Two medics appeared, with a wounded man on a litter between them. She took one look at this casualty’s wound and said, “OR, STAT,” and ran along beside the medics.
In the OR, she pointed to an empty table and called for Sharlene, the newest nurse at the Seventy-First; the poor thing was fresh off the plane from Kansas. This would be her first shift. “Sharlene,” Frankie said, thrusting a pair of scissors at her. “Cut off his clothes.”
The young blond woman stared down at the blood falling from the soldier’s chest and onto her shiny black combat boots.
Frankie saw the woman’s fear and thought, Take a breath, Frankie. She forced her voice to soften as she said, “Look at me … Sharlene.”
Sharlene’s eyes were full of tears. “Yes … ma’am…”
“It’s scary, I know. But you can cut his clothes away and take off his boot. You’re a registered nurse.”
Sharlene took the scissors in shaking hands and went to the end of the table. Staring down at what was left of the soldier’s left leg, she began to cut away the blood-and-mud-soaked pants leg.
The patient sat up suddenly, saw his mangled leg. “Where’s my foot? Where’s my foot?”
“Doc! Over here.” Frankie reached for a shot of morphine and administered it. “This will help. You’ll be okay, Corporal.”
“I’m a bulldogger, ma’am,” he said, starting to slur his words as the morphine took effect. “In Oklahoma. You smell mighty fine, ma’am, like my girl back home.”
“It’s Jean Naté perfume. What’s a bulldogger, Marine?” Frankie said, looking for a surgeon.
“Rodeo, ma’am. I surely need that foot…”
Frankie yelled, “Is there a damn doc here, or am I going to do this kid’s surgery myself?”
* * *
On her birthday, after a long shift in the OR, Frankie headed to the Park, where a party was in full swing. Barb and Slim were standing by the dirty, leaf-infested pool. A banner had been strung between two dying banana trees: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FRANKIE! A small, tired-looking group of nurses and doctors whooped and clapped at her arrival.
Coyote saw Frankie. He leaned over the tiki bar, poured a drink, and brought it to her.
In the days since she’d seen him at the O Club in Saigon, he’d shaved his mustache. He looked younger.
“Happy birthday, Frankie. I’m glad I could be here. Dance with me?”
She started to say no, but when she looked in his eyes, and saw how hard he was working to smile, she realized that they were alike: just trying to conceal the pain of every day here, tired of being alone.
“Give me a chance, Frankie. I’m a good man.”
He sounded so earnest, and she knew he meant it, knew that it made sense to do as he asked, so, she let herself be pulled forward. She wouldn’t sleep with him, wouldn’t even let him kiss her—that would be wrong, to lead him on that way—but just now, she was lonely and tired. It was the wrong song and the wrong man and the wrong hand in hers, but honestly, it felt good not to be alone. And it was just a dance, after all.
“Say you’ll be my girl.”
“I’m sorry, Coyote,” she said softly. For a moment she almost hoped he hadn’t heard her.
“Yeah,” he whispered back, his breath hot against her ear. “I know. You’re out of my league, Frankie McGrath.”
She tightened her hold on him. “No, Coyote. You’re everything a girl could want.”
He drew back. “Just not you.”
God, she hated this. “Just not me.”
He pulled her close again, resumed their dance. “I love a challenge, Frankie. You should know that about me. But I’m going home soon. Short-timer. So don’t lose your chance.”
He threw his head back and howled, but for the first time, Frankie heard the loneliness in the sound, the sorrow and the heartbreak. She wondered if it had been there all along.
Fourteen
December had been a hell of a month in the Highlands. The NVA had killed hundreds of South Vietnamese civilians at Dak To. The OR and the wards had been filled with kids who’d lost their parents, old men who’d lost their daughters, mothers who’d lost their sons.
Now, on Christmas Eve, after hours on her feet in the OR, Frankie was exhausted. They were finally done treating the last of the casualties. Hopefully, the remainder of the night would be quiet.
“Go,” Hap said. “This is the last one. Go have some eggnog.”
“You sure?”
“Sure as gonorrhea itches. Go.”
Frankie peeled off her gloves and tossed them, along with her cap and gown, into the barrel by the door. “Merry Christmas Eve,” she said to the corpsman stationed at the desk by the door.
“Ain’t it lovely?” he said. “You, too, ma’am.”
She left the OR and emerged into unexpected sunlight. She found Barb in the triage staging area, standing beside a dead Black man on a stretcher. An exploding mortar shell had blown off most of his uniform. One side of his face was ripped and charred. It looked like both of his arms and legs were shattered.
“Explosion blew the dog tags right off him. No name,” Barb said. “On Christmas Eve.”
“Someone will know him. His platoon is in Post-Op.”
“Yeah,” Barb said, carefully placing the soldier’s hand on his chest. She kept her hand atop his.
Frankie knew Barb was thinking of her brother, Will, who’d come home from Vietnam two years ago a different man. Angry. Radical. Bound for trouble.
Frankie found a white sheet and covered the dead soldier, whispering, “God bless and keep you, soldier.”
Barb didn’t look up. “The Stars and Stripes reported no American casualties yesterday. Seven men died in OR One alone.”
Frankie nodded.
Whatever doubt—or hope—she’d once held was gone now: the American government was lying about the war. There was no way to avoid that simple truth anymore. LBJ and his generals were lying to the American people, to reporters, to everyone. Maybe even to each other.
The betrayal was as shocking as the assassination of Kennedy had been, an upheaval of right and wrong. The America Frankie believed in, the shining Camelot of her youth, was gone, or lost. Or maybe it had always been a lie. All she knew was that they were here in this faraway country, soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines and volunteers, risking their lives, and their government could no longer be trusted to tell them the truth about why.
Men were still arriving in Vietnam by the thousands, and contrary to what the hippies and the protesters suggested, the majority of them were volunteers, believers in their country. How could the government—and, worse, how could the American people—not care about that?
Frankie and Barb walked past the morgue, where a pair of corpsmen were processing last night’s corpses.
Frankie was the first to hear the chopper. She turned and tented a hand over her eyes. “Damn.”
The sound of the rotors grew louder.
“Just one.”
They rushed to the helipad to help offload the wounded and saw a Huey gunship touch down.
Coyote sat in the left seat; he leaned toward Frankie, grinning. “Just the nurses we hoped to see on Christmas Eve,” he said. “Want to have some fun?”
“You don’t have to ask us twice.” Barb jumped up into the chopper, and Frankie followed.
Once inside, Frankie saw that Rye was in the right seat, wearing his comms helmet with RIOT written across the front. Mirrored aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. He gave her a smile; she answered with a thumbs-up.
Coyote handed them headsets.
Frankie put her headset on and sat on the floor, next to the gunner positioned at the open door, and behind Rye. She let her legs dangle over the side as they took off.
They flew over the flat, treeless red swath of the evac hospital, and over the leafless, empty jungle, where dead orange leaves lay on the ground beside dying trees.
Up. Up. High into the mountains, where the world was impossibly green.
A few minutes later, Rye said into his mic, “There,” and the Huey descended sharply, lowered to about six feet above the ground. Hovered there. “Two minutes, Coyote. I don’t like being a target.”