Winter Soldier

“I doubt it, but it’s a very good knockoff.”

“It would be a nice gift for your son.”

He picked the watch up again, unbuttoned his shirt pocket and took out a money clip. The shopkeeper appeared in front of them as if by magic. “You like?”

“I’ll take it.” Adam peeled off five twenties and handed the man the money. He didn’t bargain for a better price.

“Engrave for free,” the smiling shopkeeper said. “Remember Saigon always.”

“I don’t need a watch for that.” But Adam handed it to him, anyway.

“What do you say on it?”

“For Brian—” Adam began.

Suddenly there was a small stampede of sandaled feet, and from out of nowhere came a whole gaggle of children of all ages, all sizes, from toddlers to young adolescents, who swirled around them. Street children. There were many of them in Saigon, some orphaned, some not. Left behind in the headlong rush to prosperity, they roamed the streets living hand-to-mouth.

“Nguoi My! Nguoi My!” It meant American. Leah had learned it from her phrase book. “Friends, give us money—dollars.”

She wished there was more she could do to help, but she’d learned the hard way you couldn’t save the world all by yourself. At least, she could do her small part and make today a little better for them. She slipped her hand into her skirt pocket to fish out a couple of dollar bills she had stashed there.

The children became even noisier when they saw the money. They began to jump up and down, laughing and giggling, demanding more. The shopkeeper waved them away. They ignored him, crowding around Adam and Leah and plucking at their clothes. A couple tugged the straps of her backpack. Leah laughed and tugged back. The shopkeeper picked up a broom resting by the door and made sweeping motions toward the children, still scolding in Vietnamese. The boys shouted. The little girls squealed, and one of the smallest started crying.

Leah glanced over at Adam. His face was as white as his shirt. A look of pure horror.

The shopkeeper shooed the children out into the street. Leah held her breath and watched them until they were safely on the other side of the narrow, crowded roadway. She turned back as the ebb and flow of Saigon street life surrounded her again. She was alone. She looked around. Adam was already a hundred feet away and walking fast. Surely he hadn’t turned tail and run because a group of kids had hustled them for a couple of dollars. Then she remembered the look on his face and thought maybe he had. She watched him go, a head taller than everyone else around him.

“Adam, wait! Your watch.” She might as well have saved her breath. The level of street noise made it impossible for him to hear her. She didn’t think he would have stopped if he had. He’d left her alone in the middle of a strange city without a word of explanation. She had every right to be angry with him, but she wasn’t. Being stranded didn’t worry her—she could take care of herself. What bothered her was the memory of that look on his face. She wanted to know what had put it there. She wanted to help take it away—and that bothered her most of all.

CHAPTER THREE

A DELIVERY-TRUCK DRIVER made a U-turn in the middle of the street two blocks from the market, tying up traffic in every direction, when Leah was heading back to the hotel. It took her driver almost an hour to maneuver his cyclo through the snarl. When she finally arrived, the bus to take them to Dalat was waiting, engine idling. She paid the driver and hurried to her room. While packing, she listened for sounds of movement from Adam’s suite, but heard nothing. She couldn’t stop wondering where he was and what he was doing. She couldn’t forget the horror she’d glimpsed on his face—an old horror, familiar and long remembered. It sent a shiver of dread up and down her spine. When she left her room, she knocked on his door. There was no answer. She hadn’t really expected there would be.

Adam wasn’t in the lobby. He wasn’t on the sidewalk outside the hotel. He wasn’t on the bus. She shoved her duffel bag into the overhead bin and looked around. The passengers were all women, except for Roger Crenshaw.

“Glad you’re here, Leah. Only two more to come,” he said, putting a tick beside her name on the clipboard he was holding.

“Join me. We’re almost ready to leave.” Kaylene smiled and beckoned from across the aisle.

“Where are the others?” Leah asked, sliding onto the cracked leather seat beside the woman she already considered a friend.

“B.J. and most of the men left for the airport—” Kaylene glanced at her watch “—half an hour ago.”

