Chapter Eight #2
She rested her cheek on his collarbone. They moved in an easy, familiar rhythm, changing their steps only when the music changed.
Finally, she looked up, found him looking down at her. She reached up slowly, eased the hair out of his eyes. “You look tired.”
“Rough day.”
He tried to smile, and the effort touched her. She knew how hard that particular camouflage could be.
“They’re so young,” he said.
“Tell me something good,” she said.
He thought for a minute, smiled. “My seven-year-old niece, Kaylee, lost a tooth. The tooth fairy left her fifty cents and she bought a goldfish. Her brother, Braden, made the soccer team.”
Frankie smiled at the sweetness of it. She was about to ask him something about his life back in the world when the door to the O Club burst open, letting in the sound of a distant mortar attack. A trio of men walked in.
Strode, really. They were noticeable, loud, laughing.
They didn’t look military, let alone like officers.
All three had hair that was too long to be regulation.
Two had mustaches. One wore a cowboy hat and a Warlocks T-shirt.
Only one wore the blue fatigues of the Navy.
They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and were singing what sounded like a fight song.
They pushed through the crowd and sat at a table that bore a RESERVED sign.
One of them raised a hand and a Vietnamese waitress wearing an ao dai rushed over with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and three shot glasses on a tray.
A smaller guy with reddish hair and a sparse mustache threw his head back and howled like a wolf.
“Who are they?” Frankie asked. They looked more like Berkeley students or cowboys than naval officers.
“New squadron. The Seawolves. Naval helicopter combat support. The Navy needed bird pilots, so last year they chose a few jet jockeys, asked for volunteers, and taught them to fly choppers. They may look arrogant and unchecked with their hair and clothing, but they’re workhorses.
They’ve flown a lot of medevacs for us in their off-hours.
You call on one of the Seawolves, and if they aren’t fighting Victor Charlie, they show up.
” He fell silent for a moment, then said, “I’ve been thinking about you, McGrath. ”
Now he sounded and looked like any other on-the-make surgeon. This man she could laugh at. “Really?”
“You’ve been hiding long enough.”
“Hiding?”
“In Neuro. Your girl squad—Ethel and Barb—tell me you’re ready to move up.”
“Oh.”
“Captain Smith says you did exceptional work. Fastest learner he’s ever had, he said.”
Frankie didn’t quite know how to respond. Captain Smith had never said that to her.
“He also says you are compassionate, which I already knew.”
“Well…”
“The point is this. Did you come to this hellhole to change bandages or to save lives?”
“Well. I don’t think that’s quite fair, sir.”
“Jamie,” he said. “For God’s sake, McGrath. Jamie .”
“So. Jamie. I don’t think that’s quite fair. An opportunistic infection can—”
“Come work in surgery with me. Patty Perkins is a short-timer. I need someone good to replace her.”
“I’m not good enough,” she said. “Take Sara from the burn unit.”
“I want you, McGrath.”
She heard more in that sentence than belonged there, enough heat to set off warning bells. “If this is just a way to sleep with me—”
He gave her an easy smile. “Oh, I’d love to sleep with you, McGrath, but that’s not what this is about.”
“I’m not good enough. Honestly.”
“You will be when I get done with you. Scout’s honor.”
“Were you ever a Scout?”
“Hell, no. I still can’t figure out what I’m doing here. Too much debt and too many war stories, I think. My dad told me I was a fool. But here I am and here I’ll be for another seven months. I need a kick-ass nurse at my side.”
Frankie was afraid of all of it—mass casualties, failing at her job, keeping Jamie at bay—but she’d been here almost two months and, as bad as it was, time was moving fast. She’d learned what she could from Neuro.
If she really loved nursing and wanted to be even better, it was time to take the next step.
“Okay, Captain Callahan. I’ll put in for a transfer to surgery.”
“Excellent.” He looked very pleased with himself. There was a glimmer in his eyes that Frankie assumed had seduced plenty of women. She did not intend to fall prey; but the truth was that he tempted her. And she was pretty sure he knew it.
On the day of her first shift in the OR, Frankie paused at the stacked sandbags outside the door, took a deep breath, and walked into the Quonset hut.
Chaos.
Bright lights, music blaring, doctors and medics and nurses shouting instructions, casualties screaming.
She saw Jamie, dressed in a bloody gown and masked up, coming toward her.
