Fic: Military Madness: And All Of The Men In This War Torn Land (Salute The Nurses of Vietnam)
Title: And All Of The Men In This War Torn Land (Salute The Nurses of Vietnam)
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: gen, a bit of het
Summary: It's Vietnam 1967 and Thomas Moore has to learn that something really shook up his Air Force nurse.
A/N: Oy. There are a couple happier other Vietnam stories in the buffer but I wanted to keep at least a basic semblance of chronological order so you get this little drama llama first. It's pleased to make your acquaintance and hopes you'll like it, even though it deals with the kind of psychological trauma a lot of Vietnam War nurses suffered from (so... not exactly a happy little bunny but a very happy drama llama, that's for sure). Also, just a little note: takes place at the same time as Military Madness so we're currently in August 1967.
( Kennedy Made Him Believe (We Could Do Much More) )
( We'll Dance Until Morning ('Til There's Just You And Me) )
( With No Direction Home (Like a Complete Unknown) )
( So I Came in Here (And Your Long-Time Curse Hurts) )
( No Reason To Get Excited (The Thief He Kindly Spoke) )
( It’s Way Too Soon (To Be Obsessin’ Like This) )
( America Has Heard The Bugle Call (And You Know It Involves Us One And All) )
( Military Madness (Is Killing Your Country) )
And All Of The Men In This War Torn Land (Salute The Nurses of Vietnam)
“After the battle, after the fight
many owe their lives to the ladies and men in white
And all of the men in this war torn land
salute the nurses of Vietnam.”
Barry Sadler, “Salute the Nurses of Vietnam”
“She in there?”
Dee nods. “Yes, sir.”
He looks up at the sky, frowning, expecting a shower to start any minute. Fucking rainy season. Then he rubs the back of his neck and his hand comes up wet and dirty. Goddammit, he just had a shower after eight hours of crossing the damn country back and forth with teenagers bleeding on the floor of his plane and Jenna Wells behaving even stranger than usual. Fucking rainy season.”Have you tried talking to her?”
Dee shakes his head. “Looks more like a job for you, sir. With all due…”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your panties in a twist.” Why Dee still thinks he can’t comment on the relationship he has with their flight nurse is beyond him. If there is anyone allowed to do that, it’s his co-pilot, for Heaven’s sake. Not that it doesn’t keep everyone else from doing it, though. “Anyway… has she said anything ever since you found her?”
“No, sir. Just keeps sitting there and… you know.” Staring at the opposite wall, unmoving safe for the occasional blinking. Looking like those Marines they sometimes ferry to or from 95th Evac in Da Nang. He knows. He fucking knows.
He wipes the sweat off his face. “Alright, I’ll look into it. Hold off the mechanics until I sound the all clear, okay?”
His co-pilot nods and gives him a casual two finger salute before he respectfully backs off and he knows that whatever racket the grease monkeys will make about first being practically forced to fix the lag in the starboard engine and then being held off for whatever idiotic reasons those flyboys are citing now, Dee will just be staring at them through his shades and they’ll know that they will regret laying a finger on that plane before they’re allowed to.
Alright. He rolls his shoulders and straightens himself and then takes up the stairs to enter the Bou’s cargo bay through the open hatch. It’s semi dark inside and as always, he feels half overwhelmed, half disgusted when he is greeted by the by now familiar scent of fuel and grease and blood that seems to have permanently crept into the nooks and crannies of this damn plane. He’ll never figure out how Maureen can work here on a daily basis.
And… yep, there she is. Sitting on one of the cots, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms on her knees and her chin on her forearms. Still staring at the wall opposite her. So… it’s not like they haven’t gone through a rough patch here and there before - he still vividly remembers that mother of a hangover he had after that booze session that followed Anna Williamson’s letter, even though he managed to throw up directly after it - and it’s not like it’s just him having trouble here now and then but… somehow, this is different. Somehow she scares the living shit out of him right now.
For a moment, he considers sitting as far away as he can without making himself look like a a coward but then again, she doesn’t even bat an eyelid whenever she has to clean up one of his messes, so he makes himself sit down next to her. He even tries to at least look relaxed, with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out. She doesn’t even seem to notice it.
Okay, so… how to go about this, then? He could, of course, order her to talk to him but then she’d probably just beat the shit out of him with that razor sharp tongue of hers - she looks and sounds harmless but she can behead you with her voice as soft as if she were talking to a dying soldier, all the same - and she’d be right to do it. Still not in her chain of command and all that.
Or he could ask her to tell him what’s going on but he’s not sure if she’d even hear him. For all her compassion and dogged, quiet insistence if she wants to make you talk about something, she can be surprisingly stubborn and close-lipped about stuff troubling her. The only reason he learned about her botched leave in March was that he’d heard a slight hitch in her voice when she told him that she was looking forward very much to meeting another college friend, after the three she’d already visited. He still wonders just how bad it was that it made her say yes to his idiotic suggestion to spend the last two weeks of their leave somewhere on the West Coast after only a minimal amount of badgering.
Or maybe, if he just waits a little… “I am aware of your presence, sir. Please stop fidgeting.”
Fidge… he wasn’t fidgeting. He was adjusting his sitting position because honestly, it takes two minutes of sitting with your back against the wall and you can wring your damn shirt and that’s just disgusting. Also, “Far as I remember, we’ve been past the “sir” for over six months, Captain.”
“With all due respect…”
“Oh for Heaven’s sake, Kid, what is going on with you?” Maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say, and not the best tone to use and okay, it also was probably just a tad too loud because he can actually see the moment she clamps up and damn, he’ll never get it right, will he?
