Nouméa Field Hospital
“Here he comes,” a woman’s voice said. “Captain? Captain? Can you hear me?”
Sluff tried to respond but his mouth was too dry. He grunted instead.
“Can you open your eyes for me, Captain?”
“Unh-unh,” he replied.
“Oh, c’mon,” she pleaded. “You can open your eyes. Just a little squint?” Then she leaned down to whisper in his ear. “I’ll take my top off, how ’bout that?”
He tried to laugh but only managed a little chuffing sound. But he did open his eyes. White lights. Steel instruments. Faces, blurry, but recognizable as American. No japans. He smelled antiseptic. Soft hands wiped his face with a cool cloth.
Operating room. His lungs were full of something heavy, and there was a brick up on the right side of his head. The nurse leaning over him still had her mask on, but she had pretty eyes.
“Where am I?” he whispered, finally.
“You’re in the recovery room of the Nouméa field hospital,” she said. “You’re safe now. No big torpedoes here.”
“Good,” he said. For some reason his ears were humming. “Water?” he croaked.
A second nurse pressed a paper cup with shaved ice to his lips. He got about an ounce of cold water. He wanted more until he realized he couldn’t even swallow that. He had to let it dribble back out of his mouth, and the nurse wiped his chin. He almost cried.
“Go slow,” she said. “Can you move your hands and feet?”
It was warm in the recovery room. He realized he was wrapped in a blanket, maybe even two. “What’s on my head?”
“A brand-new steel plate,” she replied. “A whole bunch of bandages. Some serious sutures. Now, wiggle your fingers and toes for me.”
He did, and then lifted each hand about an inch. She seemed very pleased that he could do that.
Nouméa, he thought. How the hell did I get here? He tried to remember, but the effort was too much, so he dozed instead. He felt the nurse pat his shoulder gently and say: Okay, okay.
He awoke to find himself in a hospital bed out on a ward, with rows of other patients on either side of him. This time there were a different nurse and a couple of doctors standing by his bed. The weight on his head was still there, although it didn’t really hurt all that much. He was partially sitting up, and he still wanted water. For as long as he could remember, he couldn’t get enough water. The nurse gave him another paper cup, and this time he could actually get it down. The doctors were smiling as they introduced themselves.
“Captain,” one of them said. “I’m Doctor Reed, this is Doctor Hamill. We’re the surgeons who repaired your skull. How you feeling? Are you in much pain?”
“Very tired,” Sluff said. “No, it doesn’t hurt much.”
“Great,” Reed said. “Postoperative, no signs of infection, and the sutures are holding well. You have a plate in your skull, but there was no obvious brain damage. The dura was apparently never breached, but there had to have been some swelling with an injury that size. You were, in a way, very lucky, because the skull fracture allowed the brain swelling to push out against bone fragments instead of compressing that area of your brain. Were you okay, mentally, after the injury?”
“I think so,” Sluff said. “Couldn’t remember anything for the first few hours after I got ashore, but then it all came back.”
“Do you remember feeling better but then slipping into a coma or unconsciousness for a long period of time after the injury?”
“No,” Sluff said. “I’d go in and out of consciousness, but mostly due to pain and being very tired. I was in the sea for half the night. How’d I get here?”
“You came in on a Catalina from Tulagi last night and we did your surgery right away. Basically, you’re past the dangerous part of a traumatic head injury. What swelling you do have now is post-op, not brain. We’ll pull those IVs once we know you’re fully rehydrated. They’ll start feeding you as soon as they know all the anesthesia is out of your system, but otherwise you just rest and recover. Oh, and did someone use honey on your head wound to stave off infection?”
“Yes, they did, or the native doctor did.”
Reed looked at Hamill. “Told ya,” he said.
“Rest sounds good,” Sluff said. “And water.”
“That we can do,” Reed said. “Oh, and we’ve had a message from someone over at Halsey’s headquarters who wants to talk to you, but I told them not for forty-eight hours. By then you’re gonna feel a whole lot better, as long as that swelling keeps going down. Which it should.”
“Thanks for that,” Sluff said. “And for the forty-eight hours.”
