For All Their Lives Page 14

  “A bit awesome, eh?” Someone behind her chuckled. Casey whirled.

  Luke was still wet from his shower. His rusty curls were slicked back from his head, but he was freshly shaved, and his robe flapped around his bare ankles. He linked his arm through hers.

  “Yes,” she said. “Where are the flowers? I thought there would be flowers.”

  “Jesus, I don’t know. I never thought much about it, but you’re right. I think we should find out right away, before the next push comes in. Heavy casualities are predicted for today. Predicted,” he said, “is the same thing as confirmed. It beats the shit out of me how these brass monkeys know almost to the goddamn minute when wounded are due to arrive. They stick pins in some asshole map, and the next thing you know we have two hundred kids coming through here. Those flowers now,” he said, slapping at his head, “are going to bother me. Flowers are important. Don’t know how that got past me.”

  The row of Quonset huts came into Casey’s line of vision. They were barren-looking, hot and ugly. She wanted to say something about how ugly they were, but she realized Luke already knew. Instead she said, “Do you know a doctor, an American one, in Saigon, named Eric?”

  “Jesus, are you going to tell me you already got a thing going with one of our doctors? You just got in-country yesterday. Or are you going to tell me you’re asking for Lily?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “Want some advice, Casey? Mind your own business and let Lily handle her own affairs.”

  “I guess that means the Eric in question is married and is stringing Lily along,” Casey said. Her face flushed with the reprimand. “When his tour is up he’ll go back to the wife and children. She’ll probably be pregnant, and he’ll never think about her or the child again.” Casey searched her mind for an apt description of the situation. “It stinks!” she said succinctly.

  Luke laughed. “You know, it sounds worse when you say it with a French accent. Married men have dalliances with young women all the time, here, in the United States, in France. It’s what it is, nothing more. And,” Luke wagged a finger under her nose, “Lily has been educated in the United States and lived there for a good number of years. She looks young, but she’s thirty years old, so that hardly makes her a young girl who doesn’t know the score. Take my advice and stay out of it. She won’t thank you later on.”

  Casey watched the doctor when he stopped in his tracks, his ears and eyes cocked toward the horizon. “Here it comes.”

  He meant Chinooks full of wounded, but she couldn’t hear a thing, couldn’t see a cloud on the horizon. She was aware of movement as corpsmen with their insignia on their arms rushed outside the Quonset huts. She saw Lily Gia and the chief nurse head for the hospital. She walked as fast as she could, back to her quarters, where she pulled on the shoes Lily had left earlier. When she was outside again, she still couldn’t see anything or hear the rotor blades of the incoming choppers.

  Five minutes later she was masked, scrubbed, gloved, and gowned and standing alongside Luke Farrell. He was discussing the flower shortage with two other doctors. One of them promised to have some flown in.

  “I just want to know who the fuck is going to plant them,” Luke grumbled.

  “I’ll do it if no one else will,” Casey said from behind her mask.

  “Do you have a color preference?” the doctor closest to Luke’s table asked sourly.

  “Red. Purple. Yellow,” Casey shot back.

  “They’ll be here by 0800 two days from now.”

  When the wounded came in, there was no time to think, no time to do anything but concentrate on the surgeon’s hands.

  She was looking down at Luke’s patient. He had a lacerated liver and was going to lose his spleen. He had multiple shrapnel wounds all over his body. He’d lose one of his legs, maybe the other. His stomach steamed upward. “Wipe!” Luke ordered. “Clancy!” he roared. “This guy has a head wound. When I finish, take over!”

  Jack Clancy was the neurosurgeon.

  “I think we can stabilize this guy,” Luke said from behind his mask. “What do you think, Nurse?”

  Casey slapped a clamp into Luke’s waiting palm. “I say you’re right,” she replied softly.

  They talked then of inane things, about where she was going to plant the flowers and how many would arrive. When they exhausted the subject of flowers, they talked about hot dogs and hamburgers and ice-cold beer. Picnics, Luke said, were his favorite pastime, ants and all.

