“What do you want from me?”
“That you understand. You’re her friend. Just be here.”
For a moment, there was only silence. Outside, the night hummed and chirruped, and the wind rustled through thetrees like an impatient child. In this bright white room withits soft furniture visitors evidently weren’t invited onto,Peaches held his confidence to himself, his face impassiveand hard as ever.
“Her kids,” he finally said. Tony waited, knowing he’dfinish in his own time. “She sets all her store by those two. Can’t do nothin’ that’d hurt ’em.”
“I have a little girl of my own,” Tony said.
And Peaches nodded. His answer. His bond. His promise.
Ten minutes later, Tony walked back out into the night. The trees whispered, and the stars dusted the sky out beyond the humidity. Tony could hear voices from the house,bright, sharp voices. The voices of people who were pretending hard. Tony took a deep breath and ached for a cigarette. It was going to be a long night. It was going to be along few weeks.
He didn’t care. Claire Henderson was walking along aterrible brink, and he’d helped bring her to it. The least hecould do was show her the way back. Shoving his hands intohis jeans pockets, he limped on up the steps toward thelights.
They came in the night, just as she knew they would. Allof them, with their too-soft faces and their too-young eyesand their voices that had the power to steal sleep and shatter a person’s hope.
Not Jimmy. Worse than Jimmy tonight.
She was standing in the coronary-care section of the ICUwhere she worked, those fourteen rooms where old mencame with their illnesses of genetics and hard living and badchoices. She was waiting there, where illness and death madesense, where it didn’t encroach on her. She stood at the doorwaiting for the new admission, her scrubs on, her stethoscope in her hand, the world around her a chorus of hushedimpatience. She was laughing at something somebody saidand thinking that admissions always came at change of shift.
She heard it first. A thumping, a steady, deadly rhythmthat seemed to fill the air. It surprised her, out of place herein this pristine place. She smelled it, the coppery tang ofblood, the thick roux of mud and smoke. The stench ofdisaster. She felt it crawl like insects over her skin.
“No...”
The doors swung open, but it wasn’t the emergency-roomcart that wheeled through her door. It was a litter. It was ayoung boy, eyes glassy, mouth wide, hands clutching hisstomach.
Claire ran to him, pulled his hands away, saw the blood.Saw the destruction, went into action. She looked up forhelp and saw another boy, his head bandaged, his handsoutstretched to her. She ran to him, calling for assistance,but there was no one there.
She looked around her, reached instinctively for the equipment that was kept by the doors in her ICU. But shedidn’t see an ICU. She saw a Quonset hut. She saw daylight—bright, blinding daylight—through the doors wheremore boys were reaching out to her. More boys, their strong,healthy young bodies falling and bleeding, their eyes, thoseeyes that photographers seemed to steal right from them,suddenly ancient and sorrowful.
Boys who were silent, because they didn’t scream ormoan. They asked. They begged. “Help my buddy. Find mybrother. Is the sarge on that chopper? Please, Nurse,please...”
Multiplying right before her, first ten, then twenty and then a hundred, crowded around, piling up, dying in herarms because she couldn’t get to them. She looked down tofind that she wasn’t wearing scrubs anymore. She wore her fatigues, her heavy boots that weighted her to the floor, herchittering, clinking dog tags that never let her forget who shewas.
There was blood on her boots, blood on her hands, andthe boys kept looking at her to help, and she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t...
“Stop!”
Claire found herself on her feet, sweating and panting andterrified. Her eyes were open to the spill of faint moonlightthrough her window, but she kept expecting to see thoseboys, all those boys who looked just like Johnny. She heard the swish of branches in the breeze and still heard the choppers. She smelled the sweet tang of spring flowers in the airand thought it smelled like blood and infection and death.
Her nightgown was soaked. Her knees shook so badly shehad to steady herself on her bedpost. Her mattress waspulled halfway on to the floor as she’d fought to get to all those boys.
The pain swamped her, sharp and suffocating, as if herheart itself were dying like those old men in her unit. Shecouldn’t breathe past it, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Instinctively she lifted her hand to it, as if she could hold itthere, hold it in.
Please, God, she prayed, her eyes squeezed shut against the tide of grief. Make it stop. Make it stop.
Make them go away.
She didn’t hear her own sobs, didn’t notice that her face was wet with tears and that her nails were broken from where she’d struggled against her own inertia to help. She just knew she had to escape. She had to get out of this terrible, suffocating place.
She ran. Barefoot and nightgowned, her soles padding along the hardwood floors, hands scrabbling at the banister and then the walls that seemed to shift and move in the dim night she always held off with the light.
She’d tried to stave it off. She’d had a half a bottle of wineand stayed up until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore, talking to Tony Riordan about something inconsequential. She’d been so afraid she’d see Jimmy again thatshe’d put off bed until she thought she was too drunk to seehim.
She hadn’t. It didn’t matter.
The night air swept across her tear-chilled face andbrought her to a stop twenty paces out into the yard. Behind her, the screen door slammed shut, and down the roada dog barked. Claire stumbled out onto the grass just to feel the dew against her feet. She lifted her face to find the sky,the dark Virginia sky that looked nothing like the spectacular nights over Vietnam. She sucked in a lungful of air,searching for the scent of pine and molding leaves andcaught a whiff of tobacco.
