“When will you find out what happened to everyone?” she asked. She hadn’t seen Kerry or Lt. Col. Daniels in police custody or in the crowd out front. Hopefully, they had managed to escape or find a good place to hide until the excitement died down.
“Kerry will let me know. Either she’ll write me a letter or she’ll come to see me the next time she visits the base.”
“How did you two meet?”
“Through Huynh.” Robinson looked over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t being followed. “Kerry works for the Red Cross. When Huynh’s son Hoang was sick, she couldn’t get any of the local hospitals to treat him because his father’s a black American GI and having a mixed race child is taboo here.”
The military discouraged relationships between soldiers and locals. Such relationships frequently occurred despite those efforts, occasionally producing children who couldn’t find places in the society in which they were born. Robinson had intimated she wasn’t sleeping with Huynh, and Meredith doubted the woman was an enemy agent, but Robinson’s friendship with her could cause trouble for her before all was said and done.
“Huynh turned to the Red Cross out of desperation. She stood in front of a support vehicle and beat on the hood until the driver opened the door. Kerry took her in and told the driver to head to the closest Red Cross field station, which happened to be located on my base. I was on duty when they showed up. They were quite a motley crew—a sick baby, a worried mother, and three panicked aid workers. Huynh was yelling in Vietnamese, Kerry was tossing out Australian slang, and Hoang was screaming at the top of his lungs. I finally managed to piece their stories together and figure out what was wrong. I examined Hoang, discovered he had what I suspected was a perforated bowel, and got him prepped for surgery. It was touch and go for a while, but Hoang’s a fighter. He pulled through with no complications. Huynh thinks Kerry and I saved her son’s life.”
“You did save his life. If left untreated, his condition could have been fatal.”
Robinson shrugged. “Anyone with medical training could have diagnosed him.”
“But not everyone with medical training cared enough to treat him. You did.”
Robinson didn’t accept this latest compliment any better than she had the earlier one. She quickly changed the subject to deflect attention away from herself, a tactic Meredith noticed she used quite often.
“Huynh couldn’t afford to give me money, and I wouldn’t have dared ask for any. As payment, she offered me a place to stay whenever I’m in Saigon.”
“But Vietnamese civilian areas are off-limits.”
“So is the place we just left. That doesn’t leave me with many options, does it?”
Meredith slowed her pace. Her hotel was only a few blocks away now, and there were so many questions she hadn’t yet asked. She decided to begin with the most important. “Are you and Kerry still together?”
“No. We never were, really. We had a few laughs to ease the tension after a life-and-death situation, but we were never an item. It was fun while it lasted, and we’ll always be friends, but we could never make it as a couple.”
Meredith couldn’t believe Robinson made her relationship with Kerry sound so cut-and-dried.
“Don’t you want to fall in love?”
“Of course I do, but I’d rather wait until I’m Stateside full-time before it happens. It’s stressful enough worrying about myself out here. It would be even worse worrying about someone else.” She looked at Meredith out of the corner of her eye. “You’ll see what I mean if George gets transferred to the front lines.”
“He and I are just friends.”
“For now.” The muscles in Robinson’s jaw crawled as she clenched her teeth. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He’s already smitten.”
“What about me? Don’t I get a say?”
Robinson stopped in front of the Lotus Blossom when they reached the end of their journey. “Whether you choose to claim your destiny or allow someone else to decide your fate is entirely up to you, Meredith. But I need you to do me a favor.” She sighed as if she was reluctant to say what was about to come next. “Thank you for visiting the way I live, but please don’t come back unless you intend to stay. It’s too dangerous. For you and for me.”
Meredith felt as if the ground on which she was standing had suddenly shifted. She fought to maintain her stability. “I would never intentionally do anything to put you at risk. If you want me to stay away from you—”
“It’s not about what I want, Meredith. It’s about you. I know what I want, but I don’t think you do. Not yet, anyway. When you figure it out, you know where to find me.”
“Robinson—”
Meredith didn’t know what she intended to say, but she didn’t get the chance to find out.
A massive explosion rocked the street. The sound was like the end of the world. A heavy, percussive boom, quickly followed by shattering glass and ear-piercing screams.
Robinson threw Meredith on the sidewalk and covered her body with her own as rubble rained down on them.
Meredith heard moans of pain and cries for help. In the distance, sirens began to wail. The odd ooh-ah, ooh-ah sound she couldn’t quite get used to.
Robinson raised her head and brushed Meredith’s hair out of her eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Meredith’s ears were ringing. She shook her head in a vain attempt to clear it. She closed her eyes when a wave of dizziness hit her so hard she thought she was about to lose the hamburger and fries Tran had worked so hard to make.
“Are you sure?” When Meredith opened her eyes, Robinson’s face was a mask of concern. Blood ran freely from a cut on her forehead.
“Yes, I’m okay, but you’re hurt.” Meredith pushed Robinson off her and scrambled to her feet. She peered at the cut just above Robinson’s left eyebrow. “I think you need stitches.”
“It’s just a scratch.” Robinson swiped at the blood and wiped her hand on her jeans. “Get inside where it’s safe.” She pushed Meredith toward the lobby of her hotel and took off running. Toward the smoke and flames not away from them.
