Chapter 10

As they entered the hospital, Kathy was completely unaware of the fact that she had achieved her desired appearance. Now she was a slender brown-haired vision of beauty as she walked with her long-legged stride at Ken's side, moving with the unconscious grace of a great cat. She was oblivious to the looks that followed their passage. Her posture was straight and her breasts were proudly upthrust. The fact that they could be seen moving under the light material of her yellow shirtwaist dress did not concern her in the slightest. At least a couple of men who might otherwise have been tempted to approach her took one look at Ken's size and just went back to daydreaming about her.

Finding Tony's room they knocked softly and walked in. As they did, a couple of members of his crew were just leaving. When Tony saw them, his eyes lighted up, but Kathy saw something else in his eyes besides pleasure. She couldn't figure it out. Approaching his bedside, she extended her hand which he took and held. "Hi, Tony," she said softly. "How are you feeling?"

He pushed a call button on his pillow and then said, "I'm fine, all thanks to you, Mrs. Carlson," he said in a husky voice.

"Mrs. Carlson?" Kathy protested. "What's this all about?"

Instead of answering, Tony looked at her hand that he was still holding in his. She was puzzled as he just held it and examined it, noting her long slim fingers, perfectly-formed, unpainted nails, and the smoothness of her skin. Then he lifted her hand to his lips and softly kissed the back of her fingers, murmuring, "Madonna."

When he looked at her, Kathy was startled to see that tears were flowing from his eyes. Then he asked plaintively, "Madonna, can you ever forgive me?"

"Forgive you for what, Tony?" she demanded. "And what's this 'Madonna' nonsense?"

He smiled softly and replied, "Madonna means 'my lady' in Italian, Mrs. Carlson. That's what you are. My grandfather used to tell us about the old days in Italy. He farmed a small piece of land that belonged to a nobleman. Repeatedly, he told us about the marchessa — a true noblewoman. She was beautiful and kind and considerate of everyone. Grandfather worshiped her and would gladly have given his life for her." Looking piercingly into Kathy's eyes, he continued, "Only now do I know what he meant."

Now his tears began to flow in earnest as Tony went on, "Of course, when I meet my lady, do I strew flowers in her path? Do I beg leave to kiss her hand? Me? Tony Rossi? Hah! I have her clean out the shit-house." His voice broke and now he was sobbing, but still trying to speak in his husky whisper, "This beautiful hand was scrubbing shit. Then I have an accident. The boys just told me all about it: How you stripped naked, climbed down into that flooding trench that you knew was going to collapse..."

Now his eyes were piercing into hers as he asked, "You did know it, didn't you?"

All Kathy could do was nod her head. She felt like she was pinned to the floor by his eyes.

"Anyway, you swim in that filth. With all the time you took cutting off my boot, they thought you were dead. There was no way anyone could hold his breath as long as you did. Then you popped to the surface covered with slime and filth, gasped in some more air, dove down and finished the job. No one knows or will ever know how you pulled my foot out of the trapped boot — probably the same way you later aligned my broken leg bones: with superhuman strength.

"Is it over?" Tony continued. "Of course not. You get me to the surface and out of the trench seconds before the walls caved in completely. Then you start giving me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, drawing out the sewage I swallowed into your own mouth. You made me come back to life. Then, still naked and covered with filth yourself, you pull my broken bone back in place. Finally, you make sure I'm cleaned off, cleaning my face yourself."

His tears were flowing freely and the story he had told was frequently broken with pauses when he could no longer talk through his weeping. Finally he whispered again, "Madonna — My Lady!" and softly kissed the back of her hand again.

By this time Kathy's tears were flowing, too, and a couple dripped on Tony's face when she bent over, despite his protests, and kissed him full on the lips. It was the most tender, most loving kiss Tony had ever had, and came from the softest lips. When she stood up again, he had his hand to his lips and a look of wonder in his eyes. Only then did he turn to Ken and acknowledge his presence. "Carlson, you better take care of this princess — my lady! She is the bravest, most courageous person I have ever met — and certainly the most beautiful!"

