The Monster MASH

by Angie Fox

  “What? I don’t think so.” If he was, he was being private about it. Quite a feat in this camp of nosy Nellies.

  I strolled past Shirley and checked the heavy wood door to Kosta’s office. It was locked. “Is he in there?”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “And he’s going to kill me when he sees these.”

  “Oh no, he’s not.” I needed the colonel in a good mood. I was about to ask a giant favor, and I didn’t need any distractions. “How did you get so many?”

  She blew at a lock of curly hair that had fallen over her face. “Supply clerk,” she said. “I foisted a bunch of work off on him.” She groaned with regret. “I told him to order a pallet of rubbers. You know? Latex gloves. He thought I meant condoms. I mean, whose brain immediately goes to condoms?” she asked.

  “A man’s,” I said. Especially around here.

  She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “I’m so screwed.”

  It was an honest mistake, for those of us who weren’t keen on details. Shirley was more of a big-picture person, or at least she had been when she was in charge of games and recreation. She was an outdoorsy type. The outer office didn’t even have any windows.

  “What in Hades made them transfer you here?” I asked.

  Sure, they’d needed somebody after Kosta’s last assistant went berserk. The poor selkie was asking for signed paperwork before ducking out to the latrine. The colonel could do that to a person.

  “I requested it,” she said, smoothing her uniform shirt and sending a smoldering look at Kosta’s closed door.

  Love could make you do crazy things. It was no secret that Shirley had a crush the size of Manhattan, but I hadn’t realized she was that gaga over the colonel.

  If you asked me, she’d have been better off with someone else. Sure, Kosta was easy on the eyes, in a Vin Diesel I’m-going-to-kill-you sort of way, but he was a Spartan. They lived for discipline and self-denial, not hearts and chocolate.

  I could hear him shuffling on the other side of the door. Lordy. If he was moving, he might be out here soon. I needed him in a good mood.

  “Just explain to Kosta that supply messed up.”

  “Except that he specifically ordered me to handle these kinds of things myself.”

  “Oops.”

  “Thanks,” she said, miserable.

  “Hey, why don’t you call Rodger? He’ll take these off your hands.” We could use them. “I’m thinking water balloons.”

  Kosta might get to see them yet.

  Shirley’s eyes widened. “You really think so?”

  I had no doubt.

  “It’s not like anybody would miss them.”

  She leaned over her desk and flipped on the intercom microphone.

  Rodger Wolfstein, report to Colonel Kosta’s office, she said, glancing back at me. See if you can’t find a couple of orderlies along the way.

  “That’s bound to start some rumors,” I told her.

  “Would you mind helping me move them outside?” she asked.

  “Now?” I mean, if big, burly men were going to be moving boxes for me, I’d rather leave them to it.

  “If the colonel hears a commotion, he’s bound to come out,” she said, glancing at the door.

  Well, all right. I picked up a box. They weren’t too bad. Shirley and I spent the next few minutes banging in and out of the outer office until all twenty-four cases were stacked outside.

  A trio of supply clerks whistled as they walked past.

  “Petra,” one of them called, “you should have let us know. We could have gotten you a discount.”

  “These aren’t for me,” I snapped. And why did they always travel in threes?

  “Nice going, Petra,” called the ungrateful jerk I’d given my dessert to last week. In all fairness, prepackaged, dehydrated ice cream was no real treat, but still…

  “These are for Rodger!” I corrected.

  “Well, you can’t expect them to believe that,” Shirley said. “Rodger is devoted to his wife back home.”

  “Remember, I’m helping you.”

  “I know you are,” she said, missing the point entirely. “Oh look. Here comes Rodger.”

  “Good. Can we go inside now?”

  “Impatient,” she said as she followed me back inside.

  I felt for the knife in my pocket. Still there. It was now or never. “Can you get me in?”

  “Let me fluff my hair and put on a little lipstick,” she said, digging in her desk drawer.

  “Okay, but I’m not waiting while you stuff your bra.”

  A gorgeous and calm Shirley announced my presence, and I heard a gruff, “Enter.”

