"What did the brass want?" she asked.
"The war is going badly," he said. "They came for my advice on how to turn it around."
"I'm serious," she said, gesturing for him to get on the bed. "What did they want?"
"They gave me my 'You Forgot to Duck Medal.' "
"What?"
"Colonel Dawkins gave me the Purple Heart," Dunn said. "And my new assignment. Why should I get in bed?"
"Because I'm going to remove your sutures," she said. "Or some of them, anyway. Where's your medal?"
"In the table drawer."
"Can I see it?"
"You've never seen one before?"
"I want to see yours."
You show me yours and I'll show you mine.
He went to the bedside table and took the box out and handed it to her.
She opened it and looked at it and handed it back.
"Very nice. You should be proud of yourself."
"All that means is that I got hit," he said.
"You realize how lucky you were that it wasn't worse, I hope?"
Does she mean that the 20mm didn't hit me in the head? Or that it didn't get me in the balls?
"Yeah, sure I do," he said.
"Get in the bed and open your robe," she said.
"I'm not wearing my pajama bottoms."
She tossed him the faded green medical cloth.
"Cover yourself," she said. "Not that I would see something I haven't seen before."
He got on the bed, arranged the cloth over his crotch, and opened the robe.
She pulled on rubber gloves, an act that he found quite erotic, dipped a gauze patch in alcohol, and then proceeded to mop his inner thighs.
He yelped when, without warning, she pulled the larger bandage free with a jerk.
"Still a little suppuration," she observed, professionally. "But it's healing nicely. You were really lucky."
Without question, that remark makes reference to the fact that I didn't get zapped in the balls.
As she scrubbed at the vestiges of the tape that had held the bandage in place, he got another glimpse down the front of her crisp white uniform at the swelling of her bosom. He could smell the perfume she'd put down there, too. With dreadful inevitability he almost instantly achieved a state of erection.
Lieutenant O'Malley seemed not to notice.
"Where are they sending you?" she asked, as she jerked the smaller bandage free.
"VMF-229," he said.
"Where's that? Or is that classified?"
"Colonel Dawkins said that right now it's in the exec's desk drawer," Dunn said. "It was activated today. Right now it's me and a captain named Galloway, who's en route from the States."
"Galloway?" she asked. "Does he have a first name?"
Dunn thought a moment. "Charley, I think he said. Mean anything to you?"
"I don't know," she said. "I used to date a Tech Sergeant Charley Galloway. He was a pilot. I wonder how many Charley Galloways there are in the Marine Corps?"
Socialization between commissioned officers and enlisted personnel was not only a social no-no in the Naval Service but against regulations, and thus a court-martial offense. The announcement startled him.
"You used to date a sergeant?" he blurted.
"My, aren't you the prig? Haven't you ever done anything you shouldn't?" she asked as she dabbed at the gummy residue of the second bandage. "I think we'll just leave the bandage off of that."
"I didn't mean to sound like a prig," he said. "I guess I was just a little surprised to... hear you volunteer that."
"Well, I didn't think you would tell anybody," she said. "You mean you never heard of Sergeant Charley Galloway?"
And then, all of a sudden, he realized that he had. He hadn't made the connection before because of the rank.
"I reported aboard VMF-211 after he left," Dunn said. "That Galloway?"
She chuckled.
"That Galloway," she confirmed.
"The scuttlebutt I heard was that he and another sergeant put together a Wildcat from wrecks of what was left on December seventh, wrecks that had been written off the books, and that he flew it off without authority to join the Wake Island relief force at sea."
"The Saratoga," she said. "Task Force XIV," she said. "They started out to reinforce Wake Island, but they were called back."
"I heard that he was really in trouble for doing that," Dunn said. "That they sent him back to the States for a court-martial. What was that all about?"