WW III wi-1

by Ian Slater

  “I’m gone,” said Elizabeth.

  “Elizabeth!” Lana shouted. “Don’t you leave—”

  “Your shift, honey. I’m just visiting.”

  A minute later the whirlwind came in, hair wild. “If there’s one thing I will not tolerate, Miss Brentwood, it’s flagrant disregard for a patient’s well-being.”

  “We were only sharing a joke, Matron.”

  “A joke? So you think war’s a joke?”

  Lana simply refused to be baited. “Excuse me,” she said, and moved to check the IV drip.

  “A joke!” repeated Matron, louder this time. The drip was a little slow and Lana unscrewed the clamp a touch.

  “I fail to see—” began Matron, but then the PA system crackled to life. A man’s voice.

  “Matron, please report to OR Two. Matron to OR Two.”

  “I’ll deal with you later,” she said to Lana, her hair, still wind-strewn, looking like the wreck of the Hesperus as she bustled off with an air of officious efficiency.

  When she entered the prep room for OR Two, Matron was still angry and realized she’d gowned up before she knew it. Hands held high, she backed through the swing doors into the OR. There was no one there.

  She accused Elizabeth Ryan outright.

  “Matron, I don’t know a thing about it, honest.”

  “I’ll find out,” Matron declared. “I’ll find out. I won’t be made a fool of by anyone.”

  No one would own up to the false call, despite the captain initiating his own informal investigation, enjoying the joke as much as anyone.

  As Bahama Queen continued down Newfoundland’s coast, passing three more bergs, the dark line of Newfoundland’s cliffs far off to starboard, Matron continued her investigation, her dislike for Ryan and La Roche having curdled to childish absurdity in its intensity, and would have been dismissed as such later on had it not been for its dire consequences, which, like the bulk of the icebergs, lay hidden far beneath the surface.

  For the first groggy day William Spence thought his hands must be badly damaged, the phantom feeling that he still had his appendages persisting until the doctor had told him what they’d had to do.

  When the reality hit, when his mind grasped what sensation still denied, Lana touching his shoulder gently, try as he might, he could not stop crying, his humiliation made worse by the mundane fact that unlike anyone else in the world, he couldn’t wipe his tears away. His cumbersome attempt to do so with the bandaged stumps was at once grotesquely comic and awful to watch, his bumbling effort reflected in his sickroom mirror.

  Lana knew she was caring too much but couldn’t help it, for in return for her kindness, her attention to the smallest detail, William Spence, she knew, was falling in love with her. Once before there was a brief sojourn in Boston General during her six months’ stint as a student nurse, and she had seen it many times and knew it was a common enough phenomenon — the rapidity with which young men, especially, fell for the angels of mercy. But here, far from his home, the intensity of feeling for someone tending his every need, from a sip of water to a bedpan, who touched him, held his wrist gently for a minute, taking the beat of his heart, meant more than home. And for a young man, experiencing his first time at sea, his first time away, Lana became mother and sweetheart, so loved, so passionately desired, that the very hint of her perfume filled him with life those first few days, and when the coughing began, Lana held him during the violent episodes mat would go on for minutes at a time until, the stumps of his arms throbbing with pain, he would collapse back onto the pile of pillows. Ironically, during these episodes, his face, flushed by the coughing, would take on a healthy-looking pink compared to the drained postoperative face of a few days before. And she was with him as he talked with the intimacy that only patients and airline passengers do, telling her of how different he was from his father, for whom everything had to be explained in terms of rational behavior. How they had difficulty in getting close to each other, though he clearly admired and loved his father a great deal.

  “I suppose,” said William tiredly, his mouth dry, the morphine barely holding the pain at bay, “all fathers are like that. And all sons.”

  “Not all,” Lana replied, struck by the fact that he had so shyly avoided calling her by her first name. No one had told him she was separated, and in his naïveté, not seeing a wedding band or engagement ring, it hadn’t occurred to him that she might have been married, a belief that only made his dreams of making love to her as the untouched “she” all the more erotic and insistent. Normally in the other hospitals it was the practice to assign male nurses to assist the incapacitated male patients in bathing, shaving, and so forth, but with most eligible males being called up for what some generals were now secretly saying would be a longer war, the overwhelming bulk of the nursing jobs fell to the female nurses and the nurses’ aides.