“Where are you going?” Meredith shouted at her retreating form.
“To help the injured.”
Meredith kicked off her shoes and fell in behind her.
“Where are you going?” Robinson asked.
“To help you.”
To her credit, Robinson didn’t try to stop her. Meredith could be stubborn, too. Together, they raced toward the burning ruins of the Regency Hotel.
“You’re barefoot,” Robinson said, pointing at the debris-strewn ground. “Watch out for the shattered glass.”
Broken bodies littered the sidewalk. Some were in flames, others were already burned beyond recognition. Meredith gagged on the sickly sweet smell of charred flesh. She told herself to remember her training so she wouldn’t begin screaming hysterically like the unfortunate woman whose dress had melted into her skin.
Robinson sat the woman down and told her not to move until the ambulances arrived. She bent and pressed her fingers against the neck of a man who had been impaled by a three-foot-long piece of steel.
“No pulse.”
Meredith was so overwhelmed by the amount of devastation and the number of casualties she didn’t know where to focus her energy. Her head was still fuzzy, making it hard to concentrate. She turned to Robinson for guidance. “What do you want me to do?”
“Help me triage according to the normal protocols. If they’re ambulatory and coherent, corral them next to that bike stand. Put the most critical cases here in the street so the medics can get to them first.”
“Got it.”
Meredith began to sort through the victims, praying she wouldn’t come across anyone she knew. Her prayers weren’t answered.
Her heart lurched when she found Alice’s seemingly lifeless body under a pile of debris. Both her legs were broken, the left one bent at an impossible angle. The grisly compound fracture was the
least of her worries, however.
Meredith dropped to her knees, ignoring the pain as shards of glass dug into her skin. She felt a faint pulse at the base of Alice’s throat, none at all in her extremities. Blood streamed from a wound in her side. Meredith needed something to staunch the flood or Alice would exsanguinate before help arrived. She looked around for a towel or strip of cloth. Anything she could use to put pressure on the gaping hole.
“Here. Use this.”
Meredith turned at the sound of a familiar voice. George stood behind her, offering his shirt. She pressed the gift against Alice’s side. The colorful cotton cloth quickly turned dark red.
“Is she going to make it?” George asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
George squatted next to her. “When I heard the explosion and discovered you weren’t in your room, I knew I’d find you here. Both of you.”
He looked over at Robinson, who was performing an emergency tracheotomy on a man whose airway had been crushed by falling concrete. Nurses were allowed to perform simple procedures. A tracheotomy wasn’t one of them. Under the circumstances, Meredith doubted anyone would hold it against her. Robinson was up to her elbows in blood, but her patient appeared to be breathing through the tiny tube she had inserted in his throat.
“You’re in danger here,” George said. “There could be other bombs.”
“What do you want us to do,” Robinson asked plaintively, “leave these people here to die?”
“Of course not.”
“Then stop bitching and lend us a hand.”
George pushed himself to his feet. “Tell me what to do.”
The first ambulance showed up ten long minutes later. The police soon followed. Robinson finally backed off when MPs and local police began to cordon off the area.
“Good job,” Lt. Col. Daniels said. Meredith had been so busy tending to the injured she hadn’t noticed the LTC in the crowd. She almost cried when she saw her standing on the sidewalk safe and sound instead of rotting in a jail cell. “Even though you’re off duty, I plan on recommending each of you for a service medal.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Meredith felt like she was part of the smallest, most ragtag unit in the Army. She, George, and Robinson were covered in blood. Some of it was theirs; most belonged to the victims they had tried to help. By Meredith’s estimation, they had saved more than fifty people. Unfortunately, they might end up losing at least twice that number to the senseless act of violence that had ripped through the heart of the city.
“Get cleaned up,” Lt. Col. Daniels said. “And get someplace safe. If you can find one.”
“Ma’am. Yes, ma’am.”
Meredith and Robinson looked at each other but didn’t speak. What were you supposed to say at a time like this? For a night like this one, there were no words. Tears filled Meredith’s eyes, clouding her vision. Why were her emotions so close to the surface? Because of what she had just seen or because of what she was starting to feel?
“I think it’s time we officially called it an evening.” George swept Meredith into his arms. The soles of her feet stung from dozens of cuts. When she looked at the ground, she could track her movements by the bloody footprints she had left behind. “Are you coming with us, Nat?”
“Please do,” Meredith said. “I want to take a look at that cut.”
Robinson absently touched her forehead, then let her hand drop. “I’ll be fine. You’re worse off than I am.” She bent and examined the soles of Meredith’s feet. Her expression said she didn’t like what she saw. “Your feet are shredded and you have glass imbedded in the wounds. Do you have tweezers, George?”
“In my shaving kit back at the hotel.”
“Give me your kit. We need to do some minor surgery.”
“We? What do you mean we?”
George looked squeamish. Meredith flinched when he tightened his grip on her legs. Now that her adrenaline had stopped pumping, the pain had started to set in. Her feet and knees felt like they were on fire.
“Calm down. You won’t have to do anything more serious than carrying her upstairs and holding her hand. Can you manage that?”
