When Johnny Met Roni

WHEN JOHNNY MET RONI

JULY 2020

They were butter bars, which is slang for second lieutenants, and in the same class in the Direct Commission Course at Fort Benning. The course is designed to train officers entering the Army straight out of college or, in their case, medical residency programs: general surgery for John, ER medicine and then psychiatry for Roni.

The moment John spied this small, athletic woman, zing went the strings of his heart. Roni was broad across the shoulders with a torso that tapered to a trim waist, narrow hips, and strong, muscular thighs. When she passed by, the scent of something delicate and yet mysterious trailed behind: a whiff of jasmine on a moonlit night.

Roni could also be a real pill—or just a little nutty, but then again, she was a shrink. She enjoyed "testing limits," which was a fancy-shmancy psychiatric way of saying she didn't follow orders well. Like…she'd sit in a back corner and do needlepoint during class. No one told her to put anything away, although eventually an instructor challenged her to repeat what he'd just said. She did, verbatim, though minus the bad jokes. After that, instructors left her alone.

The other thing she had going for her with the instructors: she never moaned and bitched like the rest of them on the obstacle course or the team-building exercises. Some were downright terrifying. For example, shinnying up a rope then making like Tarzan which meant swinging from one perch to another fifty feet in the air, without crapping your pants. She never once griped during twelve-mile marches fully geared up, even though Benning broiled in a summer with way more red flag days than not. Big guys got damn near close to heat stroke and fell out of formation or a march…but Roni just never quit.

He thought that was on account of her dad being a Marine instructor at Mountain Warfare. John knew movies, which were—let's face it—so much better than real life. He figured The Great Santini contained a kernel of truth and, as for Full Metal Jacket ...some Marines were maniacs. Still, you wanted these guys, locked and loaded, on your side. Being a Marine's kid probably toughened up Ronnie enough that nothing these instructors could throw at her made a dent. Eventually, the instructors decided they couldn't break her and quit bothering her. Besides, the Army needed ER docs as much as it required shrinks, so Roni was golden.

Until the day their team lowered the flag.

All the docs were assigned to a team: Red, Blue, Yellow, and so on. Roni and John were on Blue Team, which, like all the others, was expected to perform various drills. Mind numbingly dumb-ass drills, but no one asked for John's opinion.

The evening Blue Team lowered the flag, the guy who'd drawn the short straw for inspection was a wiry, dyspeptic captain named Driver. Rumor was Driver had been a hotshot pilot before a ruptured eardrum put the kibosh on his flying days. That might make anyone irritable, but mostly they pegged Driver as a mean cuss who probably kicked dogs.

He was also on the short side, a bantam-rooster kind of guy. Which was a nice way of saying he was a shrimp. (This was something no one ever pointed out in Top Gun or Maverick. No fighter pilot was a body-builder type. They were tiny guys because there just isn't enough room in the cockpit for an Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabe. Plus, the amount of oxygen big guys suck down is huge. John figured Old Arnold would never last a single mission.)

Anyway, Driver moved slowly down the line until he came to Roni. In contrast to the rest of her team, Roni was a cool-cucumber type; if she was sweating, John didn't see it. She just stood there, staring into the middle distance, until finally Driver moved in a little closer and said, "Lieutenant Keller, your name plate is crooked."

In that situation, any sane person would just say, Yessir, sorry, sir. Won't happen again, sir. Thank you, sir. But this was Roni Keller. Sanity need not apply.

There was a millisecond's pause before Roni said, very calmly, "With all due respect, sir, no, it's not."

" What was that, Lieutenant?" Driver's chin took on a hard jut. "What did you say?"

"I said, all due respect, sir, no, it's?—"

"I heard you the first time!" For a short guy, Driver could really bellow. "Are you questioning me, Lieutenant?"

"Not at all, sir. I am only saying that you are wrong, sir."

John had to admire her calm. On the other hand, maybe this was par for the course for a Marine's kid. Or maybe shrinks were just used to being screamed at by maniacs .

"Wrong." Driver blinked then turned that into a question. "Wrong?"

"Yes, sir."

"And how is that , Lieutenant?"

"Because I measured, sir."

Driver stared. A beat passed then two. Finally, Driver said, "You. Measured."

"Yes, sir. As per D-A Pam seventy-six dash one, specifically twenty-one dash?—"

"Stop!" Driver hacked off the rest with a savage cut of his right hand. "I know the regs, Lieutenant. And so, you measured ?" Driver was toe to toe with her. Spit flecked his lips. His features were ruddy and choked. "Then why is that nameplate crooked , Lieutenant?"

"Because of what's underneath it, sir."

Oh, crap . John's heart skipped a beat. He knew Roni and where this was headed, what she meant. No, Roni, don't do it.

"Underneath?" Driver's brows knitted. "What are you talking about, Lieutenant? What do you mean, what's underneath?"

"I mean what's underneath my nameplate, sir."

"And what's that ?"

"Why, sir," Roni said with just the slightest inflection of well-duh , "a breast?"

