“Not as sorry as Quigley probably is; he a good guy?”
“Engineers seem to think so; at least he’s not one of their shitbirds.”
“OK, thanks.”
He hung up and looked at his watch. He was suddenly cold in the air conditioning. It was not all that hot outside, but the humidity was still up around 1000 percent. His body ached from the workout, but he felt better. Nothing like pumping iron to dissolve stress.
He found a clean set of summer whites, rigged a shirt with shoulder boards and insignia, and headed topside. As he was closing up the boat, he noticed that the clouds were blowing in again. More rain coming. He stepped back into the pilothouse and grabbed a plastic raincoat, just in case. Jamming his officer’s cap on his head, he headed for the Alfa.
He drove out of the marina and headed south on A1A. Traffic was light for a Saturday afternoon; everybody was already at the beach if they were going, although the overcast skies were not inviting. He drove down through Mayport Beach, Neptune Beach and Jacksonville Beach and then west to the Buckman bridge across the St. Johns, which was two miles wide at the bridge crossing south of Jacksonville. He could see the Naval Air Station off to his right as he crossed the hump in the middle of the bridge built to allow river boat traffic.
Just what Goldy needed, he thought, was some more attention. A kid wrecks his motorcycle, and the ship gets its traffic safety program inspected. Don’t have problems, the Commodore had said. Then his thoughts turned to the young sailor in the hospital, and all the administrative burdens precipitated by a traffic accident ashore were reduced to their proper insignificance. Twenty year old kid on his Harley, money in his pocket and the weekend still young, and now he would be seeing stainless steel tables, white lights, and people in green masks through a fog of pain. He grimaced. Poor bastard.
On the other side of the river he intercepted U.S. 17 for about two miles, and then turned off into the back entrance of the Naval Air Station, where the signs indicated the way to the naval hospital. A light rain was starting as he drove into the parking lot. He looked for a spot reasonably close to the main entrance. As usual, there were none to be seen, and he began circling the lot, waiting for someone to leave. Sections of the parking lot were covered by wide sheets of standing water from the previous rains. The shimmering image of the main building of the hospital, surrounded by palm trees, was reflected in the wide puddles. Finally, he saw a car leaving and steered the Alfa into a parking spot. Grabbing his raincoat, he headed for the main entrance.
He asked for directions to the emergency room at the main desk, and they pointed him down a long green hall to the right of the waiting room. There was a steady procession of hospital staff, active duty patients, retirees, dependents, and an occasional man in uniform milling around in the corridor. Saturdays were apparently a busy day. He followed the signs to the emergency room, where he identified himself to the admitting desk corpsman.
“Yes, Sir, Cap’n,” said the Corpsman, a tall, thin black man, who eyed the gold star on Mike’s right breast pocket. “He’s in recovery four; they took him right up to surgery when he came in. That’s gonna be on the fourth deck. Elevators right over there.”
He thanked the corpsman, and took the elevator upstairs. He was met at the surgical admitting desk by a nurse. The ER had called them to alert her that the CO of Quigley’s ship was on his way up. The nurse, a Navy Lieutenant, was being harried by two ringing phones and an impatient looking young doctor. She looked at Mike anxiously as he walked up, but he waved her off. “Take your time; I can wait.”
She gave him a grateful look and returned to the threering circus at her charge desk. Mike looked around. The surgical admin area was at the junction of two halls. On one side were the swinging metal doors to the hallway containing the operating theaters; on the other a hallway led through swinging doors to wards and the special recovery rooms. There were several signs on the wall giving directions to various rooms and wards, along with faded safety precautions posters and hospital regulations. Mike had the sense that all the real action was behind the swinging doors. There was an uncomfortable looking wooden bench against one wall. He decided to remain standing. There was no one else in the desk area, until Diane Martinson came walking through the doors leading back to the recovery rooms.
