Reviews:
Author Gary Carter has written an engaging tale of a man on a mission, one torn between loyalty to country and loyalty to old friends. For the Good of the Many offers a nice balance of action and narrative, propelling the story forward along with well thought out characterization and development.
For anyone who enjoys a good, rousing story, this book is a recommended read. Changes in era point of view and description of events that occurred in the past coincide with present day action and plot building that leaves nothing to be desired. If you want a page turner that offers action, mystery, suspense and romance, readers will find everything they need in For the Good of the Many. Denise Clark - Gemini Connections Book Reviews - 3-05-07
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Chapter 18
Another World
When Jason awakened some time later his leg and hand had been bandaged and a corpsman was kneeling beside him, holding an IV. Jason had no idea what they were injecting into him, and he didn't care. He found himself on his back, groggy, exhausted and thirsty, but feeling no pain. DeLaRocca was sitting next to him, opposite the corpsman, holding Jason's good hand. Seeing Jason's eyes open he let go of the hand and rested it on Jason's stomach.
"Where we going?" Jason asked, looking around. He tried to sit up. DeLaRocca pushed him back down. Jason noticed the PFC's newly bandaged hand was oozing blood.
"Quang Tri, my friend," DeLaRocca answered. "There be a field hospital there. That's what the corpsman here said, anyway. We all gonna be fixed up in no time, JJ. Good as new. Leastways, that's what they be sayin' here."
Sure we will, Jason thought, noting the lack of conviction in DeLaRocca's voice. His eyes roamed the interior of the Medevac and fell on Private Guitterez. He was covered in blood and not breathing. DeLaRocca caught Jason's stare.
"He be gone, J.J.," DeLaRocca said. Jason, fully awake now, could see that his friend had been crying. "Died just before the Cobras' got here, I guess," DeLaRocca continued, wiping at his eyes. "Damn it all, J.J. Damn this fuckin' war. Guitterez there, he just got here. Him and the others. I hear he had a wife and kid and all. A baby boy. He joined up so's the could support 'em better. It don't make no sense. Nothin' makes no sense. I don't understand."
Me either, Jason thought. He could only nod. Another failure. Among other things, he'd gotten two men killed. Kids, really, just out of high school. And how many injured and mutilated? What kind of a leader was that? DeLaRocca saw the pain in Jason's eyes.
"You did good, man, you know?" Matt said, patting Jason on the arm. "Got us all out and all. Don't you be feelin' sorry for yourself, now. Ain't a one of us would rather be back there than here. Guitterez, he and Harris, they went along with the plan, same as you'n me."
Jason felt like asking DeLaRocca if he'd asked the two dead men for their opinion, then thought better of it. Out of the original twenty on the Huey only seven had survived, maybe six. He hadn't the strength to ask about Rodriquez, whether he was still alive or not. Jason wondered if, had he managed things differently, Harris and Guitterrez might still be alive. It was a cross he would carry for the rest of his life.
* * *
"How long before Quang Tri?" Jason asked after several quiet minutes had passed, minutes during which DeLaRocca had apparently fallen asleep, slumped up against the bulkhead. Minutes when he saw a young doctor and a corpsman frantically trying to save Sgt. Rodriquez's life.
'Not too long," his corpsman said. "There's a major hospital set up there. All the latest equipment. Most of it, anyway. And a shit load of doctor's and nurse's. We'll have you guys fixed up in no time."
"The others?" Jason asked, lifting his head to look around.
"They're doing fine. The rest of your buddies are on the Huey's. Not enough room here. Now shut up and get some rest." Jason watched as the corpsman hung the IV on a hook on the wall and moved off to tend to someone else. Craning his neck, Jason couldn't tell who, but it looked like PFC Heath.
Jason closed his eyes. He felt relieved at the corpsman's words, but despondent. Who was going to fix the mental scars from all this? How would they ever replace his finger? Could they bring his men back to life? What about Harris, left back at the compound? The brass were not going to like that. He turned his head to where Private Guitterez lay, covered now in a green, woolen blanket. Jason averted his eyes. He turned his head and glanced out the open hatchway door, at the jungle and rivers as they hurried by in the moonlight below, at the distant horizon, clouded over now, silver and gray and forbidding, with yet another rainstorm moving in. How could such a beautiful world hold so much hate and evil? Why was some faction of man always trying to control another? Why was there never peace in the world? Jason had no answers, but, looking out, his heart and soul filled with the beauty that God had given them all, a beauty defiled by men of hate and greed, Jason vowed, if he ever got out of Vietnam alive, that he would spend the rest of his life trying to find the answers.