  The first morning, after they had sailed past the icebergs north of Newfoundland and were heading along the island’s western coastline, Lana bathed him. He had been too groggy to notice and had kept falling back to sleep. The second morning, however, he was as aware of his erection as she, his face turning beet-red. She simply put a warm washcloth over it, saying, “It’s what we in the trade call a ‘tent.’ Means you’re getting better.” He tried to think of anything else — cold showers, long walks— but nothing worked. The astonishing sexiness of her uniform that was not supposed to be sexy was too much for him, and he grew harder. Lana returned to the subject of his family, asking about his mother — Anne, wasn’t it? — his sisters, Rosemary and Georgina.

  “I think you said Rosemary was a teacher?” she said, beginning to make the bed, giving him an excuse to turn away.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, so tense, so ill at ease, he imagined that being interviewed for assistant chef at the Savoy couldn’t be more anxiety-producing. “Yes,” he answered. “Ah — Rosemary’s a teacher. English — Shakespeare.”

  “Uh-huh,” replied Lana. “In London?”

  “Yes, er — I mean, no — ah — she teaches in a public school. Ah, what you’d call a—”

  Lana gently raised his right arm.

  “A private school,” he raced on. “I don’t think you have them in America.”

  “Private schools? Oh yes. I went to one before college—”

  “Oh, I mean you don’t call them public schools, you call them private. We call private ‘public’ “ He was in a torture of embarrassment and lust. “It’s all very confusing, I’m afraid.”

  “Not really,” she said, smiling. “You’re just all mixed-up over there.”

  “Yes,” he admitted freely. “Yes, we are rather.”

  There was an awkward silence as she fluffed the pillows behind him. Her perfume washed over him. Lana gently moved his arm.

  “Would you like me to bring a tape recorder for you?”

  Immediately he thought of a tape measure. Maybe his wasn’t as big as others she’d seen. How many had she — the filthy bastards.

  “Tape?” he asked, his voice raspy, cracking as if she’d said “snake.”

  “To send home to your family.” She removed the facecloth softly, swiftly, pulling up the sheet. As it touched his loins, he was terrified he’d have an orgasm right there. It would be sheer bliss. Then he realized what she was telling him, ever so nicely. No, more than nicely — wonderfully. He smelled her perfume again, drinking it in. He loved her. The thought of doing it with her — he’d never had any woman — suddenly seemed rather dirty, unbecoming of her beauty, her goodness.

  She had, he now realized, really been telling him ever so gently that while he could never write again, he could and should start thinking about other people — how his parents would be sick with worry after the rather brief message that had been sent to inform the War Office of his whereabouts and condition. It was her thoughtfulness that touched him now and stoked his need for her as mother and lover. But he could see no chance of the dream materializing.

  While he was wa
iting for the tape, William Spence’s brain raced with the things he had to tell his parents, for despite a persistent weakness, and the exhausting episodes of coughing, his spirits were buoyed by Lana’s presence.

  When she brought the tape, it was as if he’d suddenly developed stage fright — couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Ever considerate, Lana had started the recorder and left, but the tape in motion only made it more difficult for him to think of something to say. Though he’d tried clumsily to push the “stop” button with his elbows, he sent the machine instead crashing to the deck. He was in such an agitated state that tears of exhaustion and rage streamed down his face and he started another bout of coughing, humiliation heaped on top of his frustration with his inability to perform such an elementary task. When she returned, Lana interpreted the signs at first as evidence of indescribable pain. But if he had such difficulty, why hadn’t he pushed the buzzer? His elbow would easily— Then she saw that the cord, with its emergency push button, had swung away down the side of the cot as he’d made a grab for the recorder, which now lay on the deck, its plastic case cracked, the tape unraveling. She eased him back on the pillows and, taking a moistened towel, wiped his face, her voice as soothing as her touch. She told him not to worry about it; she would bring another and would think of something so that he could stop and start a recorder by himself. As she leaned over him, tucking in the bed-clothes, her breasts touched his chest and he wanted to hold her, kiss her. It was an ache inside of him.

