She couldn’t imagine what they’d been through or what they’d done to escape, or how hard it had been to carry this wounded man for thirty miles through the booby-trapped jungle on bare feet.
The man on the litter had an infected bullet wound in his chest that oozed pus. Frankie didn’t need to touch his forehead to diagnose a raging fever. She could see it in his eyes, smell it on him. Frag wounds had torn up his arms and neck. He could barely breathe, kept gasping. Something must be swollen or lodged in his airway.
He was going to die, and soon.
Frankie called out to Dr. Morse, who came over, took one look at the kid on the litter, and said, “Expectant, McGrath.”
“Put a trach in, Doc,” she said. “Let him breathe easy, at least.”
“Waste of time, McGrath. Go find someone you can save.”
One of the soldiers said, “Wait. We just humped through the boonies for a week with Fred—”
Frankie knew that the doc was right. This kid wasn’t going to make it, and the OR was crowded with casualties they could save, but she couldn’t turn her back on these men and what they’d suffered.
She pointed to an empty table. “Set him there, boys.”
“What are you doing, McGrath?” Dr. Morse asked.
“Letting him say goodbye to his friends and die in peace.”
“Be quick. I’ve got a sucking chest wound that needed you ten minutes ago.”
The men set the wounded soldier on the table. Frankie cut off what was left of his fatigues. Yanking her cart close, she changed into clean gloves and wiped his neck with antiseptic solution. Holding her scalpel, she took a breath to steady herself, then made a small cut between the thyroid and cricoid cartilages and inserted a breathing tube.
The dying man took a deep, wheezing breath; Frankie saw relief come into his eyes. How long had he been fighting just to breathe?
“We got out, Fred,” one of his buddies said. “Took five of those fuckers with us.”
Frankie took hold of Fred’s hand, held it in hers, and leaned close, whispering, “You must be a good man. Your friends are here.”
His buddies kept talking—about his girl, the baby waiting for him back home, how he had saved their lives in that hellhole.
Frankie saw Fred take his last breath; felt the way he went still.
“He’s gone,” she said tiredly, looking at the two bloodied, dirtied men in front of her. “You gave him a chance, though.”
She wouldn’t be surprised if those death stares would be a part of them forever now. Men staring into a world they no longer were a part of, no longer comprehended, a world where the ground beneath your feet exploded. Another kind of casualty. She thought of other men who had grabbed her hand over the past few months, begged her to answer the question, Who will want me like this?, and it struck her that it wasn’t just physical wounds that soldiers would take home from Vietnam. From now on, all of them would have a deep understanding of both man’s cruelty and his heroism.
A medic shoved through the OR doors and yelled, “Forty-five Vietnamese villagers coming in. Napalm,” and left again.
Napalm.
“Go to the mess,” she said to the two soldiers as she stripped out of her gloves. “Get some chow. Take a shower. And get rid of that damned necklace.”
She yelled for someone to take the dead man away. Then she found Margie and together they pushed the few OR patients to one side and gathered empty beds to turn the OR into an overflow burn unit.
Two minutes later, a flood of villagers hit the OR, most of whom had been burned beyond recognition. Frankie knew it was the same scene in the ICU and Pre-Op and on the wards.
Napalm—a jellied firebomb used in flamethrowers by the U.S. to clear out foxholes and trenches, and dropped in bombs by U.S. planes—had become common in these first few months of her second tour. More and more of its victims were coming into the OR; most of them were villagers.
Tomorrow they’d be flown to the Third Field—a real burn unit—but few would survive until then. The few who did would wish they’d died. These burns were like nothing else on earth. The gel-fueled firebomb mixture stuck to its target and didn’t stop burning until nothing was left.
Frankie moved from bed to bed, applying topical ointments and debriding dead tissue, but there was so little she could do here to help them heal, and nothing to ease their tremendous pain.
By 1000 hours, she was exhausted, and the burn victims were still arriving. She could hear Margie and Dr. Morse and some medics talking to each other, rolling carts, yelling for ointment.
The next bed held a woman—impossible to tell if she was young or old; her body was burned from head to toe. The black, charred flesh still smoked.
Beside her, tucked protectively against her body, was a baby.
Frankie stopped. For a split second, the horror overwhelmed her. She had to take a deep, steadying breath.
The infant was still alive.
“Dear God,” Frankie said under her breath. How could that be?
With care, she picked up the infant, who couldn’t be much older than three months. “Hey, little one,” Frankie said, her voice breaking. Thin white ribs shone through the gaping wounds and burns on her chest.
She found a chair and sat down. The OR was a cacophony of screaming, moaning, crying casualties, and shouting medics and nurses and doctors. The sound of wheels rolling on concrete, of new gloves being snapped on. But for a moment, Frankie heard nothing except this one infant’s struggle to breathe.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Frankie said.
The baby drew in an uneven breath and exhaled slowly and then went still.
Frankie held the dead baby, overwhelmed by this loss, unable to move, unable to stand.
No one would ever know who this child was or even that she had lived and died. How could this be done, even in the name of war?
“McGrath! I need you.”
It was Dr. Morse.
Ignoring him and the melee of the OR, she carried the infant to the morgue, where body bags lay stacked along the walls.
Private Juan Martinez, a kid from Chula Vista who’d been drafted right out of high school, stood in the center of the morgue. He looked as exhausted as she felt. “Rough night,” he said.
She glanced down at the baby in her arms. “And now this.”
Martinez stared down at the baby. “Jesus,” he said softly, moving closer. He placed a black-gloved hand on the baby’s body, covering the entire ruined rib cage. “He will hold you in heaven.”
Frankie was surprised to hear that bit of faith from a man who stood in the morgue all day, cataloging the dead, zipping up body bags. Then again, maybe you couldn’t do this job otherwise.
Martinez found a cardboard box and an old T-shirt. Frankie wrapped the baby in the soft khaki cotton and laid her in the box.
She and Martinez stood there for a moment, the box and the baby between them.
Neither spoke.
Then Frankie left the morgue. As she shut the door, she heard the incoming choppers and felt something ugly take root inside of her: a dark anger. She was so tired of pulling green canvas over young men’s faces, and now this baby.
With a sigh, she headed back to the OR, grabbed a gown, and went back to work.
* * *
“Get out of here, McGrath,” Dr. Morse said at 0200. “You’re dead on your feet.”
“We all are,” she said. The OR was so full of burn victims that many lay three to a bed.
“Yeah, but you look it.”
“Har har. A beauty joke. Perfect.”
He touched her shoulder, gave it a squeeze. “Go. If you don’t, I will.”
Frankie pulled off her blue surgical cap. “Thanks, Doc. My tank really does feel empty.”
“Get some sleep.”
She looked around. “After this?”
He gave her a look of commiseration. They both knew sleep was unlikely. There wasn’t enough pot or alcohol on-site to make her forget that baby dying in her arms.
She thanked Doc and headed for her hooch. As she passed the new admin building, she ducked in, found Talkback on the radio.
“Hey, Talkback, could I make a MARS call? Short, I promise.”