For All Their Lives

by Fern Michaels

  The short walk down the corridor to the nurses’ station seemed to take forever. He pantomimed his need to see Casey. The tiny, trim nurse, her eyes full of compassion, led him to Casey’s room. Mac reached out to the doorjamb for support. For as long as he lived he knew he would carry this vision of Casey with him. Luke Farrell said Casey wasn’t going to die. He had to hold on to Luke’s promise. “You better be right, Dr. Farrell, because if you aren’t, I’ll track you down and cut your heart out,” Mac muttered as he stumbled down the corridor and out into the dark night.

  IT WAS THIRTY days before Casey was well enough to leave the hospital, and even then she was not well enough to return to Pleiku. Against all regulations, she moved into Lily’s tiny apartment.

  Alone with the mama-san and the baby, Casey looked around the poor apartment. It was clean and neat but almost bare of furniture. Two old chairs, a round table, and a tiered shelf were all that was in the tiny living room. A fan circled lazily overhead, moving the still air about the room. The bedroom, which was little bigger than a closet, held a wicker dresser and two futons for sleeping. Lily’s clothing hung on a rope stretched across the room. The bathroom was tiny, the kitchen tinier yet. She was imposing herself on Lily and she knew it. Somehow, she would have to make it up to her. Perhaps when she was able to get up and about, she could go to Lily’s parents and make them see how unjustly they were treating their daughter. How could they not want this beautiful, innocent child? Culture be damned.

  Wearily, Casey curled up on the futon and was asleep almost instantly.

  LILY GIA LOOKED down at her patient in the sterile white bed. He was old, probably with many grandchildren. A simple farmer, the head nurse said when she handed the man’s clothes to Lily. “He will be your patient until he is released. He has given us no information about himself. For now it is doubtful that any family member will come to visit him.”

  Such an old man, Lily thought, to have so many shrapnel wounds. Obviously he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She wondered vaguely if he’d been wounded by the Americans or by his own countrymen. His skin, she noticed, was a pasty yellow, his lips thin and waxy, but he’d just come out of surgery. He would recover, but what would happen to him? Who was there to care about this old man? Then she looked at his hands and his feet before she pulled the white sheet up to his chin. His hands and feet weren’t old-looking at all. The nails were still white. She frowned. He also had a full head of hair that wasn’t gray.

  She was out of sorts today and was at a loss to explain why. She’d been fine when she awoke and fed the baby. She’d been fine when she shared tea with Casey and felt relieved at the color in her friend’s cheeks. She’d been fine when she kissed the baby good-bye and patted the mama-san on the shoulder. From that point on the day had been murky, her mood changeable. She’d walked to work the way she always did, nodding to acquaintances who bowed and nodded respectfully at her white uniform. But the streets were different. Today there had been no familiar faces, no nods or bows from shopowners. Today there had been many new faces in town, young men, probably university students. Quiet students.

  With preparations under way for Tet, the Lunar New Year, the streets should have been teeming with shopowners hawking their wares beneath colorful streamers. Tet was the most important day of the year for her people, and it took days, weeks, to prepare for all the festivities. For years she’d taken part in it, but no longer. Not since Eric and the birth of the baby. Now she was an outcast, disowned by her family and barely tolerated at the hospital, all because she’d given birth to an American bastard.

  Her patient moved restlessly, his legs thrashing under the thin white sheet. “Shhh, you must lay quietly, your sutures will open otherwise,” she said softly. The patient calmed almost immediately. Lily checked the IV in his arm and took his blood pressure and temperature. She recorded both on the chart at the foot of the bed. He was muttering, murmuring names. Poor thing, Lily thought, he probably wants to know if his wife and children are here. In the same calm, soft voice, she said, “Tell me who to get in touch with. What is your name? Tell me your name, sir.”

  His eyes were open now, and they weren’t old eyes. They were dazed, and she knew he wasn’t seeing her clearly. “Where do you live?” she whispered.

