Chapter 154
WE HOLED UP AT LAURA’S apartment for the rest of the afternoon. For the first hour we just paced, but when our heart rates returned to normal, Laura taught me how to play gin rummy.
For dinner, I made a basic Bolognese using some ground beef and tomatoes she had on hand. We cleaned up and when it got late, she handed me a spare set of sheets and a quilt; without discussing it, we had come to the conclusion that I would stay the night at the apartment.
After Laura went to bed, I lay on that sofa for a long time, thinking about everything that had happened.
In particular, I spent a lot of time turning over what Francesca had said to me—that when we were forced to fight for things, we figured out what mattered.
That was exactly what had happened this summer with Teo, and on the sidewalk this afternoon with Laura.
I had only just drifted off to sleep when there was a knock at the door. It was a little after one o’clock in the morning, and my first and really only thought was that Bobby had arrived home. Wouldn’t he have had a key? Sure, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.
“Hang on,” I called as I struggled into a pair of pants.
As soon as I was decent, I flung open the door and was startled to find that it was not Bobby waiting to be let in but Mary Lou. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a cotton blouse. No makeup, no earrings, not so much as a bobby pin in that bleached-blond hair. “Is Laura up?” she asked.
I shook my head, too stunned to speak.
She gestured at the bedroom. “Will you wake her?” Because I must have been standing there with my mouth open, she added, “There’s been an accident.”
“Bobby?” I asked, and she nodded.
Laura’s bedroom was dark, and I could hear light snoring coming from her side of the bed. There was a lamp on her bedside table, and I turned it on, then watched her blink awake in surprise. “Hey, hon. Let’s get up,” I said softly. “Mary Lou’s here.”
“Mary Lou?”
Laura had been sleeping in an oversize T-shirt of Bobby’s, so I helped her into a pair of maternity pants and a cardigan and led her into the living room, where Mary Lou stood waiting for us.
“What’s going on?” she asked, but the way she clutched that big, beautiful belly, I got the feeling she already knew what was coming.
“Bobby’s having some problems,” said Mary Lou.
“Where is he?”
“Out on the tender. In the infirmary. I just talked to Jim, and he’s sending the captain’s gig for us.”
I’ve talked a lot of crap about Mary Lou, but in a crisis, she was perfect. An ombudsman to her core. She knew just what to say to get Laura out the door without making everything worse. “Do you have a bag packed?”
“Like for the baby?” asked Laura.
“You are having one pretty soon, right?”
We all looked at her stomach, which was as big as a beach ball.
“I’m not due for another five weeks.”
Mary Lou looked at me. “Will you throw some things in a bag? At least a couple of changes of clothes? And her toiletries?”
“When you say Bobby’s having problems, what do you mean?” asked Laura while I ran back to the bedroom and grabbed everything she needed, including her purse. By the time I had it all together, Mary Lou was guiding her out of the apartment and down to the Caprice.
In the car on the way to the pier, Mary Lou gave us a few more details, but not many. The Nuclear Repair team had been replacing a valve on board the U.S.S. Seneca, the sub with the busted nose, when something had gone wrong and there’d been a leak.
“Who was there?” asked Laura.
“Bobby and Kenny Canady and at least two other guys.”
“Anyone from RADCON?” I asked from the backseat.
“Paul was there,” she said. “But he’s okay.”
“Were they in the containment room?” asked Laura, still trying to get a handle on this.
Mary Lou hesitated. “They must have been, right?”
“Depends if they were working on the primary circuit or the secondary circuit,” Laura said, and I was impressed that she knew the difference, because I certainly didn’t.
“I don’t know,” said Mary Lou, quietly. “I’m sorry.”
We had arrived at the pier, where we could see a couple of Seabees using a forklift to load a burned-out Datsun with Armed Forces plates onto a flatbed truck. It was just a shell of a car, and I assumed that, at this point, the Chevelle didn’t look much better.