His mind drifted. Quang Tri. He had heard of the place, all right. They all had. It was one of the northernmost South Vietnamese cities, closer to the DMZ than most. Jason had heard a lot of had been saved there, along with a multitude of arms, legs, hands and fingers. He also knew the downside, that Quang Tri also laid claim to a cold storage facility. They shipped dead soldiers home from there. Dead soldiers in body bags. They held military tribunals there too, and court martials for wayward soldiers. Yeah, he had heard of Quang Tri all right. A real fun place to be.
More minutes passed. Minutes in which Rodriquez slipped farther away and Matt took a turn for the worse, collapsing onto the floor and going into convulsions. Long, miserable minutes filled with tears, pain and a terrible loneliness, and then they were there.
Jason braced himself as the Medevac settled down. It was a rough and hurried landing, one that aggravated wounds and minds. Jason cursed the pilot and grabbed at his leg which, despite the drugs, was becoming more painful with each passing second. Jason felt woozy. He knew he had lost a lot of blood. There had been no transfusions on the hello, no way to know what blood types to bring along, everyone in too much of a hurry at any rate. He felt overheated and nauseous, and wondered how many more pints of blood he could lose before dying.
When the Medevac finally quit bouncing Jason looked out the hatchway and scrutinized his new world. What greeted his eyes was not comforting. A myriad of helicopters, like a swarm of giant locusts, were landing and taking off in rapid succession. Jets thundered by overhead. The noise was overwhelming. Flying dust and debris surged into the chopper, clogging his mouth and nostrils. Nurses, doctors, soldiers, corpsmen and civilians seemed to be running in circles as if trying to evade some evil monster bent on their destruction. Bodies of the dead and dying lay everywhere, bathed in scattered moon beams and pulsating lights. Men, women and children, soldiers and civilians, American and Vietnamese alike, lying around and about, some on stretchers, some on the ground. Bodies lay burned beyond recognition while others were mangled and torn beyond repair. Blood was everywhere. Limbs were missing. In the distance, across the tarmac, he could make out dirty tents and makeshift buildings. Jason thought he had arrived in hell, only hell couldn't be this hot, or this disorganized.
After what seemed an eternity, strong hands grabbed Jason and carried him to the hatchway. There more strong hands helped him onto a stretcher. Before he passed out Jason caught a glimpse of the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, a nurse by the looks of the uniform she wore, a uniform smeared with blood and grime. She stared into his eyes, searching, then grabbed the IV from the corpsman and carried it along as they moved away from the helicopter. Jason had stared back, into big green eyes, eyes filled with tears and outrage. Despite the situation Jason had felt his heart flutter, and thought that, should he not survive the night, Quang Tri might not be such a bad place to die. Not in those hands.
* * *
Twenty-four hours later Jason awakened to dismal and unfamiliar surroundings. He found himself flat on his back on a cot inside a long, narrow building of sorts, the walls brown and uncaring and lacking in paint. Rows of dirty, rectangular windows lined the top of the building, where the sides of the building met the roof. Outside it was dark, and on the corrugated, tin roof a heavy rain pelted down. A driving wind whistled and howled. The building shook. Rows of tightly packed beds lined both sides of the converted warehouse, each one full as far as Jason could see. IV holders, one or more, with a myriad of odd colored fluids, stood at attention beside each bed. Down the rows someone screamed, another moaned and an eighteen year old with massive stomach wounds called out for his father, then died. Overhead, inadequate fluorescent lights spit and popped. The building swarmed with people in blood-spattered white doing their best to save lives. Two Vietnamese women ran by, jabbering and pushing a stretcher with a covered body on it. Then Jason remembered. A searing pain tore through his body, along with a specter in his mind so hot and vivid that Jason screamed out involuntarily, and he kept screaming and screaming until they knocked him out again.
