Chapter Nine #2
“Do what?”
“Imagine me and you. I dream of you, McGrath.”
Frankie’s breath caught. Just now, as exhausted as she was, the will it took to pretend to feel only friendship for him was hard to summon. She couldn’t smile. All she could think of was that she loved him. God help her. “Jamie, don’t…”
“If only I’d met you first,” he said.
“You wouldn’t have looked twice at me. Big college football star and soon-to-be surgeon.”
He touched her cheek in a swift caress. Her skin felt colder without his touch. “You have no idea how beautiful you are, McGrath.”
Frankie was afraid that in one more second of standing here looking at him, in this secret world where rain fell all around them, they—she—would lose this battle.
If one leaned forward, the other might, too.
She had never wanted to kiss a man more.
The love she felt for him caused a physical ache in her chest. She had to force herself to step back.
She wanted to say something clever, but nothing came to her.
Flipping up her hood, she angled forward to keep the rain from sluicing down her back and ran for the nurses’ showers.
They were empty, probably because of the storm.
Rain battered the elevated four-hundred-gallon water trailer, called a Water Buffalo, that fed the showers.
Frankie stripped and hung up her fatigues and poncho.
In the cold air, the shower water felt warm.
She didn’t need to look down to see red water coming off—red blood, red mud, red sweat.
Geckos climbed the wooden walls of the shower, hid behind the crossbeams.
She washed her hair and body. Without even bothering to dry off, she stepped back into her damp, dirty clothes and boots, flung the slick wet poncho back over her body, and ducked back into the rain.
At the plank bridge that ran over a gushing river of mud and water, she paused, slowed enough to check her balance so she didn’t fall into the coiled concertina wire on either side, and then she was back under the covered walkway.
The hooch was rattled by the rain; water sluiced down the wooden sides, created an ankle-deep puddle of red mud outside the door.
She opened it slowly, stepped inside, bringing the mud and rain with her.
There was no way to avoid it. In this season of wind and rain, the hooch always smelled of mildew and mold and the floor was always muddy.
On the small dresser by her bed, Frankie saw a brown-paper-wrapped, multi-stamped box beneath a blue airmail letter. Mail!
She hung up her wet poncho, made herself a cup of coffee, peeled out of her damp fatigues, and stored her boots in her footlocker. Dry boots made a world of difference over here. She put on the pajamas her mother had sent her last week, dabbed some perfume on her throat, and climbed into bed.
She opened the box, saw a bag of homemade cookies, a box of See’s chocolates, and some Twinkies inside, and smiled. When she tore open the envelope, a newspaper clipping fell out. In it, a crowd of protesters were burning the American flag.
July 5, 1967
Dearest Frances Grace,
I only want to write with good news, but the world has gone insane. The hippies aren’t so peaceful anymore, I can tell you.
Thousands of war protesters. Boys burning their draft cards and women burning their bras.
Race riots. Good Lord. Our annual party was a rather diminished affair, I must say.
All anyone talks about is the war. You remember Donna Van Dorn, from Sunday school?
At bridge club last week, I heard that she started dropping the acid and left college to join a folk band.
Supposedly, she is living in some commune and making candles.
For goodness’ sake, she’s a DAR member and a sorority girl.
People at the club are starting to wonder if the war in Vietnam is wrong.
Apparently, some International War Crimes Tribunal found the U.S.
guilty of bombing civilian targets, including schools—SCHOOLS, Frankie!
—and churches and even a leper colony. Who knew there were even lepers left in the world?
Stay safe, Frances, and write soon. I miss you.
Love,
Your mother
Frankie found an almost-dry sheet of thin blue airmail stationery so she could write back. In this humidity, the ink smeared through to the other side.
July 18, 1967
Dear Mom,
Thank you so much for the treats. I can’t tell you how much they lift everyone’s spirits in this terrible monsoon season.
The weather is tough to describe and tougher to endure. The only thing worse than the rain is that my friend Ethel’s DEROS came in. That’s Army-speak for the date eligible to return overseas. In other words, her date for going home.
(You remember me telling you about Ethel—the one who plays the violin and wants to be a big-animal veterinarian?) Anyway, in September, she’ll be leaving Vietnam. Going home.
