Chapter Four #2
Frankie had too many questions to pick just one, and her throat hurt. Clutching her travel bag and purse, she walked over to the jeep and climbed up into the backseat.
The driver hit the gas so hard Frankie was thrown back in her seat; a jagged metal spring poked her in the butt.
The nighttime traffic on base was stop-and-go.
In snatches of light, she saw barbed wire and sandbags built up around wooden buildings, armed guards standing on towers.
Soldiers walking the streets in fatigues, holding guns.
A large water-tank truck pulled up next to them, rumbling, and rolled past. Horns honked constantly, and men shouted at one another.
Another checkpoint—this one looked haphazardly thrown together with metal drums and coils of barbed wire and a tall chain-link fence. The guard waved them through.
Finally, they came to another fence, this one topped in coils of concertina wire.
The jeep braked to a stop. The driver leaned over, shoved the door open. “Your stop, ma’am.”
Frankie frowned. It took time to maneuver out of the jeep in her tight skirt. “In that building, ma’am. Second floor, 8A.”
Behind the tall ironwork fence, she saw what looked like an abandoned prison. Windows were boarded up with plywood and big chunks of the walls were missing. Before Frankie could ask where to go, the jeep was backing up, honking at something, and speeding away.
Frankie went to the gate, which creaked loudly upon opening, and stepped into a weedy front yard, where scrawny children played with a half-deflated ball. An old Vietnamese woman squatted by the side of the fence, tending to something cooking over an open fire.
Frankie followed a broken path to the front door and entered the building. Inside, a few gas lanterns flickered light against the walls. There was a woman in fatigues waiting for her in the shadowy entry. “Lieutenant McGrath?”
Thank God. “Yes.”
“I’ll show you to your room. Follow me.” The woman led the way past a hallway filled with cots, and up a set of sagging stairs to a second-floor room—cubicle, really.
A room barely big enough to hold the set of bunk beds in it, with a single dresser.
Maybe the building had once been a convent or a school.
“In-processing tomorrow at oh-seven-hundred hours. Report to admin.”
“But—”
The soldier walked away, shut the door behind her.
Darkness.
Frankie felt around for a light switch, found and flipped it.
Nothing.
She opened the door again, grateful for the bit of ambient light coming from gas lanterns in the hallway. She went in search of a bathroom, found one with a rust-stained sink and toilet. She turned on the faucet, got a weak flow of tepid water, and washed her face, then took a drink.
A woman in an Army-green T-shirt and shorts walked in, saw Frankie, and frowned. “You’ll be sorry about that, Lieutenant. Never drink the water.”
“Oh. I’m new… in-country.”
“Yeah,” the woman said, eyeing Frankie in her skirt uniform. “No shit.”
Frankie woke in the middle of the night with cramping in her stomach.
She ran down the hall to the toilet and slammed the door shut behind her.
She’d never had diarrhea like this in her life.
It felt as if everything she’d eaten in the past month came rushing out of her, and when there was nothing left, the cramping went on.
Dawn brought no relief from the pain. She checked the time, rolled into a ball, and went back to sleep. At 0630 hours, she got up, stood on shaky legs, barely able to button her uniform. The panty girdle was torture.
Outside, the weedy yard was full of skinny-armed Vietnamese children, who eyed her silently. A laundry line held dozens of green fatigues.
She pushed past the gate and walked through the huge, busy base, which was a haphazard collection of buildings and tents and shacks and roads, without a tree anywhere that she could see.
They’d obvi ously created the place with bulldozers.
There were pedicycles with whole families on them, old cars pulled by water buffalo, and dozens of Army vehicles vying to get somewhere fast. A jeep splashed past her, the driver honking at the children on the side of the road, at the water buffalo roaming alongside.
No one looked twice at the woman in her Class As, walking carefully, hoping not to vomit.
It took Frankie nearly an hour to find the administration building, which was situated near Ward A of the sprawling Third Field Hospital, where nurses in starched white moved in groups, sometimes running, and announcements blared through black speakers.
She knocked on the closed admin door, heard, “Come in,” and did as she was told.
Inside the office, she saluted to the thin female colonel seated at the desk in front of her.
The woman looked up, lifted her chin in a sharp, birdlike motion that upset the perfect perch of her cat’s-eye glasses. The way she sighed at Frankie’s entrance was hardly encouraging. “And you are?”
“Second Lieutenant Frances McGrath, Colonel.”
The colonel rifled through the paperwork. “You’re assigned to the Thirty-Sixth Evac Hospital. Follow me.” She rose sharply and walked past Frankie to the door.
Frankie struggled to keep up, hoping she wasn’t going to have another bout of diarrhea.
The colonel led the way through the throng of personnel toward a round white helipad with a red cross painted on it, where a helicopter waited. The colonel gave a thumbs-up to the pilot, who immediately started the engine. The huge rotors rotated slowly, became a blur that blasted hot air at her.
“I have… questions, Colonel,” Frankie stuttered.
“Not for me, Lieutenant. Go. He doesn’t have all day.”
The colonel forced Frankie to bend forward and pushed her toward the whirring helicopter.
At the open side, a soldier grabbed her by the hand and swung her inside and then shoved her toward a canvas seat in the back of the aircraft.
“Hang on, ma’am,” the soldier yelled as the helicopter immediately lifted into the air, dipped its nose, and then soared forward, flying over the huge American base, and then above the chaos of Saigon.
Frankie’s stomach rebelled at the movement.