She’s silent and, if that is even possible, hugs her knees a little tighter to her chest, as if she wants to make herself as small as possible. This isn’t good. This just can’t be good. He takes a deep breath, fighting off the urge to put his arm around her shoulder and hug her close. “Okay… look, we both know that something bad happened and…”
“If it did, it doesn’t concern you.” Could she be channeling Jenna Wells any more than this?
Also… could she please stop doing that? “Yes, Maureen, it does.” Shit, that wasn’t supposed to happen. He hadn’t aimed to using her first name instead of the thing he’d pinned on her after their first meeting when he’d thought that she was a twenty-two-year-old fresh out of college when she actually was a twenty-six years old nurse with four years of professional experience and a shitton of specialized training under her belt. He really hadn’t wanted to call her Maureen because the things that it implies are too much for him.
And for her, apparently. “Please don’t, Tom.”
It’s not fair, he thinks. It’s not fair that she can make the anger and frustration that have been building up during the day - flying in the rainy season is a fucking nightmare, don’t let anyone tell you different - implode just before it culminates because she’s being way more stubborn that everyone around here judges her to be. It’s not fair that all she needs for that are three words and sounding just so small and tired.
It’s not fair that she can build up road blocks that he crashes into regularly so easily.
He leans his head back, refraining from a frustrated groan, only to hear the furious noise of another sudden tropical shower battering the plane’s hull. “God, I hate that rain.”
Mh. It wasn’t supposed to be said aloud. One… two… “Then you probably shouldn’t have re-upped, genius.”
Well. At least that ended the awkward silence after her plea to him not to try and make her talk about whatever’s got her all twisted up. And if it were up to him, he’d totally leave it at that and be done with it, but unfortunately, he’s not a heartless robot and seeing Maureen trying to work out whatever shit happened to her on her own and failing miserably is tearing him to shreds inside and well, that kind of takes the decision of when and where to end it out of his hands.
“Someone had to keep flying you around the country, hadn’t there?” Okay, maybe that was a rather dumb…
“Wasn’t it you who wanted to push me off to Mitchell and his crew so badly?” Goddammit.
Did she really have to bring that up? “You’ll never let that one go, won’t you?”
“No, sir.” Of course she wouldn’t. He wouldn’t either, if he were in her stead. Telling her they shouldn’t be flying together anymore and that she should ask Carter to be reassigned to Mitchell’s plane because Landry had made a cryptic remark regarding their “very familiar” behavior with each other shortly after she’d dragged his ass out of the Le Van Loc after that letter from Lorne’s sister had been a one of a kind stupid idea. Because it had resulted in three weeks of not speaking with each other and honestly, he never, never wants something like that again.
Not that he’ll ever tell her that, of course. And of course there’s still the current issue to clear up and as much as he’d rather sit here and bicker around with her, he knows he’ll have to bring it up now or never. He’d rather prefer “never” in this case, though. He does sigh a little now. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on, Kid?”
There. Safely back in the nickname territory, having it all under control. That wasn’t so hard now, was it?
“Because, as I said already once, it’s none of your concern.” Jesus fucking Christ, is she really gonna play hard to get with that, of all things?
Frustration makes him groan. “Goddammit, Kid, of course it concerns me. I’m your… your…”
“Pilot?”
“Your…”
“Taxi driver?”
“Friend. I’m your fucking friend. Do you have to make it so hard?” That… wasn’t supposed to ever see the light of day. The first one, that is. He wasn’t ever… he didn’t actually aim to… it wasn’t…
He wasn’t ever going to admit to himself that she means more to him than just the girl that happens to be in the back to hold dying soldiers’ hands.
And he sure as hell wasn’t ever gonna admit that to her. It never was supposed to happen like this, or at all. It was supposed to be this year, or two, whatever of flying together and maybe sometimes going to drink together and spending the occasional night shift playing poker with each other. It wasn’t supposed to be having cigarettes and coffee ready for a girl who once told him she never smokes and being dragged out of bars by her and looking out for each other. It wasn’t supposed to end in making a friend. Ever.
A friend… or something else.
God, he should never have entered this goddamn plane. He should have shrugged and rolled his eyes and asked Cadman to handle this because who’d be better equipped to handle a crisis of whatever sort than a girl’s best friend? He should have walked the hell away.
He should walk the hell away right fucking now.
Suddenly being fed up with the mess that his relationship with Maureen Reece is, he drags his legs off the floor and braces one hand on the cot to get up and… “It’s the photos.”
Okay… maybe he’ll wait a bit with walking away, after all. “Photos?”
She nods, still not looking at him. “The pictures Lieutenant Wells shot at the orphanage a couple days back.” Huh, what?
How… did they get from Maureen sitting in a plane trying to make herself as small as possible to… Lieutenant Jenna Wells? “Kid…”
“She wanted to know what could cause all that shit she saw in those kids and I told her to show them to me if she didn’t want to show them to any doctors on base. So she did.” And…? “They’re terrible. Deformations all over their faces, kids born without their arms, legs… it’s just… it’s…”
Oh. Oh, okay. He gets it. She’s a nurse and while she’s not a pediatric nurse, she must have felt terrible at seeing little human beings in pain and hurt and well, from what she describes, it sounds very much like the stuff they found in kids born in areas with heavy Agent Orange spraying. And that’s not something the Viet Cong does. “And you felt horrible?”
“And I felt nothing, Tom. That’s the thing. I saw that and I could see how much it messed her up and how much she wanted to hurt someone for causing all that pain and I just… I just felt like shrugging and telling her that well, that’s what war’s like. I wanted to tell her to buck the fuck up. What the fuck is wrong with me, Tom?” Good… God.
He wishes he could tell her that everything’s okay, that she was right, that Jenna Wells was being overdramatic. But he knows that while Wells likes to complain about everything from bugs to dust, she’s not prone to overreacting, that when something messes her up, it’s not something to be taken lightly. And God, it’s like being stabbed by knives that are then turned round and round inside the wound to watch Maureen become more agitated with every sentence until she jumps up and shouts loud enough to heard over the thunder of the thunderstorm the shower of rain just turned into.