* * *
Under heavy sedation, in intensive care, Jason didn't recover consciousness again until three days later, days that were lost to him and would forever remain that way. Delirious days with ups and downs and a brush with death when his heart failed. He woke up, somewhere around ten at night, groggy, exhausted and with a young woman fumbling with the dressing on his leg. Jason grunted and tried to sit up, but failed. He almost screamed again with the pain, but you couldn't scream with a girl about, especially such a pretty one. Jason thought he recognized her as the one he had seen by the stretcher the day they landed in Quang Tri. She had been giving directions now that he remembered. Jason tried to sit up again, only to fail again. He broke into a sweat and bit his lip.
"Lie still, corporal," the young woman commanded, turning to scrutinize Jason. "Save yourself some pain."
Jason did some scrutinizing himself, figuring the girl to be around twenty or twenty-one. No doubt a nurse, Jason surmised, as she was dressed in a standard white uniform. Oddly enough she wore no cap or insignia. There was a smattering of blood on her uniform, almost matching her bright, red hair. Jason figured her for around five-feet-six or seven, several inches shorter than he, but with green eyes instead of his blue. Then, inexplicably, his mind folded in on itself as Jason watched the young woman disappear. Terror filled his heard as The Butcher filled her shoes, grinning at him, a glistening machete in his hand, poised over Jason's leg, ready to strike. Jason continued to scream and struggle as the young woman summoned help. In a matter of seconds another woman, also dressed in blood spattered white, hurried over and plunged a needle into his arm. Another three days passed before they allowed Jason out of his stupor again.
* * *
Jason opened his eyes. Outside thunder rolled. The ground shook with the resultant vibrations. Lying on his back, Jason surveyed the ceiling and smiled. He loved thunder showers, mainly because they seldom occurred in his home town. Jason's eyes widened when he realized he wasn't home. He tensed, waiting for pain, for the recurring nightmares to begin. A minute passed, then two and, when neither was forthcoming, Jason tried to relax. He glanced out an open flap that apparently served as a door to his room, out at the jumbled landscape and falling rain. A breeze hurried through the opening and washed over him, creating a welcome, cooling effect. He closed his eyes and let the soft, drumming sound of the rain sing their magic. Quiet minutes later he looked at his hand, realizing that the restraining straps that had bound his wrists were no longer there. Looking around Jason came to realize he was in another building altogether, and it wasn't a building at all, but a camouflaged tent. Seven other cots shared the area with him, circled around the room, one empty and the rest full. The IV's were still there, though fewer of them, and so was the now familiar young woman, only this time she was talking to a soldier across the way, a young black man with no arm, only a bandaged, bloody stump protruding from his right shoulder. Jason averted his eyes and scrutinized. Everyone in the room seemed to be an amputee of one sort or another. He examined his hand again, and counted his blessings. Startled, he remembered his leg and looked down, relieved to find it still attached. Everyone in the room appeared to have lost more than he. Much more.
Covering the place where Jason's finger used to be was a heavy bandage. Jason noticed with satisfaction there was no blood on the dressing. Either it had been changed recently or he was faring well. Jason hoped it was the latter. He explored further. Although there were lights strung about overhead none of them were lit, and only the girl was about. Missing was the frantic hustle and bustle of the warehouse. Jason felt more at ease. He pushed himself up, then grimaced at the pain in his hand and leg. Managing to lean on his elbows, Jason felt dizzy for a second, but, after a concentrated effort, was able to maintain his balance and consciousness. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, then felt his face, bristly now without having shaved for---how long? Jason couldn't even guess. The young woman turned and, seeing he was awake, hurried over. She was even more beautiful then Jason remembered. This without evidence of any makeup and a harried, disheveled look about her. The white shift she wore was spotless, as if she had just put it on. There was still no insignia on her person, and Jason wondered again at its absence. He straightened himself further, managing to sit up. Jason found himself suddenly wide awake and attentive, his pain and surroundings forgotten for the moment.
"Hey," the young woman said, smiling at Jason.
"Hey yourself," Jason returned weakly, then felt uneasy. Knowing nurses in the armed forces were officers, he wondered if his remark had been too flippant, or disrespectful. But when she smiled again, and nodded his way, he let it go.
When she had finished taking his pulse the woman went to the foot of Jason's cot, picked up a chart and then scribbled something on it. Jason ran his good hand through his hair, heaping he looked presentable.
