by Gail Cleare
She ran back into her ward and urged the men to return to their beds, but only a few cooperated. Then they all heard an enormous boom and saw a flash in the southeast part of the city, much closer to them. The entire building shook, and everyone went silent for a moment.
“What’s over there?” A soldier with his head wrapped in bandages pointed.
“Government buildings, I think,” another said.
“Any of them ours?” the soldier from Las Vegas wanted to know.
“The US Embassy. It’s in that direction.” Mary put her hand on his shoulder as they both stared out the window. They could hear gunfire from the direction of the explosion, and a steady hammering of mortar rounds.
“Holy shit. They’re blowing up the fucking embassy.”
“What should we do?”
“Nurse, what’s the emergency protocol?”
“Where’s the weapons and ammo, Lieutenant?”
The voices all sounded at once, a garbled chorus. The men were looking at her expectantly. Mary was the only officer in the room, and she had no idea what to do. There hadn’t been an enemy attack inside the city since she’d arrived—or ever, as far as she knew. There was no hospital protocol for this situation.
An army colonel carrying an M16 rifle rushed in from the corridor.
“Any walking wounded in here who can help with security?”
“Yes, sir.” The soldier from Las Vegas spoke up along with two others. They saluted, their white hospital gowns riding up when they raised their arms.
He looked them over and shrugged. “Let’s get down to the basement. Find you some real clothes and some weapons. We don’t have much ammo, but it’s better than nothing. They’re making Molotov cocktails down in the surgery area—we’ll have those too.”
The rocket fire at the air base had swelled, and they could hear planes taking off. Mary ran to the window to look up and saw them pass directly overhead, going north. She could hear rifle fire in the distance, and the ground shook constantly. Those B-52s were taking off under fire, which had to be terribly dangerous. She wondered where they were going. There had to be fighting somewhere else as well. That meant casualties would be coming soon from upcountry too. How would they get them in here without the planes being shot down?
Mary wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt. Her stomach growled and burned. “Colonel, what was that big explosion a minute ago?”
“They fired a rocket through the perimeter wall of the US Embassy.” His eyes flashed with anger. “VC sappers are shooting into the building through the windows. Radio chatter says the MPs and marines inside are returning fire. We need to get ready for anything. Follow me, men.”
He strode out of the room, his volunteers limping behind him.
“Ma’am, don’t you have a security force here at the hospital?” The boy from Iowa sounded scared.
“Not really.” Mary’s voice was high and shaky. “There are two MPs who guard the gate and patrol the grounds, but we’ve never had this kind of trouble before. It’s always been safe here in Saigon.”
“Not anymore,” the boy said, his eyes solemn.
Later that morning, Mary heard the news that US forces at the embassy had killed nineteen members of the elite Viet Cong C-10 Sapper Battalion. Five Americans were also dead, but the embassy had been saved. The battle at the air base raged on. Apparently, many other strategic sites in South Vietnam were also under attack by a huge, well-organized army. Wounded soldiers started to arrive at the hospital soon after the fighting began. Thousands more were expected, and the hospital was preparing for their arrival.
At first light, Captain Clark sent Mary down to the courtyard to set up an additional triage area. Ambulances were coming in from the air base, where brave medevac pilots were flying in and out under heavy fire while US troops defended them. Since the hospital complex was in the city and didn’t have the space for helicopters to land, there was no other way for wounded to get there by air. As Mary and the other nurses hustled to prepare for more wounded, she thought again of the men she loved, and she prayed for their safety.
Six months had passed since the telegram about Thomas arrived, and Mary was still wearing her engagement ring but didn’t feel there was any real hope he was still alive. His remains were probably at the bottom of the ocean. It all seemed like a nightmare.
But Jake helped to push the horror out of her mind. They had been seeing each other secretly for a while after he found out about a room down the street from the hospital where one of the Vietnamese orderlies lived. When Tuan was working, he was only too glad to rent the place to US soldiers who wanted some privacy.
With Jake’s strong arms holding her, the images of multiple amputees and massive trauma cases dissolved. When they lay together on the narrow pallet, life seemed almost normal, and home didn’t feel so far away.
“Tell me more about your town,” Mary had said just the day before the Tet attacks. Her fingers were threaded through the curly hairs on his chest while her head rested on his broad shoulder.
Jake’s chest vibrated when he spoke, a deep rumble. “It’s a little place called Hartland, deep in the Green Mountains. The kind of place where people don’t lock their doors, everybody knows your name, and neighbors pitch in to help without being asked. Sunset on the lake is a sight to behold, the most beautiful colors I’ve ever seen. You’d love it there, sweet thing.”
Mary dozed, wrapped in his warmth and the peace of that moment. “Tell more about the trees on the town green,” she murmured sleepily. “Did you climb them when you were a boy?”
“Every kid in town climbed those maples, with or without their parents’ permission. All the way to the top. It’s a rite of passage.” Jake ran his finger along the curve of her shoulder, sending shivers through her body. “I used to sneak out at night to meet my buddies there and show off for the girls.”
