by Hart Rivers
Here. As in the 99th KO. The 8th Field Hospital’s psychiatric unit conveniently placed in a combat zone. We. As in the psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, psychiatric nurses, and enlisted psychiatric techs who are doing the good work for our brave fellow men in uniform, serving on the front lines of Vietnam….
Finally, Colonel Kohn wound it all up with, “The rate of psychiatric casualties is huge and basically unknown to the general population back home. But really, there is one thing, and one thing only, that matters and you can never forget. The patients here are very dangerous. Every minute, every hour and day that you are here, never forget that these patients were trained to kill people. There is no locked ward. Forget, even for a second, that you are treating trained killers who have been pushed over the edge, and you could be the one going back home in a body bag. Any questions?” was clearly directed at Israel who stared numbly back at Colonel Kohn while the loud drone of the air conditioner blended with another shriek of “HELP ME!”
“Okay then, we have an interesting catatonic patient with Dr. Thibeaux to discuss, along with our rather vocal Sergeant Waters in the restraints over there. Dr. Mikel, Dr. Moskowitz?” The colonel got up, his attention carefully trained on the new child psychiatrist. “After you.”
As they moved toward the mind-blasted Sergeant Waters, Israel tried to wrap his brain around what he’d been repeatedly told in officer’s training: His first priority was to “preserve the fighting force,” which meant not getting damaged soldiers like these home. No, his job was to get them back to their units and the same combat zones that had landed them in this front line mental hospital that made Bellevue look like Club Med.
“As you can see, we have fourteen beds here,” Colonel Kohn was saying. “These patients have been brought in from the field or came through our Camp McDermott outpatient clinic. It’s just a short drive and for now the two of you will be accompanying Dr. Kelly out there every day directly after rounds.” Having caught up with the group, Kohn addressed the leader, mid-thirties at most, with thinning brown hair spared from a comb-over. “This is our chief psychiatrist, Dr. Robert David Thibeaux. Robert David, I believe you were on call last night. Would you care to fill us in on the situation here with Sergeant Waters?”
“Well, now thank you Dr. Kohn, it would surely be my pleasure.” Robert David Thibeaux’s refined southern accent and aristocratic bearing struck Israel as absurd in this setting as the military making attempted suicide a punishable, criminal offense because it damaged government property. “It was a quiet night except for Waters. The Sergeant has been agitated, and ranting and hallucinating constantly about this so-called Boogeyman story that got started a few weeks ago and seems to be spreading like a bad case of VD.”
“And what has the Sergeant said about this Boogeyman?” Mikel asked.
Waters cried out a terrible sound, a keening wail punctuated by “Ghost Soldier! He gets you in the dark. Shep’s dead, everyone’s dead. Oh god, please,” he gasped, pleaded, “Help me!”
For a blessed moment Israel was able to completely detach, to step outside his body and observe the macabre scene like he was back home in the movie theater, watching the horror film he’d seen last year, Night of the Living Dead. Only now starring in the show was Sergeant Waters, eyes bulging, panting, and sobbing; writhing in restraints on the mattress like he was being attacked by ghouls. And Mikel, he could be the director, stroking his chin and strangely untouched by the riveting performance. The surrounding audience, all dressed in mottled green, zoomed in and out, then snap.
A SLAM of metal bed to steel Quonset wall coincided with the sudden shriek of “STOP”—Slam—“STOP”—Slam—“STOP!” Waters’ earlier shrieking and writhing violently escalated, accompanied now by terrible grimaces and facial tics that were hideous to watch.
Thibeaux urgently tried to calm him with that low, soothing voice that dripped culture from somewhere down south, an assurance of “Shh, nothing will hurt you here. All the bad things have gone away.” Then, to Margie asked, “How much Thorazine did you give him before?”
“Two hundred and fifty milligrams. He gets it b.i.d.”
“My god,” Israel blurted, disbelief overtaking his horror of the whole scene. “Two-fifty twice a day? That is a ton. He shouldn’t even be conscious.”
“But as you can see, it is not even touching him,” responded Thibeaux. “More Margie, up it stat to three hundred fifty q.i.d. The hallucinations are driving his agitation towards burning him up in his own skin.”