There was blood everywhere, on walls, the floor, faces—dripping, geysering, pooling.
Patty Perkins, in bloody fatigues, yelled, “You’re in the way, McGrath,” and pushed Frankie aside; she stumbled and hit the wall as two medics carried a litter into the OR.
On it, a soldier—a kid—was sitting up, yelling, “Where are my legs?”
“Just breathe, McGrath,” Jamie said, touching her shoulder gently with his gowned elbow. She looked up at him, saw his tired eyes above his mask.
A gurney wheeled past them, a young man with his guts hanging out. Barb was running alongside the gurney. “Coming in from Pre-Op.”
Frankie stared at the trail of blood behind the gurney, feeling sickness rise into her throat.
“Okay, McGrath. You know what a DPC is, yes?” Jamie said.
She couldn’t remember.
“ McGrath. Focus.”
She knew, of course she did. She’d been tending to them for weeks. “Delayed primary closure. Dirty wounds need to be cleaned. We close them later to prevent infection.”
“Right. Come with me.”
Frankie moved through the OR, realizing halfway across that Jamie was close enough to keep her moving forward. He led her to a young man who lay on a gurney.
“This is a D and I. Debride and irrigate. That’s a frag wound. We need to stop the bleeding and remove the metal fragments and cut away the dead skin. Then we irrigate with saline. We make little holes out of big ones. Can you help me?”
She shook her head.
He stared down at her, said softly, “Look at me.”
She exhaled slowly and looked up at him.
“No fear, McGrath. You can do this.”
No fear.
“Right. Yes,” she lied. “Yes, of course.”
For the next six hours, the doors to Ward Six banged open repeatedly, with medics and corpsmen bringing in the wounded from Pre-Op. Frankie learned that it was called a push.
Now she stood across an operating table from Jamie, both of them capped, gowned, and gloved. Between them lay a young sergeant, whose chest had taken a close-range gunshot. To Frankie’s right was the tray of surgical instruments and supplies.
“Hemostat,” Jamie said. He gave Frankie a moment to study the tray of instruments, and then, “It’s next to the retractor. See it?”
Frankie nodded, picked up the forceps, and handed them to him. She watched, mesmerized, as he repaired the wound, stitched a vein deep inside the man’s chest.
“Allen clamp.” He took the clamp she handed him and went back to work.
By 2200 hours, Frankie was dead on her feet and covered in blood.
“All done,” Jamie said at last, stepping back.
“Last patient!” Barb said, cranking up the radio on a Van Morrison song. Singing along, she crossed the OR and approached Frankie and Jamie. “How did my girl do?” Barb asked Jamie.
Jamie looked at Frankie. “She was great.”
“I told you you could cut it,” Barb said to Frankie, giving her a hip bump.
Patty skidded into place beside Barb. “Good job, Frankie. You’ll be a star in no time.” She slung an arm around Barb. “O Club?”
Barb pulled down her mask. “You got it. See you there, Frankie?”
Frankie was so tired she could barely nod.
Barb and Patty put arms around each other’s shoulders, kept each other standing as they headed for the doors.
Jamie pulled off his surgical cap and called for a medic to take the patient to Post-Op. When the gurney was wheeled away, Jamie and Frankie were left alone in the OR, facing each other.
“Well?” he said, giving her a steady look. She knew somehow that it mattered to him, how she felt about tonight.
“I have a long way to go,” she said. Then she smiled at him. “But, yeah.”
“There are men going home to their families because of us. That’s about all we can hope for.” He moved closer. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”
“I don’t really drink.”
“Then you can buy me one.”
After they discarded their scrubs and caps and gloves, he took her hand and led her out of the OR.
She found herself leaning into him as they walked. She’d never had a serious boyfriend, never made love. Back in the world, it had seemed important to be a good girl, to make her parents proud, but honestly, the horror she saw here every day made the rules of polite society seem unimportant.
Not surprisingly, the O Club was packed with people, all of whom looked exhausted and beaten up after tonight’s push.
But they were done now and needed to unwind.
Ethel was seated at a table alone, smoking a cigarette; Barb was on the makeshift dance floor in some man’s arms, barely moving to the music.
It looked more like they were holding each other upright than dancing.
Some guy in the corner was strumming a ukulele.
Jamie led Frankie to Ethel’s table and pulled out a chair for her. Frankie practically fell into it. Then he headed to the bar for drinks. “Well?” Ethel asked, offering Frankie a cigarette.
