“And we haven’t told Ernie about this yet, either,” Pickering said.
“Jesus H. Christ!”
“Your call, Major,” Dr. Schermer said. “How do we deal with your wife? If you think a telephone call would be better, if you think learning that you’ve been wounded would upset her even more . . .”
“I’m not going to be wheeled into her room on a gurney, ” McCoy said.
“Can you walk?”
“And I want to go in alone,” McCoy said. “And not in Al Haig’s Army pants and shirt.”
“Is that where that came from?” Pickering asked, chuckling. “Doctor, Captain Haig is General Almond’s aide-de-camp.”
“There’s an officers’ sales store in the hospital,” Dr. Schermer said. “If you will agree to be rolled there in a wheelchair—and from there to your wife’s room?”
“Deal,” McCoy said. “That is, if General Pickering will loan me enough money to buy a uniform.”
“I think that can be worked out,” Pickering said.
[FOUR]
Major Kenneth R. McCoy sat with a white hospital blanket over his knees in a wheelchair in a small dressing cubicle in the officers’ sales store. He was waiting for his new uniform trousers to be taken in an inch at the waist, and for them to be provided with precisely the correct crotch-to-cuff length. While he was waiting, he was giving serious, just about completely futile, thought about what bright and witty comment, or comments, he would make to his wife when he walked into her room.
He had just about decided that he was not going to be able to come up with something useful when his reverie was interrupted by Captain George F. Hart coming into the cubicle with a dozen roses.
“Where the hell did you get those?” McCoy asked.
“It wasn’t easy,” Hart said. “A lesser dog robber than myself probably would have had to settle for one of those miniature trees—”
“Bonsai,” McCoy furnished.
“—of which the Japanese seem so fond.”
“Thanks, George.”
“On the other hand, maybe a bonsai tree would have been better,” Hart said. “The roses are going to wilt. The bonsai would last for the next century, as a souvenir of this unexpected encounter.”
A Japanese seamstress pushed the curtain aside, handed McCoy the trousers, and then folded her arms over her breast, obviously intending to see how well she had done her job.
“Would you please wait outside for a minute?” McCoy said to her.
Her eyes widened when she heard the faultless Japanese. She bowed and backed out of the dressing cubicle.
“That always bugs me,” Hart said. “They’re always surprised as hell when one of us speaks Japanese, but a hell of a lot of them speak English.”
“That’s because we’re barbarians, George,” McCoy said. He handed Hart the hospital blanket, then started to put his left leg in the trousers. He winced.
“You need some help with that?” Hart asked.
“They are surprised when we use indoor plumbing, take showers, and don’t eat with our fingers,” McCoy went on as if he hadn’t heard the offer of help.
He got the right leg mostly inside the trousers, and then, awkwardly, got out of the wheelchair and pulled them up. He tucked his shirttail in, then pulled up the zipper and closed the belt.
“Hand me the field scarf, please,” he asked, pointing to the necktie hanging from a hook.
Hart handed it to him, and McCoy turned around to face the mirror and worked the field scarf under his shirt collar.
“That hurt. I was better off before I let the doc talk me into the wheelchair.”
“What did you do on the plane?” Hart asked.
“Planes,” McCoy corrected him. “The Beaver from Wonsan to Seoul, and it hurt to move when I got out of that. Then a C-54 to Pusan. I walked up and down the aisle in that—it was the courier plane, full of chair warmers giving me dirty looks because I was wearing Al Haig’s shirt and pants—and it didn’t hurt—or hurt less—when I got off it. And I walked—not far—around Pusan to keep it from getting stiff until I got on a Navy Gooney Bird that brought me here. Hospital plane, full of wounded Marines. I walked up and down the aisle of that one, too. And I was doing pretty good until I got here. Now it hurts like hell.”
“Moving pulls on the sutures,” Hart said.
“Thank you, Dr. Hart. I had no idea what was making me hurt.”
He pulled on a tunic, examined himself in the mirror, then turned away from it.
“I think I’ll pass on the wheelchair,” he said.
“Not only did you give your word as an officer and gentleman, but