Free The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page B

they'd been in country a week.

    ,, Not without no authorization you ain't," Baker replied, pulling his towel off his shoulder as if he would flip the tall redhead with it if he made a false move.

    Joe flipped the sheet back over Xinh and headed toward the two men fighting over the gurney.

    "Hi, Joe. You want to tell the sergeant here that you authorized this transfer?" the redhead said. His uniform was funny-looking: a regular camouflage shirt mixed with green tiger-stripe trousers, his only insignia a Woody Woodpecker pin he'd probably picked up at the PX. From his manner, I thought he might be one of the doctors in from the boonies. They all spurned Army dress codes.

    Joe temporized, "Now, Doc, I didn't . . ."

    Marge popped her head through the door. "Something the matter, Sergeant Baker?" she asked cheerfully.

    "This man bringin' us this patient got no authorization, ma'am. Unless, that is, Captain Giangelo, you authorize it, sir?"

    "If Chalmers is all finished with his head, I-"

    "Nothing wrong with his head," the redhead said.

    "There was a depressed skull fracture," Joe said, not arguing, 'Just informing.

    "That was a mistake, Captain. If you X-ray him now you'll see there's nothing wrong with his head. He needs to get somethin' done about replacin' his legs so he can go back to the villages, though. They need him out there."

    "Wait a minute, wait just a minute here," Baker said. "You a doctor?
    You don't look like no doctor."

    "Yeah? Say the same thing to me when you've got your ass shot off or are burnin' up with fever and I'm the only dude in sight with a firstaid kitand some kind of training."

    "I'm real impressed. Been a field medic myself in two wars. That don't mean I haul patients around makin' unauthorized transfers or sassin' the real doctors. What's your name and your outfit, soldier?"

    "Spec-6 Charles W. Heron, Special Forces medical supervisor assigned to C-I operations detachment attached from B-53 Special Missions Advisory Force."

    "Uh huh," Baker said. "And who might this man be? Your C.O.?"

    "Sergeant Baker, Specialist-uh-" Major Canon said. "Whoever this patient is, don't you think we'd better make up our minds where he's going and get him back to bed?"

    "I'm tellin' you, Joe, there's no head in'llry," the redhead said.

    "I'll have to clear that with Major Chalmers, Doc."

    "Chalmers! That asshole has his head so far up his-"

    The man seemed to be a good judge of character anyway.

    I remembered belatedly to try to reassure the patient, the object of all of the argument. It took me a moment to recognize old Xe. His color was much improved, his head unbandaged, and his face less sunken. His eyes were open and alert, seemingly staring at the ceiling, though as I watched I saw that he shifted them from the redhead to Joe to Baker like someone watching a three-way Ping-Pong match. I probably wouldn't have recognized him at all in a couple of days-legless, bald elderly Vietnamese men weren't uncommon at the 83rd. But his hands were crossed at his chest, over the medal, in the gesture I remembered well from the night before last.

    "Way to go, papasan," I said, patting his shoulder. "You sure healed in a hurry."

    "You should watch how you touch him," Heron told me. "It's disrespectful to touch a holy man casually."

    "You're the one who's disrespectful-" Baker began, but Heron wasn't paying any attention. The old man was speaking to him in a soft, hoarse voice.

    When Heron looked back up, his face wore an odd expression, as if he was trying to assess me, and at the same time resented me.

    Marge, who had been on the phone, reappeared. "Neuro got swamped last night with ICU overflow, apparently. When I told Captain Simpson that we had one of her patients over here, she spoke to Major Chalmers. He said he didn't know why we didn't take the old man in the first place, and if you need help with the mild concussion the admitting physician misdiagnosed as a depressed skull fracture, Chalmers