Chapter Forty-Six Marion
forty-six MARION
It happened in the blink of an eye. Marion pulled the trigger, and the Vietcong behind her was obliterated. At the same moment, Daniel stepped out of the other pistol’s path, twisted it from the man’s grip, and turned it on him instead.
The crack of her gun had been deafening, and she’d fallen to her knees with shock. She started to look back, to see what she’d done, but Daniel gathered her in his arms and held her against his body.
“Don’t look, Marion. Hang on to me instead.”
She felt the energy coming off him in waves, his own fear dissipating as he held her safe. She burrowed into the fibres of his shirt, unable to get close enough, aware of her own ridiculous whimper, her relentless plea for him to forgive me, forgive me , even though she knew she had done the right thing.
“It’s all over, Marion. You saved our lives,” he murmured, and she soaked in his voice like medicine, craving more. If she could open her veins and pour him into her bloodstream, she would.
He tightened his arms around her. “You’re all right, Marion. You’re okay. I will hold you as long as you need.”
Then he twitched slightly, and she became aware that he’d heard something she had not. Like a little girl hiding beneath the covers, she stayed hidden in his shirt, unsure if she could handle any more. She held her breath, listening, and heard male voices beyond them, speaking Vietnamese.
Daniel lowered his lips to her ear. “They’re with us. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
She drew back and looked past him. Some of Bao’s men were walking through the open space, nearing the hut.
“Marion,” Daniel said. “I have something to tell you.”
She met his gaze, shocked to see that he was smiling through the grime on his face. He put one palm on each side of her face so she saw nothing but him.
“Joey’s in the hut with two others.”
Her jaw dropped. “Joey? Our Joey?”
“Yeah. Our Joey.” His expression was beautiful. “Ky’s with them. They need food and medicine. I think they’ve been stuck in there for weeks.” He leaned in and kissed her lips. “Let’s take them home.”
Daniel entered the hut first, and she heard the smile in his voice. “Ooh-rah, boys,” he said. “Cavalry’s here.”
When Marion entered, all three prisoners were sitting on the floor with their backs against the wall, eyes wide. They were skeletal and filthy, and Marion smelled decomposition in the air. A wound gone bad. When she got closer, she saw lice moving in their tangled, greasy hair. One man had lost two front teeth.
None of it mattered; she knew Joey immediately. She dropped to her knees beside him.
“Joey!” she cried. “Oh, Joey.”
He looked baffled. “Do I know you?”
She laughed and sniffed back tears. “No, you don’t know me. But Sassy says hello.”
Hearing his sister’s name, Joey’s face underwent the most sublime transition, from the emptiness of resignation to a shining, incredulous hope.
“Sassy,” he whispered.
“You’ll see her soon,” she told him gently. The sad news about his father was for another time and the siblings could handle that between them. Today was a celebration. Joey was saved. All of them were.
Boots clomped into the hut behind her, but Marion wasn’t afraid. Daniel stood like the shield he’d promised, watching and keeping her safe.
“Doctor is here?” she heard from behind him.
“Bao!” she said, grinning over her shoulder at him. “Look! I didn’t die!”
He laughed. “Good you not dead.”
“I need medicine, Bao. I need clean water and bandages. Food? Can you find food?”
Moments later he returned with Ky, their arms full of cloth and bowls. From somewhere in the enemy’s camp they dug up a pot of rice, still warm, along with dried fish, and even a can of condensed milk. While Marion cleaned wounds, the men dug grubby fingers into the food and smeared whatever they could find into their mouths. Daniel, finally convinced everything was under control, sat with them.
“This is Hal,” he told Marion. “Hal. Slow down. You got rice all over your face, dummy.”
Hal was the one with the missing front teeth, so when he laughed, his tongue stuck out a little. He stuck it out farther, seeking out the rice in question. “Better not waste it.”
“That’s Stu,” Daniel said, indicating the man lying on his back nearby, clearly the weakest of the three. “And you already know Joey.”
