bucked up on the bed like a frightened horse and tried to climb the wall backward, his screams intensifying.
At the foot of the bed, Xe sat in the wheelchair and regarded the patient with a mixture of calm and bewilderment. Then he lowered his eyes and mumbled to himself as he spread his hands over the spoiled meat of Dickens's legs.
'Get that gook away from me, oh God, he's going to kill me!'
Dickens screamed.
A patient named Miller, with one arm in a sling, jerked the wheelchair sideways and sent it flying with a kick. The chair careened down the hall, the old man trying to get control of it by grabbing for the wheels. He succeeded only in making it veer into one of the beds, where it crashed, sending its fragile old occupant sprawling.
Two more of the patients leaped from bed and started after Xe. I didn't think they were going to help him up.
I saw Meyers running, as if in slow motion, across the hall from the Vietnamese side of the ward. God, he'll never make it, I thought.
just then an ungodly clatter drew everyone's attention to the Navy corpsman, Ken Feyder. 'oops,' Ken said. 'Dropped my bedpan,' as if nothing else had been happening. He turned his trunk lazily toward the hyperventilating Dickens. 'Hey, doggie, whatsa matter? The old guy just heard you bawlin' about your legs and wanted to trade ya. Me too, anytime, pal.'
Meyers reached Xe and used his own bulk to shoulder himself in between the angry patients and the old man.
Dickens's mouth opened, then he stared at Feuder's stumps. His eye strayed to where Meyers easily hefted Xe's legless body and deposited it back in the wheelchair. He swallowed hard and clamped his lower jaw shut like a snapping turtle. I quickly finished his dressing change while Meyers returned Xe to the ward. I didn't say another word and, blessedly, neither did anyone else. If they had, I'd have exploded.
I rammed the dressing cart against the wall, stripping off my gloves so fast I broke the rubber and made the powder fly. I had to make sure Xe was all right, call Joe and tell him about the incident so he could check the old man over, and fill out an incident report.
'Ma'am?' Feuder's soft voice stopped me in my tracks as I stalked past his bed. 'Ma'am, would you hand me my bedpan? I can't reach it.'
I picked it up and held it out to him. It wobbled up and down in my shaking hand. His voice was low as he spoke to me. 'Don't be too hard on them, Lieutenant. The unit I was with when this happened to me?
Their interpreter took off just before we got hit.'
I grunted, still too furious to talk. My second day alone on the ward and I have a fucking race riot. Jesus.
'How is he?' I asked Meyers, who was standing by Xe's bedside. 'Did you get his vital signs? Is there any bleeding?'
'His vital signs are okay, dressings okay too, but maybe there's somethin' wrong with his head. He's just starin' into space. Pretty shook up, I guess. I'm sorry, Lieutenant, I was down washin' bedpans like Sarge told me. I didn't see him go over there.'
'It's not your fault,' I said, though I wished I could blame it on him.
Xe lay there with his arms limply at his sides, staring into space. I checked his clipboard. His vital signs did look okay.
'Can you feel this?' I asked and touched his arm with the tip of my finger. He shook me off as if I were a fly, and kept staring. I wished Mai wre there. I wished Heron were there. What was wrong with Xe was very clear to me. His feelings were hurt. Heron said Xe was considered a doctor among his own people, and he'd heard Dickens screaming and come to help,'only to be attacked. 'I know how you feel,' I said. 'Dickens is almost as bad to me too, but he's an asshole. Don't let him get you down. We're not all like that, honest. Feyder tried to help. And I kept this safe for you, didn't I?' I didn't even mean to touch the amulet, just to point at it. I knew how sensitive he was about it. But he moved and my finger made contact with the glass for an instant. Now I know it wasn't a sensation I felt, but then I thought it might have been something like static electricity. Because pain shot up my arm and into my chest, like angina in reverse. And that blade of pain cut a swath for the hot surge of shame and anger that swept over me, leaving the nauseatingly bitter aftertaste of failure in its wake.
Xe's eyes fastened on mine as I stepped back, his eyes brimming with a feeble old man's leaking tears.
My hand was on my chest, but as soon as I stepped away, the pain within me disappeared. It was as if I was feeling all over again what I'd felt that night by Tran's bed, only worse, much worse. And it was all there, in that old man's face.
