Read Online The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
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incredibly desirable woman I was.
I stuck the letter in an envelope, and took two more Benadryl. I thought I might finally be able to sleep.
Phody shuddered in horror when I reported for duty on orthoA pedics.
Nobody said, "Oh no, not her." Nobody gave me knowing glances that said,
"Lieutenant Colonel Blaylock told us about your kind." Major Marge Canon looked up from counting narcotics only long enough to give me a quick, slightly distracted smile. Sarah Marcus, who occupied the hooch next door to mine, wiped the sweaty hair off her forchead with her arm, pouched out her bottom lip to blow upward to cool her face, and looked straight through me in a spacey way not unusual for night nurses just coming off a twelve-hour shift. Then her eyes focused, and she sighed and nodded her head in my direction before resuming the count.
Sarah's morning report was rushed and perfunctory. "All five of the casualties from yesterday are going out today. I haven't had time to get their tags done yet. I was supervisor last night and there was a push of Vietnamese from some village that got shelled. I think we may get two or three of them. Joe was triage officer last night and didn't get scrubbed for our first case till about five-thirty, so you probably have an hour or two before recovery room calls. Right now you've got three I.V.s on the GI side, one on the Vietnamese. I'll do those tags now."
"Don't worry about it, Sarah," Major Canon told her. "We're finally getting some extra help around here. Blaylock sent us Kitty instead of making us wait around for joanie's replacement from the States, so there's no need for you to stick around."
"Yeah, well, g'night," Sarah said. "I have to go give supervisor's report to the colonel. By the way, Kitty," she added casually,
"everybody on your old ward had a pretty good night."
"Thanks, Sarah. Slecp well."
She waved good-bye, tucked the supervisor's clipboard under her arm, and disappeared down the hall.
Before the day crew disbanded from report, Marge made introductions.
"Troops, this is Lieutenant McCulley. She's been transferred to us to replace Lieutenant Mitchell. Kitty, this is our ward master, Sergeant Baker, our interpreter and nursing assistant, Miss Mal, and Specialists Voorhees and Meyers."
I nodded and said "Pleased to meet you" all around. Sergeant Baker was a broad black NCO with a habitual expression of longsuffering tolerance.
Miss Mal looked like an oriental elf who'd been out in the rain too long. All the time I was there, it was Mai's unvarving custom either to come to work early to wash her hair or to wash it during her break, so maybe she was more of a water sprite than an elf. Voorhees was a compactly built, sandy-haired corpsman of about nineteen. Meyers, the other corpsman, was a tall, chubby-checked black guy who looked as if he belonged in high school.
"Come on, Kitty, we'll try to give you a little orientation before it gets busy," Marge said. First she showed me how to fill out medevac tags for the wounded GIs, all of whom were bound for Japan for further care, and then to the States. So few of my seriously injured GIs on neuro had lived long enough to stabilize sufficiently for medevac that I didn't have much practice in filling out the forms.
I was so glad nobody seemed to be mad at me about my screwup on neuro that I wanted to prove myself, show the major how gung ho I could be. As we started rounds, I saw that one of the patients wore a badly saturated dressing over what was left of his right leg, so I pointed it out to Marge. According to the nursing care plan on the guy's chart, he had been backed into by a tank driven by a friend who had taken too much herbal remedy for the Vietnam blahs.
"Yeah, that needs reinforcing okay. Let's wrap it with another couple layers of gauze. We're just going to reinforce most of the dressings on these guys. We don't usually change them when they come straight from the field and are medevaced the next day.
I stuck the letter in an envelope, and took two more Benadryl. I thought I might finally be able to sleep.
Phody shuddered in horror when I reported for duty on orthoA pedics.
Nobody said, "Oh no, not her." Nobody gave me knowing glances that said,
"Lieutenant Colonel Blaylock told us about your kind." Major Marge Canon looked up from counting narcotics only long enough to give me a quick, slightly distracted smile. Sarah Marcus, who occupied the hooch next door to mine, wiped the sweaty hair off her forchead with her arm, pouched out her bottom lip to blow upward to cool her face, and looked straight through me in a spacey way not unusual for night nurses just coming off a twelve-hour shift. Then her eyes focused, and she sighed and nodded her head in my direction before resuming the count.
Sarah's morning report was rushed and perfunctory. "All five of the casualties from yesterday are going out today. I haven't had time to get their tags done yet. I was supervisor last night and there was a push of Vietnamese from some village that got shelled. I think we may get two or three of them. Joe was triage officer last night and didn't get scrubbed for our first case till about five-thirty, so you probably have an hour or two before recovery room calls. Right now you've got three I.V.s on the GI side, one on the Vietnamese. I'll do those tags now."
"Don't worry about it, Sarah," Major Canon told her. "We're finally getting some extra help around here. Blaylock sent us Kitty instead of making us wait around for joanie's replacement from the States, so there's no need for you to stick around."
"Yeah, well, g'night," Sarah said. "I have to go give supervisor's report to the colonel. By the way, Kitty," she added casually,
"everybody on your old ward had a pretty good night."
"Thanks, Sarah. Slecp well."
She waved good-bye, tucked the supervisor's clipboard under her arm, and disappeared down the hall.
Before the day crew disbanded from report, Marge made introductions.
"Troops, this is Lieutenant McCulley. She's been transferred to us to replace Lieutenant Mitchell. Kitty, this is our ward master, Sergeant Baker, our interpreter and nursing assistant, Miss Mal, and Specialists Voorhees and Meyers."
I nodded and said "Pleased to meet you" all around. Sergeant Baker was a broad black NCO with a habitual expression of longsuffering tolerance.
Miss Mal looked like an oriental elf who'd been out in the rain too long. All the time I was there, it was Mai's unvarving custom either to come to work early to wash her hair or to wash it during her break, so maybe she was more of a water sprite than an elf. Voorhees was a compactly built, sandy-haired corpsman of about nineteen. Meyers, the other corpsman, was a tall, chubby-checked black guy who looked as if he belonged in high school.
"Come on, Kitty, we'll try to give you a little orientation before it gets busy," Marge said. First she showed me how to fill out medevac tags for the wounded GIs, all of whom were bound for Japan for further care, and then to the States. So few of my seriously injured GIs on neuro had lived long enough to stabilize sufficiently for medevac that I didn't have much practice in filling out the forms.
I was so glad nobody seemed to be mad at me about my screwup on neuro that I wanted to prove myself, show the major how gung ho I could be. As we started rounds, I saw that one of the patients wore a badly saturated dressing over what was left of his right leg, so I pointed it out to Marge. According to the nursing care plan on the guy's chart, he had been backed into by a tank driven by a friend who had taken too much herbal remedy for the Vietnam blahs.
"Yeah, that needs reinforcing okay. Let's wrap it with another couple layers of gauze. We're just going to reinforce most of the dressings on these guys. We don't usually change them when they come straight from the field and are medevaced the next day.
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