Court Martial Read Online Free Page B

located at each corner of his mouth; it looked as
     if he was constantly smiling over a very private joke.
    She pushed the door all the way open and entered the room beaming her best morning smile. Spencer lay on the white hospital
     sheets drenched in sweat. The curl was still there on his mouth but the deep wrinkles across his forehead told the nurse that
     he was in trouble. She ran over to the side of his bed and felt for a pulse. Her free hand rested on the soaked sheets. Spencer
     moaned and thrashed his head from side to side, sending pellets of sweat from the ends of his hair across the front of her
     clean uniform. She ran from the room to the nurses’ station to get help. The staff had been expecting Spencer to have a malaria
     relapse. The virus had been detected during a blood test when he arrived at the medical center. The doctors had hoped that
     Spencer’s body would have healed from the tortures in the prisoner-of-war camp before the malaria surfaced again. But it had
     come, and Corporal Barnett was fighting for his life.
    He moaned again as the malaria fever attacked his body. The moan came from inside, created by the images that were scarred
     forever in his brain tissue.
    He was dirty and naked, with his arms wrapped around his drawn-up legs and his back pressed against the bamboo bars of a low
     cage. She lay coiled up watching him from the opposite side of her pen. The sun slipped behind the tall trees that bordered
     the Montagnard village and instantly he felt the chill against his naked skin. She flicked out her tongue to test the air.
     She too felt the change in the temperature and slowly adjusted her coils. Spencer rested his chin on his knees and tried recalling
     everything Colonel Garibaldi had told him about large snakes.
    The nurse returned to the room followed by a team of trauma medics. Spencer’s personal psychiatrist had heard the emergency
     call for room 131 and was only a couple of steps behind the trauma team.
    Spencer moaned again in his delirium and spoke just as the nurse reached his bedside. “Get the fuck away from me, bitch!”
     The nurse gasped and raised her hand to cover the shock that was expressed by her open mouth.
    “He’s not talking to you, Mary. He’s delirious,” the psychiatrist said to the nurse over her shoulder.
    “Oh…” She felt reassured but was still worried over Spencer. He looked very ill.
    The huge python started crawling next to the side of the cage toward Barnett. He held his breath.
    “Oxygen!” The doctor standing over Spencer reached back for the face mask and slipped it over the lower part of the soldier’s
     face. Spencer still held his breath. “What the hell is he doing?”
    The snake tested the air again. Spencer stretched out his leg, planning on kicking her head if she got too close, and then
     he remembered what Colonel Garibaldi had told him about
looking
like an object that was too large for her to swallow. His foot was
bite
size for the thirty-six-foot-long reticulated python, and he drew it back again against his body and watched as she continued
     her slow approach. A thin rod came through the side of the cage about an inch in front of the snake’s nose. Spencer took a
     breath.
    “Good! He’s breathing again!” The doctor held the oxygen mask tightly against Spencer’s face as the soldier breathed rapidly.
     “Now he’s starting to hyperventilate! This is crazy!”
    “Not as crazy as what’s going on inside his head.” The psychiatrist spoke from the foot of Spencer’s bed, where he could observe
     his patient and not be in the way of the medical team.
    “You keep Mother Kaa away from me!” Spencer’s voice rose and then lowered. “What do you want from me now, Sweet Bitch?”
    The psychiatrist recognized the nickname of the female North Vietnamese lieutenant who had operated the prisoner-of-war camp
     that Spencer and Colonel Garibaldi had been assigned to. Spencer had refused to talk about the camp, but