Anatomy of a Soldier

by Harry Parker

  ‘John’s currently winning, but he’s cheating as he’s only blind in one eye. Maybe we need to develop a new handicap system. What do you think, Sister?’

  ‘And deaf in one ear,’ a man shouted from another bed.

  ‘Speak up, John. We can’t hear you.’

  ‘What?’ The man cupped a hand around his ear.

  ‘Adam, it’s not funny, somebody’ll get hurt,’ the nurse said. ‘And leave John alone.’

  ‘We’ll make it non-contact from now on,’ he said, blew the nurse a kiss and hopped into his wheelchair.

  ‘Come on, Tom, I’ll show you the rest of the world.’

  You pushed forward again and we followed the man out of the bay and along the ward. He waved and joked and introduced you to someone, who laughed, and you gently shook his two-fingered left hand. We wheeled on and the nurse called after us and told you not to go far. We went on out of the ward and farther into the hospital.

  ‘Where are we going, Adam?’ you asked as we coasted around a corner past a doctor.

  ‘For a fag,’ he said, pulling his chair forward with loping strides of his one remaining leg.

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘The fresh air will do you good, mate.’

  We freewheeled down a slope and into a lift.

  ‘Come on, how long’s it been since you were outside?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ you said.

  We rolled out of the hospital and you leaned on my brakes and were just able to clip them on. ‘I’m so weak.’

  ‘It’ll come back.’ He sucked on a cigarette and dropped the pack on his seat in the space where his other leg should have been. ‘Sure you won’t have one?’

  ‘I’ve definitely wasted away.’ You were looking at your arms. ‘No thanks, last thing I need is to start smoking now. All the doctors say it’s terrible for wound healing.’

  ‘God, don’t you start, mate – or I’ll fucking shove you off into the city.’

  You looked down the hill, past the parked cars and the bus stop. The sky was clear above the red-brick buildings. You breathed in. We stayed for a while and spoke to another man who asked if you were in the army and talked about bravery. He tried handing you some money but you wouldn’t take it.

  He had to have another cigarette and said this way he only had to come out half as often. So you waited and then flicked off my brakes and we headed back inside.

  You came to a ramp and couldn’t push me up it. You called to the man ahead pulling himself forward with his leg. ‘Adam, mate, wait up. I’m struggling here.’ You strained forward on my wheels, your arms burnt and you leant your weight forward but I still didn’t budge against the slope.

  ‘Bloody hell, you are weak,’ he said. ‘You’ve managed all of about two foot.’ He was looking back down from the top. ‘Try a run-up.’

  So we reversed back and the man at the top made a beeping noise. You pushed me forward in fast stabbing flicks and you gritted your teeth as we hit the ramp, but I was too heavy and we stalled halfway up. I veered into the wall with a clunk as you lost control of me.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ you said.

  ‘No dramas,’ he was drifting down towards you. ‘Hold on to the back of my chair.’

  A man walked past. ‘Do you need a hand, guys?’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a push.’

  ‘No thanks, mate,’ you said. ‘We’ll be fine, thanks.’

  ‘Are you sure? It’s no problem at all.’

  ‘I’m positive, thanks.’

  He walked on down the corridor and glanced back at us.

  ‘That’s the spirit, Tom, fuck ’em all. We’ll manage without them,’ he said, laughing as he positioned himself in front of us. ‘Right, hold on to my back rest.’

  You gripped with your good hand and he pulled forward with his one leg and we jerked slowly up the ramp as he towed us behind him.

  ‘Thanks, Adam.’

  ‘You may be thin,’ he said at the top, breathless, ‘but you still weigh a bit.’

  ‘That’s all the fags, mate.’

  ‘Oh, sod off,’ he said and raced away, and you tried to keep up.

  *

  I stayed by your bed and you waited to heal. You joked with the other men and talked about who had the worst injuries, whether you’d swap a missing leg for a missing arm and whose scars were the ugliest. One of them drew eyes on his stump with a marker and used a flap of disfigurement to make it talk. A nurse told him off and shook her head as she left, and he made the stump into a sad face.

  You told one another to stop being pathetic when they came to clean your wounds and you winced. When anybody groaned or gasped in pain, another would ask if he’d been shot by the phantom sniper. You’d laugh through the pain and tell everybody to piss off. And you drank in the morphine that made you euphoric and then sick. You shared food and read articles from the papers aloud to each other and slept.

  Visitors filled the ward with presents and chocolates and magazines and noise. They would sit in me and look over you. Some found it difficult and you led the conversation and helped them through it. They twisted their hands together and didn’t know what to say, it was hard seeing you like this. You were embarrassed when people you didn’t really know visited. They came because they thought it was the right thing to do, but you hated being seen broken in the bed.

  You were reading a magazine when she came. Her hair was shorter and it took you a moment to recognise her.

  ‘Hi, Tom,’ she said. ‘Jess told me not to come, but I couldn’t …’

  You remembered her and the parties and how you’d ignored her. How you’d hoped some unspoken attraction would bring you together without you having to do anything. And you thought of the letter you hadn’t replied to, which you’d reread a hundred times when you were still out there.

