I arrived in Iraq unsure if I could handle what would be asked of me. I depart a seasoned combat neurosurgeon.
I arrived almost broken by months of family struggles, wondering if God had given up on me. I depart unsure of what tomorrow holds for me, but with faith that God will make it right.
I arrived needing a clear picture of things to feel safe and leave convinced that Grace is sufficient for me.
I love you all.
Lee
After I sent the letter, I went to the ICU to find Chris, and we sat in the hospital chapel for a few minutes together.
“Lee, I need to tell you something,” he said. “You really helped me get through losing Maria. Through this whole time, actually. You made it more bearable to be here.”
I wiped a tear and said, “I wouldn’t have survived here without you either. And I definitely wouldn’t have been able to take care of Mohamed or Rose. It’s been an honor to serve with you.”
Chris hugged me and shook my hand, and then we just sat and looked at the cross on the wall for a minute or so. I can’t say what Chris was thinking, but I was remembering Maria and the seemingly countless soldiers we’d lost or saved together.
A sergeant stuck his head into the chapel; it was time to go.
A few minutes later I was in a concrete bunker where Navy customs agents searched my belongings before allowing me to board a bus to the flight line. There I sat in another bunker for several hours, along with the other lucky people whose names were on the “go home” list.
At long last, the order was given, and we walked out onto the runway and boarded another C – 130. On the Tarmac, I saw another group exiting their airplane after landing in Iraq to start their deployment. I had no idea who they were or what their jobs entailed, but I felt a kinship with them because I knew some of what they were about to experience.
I looked out the back of the airplane as the ramp lifted, sealing us inside. The last thing I saw in Iraq was a parked Humvee, its headlights illuminating the runway behind the C – 130. I was filled with excitement, fear, sadness, and happiness, all at the same time. The engines started, and their roar almost drowned out my racing thoughts.
The faces of those troops I’d just seen made me remember my arrival in Iraq four months before. I’d been so unaware of the dangers I would face, so unsure of whether I was up to the job about to be set before me. Now I had similar questions, but they related to what would happen a few days later in Alabama.
As the ramp closed and sealed me into the blackness of the C – 130, I knew that the Lee Warren who had arrived in Iraq was much more innocent and naïve than the version who was about to leave. And I hoped I could live with the person I’d become. When the ramp dropped at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar four hours or so later, I stepped off the plane and away from the war, but I knew that a part of me would always be in Iraq.
Al Udeid had seemed so primitive only four months before when I’d arrived there from San Antonio. Now its paved streets, swimming pool, and lack of sandbags and portable toilets were strange sights to my eyes, accustomed as I was to the never-changing backdrop of brown camo and bleeding scalp wounds I’d seen every day in Iraq. The only thing familiar was the roar of the jets from the nearby flight line.
I had to wait in Qatar for several days before I was finally cleared to board the airplane that would take me home. As the distance from Iraq increased, I felt bits of several specific stressors peeling away. I knew that it was unlikely anyone would shoot at this airplane, and that when we landed, there would be no terrorists, no mortar attacks, no ER full of brokenness awaiting me. And yet, as the miles passed, different fears began to bubble up. The checklist of my post-war responsibilities played through my mind, and it seemed much more daunting than the one I’d completed before leaving Iraq. The actual process of starting over in my life at thirty-six years old felt as impossibly unmanageable as the first mass casualty in Iraq had four months before. The difference was: this time I somehow knew it was going to be okay. I couldn’t see the steps yet, but I knew I had the strength to take them.
We finally landed at BWI in Baltimore. Walking off the plane into the terminal, I felt almost overwhelmed by the number of people, lights, and stores. Everything had been so monotonous in Iraq; in the Baltimore airport that day, it seemed like a million different things were streaming into my brain. I became a little anxious and was unsure why — until I realized that I’d felt the same way in large crowds in Iraq, afraid of a bomber or a mortar. I told myself I was safe, but my heart didn’t believe me for a while.
