had had last night, when he grabbed up the water pitcher. What was happening to him?
At the same time, way down deep under his start and dismay was a tiny bright red tickle of satisfied pleasure. Goddam women. There wasn’t one of them who could be rational about anything. At least he had gotten even with them for once. But he was sorry.
“Jesus God,” Landers whispered. He got his palm on her forehead, and began forcing her head up. Strange got her hands and pulled them down. A bright red stream of blood was running from her nose, down over her hands, and now down over her chin, into her lap.
“At least it shut her up for a while,” Strange said, to nobody, with a silly grin.
Trynor was already on his way back from the bathroom with towels. “You oughtn’t to of done that,” he said in a mild but shocked voice.
“You big oaf,” Frances said, in a muffled but nonetheless loving tone of voice. “A real dumbkopf.”
“Put your head back,” Landers said. “Way back. Get some ice from the ice bucket,” he said to Trynor.
“Go ahead, turn me in,” Strange said with a grin. “Just go down to the lobby. There’ll be an MP somewhere. I’ll wait right here.”
“Oh, shut up, you oaf,” Frances Highsmith said.
“Do you want us to try and get you a doctor?” Landers said.
“I don’t want anything,” Frances said. “Just stop the bleeding, and get me out of here. I’ve got a doctor.”
She was much more worried about the blood on the lap of her skirt than about her nose, apparently. The skirt made her look as if she had started menstruating. They got it off of her and Landers washed the blood out of it in cold water, and hung the dress up to dry. By the time it was dry enough the bleeding had all but stopped, but the nose was swelling steadily. “Just get me out of here,” Frances said again. They gave her a hotel napkin to cover it and Landers went down with her to the street and put her in a cab. He offered to go with her, but she did not want him to. When he came back, he threw himself down in a deep armchair with a “Whoosh!” of relief.
It was the beginning of the end for Landers and Strange. Trynor stayed on, with a key, in case any of the other old-company men should come in. But Strange and Landers had had enough of partying. Both were ready to go back to the hospital.
But before they did, they stayed on long enough to get good and drunk. Then they drank more in the cab going back. On the main outdoor walkway they parted to go to their respective wards and sleep the night through. It was just suppertime on the wards.
“What’s gotten into you?” Landers asked in the cab. “You could have gotten us all into a lot of trouble.”
“I know,” Strange said. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
On his own ward he slept the whole night through in an unrestful sleep, but without dreams. In the morning, though Col Curran did not appear with the morning rounds group, Strange went to him in his surgery office and turned himself over to him, with the information that he wanted the second operation.
Strange calculated that in a little over four days he had spent just about two thousand dollars of the seven-thousand-dollar total.
But that, of course, was only if you included the $1400 paid to the hotel for the two weeks of the suite.
CHAPTER 21
CURRAN WASTED LITTLE TIME. Strange told him what he’d decided. Curran smiled his small smile and said he would take Strange the next day, tomorrow.
He had been meaning to get around to Strange, he said. There was not any question of Curran’s having waited for Strange to make a decision. He hadn’t. He just had been extraordinarily busy. Which was also the reason he had missed making morning rounds. The US 5th Army had been halted by the Germans at the Volturno in October. And had been doing heavy work, was the way Curran phrased it, since then, and in fact had been hung up not far from there since November 1st. And the tougher surgical cases were drifting back, now. He hadn’t had time for Strange.
The mention of the 5th Army in Italy shocked Strange. He had seen two of them come onto his own ward with forearm