W E B Griffin - Corp 10 - Retreat, Hell!

by Retreat, Hell!(Lit)

  "What can I do for you?" he demanded.

  "You can tell me where I can find Brigadier General Pickering," McCoy said.

  "Never heard of him," Sergeant Wandowski said, both truthfully and as sort of a challenge.

  "Trust me, Sergeant," McCoy said. "He's somewhere around here. How about getting on the horn and calling the officer of the guard and asking?"

  "I'm the officer of the guard," Wandowski said.

  "Then call the officer of the day," McCoy said patiently.

  "Can I ask who you are?"

  "My name is McCoy," McCoy said.

  "You're Major McCoy?"

  McCoy nodded.

  Sergearit Wandowski was unable to accept that.

  "Sir, have you got any identification?"

  "Get on the horn-and right now, Sergeant," McCoy said icily. "Call the OD and tell him to get word to General Pickering that Major McCoy is at the gate."

  There was something about Major McCoy's tone of voice that made Sergeant Wandowski decide that he really didn't have to check the major's. ID card.

  He picked up the telephone, and had the operator connect him with the commanding officer's quarters.

  "Hold the major there, Sergeant," Captain Schermer ordered. "Someone will be there shortly."

  Captain Schermer's Navy-gray 1950 Ford station wagon rolled up to the main gate several minutes later. A Marine captain, who looked like a circus strong man, jumped out of the front passenger seat and walked quickly to where Sergeant Wandowski was standing by the Air Force jeep. Sergeant Wandowski saluted.

  The Marine captain returned the salute.

  "Good evening, sir," he said.

  Major McCoy, shaking his head, returned the salute.

  "The general's compliments, sir," the Marine captain went on. "The general hopes that you had a pleasant flight, sir, and asks that you join him in his car."

  Sergeant Wandowski took a closer look at the Ford station wagon. There was a man in the backseat from whose collar points and epaulets gleamed the silver stars of a brigadier general. Sergeant Wandowski popped to attention and saluted. The general returned the salute.

  "Thank you, Captain," McCoy said. "I would be delighted to do so." He got out of the Air Force jeep, said, "Thanks for the ride, Sergeant," to the driv-er, and walked toward the Ford. The captain ran ahead of him, pulled the rear door of the station wagon open, and stood to attention as Major McCoy got in the back beside the brigadier general. Then he ran around the front and got in beside the driver.

  As the station wagon drove away, Sergeant Wandowski saluted again. The captain returned his salute.

  "What the hell was that all about?" Brigadier General Pickering asked.

  "Considering the circumstances," Captain George F. Hart said, "I thought a little levity was in order."

  "What circumstances, George?" McCoy asked.

  "Where should I start?" Hart said. "For openers, Banning showed up with a hair up his ass, and the boss had to pull it out of him that Milla's in the hos-pital in Charleston with breast cancer."

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "You could have phrased that with a bit more tact, and substantially more respect for a senior officer," Pickering said. "But let's start with you, Ken. How are you?"

  "Then you weren't wounded very early this morning?"

  "How'd you hear about that?" McCoy asked, genuinely surprised. "I took a little shrapnel hit, nothing serious."

  "We shall shortly find out how accurate a statement that is," Pickering said.

  "Sir?"

  Pickering pointed out the windshield. McCoy looked and saw they were ap-proaching a three-story building. An illuminated arrow pointed to the emer-gency entrance.

  "General, I just had this thing bandaged...."

  "And now the hospital commander himself is going to have a look at it," Pickering said.

  Two hospital Corpsmen, a nurse, and a gurney were waiting outside the emergency room door.

  "I don't need that," McCoy protested.

  "I had to talk him out of sending an ambulance to the airport," Hart said.

  One hospital Corpsman and the nurse came quickly to the station wagon. The second Corpsman pushed the gurney up to it.

  McCoy winced when he got out of the station wagon. Pickering saw it.

  "I don't need that," McCoy said. "Thanks anyway."

  "Get on the gurney, Ken," Pickering said. "That's not a friendly suggestion. The response I expect is Aye, aye, sir.' "

  "Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said.

  He winced again as the Corpsmen helped him onto the stretcher.

  "Where'd you get it, Ken?" Hart asked.

  "Left leg, four inches from the family jewels," McCoy said, and then re-membered the nurse, and added, "Sorry."

  The nurse ignored the apology.

  "Where were you first treated, Major?" she asked. "Forward aid station?"

  "In the sick bay of the Mount McKinley " McCoy answered, then made the connection. "Oh. What did General Almond do? Send a message?"

  "He suspected-correctly, obviously-that you might not mention what had happened to you," Pickering said.

  Captain F. Howard Schermer, MC, USN, looked up from his examination of McCoy's now-unbandaged upper thigh.

