She’d eat something and drink plenty of water and report for duty. She would drink water only from the Lister bag and take her malaria and diarrhea medications on time.
Outside, she saw that the compound was a sprawling complex of buildings, all set on a mostly treeless patch of rich red earth. There were buildings and shacks and huts and tents. The Quonset huts that housed the wards looked like giant tin cans cut in half vertically and pressed into the dirt, with their entrances protected by sandbags.
She followed the center aisle, which was flanked on either side by a long covered area and rows of buildings. She passed the men’s quarters, the pharmacy, a small chapel, and the Red Cross station, the PX. In the center of the aisle, below a tall water tower, was a raised stage. Empty now.
The mess hall ran perpendicular to the stage. She paused at the open door of the long wooden building. Inside, it was divided in half; one side for officers, one side for enlisted.
She found a table set with bread, muffins, a vat of American peanut butter, and a tub of butter. She poured a cup of coffee and gulped it down, hoping it would quell her pounding headache. When she emptied the first cup, she put peanut butter on a piece of toast and downed it with eight ounces of milk.
She instantly felt sick and ran for the latrines, but made it only halfway there before she vomited at the side of the PX.
When there was nothing left to vomit, she moved cautiously back onto the walkway, made her way to Major Wendy Goldstein’s office. Inside, the chief nurse sat at a desk behind a mound of paperwork, dressed in faded, pressed fatigues.
Frankie stepped inside the office and saluted. “Second Lieutenant McGrath reporting as ordered,” she said clearly.
Major Goldstein looked up. Her face and hair were both pale and could have given the impression of fragility, but somehow the opposite felt true. “What time is it, Lieutenant McGrath?”
Frankie glanced at the black wall clock, which was protected by a black wire cage. “Oh-eight-oh-three hours, Major Goldstein.”
The major pursed her lips. “Oh good. I was afraid you couldn’t tell time. When you are told to report to me at oh-eight-hundred, I expect to see you precisely at oh-eight-hundred. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Major,” Frankie said. “I was … sick.”
“Don’t drink the water or you’ll spend your whole tour either vomiting or crapping. Didn’t someone tell you that? I think—” She stopped midsentence, drew in a sharp breath. She cocked her head to the left, listening. Then said, “Damn.”
Frankie heard the distant thwop-thwop-thwop of incoming helicopters. “Are we under attack?”
“Not in the way you think.” She closed a manila folder. “Let’s see what you’re made of, McGrath. I’ll assign you tomorrow. Be here at oh-eight-hundred sharp. For now, it’s all hands on deck. Report to Lieutenant Flint in the ER.”
“The emergency room? I’m not—”
“It’s not a cocktail party invitation, McGrath. Move.”
Frankie was so confused, she forgot to salute. She couldn’t even remember if she was supposed to salute. She turned and rushed out of the admin building, followed the covered walkway to the set of Quonset huts that made up the wards. Her new boots started to hurt her feet.
At the helipad, marked by a red cross on a white circle on the ground, she saw three helicopters, each emblazoned with the Red Cross insignia, buzzing overhead. None had manned gunners at the doors. So these were the Dust Offs she’d read about. Unarmed medevac helicopters that transported injured men off the field. Two of them hovered as the third lowered.
A medic and two nurses appeared almost instantly and began offloading men on litters.
Moments after that chopper lifted up, another lowered onto the pad. More corpsmen showed up to offload the wounded. An ambulance drove up to Pre-Op.
Frankie found the Quonset hut that housed the emergency room.
Medics ran in and out, carrying men on litters: one lay screaming, his own severed leg on his chest; another had no legs at all. Their uniforms were bloody; some of their faces were still smoking from burns the medics—or their friends—had put out. There were gaping chest wounds—one guy she could see had a broken rib sticking up. Ethel stood in the midst of the chaos like an Amazon goddess, directing traffic, positioning the casualties, pointing out what to do with the wounded. She seemed unaffected by the chaos. More men followed her commands. There were so many wounded that some had to be left outside, their litters set on sawhorses, waiting for space in the ER.
Frankie was overwhelmed by the horror of it. The screaming, the smoke, the shouting.
A medic saw Frankie standing there and shoved a boot into her arms.
She stared down at it, saw that a foot was still inside.
Frankie dropped the boot, stumbled just out of the way, and vomited. She was about to vomit a second time when she heard, “Frank. Frank McGrath.” Ethel grabbed her by the arm.
Frankie wanted to run. “I’m not trained for this.”
“We need your help.”
Frankie shook her head.
Ethel touched Frankie’s chin, made her look up. “I know,” she said, pushing her hair back with a bloody hand. “I know.”
“In Basic, they taught us how to wrap bandages and shave a man for an operation. I shouldn’t be here. I—”
“You can hold a man’s head. You can do that.”
Frankie nodded numbly.
Ethel took her by the hand and led her to the staging area in the ER. “This is triage,” Ethel said. “We assess here. We decide who gets seen and when. We treat the ones we can save first. That screen over there in the back? We put the expectants there—men who probably aren’t going to make it. We see them last. We can treat five gutshot wounds or amputations in the time it takes to handle one head injury. You understand? The walking wounded—those men over there.” She pointed to a group of soldiers who stood beside the screen with their fellow soldiers, talking, smoking, doing what they could to comfort the expectants. “They’ll be seen when we have time.”
Ethel led Frankie to a soldier lying on a litter. He was drenched in blood and one arm was just … gone. She looked quickly away.
“Keep breathing, Frank,” Ethel said calmly. “Hold his hand.”
Frankie positioned herself at the patient’s side and forced herself to look down. At first all she saw was the horror, the devastating amount of blood, the arm that had been severed at the elbow, revealing the white of bone and pink gristle and dripping blood.
Focus, Frankie.
She closed her eyes for a second, exhaled, and then opened her eyes.
She saw the soldier this time, a young Black man wearing a dirty green bandanna, who looked barely old enough to shave. Very carefully, she took hold of his hand.
“Hey, ma’am,” he said in a slurred voice, “have you seen my buddy Stevo? We were together…”
Ethel snipped the uniform off of the young man, revealing a massive abdominal wound.
Ethel looked up. Her eyes were tired. “Expectant,” she yelled out.
Two medics appeared and picked up the litter and carried it to the staging area behind the screen.
Frankie looked up at Ethel. “He’s going to die.”
“Probably.”
Was this what Frankie had joined the Army for, to watch young men die?
“We will save plenty of lives today, Frank. But not all of them. Never all of them.”
“He shouldn’t die alone.”
“No,” Ethel said, and gave her a tired smile. “Go, Frank. Be his sister, his wife, his mother.”
“But—”
“Just hold his hand. Sometimes that’s all we can do. And then … come back here.”
When he was dead; that was what Ethel meant. Frankie felt as if a giant weight were suddenly pressing down on her as she stepped around the screen. The soldier—kid—was off by himself. She saw that he was crying.
She approached him carefully, looked down, saw his name and rank. “Private Fournette,” she said. It seemed to get quiet suddenly. She couldn’t hear the screaming of the helicopters coming and going or the nurses yelling at one another. All she could hear was this man’s labored, bubbly breathing.