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“What are you doing here?” asked Ruth once she’d climbed into the passenger seat and caught her breath.

“I should ask you the same question,” said Ivy, zipping the jeep past the Quonset huts, toward the main road. “Mom must have had fits.”

The mention of their mother started Ruth’s tears again, and several minutes passed before she could carry on a normal conversation.

Which gave her time to think about the questions she most wanted to ask, because Ivy wasn’t volunteering anything, that was for sure.

While Ruth gathered herself, Ivy simply drove.

She offered no explanation, no excuse. She was unchanged, thought Ruth.

No apology would be offered because Ivy didn’t believe one was owed.

Ruth could spend this drive attempting—and no doubt failing—to extract one. Or she could go a different way. “So you’re a WAC?” she said at last.

Ivy shook her head. “Nope. Look at the sleeves. You need to learn the insignia if you want to know who can do what for you while you’re here.

Not that it’s always about rank, but rank never hurts.

” Ivy tugged at the unadorned olive drab fabric covering her upper arm.

“No rank, no unit, see? I picked these up in Saigon to wear on my off days. They’re comfortable and hardly show dirt at all. Unlike my Donut Dolly uniform.”

“Your what?”

“My Donut Dolly uniform. We wear these cute little powder-blue dresses. They’re comfortable, but you stand out more than I .

.. well, you stand out. Which is the point, I suppose.

We’re here with the Red Cross, keeping up troop morale.

You know, songs and games and lemonade and snacks and conversation with a real live American girl. ”

“You came to Vietnam to boost troop morale?”

“Something like that. It would take too long to explain.”

“Oh, I think I’ve got time.”

“Time is one thing nurses here never have. Listen, you’re going to see some stuff here, Ruth. It’s going to be pretty awful.”

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Ruth said. “So you think I haven’t either.

But you’re wrong. I keep up with the casualty counts.

I know it’s terrible here. I chose to come because it’s terrible here.

” And, she thought, because you weren’t supposed to be here.

But maybe Ivy’s presence meant that she had made the right choice.

They were reunited. In country, as Kimberly would have said.

“You know I have to tell them that you’re here. I’m not going to lie for you,” said Ruth.

“Tell them whatever you want. I’m blown anyway. I ran into Frank Jr. last week. Me in my powder-blue dress with my stack of board games and him with his face covered in mud—keeps the mosquitoes off—cleaning his M16.”

Ruth wondered what seeing Frank Jr. had entailed, exactly. Her face must have shown it, because Ivy said, “That was a long time ago. If I could take it back, I would. Him and most of the others. I would have left him for you, Ruthie.”

“Well, I don’t want him now.”

“Me neither. Why didn’t he get a deferral? He could have stayed in college. Only son. All that.” Ivy waved her hand dismissively at all that . “At least gone the National Guard route.”

“That’s what Aunt Helen wanted. She and Uncle Frank argued about it for months.

Grandma Adele thinks he signed up just so he didn’t have to hear them fight anymore.

Aren’t you worried he’ll write his parents?

” Who would, naturally—Aunt Helen with considerable delight—then inform their mother that Ivy was in Vietnam too.

“He didn’t strike me as the letter-writing type. Maybe a postcard every six weeks or so. Things are fine here. Hope this finds you well. ”

Ivy slowed the jeep. “We’re almost there,” she said.

“Good, I’m beat. I can’t wait to get out of these clothes. Maybe take a shower.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Ivy. She named two units that had gone out just before she left the base.

There had been signs of a new VC supply line pushing through toward the Iron Triangle.

Ivy suspected there’d be fighting. And that meant medevacs of wounded coming out, with Cu Chi the closest hospital to receive them.

“You’re going to hit the ground running, Ruth.

They’ll let you change, but it may be a long time before you shower or sleep. ”

Ruth had anticipated a leisurely tour of the base, a forced but amiable hour of conversation with her new colleagues, a disappointing meal in the mess, and a full night’s rest before she even changed a bandage. But this was what she’d signed up for. “Okay,” she said.

“Look. I could probably get you out. We could turn around right now. Drive back to Long Binh and ask to see the paperwork. There’s almost always something you can point to in the paperwork.

