D r. Leonard O'Doull watched Sergeant Vince Donofrio chatting up a well-fed blond Georgia farm girl with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. The senior medic seemed to try his luck with everything female from fourteen to fifty. This one-her name was Billie Jean-fell toward the lower end of the range, but not so low that she didn't have everything a woman needed. She also had an inch-long cut on her left index finger, which was what brought her to the U.S. aid station in the first place.
Donofrio had given her a shot of novocaine and put a couple of stitches in the cut. In O'Doull's professional opinion, it needed nothing but a bandage, but Donofrio had motivation beyond the purely professional.
"I never reckoned Yankees could be so kind and helpful," Billie Jean said, which showed the sergeant had made some progress, anyhow.
"I'm a medic. We help everybody on both sides." Donofrio turned to O'Doull for support. "Ain't that right, Doc?"
"That's our job." O'Doull could hardly deny it-it was true. He said it himself, somewhere between once a day and once a week. Here, though, he wished he weren't agreeing with the horny sergeant. He'd never sewn up a pretty girl's wound in the hope of getting into her pants.
Then he shook his head and started to laugh. When he sutured a cut on Lucien Galtier's leg up in Quebec, that put him in the good graces of the man who became his father-in-law. It didn't hurt him with Nicole, either. Still, he wasn't inclined to look at Vince Donofrio and Billie Jean Whoozis and intone, Bless you, my children.
As if Vince cared. "Can I walk you home, sweetie?" he asked.
Billie Jean frowned. O'Doull gave her points for that. "I don't know," she said. "Some of the guys here, they don't like it if they see a girl walkin' with a Yankee." At least she didn't say damnyankee.
"Like I said, I'm a medic," Donofrio said. "I don't give trouble, and I don't want trouble." He had a.45 on his hip, just in case. So did O'Doull.
He also had the gift of gab, even though his boss was the Irishman. He talked Billie Jean into letting him tag along. And he talked O'Doull into letting him go, which was harder. "You be back in an hour, you hear me?" O'Doull growled. "And I don't mean an hour and one minute, either. I don't see you here in an hour's time, I send a search party out after you, and you won't like it when they find you."
"I promise, Doc." The senior medic crossed his heart. Billie Jean laughed.
Ten minutes later, corpsmen brought a soldier with a hand wound into the aid station. He'd passed out, or he would have come in under his own power. One look at the injury told O'Doull the hand would have to go. He hated to do it, but he didn't see any way to save the mangled remnants. He wished Vince were there to pass gas, but he could act as his own anesthetist.
"What happened to the guy, Eddie?" he asked as he put the ether cone over the wounded man's mouth and nose. "Do you know? This is about as ugly a hand wound as I've ever seen."
"I thought the same thing, Doc," the corpsman answered. "He was by a boulder when we found him, and the boulder had blood all over it. I'm guessing, but I'd say a big old chunk of shell casing mashed his hand against the rock."
O'Doull nodded. "Sounds reasonable. But he'll have to make do with a hook from here on out. I hope he wasn't left-handed, that's all."
"Didn't even think of that." Eddie looked and sounded surprised.
The amputation went as well as an operation like that could. The cutting was over in a hurry; patching things up, as usual, took longer. At last, O'Doull said, "Well, that's about all I can do. Poor bastard won't like it when he wakes up."
"Any other doc would've done the same thing-only not as well, chances are," Eddie said. They'd worked together a long time.
"Thanks," O'Doull said wearily. "I'd like a drink, but I think I'll settle for a cigarette." He stepped outside the aid tent to light up. He'd smoked the Raleigh almost down to the butt when he happened to look at his watch. An hour and five minutes had passed since Vince Donofrio decided to walk Billie Jean home, and he wasn't back. O'Doull swore in disgust. He didn't care if Vince had got lucky. The medic wouldn't think he was by the time O'Doull got through with him.
Finding soldiers for a search party was the easiest thing in the world. He waved to the first squad he saw coming up the road and told them what he needed. The Army had made him a major so he could give enlisted men orders. "Right," said the corporal in charge of the squad. "So what do we do if we catch him laying this broad?"
"Throw cold water on him, pull him off, and haul his sorry ass back here," O'Doull replied angrily, which made the soldiers grin. They went off with a spring in their step and a gleam in their eye.
When they weren't back in half an hour or so-and when Donofrio, shamefaced or not, didn't show up on his own-O'Doull started to worry. He almost welcomed a man with a leg wound. Patching it up let him think about other things besides the medic and why he might be missing. Why the devil had he let Donofrio go? But he knew the answer to that: because Vince would have sulked and fumed for days if he hadn't, and life was too short. But if life turned out to be literally too short…
By the time another hour went by, O'Doull began to dread what would happen when the search party came back. Then they did. One look at the corporal's face told him he hadn't wasted his time worrying. "What happened?" he asked.
"Both dead," the noncom said grimly. "Beaten, stomped, kicked-you name it, they got it, the guy and the gal both. We found 'em in a field not far from the side of the road. The medic's holster was empty, so his pistol's gone. Some goddamn Confederate's got it now."
"Jesus!" O'Doull felt sick. He'd never been responsible for a man's death like this before. Plenty of wounded soldiers had died while he was working on them, but he was doing his goddamnedest to save them. Here, one word-no-would have saved Vince Donofrio. It would have, but he hadn't said it. He forced out the next question: "What now?"
"Sir, I've already talked to a line officer," the squad leader said. "We beat the bushes for the motherfuckers who did it. We take hostages. We put out the call for the guilty bastards to give themselves up. Then we blow the fuckin' hostages' heads off." He sounded as if he looked forward to serving in the firing squad.
"Jesus!" O'Doull said again. "How many people are going to die because Vince thought Billie Jean was cute?"
"She wasn't cute when we found her, sir," the corporal said. "They…Well, shit, you don't want to hear about that. But she wasn't. Neither was he."
O'Doull crossed himself. "I shouldn't have let him go. But he liked her looks, and I didn't think anything would happen this time, so-"
"You never think anything'll happen this time," the corporal said. "Only sometimes it does."
"Yeah. Sometimes it does." O'Doull covered his face with his hands. "Here's one I'll carry on my conscience the rest of my life." Yes, this was much worse than losing a patient on the table.
"We'll get 'em," the corporal said. "Or if we don't, we'll get enough of the bastards who might have done it to make the rest of the assholes around here think twice before they try anything like that again."
"Fat lot of good any of that will do Vince," O'Doull said.
"Sir, I'm sorry as hell about that. It's part of the war around these parts," the corporal said. "Sooner or later, I expect we'll put the fear of God into the Confederates."
That wouldn't do Vince Donofrio any good, either. O'Doull didn't say so-what was the use? The noncom saluted and led his squad away. Eddie came up to O'Doull. "Not your fault, Doc," he said. "You just did what anybody else would've done."