Page 8 of For This We Are Soldiers
He watched her walk away, embarrassed that he had boasted about that battlefield surgery. It was all true, but he had never been a man to toot his horn. He couldn’t help wondering when she would get tired of helping him.
“That is a lovely woman.”
Colm looked around in surprise. The stentorian voice, which could probably blow out the back wall of a theatre, was considerably weakened, but there was no mistaking the dramatic timbre.
“You’re among the living again,” he said, putting a hand against the old gent’s chest. “Firm beat.” He touched his two fingers to his wrist. “True there.”
To his further surprise, the actor grabbed Colm’s wrist and inexpertly felt for a pulse. “Lad, are you smitten by that pretty lady?” He closed his eyes. “When I feel better, you must tell me everything.”
When pigs fly, Colm thought, not sure if he was amused or exasperated.Gadfreys, was he that obvious to a man coming out of anesthesia?
A
As it turned out, Ozzie didn’t have to exert any pressure on her employer. She explained the situation, and Mrs. Chambers barely heard anything beyondactor.
“Do you think he might perform for us when he is better?” she asked. “We could hold such a party.”
“It’ll be a few days until he is lively enough,” Ozzie hedged. “Surely you can arrange for a corporal’s wife to help out while I am busy at the hospital.” She delivered the clincher. “It’s for the good of the regiment.”
Mrs. Chambers was no slouch, and no kinder than most penny-pinchers. “If you will promise her the wages I would have paid you.”
“Yes, indeed,” Ozzie replied, secretly amused.
As she hurried to her little room to gather up an apron that fit, and her extra dress, Ozzie stopped a moment to pat her hair here and there, then wonder how long she might have to stay at the hospital. It would be a pleasant change from garrison tedium, if nothing else. She patted her hair a little more.
All was calm in the hospital when Ozzie returned. She hesitated in the corridor, wondering if Suh really needed her.
She sniffed the air. He needed her. She peeked into the kitchen. There he stood, stirring madly at a pot from which a burned smell rose like gas in a Louisiana swamp.
“I’m hopeless,” he said. “The books say patients should have a low diet of gruel and tea, but for the life of me …”
He took the pan off the hob, looked inside hopefully, as if something might have changed, and sighed.
Without a word, he handed her the wooden spoon, turned around and bent over, which made Ozzie whoop with laughter. Soon, he laughed too.
“Help me?” he asked simply, straightening up. “I have eggs, milk, and cream.” He looked toward the pot. “We’ll forget the farina.”
Ozzie carried the offending pan to the dry sink and left it there to suffer third-degree burns. “We may have to throw out that pan altogether,” she said. “I will cook for you all.”
Suh put his hand to his heart and staggered backward. “Thank the Almighty.” Perhaps he had learned something from Lysander Locke, Shakespeare tragedian. “‘We,’ she says. ‘We.’ She’s not leaving me alone to suffer.”
Ozzie wiped tears of merriment from her eyes. “I am going to make scrambled eggs and flapjacks.”
“That’s not a low diet.”
“Honestly, Suh, how can anyone get well on gruel?”
“So I’ve tried to tell any number of post surgeons in the past decade, with no success.” He looked around elaborately. “But Captain Dilworth isn’t here, and those men are hungry.”
“Then stand back and let me cook,” she said. “Any vanilla? Dare I ask for maple syrup?”
“You dare, indeed.” He pointed out the objects in question. “I will retreat to the ward and assure the broken leg, burned arm, and avulsed ankle that good food will arrive shortly, and that I had nothing to do with it.”
Smiling, she went to work in the hospital kitchen, grateful for the matron’s lumbago. The kitchen was well stocked and quiet. Ozzie found herself humming as she made flapjacks, that staple of army life, but with a touch of vanilla. They went into the warming oven while she scrambled eggs and added cream, something even the Chambers didn’t see in their kitchen too often. Medical rations were far superior, as long as amateur cooks weren’t allowed to roam at will, like Suh.
“Suh, you are a forlorn hope in the kitchen,” she said to the eggs, which were getting all glossy, as good scrambled eggs should.
She found a small cart on wheels, so it was with her own Louisiana flair that she rolled dinner into the ward and witnessed the eagerness of hungry men.
