A Weldon Family Christmas: A Southern Steam Novella (Weldon Brothers) (3 page)

“I’ve got a rhythm.” Jackson cried.  “Jared, I want wet towels and bags of ice now.  Hypothermia will help.”

Finally drawing a breath, Emma stood on shaky legs as Rocky let the EMTs inside.  Jackson gave the EMTs orders about what to do next.  The tech’s looked shocked, but then as they saw the treatment John had already gotten, they went into action.  In less than two minutes, John was on his way to the hospital with Jackson riding in the back of the ambulance.

Hands shaking, Emma grabbed the car keys off the hook by the door.  She had to be with John.  She should have jumped into the ambulance.  What if he had another heart attack in the ambulance?

James pulled the keys from her grip. “Mom, get your coat and your purse.  They’re going to need Dad’s insurance information.”

Emma turned at a loss on how to function.  Where was her coat?  Where was her purse?  She couldn’t seem to think.

“Here!”  Jared pulled her winter coat from the entry closet and draped it over her shoulders.

“Let’s load up.  I’m driving my car,” Jesse said, exiting her bedroom with her purse dangling on his arm.

“Don’t worry about anything here,” Alexi said.

“We’ll take care of it,” Nan added.

“And we’ll bring you a bag of things for you to the hospital,” Rocky said.

 Tears blurred Emma’s eyes.  How much loving had gone on in this home?  How many heartwarming Christmas had she and John shared since Saigon?  It couldn’t all end now.

The next thing she knew, James scooped her up into his arms.

Shocked from her stupor, Emma cried out.  “James Weldon, what are you doing?”

“Getting you to Jesse’s car the fastest way possible.  He and Jared are already out there.”

Emma wrapped her arm around James’s neck and cried.  She couldn’t seem to stop herself.  She should be strong.  She should be keeping everything all together the way she always had.  But everything was beyond her grasp.  The twins looked so much like John when she’d first met him.  Only John had been younger and more broken.

James pulled her tight.  “Don’t cry, mom.  Dad’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah.  I do.”

Emma knew what James was referring to and wasn’t going to argue with him now.  She wasn’t convinced that James got “visions” of death even if he thought so.  The incidents of people disappearing from his vision as a precursor to their deaths were more apt to be a symptom of his hangovers.  Having had two friends die after graduation wasn’t proof enough.  And months later, after having a “vision” of Jesse and Jackson disappearing, everyone was just fine.  Even if John didn’t die on the way to the hospital, Emma knew there was a whole spectrum of “not okays” between health and death.  She had worked in a hospital, after all.

 By the time James slid her into the back seat of Jesse’s car, Emma felt ridiculous enough to dry her tears on the dishrag she hadn’t even realized she still held.  James buckled her in and stepped back.

“You’re not coming?”

“I’d thought I’d ride my bike.”

Emma grabbed his hand.  “Please?”

James shrugged and walked around to get in on the other side.  “You worry too much,” he muttered, looking like he had when they’d put training wheels on his bicycle.

Her eyes welled with more tears.  “Maybe, but then your father was worse than me when I first met him.”

Jesse hit the gas, racing toward the hospital.

The past came rushing through her and she couldn’t seem to keep the memories bottled in her heart.  Talking about John made her feel as if she was with him in that ambulance, as if her heart and spirit were reaching across time and space to him.  “I’d only just met your father at a Christmas event in Saigon and we’d spoken for just a minute, but that didn’t stop him from hunting me down and ordering me to go home.”  She smiled and shook her head.  “He’d said that with the troops withdrawing from the war, it was less safe than ever to be in Asia.  And he all but threatened to kidnap me, hog-tie me in cotton, and ship me back to Georgia.  At the time, I thought he was being more than just a bit overbearing, because his actions resulted in my Donut Dolly Supervisor firing me.  And I wasn’t at all happy about that.  Your father had been called back to his unit early and suspected something big was about to happen.  It wasn’t until the day after Christmas, that I learned why he’d been so worried.  You see, the peace talks at the beginning of December had failed and apparently North Vietnam planned to attack, but U.S. forces made a massive airstrike first on December 26
^th
.”  She realized she was rambling, but it made her feel better.

