Rachel nearly staggered with the rush of stunned joy that hit her. Her throat unlocked, and tears streamed from her eyes, dropping from her chin onto the still, blue-tinged face lying unconscious on the operating table.
“It’s going!” she shouted. “It’s beating! He’s alive!”
She drew her hand out of Brian’s chest cavity, and looked up at Mac, meeting his incredulous gaze. The beam from the flashlight leaped, and swung across the ceiling, as Meredith let go a whoop of triumph.
“I’ll be,” Mac whispered. “A bloody miracle, that was, if I ever saw one. You sure you’re not Catholic?”
Rachel laughed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Not that I know of. Why?”
“For a second there, I could’ve sworn I saw an angel ridin’ on your shoulder.”
Chapter 14
Brian opened his eyes to a sea of white. White walls. White sheets. White louver shutters thrown open to let in the smell of rain, and the hot blue of a tropical sky.
I’m dreaming this, aren’t I? I’m at home, in my own bed next to Kevin’s, and Mom is in the kitchen stirring oatmeal in the big enamel pot, and I—
He shifted to make himself more comfortable, and the movement brought a blast of pain shearing up his middle, an instant of intense white-hot agony, followed by wave after thundering wave of aftershock. No dream, oh Christ, what then?
He was wide awake now. He moaned, tears of pain trickling from the corners of his eyes and running slowly down his temples into his hair.
Through the fog of tears, he saw the blurred outline of someone standing over him. He blinked, and the image sharpened.
A woman.
She was tiny, delicate, like Vietnamese women, but her coloring was fair, almost too pale, her hair a lovely coppery brown. She wore it pulled back at the nape of her slender neck and fastened with a barrette. Her eyes were so vividly blue, it almost hurt to look into them, like staring straight up into a blazing summer sky. Gradually, he took in the rest of her. Small, heart-shaped face. Stubborn jaw, and straight flared nose. A mouth that rescued her from conventional prettiness by being a shade too wide. She seemed tired and anxious. There were violet shadows under her eyes, and the skin around her temples and the base of her throat looked faintly bruised.
He had never seen her before, but strangely he felt as if he knew her.
“Good morning,” she said, those deep-blue eyes of hers fixed on him with complete concentration, never flickering off to one side. “How do you feel?” He saw that she wore khaki pants, sandals, and [246] a faded green overshirt with a stethoscope sticking out of its deep front pocket.
Was she a nurse? This was some kind of hospital, wasn’t it? He was lying on a bed in a long room. Other beds—iron cots really—stretched along the whitewashed cement walls. And in each bed, a bandaged figure, some barely recognizable as human beings.
Brian’s head felt light and shimmery, his mouth dry as flannel. A dream? Lately, it seemed, he’d been drifting in and out of one long dream, so he couldn’t keep straight anymore what was real and what wasn’t. The only thing he knew for sure was real was the pain. His entire body, from his neck down, felt as if it had been run over by a bulldozer. It hurt just to breathe.
“Like Sonny Liston after fifteen rounds with Cassius Clay,” he said, managing the tiniest of smiles.
As if she had been waiting for something from him, some sign, the tautness in her face relaxed. She smiled. A brilliant smile that seemed almost a physical touch, catching hold of him, lifting him.
“You gave the crowd its money’s worth,” she said. “We weren’t sure you were going to make it, but you put up a good fight. Do you remember any of it?”
Brian shifted a fraction of an inch on the hard mattress of his iron cot. Pain flared again. He fell back, gasping. What in God’s name had happened to him?
“Not much,” he answered, the pain a dull hammering now. “How long have I been here?”
“Nearly three weeks now,” she said. “You slept through most of it. The morphine helped.”
He closed his eyes. The light hurt him. The sight of the men in the other beds—looking as he imagined he must look to them, mummified under yards of gauze, tubes sticking out everywhere—seemed to make the pain worse.
Inside his head, where it was dark and cool, her voice followed him, strangely restful. “Maybe it would be better if you didn’t try to remember everything all at once,” she said.
