Gloria reached across the table and covered Chelsea’s hand with hers. “I want you to be happy for me, Chels. I feel like I’m figuring things out for the first time in my life. It’s a lot about Guy, of course, but it’s also a chance to give back to my Dad for what he did so long ago. I’m scared, of course, but I’m more excited than scared.
Chelsea smiled, “I am excited for you if this is what you want. I’m scared for you too, but I think it’s a great thing to be as sure about something as you are about this,” She lifted her wine glass and silently toasted Gloria Vesta.
It didn’t take long for news of Gloria’s plans to become well-known around the campus. Some of her friends were horrified and thought that Gloria would change her mind when the shock of Guy’s death lost some of its immediacy. Others, though, saw in Gloria a steely resolve that had been missing before.
Chelsea accompanied Gloria to a video presentation about life on the ground in Iraq. The troop surge to Iraq was in its final stages by this time and after graduation, Boot Camp etc. Gloria was likely to be stationed in Afghanistan rather than Iraq. Even so, the conditions shown on the screen left no doubt that the route that Gloria had chosen wasn’t going to be a stay in Camp Cushy.
Desert warfare was desert warfare and in many ways the conditions in Afghanistan, high mountains and deep cave systems for instance, made life for the troops that much more treacherous. On the way back to campus, Chelsea voiced some thoughts that had been on her mind.
“Gloria, do you believe in the war?”
Gloria looked pensive for a moment and then said, “I think I do. There are a lot of people that want to do this country harm. We have to defend what we know is right.”
Chelsea answered, “I get that, but doesn’t it seem like we are always fighting a war thousands of miles from home?”
“You bet it does. That’s why I don’t think that it matters all that much if I’m pro-war, or anti-war or ambivalent about war. There are young men and women suffering and way too few nurses to be able to take care of them!”
Gloria turned to Chelsea and put her hand on her friend’s arm for emphasis. “Chelsea, we wanted to become nurses to help people. That’s what all the cramming and test-taking is all about. Well, there is no place in the world that we are more needed than in places where people our age are suffering and dying.” Chelsea had no answer in the face of Gloria’s fervent declaration. Gloria was right!
The two friends walked the rest of the way home in silence. Gloria hoped that she hadn’t come on too strong to her friend. Chelsea was wondering if Gloria had come on strong enough.
Chelsea had a lot to think about over the next several months. The more time she spent with Gloria, and the more excited Gloria became over her coming enlistment, the more Chelsea pondered her own future. She had developed the true heart of a nurse over the two years that she spent in nursing school at Keystone. In solitary moments of introspection Chelsea knew that she was late to the party where empathy was concerned. Her early upbringing engendered a lack of awareness of people less fortunate than herself, if not a disdain.
Charitable giving was an afterthought in the George Bannister family and was something most properly handled by Mr. Bannister’s accountant. That way the best tax break possible could be garnered. Chelsea grew up not knowing whether she was an elitist or not. She just never knew any poor people except for the people that worked for the Bannister family or the family of one of Chelsea’s friends.
It was only later, after the financial collapse and the beginning of her college career that Chelsea realized that not knowing whether she was an elitist was the best evidence that she was one. The upshot of Chelsea’s realization was that she felt late to the party that was called, “Caring for Your Fellow Man.” Her sense of embarrassment over that, the loss of Guy Harris, her friendship with Gloria Vesta, and the exploration of her true heart brought Chelsea to the decision that had her aboard a troop plane to Afghanistan almost a year later.
As Chelsea tried to find a comfortable spot on the buffeted plane, she recalled the teary conversation that she had with her mother when she told her about her sudden change of plans. Chelsea had driven down to Philadelphia to speak to her mother in person. Linda believing that her daughter just needed a weekend getaway from school asked Chelsea if she would like to have some people over.
“Would you like to have a little reunion with some friends?” Linda asked over the phone. Chelsea shook her head, though Linda was unable to see the reaction. “No, Mom. Remember I never really connected with anyone my senior year. That is my fault now that I think about it, but it’s true. Anyway, I need to talk to you about something. Let’s just have a girl’s night.”
