At 0300 hours, a red alert siren blared through camp. Then came the sound of incoming choppers. A swarm of them. One Dust Off after another landed in the pouring rain, full of wounded. Frankie and Barb and Ethel stumbled out of bed and ran to the helipad, helping to offload them. Frankie spent the next eight hours at Jamie’s side, going from one surgery to the next, until she was so tired she could barely stand.
At 1100 hours, when the last patient was rolled out of the OR, Frankie reached numbly for a mop and began cleaning the floor until Jamie stopped her. “We’re done,” he said. “Someone else can mop up the blood. Let’s go.”
Nodding, she put on her green poncho, flipped up her hood, and followed Jamie out of the OR. The wooden walkway was underwater. Rain pounded the roof overhead. He put an arm around her, steadied her as they walked through the compound.
At Jamie’s quarters, he came to a stop; Frankie realized suddenly that she was too close to him, touching his body with her own as they stood beneath the overhang, barely out of the rain. A tiny drizzle of someone else’s blood streaked down Jamie’s neck. She reached up to wipe it away.
Jamie almost smiled, but not quite. “You want to kiss me before I go,” he said. “I knew it.”
“Have fun in Maui,” she said, embarrassed by the jealousy she felt at the idea of him being with his wife. “Bring me back something fun.”
There was more love in his eyes than should be there, and probably too much in hers. “I love you, McGrath. I know I’m not supposed to…”
She longed to say it in return, but how could she? Words were creators of worlds; you had to be careful with them. He was going to meet his wife, see pictures of his son. “I’ll miss you,” she said instead.
He stepped back. “See you in a week.”
As she watched him leave, the moment played over in her mind: I love you, McGrath.
Maybe she should have said it, too. But what good could come of her love for him? He wasn’t hers to love. When she couldn’t stand the regret anymore, she flipped her hood up and headed for her hooch.
She opened the door and realized instantly what she’d forgotten during the push.
Barb sat on Ethel’s empty cot. “She’s gone.”
Frankie sat down beside Barb, not even bothering to pull off her wet poncho. “We didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“She didn’t want us to. Probably slipped out while we were looking the other way. Bitch.”
It was the way of Vietnam; people came, they did their tour, and they left. The lucky ones, like Ethel, flew home in one piece. Some wanted parties for their send-off and some wanted to slip away in silence. Some wanted both. Either way, you woke up one day and your friend was just gone.
War was full of goodbyes, and most of them never really happened; you were always too early or too late.
Like with Finley.
She had said goodbye to her brother long after the words could have mattered to him. That was one thing this war had taught her; there was never enough time with the people who mattered.
* * *
It rained for the next week. Not a drenching, monsoon rain, just a thumping, ever-present drip-drip-drip that demoralized everyone. Even gatherings at the O Club had all but ended. No one felt like partying in this weather.
Now, as midnight neared, Frankie stood in the OR, in mask and cap and gloves and gown, closing an incision. Not far away, the new doctor, Rob Aldean, from Kentucky, was trying to save a young Vietnamese woman’s leg. While Jamie was on R and R in Maui with his wife, they were down to two surgeons, and that wasn’t enough to keep up with the casualties. To make matters worse, they hadn’t replaced Ethel yet, so they were understaffed in nurses, too. Four patients lay on tables awaiting surgery, with more in triage and Pre-Op.
A bright light shone down on the patch of brown-washed skin of the soldier who lay anesthetized before Frankie.
After her last stitch, she dropped her bloody instruments on her tray and peeled off her gloves. “I’ll get Sammy to take you to Post-Op, Private Morrison,” she said aloud, even though the patient couldn’t hear her.
She heard the distant sound of a helicopter coming in. Dr. Rob looked up, his worried gaze meeting Frankie’s. They were at their ragged end.
Just one chopper. “Thank God,” Frankie said.
Rob went back to work.
The OR doors banged open and a gowned and masked Barb came in with a pair of medics carrying a bloody patient on a litter. “We need a surgeon. And you, Frankie. Stat.”
Frankie could tell it was bad by the look in Barb’s eyes.
Frankie washed her hands and picked up a new pair of gloves, snapping them on.
The soldier on the litter wore a blood-soaked T-shirt and fatigues that had been cut off at the thigh. He’d lost his left leg at the knee, a medic had field-wrapped the bloody stump, but that injury was nothing compared to his chest wound.
A thick layer of black-red blood covered his face. She picked up his dog tags. “Hey, Captain C—”
Callahan.
Jamie.
She looked up at Barb, saw the grief in her friend’s eyes. I’m sorry, Barb mouthed.
“His bird was shot down, ma’am,” one of the medics said.
Frankie wiped the blood from Jamie’s face and saw the grievous injury to his skull.
“Rob!” she shouted. “Get over here. Now!”
The doctor came over, looked down at Jamie, and then at Frankie. “He won’t make it, Frankie, you know that, and we have—”
“Save him, Doc. At least try.” She reached for Jamie’s cold, limp hand, held it. “Please. Please.”
Eleven
Jamie lay in a Stryker bed in Neuro, naked beneath a sheet, his face bandaged so completely that only one closed eye could be seen. A tube snaked into his nostril. A ventilator kept him breathing. Whoosh-thunk. Another machine monitored his heartbeat. Rob, the surgeon, had done what he could, and then stepped back, shaking his head, saying, “I’m sorry, Frankie. I’ll write to his wife tomorrow. You should say goodbye.”
Now Frankie sat by Jamie’s bed, held his hand. The heat of his skin indicated that an infection was already taking hold. “We’ll get you to the Third, Jamie. You hang on. You hear me?”
Frankie’s mind played and replayed the last thing Jamie had said to her. I love you, McGrath.
And she’d said nothing.
God, she wished she’d told him the truth, wished they’d kissed, just once, so she could have that memory.
“I should have…” What? What should she have done? What could she have done? Love mattered in this ruined world, but so did honor. What was one without the other? He was married and Frankie knew he loved his wife. “You’re strong,” she said, her voice strained. The nurse in her knew no one was strong enough for some injuries; the woman in her longed to believe in an impossible recovery.
“Lieutenant? Lieutenant?”
The voice seemed to come from far away. Scratching, irritating, a thing to brush off.
She realized a pair of medics were standing beside her. She noticed belatedly that one had laid his hand on her shoulder.
She looked up at him. How long had she been here? Her back ached and a headache throbbed behind her eyes. It felt like hours, but it hadn’t been long at all.
“The bird’s here. He’s being medevaced to the Third. A neuro team is standing by.”
Frankie nodded, pushed her chair back, and stood. For a second, she was shaky on her feet.
The medic steadied her.
She saw the duffel bag at his feet. “Those are Jamie—Captain Callahan’s things?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Frankie reached into her pocket and pulled out a felt-tipped marker and the small gray stone she’d been given by the young Vietnamese boy. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he’d pressed it into her palm. It had become a talisman for her. She wrote You fight on one side of the stone and McGrath on the other. She slipped it into his duffel bag.