Monsoon humidity gave way to oppressive heat as September began, and Frankie McGrath pushed through exhaustion from relentless surgeries, nightly mortar attacks, and sleeplessness. On Ethel Flint’s DEROS day, Ethel refuses a simple O Club send-off and commandeers a Seawolves helicopter for a beach-party farewell near Saigon. Slim and Coyote, along with nurses, medics, corpsmen, Dust Off and Seawolves crews, and Donut Dollies, gather under a banner to celebrate Ethel.

Drawn into the festivities, Frankie is coaxed into water-skiing for the first time, finally getting up and reveling in a fleeting surge of joy that recalls surfing with Finley. At dusk, they sit by a campfire sharing beer and stories of Ethel’s Virginia home. Jamie Callahan, now a short-timer with DEROS approaching, asks Frankie to dance and impulsively invites her to meet him in Maui for R and R with him, despite his wife, Sarah. They share an intimate, restrained moment; Frankie stops him, saying it cannot happen, though both acknowledge their mutual feelings.

Gunfire and tracers abruptly end the party when the Seawolves are called to “Rocket City” (Pleiku). Under fire en route back, the chopper takes evasive action and returns the group safely to the Thirty-Sixth. Hours later, at 0300, a red alert ushers in a surge of casualties; Frankie assists Jamie through successive surgeries until the push ends late in the morning. Outside Jamie’s quarters, after the grueling shift, Jamie admits, “I love you, McGrath,” before leaving for a week of R and R to meet his wife; Frankie withholds the same words and asks only that he bring her something back.

Returning to the hooch, Frankie discovers Ethel has left without goodbyes, a choice Barb attributes to Ethel’s desire to slip away. The week that follows is sodden and demoralizing; with Jamie gone, the unit is down to two surgeons, and Ethel’s vacancy leaves them short on nurses. Frankie closes a case in the OR while Dr. Rob Aldean operates nearby, and a backlog of patients grows.

When a single Dust Off arrives, Barb rushes in with medics carrying a critically wounded soldier missing a leg and with a catastrophic head wound. Frankie reaches for the dog tags and realizes the patient is Jamie Callahan, whose helicopter has been shot down. Despite Dr. Aldean’s assessment that Jamie will not survive and the competing surgical demands, Frankie pleads for him to try to save Jamie, clutching Jamie’s hand and begging, “Please. Please.”