War Baby

by Colin Falconer

  Two of the residents were running with them, while the lead EMT shouted the handover.

  ‘I got a pulse!’

  ‘Notify the OR and get me eight units of O neg,’ one of the residents screamed.

  Mickey ran to the phone, called in the order to the blood bank and put a page on the chief resident. When she got back to the emergency room, the two doctors and three other nurses were transferring the boy from the gurney to the table.

  ‘Ventilating!’

  ‘Multiple gun shot wounds to the abdomen, chest and legs.’

  ‘Pulse one sixty and thready.’

  As Mickey cut away the boy’s T-shirt she looked at his face for the first time. Vietnamese.

  She froze.

  ‘He’s hyper-resonant on the right side. I’ll decompress.’

  ‘Let’s intubate him. Suction!’

  Suction. What did he mean, suction?

  ‘Suction! I can’t see a thing here!’

  She fumbled around the Mayo stand, but she couldn’t think where the suction tubing was, or even what it looked like.

  Kath, one of her fellow nurses, grabbed her arm. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Suction,’ she said.

  People were shouting and moving all around her. She stared at the boy on the table. We shouldn’t be wasting our fucking time on gooks. There’s our own boys dying out there.

  She turned and walked out of the ER.

  * * *

  Kath waited with her in the chow line at the cafeteria. They got coffees and sat down at a table in the corner. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened in there.’

  ‘What did happen?’

  ‘I froze. I’ve never done that before.’ How can I explain this away? The chief resident won’t just say ‘she froze,’ and shrug it off. He’ll want a better explanation that that. ‘I think I’m pregnant,’ she said.

  ‘Mickey! ... that’s great... does Sean know?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, he’s really pleased.’

  She was pregnant, that was it. It was the hormones. This was the third time something like this had happened to her in as many weeks. The other two occasions she had covered up, no one had noticed.

  It had to be the hormones.

  ‘Maybe you should ask for a little time off.’

  ‘I don’t need time off.’

  ‘Yeah? I gotta tell you, Mickey, you don’t look so good.’

  Mickey felt a tear work its way down her cheek. Jesus Christ. She hadn’t cried in years. I can’t let this happen. If I come undone, it has to be at home in my own house, with the doors and windows locked.

  She sipped her coffee, took back control. ‘What I said about Sean, being pleased. That wasn’t true.’

  ‘He doesn’t want the baby?’

  ‘He says he does. We’ve been trying, you know. I mean, when he’s not too tired and I’m not too tired.’ A brittle laugh. ‘But then when I said I thought I was...’ She shrugged. ‘... you should have seen his face.’

  Kath reached out and took her hand. ‘Mickey ...’

  She wiped at her eyes, a quick, impatient gesture. ‘Well. No one ever said it was going to be easy.’

  ‘Maybe he’s finding it hard, dealing with everything. Did you see the cartoon in the Post this morning?’

  ‘Yeah, I saw it.’ Some wiseass at the paper had drawn him clinging to the wing of America One with one hand, while he thrust a microphone towards the President through the window with the other. Mr President, what do you think of the situation in El Salvador?

  ‘Next thing he’ll be in Doonesbury.’

  ‘I don’t think any of that bothers him. I don’t think he gives a damn what anyone says. I wish he did care. I wish he’d talk about it anyway.’

  She looked into Kath’s eyes, saw sympathy and that special kind of satisfaction that comes when envy dies. Having Sean Ryan as a husband had conferred a vicarious celebrity she didn’t really want. She was sick of it.

  ‘I guess it ain’t that easy being you, huh?’ Kath said.

  ‘It shouldn’t be this damned hard.’ Could she trust Kath with her private feelings? Probably not. But what the hell, she needed to let off steam. She leaned across the table, lowered her voice. ‘I don’t know what he wants anymore. What do I do? How do I get him to talk to me?’ She let the question hang, knowing it was unfathomable. ‘He expects the President to come clean to the whole world but he won’t even open to his own wife.’

  ‘Have you talked to anyone?’

