Court Martial

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  Spencer Barnett had been shipped directly to her ward from a prisoner-of-war camp in Laos. He had been in very bad physical condition when he first arrived at Walter Reed Army Hospital, but a month of intensive care by some of the best medical people in the business had made a dramatic improvement in the young recon soldier. The nurse smiled again when she thought about the first time she had seen him lying on the hospital bed in a horribly emaciated condition with his body covered with infected insect bites and jungle ulcers. What drew the smile from the woman was that even though his body had been tortured and broken, he wore a smile in his sleep that was caused mostly by the natural curl located at each corner of his mouth; it looked as if he was constantly smiling over a very private joke.

  She pushed the door all the way open and entered the room beaming her best morning smile. Spencer lay on the white hospital sheets drenched in sweat. The curl was still there on his mouth but the deep wrinkles across his forehead told the nurse that he was in trouble. She ran over to the side of his bed and felt for a pulse. Her free hand rested on the soaked sheets. Spencer moaned and thrashed his head from side to side, sending pellets of sweat from the ends of his hair across the front of her clean uniform. She ran from the room to the nurses’ station to get help. The staff had been expecting Spencer to have a malaria relapse. The virus had been detected during a blood test when he arrived at the medical center. The doctors had hoped that Spencer’s body would have healed from the tortures in the prisoner-of-war camp before the malaria surfaced again. But it had come, and Corporal Barnett was fighting for his life.

  He moaned again as the malaria fever attacked his body. The moan came from inside, created by the images that were scarred forever in his brain tissue.

  He was dirty and naked, with his arms wrapped around his drawn-up legs and his back pressed against the bamboo bars of a low cage. She lay coiled up watching him from the opposite side of her pen. The sun slipped behind the tall trees that bordered the Montagnard village and instantly he felt the chill against his naked skin. She flicked out her tongue to test the air. She too felt the change in the temperature and slowly adjusted her coils. Spencer rested his chin on his knees and tried recalling everything Colonel Garibaldi had told him about large snakes.

  The nurse returned to the room followed by a team of trauma medics. Spencer’s personal psychiatrist had heard the emergency call for room 131 and was only a couple of steps behind the trauma team.

  Spencer moaned again in his delirium and spoke just as the nurse reached his bedside. “Get the fuck away from me, bitch!” The nurse gasped and raised her hand to cover the shock that was expressed by her open mouth.

  “He’s not talking to you, Mary. He’s delirious,” the psychiatrist said to the nurse over her shoulder.

  “Oh…” She felt reassured but was still worried over Spencer. He looked very ill.

  The huge python started crawling next to the side of the cage toward Barnett. He held his breath.

  “Oxygen!” The doctor standing over Spencer reached back for the face mask and slipped it over the lower part of the soldier’s face. Spencer still held his breath. “What the hell is he doing?”

  The snake tested the air again. Spencer stretched out his leg, planning on kicking her head if she got too close, and then he remembered what Colonel Garibaldi had told him about looking like an object that was too large for her to swallow. His foot was bite size for the thirty-six-foot-long reticulated python, and he drew it back again against his body and watched as she continued her slow approach. A thin rod came through the side of the cage about an inch in front of the snake’s nose. Spencer took a breath.

  “Good! He’s breathing again!” The doctor held the oxygen mask tightly against Spencer’s face as the soldier breathed rapidly. “Now he’s starting to hyperventilate! This is crazy!”

  “Not as crazy as what’s going on inside his head.” The psychiatrist spoke from the foot of Spencer’s bed, where he could observe his patient and not be in the way of the medical team.

  “You keep Mother Kaa away from me!” Spencer’s voice rose and then lowered. “What do you want from me now, Sweet Bitch?”

  The psychiatrist recognized the nickname of the female North Vietnamese lieutenant who had operated the prisoner-of-war camp that Spencer and Colonel Garibaldi had been assigned to. Spencer had refused to talk about the camp, but Colonel Garibaldi had given them a complete briefing, including the torture where she used the python.