Their eyes met across the waiting room. For a moment, neither of them spoke. She was dressed in the traditional Gray Lady hospital volunteer uniform, so called because the starched full shirtdress was a utilitarian gray with trim white borders. Diane wore no makeup and had her hair pulled into an efficient bun at the back of her neck. Mike still thought she looked like a million dollars. She walked over to him, her face carefully composed. He could not decide whether to call her Diane or Mrs. Martinson. Her face grew serious as she approached, and he belatedly remembered why he was here.
“Captain Montgomery. You’re here to see about Fireman Quigley.” In her hospital flats, she had to look up at him.
“Yes, I am,” he answered, ducking the first name issue.
The nurse hung up the phone with a bang and groan of exasperation.
“Damn these infernal bureaucrats. They forget what we’re supposed to be doing here!”
She composed her face and turned to where Diane and Mike were standing.
“Captain. Thanks for being patient. We’ve got kind of a zoo going here.”
“No problem, Lieutenant. I encounter zoos occasionally. How’s my guy, Quigley?”
The nurse pulled a steel chart clipboard from a rack on the wall, and opened it up.
“Not terrific, Sir,” she replied. “He’s got two broken legs, some broken ribs, a possibly punctured lung, a dislocated shoulder, and several square inches of hide missing. Typical motorcycle accident, I’m afraid.”
She looked up, wondering if her offhand comment might have offended the tall Commander.
“Can I see him?” asked Mike. “Is he, uh, awake?”
“Yes, Sir, I think he is—Mrs. Martinson, you’ve been back in recovery—is Fireman Quigley awake?”
“Yes, he is, although they have him pretty well sedated. Shall I show you back to recovery, Captain?”
She was keeping it formal, as if they had never met. Once again, she seemed uncomfortable in his presence. He decided to keep it all official if that’s what she wanted.
“I’d appreciate that, Mrs. Martinson. I’m not going to try to take up a lot of his time or energy.”
He turned to the nurse.
“His division officer, Lieutenant (JG) Sorento, is supposedly coming in. I want to see him before I leave, and then I’ll need a phone with an outside line to call his parents.”
“Of course, Sir. You can use Doctor Henry’s office, right over there. Don’t be too long in there; that kid is going to need his strength.”
Mike smiled mentally at the twenty-four year old nurse calling the twenty year old sailor a kid.
“I understand. Mrs. Martinson, if you’ll lead on …”
Diane walked in front of him through the swinging doors into the recovery area. He was conscious again of a faint perfume amongst all the antiseptic smells of the hospital. Her uniform dress rustled as she walked. He realized that he was a half a head taller than she was, and that her hair, even pulled tight into a bun, was thick and luxuriant. They stopped outside of yet another set of swinging doors, marked Recovery Four.
“There are two patients in here besides Quigley,” she said, quietly, over her shoulder. “One appendectomy, a dependent wife, and one child who had to have her gall bladder taken out, of all things. Quigley is way in the back, behind the closed curtains. He’s—he’s not very pretty to look at.”
She paused in front of the closed door to see if he had any questions.
“Do you volunteer here often?” he asked.
She looked up at him for a moment, seeming to weigh the propriety of a personal question under these circumstances.
“Yes, once a week, but usually on a weekday. They need
ed help today, so I came in. Shall we go in?”
He nodded, and they pushed through the door. The recovery bay contained four sections, each with a single bed backed up by a bank of tubes, monitors, and steel tables with medical equipment in steel trays. The beds were ringed by freestanding screen curtain racks on wheeled frames. The light was subdued, owing to the deliberately dimmed lights and growing darkness outside as more clouds moved in. Diane pointed to Quigley’s bed, and stepped aside to let him approach. Mike shivered. He hoped he would never have to spend time in a recovery room.
Quigley was on his back, his arms taped to splints at his side. His pale face seemed to be painted with blue, green, and yellow bruises all around his two very large black eyes. There was a great red scrape mark all the way across his forehead. He had tubes going down his nose and into both arms; his arm splints were taped to the bedside to ensure he did not disturb his IV’s. His legs were also on splint boards, and they stuck out from under the covers like marshmallow man legs. Mike recognized the man, but he looked very much smaller in the bed, enmeshed in all the paraphernalia of life support systems. One swollen eye was partially open, and suddenly he realized that Quigley was looking at him. Forgetting Diane Martinson, he bent down closer to Quigley’s face.
