“I’m not good enough. Honestly.”
“You will be when I get done with you. Scout’s honor.”
“Were you ever a Scout?”
“Hell, no. I still can’t figure out what I’m doing here. Too much debt and too many war stories, I think. My dad told me I was a fool. But here I am and here I’ll be for another seven months. I need a kick-ass nurse at my side.”
Frankie was afraid of all of it—mass casualties, failing at her job, keeping Jamie at bay—but she’d been here almost two months and, as bad as it was, time was moving fast. She’d learned what she could from Neuro. If she really loved nursing and wanted to be even better, it was time to take the next step.
“Okay, Captain Callahan. I’ll put in for a transfer to surgery.”
“Excellent.” He looked very pleased with himself. There was a glimmer in his eyes that Frankie assumed had seduced plenty of women. She did not intend to fall prey; but the truth was that he tempted her. And she was pretty sure he knew it.
* * *
On the day of her first shift in the OR, Frankie paused at the stacked sandbags outside the door, took a deep breath, and walked into the Quonset hut.
Chaos.
Bright lights, music blaring, doctors and medics and nurses shouting instructions, casualties screaming. She saw Jamie, dressed in a bloody gown and masked up, coming toward her. There was blood everywhere, on walls, the floor, faces—dripping, geysering, pooling. Patty Perkins, in bloody fatigues, yelled, “You’re in the way, McGrath,” and pushed Frankie aside; she stumbled and hit the wall as two medics carried a litter into the OR. On it, a soldier—a kid—was sitting up, yelling, “Where are my legs?”
“Just breathe, McGrath,” Jamie said, touching her shoulder gently with his gowned elbow. She looked up at him, saw his tired eyes above his mask.
A gurney wheeled past them, a young man with his guts hanging out. Barb was running alongside the gurney. “Coming in from Pre-Op.”
Frankie stared at the trail of blood behind the gurney, feeling sickness rise into her throat.
“Okay, McGrath. You know what a DPC is, yes?” Jamie said.
She couldn’t remember.
“McGrath. Focus.”
She knew, of course she did. She’d been tending to them for weeks. “Delayed primary closure. Dirty wounds need to be cleaned. We close them later to prevent infection.”
“Right. Come with me.”
Frankie moved through the OR, realizing halfway across that Jamie was close enough to keep her moving forward. He led her to a young man who lay on a gurney.
“This is a D and I. Debride and irrigate. That’s a frag wound. We need to stop the bleeding and remove the metal fragments and cut away the dead skin. Then we irrigate with saline. We make little holes out of big ones. Can you help me?”
She shook her head.
He stared down at her, said softly, “Look at me.”
She exhaled slowly and looked up at him.
“No fear, McGrath. You can do this.”
No fear.
“Right. Yes,” she lied. “Yes, of course.”
* * *
For the next six hours, the doors to Ward Six banged open repeatedly, with medics and corpsmen bringing in the wounded from Pre-Op. Frankie learned that it was called a push.
Now she stood across an operating table from Jamie, both of them capped, gowned, and gloved. Between them lay a young sergeant, whose chest had taken a close-range gunshot. To Frankie’s right was the tray of surgical instruments and supplies.
“Hemostat,” Jamie said. He gave Frankie a moment to study the tray of instruments, and then, “It’s next to the retractor. See it?”
Frankie nodded, picked up the forceps, and handed them to him. She watched, mesmerized, as he repaired the wound, stitched a vein deep inside the man’s chest.
“Allen clamp.” He took the clamp she handed him and went back to work.
By 2200 hours, Frankie was dead on her feet and covered in blood.
“All done,” Jamie said at last, stepping back.
“Last patient!” Barb said, cranking up the radio on a Van Morrison song. Singing along, she crossed the OR and approached Frankie and Jamie. “How did my girl do?” Barb asked Jamie.
Jamie looked at Frankie. “She was great.”
“I told you you could cut it,” Barb said to Frankie, giving her a hip bump.
Patty skidded into place beside Barb. “Good job, Frankie. You’ll be a star in no time.” She slung an arm around Barb. “O Club?”
Barb pulled down her mask. “You got it. See you there, Frankie?”