"Uh, I'm Corporal McBride," he volunteered. "Jason McBride. It's really John Jason, but I go by Jason. Most people call me J.J. Everyone but my family, anyway."
"I know," the young woman said, looking up from her chart. "They call me Maggy's."
"Maggy's?"
"Yeah. Maggy's drawers."
Jason laughed. "You, well, you're pulling my leg, right?" Jason asked, his smile fading, not sure how to take this pretty girl.
"Yeah, I'm kidding, soldier," Maggy said wryly. "It's Margaret. Margaret MacIntyre. Margaret Louise MacIntyre if you will, but most folks call me Maggy. Everyone but my family, anyway.'
Jason blushed. "Are, are you a nurse?" he asked, trying to keep the conversation going. He knew military protocol forbade enlisted men fraternizing with officers, but Jason suddenly found himself needing to talk to someone. More than that he needed to talk to this particular someone.
"A doctor actually, now that you asked," Maggy answered, continuing to smile across the bed at him. Jason was dumbfounded, and he became ill at ease. Maggy put the chart back and moved around the cot. She poked Jason's injured leg, below where it was wrapped.
"Ouch!" Jason responded. "That hurts!"
"Good," Maggy said. "You still have feeling there. We were worried you might not. You're a lucky guy, you know that?"
"Yeah. How's that?" Jason asked, finding it difficult to talk. He was finding it hard to feel lucky, too. Then his throat went dry as a feeling of intimidation flooded over him. Talking to a woman doctor, let alone a commissioned nurse, and trying to find some common ground was definitely out of league. He decided to shut up before he found himself being disciplined.
"We thought you might lose this leg," Maggy continued, poking at him again, only this time below the knee, and more gently. "The bullet went in here,' Maggy pointed out, "and came out there. It missed your knee, but cracked your thigh bone and tore up some muscles and nerves pretty bad. You lost a lot of blood. From your leg and hand. So much that it's a miracle you survived. You were barely alive when I first saw you. They, I mean I, almost assigned you to the holding area."
"The holding area?"
"Yeah. When you troopers are coming in hot and heavy like you were the doctors have to decide who has the best chance of making it and who doesn't. If I hadn't looked into your eyes they would have set you aside and gone on to more promising individuals. Odds are, you being one of the last in line, you would have died while waiting a turn. Simple as that."
"My eyes?"
"Yeah," Maggy said. "They're blue. I like blue-eyed guys."
"Oh," Was all Jason could manage.
"You're going to take a long time to heal," Maggy said, "but the prognosis is good. You're made of stern stuff, soldier. A lesser man might have died."
"Will, will I ever run again?" Jason asked after a short silence, a silence in which a young couple's eyes met, locked, and then turned quickly away. This time it was Maggy who found herself blushing.
"How do you mean?" she asked. Picking up Jason's clipboard, she pretended to write.
"I used to run a lot. Track in high school. Just for the heck of it, too. To keep in shape."
"I don't think so," Maggy said, returning her eyes to Jason. In spite of her orders she found being drawn to him, his rugged good looks, childlike shyness and determination to survive. "Not competitively, anyway. But you're young and will have the best of care when you get back to the states. I really don't know. Once the doctors finish their work it will be up to you."
Maggy put the clipboard back in its place and moved around the cot, taking Jason's wrist in her hand, pretending to take his pulse. At her touch Jason felt an electric jolt surge through his body, unlike anything he'd experienced before. Looking at her, being close to her, he felt himself becoming aroused. It was amazing, considering. He looked away, out the tent door and through the rain, fighting back an urge to grab and kiss her.
"I, how old are you?" he asked, still staring out the tent. "I mean, if it's okay to ask."
"Why?" Maggy asked in return, looking at Jason's damaged leg, finding herself hoping it would heal properly, that those who would be in charge of this young man's care would be able to help him mend properly.
"You seem, well, too young to be a doctor."
Maggy smiled. She released his wrist and pulled on Jason's chin until he was looking at her again.
"I am. I'm twenty-one." She let her hand drop.
"How . . . ?"
"I finished high school at fifteen, and my internship last year at Berkeley. I guess you could call me a prodigy, or something like that," Maggy said.
