'You're in line for an X-Ray, Lieutenant, I can't-'
'Sure you can. Just help me up and we'll look around. Then bring me back here for the X-Ray.' It sounded like a good plan to me. But I needed a little help, and for those bells to stop.
'You got hit on the head too hard, Lieutenant. You have to stay there!'
Jay scurried off. At least he looked more scared of me than of the other casualties now. My head was beginning to clear a little, and the ringing racket going on between my ears was down a few notches. With no help available, it was time to either lay back and forget about Kaz, or get up by myself. I wondered what an X Ray would find. I touched the side of my head again and felt a crusty patch of matted hair and dried blood. I realized my shirt was gone. I found the blood-soaked pieces on the stretcher beside me. They must have cut it off, looking for other wounds. I did a quick check and couldn't find any other sharp pains anywhere. I knew I could move my legs and arms, even if not real well. Screw the X Ray. I just needed a shirt so I could walk around without being put back on a stretcher.
I looked up and down the hall. No Jay, no doctors. I took a deep breath and rolled off the stretcher, onto my knees and elbows. Oh boy. The bells started ringing louder, my skull was pounding, but I stayed steady on all fours. Good so far. I got up on one knee. Still no one in the hallway. I had to stand upright now, while I had the time. Push, I ordered myself.
I was up. My legs were shaking. I rested my hands on my knees while my stomach decided if it was coming with me or not. The hallway started to spin but it slowed to a stop, like a top on its last few turns. My stomach stayed put and I managed to stand up straight. That lasted two seconds, but long enough for me to get one hand to the wall and that was enough to keep me vertical. I took a couple of deep breaths and let my hand fall to my side. Not bad. Who needs an X-Ray anyway?
I took slow steps until I was sure my legs remembered how to work together. They did and I kept going, aiming for the open door on my right. I passed one guy on his stretcher who had his leg in a splint. He smiled and gave me the V for victory sign. I nodded like I was out for a walk in the park. The next guy was unconscious. His chest was taped up and he had a gauze bandage on his head. His breathing was ragged, bubbles of blood popping out of his mouth when he exhaled. If this was the area for guys who weren't hurt too badly and could wait, I didn't want to see the others.
I made it to a door. I went in. No one was inside. Just what I wanted. A supply closet with a sink, soap, and shelves full of bandages, towels, all sorts of medical supplies. I ran the water and stuck my head underneath the spigot. It felt like an ice pick. I gasped but made myself stay under. I had to look presentable, and that meant no dried blood. I washed my face and toweled off, carefully dabbing around the wound above my ear. I had a big goose egg, and a long cut still oozing blood after I cleaned it out. I went through the bandages, found a gauze pad, and wrapped a bandage around it, ripped the ends and tied them off. There wasn't a mirror and I hoped I looked like a discharged walking wounded, not an escaped madman.
Clothes. I needed a shirt. The shelves were stacked with operating gowns but I didn't think I could pass for a doctor. I looked around and saw khaki shirts and pants hanging on the back of the door. Perfect. I checked the shirts. There was one with lieutenant's bars and one with captain's. I decided against adding impersonating a senior office to whatever regulations I was breaking already and took the second louie's shirt.
My hands rested on the sink for a minute. The cold water had cleared my head some. I was still dizzy and things were a bit blurry, but I was ready. I was even getting used to the ringing in my ears. Time to find Kaz.
I moved down the hallway, and recognized where I was. This was a wing off the main hospital. I walked past a double door with X-Ray painted on it. I couldn't bust in to see if Kaz was there, but I checked the stretchers lining the hall. Mostly GIs with broken bones or cracked skulls. A few sailors, maybe from the air raid on the harbor. I was almost to the end of the corridor when a nurse turned the corner and walked toward me.
'Are you all right, Lieutenant?' she asked, concern and confusion wrinkling her brow.
'Yeah, they checked me out and said I was fine, told me to get out of the way,' I said, as cheerfully as I could, hooking a thumb back in the general direction of the X-Ray room.
'Well, this is your lucky day, Lieutenant,' she said, and hustled by me to kneel down and check one of the sailors. I wanted to tell her if I was really lucky I wouldn't have had this knock on the head, but thought better of it and turned left, toward the main emergency room.
