“I will be taking leave because, like many of you, I have family issues going on back home. My son has just tried to commit suicide.” A hush falls over everyone in the audience. Even the people who don't like Command Sergeant Major Ridge are quiet. “Thank God his attempt wasn't successful, but I've talked to Colonel Tucker and we both feel that I should take some time off and fly home to be with my son and help him through this ordeal. I want you all to know that I will be thinking about you while I am gone. I think of you all as my sons and daughters and I will miss you, but for a few weeks I need to be with my family during this hour of need.”
I can't help but feel, as I walk out of the auditorium, that with all of Ridge's faults and even being the lackey of Colonel Tucker (actually everyone refers to him as Colonel Jelly because a two-star general once called him a spineless asshole), he is still only a human trying to survive in the world.
WEEK 1, DAY 6, IRAQ
2000 HOURS, OR
“I don't give a shit what he has. When he's in my OR, I make the rules. I'm not going to treat anyone special just because they are ‘special,’ says Dr. John, one of the surgeons from the FST.
“Well, back home I work with children with autism and there's a certain way you have to deal with them,” says Captain Tarr.
They are fighting over Lieutenant Quinn, a 6′4″ Caucasian man. His jet-black hair and squinty eyes make him look like he could be a tall Asian man. He also, according to Captain Tarr, has undiagnosed Asperger's, which is a mild form of autism.
“This is bullshit. If he does have Asperger's, then how the fuck did he even get into the Army? And besides, that doesn't excuse him from screwing up my surgery and almost getting a patient killed,” John yells back.
Captain Tarr doesn't want to have this argument, but she knows she's already in too deep. She can't back down now.
“Listen, it's something to be dealt with. I've had family members with this problem. He's just having trouble adjusting to the change of atmosphere.”
Chandler walks in just in time to hear them yelling. “What are those two fighting about?”
I look over at Chandler and the Pepsi in his hand. He drinks so much, he now only has a few teeth left.
“They're yelling about Quinn screwing up a case.”
Chandler laughs. Lieutenant Quinn has been acting strange lately. The type of strange where if you asked him why he was rubbing honey all over his body he'd reply with, “Oh … I thought it was vinegar.” On a good day you avoid him; on a bad day Colonel Reke would send him home telling him to take the day off. The last nurse is Colonel Reke. She is in charge of the nurses for the OR, as well as Staff Sergeant Gagney. She is in her late fifties and still has golden blond hair. With her tiny figure and rosy red lipstick, she also reminds me of my grandmother. She is a former Special Forces nurse and CEO of a hospital. She never seems to be around. It's as if she's always doing something else besides being in the OR.
“I was the scrub tech and Lieutenant Quinn was my nurse for the case,” I say to Chandler.
“When the surgery started, Quinn was nowhere to be found. Twenty minutes into the surgery, he walks in the room. Then he leaves again and ten minutes later he comes back in and starts mopping the floor — while our surgery is still going on! Dr. John then started yelling at him saying, ‘You can't mop during surgery! You'll kick dirt into the air. Get the hell out of here!’
“Lieutenant Quinn stares back at him and walks out of the room like a little kid that's been told no more cookies before dinner. Quinn then walks back in and stares at the doctor, just stands there — staring. John doesn't notice and asks him for some saline, and then, out of nowhere, Quinn starts freaking out:
‘What kind of saline? Do you want normal saline? What percentage sodium? What size bag … large, medium, small? I need to know these things before I leave the room or else I'll be walking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Or is that what you want, you want me to go back and forth, back and forth, just for your … amusement … huh, is that it…?’
The one we always use,' John yells, and he goes back to focusing on the patient.
“Next John asks for suture and Quinn lists every type of suture we have. Quinn does the same thing every time the doctor asks for something, so eventually Johns starts to make do with what he has. Out of the corner of my eye I see Quinn fooling around with the bovie machine. I don't say anything because I don't want him freaking out on me. Captain Tarr then comes in to relieve Quinn so that he can go get some lunch.
