Robert’s memory of the next forty-eight hours was a haze of pain and delirium. It was only later that he learned that the nurse, Susan Ward, had persuaded a doctor to operate on him and had donated her own blood for a transfusion. They had put three IVs into Robert’s ravaged body, and pumped blood through them simultaneously, fighting to keep him alive.
When the operation was over, the surgeon in charge sighed. “We’ve wasted our time. He’s got no more than a ten per cent chance of pulling through.”
But the doctor did not know Robert Bellamy. And he did not know Susan Ward. It seemed to Robert that whenever he opened his eyes, Susan was there, holding his hand, stroking his forehead, ministering to him, willing him to live. He was delirious most of the time. Susan sat quietly next to him in the dark ward in the middle of the lonely nights, and listened to his ravings.
“… the DOD is wrong, you can’t head in perpendicular to the target or you’ll hit the river … tell them to angle the dives a few degrees off target-heading … tell them …” he mumbled.
Susan said soothingly, “I will.”
Robert’s body was soaked in perspiration. She sponged him off. “… you have to remove all five of the safety pins or the seat won’t eject. Check them …”
“All right. Go back to sleep now.”
“… the shackles on the multiple ejector racks malfunctioned. God only knows where the bombs landed …”
Half the time Susan could not understand what her patient was talking about.
Susan Ward was the head emergency operating-room nurse and the best. She had come from a small town in Idaho, and had grown up with the boy next door, Frank Frescott, the son of the Mayor. Everyone in town assumed they would be married one day.
Susan had a younger brother, Michael, whom she adored. On his eighteenth birthday he was sent to Vietnam, and Susan wrote to him every day. Three months after he had enlisted, Susan’s family received a telegram, and she knew what it contained before they opened it.
When Frank Prescott heard the news, he rushed over. “I’m really sorry, Susan. I liked Michael a lot.” And then he made the mistake of saying, “Let’s get married right away.”
And Susan had looked at him and made a decision. “No. I have to do something important with my life.”
“For God’s sake! What’s more important than marrying me?”
The answer was Vietnam.
Susan Ward went to nursing school.
She had been in Vietnam for eleven months, working tirelessly, when Commander Robert Bellamy was wheeled in and sentenced to die. Triage was a common practice in emergency evacuation hospitals. The doctors would examine two or three patients and make summary judgements as to which one they would try to save. For reasons which were never truly clear to her, Susan had taken one look at the torn body of Robert Bellamy and had known that she could not let him die. Was it her brother she was trying to save? Or was it something else? She was exhausted and overworked, but instead of taking her time off, she spent every spare moment tending to him.
Susan had looked up her patient’s record. An ace Navy pilot and instructor, he had earned the Naval Cross. His birthplace was Harvey, Illinois, a small industrial city south of Chicago. He had enlisted in the Navy from college, and had trained at Pensacola. He was unmarried.
Each day, as Robert Bellamy was recuperating, walking the thin line between death and life, Susan whispered to him, “Come on, sailor. I’m waiting for you.”
One night, six days after he had been brought into the hospital, Robert was rambling on in his delirium, when suddenly he sat straight up in bed, looked at Susan, and said clearly, “It’s not a dream. You’re real.”
Susan felt her heart give a little jump. “Yes,” she said softly, “I’m real.”
“I thought I was dreaming. I thought I had gone to heaven and God assigned you to me.”
She looked into Robert’s eyes and said seriously, “I would have killed you if you had died.”
His eyes swept the crowded ward. “Where … where am I?”
“The 12th Evacuation Hospital at Cu Chi.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Six days.”
“Eddie … he …”
“I’m sorry.”
“I have to tell the Admiral.”
She took Robert’s hand and said, gently, “He knows. He’s been here to visit you.”
Robert’s eyes filled with tears. “I hate this goddamn war. I can’t tell you how much I hate it.”
From that moment on, Robert’s progress astonished the doctors. All his vital signs stabilized.
“We’ll be shipping him out of here soon,” they told Susan. And she felt a sharp pang.
Robert was not sure exactly when he fell in love with Susan Ward. Perhaps it was the moment when she was dressing his wounds, and nearby they heard the sounds of bombs dropping and she murmured, “They’re playing our song.”
Or perhaps it was when they told Robert he was well enough to be transferred to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington to finish his convalescence, and Susan said, “Do you think I’m going to stay here and let some other nurse have that great body? Oh, no. I’m going to pull every string I can to go with you.”
They were married two weeks later. It took Robert a year to heal completely, and Susan tended to his every need, night and day. He had never met anyone like her, nor had he dreamed that he could ever love anyone so much. He loved her compassion and sensitivity, her passion and vitality. He loved her beauty and her sense of humour.
On their first anniversary he said to her, “You’re the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most caring human being in the world. There is no one on this earth with your warmth and wit and intelligence.”
And Susan had held him tightly and whispered in a nasal, chorus-girl voice, “Likewise, I’m sure.”
They shared more than love. They genuinely liked and respected each other. All their friends envied them, and with good reason. Whenever they talked about a perfect marriage, it was always Robert and Susan they held up as an example. They were compatible in every way, complete soulmates. Susan was the most sensual woman Robert had ever known, and they were able to set each other on fire with a touch, a word. One evening, when they were scheduled to go to a formal dinner party, Robert was running late. He was in the shower when Susan came into the bathroom, carefully made up and dressed in a lovely strapless evening gown.
“My God, you look sexy,” Robert said. “It’s too bad we don’t have more time.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Susan murmured. Arid a moment later she had stripped off her clothes and joined Robert in the shower.
They never got to the party.
Susan sensed Robert’s needs almost before he knew them, and she saw to it that they were attended to. And Robert was equally attentive to her. Susan would find love notes on her dressing-room table, or in her shoes when she started to get dressed. Flowers and little gifts would be delivered to her on Ground Hog Day and President Folk’s birthday and in celebration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
And the laughter that they shared. The wonderful laughter …
The pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom. “We’ll be landing in Zurich in ten minutes, Commander.”
Robert Bellamy’s thoughts snapped back to the present, to his assignment. In his fifteen years with Naval Intelligence, he had been involved in dozens of challenging cases, but this one promised to be the most bizarre of them all. He was on his way to Switzerland to find a busload of anonymous witnesses who had disappeared into thin air. Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack. I don’t even know where the haystack is. Where is Sherlock Holmes when I need him?
“Will you fasten your seat belt, please?”
The C20A was flying over dark forests, and a moment later, skimming over the runway etched by the landing lights of the Zurich International Airport. The plane taxied to the east side of the airport, and headed for the small General Aviation Building, away from the main terminal. There were still puddles on the tarmac from the earlier rainstorms, but the night sky was clear.