“Four years.” He looked down at his drink. “But…”
“But what?” she asked, knowing it was a dangerous question. They were a long way from home here, in a world that felt impossibly fragile. Lonely.
“Sarah got pregnant the first time we had sex. At a dorm party in her senior year. I was in med school. It never occurred to either one of us not to get married.”
“And…”
“I’m a good guy, McGrath.”
She stared at him, feeling strangely bereft. As if a chance had been lost before she’d even known of its existence. “And I’m a good girl.”
“I know that.”
Between them, a silence fell. Then Frankie forced a smile.
“Sarah must be a saint to put up with your sorry ass.”
“That she is, McGrath,” he said, looking at her sadly. “That she is.”
* * *
May 16, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
I am training to be a surgical nurse now.
I want to be good at this more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
It’s a good feeling to love what you do.
The countryside is beautiful here. A kind of green I’ve never seen before, and the water is a stunning turquoise. We are in the monsoon season now, but so far that just means flashes of hard rain that come and go, leaving sunshine behind. No wonder everything is so green.
I’m taking lots of pictures and can’t wait to share this all with you. Then you’ll understand.
How’s life back in the world?
Love you,
F
PS. Please send hand lotion and crème rinse and perfume. And a new St. Christopher medal.
* * *
May 31, 1967
Dear Frances Grace,
I think about you all the time. I light a candle for you every Sunday, and I know your father sometimes sits in your Bug, with his hands on the steering wheel, staring at the garage wall. What he is thinking, I can only guess.
It is a strange world we are all in. Volatile and uncertain. We—Americans, I mean—can’t seem to talk to each other anymore, our disagreements seem insurmountable.
I imagine it would feel wonderful to be good at something that mattered. That is something that too many of the women of my generation didn’t consider.
With love,
Your mother
Nine
Frankie had stopped being afraid every time she walked into the OR. She was still often uncertain, but, like the turtle they’d called her on her first night, she’d developed a hard shell to protect her heart from what she saw and the confidence to move past her own fear in order to help the men—and women, and children—who ended up in the OR. It was the only way to survive.
Patty, in her last weeks at the Thirty-Sixth, made it her mission to give Frankie every skill she’d learned during her tour, and of course Barb was always ready to lend a hand in the OR, regardless of how little sleep she’d had the night before. And Ethel was there for emotional support.
Now, on a hot, rainy June day, as she assisted Jamie in surgery, she heard the whirring of choppers overhead. More than one. It didn’t even surprise her anymore, the escalating number of wounded coming through the OR, the growing number of pushes. The U.S. and ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, had pushed into the Demilitarized Zone that separated the Communist North from the American-aided South, and the fighting was brutal. She wished Patty were still here, but she’d gone home last week. With a hell of a send-off.
“Shit,” Jamie said, through his mask. He was elbow-deep in the kid’s abdomen. “His spleen’s ruptured.”
Frankie picked up a clamp and handed it to him.
Moments later, the OR doors banged open. Barb, masked and gowned, wheeled in another casualty from Pre-Op. “Doc, sucking chest wound. It’s bad.”
Jamie cursed under his breath. “I’ll get to it … we gotta get this spleen out…” He reached out, took instruments from Frankie, and handed them back, working quickly. Sweat appeared on his brow; droplets slid down to his mask. Finally, he stepped away from the table. “That’s it. You’re on your own now, McGrath.”
“Me?”
Jamie took off his gloves and reached for a new pair. As he started on the chest wound, he said, “You can close, McGrath. You’ve watched me do it enough. Just take nice, wide bites of fascia, put in all of the stitches, tag them, and tie the sutures with five square knots. Count ’em. Five.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Damn it, McGrath. We don’t have time for fear. You’re good enough. Do it.”
Frankie nodded, swallowed hard, moving in closer to the patient’s draped, sliced-open abdomen.
“It’s just like sewing, McGrath. Don’t all you nice sorority girls know how to sew? You can stitch.”
Frankie took a deep breath and released it. You can do this.
She took another moment to focus, to tune out the noise and mayhem, the sound of the rain hitting the roof; when she’d calmed, she gently began to close the kid’s fascia, one stitch at a time. She counted each knot, kept careful track of them.
“Good,” Jamie said, glancing over at her. “I knew you could do it.”
Frankie had never focused on anything so intently in her life. The din in the OR faded away. She felt her own heartbeat, the flicker of her pulse, the air moving through her lungs. The whole world compressed into the bloody space in this kid’s belly. By the time she’d closed the fascia, she was sweating profusely, but she kept working. Finally, she let out a long breath and closed the wound and stared down at her work: the sutures were perfect. She had never felt so proud.
This, she thought. This is who I came here to be.
“I’m done here,” Jamie said to Frankie.
“Me, too,” she said.
They both looked up at the same time. Even though he was masked, she could tell that he was smiling.
“Told you, McGrath.”
She could only nod.
“Now move,” he said. “I just heard another Dust Off land.”
* * *
In late June, monsoon season hit with a vengeance; the weather was like nothing Frankie had ever seen.
Howling winds ripped off roofs, tore away signs. Rain fell in sheets, blown sideways by the wind. The red dirt turned to a viscous, clinging mud that oozed into the OR from outside, mingling with blood on the concrete floor. It was a constant job to shovel it away. Frankie and the other nurses and the medics, and anyone else they could wrangle into picking up a shovel, spent time trying to push the mud outside.
And it was cold.
Frankie stared down at the patient in front of her, his guts split wide open, his chest covered in frag wounds. Tonight’s storm battered the Quonset like a kid continuously hitting a toy barn with a hammer.
“He’s gone,” Jamie said, then cursed under his breath.
She looked at the clock for time of death, reported it in a quiet voice.
She had been on her feet for twelve hours. Monsoon season made every part of life more difficult. Or maybe it wasn’t the weather that was bad; maybe it was the increased number of wounded that came through these doors. Last week had been mostly quiet, with lots of downtime for the nurses; not so this week. LBJ kept sending more and more troops into the fray, hoping manpower would turn the tide, while the Stars and Stripes published rah-rah-America-is-winning-the-war articles every week.
She shivered hard, her stained, faded fatigues damp beneath her surgical gown. Her pockets bulged with cigarettes and lighters. (She always kept them on hand to give to her boys. That was how she thought of the casualties now: as her boys.) In her breast pocket she had a small flashlight and bandage scissors. A length of stretchy rubber tubing hung limply from one epaulet, just in case she needed to draw blood on the fly. A Kelly clamp hung from one belt loop. A blue surgical cap covered her shaggy hair and a mask covered her nose and mouth. All anyone could see of her was her tired eyes.
Jamie looked at her over the dead body of a kid who had probably been playing high school football six months ago. “You okay, McGrath?”
“Fine. You?”