It was clear to those who saw the faces. They could no more shrink from the mission than they could deny their manhood. There were smiles now. Most of the Marines traded remarks with their friends, and it wasn't glory they saw before their eyes. It was purpose, and perhaps the look to be seen in the eyes of the men whose lives they would redeem. We're Americans and we're here to take you home.
'Well, Mr Clark, your admiral makes a pretty good speech. I wish we recorded it.'
'You're old enough to know better. Guns. It's going to be a dicey one.'
Irvin smiled in a surprisingly playful way. 'Yeah, I know. But if you think ifs a crock, why the hell are you going in alone?'
'Somebody asked me to.' Kelly shook his head and went off to join the Admiral with a request of his own.
She made it all the way down the steps, holding on to the banister, her head still hurting, but not so badly this morning, following the smell of the coffee to the sound of conversation.
Sandy's face broke into a smile. 'Well, good morning!'
'Hi,' Doris said, still pale and weak, but she smiled back as she walked through the doorway, still holding on. 'I'm real hungry.'
'I hope you like eggs.' Sandy helped her to a chair and got her a glass of orange juice.
'I'll eat the shells,' Doris replied, showing her first sign of humor.
'You can start with these, and don't worry about the shells,' Sarah Rosen told her, shoveling the beginnings of a normal breakfast from the frying pan onto a plate.
She had turned the corner. Doris's movements were painfully slow, and her coordination was that of a small child, but the improvement from only twenty-four hours before was miraculous. Blood drawn the day before showed still more favorable signs. The massive doses of antibiotics had obliterated her infections, and the lingering signs of barbiturates were almost completely gone - the remnants were from the palliative doses Sarah had prescribed and injected, which would not be repeated. But the most encouraging sign of all was how she ate. Awkwardness and all, she unfolded her napkin and sat it in the lap of the terrycloth robe. She didn't shovel the food in. Instead she consumed her first real breakfast in months in as dignified a manner as her condition and hunger allowed. Doris was turning back into a person.
But they still didn't know anything about her except her name - Doris Brown. Sandy got a cup of coffee for herself and sat down at the table.
'Where are you from?' she asked in as innocent a voice as she could manage.
'Pittsburgh.' A place as distant to her house guest as the back end of the moon.
'Family?'
'Just my father. Mom died in '65, breast cancer,' Doris said slowly, then unconsciously felt inside her robe. For the first time she could remember, her breasts didn't hurt from Billy's attention. Sandy saw the movement and guessed what it meant.
'Nobody else?' the nurse asked evenly.
'My brother... Vietnam.'
Tm sorry, Doris.'
'It's okay -'
'Sandy's my name, remember?'
'I'm Sarah,' Dr Rosen added, replacing the empty plate with a full one.
'Thank you, Sarah.' This smile was somewhat wan, but Doris Brown was reacting to the world around her now, an event far more important than the casual observer might have guessed. Small steps, Sarah told herself. They don't have to be big steps. They just have to head in the right direction. Doctor and nurse shared a look.
There was nothing like it. It was too hard to explain to someone who hadn't been there and done it. She and Sandy had reached into the grave and pulled this girl back from grasping earth. Three more months, Sarah had estimated, maybe not that long, and her body would have been so weakened that the most trivial outside influence would have ended her life in a matter of hours. But not now. Now this girl would live, and the two medics shared without words the feeling that God must have known when He had breathed life into Adam. They had defeated Death, redeeming the gift that only God could give. For this reason both had entered their shared profession, and moments like this one pushed back the rage and sorrow and grief for those patients whom they couldn't save.
'Don't eat too fast, Doris. When you don't eat for a while, your stomach actually shrinks down some,' Sarah told her, returning to form as a medical doctor. There was no sense in warning her about problems and pain sure to develop in her gastrointestinal tract. Nothing would stop it, and getting nourishment into her superseded other considerations at the moment.
'Okay. I'm getting a little full.'
'Then relax a little. Tell us about your father.'
'I ran away,' Doris replied at once. 'Right after David... after the telegram, and Daddy... he had some trouble, and he blamed me.'
Raymond Brown was a foreman in the Number Three Basic Oxygen Furnace Shed of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, and that was all he was, now. His house was on Dunleavy Street, halfway up one of the steep hills of his city, one of many detached frame dwellings built around the turn of the century, with wood clapboard siding that he had to paint every two or three years, depending on the severity of the winter winds that swept down the Monongahela Valley. He worked the night shift because his house was especially empty at night. Nevermore to hear the sounds of his wife, nevermore to take his son to Little League to play catch in the sloped sanctity of his tiny backyard, nevermore to worry about his daughter's dates on weekends.
He'd tried, done everything a man could do, after it was too late, which was so often the way of things. It had just been too much. His wife, discovering a lump, still a pretty young woman in her thirty-seventh year, his best and closest friend. He'd supported her as best he could after the surgery, but then came another lump, another surgery, medical treatment, and the downhill slide, always having to be strong for her until the end. It would have been a crushing burden for any man, and then followed by another. His only son, David, drafted, sent to Vietnam, and killed two weeks later in some nameless valley. The support of his fellow workers, the way they had come to Davey's funeral, hadn't stopped him from crawling inside a bottle, desperately trying to cling to what he had left, but too tightly. Doris had borne her own grief, something Raymond hadn't fully understood or appreciated, and when she'd come home late, her clothing not quite right, the cruel and hateful things he'd said. He could remember every word, the hollow sound as the front door had slammed.
Only a day later he'd come to his senses, driving with tears in his eyes to the police station, abasing himself before men whose understanding and sympathy he never quite recognized, desperate again to get his little girl back, to beg from her the forgiveness that he could never give himself. But Doris had vanished. The police had done what they could, and that wasn't much. And so for two years he'd lived inside a bottle, until two fellow workers had taken him aside and talked as friends do once they have gathered the courage to invade the privacy of another man's life. His minister was a regular guest in the lonely house now. He was drying out - Raymond Brown still drank, but no longer to excess, and he was working to cut it down to zero. Man that he was, he had to face his loneliness that way, had to deal with it as best he could. He knew that solitary dignity was of little value. It was an empty thing to cling to, but it was all he had. Prayer also helped, some, and in the repeated words he often found sleep, though not the dreams of the family which had once shared the house with him. He was tossing and turning in his bed, sweating from the heat, when the phone rang.
'Hello?'
'Hello, is this Raymond Brown?'
'Yeah, who's this?' he asked with closed eyes.
'My name is Sarah Rosen. I'm a doctor in Baltimore, I work at Johns Hopkins Hospital.'
'Yes?' The tone of her voice opened his eyes. He stared at the ceiling, the blank white place that so closely matched the emptiness of his life. And there was sudden fear. Why would a doctor from Baltimore call him? His mind was spinning off towards a named dread when the voice went on quickly.
'I have somebody here who wants to talk to you, Mr Brown.'
'Huh?' He next heard muffled noises that might have been static from a bad line, but was not.
'I can't.'
'You have nothing to lose, dear,' Sarah said, handing over the phone. 'He's your father. Trust him.'
Doris took it, holding it in both hands close to her face, and her voice was a whisper.
'Daddy?'
