Chapter Forty-Four Marion
forty-four MARION
After two weeks in Da Nang, with its endless casualties, ferocious heat, and nearby explosions that shook the building and caused the lights to flicker, Marion’s work inside the hospital was getting better. Not easier, but better. Thanks to ten straight hours—sometimes longer—of thinking and working on her feet, she slept pretty well. The work was rewarding, heartbreaking, and grueling, but she was acclimating to it.
At the end of every day, Daniel met her outside the hospital and walked her to dinner. He took his bodyguard role as seriously as he could, considering he wasn’t able to be with her when she was operating or tending to patients. He had been quick to contact the U.S. military base by telephone when he arrived, and after they approved his credentials, he was issued weapons, which he slung over his shoulder, hung at his belt, and shoved into a leather holster on his hip. He was physically larger than the men in the Vietnamese Security Forces, so once they got to know him, he became a sort of guard for the entire hospital.
Sometimes he wandered into the nearby jungle to “hunt.” Marion was aware that what he meant by that was “recon,” and she hated the thought of it.
“I’m not going far, and it’s just me,” he said. “I can sit in the trees for hours without moving if I need to.” When she still wasn’t reassured, he scowled. “You want me to just sit here? I’m not made for that, Marion.”
She knew that, but still. She thought about mentioning his missing eye and reduced vision, but she knew that would annoy him, not dissuade him.
Then one day, he wasn’t there.
Marion stood at the exit to the hospital for an hour after her shift was over, fighting panic when he didn’t appear. It was dusk when she stopped to ask two members of the Vietnamese Security Forces if they’d seen him, but they only pointed vaguely toward the trees. By then, the sun was quickly sinking. She couldn’t stay put any longer, and she had no time to eat. She walked quickly to the VPVN compound then dove into her room and locked the door.
Daniel was not there in the morning to walk her to the hospital. When she arrived on her own, she went directly to the Security Forces again. They had nothing to tell her, other than to say there had been no local reports of conflicts. If Daniel was out there, they said, he was not fighting.
That did nothing to calm her. All day she was distracted, and once she was reprimanded by the surgeon for not paying attention. When the day was done, she went in search of the chef. He didn’t like the idea that she was now without a bodyguard, and he promised to look into it and report back. When the day was done, he sent one of his men to safely accompany her to the compound. In the brief snatches of sleep she caught, she dreamed of him out in the jungle, wounded and alone.
The next morning, she knocked on Daniel’s door, hoping, but there was no answer. Jaw set, she marched the few blocks to the hospital and was met by the chef. He waved her into his office and sat her down. His tight expression sent her pulse rocketing.
He closed the door behind her. “ Mes hommes ont trouvé le major.” She caught her breath, forcing herself to stay quiet, but tears of relief burned. He’s alive!
“Ah. Pardon! Major Neumann has been seen, but he will not come. He says to tell you he is all right, but il a beaucoup à faire. Je m’excuse . He has much to do.” He frowned. “He says to my man that he has found American prisoners.”
Marion’s jaw dropped. “Where? Where is he?”
“About deux kilomètres à l’ouest . He found a small camp.” Again he frowned. “This is the first time we are learning of this place. Only one hour away. That is too close to the hospital. We are sending Security Forces out today.”
“I want to go with them.”
His face twisted with astonishment, then his eyes crinkled as if he might laugh. “You? Non, non, non. You are not going out there. You are un docteur, pas un soldier . You are needed ici. Out there? You are dead.”
But Marion could no longer focus on her patients. All morning she was distracted. She needed to get to Daniel somehow, though the idea seemed impossible. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she lied to her boss for the first time in her life, telling the surgeon she was too sick to work. With everything going on around them, he had no time to question her, so he simply called for another intern to take her spot. Determined, she trotted out of the hospital and went in search of the Special Forces. A couple of them stood nearby, arms crossed, their faces painted with green camouflage. As she got closer to them, they exchanged uneasy glances. It made her wonder if they’d been waiting for her.
“You cannot come with us,” the first informed her, hugging an M16 to his side.
“All right,” she bluffed. “Just point the way to the camp, then. I will get there on my own. It’s okay. I have a compass.”
The second one glared. “You work. You not come to camp.”
“I am coming. I am a doctor. I need to make sure no one is wounded.”
Indecision was clear in the first guard’s furrowed brow. After a moment, he faced Marion again, and she sensed his reluctance. With that came a rush of adrenaline. She was going to get her way. Just like Sassy would have.
“You not talk, not make a sound. You do what I say. When you are killed, is not my fault.”
If , she wanted to exclaim. You mean if I am killed. Instead, she nodded. “My fault. I understand. When can we go?”
