Goldman opened his eyes, and the blur between dream and reality vanished. There was no mistaking where he was; the click of the air conditioning coming on and beginning its interminable throbbing was familiar enough proof he was sitting in a hard, government issue chair in the hospital room at Nha Trang, Vietnam. Yet, his clothes were soaked with sweat, and a chill went through him as the cold air moved in the room.
And there was another, more important, detail that was not right.
The hospital bunk was empty.
Casey-Casca-was gone…
A cold wash of fear ran over Goldman. Momentarily his mind filled again with the sights and sounds and smell of that last great battle on the Parthian plains.
Or was it the smell of blood coming from the hospital morgue next door? There were, of course, rational ways to rule out hallucinations. After all I am a doctor, forcing the emerging panic back to the dark where it came from. He made a controlled unhurried visual survey of the room. It was precisely as he had remembered it. Nothing whatever had changed except that Casey was no longer on the bed. And, considering where his chair was placed, no one could have rolled a stretcher into the room and taken the wounded man while he slept. He looked at the bed. Had the man never been there in the first place? No. There was the indentation a body would normally have made, and the top sheet was pushed aside much as it would have been if Casey had simply gotten up of his own accord and left the room.
Goldman bent over the bed and absently ran his fingers lightly over the surface. He felt a lingering trace of warmth. He looked back at the door. Closed. Feeling a little foolish, he bent down and looked under the bed. He could see all the way to the shadowed wall. Nothing. He made a careful search of the entire room. Empty of any human life other than his own.
Odd. Damned odd.
He snapped the fingers of his right hand. He could hear the sharp noise distinctly. He moved his hand against the light. No. He was in full command of his own senses, a rational human being.
Yet…
He opened the door and stepped out into the hall and found himself stumbling, his body functioning as though all the energy had been drained from it. The lethargy weighed down his limbs as he made his way down the long hallway to Colonel Landries's room. He felt a little as though he were drunk-but he had no memory of drinking. As he passed the mess hall, an outside door opened, and he saw that dawn had almost come. He checked his watch: 0430 hours. Solid reality. Inside the mess hall the cooks were cussing out the Vietnamese kitchen help. Normal. Familiar.
He beat on Landries's door.
"What the hell is it now?" came the grumbling sleep-filled response from inside.
Goldman pounded again.
"All right. All right! Knock off the noise. I'm coming."
Landires opened the door. He was wearing only Bermuda shorts, and sweat trickled down the thin gray hairs on his chest.
"Goldman?" He saw something in his surgeon's eyes. "It's Casey, isn't it? He's dead?"
"Dead?" Goldman laughed. "Dead? Casey dead? No, Doctor, that is the one thing he's not." He roared with laughter that bordered on the hysterical.
They were in Landries's office, the door locked, and the bottle of Jack Daniel's whiskey nearly empty on the desk. Both men had been oblivious to the passage of time.
"That's all of it, Colonel," Goldman concluded. "That's it. His bunk is empty, and he is gone. I don't know if perhaps I am not relieved that he is."
Landries moved his glass between his thin, artistic fingers. Silence hung in the room. Finally Landries reached for the bottle, divided the remaining whiskey between his glass and Goldman's, and threw the empty bottle in the wastebasket. The gesture had a kind of routine finality to it… as though the whole matter was settled.
Landries took a long pull from his glass, letting the sweet burning of the Tennessee sipping whiskey settle into his stomach. "Perhaps you're right, Goldie"-it was the first time he had ever called Goldman anything but Goldman-"Perhaps it is just as well. So
… We will just turn it over to the military police as an AWOL from the hospital report and hope that's the end to it. Somehow I don't think the MPs are going to find him. And, as for the records, both you and I know how often medical records get lost or destroyed in a war zone. I've raised enough hell about it in the past. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened to Casey's records. All his records, including his 201 file you sent for. No, Goldie, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised at all if that happened. Would you?"
Goldman nodded in agreement.
"Now, as for the whole thing," the colonel continued, "what we saw and what he told you-that is another problem." He was silent a very long time. "Any suggestions?"
"No."
"Then let's just assume that it's none of our damned business and let it go at that."
"Agreed."
"However…" A slow, slightly malicious smile began to form at the edges of Landries's mouth. "Next time I corner the chaplain I think I'll have some interesting questions to put to him."