  ‘You mean a shrink? Can you imagine a guy like Sean going to counseling?’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mickey said. But the truth was, she did know. She would try and pretend the last fifteen years had not happened; she would forget about Nam, forget about the wasted years in Walter Reed and San Francisco, forget about year in the Central American jungle.

  ‘He’s going to leave me, Kath.’

  ‘What? Has he said anything?’

  ‘I just feel it.’

  ‘Mickey, not every guy is happy about children at first. That doesn’t mean he’s going to —’

  ‘I know Ryan. I know what goes on in his head.’ She rubbed at her eyes. ‘He was just exhausted and he saw this bit of driftwood coming by so he reached out and hung on. The bit of driftwood was me.’

  ‘Mickey, you need a break. A few days away from this place.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Perhaps I need more than just a few days.

  Why are you still in scrubs in an ER after all these years? Why is there still this rush every time a gurney crashes through the doors? You are replaying the same scene over and over and it never gets any better. There are sirens instead of rotor blades but that kick inside is still the same and it’s killing you.

  ‘I’ll work it out,’ Mickey said.

  Chapter 53

  She was stopped at a red light on Wisconsin. It was late and she was tired and she had a pulsing headache. The radio was playing ‘Mrs Robinson’. When was the last time she had heard it? She smelled aviation fuel, rotting vegetation, urine and antiseptics. She wound down the window for some fresh air.

  From somewhere overhead came the whump-whump-whump of helicopter blades. Just cops, or an eye in the sky newsman, she reminded herself. But it was no good. She felt herself start to shake. Two teenagers ran towards her Prelude holding Chicom rifles and shouting in Vietnamese. Viet Cong.

  She fumbled with the door, jumped out of the car and started to run.

  The helicopter circled overhead, a government gunship on the lookout for FMLN. They must have seen her running across the compound. She had no chance here in the open. She weaved across the road in a low, crouching run, heard the blaring of car horns, waited for the impact of the bullets.

  She found cover behind a wall and peered back down the street but the two VC were gone. She had lost them. She looked up, searching the sky for the Huey, but the white arc of its floodlights was bow two blocks away.

  A cherry-top turned off Wisconsin, red beacons flashing. A patrolman ran across the road, holding a flashlight. He saw her crouching behind the wall and stopped, one hand on his service revolver.

  ‘Are you all right, ma’am?’

  She fumbled in her pockets for her identity papers. She had to prove she was American. She tried to think what time the curfew was. She heard the other patrolman talking into his radio in the cherry-top. Perhaps he was calling up air support.

  ‘Ma’am, are you okay?’ the patrolman repeated. The beam from his flashlight blinded her. She shielded her eyes and turned away. She imagined them finding her body in the morning out on the lava flow at El Playón.

  ‘I can’t find the suction,’ she said.

  ‘What did you say, ma’am?’

  Suddenly the night was cool again and the sweat dried on her skin. She remembered where she was. Her heart was banging in her chest, her tongue gummed to the roof of her mouth.

  ‘Ma’am, please come out from behi
nd that wall.’

  Mickey stood up, her hands limp at her side. ‘I’m sorry, Officer,’ she said. ‘I’m quite all right. Really.’

  ‘Why did you run away from your car, ma’am? Is someone chasing you?’

  She heard the thump of helicopter rotors in the distance, saw a beam of light heading east towards the Capitol. ‘You ever in Vietnam?’ she said.

  ‘Shoot, is that what’s bothering you? I hate those damned things, too.’ He took his hand away from his weapon and took a few steps closer. ‘You okay now?’

  ‘I’ve made a fool of myself.’

  He called to his partner in the cherry-top. ‘It’s okay, Ray!’ He turned back to her. ‘Live far from here?’

  ‘Not far. I’ve got a townhouse on P Street.’

  ‘I’ll walk you back to your car, ma’am.’

  ‘No, really, it’s all right. I’m sorry I’ve been a nuisance.’

  ‘It’s no problem, ma’am.’

  He walked her back to the corner. The Prelude was still parked at the lights, the driver’s door swinging open. She felt humiliated. You’re losing it, Mickey, you’re headed for a breakdown.

