Fortunate Sons

Chapter 32: Into the Woods

Sue awoke bright and early to head for the hospital along with the other nurses. After a quick shower she slipped into her fatigues and boots, gathered up her bag and began the short walk from the nurses' house to the Tran Vong hospital where her day started at six and ended at six.

All the while on her walk she mulled over what she had seen the night before when she walked into the embassy building. Once she had put two and two together it racked her mind and cost her a sleepless night. It ate at her, gnawing at her insides like hungry insects and made her stomach turn.

You have to tell Colonel Swyft......you have to tell him stupid.....if you get the chance, please for the love of God pull the damn trigger....

Down the street she walked, rounding the corner and crossing when needed through the noisy street traffic until she reached the hospital. The uneasiness dragged her down and pulled her back the more she tried to focus on the day ahead and as she neared the hospital it got a bit worse.

Inside was the same as it always was, the wards neat and tidy from the work of the night crew, patients recovering, wounded coming in on gurneys and stretchers and the doctors and nurses tending to their duties. Just as she had clocked in, Dr. Pearlman approached.

Dr. Pearlman was the driving force behind every doctor and nurse who worked at the Tran Vong Hospital. He was about Dix's height with lighter chestnut and rust colored hair and a neatly shadowed chin. He had grown up in the midst of turmoil almost all his life but the chaos of hospital work never put him down. He was Tran Vong's best doctor and one of the youngest at twenty eight years old, deeply intelligent with a good eye for details and who was never afraid to make fun of himself when the chips were down.

"Morning Sue," he greeted. "Listen, I apologize for catching you at a bad time but you and I have been given an assignment."

"What sort of assignment?" Sue asked, taken aback by Dr. Pearlman's announcement.

"Looks like they're understaffed at a MASH unit and need you and I to go down there to help out," the doctor explained. "I guess they want me to go so they can teach these guys a thing or two and I could use the extra hands."

Good....Sue thought. Anything to get me out of this damn place......

Sue gathered up whatever she needed and followed Dr. Pearlman and four others to the area where the huey was waiting. They had only packed a small bag containing a few spare clothes and medical supplies before they hopped in and buckled up. Of course Leah had tagged along with three other men that neither of them really knew nor cared to know.

The whirl of the blades atop the helicopter was almost deafening as they spun fast, so fast that they became a blur. The six passengers felt themselves slowly lifting off the ground as they pulled up into the air and took off. Everything shrank as they went up and up, at least three to four hundred feet off the ground and climbed until the city was nothing more than an inch high miniature on the ground.

The pilots flew them high over the vast green fields below full of outlying villages and rice paddies while the hills and mountains jutted out of the ground like a dragon's back. They flew over the huge expanse of river, a long, brown strip that snaked its way from the north to the south and everywhere in between. Sue had been to rural parts before, but this was a whole different level of being out there.

No one said a word as the pilots flew the chopper over the land below. A machine gunner kept his watchful gaze fixed out the open doors and a finger close to the trigger just in case a surprise attack from below should blow them out of the sky. It wasn't a long ride at all, a little over an hour before the huey finally touched down in the designated landing field and let everybody off. Sue, Dr. Pearlman and the others scrambled out of the chopper and well away just as it took off, leaving them there at the MASH.