CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It stood like an avenging demon on top of the spice rack, daring him to throw it out unread. Daring him to leave it there until it collected cobwebs and turned yellow and disintegrated. Daring him (and this was worst of all) to take it down and confirm that it held what he knew it did.
By the following Thursday night it wasn't feasible to procrastinate any longer. Juan was over at Celestina's, Sharon was working in her studio, and things were as private as they were going to get. Al set up his workspace carefully: a clean glass, a tray of ice cubes, well-aged whiskey (still important enough to make the list of necessary purchases), a good pen, an HB pencil with a point that could have been used on a hypodermic syringe, and Chester, for moral support.
Last of all, he took the envelope from its perch and sat down at the table. He pressed the whiskey bottle between his knees, such tasks being a torment for his left arm now, and screwed off the cap. He poured himself a glassful over some ice, and took two sharp swallows. Then he leaned over and lifted the dog, rather awkwardly with only one hand, into his lap. Chester could sense his master's dread, and it agitated him. A few good pets settled him, though, and he curled against Al's carefully furled left arm. Then, pressing the envelope against the table with his thumb, Al used his right fingers to tear open the flap. He carefully withdrew the thick stack of papers, pushed the envelope away, and started on the cover letter. He read the neatly typewritten text:
Notice to A.M. Calavicci, Captain, USN, 382 11 5693
You are hereby ordered to report to Balboa Naval Hospital, San Diego, CA, on 5th April, 1982 for your annual physical and psychological assessment. As in previous years, preliminary paperwork is required to facilitate your admission and evaluation. Complete all enclosed forms to the best of your ability, with full detail, candor and honesty as becomes an officer. Any errors must be corrected upon arrival at Balboa Naval Hospital. You are reminded that deliberate omissions will be considered grounds for disciplinary action.
Your assessment is expected to conclude 8th April, 1982. Included is the appropriate Temporary Duty Assignment requisition form to be provided to your immediate superior, if any.
Yours in solidarity,
Vice Admiral Adrian D. Featherstone, M.D.
Al sighed and scrubbed his forehead. Grounds for disciplinary action? That hadn't been in last year's letter. Maybe they were getting sick of him. Not sick enough to leave him alone, obviously. Experience had taught him that he would only make trouble for himself and prolong the ordeal by resisting, so he turned to the first sheet, a summary of his health over the past year. That was straightforward enough, and quickly dispatched. Next was the psychological pre-test, full of absurd questions that had to be answered on a bubble-sheet for electronic processing.
"For statements 17 to 39," Al read aloud to Chester; "follow this format: a) strongly agree, b) agree, c) no opinion, d) disagree, e) strongly disagree, f) not applicable."
He stared at the first statement for a moment before deciding that this, too, was something the dog needed to hear.
"Loud noises produce strong feelings of anger," he said, rolling his eyes heavenwards. "Oi veh."
Two hundred and six questions later, Al was seeing stars, which was probably not exclusively due to the inane nature of the questions, since he was halfway through the whiskey. The questions were dull, ridiculous and repetitive. There were several different versions of each inquiry, worded differently to trap you in the psychiatrists' devious webs. Al had filled out so many of these damned preliminaries over the years that he was resigned to getting caught, so he filled it out as quickly as possible and moved on to the written work.
By the time he was finally finished, Juan was back from Celestina's. He greeted Al respectfully and disappeared into the bathroom for a three-minute shower that would have been a credit to a Naval plebe. Al bade him goodnight and made his way to the bedroom as Juan settled on the sofa. Al changed into his pajamas and lay back with Wuthering Heights. He had been trying to read it for six and a half months, and was still only on the fourth chapter.
"Interesting choice of literature," came a sultry voice from the door. There stood Sharon, fresh from the shower with her hair clinging damply to her shoulders and her nightie performing a similar function on her curves. "This mean you're in a romantic mood?"
She entered the room and closed the door. Al watched her approach. She crawled onto the foot of the bed and began to creep forward. Chester, settled on his master's lap, watched this curious behavior with interest. Al closed the book and set it aside. Finally, after ten days of the cold-shoulder treatment, Sharon was ready to make peace.