He can see that she’s panting heavily, just as a strike of lightening briefly lights up the cargo bay. He can see that there are tears in her eyes, but not on her face. Tears… tears are something that he never even thought to associate with Maureen Reece even though he’s pretty sure that she regularly spent her off shift crying herself to sleep in her first two or three months here. It’s just the kind of thing the girl she was when she came here would have done.
Now, though… “What did you tell her?”
There are a couple things he could have said and none of them would have been as stupid as that one. But that’s him, Thomas Moore, idiot extraordinaire, didn’t you know. She seems to think the same thing, throwing up her hands in the air exasperatedly and saying, “What do you think?” Well… “I confirmed to her that the cause is most likely Agent Orange and I told her that yes, it disgusts me, too that this is what we are doing to this country and then they told her that her father’s here and I haven’t heard from her since she scampered off in a daze.”
He frowns. “That’s perfectly okay. I mean, look, it’s been a long shift and maybe you’re just tired and…”
“I haven’t been caring about sick and wounded and dying people for months now, Tom. Fucking months!” That’s… not how he remembers it. Sure, she’d become a bit detached in the months after her arrival but he’d figured that it was the professional thing to do, like pilots learning to shut off their emotions to be able to analyze a situation and react as fast as possible in any given situation. But there’s never once been a patient or passenger on this plane who felt a need to complain about her bedside manner or just anything having to do with her.
And she… she cares about him, doesn’t she? Would she keep dragging his ass out of bars all over the country and make sure that he’s always ready to fly when he needs to and just sit next to him for hours on end when he wants to talk about Charlie so fucking bad and just can’t? Would she? “I don’t think that’s true, Kid.”
“Don’t you fucking dare telling me what I’m feeling or not!” Whoa, okay, what the hell?
He rubs his neck and he’s almost sure that this time the sweaty wetness doesn’t have anything to do with the humidity and heat. “Look, I wasn’t trying to do that. I just… cut yourself some slack, Kid? Please?”
Now it’s her turn to give him a frustrated groan. “Are you really that stupid or are you just pretending to be?” Hey! Now, see here, young lady… “Caring for people is my fucking job. I’m a nurse, Tom, I don’t do anything but taking care of people. My ability to care for people who need comfort and compassion is literally the one thing making me what I am, you ass.”
Doesn’t she get it? That’s just. Not. True. She was the one telling him that the role of a flight nurse is more that of an emergency surgeon and anesthetist than of the stereotypical angel in a white dress that dispenses pills and smiles to make the downtrodden feel better about their fate. She… she has an academic degree. She could even, some day, get a fucking PhD - she is, without a doubt, the smarter of the two of them and he’ll keep shoving that into everyone’s face until they all fucking get it - and she honestly thinks that caring for people is the one thing that makes her a nurse? That’s some majorly fucked up bullshit there, even he can see that.
And there’s nothing, nothing coming to his mind that he could tell her to comfort her and make the bullshit go away. Helplessly, he gestures with his hands. “Kid, I don’t…”
“Whenever one of them dies in that plane, I keep thinking “I really should be sad about this” and I wait for the tears to start coming at the end of the shift, like they did in the beginning,” so apparently, he isn’t all dumb when it’s about assessing other people. He should be proud of that, shouldn’t he? “But… nothing ever happens. I’m not sad and I’m not crying anymore. I just keep thinking “God, I need a fucking drink when this is over” and “I just want to sleep for a week” and everything I kept thinking during study sessions at college, like this isn’t more than some tedious, boring work. And when it’s over, I’m so… I feel so numb all the time on the plane.”
He wonders if she ever told anyone about that. He wonders for how long it’s been this way, if she’s told anything about that to her college friends after they told her about their husbands and kids and asked her “when that silly Army gig is finally over” - they actually said Army and it was almost funny just how much that rankled her of all the things that could rankle her - if she ever told Cadman about this.
And then he realizes… that she didn’t. Something - maybe the way her fists are balled at her sides or the way she’s still trying to choke back the tears like she’s surprised about her own reaction - tells him that this is the first time she ever tells anyone about this and the implications of this scare the fucking crap out of him.
He wants to say something but nothing makes it out of his open mouth and he feels like a fish when he’s opening and closing it several times without making a sound. He really thinks it can’t get any worse than this when she says, her voice small and terrified, “Something’s happening to me and I have no idea what’s going on. It’s scaring the living daylights out of me, Tom.”
There is nothing that he could say that wouldn’t sound dumb or trite or ridiculous so he does the only thing he can think of and gets up, walks over to her lonely figure standing in the middle of the cargo bay, illuminated by another strike of lightening. Not even hesitating, he puts his arms around her shoulders and pulls her towards him.
She gives him a bit of resistance, shaking her head and putting her fists against his chest but the moment a silent sob rips through her entire body and she goes slack he knows that she has surrendered to whatever is eating her up from the inside and he hugs her closer to keep her upright. He feels her silently sobbing into his shirt and he wants to tell her that it’ll be alright. But not even his thick skull can keep out the dim realization that a lot of things won’t be alright for a long, long time, maybe ever.
So he just keeps holding her, not saying anything, just sometimes making shushing noises and she keeps crying, silently, only sometimes whispering hoarsely about being so fucking scared. It’s ripping his heart out, leaving a deep hole with jagged edges behind but he doesn’t let her go because he knows leaving her alone now would possibly rip her heart out and that’s something he’s not prepared to do, now or ever. It’s scaring the crap out of him.
