by Len Levinson
She hadn't slept much during the night, and her eyeballs were laced with tiny red lines. Fidgeting, pacing back and forth, she wished Dr. Harris would arrive soon. Butsko's leg had become a religious crusade for her. She thought it would be a great tragedy if such a man were to lose his leg inadvertently.
Finally she saw Dr. Harris walking toward her, carrying a clipboard under his arm, his eyeglasses flashing the corridor lights.
“Dr. Harris,” she said, “I've got to talk to you.”
He raised his eyebrows, obviously annoyed that such a low form of life as a nurse would be presumptuous enough to talk to him directly. “I'm busy right now,” he told her, taking the key to his door out of his pocket.
“It's very important.”
“It'll have to wait.”
He unlocked the door to his office, stepped inside, and pushed the door closed behind him, but Nurse Morrison was there and the door slammed against the palms of her hands. She entered his office and shut the door.
He moved behind his desk and noticed her. “I thought I told you I was busy.”
“I'm sorry, Doctor,” she said nervously, because Dr. Harris ! could make a lot of trouble for her, “but I must speak with you and I'm not leaving until I've had my say.”
Dr. Harris sat behind his desk and realized he'd look foolish if he called the Marines to take the nurse away, so he decided I to deal with her diplomatically and fast-talk her out of whatever she wanted, because evidently she wanted something, and doctors think they can fast-talk anybody out of anything.
He put on a phony doctor's smile. “What can I do for you, if Nurse—ah—what's your name again?”.
“Lieutenant Roberta Morrison.”
“Ah, yes, of course. What was it you wanted?”
“It's about Sergeant Butsko, sir. I think we ought to take ‘another X ray before you amputate his leg.”
Dr. Harris felt his expertise being challenged, and doctors ; tend to get very weird when that happens. “What makes you ’) think we should take another X ray, Lieutenant Morrison?”
“To make sure that his X ray hasn't been mixed up with somebody else's.”
“What makes you think it has been mixed up with somebody else's?”
“It happens and you know it.”
Dr. Harris smiled indulgently. “Yes, it happens, but very seldom. We can't take special additional X rays of everybody who's facing an operation.”
“I'm not suggesting that we take additional X rays of everybody. I'd just like to have additional X rays taken of Sergeant Butsko.”
“Why him and not somebody else?”
“Because he claims that he wasn't hit by shrapnel, and his leg wasn't hurt that badly.”
“How would he know? You should be aware by now that soldiers are often mistaken about these things.”
“Well,” she said, “Butsko is no green young soldier. He's been wounded many times and he's seen a lot of war. I'm inclined to take him seriously when he says he wasn't hit by shrapnel. I think he'd know when artillery shells or hand grenades were falling and when they weren't.”
Dr. Harris narrowed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. He gazed emphatically at Nurse Morrison, and she could hear the little wheels turning inside his head, but she was no shrinking violet. She held her hands behind her back and looked down at him, because he hadn't even invited her to sit down.
“You seem to be taking an inordinate interest in this Sergeant Butsko,” Dr. Harris said suspiciously. “What's going on between you two?”
Nurse Morrison blushed, and because she knew she was blushing, she blushed even more. “Nothing's going on between us. What an absurd thing to say.”
“Absurd? Really?” Dr. Harris smiled victoriously, because he could see that he'd hit a soft spot. “Of all the soldiers on this ship, it seems odd that you've taken such a strong interest in Sergeant Butsko. Surely there must be a reason.”
“I've told you the reason. I don't believe that the man should have his leg amputated without another corroborating X ray. I think an error has been made, and it shouldn't be compounded to the point where he will lose his leg by mistake.”