  He was thrashing about again, muttering furiously about the Tan Son Nhut Air Base and destroying the foreign enemy. He was cursing ripely. She bent over to listen. She had to reach for the metal side supports on the bed or she would have fainted. He said something about an offensive, the Tet Offensive.

  Lily had her notebook out. She scribbled furiously. The Tan Son Nhut Air Base, the . . . Tet Offensive. She underlined the words Tet Offensive. Times, she needed to know the times or her information would mean nothing. She had so little information. Who was she to tell? Who would believe her?

  Two days until Tet. What could she do in two days? Tell Casey. Casey could go to Army Headquarters and tell those in charge. Would they believe Casey, one of their own? Perhaps, until Casey told them where she got her information. Maybe what she was hearing was nothing more than the delirious murmurings of a sick patient.

  Confused and desperate now, Lily leaned closer to her patient. “Tell me what time. . . .” She made her voice deep and gruff. “Tell me, I need to know the time of the offensive.” But he was asleep. She had nothing.

  When her shift was over, she wanted to run home, to tell Casey, but she forced herself to walk the streets, hoping to see something that would give credence to what she’d just heard. So many students. Why weren’t they in class? Were they soldiers? Sometimes they walked in groups of three. Hundreds of students. The air base, of course, was off limits to her, but not to Casey.

  Lily looked around wildly. Saigon had always been safe. Surely the VC wouldn’t open fire on the city. But according to her patient, that was exactly what they were going to do. Two days. Forty-eight hours. It wasn’t much time.

  Casey knew the moment Lily walked through the door that something was critically wrong. The smile she showered on the mama-san was forced, her full lips stretching into thin lines. She’s lost her job, was Casey’s first thought. Her second was that she’d heard something terrible about her family.

  Tea. Tea always made things right. “Sit, sit, Lily, and tell me what’s wrong. The mama-san made tea a few minutes ago. We were worried about you. You’re late,” she babbled uneasily.

  “I know. I’ve been walking about the city because . . . because . . . Oh, Casey, I need your common sense here.” She told her everything she’d heard, about how she’d tried to question the sick patient. “His hands were young, so were his feet. Our men tend to look prematurely old, especially the soldiers. It is the sun that does it. But who is going to pay attention to what a patient’s hands and feet look like?” she said, wringing her hands in agitation.

  “Drink your tea and then we’ll talk,” Casey replied. “You must relax, Lily. Your anxiety will transfer itself to the baby, and that isn’t good. Maybe we can do something about what you heard. At least we’ll try.”

  When Lily had swallowed the last of her tea, Casey said, “Now, calmly, tell me everything.”

  “This is the Year of the Monkey, and most believe it to be a harbinger of bad luck. The Lunar New Year for us is a time of family reunions,” Lily said with a break in her voice, “with all manner of festivities, as well as feasting and fireworks. Probably nothing half as grand as those we had for the Fourth of July, but wonderful nonetheless. Every family will place a matching pair of watermelons on their family altar for good luck and to honor their ancestors. I, of course, will not do this, for I have no altar, so I will remember other times. Do not be sad for me. I have accepted my new way of life now.

  “Each year as the New Year begins, thousands of people pour into Saigon. They come on bicycles, by bus, by scooter and sampan. Thousands more come on foot from the various countrysides. This year . . . this year, there will be thousands of others, hidden among the tra
velers. Most of these others will be Viet Cong. I understand the plan. It will be easy for the enemy to come into Saigon. They will strike on the morning of Tet. It’s less than forty-eight hours away, Casey. You must go to the American embassy. They’ll know what to do. We can’t use the Bamboo Pipeline, it takes too long. They’ll believe us, won’t they?”

  “I hope so,” Casey said fretfully.

  “You must be the one to tell them. They will not believe me. Your people say they believe us, but they don’t. They will think this is a trick of some sort. That is why I cannot go with you, Casey. I will stay here with my son.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Lily, no one would believe you, and they won’t believe me either, because I will have to tell them where I got the information,” Casey said wearily.

  “You must try.”