  They were on their fifth patient; the talk moved on to hula hoops and stuffed animals and two-wheeled bicycles. When a deep belly wound arrived, Lily spelled Casey for her ten-minute break.

  Outside in the stifling air, Casey lit a cigarette as she let her eyes travel the length and width of the compound. Now was as good a time as any to decide where the flowers would go. Planting flowers was normal. Planting something beautiful in a place so ugly was civilized. She did a mental count of how many plants she would need. Maybe she should just make a big circle and plant everything in the center instead of trying to decorate the mean-looking Quonset huts. She knew in her gut that the plants and the garden would become an obsession. She felt like crying, but of course she wouldn’t. That would mean she was weak, and this awful country wasn’t for the weak of heart. She said a prayer then, asking for strength and stamina to do what she came here to do. “Don’t let me fail,” she pleaded silently.

  The day wore on. When the shift crawled toward the fourteen-hour mark, Casey felt as if she would drop in her tracks. All she wanted was to lie down on the wet sheets and sleep forever. She no longer cared about her feet. They were as numb as her brain. When she left the O.R. at the end of fifteen hours, she refused to look at the chart by the door. When she peeled off her hospital clothes, she saw dried blood on her arms. She wondered whose blood it was.

  Casey headed straight for the shower. She stood under the spray, fully clothed. She rubbed at her fatigues, trying to squeeze the water toward her swollen ankles. In a daze she walked back to her room and fell on her cot.

  Six hours later she heard the Chinooks directly overhead. She bolted upright, knowing she had five minutes at best to get to the O.R.

  She pulled the hospital gown on over the same clothes she’d showered and slept in the night before. Until she pulled on her booties, she hadn’t realized she was barefoot.

  “I had a dream last night,” Luke volunteered.

  “I thought you said you never sleep,” Casey said in an accusing voice.

  “Actually, it was a daydream, okay?” Luke looked down at his first patient. “Jesus Christ!”

  Casey glanced at the faceless boy, faceless because there was virtually no face left. She reeled and felt one of the corpsmen’s backs push against her own. She recovered immediately.

  “Who’s doing triage!” Luke barked. “I can’t help this kid. I don’t fix faces. Ah, shit! Corpsman! On the double, move him out! Next!”

  Five hours later Luke said, “As I was saying, I had this dr—this daydream. I was sleigh riding with this kid Jimmy Oliver. I didn’t have a sled, so I was using an old rubber tire. Man, did that baby go. I was at the top of this huge hill, back in Pennsylvania, and when we got to the bottom, we sailed right into the South China Sea, tire and all. Is that a dream or what? There we were freezing our butts off, and then at the bottom we slid into ninety-degree water. Neat, eh? Close this guy, Adams. Looks like it’s going to be an early shift today. Ten and a half hours. Can’t beat that. I’ll buy dinner at the club. After I fight you for the shower. Remember now, neat stitches.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She was tired, but not as tired as she had been the day before. She was also starving. She was clean, her hair washed, and she added lipstick and a dab of powder to her already damp nose. She rubbed it off when she saw the way it clumped on her skin. Au naturel was the way to go. It had to be. There was no choice. She smiled at her reflection. She was adjusting. Even her feet felt better.

  The others were already seated when Casey
entered the Officers’ Club. Maureen Hagen was seated next to Lily Gia, and next to her were Luke and two other doctors, whom she was finally seeing for the first time without their surgical masks. She wondered whose guest Lily was, or if that protocol wasn’t a requirement at the club.

  Off duty they were a wholesome group. The talk was about home and friends and favorite foods.

  “What I really miss is the change of seasons,” Maureen said wistfully.

  “Hell, we can fix that right up,” a doctor named Sam said brightly. “We’re getting some flowers. I put the order in last night. Personally. Flowers will make it summer. Can you deal with summer for a while? We can work on the other seasons as we go along. Anyway, you’re about due for R and R, aren’t you?” Maureen nodded. “Save it for winter and go to Japan. It gets cold there in winter. That’s my contribution for the day, ladies and gentlemen.”

  “And we do thank you,” Luke muttered.