While he had been talking, a nurse had stuck her head in the room. Tony was talking at the time and just nodded once in her direction and she withdrew. Now, after a soft knock on the door, a doctor entered. Tony introduced him as Dr. Scott, the orthopedic surgeon on his case. Only then did Kathy realize that Tony's leg was still enclosed in the metal emergency splint that she had put on it earlier.

Scott saw her look of surprise and started to laugh. "I'm sure you're wondering why Tony's leg is still in your splint, aren't you?"

"I sure am," she replied, utterly baffled that apparently nothing had been done.

"The answer is very simple, Mrs. Carlson," the doctor replied. "We've been trying to figure out how to get it out of yours and into ours without lousing up his leg."

"Good heavens!" she exclaimed in dismay. "I don't know very much, and you're telling me I really screwed it up, aren't you? Will he be all right? Can you possibly repair the damage I caused?"

Scott's head had been shaking and he was laughing even harder. Tony was now laughing as well. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Carlson," the doctor explained. "I didn't explain it very well. You see, what you did was a perfect closed reduction of a fractured tibia — badly fractured, I might add. The bone alignment is absolutely perfect." Then he grinned and added, "Lest you think we did nothing, it's just not true. For example, we carefully cleaned off the splint — there was a lot of dirt around it; we gave Tony a bath — your work with the hose wasn't quite up to our hospital standard..." He looked around as if trying to recall the services the hospital had performed. Then he brightened and added, "Oh, I almost forgot! We fed him, too."

Then Scott looked at Kathy closely and asked, "May I look at your arm, please?" Kathy was wearing a sleeveless dress in yellow that was very bright and cheerful in color. Looking puzzled, she extended her hand. He took it in his left hand while with his right he ran his fingers up her inner arm and then up to her upper arm. He asked her to make a fist and expand her biceps, which she did. Then he just held her hand in both of his and looked at it.

"It's impossible," he said softly. "Mrs. Carlson, you could not possibly do what you so obviously did. With Tony's musculature, you could not have exerted, let alone maintained, the pressure required to pull his lower leg bone down to realign with the upper piece. You see, powerful muscles such as Tony's are great — unless a bone breaks. Then, the natural contraction of the muscles pulls the bone together. But when it's no longer joined, it is, in effect, pulling the ends farther apart." He looked at her and just shook his head. "How, in hell, did you do it? Because physically, you just could not."

Kathy just shook her head, not knowing what to say. But Tony spoke up saying, "Doctor, just before the Carlsons arrived, a couple of the boys were in. They told me about it. You see, Mrs. Carlson was completely naked when she was working on me. There was nothing to conceal anything. They tell me they have never seen the muscle development on a human that this woman has. You wouldn't expect it would you?

"But," he continued, "when she has her foot in my groin and is holding my ankle with both hands and is pulling, muscles were popping out on her legs, shoulders and arms that blew my guys away. But as you know, it wasn't a sudden jerk. It was a very powerful steady pull while she focuses on getting the alignment as good as she could. That's how she did it, Doctor."

"Mrs. Carlson, how much do you charge for orthopedic services? Why don't you send us your bill and we'll handle it in our usual way: Mark it up 400 percent, type it on our bill-head, and send it on to Tony. Would that be okay?" he asked with a grin.

"Lady, you did it all. We did nothing. Now we're just trying to keep from screwing up your brilliant work." As an afterthought he added, "By the way, have you been medically examined? Swimming in sewage is not normally conducive to good health."

She said she hadn't and he grinned again and offered her a complete examination on the house. "Why don't you come down when you finish here? The nurses will tell you where to find me." With that, he withdrew from the room.

Tony turned back to Ken and picked up where he had left off. "Carlson, she's a hero, and you better take care of her."