  “I love you,” he said simply.

  She said nothing for a moment or two, straightening up the bedclothes, then stopped. “I know,” she said softly, and bent down to collect the broken pieces of the tape recorder.

  When she brought him a second recorder, the talking came easily, as now that he’d declared himself to her, all things were possible. He spoke of his older sister, Rosemary, with whom he shared a fond affection. He was not anywhere as intellectual or trained in the classics as she was, he told Lana, but Rosemary had never made him feel that not going on to university was a shame, unlike Georgina, who, as fiery as she was young and beautiful, had castigated him soundly for not having a “social conscience” and planning to do “something with your life.” Georgina was in her third year at London School of Economics and Political Science, and her social conscience had embraced the left of the political spectrum — a “born protester,” her father often lamented, claiming, not too far from the truth, that she seemed to have more causes then courses.

  It was still difficult for William to speak to his father, even on the tape. He reminisced about the walks up on the chalk downs, the small, winding, tree-shaded lanes, and the holidays they had spent cruising the canals once so awfully neglected but now largely restored, like the two-barge-wide lock at Stoke Bruerne, where all the people had lined the canal to watch them squeeze through. Petrol must be rationed now.

  When it came to the double amputation, he spoke quickly about the wonders of modern technology, how Nurse Brentwood had told him of the fantastic things they were doing with computer-controlled limbs these days, and how things you never realized — tape, for example — were a darn sight easier than having to write a long letter. “Never was much of a speller anyway, was I?” he asked his father. But he could not tell his father he loved him, no matter how much banter or reminiscence might have provided the opportunity to say it. He tried to say it outright near the tape’s end, but the words choked and he ended with a cheery “Love to all,” not realizing how many times he’d mentioned how kind and what a “wonderful person” Nurse Brentwood was, not using her first name, as for him to have done this would have somehow constituted an invasion of his love for her, cheapened it in some way. The name Lana had become something intensely private to him, something he carried with him.

  By the time he had finished the tape, he was coughing again from the exertion, this time so badly that Lana took it upon herself to go and suggest to the senior medical officer that he authorize an X ray.

  “That your boyfriend in two oh one?” the young medical captain asked.

  “The patient,” said Lana icily, “in two oh one. Yes.”

  “Why?” the captain pressed, reverting to rank after her rebuff.

  “Well, I’m used to patients having that acetonelike breath— with a bad cold, flu, or something on top of what they’ve got already. But his breath smells of oil. I think he must have inhaled some.”

  “Quite possible, but we should have noticed if there was a problem before this.”

  “It’s difficult to sometimes,” proffered Lana. “Every man that came aboard — I mean that’s been in the water lately — had it on him, hair, fingernails.”

  “Lipid pneumonia?” said the doctor, his tone more reasonable now. “Possible. Sometimes doesn’t show up for twenty-four hours or so.” Lana also remembered that it only needed a few milliliters of oil in the lungs for it to be fatal in some cases.

  “All right,” said the doctor. “Let’s have a look at him. I wouldn’t mention why, though.”

  “No — of course,” said Lana.

  “Nurse?”

  “Yes?” She turned. The doctor was taking off his stethoscope, slipping it into his white coat. “Sorry about that ‘boyfriend’ crack. Uncalled for. I’m glad we’ve got nurses like you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and as she walked away, the captain watched her for a long time, his fingers drumming on the stethoscope. Coming into the room, Matron saw him watching Lana Brentwood as, against regulations, Lana went down the stairs between upper and main deck facing forward instead of backward for safety’s sake. The captain was watching her backside through the very proper starch of her uniform.

  “Doctor?”

  He jumped. “Yes, Matron?”

  “One oh eight. I think you should see him. I think he’s a malingerer.”