  Kosta sat behind a desk like Shirley’s. It might have been slightly larger, but it was still standard metal, military issue.

  Ancient battle shields lined the walls of his office, no doubt trophies from a former life. The colonel had been granted immortality after the campaign against Athens, but he sure hadn’t let it go to his head.

  He frowned, the muscles in his shoulders bunching. “You here to talk about the kraken in the officers’ showers?”

  “No.” I didn’t start it. I merely relocated it.

  He steepled his fingers and leaned forward. “What about the cannabis you planted in my vegetable garden?”

  “Let’s skip over that.” I’d told Rodger we needed to hide it closer to the tomatoes.

  His eyes narrowed. “You want to explain the snails in my combat boots?”

  “That wasn’t even me,” I said a bit too quickly. Whoops.

  Good one, though.

  “Sit,” he ordered.

  I took the straight-backed wooden chair opposite his desk.

  “What do you want, Robichaud?” He watched me like he knew. He grunted, leaning back in his chair. “It had better not be more surgery cases. You don’t have the rank or the seniority.”

  I squirmed on the hard wood seat. “Not today, Colonel.” Although I still hadn’t given up on that one despite all the trouble my last big surgical patient had given me. “I’m afraid it’s more serious.”

  He gave me his full attention. “Yes?”

  I crossed my legs, then uncrossed them, fighting the urge to sugarcoat it. Kosta liked things short and to the point. “I’m dealing with a bureaucratic mistake. My patient isn’t my patient anymore. He was transferred to a dead doctor. I want him back.”

  “It could take months.”

  “So I’ve heard. But it doesn’t make logical sense,” I insisted, knowing Kosta preferred facts over emotion. “He needs to go back to his unit. Only the doctor who needs to sign off is dead.”

  He sat, unmoved. “Call on another doctor in the unit.”

  “His backup is dead. They’ve been dead for eighty years.”

  Kosta studied me. “I’m sure he’s in good hands wherever he is.”

  It took everything I had to keep my voice calm and my butt in the chair. “That may be so, but I need him out of here. He’s my patient.” I felt guilty for trying to get rid of him in the first place.

  Kosta tilted his head. “What’s really going on here, Robichaud?”

  Galen of Delphi saw too much.

  Knew too much.

  Made me feel too much.

  Worst of all, Galen of Delphi might be right.

  I stood quickly. I needed a walk or maybe a swift kick upside the head. “The patient is fully recovered,” I said, pacing between an Athenian shield and an uncomfortable-looking cot. “He’s a trapped war hero who probably doesn’t appreciate being stuck here.”

  Kosta pulled out a cigar from the bottom drawer of his desk. “He’s a soldier. He’ll manage.”

  “Why should he have to? Can’t you call someone?”

  “I don’t bend the rules.” He bit the tip off the cigar and tossed it in the trash.

  “I should have just signed it myself,” I mused.

  “And you’d have faced court-martial.”

  I stared at the ceiling. “So the only thing left would b
e to raise this doc from the dead.”

  Kosta scoffed. “You know it doesn’t work that way, Robichaud,” he said, lighting up.

  I knew. I’d never seen Kosta use his power to raise the dead, but I knew it cost him every time he did it.

  “Powers are a tricky thing,” he said.

  Tell me about it.

  He rolled his cigar between his fingers. “Every action has consequences.”

  It was the last thing I wanted to hear. “So what do you expect me to do?” I needed him to throw me a bone here.

  “Deal with it.”

  “Lovely.”

  He took a few puffs. “You may want to start with Shirley. Tell her I said to talk to Pandora at HQ.”

  “Okay.” I could do that. “Thanks.”

  I turned to leave.

  “One more thing.” He rolled the cigar in the corner of his mouth. “You say this man’s a war hero?”

  “Yes,” I said, hope blossoming.

  He pulled the cigar from his mouth and pointed it at me. “Then I’m going to have to agree with you. He doesn’t belong in the hospital tent.”

  I wanted to twirl with relief.

  “Put him in VOQ,” Kosta said.