He knew that voice, didn’t he? It was almost ... familiar. Like something he might have dreamed. Now a small cool hand touched his brow, making the fiery pain recede a little.
Strange, disjointed fragments of memory floated up from some [247] deep dark place inside his head. He struggled to fit them together. “We were on bush patrol,” he said. “Walked into an ambush. I was hit. Yes, I remember now. It was Trang ... he stepped on a mine. The river ...” Brian’s eyes flew open. He struggled to pull himself up, but was knocked flat by a pain so crushing it set off an explosion of red stars behind his forehead. He waited for the agony to subside a little, then asked, “Trang? Is he ...”
The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said kindly. “Please, don’t try to sit up just yet. It’s better if you lie flat. Can I get you anything?”
Brian felt sadness well up inside him. Anger too. He hadn’t been able to save Trang after all. What was the use of even trying anymore? What was the use of any of it, all those guys dying, the war itself?
Reflexively, he made the sign of the cross. Poor Trang. How many others besides? And why not me? Why was I spared?
Suddenly, he didn’t want to know. He was tired, so tired. His mind was beginning to float again.
He licked his lips, and tasted something salty. Blood. His lips were cracked, rough as old cardboard. “Water,” he said. “Are you a nurse?”
“Doctor,” she said, smiling. “But please ... call me Rachel. I feel as if we’re old friends by now.”
She filled a paper cup from a pitcher of water on the small metal table beside his bed, and held it to his mouth, supporting his head with her hand. She was surprisingly strong for someone so small. Her long ponytail brushed his cheek, soft as a kiss, and he caught a whiff of lemony scent.
The scent brought another fragment of memory drifting to the surface. A dream, really, but maybe something like it had really happened. He had been in a dark place, a tunnel, walking toward a light at the other end. A light so intense it hurt his eyes, like looking into the sun. But he was drawn to it, as if by a magnet. The closer he got, the happier he felt. And strangely lighter, as if the pull of gravity were growing weaker with each step. He hurried, almost floating.
Then the tunnel was suddenly filled with a strong, almost overpowering fragrance. A heady scent that was a mixture of lemon [248] blossoms, and summer grass, and the good smell of freshly ironed dresses hanging in his mother’s chifforobe. There was a voice, too, a woman’s voice. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he felt her beckoning him. Pulling him back ... away from the light. He fought it at first, but the pull was too great. And at last he surrendered to it. ...
Now, as he drank of the lukewarm water, tasting her scent, he thought: It was her. This tiny woman named Rachel. She had pulled him back from some brink. Death? Dear Christ, had he been as far gone as that?
Was he supposed to feel grateful to her? Yeah, probably. But right now all he felt was wasted. He just wanted to sleep. ...
When he had finished drinking, she eased his head gently back onto the pillow. “You were wearing this when they brought you in.” She pressed something into his palm. Cool. Metallic. His Saint Christopher’s medal. Rose had given it to him the day he shipped out. He had put it on, then forgotten he was wearing it. “I saved it for you. I thought you might ... need it.”
“Thanks,” he said, closing his fist around it. He tried to summon Rose’s face, but it didn’t come. The only picture that came to his mind was of the snapshot he carried in his wallet. He’d tak
en it last winter out at Coney Island. A perfect day, he remembered. A whole day just for themselves. They had had hot dogs and fried clams at Nathan’s, then walked and walked down the deserted windswept boardwalk, feeling like the only two people in the world, until their fingers were frozen inside their mittens. He had taken a picture of Rose, posed a little stiffly against the shuttered entrance to some boardwalk attraction, black hair blowing across her face, cheeks flushed, her smile tentative, as if she couldn’t quite believe her happiness and half-expected that at any moment something would spoil it.
Rose, dear Rosie, didn’t you know you were safe with me? Couldn’t you see that?
“Sleep now,” Rachel said. “I’ll come back when you’ve rested a bit more. Don’t expect too much of yourself at first. You’ve been through a lot.”
Suddenly, he didn’t want her to leave.
“Please,” he whispered, “will you sit with me until I fall asleep? Just a few minutes longer?”