Both men glanced at the door to the hospital then at each other. They said something back and forth in Vietnamese then shrugged. The first man approached Marion and fastened a leather belt around her waist, then he held up a pistol.
“You know this?”
Her mind flew back to Daniel’s lessons, and how she’d giggled self-consciously, insisting she’d never need to use it.
“Yes, I know this,” she told the guard.
He slid the pistol into a holster on her belt. “Is loaded.”
For some reason, seeing it hanging on her hip frightened her, so she draped the bottom of her khaki shirt over the top. The second man opened a tin he’d taken from his pocket, revealing a dark green paste, which he smeared over her face. It smelled rank, and she instantly wanted to scratch, but she kept her hands where they were.
“We go,” the first man said. “Me is Bao. He is Ky. Is four more coming, too. You is not making noise.”
The deeper they went in the jungle, the more petrified she became. After a while, she feared he might turn on her for being noisy, with her thundering heartbeat and chattering teeth. She had no right to be out here, traipsing silently through the trees behind Bao and the other five, doing “recon.” Careful of roots snagging her feet and branches scratching her arms, she scanned the thick canopy of leaves overhead, always searching for threats. If they were ambushed, Daniel had said, she would never see the light of day again.
It took about an hour of stealthy hiking before she finally heard a man’s voice. Bao made a downward movement with his hand, and everyone, including Marion, dropped. The voice was clearly Vietnamese, and it seemed unconcerned about possibly being heard. Bao, Ky, and the others crouched near her, listening hard.
“No good,” Bao told her quietly. “Too many prisoners.”
“Is Major Neumann a prisoner?”
“Not major,” he reported.
“How many?” she whispered.
He shook his head then said something to Ky, who stayed where he was while Bao moved closer to the camp. He returned quickly.
“Three sick men in hut,” he said.
The image made Marion temporarily forget about Daniel. “I need to help. I need to see how sick they are.”
“Is much sick. You fix later.”
A dog barked, making her jump.
“Stay,” Bao said to her, as if she was the dog itself. Then he and the others moved swiftly forward and vanished into the trees.
It happened again, a frenzied string of barks that set off her internal alarm, and one of the men in the camp shouted at the animal to be quiet. If the dog was some kind of alarm system for the camp, the men weren’t minding him. Unable to sit still another moment, Marion glided through the brush in the direction Bao and Ky had gone. To her dismay, they were no longer there. She was alone.
She crouched, shaking so hard the plants around her quivered, acutely aware that her life depended upon staying as still as possible. Be calm , she ordered herself . Inhale. Exhale. 1-2-3, 3-2-1. The least she could do was not pass out and become a liability. But it took a while to get to the point where her pulse was regular.
Beyond the tall grasses in front of her, something moved. A brown shadow travelling within a forest of green, like the smooth passing of a deer. She stared at the spot, willing herself not to blink while she waited for more, but the shadow was gone. Without a breeze, nothing in the surrounding forest moved. Had it been her imagination? She trained her eyes on the cleared area straight ahead, and she spotted the large, shabbily built hut Bao had mentioned. It stood at one corner of the compound, listing slightly, its dark wood boards partly eaten by humidity. She saw no movement near it, so she scanned the larger area, and her startled gaze landed on three Vietnamese men leaning against a wagon near the other side of the camp, smoking and talking among themselves. How many others were here?
A swish in the grass, and Marion fell back with a gasp. She almost laughed, weak with relief when Bao crouched beside her, glowering. He was clearly unimpressed with how close she had snuck.
“Not my fault. You remember.”
She nodded, but he saw the question in her expression.
“I am not seeing major. I see six, maybe seven Vietcong.” He grinned, a slash of white against his painted face. “They not seeing us. You have gun?”
She tapped the pistol at her hip, hidden under the tail of her shirt. Then he was off.
She watched him disappear again, wondering what he had seen inside of the hut. She should have brought medical supplies, but she hadn’t been thinking ahead. Annoyed with herself, she flapped at her ear when an insect buzzed close, then she jerked away from a spider, spread out in the middle of its web near her elbow. It was a giant, brilliant blue, four inches from top to bottom. She had no idea if it was dangerous, but she wasn’t about to test it. She shuffled away, more aware than ever of how alien she was to this land.
There was a shout from the camp, and she forgot about the spider. A rattling of gunfire jerked the three men at the wagon to life, and they sprinted toward the sound. More gunfire followed, and an enemy fighter fell. One of the Security Forces men from the hospital emerged from the trees, shooting, then two more. They disappeared again, and gunfire erupted deeper in the forest, not too far from where Marion hid. She guessed that some of the Vietcong were fleeing in the trees, and she hunched even lower.