Somehow, they manage to get their asses over to the cot they’ve been sitting on before this… thing happened and he’s still holding her, her legs across his lap and her face buried in the crook of the neck and for the first time ever since coming to this country, he’s glad for those thunderstorms that fuck everything up so bad that even the VC prefers staying indoors to shooting up imperialist American pigs. The chances of people who really shouldn’t see them like this - such as one Major Carter or a certain General Landry - entering this cargo bay in the worst possible moment are greatly reduced by rain literally coming down in sheets and thunder shaking the buildings on base worse than VC mortars and all of a sudden, he’s damn grateful for that.
And yeah, for the first time ever he has serious issues with the damn storms being over as suddenly as they began, too.
Because it means, you know, that she slowly remembers where she is and what the fuck she’s doing and what she’s supposed to be acting like and as the last cloud disperses and leaves behind blue skies, she clears her throat, removes her legs from his laps and never looks him in the eye. He shouldn’t be offended by it but damn, it does hurt.
Until he realizes that well, he prefers sitting next to each other and not being forced to look at each other greatly himself.
“So,” she says after a few moments of oddly comfortable silence, “you still got those Silk Cuts you won off the Australians at Vung Tau?”
Really? She still remembers a poker game that was four months ago? And, more importantly, she knows him so well that she doesn’t even think it strange to ask him that, right here, right now? For a moment, he contemplates saying no but then… well. “Here you go, Ms. “One day, that stuff’s gonna kill you”.”
“That’s still Captain “One day that stuff’s gonna kill you” to you, sir.” He hates that she manages to turn him on with just a simple sentence like that, after just crying rivers into his shirt and how his desire makes him avert his eyes and do a James Bond, nonchalantly lighting up the cigarette in her mouth without her even asking. And God, now it’s getting him all hot and bothered just thinking about her smoking that thing next to him as if she’s Ingrid Bergmann and he’s Humphrey Bogart.
He’s tempted to take that cig from her fingers, just like Lorne still keeps doing it with Cadman, partly to fuck with her head, partly because he just can’t look at her when she’s being all ladylike with her legs crossed and her lips pursed whenever she exhales and puckered when she sucks on that damn thing and goddammit, where did she learn how to smoke like that? Do they teach that at fucking nursing school or what?
God, he’s a mess.
And of course that is the moment when Dee appears in the hatch, as if he fucking smelled that the coast is clear of any nervous breakdown shenanigans now. “Sir,” he says, “the grease monkeys are asking if they can start working on the Bou now.”
He rolls his eyes and wants to answer but from next to him comes, “It’s gonna start raining again in five minutes and they know that. They’re just trying to be the assholes here for once.”
She almost sounds like herself again, only a little off as if she has to actually make an effort to sound her like her usual matter-of-fact, professional, sometimes a little bored self and he can’t decide whether he’s relieved by that or starts honestly hating that tone.
“Oh, ma’am,” Dee replies, as if he just now saw her and he thinks that he’ll never have Dee’s tact. “Uh… you okay, ma’am?” He’s pretty sure that he just saw a flicker of insecurity and worry cross Dee’s face and he conveniently ignores the fact that he can barely see that face because Dee’s still standing in the hatch, against the grey-white sky. Huh, would you look at that.
“I will be,” she says, sounding a little tired and it’s almost a sigh so it finally makes him look at her. “Guess I just needed a little break.” Then, after a moment of contemplation, she pads the free spot next to her. “Actually, I guess we all could. Come on over, Dee.”
That’s Captain Maureen Reece for you, ladies and gentlemen. Crying her heart out about being scared shitless about losing her ability to care one moment and taking care of the one guy everyone thinks can fend for himself the next. Coming to think of it, Dee really does look a little tired, every now and then, ever since they came back from their extended tour leave in April, and she probably saw it before everyone else did, maybe even before Dee did. Smartest of them all, did he mention that before?
And, always the gentleman, of course Dee comes over, sitting down next to her so that she’s sitting between the two of them, her legs stretched out in front of her now and for some reason, both of them follow suit. She keeps smoking, her eyes closed and… is she humming something?
Yes, yes she is. And now Dee’s humming it, too and really, it’s absolutely unfair how with those two, even tuneless humming sounds melodi… oh, wait, there is a melody. Huh. He nearly starts laughing his ass off at her choice of song but the tune is stronger and before he knows it, he started singing, “What becomes of the broken hearted…”
“Who had love that's now departed…” That’s Dee, sounding a bit off, a bit… wistful? Regretful? Bitter?
Nah. Not Dee. That’s not his style. That’s not who he is. And who would he be wistful, regretful and bitter about any… “I know I’ve got to find…”
Right. The song. He grins at Dee and together, they join Maureen, “Some kind of peace of mind,” and then it’s the rest of the song and she tells him please never to try and attempt a professional singing career and Dee actually pulls that infernal mouth organ out of his chest pocket and he really hadn’t thought that his shift today would end with trying to sing every Dylan, Seeger, Donovan and Baez song they can come up with, and after that just about every song from the last two years that made it over to ‘Nam, laughing hysterically enough to prompt the grease monkeys trying to check up on them to see if any of them need a trip to the 95th themselves.
He had, however, absolutely anticipated that he’d want to just grab her and kiss her senseless about a dozen times because that’s usually what happens when he’s around her. Especially but not limited to all the times when she’s relaxed, carefree, giving him that wonderful laugh that’s deep from within - from that place that the war still doesn’t seem to have touched, where the shy, compassionate, brave twenty-six-year-old she was when she came here still lives and just waits for her to rediscover her and reconcile herself with her.
But it’s okay, because he’s used to it. It’s okay and he’s gonna make it through the next six months, being her friend and holding her when she needs him to and laughing with her when she wants him to because really, what else is there left to do when you love someone so much that you desperately keep yourself away from her because you’d never want to wish yourself on her? What else do you have left to do, anyway?