  They drank beer and ate stale, soggy pretzels. Their dinner, when it arrived, was something that looked like pepper steak and rice. Luke said it wasn’t pepper steak at all. No one, it seemed, knew exactly what it was, because it had no taste. Lily giggled.

  The talk was easy, friendly. Casey felt as if she truly belonged somewhere for the first time in her life. Then Luke made a toast. She raised stunned eyes to the group when he said, “To the best O.R. nurse I ever worked with! Think I’ll marry her someday!”

  “Here! Here!” Brian Breen shouted, raising his glass. Casey flushed. Lily hugged her and Maureen winked slyly in her direction. God, she really belonged. It was a wonderful feeling. Of course, she knew Luke didn’t mean it. He was just saying whatever came into his head. Luke Farrell was a loner. The Luke Farrells of the world didn’t have time for things like marriage. But she did feel flattered.

  They all went on about home for a while, but when the conversation came to Casey, she said, “I just got here. It’s too soon for me to think about home. The truth is, I don’t have a home to go back to.” She told them all about arriving in San Francisco. They listened intently. When she wound down, Brian said, “That’s shitful! I come from Waco, Texas, and they’re always looking for transplants. Think about it.” By the end of the evening she had offers from six other states.

  When the clock on the wall said it was 10:45, Maureen decided to call it a night. So did Lily. Brian was asleep on the table and Sam was dancing by himself in the middle of the floor. Tomas had left earlier with a young nurse named Patty something-or-other. Casey looked at Luke, and Luke looked at her. “I know what you’re going to ask me. You want me to tell you all about Vietnam, right?”

  “How did you know?” Casey asked in awe.

  “I can see it in your eyes. You wanted to ask before, but we were all caught up in the home thing, so you put it off. Right?”

  “Are you a seer or something?”

  “Or something. It took me five days before I started to ask about it. I’ll pass on what I was told, howzat?”

  “Only if you feel like talking about it,” Casey said quietly.

  Luke tilted his chair back against the wall. He spoke in a low, even monotone. He’s reciting a geography lesson the way I used to do in class, Casey thought. She listened, which was more than she did when the other students were reciting their lessons.

  “We’re on the Indochinese peninsula, bordered on the north by China, west by Laos and Cambodia, east and south by the Gulf of Thailand, the Gulf of Tonkin, and the South China Sea. North and south, I’d say, stretches it to about a thousand miles, east and west about three hundred thirty miles. In the north it’s thick, mountainous jungle. The VC love it there. The climate is monsoonal with lots of floods. Here in the south it’s flat, marshy, and muddy. Rice grows well in both the north and south. You’re gonna get sick of rice. I’m to the point where I’d rather chew on grass than eat rice.”

  “I’m pretty much a potato person myself.” Casey smiled.

  “Forget it. No potatoes here. Lots of pepper though. Sweet potatoes, does that count?”

  “Ohhh, I love sweet potatoes with lots of butter, pepper, and brown sugar. I could eat them every day.”

  “Jesus, don’t tell that to anyone or you will be,” Luke groused. “And you’ll get a good case of Ho Chi Minh’s revenge.” Casey flushed.

  “How do you know all this?” Casey asked suspiciously, unsure if Luke was putting her on or not.

  “Got it straight from a mama-san who helps out in the orphanage in Da Nang. Since it’s her country, she should know, don’t you agree?”

  “I suppose so. Do many of the Vietnamese speak English?”

  “The educated ones do, and French, of course. The nuns in the orphanage speak Vietnamese fluently. They translate for us. Onward and upward . . . the biggest cities in the south are, of course, Saigon, which is very modern, and Da Nang. I’ve been to them when I can get out of here, which isn’t often.”

  “Is it true that there are a lot of Roman Catholics here?”

  “It’s true. Taoism and Buddhism too, though everyone is so hell-bent on killing everyone else, it’s hard to conceive the religion thing at all. What are you?” Luke asked curiously.

  “Roman Catholic, and you?”

  “I’m not anything right now. Someday I will be though,” Luke said curtly.

  “I see,” Casey said.