James frowned.  “Why did she fire you?”

Emma’s smile deepened.  That had been a day when the good Lord had tested her every conviction.  John had kissed her, too.

Vietnam
December 1971

E
mma watched John Weldon
leave the Christmas party, her heart squeezing painfully.  She’d been too frank with him.  But he’d come at her with both barrels blasting, demanding to know why she was in Nam, then practically told her she was clueless about the realities of life.

She knew about hell and pain, personally.  That season had lasted most of her childhood and she couldn’t let him run roughshod over her, even if he’d gone about it somewhat politely.  His frankness had demanded her to be truthful.  No matter what he was suffering now, there was light at the end of the darkness.

She’d known before approaching him that he was a wounded soul.  She’d seen that in his eyes before his spark of desire nearly blinded her.  She’d also known she’d never met him before, either.  He wasn’t a man a woman forgot—ever.  Even amid of sea of men, his chiseled features and commanding stature stood out.  His midnight hair gleamed like silk and his crystal blue eyes were pure persuasion.

“Best not let the Dragon Lady see you yearning for that man.  We’re already on thin ice with that woman.”

Emma whipped around, sputtering.  Maggie Shay was her Donut Dolly “buddy.”  They went through training in Washington DC together, flew to Nam on the same planes, and now bunked together.  The Dollies always did everything in pairs.  That way no woman was ever compromised by being alone with a man.  A Donut Dolly’s reputation was paramount.   “What do you mean yearning?  I don’t even know him.  We just met.”

“I know.  I saw you speak to him by the window.  Things looked really intense between you, though.  The Dragon Lady noticed, too.”  They’d nicknamed Miss Slaughter, the thirty-something woman who’d replaced their regular supervisor, Dragon Lady, because slaughter was just too brutal a word in Nam.  Besides, the woman seemed to breathe fire at everyone.  “What were you two talking about?”  Maggie arched a brow.

“Hell.”

Maggie rolled her eyes.  “It’s a Christmas Party.”

“Ho, ho, ho,” Emma muttered.  “I think I may have caused him more pain.  He was already hurting before I spoke to him.”

“Most of the men who stay on the fringes are haunted by something.  I find it hard to believe you hurt anyone, though.  You cry over spilt milk and save creepy-crawlers instead of squashing them.  What did you say to him?”

“Not to let today’s hell steal tomorrow’s heaven.”

“Good Heavens,” Maggie said.  “You do go deep.  Don’t worry, Em.  Casting lines like that usually end up being the very lifeline that saves a man drowning in this godforsaken place.”

Emma grabbed Maggie’s hand.  “Don’t say godforsaken.  Not even in jest.  John was sure God had abandoned all here in Nam.  The soldiers need to know that isn’t true.”

“Who’s John?”

Emma nodded in the direction John had left.  “Mr. Intensity.”

“Are you sure you don’t know him?”  Maggie frowned.

Emma laughed.  “Quite sure, but we’re both from Georgia.   So maybe you sense our home state kinship.”

“I’m thinking I need to move out of Providence when I get back home.  Every gorgeous man I see is from somewhere else.”

“We’d better get back into the crowd.  We’re here for another six months, so no need to make any hasty decisions.”                                       

The rest of the evening passed in a blur of activity.  Being in Saigon was a welcomed respite to the rough schedule they kept out in the field.  Sometimes they would travel to three different bases and put in ten to twelve hour days of smiling, talking, and playing Dolly games with the soldiers.  They were reminders of all things good, the girl next door, the sister, the friend, the girlfriend, the wife, the mother.  The only taste of home that these men would have in many long months and sometimes, it was a man’s last.

 Emma didn’t have a chance to think about John Weldon again until late that night.  Even now, as she lay alone in her bed, she could still feel the electric shock of his gaze and the heated burn of his hand sliding against hers.  Touching his shoulder had made her stomach knot with angst and anticipation.  She knew it was daring and bordered on blurring the strict line of her personal moral code.  Not because she’d touched him, but because she hadn’t reached out to him solely because he was alone and in pain.  The man attracted her, and she’d wanted to know what he’d felt like.  She fell asleep and dreamed about crystal blue eyes that had persuaded her into a steamy affair, which ended with her being dismissed from the Red Cross.