[249] She smiled, and sat down on the very edge of his cot, laying her fingers lightly across his wrist. His hand, he saw, was bound with gauze and adhesive tape where an IV needle was stuck into a vein just above his knuckles. But he didn’t seem to mind. “I’ll stay as long as you like,” she said.
A week later, Brian was sitting up in bed. A pillow across his knees formed a makeshift desk for the battered spiral notebook over which he was bent. His hand was trembling; it had been so long since he’d held a pen, or even sat up for longer than it took to relieve himself on a bedpan. But once he began to write, the words flowed easily:
Today is the last day of June. Bobby Childress had his track tube out two days ago. This morning they shipped him out to the naval hospital in Okinawa. A couple of hours ago, they brought in another guy with a tube sticking out his chest, and one arm missing. Someone said he’d picked up a whore in Quang Tri, and that she left him a little present before slipping off into the night. Deke Forrester spoke for all of us when he said, “Too bad it wasn’t the clap.” That’s how you get to think after a while. It’s never a question of good or bad, just degrees. How bad is bad when you’re lying next to a guy with a couple of oozing stumps where his legs used to be? Or a nine-year-old kid missing half his face?
As I’m writing this, a few of the guys are playing poker at the bed across from mine. Big John and Skeeter Lucas and Coy Mayhew. Skeeter is dealing, and someone is picking up the cards for Big John because Big John, who would have gone home to a football scholarship, is missing all but two fingers on his left hand. And the guy holding Mayhew’s hand for him is kidding him about “blind luck.” Mayhew caught a beehive round in the face, which severed his optic nerve. He’ll never see again, but he considers himself extremely lucky it wasn’t a lobotomy, compliments of the US of A.
The weirdest part about all this is, with all their leftover parts stuck together, they make a whole. No, better than that. There’s a generosity of spirit ... I don’t know how to explain it ... just that I’ve never seen anything like it, not even in battle. The quality of mercy, in the words of old Will Shakespeare. Yesterday I saw that quality in a [250] paraplegic who dragged himself out of bed to spoon-feed a buddy too sick to sit up.
At night is when they cry. It’s like the wind blowing in the trees, you get so used to it. The sound of men weeping quietly into their pillows. We all want to go home, but we’re scared, too. The world is the same, but we’re different. Some of us on the outside, all of us on the inside. And we’re all wondering, What’s it going to be like? How can we go back and pick up the pieces when none of the pieces fit anymore?
I’m thinking about Rose just now. What she looks like, how she felt. I have to work hard at it, like drawing a picture in my mind. That scares me. I know I love her as much as ever, but the harder I work at remembering, the farther away she seems. Does she still think about me? Will she want me back? But even if she does, I’m not sure who it is she’ll be getting. Not the guy who took care of her, who’s been looking out for her since she was a kid. Now I’m not sure I can even take care of myself, much less anyone else. I get scared in the night sometimes. I think about Trang, and Gruber, and Matinsky, and I cry. I cry just like a damn baby, and it scares the hell out of me. Why shouldn’t it scare the hell out of Rose, too?
Listen, Rose, if you’re out there somewhere tuned into this station, for God’s sake, write to me. Say you love me. Say you’ll love me no matter who you find walking around in my skin when I get back. Say—
“Letter home?”
Brian looked up to find Rachel standing over him, wearing an oddly wistful expression. How long had she been there?
“You could call it that,” he said.
He laid his pen down on the closely written page, and felt some of the ragged tension in his muscles drain away. He was glad to see her.
Admit it, man, you look forward to it. Well, okay, that was true. He’d gotten into the habit of expecting her around this time of the evening. When it was quiet, as it had been these past few days, she always dropped by. It was just that he hadn’t realized until this moment how much it mattered to him, how much her presence soothed him. To be honest, he was a little ashamed to admit it, even to himself.
“Hey, Doc!” Big John called over. He waved the stump of his [251] right hand, his dark face split in a grin as wide as the Mississippi. “I’ll front you a game if you want to join us.”
