The Healer's War
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Language: English
Pages: 242
ISBN: B01B98TG06
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Although perhaps best known for her lightly humorous fantasies and collaborations with Anne McCaffrey on the Petaybee series and the Acorna series, Elizabeth Anne Scarborough has also written Healer's War, a classic novel of the Vietnam War, enriched with a magical, mystical twist, which won the 1989 Nebula Award for Best Novel of 1988. The Minneapolis Star Tribune called it "a brutal and beautiful book." Scarborough herself was a nurse in Vietnam during the war, and she draws on her own personal experiences to create the central character, Lieutenant Kitty McCulley. McCulley, a young and inexperienced nurse tossed into a stressful and chaotic situation, is having a difficult time reconciling her duty to help and heal with the indifference and overt racism of some of her colleagues, and with the horrendously damaged soldiers and Vietnamese civilians whom she encounters during her service at the China Beach medical facilities. She is unexpectedly helped by the mysterious and inexplicable properties of an amulet, given to her by one of her patients, an elderly, dying Vietnamese holy man, which allows her to see other people's "auras" and to understand more about them as a result. This eventually leads to a strange, almost surrealistic journey through the jungle, accompanied by a one‑legged boy and a battle‑seasoned but crazed soldier, and, by the end of the journey, McCulley has found herself and a way to live and survive through the madness and destruction.
too much more about it here since that might spoil the story (it does have a bit of one of those O. Henry twists that I’ve always enjoyed so much but are so often deplored these days). But, ever the mercenary free-lancer, I decided before the goose bumps the dream had evoked had faded to write it up as a short story with the idea of selling it to the late, lamented Twilight Zone magazine. Some time later, I mentioned to Janna Silverstein at Bantam/Spectra that I had this idea I couldn’t get out
it over. And there’ll be other parties. Don’t worry….” The talk turned to their families again, then, abruptly, Tommy Dean ducked out to see if the sergeant they’d ridden over with was done with his carousing at the NCO club. “Is he okay?” I asked. “Oh sure, honey. Just a little homesick. You know, I don’t think you realize how much it means to him—to both of us—to have you come over and talk to us for a while.” He stopped looking at me for the first time that evening and studied his
hopelessness. I wanted to wipe that away, first. “Please tell babysan that when he goes to surgery, Bac si Joe will only work on what is left of his left leg to try to save as much as possible. Later, the doctor will give him a new wooden leg so he can walk again. Tell babysan that Private Dong was not telling him the truth.” She shushed Ahn and talked to him for some time, answering his interruptions until his expression changed to one of skepticism and worry. He glanced down at his soiled
sun, as I thought, reflected in the sky. Around the next bend, I felt the heat, smelled the smoke, and watched tongues of fire lick at the sky as the field below us spouted flames. Acres of plants were already consumed and blackened, and the fire now fed on earth and roots. I wondered what burned so hot and remembered napalm. But why napalm somebody’s field? I hated the feel of it even more than I hated stumbling through jungle, so I started climbing again, up away from the fire. Just before
her black hair flying like a scarf behind her. In her hot little hand was a roll of gauze bandage, still in its white wrapper with the red cross in the blue circle. “Co, co, see, see!” she cried. She was such a gorgeous child, like a doll with that Kewpie mouth and little pointed chin and that shining hair. “Co Mao, Co Mao,” the old man said. It was no good trying to get him to go ahead and say my name untranslated. I ducked back inside the house to bandage Ahn’s leg. He was sitting up now,