  “Visiting officers’ quarters?” He had to be kidding. That was for diplomats and generals and important people.

  “I’ll have them start prepping the tent this afternoon. It’ll be ready first thing tomorrow. You give this soldier one final exam and then move him in.”

  “Oy.”

  “One more thing, Robichaud. Be sure to tell this hero how honored we are to have him with us.”

  I nearly choked. “Believe me, sir. He’s made himself quite welcome.”

  Chapter Eleven

  That night Rodger and I patched up a couple of mechanics from the motor pool who had tried—and failed—to unleash a plague of locusts in Kosta’s tent.

  We were in the small intake room off the main OR. Two tables, no waiting.

  Rodger had been avoiding me all day. Now he wouldn’t even look at me as he worked.

  Yeah, well, denial would only get him so far.

  The mean part of me hoped he had a hangover. Maybe he’d learn from it.

  “That’s a nasty scrape,” Rodger said to his patient.

  I shot my friend a dirty look. “It’s always good to think before you act.”

  That went for me, too, I realized as I leaned in to get a better look at the Russian sitting on my exam table. I touched my gloved fingers to my patient’s bald head and craned my arm to adjust the large silver snake light above him.

  “There’s not much I can do for the bites,” I said, examining a particularly nasty one between his eyes. A little Neosporin should do the trick. “Your buddy got the worst of it.”

  His companion lay on Rodger’s table, suffering more from humiliation than his twisted ankle. He tilted his head up. “Next time, we’ll use frogs.”

  Rodger tossed his exam gloves into the waste bucket between our tables. “It’s not your taste in plagues. It’s the colonel’s wards.”

  True enough. Rodger and I learned that firsthand when we tried to park a jeep in his office. “He’s got his hutch warded, his car—”

  “His private latrine,” Rodger added. He cast a glance my way, testing the waters. “Kosta’s a slippery one.”

  Our patients had made a beginner’s mistake. Sure, Kosta’s plain tent looked like an easy target. So did his car—a vintage 1959 Cooper T51 racer that he liked to polish with a cloth baby diaper. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that the Formula One racer was Kosta’s only luxury.

  Back when the vacation pot was only up to a week and change, Rodger and I tried to fill Kosta’s race car with gumdrops. We got our candy-laden trash bags to within a foot of the royal blue paint job and the gumdrops started exploding. It was like we were each holding a thousand live firecrackers. Rodger screamed like a girl. I’d like to say I handled it a little better. But I don’t like to lie.

  No doubt the colonel had been in his tent, smoking a cigar and laughing his butt off.

  “That’s why the vacation pot is up so high,” I said, placing a Band-Aid between the Russian’s eyes.

  Well, that and the fact that we’d gotten a lot of veteran transfers. You had to put in your whole vacation savings bank in order to have a shot at the jackpot. Some of the immortals had chipped in as much as a day. It was insane.

  “It can make people do crazy things,” Rodger said, tucking an ice pack into his patient’s bandages.

  “Like drive a person to drink,” I said, tearing open another Band-Aid, not bothering to hide my meaning.

  Rodger took a sudden interest in making sure the Ace bandage clips were tight.

  My patient frowned. “Kosta’s not the magical type.”

  Not unless you counted raising the dead as magic. Still, the Russian had a point. “We think there’s someone helping him,” I said.

  “We keep hoping Kosta’s magical ace is in camp,” Rodger said.

  “And corruptible,” I added. If we could figure out who it was, and if the person was open to part of the jackpot, we’d be in business.

  “Did you two see anybody outside after your prank failed?” Rodger asked. “Anybody checking out the hutch or maybe aiming a few spells at the place?”

  “We were too busy running,” the man on Rodger’s table groaned.

  I didn’t blame them.

  Rodger helped him down, and we sent our patients back to their hutches with parting gifts of crutches, antibacterial ointment, and Band-Aids, courtesy of the New God Army.

  The room was deafeningly quiet save for the low buzz from the overhead lights.

  I pulled off my latex gloves. “I’m glad we were on call tonight,” I said to Rodger, “or else I would have thought you ran away.”

