In Danger's Path (13 page)

It was a long sheet of yellow paper, a carbon copy of a Teletype message. Kister took it and read it. As he did, his eyebrows went up.

Doctor Kister looked at Weston. “Very interesting,” he said.

Weston went into the envelope again and came out with a long form, which he handed to Kister. “That's a flight physical,” Weston said.

“Would you believe I've seen one before?” Kister asked, and read it carefully. Then he looked at Weston. “How'd you get this?”

“I went to the Navy Hospital in Pearl Harbor. They examined me for several hours and decided I could see lightning and hear thunder well enough to be allowed to fly.”

“According to this, aside from being a few pounds underweight, you're in excellent health.”

“As, indeed, I am,” Weston said. “So what the hell am I doing in a psycho ward?”

“Interesting question,” Kister said. “This is dated five weeks ago. Have you been flying?”

“Yes, I have. And four hours after I passed my rating ćheck ride in a Corsair, I got orders to come here.”

“Anybody who has been a prisoner of war and escapes gets sent here,” Kister said, “to determine what kind of shape he's in. You were a POW, right?”

“No.”

“Your paperwork,” Kister said, tapping the manila folder he had brought with him, “says you escaped from the Philippines.”

“I was
ordered out
of the Philippines. You asked if I had been a POW.”

“What were you doing in the Philippines?”

“Would you believe it if I told you I was G-2 of U.S. forces in the Philippines?”

Kister examined him carefully and, Weston thought, with disbelief.

“With overwhelming immodesty,” Weston said, “I have a Silver Star to prove it. It was personally pinned to my breast by General Douglas MacArthur.”

Kister opened Weston's records jacket and went through it carefully. “Your Silver Star somehow didn't get into your records,” Kister said. “And you're not wearing it.”

Weston reached into his manila envelope again, came out with a four-by-five-inch glossy photograph, and handed it to Dr. Kister. “I have six more copies of that, eight-by-tens, in my luggage, wherever the hell my luggage might be.”

Kister examined the photograph. It showed the Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Areas, in the act of pinning the Silver Star to Weston's tunic. Weston was wearing a full beard.

“I'll be damned,” Kister said. “Nice beard.”

“Thank you,” Weston said.

“Who's the Marine general?” Kister asked.

“His name is Pickering.”

“Maybe he's the guy who can straighten this out,” Dr. Kister said. “I don't think I'd have much luck getting General MacArthur on the telephone.”

Weston chuckled.

“What I don't understand is how you went back to flying,” Kister said. “You want to tell me about that?”

“I got as far as Hawaii when I was given the choice of a thirty-day leave in the States or getting checked out in the Corsair,” Weston said. “I chose the Corsair.”

“You didn't want to come home on leave? Why?”

“I don't have much of a family here,” Weston said. “Weighed in the balance, an aunt I hardly know and haven't seen in years came up short when the alternative was getting back to flying fighters.”

“And then, it would seem reasonable to assume, the bureaucracy caught up with you, and you're back in the Escaped POW Pipeline.”

“So it would seem,” Weston said. “If I told you I'm mightily pissed off, would that certify me as a loony?”

“No. But getting off on the wrong foot with Lieutenant Hardison does.”

Weston smiled.

“So now you're going to call in the corpsmen with the straitjacket?”

“No. It's too late to do anything about this today. So what I suggest is that we get you a bed for the night. Could I give you an off-the-ward pass to visit the O Club for dinner and a couple of drinks with reasonable assurance that you would behave yourself?”

“In other words, you want my word as an officer and a gentleman that if I encounter Lieutenant Hardison, I will not drag her off into the bushes and ravish her?”

“Her or any other female you encounter, including those who imply they would like to be dragged into the bushes.”

“I do solemnly swear,” Weston said, and held up his right hand with the three center fingers extended. “Boy Scout's Honor.”

“I'll take the chance,” Dr. Kister said. “One thing. Go easy on the booze. I'm going to schedule you for a physical first thing in the morning, and I don't want your blood test coming back reading ‘mostly alcohol.'”

“Why another physical?”

“It will allow the physicians, nurses, and Corpsmen involved to feel they are making a contribution to the war effort, okay? And as sure as Christ made little apples, when we start looking into this, the first question somebody is going to ask is, ‘How do we know that Hawaiian physical isn't somebody else's?'”