We had a long layover before my flight to San Antonio, so I found a pay phone to call my children. I was surprised by the dial tone and by the lack of an operator telling me how long I was allowed to talk. Nervous, I dialed the number. After a few rings, my eight-year-old daughter Kalyn answered.
“Hello.”
“Kalyn, it’s Daddy. I’m back in America.”
I heard a slight gasp, and then Kalyn whispered, “Hold on, Daddy.”
Next there was a loud crash, as if she had dropped the phone, and a thumping sound for several seconds. Finally, Kalyn picked up the phone again.
“Sorry, Daddy. I was jumping up and down.”
CHAPTER 32
AND THEN I LOST MY MIND
You’re free to go, Major. Seven days of leave is authorized.”
I signed the form and handed it back to the chief master sergeant. I’d just turned in my chemical weapons suit and the rest of the three duffel bags full of gear I’d deployed with.
“Thanks, Chief.”
I walked out of the processing center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, blinking hard in the morning sunshine. Clean air filled my lungs, and I could breathe through my mouth without coughing. The notion that I could go anywhere I wanted or do whatever I felt like seemed almost unbelievable.
Despite all that freedom, there was only one place I wanted to go.
It took two days to get there, and it felt like years. I pulled into the driveway of my kids’ house in Montgomery, Alabama, and stepped out of the car. My heart was racing, and I felt a little bit like I might pass out. In a moment that still plays like a slow-motion highlight reel in my mind, I saw my children race out the front door and across the yard toward me — Kimber first, followed closely by Mitch and Kalyn, still in her pajamas.
I fell to my knees, and the kids crashed into me. We fell to the ground, all three of them kissing and holding on to me tightly. Mitch kept touching my face and saying, “Dad, you’re really home.” I stood, and Kalyn clung to my leg.
I heard another voice say, “Welcome home.”
With Kalyn still wrapped around my leg, I turned and saw my wife. “Hello,” I said.
I had anticipated this moment and wondered how it would feel, what we would say. She stepped closer, and we awkwardly hugged for a few seconds. Sixteen years of marriage had produced in me a lot of patterned behaviors toward her, and one of them was showing affection in front of the kids. Especially when she was upset, I had tried to show my kids that a husband should be tender and loving to his wife. But that wasn’t my role anymore. I had to be consistent and truthful with the kids. We backed apart, and when our eyes met I think we both knew.
The kids and I spent a few days together there in Montgomery, building the initial bridges of our new life together as a different family than we’d previously known.
We stayed in a hotel with two queen-sized beds in the room, and every night the kids argued about who got to sleep with me. It didn’t really matter, because by morning they were all three in my bed anyway.
“Where are we going to live, Dad?” Kimber asked one evening while I was tucking them into bed.
“I’m not sure yet, honey. Tell you what — tomorrow we’ll go look around.”
“What about furniture?” she said.
I hadn’t thought about that. I didn’t have even a folding chair to my name, I didn’t know a futon from a fireplace, and I wasn’t ab
out to make my kids live in two half-furnished homes. This was going to be harder than I’d thought.
Kalyn said, “Don’t worry, Daddy. We can make tents and sleep on the floor.”
“Or maybe a fort!” Mitch said.
I laughed. “Okay, tents and forts. It will be fun. Now go to sleep.”
That night in bed, I woke to Mitch shaking me. “Wake up, Daddy, wake up!”
I sat up, and for a minute I couldn’t tell where I was. I looked for my body armor and didn’t find it. The sheets were soaked with my sweat.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” Kimber said from the next bed.
I wiped my eyes and pulled Mitch into a tight hug. His hair smelled like fresh air, rather than clotted blood and smoke. He was about the same size as 1954, the Iraqi boy who had died from the car bomb terrorists had tried to drive onto our base a few days after I arrived in Iraq. But Mitch’s heart was beating strongly, and his brown eyes looked up at me full of life — and also full of fear at whatever I’d done and said before waking.