“That sounds fine, honey. I look forward to it.”
When Chelsea arrived at Linda’s apartment in Philadelphia, she looked around in wonder. It seemed as if so many changes had happened in the almost two years since she had left Philly. While there had actually been very few changes to the apartment, Chelsea was right about changes. They had been within her. After a bit of small talk, “How are the boys?”
“Oh, fine,” kind of thing Linda and Chelsea sat in the kitchen while the pot roast simmered on the stove. Linda folded her hands together on the breakfast bar counter top and asked, “Okay dear, would you like to tell me what you need to talk about?”
Chelsea swallowed and began, “Mom, when I graduate I don’t think that I’m going to go straight into hospital or clinic work. At least not here.” Linda looked perplexed as Chelsea paused for a beat. “Where would you like to work then? I didn’t know if you would be coming back to Philadelphia or looking to get away. I guess you want to get away, is that what I’m hearing?”
“Yes, but it isn’t that I just think I need a change of scenery. Mom, I’m going to go into the service. I want to be a combat nurse overseas!” Linda looked shocked but kept her voice under control.
“Honey, that’s a very dangerous idea. I admire you for wanting to serve your country but…you’ll be so far away…” Linda’s voice trailed away as she realized the grave import of what she had just heard. She had thought that her daughter might have been thinking about…New Jersey or New York maybe. But overseas? And in the Army? In a war??? Linda composed herself and asked Chelsea if she had thought it through.
With a steady voice that her mother could tell reflected the resolve inside, Chelsea told Linda about Guy’s death and the emotional journey that she had gone through as a result. She talked about the sense of peace that she felt about her decision, even though she knew the dangers and risks involved. Finally, she spoke of the passion for healing that had only come to the fore at Keystone, and how she could think of no better time or place for that passion to be allowed to play out than as a nurse in a combat setting.
With a lump in her throat, Linda gave Chelsea her blessing to pursue her plans. Ultimately it wouldn’t have mattered to the final outcome whether she blessed the idea or not. Chelsea had always known her own mind. But Linda told Chelsea that she would support any decision that she made. Chelsea stepped around the counter and hugged her Mom, only to notice that Linda was laughing. Chelsea stepped back and looked at Linda with a puzzled expression.
“I didn’t think you would laugh, Mom. What’s funny?”
“Oh, Chelsea. When you called and said that you needed to come home and talk, I didn’t think that you were going to tell me that you were going to war. I thought you were going to tell me that you were pregnant!”
Not pregnant but just as uncomfortable as if she had been, Chelsea braced herself against the bulkhead of the rocking C-17 Globemaster. Unlike in a passenger airliner, the crew of a troop transport doesn’t come on the loudspeaker and tell the passengers when there is heavy weather ahead. Therefore, Chelsea and her fellow passengers didn’t know that a storm front was battering the western Swedish coastline, and there was nothing that the pilot could do to get around it and still have fuel to get to his destination.
Chels
ea glanced at her watch. Two hours to go, she thought. Two hours and we’ll be on the ground.
Two hours later Chelsea was indeed on the ground at Bagram Airfield just outside of Kabul. After the storm that she had flown through recently she was expecting something other than what she experienced on the ground. The heat was oppressive. On the way to the commander's office, Chelsea saw a temperature gauge. At first the reading of 49.4 degrees baffled her until she realized that she was seeing a reading in Celsius.
A quick calculation told Chelsea that it was just a tick under 121 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time she reached the relative cool (100 degrees or so) of the commander’s office Chelsea had sweated through the lightest weight uniform that she possessed.
She was met by a clerk in the office. The clerk, Sergeant Bascom by his stripes and name tag, quickly found the paperwork necessary to process Private First Class Chelsea Bannister into her Combat Housing Unit and connect her with the medical personnel with whom she would be working. Chelsea was given an order form for three sets of DCU’s (Desert Camo Uniforms) as well as a set of desert camouflage BDU’s (Battle Dress Uniform).
