I almost said, "What? A zip in Vietnam? Surely not!" but remembered in time that the grunt sense of humor was usually dampened considerably by being wounded. So I just told him casually that he probably had, since we had lots of Vietnamese patients and staff members.
,,But this is an American hospital!" he said indignantly. He was as young as they all were, his face deeply sunburned and peeling, with a white line near the hair where his hat or a bandanna might have been. He had frag wounds in both legs as well as the fractured left ankle. When he saw that I wasn't going to rush out and correct what he seemed to think was a terrible oversight, he continued. "Man, I don't want to just lie here with no weapon with damn zips runnin' around. You can't trust 'em. Not any of 'em. The kids will blow you up, the babies are booby-trapped- Hey, ma'am, no offense, but you know what they say about the way to win Vietnam. You take all the friendlies and put 'em in a boat in the middle of the South China Sea, nuke the country, then sink the boat."
Yes, indeed, I had heard that one. Many times. Way too many times. But I ignored it and said, "Well, most of the patients have been here for a while, and we don't let them have weapons either. They're mostly hurt as bad as you are, or worse. And the interpreters have been working here longer than I have, and haven't hurt anybody yet."
But he was still shaking his head as I moved on.
Two beds down, a man was moaning low heretical obscenities that rose in volume as I approached, to, "Oh, why me? Why did this happen to me? Aw, shit. Goddamn, this hurts like a motherfucker."
The two patients between him and me had rolled onto their stomachs with pillows covering their heads.
I checked the noisy one's chart. Crushing injuries to the soft tissue of both legs, it said. Nasty. The crisp smell of antiseptic gauze was overlaid by the tang of old blood and a touch of the sicky-sweet reek of rot. His bandages were soaked with the breakdown fluids from his crushed skin and muscle. Soft-tissue injuries were often more painful than broken bones-and healed more slowly.
"Sounds like you're really hurting," I said, checking his chart, which identified him as PFC Ronald G. Dickens. "You need something?" It had been only two and a half hours, but I was willing to stretch it and estimate a long fifteen minutes to prepare the injection. Fifteen minutes' leeway on the three-to-four-hour limit was usually permissible.
" I sure as hell do. I need you to get your ass over there to your little stash, sweetheart, and get me a fuckin' pain shot before I go through the fuckin' roof. Oh God, oh Gawd."
Nursing is such a rewarding profession. All that gratitude. Restraining myself from strangling him, I drew up the Demerol, but when I swabbed the alcohol wipe on his thigh before administering the injection lie started bellowing in my ear again. "Jesus fucking Christ, woman, you can't give it there. Not in my leg, oh shit-"
"Well, if you want to wait until I get help to roll you over-"
"And move these legs? Lady, are you out of your fuckin' mind?
I'm hurt, you stupid-"
"Hey, man, cool it," the fellow across the aisle told him. "The lady's just trying to help you."
"Fuck you," Dickens said, and while he was flipping my would-be rescuer the bird I shoved in the needle, aspirated, and pushed in the plunger before he said something I really couldn't ignore.
"I'll let that take effect and be around to change your dressing pretty soon." I ducked around to the other side of the next bed to put maximu4n distance between us, and tried to calm myself down. I knew the guy hurt and hurt badly and was probably still shocky. But he still pissed me off. Maybe he wouldn't be so nasty once the Demerol took effect. He probably realized he might lose some or all of both legs with injuries like that and would undoubtedly lose some function-it was one thing to express those feelings, even loudly, and another thing to take it out on me.
My hands shook as I disposed of the needle and syringe at the nurses'
station. Then I took a deep breath and concentrated firmly on the next patient, a Navy corpsman who was lying on his stomach because, in addition to having lost both legs, he had sustained multiple deep lacerations to his buttocks and back. I thought he was sleeping, but he turned his head toward me. "Hi, Lieutenant. Having a nice day?" he asked, grinning. "Don't answer that. Listen, I think it's about time for the heat lamp to my butt. Would you do the honors?"
I pulled back the light sheet that covered his lower half-his upper half, like that of most of the men, was already bare except for dog tags and assorted GI jewelry. His stumps were bandaged, with drainage at the ends, and I made :! note to bring more gauze to reinforce them when I changed the dressings of the charmer in the next bed. The lacerations on his hips were deep and infected, seeping green and smelling to high heaven of pseudomonas, a germ that got into everything. I pulled the silver gooseneck lamp over and cranked his bed down so that the lip of the lamp was high enough above him that it wouldn't burn him. "There you go," I told him.
"Thanks a lot, ma'am."
"Uh-you need anything for pain?"
"I think I'd better hold off. I'm going to need it a lot worse later,"
he said ruefully.
"How-uh-how did you get hurt?" I asked.
"Oh, I was helping out when the compound this bunch came from got hit. I saw this dude get hit out by the perimeter and was trying to drag him in out of range. I screwed up and dragged him across a live grenade. Threw him up in the air and blew the shit out of my legs. I don't remember any of that. I guess the Army medic saved my life, but he couldn't save my legs. They tell me I landed in a nest of concertina wire-that's how I got cut up."
"Yeah? How about the guy you dragged?"
He shrugged. "Nobody's said. I think he just took some frags, but hard tellin'. If you hear anything, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know."
Tony called as I was finishing my charting on the Vietnamese side.
"Keeping busy?" he asked.
"Sure am, thanks to you."
"No problem. Happy to be of service. When can we get together again?"
The red-haired Special Forces type, Heron, flipped a mock salute as he passed the nurses' station on the way to visit Xe. The old man lay
','lke a poor man's skinny Buddha, hands crossed on the concave spot where his belly should have been, eyes closed. They opened when he saw Heron and he actually smiled.
"Uh-I don't know," I told Tony. "Can you come over here after work tomorrow?"
"I doubt it. We're still on alert."
"Well, I'm off Monday next week. We could go to the beach or the club, maybe.........
"Okay. Then, if not before. Gotta go. 'Bye, babe." I said good-bye to a dial tone.
Both the ARVN and Ahn were gone, I noticed. I'd passed Joe's order on to Sergeant Baker, who'd said he'd take care of it. Apparently he had.
Even as I was thinking Ahn was a long time returning from surgery, recovery room called and said they were sending him back to US.
Heron sat on the edge of Xe's bed, talking to him in a Southernfried version of Vietnamese. The old man listened and nodded and said something once in a while. Heron's large hand covered the old man's frail one. Xe's other hand was, as usual, stroking his amulet.