“Just a bad dream, honey,” I said.
“About the war?” she said.
I nodded. “Yeah, Kimber, it was about the war.”
We all tried to go back to sleep. Kimber crawled into bed with us, and she and Mitch never let go of me that night. Kalyn never woke up.
Too soon, it was time for me to leave them again. I drove them to their mom’s house, and we hugged and cried and held each other tight.
“I won’t let you go, Daddy,” Kalyn said while wrapped around my leg like a koala.
“The sooner you let him go, the sooner he’ll be back,” Kimber told her.
Kalyn’s grip loosened a little. She looked up at me and blinked hard. “And then you’ll take us to our new house?” she said with a quavering voice.
I smiled. “Yes, honey, I promise.”
Kalyn let me go and stood up. We all hugged again, and I got into the car for the long drive back to San Antonio. I took one last look over my shoulder and saw my past, and my future, standing on the porch together.
As I drove toward Texas, the road stretched before me like the empty canvas of what my life would become. I felt a peace that everything would be okay eventually, but little data with which to answer my millions of questions about how I was going to get there.
In Mississippi, a highway patrolman stopped me for speeding. When I looked in the side-view mirror to watch him walk up, I saw his handgun and for a second I was sure that he would draw the gun and shoot at me like the insurgent in Baghdad. I held my breath as he approached the window of my car.
“License and registration, please,” he said.
I opened my wallet and was about to pull out my driver’s license, which was behind my military ID. He reached for my wallet and pulled it closer to his face. Then he handed me back my wallet.
“Your hair’s awfully short, sir. You been deployed?”
“Just got home from Iraq a few days ago,” I said.
Squinting in the sunlight, the trooper stood tall and said, “I’m Sergeant Vaughan, Army National Guard. My unit’s going over there soon.” Vaughan gave me a crisp salute and made a right face. Just as he stepped away he said, “Thanks for your service, Major. You be safe.”
I drove away, happy to have not received a speeding ticket but also worried and sad, because I knew that Sergeant Vaughan was about to see some things I wished I had not. His war was about to start, and mine was almost over.
I still owed the Air Force six weeks.
In San Antonio, I stayed in the home of Dennis McDonald, the minister I’d turned to the previous year when I’d first realized how much trouble my marriage was in. Dennis and his wife, Patty, had become like extra parents to me before the war and had sent numerous care packages to me in Iraq. In one of those, they had sent a note that invited me to stay with them if I ever needed to. Now I took them up on it.
Wandering the halls of Wilford Hall Medical Center, where I had worked for four years, I felt unknown. I was the first of my group to return from the war, and nobody else had ever been deployed. There was no one to talk to, and since my date of separation from the Air Force was so close, my squadron commander wouldn’t let me work. He placed me on terminal leave and ordered me to spend my days finalizing my out-processing paperwork. Every day I would scratch a few items off the list, while also searching for a new place to live and working on credentialing paperwork for my new hospital in Alabama.
The last thing I had to do before I left Texas was to finalize my divorce. We’d both hired lawyers and worked out the details, and all that remained was for me to appear before a judge to sign the final paperwork.
The night before the hearing, my usual Iraq nightmares were also populated with images of my kids blaming all of their future problems on their parents’ divorce, and of every member of my old church lining up on both sides of a street marked “Road to Hell,” along which I was walking alone.
The next morning I went to the courthouse and stood before a judge.
Looking down from his bench, a white-haired judge said, “This divorce is uncontested. The other party has already signed and waived their appearance here today, so all you have to do is sign these papers. Are you sure about this?”
He handed the papers to the bailiff, who handed them to me. I looked down at the form and saw my soon-to-be-ex-wife’s signature, and then I picked up the pen. “Yes, sir.”
