Authors: Ronald J. Glasser
“What?” Edwards asked.
“Detonators. I must have taken a round in my rucksack. They just blew up, and then I was on fire. Tried to tear my gear off, but my hands...”
“It’s all right,” Edwards said. The evac Sergeant handed him the patient’s medical jacket. Quickly turning the pages, he read: “Eighty percent second-degree and third degree. Debridged under general anesthesia at the 60 evac, Chu Ci. Six liter plasmonate...catheterized...furacin and sterile dressings...Demerol...64-mg. q three hours.” He looked at the cover sheet. “David Jensen, MOS B11; 1/30 E-2, 4th Division, 20 years old.”
“Twenty years old,” he thought, handing back the chart. “Grant’s age.”
“David,” he said wearily.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m going to have the corpsman take you to the ward.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The first thing we’re going to do is put you in a whirlpool bath to soak off your bandages and remove what dead skin we can. It’s going to hurt.”
“Yes, sir,” David said, his voice wavering.
“If it hurts, just let us know. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me sir.”
“Yes, sir; thank you, sir.”
“Take him to C-4,” Edwards said to the corpsman. “Tell Sergeant Dorsey I’ll be right there. And David...”
“Yes, sir.”
“Burns look and feel a lot worse than they are. You’re going to get better.”
“Yes, sir.”
Edwards watched the corpsman wheel the boy out of the evac area and then left the area himself to go to the neurosurgery ward. It was a long walk. Like all Army hospitals, Kishine is fantastically spread out, its buildings and wards acres apart so that no one shell or bomb can get it all. By the time he got to the ward, the neurosurgeon was already in the treatment room. The patient, partially hidden by the nurse and doctor, was lying naked on the treatment table. There were blood-soaked clothes and bandages all over the floor. Cramer turned his head for a moment, looked at Edwards, and went back to work.
“His frontal lobe is torn up,” Cramer said. “I’m going to have to take him up to the operating room and save what I can. What do you think about his burns?”
Looking over Cramer’s shoulder Edwards saw that the surgeon’s fingers were deep inside the half shell of the boy’s skull. “Don’t worry about the burns,” he said, turning to leave.
“Oh, Edwards,” Cramer said as he reached the door. “I know how close you two’d become. I’m sorry.”
“Regardless of the branch of service: The emblem of the Infantry, crossed rifles, will be carried on every coffin. The deceased, where the remains are viewable, will be buried in full military uniform. The emblems on his uniform will be that of the service to which he was attached at the time of his death.”
He walked down the corridor to the elevator. Leaning wearily against the wall, he pressed the button, and without looking, stepped in even as the door was opening, almost colliding with one of the patients. “Sorry,” he said, moving over to the other side of the elevator. The patient, his bathrobe slung over his good shoulder—the other was wrapped in a plaster cast—smiled politely and was about to look away when he saw the doctor’s name plate on his uniform.
“Excuse me, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Do you have any relatives in Nam?”
“Yes,” Edwards said, “I do.”
“First Air Cav?”
“Yes.”
“Is his name Grant?”
Edwards nodded as the elevator suddenly slowed to a stop.
“Your brother?” The door opened. “I thought so,” the trooper said, obviously pleased. “You sort of look like him.”
“Come on,” Edwards said pleasantly, holding the door.
“I saw him about three weeks ago. There isn’t a better platoon leader in the whole cav. But I can tell you this, they were handing him some shit to do, when I saw him. His unit was on their way to getting their ass whipped.”
“Are you sure, Grant? Why don’t you go into Tokyo? You only have a few days for your R and R. You might as well have a good time.”
“But I want to see what you’re doing.”
“It’s not nice.”
“And where do you think I’ve been?”
He had been surprised at how well Grant had handled himself in the burn unit. He had seen more than one visitor walking through the ward trying desperately to be natural, moving stiffly from bed to bed, smiling and talking as if the boys weren’t burned at all. When Grant visited, there were two ghastly 90-percent burns stretched out, blistered and dying on their Stryker frames. Grant had stopped to talk to them and stayed with each much longer than he had to. He was very much at ease. He didn’t ignore their wounds, or pretend not to see they were so obviously dying. He simply talked to them, interestedly and honestly, with a concern so palpable that no one could doubt his sincerity. He was one of them and, for a moment, watching his brother sitting by their frames, Edwards felt suddenly very much outside it all. He was very proud of his younger brother.
