There are four empty beds-'
'I've given you an order, lieutenant. I expect it to be carried out. Do I make myself clear?'
'But, sir, when you've been in country awhile and seen what Province Hospital is like-'
'See here, young woman, I'm not listening to any more of these crappy war stories by you so-called old-timers. I want that woman out of here and I want her out of here now. Sergeant!'
He was talking to Baker. 'Yes, sir,' Baker said. 'Voorhees!'
Voorhees dropped the thermometer he was about to put in Dinh's mouth.
'Sergeant?'
'You heard the doctor. Get an ambulance and transfer the patient in bed four to Province Hospital ASAP.'
'Yes, sir.'
I glared at Sergeant Baker, but he didn't meet my gaze.
Voorhees moved slowly, rebelliously, but he was up for promotion, so he got the ambulance and he got the stretcher and he started loading Dang Thi That onto it. I went over to help, to try to reassure her. I don't remember where Mai was, but she wasn't there to translate or I would have tried to find someone else, a friend, a relative, to let them know about That's departure. I took her hand and said, 'New doctor say you well, mamasan. Send you Province Hospital.'
I hadn't gotten the words out of my mouth before she grasped my arm with both hands, digging in frantically with her fingernails. Her face, which had reflected slow and agonizing suffering for so long, was suddenly suffused with terror. 'No, co! No!' She started climbing my arms, crying and begging. 'Kitty, no-' Her eyes pleaded with me to change things, not to betray the hope and trust I had-we all hadencouraged her to have in us.
I held on to the stretcher, but Voorhees was pulling it away. That's nails grazed my arms as her hands lost their grip. Sergeant Baker tugged gently at my shoulders. 'Come on, Lieutenant. No need to get hysterical over this,' he said. 'How many ladies like her you think are out there ain't had nobody to look after them?'
'No, Kitty! No!' That cried, but now Voorhees, who looked about to cry himself, was patting her and trying to calm her. He pulled the cart away from me and rolled her down the hall. I looked after them.
Voorhees was still comforting, but That was silent now, her arms folded across her chest, her streaming eyes turned toward the ceiling.
I whirled around to glare at Krupman, but the bastard hadn't had the guts to stick around and hear her cry, so I glared at Baker instead.
'Thanks for the backup, Sarge,' I said sarcastically.
'Don't go gettin' hurry on me, L.T. I just saved your butt. That doctor outranks both of us, and he said she goes, she goes. I didn't like it neither, but this is a war we got going' on here. Lkts of folks got less chance than Mrs. Dang out there on their own. At least he sent her to the hospital.'
'You heard what Voorhees said about that place! She'll die there and she knows it.' I was still shaking, so I concentrated on licking my finger and smudging the bloody tracks That's nails had left on my arms.
'You don't know no such thing, ma'am. It's the place these people would go to if we weren't here. They got their own ways, you know.'
'I guess so,' I said, and turned away because I didn't want him to see me crying. I was sitting at the desk watering the charts when I felt something warm close by. I turned slightly and Ahn leaned against me, nodding his head wisely, his eyes filled, not with fear, but with a mixture of cynicism and the sort of pity an adult gives a child the first time the child has a toy his father can't fix.
We got in a push of GIs later that week, and Krupman was too busy enjoying being a combat physician to banish any more of the native patients. I did my job and was barely polite, but as I worked with him that week and the next I couldn't help realizing that with the GIs he was a good doctor, caring, skillful, and thorough. I had to close my eyes and see That's face to remind myself what an ass he was. But I was beginning to be almost able to stand the man when Voorhees returned from the orphanage.
'We stopped by Province Hospital on the way back, Lieutenant,' he said.
I was afraid to ask but I did anyway. 'Did you see That? How is she?'
,,She died a few days after she was admitted. Wound infection.'
'Shit,' I said, but that was all.
Mai returned from her daily shampoo in time to hear me. 'What the mattah?' she asked, looking from me to Voorhees.
He told her.
I just sat there, and when I started to move, I felt as if I'd had a great big novocaine shot that affected my entire body.