They wished him well and then moved on down the ward.
People at Halsey’s headquarters wanted to talk to him; can’t wait, he thought, remembering the brief tale told by the PT boat skipper.
He tried to relax. Yet another nurse came by and set up a bed-bridge table for him, complete with a glass of water and some saltine crackers. She checked the bandages, the IV, his covers, and then made some notes in his chart, smiled, and left. He looked up and down the ward, which was full. Some of the patients had curtains set up around them; others were sitting up and playing cards or talking to their neighbors. Every time he exhaled he coughed a little and then tasted something chemical in his mouth.
What were they going to ask him, he wondered. And would it be someone Halsey himself sent, or that snake, his chief of staff? What was his name—a color? White? Green? Browning, that was it. The guy who’d called him Tonto. A third nurse stopped by, took his vitals, made him drink some more water, smiled at him, looked at her watch, and then did something to one of the IVs. Then it was night-night time.
The next morning he was wheeled to a rehab room where two Navy corpsmen put him through a series of motor-skill tests to determine if he had neurological damage as well as skull damage. He was able to do everything they asked, but tired quickly. He got his first real meal since coming to the hospital, ate about a quarter of it, and felt much better after that. In the afternoon he got to take a long hot shower from the neck down. He caught a quick glimpse of his head in the bathroom mirror. The bandage was indeed pretty big and there were faint dark circles around his eyes. His head had been shaved clean.
They gave him fresh pajamas and a bathrobe, and then wheeled him to a different ward in the sprawling hospital up on the hill above the town of Nouméa. When he asked why the move, they told him they needed his bed in the postsurgery recovery ward. Apparently the war hadn’t stopped in honor of his arrival. They said they’d be back in the morning for more rehab exercises.
The new ward had semiprivate rooms for senior officers, although with two beds, and he apparently qualified. It was small but comfortable, with an overhead fan, a tiny screened porch with two wooden chairs, and a bathroom, which he shared with the adjoining room. The bathroom had a mirror above the sink, so he got his second look at the new and improved Harmon Wolf. His face, which now stretched over his prominent cheekbones like an artist’s canvas, startled him. His eyes were framed in dark hollows, and from the right side of his head a white, somewhat mashed volleyball made of bandages protruded. His entire skull had been shaved clean. What hairs he could make out on his scalp looked white. The mirror also showed massive bruising along the right side of his face, and his right ear felt like it was off kilter.
He sighed. He looked ancient, like one of the Mide, the tribal elders. He wondered if he could find a feather out on the lawn to stick into that mass of bandages.
His head didn’t hurt much, and surprisingly, he couldn’t feel the new steel plate through all that bandage material. The backs of his wrists hurt more than his head, courtesy of those IVs, which were now, thankfully, gone. He was vaguely aware of some pressure inside his skull, but wondered if he was just imagining that. On balance, though, it wasn’t his body that was hurting. It was the thought of what had happened to his ships and his people out there in the upper reaches of Ironbottom Sound. He remembered Jennifer telling him about the mass graves down near the beach. Some Japs, but mostly Americans.
His Americans? He lay down on the bed, which was a nice change from the World War I canvas stretcher. He wondered where the “boys” were now, and whether or not Jennifer had decided to come out or go back into that evocative long bush. He slept.
The next day there was more rehab work, after which the corpsmen decided he mostly needed rest, as all his motor skills appeared to be okay. The surgeons stopped by for a cursory visit. Both of them looked exhausted. Once they determined there were no complications, they left to continue rounds.
The next morning he was in the bathroom, trying to shave, when he heard voices in the bedroom.
“Captain Wolf?” a voice inquired. He stepped back into the bedroom to see a tall Navy captain standing in the doorway. Behind him was an enlisted man who was carrying a machine of some kind.
“Yes?” Sluff said.
“I’m Captain Bob Hollis, from SOPAC staff. I’m the deputy chief of staff for operations. Are you well enough to entertain some questions about what happened to you?”
“I suppose so,” Sluff said. He realized he was just a little bit dizzy. “But I think I need to get back in that bed.”