Dr. Harris shook his head slowly. “I don't think that's the real reason at all. I think the real reason is a peculiar affectionate feeling that you evidently have for this man Butsko. I can't understand it, because he's an ugly brute if ever there was one, but to each his own, I suppose. Regardless of that, I'm not having additional X rays taken of Sergeant Butsko's leg, and I shall amputate it this morning to prevent infection and save as much of the limb as I can.” Dr. Harris looked at the papers on his desk. “I'm afraid I have work to do before I go to the operating room. You may leave now.”
Nurse Morrison wanted to jump on Dr. Harris and scratch his eyes out, but she had too cool a head actually to do it. She turned and walked out of the office, heading toward the psycho ward and her duty shift. Well, I tried, she said to herself. I can't think of anything else to do.
She knew it would be pointless to go over Dr. Harris's head to Captain Forbes, the chief doctor on the ship, because Captain Forbes was a doctor, too, and all the doctors stuck together. He'd just say that Dr. Harris was the doctor on the case and he had the final word. That would be the end of it, and she'd be humiliated again—not that she minded that part of it. Men always tend to humiliate women who are unattractive, and she was used to it.
I've done all I could, she said to herself with a sigh. Some-body else will have to carry the ball now. I wonder if Colonel Hutchins has been able to do anything.
It was dawn on the beach, and dark, oily clouds covered the sky. Crates were stacked everywhere, and work details loaded the crates onto trucks. Motor launches of various types were prow-up on the beach, and trucks drove back and forth. Antiaircraft artillery observers scanned the skies for enemy planes, ready to load up and shoot them down.
Details of soldiers marched to their places of work, and among them moved ten selected men from the recon platoon in a column of twos, led by Colonel Hutchins, with Sergeant Cameron at his side. All carried Thompson submachine guns and plenty of ammunition.
The contingent from the recon platoon headed toward the row of boats at the shoreline, and all the men were angry. Colonel Hutchins had told them what was going to happen to Butsko, and they weren't going to let it go down without a fight.
They approached a motor launch upon which wounded men were being loaded, and Colonel Hutchins shouted: "Detail, halt!”
The men from the recon platoon stopped and stood at attention . Colonel Hutchins waded into the water beside the motor launch. “Who's in charge here?” he bellowed.
A sailor poked his head over the gunwale. “I am.” Then he noticed the eagles on Colonel Hutchins's lapels and added: “Sir.”
“When are you leaving for the hospital ship?”
“About ten more minutes, sir.”
“My men and I are going with you!”
The sailor looked at Colonel Hutchins and his men, wondering what was going on. This had never happened to him before. “You are?”
“We are.” Colonel Hutchins turned to his men. “Load onto ’ this boat, and make it snappy!”
The men from the recon platoon sloshed into the water and climbed up the sides of the motor launch. The sailor thought that somehow this loading was against military regulations, but he was only a boatswain's mate third class, and he wasn't about to argue with a bird colonel. He shrugged and made his way back to the stern of the boat, where the wheel was, as the men from the recon platoon knelt among the wounded soldiers stacked side by side on the deck of the motor launch. The men from the recon platoon offered cigarettes to the wounded soldiers and shot the shit with them while the motor launch got under way.
Butsko was still knocked unconscious by powerful drugs when Nurse Morrison came on duty. She relieved the nurse at the desk, read the instructions left for her, and then walked to Butsko's bunk to see how he was. He lay wrapped in his straitjacket and his eyes we
re closed; he slept peacefully. She looked at his form underneath his covers, saw both of his legs, and nearly burst into tears at the thought that one of them might be cut off by mistake.
Butsko was sleeping, but his combat soldier's sixth sense was still in operation, and he became aware that someone was near him. He opened his eyes and saw her standing there.
“What's going on?” he asked, his words slurred by sleep and drugs.
She didn't know what to tell him, but the expression on her face said it all.
“They're still gonna cut off my leg?” he asked.
She nodded.
“They can't do that to me,” he mumbled. “Did you get through to Colonel Hutchins?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he'd get out here as fast as he could.”
“What time is it now?”
“A little after six hundred hours.”
“When'll they operate?”