  Of course Lily was right, she had to try. She bent over to put her shoes on. A wave of dizziness swept through her. She took deep breaths before raising her head slowly. The moment passed.

  “How do I get to Thong Nhut Street, where the embassy is?”

  Casey wrote down Lily’s directions.

  “I’ll find it. If I don’t make it back before midnight, I’ll find a place to sleep until morning. I won’t risk the curfew. Now, wish me luck.”

  Instead, Lily hugged her, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Be careful,” she whispered.

  “I will,” Casey whispered back, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Why are we whispering?” She giggled.

  “Go. This is no time for jokes,” Lily ordered. Casey nodded as she slipped through the door.

  While Casey was walking through the streets of Saigon, Lily paced the confines of her tiny apartment. She paced for forty minutes before she went to the apartment next door to ask her young neighbor if she would watch the baby until she returned. “I will be gone no more than thirty minutes.” The young woman agreed.

  Lily ran down the three flights of steps and out into the night; her destination—her parents’ home. She was breathless when she arrived. She leaned against the stout, solid iron gate and caught her breath before she rang the bell. Within moments tiny lights beamed upward from the narrow walkway. She recognized her mother’s mincing footsteps. She wished now she’d taken the time to change out of her madras shorts and shirt and into more traditional clothing. “I look too American,” she muttered under her breath.

  Lily bowed low. “Mother, I must tell you something. Please listen to me,” she pleaded.

  “You should not have come here, daughter, for you have brought dishonor to our family. You must not come here again. Go now before your father comes to the gate and sees you.”

  Lily heard the sob in her mother’s voice, could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes from the yellow glow of the walk lights. She wanted to cry herself, could feel her shoulders start to shake.

  “One moment, Mother.” Quickly, breathlessly, Lily recounted what she’d heard earlier at the hospital. “You must leave the city as soon as possible. Thank you for talking to me, Mother. I love you very much. I will always love you. Take this,” she said, slipping a snapshot Casey had taken of little Eric earlier in the week. “It is all I have to give, Mother, for the New Year.”

  Lily felt her mother’s fingers touch her own through the grillwork of the iron fence, then she withdrew them abruptly. The walkway lights went out.

  “Go quickly, Lily, your father is coming down the walk. I will tell him a colleague stopped by, and I will pass on your information. You will always be in my heart, daughter.” Lily didn’t hear the soft whispered words. She was already melting into the dark shadows.

  Her parents wouldn’t leave, she’d known that when she rang the bell. They were doctors, dedicated to saving lives. If an offensive did occur, they would be needed. Had she come just to see her mother, to see her face and to pass on the small snapshot? Of course she had. Her mother still loved her in the same way Lily would always love her own child. She cried all the way back to her shabby apartment.

  CASEY WAS EXHAUSTED when she reached the Armed Forces Training Center. At the last second she’d changed her mind about going to the American embassy. Something perverse in her insisted she try instead to locate Sue Collins, the woman she had met when she first arrived in-country. She was so tired, she couldn’t explain her reasoning to herself, but the gods of Fortune smiled on her. When she entered the building, Collins was on her way out.

  “I’ll be damned.” Collins grinned. “What brings you to Saigon? Don’t tell me. Tet. I think everyone and his brother is here for the festivities. Listen, I have to thank you for that great Fourth of July party at Da Nang. I got to see Rick for twenty whole minutes. Your turn.” She laughed.

  “Can we go somewhere to talk? This is . . . crucial.”

  “It’s something serious, isn’t it? Has something happened to Rick?” There was desperation in her voice.

  “I’m sorry if I . . . no, it has nothing to do with Rick. It’s something else.”

  Outside in the darkness, Casey repeated Lily’s story. “I believe her, but Lily says the authorities, the national police, won’t pay any attention. I thought you would know who to go to. I’m willing to go with you. At first I was going to go to the embassy, and I’ll still go if you think it will do any good.”