“Please,” Hollis said. “We can come back if you’re not up to this. They told us you had a serious head injury. If that bandage is any indication…”
“I think it’s bigger than the damage,” Sluff said, climbing gingerly into the single bed. He’d learned not to provoke the plate with too much actual exertion. He pulled the pillows behind him so that he could sit up. The captain came in, pulled up a chair, and then indicated for the petty officer with him to set up on the other side of the bed. Sluff wasn’t familiar with the petty officer’s rating badge, but he looked to be too old to be just a second-class.
“This is Petty Officer Woodrow. In civilian life he was a court reporter, and he’s here to save me the effort of remembering what you have to say.”
“A court reporter,” Sluff mused. “Are these going to be legal proceedings?”
“By no means, Captain,” Hollis said. “First of all, we’re glad you’re alive. When that report came in from Sydney it caused quite a stir. No, this is an informal fact-finding mission, nothing more. You were reported as missing in action after the battle and presumed lost, considering what happened to your flagship.”
He paused. “There were not that many survivors from that engagement,” he continued. “Destroyers Cannon, Stayers, Barrett, and Evans, along with Providence, all lost. Malone made it out of the engagement area, but then sank near Cactus the next morning. The only real survivor was J. B. King. She managed to escape the Jap cruisers and plant two torpedoes into one of the surviving Jap destroyers on her way out.”
“J. B. King,” Sluff said. “That was my old ship.”
“Yes, we know. You apparently trained them well. Look, let me reiterate: This is not a court of inquiry or even a formal investigation. Your return to life offers us a signal opportunity to find out what happened. If it makes you feel any better, Rear Admiral Tyree was in charge, legally speaking, and thus the responsibility for what happened necessarily lies with him.”
“And where is Caw Tyree now?” Sluff asked quietly.
“Ah, yes,” Hollis said. He frowned and then nodded. “Right. I guess that makes you the senior surviving officer. But still—”
“Is Captain Browning still the chief of staff?” Sluff asked.
Hollis gave a faint smile and nodded. “Why do you ask?”
“We’re not friends,” Sluff said.
“I’m not sure Captain Browning has any friends,” Hollis said. “Something you should know: I’m on this year’s flag list. Waiting to make my number and then I’ll be away, hopefully with an operational command. I tell you this so you’ll know you’ll get a fair shake from me—I want to know what happened. Correction: Halsey wants to know what happened. Captain Browning is—” He paused. “Captain Browning is not pleased that one of the officers on his staff made flag and he did not. Yes, my report has to go through the chief of staff, but soon…”
Sluff nodded. He understood. Hollis was telling him that as soon he became part of that rarefied community of naval officers who’d “made” flag, Browning would have zero leverage on him. On average, one-tenth of one percent of each Naval Academy class was selected for admiral rank. If Browning made trouble, he, Hollis, would be able to step on that trouble from within the ranks of the Navy’s flag officers. The implicit other half of that deal was that Sluff was going to have to tell Rear Admiral (select) Hollis everything, no holds barred, if he wanted some protection.
There was a polite knock on the door and then a nurse came in. She was older than most of the nurses he had seen and tiny, maybe five three if she stood very straight. Tiny, but very pretty, wearing the tropical gray-and-white-striped seersucker uniform, and obviously not happy.
“Gentlemen,” she said. “I’m Assistant Superintendent Danfield. My nurses told me that there was an interview going on in here. That needs to stop until this patient has had a little more time to recover.” She faced Captain Hollis. “He’s had brain surgery, Captain. Look at his eyes—see how dry they look? See those rings? That’s both exhaustion and dehydration. Can’t this wait another day?”
“Of course,” Hollis said, hastily getting up. “I’ll check with the doctors in the morning and then we’ll be over. Or not, as the case might be.”
“I look forward to it,” Sluff said, barely suppressing a yawn.
“Good,” Hollis said. “We’ll try again in the morning, then.” He turned to speak to the nurse. “If that’s okay with you, that is.”
“The doctors will make that call, Captain,” she said primly. “I’m just a nurse.”
