Fleet Hospital. Anne Duquette Marie

      Michael’s whole Scout pack—minus rat fink Dennis Klemko—wore their uniforms to the second funeral. Michael flatly refused. He hated Scouts. He hated everyone who’d ever been a Scout.

      Without a uniform, he had nothing formal to wear. His father said he wasn’t up to taking him shopping and didn’t even know Michael’s new size. Michael had outgrown his old church suit ages ago, and the Scoutmaster’s wife couldn’t get off work to take him shopping, either. So the Certs lady—his Scoutmaster’s single sister-in-law with the silly name of Sunshine Mellow and sillier plastic go-go boots—guessed his size and showed up at the last minute with a new black suit and white shirt from the Navy Exchange. Apparently it was paid for by the Scout troop, which made Michael almost want to reject it.

      When the Certs lady dropped off the suit bag, Michael asked her if she’d sit with him at his mother’s funeral. Michael knew Sunshine didn’t meet his father’s standards. She wasn’t Irish, she wasn’t even Catholic and she had a “hippie” name, but Michael liked her, anyway. She said he had to ask his father; she’d wait in the car while he did. Michael ran back inside.

      “Please, Dad, can she? She brought me a suit. So can she?”

      His father, busy phoning relatives from both sides of the family, phoning Navy staff above and below him at the flight line, planning the second funeral and arranging for Michael’s make-up schoolwork, agreed. Once again Michael sat in the front pew of the Navy chapel, this time flanked by his father and the Certs lady.

      All through church, his father held Michael’s right hand, and Sunshine held his left—in between Certs after Certs. She adjusted his old bow tie, which made him itch and scratch. It was too tight for his neck, but the base exchange was out of new ones. Michael didn’t mind, really he didn’t. He wanted to be dressed right for Mom.

      At least his tie wasn’t some stupid neckerchief. Michael sucked on his candy, ignored the communion line Dad was in and leaned a salt-wet cheek against Sunshine’s Protestant shoulder. He wondered if Mom was rocking Anna in heaven. Mom had to be there—she was a good mom, and she hadn’t disgraced her uniform. He wondered who’d take care of him and Dad. He knew he’d never see Mom and baby Anna again, not even in heaven. If he hadn’t been such a baby himself and called out for his father when the boys were chasing him, Anna would still be alive. He’d gotten rid of the drawing; he should have taken the beating like a man. Now, he was damned to hellfire and worms forever.

      Unless… Michael slowly inserted another Certs into his mouth. Unless he got a new uniform, started over and never disgraced that uniform again. He was the son of uniformed parents. He knew about duty. He was no rotten quitter. Michael sat up a little straighter in the pew. He could wear a new uniform with a new Scout troop, and a Navy uniform later, like his mom’s.

      On his honor, Michael vowed to do his best…to do his duty to God and his country…to help other people at all times…and to never do another Bad Thing again. Starting now. He shoved the rest of the Certs into his pants pocket.

      On his honor.

      CHAPTER TWO

      MEMO

      TO: All Personnel

      FROM: U.S. Naval Training Program Office

      SUBJ: FLEET HOSPITAL Mission Description

      1) Is a Department of Defense standardized, modular, deployable, rapidly erectable, relocatable shore-based medical facility.

      2) Provides Fleet Commander in Chief with fully mission-capable combat medical treatment facilities in support of combat forces at risk.

      3) Deployed in three phases: Air Detachment, Advance Party and Main Body.

      4) Assembled rapidly at prepared sites in five to ten days with 100-bed or 500-bed combat zone hospital.

      5) Unlike Army MASH units, Navy FLEET HOSPITAL units are essentially self-sustaining.

      6) Once FLEET HOSPITAL facilities are erected and provided with 60 days of supplies, FLEET HOSPITAL is on its own.

      Naval Fleet Hospital Training, FHOTC (Fleet Hospital Operations and Training Command)

      Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base

       Day 1

      TABLOID WRITER Lori Sepanik, pen name Jo Marche, stepped outside into Southern California’s July sun and the noon heat of the fenced desert compound. It was the day’s second muster. Located directly to the north of the Fleet Hospital Command, the training class within the fenced area offered no frills—or even basic comforts. The assembled students, sweating in heavy green cammies, black boots and starched covers, tried to ignore the humming of Admin’s air-conditioning outside their barbed-wire fences and guarded gates. Judging by the looks on their faces, Jo decided they were failing miserably. She knew she was.

      Air conditioning existed for the staff’s administration computers only and the few staff personnel lucky enough to work in the regular buildings. Typewriters were used in the Fleet Hospital’s actual training area, and the frigid air wasn’t needed there. Everyone not in FHOTC’s Admin building, from instructors and students to civilian guests like her, sweated. Their only relief was drinking potable water outside the huge tent “hospital” that served as their classroom. No soda, soft drinks or pop, depending on one’s regional vernacular. In Jo’s case, it was a Midwesterner’s “soda.” She’d kill for one right now. No such luck. She was stuck inside the compound, sweating and waiting for the training exercise’s first “casualties.”

      Jo had been admitted onto the marine base as an Associated Press reporter. However, the credentials she had were as phony as her pen name. If she was lucky and able to write a decent story, instead of her usual tabloid trash, she just might get away with what she hoped was the last lie she’d ever have to tell. Face it, tabloid reporters were pretty much professional liars—if you considered the lousy substandard pay she received for her articles “professional.” But so far, she hadn’t found even the hint of a real story at Fleet Hospital.

      I’ll never get a decent job with a decent newspaper at this rate. She hadn’t managed to get an interview with the Commanding Officer, a Captain McLowery. Not yet, anyway. AP rarely bought feature stories without a diversity of interviews. In this case, that meant officers and enlisted, high ranks and lower ranks, men and women, and people of varied ethnic backgrounds. Unfortunately, an interview with the high-ranking McLowery wasn’t happening so far, despite a quick conversation with him earlier in the day.

      Not needing to worry about the muster, Jo stepped back into the shade and consulted her notes as the roll call droned on in the blinding light. She had to find a story, so she might as well go where it was cooler and start with some of the low-ranking officers.

      Luckily for her, the CHC—Chaplain Corps—worked inside the hospital, a huge complex of connected canvas tents, which all the students learned to assemble. The hospital air-conditioning operated only in critical areas— Surgery, Intensive Care and the Expectant area, which was what they called the cordoned-off area for those expected to die. Those three sites, especially the latter two, were chaplain territories, she read. Chaplains would be praying over the dead and dying.

      “Nothing like fake blood on bandages to spice up a dull shot,” Jo murmured. She felt for her camera at her side and stayed in the shade as she searched the mustered ranks for the chaplain participating in this exercise. She had a gift for both words and photography—although she rarely needed photos when it came to the tabloids. Celebrity stories used stock shots, and fake stories used computer-generated photos, like those used to show readers supposed alien-human babies born in Roswell basements near Area 51.

      She ought to know; she’d written a series of alien-baby stories herself under her Jo Marche byline. They sold almost as well as Elvis sightings and features on the British royals’ latest affairs—whether they’d actually happened or not. Jo had always wanted to be a nonfiction writer, but for some reason only the tabloids bought her stuff, and that sort of writing could hardly be classified as true reporting.

      She