The next day their duties had them visiting the hospital and playing games with the semi-mobile wounded in the lunch-room.  She was in the middle of a checker game with a soldier from Kansas who’d lost his left leg.  He would be leaving tomorrow.  The Dear John letter he’d gotten the day before his platoon had been ambushed hadn’t helped the boy to recover.  At eighteen years to her twenty-two, he felt like a boy and she an older sister.

“Okay, Patrick,” she said as she crowned one of his men and moved one of hers a square.  “Let’s go over your game plan again.  When you get home what are you going to focus on?”

He moved his king.  “Rehab and music.”

She angled another checker to protect her man.  “Is it going to be easy?”

He shifted his king to the next square.  “No.”

She frowned at the board then made her move.  “Then what will it be?”

He retreated his king.  “Hard.”

She jumped one of his men.  “Are you going to give up?”

He doubled jumped her with his king.  “No.”

She groaned, having not seen that move.  “Why?”

He slid another man to be crowned and grinned.  “Because perseverance is its own success.”

She crowned his man then reached over and took the soldier’s hand.  “I’ll be waiting for your letter and be the first in line to buy your album when it comes out.  You can do this.  Life threw you a curve ball, but you’re going to hit a home run, okay?”  Emma felt someone behind her and she
knew
it was John.

“Miss Emma, I love you forever,” Patrick said, and kissed her hand in his enthusiasm.

Emma patted the boy’s hand and freed hers.

Patrick’s nurse came up.  “Time for rehab, kiddo.”

“He’s pretty much won this game already,” Emma said with a laugh.

“Yeah.  I’m ready to go knock it out of the park.”  The nurse wheeled Patrick away.

John pulled up a chair and sat opposite her.  He had a heavy frown darkening his brow.  “You need to go home.”

Emma felt as if he’d slapped her.  Her mouth dropped open.  She couldn't seem to stop her response, even though sarcasm wasn’t in her nature.  “Good afternoon, Miss Rollins.  It’s so nice to see you again.  How are you doing today?  You really make a difference in some of these soldiers’ lives.  You don’t know how much we appreciate that.  Why thank you, Lieutenant Weldon.  So nice to see you again as well.  Sorry, to have to rush off, but I’m due back and I’m already running late.” Her dream of him last night had been too real and his abrupt manner, had her even more flustered.  She had to get away.

Seeing Maggie frowning at her from the door, Emma stood and made a beeline for her buddy.  She grabbed Maggie’s arm.  “Let’s go.”

“We’ve another five minutes.”

“I don’t.”  Emma left and Maggie followed.  Once they reached the street she started venting.  “That man has the manners of a bull in a china shop with the ass end of a mule to back him up.”

Maggie burst into laughter.  “He is rather broad across the shoulders and trim in the hip.  What has you so ticked off?”

“Him.”

“But he’d just sat down, though he had been hovering over you for a bit first.”

“He said five words to me and now I can’t see straight.”

“What did he say?  I’ve never seen you like this.”

“I told her she needed to go home,” John said from behind them both, causing her to jump and Maggie to squeal.  They’d been so involved they hadn’t heard him at all.  Then again, he likely moved like a shadow in the night when he wanted to.

“You do, too.” John told Maggie.  “It’s not safe here.”

Maggie shook her head, seemingly calm in the face of John Weldon’s dictatorial manner.  “I understand your concern, Lieutenant Weldon, but nothing has happened in Saigon in years.  There’s a reason the base and the hospital are here.”

“You’re not seeing all the facts here, Miss…?”

“Shay,” Maggie said holding out her hand.

“Maggie Shay of Rhode Island meet Lieutenant John Weldon of Georgia,” Emma muttered, wondering how her piss-off was being turned into a social occasion.  People on the street were starting to look their way.

“I think we need to keep walking,” Emma said.

Smooth as butter, John stepped between them and ushered them forward.  “I’ll escort you back and say my peace.” 

 “Well, peace away, Lieutenant Weldon.  We’re just two blocks from our destination.  What facts are we missing?”

