The War Within by Yolanda Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

usually start punching each other in the face like guys do, but they hold on to slights a lot longer. I doubt Mom will ever be as close to anyone I bring home as Dad was to Papa George. In fact, I’m half-convinced she thinks being a lesbian is a phase I’ll grow out of like a bad haircut.”
    “Don’t give up on your mother, honey. Be patient. She’ll come around. One day, something will click and you’ll see the light come on in her eyes. It takes some people longer to see that light than others. But when Diana does, you’ll know it.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because that’s what happened to me.”
    Jordan reflected on the story Grandma Meredith had told about her first day in Vietnam and the interesting bunch of characters she’d met after she arrived. Man. It had taken serious guts to do what they did. If the teaser was this action-packed, she couldn’t imagine what the rest of the story would be like. She knew how it began and how it ended, but she had no idea what had happened in the middle. And she couldn’t wait to find out.
    Did that mean Brittany was right about her? No way. Being supportive of family members and being anti-war weren’t mutually exclusive. Were they? She shook her head to clear her mind of a conflict she couldn’t resolve.
    “Do you think we’ll run into Robinson this summer? You said she lived on Jekyll Island, right? She sounds fascinating. I’d love to meet her.”
    “She and I lost touch years ago. We didn’t part on the best of terms. I don’t know if she still lives in the same place. If she does, I doubt she would want to see me.”
    “If she is still rattling around the island, it would be cool if you two could kiss and make up.”
    “Yeah,” Grandma Meredith said as she stared out the window. “That would be way cool.”

Chapter Four

    September 1, 1967
    Saigon

    Meredith looked out the rear of the truck as the transport vehicle headed back to post. A thick cloud of dust trailed in its wake. She squinted to see through the sandy filter as the sights and sounds of Vietnam flew past her vantage point.
    Despite the spectacular views along the circuitous route between the base and town, she had found working in the hospital disappointing. She liked helping the locals become self-sufficient and she loved being able to ease the patients’ suffering, but she had become frustrated by the fact that, aside from Lt. Col. Daniels, most of her superiors seemed more concerned with making sure everyone’s uniforms were starched and pressed instead of guaranteeing the patients received the best possible care. The majority of the doctors on staff gloated about the cushy assignment they had received, while a relative few openly longed to be closer to the front lines where the real action was. Meredith just wanted to help, no matter her location. That was the reason she had signed up in the first place.
    At the hospital, she had kept her head down and done her job as best she could, whether her patient was a local with a stomachache or a GI who had developed a raging infection after falling into a punji trap. The spikes in such traps were often deliberately contaminated to compound the misery of its victims and the medical personnel who searched, sometimes in vain, for the proper method to treat the infection.
    Now that she had finished her final shift, she had forty-eight hours of leave. Two whole days of down time before she packed her bags and prepared to ship off to her next posting.
    Long Binh was an evac hospital thirty-three clicks away. Based on the horror stories she had heard, it would be like leaving heaven for hell. The facilities were better than in Saigon, but the base was crowded, and the types of injuries she’d have to treat would be exponentially worse than the ones she had seen so far. Not to mention the Long Binh Jail also served as the primary incarceration center in Vietnam. For the past year, all of the Army’s ne’er-do-wells and criminals had been