Beyond the flatbed truck was the captain’s gig, tied up to a piling. The gig’s coxswain stood on the pier smoking a cigarette, but when he saw the three of us approaching, he tossed the butt in the water and tipped his hat in Mary Lou’s direction.
Because the captain’s gig was a small cabin cruiser, it took half the time it normally did to get to Santo Stefano.
The cabin was quiet, and we didn’t say a word the whole way.
When we docked, Laura flew out of the boat and up the Gilmore’s gangway, where she was stopped at the top by a seaman standing watch.
“The tender’s on lockdown,” he said. “No nonmilitary personnel are allowed aboard at this time.”
“The commodore has signed off on this,” said Mary Lou, only a few feet behind her.
The seaman looked nervously from Laura to Mary Lou. “Where are you headed?”
“The infirmary,” said Mary Lou. “To see Lieutenant Carpenter.”
“Go straight there. The second deck is closed.”
“Got it,” said Mary Lou, and led Laura and me to the upper deck, where the infirmary sat next to the dental department.
I’d never been inside the tender’s infirmary.
It was a smallish room with stainless-steel cabinetry, a sink, and a couple of gurneys, one of which was sitting behind a curtain.
In the ceiling were those giant lights you see in operating theaters, so I guess the idea was that—in a pinch—this room could become an OR.
“Bobby?” called Laura.
From behind the curtain, we heard him scream, “Don’t let her in here!” It shocked me because I had not once—in the two years we’d been friends—heard him raise his voice. But then he said, “She’s pregnant,” and I realized what it was about.
The ship’s doctor, a guy with the last name Wilson, was wearing a gown, a mask, and one of those big iron aprons, and when he stepped out from behind the curtain, he seemed surprised to see us until he realized we were with Mary Lou.
“This is Lieutenant Carpenter’s wife, Laura,” said Mary Lou. “We’re going to put her on the medevac with him and Petty Officer Canady. Assuming Lieutenant Carpenter is willing.”
Wilson nodded and turned to Laura. “Your husband’s displaying some mild symptoms of radiation syndrome. Nausea, dizziness, a little disorientation.”
“Shit,” whispered Laura.
“There’s good reason to believe he’ll make a full recovery—”
Mary Lou interrupted. “Tell her what you told the commodore.”
The doctor cleared his throat. “The symptoms do tend to get worse a couple of days post-exposure. Which is why we’re sending him to Naples.”
“Right now?” asked Laura.
Wilson looked at his watch. “Chopper should be here around oh two hundred.”
“Right,” said Laura, who was clearly starting to lose it. She sidestepped Wilson and started to move toward the curtain.
Wilson stopped her. “He’s worried about the baby.”
“But he’s been decontaminated, right?”
“Once outside the containment room and again in here, after he started displaying symptoms.”
“So we’re good?” said Laura.
“At this point, whatever he inhaled or absorbed is a threat to him, but it shouldn’t have any effect on you. Or the baby.”
“Bobby,” she said in a voice loud enough to carry, “do you hear that? The doc says the baby’s going to be fine.”
“I’m not doing it, Laura,” he called to her. “I love you, but please go home.”
“Maybe he’s got a point,” I said to Laura.
She wouldn’t hear me. “You have to talk to him,” she said to Dr. Wilson. “Explain that it’s safe.”
I glanced at Mary Lou. She had brought us here, so she obviously didn’t think it was dangerous for Laura and Bobby to be in the same room together.
But she was the same person who hadn’t been ruffled by the Mirfield arrests or the Chartridge grounding or the fact that three babies without skulls had been born in the same tiny hospital within a year of each other.
At least she hadn’t acted ruffled. It occurred to me, looking at her, that maybe not acting ruffled was her whole trick.
“I’ll talk to him,” I said to Laura.
“You will?”
“Yeah,” I said, and that was when I knew that, regardless of what happened between Paul and me, Laura and I were going to be fine.