A Cup of Normal

by Devon Monk

  Thip, thip, thip, stitch after stitch of time pulled out.

  “Ned,” Tilly said, hoping he could hear her. “I have to fix you up. Just some stitching, but nothing fancy. You’ll still be you — not like what I did to the beast, okay?”

  Tilly couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw Right Ned shake his head.

  She looked at the Grandma, saw how she was trying to pull the yarn real slow so it would last.

  “Ned,” Tilly said, “you can’t die.”

  Thip, thip, thip.

  There were only a few rows of red left, and then the grandma would be into the white. As soon as the white was gone, there’d be no time left. She had to do something now.

  She kneeled down and put her hands above Ned’s stomach, her unnatural, patchwork hands. She closed her eyes, just the way she’d seen Ned do it. Then she tried to find his spirit, the living thing that made him what he was. Somehow, she had to convince him to stay living until she could stitch him.

  She sensed his heartbeat and the sluggish push of blood under her fingers. Briefly, something else flashed past her closed eyes, something sweet as honey and fresh as lemons. Ned’s soul.

  She held on to the idea of that, hoping it wasn’t just her imagination. Her feet and face and hands tingled as she wrapped her mental self gently as she could around that warm sweet core of him.

  “Please keep living, Ned. I love you.”

  The words seeped down, running through her skin to his skin. Words filled his veins where there wasn’t enough blood. His heartbeat stuttered and fell into beat with the rhythm of time unstitching.

  “Spring’s supposed to be a time of life, not death. You and I have a lot of living left.” Tilly poured her soul into those words, and felt the brush of his mind against hers. Then she felt his breath as if it were her own — his pain shooting through her body, his fear sharp within her mind. She kept her thoughts calm, sending snatches of happy memories to him, until his pain and fear eased. “Live, Ned.” She whispered, and then she opened her eyes.

  Thip, thip, thip. The grandma pulled yarn. Tilly looked over her shoulder. The white yarn was almost gone.

  “No,” she said.

  Thip. The last loop.

  She felt the world shudder and pause.

  Ned’s heart, beneath her hands, stopped.

  Tilly took a deep breath and watched Ned’s chest rise. His heart stumbled and began beating on its own again.

  “Keep breathing,” Tilly said while she got to her feet. She was dizzy, but somehow managed to find the trauma-kit in the kitchen, filled with cotton thread, painkillers and antiseptics.

  Tilly concentrated on breathing whenever Ned forgot, and tried to send him memories of warm summer days. She didn’t know if the grandma helped her sew and dress Ned’s wounds or not. But the tingling she’d felt in her hands and feet and face ever since she’d started touching Ned’s mind all picked the same moment to rush inward. It was like the world had just taped her up and pulled that tape away, stripping her to the bone.

  She didn’t know she had passed out until she woke, down in the bed Ned and she shared. Ned was beside her, his breath no longer connected to hers, warm and real and alive all on its own, against her cheek.

  Tilly stared up at the ceiling for awhile, blinking back tears. She’d made mistake after mistake — let the beast die, stitched, left the gate open, and had made Ned live too. She’d kept her promise, but keeping it had almost killed him. She hadn’t stitched, but she’d done something else he’d never wanted. She mingled with his mind and touched his soul. She’d made him a part of her long enough to keep him alive, even though his body had been set on dying.

  Now she knew why touching a mind once wasn’t ever enough for him.

  Ned shifted. He woke with a quiet moan and she propped up on her elbow to get a good look at the both of him.

  Right Ned opened his eyes. “Did you . . .?”

  She shook her head. “No. You’re healing on your own.”

  “How?” he asked.

  “Shhh,” she said, resisting the urge to reach out and touch his mind again. “I — we mingled. I’m sorry I touched you that way, but I couldn’t bear the death of you.” Guilt soured her stomach, and her oily tears dropped to the sheets.

  “You mingled with me?” Right Ned asked. Then a faint smile touched his mouth. “With your hands?”

  “I know it’s wrong . . . .”

  “It isn’t wrong, Tilly.”

  Right Ned swallowed, so Left Ned said, “Wasn’t that I hated the thought of being close to you . . .”