  ‘You take it easy now,’ the cop said. ‘Wind up the windows and turn on the radio. A little jazz is good for the soul.’

  She felt outrageously grateful. He could have written her up, taken her downtown if he really wanted to ruin her night. Embarrassed, she jumped into the car, snapped the belt buckle and almost drove straight through the red light.

  He leaned in through the window. ‘Now you just take it easy, okay?’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’

  For God’s sake. Just let me get home!

  * * *

  She ran up the stoop, the old-fashioned gaslights throwing yellow pools of light on the steps. As she fumbled for her keys she heard the rustling of leaves in the night wind, like the murmurings of distant voices. She imagined people watching her, soldiers in olive fatigues. She looked quickly up and down the street. Empty.

  She locked the door and rushed up to the bathroom. She turned on the jacuzzi, undressed, and lowered herself into the swirling, eucalyptus-scented water. She rested her head on the marble rim of the tub. Sweat ran down her face.

  I must not come undone.

  Chapter 54

  They drove out through Loudon County towards Leesburg, past the trim white fences of thoroughbred horse studs. Huntingdon Lodge was a mid-nineteenth-century plantation house set in fifty-six acres of rolling hills. As Ryan drove through the gates he saw a line of cars stretched right along the gravel drive, waiting to be parked. He pulled up behind a new Volvo; in the rear-vision mirror he saw a red BMW 525i. Here he was in a white Mercedes coupe. To think he had spent a large part of his life getting around in a Mini Moke with bullet holes in it.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Mickey asked.

  He couldn’t really say. He checked his look in the driving mirror; dark hair, straying over his collar, a clean-shaven face that somehow contrived to look much the same as it had ten years before. Next year he would be forty. His mates called him Dorian Gray. They were losing their hair and their bellies were sagging, but Sean Ryan, shot to shit half a dozen times, looked like he’d spent his life at a health farm. Something in the genes, he supposed. He guessed his father might have worn well, too, if he hadn’t drunk himself to death.

  He brushed some imagined lint from his tuxedo. This was a long way from an outback wheat town in Queensland. He had risked his neck so many times to get here. So why did he feel like a fraud?

  ‘This is all bullshit,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Life. It’s all bullshit.’

  Mickey raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s not going to be the theme of your speech tonight, is it? These ladies are from North Neck, remember.’

  Look at Mrs. Ryan: evening gown of pale blue silk, blonde hair teased with mousse, pale pink gloss on her lips. Radiant, on the surface at least. Why aren’t I happy? When Buford held the gun to his head that night in La Esperanza, this was what he bargained for. There were a lot of blokes counted themselves lucky with a lot less.

  Why was it, when a man felt like shit, he always took it out on his wife? Perhaps that was why he had never got married before, the same reason he didn’t like going out to the front line with new guys. Sometimes it was hard enough just taking care of yourself.

  If it weren’t for the baby, perhaps they could rethink this. But he couldn’t back out now. ‘You’d think they’d let the guest of honor park first,’ Mickey said.

  ‘I may be the guest of honor tonight but I’m just an employee the other six days of the week.’ They pulled up at the forecourt, and someone opened the door for his wife. A valet came around the car, took his keys and handed him a chit.

  A liveried footman in a black top hat led them inside. ‘Welcome to Huntingdon Lodge, Mr. Ryan,’ he said, and then, sotto voce, ‘I watch you on television all the time.’

  ‘What’s it like being married to a celebrity?’ Ryan whispered to Mickey as they stepped inside.

  ‘Remember the vampire bats in La Esperanza? I miss them. That’s what it’s like being married to a celebrity.’

  They walked into the cocktail bar. Mickey sat on a bar stool and Ryan stood beside her. She ordered Stoli and orange, he asked for Bushmills with ice.

  ‘Are you nervous?’ she asked him.

  ‘I hate talking in front of crowds.’

  ‘You’ve got an audience of fifty million every night of the week.’

  ‘No, I have an audience of two, my cameraman and my soundman. If the other fifty million yawn or pick their noses or fall asleep with their heads in their dinner I don’t have to watch.’

