"Just one of them people that's been here every day since you got here.
Head nurse ran 'em off but said we had to call them as soon as you were strong enough."
I wasn't strong enough. Nobody is strong enough to put up with the kind of shit I took from those intelligence people day in and day out for weeks after that. They made Hennessey's accusations sound like "Tsk tsk." One guy in particular started getting really hostile. They were trying to break me down, and that was easy. I've never been able to bear mental battering. But it didn't do a lot of good. I was confused and whiny, and weepy, and even to me my story never sounded exactly the same each time I told it.
But Marge came to visit me once. I told her as much as I could about where Ahn was and said if she could find Heron, I was sure he could find Ahn. I just wanted to know he was okay. She listened to me carefully and nodded noncommittally. On her way out, she stopped and chatted with the head nurse, and after that when the interrogators came, one of the ward nurses made it her business to be nearby.
Otherwise, most of the staff steered clear of me, except for treatments.
I was at the end of the ward, and a curtain was drawn between me and the other patients, so I could hear them but I couldn't see them. I even had a guard, usually a woman, so she could go right into the bathroom with me, if necessary. I was surprised they spared the handcuffs, but at least having a guard meant there was someone I could talk to. I suppose that's what they counted on, but since I didn't have anything incriminating to reveal, it didn't do much good. Some of my guards ignored me pretty much to flirt with the corpsmen or the patients, but one WAC in particular was someone I thought I'd have liked for a friend under other circumstances. She reminded me a little of Hue, short, tough, and very quick, deceptively young-looking, with an aura of bright yellow intellect, creative lavender, and idealistic blue slightly overlaid with deceptive gray-green. I almost told her about the amulet, once, but then I remembered what the inside of a mental hospital is like and knew that that was not where I wanted to spend my first few years back in the world. Also, in the back of my mind, I kept hearing what Colonel Dinh had said about the way the government would use the power to prolong the war. I thought, if Charlie Heron turned up before I left, maybe I would give it to him. But he never did.
Sergeant Janice Mitchell, the one who reminded me of Hue, never grilled me. She just sat inside the curtain and chatted with me, leaving only long enough to light up a smoke away from the oxygen I had flowing through a cannula into my nose, as therapy for the pneumonia. She listened to what I said sympathetically, not as if she was about to indict me for every word. Every time I had another session and she was there, I'd blow off what little steam I had left or whimper in her direction, so we went over the same story almost as often as I did with the interrogators. Maybe more. Besides, we got to talking about home.
She was a Midwesterner too, from Nebraska, and had joined to get out of Nebraska and to be near her brother, who had been up at Phu Bai until he was injured. She was dating several guys, but she didn't elaborate, except in general terms. I gathered maybe she wasn't supposed to talk about that. I told her about Duncan, repeating some of his stories, and about my family. But somehow the conversation would always drift back to what had happened after my fight with Krupman.
I wasn't trying to lie, but I didn't want to talk about the amulet, nor did I want to be obviously withholding anything. So I told her about the villagers, okay, but I down played the injuries and upgraded the available equipment slightly. We had been talking for two weeks before we ever got past the ambush. I started telling her about what happened afterward, what Hennessey had said.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," she said. "You trying to tell me that the general tried to talk these men into killing you? You have witnesses?" She looked a little like a pointer who found a scent just then.
"Well, yeah, like I told you, William Johnson was there, but he got there after the general said most of that stuff. And Zits and Maryjane but-no real names." I shrugged helplessly and stared down at my sheet.
"Wait a minute. There was the radioman. A black guy. His name tag said Brown. He'd tell you."
"I'll check on it," she said ruefully. "There's probably only a couple thousand men named Brown in the area."
She stood up abruptly, flipped back the curtain, and stood at the foot of my bed. I heard the click of her lighter, saw her shadow take three short steps one way, three short steps the other, back and forth.
She and Sergeant Llewellyn, the ward master, struck up quite a friendship while I was there. He had mentioned once when he was handing me an emesis basin that Janice had been with me most of the week I was out with my fever. They'd gotten well acquainted at that time, I supposed. I heard him ask her if she wanted a cup of coffee and she ducked her head in and said, "Kitty, I'm going to the nurses' station for coffee. Want a cup?"
I shook my head. later I heard whispers from the station and then voices raised in argument. I caught the words "your career" in a male voice and then "about as subversive as you are" in Janice's clarion tones, followed by "my career" and mumbles of grudging agreement.
Before day shift ended that day, Llewellyn, a lanky, rawboned 91Charlie who had Cherokee cheekbones and a Tennessee accent, lingered by my bed after picking up my supper tray. His aura was a rather muddied mauve, the healing rose overlaid with anxious gray violet just at the moment, belying his casual tone.
"Well, how are you this evening, ma'am?"
I sighed and tried to smile, but the smile drained away before it got to my mouth. "I'll do."
"Yeah, well, it sure is exciting having you around here, y'know that?
All these visitors and such. Why, it's the most excitement we've had in this place since the My Lai thing and all those newsmen and investigators all over the place. Sergeant Mitchell was on that one, too, but I didn't know her then. Noticed her, though. I don't know how you folks felt up there, but we thought ol' Calley sort of took a fall for somebody higher up. Gotta hand it to General Hennessey, though, he was right in there cryin' atrocity with everybody else, even though I met this fellow used to work in the general's mess?" His voice rose in the Southern interrogatory that means "you know?" but puts in the question mark and leaves out the words. "He said Hennessey was in favor of wipin' out the entire population. Not that that's an unusual idea.
But it's commonly held that if it takes wipin' out all of us to wipe out all of them, he's gonna be right in there wavin' the flag and talkin'
about the domino theory. Between you and me, the man ain't fishin' with a baited hook. He's been around a couple of times to pass out medals and he's downright rude to the female personnel. Why, I remember last spring one lieutenant got raped by a troop under Hennessey's command and she had to go to the I.G. and have her mama write her congressman to keep from being thrown out of the service for bein' a loose woman.
Useful thing, the I.G. I believe General Torelli, same officer that was in charge when Lieutenant LaVeau had her trouble, is still OIC. Between you and me, I think he might like to get somethin' on that bastard."
My brain was not working at rapid speed, but the man had practically drawn me a picture. I had been too harassed and too out of it to wonder, but suddenly I realized I had had no letters, no calls, no solicitousness of any kind from home since my return. Nothing forwarded. I wondered what my family had been told.
"Well, I'd write home," I said wearily, "but I suppose it would be intercepted."