Movement by the hut caught her attention. When she could distinguish its shape, her heart jumped in her chest. Daniel. He had reached the structure and was crouched at one side. It looked like he was busy with some sort of latch. How she wished she had binoculars. Then there was a shout, and he dove into the jungle, dodging bullets. Two men followed him, and she stared in agony, waiting to see who came out. There . Daniel materialized at the edge of the trees, twenty feet from the place where the prisoners were being kept, and as he crept toward the hut again she recognized the effortless brown shadow she’d seen before. The two men who had followed him into the trees were nowhere to be seen. She scoured the tree line, but she was certain they had not come out. Daniel snaked forward, his attention entirely on the small black hut.
Then Marion spotted one of the Vietcong slinking out of the trees, creeping up on Daniel. When Daniel didn’t alter his steady stride, she realized he couldn’t see the enemy, who was rushing up on Daniel’s blind side. He was far too close, and as she watched in horror, the enemy lifted his gun to fire.
“Three!” she screamed, jumping up without thinking. “Three, Daniel! Three o’clock!”
He turned on a dime and shot the attacker, then spun around to stare at her, disbelief written all over his face. That’s when she spotted another enemy fighter approaching him from behind.
She pointed. “Three o’clock again!”
He took care of that one as well, then he sprinted toward the hut, shooting her another incredulous look as he ran. Elated, she hopped on her toes and bit her fist to keep from cheering. Then she felt a sharp poke of metal in her back.
“ ??ng di chuy?n ,” a man growled.
She needed no translation. Marion put her hands in the air and didn’t move until she felt the muzzle of his gun shoving her forward. As she stumbled through the undergrowth into the clearing ahead, terror lodged in her chest. She felt exposed, and very much alone. Where was Daniel? Where were the others? She was shaking so badly she couldn’t control her hands. Her captor did not appear to notice when she dropped them to her sides. Once he had her in the open, he kept yelling, but not at her. She didn’t know what to do, so she just stood there, hyperventilating, as he prodded her from behind.
“American!” he shouted.
“No!” she cried. She knew what would happen next. Daniel would come for her. He would sacrifice himself. He had already made that clear. One of them was going to die today, she realized. Maybe both.
But Daniel did not appear.
“American!” her captor roared again, and the gun shifted roughly to the back of her head, knocking her a step sideways.
Daniel immediately stepped out of the shadows.
“ Kh?ng có súng! ” the man shouted. Daniel dropped his gun, raised his hands, and linked them behind his head. Never looking away from her, he slowly walked toward them.
“It’s all right, Marion,” he said calmly, and she feared she might dissolve, hearing the strength of that voice again. One of his hands lifted slightly above his head and made a fist. Freeze , she remembered, but she couldn’t stop shaking.
“I’m sorry, Daniel,” she whimpered. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left you.” He glared at the Vietcong soldier. “ R?i xa c? ?y. ”
The soldier chuckled. “ Kh?ng , American. B?n s? ch?t .”
She didn’t care what they were saying. None of this was real. It wasn’t happening. Somehow she had fallen into one of Daniel’s nightmares, shivering in the sweltering heat of Vietnam, unable to move. It would pass soon, she told herself. She just needed to wake up.
But this was no dream. This was the end.
She took a long, deep breath, willing her pulse to slow so she could think. This couldn’t be the end. There had to be a way.
The man behind her shouted something, and one of his men answered the call. He jogged directly to Daniel, who stopped on command, then he shoved the mouth of his pistol against Daniel’s temple. Daniel lifted his chin and looked at her, and in his expression she saw the most terrible regret.
“I’m sorry, Marion. You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met. I wish we had more time.”
Beside him, the enemy was laughing through a mouth of broken teeth, saying something to the man behind her. He was laughing as well. Marion was staring at the small black gun at Daniel’s head, seeking clarity, and in that moment, it came to her. Someone’s gonna get killed , Daniel had said long ago. You don’t want it to be you. They die or you do. Every man in every war understands that.
Daniel’s gaze had been locked on hers the whole time, and now she dropped her eyes, urging him to follow. She needed him to notice the slight, careful motion of her hand.
As cautiously as she could, Marion slipped her right hand under her shirt bottom. When she came into contact with the gun’s metal handle, she twisted her wrist and wrapped her fingers around it. It’s loaded , Bao had said. With almost no movement, Marion slid the gun from its holster then rotated the pistol toward her own body, on its way to finding that of the enemy behind her. Her hand curled securely around the handle while her thumb located the safety, and she clicked it off. They die or you do.
She met Daniel’s gaze again and saw the apprehension in his expression. She also saw the tiniest of nods. He knew what to do.
The man beside Daniel stepped back, extending his arm, making room for the blast that would blow Daniel’s head off. Behind her, the other man was laughing, egging him on. They were too confident for their own good.
Marion fired.