“Pretty soon, I guess.”
“Can't you do something to stop them?” Butsko asked, and his voice cracked in his throat, because he was scared. Getting wounded in battle was one thing, but having your leg cut off on an operating table was something else, especially if it was all a big fuck-up.
“I'm afraid I've done all I could. I wish I could do more, but I can't.”
Butsko looked from left to right and then whispered: “Cut me loose.”
“I can't.”
“Sure you can.”
“No I can't, and even if I did, where would you go?”
“I'll worry about that then.”
“You can't even walk.”
“Put me on a wheel chair and roll me out of here.”
“And then what?”
“I don't know.” She was confused, torn between her desire to help and her fear of the system. “I can't.”
“You're gonna let them cut off my fucking leg, right?”
Two orderlies entered the ward, pushing a cot on wheels.
They looked around and saw Nurse Morrison.
“Which one's Butsko?” one of them asked.
She couldn't reply. ;
One of the Marines guarding Butsko said: “This is him right here.”
The orderlies wheeled their cart toward Butsko and he screamed at the top of his lungs: "You can't do this to me! There ain't nothing wrong with my leg! Somebody help me!” : Butsko strained against his straitjacket and squirmed around in his bed. One orderly winked at the other, and the second orderly took a hypodermic needle from a tray underneath the cart.
“don't want no needle!” Butsko said. "Please, don't gimme a needle!”
The orderly pulled up the bedclothes at the bottom of But- sko's bed, revealing his thick, hairy legs. The one on the right was swathed in bandages. The orderly stabbed the needle into Butsko's left thigh as Butsko struggled to break loose.
"Leave me alone! You got me mixed up with some other asshole!”
The drug worked quickly, and Butsko felt himself getting woozy. The volume of his voice dropped to a whisper, and the orderlies untied the straps, rolling him onto the cart. They wheeled him out of the psycho ward, heading for the operating room.
Nurse Morrison sat at her desk and buried her face in her hands. She felt sick and wanted to cry, but she was a tough broad and the tears wouldn't come. I've done all can, haven't I? she asked herself. What more can I do?
She didn't know what else she could do, but she felt she had to do something. She couldn't just sit there quietly, knowing they were sawing off Butsko's leg down in the operating room. She decided to go to the operating room and make one last attempt to save Butsko's leg. She didn't know exactly how she'd go about it, but she'd figure that out when she got there.
She picked up the phone and dialed the extension of one of her friends to ask her friend to take over for her so Nurse Morrison could leave her post and go to the operating room.
Frankie was awakened by clattering sounds outside his cell. He opened his eyes and saw an orderly pushing a wagon covered with trays of food. The orderly lifted a tray and shoved it under the bars of Frankie's cell.
“Chowtime,” the orderly said.
“Thanks,” Frankie replied.
The orderly noticed the name tag on the front of Frankie's cell, and Frankie noticed that the orderly carried a key ring on his belt.
“Hey,” said the orderly, “you're Frankie La Barbara, huh?”
“So what if I am,” Frankie replied, carrying the tray of food back to his bunk.
“You're the guy who tried to kill that sergeant, right?”
“Right,” Frankie admitted.
“And then they found you in a broom closet, trying to paste a phony mustache underneath your nose.” The orderly laughed.
Frankie sat on his cot and looked at the food on his tray. It was powdered scrambled eggs, toast, a cup of coffee, and a wooden spoon.
“Everybody's talking about you,” the orderly said. “We ain't never had somebody try to kill somebody on this ship before. What've you got against that sergeant?”
“I hate his fucking guts, because he's no fucking good.”
“Well,” said the orderly, “he sure ain't gonna be good for much after this morning, because they're gonna cut his leg off.”
Frankie opened his mouth, morsels of scrambled egg all over his tongue. “Huh?”
“I said they're gonna cut his leg off.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“I didn't know that.”
“You know it now.”
