The War Within (6 page)

“More like excuses. For one thing, she thinks I’m shallow. Her exact quote was I’m ‘as deep as a wading pool.’”

“She has a way with words, I’ll give her that, but she could definitely learn some tact. A course in sensitivity might be beneficial as well.”

Jordan felt her dark mood begin to brighten. “I knew I could count on you to be on my side. You don’t think I’m shallow, do you?” When Grandma Meredith opened her mouth to respond, Jordan held up her hands to stop the flow of words before they could begin. “Don’t. I’ve had enough constructive criticism for one day.”

“I think you can take a little bit more.”

“Do I have to?”

Jordan hadn’t related Brittany’s other reasons for leaving so she could spare Grandma Meredith’s feelings. She wished Grandma Meredith would return the favor.

When Grandma Meredith turned to face her, Jordan could feel some of that tough love she’d thought she wanted coming on. “I’m not going to tell you to ignore what Brittany said because I think you needed to hear it. But hear this, too. What she said was based on her opinion. Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.”

Jordan snorted laughter. She had never heard Grandma Meredith use any word stronger than fiddlesticks to express her displeasure. She didn’t know which was funnier, hearing Grandma Meredith utter an actual expletive or seeing the unabashed glee on her face when she did. She looked like a teenager sneaking a cigarette under the bleachers at recess. Like she was getting away with breaking the rules and having the time of her life in the process.

“Feel better?” Grandma Meredith asked.

Jordan conducted a brief personal inventory. “A bit, yeah. It’s her loss, right?”

“You bet.” Grandma Meredith cupped a hand against her cheek. “You have an old soul, honey. One day your heart will catch up. I know it will.”

Jordan fanned her splayed fingers as she tried to hold a sudden rush of emotion at bay. “Stop before you make me start crying again. Besides, we’re supposed to be talking about you.” She put the car in reverse. “Are you ready to pick up where we left off?”

“Are you sure you want to hear more about my dull, boring life?”

“Dull and boring, my ass.” Jordan pulled out of the parking lot and eased into the flow of traffic on the interstate. “I would call you GI Jane, but that makes me think of Demi Moore, which conjures up a completely different image altogether.”

“The movie had its flaws—except for a few recent exceptions, most Hollywood war movies fail to get it right—but Demi did look powerful with a shaved head, didn’t she?”

“That’s one way of putting it. Super sexy is another.” Jordan loved being able to talk openly with Grandma Meredith about her attraction to women without having to tone anything down for her audience. “Why can’t I talk with my parents like this?”

“Have you tried?”

“Every time I do, Mom gets all flustered and doesn’t know what to say. Dad just turns fifty shades of red and buries his nose in a book. To make it easier on them, I always change the subject to something safer and more innocuous.”

“In their eyes, you’re still their baby, and the last thing their baby should be doing is having sex. I was the same way when Diana started dating, and your grandfather was even worse. He nearly scared your poor father to death when Diana brought him home to meet us, but he and Frank ended up the best of friends.”

“Guys are different. They can fight it out and forget about what made them start trading blows in the first place. Women don’t usually start punching each other in the face like guys do, but they hold on to slights a lot longer. I doubt Mom will ever be as close to anyone I bring home as Dad was to Papa George. In fact, I’m half-convinced she thinks being a lesbian is a phase I’ll grow out of like a bad haircut.”

“Don’t give up on your mother, honey. Be patient. She’ll come around. One day, something will click and you’ll see the light come on in her eyes. It takes some people longer to see that light than others. But when Diana does, you’ll know it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s what happened to me.”

Jordan reflected on the story Grandma Meredith had told about her first day in Vietnam and the interesting bunch of characters she’d met after she arrived. Man. It had taken serious guts to do what they did. If the teaser was this action-packed, she couldn’t imagine what the rest of the story would be like. She knew how it began and how it ended, but she had no idea what had happened in the middle. And she couldn’t wait to find out.

Did that mean Brittany was right about her? No way. Being supportive of family members and being anti-war weren’t mutually exclusive. Were they? She shook her head to clear her mind of a conflict she couldn’t resolve.