“Welcome to our little p-piece of heaven,” Hal said.
He had a heavy stutter, but that didn’t slow him down. Energized by the food, he kept talking, going off on tangents Marion couldn’t follow, but always coming back to his buddies. His brothers.
“Where’s Chip?” Daniel eventually asked.
Joey flinched beside him then reached for a canteen of water. “Don’t ask.”
Hal’s eyes went dark. “Ch-Ch-Chip messed up. Tried to run, b-but Charlie cut off his head.” He pointed toward the door. “Left the rest of him in front of the hut for two days, until something dragged it off. N-never saw what happened to his head.”
Marion stared at him in shock, but the men seemed to have accepted the horror as part of their lives now.
“I told him not to risk it,” Joey said, wiping water from his lips with his sleeve.
“Chip always knew better,” Daniel acknowledged. “Sorry to hear it.”
Stu exhaled deeply. “Rest in peace, brother.”
“He should have waited,” Hal said. “G-G-God told me weeks ago that we would go home soon. Joey didn’t b-b-believe me.” He guffawed. “God said he was sending an angel. I never expected it’d be you, D-Danny.”
“I heard the First Battalion was in the area,” Daniel said, “but I wasn’t sure who might still be in it. And I had no idea you’d been locked up.”
“He never forgot any of you,” Marion told them, recalling the stories Daniel had told her in his hospital room. Hal was from Ohio, she remembered. He farmed cattle with his dad, the only boy of four siblings. Stu was smaller than the others and rapidly losing what remained of his hair. He was from Seattle. Planned to be a lawyer.
And Joey. Sassy’s sweet Joey, with those beautiful green eyes, just like his sister’s, dreaming of baseball.
Bao radioed the hospital, and everything Marion requested was delivered within the next hour or so. When they were stable enough, the three men were brought back to the surgical hospital in Da Nang. Stu needed to be carried most of the way, and the other two took frequent breaks to rest, but Hal never stopped talking. Now that it had sunk in that they were truly free, Joey’s eyes were bright with relief, looking so much like his sister it took Marion’s breath away.
In the hospital, their bodies received much-needed fluid and medicine, and their heads rested on soft pillows. Marion and Daniel returned to the VPVN compound, and Marion finally collapsed into her own cot, dead tired, though she knew she would not sleep for a while. The psychiatrist in her wanted to sort through everything, to understand how and why she felt euphoria and dread simultaneously. Why she wanted to cry for days then dance for joy. Then she thought of Sassy, remembering how her friend could live in the moment in such a magical way. Marion wanted that. She took a deep breath then let everything out. Instead of analyzing it all, she decided to just feel it.
Daniel saw the change in her. She knew he did. He tucked her into her bed then left, but in the morning he returned. They went for breakfast, and he waited for her to begin speaking.
“I think I understand you a little better now,” she said.
“Me?”
“What happened back there keeps coming back to me, whether I want to relive it or not. I think I’m fine, busy with something else, and suddenly I’m in the dark, experiencing what happened all over again. I’m shaking in the bush, waiting for someone to kill me. I’m feeling that gun against the back of my head. I wonder if that fear will ever go away.”
“You’ll move away from it,” he assured her. “But like I said a long time ago, if you aren’t at least a little bit scared, you are putting yourself in danger. Not just in Vietnam.”
“I still feel my pistol firing when I killed him.” She held up her hands. They were shaking noticeably. “And I can’t forget what I saw. It’s so real, I still smell the gunpowder, the smoke from when you shot—”
She hung her head, ashamed. She had seen everything: the cool assurance in Daniel’s expression, the astonishment in the other man’s. The moment when the bullet struck and burst through his back, ending his life. How the dead man had flailed backward, out of time.
Why did it matter so much to her? Why was it stuck in her mind? Because it was Daniel. The contradiction between the gentle affection in his eyes and his detached ability to kill a human being was hard to reconcile.
