The lost opportunity frenzied the crowd outside. Heads poked over while Marines stood atop the walls, rifle-butting bodies off.
Inside was crowded but calmer. Americans stood by the compound buildings while Vietnamese squatted on every available inch of grass.
They were searched and patted down. “Ma’am, you’ll have to turn that in.”
Helen looked at the guard bewildered until she realized they had found the forgotten gun in her smock. Not only that, but she had managed somehow to keep both film cases. The guard led her over to the compound swimming pool, where she tossed it in to join the fifty or sixty guns already lying along the bottom.
“I need a medic,” Helen said.
The guard nodded and went off. Helen grabbed Linh’s shoulders and supported his weight as he lowered himself and stretched out on the ground. The front of his shirt was soaked in blood. Several minutes later an American in white shirtsleeves came over with a black kit. “You hurt, miss?”
“Not me. Linh was wounded a couple of days ago. He’s bleeding.”
The man helped unbutton Linh’s shirt and unwrapped the bandages. “I can clean him up, but he needs attention from doctors on ship.”
“How long before we go?” Helen said.
“They’ll call you.”
Helen nodded.
“How about I look at that bump on your head? Looks like you might need some stitches yourself. Don’t want a scar.”
Hours passed. Helen and Linh sat on the grass, propped against the film cases. Papers were being burned inside the compound buildings, the endless secrets of the war, smoke and ash drifting in the air, settling on the people, the ground, on top of the water in the pool like a gray snowfall. After the adrenaline wore off, Helen was bone-weary. She nibbled on a few uppers, then brought warm sodas and stale sandwiches from the makeshift food service operating out of the abandoned embassy restaurant.
“We made it,” she said. “Happy, happy.”
“Still in Saigon. We just managed to crawl into a new cage.” Linh held his side, his face drowsy with dull pain.
Helen leaned in close to him. “I pushed it too far, but it all worked out. No damage done.”
“No damage.”
“When I took the picture of that woman, I was angry that the shot might get ruined. And then I thought, What have I become?”
Linh shifted and grimaced at the pain. “Just be with me.”
“I want to.”
“You didn’t start this war, and you didn’t end it. Nothing that happened in between is your fault, either.”
Helen’s face was expressionless, tears running down it, without emotion.
“You don’t believe me.” He wiped her face dry, but already her attention was slipping away. “None of it had anything to do with us. We’re just bystanders to history.”
The sky darkened. Linh’s head rolled to one side as he fell into a deep, drugged sleep. People near Helen worried about the Marines being able to keep back the crowd outside. The Vietnamese going out were classified as dependents of the Americans, although for the last decade the Americans had depended on them to survive in this harsh country. Traitors by association. The number of people per flight was minuscule compared to those waiting, like taking water out of a bucket an eyedropperful at a time.
The noise from the helicopters was deafening, but in between Helen could hear the distant rumblings from Gia Dinh and Tan Son Nhut, a constant percussion that matched the throbbing in her head. The noise much closer than this morning; lifetimes seemed to have passed in the intervening hours. Linh trembled in his sleep.
An embassy employee walked by, and Helen stopped the man. “How much longer? This man needs medical attention.”
“Could be all night.” He looked at her sternly, tapping his pencil on his note pad for emphasis. “Americans are being boarded now. Especially women. Go inside. He’ll be taken care of later.”
In the convoluted language of the embassy, trouble. She woke Linh, tugging him onto his feet, harnessing the straps of the film cases around her neck. They joined the end of a long line going up the stairs to the roof. She flagged one of the Marines guarding the entrance. “I need to get this man on a helicopter.”
“Everyone takes their turn.”
She rubbed her forehead. “No. He’s been shot. He’s going to die without medical attention.”
“There are a lot of people anxious to get on the plane, ma’am. I don’t have any special orders concerning him.”
A rumpled-up man with a clipboard came up. He was in his twenties, with a beaten-up face that looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“I’m Helen Adams. Life staff photographer. This is Nguyen Pran Linh, who works for Life and the Times. He’s wounded and needs immediate evacuation.” Helen figured under the current circumstances no one would find out about her lies, the fact her magazine had pulled her credentials. Weren’t they trying to kick her out of the country, after all?
He scribbled something on his clipboard. “Absolutely.” He scratched his head and turned to the Marine. “Medical evac. Get someone to escort them to the front of the line. And get someone else to explain why to everyone they’re bumping in front of. Tell ’em he’s a defector or something.”
“You’re the first person today who’s actually done what he said,” Helen said.
“I’m a big fan of yours, Ms. Adams.”
“I didn’t know I had any.”
“You covered my older brother. He was a Marine in ’sixty-eight. Turner. Stationed in I Corps.”
“Did he-”
“Back home running a garage in Reno. Three kids. The picture you took of him and his buddies on the wall. He talked about meeting you. I’ve been following your work since.”
“Thank you for this. Good luck,” she said.
“We’re going to need a whole lot more than luck.”
One Marine carried the film cases and another half-carried Linh up the jammed staircase. They went through a thick metal door and more stairs, waited, then climbed up a flimsy metal ladder staircase and were on the roof. The air filled with the smells of exhaust and things burning, a spooky camp-fire. To the north and west, Helen saw the reddish glow of hundreds of fires and the few streaks of friendly red tracers going out against the flood of blue enemy tracers coming in. The odds visibly against them. The throbbing of her head had become a constant buzz, but she didn’t want to take anything, wanted her mind to keep clear.
The helicopter jerked down onto the roof, landing like a thread through the eye of a needle, and her body went rigid. The beating rotors and the screaming of the engine so loud, the Marines shouting unintelligible boarding instructions that she didn’t have time to explain to Linh. His eyes fluttered half-closed. A young man from one of the wires stood next to them, going out on the same flight.
The Marines signaled their group to move out, and they crouched and ran under the hot rotor wind. At the helicopter door, Helen grabbed the young newsman’s arm.
“Get these to someone from Life on board the ship.”
“Sure. But why?”
“I’m going out on a later flight.” Until the words fell out of her mouth, she hadn’t accepted that she had made room for this possibility.
The Marine started heaving the film bags on, the tape coming loose and hanging off like party streamers. “Hurry up, people. Ma’am, get on.”
Helen backed away. Her stomach heaved, sick in soul.
“Look after him,” she yelled to the stranger. “His name is Nguyen Pran Linh. He works for Life.