“Do you think we’ll run into Robinson this summer? You said she lived on Jekyll Island, right? She sounds fascinating. I’d love to meet her.”

“She and I lost touch years ago. We didn’t part on the best of terms. I don’t know if she still lives in the same place. If she does, I doubt she would want to see me.”

“If she is still rattling around the island, it would be cool if you two could kiss and make up.”

“Yeah,” Grandma Meredith said as she stared out the window. “That would be way cool.”

September 1, 1967

Saigon

Meredith looked out the rear of the truck as the transport vehicle headed back to post. A thick cloud of dust trailed in its wake. She squinted to see through the sandy filter as the sights and sounds of Vietnam flew past her vantage point.

Despite the spectacular views along the circuitous route between the base and town, she had found working in the hospital disappointing. She liked helping the locals become self-sufficient and she loved being able to ease the patients’ suffering, but she had become frustrated by the fact that, aside from Lt. Col. Daniels, most of her superiors seemed more concerned with making sure everyone’s uniforms were starched and pressed instead of guaranteeing the patients received the best possible care. The majority of the doctors on staff gloated about the cushy assignment they had received, while a relative few openly longed to be closer to the front lines where the real action was. Meredith just wanted to help, no matter her location. That was the reason she had signed up in the first place.

At the hospital, she had kept her head down and done her job as best she could, whether her patient was a local with a stomachache or a GI who had developed a raging infection after falling into a
punji
trap. The spikes in such traps were often deliberately contaminated to compound the misery of its victims and the medical personnel who searched, sometimes in vain, for the proper method to treat the infection.

Now that she had finished her final shift, she had forty-eight hours of leave. Two whole days of down time before she packed her bags and prepared to ship off to her next posting.

Long Binh was an evac hospital thirty-three clicks away. Based on the horror stories she had heard, it would be like leaving heaven for hell. The facilities were better than in Saigon, but the base was crowded, and the types of injuries she’d have to treat would be exponentially worse than the ones she had seen so far. Not to mention the Long Binh Jail also served as the primary incarceration center in Vietnam. For the past year, all of the Army’s ne’er-do-wells and criminals had been housed in the stockade there. More were arriving every day. Meredith had heard the place was a powder keg waiting to blow. She hoped she’d be situated in another post before the explosion occurred. From the looks of things, though, no place in Vietnam was safe.

She held on to the metal support rail above her head as the deuce and a half, a two-and-a-half-ton transport truck, bounced over the pitted road. She braced herself each time the driver hit a pothole, preparing for the inevitable explosion. Just last week, a jeep filled with soldiers on leave had driven over a roadside bomb on the way back from one of the bars in town. Ambulances had been dispatched to the scene right away, but all four men were DOA by the time they reached the hospital. With the amount of damage inflicted, Elias had certainly had his work cut out for him making the bodies look presentable for their journey home.

What made a terrible situation even worse was the discovery that the explosive device had been crafted from material the US Army had unwittingly provided—dud bombs that had been scavenged by locals and fashioned into new weapons less obvious and more insidious than their previous incarnations. In Saigon, such attacks were rare. In country, they happened nearly every day. Meredith was headed in country.

She wondered how much time she would be able to spend away from base. How much time she would spend putting herself at risk.

She fingered the stainless steel dog tags dangling from the ball chain around her neck. Her name, Social Security number, blood type, and religion were stamped into the metal. If something happened to her, one of the dog tags would stay with her, the other would be collected and used to help treat her injuries or, if the unthinkable happened, identify her remains.

“I thought you were Protestant, not Catholic,” Robinson said.

“I am. Why?”

Robinson pointed to her dog tags. “You’re fondling those things like they’re rosary beads.”

“Nervous habit.” Meredith tucked the tags inside her shirt and fastened her top button to keep them out of easy reach.

“Whatever works. Don’t let me stop you.”

Robinson leaned back in her seat as if reclining in an easy chair instead of being tossed to and fro by a driver who seemed more concerned with speed than safety. Meredith envied her ability to look at ease no matter how stressful the situation.

