｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ( 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚 ) chapter three — STELLA THE SECOND
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─ 🧳🕸📺📀🦟🌪🎞⌛️ PLATOON. 1966 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆
STELLA'S SO WORRIED ABOUT PADDY WHEN HE'S OUT ON PATROL, that she starts biting her fingernails again. He's short sighted so such an extent that he had to cheat and guess his way through optical wellness tests at Basic Training and she's far too skinny to carry any wounded men back to Base Camp if things went wrong out there. The harder recruits also make jabs at him for being a male nurse and not a fully-fledged corpsman. All that, and he's the only one of two medics out in the jungle with 2nd Platoon.
"It's raining again. Can you believe it? Any more of this shit and I'll grow webbed feet."
Stella looks up from her steaming mug of what Doctor Backshaw insists is black coffee. It's Marianne who spoke — she's standing beside the window of the women's barracks holding a letter from her husband back in Portland. She draws hearts on the corners of the page and everything, and kisses it before she slides it neatly into the envelope. She writes to him every day and is constantly awaiting the next mail call.
Stella's never been concerned by the mail call. Actually, the torrential rain reminds her of the day with The Grey Man, and another, lesser memory of The Apartment Man, and her head thrums with a migraine. She almost let something really, truly terrible happen to herself and the full weight of shock and trauma still has yet to fully implement itself. Sometimes, the coolness of her dog tags against her neck reminds her of the blade of the surgical scissors, but that's as bad as it has been. Perhaps the fact that not even a soul knows makes things even worse. Maybe Paddy was right when he said that only God can judge her now.
"It's been so quiet out there recently," she says, pausing to run her tongue across the tacky edge of the envelope. "They ought to run into something at some point, right? An ambush? A bit of action? I mean, we never do a damn thing out here. We're such a tiny unit, we've never even had a red alert! I haven't seen a single cas-evac helicopter since I arrived. I reckon all this rain turns the jungle out there into a slip n' slide. All Bravo Company will come back with is bruised egos and couple'a twisted ankles, nothing for the OR, just some bullshit for us to sort out whilst Loving goes and fucks up elsewhere. I'd say the rain filled up the NVA's cosy holes and drowned them all where they sat."
Stella wants to tell her not to speak so soon, — because a). Doctor Backshaw's a gossiper, and b). one lucky air assault and they'd all be blown to smithereens, or a Vietcong sniper could catch one of them in the nut like Lee Harvey Oswald did JFK — but she doesn't get the chance, because chopper blades indicate that patrol is back after their four day vacation in Da Nang's jungle. Some of the MASH unit are shouting and praising their return, but they really look worse for wear when she spots from from the awning of the tent. The men are soaked right through to the bone despite their ponchos, and they limp, exhausted, back towards their barracks. Those who are wounded stagger towards their tent, but a lack of stretchers indicates that no harm could have been black or red in the triage.