Rachel laughed, and called back to him, “Fat chance, not after the way you skinned me last time.”
Big John threw his head back in a booming laugh. “Sister, if I had any aces hid up this here sleeve, you’d a been the first to know it.”
Brian knew that this was a form of respect, the teasing. They knew she cared, and they also knew she didn’t put up with any bullshit. He suspected a few were probably in love with her.
Big John went back to his game. Rachel sat down on the end of Brian’s cot. She was wearing her hair loose tonight, and it seemed to crackle about her face like some kind of electrical field. She had just washed it, and the red highlights stood out, winking like sparks under the hard glow of the bare bulb over his bed. He caught her clean, citrusy scent, and was grateful. He’d had enough of the rotten smell of death on this ward, and each time she visited him, bringing her smile, the brilliance of her blue eyes, her fragrance, it was like a small gift to be slowly unwrapped and savored.
Now he wished he had something to offer her in return.
“It’s a journal I’ve been keeping,” he explained when he saw her looking curiously at the spiral-bound notebook. “I started it at the beginning of my tour. Each day I write a little something. My short-timer stick, you could say.” Some guys carried a stick with a notch in it for each of the remaining days of their tour. And each day they sawed off another notch with their K-bar until there was nothing left but a stub and it was time to go home. A kind of talisman, he supposed. He shrugged. “It keeps me sane.”
She nodded. He saw from her expression there was no need to explain. She understood so much. She said, “Supplies of sanity are running short around here, so take it where you can get it. Which reminds me, I brought you something.” She reached into the pocket of her khaki shirt, and fished out a chocolate bar. Ghirardelli’s Bittersweet. His mouth watered just looking at it. “My mother sends them. She likes to pretend I’m at summer camp, just like when I was ten. So welcome to Camp Loony Tunes.” She passed it over, her gaze falling once again on the notebook. “What will you do with it?”
[252] “I don’t know yet. Maybe just keep it around as a reminder. If I ever have a son, I’d want him to know.”
“You like kids?” She looked sad.
“Sure, I do. Six younger brothers at home, I’d better. I’d always planned on having at least a dozen myself some day.”
“Only a dozen?”
“Well, for starters.”
She joined him in laughing, but he thought her laughter seemed strained.
Suddenly it struck him that he did have s
omething to offer her after all. “Would you like to read it?”
“May I?” Her head snapped up, an eager expression spreading across her heart-shaped face.
Brian thought how odd it was that he didn’t feel shy about revealing his most intimate thoughts to her. But then, how surprising was that really? She knew his body better than his own mother did. In a way it was as if she had given birth to him. She had brought him back to life, she had touched every part of him, cleaned his filth, fed him, nurtured him. How natural then that he should already feel connected to her.
He handed her the journal, expecting her to tuck it away in one of her pockets to read later on. But she surprised him by opening it right then and there. She began to read, and didn’t stop, or even move except to turn the pages, until she had finished the very last. one.
More than an hour had passed. It was past ten, the chocolate just a lingering sweetness on the back of his tongue. The poker game was breaking up, men shuffling back to their beds with the unsteady gait of old drunks. Lily was making the rounds, checking trach tubes and dressings, dispensing medication. All through the ward there was the creak of bedsprings settling, men adjusting their ravaged bodies for a position that might let them sleep.
When Rachel looked up, Brian saw that her eyes were shining with tears. “It’s good,” she said, her voice tight. “You made me feel something, and dammit, I don’t want to feel.”
“I know what you mean,” he said, “about not wanting to feel. I thought about writing a book when I get home. That’s why I started the journal, so I wouldn’t forget any of it. But now I don’t know if I could. It would be like living it all over again.”
[253] She nodded. “I understand. But that’s all the more reason, isn’t it? How else are we going to stop this craziness?”
Brian tried to think. He picked up his pen and twirled it around and around inside the circle of his thumb and index finger. He felt so exposed to her, naked not only on the outside, but on the inside too. One step at a time, he thought. Man, I can’t handle any more than that right now.
Garden of Lies Page 29