“Did you get posted to Long Binh?” she asked.

“I think everyone did.” Robinson pushed herself out of her seat, stepped over the duffels piled in the aisle, and sat next to Meredith after one of the other nurses moved over to give her room. The various conversations going on around them continued without discernible pause. “The CO said Long Binh is going to serve as the US Army Republic of Vietnam HQ. Most of the USARV command and the units stationed in Saigon will be moved there if they haven’t already.”

The day the postings were announced, the other nurses had chatted about the assignment for hours. Meredith had been left not knowing what to believe. Was Long Binh a resort paradise filled with swimming pools, driving ranges, basketball courts, more restaurants and nightclubs than you could count, and an honest to God movie theater that played some of Hollywood’s latest and greatest, or was it home to one of the busiest evac hospitals in Vietnam and a stockade teeming with angry prisoners? Robinson was the only person she knew who might know for sure.

“What’s it like?”

“Everything you want it to be and then some. There’s so much to do you never have to leave the base. If you want to party and have fun, Long Binh’s the place. If you want to see all the horrors this war has to offer, Long Binh’s the place for that, too.”

“It sounds so big.”

Meredith was overwhelmed not by the size of the base but by the realization she was inching closer to the front lines. Closer to danger. She didn’t know how to give voice to her feelings, but she didn’t have to. Robinson understood without her having to say a word. Robinson knew exactly what she was experiencing because she was experiencing it, too.

“Don’t worry, Goldilocks.” Robinson nudged Meredith’s thigh with her knee. “If you get lost, I’ll leave a trail of bread crumbs for you to follow.”

Meredith felt the sense of calm that always washed over her when she knew she and Robinson would be working side-by-side. The most experienced nurses were assigned the night shift because enemy attacks were more likely to take place after the sun set. As a result, Meredith often found herself working from dusk to dawn. Some days, she saw more of Natalie Robinson than she did her own bed.

“It’s good to know that no matter how bad things get, you and Lt. Col. Daniels will be there to talk me through it.”

“The LTC’s better at it than I am,” Robinson said with an aw-shucks shrug.

“You’re pretty good, too. Remember our first day here when the LTC asked us to go through those body bags?” Meredith shuddered at the memory. “I don’t think I could have gotten through that day without you. And what you did for Bobby Laws? I’ve never seen anything like it. I never thanked you for either of those things, did I? Thank you for everything you’ve done for me since I’ve been here.”

She squeezed Robinson’s hand. Robinson returned the pressure for a second or two, but almost immediately drew her hand away.

“You don’t have to thank me. What I did for Laws wasn’t extraordinary but expected. As far as the first day is concerned, you would have done the same for me, if given a chance.”

Meredith nearly laughed out loud. “When would I have the chance? You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met. You won’t let me or anyone else help you through the tough times. You always insist on doing it yourself.”

“I don’t like being dependent on anyone. I see patients who can’t do anything for themselves, and the whole time I’m with them, I keep thinking, ‘I’m so glad that’s not me.’” Robinson’s eyes were downcast. As if she were ashamed of the admission. “But I suppose everyone needs someone sometime,” she said softly.

Meredith was struck by the simplicity and the eloquence of Robinson’s statement. For someone who didn’t say much, she certainly had a way with words.

“Are you heading into town tonight?” Meredith asked.

She lived in the officers’ quarters on base, Robinson in the tin-roofed hooch she shared with five other enlisted women. At the hospital, they shared the same locker room, shower, and break room. Despite their shared experiences and occasional forced intimacy, Robinson looked at her with what Meredith could only describe as mistrust. “Why do you ask?”

“George Moser asked me if I wanted to grab a beer with him. If you don’t have any plans, perhaps you could tag along.”

“In case you haven’t heard, two’s company and three’s a crowd.”

“You wouldn’t be crowding in. There’ll be eight of us. Four guys and four girls, including George and me. We’re going to meet at Charlie’s and head into town to see what kind of trouble we can get into. You should come with us. I could ask Lois to round up another guy to even things out. I’m sure the gang wouldn’t mind if two more joined the party.”