As Margie saw to the injection, Thibeaux continued to soothe Waters in a lullaby voice until the drugs kicked in, mercifully quick, then promptly ushered the group “right this way” as if they were being led to a cotillion ball rather than another hospital bed, fully occupied, eerily silent.
“We have here Lieutenant Bill Wilson. Just brought in two days ago from Pleiku.” Solicitously, “How are you, Lieutenant?”
Wilson stared up at the ceiling, unblinking, his eyes fixed on something no one else could see.
Clap, clap! The sharp strike of Thibeaux’ palms next to Wilson’s ear produced nothing, not even a flinch. Next Thibeaux shouted, “Look out!”
Israel ducked, covering his head with the hands he struggled to get under control.
Someone softly touched his shoulder. “It’s okay.” Gregg’s voice.
Israel forced his hands from his head and put them behind his back. It had the substance of jelly. Margie was looking at him with a kind of knowing look. Even if he couldn’t force more than a grimace in response to her little smile, Israel was grateful. Thank god, he thought, there is someone else here as scared as me.
“Observe.” Thibeaux gently lifted Wilson’s arm high into the air, released. It stayed there, a mannequin pose.
“As you can see, Lieutenant Wilson exhibits classic catatonic features. The waxy flexibility of his limbs and the nonresponsiveness to sensory stimulation confirms this diagnosis. Lieutenant Wilson was found in the field, sitting there, just like this. He has yet to speak. Every man around him in the field had been killed. Clearly, they are not speaking either regarding what happened to instigate this extraordinary condition.”
“Wilson is our newest arrival and will likely be sent out within a week, Dr. Moskowitz,” explained Colonel Kohn. “We have only seven days or less with the patients. If they are admitted here, they are almost always acute and severe and if we do not think that we can get them back to duty within seven days then they are sent out to Japan.”
Thibeaux lowered Wilson’s arm, touched him warmly on his shoulder, a sincere “thank you, Bill,” and he moved on to the next bed where another poor soul, in full leather restraints on his wrists and ankles, slept heavily. His face was calm, at peace, and Israel could see that he was just a big boy.
“Corporal Kim Sellers,” Margie announced, handing Thibeaux another metal clad chart.
“Corporal Sellers is completely restrained and heavily sedated with good cause,” Thibeaux continued, as though lectures in catatonia and demonstration lessons of deep compassion were just a typical day’s work. “This man is extremely agitated. He is paranoid and he is violent. We have dangerous jobs here, Dr. Moskowitz. The KO down in Saigon lost their psychiatrist, a social worker and a specialist six months ago. They weren’t the first and they won’t be the last.”
“Lost?” Israel noticed the group was very quiet. “How were they lost?”
“They were killed by a patient. And unless we want to risk the same fate, we must all be most careful with our Corporal here. He is quite dangerous to himself—and to you. And you… and you.” Thibeaux’ finger pointing down the line ended with Israel, before Thibeaux jabbed the air a good distance from the unconscious Sellers, as if he didn’t trust the corporal’s teeth from taking a body part while the rest of him slept. “Watch him. We will keep him heavily sedated, but do not turn your backs to him if you get him up to the toilet or you are feeding him or bathing him. The medication will sl
ow him but he is a tied up tiger. And he will not hesitate to take you down.”
Israel willed himself to detach again, but he couldn’t. His head was buzzing and his stomach churned bile, produced by the dawning realization that he was in a war zone where the patients were murdering their doctors. This was worse than anything in a horror movie. He was trapped in a ghastly prison sentence and had a year of his life to spend in this kind of special hell. Why, why, hadn’t he followed in his father’s footsteps and gone to law school instead?
“Good work, Robert David.” Colonel Kohn congratulated Thibeaux with a salute. “Okay folks, that’s it. Clinic people, move out.” Then, privately, “Dr. Moskowitz, as you can see we keep some formality in rounds, trying of course to remember we are doctors here in this place.”
Israel swallowed. His throat was sandpaper. He felt numb all over, except his fingers, toes were tingling. He didn’t trust his voice but he had to say something. “Yes, sir. Where—where is the clinic again?”