“The Paris Peace talks failed at the beginning of this month.  Two years ago there were over five hundred thousand men here in Nam.  Now were at about a hundred and fifty thousand with more troops being pulled every day, yet we’re still out there shooting at the NVG hornet’s nest.  If you don’t think something bad can happen in Saigon then you don’t know who we’re fighting.  The situation is ripe for a mortal blow against the US.  Lastly, you aren’t just staying here in Saigon.  You’re flying to Long Bình Christmas Day.  And I’m sure they have you visiting more troops other places before the New Year.  Am I right?”

Emma pressed her lips to keep silent and could have kicked Maggie for answering.  “Yes, we’re scheduled to visit Cu Chi and Da Nang.”

“All of which is none of your business, Lieutenant Weldon.  I appreciate your concern but quite frankly you have no right to march into my life and start dictating what I can and cannot do.”  Emma sucked in a deep breath, feeling much better now that she’d gotten that off her chest.

They reached the entryway to the Red Cross compound.

“I’ve no right?” John asked softly.

Emma frowned at him and wanted to kick Maggie again.  Her friend was grinning from ear to ear.

John continued.  “You gave me that right last night, Miss Rollins.  I can no more walk away without warning you of the danger I see coming than you could resist touching me.”

The door opened behind Emma as John spoke and the Dragon Lady gasped with outrage. “
Touched you?
  Miss Rollins, your improprieties have cast shame upon us all.  You’re fired!  I expect to see you in my office in thirty minutes with your belongings.  I will be seeking what other disciplinary actions are necessary to assure no other woman under my supervision engages in sordid behavior.”

Emma stood stunned.

“You can’t do that!” Maggie shouted.  “She did nothing wrong and you’re besmirching her good name.”

“And you’re lying to protect her.  You’re fired, too.  You both have thirty minutes.”  The Dragon Lady turned on her heal and marched back inside and slammed the door.

“I’ll go explain,” Maggie cried, running after the Dragon Lady.

“What in the hell was that?” John asked. 

Emma planted her finger in the middle of John’s hard chest and pushed.  “That’s you messing up my life.  What do you think someone is going to make of what you said?  ‘Couldn’t resist touching you last night?’”  She snorted.  “You’ve got an ego the size of the Empire State Building.”

John winced and raked his fingers through his hair.  “I didn’t mean it sexually.  I meant it humanely.  You couldn’t walk away from my pain without touching me.  I’ll go and explain to the woman.  How she could take my sentence and run to Bum-uh-Egypt is mind boggling.”

Emma sighed and shook her head.  “I think you’ve done enough damage for one day.  Seeing you more will only add fuel to the Dragon Lady’s fire.”

“Because?”

Emma rolled her eyes.  “Have you ever looked in a mirror, John Weldon?  Every woman who looks at you has impure thoughts, I’m sure.”

He arched a deadly brow.  “Do you?”

Emma straightened her shoulders.  “It would be highly improper for me—”

John leaned down and kissed her.  Just flat out planted his mouth on hers and stole her breath in a thundering heartbeat of excitement.  She moaned and leaned into in him a moment.  She pressed the palms of her hands to his chest and felt the solid burning heat of muscled man for a brief glimpse into heaven before she wrenched away.

“Dear Lord!  You shouldn’t have done that!”

“Why not?  As I see it, it was my only chance.  Kissing a Donut Dolly is off limits.  Currently, you’ve been fired so I can kiss you without breaking the rules.   I’ve no doubt that you will get your job back shortly and will then become off limits again.”

“John Weldon you are a devil if I ever saw one.”

He backed away grinning.  “I did say we were in Hell.  I’m dead serious about your safety, though.  If you won’t go home at least speak to your supervisors about staying in Saigon.  It’s more dangerous out there than ever.  I’ve had my leave cut short for some reason, and I’m going back to camp right now.  Something big is up.”

Emma clutched her hand to her heart, wanting to reach out and stop him from leaving.  Wanting to touch her lips to his again.  She’d thought he was here until Christmas. She wasn’t ready for good-bye.  He disappeared around the corner of the building, leaving the main street.  Would she see him again?