“A friend from high school came through today. We played football together. He said, Save me, JC.” His voice broke. “I haven’t been JC in a long time. And I couldn’t save him.”
Frankie could have said the kind of thing she’d heard at Finley’s funeral, the empty, shiny words of a stranger. Instead, she said, “You were with him when he died. You can tell his family that he wasn’t alone. That will mean a lot to them. I know, believe me. My brother died over here and all we got back was another man’s boots.”
Jamie looked at her for a long time, as if her words had surprised him. Then he tossed down his cigarette, ground it out with his heel. “Come on, McGrath. It’s late. I’ll walk you back to your hooch.”
He moved toward her. She fell into step beside him. On the makeshift bridge, he let her go first, and at the closed door of her hooch, he stopped.
“Thanks,” he said.
“For what?”
“Just being here, I guess. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to save a man in ’Nam.”
On that, he gave her a false, fleeting smile, and walked away.
Seven
The next morning, when Frankie woke up, she was alone in the hooch. She dressed quickly and presented herself at admin at precisely 0800.
She saluted. “Lieutenant McGrath, Major.”
“I heard you were as much help in the ER as a tiara,” the major said, and opened a manila folder. “A nursing degree from some small Catholic women’s college and almost no clinical experience. And you’re young.” She peered at Frankie through black horn-rimmed glasses. “What on earth brought you here, Lieutenant?”
“My brother—”
“Never mind. I don’t care. But I hope to God you aren’t here to say hi to a brother.” Major Goldstein pushed her glasses higher up on her nose. “The Navy and Air Force won’t even let a girl like you in ’Nam. They require training.” She closed the folder, sighed. “Anyway. You’re here. Unready, unprepared, but here. I’m assigning you to Neuro. Night shift. How much damage can you do there?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Uh-huh. Welcome to the Thirty-Sixth Evac Hospital, McGrath. Be the best version of yourself.”
* * *
Housed in a Quonset hut near the OR, the Neuro ward was a brightly lit, domed space filled with Stryker frame beds. Frankie had never seen the specialized beds before, but she’d learned about them in school and in Basic Training: beds for paraplegics, for patients with pelvic fractures, burn patients, or others who couldn’t handle much manipulation. Two rows of beds were separated by a wide aisle. Metal tubing ran the length of each wall for hanging IVs. The amount of equipment at each bed was staggering: ventilators, cooling blankets, monitors, IVs. Frankie didn’t even recognize most of the machines. The overhead lights were blaringly bright. She heard the whooh-thunk of ventilators, the buzz of EKG monitors.
In the front left corner, an older man in faded fatigues sat at a desk, writing. The only other soldier she saw (standing) was a corpsman at the far end of the ward; he was checking on a patient.
Frankie straightened her posture and tried to look more confident than she felt as she walked over to the man at the desk. “Second Lieutenant McGrath, reporting as ordered, sir.”
The man looked up. He had the tiredest eyes she’d ever seen and a face that showed a history of acne. Heavily jowled cheeks blurred his jawline. “Frances, right?”
“Frankie, sir.”
“Captain Ted Smith. Doctor. How much nursing experience do you have, Frankie?”
“My RN, sir. And … some time on the night shift at my local hospital.”
“Uh-huh.” He stood up. “Walk with me.” He strode forward. At the first bed, he paused. Beside him lay a young Vietnamese man, his head wrapped in bandages, through which blood had seeped in a red-brown burst.
“He’s Vietnamese,” Frankie said, surprised.
“We treat the villagers who are brought in,” Captain Smith said. “Anyway, Frankie, every patient in here is brain-damaged. Most have no pupillary response. You know what that means?”
Before she could answer, he took a slim flashlight out of his breast pocket and shone it into the patient’s eyes. “See that? No reaction. Fixed and dilated. You’d note that in his chart, along with the time and date.”
He showed her where and how to make the notation and then handed her the flashlight and walked on, took her past one young American soldier after another who lay naked beneath pale sheets, staring at nothing; most were on ventilators. There were several Vietnamese patients. “This one walked into a rotor,” he said at the bed of a man with half his head bandaged and one arm gone. The last bed was occupied by a Black man covered in bandages. He writhed, babbled unintelligibly. Then he screamed as if in pain.
“He’s not comatose but not fully conscious, either. He has a chance at some kind of recovery. Most don’t, honestly. We’ve developed the skills to save their bodies, but not their lives,” Captain Smith said.
Frankie looked out over the many beds, a split sea of white and metal and men and machines. Each one someone’s son or brother or husband.
“We monitor and change dressings and keep them breathing until they can see a neurologist at the Third Field Hospital. You’ll learn to see subtle changes in their conditions. But this is an evac hospital. They won’t be here long.”
“Can they hear me?”
“Good question. Yeah, Frankie. I think they can. I hope so, anyway. You can start an IV?”
“In theory, sir.” She felt her own incompetence like a scarlet letter on her fatigues.
“Don’t worry, Frankie. You’ve got heart, I can tell. Skills, I can teach.”
* * *
April 14, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
Hello from the 36th Evacuation Hospital! I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write. It’s hard to express the speed of life over here. I’m either terrified or exhausted most of the time. When my head hits the pillow, I’m out. Turns out you can learn to sleep through anything if you’re tired enough. I’ve been focusing on improving my nursing skills, which were, to put it kindly, subpar. I work long hours on the Neuro ward, where I’ve been assigned.
I’m learning so much! I spend my shift shining bright lights into my patients’ eyes, marking down any pupil dilation, or lack thereof, changing surgical dressings, suctioning wounds, monitoring ventilators, changing IVs, turning paralyzed patients every few hours, pinching or poking places on the bodies to see if they can feel pain. It is every bit as glamorous as it sounds, and Mom, you would definitely have something to say about how I look these days, but my skills are improving. Slowly.
I’ve made two friends over here. Ethel Flint, an ER nurse from Virginia, and Barb Johnson, a surgical nurse from Georgia. They’re keeping me sane. My superior, Captain Smith, is great, too. He’s from a small town near Kansas City. You would love him, Dad. He collects watches and loves backgammon.
I miss you. Send me news of the real world. All we get for newspapers over here is the Stars and Stripes, and the only radio is Armed Forces Radio. Suffice it to say that we don’t get news about the latest Burton-Taylor brawl. Please write back soon!
Love you,
Frankie
* * *