How could she, when she was in love with him?
“I can’t help it, Daniel. I keep seeing what you did. You were so calm.”
“So were you, Marion,” he said slowly, but there was no judgement in his expression. “You watched me like a cat the whole time you put your gun behind you. You kept me in place. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t. Probably killed us both. You understand you did the best thing, right?”
She’d been deafened by the shot, which she appreciated later, because she never heard the man’s dying sounds. “I… I don’t know yet.”
“This is war, Marion. What you did, it had to be done.”
It had to be done. It had been either him or her. Or Daniel. The knot in her throat broke free. “I don’t know how to feel,” she sobbed.
“You’ll get through this,” he said, holding her again. “I’ll help you, like you did for me.”
The rescued prisoners slept solidly for two full days. Between that and falling asleep again, they ate everything they saw. On the third morning, Marion was back to work in the operating rooms. When she walked past the area where the men were staying, she saw Daniel sitting with them. He touched his eye patch self-consciously, and they all laughed at something. It was the sound of brothers.
Marion paused, mesmerized. From where she stood, his shoulders looked smaller, then she realized it wasn’t size but rigidity. All this time, just like he had said, he had needed to see his brothers. Now they were together, the survivors, at least. And it was time to bring them home.
A thought struck her. These were American marines. Was it right to bring them to Canada? What did she need to do about that?
On his cot, Stu said something then dropped his chin, and Daniel reached out to pat his back. His brother smiled sheepishly in return, and a rumble of male, self-conscious laughter travelled to her.
Marion would figure out the politics later. Right now, these men needed each other.
She was about to move away from the door when Joey’s gaze caught hers. “Thank you,” he mouthed.
She smiled, feeling a rush of anticipation. She couldn’t wait to bring him to Sassy. To see her best friend in his arms, laughing and crying with him. It was more than she had dared to dream about this voyage.
On the night before they were to fly out of Vietnam, the midnight sky sparkled with stars, and for once, the air was clear of explosions, a strangely hollow vacuum without the jagged rhythm of death being shot into it. Daniel led Marion to a quiet spot overlooking the water, then he stood behind her, arms around her waist. She rested her head back on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and blinking at the sky.
“I’ve never heard it so quiet here,” she sighed.
“Any place can be beautiful.” He lowered his chin to her shoulder then kissed her cheek. “Hey. I never said thank you.”
“What for?”
“You brought me here. It’s because of you that my buddies are safe now.”
“I’d say we’re even. I’d never have come without you.”
She felt him shake his head slowly, his chin on her head. “No. This was you, Marion. All you.”
The view was striking, the arc of the moon shining on the still surface of the water, framed by the lines and curves of the jungle. It was unexpected, this beauty. She’d gotten so used to blasts and gunfire, screams and death. This was peace, if only for a little while.
“I feel like a different person,” she said softly.
“You’re still you.” She heard the warmth in his voice. And the smile. “But, ah, the stories you can tell. Did you ever imagine you’d get on an airplane, fly to Vietnam, then rescue POWs in the middle of a war zone? And you did all that with a man you hardly knew? Doesn’t seem like the cautious, rule-oriented doctor I knew before.”
“Who’s this man you say I hardly knew?” She turned in the circle of his arms and rested her hands on the insides of his elbows, where the skin was soft. “I know you, Daniel.”
They hadn’t kissed since the day the helicopter had crashed, which felt like years before. There had never been a time or place where it felt right. But here, under the stars of another world, Marion let herself fall.
“You changed my life,” she told him.
She saw her own gratitude in his gaze, and she relished the slow beat of his pulse under her. He swallowed, always watching her, and she lifted her chin, waiting for what she knew he would bring. His kiss was soft at first, but not brief. He was feeling her there, tasting her, joining with her in the most exquisite sensation she had ever felt. When he drew back, it was as if he gazed into her soul, and she held it open for him. He belonged there, and she belonged with him.