"Maybe," he said, leaning forward to kiss her. She stroked his cheek and started to unbutton his pajama shirt.
"Good," she said. " 'Cause I know I am."
She kissed him again, and Al found himself responding instinctively. A sudden realization gave him pause, however. He pulled back.
"Your arm again?" Sharon cried angrily. "When are you going to see a doctor?"
"The fifth of April," Al admitted grimly.
Sharon stared. "What?"
"The fifth of April," Al repeated. "I have to go to San Diego for my annual overhaul."
"For the Navy? And they'll fix your shoulder?" Sharon asked.
Al nodded. "For the Navy. All of us poor suckers who came home in '73 have to go in for a total working over." He shuddered at the thought. "Three days of tests. I'll let the docs know about my shoulder, I promise." They'd notice anyway, he knew. They were so thorough that he was pretty sure the thousands of forms they filled out included at least one count of your nose-hairs.
"Well, good," Sharon said, settling down considerably. "And they'll fix it?"
"Babe, even if it ain't broke they fix it," Al said.
"I don't think it's broke, but it is hurting you," Sharon said. "We can always do something else if you don't want to go for the good old-fashioned roll in the hay."
Al shook his head. "That's not the problem," he said. "We shouldn't… you know when we've got a guest."
Sharon's expression froze. "You mean you don't want to make love because of Juan Penja?" she said frostily.
"Well, sometimes it gets noisy, and—"
"God, you make me sick!" Sharon exclaimed. "First you tell me I have to play gracious hostess to that baboon, and then you say I can't even get it on 'cause you're shy?"
"Yes—no!" Al exclaimed. "No! I'm not shy! It's just that…well…er…"
"Forget it!" Sharon cried, flopping down on her pillow and hauling the blankets wrathfully over her hip. "Just forget it! Right now I wouldn't sleep with you if you were the last man on earth!"
Al tried to placate her with a gentle touch. "Baby…" he wheedled.
"Shut up!" she barked.
Depressed, Al put down his book and switched off the light, cuddling Chester close to his body.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMMWMWMWMWMWMWMFriday was Stevie's last day of chemo. He was discharged from the cancer clinic by Doctor Ananda, who was all smiles and friendly words. He would have to come back in two week's time for tests, at which time they would reevaluate his therapy and look into the next step.
Al wanted to take Stevie out for a treat, but though it was the last day he had still had four hours of chemotherapy, and the poor little guy wasn't feeling up to anything. So they went straight home and curled up together in Al's bed. Sharon was out, having left early for her class. Al slept gratefully until three, when he turned the boy over to his mother, who was absolutely convinced that today was the last day of her child's illness and that the miracles for which she had been praying so diligently since Christmas were finally going to come to pass.
At Starbright Al began to prepare things for his upcoming absence. Being the most senior officer, Al had no need for the TDY papers. He merely informed Prysock and Eulalie that he would be gone for four days on a medical matter, and that anything that needed doing would have to be done ahead of time. A niggling little voice in the back of his head told him it wouldn't hurt to leave a copy of the official orders on file in H.R., but he ignored it. He didn't have time for stupid details like that.
Sharon was definitely mad. After Thursday's fiasco she ignored him as thoroughly as she could. The only reason they were still sleeping in the same bed was that for some reason Sharon saw the need to preserve, at all costs, the illusion of a happy household. God forbid Juan think they were human or something.
Actually, if Al were being truthful, he would have admitted that he didn't want to make a scene either. There was one thing he couldn't stand, and that was being made a spectacle of—at least, on any terms but his own.
That was, however, precisely what was going to happen, continuously, for three days.
MWMWMWMWMMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMHe reported as ordered to the in-patient desk at Balboa. The nurse showed him to an examining room, where he was given a back-fastening gown and told to remove his clothes and other personal possessions. These were placed in a cardboard file box, since in theory he wouldn't be needing shoes, underwear or money until he was discharged. In reality, Al suspected it was to keep him from running. The development had been introduced at his fifth such session, that one held at Bethesda in Maryland. Prior to that he'd had a history of vanishing on an Unauthorized Absense after hours and coming back wasted.
