by CD Reiss
“Yeah, well, I don’t know what’s on your minds out there. But if someone air-dropped onto Main Street and said they were running shit, I’m sure you wouldn’t take too kindly. You’d fight to the death.”
“It’s like you know me.”
He wagged his finger at me. “I know a soldier when I see one.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“So, when you make your rotations, keep that in mind.”
“I will. Thank you.”
* * *
DAY ONE
08:23:00
The surgical rotations were set at six days. Without a full day’s rest, they’d start breaking down at four days, and the mistakes would start. After that, we’d need more doctors and nurses. We had enough PAs for an extra twelve hours. It wouldn’t be enough, because if tanks full of foreign soldiers rolled down Main Street, I’d fight to the death.
There was a shout outside as a truck pulled up.
I went out through the hospital. Boxes were being unloaded, and I was nearly knocked over by a grunt carrying a crate of meds.
“Sorry,” he shouted over his shoulder.
“No pro—”
A weight hit my chest, pushing me back. I spun back to front and center.
It was still night, but the bright light of day shone in Caden’s eyes. He pushed the crate against me. “Take it.”
I held my arms out under the crate and accidentally touched his hands. He slid them out from under, giving me the full weight.
“Give it to Yvonne,” he said. “She knows where it goes.”
Without another word, he went back to the truck, scrubs skimming his body until he was naked in my mind.
“Let’s go!” a sergeant shouted to someone I couldn’t see. It didn’t matter. Time to get moving.
I found Yvonne and gave her the crate, then I went for another, taking whatever was handed to me.
Twice more, the hauling pattern brought us together. Twice more, our hands brushed together under the box. After the second time, I returned to the loading dock to find the truck pulling away. Caden watched it go with his bare arms crossed in the cold air. On most men, that body language was closed. On him, the ropes of his forearms were nothing if not inviting.
“Did they bring additional staff?” I asked.
“Nope. They took two surgical nurses though.”
“What? Who?”
“Barn Door and Guitterez.” Totally normal to pepper nicknames with real names. “They have field experience.”
“Shit.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, tilting his body in my direction.
I stepped back toward my office. “I have to watch the nurses too.”
“That’s about to be the least of our problems. Rumor has it, at least.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Sure.” Before I could get back to the tent, he called for me. “Major.”
I turned on the ball of my foot. He was the only still point in the floodlight. “Yeah?”
“I was being a dick. No excuses.”
“It’s all right.”
“Under different circumstances though…” He didn’t finish.
“If wishes were horses, Captain.”
“The streets would be full of horseshit.”
I laughed. He was pulled back into the hospital with a wave. I went to redo my rotation forecasting, imagining meeting him in a different situation, a different time, a different place.
* * *
DAY ONE
09:12:00
When the choppers arrived, there was a palpable sense of relief among the staff. They had jobs and could finally do them. I didn’t have much for the first few hours. I fetched and ran. Filled in forms. Administered first aid when needed. Assisted as much as I could. I was an MD, but the best use of my skills was to let people who knew what they were doing get the job done.
That was the report I wrote in my head.
The reality of triage was more complex.
“Major Frazier!” Corporal LeShawn called. He was kneeling by a screaming man bathed in black soot and blood, holding a red-soaked gauze over the soldier’s hip.
I ran over because I was needed, but my chest hitched, and I had to hold back a cry of despair over his pain. It wasn’t the first time that day I’d had to enforce professional detachment—or the last. I navigated rows of bloody stretchers, narrowly missed a nurse heading in the opposite direction, and kneeled across from the corporal, trying to breathe around the stench of intestinal matter.
“Pressure,” he said calmly.
Surprised I could hear him through the screams, I replaced his hands on the bloody gauze while he put together a morphine drip. The wounded soldier was down to weeping.
“You’re doing great,” I said, checking his blood-soaked name tape. “Hardy. You’re doing great. Breathe.”
“They came out of nowhere. I didn’t see them.”
“You did your best.”
“They were everywhere.” He was hyperventilating from the memory.
“Okay, breathe.” His hand grabbed for mine, and I took it. “You’re here now. LeShawn’s getting you something for the pain.”
The drip was going.
“My wife.” An injured man will often forget the strength he has in the limbs that still work, and Hardy had forgotten his hands could probably break mine. “We run marathons. If I can’t run… will I be able to run?”
I didn’t know if he had anything worse than a paper cut or if he was too wounded to walk again.
Outside, the slapping sound of choppers. More coming.
“I’m not that kind of doctor.”
“Doctor Frazier!” a voice called from behind me.
“Don’t go!” Private Hardy grabbed me with his other hand, clutching my forearm.
“Major! We need you!”
I pulled away, the blood acting as a lubricant between our hands.
“I’ll come see you in recovery,” I said, trying to get his fist off my forearm.
“Don’t go. Please.”
