So everything's going to work out great with you getting promoted right away. Lieutenant Colonel Blaylock wouldn't like leaving a second lieutenant as acting head nurse but plenty of first lieutenants are. So I won't have to wait until my replacement arrives in country.'
When I arrived at work the next day, I walked about six inches taller and chirped my way around the ward with more energy than usual.
,Good morning, Melville,' I greeted one of the GI patients, 'How's the ankle doin'?' Melville had sprained it while stocking supply shelves. I suspected he had fallen off the ladder while stoned. He stayed stoned a lot, though nobody on the ward ever saw him smoke.
'Oh, sir,' he said, 'I think gangrene is setting in. Can I have a Darvon?'
Usually I would have snarled. Today the milk of human kindness filled my circulatory system.
'Of course you can, Melville. Just a sec.' It was a wonder I didn't tell him to take two, they're small.
My promotion was held on the Vietnamese side, with Marge, Joe Giangelo, Sergeant Baker, Mai, and Voorhees in attendance. Meyers had been pulled to ICU.
I stood at attention while Marge read me the paper telling me in Armyese that I had met their requirements (though it sounded, in typically inflated bureaucrat language, as if I had won the Congressional Medal of Honor instead of merely an almost guaranteed promotion) and pinned a set of shiny silver bars over the embroidered ones on my fatigues that corresponded to a second lieutenant's butter bars. The shiny silver ones were for symbolism's sake. You didn't wear metal insignia on combat fatigues. I had learned this soon after coming in country, when the rationale of Army couture was explained to me by the supply sergeant. 'No, ma'am. No shiny brass in the field. Sun catches on it and announces your arrival to the enemy, sure as shit.'
But I looked at my new bars as if they were platinum and shook hands all around.
I felt a tug at my hip pocket and turned around to see Ahn wearing an officious expression. 'Mamasan, mamasan, la dai. Chung Wi Long say you come.'
Lieutenant Long, in the bed directly across from the nurses' station, was nodding a smiling endorsement of Ahn's summons. Long had been with us about two weeks. He was an educated man who spoke both French and Vietnamese and sometimes translated for us on nights. He'd lost a leg but seemed to have accepted his loss with equanimity. He was glad to be out of action, I think, but I wished we could medevac him too. After all, when the NVA took over as seemed inevitable, Long would still be in Vietnam. I didn't think a disabled vet from the losing side whuld stand much of a chance.
I followed Ahn to Long's bed. In the next bed, That shifted painfully and gave me a tired smile. On the far side from us, Xe woke muttering from an afternoon nap.
Lieutenant Long cleared his throat. 'Miss McCulley, you have promotion.
You are now chung wi, same-same me, yes?'
'Yes. See my pretty new bars?' I flipped up my collar for him to admire them.
'Very nice.' He reached under his pillow and held out a couple of small brass flower-shaped clusters, hooked together. 'This is Vietnamese rank for chung wi. Please accept with my congratulations.'
'Are these yours?' I asked.
'Yes. I have more. Please accept.'
'Oh, I do. Thank you very much.' And added formally, as I pinned them on my shirt pocket flap, where sometimes we wore extra little pins, unauthorized, of course, 'I will wear this proudly. I feel very honored.' And I did. Even though no extra pay came with it, I was almost more pleased at being promoted by Lieutenant lmng than I was at being promoted by Uncle Sam.
Then, of course, Xinhdy and That and Ahn all had to admire my new rank, both American and Vietnamese. That bobbed her head respectfully. Ahn wanted to know if he could have my old ones. Even old Xe la daied me imperiously, gravely surveyed my new ornamentation, and nodded his approval. I patted his hand, despite his lordly air, and I thought his eyes brightened.
Xinhdy took out her lipstick and a Kleenex and polished the bars for me.
It was the kind of totally off-the-wall thing she was always doing to try to please me, just because she was a generous and outgoing girl. I never got a chance to pay her back for her attempts to make me glamorous.
Sergeant Baker called me from the door. 'Hey, Lieutenant, you got a visitor,' he said.
I turned from Xe to see Ginger Phillips shuffle onto the ward, her hands on the shoulders of a gangly, crew-cut Vietnamese child in a faded pink dress.