‘Bovie,’ John yells at me to hand it to him.
‘Why the hell isn't this working?’ John yells when the bovie doesn't turn on.
“The patient is now bleeding profusely and we can't stop the bleeding because the bovie machine — which is used to cauterize — isn't working.
‘Mosquito clamp and suture,’ John yells out at me, as we clamp off the blood vessel and tie it off to stop the bleeding, giving us time to find out what's wrong.
“Tarr starts frantically pushing buttons on the machine. Then she says, ‘Someone unplugged the machine and the switches are in the opposite direction.’
‘This is bullshit,’ Dr. John screams, throwing a pair of scissors to the ground. I hand him the bovie tip and he cauterizes the skin. The surgery ends and John rushes off, saying that he's got some business to take care of and he tells me to finish up. John finds Colonel Reke, tells her what happened, and Reke tells Quinn to go home for the day.”.
“John wants Lieutenant Quinn kicked out of the military.”
WEEK 2, DAY 1, IRAQ
2000 HOURS, AUDITORIUM
Four women from my unit had decided to dress up in sexy lingerie and sing “Lady Marmalade” in a talent show. If I didn't know them, I guess I'd say they were sexy; the only problem is that I do know them, and they've been sleeping around ever since they got to Iraq. The men in the audience all clapped, smiled, and yelled to the ladies. The women in the audience shook their heads in disapproval. The flier for the show clearly says: “Be warned, explicit content.”
The next day one of the women in the audience — an old woman who probably hasn't had sex in ten years — complains that the evening was too provocative. She said she saw a poster for the show and read the warning that it might be a little graphic and adult oriented. But she never thought that it'd be anything like that. Now we're not allowed to have any more shows like that.
Six thousand miles away from home and our only entertainment is gossip and the occasional PG-rated show we put on in the theater.
WEEK 2, DAY 5, IRAQ
0700 HOURS, OR
“So do you want the bad story or the worst story?” Denti asks as I place my breakfast tray on the OR break room table. I have discovered that since surgeries don't start until 0800 and I normally have to wait from 0700 to 0800 for the doctors, instead of waking up at 0600 to eat, I can wake up at 0630 — a half-hour later than I was previously — and eat at the OR. The downside is I have to listen to Denti talk as I eat — or as he steals a bagel off my plate.
“You want to hear the worst or the most perverted — well, actually, they're both kind of perverted.”
“It's too early to talk —”
“Just listen to me. You know about two weeks ago Sergeant Major Ridge gave that speech about going home to be with his suicidal son?”
Denti doesn't wait for me to reply.
“Well, he went home on a plane with a bunch of other people who were going on leave. One of those people was Sergeant Henderson.”
Sergeant Henderson is a medic with our southern hospital.
“Henderson and Ridge both get back to the States and take the same plane back since they're from the same town. Henderson is home for a few days and decides to go out to a bar and play some pool with his buddies. And he's bent over a pool table shooting when he overhears one of his friends say:
“‘Check out this old guy grabbing that girl's ass.’
Henderson looks up —
“‘Oh my God. That's the command sergeant major for my unit.’
Ridge takes several girls to a private booth in the back of the pool hall.
“‘Just let the old man have some fun,’ Henderson's friend yells to him.
“‘He's got a daughter the same ages as these girls, too.’ Henderson says back.”
Denti pauses to take a piece of bacon from my plate; he pisses me off.
“As I was saying,” he starts back up again.
“Why don't you get your own bacon?”
“Listen, listen, listen.” He's already eating it. “What happened was Henderson goes back to playing pool and sees Ridge leave the bar with two prostitutes.”
“Some time of need for his family, what a dickhead, I can't believe I felt bad for him.”
“That's not even the perverted one,” Denti says. “You know the education courses? Since Waters's boyfriend is new here he's taking his education classes.”