  "Couldn't have done it better myself," he said, then stepped away from the table and made a gesture to the nurse to apply fresh bandages.

  "I presume you've been given some penicillin, Major?"

  McCoy reached into the pocket of Al Haig's Army OD shirt, took out a folded sheet of paper, and handed it to the doctor.

  "The doctor gave me this as I was walking out of sick bay, sir," he said.

  "Walking or limping, Major?" Captain Schermer asked. He read the note. "Well, you're full of penicillin. Did he give you anything for the pain?"

  McCoy went back in the shirt pocket, came out with a small vial of pills, and handed it to Captain Schermer.

  "How many of these have you taken? And when?"

  "None, sir."

  "You're a real tough Marine, are you? Or maybe a masochist? That has to hurt like hell every time you move."

  McCoy didn't reply.

  Dr. Schermer walked to a sink and came back with a paper water cup.

  "Take two of these now," he said, and turned to the nurse. "See that he gets one every four hours. Make sure his chart says 'do not wake to administer.' And start penicillin again in the morning."

  "Yes, sir," the nurse said.

  Schermer turned to Pickering.

  "Well, General, the major gets at least ninety-six hours in bed," he said. "At least forty-eight of which he should spend offering prayers of gratitude that whatever hit him didn't go an inch deeper. Or four inches higher." He looked at McCoy. "I said take two of those, Major."

  "Sir, could I hold off until I can call my wife? She's in Tokyo. I don't want to sound like a zombie."

  "Which brings us to Mrs. McCoy," Dr. Schermer said. "Had you planned to tell your wife about your leg, Major?"

  "Nothing to tell," McCoy said.

  "I think she'll be just a little curious when she sees that bandaged leg," Dr. Schermer said.

  "She's not going to see it, sir."

  "Ernie's here, Ken," Pickering said.

  "She's here?"

  "She came to see Pick," Pickering said.

  Schermer added, "And a combination of the train ride down here, seeing Major Pickering, and learning of Miss Priestly's death almost-I say almost- caused her to lose the baby."

  "Oh, shit!"

  "At the moment, her condition ranges from stable to improving slightly," Dr. Schermer said.

  "I want to see her," McCoy said.

  "I am wondering what her reaction will be to learning she almost lost her husband," Dr. Schermer said.

  "She's a pretty tough girl," Pickering said.

  "I noticed," Schermer said.

  "Ken," Pickering said, "Pick took Jeanette's death pretty badly."

  "I suppose," McCoy said.

  "
Dr. Schermer thought, and I agree, that in addition to her own worries, Ernie didn't need to be any more upset by him. So he's on his way to the States."

  "He was that bad?" McCoy asked.

  "He needs a lot of rest, Major. Physically and emotionally. He wasn't going to get much emotional rest here-sending him to the States, we hope, will sort of close a door on what happened to him here-and the hospital at San Diego has the facilities to take better care of him than we can here."

  "I guess that answers my question, doesn't it?"

  "What he did, Ken," Pickering said, "when he finally broke down, was start to cry. And he couldn't stop. And since he didn't want Ernie, or George, or Zim-merman, or-me, to see him crying, that made it worse."

  "A vicious emotional circle, Major," Captain Schermer said. "We got it under control here, temporarily, with medicine, but what Major Pickering needs is a lot of time with a good psychiatrist, and they've got better ones in San Diego."

  "And we haven't told Ernie about this yet, either," Pickering said.

  "Jesus H. Christ!"

  "Your call, Major," Dr. Schermer said. "How do we deal with your wife? If you think a telephone call would be better, if you think learning that you've been wounded would upset her even more..."

  "I'm not going to be wheeled into her room on a gurney," McCoy said.

  "Can you walk?"

  "And I want to go in alone," McCoy said. "And not in Al Haig's Army pants and shirt."

  "Is that where that came from?" Pickering asked, chuckling. "Doctor, Cap-tain Haig is General Almond's aide-de-camp."

  "There's an officers' sales store in the hospital," Dr. Schermer said. "If you will agree to be rolled there in a wheelchair-and from there to your wife's room?"

  "Deal," McCoy said. "That is, if General Pickering will loan me enough money to buy a uniform."

  "I think that can be worked out," Pickering said.

  [FOUR]

  Major Kenneth R. McCoy sat with a white hospital blanket over his knees in a wheelchair in a small dressing cubicle in the officers' sales store. He was wait-ing for his new uniform trousers to be taken in an inch at the waist, and for them to be provided with precisely the correct crotch-to-cuff length. While he was waiting, he was giving serious, just about completely futile, thought about what bright and witty comment, or comments, he would make to his wife when he walked into her room.

  He had just about decided that he was not going to be able to come up with something useful when his reverie was interrupted by Captain George F. Hart coming into the cubicle with a dozen roses.

  "Where the hell did you get those?" McCoy asked.