They met me before I came around the bed and the child threw her arms around my neck. I returned her hug, though I was a little puzzled.
'Tran just wanted to say good-bye and thank you, Kitty,' Ginger said.
'She's going home today so she can spend Christmas with her folks.'
'Cam ong, co,' Tran said softly. 'Tank you.' I had no idea what she was thanking me for, but I suspected Ginger had put her up to it. She had worked on ward six since a little before I had, and had continued to speak to me after my transfer.
'No sweat, Tran,' I said, stroking her bristling head. The words had a hard time coming out. My throat had closed over and my eyes watered like an old woman's.
Ahn grabbed my hand as soon as I let go of Tran, and didn't release it until she left.
I was promoted on Wednesday, switched to days on Thursday.
mISunday morning I worked alone on day shift. I walked onto the Vietnamese ward to find Sarah still running around trying to get morning meds and charting done. Her face was set and tight with emotion and she would not look at me. There was something else, too, something awful about the ward that made me stop at the door and hesitate to look around. My eyes went first to Dang Thi That and Xe, but they both seemed to be sleeping. I was noticing that the old man looked even more drawn and drained than usual when Ahn sat up, saw me, and catapulted into his wheelchair like a cowboy in a movie, barely stopping himself from knocking me over by throwing his arms around my waist and sobbing.
I knelt down to pet him and that was when I noticed Xinhdy's empty bed.
'Sarah, where's Xinhdy?' I asked as casually as I could. She could have been in X-ray, or surgery. She was young and healthy and . . .
'Xinhdy died, Kitty.'
'Died?' I asked stupidly. 'What do you mean she died? C'mon, Sarah, get real. I'm talking about Xinh, in the last bed? She couldn't have died. All she had was a broken hip, for Christ's sake. She wasn't even on the seriously ill list. She wasn't authorized to die.' I know that sounds like a bad joke to an outsider, but we had a seriously ill list and a very seriously ill list. If a patient was not on the very seriously ill list before he died, staff members were considered to be derelict in their duty.
Sarah didn't answer me, but Mai emerged from the bathroom. This time more than her hair was wet.
'Mai . . . ?' I began, still stroking Ahn's back and shoulders. Mai looked away, then covered her face with her hands, and I knew there was no mistake.
But there had to be. When I left the ward the night before, Xinhdy was perfectly okay. Well, she was restless and was sweating more than usual. She had a very slight temp, which I charted. I told Sarah in report I thought Xinh might be coming down with the flu. She'd been so cranky all evening Meyers had asked very carefully if she might be on her period. She kept thrashing around, shifting from one position to another, demanding that things be moved to accommodate each shift. This from the most self-sufficient bedfast patient on the ward. When the other Vietnamese visited, she complained to them in a loud voice until they left again, disgruntled. Still, I figured it was just a little upset. Hospitalized people can get colds and the flu too. My God, had I missed the beginnings of some horrible fast-killing Vietnamese strain of pneumonia? The empty bed stared blankly back at me. I expected a gurney to be wheeled in at any moment with Xinh in her hip spica cast leaning up on one elbow to smile and wave hello like a Rose Bowl princess as she passed the other beds on the ward.
'What was it, Sarah?' I asked. 'Did she-was it some kind of flu? Were you able to get Joe?'
'Not till it was too late,' she said. 'He was over at that generals'
mess at I Corps and didn't get back till later. Captain Schlakowski came over at eight and checked her but thought she was okay. Then we got three new patients on the GI side, and when I came back to do
'dn'ght meds Xinh was having trouble breathing. I was taking her mi I pulse when she arrested. I started CPR while Ryan called a code and tossed me the ambu bag. The team got here right away but it was just too late.'
'How could she arrest?' I asked. 'She's twenty-two years old.'
'I know, I know,' she said, her voice getting softer and softer. 'Joe came in to pronounce her. He said it was a fat embolism. Sometimes it happens with bad hip injuries who are bedridden for a long time. I never heard of that before, did you?'
'No-l-where's Joe?'
'In surgery with one of the GIs. I don't know how he can do it, Kitty.