“Didn’t the girls climb trees too?” She raised her head to look at his face and saw him watching her with softness in his eyes.
“A few of them did.” He grinned. “The ones who didn’t mind the guys looking up their skirts.”
“I would have worn jeans,” Mary said, laying her head back down. “You don’t get your legs all scratched up.”
“You probably would have beat me to the top, sweet thing. You are one determined woman.”
Mary sniffed. “You better believe it. When I was a kid, my sister and I used to climb all the way to the tippety-top of the old pine tree in our yard. Pine bark cuts like crazy, and we’d get covered with sticky black sap, but we could see the whole town from up there. When the wind blew, the tree swayed. I loved it.”
He leaned over and kissed her gently on the mouth, pulling her close. The spark between them flared again, and he turned to cover her with his lean, muscular body, deepening the kiss. She took his tongue into her mouth and tasted his intoxicating flavor, breathing in the warm, spicy aroma that radiated from his skin. He groaned. She felt him harden and press against her thigh. Her legs slipped open, and she took him inside, welcoming the total focus on the here and now that sex with Jake brought her. Eyes locked together, energy flowing on the deepest level of communication. She felt their minds connect. They rocked together in the hot little room, sunlight slanting in through a shuttered window to fall in bright stripes through the air, bodies slick with sweat as they slid against one another and she arched toward him, absorbed by him, until a brilliant flash and a deep shudder flew her away to another world where nobody was bleeding and the only color surrounding them was the marbled green of a cool Vermont forest.
“Tell me,” she whispered in his ear when they lay next to each other again. “Tell me about the lake.”
They didn’t speak of love, but she felt it surrounding them. For the time being, this wonderful intimacy was enough. The seven-year difference in thei
r ages didn’t seem important anymore. They were equal when working side by side to save a wounded soldier’s life. The losses were huge, appalling. One man died out of every three they tried to save, and it would be easy to feel their mission was hopeless. For Mary, the affair had become a way to assert that she was still alive while so many around her were dying.
Jake was off duty, catching up on sleep, when the Tet attack began and the call went out. Mary knew he’d end up driving one of the ambulances back and forth from the air base, which would put him in grave danger.
She set up the clipboards and waited by the back door. Several other nurses were supposed to join her. The medics had been told to bypass the front of the hospital and drive around back to unload the wounded. One very large truck pulled up, a two-and-a-half-ton vehicle. The driver who got out wasn’t a medic but an MP officer. Two others jumped out to help him.
Mary walked over to talk to them. “Lieutenant? How many wounded on board? Do you need help?” Nurses and medical corpsmen were coming out of the back door, ready to deal with the wounded about to arrive.
The officer turned toward her. His expression was grim, his face was pale and dirty, and there were rips in his flak jacket. He had obviously been in the fighting.
“Thanks, but we can handle it, Lieutenant Sullivan. I doubt your people would want to waste their time with this lot, anyhow.”
Mary frowned, wondering why he would speak that way.
His men opened the back of the truck, and Mary recoiled at the sight, nearly overcome with nausea. All the bodies from the morning’s massacre at the embassy were piled inside. The MPs began to carry the dead into the grassy courtyard and lay them out in rows. While they were working, the first ambulance rounded the corner and parked on the edge of the grass, then the next, and a third.
Jake was driving the third. He looked over and flashed Mary the brightest smile she had seen all day. She smiled back, caught on his eyes like a fish on a hook. He winked, and suddenly she felt fine and strong again.
They worked into the night, and still, the wounded kept coming. There were patients in every available space, lying on cots that lined the hallways and outside on the covered porches. The nurses worked twenty-four-hour shifts. It was a nightmare, but nobody had time to be terrified.
Mary glimpsed Jake every hour or so when he pulled up and unloaded. By sundown, most of the grass in the little courtyard had been churned to mud, and everyone was covered with it. Around sundown, he finally parked at her station, and they had a chance to talk for a minute. The corpsmen and male nurses had carried all the loaded stretchers inside, and Jake was about to jump inside his truck for another trip to the air base.
“What’s it like over there, Sergeant?” Mary approached, careful to keep her voice impersonal. She knew her heart showed in her eyes and he’d see how she felt.
He smiled at her, and she saw his feelings written on his face as well. “Like shootin’ fish in a barrel… except I’m the fish. Our guys are doing a great job. They’re pulling the flak off us pretty good when we stop to load up.”
“Glad to hear it.” She wanted to kiss him or at least to touch him. “You take care, soldier.” She smiled and reached out and patted his shoulder, a neutral supportive gesture. The warmth of his arm through the fabric made her chest ache with emotion.
He seemed to know what she meant and saluted, then tipped his combat helmet with a twinkle in his eye. “You take care too, ma’am. Be seeing you soon.”
Mary watched him drive away as she blinked away tears, but then the next truck pulled up in front of her, and there wasn’t time to worry.
Later in the evening, Mary realized she hadn’t seen Jake in a while or the corpsman who had worked by his side that day. “Is everyone getting through the line okay?” she asked the next driver who pulled into her station.