Behind me, I heard the Vietnamese talking, but I didn't pay any attention. When it was time for dressings, I missed doing That's as I had every day since she'd left. Forty patients on the census, and I missed dressing one hollow hip.
When it was Xe's turn, I bent over to dress his stumps and felt his hands come up at the sides of my head. The numbness there began sliding away, and a deep ache replaced it.
'What are you doing?' I snapped, but then I looked at him to find in his face a perfect counterpart of my own pain and sense of failure. And I knew what had been slowly killing him. We were in the same boat, but his was sinking faster. We were both there to help, and he, who according to Heron had once been so much more powerful than I, was now even more powerless.
His hands, transparent as paper, hovered on either side of my head and he ignored my question but kept watching me. Something silken and balmlike touched the burning edges of the ache, then fell away. The sorrow in his eyes deepened even as he lowered his hands.
But the ache in my head receded and the numbness returned.
I walked away from the hospital, the cold afternoon drizzle soaking through my uniform. I didn't even bother with my poncho. I went straight to the club and knocked back three straight tequilas. The tequilas weren't so much to bolster my courage as to tranquilize me so I didn't attack Krupman with my bare hands. Usually booze just makes me sleepy, but that night I had to quit drinking before I calmed down.
The anger swelled up inside me till there was no longer room to swallow.
I wanted Krupman to come into the club. I wanted to make a scene. I wanted to ream him out in front of everybody. But he didn't come, the bastard, so I staggered over to his hooch and stood there pounding on the screen while rivulets of water poured off my boonie hat and down my arms. The doctor was inside, headphones enveloping his ears while his reel-to-reel deck rolled shiny tape from one cylinder to another. He looked up, and no one could accuse him of undue sensitivity or second sight.
'What is it, lieutenant?' he asked, almost amiably. 'An emergency?'
'Not exactly,' I said. 'I just wanted to give you something to celebrate. I thought you'd like to know that poor woman you sent to Province Hospital accommodated you by dying. That seems to be what you wanted-'
He had lifted the headphones when I started to talk; now he tore them off his head and flung them on his bunk. 'I didn't want anything one way or the other, lieutenant. I just didn't give up my practice to treat slants.' He picked up a photo of a group of people, and I admit I didn't register what they looked like because I thought he might be planning on using it as a weapon. 'You see this boy in uniform here?
That's my baby brother. He volunteered to be an American adviser and help these goddamn people and they let him walk into an ambush.
'I came over here to help boys like him and keep them from dying in this idiotic war. How people like that Giangelo guy and you can make pets out of the locals when you see what they do to your own people is a mystery to me, but as long as I'm in charge of orthopedics we are treating Americans, and the gooks can take care of their own. I'll tell you something else, lieutenant'-his face was perfectly calm through all this and his voice was as even as a numbed-out marine's, though not as loud-'as soon as I have a little free time from the men who need me, I'm going to clean that place out, starting with those panhandlers who've been using up American medical supplies for the past few months. So you might as well start getting used to it.'
He slammed the screen, then the inner door, in my face. As the door slammed, I saw him slip his headphones back on.
I could have pounded all night and been hauled off by the MPs, I suppose, but instead I sloshed back through the rain to the club to continue getting drunk. It wasn't my day. Tony was there. I hadn't seen him in weeks, except coming and going a couple of times from Julie's hooch. Carole had mentioned that they'd broken up and that Tony had cornered her and Tom to cry on their shoulders.
'Kitty, I have to talk to you-'
'Not now,' I snapped. 'Not ever. Let me alone, Tony. Take whatever you've got to say and put it in a letter to your wife.'
'Don't be that way, babe. I didn't know it mattered to you. You were seeing jake when I met you.'
'I was not 'seeing' jake,' I began and then was just too tired to finish. 'Look, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk to you.'
'Baby, I miss you. We're getting fired on all the time now. I almost got creamed last time.' From his tone and the slight tremble of his perfect fingers around his drink, I thought he meant it this time.
Usually, despite his fondness for military melodrama, Tony had as much faith in his own immortality as most of