"I, I don't see any rank," Jason said, wanting to reach over and stroke Maggy's long hair, her neck, knowing he shouldn't be talking to her. Not like this, anyway. Not asking questions, and feeling the way he did.
"I'm a civilian," Maggy answered. "You could call me a volunteer. There's a few of us around."
"You don't get paid?"
"Oh, yeah, I get paid, and pretty good, too. I'm just not in the military."
"I thought they only had military doctors in the service."
"Mostly. But I'm a specialist, and they need me here."
"You're a specialist, too?"
"Yes. Amputees."
"Oh," Jason said, at a loss for words again. Only twenty-one, and a specialist, too. Jason felt himself lacking, and inferior. After another short silence, a silence in which Maggy pretended to check Jason's heart and lungs, wanting to stick around awhile, she spoke.
"You've had a rough time," she said, setting her stethoscope aside. Maggy took Jason's bandaged hand in her left hand and covered it with her right. Jason didn't protest, even though his hand started throbbing.
"How do you mean?" he asked, noticing for the first time some of the other wounded in the room looking his way, wondering why he was getting all the attention.
"I heard the story."
"What story?" Jason asked, wishing in a way she would leave, because he was both uncomfortable in her presence, yet glad she was here, taking an interest in him, taking him under her wing. He took stock of his surroundings, at the mangled bodies of his comrades staring his way, and wished he were elsewhere. Elsewhere with Maggy.
"About your being captured," Maggy said, releasing Jason's hand to his lap. "And the escape, and all. You're a pretty brave fellow, from what I've heard. Smart, too."
"Who told you that?" Jason asked. "I wasn't brave. I was the senior man in charge. I did what I had to do."
"I think you did a little more that that," Maggy said, attracted to Jason's modesty. "And since you asked, the others told me, those that came back with you. In case you weren't aware it appears you and your men were interrogated by the notorious Viet Cong captain we call "The Butcher," otherwise known as Cao Tung. There's a huge price on his head. You're lucky to get out alive, from what I've heard. A few others have managed to escape his prisons, although torture camps would be a better word. We, I mean they, Central Command, they have sent assassins north trying to find and kill him. Apparently without any luck. He hates anything and everything American."
"So I gathered," Jason said. "I believe he's dead, Maggy. I'm sorry, I meant doctor," Jason apologized. "I'm not doing very good. I keep forgetting my manners."
"Maggy's fine, soldier. Remember, I'm a civilian and, just between you and me, not much for titles. Anyway, why do you say that? That he's dead?"
When Jason had finished his story Maggy, after recording every detail, nodded her head.
"You story corroborates what the others have said. Let's hope you're right. Let's hope that the bastard's dead."
"Why did you tape everything?" Jason asked after a brief silence, a silence that consisted of Jason trying to shake the terror of his imprisonment, and of Maggy trying to fathom the escape and Jason's heroism.
"Unfortunately, it's part of my job, Jason," Maggy said shortly. "Once I deem you're well the military personnel in charge of such matters will contact you for a more detailed story. Apparently something has happened in connection with your imprisonment that they're not telling me about, something to do with this offensive the North Vietnamese have launched. Anyway, to answer your question, sometimes men forget things, or sometimes soldiers will die before the authorities get a chance to interrogate them. But that's not going to happen to you!" she added quickly.
Jason accepted her answers, but not without misgivings. After another brief silence he remembered a question he'd been wanting to ask.
"My men! I almost forgot my men. How are they?"
"Good. So far, anyway. Thanks to you. They're scattered about. We've had lots of causalities since the North's offensive, and are hard put to find a place for everyone. They're all in camp here somewhere, except for PFC Tanaguchi, I believe his name was. He went back to your old outfit, I think. After they interrogated him. I'm not sure."
"And Sgt. Rodriquez? He's okay?"
"He's going to be all right, Jason. It was touch and go for awhile, same as you. But he's one tough hombre, as the Spanish like to say. He's been in and out of consciousness a lot, but he's improving every day. Everyone, well, they should be all right," Maggy added, then wished she hadn't.
"Why do you say, 'should' ?"