  “Let’s go back inside,” Sue replied. “There are phones we can use to call the embassy. I know some of the guys there. Hell, we’ll call everybody we can think of. From experience, I think the first thing to do is send word out on the Bamboo Pipeline. It will be better and faster than any communications center.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Casey muttered, wiping the sweat from her forehead. It was wonderful to sit down, to feel the coolness of the building. The tall glass of Tang that Sue handed her was the most welcome thing in the world.

  The calls took over an hour. When she finally hung up the phone, Sue looked at Casey. “An economic-commercial officer at the embassy is coming over. He has a pass so he can move about after curfew. I told him to stop at the hospital to check on Lily’s patient. He said he would do it, but he could have been humoring me. Thong Nhut Boulevard is within spitting distance of us. It shouldn’t take him long.”

  They passed a few nervous minutes talking about less important things. About snow, the new rage in fashion, the miniskirt, Easter bonnets, and white-shingled houses with picket fences. They spoke of home and family, but they kept their eyes glued to the plate-glass doors.

  Sue was nervously pleating the hem of her corded skirt. “I heard this morning when I came on duty that guerrillas in the Central Highlands overran Tuy Phuoc. That town was considered the showcase of ‘Revolutionary Development,’ the program that was supposed to rid the countryside of Viet Cong. I also heard that Westy has shifted thousands of troops north to beef up defenses. Right after he did that, the U.S. announced the cancellation of a thirty-six-hour unilateral truce, at the same time the VC proclaimed their seven-day cease fire for the Lunar New Year. Something is going on, there’s no doubt about it.” She started to nibble on a nail, her eyes far away.

  Casey knew Sue must be worrying about Rick. It was weird, she thought, how both of them were more concerned with their loves than with themselves.

  “I was just thinking,” Casey said, ruminating aloud. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to be. I was discharged from the hospital but wasn’t well enough to go back to Pleiku. I have another ten days and a medical checkup to go through before I can return to the hospital. I left word at the hospital I was staying at Lily’s. Major Hagen came down to see me, but I don’t think I’m listed anywhere. I should be listed,” she added fretfully.

  “Are you certain you aren’t?” Sue said, her face full of concern.

  “I’m positive. Major Hagen said the paperwork alone would take a month. Even though I was discharged from the hospital, that’s my last known address, for want of a better word. Mac, of course, knows where I am, and he has the address. Major Hagen, bless her heart, ca
n’t find her way out of a paper bag. She has difficulty with names over here. I know by the time she got to the airport she’d forgotten Lily’s address. I’m just talking, don’t mind me,” Casey said tiredly.

  “No, no, Casey, this is important. If something happens here in the city, if Lily is right, and they open fire, anything can happen. There has to be a record of you, and the hospital isn’t going to be good enough. The army doesn’t like it when things get flubbed up. In the morning I’ll see what I can do. Write down the name of your unit and everything I need to know. Uh-oh, here he comes,” Sue said, sotto voce.

  Geoffrey Hollister looked like a pompous, overstuffed walrus. He was overweight by a good forty pounds, and his flabby fat jiggled as he walked. He was wearing walking shorts with beige knee socks that sagged around his ankles. His light green shirt was soaked with perspiration, as was his bald head. His brown eyes looked mean and angry, his cheeks puffing out with the exertion it took to walk across the anteroom to where both young women were sitting. Be charitable, Casey warned herself. It’s the end of a very long day and the man is probably exhausted. He introduced himself before he sat down on the hard, plastic chair, his thighs hanging over the side. He acknowledged Sue’s introduction with a curt nod.

  “I hope this is important, Captain,” he said, addressing Sue. “I don’t like to be out on these streets after curfew. And if what you are about to tell me is army business, I’m going to be very angry,” he said irritably. Everyone knew you didn’t disturb army brass after midnight. It was okay to disturb embassy personnel though.

  Sue told him everything Lily said. Both girls watched the man’s fat face for his reaction. When he laughed, Casey felt an adrenaline surge.

  “Is this the same Lily Gia who hung around with Eric Savorone before he headed back to the States? Eric was a friend of mine. Did it ever occur to either one of you that this might be a—”