything, not even Tatiana. He couldn’t close or open his eyes at all. They were motionless.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kings and Heroes

Heaven

Heaven, as it turned out, was noisy.

Clattery, clangy, fussy, strident. All accompanied by a nearly constant high-pitched detestable whistling very close to his head. And every time it whistled, the ice pick went right back in his heart. Heaven had unpleasant medicinal smells. Was it formaldehyde, to replace the lost blood in his veins and to preserve him as an organic specimen? Was it old decaying blood? Other bodily fluids? Was it bleach to cover it all up? Whatever it was, it was pungent and dreadful. He had always imagined heaven as a place like Tania’s Luga, where in the chirping serene dawn of tomorrow, someone caressed his head, while his hands braided Tania’s hair, who sat between his legs and murmured jokes in her harp of a voice. That was heaven. Perhaps maybe some comfort food in front of him. Blinchiki. Rum over plantains. Maybe a comfort smell or two. Ocean brine. Nicotine. Oh yes! Nicotine. Sitting, smoking, looking at the ocean, hearing the waves break, while behind him in the house, warm bread rose in the oven. Now
that
was heaven.
Rai
. And then perhaps other things, too, rooted in the carnal, yet elevated to celestial. Eros and Venus all in one.

But here in this heaven, not only were there none of these things but clearly the things that were here resembled more a mountain of purgatory than a meadow of serenity.
Ad.
There was cacophony everywhere and grating sounds: of slamming doors, of creaking windows, of hurrying feet. Of things being dragged and scraped on linoleum floors, of metal pans falling, spilling, of loud language accompanying them like carnage, coming from irritated, frustrated throats. “Oh hell! Can’t you just once watch where you’re going! How many times do I have to tell you! Look what you did! Who the hell is going to clean that shit up?” Flying flapping screeching bats.

He couldn’t move his body. He could taste nothing. He couldn’t open his eyes. All he could do was smell and hear. And his senses of smell and hearing told him he was not in the Elysian Fields. What had happened to him? He was uncorked, and condemned for eternity to listen to scurrilous inmates fight over bedpans. Perhaps there was some cholla nearby, too. Maybe they could stuff it in their throats as they fought over who was going to clean what. Was this his Temple of Fame? Is this how he was buried with kings and heroes?

And then—oh, no! It just never stops. More loud noises, only now a bitter argument. Alexander sighed, rippling the River Styx with his whistling sighs, rowing at the crossroads between the land of the living and the land of the dead. He wanted to tell them to shut the
hell
up. This argument was too close, almost next to him.

He wanted to open his eyes. Why couldn’t he see in his hereafter? He couldn’t see, oh, but how loud and clearly he was hearing!

“Coma, I tell you! I know you’re upset, and I’m sorry about that, but he is in a
coma
! A deep and prolonged unconsciousness, very likely brain dead, in a persistent vegetative state, very common after a severe injury like his, coupled with hypoxia. Coma! We’re doing what we can for him, to keep him comfortable. I don’t know who you think you are, telling me
we’re
not doing enough.”

“Enough? You’re doing
nothing
!” a voice yelled.

Ah.

This one was angry, was loud, was upset, but it wasn’t grating and it wasn’t cacophonous. “First of all, he is
not
in a coma. That’s
first
. Perhaps it’s easier for you to abuse your medical privileges while you pretend he’s lying here beyond your help, but I’m going to tell you right now, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

“He
is
in a coma! He’s been in Saigon a week under my care. You’re here five seconds. I’ve seen thousands like him. I’ve been a nurse thirty years. Not once has his pulse risen above 40, and he has almost no blood pressure.”

“His pulse is 40, is it? Have you even glanced at the patient? Have you lifted your eyes, just once today, or in the last seven days, and taken one look at the patient? A 40 pulse?”

Alexander felt his wrist being lifted and circled by a small warm hand and then dropped back on the bed.

“When was the last time you touched him? His pulse is 62 right now. And without even putting a cuff on him, I can tell just from looking at his skin that his blood pressure is not 60 over 40 as you’ve conveniently listed here in your little chart, which, by the way, you have not initialed off since yesterday morning, but 70 over 55! That is not a comatose patient. Did you even go to school?”

“I have fifty of these men to take care of, not just him! I’m doing the best I can. Who do you think I am? Who do you think you are?”

“I don’t care who you are. And you don’t want to know who I am. What matters is that this man is a major in the United States Army, and he was critically wounded, and he depends on you to take care of him so he can live, and you’re standing here with your bedraggled face and your insolent eyes, telling me you’ve got to clean out the water closet on the second floor, while a human being is lying in your bed with undrained air pressure in his lungs, and with dressing around his
chest wound
that has not been changed for at least twelve hours!”

“That is not true! That is simply not true! We change it every four hours when we decompress his lung!”

“Bullshit! Listen to his wheezing—that sounds like a recently drained lung to you? He can’t exhale! Where’s the decompression catheter? And his chest dressing—I don’t have to go near him to smell that dressing, to know that it has not been changed or irrigated in over twelve hours. I don’t have to go near him to see that the IV that drips fluids into his body—fluids without which he can’t survive!—has slipped out of the vein and now his entire forearm has blown up to three times its normal size. What, you can’t see that?” The voice rose and rose and rose until it was the loudest voice in purgatory. “Put the metal pans down, nurse, they’re blocking your view, put them down and take a look at your patient! Smell your patient! He’s got a five-inch stab wound in his leg that’s now infected
only
because his dressing has not been changed, and the penicillin you’re giving him to treat him is now dripping into his open arm cavity instead of into his veins, and you’re telling me you’re taking care of him? This is your best? A
healthy
man would go into a fucking coma under your care! Where is your attending physician? I want to see him right now.”

“But—”

“Right now—and not a single additional word out of you. But you will get one more word out of me—I will have your job, if it’s the last thing I do. You are not fit to wash bedpans in this hospital, much less take care of wounded soldiers. Now go get me a doctor. This man is not staying in your so-called care another minute. Another
second
. The NVA could take care of him better than you. Now go! Go, I said!”