  “Evidence?”

  “Oh, all vital signs are normal. That’s what first aroused my suspicion.”

  “Hmm, still,” the captain countered, “never quite know with these possible neuro cases. We’ve done the pointed stick bit on him. Let me check.” The doctor scanned the list of thirty-seven cases. “Far as I remember, he didn’t feel a thing.”

  “He said,” replied Matron, “that he didn’t feel a thing. I’m not so sure. In any event, I’ve seen some you could stick a hat pin in and they wouldn’t flinch. Not if it meant they could get out of the fighting.”

  “All right,” said the MO. “Any suggestions?”

  “I’d wait till he was asleep.”

  “My God, you’re a sly one, Matron. I could be sued.”

  “In private practice, yes,” said Matron evenly, “but not in the navy, Doctor. We’re here to insure—”

  “Yes, yes, all right. I’ll have a look at—” he took the chart from matron,”—Johnson now. Is he asleep?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Perhaps,” said the captain, “he needs a sedative. Settle him down a mite.”

  Matron said nothing. She didn’t believe in unnecessary medication. “Well, when do you suggest?” pressed the doctor.

  “Perhaps later this evening.”

  The doctor sighed. “All right, but I would have thought we’ve got better things to do than weed out—”

  “Doctor — if I might remind you. We have a very specific directive about this from both Ottawa and Washington. We must weed them out. Set an example. Besides, once they get ashore, that type is quite likely to pack up and—”

  “Yes, yes. All right, Matron. I’ll jab him in the butt at midnight. How’s that?”

  “I don’t enjoy this any more than you do, Doctor.”

  “No, of course not,” he replied, but believing she did.

  As she walked along the deck on her rounds, Matron saw the line far to the west that marked Newfoundland and the tiny dots out from it that were the fishing boats of the Grand Banks, and on the deck below she could see the La Roche girl pushing the Spence boy to X ray.

>   CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Though it was the mass of Soviet and Warsaw Pact armor together with Soviet Yak ground-attack aircraft that had pressed home the first attacks on the NATO positions in southern, central, and northern Europe, once the battle was joined, Soviet and NATO tanks mixing it up together in the massive confusion of dust, smoke, and darkness, it was the awesome and concentrated fire of the Soviet artillery that drove home the breakthroughs. While the Allies had expected the twenty-three-mile-range, eighty-pound shells from the Soviets’ self-propelled BM-27s to precede any Soviet breakthrough, it was an entirely new development that was now turning some NATO withdrawals into routes. This was especially true along the alluvial flats of the Danube, all the way from the Austrian-Czech border in the east, westward deep into southern Germany.

  For Soviet artillery commanders, the most impressive and dangerous aspect of American arms was the ability of the Americans to move artillery batteries quickly and to reengage within minutes. Up until the late eighties the U.S. Army had also possessed the most accurate 155-millimeter in the world. The reason was political.

  In a move that the South African ambassador in Ottawa had reported to Pretoria as being “typically Canadian” and a move Pretoria took immediate advantage of, the Canadian government had expressed no interest in a new artillery piece designed by a Canadian. The Canadian-invented gun was then built by the South Africans, a fact that made it ineligible for purchase by the U.S. Army, whose procurement was closely monitored by antiapartheid lobbies. The G-6, as the South Africans called the new 155-millimeter gun, was a self-propelled howitzer capable of firing a hundred-pound, HE bag-cartridge-propelled shell a distance of forty-two miles. It was the batteries of the Soviet-purchased G-6s that systematically destroyed the American and West German defensive lines and attacks.

  The only comparable guns had been the enormous rail-mounted weapons of Nazi Germany. The G-6, however, was much lighter, mounted on a highly mobile vehicle which also carried forty-four rounds. It was not simply that the G-6 batteries, with their eighty-degree arc of fire and extraordinarily long range, could outreach the other Allied guns but that the G-6’s accuracy was such that the S-WP forward observers could see it tearing apart not only the big concentrations of Leopards and M-1s, as if they were metal shacks, but individual tanks as well.