I didn’t want to go. I wanted to crouch by him for as long as he needed me, but hands appeared, pulling him off me, and before I could think about Private Hardy, I was holding a stitch tray, and before I could check on whether he’d made it to the OR, I was cutting away a bloody pant leg, and before I could think about eating or going to the latrine to relieve the painful pressure on my bladder, I was holding another man’s hand as a brain injury metastasized into death.
* * *
DAY ONE
14:39:00
Enforcing rest and nutrition was hard, especially with the surgeons. One in particular.
“I’m not changing out, eating a bag of chips, and scrubbing back in.” Caden plucked a bit of shrapnel out of a pink gut and dropped it in a plastic tray. A nurse held up the X-ray against the light. He peered at it. “Let’s get the one in the ilium.”
The nurse repeated the order, and hands moved over the table.
“All you have to do is stand still for a second,” I said. I’d scrubbed in to work with him and Dr. Indira, the other surgeon. She was generally easier to talk to.
“Really?” He squinted around the body, looking for a piece of something that shouldn’t have been there.
“Really.”
“Give me a little room here,” he said to the nurse. “I think I got it.”
“You’re not afraid of a shot, are you?”
He glanced up from the wounded soldier, just a set of blue eyes over the gray rectangle of his surgical mask. “Where?”
“Intramuscular.”
His eyebrows, which seemed darker and more curved without the distraction of his mouth, went up a fraction of an inch. “Go for it.”
I got behind him and put my tray on a stand.
“Take your time,” he said. “Can you clean that up for me?” he said in a completely different tone.
“I have six other surgeons with depleted blood sugar,” I said, pulling his pants awa
y from the smallest patch of skin possible. “I don’t need to waste time on your ass.”
I wished I could because as I estimated the midpoint between his side and the crack of his ass, quickly feeling for the curve of his bone, I decided it was the only worthy ass I’d ever touched. After swiping an alcohol wipe over the site, I stretched the skin and gave him his shot.
“All done.” I covered him.
“What did you give me?”
“Glucose and B vitamins.”
“Boring.” Another piece of shrapnel clicked in the tray.
“We’re saving the good stuff.”
“I’ll be here.”
* * *
DAY TWO
23:02:00
None of the surgeons had rested. Half the triage group had taken a catnap. The nurses, who as a profession understood they were the lynchpin of the team, were keeping to their rest schedule when possible.
“We haven’t had a chopper in three hours,” Colonel Brogue said over hot coffee and rolls that had come sealed in noisy plastic. “If we hold, everyone can get a little shuteye before the next round.”
“They’re going to start breaking down in twelve hours.” Looking over the hunched, tired figures haunting the chow hall, I figured I was being generous.
“What about you?”
“I got an hour this afternoon. I have four men in recovery I’m keeping an eye on.”
I couldn’t say more without betraying a confidence. They were suicidal, depressed, suffering from acute emotional exhaustion, and pretending they were fine. Hardy, the marathoner, was on his second deployment. Another was an Iraqi translator who only wanted to be comforted in Arabic, a language I spoke well enough to make me feel a responsibility toward him.
I spent more time with the lightest wounds. The men who could be sent back into combat were the ones I could do the most good for. I could recommend they be sent home. The others would be sent back to the States whether they had PTSD or not.
“They’re soldiers,” Brogue said. “This is their job. You can take care of them later. Keep the doctors awake. This ain’t over.” He shook his head pensively and said half to himself, “I wish I could get back out there.”
* * *
DAY THREE
13:43:00
Caden St. John was a machine. The morning of the second day, we’d moved from vitamins and glucose to a cocktail of shots that included caffeine and an over-the-counter stimulant. He didn’t stop. His joints were swollen. He denied any pain in his shoulders. He was lying.
They kept coming and coming.
As long as he wasn’t shaking or losing motor skills, he was to stay in the OR.
And they kept coming. By truck and chopper, with flesh wounds and worse, they came. The smell of blood was now so hooked in my nostrils I didn’t even notice it. The cloy of alcohol smelled clean instead of sharp, and when I went outside, the cold air seemed so hollow it jabbed my sinuses.
I took naps when I could. By the third day, they were little more than a necessary inconvenience, and their ability to refresh me diminished with each passing rotation.
And still, Caden worked as if he was in secret competition with the other surgeons. They rested when they could. He changed out when he had to use the latrine and scrubbed right back in.
I shot him up every eight hours with vitamins and stimulants, and on day three, I went to the next level.
“Amphetamine?” he asked as he turned on the faucet to scrub in.
I held up the syringe in my latex-coated hand. “It’s that or go to bed.”
He looked me up and down with red-rimmed eyes. “Since both involve you taking my pants down, I’ll pick… eenie, meenie, miney…”
“The speed,” I said, getting behind him. “You’ll take the speed or a nap with your pants on.”
“Crank it up.”
We were alone. Not that it mattered for him. It mattered for me. I didn’t want to enjoy touching his bottom, but if I did and it showed, I didn’t want anyone to see.
After exposing a patch of skin, I ripped open an alcohol wipe. “What’s driving you?”
