"Thank you, sir." O'Doull was much less impressed. He also suspected Tobin had chosen to promote him to try to persuade him to stay in the Army. If so, the man was barking up the wrong tree. "Sir, I've been away from my family a long time now. With the war over and done, I'd like to arrange to return to civilian life."
"So would we all," Tobin said. "But you can't deny soldiers are still getting wounded, can you? And you can't deny they're coming down with, uh, unpleasant diseases, either." He didn't want to come right out and say VD.
"No, sir. I can't deny any of that. Still, it is peacetime-formally, anyhow. And with our new antibiotics, a medic can do just as much for syphilis and gonorrhea as I can."
Colonel Tobin winced when he heard the names. But he didn't retreat. "I'm very sorry, but the United States still need you. You did sign up to serve at the country's pleasure, you know."
That was a trump against most men in U.S. service. Against Leonard O'Doull? Not necessarily. "Sir, meaning no disrespect, but I'm going to have to get hold of my government and see what it thinks of your refusing to discharge me."
"Your government?" Tobin had bushy eyebrows, and got a good theatrical effect when he raised one. "You have a different one from everybody else's?"
"Yes, sir," O'Doull said, which made the colonel's eyebrow jump again-this time, O'Doull judged, involuntarily. He pulled a maroon passport out of his trouser pocket. "As you see, sir, I'm a citizen of the Republic of Quebec. Actually, I have dual citizenship, but I've lived in the Republic since the last war. I met a girl up there, and I stayed and started a practice in Riviиre-du-Loup."
"Good God. Let me see that." Tobin took the Quebecois passport as if it were a poisonous snake. He found the page with O'Doull's picture and grunted in surprise, as if he truly hadn't expected to see it there. Shaking his head, he handed the passport back. "You'd better get hold of your officials. If they write me and say they want you to go on home, I have a reason to turn you loose. Till then, though, you're a U.S. military physician, and we do need your services."
Damn, O'Doull thought. He had no idea whether the authorities in the Republic would send that kind of letter. But he couldn't deny that Colonel Tobin was playing by the rules. "All right, sir. I'll do that, then." O'Doull put the passport back in his pocket. Colonel Tobin seemed glad to see him go.
"Well, Doc? Any luck?" Goodson Lord asked him when he got back to the aid station.
"Depends on what you mean." O'Doull displayed his new rank insignia. Sergeant Lord shook his hand. "As for getting out," O'Doull went on, "well, yes and no. If I can get a letter from my mommy-I mean, from my government-Tobin will have a real, live piece of paper to give him an excuse to turn me loose. Till then, I'm here."
"Hope like hell they give it to you," Lord said. "If I had an angle like that, you bet your sweet ass I'd use it. Playing a horn beats the crap out of this."
"You're a good medic," O'Doull said.
"Thanks. I try. Some guy comes in bleeding, you don't want to let him down, you know what I mean?" Lord said. "Even if I am halfway decent, though, it's not like I want to do it the rest of my life."
"That seems fair," O'Doull allowed.
He wondered how long the United States would be able to occupy the Confederate States. The government might want to do it, but the soldiers on the ground were a lot less enthusiastic. They chafed under the discipline they'd accepted without thinking when their country was in peril.
They drank whatever they could get their hands on. They got into brawls with the locals and with one another. Despite all the thunderous orders against fraternizing with Confederate women, they chased skirt as eagerly as they would have back home. And what they chased, they caught. They caught all kinds of things-the penicillin they got stuck with testified to that.
"I don't know what the hell her name was," said a private most unhappy about his privates-he had one of the drippiest faucets O'Doull had ever seen. "It was dark. She said, 'Five dollars,' so I gave it to her. Then she gave it to me."
"She sure did. Bend over. I'm going to give it to you, too," O'Doull said. The soldier whined when the shot went home. O'Doull persisted: "Where was this? At a brothel? We need to know about those."
"No…" The soldier sighed with relief as the needle came out. "I was going back to my tent after I stood sentry, you know? And she called, and I felt like it, so I paid her and I screwed her in the bushes. And the bitch gave me something to remember her by."
O'Doull sighed. "Oh, God, I am so tired of this."
"Yeah, well, let me tell you somethin', Doc-it's even less fun on this end of the needle." The soldier did up his pants. "Is that it? Am I done?"
"No. You have to come back in three days for another shot," O'Doull answered. The other man groaned. O'Doull felt like groaning himself. This is why I need to get out of the Army, he thought glumly. "And I have to see your dogtags. Your superiors in the line need to know you came down venereal."
The soldier with the clap really didn't like that. If Goodson Lord and Eddie hadn't opportunely appeared, he might have stormed out of the aid station and forgotten about the second half of his cure. Eddie held a wrench; Sergeant Lord had a tire iron. O'Doull got the information he needed.
As soon as he'd written that down, he started in on the letter to the powers that be in the Republic of Quebec. Finding an envelope for it was easy. Coming up with a postage stamp wasn't. Soldiers in Confederate territory who were writing to the USA got free franking. Writing to Quebec, O'Doull didn't, and he'd used his last stamp a few days before on a letter to Nicole. He thought about using Confederate stamps, but they'd been demonetized. Eventually, a mail clerk came up with the requisite postage, and the letter went on its way.
And then he forgot about it. He went back to being a busy Army doctor, because an auto bomb killed several U.S. soldiers and wounded two dozen more. He hated auto bombs. They were a coward's weapons. You could be-and, if you had any brains, you were-miles away when your little toy went off. And you could laugh at what it did to the people you didn't like.
Digging jagged chunks of metal out of one soldier after another, O'Doull wasn't laughing. He didn't think the locals would be laughing very long, either, even though they probably were right now. "How many hostages will the authorities take after something like this?" he asked.
"Beats me," Goodson Lord answered. "But they'll shoot every damn one of 'em. You can bet your last nickel on that."
"I know. And that will make some diehard mad enough to build another bomb, and then it just starts up again. Ain't we got fun?" O'Doull said.
"Fun. Yeah," Lord said. "How's this guy doing?"
"We would have lost him in the last war-this kind of belly wound, peritonitis and septicemia would have got him for sure. But with the antibiotics, I think he'll pull through. His colon's more like a semicolon now, but you can live with that."
"Ouch!" Lord said. The pun seemed to distress him more than the bloody work he was assisting with. He'd done the work lots of times. The pun was a fresh displeasure. O'Doull had pulled it on Granny McDougald before, but not on him. I'm getting old, he thought. I'm using the same jokes over and over.
After he'd repaired as best he could the wounded who were brought to him, he took a big slug of medicinal brandy, and poured another for Goodson Lord. He wouldn't have done that during the fighting. No telling then when more casualties were coming in, and he'd wanted to keep his judgment as sharp as he could. Now he could hope he wouldn't have anything more complicated than another dose of clap to worry about for a while.