The Colonel came in closer, put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, Izzy,” he said quietly. “It’s your first day. Don’t worry, we will get you through this.”
For the second time today someone had called him Izzy. It took Israel back to more innocent times. It took him back to Morrie who would roar at the irony of his best pal getting saddled with a dorky nickname he’d ditched at the onset of pubescent acne when Iz ze da pits or what? threatened to stick like gum to a shoe.
What Morrie got stuck with was worse. Much worse. He would trade in his wheelchair for combat boots and jungle fatigues in a heartbeat. And because Israel needed to find some dark humor in something, do a little more penance for the accident no one had ever blamed him for but himself, “Izzy” managed a nod.
“That’s it,” said Kohn, sounding like a proud coach whose best player hadn’t let a little rough sacking take him out of the game. He even threw in a back slap as he called, “Hey, Gregg, would you be so kind as to take Izzy and Dr. Mikel for the usual introductions at headquarters with The Emperor, then show them the ropes at the clinic?”
“My pleasure, sir,” Gregg called back and promptly steered his charges out of the air conditioned unit and into the sweltering heat.
The effect was immediate and intense. Izzy felt like he’d slammed into an invisible forest fire while the humidity simultaneously plunged him under boiling water. He struggled to breathe. Sweat moved down his back and his thighs.
“It’s hot,” he gasped, and felt so damn stupid. You’re in a war. If you aren’t careful, the patients are going to kill you, and here you are whining about the weather?
“Oh yeah, it’s hot at first, but then…” Gregg gave him a sympathetic look, “…it can get even worse if you’re not careful. You’re not wearing underwear are you?”
“Uh…”
“Because you can get a bad rash if you do.”
“Yeah, crotch rot is bad,” agreed Mikel, who must not be human because he was not sweating, panting, or showing any signs of physical distress. “Guys bleed down there if it gets bad and if they get infected, it’s worse than bad. You hanging in there, Izzy?”
“Yeah, yeah. Fine, fine,” he lied, knowing if this cool cat Mikel in his aviator shades was showing concern, he must look like road kill. Izzy half expected to see buzzards circling overhead while they continued to traipse across the metal tracks that covered the sand and mud stretching to the headquarters it was taking them forever to reach.
The many different buildings serving various hospital functions that Gregg pointed out en route had a temporary yet somehow established feel—like the Red Cross building that looked a bit like a tropical lounge with a bunch of soldiers hanging around on a thatched roof porch where a stunning brunette suddenly emerged.
Spying Gregg, she gave a whistle and waved.
“Hey, Nikki!” Gregg stopped in mid-step and motioned her over. “Got a couple of new docs in town for you to meet.”
As the prettier than pretty Red Cross girl in a dress bounded their way, every eyeball still on the porch ate up her tracks. With a dazzling smile spiked with a twang, Nikki said, “Well, welcome to Vietnam, Doctors. Come on over and get some cold lemonade. Make a phone call while you’re at it.”
“That’s a very kind offer,” responded Mikel. “But Gregg’s taking us to headquarters.”
“Yeah, thanks a lot, Nikki,” Gregg agreed before Izzy could protest, “but I promised Colonel Kohn I’d get them introduced to Colonel Kellogg, then out to the Camp McDermott clinic. Maybe later?”
“You just come when you can, Gregg, and I’ll make y’all some fresh lemonade. And remember, I’ve got the phone if you want to call home. Even if it’s not Wednesday.” A wink and Nikki was gone.
Gregg and Mikel were already several paces ahead when Gregg stopped and pointed to the space between them. “Hey, Iz, if you want to know all there is to know about Nikki, ya gotta come and get it.”
Izzy caught up in the hope there might be some cold air at headquarters to compensate for the phone call he was dying to make to his fiancé. The letters Rachel had sent to officer’s training were already falling apart from his constant folding and unfolding to read and re-read what he had already committed to memory.
