«How do you like it?» Weston asked.
«Excuse me?»
«Boiled? Broiled? Thermidor?»
«I don't know,» she confessed. «I've never had lobster before.»
What does that make you, a lobster virgin?
«Really?»
«Kansas—Wichita—is a long way from the ocean,» Janice said.
«It's even farther from Scotland,» he said.
«My father's a doctor,» she said. «He taught me to drink scotch.»
And how to keep it till marriage, right?
«What kind of a doctor?»
«A psychiatrist,» she said.
«And that's why you became a psychiatric nurse?»
«I was in a test program at the University… of Kansas, at the Medical School. The university offers a four-year course in nursing. You need an undergraduate degree to get into medical school. They wondered how well a B.S.N. would do in medical school—hopefully better than the usual B.S. or B.A.»
«B.S.N.? Bachelor of Science, Nursing?»
«Right. So I was one of the guinea pigs.»
«How does one get to be a guinea pig?»
«It helps if your father is a professor of medicine,» she said.
«So why aren't you in medical school?»
«Well, the war came along, the Navy came around recruiting nurses, and Daddy said I should take it. Daddy said I could get more clinical experience as a nurse in the service than I would get as a psychiatric resident.»
Daddy said? Daddy said, «Daughter Darling, go in the Navy, drink scotch, and hang on to your pearl of great price until you get married»?
Well, what the hell is wrong with that?
«What about you?» Janice asked.
«University of Iowa,» he said. «I was raised in Des Moines. Offered a chance for flight school, joined the Corps, and here I am.»
«Your parents?»
«My mother died when I was a kid, and my father—he was in the insurance business—died when I was in college.»
«Brothers and sisters?»
«Neither. Just an aunt.»
«I have two brothers,» she said. «Both doctors. One surgeon and one proctologist. My mother was a nurse before she married my father.»
«What's a proctologist?»
«It deals with the lower intestines,» she said after a brief hesitation.
His face lit up. «I know what it means!» he remembered.
«I thought you might,» she said, and smiled at him.
Goddamn, she's really sweet.
Well, why not? Good solid family. Daddy's a doctor, Mommy's a nurse, she was baby sister to two brothers. Either of whom would probably cheerfully break both my legs if! changed her virginal status. Or pull my tonsils through the terminus of my lower intestines with surgical forceps.
«We ate lobster in Iowa,» Weston said. «God only knows how it got there, but there it was.»
«I'm sure we had them in Kansas, too,» she said, loyally. «My family just never ate them.»
«Charley Galloway told me to go where we're going tonight,» Weston said. «Caroline took him there. Place called Bookbinder's.»
«I've been there,» she said, «a couple of times. I've gone as far as clam chowder and broiled flounder, but so far I haven't had the courage for lobster or oysters. Raw oysters.»
«I'd stay away from raw oysters if I were you,» Weston said without thinking first.
Janice blushed.
Oh, shit. You and your big mouth. She's heard what oysters are supposed to do to you.
And she blushed. She's a nurse, she's heard everything, seen everything, and it hasn't touched her, otherwise she wouldn't be blushing.
«Yes, thank you, Captain Weston,» Commander Jerome J. Kister, MC, USNR, said, as he took the barstool beside Janice Hardison, «I will permit you to buy me a drink. I spent most of the afternoon on the telephone about you.»
«Do I have to buy you the drink before you tell me what happened?»
«Jim!» Janice said.
«Yes, you do,» Kister said, «and let me say how delighted I am that you two have reached some sort of armistice.»
«It was love at first sight,» Weston said. «But she's having trouble adjusting to that.»
«Oh, Jim!» Janice said.
«You mean all you wanted was a lobster?»
«I'm still not sure I want a lobster,» she said.
«The Junior Assistant Deputy Surgeon General of the United States Navy.» Kister said, hoping to turn their attention away from each other to him. When he had their attention, he went on, «Or was it the Deputy Assistant Junior Surgeon General?»
«You tell me,» Weston said. «I'm all ears.»
«Whatever his title,» Kister said, «he's now the guy who makes decisions in cases like yours. He's a captain.» He paused. «I suspect the sonofabitch was an obstetrician in civilian life,» he sighed, «and I'd be very surprised to learn he's ever been afloat in anything larger than a canoe. Be that as it may, the Captain is
absolutely
unwilling to accept my professional opinion that you are no crazier than any other Marine…«
«Oh, shit!» Weston said bitterly, and then, remembering the company, quickly added, «Sorry, Janice.»
«He said that he was surprised that someone of my experience would risk his reputation by making a snap judgment.»
«So what happens now?» Jim asked, quietly furious.
«That was the bad news,» Kister said. «Or almost all of it. I told you they— they being this obstetrician drunk with his own power—would challenge the physical you had at Pearl Harbor.»
«And he did.»
«And he did. But the good news is that he did agree to accept the opinion of the medical staff here vis a vis your general physical condition.»
«I don't understand,» Weston said.
«Presuming nothing bad shows up on your lab work—your blood, urine, that sort of thing, and I don't think it will—on the physical you took this morning, I can certify you as physically fit to enter upon your convalescent leave and get orders cut for you to go to the Greenbrier. You can be out of here in a couple of days, in other words.»
The downside to that is that if I'm out of here, I will also be away from Janice.
«Explain that 'orders cut to go to the Greenbrier' to me.»
«The Greenbrier is a luxury resort hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, which you could not possibly afford under normal circumstances. In the abnormal circumstances existing today, however, you can, because it's free. The government has taken the place over, thrown out the undeserving rich, and made it available for the rest and rehabilitation of returned heroes such as yourself.»
«And if I don't want to go to this luxury hotel in the wilds of West Virginia?»
«You don't seem to understand. You
will
be placed on orders. You
will
, on temporary
duty
for a period of thirty days, proceed to the Greenbrier Hotel. You
will
rest and recuperate, and incidentally be psychologically evaluated.»