“Hey, snipe. You don’t look like you’re gonna be ready for the 20-24 in two firehouse tonight.”
Quigley tried a grin, but his puffed lips barely managed a painful twist.
“Don’t try to talk,” Mike continued. “There’s ladies present, and they’re probably not used to snipe talk. Now, listen: Mr. Sorento is on his way in, and he’s going to hang around until we know that you’re stable and on the mend. The hospital has notified your parents, and I’m going to be calling them as soon as I’m done in here. If they want to come down, the ship will arrange for a motel room nearby. OK?”
Quigley blinked his eyes a couple of times; tears were welling up. Mike took Quigley’s hand in his. It felt hot and dry.
“It hurts; I know it hurts, son. But they’ll take good care of you, and we’ll leave somebody back when we go out next week. You’re not going to be alone. Diane—Mrs. Martinson—can I have a kleenex or something.”
Her hand appeared next to his, and he took the sterile paper towel and dabbed Quigley’s eyes a couple of times. From behind, Diane watched, marvelling at this big man’s gentleness with the sailor. Her only contact with senior officers had been in circumstances where a certain amount of professional posturing and a polished, almost macho image was the order of the day. Montgomery was holding this young man’s hand and wiping away his tears like he would a son, all the time reassuring the injured young man. For the first time, her attraction to him was infused by something besides the unmistakable sexual currents which seemed to flow when they met. She had to recompose her face when she realized he was getting ready to leave.
“OK, snipe,” he said. “The doctor’ll be in soon. I’m gonna call your folks right now and let them know what’s going on. You hang in there.”
Diane escorted Mike back to the swinging doors. He smiled at her briefly; his eyes were not all that dry, either, she noticed.
“Will you stay with him for a while?” he asked.
She nodded. “My relief comes in in about twenty minutes; but I’ll stay with him until she shows up.”
He nodded again, thanked her, and slipped out the door to make his calls. From across the recovery room bay, the young wife recovering from her appendectomy asked Diane if the big officer was the Captain of a ship.
“He sure is,” said Diane. “In the best sense of the word.”
The woman frowned, not quite sure what Diane was talking about. The woman asked her for a glass of water.
EIGHTEEN
Naval Air Station Jacksonville; Saturday, 19 April; 1630
By the time Mike had made his calls, checked back on Quigley, and talked to Lieutenant (J.G.) Sorento, it was well after four o’clock. He made his way to the entrance of the hospital and found that it was raining hard, the skies darkening even as he stood in the vestibule. He slipped into his plastic raincoat, pushed his hat down over his forehead, and made a run for his car. His shoes were soaked after about twenty feet by the standing water in the parking lot.
He made it to the Alfa and piled in, fighting the flapping raincoat as he wedged himself into the car. The rain drummed down on the car roof vengefully, as if angry that he was finally under cover. He lit off the engine, and waited for the rain to let up so that he could see where he was going. After a few minutes of increasingly harder rain, he decided to go.
Turning on his lights, he threaded his way out through the lanes of parked cars. The main hospital building was no longer visible, blotted out by sheets of rain; he had to stop in the lot periodically to get his bearings. Using a line of streetlights as a landmark to find the narrow exit road, he crawled along in first gear to make sure he stayed on the road, which was rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the flooded drainage ditches on either side. It was a serious, tropical rain, and he knew that those ditches were four feet deep. A sheet of lightning glared in the dark clouds overhead, followed by a boom of thunder. He turned his wipers on high, but without much effect. The entire area of the road ahead was a yellow white wedge of thrashing raindrops.