  "It wasn't easy," Hart said. "A lesser dog robber than myself probably would have had to settle for one of those miniature trees-"

  "Bonsai," McCoy furnished.

  "-of which the Japanese seem so fond."

  "Thanks, George."

  "On the other hand, maybe a bonsai tree would have been better," Hart said. "The roses are going to wilt. The bonsai would last for the next century, as a souvenir of this unexpected encounter."

  A Japanese seamstress pushed the curtain aside, handed McCoy the trousers, and then folded her arms over her breast, obviously intending to see how well she had done her job.

  "Would you please wait outside for a minute?" McCoy said to her.

  Her eyes widened when she heard the faultless Japanese. She bowed and backed out of the dressing cubicle.

  "That always bugs me," Hart said. "They're always surprised as hell when one of us speaks Japanese, but a hell of a lot of them speak English."

  "That's because we're barbarians, George," McCoy said. He handed Hart the hospital blanket, then started to put his left leg in the trousers. He winced.

  "You need some help with that?" Hart asked.

  "They are surprised when we use indoor plumbing, take showers, and don't eat with our fingers," McCoy went on as if he hadn't heard the offer of help.

  He got the right leg mostly inside the trousers, and then, awkwardly, got out of the wheelchair and pulled them up. He tucked his shirttail in, then pulled up the zipper and closed the belt.

  "Hand me the field scarf, please," he asked, pointing to the necktie hang-ing from a hook.

  Hart handed it to him, and McCoy turned around to face the mirror and worked the field scarf under his shirt collar.

  "That hurt. I was better off before I let the doc talk me into the wheelchair."

  "What did you do on the plane?" Hart asked.

  "Planes," McCoy corrected him. "The Beaver from Wonsan to Seoul, and it hurt to move when I got out of that. Then a C-54 to Pusan. I walked up and down the aisle in that-it was the courier plane, full of chair warmers giving me dirty looks because I was wearing Al Haig's shirt and pants-and it didn't hurt-or hurt less-when I got off it. And I walked-not far-around Pusan to keep it from getting stiff until I got on a Navy Gooney Bird that brought me here. Hospital plane, full of wounded Marines. I walked up and down the aisle of that one, too. And I was doing pretty good until I got here. Now it hurts like hell."

  "Moving pulls on the sutures," Hart said.

  "Thank you, Dr. Hart. I had no idea what was making me hurt."

  He pulled on a tunic, examined himself in the mirror, then turned away from it.

  "I think I'll pass on the wheelchair," he said.

  "Not only did you give your word as an officer and gentleman, but Ernie's room is way to hell and gone across the hospital."

  "Well, maybe I can ride part of the way," McCoy said, and carefully low-ered himself into the wheelchair.

  Outside the room with the sign "McCoy, Mrs. Ernestine NO VISITORS," Hart took the roses from McCoy's lap and held them while McCoy got out of the wheelchair and painfully moved his leg around. Then, when McCoy nod-ded, Hart handed him the roses and pushed open the heavy door.

  "That will be all, Captain Hart, thank you," McCoy said, and walked into the room.

  Ernie was in bed, with the back raised, reading a book. She looked up when she saw him.

  "You apparently can't read, Major," she said after a long moment. "The sign says no visitors."

  "What are you reading?"

  "A novel. The Egyptian."

  "Is it any good?"

  "It is not about Korea or childbearing," Ernie said. "What's with the roses?"

  He walked to the bed and handed them to her.

  If I limped, she didn't seem to notice.

  "Knowing you as I do, these were somebody else's idea," Ernie said.

  "Hart's," McCoy admitted. "You almost got a bonsai tree."

  "Are you going to put your arms around me, or I am that repulsive in my bloated condition?"

  He leaned over the bed and put his arms around her.

  "Oh, Ken, I've missed you!" she said into his neck.

  "Me, too, baby," he said.

  "How much do you know?" Ernie asked, still speaking into his neck.

  "I know it was a damned fool thing to do, taking a train down here," he said.

  "I almost lost it," she said. "But I had to see Pick."

  "I know."

  She let him go, and sort of pushed him away.

  "Okay. Now what's wrong with you?" she asked.

  "Nothing's wrong with me," he said.

  "You're as pale as a sheet, and there's something wrong with your leg," she said.

  "I took a little piece of shrapnel," he said.

  "Is that why you're walking that way?"

  "What way?"

  "Ken, is that why you're walking that way?"

  "I suppose."

  "You want to lie down with me?"

  "I want to, but is it smart?"

  She shifted herself to the far side of the narrow bed, then patted the near side.

  He very carefully got into the bed beside her, but was unable to do so with-out wincing several times.

  "I don't think this is going to work," he said.

  "You want to feel him or her? Him or her just kicked me again."


  "Is that good or bad?"