“I’ve seen worse, Bob. Really...a lot worse.”
“Sir?”
“Yes, I know,” Edwards said gently. “They did get whipped.”
When he got back to the burn unit, he found David in the treatment area, already floating full length in one of the whirlpool baths, his head supported on a padded board to keep it above the waterline, the water gently churning about his burnt body. His IV bottle, hanging from a ceiling hook, was still working. A few of the dressings had already soaked off, and the medic was picking them out of the water. Taking an admissions chart off the wall rack, Edwards sat down on a chair next to the huge tub.
“OK?” he asked.
David, clenching his teeth, nodded.
“Just try to relax. I have a few things to ask you.” He quickly went over what had happened, the illnesses that David had had, whether he had taken his CP pills, whether he was on any medicines. While he was taking the history, he carefully, in a pre-printed outline of a man that was drawn on the admissions sheet, sketched in the areas of the burns and their depth, using red for third degrees and blue for second; he kept filling in until almost the whole figure, front and back, was covered.
“David,” he said, “we’re going to debride you a bit—take off the dead skin. We are going to have to do it every day, a little bit at a time. That way it won’t be as painful.” David was looking anxiously at him. “Once you know what’s going on, it won’t be so bad. We’re going to put you into the whirlpool every day, and all the skin that is loose, or loosening, is going to be removed. It has to be done.” He hesitated a moment and then went on matter-of-factly. “If we don’t take it off, it just stays and decays, forming a place for bacteria to grow and divide, and you’ll just get infected. That’s what we want to avoid, because if the burns get infected no new skin will form. It’s going to hurt, and I’ll give you something for the pain when I think you need it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve been doing this a long time, David, and I know when it really hurts and when it doesn’t. We’re going to have to be doing this for some time and we don’t want to make an addict out of you, so we’re only going to use the pain medicine when we have to. I know you can do it. There have been a lot of troopers, just like you, through here, and I know you’re as fine as they are.”
David had been staring up at him the whole time. What was left of his lips were clamped tight against the pain of the water churning against his blistered skin. “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice trembling.
“OK, John,” Edwards said. David looked nervously from him to the corpsman. Pieces of dead skin were already floating free. The corpsman, kneeling down beside the tub, began picking off those pieces that were still attached but had been loosened. “How long have you been in Nam, David?”
“Five...five months,” David said, watching the corpsman pick a chunk of skin off his chest. He had to tug to get it off. David grimaced, barely suppressing a groan.
“How do you like the Vietnamese women?” the medic asked.
“Don’t know,” David said, painfully engrossed in watching the corpsman go after another piece of his skin. “Didn’t meet any gooks.”
“How come?” the medic asked, scooping a piece of skin out of the water.
“We killed ’em all.”
Suddenly David let out a scream, and the scream, echoing off the spotless tile walls, pierced Edwards to his heart. His eyes clenched tight, the boy was fighting valiantly for control. Blood began oozing from the new patch of raw skin on his chest, and Edwards could see the tears rolling down his burned cheeks.
“Where you from, Doc?” the cab driver asked.
“Japan.”
“Oh,” the cabbie said, pulling away from the curb. “Thought so, saw the Fuji patch on your sleeve. Nice place, huh?”
“No,” Edwards said.
“I heard that Japan was paradise.”
“I work in a burn unit.”
“Oh, get many burns over there?”
“There’s a war on. Remember?”
“You mean, you get those guys in Japan?”
“Yeah,” Edwards said. “We get those guys...”
“Major, Major?”
Edwards opened his eyes. It was the ward master.
“Excuse me, sir. Those flights back from the States are tough. I’m sure you haven’t caught up with the time change. Why don’t you take a sleeping pill and get some rest?”
“Think I’ll take your advice,” Edwards said, closing his clipboard. He wrote a Demerol order for David and then went to his room. As tired as he was, though, he couldn’t sleep. Every time he drifted off, he’d see Grant’s tag: “Remains, non-viewable.” And all that time in the States he thought he could handle it.