I roll my eyes at Denti at the mere mention of Colonel Lessly, the man who's in charge of the education classes. He got in trouble before we even got deployed. Colonel Lessly was put on special orders to be on active duty before we got deployed and was in charge of getting our unit's inventory ready. He looks like the biker from the Village People, but in an Army uniform. Specialist Wilson also got put on orders early. Wilson is a twenty-eight-year-old man who is about sixty pounds overweight — with all of it in his gut. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed. If you ask him what time it is, he'll stare at you for fifteen seconds, his watch for twenty, stare at you again for fifteen seconds and then tell you the wrong time.
“One night Lessly invites Wilson to dinner and a movie. They went out on a Friday night. Over the next few days Wilson got three e-mails from Lessly. The first one asks him if he had fun at the movies, and Lessly attaches a picture of two animals having sex and a caption that says: ‘Doesn't that look fun?’ In the next e-mail there's a picture of a monkey eating a banana shaped like a penis, and the caption says: ‘The things I could do to that banana.’ Wilson doesn't answer the e-mails. I don't think it even occurred to him how weird this was. On Sunday Wilson receives another email. Colonel Lessly asks Wilson if he can ‘suck his dick.’ Wilson freaks out. He prints the e-mails and shows them to Mardine. She shows them to the GOBs, and you know what they told Lessly to do? You ready for this? ‘Don't talk to Wilson anymore.’”.
“HEY. If you want to hear the story, pay attention.” I hear Denti say, taking me out of my daze. “Oh shit, Anthony, you never listen — the point is that Colonel Lessly is now making the moves on McClee — ”.
BAAAANNNGGG. BAAAAANNNNGGG.
BUNKERS! BUNKERS! BUNKERS!
1500 HOURS, OR
Our surgeries are out early today after we each did three I&Ds. When Reto walks in for second shift he's got a paper with him. “What patient died in the OR?” he asks. Denti and I look up.
“None.”
No patient has died in the OR. Patients of ours have died at later dates, but up to this time no patient has died in our OR — as far as I'm aware.
“Let me see that.”
We go over to see this.
Denti says, “What are you talking about? This is wrong. What is this, yellow journalism?”
“Probably some mistake.”
“No patients have died in the OR.”
“An American soldier died on the operating table,” Reto is reading.
“That's not true. No patient died, not in the OR, I remember that surgery. There was an American soldier and Iraqi. Now, yes, the patient in question did end up dying, but he died later in the ICW. But the patient was alive, he didn't die during surgery here in the OR…. ”
We have an advanced copy of the article written by the journalists who visited the OR a few months ago. The article is a powder puff piece about our unit and it blatantly lies about a patient dying in the OR — the journalists were in there when we wheeled the patient out alive.
We're all just standing there in silence.
WEEK 2, DAY 6, IRAQ
2330 HOURS, MY ROOM
I normally go to sleep at 2200 hours, ten o'clock, but I can't sleep anymore. I've been taking sleeping pills almost every night. The pills are still working, but I have to take more and more each night to fall asleep.
I spend a half-hour tossing and turning in bed and decide to go outside and smoke a cigarette.
“Anthony, what's up, man?” I turn and see Specialist Steve. Steve is a friend of mine from the unit. Tall, gangly, white as a ghost.
“I thought you were down south.”
“Not me.”
“Working?”
“You just getting off?”
“Yeah, man, been working night shift ever since we got here. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, sleep. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, sleep.”
“That's what I'm trying to do right now myself — go to sleep. Pills aren't working.”
“NyQuil, man. I've been using it for a couple weeks. Down a couple of shots before bed and you sleep twelve hours.”
I make a note to buy NyQuil.
WEEK 3, DAY 1, IRAQ
0145 HOURS, MY ROOM
Earlier in the day I go to the store to buy some NyQuil, but it was sold out. The sales clerk tells me nighttime medicines sell out the second they come in, and he won't have another shipment in for two weeks. If I really want the NyQuil, though, I should check back every day in case they get the shipment early. He tells me that there's a tall, skinny, white man named Steve who comes in every other day looking for NyQuil and I should do what he does.
