Combat Medic

By Kris Nelscott

Berkeley, May, 1969—When former Army nurse Captain June “Eagle” Eagleton returned from Vietnam, she thought she left the war zone behind. But when the familiar sound of a helicopter wakes Eagle from sleep, she realizes she has awoken in a very different kind of war zone: one filled with tear gas, and kids, and the National Guard.

As Eagle fights her way to help her friend Pammy at A Gym of Her Own, she finds herself in the middle of a very difficult situation—one where saving lives might prove harder than she thought possible.

“Nelscott recalls the era with vivid accuracy.”

—St. Petersburg Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Oct 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386144984

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Combat Medic

Combat Medic

Kris Nelscott

WMG Publishing Inc.

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Combat Medic

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Combat Medic

The whap-whap-whap of helicopter rotors invaded her dreams. Eagle blinked awake, and the sound remained. Sikorsky getting close .

Incoming. Wounded.

Her breath caught and her entire body tensed. She threw back covers (soft, woven blanket—um, what?) and swung her legs off the bunk, banging her feet on the floor. The bunk was shorter than she expected, but she didn’t have time to think about that.

She groped for her fatigues, couldn’t find them within easy reach, grabbed a loose T-shirt and jeans (civilian clothes? Where’d they come from?), slid them on, found bunched-up dirty socks, pulled on two, and then her boots, familiar and comfortable.

She tripped heading for the door, listening for the other nurses, hearing only the drumbeat of rotors, closer, closer, closer, almost as fast as her heartbeat. Stepped through the door, expecting it to bang back as she emerged into the harsh sunlight.

Instead—

Living room, green sofa, blanket on top, large 16-inch TV, her only splurge, canted coffee table with a bong in plain sight, magazines slightly out of order, pale sunlight through the thin curtains.

She took a breath, inhaled the greasy odor of last night’s hamburger lingering in the air—even though the cast-iron skillet had been wiped and replaced in the cabinet, dinner plate scrubbed and back on the shelf.

As usual, the galley kitchen, attached to the living room, was the cleanest room in the house.

But the whap-whap-whap grew closer. No incoming, no wounded.

She was home, Berkeley, not Nam, been home for two years, dammit, the dreams should have been over, but they weren’t, no matter how much pot she smoked before bed (self-medicating, Eagle, not good, you know that).

But this was the first time—the very first, ever—that the sound stayed after the dream had ended. She’d awakened hundreds of times with the stench of truck exhaust mixed with burned skin trapped in her nose, hearing ’copters, bringing in wounded, bringing the dead, and she’d always run forward, always headed toward the crisis, and here, in Berkeley, she always stopped in the kitchen.

Usually the