The Army had just been phasing out the old woodland and desert-pattern uniforms the previous April, and Chelsea was one of the last to be issued a set. Chelsea took the order form promising to return it by 1700 hours the next day, and found her way to her CHU. She was expecting a barracks or spare apartment of some kind. What she found…was a box.
A CHU (pronounced phonetically…Chew) is an aluminum box slightly larger [22'x8'] than a commercial shipping container, with linoleum floors and cots or beds inside. This insulated CONEX shipping container has a door, window, top vent, power cabling, and an air conditioner. One version houses four people while another is split into two, two-person rooms.
The version with a shower and toilet shared between two rooms is called a "wet chu", which provided a less crowded latrine and shower condition than a tent. The CHU would give Chelsea a lot more living space than a tent perhaps, but she already felt the claustrophobia start to set in.
Nevertheless she began to store her gear. Her CHU was a two-person model. Chelsea’s roommate was nowhere to be seen, but Chelsea could already see that her roommate left something to be desired in the category of “neatness.” There was a towel tossed casually over a chair on Chelsea’s side of the CHU, and a discarded pair of pants tossed on the bed that would be Chelsea’s. The roommate had a television hooked up, but the cord snaked throughout the living area and down the middle of the floor.
Chelsea stifled her instinct to take a dislike to her roommate sight unseen. Chelsea’s training in the nursing program at Keystone had been big on neatness in your personal life. The belief was that neatness would carry over into your professional life. Nursing students at Keystone dreaded the white glove inspections that their instructors occasionally performed without warning.
Somebody here would flunk one of those. That’s for damn sure. Chelsea said to herself.
Just then the door of the CHU banged open, and the object of Chelsea’s scorn fell, as much as walked, into the unit. Bleary-eyed, the roommate looked at Chelsea and grunted “H’lo” as she made her way to the couch upon which she threw herself with a groan. Chelsea turned her nose up. Her initial impression of her roommate was apparently correct. She wondered if her roommate was drunk.
Just then, from under the forearm that she had thrown over her eyes, the roommate spoke.
“I’m Lisa Glenn. Are you Bannister? If not get the Hell out of my CHU.”
Chelsea wasn’t used to being spoken to in that manner except by a nursing instructor, but she also didn’t want to make waves within minutes of arriving in Afghanistan. So she answered in as friendly a tone as she could muster.
“Yes, I’m Chelsea Bannister. It’s nice to meet you.”
Lisa moved one arm just enough to be able to peer at Chelsea through one half-open eye. Apparently neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with what she saw, Lisa said, “Where ya’ from?”
“The Philadelphia area, originally. I went to nursing school at Keystone College in upstate Pennsylvania.”
Lisa nodded and closed the open eye before answering. “Well, Bannister, welcome to our happy little home. You and me, we can chitchat about ourselves later but right now I’m coming off 28 straight hours in a surgery tent with sand blowing in my eyes most of the time. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m thirsty, but I’m more tired than anything, so I’m gonna sleep. I don’t have to be on until 1200 hours tomorrow. Good night.”
Chelsea saw that what she had thought was drunken behavior was just utter exhaustion. Lisa Glenn had taken her boots off but left them on the end of the couch.
Poor thing. She fell asleep before she even put her shoes on the floor, Chelsea thought.
Chelsea left the CHU and walked through the blinding heat to the Medical Staff Reception tent that she had been told to find as soon as she got on base and processed in. It wasn’t easy to find, though there was a sign. Desert combat signs don’t last long in blowing sand conditions and the sign indicating Chelsea’s destination was badly pitted and in need of replacement.
Chelsea walked inside and was greeted by the sound of music. Upon further inspection, Chelsea saw that an iPod was connected to two big speakers up against the far wall of the tent. Around a table in the center of the room, Chelsea saw four or five people sitting in chairs that were tipped back. Everyone had his or her feet on the table.
This place seems a little undisciplined, Chelsea thought as she slowly made her way in. One of the females turned around and waved Chelsea over. “Come on in. You look lost. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re new in this joint, but I haven’t seen you before.”