I can’t imagine doing this without her.
But I will, I guess.
Over here
Frankie heard the sound of incoming choppers and put down her pen.
Sighing, she stowed the unfinished letter and most of the treats in her makeshift nightstand and dressed in her still-damp fatigues and put her boots back on.
Her shift was over, but what did that matter, as understaffed as they were? There were wounded incoming and nurses would be needed. Slipping the still-wet poncho over her clothes, she headed for the OR and saw a pair of ambulances drive up to the Pre-Op door, just off the helipad.
Jamie was already in the OR, in his surgical cap and gown. “No rest for the wicked, eh, McGrath?”
She handed him a Twinkie. “None at all.”
In late July, on a day with no incoming casualties expected, Barb organized a MEDCAP trip and the three nurses and Jamie headed for the helipad, where a stripped-down Huey waited for them.
Today they were catching a ride to St. Elizabeth’s Orphanage, which was housed in an old stone church not far away.
Holding her olive-green boonie hat on her head, Frankie angled forward and ran for the helicopter and jumped aboard. For the first time, she didn’t move to the back. She didn’t want to be afraid anymore, didn’t want to think of Finley every time she climbed into a helicopter.
Instead, she sat carefully on the floor near one of the gunners, whose machine gun pointed down at the land below. She cautiously swung one leg over the edge, then the other. Barb sat in the other open door. Ethel and Jamie sat in the back. When the chopper lifted, Frankie’s breath caught.
And then they were up, flying over the countryside.
Frankie had never felt so free, so fearless. Wind whipped across her face. The green landscape below was stunningly beautiful; she saw the thread of sand along the turquoise South China Sea.
The helicopter banked hard, turned inland, and swooped low over some rice paddies.
Frankie saw a red dirt road that sliced through a dense swath of elephant grass; there, the chopper paused, hovered, the rotors thwopping loudly, the grass flattened by the wash.
Slowly, the bird lowered to the ground and touched down just long enough to let the MEDCAP team get out, and then flew away, headed north.
As the medical team approached the orphanage, the doors banged open and children in ragged clothing surged forward, waving their hands, jostling each other in excitement.
They knew the Americans brought candy to hand out to the children.
Behind them, Vietnamese nuns, dressed in black habits, wearing conical straw hats, looked on wearily.
The nurses were swarmed by a group of young girls, all reaching out, wanting to touch them. Beside Frankie, Barb dropped to her knees, let the children touch her hair as she handed out suckers. Then she lined the kids up for vaccinations.
For the next four hours, the nurses administered vaccines and gave out vitamins, tended to rat bites and treated malaria. Jamie stitched up wounds and even pulled a few rotten teeth.
They were packing up to go when a petite, pretty young Vietnamese nun came forward. She walked up to Frankie, looking hesitant. “Uh… madame ?” she said in French-accented English.
“Yes?” Frankie said, wiping the sweat from her brow, resettling the bag of her medical supplies over her shoulder.
“You could please follow me?”
Frankie followed the nun into the cool interior of the orphanage.
Each room had been turned into a dormitory, with straw mats on the floor for sleeping.
One room held a dozen or more cribs, where babies slept and cried.
It broke Frankie’s heart to think of how many orphans were being made by this war.
Who would care for these children and babies when it ended?
At last, they turned a corner and stepped into an oblong room. Burned-down candles sat on windowsills and along the floor—so, no electricity.
There was only one child in here, a toddler, a girl, on a mat with her knees tucked up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her bent legs. She seemed to be making herself as small as physically possible. Frankie looked questioningly at the nun.
“A heat in her forehead,” the nun said, touching her own forehead to communicate clearly.
Frankie knelt on the hard stone floor beside the mat. Up close, she could see that the girl was a little older than she’d thought, but her body had been pared down by malnutrition.
“She will not eat,” the nun said.
“Hey, little one,” Frankie said, stroking the girl’s messy black hair.
The girl didn’t move or respond, just gazed at Frankie through sad brown eyes. Her snarled hair obscured an ugly burn that puckered the skin along her jaw.
“What’s your name?” Frankie asked, touching the child’s forehead, studying the burn, which didn’t look to be infected.
Fever, but not a bad one.