He hated it. Removing his clothes piece by piece and replacing them with the meager cotton smock was degrading. It was too much like other times… times when he hadn't been doing the stripping himself.
The nurse returned and took the box away, and then Al knew he was trapped. Unless he was going to run off with his tushy in the breeze, he would be stuck here until these sadists who styled themselves physicians decided that he could go. Uncomfortable and a little chilly in the air-conditioned room, Al perched on the table and waited for the quack who would be coordinating his tune-up.
In the first three hours they took blood and urine samples, swabbed his throat and ears, measured his blood pressure and his heart rate, noted height, weight, and waist circumference, hooked him up to a peak flow meter and subjected him to a palpitation exam. These were all things that every officer had to endure at least once a year, and although it wasn't fun, at least it didn't make him feel like the frog in Bio 101… or the rat in the proverbial maze.
After all that it was lunchtime, and Al was faced with one of the least pleasant aspects of these excursions. Balboa had the best hospital food in the Navy, but it was still hospital food, and it was also military. Al knew from the cheerful place card on his tray that the meal was a perfectly balanced one, incorporating elements from all four food groups in an ideal ratio of carbohydrates, proteins and lipids and carefully selected to provide optimal levels of vitamins and minerals. His eyes, nose and taste buds, however, told him he was eating grayish pork that had been seasoned with wheat flour, lumpy potatoes, vegetables that had been vacuum sealed and frozen about the time President Truman was writing his inaugural speech, and a "mystery dessert" that looked like a car wreck involving a discount fruit stand and a bus full of refugees from Candyland. There was also, he noticed with a shiver of revulsion, six ounces of Ensure meal replacement. That meant he hadn't made minimum weight.
Because he knew it would cause nothing but hassles, Al forced down everything. Even the Ensure, which was the most horrifically cloying thing he'd ever tasted, and brought back some really diabolical memories of the happy days of repatriation. Then he helped himself to the examining room sink, imbibing more water than he had all month in an attempt to rehydrate his mouth after its sugar desiccation. The nurse, who was older than he was and way too condescending, came back to tell him that he was a good boy for eating up all of his dinner, and the doctor would be with him shortly.
Al muttered something about how he could hardly wait, and sat back down on the examination table, bare legs swinging and shoulder throbbing.
The doctor arrived as promised, and Al noted with a flash of amusement that shortly was a very apt description. He was about five foot two, with his black hair neatly crew-cut, and his horn-rimmed glasses emphasizing both the shape and color of his eyes excruciatingly. Al just about burst out laughing when he introduced himself.
"I'm Commander Paul Nyugen," he said. "Pleased to meet you, Captain."
"Pleasure," Al said, extending his hand. "You'll excuse me if I don't bow, but my assets are kind of hanging out."
"Yes, hospital gowns aren't the most comfortable things," the physician allowed. "It's only for a couple days."
"Easy for you to say," Al muttered. The morning's activities had not made him feel at all positive about the ordeal ahead. And when they found out about his shoulder, well, there was going to be hell to pay.
"Now, I've had a chance to look at your results, but I'd like to talk a little about your health first," Nyugen said, pulling up a stool and mounting it with some difficulty. Al wondered inanely whether admission standards for the medical core were—literally!—dropping. "How are you feeling?"
"Irritated, cold and half-naked," Al quipped.
"Are you cold all the time?" the doctor asked, completely unphased.
"No," Al said. "Just when I'm wearing a pillowcase."
"Any other unusual symptoms? Tremors? Pains?"
"Yeah, now that you mention it," Al said. "I have got a pain."
"Indeed? How severe?"
"Really, really severe," Al told him earnestly. "Excruciating. It's a pain in the neck."
"In your neck?" Nyugen leaned forward anxiously, peering at Al's throat. "Can you show me where?"
Al pointed at the doctor. "Right there," he said.