  ‘You’ll charm the pants off them.’

  ‘Not the men, I hope.’

  He looked around the room; it was decorated to resemble a colonial inn, warmly lit with lamps. There were hunting prints on the wall, some Victorian antiques and a stone fireplace with a log fire.

  He watched his wife out of the corner of his right. Something not right there; he noticed the tremor in her hand, and she was drinking way too fast. Her Stoli had just about evaporated and he’d hardly touched his whisky. Perhaps she was just nervous. She never liked playing the Washington socialite. ‘You’re the star,’ she had told him more than once. ‘I look for pulses and carry bedpans.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked her.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You’re not nervous?’

  ‘Why should I be nervous? I don’t have to stand up on stage and bare my soul to a couple of hundred blue-rinsed Loudon County matrons.’

  ‘I’m not going to bare anything.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’ She put her empty glass on the bar. ‘One more before we go in.’

  ‘Give me a chance to catch up.’

  ‘Why should I? Australians are all pussies. Same again, barman.’

  He decided to sit on his Bushmills. He didn’t want to slur his words; that wouldn’t be good for his public image.

  ‘Can I ask you a personal question?’

  He braced himself. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Are you having an affair?’

  ‘Oh, that personal.’

  ‘I don’t mean to pry. But I suppose being the wife of a celebrity has made me a little audacious.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No what?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Don’t be cute with me, Sean. I have to know. Is that a no, not at the moment, or a no, not ever. Or is it a no, but I’m thinking about it?’

  ‘This is not a good time to discuss this.’

  ‘I’m not mad at you, Sean. I just need to work a few things out before it’s too late.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘I’m wanted elsewhere.’

  ‘What I mean is, before you came to Washington you were dangerous, you were charming, you were good-looking. Now you’re all those things and you’re a highly paid television star as well. I can understand that puts a lot of strain on
the best of intentions.’

  ‘We can’t talk about this now.’ They crossed the lobby and went into the dining hall; Irish linen on heavy oak tables, silver service, white jacketed waiters.

  Mrs. Carson, president of the Loudon County Literary Guild, swept towards him, arms open.

  ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,’ Mickey whispered, and slipped away.

  ‘Sean Ryan! I’m so delighted you could be with us tonight. Everyone is so excited to meet you.’ She embraced him as if he were a long-lost nephew. ‘You look even more handsome than you do on television.’ She indicated a plump, expensively dressed woman at her side. ‘This is Mrs. Havermeyer, our treasurer. She’s your greatest fan.’

  Oh, Christ.

  ‘You are a naughty boy,’ Mrs. Havermeyer said.

  ‘Why’s that?’ he said, feeling his features set into a death’s head mask.

  ‘You have been saying some very unkind things about our Mr. Reagan lately.’ She made it sound as if he had insulted one of the family. ‘But we forgive you.’

  Ryan looked around for an escape. Mickey was talking to an olive-skinned waiter with a designer ponytail. She saw hi.m watching her. She took a flute of cuvée brute from the tray, raised her glass in a toast and smiled.

  * * *

  There was salmon and scallop mousse with lobster sauce, followed by venison game pie and crêpes flambées. Afterwards Ryan sang for his supper, a perfectly timed twenty five minutes on the life of a world famous journalist, name-dropping shamelessly - Sihanouk and Carter, Schultz and Begin, Cao Ky and Reagan. Then he fielded their questions for another half an hour and finally sat down, grinning, to rapturous applause.

  Later, as the waiters drifted among the tables, clearing away the empty coffee cups and wine glasses and creased linen napkins, Ryan looked desperately around the room for Mickey so that he could make his escape.

  ‘Mr. Ryan?’

  He looked around, saw a small dark-haired woman in a rather plain woolen dress. There were flecks of grey in her hair, and she had large, sad eyes that were accentuated by her spectacles. Unlike most of the women at the dinner, she wore little jewelry, just a pair of pearl earrings and a small, emerald brooch. ‘I did enjoy your talk.’