  “I haven’t been avoiding you,” he growled, shoving the Ace bandage roll back into the med cabinet.

  “Oh good,” I said. Fan-fricking-tastic. “Then you must want to talk about what happened last night.”

  Rodger tossed a disposable ice pack into the med waste bin. “No. Because I already have a mother and she’s in Croydon.”

  “So I’m a nag if I tell you that you might have an alcohol problem.”

  He glared at me. “I’m in control.”

  “Is that a fact?” My heart thumped hard against my chest. “Then why the hell did you tell Galen about the knife?”

  “Wait.” He threw up a hand. “What?”

  He’d better not deny it. “You heard me.”

  He stood, stunned. “I don’t remember that.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “And you don’t think that’s a problem?”

  He ran a hand through his coarse mop of hair. “Hey, I’m sorry. I had no idea—”

  Yeah, well, that ticked me off more. “Sorry doesn’t cut it.” Apologies meant nothing if he didn’t promise to knock it off. “Look, this place gets to me, too.” It got to all of us. “But it doesn’t mean you have to destroy yourself.”

  Rodger cocked a brow. “Aren’t you being a little melodramatic?”

  “No.” I sighed. It was like reasoning with a doorknob. “I’m worried about you.”

  He dragged on his army field jacket. “I got it, okay?”

  I didn’t think he did. But I’d made my point as best I could.

  Rodger started flipping off lights.

  I bent over the small desk by the door and signed us out on the log sheet. “You got drunk and didn’t bother to think. Now, because of you, Galen is convinced I’m some answer to everyone’s prayers.”

  “Who’s Galen?” Rodger bent to add his signature.

  “The special ops soldier,” I snapped.

  Rodger gave me a knowing grin. “Ahh, so now he’s Galen?”

  “Oh, grow up.” I wasn’t in the mood. “Don’t you think there’s something wrong if you don’t remember what you said last night?” I planted a hand on my hip. “What would Mary Ann say?” Maybe I should write to
his wife about his drinking.

  Although, chances were she could do nothing, and it would only worry the snot out of her.

  Rodger snarled. His shoulders bunched as if he were ready to pounce.

  “What?” I asked. “Too close to home?”

  Yellow ringed his pupils as he stared me down. He seemed larger, more menacing as he sucked the air out of the small room.

  I rolled my eyes. “Too bad for you the angry-werewolf thing stopped working about three years ago.” And frankly, it ticked me off he’d try. “I know you weren’t on duty and you weren’t on call, but what if we’d actually needed you last night? What if a dozen ambulances came screaming in and we needed an extra set of hands?”

  He growled low in his throat. “Are you done?”

  “No.” Because that wasn’t even why I was mad. I scrubbed a hand over my eyes and sat back against the desk. “Remember last month?”

  Rodger had gotten drunk, shifted, and gnawed the tires off half a dozen ambulances.

  He crossed his hands over his large round chest. “You nailed Marius into his footlocker,” he said accusingly.

  Way to bring that up. “That was different. I wasn’t drunk.”

  He shrugged one meaty shoulder. “Look. I’m fine. Okay?”

  No, it wasn’t okay. Something was taking hold of Rodger. I looked up at my friend and knew from the stony expression on his face that he’d shut down.

  I didn’t know what else I could say to get through to him, and that bugged me most of all.

  “Rodger—” I blew out a breath. What was I going to do? Tie him to his bed? Nail him in a footlocker? He had to decide he had a problem, and he had to want to change. I didn’t know how to deliver him to that point. Maybe he hadn’t screwed up enough yet. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said, letting it drop. Rodger always let it drop.

  It was dark and I was cranky as we trudged toward the tar swamp, crunching over locusts, batting them away from our eyes.

  Cursed amateurs.

  It had been a grueling day, made more annoying by the fact that I’d been running full throttle and somehow making things worse instead of better.

  Father McArio was no longer the only one who knew I could see the dead. The entire camp thought I was going to use forty-eight thousand condoms. And Galen was a VIP.