  “Where’s your little turncoat today?” Spencer sneered at his hallucinated tormentor while the nurse next to his bed wiped his face with an ice-water-soaked pad. She was worried and it showed on her face. Spencer had been doing so well lately.

  “James… Who else would I be talking about?” Spencer answered someone in his delirium. “I told you that I would never do that! One traitor per POW camp… that’s all, Sweet Bitch!” Spencer groaned and arched his back on the bed as if he had just received a blow. “Ugh!” His body went totally limp. One of the doctors took his pulse as they hooked him up to a monitoring unit.

  The nurse looked over at the psychiatrist, fear showing in her eyes. He closed his notebook and shook his head slowly. “He’s exhausted and needs some fluid put back in his system.” He nodded toward the IV stand and the wide strap they were tying Spencer’s arm down with so that he wouldn’t tear out the needle when he thrashed around on his bed. The psychiatrist smiled his reassurance. “He’s going to be fine, Mary.”

  The fear was still in her eyes. She just couldn’t lose him now that she had finally found a man she could love. Tears came with the thought, even though she knew it wouldn’t look very professional, but she didn’t give a damn.

  The scene changed in Spencer’s mind. He felt the red-hot end of a cigar against the tender foreskin of his penis. The scream coming from deep within his chest startled even the old emergency-room doctor who was working over him. Spencer tried reaching for his crotch with his tied-down hand and then changed and used his free hand to protect his groin from the hallucinatory attack. He screamed again in a high-pitched adolescent’s tenor and pleaded, “Stop! Please! Stop… I won’t do it again… I promise!” And then Spencer started crying like a small boy.

  The psychiatrist ground his teeth together and watched the young soldier relive whatever had caused those scars that covered the insides of his thighs and the end of his penis. All the doctors had agreed that the scar tissue was too old to have been caused while he was a prisoner of war. The psychiatrist had tried a number of times to get Spencer to talk about the scars, but on each occasion the soldier had told him bluntly that it was none of his damn business. Spencer didn’t realize the pressure that had been placed on the psychiatrist by the hospital commander to find out as much as they could about the young Army corporal before the President of the United States presented him with the Medal of Honor.

  Spencer hadn’t yet pieced together his private room and all the extra care he had been receiving during his stay. Even Garibaldi had been released from the hospital, and he had been a POW for years

  The psychiatrist knew a lot more about Spencer than the soldier realized. He had access to all the help he needed in gathering information on the boy—even from the FBI and the CIA. Spencer was a very hot property, and the President and the senior military leadership were very interested in his recovery.

  The nurse couldn’t take any more and left the room, followed by another of Spencer’s heartrending screams. She nearly knocked down the head nurse when she shoved open the door.

  “What’s going on in there, Mary? My God! What are they doing to that boy?” The gray-haired colonel had never heard a grown man scream like that before and she had been around a long time.”

  “They’re not hurting him. He’s having a severe malaria relapse. Would you cover for me a little while?” The young nurse shook her head and rushed down the hall away from room 131.

  “Oh… that dear, dear child.” The head nurse entered the room to replace Ma
ry.

  Spencer lowered the top half of his body down between the two chairs and grimaced when he felt the pain as he tried to rise again. “Forty!” The word hissed out between his clenched teeth and he dropped down to the polished tile floor.

  “You aren’t supposed to exercise until the doctor tells you it’s all right.”

  Spencer inhaled deeply and looked out the window. “I’ll turn into a wimp and wear my hair in a ponytail before these hippie doctors let me work out.”

  Mary set the glass down on the table next to Spencer’s bed; then walked up behind and helped him to his feet. She laid her hands on his sweaty shoulders and rubbed them in small circles. “You smell good.” She kissed his back.

  Spencer turned around and hugged her against his wet chest. The top inch of his hospital pajama bottoms was soaked with sweat. “I’ve got to take a shower.”