This did not seem safe. And where were their guns? How could they shoot back at the enemy if necessary? She heard an explosion somewhere; it rattled the helicopter, which swooped sideways. She clamped a hand over her mouth and prayed that she wouldn’t vomit.
Another explosion. A rattle of gunfire. The helicopter shook hard, clattered like a thousand bolts in a metal box.
Frankie survived the terrifying flight one breath at a time. It was often all she could do not to scream. And then, miraculously, they were descending, lowering toward a helipad.
When they touched down, the copilot looked back at Frankie. “Ma’am?”
“What?” Frankie yelled.
“You gotta get out.”
“Oh. Right.”
She couldn’t make herself move.
The soldier who’d helped her aboard—a medic—yanked her out of her seat and hauled her toward the open door. A female first lieutenant in stained fatigues stood nearby, holding on to her canvas hat, staring up.
The medic threw Frankie’s bag out of the helicopter. It landed at the first lieutenant’s feet.
“Ma’am?” he said impatiently.
Jump, Frankie.
In heels.
She hit the ground hard enough to buckle her knees. She dropped her purse and bent quickly to pick it up. Taking a deep breath, ignoring the pain, she slowly straightened and started to salute. “Lieutenant McGrath, reporting for duty.”
“Not here,” the first lieutenant said. “I like being alive. I’m Patty Perkins. Surgical nurse.” She held on to Frankie for just a moment, steadying her, and then abruptly let go and started walking.
“Welcome to the Thirty-Sixth. We are a four-hundred-bed evac hospital on the coast about sixty miles from Saigon. You are one of nine female nurses on staff, in addition to male nurses and medics. We keep this place running,” the first lieutenant yelled back at her.
“It’s considered one of the safer posts.
The DMZ is up north, so fighting here is minimal.
We provide care for the VSI who are medevaced—”
Frankie struggled to keep up. “VSI?”
“Very seriously injured. Here you’ll see everything from leprosy to amputations to rat bites to what’s left of a soldier after a land mine.
Most wounds require delayed primary closures—DPCs—which means we clear and debride wounds but don’t close.
That will be your biggest job. Most casualties are here three days or less.
From here, the lucky ones go to the Third Field Hospital in Saigon, for more specialized treatment; the unlucky ones go back to their units; and the really unlucky ones go home in a box.
Keep up, Lieutenant.” The woman led the way past a series of Quonset huts.
“That’s the ER, Pre-Op, the two ORs, Post-Op, the ICU, and Neuro.
” She kept going. “That’s the mess hall.
Officers on the right side. Report to Major Goldstein in admin tomorrow at oh-eight-hundred.
She’s chief nurse.” She came to an abrupt halt in front of a row of identical wooden buildings whose lower halves were protected by stacked sandbags.
“This is your hooch. Showers and latrines are over there. Shower quickly, the flyboys like to hover over and watch.” Patty smiled, then offered two bottles of pills.
“Malaria and diarrhea. Take them religiously. Don’t drink the water unless it’s out of a Lister bag or jerry can. If you want, I’ll show you—”
Patty stopped midsentence, cocked her head, listening. A moment later, Frankie heard the sound of helicopters.
“Crap,” Patty said. “Incoming. I guess you’re on your own, McGrath. Get settled in.” With an encouraging smile, she patted Frankie’s shoulder and hurried away. Frankie heard the thud of dozens of booted feet running on the wooden ramps throughout the camp.
Frankie felt abandoned.
“Buck up, McGrath,” she said aloud. Reaching for the door to her hooch, she stepped up the single step and entered a dark, musty, buggy room, about fifteen feet by thirty feet, that was divided into three separate cubicle-like spaces, each with its own green canvas-and-metal cot, a makeshift bedside table, and a lamp.
Olive-green netting hung in swoops over the ugly plywood walls.
Above one cot, color photographs were tacked to the wall: a couple, standing in front of a red horse barn, a man with close-cropped hair, leaning against the hood of a Chevrolet truck, that same man standing between a little red-haired girl and a huge black horse.
Above the other cot were posters of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King, Jr. The third cot—hers, presumably—had nothing tacked onto the wall, but the plywood was full of tack holes and torn bits of paper from posters that had been put up and ripped down. Her duffel bag was on the floor.
There was a small fridge in one corner, and someone had built a bookcase out of old slats and filled the shelves with worn paperbacks. It was stiflingly hot and there was neither a fan nor a window. A layer of red dirt coated the floor.
Closing the door behind her, she sat down on the narrow cot and opened her overnight bag.
A brand-new Polaroid camera lay on top of the carefully wrapped stack of framed photographs she’d brought from home.
She reached for the top one, unwrapped it, held it on her lap.
The picture had been taken at Disneyland.
In it, Frankie and Finley stood in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle, holding hands.
A split second before the camera lens clicked, Finley had grabbed the ticket booklet from Mom and ripped out the E tickets, saying, Me and Frankie are goin’ straight to the Rocket to the Moon.
And then to the Submarine. And Mom had said quietly, I hope they serve drinks at one of those kiosks, Connor .
Frankie felt the sting of tears. There was no one here to see, or to care, so she didn’t bother dashing them away. She stared at the image of her brother, with his protruding teeth and spit-shined hair and freckled face, and thought: What have I done?
Next, she unwrapped a picture of her parents, taken at one of their famous Fourth of July parties, both of them smiling, a table draped in patriotic bunting behind them.
They had been right. She had no business being so far away from home—at war—without Finley. How would she last a year?
At that, her stomach roiled again.
She ran for the latrines.