“Dr. Sauder, too?”

“Yes, I believe I saw him with the group.”

Leah was relieved to learn that Adam had made it safely back to the hotel. Something of what she was feeling must have shown on her face, for Kaylene looked as if she wanted to say more. But just then the bus doors screeched shut on unoiled hinges behind the final two members of the group. Moments later they pulled out onto the street, parting the waves of opposing traffic like a whale in a school of shrimp.

The ride to Dalat was one of the most nerveracking experiences of Leah’s life. The highway out of Saigon was crowded with all manner of vehicles, from eighteen-wheelers to high-wheeled carts pulled by water buffalo. There were seventies-era American cars, Japanese motor scooters, Chinese trucks and buses, cyclists and pedestrians, and no one paid any more attention to the traffic laws here than they had in Saigon. There seemed to be only one rule of the road: have a horn and use it. It was a long, harrowing drive, and even the beauty of the mist-washed hillsides was not enough to take Leah’s mind off their driver’s suicidal tendency to pass other vehicles on the winding stretches of narrow roadway with sheer, unguarded drops only inches from the bus’s wheels.

The sun had set and the short twilight had almost faded when they arrived at the hospital compound in the jungle, several miles outside the hill-country city of Dalat. Father Gerard, the French Canadian priest in charge of the hospital, and two of the nuns, whom he introduced as Sister Grace and Sister Janet, came out of the square, two-story, brick building to welcome them.

Leah took a moment to look around and get her bearings before following the white-cassocked Father Gerard and the others on a tour of the compound. To the west of the hospital was a church made out of the same dusty-red brick, its copper-roofed steeple green with age. Grouped between the two buildings were half-a-dozen thatched-roof huts. Smoke from cooking fires curled through holes in the roofs while small children played outside in the dirt, among chickens and potbellied pigs. Here, Father Gerard explained, as he led them to their rooms in two larger communal huts, the families and friends of hospital patients stayed while their loved ones underwent treatment.

They drew names out of a hat for room assignments, and Leah and Kaylene found themselves paired up, an arrangement that suited them both. Their room was at the end of the long building closest to the hospital. Barely big enough to turn around in, it held two hard, narrow beds draped with mosquito netting, a small table and one chair, a metal washbowl and pitcher. A single bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling. The hospital had electricity provided from Dalat, but in the compound there was only an aging generator that produced electricity for two hours at dusk and one hour in the morning. Showers and toilets were in the hospital building. The kitchen and refectory were there, too.

The evening meal had been held for them. They took their places at the long benched tables and the Vietnamese nuns brought them soup thick with noodles and bits of pork and chicken. It was spicier than anything Leah had ever eaten, but delicious. The rest of the meal consisted of steamed rice, stale French bread, dried fruit—and tea—no coffee. Adam wouldn’t like that, Leah thought. When they’d finished eating, they toured the wards and the operating suites. It was dark by the time they returned to their rooms to unpack. The generator shut down at eight as advertised. They undressed by candlelight and were in bed by nine.

Leah was so tired she ached in every muscle, but still she couldn’t sleep. Where were the supply trucks? They should have arrived by now. The highway they’d traveled was treacherous enough in daylight. At night, with only the moon to guide them, it would be even more dangerous. She stared into the darkness and listened to the unfamiliar but comforting sound of Kaylene’s gentle snoring. She found herself straining to hear the sound of trucks laboring up the steep grade to the hospital compound. What if something had happened to them? To B.J. and the others? To Adam?

She forced herself to relax. There was nothing she could do to get the trucks and their occupants here any faster, and tomorrow was going to be a long, busy day. The two operating suites would have to be evaluated and arranged to the surgeons’ satisfaction. The electrician would have to get the generator that would power all their high-tech equipment and computers up and running. All the surgical instruments had to be checked and checked again. There would be patients to evaluate, operating schedules to draw up. But still she couldn’t sleep. Instead, she watched the luminous hands of her travel clock creep forward in slow circles until at last her vigil was rewarded with the unmistakable sound of heavy trucks pulling into the compound.