Coming around the second bend in the road he nearly ran into a car that was stopped ahead. Stopped and listing to starboard. As he closed in, he saw the car lurch even more to the right, its brake lights flaring in the rain. It ended up hanging at a precarious angle, half on the road, halfway into the ditch. It was a Volvo station wagon. As he slowed, the driver of the Volvo tried to pull it out to the left, but the rear end slid the last few remaining inches over into the ditch. The entire rear end began to sink down into the deep ditch, the drive wheel churning the water as the right brake light submerged, canting the front of the car up high enough for its headlights to illuminate the tops of the palm trees on the other side of the road. Then all the Volvo’s lights went out as the water shorted the system. Scratch one Volvo, he thought, as he pulled up as close as he could get, turned on his flashers and set his hand brake.
He kept his engine running to provide lights. As he prepared to get out, he saw the driver’s door open on the Volvo and a woman climb out. In the glare of his headlights he recognized Diane Martinson. She had no raincoat on, and the rain quickly soaked her Gray Lady uniform as she went around to look at the rear end of the car. She banged a fist on the back window of the Volvo, and then stumbled back as the car lurched even deeper into the ditch. She lost her footing and sat down hard.
Mike got out, forgetting his hat. He ran forward to where she was sitting in two inches of water in the pouring rain. Mike fought down a sudden wild impulse to laugh, and offered her his hands. He pulled her up off the road. She stood there, eyes blinking, not yet recognizing him.
“Dammit!” she cried. “I couldn’t see the road. Look at my car. His car. He’s absolutely going to kill me!”
Then she recognized him, and became aware that she was gripping both his hands. She let go, and turned to stare at the car. The rain came down even harder, as if it were proud of what it had done.
“Hey,” he shouted over the noise of downpour. “Grab your purse and get in my car. I’ll take you over to the Exchange garage and we’ll get a tow truck.”
He started back to the Alfa, but she just stood there looking at the Volvo. He went back, took her arm, and pulled her along to the Alfa, where he handed her into the right front seat. He went back to the Volvo, gingerly opened the driver side door, and recovered her purse; the car was still settling into the ditch. He ran back to the Alfa, opened the driver’s side door, handed her the purse, and then went back to the Alfa’s tiny trunk and extracted a flare. He tried for a minute to get the thing going, but the striker became soaked the moment he ripped the top off.
“Screw it,” he said, throwing the flare into the ditch.
He got back into the Alfa. Diane sat there, so
aked to the skin, her mouth tight and her eyes very close to tears. The rain drummed hard on the roof.
“Shit,” she said.
“Shit, aye,” he said, putting the Alfa in reverse.
He backed away from the Volvo, and then pulled out around the sinking station wagon. He crept along the road even more carefully now; the ditch that could take one third of a Volvo could eat an entire Alfa. Diane remained silent for the next fifteen minutes as he navigated in first gear across the golf course perimeter roads towards the Exchange Service Station area. The rain continued, although not quite so hard.
They arrived at the Exchange gas station to find it dark. An attendant inside the small office waved him off as Mike figured it out. Power failure. He maneuvered the Alfa alongside the office door, and rolled his window down. The man stepped reluctantly into the doorway.
“We’re shut down,” he called. “No electricity.”
“I don’t need gas, I need a tow truck,” Mike shouted over the noise of the rain on the metal overhang. “Got a Volvo in the ditch over by the hospital.”
The attendant shook his head in the doorway.
“Truck’s already out; we got a three car pile-up on the main drag. You can leave a work order if you want, and we’ll get it when we can. But it’s gonna be awhile. Like tomorrow, maybe.”
“OK, we’ll do that.”
Mike rolled up the window, and pulled the Alfa under the gas pump line overhang. He looked over at Diane. The front of her hair was plastered to her forehead, and the Gray Lady dress was a sodden mass of wet cotton. He found himself staring again. She looked back at him for an instant, and then down at the floor.
“I have to call J.W.,” she said, resignedly. “Might as well get it over with. I take it they can’t help us.”
“Not right now, but they’ll go pull it out sometime tonight, or maybe in the morning, after this rain lets up a little and they get power back in this part of the base. I’ll go in and call the cops on a base phone, and get the guy to work up a towing order. There’s a pay phone over there you can use to get off base. I can run you home, and then you’ll probably have to come back over tomorrow morning. That’s the best we can do, I’m afraid.”
Scorpion in the Sea Page 16