  “. . . I just wanted it so fierce,” Right Ned said, “I knew I’d never let go once we touched that way. If you ever left me, or told me you didn’t want me around, I knew I couldn’t leave you.”

  Tilly couldn’t believe what he was saying, but felt the truth in his words as if they were her own. All this time, he had wanted her too much, so he hadn’t touched her at all.

  “Now, that kind of thinking won’t do us any good,” she said. “I love you, Ned. Both of you.”

  Ned smiled, and though he didn’t say it, Tilly felt his love spread tenderly across her mind.

  This time, Tilly knew just what to do. She leaned down and very gently kissed first Right Ned, then Left Ned, then Right Ned again, touching him with her mind, her soul and her patchwork hands.

  I wrote this while thinking about the human capacity to go forward and do good even when faced with great adversity.

  LAST TOUR OF DUTY

  Here’s another Lucky!” the private yelled as he pushed the stretcher out of the medical transport truck.

  Corey knew the Lucky could wait, but he gave the boy a quick glance anyway. The soldier had an abdomen full of shrapnel, yet he was calm, like all Luckys were. After a year of receiving Luckys, Corey knew this one would make it too.

  “Put him over there by the other two,” Corey said. “And get the rest of these boys into O.R.”

  The private nodded. Corey supposed he should have demanded a crisp “yes, sir!” but the men needed all the energy they had just to get the dozen wounded soldiers across the dirt to the makeshift operating room.

  At least it wasn’t raining. Of course, when it wasn’t raining in Nam, the air hatched wings.

  Corey strode into the scrub tent. The other doctors were already washing: Jim, the new guy, who still walked in a daze even though he’d been here three months; and soft-spoken Lonnie.

  “Three Luckys.” Corey elbowed on the faucet and held his hands under the running water.

  “How about the rest?” Lonnie asked.

  “Nine. Let’s get to them as quickly as we can. Save the Luckys for last.” They were old words, as worn out as their scrubs, but just as necessary.

  “Let’s get on it, gentlemen.”

  They got on it. Cockroaches scurried from sheets as bodies were placed onto tables. Corey cut, cleaned, extracted, sewed. One boy after another: missing limbs, shrapnel, and burns that were still smoking. Of the four boys that came across his table, maybe two would make it. No matter how fast Corey worked, no matter how brilliantly he patched and sutured, their odds for survival were never any better. Death ran too close a race.

  The last boy he didn’t bother to stitch. The medic had done a poor job stabilizing him. The wrap was too loose, and the soldier, Steve, by his grimy dogtags, had bled out his chance of survival on the ride over.

  Corey shook his head and the nurse tugged the sheet over the soldier’s still face before the orderlies were back with a new body.

  This one was a Lucky. Corey took a moment to look at his dogtags.

  “Okay, Thomas, you’re going to be just fine.” Corey pushed his hands into new gloves, asked for the scissors, and cut the bandaging away from Thomas’ stomach.

  The medic who placed these wraps knew his shit. The bandages were tight, clean, even. Even an intern could tell the medic, Billy Templin — the wounded called him Lucky — had a knack for doctoring.

  Ten o
ut of ten wounded men Billy bandaged on the front lines survived. It was a weird probability that Corey had refused to believe for the first six months, but now, eighteen months into his service here, any boy Lucky touched still didn’t die.

  Corey tended two Luckys and Lonnie took the other one. The new guy, Jim, left without saying a word as soon as he was done with his last patient. Corey figured he’d go off to drink, or try to sleep out the heat. One of these days, Jim was going to wake up and realize this wasn’t a bad dream. Corey wasn’t looking forward to that day.

  “Any more?” Corey asked the private who stood near the door.

  The private shook his head. “That’s all, Sir.” What he didn’t have to say, was: for now.

  Corey took a deep breath, aware again of the sharp smell of sweat and rot of insides being exposed to the outside.

  He shucked off his gloves and ran his hand over his face. Maybe half would survive his table. Three of three Luckys would walk. He’d do anything to increase those odds, and send more of the boys home breathing, instead of in boxes.