As I got closer I understood why there were so many stretcher cases lined up outside. The place was packed. Nurses and doctors were running back and forth, threading their way between gurneys as orderlies shifted the wounded from waiting areas into treatment rooms or surgery. Some of the doctors had on their white operating gowns, splashed with blood, while others were working on guys right in the hall, doing God knows what. One GI was screaming bloody murder as two nurses held him down while Perrini worked on his leg. I didn't interrupt.
I remembered Gloria had told me they had new doctors coming in, and I figured they got here just in time. The 21st was a General Hospital, not a Field Hospital. They were supposed to get cases sent up the line from the Field Hospitals, not fresh casualties. No one expected the Luftwaffe to be this active so far in our rear. The staff looked a little overwhelmed, and a lot scared.
As I approached the operating theaters, the odors got worse. Antiseptic, dried blood, the smell of shit and piss mixed with the smoky burned smells of fabric and flesh, all blending into the gut- wrenching stink of the ass- end of war, a military hospital under siege by the wounded and dying.
'Outta the way, outta the way!' An orderly ran by pushing a gurney with a still form on it, a white sheet over his body, soaking up blood wherever it touched him. His eyes were open and staring at the ceding as I stumbled back, out of the way, wondering if a dirty brown ceiling in a makeshift Algiers hospital was going to be the last thing that kid ever saw.
I had to back up to lean against the wall or fall down. The smells were getting to me and I needed to catch my breath. I moved on, checking the conscious and unconscious wounded on either side of me. No British uniforms, not that I could tell anyway, as most had been cut away.
I began to be able to tell the difference between the GIs who ran into the Germans at the front, and those in the convoy who'd been bombed and strafed just outside of town. The convoy GIs wore clean uniforms. They were dressed in herringbone twill coveralls, with the American flag patch sewn on the shoulder. Their woolen clothes were probably in their duffle bags, blown to hell on some deserted stretch of Algerian highway, with whatever wasn't burned or looted by Arabs. The GIs from the front were dressed in filthy, dirty wool pants, shirts, and twill coveralls in all sorts of combinations. They looked like they had been wearing everything they owned, dressed for cold nights in the desert. As their clothes were cut away by orderlies searching for secondary wounds, each layer would cover another shirt, or long johns, or whatever they had piled on for warmth. I wondered about the cold- weather gear stacked up in the warehouses down by the harbor. Had the army a clue how damn cold it got in the desert?
I passed a hallway leading to another wing of the budding, this one also stacked up with wounded on stretchers or sitting on crates. It looked like another holding area for those who could wait for treatment.
I walked the corridor searching for Kaz, hoping to see him sitting there with a big grin on his face.
There was some yelling going on. 'You get the fuck out of here,' hollered a GI, a huge bandage wrapped around one shoulder. It didn't stop him from jabbing a finger on his good side at the guy across from him.
'Shut up, dogface. Don't they teach you not to talk to an officer that way?' This from a guy in a leather jacket, an Army Air Corps pilot, a lieutenant with his trousers ripped open and bandages on both legs.
'Don't they teach you not to shoot up your own troops? Yesterday two P-38s killed four of our guys, and it wasn't the first time. I'm getting sick of it!' The GI tried to get up but winced at the effort and sat back down.
'You tell him, Morrie,' said another GI. There were murmurs of assent and anger, but not one of them seemed to be as willing as Morrie to take on an officer, even if he was Air Corps.
'Listen, Private, it works both ways. You guys are supposed to know aircraft recognition, right? They ever teach you WEFT procedures? Wings, Engine, Fuselage, Tail?'
'Kinda hard to pick out that WEFT bullshit when half a dozen P- 38s are blazing away at you with their. 50 calibers,' Morrie said.
'You probably fired on them first. You know what WEFT really stands for in the infantry? Wrong Every Fucking Time!'
This time Morrie stood up. 'Yeah, well you murdering bastard, we have a saying too. If it flies, it dies!' Morrie raised his one good arm in a fist and advanced on the pilot, who lay immobile on his stretcher. Three guys who could get up did and pulled Morrie back. Words continued to fly, but not fists.