And I know some people. I could make a couple of phone calls, get you on a plane home, but only if we turn around now. ”

“God, you sound just like Mom. Knowing all the right people to call. Forget it, Ivy. Look, you don’t have to take care of me.

I didn’t come here looking for you. I never expected to see you again at all.

So don’t worry about me. Go play games and sing songs with the GIs and let me do what I came here to do. ”

“Fair enough,” said Ivy as the base came into view. “Just one thing you should know. I go by Shaw now, not Rutledge.”

As Ruth pulled on her stiff newly issued fatigues, disappointment pierced her relief and shock at seeing Ivy.

Vietnam was supposed to be her own adventure, one that would top whatever Ivy was up to.

Yet once again, Ivy had beaten her out. Once again, Ivy knew more than she did.

“ Nyeh nyeh nyeh, you have to learn the insignia, ” thought Ruth.

Her ribs began to vibrate with the drumming of propellers.

The nurses in her hooch took off running to the airfield.

Ruth followed and found herself in the midst of what at first appeared to be chaos, but which, once she focused on Captain Stanich, the nurse in charge, resolved itself into a pattern.

A stretcher was pulled off a helicopter, or, more rarely, a GI climbed out on his own.

Two nurses looked him over, asked him questions if he was conscious, took his vitals, and pointed to the area where they wanted the medics to take him.

“Rutledge, let’s go,” ordered Stanich. Ruth moved to her commanding officer’s side.

“This one looks easy. The medics can stitch him up, give him antibiotics,” Stanich said, indicating the gash on the soldier’s forearm.

“You hurt anywhere else? Turn around so I can see if you’re bleeding anywhere.

Sometimes they’re in shock and they don’t feel it even when they’ve got a bullet in them. But this one’s clean.”

They moved on to the next stretcher. “He’s dead,” said Ruth.

“Not yet.” Stanich pressed her fingers against the man’s bloody neck. “Thready pulse.” She tugged his dog tags from under his fatigues. “O negative,” she shouted, and in seconds a medic arrived with a bag of blood. “OR,” she said, and the medics carried the soldier to the operating tent.

The third one she barely glanced at. A large chunk of his skull appeared to be missing, yet he still struggled to breathe. “Morphine,” said Stanich. “Put him over there.”

The worst cases got sent Over There, where only one nurse was on duty, mostly administering morphine and speaking soothingly to the soldiers in her care, all of whom appeared to be beyond listening.

Before Ruth could suggest that perhaps Over There needed staffing up, Stanich moved to the next stretcher.

Ruth strained to catch her voice over the sound of the Hueys.

“I said, grab that boot.” Stanich scowled at having to repeat herself. She was petite—Ruth had to stoop to hear her—and the softness of her looks wasn’t reflected in her stern manner. The soldier on the stretcher clutched his boot to his chest.

“No,” he said when Ruth attempted to take it. “No, I need it.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep it safe for you,” said Ruth. Stanich took his pulse and examined his pupils, looking him over for bullet wounds.

“We need it out of the way so we can see where you’re hurt,” said Ruth, gently tugging the boot. The soldier held firm. She tugged harder.

“It’s his foot,” said Stanich. Ruth waited for her to send him off with the medics for bandaging and crutches.

But when the soldier released his boot, repeating, “I need it,” the weight of it shocked her.

How did they march in such heavy footwear?

Glancing down, she glimpsed the field tourniquet on the soldier’s leg, saw the bony, ragged stump protruding from the boot’s opening.

“Sew it back on,” he pleaded. “I need it.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” soothed Stanich. To Ruth she murmured, “Get rid of that.”

How? she wondered. Where? It was all she could do not to drop the thing and bend over and vomit where she stood. Only her desire to make a good impression on Stanich and to avoid frightening the soldier kept her upright.

Stanich moved on to the next stretcher, and a medic gently took the boot from Ruth’s hands. “It gets easier,” he said. But she didn’t see how it could ever get easy enough.

Hours later, she collapsed on her cot. When she woke, she was already late for her first shift in the hospital.

She’d lost track of how many days she’d gone without a shower, but already she knew it didn’t matter.

She glanced around for Ivy as she jogged to the latrine and then to the hospital.

The Donut Dollies’ hooch was near hers—the women were corralled together in their own pocket of the base—and she glimpsed several women in powder-blue uniforms, not one of them her sister.