“Right,” Hollis said with a wry smile. “Just a nurse.”
Once they’d left she came over to the bed and sat down in the chair. “Sorry,” she said. “I know they have to debrief you, but your chart says you’re still a long way from a hundred percent. You need water, sleep, and food. Water first, yes?”
He realized he was very thirsty. “Yes,” he said. His voice had become raspy. She had dark hair, cut severely short, beautiful brown eyes, and a figure that must have broken more than a few hearts along the way.
She left and then came back in a couple of minutes with a pitcher of ice water and some paper cups. “Sip water as much as you can. Sleep in between. There are no signs of infection, but you’re not out of that danger zone yet, either. We can’t see inside your braincase, so it will be you who will tell us if there’s swelling, infection, or any neurological disturbances going on. I think it would be best if you recovered for two more days, then let the Grand Inquisitor back in.”
“Sounds like a great idea,” he said. “Except they do need to know what happened before they go out and do it again.”
She studied his face. “You don’t look old enough to be a captain,” she said finally.
“You don’t look old enough to be an assistant superintendent of anything,” he replied, but with a smile.
“I wield a mean syringe, sir,” she said. “Is it true you are an American Indian?”
“I was,” he said, softly. “But now I’m just an American naval officer with a hole in his head.”
“Not anymore,” she said. “Now you have a steel plate in your head. Anybody who tries to scalp you is in for a big surprise.”
“We Indians don’t scalp anymore,” he protested. “Stinks up the tipi; squaws object to the smell and then we have to sleep with the dogs. While they eat the scalp.”
She gave him a patient look. “You all done?” she asked.
He smiled again. “You started it.”
She grinned.
“It’s the face, of course,” he said. “I’ve been living with Indian jokes since plebe year. But here I am, just another Navy casualty, it seems.”
“That captain—he looked serious enough.”
“He’s going to be an admiral pretty soon,” Sluff said. “I was commodore of a destroyer squadron. We got our collective asses handed to us by those wily Oriental devils known as the Imperial Japanese Navy. Admiral Halsey wants to know what the hell happened. Hollis is his Grand Inquisitor, as you called him.”
“That’s interesting,” she said. “That they’d send a flag selectee to interview you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Debrief. Flag selectee. You’re talking like you’re Navy yourself, I mean, besides as a superintendent nurse?”
She smiled, but now it was a sad smile. “My husband was chief engineer on the Juneau,” she said.
“Juneau,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I was one of the nurses in charge of the main surgical recovery unit at the naval hospital in San Diego when it happened. I requested a transfer out here. They said no. I didn’t take no for an answer, and they finally relented.”
“Why did you want to come out here to the ends of the earth?”
“Can’t you guess?”
He thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Poor Juneau. That was terrible.”
“Seven hundred souls on board,” she said, her voice so low he almost couldn’t hear her. “Ten came back, I’m told.”
He remembered the story: After the melee of November 13, cruisers Helena, Juneau, and San Francisco, all seriously damaged, had been making their way to the American repair base at Espiritu Santo when a Jap submarine had attempted to torpedo San Francisco. She missed the heavy cruiser, but one of her torpedoes hit Juneau, which disappeared in a thunderclap of flying metal and sank in thirty seconds. Then, adding insult to injury, the stragglers elected to keep going on to the distant base, wrongly assuming that no one could have survived such an explosion. One hundred or more men did, but only ten were alive when search planes finally went back to look days later.
“Well,” he said. “I think I lost about as many men. Four destroyers sunk, a light cruiser sunk, an admiral killed. That’s why Hollis was here. I think they’re looking for someone to hang.”
“Nobody was hanged for what happened to Juneau,” she pointed out. She stood up and smoothed her skirt over her legs. “It’s war, Captain, or Commodore—the Japs are just a lot better than everyone thought.”
“You have no idea,” he said.
“Actually,” she said, with a wan smile.
He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m—”
“Exhausted and badly hurt,” she said. “Water, rest, more water. I’ll check on you in the morning.” She pulled up the light blue cotton cover.
“I’d like that,” he mumbled as the shadows drew around him. He found himself embracing them.