I have four sleeping pills in me and I still can't sleep. I've smoked two cigarettes and my mind is on fire.
As I lay here I am beginning to notice all the different noises in Iraq.
Bang!
I hear a loud noise; it's a dumpster hitting the ground but it sounds like a mortar. Both noises sound similar, but it takes a trained ear to differentiate the two. Sometimes you hear a loud noise and cannot tell whether it is the beginning of a mortar attack and you should grab your weapon or whether it is a dumpster hitting the ground and you should go back to sleep.
There's a string of gunfire heard in the background, but I can't tell if the guns are being fired to kill or as practice. Every noise has a different nuance and every sound has a different meaning.
I think of the Buddha. What is the sound of one hand clapping …? If a tree falls in the forest, but no one… ? If a bullet rips through the body of a terrorist, splitting his skin and bones to fragments, but no one… ? I know now what people mean when they say, “A shot heard around the world.”
But as terrifying as the noises and sounds might be, nothing compares to the silences, the silence as I lay here in bed. Silence is the real killer. It leaves you no other devices but your own thoughts, and when you are fighting a war your thoughts aren't too often good. There are many types of silences. The silence of fatigue after a long day in the OR. The silence of doubt after twelve hours of surgery when the patient still dies. The silence of fear just after a mortar attack. My mind races. Is it a mortar or a dumpster? Should I get out of bed or stay in bed? Do I even care if I die? Is someone now dying? Is someone now dead? Am I dead?
Silence… . I hear the dump truck drive away. I need to go back to sleep. It's the silence that drives us mad. That drives us to commit suicide or cheat on our wives or ruin someone's life.
It's the silence that kills us.
WEEK 3, DAY 2, IRAQ
0215 HOURS, MY ROOM
BBBBAAAAMMMMMMMMMMM!!!
I sit up straight in bed.
BBBBAAAAMMMMMMMMMMM!!!
BBBBAAAAMMMMMMMMMMM!!!
BBBBOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!
BUNKERS. BUNKERS. BUNKERS.
It's an attack and the rounds are hitting close. I look at my clock; it says 2:15. I look over on my nightstand at the half-empty bottle of Nyquil. I know I should get out of bed but I don't feel like moving.
BBBBAAAAMMMMM
MMMMMM!!!
The rounds are really close. I don't think I've heard them this close, hitting inside our barracks.
I know I should get out of bed; they're hitting inside our sleeping compound. I look back at the clock: 2:17. I look at the half-empty bottle of NyQuil that Steve finally gave me. I look at the inside of my eyelids.
BBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!
2:20. I know I need to get up. I look over at Markham to see if he's out of bed. He's gone and our door is wide open.
BBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!
I know I've got to move fast, so I grab my weapon and head to the closest bunker, which luckily is only a few feet away. My heart is pounding but I'm not sure if it's from the rush or the NyQuil. I run to the bunker. By the time I get there everyone from my street is already there — BBBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAMMM-MMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!
BBBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM-MMMMM!!!!!!!!!
BBBBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM-MMMMM!!!!!!!!!
CCCRRRAAAAASSSSSHHH!!!!
Everyone in the bunker looks at one another; those last two hits sounded like they hit someone's room. It's freezing outside. It's the beginning of winter. I'm only wearing a T-shirt and shorts. It is almost Christmas.
0325 HOURS, BUNKER
It takes over an hour for the bombings to stop and the base to be all cleared again. Because it's a few blocks closer to our rooms than the hospital, Gagney lets us check in at his room.
On my way back I see a huge crowd of people gathered around a Chu (sleeping quarter) that's on the street after mine. Everyone is crowded around Sergeant Elster's room.
Sergeant Mardine comes through the crowd telling everyone to back up a hundred feet.
“There is an unexploded mortar on the ground.”
Elster sees me and makes his way through the crowd.
Mass Casualties Page 9