  “How’d we do, Corey?” Lonnie asked as Corey stepped out into the fading sunlight.

  The early evening air was hot and wet. Corey locked his jaw and strained the air through his teeth to get it down. Eighteen months had all but erased his memory of Colorado’s clean, cold wind.

  “The Luckys will make it,” Corey said, “I think three or four others have a chance.”

  Lonnie nodded and pulled a rolled cigarette and lighter from his pocket.

  “Too bad they all can’t be Luckys,” Corey said quietly. He heard the approach of incoming choppers over the forested ridge.

  Lonnie rubbed his thumb across his lighter. “Too bad Billy can’t be here.”

  The ache lifted from Corey’s shoulders. A breath of Colorado air, cool as a drink of water, suddenly brushed across the sweat on his face. Such a simple answer: bring Billy here. The five-oh-four received wounded from several units. If Billy were here, he could help more boys, save more boys.

  The chopper came closer. Lonnie finally got his joint lit, and sucked a deep, satisfied lungful.

  “Maybe Lucky should come here,” Corey said, trying to keep the creep of excitement out of his voice. “We need a man like him.”

  Lonnie raised one eyebrow, but didn’t exhale.

  “We could send someone to bring him here,” Corey said. “Hell, I’ll go out there. Think of how many we could save.” Most? he thought to himself. All? Could it be that easy? Statistics would say it was impossible, but then, so was the very real fact that every Lucky lived.

  “They won’t let him go.” Lonnie’s words came out like molasses, slow and smoky-sweet. “Always short on good men in the boonies.”

  “We’re short on good men here!”

  Lonnie blinked, the surprise and hurt plain on his face. He tipped his head and studied his bloody boots. “Damn, Corey.”

  Corey opened his mouth, closed it and scrubbed his hand across his face. “I don’t mean it that way. We just . . . we can’t keep up with this.” He waved his hand toward the OR tent. “We’re losing, Lonnie. Can’t you see that? Fifty-fifty odds. That’s not good enough. Billy will make the difference. His boys don’t die.” Corey put his hand on Lonnie’s shoulder. “We need him to work with us. So all the boys can go home.”

  Lonnie smiled real slow, like he had just tuned in a favorite song on the radio. “And then we go home, right?”

  Corey nodded. “Sure. Maybe then we can all go home.”

  Before dawn, Corey packed his bag and walked out to the jeep like this was something he did every day. He swung into the driver’s seat, and jumped when a low voice spoke.

  “Be careful,” Lonnie said. “It’s pretty bad out there.”

  Lonnie stood in nothing but his boots, his red hair gone wild from sleep, or maybe from the active lack of it. He held a sheaf of papers out to him.

  Corey took them.

  “Paperwork to transfer personnel. These should work so long as the C.O. doesn’t look too close.”

  Corey smiled. “Thanks. And go back to bed. You’ve got my rounds in an hour.”

  “What should I tell them when they notice you’re gone?”

  “I’ll be back by then.”

  Lonnie shook his head, but he smiled. “Give ’em hell.”

  Corey turned the ignition and ground gears. He left Lonnie, the camp, the Luckys and the dead behind, and followed the dirt track out along the edge of the ridge, then down through the press of hills.

  This was too easy: stealing the jeep, Lonnie’s papers, but he wasn’t about to wait for someone to notice him.

  The engine roared in the pre-morning air. Headlights traced gullies and bushes in stark relief. Dawn spilled out and Corey gripped the wheel tighter, his hands sweating. Every bounce of the tires could trigger a buried claymore, every bend in the track reveal a sniper.

  “Damn, damn, damn.” He kept his foot down and his eyes on the brush. The platoon should be close, should be here. He couldn’t have passed it, couldn’t have gotten turned around in the darkness.

  Heat rose off the jungle floor in biting, clicking swarms. Corey wiped sweat and pebble-hard bugs off his neck. One more mile. If the platoon didn’t show, he would turn around. And try to explain this joyride to his C.O.

  A dirty mess of tents emerged from the woodline to his left. Corey slowed the jeep and waved at the sentry who called out a challenge. He let the soldier search his jeep, and showed him the papers Lonnie had rigged. The private pointed at the C.O.’s tent. Corey took his time walking there, trying to keep his face poker straight. By the time he had ducked into the tent and sat in the extra chair, he had his best bedside manners in place.

