Read Online Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck - Free Book Online Page B

matched or hair color worried us, or something in the look of the eyes reminded us of our men. How badly we all wanted them to show up in the base hospital with a survivable sprinkling of bullets across the surface. Pin on a medal. Send him home. God, how we wanted that, but it was not to be.
    Ben hadn’t written to me in over three weeks. He’d never gone this long without some kind of contact. I knew he was in a terrible area, and I heard from medics and wounded soldiers that it was hell. I was somewhat reassured by the fact that none of the other girls with men in Ben’s unit heard anything. They couldn’t all be dead, was what we told ourselves. Also, I had peace because I knew that if Ben had died I’d feel some kind of wrenching in my gut, and that wrenching hadn’t yet occurred.
    My patient gave a gurgling, guttural cry, and I sent him to surgery with a look of reassurance I did not feel and a prayer, and wondered whether prayers were triaged.
    Ridiculous , Peter would have said. God has no limits.
    Then where the hell was—
    “Next!”
    The medics brought in what could only have been a boy,underage but in uniform, and in possession of tremendous dignity in spite of his years, with the lower half of his legs missing. He did not cry but he was a ghastly shade of green.
    “Name,” I said.
    The patient answered for the medic. “Private John Bates Junior, ma’am.”
    “Injury.”
    “Loss of limbs,” said the medic. Private Bates’s face contorted into a sob. I felt my heart ache for him. He should have been home at some northeastern college, talking sports and wooing pretty debutantes. I reached out, squeezed his hand, and ran my fingers over his strong shoulder.
    “We will heal you, Private John Bates Junior,” I said. “Surgery.”
    I nodded at the nurses and they wheeled him away. I turned my attention to the door. The next soldier came through.
    “DOA,” I said. The medics seemed surprised as they looked down at their patient, blue as an icicle and already showing signs of rigor mortis. They wordlessly carried his stretcher to the morgue.
    “Next. Name?”
    “Gavin Murray.”
    I looked at him and saw his face hanging open like a flap where metal had slashed through it. He, too, was just a boy.
    “Injury.”
    “Is my buddy okay?” he asked. “Is John gonna be okay?”
    I thought of the boy who’d just come in with missing limbs and the massive quantities of blood staining his sheet.
    “We’ll do our best,” I said. “He looks like a fighter.”
    “He is,” said Gavin. “We both are.”
    “You just worry about yourself and we’ll take care of your friend,” I said, squeezing his hand for reassurance, before he was wheeled away to be cleaned and stitched.
    “Next. Name?”
    “All we got was Ben.”
    I felt my head go dizzy and slowly turned to look at the patient. Red hair, green eyes. Not my Ben. I had never felt so disheartened and relieved at once.
    “In…injury?”
    “Shrapnel.”
    I gestured over to the bed nearest the door for surgery, where a nurse would be able to handle the picking and cleaning. I suddenly saw stars in the corners of my field of vision and thought I’d faint. I grabbed the stretcher and squeezed my eyes shut.
    “Nurse, are you okay?” I felt a hand on my arm. I breathed in and out, and opened my eyes when the world steadied. I nodded and released the stretcher.
    After the last of the men was admitted, I walked out into the cold, away from the base hospital, crunching over the frozen grass with my arms wrapped around myself. I ended up at the edge of the forest, bare of leaves, vacant of animals, and held up by sopping cold earth. I searched the growth with my eyes, yearning for a small sign of life, something that belonged in a forest and remained untouched by war, something to buoy me up in this barren wasteland. But there was nothing.

SEVEN

    I knocked before I had time to lose my nerve.
    Thin, pale, their hair plaited and limbs entwined, the