Ernie’s room is way to hell and gone across the hospital.”
“Well, maybe I can ride part of the way,” McCoy said, and carefully lowered himself into the wheelchair.
Outside the room with the sign “McCoy, Mrs. Ernestine NO VISITORS,” Hart took the roses from McCoy’s lap and held them while McCoy got out of the wheelchair and painfully moved his leg around. Then, when McCoy nodded, Hart handed him the roses and pushed open the heavy door.
“That will be all, Captain Hart, thank you,” McCoy said, and walked into the room.
Ernie was in bed, with the back raised, reading a book. She looked up when she saw him.
“You apparently can’t read, Major,” she said after a long moment. “The sign says no visitors.”
“What are you reading?”
“A novel. The Egyptian.”
“Is it any good?”
“It is not about Korea or childbearing,” Ernie said. “What’s with the roses?”
He walked to the bed and handed them to her.
If I limped, she didn’t seem to notice.
“Knowing you as I do, these were somebody else’s idea,” Ernie said.
“Hart’s,” McCoy admitted. “You almost got a bonsai tree.”
“Are you going to put your arms around me, or I am that repulsive in my bloated condition?”
He leaned over the bed and put his arms around her.
“Oh, Ken, I’ve missed you!” she said into his neck.
“Me, too, baby,” he said.
“How much do you know?” Ernie asked, still speaking into his neck.
“I know it was a damned fool thing to do, taking a train down here,” he said.
“I almost lost it,” she said. “But I had to see Pick.”
“I know.”
She let him go, and sort of pushed him away.
“Okay. Now what’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he said.
“You’re as pale as a sheet, and there’s something wrong with your leg,” she said.
“I took a little piece of shrapnel,” he said.
“Is that why you’re walking that way?”
“What way?”
“Ken, is that why you’re walking that way?”
“I suppose.”
“You want to lie down with me?”
“I want to, but is it smart?”
She shifted herself to the far side of the narrow bed, then patted the near side.
He very carefully got into the bed beside her, but was unable to do so without wincing several times.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” he said.
“You want to feel him or her? Him or her just kicked me again.”
“Is that good or bad?”
She took his hand and guided it to her stomach.
“Jesus!” he said. “Does it do that all the time?”
“Him or her does that frequently,” Ernie said. “Do not call him or her ’it.’ ”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Their eyes met again. He moved his hand from her stomach to her face.
“My God, I love you so much,” he said.
“It took you long enough to say it,” she said.
The door swung open, and Captain F. Howard Schermer, MC, USN, marched in, followed by a middle-aged, gray-haired, short and stocky nurse whose badge identified her as Commander J. V. Stenten, NC, USN, Chief Nursing Services, and Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR.
“When I told you, Major McCoy,” Captain Schermer said, “that you would have to spend at least the next four days in bed, I really had a bed of your own in mind.”
McCoy, looking guilty, started to swing his legs out of bed.
“Belay that!” Captain Schermer ordered.
McCoy stopped moving.
“How bad is he, Doctor?” Ernie asked.
“He has been sewn up,” Dr. Schermer said. “If he does what he’s ordered to do, in three weeks or a month he should be as good as new.”
“He very seldom does what he’s ordered to do,” Ernie said.
“So General Pickering has been telling me,” Dr. Schermer said.
“Is there any reason another bed can’t be brought in here for him?” Ernie said. “I’ll see he does what he’s told to do.”
“It is against both regulation and policy,” Dr. Schermer said.
“That wasn’t her question, Captain Schermer,” Pickering said.
“Doctor, the sumo bed?” Commander Stenten asked.
“You’re one step ahead of me again, Commander Stenten, ” Captain Schermer said. He turned to Pickering. “What I was thinking, General, was that if, in contravention of regulation and policy, we rolled another bed in here for Major McCoy”—he pointed across the room—“the first thing either or both of them would do the minute the door was closed would be to push the beds close to each other. Neither of them should be (a) on their feet and (b) pushing furniture around. This applies even more to Major McCoy, since he is about to take the medicine for pain prescribed, which is certain to make him more than a little groggy.”