  “Morning, doctor,” Lieutenant Jonas said, his words slightly slurred. The tent smelled of stale whiskey and vomit. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Gunfire rattled, close enough to catch its own echo and Corey glanced out the netting before answering.

  “I have orders to take one of your medics back to the five-oh-four.”

  “Jesus,” the Lieutenant said. He took a swallow out of a nearly empty bottle. “Just one? Hell, they’ll line up for you, Doc. Take ’em all back. And while you’re at it, why don’t you take the rest of the platoon?” He laughed, but his bloodshot gaze was steady and hard.

  Corey forced a smile and handed Jonas the papers.

  Jonas took the papers, but didn’t look at them. “Which one of my boys do you want?”

  “Billy Templin.”

  “Lucky?” Jonas’ eyebrows shot up. He chuckled again, and coughed. “Looks like you’ve got a problem,” he said. “Lucky Templin’s dead.”

  Death had won again, outpaced him by what? Moments? Corey felt the weight of eighteen months press his shoulders down into his spine.

  “How did he die?” he asked.

  “You’ve heard about the war, right?” Jonas drawled. “Tell you what. How about you scratch his name out of that order and write in some other bastard’s name?”

  “When did he die?” Corey asked. “This morning? Last night?” Gunfire popped again, further away this time.

  Jonas sniffed. “Seven months ago. About. During the rain. Jesus. You’re seven months late.”

  “But —”

  “Pulled his body in myself,” Jonas said. “What was left of it.”

  Corey managed to nod. Jonas must be lying. Yesterday’s wounded had Billy’s signature wraps. They were surviving against the odds. Billy had to be alive.

  “I’m sorry,” Corey said. He took the papers, stood and walked out of the tent, his mind spinning. He started the jeep and turned it back down the trail to the five-oh-four.

  It didn’t add up. The wounded were still coming in, still bandaged the same way they had been for the last eight months. Maybe Billy had trained someone else, another medic. Maybe he had gone AWOL. But if he had skipped out, why would he still be bandaging the wounded?

  Corey was too wrapped in tho
ught to notice the small bulge in the road ahead of him.

  Something exploded. The world broke apart. The jeep swerved, tipped. Corey felt his head strike something hard where there should have been air and a detached voice in his mind catalogued each impact: skull fracture, broken ribs, collarbone, arm, and then there was a sickening crunch against his chest and the detached voice shut up while Corey screamed.

  Darkness came in fits. Corey clung to it, tried to suck it down, but reality would not go away, would not stop hurting.

  He watched a bird wing a tight circle against a sky gone white-hot and heard the crackle and lick of fire feeding on the wrecked jeep. The wind stirred, hot and wet, and tugged the edges of his clothes. Even though it was a minor pain, he shuddered in agony.

  There was no one out here to look for him, the detached voice in his head came back to say. Too many breaks, probably a chunk of metal in the stomach. Bleeding too bad. Nobody to look for him. Nobody to hear his moans, and maybe he should try to be quiet anyway.

  Die, take a breath, die again.

  Cool hands touched his face.

  Not until the hands probed his arms, torso and legs, did Corey decide they were real. He looked up.

  A man leaned over him, gaze intent on his chest, fingers gently pulling the clothing away from the wound there.

  Corey moaned.

  “You’ll be okay,” the man said, his voice as cool as autumn in the Colorado countryside. He bent a bit to put himself fully in Corey’s line of vision.

  Corey blinked. Blinked again.

  The man was horribly scarred, but his brown eyes were sparked with good humor, his crooked smile sincere.

  Who? he thought.

  “I’m Billy Templin,” the man said.

  Billy’s hands moved with short efficient motions: pulled out gauze pads and strips. His face seemed to fade until it was see-through, like a reflection on a dark window pane. Corey saw vegetation through his face; saw sky and a bird flying where Billy’s forehead should be.

  His hands were too cold, but they felt real.

  Corey moaned as Billy slowly pressed and wrapped his wounds.