I knelt down to pet him and that was when I noticed Xinhdy's empty bed.
"Sarah, where's Xinhdy?" I asked as casually as I could. She could have been in X-ray, or surgery. She was young and healthy and . . .
"Xinhdy died, Kitty."
"Died?" I asked stupidly. "What do you mean she died? C'mon, Sarah, get real. I'm talking about Xinh, in the last bed? She couldn't have died. All she had was a broken hip, for Christ's sake. She wasn't even on the seriously ill list. She wasn't authorized to die." I know that sounds like a bad joke to an outsider, but we had a seriously ill list and a very seriously ill list. If a patient was not on the very seriously ill list before he died, staff members were considered to be derelict in their duty.
Sarah didn't answer me, but Mai emerged from the bathroom. This time more than her hair was wet.
"Mai . . . ?" I began, still stroking Ahn's back and shoulders. Mai looked away, then covered her face with her hands, and I knew there was no mistake.
But there had to be. When I left the ward the night before, Xinhdy was perfectly okay. Well, she was restless and was sweating more than usual. She had a very slight temp, which I charted. I told Sarah in report I thought Xinh might be coming down with the flu. She'd been so cranky all evening Meyers had asked very carefully if she might be on her period. She kept thrashing around, shifting from one position to another, demanding that things be moved to accommodate each shift. This from the most self-sufficient bedfast patient on the ward. When the other Vietnamese visited, she complained to them in a loud voice until they left again, disgruntled. Still, I figured it was just a little upset. Hospitalized people can get colds and the flu too. My God, had I missed the beginnings of some horrible fast-killing Vietnamese strain of pneumonia? The empty bed stared blankly back at me. I expected a gurney to be wheeled in at any moment with Xinh in her hip spica cast leaning up on one elbow to smile and wave hello like a Rose Bowl princess as she passed the other beds on the ward.
"What was it, Sarah?" I asked. "Did she-was it some kind of flu? Were you able to get Joe?"
"Not till it was too late," she said. "He was over at that generals'
mess at I Corps and didn't get back till later. Captain Schlakowski came over at eight and checked her but thought she was okay. Then we got three new patients on the GI side, and when I came back to do
'dn'ght meds Xinh was having trouble breathing. I was taking her mi I pulse when she arrested. I started CPR while Ryan called a code and tossed me the ambu bag. The team got here right away but it was just too late."
"How could she arrest?" I asked. "She's twenty-two years old."
"I know, I know," she said, her voice getting softer and softer. "Joe came in to pronounce her. He said it was a fat embolism. Sometimes it happens with bad hip injuries who are bedridden for a long time. I never heard of that before, did you?"
"No-l-where's Joe?"
"In surgery with one of the GIs. I don't know how he can do it, Kitty.
He was more upset than anybody. Except maybe Xe. He woke up when the team brought the crash cart and I guess he was confused by all the commotion. He tried to get out of bed by himself and fell, then kept crawling toward us. It was awful," and now Sarah started to cry and I put my free arm around her. "I'm filling out an incident reportnow.
"Old guy's more trouble than he's worth, isn't he?" I said, but my voice cracked.
I didn't cry until toward the end of the day, though. You aren't supposed to cry in front of the patients, but that wasn't it. I just couldn't believe she was gone. Well, gone, yeah, but dead? I kept wandering back to her bed. The silence, without Vietnamese TV, was oppressive. Mai simply made herself scarce except when she had specifically assigned duties. The other patients slept, except for That, when I did her treatment, and Ahn, who clung to me and wanted me to carry him all day.
The day passed in a haze until mail call. I opened a care package from home when I got back to the ward. A nest of fat, bright yarn hair ties lay in the bottom and I pulled them out. My first thought was Xinhdy will love these; and then I looked at her stripped bed and aping bedside table. My throat clamped down. I dumped Ahn in his wheelchair and bolted for the nurses' bathroom on the GI side. I don't know how long it took me to stop crying, but when I did, the fog had lifted and the pain had definitely set in. I wish I could say that I nobly comforted everybody else, but we all handled it as we handled most things in Vietnam, isolating ourselves from one another until we could convince ourselves that the anguish was nonsense, that war was a tough situation and you just had to do the best you could. The patients slept. Mai went home early. The corpsmen and Sergeant Baker furiously cleaned the ward as if the President were visiting the next day. Joe was a pain in the ass when he made rounds, ordering all kinds of useless things for patients he hadn't done more than cursory exams on for months.
On Monday, Sergeant Baker plopped a wad of R&R pamphlets on the desk in front of me. "Forms are right there, Lieutenant. Pick your spot, fill
'em out, and get the hell away from here while you still got the chance."
I leafed through them. The waters of the Great Barrier Reef looked abnormally blue, the mountains of Japan steep, and I already had a camera and a stereo coming from the Pacex catalog. As for the shopping of Singapore and Hong Kong, who needed sleazy silk clothes or outdated beaded sweaters? I couldn't work up any enthusiasm, yet I knew that Sarge was right, I needed to leave, and soon.
Heron was leaning against Xe's side rails when I returned from passing meds to the new GI casualties that day. He looked tired and ungainly, his body angling off in several directions to bring his face close to the still one of the shrunken old man. Xe's left hand fluttered like a moth until it lit in the medic's palm. As I approached them, the old man's eyes opened. His face was agonized as he looked up at Heron, like a dog asking to be put to sleep.
Without turning around, Heron asked, "How long has he been like this?"
"Since last night. He fell out of bed. He was trying to-urn, he was-"
I broke off and bit my lip, swallowed, and continued, "One of our long-term patients died last night. She was-a friend of Xe's. I think he was probably so scared for her he forgot he couldn't walk-"
"Who was it?"
"Xinhdy-Xinh. The girl in the last bed. It was-a sort of freaky thing.
My voice died away as my throat closed off again. "I think -I think he's grieving-"
"That's putting it mildly," Heron said bitterly. Then he turned to face me. "Sorry, McCulley. But you have no idea how special this man is."
"I'm starting to. You've spoken of it before. And-some things have happened."
"Like the deal with the men on the other side of the ward?"
"Heron, I want you to know it wasn't that I didn't mean to help Xe. But I saw Meyers coming and I still had to dress Dickens's legs and I don't think the men would have really-"
He gave me a disgusted look. "Of course they would have. But I understand when you've got two patients who both need you, your inclination would be to stay with the white guy."