“There’s one truck down, flipped over by a mortar round. No wounded were inside yet, thank God.”
“Everyone okay? Your guys?”
“They both got beat up pretty bad, I heard. Somebody brought them in here a while ago. The driver got his leg broke and caught a bullet. Bascomb, I think his name is.”
Her stomach twisted, and black spots swam in front of her as all the blood seemed to drain out of her body. Mary’s knees buckled, and she sank toward the ground.
“You okay, ma’am?” The ambulance driver pulled her up by the elbow, and she steadied on her feet.
She took a deep breath and straightened. “I’m fine. Thank you, Sergeant. It’s been… a hell of a day.” She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. Silently, she started to pray.
“Hell of a day, ma’am.” He nodded and turned back to his work.
Mary robotically straightened her white cap to greet the next wounded soldier. It took every ounce of discipline she possessed not to turn and run inside to find Jake.
She got off duty at around nine o’clock that night after working since the day before with only a few breaks to eat, hydrate, and go to the bathroom. The rush of wounded showed no sign of abating. Soon, they would have to move some of the stabilized patients out, perhaps send them away from the war zone to recover. Her white uniform was dappled with layers of bloodstains, and she desperately needed a shower.
When Mary went to find Jake, she discovered he was in surgery. He had a compound fracture of the right leg and a gunshot wound in his left arm. They had set his leg and were working on the arm. It looked as if he would probably stay alive unless an infection set in, and Mary sent up a prayer of thanks.
She went back to her quarters to shower and change into fatigues. The nurses had abandoned their whites, which were impractical under the best circumstances and impossible during a catastrophe like this. They had been commanded to wear their helmets when outdoors, something never considered necessary before that moment in Saigon.
Mary tried to think of what to bring Jake. A magazine? Flowers? She grabbed a paperback copy of the latest James Bond book off the table in the lounge, slapped her helmet on her head, and trotted down the dark road toward the building where the surgeons had been operating on Jake.
While she jogged, Mary thought about what might happen next. Most likely, Jake would be sent home, with two serious injuries and a bad break in his leg that could stop him from driving a vehicle for a long time.
What will I do here without him? It was a selfish thought. She tried to wipe it from her mind.
At least her tour of duty would be over in a few months. Mary had been playing with the idea of re-enlisting, but after the past day’s events, it didn’t seem like the right step. She wasn’t cut out to be an army nurse. Working in the emergency room in Boston would be like a luxury vacation compared to triage in the mud.
She wondered where Jake would go after he recovered in an army hospital stateside. He had spoken so fondly of the little town in Vermont where he grew up. It sounded beautiful. A lovely place to raise kids, grow old, and die.
Mary reached the hospital and went inside to find the man she was picturing by her side as they lived happily ever after in a place called Hartland. A week later, just after she and Jake had kissed good-bye and she’d watched medics carry him onto a plane to start the long journey home, Mary received word that Thomas Reilly was alive.
Chapter 32
Nell ~ 2014
Nell and Bridget’s mother was buried next to their dad in the family’s hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. When they all walked out of the cool stone church after the service, the brightness outside was dazzling. Nell heard people say that the heavenly gates had opened to let Mom in, and a flash of God’s light was shining through.
Many of the Reillys’ old friends attended the funeral, families who had been there when Nell and Bridget were growing up. In the graveyard, an army honor guard shot off a three-gun rifle salute, folded the American f
lag that had covered Mom’s coffin, and presented it to Nell and Bridget while the bugler played taps. Nell cried all the way through it, holding tightly onto her sister’s hand.
The sisters stood by their mother’s grave, wearing the black linen A-line dresses that Mom had made for them when Grandma died. Nell wore her dress plain with a simple strand of pearls while Bridget had jazzed hers up with a Hermes silk scarf, fastened at the shoulder with a gold pin. Wearing clothes that Mom had sewed for them so lovingly was their salute to her. Ben had pointed out that his grandmother’s DNA was probably embedded in every fiber. Nell felt the dress embracing her like a ghostly hug, and Mom seemed present among the family as they gathered to say good-bye.
Nell had finally told David about her mother’s cottage, which she and Bridget had inherited. As she’d expected, he was excited to come up and see the place. The kids wanted to swim in the lake and go fishing.
Bridget was planning to stay on in Vermont until her divorce was settled, maybe even longer. The peace and quiet were addictive, she said. Nell promised to let her enjoy the solitude for as long as possible, so for the moment, the cottage was still the sisters’ private space.
David looked handsome and dignified, greeting their old friends and neighbors with a firm handshake as they filed by to express their condolences. Ben stood next to him, and when she saw them side by side, Nell realized he was nearly as tall as his father. She still had to help make sure his tie went with his shirt and his socks matched, but despite Ben’s color blindness, he was growing up fast and finding ways to compensate on his own. She glanced at his feet and noticed that he had chosen one navy and one brown sock. With his dark-blue suit, he was half-right. Close enough. She knew he would be off on his own soon. He would learn to get along without her just as she would somehow learn to survive without her mother.