I returned to my desk and filled out the incident report.
'What did you do when the incident occurred?'
'I attempted to calm and restrain Private Dickens while Spec-4 Meyers assisted Mr. Xe.'
'What could you do to prevent such an incident from recurring?'
I chewed on my pencil for a long time over that. Maintain strict segregation of patients? Gag all overwrought patients during dressing changes? Never start a dressing change until the riot squad is handy for backup? I gave it an appropriately vague answer in bureaucratese:
'In the future ensure that all patients understand ahead of time that they are not to interfere when staff members are treating other patients.'
That night I went straight to the club from work and systematically proceeded to get very, very drunk.
In spite of my hangover, the following day started out a little better.
Marge and Joe took care of Dickens's dressing change during Joe's morning rounds, and I learned that most of this particular batch of casualties would be transferred to Japan the next day.
Sergeant Baker kept Meyers and Voorhees scurrying all morning cleaning up the ward. Blaylock informed Marge that VIPs would be touring the hospital later on. And sure enough, sometime around noon a handful of colonels and a general or two arrived with little jewelry boxes full of medals, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, and so on.
We all stood at attention and they handed Marge a list of patients to be decorated. I was supposed to help prepare everybody to be honored.
Ken Feyder was up for a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. He was basking his buns under the heat lamp when the VIPs started their rounds. 'C'mon, Ken, time to turn over and get your just reward,' I kidded him. I couldn't be more pleased for him. After yesterday, I didn't need anybody to tell me he was a hero. And I always liked my heroes to be nice people, too. But I was a lot more thrilled by his official recognition than he was. For the first time since he'd arrived on the ward, Feyder was less than cooperative.
'Just have 'em pin it on my butt, Lieutenant,' he said, and withdrew and refused to discuss it, pretending to be asleep. They finally presented it to his pillowcase.
A surprise came when Heron appeared on the GI side that afternoon and had a long visit with Ken Feyder.
'Okay if I take Feyder for a little wheelchair ride, L.T.?' he asked me.
' I don't know. He's got those wounds on his hips and Joe hasn't authorized-'
'Do me a favor, will you? Call Joe, ask him. Ken's about to go nuts in here with the heat and the noise. He'd sure like to go out for a spell.'
He was giving me his most helpful good-ol'-country-boy routine, his eyes trying hard to look round and sincere.
'Are you and Feyder old buddies or something?' I asked. 'I thought you were only interested in Xe.'
'I heard what happened yesterday. You know, surely? Meyers said you were standing right there.' The way he said 'standing right there' made it clear he thought I should have been doing more than that. And he was right, of course. But I had been so taken by surprise I hadn't known which way to move or how fast. 'Meyers could come too, for that matter,' he continued, hurrying past the reproachful jab at me, no doubt having been told by his Southern mama that he could get more flies with molasses than with vinegar.
'Oh, okay, just a minute,' I said. Joe okayed it, providing the chair was amply padded with Chux and heavy dressing pads. I asked Ken if he wanted a pain shot and saw him look toward Heron, who shook his head, very slightly, which I thought was a little odd. Meyers and Heron loaded Ken in the chair and the three of them left by the back door.
I passed them on the way to pick up my mall. I'd have missed them except for the wheelchair. The three of them were huddled behind some canvas and scaffolding between two of the wards. I saw only their feet, but I caught a strong whiff of pot as I passed. I could have confronted them then, I suppose. As Meyers's superior officer, I should have. I didn't condone smoking pot on duty. But maybe he wasn't. Maybe it was just Heron, who wasn't on duty, and Ken Feyder. And I really didn't want to get Feyder in trouble after all he'd been through. I kept walking, and decided to send Sergeant Baker out to collect Feyder later on. Discipline was the ward master's province mostly, anyway. However, by the time I returned, Feyder was in bed sleeping and Meyers had resumed his duties, though he was wielding the mop in a very dreamy fashion. Heron had wisely made himself scarce.
When I made rounds with Joe that evening, the doctor tried to encourage Xe to try the wheelchair again, but the old man folded his arms stubbornly and refused to so much as look at the chair, which was about what I expected. But when we came to Ahn's bedside it was a different story.