“Okay. Easy on the booze,” Weston said. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“Welcome home, Captain Weston,” Dr. Kister said, and offered Weston his hand.

[TWO]

“I will be damned,” Lieutenant (j.g.) Janice Hardison, NNC, exclaimed as she was driving her 1937 Ford Business Coupe northward on South Broad Street approximately one hour later. The insufferably arrogant patient who had given her all the trouble earlier, and who should by now be mildly sedated, dressed in a bathrobe, and either asleep in his bed or listening to the radio in the day-room of Ward Five-B, was instead marching purposefully down the sidewalk six blocks from the hospital compound in full uniform. He was carrying a brown paper bag.

She made the next left turn and headed back to the hospital. She would tell the Shore Patrolman on duty at the gate. A Shore Patrol detail would be instantly dispatched, and he would be returned to the hospital, in handcuffs if necessary.

Janice had a change of heart before she reached the hospital. She admitted to herself that she was being controlled by her personal emotions and was therefore responding to the situation in a nonprofessional manner.

Marines were, almost by definition, arrogant. But in the arrogance department this one stood head and shoulders over any other Marine she had ever met. She could not recall anyone ever in her entire life having made her so angry in so short a time as had this blond-haired, blue-eyed gyrene sonofabitch. And while it probably would be good for his character, long term, to be subjected to the humiliation of being hauled back to the hospital in handcuffs, she had, as a practitioner of the healing arts, to consider the short term.

God only knew what horrors he had experienced in a POW camp. The proof of that seemed to be that he denied having been a POW. The memories were simply too horrible for him to accept. That veneer of arrogance was paper-thin, concealing all the effects of severe psychological trauma. She could not, as a nurse, add humiliation to the other psychological burdens he was already carrying.

She turned the Ford coupe around and turned onto South Broad Street again.

Before she saw him, she had just about convinced herself that she would not be able to find him.

She pulled to the curb, leaned across the seat, and opened the door. “Weston!” she called.

He looked at her and smiled, pretending to be really glad to see her.

“I'll be damned,” he said. “Is this how you spend your off-duty hours, cruising the streets and picking up Marines?”

“Please get in the car, Captain,” Janice said.

He walked to the car and squatted on the sidewalk so that their faces were on a level.

“Does this mean you've changed your mind and we're on for dinner?”

“Please get in the car,” she said. “I'll take you back to the hospital. With a little luck, the Shore Patrol won't ask for your pass, and we will just forget this ever happened.”

“Actually, I have other plans,” he said. “Made, of course, after you so cruelly rejected me. Her name is Caroline, and she is at this moment anxiously awaiting my appearance.”

He's lying
, she thought.
He made that up. There is absolutely no way, in the short time he's been here, that he could have made a date
.

“But thank you just the same,” Jim Weston went on. “You may consider yourself forgiven for your outrageous behavior at the airport.”

“
My
outrageous behavior?” Janice asked incredulously.

“Yes,” he said. “We'll just pretend
that
never happened, and perhaps I can even fit you into my schedule later in the week. But right now, I'm running a little late, so you'll have to excuse me.” He stood up and resumed walking up South Broad Street.

She leaned over and with difficulty reached across for the open door and closed it. When she looked out the windshield, she saw him trying and failing to flag down a taxicab.

Where the hell is he going? If I don't get him back to the hospital, he's headed for real trouble
.

She put the Ford in gear and went after him. “Get in, and I'll give you a ride,” she called to him when she pulled to the curb again.

“If I get in your car, Florence Nightingale, you'll try to drive me back to the hospital. I can see it in your eyes.”

“I'll take you wherever you want to go,” she said.

“Girl Scout's Honor? I don't have much faith in that officer and gentleman—gentle
lady?
—word-of-honor business.”

“Where are you really going?”

“Will you really take me there?”

“Yes, I will. I said I would, and I will.”

He opened the car door and slipped in beside her.

“Where to?” Janice asked.

What he's going to do now is make another pitch to take me to dinner, and I'll turn him down again and take him back to the hospital
.

Oh, what the hell, I have to eat. Having dinner with him will calm him down—stroke that enormous ego—and then it will be easier to get him back to the hospital
.

She could smell his aftershave lotion.

He handed her a slip of paper on which was written: “Caroline. 98 Stevens Ave., Jenkintown, PA 19046.”

I'll be damned. He really has a woman waiting for him
.