It felt very much like the hundreds of times I’d seen families decide to withdraw life support from an unsalvageable loved one they’d been keeping alive until all the relatives arrived. The decisions had been made long before and the emotions had all been experienced and expressed. Now it was time to flip the switch, pull the tube, and declare it legally dead. In the ICU, these moments are never celebrations, but neither are they usually especially tearful. The tears have been shed, and as the monitors show the heart’s last few beats before it flatlines, the prevailing emotion is relief.
I signed the form.
On the final day of my fourteen years in the United States Air Force, I was handed a folder by a master sergeant, who shook my hand. “Thank you for your service, sir,” he said.
There was no ceremony, no one lining up at the door to say goodbye. I felt anonymous, simply a part of a big machine, a part that had been replaced and discarded. I felt as if I was losing my community, and in a strange way I almost wished I could go back to Iraq. As Lackland Air Force Base’s gates closed behind my car, I realized that the rest of my life would be spent outside the wire.
The highway to Alabama felt different this time. Six weeks ago I was married; now I was single. Then I’d been Major Warren the combat neurosurgeon; now I was Dr. Warren the civilian.
I joined a practice in Montgomery, with two good neurosurgeons who were kind to me. I had an office and a private parking space and a clean white lab coat with my name stitched on the front. It seemed perfect.
The kids and I spent a lot of time together, and every other weekend they stayed with me. They seemed happy and were doing well in school, and I felt like our new little family was coming along just fine. As far as anyone could tell from the outside, it looked like I was back on my feet.
The workdays felt manageable. As long as I was busy, I was fine. But nighttime was a different story. I slept in short spurts of fifteen or twenty minutes. Rarely did I manage more than two or three hours of sleep a night, and every night I startled awake at 2:00 a.m., expecting to hear the fighters on their take-off rolls nearby. When sleep finally arrived, it came with nightmares of terrorists and dying babies and soldiers I couldn’t save.
One morning, as I shaved, I realized that the man in the mirror was a man I didn’t recognize. My temples were hollowed out, like people in those concentration camp pictures, and my blue eyes had a pale hollowness to them. When I dressed that morning, I cinched up my belt and found that even on the last hole it would not hold up my pants.
I went to the office early and stepped on the pa
tient scale. I weighed 157 pounds, forty-eight pounds below my deployment weight of 205. The last time I had weighed less than 160 pounds, I was in the eighth grade.
That day in the operating room, I picked up a pair of delicate scissors used for cutting tissue away from nerves. They didn’t feel quite right to me, and I used the microscope to zoom in on them. I saw the problem immediately. “Blades are bent,” I said. “That’s why they feel funny.”
The scrub nurse handed me a different pair. “No problem,” he said. “We’ve got ten more of these in the back room.”
I finished my case, thinking the whole time how extravagant it was to have ten copies of the same instrument. I wished I could send some of them to Balad, where I knew the surgeons would use them to save lives. I felt guilty that I was hoarding them all in Alabama to treat somebody’s low-back pain.
When I walked past the front desk of the operating room, I heard a heart surgeon cussing out the charge nurse. “How do you expect me to work under these conditions?” he hissed. “I can’t do my work if you incompetent people can’t give me what I need.”
I kept walking, thinking that Todd and his partners in Iraq could do five cases in half the time this guy could do one, with five percent as much equipment, in a tent — and not complain about it once.
I tried to eat lunch in the doctors’ lounge that day, but my stomach hurt and everyone at the table was complaining that the food, served on a white-cloth-covered table, was a little too salty or cold or wasn’t as good as yesterday’s. A group of doctors was arguing about whether Gettysburg really was the turning point in the Civil War, and what they would have done differently at Little Round Top.
I got up from the table to leave, and my partner Bob grabbed my arm. “Hey, why don’t you tell those guys what a real war is like?” he said.
“Some other time,” I said. “I have patients to see.” I walked away, feeling overwhelmed by the excess of food and equipment and opinions. I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. Except that sleep wouldn’t be much safer for me.
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