  “No you don’t see at all. Jesus, I hate it when people patronize me. You don’t understand how I cannot have a religion and maybe never have one. Since you think it, why don’t you say it?” he snarled.

  Casey bristled. It bothered her when this man who played second fiddle to God in the operating room could be so blase about something so important. She minced no words when she said so.

  Luke blinked. “It never pays to argue about religion or politics. I was baptized a Lutheran, does that help?”

  “Yes.” Casey smiled, “It helps a lot. Listen, thank you for the history lesson. You forgot something though.” She grinned.

  “And what might that be?”

  “You forgot to tell me about the money. Well, don’t worry. I already know. It’s the dong.”

  “Dong, schlong, what the hell.” When he saw her blush, he knew she knew what the second word meant. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”

  “Accepted. I wasn’t raised entirely in a convent,” she said, though actually, she had only learned the word in the past few days. She’d overheard some enlisted men using it. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “And the day after and the day after that,” Luke said morosely.

  “Are you going to stay here?” Casey asked curiously as she prepared to leave.

  “Yeah, I want to write a letter to a med school buddy of mine in Thailand. I’ve been trying to coerce him into coming here and helping out, but so far he’s resisted my efforts. He’s probably the best goddamn plastic surgeon in the world. If Singin Vinh were here today, he could have fixed that kid’s face, the one we lost. If I’d been able to save him, Singin could have . . . ah, shit, what difference does it make now?”

  He was writing the letter in his head, Casey saw. She ceased to exist for him, and that was all right. Whoever you are, Singin Vinh, she thought, I hope you reconsider and come here to help your friend. She walked out into the hot, sultry night.

  “Good night, Casey,” Lily called from across the compound.

  “Good night, Lily. Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” She could hear Lily’s soft laughter follow her.

  Inside her stifling room, Casey lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Maybe she should write some letters herself. She could pen off a note to Mac and give it to one of the chopper pilots to deliver to the Red Cross unit in Vinh Long. It would probably go through three or four pilots before it reached Vinh Long, but if there was a way to get something through, be it supplies, wounded, or messages, the chopper pilots were the ones to trust. A letter to Nicole to ask for cotton underwear would go with the regular mail. She closed her eyes, merely t
o rest them and think about what she wanted to write to Mac, when she drifted off to sleep and didn’t wake until the middle of the following morning.

  “No wounded today,” Lily said in the mess tent.

  “Really! That’s wonderful. What will we do all day?”

  “Scrub down the operating room, help on the medical floor, write letters for some of the men, read to others. Paperwork,” she said, making a face.

  “Paperwork!” Casey said, aghast.

  “Uh-huh. Loads of it.”

  It was noon before the chief nurse called a halt to the morning’s work schedule. The hospital was clean, the mounds of linen counted and neatly stacked, rounds were over, letters written for the wounded, along with small talk about things back home. It was all under control for the moment, Casey thought as she walked outside into the brilliant sunshine. The sky was a radiant blue, the clouds white and fluffy.

  “It’s all so quiet,” she murmured to Lily. “I don’t hear any mortar fire or sniper fire. It’s weird. What does it mean?”

  “It means both sides are taking a temporary break, I guess. Enjoy the quiet. It won’t last long. There’s a pond not far from here if you want to go and enjoy the quiet for a while. It’s a wonderful little place where you can sit on a blanket and read. I would imagine there are places like it where you come from. All we have to do is tell someone we’re going, so they can guard us. It’s one of the rules. Until now, we’ve been so busy I don’t think anyone has explained to you that you cannot leave the compound without an escort. It will be nice to have some company today, if you feel like coming with me.”

  “I’d love it. I have some letters to write. What’s for lunch?”

  Lily made a face. “Macaroni and cheese and Spam.”

  “I guess I can eat that.” Casey grinned.

  Lunch was a cacophony of chatter, laughter, the clatter of silverware and plates and shuffling feet, as well as some good-natured jostling which resulted in squeals and giggles from the Vietnamese women who were permitted to eat in the mess hall. Casey enjoyed the easy camaraderie.