Mary-Sue waited anxiously by the phone. She never left the apartment, chipping away at the Mickey Mouse cake bite by bite. She listened a little to a military expert on the radio gassing on about how the plane was built by Lockheed, and how that model had a history of malfunction. Some help this was now. She didn’t dare turn on the TV in case she saw footage of the crash. Though she had no idea what her Katie looked like, she was convinced that if she even glimpsed her face—or mangled body—she’d recognize her in an instant and lose her mind.

Days later, Myrna called with news. Three-year-old Kate was among those who survived, and she was—miraculously—unscathed. A young South Vietnamese nurse had held on to her as the plane plunged into the rice fields. When their part of the plane caught on fire, she covered Kate with a blanket and shielded her from the flames. Kate had been one of the lucky ones. The army reported its final tally—155 out of the 328 on board were killed, 98 of them infants and babies.

“So when do I get to see her?”

“They’ve put the kids on rotation. The flights that were scheduled to leave will still do so but they’ll be putting survivors on those planes whenever they can find space for them.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, Mary-Sue, be patient.”

The Operation Babylift flights continued as Saigon fell. Then on one of the final airlifts out of the city, Kate was brought to San Francisco without fanfare. The South Vietnamese nurse, who suffered 20 percent burns from the crash, was on the same plane. The skin on her face was gone, as was most of her nose; she was to go through reconstructive surgery at the UCSF Medical Center, thanks to contributions from the American people. In the weeks following the crash, she’d grown desperately attached to the little girl whose life she had saved, and at the San Francisco airport, refused to let Kate go, calling her “bé cưng.” Darling baby. Mary-Sue watched as nurses injected the woman with sedative and snatched Kate away as soon as her arms let go.

Kate was small and nondescript, but somehow eerily complete—her arms and legs worked, she could see, hear, respond. She had silky dark-brown hair that was a clue to one non-Asian parent, probably a GI. Although she wasn’t immediately adorable, something about her was very familiar. When the FCVN woman put her in front of Mary-Sue, her piercing brown eyes registered everything—and her silence was damning.

Mary-Sue was terrified of her. She held the big stuffed panda bear between them like a shield. Little Kate, after some hesitation, walked to the bear and hugged it and hugged it and hugged it. Not once afterwards did she look back at the disfigured nurse who saved her life, now slumped in her wheelchair.