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: gen, a bit of het
Summary: It's Vietnam 1967 and Thomas Moore has to learn that something really shook up his Air Force nurse.
A/N: Oy. There are a couple happier other Vietnam stories in the buffer but I wanted to keep at least a basic semblance of chronological order so you get this little drama llama first. It's pleased to make your acquaintance and hopes you'll like it, even though it deals with the kind of psychological trauma a lot of Vietnam War nurses suffered from (so... not exactly a happy little bunny but a very happy drama llama, that's for sure). Also, just a little note: takes place at the same time as Military Madness so we're currently in August 1967.
( Kennedy Made Him Believe (We Could Do Much More) )
( We'll Dance Until Morning ('Til There's Just You And Me) )
( With No Direction Home (Like a Complete Unknown) )
( So I Came in Here (And Your Long-Time Curse Hurts) )
( No Reason To Get Excited (The Thief He Kindly Spoke) )
( It’s Way Too Soon (To Be Obsessin’ Like This) )
( America Has Heard The Bugle Call (And You Know It Involves Us One And All) )
( Military Madness (Is Killing Your Country) )
And All Of The Men In This War Torn Land (Salute The Nurses of Vietnam)
“After the battle, after the fight
many owe their lives to the ladies and men in white
And all of the men in this war torn land
salute the nurses of Vietnam.”
Barry Sadler, “Salute the Nurses of Vietnam”
“She in there?”
Dee nods. “Yes, sir.”
He looks up at the sky, frowning, expecting a shower to start any minute. Fucking rainy season. Then he rubs the back of his neck and his hand comes up wet and dirty. Goddammit, he just had a shower after eight hours of crossing the damn country back and forth with teenagers bleeding on the floor of his plane and Jenna Wells behaving even stranger than usual. Fucking rainy season.”Have you tried talking to her?”
Dee shakes his head. “Looks more like a job for you, sir. With all due…”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your panties in a twist.” Why Dee still thinks he can’t comment on the relationship he has with their flight nurse is beyond him. If there is anyone allowed to do that, it’s his co-pilot, for Heaven’s sake. Not that it doesn’t keep everyone else from doing it, though. “Anyway… has she said anything ever since you found her?”
“No, sir. Just keeps sitting there and… you know.” Staring at the opposite wall, unmoving safe for the occasional blinking. Looking like those Marines they sometimes ferry to or from 95th Evac in Da Nang. He knows. He fucking knows.
He wipes the sweat off his face. “Alright, I’ll look into it. Hold off the mechanics until I sound the all clear, okay?”
His co-pilot nods and gives him a casual two finger salute before he respectfully backs off and he knows that whatever racket the grease monkeys will make about first being practically forced to fix the lag in the starboard engine and then being held off for whatever idiotic reasons those flyboys are citing now, Dee will just be staring at them through his shades and they’ll know that they will regret laying a finger on that plane before they’re allowed to.
Alright. He rolls his shoulders and straightens himself and then takes up the stairs to enter the Bou’s cargo bay through the open hatch. It’s semi dark inside and as always, he feels half overwhelmed, half disgusted when he is greeted by the by now familiar scent of fuel and grease and blood that seems to have permanently crept into the nooks and crannies of this damn plane. He’ll never figure out how Maureen can work here on a daily basis.
And… yep, there she is. Sitting on one of the cots, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms on her knees and her chin on her forearms. Still staring at the wall opposite her. So… it’s not like they haven’t gone through a rough patch here and there before - he still vividly remembers that mother of a hangover he had after that booze session that followed Anna Williamson’s letter, even though he managed to throw up directly after it - and it’s not like it’s just him having trouble here now and then but… somehow, this is different. Somehow she scares the living shit out of him right now.
For a moment, he considers sitting as far away as he can without making himself look like a a coward but then again, she doesn’t even bat an eyelid whenever she has to clean up one of his messes, so he makes himself sit down next to her. He even tries to at least look relaxed, with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out. She doesn’t even seem to notice it.
Okay, so… how to go about this, then? He could, of course, order her to talk to him but then she’d probably just beat the shit out of him with that razor sharp tongue of hers - she looks and sounds harmless but she can behead you with her voice as soft as if she were talking to a dying soldier, all the same - and she’d be right to do it. Still not in her chain of command and all that.
Or he could ask her to tell him what’s going on but he’s not sure if she’d even hear him. For all her compassion and dogged, quiet insistence if she wants to make you talk about something, she can be surprisingly stubborn and close-lipped about stuff troubling her. The only reason he learned about her botched leave in March was that he’d heard a slight hitch in her voice when she told him that she was looking forward very much to meeting another college friend, after the three she’d already visited. He still wonders just how bad it was that it made her say yes to his idiotic suggestion to spend the last two weeks of their leave somewhere on the West Coast after only a minimal amount of badgering.
Or maybe, if he just waits a little… “I am aware of your presence, sir. Please stop fidgeting.”
Fidge… he wasn’t fidgeting. He was adjusting his sitting position because honestly, it takes two minutes of sitting with your back against the wall and you can wring your damn shirt and that’s just disgusting. Also, “Far as I remember, we’ve been past the “sir” for over six months, Captain.”
“With all due respect…”
“Oh for Heaven’s sake, Kid, what is going on with you?” Maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say, and not the best tone to use and okay, it also was probably just a tad too loud because he can actually see the moment she clamps up and damn, he’ll never get it right, will he?
She’s silent and, if that is even possible, hugs her knees a little tighter to her chest, as if she wants to make herself as small as possible. This isn’t good. This just can’t be good. He takes a deep breath, fighting off the urge to put his arm around her shoulder and hug her close. “Okay… look, we both know that something bad happened and…”
“If it did, it doesn’t concern you.” Could she be channeling Jenna Wells any more than this?