They were here. They were safe. He was safe. Leah closed her eyes, but it wasn’t until she heard the low rumble of Adam’s voice as he exchanged greetings with Father Gerard that she relaxed enough to fall asleep.

THUNDER RUMBLED in the distance, barely audible above the steady roar of the generator on the other side of the wall. Adam looked out the operating room’s one small window, saw the dark clouds rolling down from the mountains and knew they were in for a downpour. He would be surprised if they didn’t get a thunderstorm at this time of the afternoon every day for the next three weeks. He saw Leah Gentry glance over her shoulder to the same spot and then continue her conversation with Roger Crenshaw.

He’d been avoiding her all day. He owed her an apology and an explanation. The apology he could handle; the explanation he wasn’t so sure about. Adam watched as Leah and Roger inspected a pressure gauge they’d just unpacked. Roger would oversee the larger operating room next door where the orthopedic and general surgeons would set up shop. He and Leah would work together here. The generator’s staccato beat stuttered and faltered. The lights flickered and dimmed, then steadied again. Leah dropped a screwdriver on the cement floor and mumbled an apology in his direction.

He acknowledged it with a nod and went on checking his own instruments, thousands of dollars’ worth of specialized scalpels and retractors, drills and clamps. He hadn’t bothered to keep them with him on the plane, as Leah had with her red toolbox. If they’d been lost, he wouldn’t have to operate. He could have turned tail and run back to Chicago. He closed the case and set it on the table by the antique autoclave in the corner. From now on they were Kaylene Smiley’s responsibility.

Roger Crenshaw left the room, and Adam found himself standing at the head of the operating table watching Leah work. “Everything check out okay?” he asked.

She was apparently so involved in what she was doing it took a moment for his words to sink in. Then she looked at him and blinked. There were dark smudges beneath her eyes, as though she hadn’t slept well. She probably hadn’t, if her bed was as hard and uncomfortable as his.

She smiled tentatively, obviously not quite certain how to handle him after yesterday’s disappearing act. Her hair was in the same French braid as before, but today little curling wisps had escaped to brush against her cheek and the nape of her neck. “The humidity is giving me fits. Everything’s sticking or jumping around.” She tapped one of the gauges with the tip of her fingernail.

“B.J. said they’ll have the air conditioner installed soon.” Even though it was cooler in the hills this time of year than in Saigon, the humidity would play havoc with the delicate instruments on which both he and Leah relied. The air conditioner was a necessity, not a luxury.

“I’ll run one more check when it’s up and going. Then I’m ready whenever you are.”

“We start patient evaluations first thing in the morning. Would you like to sit in on mine?” Back at St. B’s he let his residents do most of the face-to-face work. These days he kept his distance from his patients, especially the youngest ones.

“Thank you, I would. Caleb and I work together that way. I like to have a feel for the patient. There’s more to anesthesia than just checking height and weight, and looking up dosages on a chart.” She tilted her head slightly and smiled at him.

Adam had been waiting for that smile, and the realization made him angry at himself. He took it out on Leah. “This isn’t going to be fun and games. It’s triage. The oldest, the youngest, the sickest—those are the ones who can’t beat the odds, the ones we’ll have to pass over.”

Her smile disappeared. “I know that.”

“B.J.’s done a hell of a job getting me what I need to operate here, but it’s still a Third World setup. No heroics. No miracles. Some are going to make it and some aren’t. Can you handle that, too?” He looked down at his hands, balled into fists on the metal table. He sounded like the soulless medical machine he was becoming.

“I can live with the tough calls,” she said quietly. “Can you?”

He ignored her question. Losing your soul didn’t mean you had to behave like a jackass. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. We’ll do our best for all our patients. We’ll do fine together.”

“I always give my patients one hundred percent. I’m sure you do, too.”

She didn’t sound completely mollified, but he forged ahead. “And while I’m at it, I also want to apologize for leaving you stranded yesterday.”