  “Would you like me to join you?” Mary teased.

  “Sure…” Spencer started unbuttoning her uniform.

  “Spencer! Stop that! Dr. Martin is coming to see you!” She struggled with his hand. “Spencer! I’ll be court-martialed for promiscuous conduct with an enlisted man!”

  “Don’t play with what you can’t handle.”

  “Spencer! The doctor is coming… any minute now!” She felt a warm glow in all of her erogenous zones at the same time.

  “Who’s getting court-martialed?” The lieutenant colonel stepped into the private room.

  Mary blushed and Spencer answered for her. “My nurse is afraid that she’s spending too much time with me and is ignoring her other patients.”

  “She’s too good a nurse to court-martial,” the Army psychiatrist complimented the nurse. He knew that a love affair was developing between the two in spite of the age difference. Spencer was seventeen—almost eighteen, and she was a very young-looking twenty-one, graduating a year and a half ahead of her class. “But there is going to be a court-martial that you might be interested in…” the lieutenant colonel added.

  Spencer paused in the doorway of his bathroom. “Whose?”

  “Special Fourth Class Mohammed James… Does the name ring a bell?” The psychiatrist noticed the tendons bulge out on the hand Spencer held against the doorjamb.

  “You know damn well it does.” Barnett untied the drawstring of his blue-green hospital pajamas and let the loose-fitting pants drop to the floor. He used the toes on his right foot to flip the garment up to his hand. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “I’ll wait.” The doctor’s voice sounded very patient.

  “It’s going to be a very long shower.”

  “That’s fine. Take your time.” The lieutenant colonel looked over at the nurse. “Would you mind bringing me a cup of coffee on your way back with his clean pajamas?”

  Mary nodded and left the room. She sensed that Spencer didn’t like the psychiatrist.

  Spencer took his time in the shower and brushed his teeth and shaved while he let the water run in the shower stall. He had been in the bathroom over a half hour before he opened the door with a towel wrapped around his waist. “Did the nurse bring me some clothes?”

  The doctor looked up from the magazine he had been reading and nodded toward the neatly folded hospital pajamas lying on the foot of the bed. Spencer walked over and picked them up. He started pulling the towel away from his waist and then changed his mind and went back into the bathroom to change. Normally he wasn’t shy, but the psychiatrist’s eyes were always trying to penetrate; they were nosy eyes.

  “Take your time, Spencer. This is a good article I’m reading.” The psychiatrist knew how to play the game also.

  Spencer looked at his reflection in the mirror and flexed his jaw muscles. He hadn’t been broken yet, and some mighty powerful people had tried. He opened the door too fast and stepped out of the small bathroom. “So! What brings you around here today?”

  “First, let’s talk about the court-martial.” The doctor looked up at Spencer over the top of his glasses, which had slipped down his nose. “What do you think about James’s court-martial?”

  Spencer went over and opened the window. It was getting very stuffy in the room. “Fine with me. He was a traitor.”

  “Well, that’s what the court-martial is for... to see if he was a traitor.”

  Spencer dropped down in a chair near the window and looked out. “He is a traitor.”

  “Hmm…”

  “What the fuck are you humming about!” The anger boiled out of Spencer.

  The psychiatrist flashed an angry look at the soldier. “Try to remember that I’m a lieutenant colonel… okay?”

  “Right, sir.”

  The medical doctor with the extra years of psychology realized that he had just screwed up with his patient. “Well, not that much of a lieutenant colonel.”

  “Make up your mind what you want to be… sir.” Spencer grinned. “You’re confusing me.”

  “We can’t have that, can we?” The lieutenant colonel smiled. “Why don’t you just call me Colonel Martin?”

  “Fine with me, sir. You can call me Corporal Barnett.” Spencer was tiring of the mind game the doctor was playing. “Look, I’ve got to take a nap.

