"Been an age, Sergeant," Cody acknowledged, levering herself up as he bent over to give her a rough embrace. "Too fuckin' long, an' that's a fact."

"You two know each other, Scent?"

"Goin' on twenty, Doc," the blind joker replied. "Meet the only woman combat cutter in U.S. Army history."

"You were in Vietnam?" Finn asked her. "The Joker Brigade," he added with disgust.

"Gotta understand, Doc," Scent said to the young centaur, "there was a lotta rationalization back then. Nobody gave a rat fuck about us. Attitude was, we get killed, that's one less freak fouling the gene pool. Usual pattern, if a joker got medivac'd to an aid station, he'd hardly be there more'n a day before some REMF in razor-creased tiger stripes'd slick up from Saigon to collect him. Standard excuse was to evac him to a special joker medical facility. Made sense actually-at least, most bought it since our regular quarters were in quarantine zone. Problem was, this `facility' seemed to be located an hour's flight out across the South China Sea. No muss, no fuss, just a thousand-foot-high dive into a telegram home to Momma. 'Cept Cody, she didn't buy it. Man showed up on her doorstep, she told him to fuck off. Man brought some Saigon khakis to back him up…" Finn looked confused.

"Upper-echelon staff officers from MACV headquarters," Cody told him.

"… damn if she didn't have a couple of network camera crews on hand doing interviews. Made sure they got pictures of the Man, made sure they had her records of the casualties. Any funny business, no way could it be kept quiet. Man backed down, did a rabbit. After that, you were a joker and you got hit, you moved heaven and earth to get to Cody's doorstep. It was like she was magic-nobody ever died on her table."

"I'm afraid, Scent, that string's gone down the drain." Along, she thought, with a lot of other things. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but why am I here? Maybe I'm confused about my New York geography but from what I remember of the subway map, isn't Blythe klicks from that station I was in? Aren't there closer hospitals?"_