He woke up in the morning exhausted, put on his wrinkled uniform, and went to the ward.
Johnson was already in the office. “Hi,” he said, turning around from his desk. “You know you didn’t have to work today—or yesterday, for that matter.”
“I know.” Edwards hung up his jacket. “There’s really not much else to do.”
Both he and Johnson had shared the same office for almost a year now. Johnson had been the plastic surgeon working with the burn unit at Duke University. He had been drafted and assigned to Kishine.
“You want to go on rounds?” Edwards asked.
Johnson pressed the button on the intercom. “Julian, we’re gonna start rounds.” He pushed himself away from the desk. “Let’s go.”
“How’s the fellow on the respirator?”
“He died this morning,” Johnson said, picking up his notes. “I told the corpsman to leave you alone.”
They walked down the ward, stopping at each bed. Fifty-percent burns, 80-percent burns, hand burns, half-burned, arm burned, 70-percent burned, third-degree, first-degree, second-degree, pseudomonas infections, staphylococci infections, split thickness graphs, full thickness grafts, swing flaps, corneal burns, esophageal burns, tracheal burns, contractures, isolated tendon repairs, urinary tract infections, open wounds, closed wounds, furacin dressings; sulfamyalon, penicillin, Chloromycetin, actinomycin D, renal failure, congestive heart failure, gram negative shock, steroids, isoprel, epinephrine, full diet, soft diet, liquid diet, hyperalimentation, normal saline, plasmonate, albumin, blood-type A, type O; unmatched, matched, cross-matched....
“Your grafts are holding up nicely, Harold.”
“Sergeant, increase Dermitt’s Demerol to q three hours, prn.”
“Let me see Denton’s temp sheet.”
“How’s Leon’s titers?”
“Robinson, you’re doing fine.”
“Jergons, I want you to do more P.T. with that hand.”
They moved on down the ward. On each bed or posted on the wall above the frames were the patches of the units each patient belonged to: the yellow and black of the 1st Air Cav; the red and blue eagle of the 101st Airborne; the 25th Division, the 9th, the big red one of the 1st and the Americal—even the unconscious patients had their service identification. There was a 1st Air Cav patch over David’s frame.
“You worked him up?” Johnson asked, taking David’s chart out of the rack.
“Yeah,” Edwards said, looking at the Ranger patch that someone had placed below the Cav emblem. “Eighty-percent second or third.” Johnson put down the chart, and they moved on.
After rounds, Edwards had the ward master take down all the unit patches. “Sergeant, I don’t care what you think about morale. They’re out of the war now, and I want those damn playthings off the walls. That’s an order. Off the walls.”
He went down to the bacteriology lab and then to his office. Johnson had gone to X ray to check on a few films. He sat down at his desk and looked at the two weeks’ accumulation of correspondence that had been piled neatly at the corner of his desk. He was reaching for the first letter when the phone rang.
“Major Edwards, this is Captain Eden. There are two generals who will be visiting Kishine today. The Colonel wanted me to make sure you’ll be free to take them around.”
“What time?” Edwards asked, balancing the phone on his shoulder while he read a letter.
“We’re not sure.”
“I’m afraid I’ll be busy this afternoon. You’d better tell the Commander to take them through Kishine’s pride and joy himself.” Without waiting for an answer, he hung up.
The intercom was buzzing. “Major, Jensen’s in the whirlpool.”
“OK, be right there; thanks.”
David was already in the tub, being debrided. Edwards knelt down by the side of the tub and checked the burns. At some places, on the thighs and chest, he could see down to the muscle fibers crisscrossing under the burned fat. “David, I’m going to stop your IV,” he said, straightening up. “You’re going to have to start eating. The ward master told me you didn’t touch your breakfast. Hurt?”
Chewing on what remained of his lips, David winced.
“Jessie, why don’t you give him twenty-five of Demerol.”
“Yes, sir,” the corpsman said.
“Why didn’t you eat?”
“No one was there to feed me,” David said, watching the corpsman open the medicine cabinet and fill the syringe.
“We don’t feed you here,” Edwards said. “You feed yourself. You’ve got to start using your hands sometime.” He waited while the medic searched for a place to give the injection. “In his arm,” he said.