“Chelsea Bannister, ma’am. I just got here.”
Chelsea sat down and leaned on her arms on the table but before she could relax the man next to her grabbed her arm and said, “You better put your feet up.”
Chelsea looked at the man with a doubtful expression. She had heard that hazing went on in some of the deployments, and she didn’t want to be the butt of someone’s joke. But the man looked dead serious. He tapped her leg.
“Put them up, Bannister. There are lots of scorpions that look for a shady spot and under a table is some of the best shade we can offer. Keep your footwear off the ground in your CHU, too.”
Chelsea realized that Lisa Glenn had good reason for leaving her shoes on the couch. Maybe I ought to give these people a chance before I judge them too harshly.
From that moment on Chelsea decided to listen first and opine later. The decision served her well. The man who had warned her about scorpions turned out to be a very important older gentleman in her life. He was Dr. Edward McGuire. That is, Captain McGuire to the staff, Ed to his best friends and Eddie Mac to his wife (and only to his wife). Captain McGuire was serving his third two year tour (each tour separated by a year at home) in war-torn Afghanistan, having left a practice in Portsmouth New Hampshire in the care of his colleague, Anthony Descalso.
Captain McGuire was beloved by his staff, and the talk of a few of the nurses. That wasn’t surprising given his steel gray eyes, cleft chin, and wavy blonde hair just beginning to gray at the temples. No wartime romance for Captain McGuire, though. His heart belonged to Margaret Mary McGuire, 24 years his wife, and waiting for him stateside in New Hampshire.
Chelsea threw herself into her work, and there was plenty of work to be accomplished. The day after her arrival, a day that was supposed to be set aside for paperwork and settling in, Chelsea pulled a 10-hour tour, almost all of it in surgery. There had been horrific fighting on the A01 between Kabul and Jalalabad. There were 11 confirmed dead and two soldiers missing and presumed dead.
Sixteen wounded were brought back to the Med Unit at Bagram Airbase to be cared for by Captain McGuire’s medical team. On her first day, Chelsea was the nurse in charge of keeping a sterile field. Back home this was a task that would have been the role of a Nurse’s Aide, but a
t the front it was all hands on deck for whatever task needed to be done.
Chelsea sensed rather than saw Captain McGuire’s expert touch and calming mood in action. He had a word for every one of the soldiers with whom he came in contact. The injured warriors (on average 20 years old) wouldn’t have said that they needed a father figure when they were in pain, but that’s what Captain McGuire became to the scared lads who had been hurt in battle.
After a word or two Captain McGuire calmly called for the anesthesiologist to do her thing and the patient drifted off to sleep, somehow more at peace after his interaction with Captain McGuire.
The other team member that Chelsea noticed was the head nurse. First Lieutenant Alice McKay had been serving under Captain McGuire for nearly two years, and the two worked together like a well-oiled machine. Lieutenant McKay ruled the nursing staff with an iron hand; Chelsea found that out at once when she clumsily dropped a retractor that had been sterile just moments before. “Private Bannister, we need all of the equipment to remain in a properly sterile condition when we put it in your arguably capable hands! Do I Make Myself Clear, Private Bannister?”
Chelsea bit her lip and nodded. That wasn’t response enough for the nurse in charge.
“I expect an answer, Private Bannister. When I talk, if you hear, I expect you to respond. Are we at least clear about that, Private Bannister?”
“Yes, Lieutenant McKay. Crystal clear.”
For all of her bluster over Chelsea’s mistake, Alice McKay was as capable a combat nurse as could be found in the Afghan Theater of Operations. She expected (demanded) that the nurses under her behave professionally and proficiently. In return, she would back any of her charges as if she were a mother hen. That is if a mother hen yelled at her chicks as often as Lieutenant McKay yelled at her nurses. The six nurses who worked directly under Lieutenant McKay obeyed her slavishly, grumbled about her behind her back, but without exception admired her dauntless effort, dedication to her task and pure unadulterated stamina.
Angel of Mercy Page 3