Frankie took it, lit it off of Ethel’s. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Hell, Frank, that’s a great first day in the OR.” She sighed. “Triage was brutal. Charlie really tore the shit out of those boys. Every single expectant died.”
Ethel held Frankie’s hand for a moment, both giving and receiving comfort. Then she stood up. “I can’t stand it in here tonight. I’m going to the hooch for quiet, maybe write my dad a letter. You?”
Frankie glanced at Jamie, who was headed back from the bar. “Jamie’s—”
“Married.”
Frankie looked up at Ethel. “Married? What? He never said…”
Ethel touched her shoulder. “Be careful, Frank. Not everything the world teaches women is a lie. You don’t want to get a reputation over here.
I know I’m a good Baptist girl and far from cool, but some things are simply true, no matter how much the world changes.
Think carefully who you climb into a cot with. ”
Frankie watched Ethel walk out of the O Club.
Moments later, Jamie sat down beside Frankie, scooted in close, offered her a Fresca. “I got you this, but I seriously recommend the whiskey.”
“Do you?” She sipped the lukewarm soda.
“There’s a hotel in Saigon,” he said. “The Caravelle. It has a great rooftop bar. You’d love it. Soft beds. Clean sheets.”
Frankie turned to him. “You should wear a ring, you know.”
His smile faded. “McGrath—”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“I figured you knew. Everyone knows.”
“What’s your wife’s name?”
He sighed. “Sarah.”
“Do you have children?”
“One,” he said after a pause. “Davy.”
Frankie closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Do you have a picture?”
He took out his wallet, pulled out a photograph of a tall, slender woman with bouffant hair, holding a towheaded boy with plump cheeks and marshmallow arms and legs.
He put the photograph away. There was a silence between them now, a quiet steeped in Frankie’s disappointment. “It… doesn’t have to have anything to do with… this. Us. Here.”
“You disappoint me,” she said.
“I…”
“Don’t tell me lies, Jamie. Respect me, please. I believe in old-fashioned things. Like love and honesty. And vows.” She downed her soda so fast it burned her throat. Then she stood up. “Good night.”
“Don’t run off, McGrath. I’ll be a gentleman. Scout’s honor.”
“I believe we’ve already determined that you were never a Scout.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But I could use a friend tonight.”
She knew how that felt. She wondered if it had been the photograph of his child that stole his smile and made him sad. Slowly, she sat down beside him. The truth was she liked him; too much, maybe, and she needed a friend tonight as much as he did. “How long have you been married?”
“Four years.” He looked down at his drink. “But…”
“But what?” she asked, knowing it was a dangerous question. They were a long way from home here, in a world that felt impossibly fragile. Lonely.
“Sarah got pregnant the first time we had sex. At a dorm party in her senior year. I was in med school. It never occurred to either one of us not to get married.”
“And…”
“I’m a good guy, McGrath.”
She stared at him, feeling strangely bereft. As if a chance had been lost before she’d even known of its existence. “And I’m a good girl.”
“I know that.”
Between them, a silence fell. Then Frankie forced a smile.
“Sarah must be a saint to put up with your sorry ass.”
“That she is, McGrath,” he said, looking at her sadly. “That she is.”
May 16, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
I am training to be a surgical nurse now.
I want to be good at this more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
It’s a good feeling to love what you do.
The countryside is beautiful here. A kind of green I’ve never seen before, and the water is a stunning turquoise. We are in the monsoon season now, but so far that just means flashes of hard rain that come and go, leaving sunshine behind. No wonder everything is so green.
I’m taking lots of pictures and can’t wait to share this all with you. Then you’ll understand.
How’s life back in the world?
Love you,
F
PS. Please send hand lotion and crème rinse and perfume. And a new St. Christopher medal.
May 31, 1967
Dear Frances Grace,
I think about you all the time. I light a candle for you every Sunday, and I know your father sometimes sits in your Bug, with his hands on the steering wheel, staring at the garage wall. What he is thinking, I can only guess.
It is a strange world we are all in. Volatile and uncertain. We—Americans, I mean—can’t seem to talk to each other anymore, our disagreements seem insurmountable.
I imagine it would feel wonderful to be good at something that mattered. That is something that too many of the women of my generation didn’t consider.
With love,
Your mother