Maggy shrugged. "Physically they should recover and lead active lives. But, sometimes, well, never mind. They'll be fine." A frown crossed Maggy's face, followed by a look of anger. Jason sensed a mood swing.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
"No," she said, averting her eyes. Maggy glanced around the tent, at the others with their missing arms and legs and hands. When she looked back to Jason those same eyes spoke of frustration, and there were tears in them. Maggy wiped at her eyes and looked out the door. Jason felt her sorrow.
"Why do you do this?" he asked.
"What?"
"Help soldiers. Be a doctor over here. Why do it if it upsets you? You could get a job anywhere."
"My father," Maggy started, then stopped. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped at her eyes. She continued to stare out the open tent flap, at the painful memories parading in the rain. "He was a Marine, like you. I was his only child. He died in Korea, when I was just a kid. They gave me and my mother a flag and a fucking medal to remember him by. I wanted to do something to help you guys, to be involved."
"I, I'm sorry, mam," Jason said.
"Me too. And don't call me mam!" Maggy said, turning to glare at Jason, startling him with her outburst. "I hate that! It's men and women like you that I, that we doctors and nurses should be calling 'mam' and 'sir', and not the other way around. It's you guys who do the fighting and suffering, not the doctors and nurses. I hate this military crap, Jason, and I hate this God damn war! It's stupid, and, and senseless! Look at you, and all for what? So a few jerk offs back home can get their kicks? Play king of the hill with other people's lives?"
"Whoa, Maggy," Jason said, wide awake now, surprised that a woman could harbor so much hate, and that a doctor would use such language. "It's all right. We all knew what the pay was before we came over here. We came to fight, and that's what we're doing."
"Oh, bullshit!" Maggy said, close to yelling. Others in the room sat up to listen, those that could, those that weren't so doped up they could hear. "You're all too young to know what you're doing! All of us are. Big, bad ass Marines! Just like my father. Where did it get him? And where has it got you? Look around soldier," Maggy continued, pointing around the room. "What the hell has it gotten any of them? I'll tell you what it's gotten me. A room full of crippled men! And we've got a room full of dead ones over in cold storage. You want to go and take a look?"
"What's the point here, Maggy?" Jason asked, upset, wanting to defend himself, his values, his fellows, feeling the need to defend what he and they were doing.
"My point is, if all you stupid men would quit playing soldier, then the world would be a whole lot better place for the rest of us to live!" Maggy spat, then turned and stomped out of the tent.
"Mam! Maggy, wait!" Jason called behind her, but to no avail. He watched as Maggy disappeared into the rain, her head back and defiant, chastising himself for upsetting her. He lay back on his cot and began cursing at the ceiling, unaware that his friend Matthew DeLaRocca had been standing outside for several minutes, listening in on the conversation.
"Well, y'all screwed that one up," Matt said, entering the tent after watching Maggy march off. He smiled and walked toward where Jason lay, still cursing the ceiling. Startled, Jason sat up again.
"Matt?" he said, forgetting Maggy for the moment.
"Now who the Sam Hill you think it is, boy? I aint' changed none," DeLaRocca said. He stopped next to Jason's bed as both of them broke into wide grins. "I'd shake you hand, J.J., but for I ain't got enough fingers no more." Matt held up his bandaged hand, the one with the two missing fingers, for Jason to see. Despite his loss DeLaRocca continued to smile, happpy to see his friend awake and alert for once.
"Me neither," Jason said, then reached over, grabbed Matt around the waist and gave him a bear hug. "Damn, it's good to see you," he added, continuing to hang on until DeLaRocca began prying him loose. "To see you alive."
"It be good to see you too, J.J.," DeLaRocca said askwardly. He'd never been hugged by a white man before, let alone around the waist. Embarrassed, Matt finished prying Jason's hand loose and, after stepping back from the cot, he bent his tall frame and patted Jason on the shoulder. "You been sleepin' and awful lot," he said, then straightened up.
"How much is an awful lot?" Jason asked.
'You been out for seven days now, man. Didn't no one tell you?"
"Not really. No. I just woke up, I think. That long?"
"Yeah. You and the sergeant. We wasn't sure if you two was gonna make it or not."
"Thanks Matt."
"For what, J.J.?"
"Well, for looking after me, for one thing."
"Who said I was looking after you?"
"Sometimes, when I'd wake up, through all the haze, I'd see some tall, skinny kid sitting alongside my bed, holding my hand. That was you, wasn't it?"