  “Sorry, Corporal Barnett, but we’ve still got some things to talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Some things you talked about during your malaria attack last week.”

  “Look, Colonel Martin…” Spencer’s voice filled with anger. “What I talk about when I’m sick, I can’t help, and I can’t help it if a bunch of very sick people sit around my bed and listen in on what I’m saying… that’s not my fault. I don’t want to be here and I don’t want you to be here.” Spencer went to the windowsill, hopped up on it, and looked out. He leaned as far out of the window as he could, holding on to the bottom of the wooden frame.

  “You know it’s against regulations to do that, Spencer.” The psychiatrist lit a cigarette and rested his head against the back of the chair. He waited until Spencer came back into the room before continuing. “I’m not spying on you. I’m here to help you put some things back together again.”

  “Oh? Like what?” Spencer sighed. “I feel fine.”

  “General Garibaldi told us a quite a few things about what went on in your POW camp, and quite frankly we’re a little worried about what it might have done to you mentally.” The psychiatrist inhaled a lungful of smoke and paused.

  “Mentally I’m fine.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.” The doctor exhaled.

  “Okay… what do you want to talk about?”

  “The snake.”

  “The snake…” Spencer placed his index finger against his bottom lip and looked up at the ceiling. “The snake. Let’s see… the snake. Oh yes… you mean that huge motherfucking python? The one the prison commander would use to scare the shit out of us with? That snake?”

  The psychiatrist nodded.

  “Well… that snake was very big, over thirty feet long.” Spencer looked at the doctor to see if he believed him. “Really! Ask Colonel Garibaldi.”

  “He’s a major general now,” the psychiatrist corrected Spencer.

  “I know, but he said that I can call him Colonel as long as I want to… it’s a little thing us POWs have. You know—a mental block or something like that.”

  “General Garibaldi has confirmed that the snake was well over thirty feet long.”

  “I know that. I just didn’t want you to think I was exaggerating.” Spencer smiled.

  “So tell me about the snake.”

  “I just told you. It was big.”

  “How did the NVA use the snake to torture people?”

  “They put the people in the snake’s cage overnight.”

  “That was torture?” The psychiatrist was trying to get Spencer to talk about his experience in the cage.

  “You are one dumb motherfucking colonel!” Spencer got up and pulled open his room door. “Get out of here!”

  “Sorry, Spencer�
�� Corporal Bamett, but I’m calling the shots today. I’ll leave when I’m finished talking.”

  Spencer slammed the door shut, sending a loud echo down the tiled hallway.

  “Come back here and sit down. You’re acting like a spoiled brat.”

  Spencer took a seat again on the window ledge and wrapped his arms around one of his legs. He rested his chin on his knee and looked down at the free people walking in one of the hospital’s large parking lots.

  The psychiatrist knew that Spencer wasn’t going to cooperate and talk openly to him so he tried changing his tactics. “Answer my questions, Corporal.”

  Spencer kept staring out the window. He felt the old wall inside him begin to close its gates to the outside world. Mary had opened them for him, but this doctor was closing them again.

  “Did Specialist James take part in torturing you while you were a prisoner?” The doctor’s voice sounded like a tin echo.

  It took Spencer so long to answer that the doctor was about ready to ask another question. “Yes.”

  “Did Lieutenant Van Pao beat you with a bamboo rod?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they bury you in a pit with a dead Montagnard child?”

  The pause was longer. “Yes.”

  “Did Specialist James admit to you that he killed white soldiers in combat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Specialist James take part in torturing you?’

  “Yes.” Spencer squeezed his leg and bit down on his knee.

  “Does any of this bother you?”

  “No.”

  The doctor sighed. “Spencer, please cooperate with me. I’m here to help you!”

  “I thought we were going to call each other by our military ranks, sir.”

  “Spencer, dammit!” The doctor lost his temper. “You’ve got to let some of these things out. You can’t live your whole life building walls around yourself!”