George nodded fervently. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Then let’s go.”
With Robinson leading the way, George took Meredith to their hotel and carried her up all three flights of stairs to her room. He waited in the hall while Robinson helped her prepare to take a bath so she could disinfect the cuts. Robinson peeled off her bloodstained dress and helped her into the tub. Meredith sighed when she lowered her body into the warm water.
Robinson pointed to the other room. “I’ll be out here if you need me.”
When Meredith finished bathing and pulled the stopper in the tub, she saw streaks of pink spiraling down the drain. Her blood mixed with the water.
“Okay in there?” Robinson asked from the other side of the bathroom door.
“Yeah,” Meredith said shakily. “I’m fine.”
She dried herself off with a towel, pulled herself out of the tub, and sat on the closed lid of the toilet. After she pulled her nightgown over her head, she inspected her ruined dress. Tonight she’d worn it for the first and last time. She tossed the dress in the trash so she could begin to put the night behind her.
“Ready?” Robinson asked.
“Ready.”
After Robinson opened the door, George came inside and carried Meredith to the bed. Robinson turned the chair toward her and inspected her cuts like a jeweler examining a diamond for flaws. “They’re not as deep as I thought, but you’re going to have a hard time wearing shoes for a while.”
Meredith hissed in pain when Robinson used the tweezers to pull bits of glass from her knees and the soles of her feet. George offered his hand. Meredith clamped on to it like a lifeline. A connection was being forged in this room. A bond she didn’t think would ever break. She clenched her teeth as Robinson probed her wounds. “Someone tell me a story.”
“Like once upon a time and all that?” George asked.
Meredith flinched as Robinson retrieved another shard of glass. She didn’t know how much more she could take without crying, but she didn’t want her tears to be seen as a sign of weakness. “I don’t care. Just tell me something to take my mind off this.”
George shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know any fairy tales. There are some limericks I could recite, but they aren’t fit for mixed company.”
“Or any other kind, for that matter,” Robinson said.
“Can you do better?” George asked with a hint of challenge in his voice.
“I couldn’t do much worse.”
“Prove it then.”
“All right,” Robinson said thoughtfully as if she were searching her memory banks for a story that was most appropriate to the situation. “When we were little, my brother and I used to go barefoot all summer long. Our parents insisted we wear shoes to church each week so our fellow congregants wouldn’t think we were too poor to afford them. As soon as services were over, though, off they went. We wanted to feel the sand between our toes and the ocean on our skin. Shoes just got in the way.”
Meredith could practically smell the salt air. “I didn’t know you had a brother. Where’s he serving?”
“Paul got drafted, but he failed his physical. He hurt his foot one summer when I was twelve and he had just turned ten. Our uncle Raiford had a wind chime on his front porch. Every time we went to visit him, Paul liked to jump up and hit the chime with his hand to make it tinkle. This particular year, Uncle Raiford was having some work done on the porch. The contractor he had hired was good at what he did, but he didn’t like to clean up after himself. He had left some old boards lying around. After Paul jumped up and hit the chime, he landed on a rusty nail. He said it didn’t hurt, but he started crying when he couldn’t pull it out.”
“What happened?” Meredith asked, forgetting about the pain in her own feet.
“I went and got Uncle Raifo
rd, who removed the nail and fired the contractor. Aunt Celia put a penny and a piece of fatback on Paul’s foot because everyone knows that’s how to keep someone from getting tetanus.”
“Is that why Paul was marked 4F?”
“No, the nail cracked a bone in his foot. The bone didn’t heal properly. He didn’t realize it at the time and it didn’t stop him from playing football all through high school and college, but the Army docs didn’t think his foot would be able to hold up to all the miles of marching he’d be subjected to.”
Meredith looked at her own feet. Were her wounds severe enough to send her home or would she be able to continue her mission?
“Welcome to the war, Meredith,” Robinson said after she dropped the last piece of glass into the trash. “You’re a veteran now.” She tore a towel into strips and used them as bandages. “My job’s done. Take care of her, okay, George? I need to check on Huynh and Hoang.”
Meredith fought back tears as she reached for Robinson’s hand. “Stay with me. I don’t want you going back out there tonight. It’s too dangerous.”
Robinson looked down at their clasped hands as if she wasn’t used to being anyone’s cause of concern. She gave Meredith’s hand a quick squeeze and let go. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” She rose from her chair. “Can I count on you to keep her safe, George?”
“I won’t let her out of my sight again. That’s a promise.”
“Thanks, buddy. I owe you one.” Robinson turned and waded into the crowd of frightened guests milling around in the hall. Meredith watched her swim against the current until she faded from view.
George turned back the covers. “Let’s get you to bed. For real this time.”
Meredith wearily laid her head on the pillow as George covered her with the sheet and bedspread.
“You got lucky,” he said. “You could have been killed tonight.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“Even so, I plan on sleeping in the hall tonight so you can’t sneak out again. If you want to play Florence Nightingale one more time, you’ll have to climb out the window. Unless you grow a pair of wings, I doubt you’ll be up to the challenge.”
The War Within Page 9