Becky laughed. A pretty, optimistic sound. “Course not. Most of the boys we know have ways out. A few have gotten married.”
“How fortunate.” Frankie got to her feet so quickly it must have looked like she wasn’t in control of her body, and really, she wasn’t. She was like an animal who had sensed danger and gone into full flight mode. If she didn’t leave now she might scream. “I should go.”
“Why, you just got here, silly!”
“I … have to work.” Frankie sidled to the left to give herself a clear path.
Someone put a record on the stereo and turned up the volume.
“We gotta get out of this place…”
“Turn that shit off,” Frankie snapped. She didn’t realize that she’d yelled it until the record was scratched and the party fell quiet and everyone was staring at her.
She couldn’t smile. “Sorry. I hate that song.”
Becky looked frightened. “Uh. How was Florence? Chad and I are going for our anniversary.”
“I wasn’t in Florence, Bex,” she said slowly, trying to calm down, pull back, be okay. Be normal.
But she wasn’t okay.
She was standing with a bunch of debutantes and sorority girls who were planning a wedding with fresh flowers and honeymoons abroad while men their age were dying on foreign soil. Not their men, though, not their rich, pretty college boys. “I was in Vietnam.”
Silence.
Then a titter of laughter. It broke the silence; the women all joined in.
Becky looked relieved. “Ah. Funny joke, Frankie. You always were a card.”
Frankie took a step closer, went toe to toe with her best friend from ninth grade. All the while she was thinking, Calm down, back off, at the same time she thought, Killed by enemy fire and almost instantly.
“Believe me, Bex. It is not a joke. I’ve held men’s severed legs in my hands and tried to hold their chests together just long enough to get them into the OR. What’s happening in Vietnam is no joke. The joke is here. This.” She looked around. “You.”
She pushed past her friend and strode through the pod of silent, staring women, heard someone say, “What’s wrong with her?,” and before she made it outside to her car, she was screaming.
* * *
Frankie sat at a picnic table in Ski Beach Park, overlooking the ocean. As usual on a summer evening, the place was crowded with people out walking their dogs or jogging in brightly colored short shorts. Kids played in the grass and in the sand, their shrieks of joy sometimes startlingly loud.
She ignored all of it, or, more accurately, she didn’t notice the commotion going on around her. She smoked one cigarette after another, only getting up to put her butts in the trash.
There was something wrong. With her. And she was unsure of how to fix it. Her behavior at the shower was unacceptable on any level. There was no doubt about that. Oh, Becky and the others had been offensive about Vietnam, but so was much of the country. That didn’t give Frankie license to lash out. All she’d had to do was claim a need to leave and politely walk out of the party.
Instead …
Her anxiety and anger had surged, come out of nowhere, and suffocated her.
Even now, hours later, it was still there, lying in wait, ready to lash out at a moment’s notice. It made her feel weak, shaky. Fragile.
She’d never thought of herself as fragile, and yet here she was. Alone and afraid.
She could handle a MASCAL in ’Nam with ease, but a long-forgotten friend at a bridal shower could bring her to her emotional knees with the flick of a word.
Vietnam.
That had to be at the root of her outburst. And how could it not? She’d shown up at a bridal shower only months after Rye’s death. Wouldn’t anyone be upended by grief at a time like that?
But what about the sudden anger? Was that part of grief?
She had to do better, be better. No more putting herself in upsetting situations. No more telling people she’d been to Vietnam. They didn’t want to hear it, anyway. The message was clear: Don’t talk about it.
She needed to do as everyone suggested and forget.
She knew that enforced silence added to her anxiety, increased her anger, but it was undeniably true that even her own family was ashamed of her service and expected her to be ashamed, too.
At 2245 hours, long after dark, she was still on the wooden picnic table bench, worrying over all of it, gnawing on the bone of her failures. When she stood up, she realized she hadn’t eaten all day and the pack of cigarettes she’d smoked had left her light-headed.
She got up and walked to her car, hearing the ocean purr behind her. The park was mostly empty this late; just a few pairs of lovers out here now.
She drove the short distance to the hospital and parked. Moving cautiously—she was jittery, unsteady—she entered the brightly lit halls, went to her locker, and put on her uniform. After brushing her teeth at the sink, she straightened and caught sight of herself in the mirror: a young face with old, tired eyes, black hair, and a stark white nursing cap.
She headed for the nurses’ station, made herself a cup of coffee, ate something from a vending machine, and began her rounds.
The halls and rooms were quiet. Most of the patients were sleeping and there were no surgeries scheduled for tonight.
Four hours later, she sat at the station desk, tapping her pen. On her shift so far, she’d changed four bedpans, helped three patients to the bathroom, and replaced two pillows. She’d filled water pitchers and lowered a bed and helped one old woman sleep by reading to her.
As usual, she had pretty much just twiddled her thumbs.
Suddenly the elevator doors banged open. An ambulance attendant rolled a patient in on a wheeled gurney. “The ER is packed,” he said. “Bus accident.”
Frankie shot to her feet, felt instinctively for the Kelly clamp on her fatigue pocket. Not there.
“Gunshot wound,” the attendant said.
Frankie felt a rush of adrenaline. “This way,” she said and ran alongside the patient, who was a young man. Shot in the upper chest at close range. Blood gushed from the gaping wound, dripped onto the floor. He couldn’t breathe, gasped, grabbed for her.
In OR 1, Frankie hit the intercom. “Code. Bay One. Code. Bay One.”
To the attendant, Frankie said, “Get him on the table.”
“There’s no doc—”
“On the table,” she shouted, washing her hands, looking for gloves. “Now.”
The attendant moved the kid onto the operating table. Frankie masked and scrubbed up and hurried back to the table. “You’re going to be okay,” she said to the young man.
He gurgled, gasped, clawed at his throat. Something was obstructing his breathing.
Frankie went to the intercom again, hit the button with her elbow, and called for help, this time saying, “Code blue. STAT. OR, Bay One.”
“Hang on, kid,” she said. “The doc will be here soon.”
The patient gasped, started to turn blue.
Frankie glanced back at the door. Didn’t these people listen? Did they not respond to calls?
She waited five more seconds, then found the surgical cart, grabbed some antiseptic ointment and a scalpel and a breathing tube.
He was dying.
She wiped his neck with antiseptic and picked up a scalpel. It took less than twenty seconds to do the tracheotomy and get the kid breathing.
“There,” she said when he inhaled and exhaled through the tube. She cut off his shirt and vest, exposing the wound. It was gushing blood. She grabbed some gauze, applied pressure, and tried to stop the bleeding.
A short-haired man in scrubs rushed into the OR and stopped in his tracks. “What in the hell?”
Frankie threw him an irritated look. “There you are. What took you so long?”
The doctor stared at her, his mouth open. Mrs. Henderson appeared beside him. She looked at Frankie, her face no doubt streaked with the patient’s blood, her white nurse uniform stained red in places, her cap thrown to the floor, applying pressure to a patient’s wound.
“Who did the trach?” the doctor asked, looking around.
“He couldn’t breathe,” Frankie said.
“So you performed a trach? You?” the doctor said.
“I called. No one came,” Frankie said.
“We have other emergencies,” he said.