yet," I snapped. He looked right at me and howled louder.
"Qkay, kid, that's it. I've had it with you and so has everybody else.
You're not the only one around here who's been hurt, you know."
But he just kept howling. I couldn't, I simply could not, keep listening to that racket while I worked on him. I pushed him over on his side and swatted his rear. "Now, em di, dammit. We're all tired of you. Just shut up." I gave him about four swats, the pink of my hand blurring to red as it hit the red around his rear.
He didn't yell any louder. In fact, his shrieking died off to a whimper, then a snuffle, by the time I got control of myself and stopped abusing my patient. He sniffed and looked at me for the first time without the hatred and terror I was used to seeing in his face. I couldn't figure it out. I was feeling like the Marquise de Sade and the kid was definitely in the best mood he'd been in since he arrived. The light around him looked cooler somehow, too, and less murky. My own had faded to dusty pink. I laid my hand on his forehead, thinking that maybe the color had something to do with fever.
His skin was sweaty but cool, and he watched me, not fearfully, but with a funny kind of anticipation. And it came to me that he didn't know nurses weren't supposed to paddle their patients. He knew he'd been thoroughly annoying everybody, but he felt lost and abandoned. The spanking and my scolding voice, even speaking English, had made if his mother were still with hid'mn control of the world, it seem as I I I telling him what to do. I knew that as certainly as if he'd told me, though I didn't know then how I knew it. But whatever passed between us he didn't ask to understand but simply accepted with relief. His face smoothed out of its monkeylike scowl and his lids dropped like rocks as he passed into long-overdue sleep.
"ooh!" Xinh cried and shook her hand. I left the dressing cart by Ahn's bed and walked to hers. A blur of blue-green light surrounded her. I blinked hard, but the light remained.
"What's wrong, Xinh?"
She held up her hand so I could see the fingernail broken into the quick, a thin line of burgundy light pulsing from it. "Nothing. Tete dau," she said, her frown vanishing.
She took my hand in her sore one and swung it back and forth, companionably. This made me a little uncomfortable, but I knew from watching Vietnamese people that same-sex friends often held hands in public. I was grateful for the gesture, since I was still feeling a little like an ogress for spanking Ahn, despite the surprising way he had reacted. Xinh was impossible to dislike. Her emotions swept across her face like weather on a seascape, sunny one minute, stormy the next, but open and changeable. She painted her nails and tried different hairdos and watched the performers on Vietnamese TV. I was sure that if I could understand what she and Mal gossiped about, it would have been what my friends in nursing school talked about, boys, clothes, normal things that had nothing to do with the war. The only thing funny about her was that blue-green stain. I must have a bad case of heatstroke, I thought, and reclaimed my hand. "I have to get back to work, Xinh," I said.
She pulled her own hand away and started to suck on the broken 'l, then stopped with't halfway to her mouth. "Heyy! Numbah one!"
nal she said, her eyes shining. She held up her nail, perfectly intact, with about a quarter inch of unpainted growth showing above her ruined polish job. She looked at me as if I had pulled a coin from behind her ear. "How you do that?"
"Huh?" I said stupidly. Maybe Xinh wasn't feeling so good either -she was that funny color around the edges. Maybe we were both sick. I looked at both of Xinh's hands-all of the nails were intact. I shrugged. She shrugged and happily accepted the mending of her manicure as a miracle of American medicine. I felt distinctly dizzy as I started back for the nurses' station.
Mal returned to the ward, her
"Qkay, kid, that's it. I've had it with you and so has everybody else.
You're not the only one around here who's been hurt, you know."
But he just kept howling. I couldn't, I simply could not, keep listening to that racket while I worked on him. I pushed him over on his side and swatted his rear. "Now, em di, dammit. We're all tired of you. Just shut up." I gave him about four swats, the pink of my hand blurring to red as it hit the red around his rear.
He didn't yell any louder. In fact, his shrieking died off to a whimper, then a snuffle, by the time I got control of myself and stopped abusing my patient. He sniffed and looked at me for the first time without the hatred and terror I was used to seeing in his face. I couldn't figure it out. I was feeling like the Marquise de Sade and the kid was definitely in the best mood he'd been in since he arrived. The light around him looked cooler somehow, too, and less murky. My own had faded to dusty pink. I laid my hand on his forehead, thinking that maybe the color had something to do with fever.
His skin was sweaty but cool, and he watched me, not fearfully, but with a funny kind of anticipation. And it came to me that he didn't know nurses weren't supposed to paddle their patients. He knew he'd been thoroughly annoying everybody, but he felt lost and abandoned. The spanking and my scolding voice, even speaking English, had made if his mother were still with hid'mn control of the world, it seem as I I I telling him what to do. I knew that as certainly as if he'd told me, though I didn't know then how I knew it. But whatever passed between us he didn't ask to understand but simply accepted with relief. His face smoothed out of its monkeylike scowl and his lids dropped like rocks as he passed into long-overdue sleep.
"ooh!" Xinh cried and shook her hand. I left the dressing cart by Ahn's bed and walked to hers. A blur of blue-green light surrounded her. I blinked hard, but the light remained.
"What's wrong, Xinh?"
She held up her hand so I could see the fingernail broken into the quick, a thin line of burgundy light pulsing from it. "Nothing. Tete dau," she said, her frown vanishing.
She took my hand in her sore one and swung it back and forth, companionably. This made me a little uncomfortable, but I knew from watching Vietnamese people that same-sex friends often held hands in public. I was grateful for the gesture, since I was still feeling a little like an ogress for spanking Ahn, despite the surprising way he had reacted. Xinh was impossible to dislike. Her emotions swept across her face like weather on a seascape, sunny one minute, stormy the next, but open and changeable. She painted her nails and tried different hairdos and watched the performers on Vietnamese TV. I was sure that if I could understand what she and Mal gossiped about, it would have been what my friends in nursing school talked about, boys, clothes, normal things that had nothing to do with the war. The only thing funny about her was that blue-green stain. I must have a bad case of heatstroke, I thought, and reclaimed my hand. "I have to get back to work, Xinh," I said.
She pulled her own hand away and started to suck on the broken 'l, then stopped with't halfway to her mouth. "Heyy! Numbah one!"
nal she said, her eyes shining. She held up her nail, perfectly intact, with about a quarter inch of unpainted growth showing above her ruined polish job. She looked at me as if I had pulled a coin from behind her ear. "How you do that?"
"Huh?" I said stupidly. Maybe Xinh wasn't feeling so good either -she was that funny color around the edges. Maybe we were both sick. I looked at both of Xinh's hands-all of the nails were intact. I shrugged. She shrugged and happily accepted the mending of her manicure as a miracle of American medicine. I felt distinctly dizzy as I started back for the nurses' station.
Mal returned to the ward, her
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