The orderly pushed his wagon away, and Frankie stared at the bars of his cell, but he didn't see them. He saw Butsko hopping around on one leg; the image disturbed Frankie greatly. He wanted to cut Butsko's throat, or shoot him, or strangle him, but somehow the image of Butsko as a cripple changed the whole picture.
Frankie considered Butsko a mean, rotten son of a bitch, but he knew that Butsko was a great soldier, a real man's man, and it would be terrible if he had to become a cripple, walking around on a wooden leg. Frankie would get no pleasure out of killing a cripple. He felt that he was being cheated of his revenge against Butsko, and Frankie caught a faint glimmer of the truth: that his ongoing, longstanding hassle with Butsko was one of the factors that kept him angry, awake, and alive.
Frankie felt his crotch; his little knife still was there. He thought he should try to bust out out of the brig and do something for Butsko, although he didn't know specifically what he should do. He had to admit to himself that if Butsko or even his buddy Bannon had fallen ill with malaria in no-man's-land, Frankie would have been the first to insist that the sick man be left behind.
Frankie finished his breakfast and stood, pacing back and forth in his cell, trying to figure out what to do. He wrapped his fingers around the bars of the cell and shook them, but the bars were solid and unmovable. He tapped the walls of the cell; they were thick steel. If only I had a hand grenade, he thought.
He heard the chow wagon coming back down the corridor, and Frankie leaped on the bars of his cell, trying to see. The orderly was picking up the empty trays, and Frankie realized that opportunity was heading his way. Stepping backward, he huddled in a corner and removed the knife from his inner thigh. Then he sauntered casually toward the bars, just as the wagon appeared.
“Hi,” Frankie said to the orderly. “Got a cigarette by any chance?”
“Sure,” the orderly replied. He reached into his white jacket pocket and took out a package of Camels, the favorite cigarette with men in the Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard, based on actual sales records in post exchanges, sales commissaries, ship's service stores, and canteens. The orderly held out the pack. “Here.”
Frankie smiled as he reached through the bars, but his smile vanished as he lunged and grabbed the front of the orderly's jacket with his left hand, pulling the orderly against the bars and holding the knife against the orderly's throat with his right hand.
“You'd bett
er open up this door,” Frankie muttered, “or else I'll cut your fucking throat!”
The orderly's eyes bulged out of his head and his face drained of color as he reached toward his belt for the ring of keys.
SEVENTEEN . . .
The operating room, located centrally on one of the lower decks of the hospital ship, contained ten operating tables, and every one was in use when Butsko was wheeled into the area. The orderlies moved him into an adjacent cubicle where patients were lined up, waiting to go under the knife.
Orderlies, nurses, and doctors walked past Butsko, but Butsko was out like a light and didn't know anything. Occasionally someone would look at the tag on his cot. A nurse felt his pulse. An anesthesiologist checked Butsko's graph to see how much medication he'd been given, and was surprised by the large quantity.
One by one the other patients in the waiting room were wheeled into the operating room. Finally it was Butsko's turn, and the orderlies rolled him toward an empty operating table between a soldier getting a cast put on his left arm and a Marine having particles of shrapnel removed from his eye by a giant magnet.
Butsko was placed on the operating table, and nurses hooked him up to bottles of plasma and liquid food, plus a variety of machines that monitored his bodily functions. Dr. Harris and Dr. Schearson arrived, wearing long white coats, white hats, and white masks over their eyes. Dr. Harris hung Butsko's X ray on the wall at the foot of the operating table. He talked with Dr. Schearson in medical language, pointing to the X ray, planning the operation. The anesthesiologist rolled the ether machine toward Butsko and turned knobs.
Dr. Harris and Dr. Schearson turned around and approached Butsko. Their first task was to remove the cast from his leg. Dr. Schearson picked up the special hacksaw and began sawing. The anesthesiologist placed the face mask on Butsko to give him some whiffs of ether.
