books. After dinner, Mai's brothers and I played guitars and I chatted with her mother while Mai translated. By then it was well after dark, and Sergeant Baker came for me in the jeep.
I think Mai and I were trying to start a friendship that would expand to fill some of the gap left by Xinh's death, though we never spoke of her.
But though the friendship was cut short, I remember that peaceful, relaxed evening with gratitude.
I had been looking forward to monsoon season as a break from ithe bleak simmer of the heat. The first weeks of rain were welcome, but soon everything stayed clammy with damp. The sheets were damp, the towels were damp, even my sweater didn't offer much warmth because it was damp, too. I worked an unexpected run of nights when Sarah caught amebiasis and had to lie on a stretcher and take I.V. fluids every morning before work because anything she ate or drank was lost to diarrhea and vomiting. The wards were cold in the daytime, and high winds brought storms in off the sea. Dressed in ponchos and wet jungle boots, we waded to work across half-submerged islands of sidewalk. About an inch of water covered the floor of the central corridor. The roof leaked and bedpans and urinals sat around everywhere to catch the drips while poncho-clad Vietnamese workmen crawled around on the roof, laboring slowly to plug the holes. Little lizards darted through the halls, and Ahn, now equipped with a crutch and a makeshift wooden leg Joe had fashioned from a crutch, limped after them with more agility than I would have thought possible.
Marge's transfer to Quang Ngai was reluctantly approved with the help of her boyfriend's connections. Joe's DEROS date was fast approaching, and between the two of them, you'd have thought the place was a photography studio instead of a hospital ward. We took turns snapping pictures of Marge and Joe, Marge with Mai, Joe with Mai, Marge and Joe together and separately with Ahn, me, Sergeant Baker, Voorhees, Meyers, Ryan, That, and any other patient or staff member who would stand still long enough to be snapped. Then we had to do more of the same because Marge's camera was a Polaroid and Ahn and Mai wanted duplicates of every picture with them in it.
Then Sarah suddenly got a drop because of her amebiasis, which meant they sent her home two months early to recuperate. I was pleased for her, but it made a lot more work for me, since her position and my old one were filled with two new nurses. I spent a lot of time being teacher. One of the new girls got amebiasis her second week in country and, like Sarah, had to report early for I.V.s every morning. She and Sarah left on the same plane.
Marge hugged me when it was time for her to leave. 'You'll do fine, Kitty. Write and let me know how everybody is, okay?'
'Okay. just take care of yourself and kick Hal in the shins for me for taking you away from us.'
Soon to be ex-Major Joe Giangelo and another major made it to the door in time to block her exit. Joe grabbed Marge for a hug. 'You be a good girl, Margie, and oh, I almost forgot, I have something for you here.'
His brown eyes twinkled as he handed her a couple of pieces of paper.
'They're exercises to correct bowless-after you've been with old Hal for a while you're probably going to need them.'
'Don't let me take the copies you were going to mail to your wife, Joe.
How long have you got left now?'
'Six days four hours three minutes and'-he checked his watch
-'twenty-one seconds. By the way, I'd like you all to meet my replacement. Major Krupman, Major Marge Canon, the best ortho nurse in Vietnam and possibly the entire military and an incredible fink who is splitting our fabled beaches. And this is Lieutenant McCulley, her second-in-command.'
Marge said hi and then had to run for her ride. I said hi, but Krupman ignored it. 'I'd like to make rounds now, Joe, if you don't mind,' he said briskly.
'Sure thing. We'll start here.'
'Here? But these aren't American servicemen, they're gooks.'
Joe looked around him at all of the familiar faces and the few new arrivals. 'No kidding? How about that? You mean you guys aren't from 1st Cay?'
Mai giggled. I decided it was a good time to get That up for her afternoon walk. Her grafts had taken and her hip was healed except for a single small area, from which a drain protruded. She had already walked twice. This time when I raised her, she only hissed between her teeth, but did not cry when I got her to her feet, slung her arm around my shoulders-which was a reach for her-and put my arm around her waist.
She hissed again and groaned once.
'Sorry, That,' I said. 'Sin loi.' I hated to hurt her.
She turned her face to me and on it was the biggest smile I had ever seen. She was walking. It hurt, but she was walking and she hadn't ever thought she'd do that again, the smile said. We made the route twice. In a couple of weeks the drain could come out and with a little help she could go home, wherever that was.
'Hey, Joe, look at That!' I said. Joe looked up and waved.
'Numbah one, mamasan!' he called to That from Xe's bed. 'You gonna run footraces pretty soon.'
Krupman straightened and glared.
Joe made rounds for three more days. Krupman usually made it just in time for the rounds on the GI side, but was unavoidably detained elsewhere when it came time to examine the Vietnamese. Even when Joe was not technically on duty, during the three out-processing days, Krupman didn't make rounds on the Vietnamese ward, despite our having a flock of new casualties, though he spent a lot of time patiently explaining back exercises to the incapacitated clerk-typist from Marine headquarters.
The day Joe got on the plane, however, I returned from lunch and saw that the new doctor had finally deigned to visit the Vietnamese ward long enough to stack a pile of charts where I could take off the orders.
The first chart was that of an old man with a fractured collarbone and possible pneumonia. He had had his arm in a sling and had had I.V.
antibiotics for the last day or so. The new order said 'Discharge,' as did the orders on the charts of a girl with multiple shrapnel wounds to her lower body and a fractured humerus. The third discharge order was for Lieutenant Long, and already his bed was neatly made up and his bedside table cleared.
'Mai, did you see somebody take this order off already?' I asked, puzzled, since as the only nurse on the shift I was the only one who could pass along the orders to be carried out.
'No, Kitty. Chung Wi Long, he hear Dr. Krupman say, 'Send that man away, is no more we can do for him.' Chung Wi Long go.'
'Go? Where can he go?'
Mai just looked unhappy.
'Does he have family here, Mai?'
Mai looked even more miserable and finally she mumbled that she supposed he must, and left.
'Sarge, Lieutenant Long just took off and Mai doesn't know where he's gone.'
'Oh, yes, ma'am. Major Krupman said he could go. Only he didn't exactly put it like that.'
'Go where? He's got one leg and no family around here anymore. He said they were all wiped out at Tet last year. Where could he have gone?'
Baker gave me a long look. It said I'd had a sheltered life and didn't understand much about people with no choices. It said what did I think happened to former Vietnamese officers with no family and wounds that left them helpless and dependent.
'Beats the hell out of me, ma'am,' was all Baker said.
My hand went to my brass rosettes and my eyes swam as I opened the fourth chart, Dang Thi That's. 'Transfer to Province Vietnamese Hospital,' the order said.
I cleaned and dressed That's wound, helped her use her trapeze to swing herself free of the bed, and walked her, deliberately waiting until Krupman arrived the next day to talk to him about his preposterous orders.
He beat me to it. 'What are these people still doing here, nurse? I have written orders that they were to be discharged.'
'Xuan and Dinh are waiting for someone from their village to collect them, sir,' I said. They might be waiting, but their village was near Tam Ky and their relatives had no idea how to locate them.
'How about the old woman?'
'I wanted to talk to you about her, sir. That's been making great progress-I'm sure Dr. Giangelo told you how hard we've worked with her, how hard she's worked, but she's not quite healed yet and-'
'Lieutenant, I am the physician here. I make that determination,' he said, despite the fact that he had yet to examine her. 'She's on her feet. She's well enough to go to her own facility and give up her much needed space to a deserving Gi.'
'Sir, we haven't had to admit GIs to this side since I've been here and the census isn't especially high right now. We don't need the bed.