Also… could she please stop doing that? “Yes, Maureen, it does.” Shit, that wasn’t supposed to happen. He hadn’t aimed to using her first name instead of the thing he’d pinned on her after their first meeting when he’d thought that she was a twenty-two-year-old fresh out of college when she actually was a twenty-six years old nurse with four years of professional experience and a shitton of specialized training under her belt. He really hadn’t wanted to call her Maureen because the things that it implies are too much for him.
And for her, apparently. “Please don’t, Tom.”
It’s not fair, he thinks. It’s not fair that she can make the anger and frustration that have been building up during the day - flying in the rainy season is a fucking nightmare, don’t let anyone tell you different - implode just before it culminates because she’s being way more stubborn that everyone around here judges her to be. It’s not fair that all she needs for that are three words and sounding just so small and tired.
It’s not fair that she can build up road blocks that he crashes into regularly so easily.
He leans his head back, refraining from a frustrated groan, only to hear the furious noise of another sudden tropical shower battering the plane’s hull. “God, I hate that rain.”
Mh. It wasn’t supposed to be said aloud. One… two… “Then you probably shouldn’t have re-upped, genius.”
Well. At least that ended the awkward silence after her plea to him not to try and make her talk about whatever’s got her all twisted up. And if it were up to him, he’d totally leave it at that and be done with it, but unfortunately, he’s not a heartless robot and seeing Maureen trying to work out whatever shit happened to her on her own and failing miserably is tearing him to shreds inside and well, that kind of takes the decision of when and where to end it out of his hands.
“Someone had to keep flying you around the country, hadn’t there?” Okay, maybe that was a rather dumb…
“Wasn’t it you who wanted to push me off to Mitchell and his crew so badly?” Goddammit.
Did she really have to bring that up? “You’ll never let that one go, won’t you?”
“No, sir.” Of course she wouldn’t. He wouldn’t either, if he were in her stead. Telling her they shouldn’t be flying together anymore and that she should ask Carter to be reassigned to Mitchell’s plane because Landry had made a cryptic remark regarding their “very familiar” behavior with each other shortly after she’d dragged his ass out of the Le Van Loc after that letter from Lorne’s sister had been a one of a kind stupid idea. Because it had resulted in three weeks of not speaking with each other and honestly, he never, never wants something like that again.
Not that he’ll ever tell her that, of course. And of course there’s still the current issue to clear up and as much as he’d rather sit here and bicker around with her, he knows he’ll have to bring it up now or never. He’d rather prefer “never” in this case, though. He does sigh a little now. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on, Kid?”
There. Safely back in the nickname territory, having it all under control. That wasn’t so hard now, was it?
“Because, as I said already once, it’s none of your concern.” Jesus fucking Christ, is she really gonna play hard to get with that, of all things?
Frustration makes him groan. “Goddammit, Kid, of course it concerns me. I’m your… your…”
“Pilot?”
“Your…”
“Taxi driver?”
“Friend. I’m your fucking friend. Do you have to make it so hard?” That… wasn’t supposed to ever see the light of day. The first one, that is. He wasn’t ever… he didn’t actually aim to… it wasn’t…
He wasn’t ever going to admit to himself that she means more to him than just the girl that happens to be in the back to hold dying soldiers’ hands.
And he sure as hell wasn’t ever gonna admit that to her. It never was supposed to happen like this, or at all. It was supposed to be this year, or two, whatever of flying together and maybe sometimes going to drink together and spending the occasional night shift playing poker with each other. It wasn’t supposed to be having cigarettes and coffee ready for a girl who once told him she never smokes and being dragged out of bars by her and looking out for each other. It wasn’t supposed to end in making a friend. Ever.
A friend… or something else.
God, he should never have entered this goddamn plane. He should have shrugged and rolled his eyes and asked Cadman to handle this because who’d be better equipped to handle a crisis of whatever sort than a girl’s best friend? He should have walked the hell away.
He should walk the hell away right fucking now.
Suddenly being fed up with the mess that his relationship with Maureen Reece is, he drags his legs off the floor and braces one hand on the cot to get up and… “It’s the photos.”
Okay… maybe he’ll wait a bit with walking away, after all. “Photos?”
She nods, still not looking at him. “The pictures Lieutenant Wells shot at the orphanage a couple days back.” Huh, what?
How… did they get from Maureen sitting in a plane trying to make herself as small as possible to… Lieutenant Jenna Wells? “Kid…”
“She wanted to know what could cause all that shit she saw in those kids and I told her to show them to me if she didn’t want to show them to any doctors on base. So she did.” And…? “They’re terrible. Deformations all over their faces, kids born without their arms, legs… it’s just… it’s…”
Oh. Oh, okay. He gets it. She’s a nurse and while she’s not a pediatric nurse, she must have felt terrible at seeing little human beings in pain and hurt and well, from what she describes, it sounds very much like the stuff they found in kids born in areas with heavy Agent Orange spraying. And that’s not something the Viet Cong does. “And you felt horrible?”
“And I felt nothing, Tom. That’s the thing. I saw that and I could see how much it messed her up and how much she wanted to hurt someone for causing all that pain and I just… I just felt like shrugging and telling her that well, that’s what war’s like. I wanted to tell her to buck the fuck up. What the fuck is wrong with me, Tom?” Good… God.
He wishes he could tell her that everything’s okay, that she was right, that Jenna Wells was being overdramatic. But he knows that while Wells likes to complain about everything from bugs to dust, she’s not prone to overreacting, that when something messes her up, it’s not something to be taken lightly. And God, it’s like being stabbed by knives that are then turned round and round inside the wound to watch Maureen become more agitated with every sentence until she jumps up and shouts loud enough to heard over the thunder of the thunderstorm the shower of rain just turned into.