Half the class decided she was suicidal. The other half thought she wanted to be kicked out and probably would be since Driver would send her to the base commandant for a reprimand, maybe even a dishonorable discharge. The Army couldn't be that hard up.

"Seriously," Horner, an orthopedist, blustered, "she's not even really a doctor, is she? I mean, she's a shrink. "

"She's got MD after her name," John said. "She did an ER residency."

"Yeah, that's the point. She switched. I bet I can guess why, too." Horner's wolfish grin gave way to a broad, self-satisfied smile that showed all his teeth. "Because she couldn't cut it. That's why shrinks go into psychiatry in the first place: because a shrink hospital's the one place where the nuts feed the squirrels. If they have to bring me into an ER, I sure wouldn't want her to be the only doc in the hospital."

There was some general shuffling of feet from the others, a few coughs, but no one rushed in to defend Roni, and John gave up. Why was he even arguing with this moron? Horner was nothing more than a glorified bone carpenter. Everyone knew orthopedists were strong as bulls and twice as smart.

When an hour and a half passed and still no Roni—Horner opined that maybe Driver had sent for a firing squad—the others drifted off to chow. John stayed behind and fretted. If Roni were booted, that would be bad. On the other hand, John had only known her for, what, a month? Heck, they'd probably get assigned to different bases right off the bat and he'd never see her again. Except the idea of Roni being booted out left him feeling as if someone had taken a melon baller and scooped out his guts...

That thought derailed as the barracks door squealed. He looked over in time to see Roni motoring for the stairs.

"Hey." Popping off the couch, he took the distance to the foyer in three strides. "Hey, Roni, wait!"

Of all the people who might've hung around—most were ghouls, anyway, eager to feed off her misfortune and distress—she never expected John Worthy. She'd noticed him noticing her, of course. Even thought about him... that way. Not that she ever encouraged him because she'd already decided: no entanglements. DCC was only six weeks long. Sure, that was enough time for some people to make like jackrabbits and hop from one bed to the next. She had plenty of other ways to work off steam and, in fact, she'd already decided what she would do next: get her rental, grab herself a rifle, and...

So, she could've kept going. She hadn't gotten this far by caving in to anyone for anything. Yet she stopped and turned—though she kept one foot on the bottom step just in case she was wrong, and John turned out to be a turd.

"Yeah?" That was all she could think to say.

"Are you..." A flurry of emotions chased over his features too quickly for her to read, but was that indecision? Shyness? "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah." Wow, she had to be blowing him away with her clever repartee, so she added, "I'm fine."

"What happened?" But then, before she could answer, he held up both hands like a traffic cop. "I'm sorry. That was wrong. It's none of my business."

"It's okay." Which was the truth, so she lied, but only a little. "We didn't talk about much." There, how was that for vague?

"Talked." He goggled. "You and Driver ? About what ?"

"Just…" Reaching behind her head, she tugged an elastic band from the end of her braid. Her hair was, a stylist once said (and not without a trace of envy), a really luscious shade of chestnut mingled with auburn highlights and completely her own. When she started her ER residency, she'd debated about cutting her hair because she worried the guys in the program wouldn't take her seriously. When she switched to psychiatry, an analyst told her that her hair might inspire fantasies in her male patients. She decided the analyst was simply a dirty old man hiding behind a Freud-style goatee and disregarded the advice. Anyway, her hair was just long enough to brush the wings of her scapulae. "Stuff," she said, finger-combing out kinks. "We just talked about stuff.

"Stuff," he echoed.

"Yeah." She felt a smile flirt with her mouth. "Stuff."

"Uh-huh. So, are you still here ? Did you get kicked out?"

"Kicked out?" Her fingers stilled. "No. I mean, he was angry ."

"Seeing as how you were kind of a wise ass?"

"Ow." She gave him a mock scowl. "Whose side are you on?" Wait, are you flirting?

"Yours. I mean..." He gave a pointed look right and then left at the empty barracks. "I'm still here, right?"

He'd waited for her. He's not the enemy. "We just talked." She paused then added, "It was private."

"Oh." The look of expectation slid from his face to be replaced by something close to embarrassment. "Okay." His mouth wobbled into a sheepish grin. "Okay," he repeated as he backed away. "Just wanted to be sure you were all right. "

"I am. Thanks." Then she thought, How often have you run into a nice guy who probably would never comment on how your ass wiggles when you use a Gigli saw?

So, despite all her resolutions and best intentions, she said, "Lieutenant Worthy, just what do you do for fun?"

"Fun? Me? Here ?"

"They're not oxymorons."

The right corner of his mouth quirked. "I read and work out. I watch movies. I hang at the airfield a lot."

"The airfield."

"Yeah." A little defensively. "I like to watch the planes come and go."

"Come and go."

"Yeah. The hand signals are interesting."

"Interesting."

"So weird." He cocked his head. "Do you hear an echo?"

Okaaay. A guy with a sense of humor. She also didn't think his hesitancy, the stumbling and fumbling, was an act.

"How about this?" she said. "We both change into civvies then blow this Crackerjack joint and go have some real fun?"

"Oh?" he said. "Such as?"