“Nikki is Margie’s roommate.” Gregg’s voice had some kind of soothing magic to it, like they were chumming around the water cooler for some hospital gossip. “Nikki is a really fine woman—they both are—but while Margie’s available, Nikki has something going with a strange one that was fortunately elsewhere this morning. Peck, you’ll meet him soon enough. He’s the other psychiatrist besides Robert David.”
“What makes Peck so strange?” Mikel sounded curious. Izzy didn’t care if this Peck ate lab rats for breakfast as long as he could get his hands on that phone and chug a gallon of the lemonade Nikki had offered.
“Well… I don’t like to badmouth anyone, but let’s just say he’s a real piece of work. One day he’s Mr. Nice Guy, the next he’s filing a report because some captain passed him on the highway. Oops. Guess I did cut that one a little close. He left some candy out on the table at our quarters, and then got all pissed off because Robert David ate a piece while he was gone. Petty things like that, plus some other stuff you’ll hear about that gets a little disturbing. Peck has a room at the villa but doesn’t use it much, which suits the rest of us fine.” Gregg shrugged. “You can draw your own conclusions when you meet him, but beats me what Nikki sees in the man. Especially, because she’s a ‘Dolly.’”
“A what?”
“He means a Red Cross Dolly,” Mikel explained. “They got the nickname Donut Dollies because of all the donuts they gave out to the troops in World War II.”
“Donuts sound good.” Izzy wondered if he could keep one down if Nikki offered one along with the lemonade. How he had loved the donuts that were always around the hospital break room. A little too much perhaps, though no one would guess it now. He had already dropped twenty pounds and was on track to lose another five in water weight before they made it to the stupid headquarters.
“They do a lot of other work to support our men. Like having a shoulder to spare when ‘Dear Johns’ get delivered, and that’s a huge help for sure with morale,” Gregg said. “Except for the nurses, the Dollies are the only round eyes around here.”
“Round eyes?”
“The women who aren’t Asian.” Mikel again.
“She, uh… she said something about a call?”
“Sure, let’s come back after lunch. It is Big Wednesday, phone call day.” Gregg thumbed back at the line of soldiers on the porch that was now behind them. “You can call home, back to the world. It’s a big deal.”
Home. Izzy nodded, unable to get another word past the lump in his throat. Calling home would be a very big deal right now, bigger than any deal he could think of. Because he felt like an eight-year-old sent off to camp—
A camp so far away it was no longer considered to be in the world.
&n
bsp; Chapter 3
They continued to walk on, passing some surgical units, a mess hall, the officers’ mess. Gregg knew Colonel Kohn was worried about Izzy and there was ample cause for that. Everything about their new Dr. Israel Moskowitz suggested a classic intellectual who’d get shell-shocked by stumbling into a strip joint. His bottom lip gnawing, probably to stop it from quivering, did not bode well. The erratic tremor in his hands bode even worse. Doctors were scarce and the 99KO needed him. Just like they needed their other new psychiatrist, Dr. J.D. Mikel.
Gregg wasn’t yet sure what to make of him. While most everyone was not there voluntarily—him included with the ink barely dry on his PhD from USC when he got served—Mikel came across as an organic anomaly in his element, owning every room he walked into. Fine, let him have the whole continent of Asia if he wanted it. Guys like Gregg Kelly were perfectly content with a surfboard, a tenure-track professorship, and a little bungalow off the Ventura Highway—especially if it came with the dream girl next door he hadn’t given up on yet.
“So, what can you tell me about the CO you’re taking us to meet?” Mikel asked, as if he was just making small talk. Gregg knew better. This was not a personality type to make small talk about anything or anyone. Everything that came out of his mouth had some purpose behind it. Even if it was to distract a colleague like Izzy from the urge to go crazy or start crying for mommy.
“The CO’s not a bad guy. He’s a career medical officer, and that’s cool, but we call him The Emperor because Colonel Kellogg really, really wants to be ‘General Kellogg’ and rumor has it he was recently passed over for his promotion again which might explain why he’s been dressing like Patton lately. I think the idea is to make sure everyone sees him as the true warrior he is….” Gregg negated that with a loud cough into his fist as they finally reached the building known as headquarters, “But the unfortunate outcome is that he looks more like—”
