Chapter 1
February 10, 1971
2155 Hours
95th Evacuation Hospital
Da Nang, South Vietnam
“Doctor Howard, wake up.” The loud female voice seemed to come from far away.
Franklin Howard, Frank to his friends, turned over on the bottom half of a blanket-covered twin bunk, sat up, swung his legs over the edge, pushed away the mosquito netting, and rubbed his tired eyes.
He’d just lain down after a long twenty-four-hour shift in surgery but couldn’t sleep. Visions of bloody men, screaming in agony with missing limbs and grievous traumatic injuries, some fatal, some not, and some in-between, stacked like cordwood in the halls outside the operating room, kept him awake.
The medivac choppers were instructed to overfly them to alternative evacuation hospitals if the surgical backlog exceeded sixteen hours. Sometimes he wondered if that actually happened when the hallway became a maze of gurneys and blood.
“Yeah,” Frank said, staring at the slender nurse standing in the open doorway. Her faded OD-green ripstop cotton jungle fatigues had dark spots from bloodstains that would never come out. Light filtered around her into the darkened room, shining down on him, making dancing spots appear before his eyes until they adjusted.
This room doubled as sleeping quarters and a supply closet. He felt like a first-year resident again, napping when he caught a short break. Around him sat stacks of boxes and sparsely loaded shelving. There wasn’t much storage space inside these prefab corrugated steel Quonset-style buildings, so they had to make do.
Dust floated in the air above the damp stained concrete floor, stirred around by the overhead exhaust fans. The floor never completely dried, being hosed off constantly to remove the coating of blood from the wounded, dying, and the dead.
“Sorry to disturb you, Major,” Nurse Cathy Alexander said, her red-haired ponytail flopping as she turned to point toward the ICU. “That Special Forces officer you worked on earlier, Major Landry, the one with half his skull gone, opened his eyes.”
Frank felt hope rise in his heart. Jake Landry was his undergraduate roommate at Pensacola State College. They had a lot of good times together, chasing girls, tanning on the beach, and surfing in the bay. While he pursued a medical degree at Florida State University, Jake, so much smarter than him, graduated with honors and a Master’s degree in Physics from MIT.
Why Jake decided to join the Army or the Special Forces after graduation, Frank had no idea. The man had a bright future ahead of him as a scientist. Maybe even an astronaut. The only reason Frank could come up with, the same as his for joining the Army, to serve his country and pay off his student loans. Or maybe it was a stepping stone into NASA. They seemed to gravitate toward those in the military.
“Thanks, Cathy. Anything else?” Frank stood and stretched then grabbed his fatigue shirt hanging on a chair and put it on. His shirt looked like Cathy’s, faded, tattered, and stained. Too much blood and too many washings. He covered it up with his somewhat white, wrinkled lab coat. The evidence of being in Vietnam too long - or being a “short-timer.” For him, it was the former, even though he’d only been here a couple of months. But it already felt like years after the Army revoked his TDY status, ordering him to complete a year-long tour at the 95th Evacuation Hospital.
“No, sir.” Cathy yawned, walking beside Frank down the hall. “Just wanted you to know. Did you get any sleep?”
Frank looked at his watch. 0300 hours. He’d been in bed for less than an hour. “No. As a captain, you’ve got seniority on most of the other nurses, Cathy, and you’re a short-timer with three months left over here. Why do you work the night shift?”
Cathy smiled. “It’s quiet and gives me a chance to study.”
“For what?” Frank opened the door to the ICU and followed her inside.
“Medical school.”
“Have you been accepted?”
Cathy pulled a medical chart from the holder at the central desk, handed it to Frank then smiled. “Yes, I start at Baylor in the fall. I was accepted last year, but when my transfer to the hospital at Fort Hood fell through, they put me in this year’s class. Could you keep it under wraps? Please. I don’t want special treatment.” She looked around. “Or a party. I want to finish up my time here and go home without any fanfare.”
“Well, congratulations. And I won’t tell anyone.”
“Thanks.” Cathy nodded at the bed. “Go see your friend.”
In the dingy sea green-walled, noisy, brightly lit Recovery Room/ICU, Frank looked at the chart. All of Jake’s vital signs had stabilized. He sat in the chair next to the bed. Jake’s face was barely visible under the large swath of white gauze bandages. They wouldn’t put in a metal plate to replace the missing part of his skull until the brain swelling had subsided. Around the time he reached Tachikawa Army Hospital in Japan.
While Jake’s glazed bloodshot brown eyes were open, they showed no sign of recognition. Nearby, the ventilator whooshed and thumped as it pushed air into Jake’s lungs. All he did was breathe and look straight ahead. Right now, the only things keeping him alive were the endotracheal tube, blood transfusions, and IV lines.
Frank considered if Jake really should have been KIA instead. He knew from experience his friend, while alive, probably wouldn’t have much of a life. All he would do was sit in a wheelchair in a nursing home, staring out a window with his meals going into his stomach through a tube in his nose. What was life without communication?
Frank removed his penlight from his lab coat pocket and checked Jake’s pupil reaction. Sluggish at best. But there was some movement and maybe brain activity. He grabbed Jake’s limp hand and squeezed, hoping for a return squeeze, something to say his friend was still there. “Hey, Jake.” Nothing. The hand remained limp weight, cold and clammy, even in the humid warmth of the room. All he could do now was pray for a miracle. They did sometimes happen.
***
Frank lifted his head from next to Jake’s when someone shook his shoulder. He looked up into Cathy’s green eyes and beautiful smile. “Huh? What time is it?”
“It’s 0555.” Cathy tapped the face of her wristwatch.
Shift change. Frank straightened in his chair. “What happened?”
“You fell asleep, and I didn’t want to disturb you. You’re exhausted and needed the rest. He—” Cathy pointed at Jake. “Closed his eyes about the same time and seemed much more comfortable. Do you want to have breakfast with me before I hit the rack?” Cathy chuckled. “Such as it is…powdered eggs, watered-down coffee, and burned pancakes.”
Frank thought about it for a few seconds. Like her, he was hungry and would grab a few more hours of sleep in his quarters. At least, according to the duty roster, he wasn’t back on shift until tomorrow unless they got another influx of wounded. “Sure.” And he wanted to know more about her plans. What kind of doctor she wanted to be. She was already one hell of a surgical nurse. Professional, kind, compassionate, and caring.
He’d heard about the young Special Forces Lt. Colonel, Jackson somebody, a man given a twenty percent chance of survival due to malnutrition and his severe injuries after escaping from a POW camp. Many of those still assigned here credited her with helping to save his life, both physically and mentally. He didn’t know the particulars, but that opinion among so many said a lot. One day he knew she would be an exceptional physician. He pictured her as a pediatrician.
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