China Beach Drabble
A/N2: I’m just doing drabbles for these two while I get a longer fic done.
McMurphy’s POV
I should have thanked K.C. for getting Dr. Dick that pair of ao dais for his wife. Authentic, hand-made silk. I never told Dr. Dick that I really had had a going away present for him. Also hand-made, but in no way would that gift have been enjoyed as much.
Amidst the chaos that was China Beach 510th Evac Hospital’s normal day-to-day operations, there had been the disposal of a live mortar bomb (carried out by Dr. Dick, almost causing him to miss his R&R), downing of a Huey with Lila, Cherry and Laurette on-board and the planning of Dr. Dick’s going away party (and a gift for his wife as he had forgotten to get one).
I don’t know what made me think that Beth-Anne might like a crazy-quilt shirt made out of miscellaneous bits of our lives in Vietnam. The fact that I continued with my mission to give the good doctor a personalized gift even after K.C. let me know how inane my gift actually was - “the man is gonna fly halfway around the world to see his wife and talk about Boonie’s shorts?” showed just how naive I still may have been. Or it might have been that I needed the distraction since K.C. had shown up in my quarters while I was sewing the shirt, in nothing but a large white men’s shirt.
I can barely remember anything about the shirt I was making, other than the remark about Boonie’s shorts, but I can remember everything about K.C. from that same point in time. She’d sauntered in with no knock or salutation. Just wandered in like she belonged there.
The discussion about my gift to Dr. Dick was a sideline, her own distraction. She’d come to let me know that Cherry and Laurette’s chopper had gone down. In her own way, she wanted to let me know that she was distressed. But damn it, did she have to dress like that when she did it?
The image of her bare legs, seen through the corners of my eyes and from darting glances while I continued to sew, was burned into my memory. The confident stride was still there, but the strained look on her face and the pain in her voice when she relayed her lack of information regarding the crash, told me she was scared. All that vulnerability was erased once she’d heard from her pilot friends that the girls had been found alive and were being returned to base relatively unhurt.
She surprised Dr. Dick at his party with the pair of ao dais - the item she’d specially ordered from Da Nang. I’ll never really know if she did it to piss me off or try to save me the embarrassment of giving him that horrible shirt. As she’d said, “For a smart girl, you can be incredibly dumb.”
Having been not so subtly one-upped, I hadn’t been entirely enthused to run into K.C. upon exiting the hospital after seeing the doctor to his taxi. She knew I was irritated that she’d provided a gift I couldn’t hope to have given. Verbally sparring about the price with her seemed to be the only way I could retain my pride. With the exception that she’d actually been coming to tell me the news that the girls were ok.
I‘d quietly digested that information and meant to walk away, because my Irish pride was again raging against anything that sounded like an apology. But I turned back because that same damned pride forced me to admit my guilt, however silently. She read the look on my face and asked, “What did you have in mind?”
The only thing I had on my mind at that point was those bare legs.
McMurphy’s POV
I should have thanked K.C. for getting Dr. Dick that pair of ao dais for his wife. Authentic, hand-made silk. I never told Dr. Dick that I really had had a going away present for him. Also hand-made, but in no way would that gift have been enjoyed as much.
Amidst the chaos that was China Beach 510th Evac Hospital’s normal day-to-day operations, there had been the disposal of a live mortar bomb (carried out by Dr. Dick, almost causing him to miss his R&R), downing of a Huey with Lila, Cherry and Laurette on-board and the planning of Dr. Dick’s going away party (and a gift for his wife as he had forgotten to get one).
I don’t know what made me think that Beth-Anne might like a crazy-quilt shirt made out of miscellaneous bits of our lives in Vietnam. The fact that I continued with my mission to give the good doctor a personalized gift even after K.C. let me know how inane my gift actually was - “the man is gonna fly halfway around the world to see his wife and talk about Boonie’s shorts?” showed just how naive I still may have been. Or it might have been that I needed the distraction since K.C. had shown up in my quarters while I was sewing the shirt, in nothing but a large white men’s shirt.
I can barely remember anything about the shirt I was making, other than the remark about Boonie’s shorts, but I can remember everything about K.C. from that same point in time. She’d sauntered in with no knock or salutation. Just wandered in like she belonged there.
The discussion about my gift to Dr. Dick was a sideline, her own distraction. She’d come to let me know that Cherry and Laurette’s chopper had gone down. In her own way, she wanted to let me know that she was distressed. But damn it, did she have to dress like that when she did it?
The image of her bare legs, seen through the corners of my eyes and from darting glances while I continued to sew, was burned into my memory. The confident stride was still there, but the strained look on her face and the pain in her voice when she relayed her lack of information regarding the crash, told me she was scared. All that vulnerability was erased once she’d heard from her pilot friends that the girls had been found alive and were being returned to base relatively unhurt.
She surprised Dr. Dick at his party with the pair of ao dais - the item she’d specially ordered from Da Nang. I’ll never really know if she did it to piss me off or try to save me the embarrassment of giving him that horrible shirt. As she’d said, “For a smart girl, you can be incredibly dumb.”
Having been not so subtly one-upped, I hadn’t been entirely enthused to run into K.C. upon exiting the hospital after seeing the doctor to his taxi. She knew I was irritated that she’d provided a gift I couldn’t hope to have given. Verbally sparring about the price with her seemed to be the only way I could retain my pride. With the exception that she’d actually been coming to tell me the news that the girls were ok.
I‘d quietly digested that information and meant to walk away, because my Irish pride was again raging against anything that sounded like an apology. But I turned back because that same damned pride forced me to admit my guilt, however silently. She read the look on my face and asked, “What did you have in mind?”
The only thing I had on my mind at that point was those bare legs.