He expected a dignified fluttering of the eyelashes or a sarcastic remark. Instead, the commander laughed uproariously. "That's a good one, Captain!" he exclaimed. "You got me! But in all seriousness, any physical discomfort?"
Al sighed, defeated by the man's sense of humor and refusal to take himself too seriously. "Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, my left shoulder hurts like hell."
MWMWMWMWMWMMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM
As he knew they would, the hospital staff launched into action with the same grim efficiency with which the German war machine had rolled over Europe during Al's childhood. He was whisked off for x-rays, which turned into a full-body excursion, just as long as they had him on the table. From there he went to ultrasound, and then to a lab where a gorgeous young technician inserted a very long, nasty-looking needle into the joint and drew out some fluid. Then a orthopedist showed up and started to manipulate the joint.
Al gritted his teeth and tried to control himself. His arm was lifted in front of him and straightened, then rotated slowly up, down and around. The pain was unbelievable. It always amazed him how much pain they could cause just by moving your arm in directions it didn't want to go. The bones seemed to grind together, and the agony grew. A couple sharp jerks, and a scream tore itself unwillingly from his throat.
The nurse dropped his chart with a cacophonous clang, staring at him in horror. The surgeon, a stout middle-aged man whom Al remembered from his days of re-breaking old injuries, seemed largely unphased. He eased the arm back down, and Al held it tightly to his chest.
"I'm sorry to hurt you, Captain," he said. "That shoulder is a mess. How many times have you dislocated it?"
"Two or three hundred?" Al tried. The skeptical look told him that wasn't an acceptable answer, but it was the only one he had. "Hell, Doc, I don't know," he said. "Over six years? I kinda lost track of things like that."
The physician nodded. "I'll have to take a closer look at the x-rays, but it sees to me like we've got at least three problems here. There's some pretty serious calcification on the ligaments, at least two muscles in the rotator cuff are torn, and you've got a pectoral hernia, right here."
He poked a painful lump in Al's armpit, eliciting an angry hiss of suffering.
"I'd say you've been lifting things you shouldn't," the specialist observed.
"What if I have?" Al asked defensively. He wished he could relax, but the fact of the matter was that he was going to be on the defensive from here on in, so he might as well get used to it.
"You're right, it's none of my business. Just as long as you know that the reason you're in this kind of shape is because you neglected to get the proper care when this problem surfaced."
"I dunno," Al said. "I was thinking maybe it has something to do with the extra-special V.I.P. treatment I received at a little resort outside of Cham Hoi."
"That's a pre-existing condition that should have warned you that extra care was necessary," the orthopedist told him. "You brought this on yourself."
Al couldn't argue with that one. Who had volunteered for that second tour, anyway?
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWThe really good thing about the fuss over his arm was that his preliminary psyche evaluation was delayed. He wouldn't have to submit to the brain-sucking monsters until tomorrow. After a few more tests Al was forced to cope with hospital supper, noting with dismay that his Ensure ration had been upped four ounces. Then he was shown to a ward full of former POWs, all here for the same purpose, and left to fend for himself.
It wasn't so bad. There was talking and laughing and a bit of commiserating about their treatment at the hands of the Balboa staff. Nobody talked about the war, of course. They were all having to relive it with the shrinks, and during down time it was better to think of other things.
The camaraderie here was just as life-giving as it had been in Vietnam. When the world was against you and you had no power over your surroundings, there was nothing more heartening than being surrounded by a crowd of guys in the same boat. Whether you were wearing filthy Ho Chi Mihn pajamas or a hospital gown and coarse terrycloth bathrobe, you didn't mind your state of undress so much when everyone else was wearing the same thing. The laughter, the wisecracks, and the poker played for ice cubes made for an almost pleasant evening.
It was only when the nurse came in to order everyone into bed and silence fell that Al began to realize that there was a problem. They had confiscated his flask along with his other possessions, and he didn't have anything to use as a nightcap. Terror gripped him as he lay in the dark, listening to the snores of the other eleven men in the room.
Knowing what would come if he surrendered to his weariness, Al tried desperately not to fall asleep. It was a losing battle, however, and his exhausted body gave in all too easily.