Kathy hugged Ken's arm and spoke before he could, "You have that completely wrong, Tony. In the Carlson household, Ken's the hero; I'm the committed coward. Tony, Ken has a fistful of medals from the Army."

Suddenly there was an expression of utter shock, followed by dismay, followed by tears. So softly, they could scarcely hear him as he murmured, "Carlson's Rangers ... You're that Ken Carlson, aren't you?"

Ken grinned and said, "I guess a few idiots nicknamed us that. Actually, Tony, it was Alpha Company, First Ranger Battalion, U.S. Army."

Tears were streaming in a flood now, and Tony could scarcely talk. He appeared to be in far worse condition than when he had been crying over his treatment of Kathy. "Does the name, Michael Rossi mean anything to you? Sergeant Michael Rossi?" he asked softly while his eyes drilled into Ken's.

"Michael Rossi?" Suddenly, Ken's face lighted like a Christmas tree, "Mike Rossi? My God! Are you his father? Mike was one of the best men I ever had."

Suddenly Tony's tears turned into a flood. She didn't know what the trouble was, but Kathy couldn't stand to watch his obvious suffering. She bent over the bed, hugged his shoulders, and began to lightly kiss his face whispering, "Tony, what's wrong? What have we done to you? Please stop, Tony. You're killing me with your tears."

With an effort of will, largely triggered by his embarrassment at causing Kathy any pain, he regained control. He held Kathy's hand and looked at her steadily. "Madonna, you don't know the half of it. I think I know far more about Ken Carlson than you do — at least the military side of it. You see, my son, Mike, jokes about how they finally double-crossed Captain Carlson and got him some hardware. You see, that was the most decorated unit in the whole military. Carlson's was the unit with the motto, 'Leave no one behind.'

"You see, most of the time they operated deep behind enemy lines. The unit suffered 150 percent casualties. That means that everyone was a casualty on average one-and-a-half times. Killed in action? None. Missing in action? None. They were all wounded, all brought back, and all the wounded later moved heaven and earth to rejoin their unit.

"Medals? It was the unit joke! You see, Ken Carlson personally deserves almost all of them. Why a joke? Because he would assiduously write up the events of an action. The only thing is, he changed the names. For example, my son, Mike, also has a DSC. His citation tells how his commanding officer and three men were trapped in front of the main body and were all wounded. Mike, with a complete disregard for his own life, went through enemy fire, eliminating two groups of the enemy who had the CO trapped, and then brought back all the men.

"He jokes about it: The Army never caught on. You see, he was wounded — got the Purple Heart, too — Captain Carlson wasn't. Mike was the one trapped and Ken was the guy who got them out.

"What finally happened to get him a few of his medals? It was only when Ken was wounded deep behind enemy lines. When they finally got him out, he was in bad shape, so he couldn't protect himself. This time, the rest of the guys made sure he finally got at least a couple of the medals that he deserved. Carlson? When he came out of action, all he cared about were his Kathy-grams..."

Again Tony's face dropped. "But ... But ... But you're Kathy!" Looking at her he asked, "Did you always write Ken using the same blue notepaper, and always write in blue ink?"

Kathy shrugged and said, "I'm sorry, Tony. I was just a schoolgirl stuck in a rut. But what does that... ?"

"You made the whole damned unit go, is what it means. Your letters were christened Kathy-grams and were known to just about everyone over there. In fact, Mike tells me that in some places the mail clerks used to keep them apart in a little stack. When Ken and the boys came out of the jungle they would give him the stack with the oldest letter on top, all tied up with blue ribbon. Then Ken would go off by himself and read them in order. Like all the other guys, he seldom wrote. But those letters of yours just came and came and came.

"To the guys, they loved to see it. You see, their asses could really be dragging after a tough mission. Then Ken would sit down and read your letters. They watched from a distance, and it was almost like seeing a battery being recharged. The more he read, the more he came back to life. By the time he was finished with the last one, he was fully recharged and then would recharge his troops."