He can see that she’s panting heavily, just as a strike of lightening briefly lights up the cargo bay. He can see that there are tears in her eyes, but not on her face. Tears… tears are something that he never even thought to associate with Maureen Reece even though he’s pretty sure that she regularly spent her off shift crying herself to sleep in her first two or three months here. It’s just the kind of thing the girl she was when she came here would have done.
Now, though… “What did you tell her?”
There are a couple things he could have said and none of them would have been as stupid as that one. But that’s him, Thomas Moore, idiot extraordinaire, didn’t you know. She seems to think the same thing, throwing up her hands in the air exasperatedly and saying, “What do you think?” Well… “I confirmed to her that the cause is most likely Agent Orange and I told her that yes, it disgusts me, too that this is what we are doing to this country and then they told her that her father’s here and I haven’t heard from her since she scampered off in a daze.”
He frowns. “That’s perfectly okay. I mean, look, it’s been a long shift and maybe you’re just tired and…”
“I haven’t been caring about sick and wounded and dying people for months now, Tom. Fucking months!” That’s… not how he remembers it. Sure, she’d become a bit detached in the months after her arrival but he’d figured that it was the professional thing to do, like pilots learning to shut off their emotions to be able to analyze a situation and react as fast as possible in any given situation. But there’s never once been a patient or passenger on this plane who felt a need to complain about her bedside manner or just anything having to do with her.
And she… she cares about him, doesn’t she? Would she keep dragging his ass out of bars all over the country and make sure that he’s always ready to fly when he needs to and just sit next to him for hours on end when he wants to talk about Charlie so fucking bad and just can’t? Would she? “I don’t think that’s true, Kid.”
“Don’t you fucking dare telling me what I’m feeling or not!” Whoa, okay, what the hell?
He rubs his neck and he’s almost sure that this time the sweaty wetness doesn’t have anything to do with the humidity and heat. “Look, I wasn’t trying to do that. I just… cut yourself some slack, Kid? Please?”
Now it’s her turn to give him a frustrated groan. “Are you really that stupid or are you just pretending to be?” Hey! Now, see here, young lady… “Caring for people is my fucking job. I’m a nurse, Tom, I don’t do anything but taking care of people. My ability to care for people who need comfort and compassion is literally the one thing making me what I am, you ass.”
Doesn’t she get it? That’s just. Not. True. She was the one telling him that the role of a flight nurse is more that of an emergency surgeon and anesthetist than of the stereotypical angel in a white dress that dispenses pills and smiles to make the downtrodden feel better about their fate. She… she has an academic degree. She could even, some day, get a fucking PhD - she is, without a doubt, the smarter of the two of them and he’ll keep shoving that into everyone’s face until they all fucking get it - and she honestly thinks that caring for people is the one thing that makes her a nurse? That’s some majorly fucked up bullshit there, even he can see that.
And there’s nothing, nothing coming to his mind that he could tell her to comfort her and make the bullshit go away. Helplessly, he gestures with his hands. “Kid, I don’t…”
“Whenever one of them dies in that plane, I keep thinking “I really should be sad about this” and I wait for the tears to start coming at the end of the shift, like they did in the beginning,” so apparently, he isn’t all dumb when it’s about assessing other people. He should be proud of that, shouldn’t he? “But… nothing ever happens. I’m not sad and I’m not crying anymore. I just keep thinking “God, I need a fucking drink when this is over” and “I just want to sleep for a week” and everything I kept thinking during study sessions at college, like this isn’t more than some tedious, boring work. And when it’s over, I’m so… I feel so numb all the time on the plane.”
He wonders if she ever told anyone about that. He wonders for how long it’s been this way, if she’s told anything about that to her college friends after they told her about their husbands and kids and asked her “when that silly Army gig is finally over” - they actually said Army and it was almost funny just how much that rankled her of all the things that could rankle her - if she ever told Cadman about this.
And then he realizes… that she didn’t. Something - maybe the way her fists are balled at her sides or the way she’s still trying to choke back the tears like she’s surprised about her own reaction - tells him that this is the first time she ever tells anyone about this and the implications of this scare the fucking crap out of him.
He wants to say something but nothing makes it out of his open mouth and he feels like a fish when he’s opening and closing it several times without making a sound. He really thinks it can’t get any worse than this when she says, her voice small and terrified, “Something’s happening to me and I have no idea what’s going on. It’s scaring the living daylights out of me, Tom.”
There is nothing that he could say that wouldn’t sound dumb or trite or ridiculous so he does the only thing he can think of and gets up, walks over to her lonely figure standing in the middle of the cargo bay, illuminated by another strike of lightening. Not even hesitating, he puts his arms around her shoulders and pulls her towards him.
She gives him a bit of resistance, shaking her head and putting her fists against his chest but the moment a silent sob rips through her entire body and she goes slack he knows that she has surrendered to whatever is eating her up from the inside and he hugs her closer to keep her upright. He feels her silently sobbing into his shirt and he wants to tell her that it’ll be alright. But not even his thick skull can keep out the dim realization that a lot of things won’t be alright for a long, long time, maybe ever.
So he just keeps holding her, not saying anything, just sometimes making shushing noises and she keeps crying, silently, only sometimes whispering hoarsely about being so fucking scared. It’s ripping his heart out, leaving a deep hole with jagged edges behind but he doesn’t let her go because he knows leaving her alone now would possibly rip her heart out and that’s something he’s not prepared to do, now or ever. It’s scaring the crap out of him.