“The guys on the table.”
“Don’t lie to me.” I jabbed him with the needle.
“Wow, tired, Doctor? You’re a little punchy.”
I wiped blood off. “I’ve spent two days looking at your ass. I think I deserve an honest answer. You jumped into the military after 9/11. Okay, fine. You’re not the first. But you’ve got more defense mechanisms than the Pentagon, and you do this job like you’re digging out of a hole someone’s shoveling dirt into.”
When he looked over his shoulder, I realized I was still wiping his bottom with the swab. I cleared my throat and pulled up his pants.
He turned with his hands pointed up at the elbows. “Gown.”
I got a gown off the shelf and ripped open the package, careful not to touch the outside of the sterile garment.
“You’re not winning,” I said, holding up the sterile garment. “No one wins this.”
He slid his hands through the armholes, and I draped it over his shoulders. When my arms met behind his neck, I identified his scent. Fresh coffee grounds and the cut grass of a suburban Saturday morning.
“My parents were in the North Tower,” he said softly, as if his words needed to be padded with seduction. “Hundred and first floor. They fell for about ten seconds, reaching a velocity of almost one hundred thirteen miles per hour. Fully conscious the whole way down. And when they hit, the force transferred all the energy they’d accumulated over those ten seconds outward. They never identified which grease spots were theirs. But they did find one of my mother’s shoes.”
I opened my mouth to give condolences, but his lips stopped me. He didn’t kiss me but put them against mine, transferring his words into my throat.
“My father wasn’t a good person.” I felt the scrape of his chapped lower lip as it moved. “He was a sadistic monster, and none of these kids are going to die for his sake.”
“And your mother?”
We kept our eyes open as he brushed his lips against mine, running their circumference, and with every turn, my body hungered for more. A true kiss. The taste of his tongue. The flutter of his eyelids when they closed. A murmur of desire in his throat.
But he didn’t offer that, nor did he attribute any of his motivations to his mother.
“Close it please,” he whispered.
My face went hot with shame. I shut my mouth and tied the loops at the back of his neck. He turned, hands still above his waist, so I could close him up in the back. My heart was still pounding, and the space between my legs had gone swollen and heavy.
“You owe me a story,” he said.
“Once upon a time, there was a handsome prince. He wanted to woo the fair lady, but he was a jerk, and she had no time for it. So, he moved on to someone else. The end.” I patted him, done with the last tie.
He turned. “Your story.”
“That is my story.”
“It’s not finished.” He pulled on a glove as a new shift burst in to scrub.
The room exploded into activity, but he and I were in our own little world.
“How do you know?” I got a mask ready for him.
“It ended with what he did, not what she did.” As he snapped on the second glove, the pah-pah of chopper blades rose in the distance. “No pressure.” He bowed his head. I looped the mask around his neck, and he stood straight. “None of us know how our story ends. Shit, we don’t even know how this mess all ends…or when.”
“You always get philosophical when you’re tired?”
“I like you. I’m tired enough to say that and mean it. And I want to know your story.”
“That’s the amphetamine talking.” I put the mask over his face.
“If you say so.” He backed away, hands still up.
I called out before he went through the doors to the OR. “Maybe I’ll tell it to you if you’re good.”
Under his
mask, he smiled.
Chapter Three
DAY FOUR
16:23:00
I spoke to every soldier in recovery. Most of them told their stories with a healthy serving of bravado and swagger. I listened for hours on end, doling out sleeping pills, anti-depressants, and when allowed, comfort. I heard a hundred war stories told like the final minutes of a football game that was won or lost. But sadness was not allowed. Weakness was a disease. More than half wanted to go back to the front to join or avenge their buddies.
My father had been nineteen in 1968. He was a retired staff sergeant who never mentioned Vietnam. Not when my brother signed up, nor when I did. He only talked about the years he spent training soldiers Stateside, as if we didn’t know why we had to knock before we entered a room he was in or why he woke up shouting, “They’re all dying!” in the middle of the night.
And still, we joined because it was what our family did.
I’d never seen a battle, nor had I seen the back end of it until Balad. Casualties kept coming. I got a few hours’ sleep when I could, but they kept coming, and they needed me as much as they needed the surgeons. One screaming soldier was rolled under them as a stitched-up one was rolled away. Surgeons grabbed an hour of sleep until the next chopper. But not Caden. He was shredding his brain, and I was helpless to do anything for him except fill him full of vitamins and speed.
“He stopped joking around three hours ago.” I peered through the window in the OR door. “Hasn’t spoken except to ask for instruments.”
“You’re obsessed,” Ronin said from next to me.
Understatement of the year.
“What he’s doing… it’s not even heroic at this point. It’s suicide. So, yes. I’m obsessed with stopping it.”
“He has a commanding officer.”
“Who wants results.”
“They can get MPs in here to haul him away.”
I shook my head, watching Caden sew up an internal organ cut open by bullets. No one was hauling him away. They’d work him until he was dead.