Somehow, they manage to get their asses over to the cot they’ve been sitting on before this… thing happened and he’s still holding her, her legs across his lap and her face buried in the crook of the neck and for the first time ever since coming to this country, he’s glad for those thunderstorms that fuck everything up so bad that even the VC prefers staying indoors to shooting up imperialist American pigs. The chances of people who really shouldn’t see them like this - such as one Major Carter or a certain General Landry - entering this cargo bay in the worst possible moment are greatly reduced by rain literally coming down in sheets and thunder shaking the buildings on base worse than VC mortars and all of a sudden, he’s damn grateful for that.
And yeah, for the first time ever he has serious issues with the damn storms being over as suddenly as they began, too.
Because it means, you know, that she slowly remembers where she is and what the fuck she’s doing and what she’s supposed to be acting like and as the last cloud disperses and leaves behind blue skies, she clears her throat, removes her legs from his laps and never looks him in the eye. He shouldn’t be offended by it but damn, it does hurt.
Until he realizes that well, he prefers sitting next to each other and not being forced to look at each other greatly himself.
“So,” she says after a few moments of oddly comfortable silence, “you still got those Silk Cuts you won off the Australians at Vung Tau?”
Really? She still remembers a poker game that was four months ago? And, more importantly, she knows him so well that she doesn’t even think it strange to ask him that, right here, right now? For a moment, he contemplates saying no but then… well. “Here you go, Ms. “One day, that stuff’s gonna kill you”.”
“That’s still Captain “One day that stuff’s gonna kill you” to you, sir.” He hates that she manages to turn him on with just a simple sentence like that, after just crying rivers into his shirt and how his desire makes him avert his eyes and do a James Bond, nonchalantly lighting up the cigarette in her mouth without her even asking. And God, now it’s getting him all hot and bothered just thinking about her smoking that thing next to him as if she’s Ingrid Bergmann and he’s Humphrey Bogart.
He’s tempted to take that cig from her fingers, just like Lorne still keeps doing it with Cadman, partly to fuck with her head, partly because he just can’t look at her when she’s being all ladylike with her legs crossed and her lips pursed whenever she exhales and puckered when she sucks on that damn thing and goddammit, where did she learn how to smoke like that? Do they teach that at fucking nursing school or what?
God, he’s a mess.
And of course that is the moment when Dee appears in the hatch, as if he fucking smelled that the coast is clear of any nervous breakdown shenanigans now. “Sir,” he says, “the grease monkeys are asking if they can start working on the Bou now.”
He rolls his eyes and wants to answer but from next to him comes, “It’s gonna start raining again in five minutes and they know that. They’re just trying to be the assholes here for once.”
She almost sounds like herself again, only a little off as if she has to actually make an effort to sound her like her usual matter-of-fact, professional, sometimes a little bored self and he can’t decide whether he’s relieved by that or starts honestly hating that tone.
“Oh, ma’am,” Dee replies, as if he just now saw her and he thinks that he’ll never have Dee’s tact. “Uh… you okay, ma’am?” He’s pretty sure that he just saw a flicker of insecurity and worry cross Dee’s face and he conveniently ignores the fact that he can barely see that face because Dee’s still standing in the hatch, against the grey-white sky. Huh, would you look at that.
“I will be,” she says, sounding a little tired and it’s almost a sigh so it finally makes him look at her. “Guess I just needed a little break.” Then, after a moment of contemplation, she pads the free spot next to her. “Actually, I guess we all could. Come on over, Dee.”
That’s Captain Maureen Reece for you, ladies and gentlemen. Crying her heart out about being scared shitless about losing her ability to care one moment and taking care of the one guy everyone thinks can fend for himself the next. Coming to think of it, Dee really does look a little tired, every now and then, ever since they came back from their extended tour leave in April, and she probably saw it before everyone else did, maybe even before Dee did. Smartest of them all, did he mention that before?
And, always the gentleman, of course Dee comes over, sitting down next to her so that she’s sitting between the two of them, her legs stretched out in front of her now and for some reason, both of them follow suit. She keeps smoking, her eyes closed and… is she humming something?
Yes, yes she is. And now Dee’s humming it, too and really, it’s absolutely unfair how with those two, even tuneless humming sounds melodi… oh, wait, there is a melody. Huh. He nearly starts laughing his ass off at her choice of song but the tune is stronger and before he knows it, he started singing, “What becomes of the broken hearted…”
“Who had love that's now departed…” That’s Dee, sounding a bit off, a bit… wistful? Regretful? Bitter?
Nah. Not Dee. That’s not his style. That’s not who he is. And who would he be wistful, regretful and bitter about any… “I know I’ve got to find…”
Right. The song. He grins at Dee and together, they join Maureen, “Some kind of peace of mind,” and then it’s the rest of the song and she tells him please never to try and attempt a professional singing career and Dee actually pulls that infernal mouth organ out of his chest pocket and he really hadn’t thought that his shift today would end with trying to sing every Dylan, Seeger, Donovan and Baez song they can come up with, and after that just about every song from the last two years that made it over to ‘Nam, laughing hysterically enough to prompt the grease monkeys trying to check up on them to see if any of them need a trip to the 95th themselves.
He had, however, absolutely anticipated that he’d want to just grab her and kiss her senseless about a dozen times because that’s usually what happens when he’s around her. Especially but not limited to all the times when she’s relaxed, carefree, giving him that wonderful laugh that’s deep from within - from that place that the war still doesn’t seem to have touched, where the shy, compassionate, brave twenty-six-year-old she was when she came here still lives and just waits for her to rediscover her and reconcile herself with her.
But it’s okay, because he’s used to it. It’s okay and he’s gonna make it through the next six months, being her friend and holding her when she needs him to and laughing with her when she wants him to because really, what else is there left to do when you love someone so much that you desperately keep yourself away from her because you’d never want to wish yourself on her? What else do you have left to do, anyway?