  ‘Hi,’ you said.

  ‘I’m Anna. I just thought I should – I couldn’t not come.’

  ‘Yes, Anna – sorry, I know that. Sit down,’ you said.

  You pulled the sheet farther over yourself as she sat down in me. You were ashamed. You wanted to run away from her. You couldn’t be disinterested and ignore her now, couldn’t marvel at the pangs of excitement each time your eyes met across a room. She was next to you and you couldn’t look away and pretend you hadn’t been staring at her all along. She could see how damaged you were, how much you’d been changed, but she didn’t look at it. She only looked into your face.

  ‘Thank you for the letter,’ you said. ‘Sorry I didn’t reply.’ Your heart was racing and your chest was tight with panic. You wanted her to leave.

  ‘I brought you this.’ She put a bag on the table.

  ‘Thanks, Anna.’

  ‘Open it later,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s nothing, just chocolates.’

  You asked how she was and about the friends you both knew. She seemed worried and asked how you were. She was nervous too and her fingers played against my cushion. You heard only some of what she said and it was awkward when she told you a story about people she thought you knew but you didn’t.

  You interrupted her before you meant to, when you couldn’t take the embarrassment of it any more. ‘I’m sorry,’ you said, ‘visiting hours are nearly over.’

  You managed to thank her for the letter again before she left; you said it meant a lot. But she was already walking across the ward and away from us. She looked like she was going to cry and you knew you had pushed her away. You thought she was crying because of the way you had been changed.

  You put your hand on my cushion where she’d been sitting and breathed in her scent and thought how perfect she was. You were glad she had gone.

  *

  When you were well enough to leave they started to pack up your things. You pulled yourself across the board and into me, using my armrests to shuffle your bottom back. A nurse was behind you, ready to help, but you did it yourself. You waved to the others in the bay and said you’d see them soon, and they
told you to break a leg.

  We wheeled out to the car park. You held on to the top of the front door and shifted yourself into the passenger seat. You looked down into the empty footwell. A man folded me up and put me on the back seat, then drove us away from the hospital.

  The lampposts flicked past and the ducking power lines swept together, aligned and then retreated. You looked at the cars around us as they swapped places down the motorway and the people behind the wheels. A few of them glanced at you but couldn’t tell anything was wrong with you through the door. You talked to the driver because you thought you should.

  The white lines that throbbed under the car made you want to sleep but you were also excited. You were out of the hospital and heading for the next place; it was progress. You’d been in this country for six weeks but hadn’t seen it yet, and even though the land around was familiar you were experiencing it for the first time.

  We turned off the motorway and passed through suburbia, then pulled through gates down a gravel track and stopped at the back of a building. I was reassembled and pushed up to the front seat and you slid yourself into me.

  The gravel was too rough for my wheels, so the driver grabbed my handles and pushed us through it. Nurses greeted you and wheeled us down green corridors to a ward. They showed you to a space in the corner. It was like the last hospital except there were fewer machines above the bed or stands to hold up bags of drugs.

  The other men limped or wheeled over to shake your hand. They were in sports kit and looked strong. You didn’t want to talk yet, so you pulled the curtain around your bed and slept and I waited there, empty.

  The next day you started your rehabilitation. It was gentle at first. We wheeled around the centre and you met all the people who would tell you what to do next. It was the first day at school and everyone noticed we were new. A physiotherapist introduced herself and gave you a piece of paper. It told you where to be during every hour of the day. You folded it up and stuffed it between my cushion and armrest.

  She gave you exercises to do and we rolled to the gym, where others were sitting on the floor waving their limbs in the air or standing on one leg and lifting weights. You lowered yourself off me onto a blue mat and sat with your little stumps out in front of you, working them against a resistance band until they ached. An instructor handed you pink weights, the only ones you could lift, and they shook in your hands as you tried to extend them above your head.

  And then we wheeled on to the next session. In the corridor you passed another man in a chair like me. You were shocked by his injuries and thought how strange he looked as he glided past, suspended up in his chair without any legs. He nodded at you and you nodded back. You felt sorry for him and didn’t want to stare. You wheeled around a corner and two therapists walked past and stopped to tell you where the next session was, bending over you and talking gently.

  You met a man who told you how they’d get you walking so you wouldn’t have to rely on me. He asked how tall you’d been and what size shoes you’d worn. He explained the casting process and promised they’d have you standing in a couple of weeks.

  He went to get equipment to measure your stumps. While you waited, another man went past. He had no legs, like you, except he was walking on prosthetics, flicking them forward and arching his back. He was red-faced, his arms swinging around him for balance. You didn’t want him to see you looking but wondered how he did it and couldn’t imagine being able to do it yourself.

  Others called you over at lunch and asked you to sit with them. You felt dazed and sick after the morning’s effort and they could see it in your face. They told you that it got easier, that you’d look back and be amazed by your progress. Just be patient. And then you pulled out the piece of paper and saw you were already late. You hated being late and pushed my wheels hard to hurry to your next session.

  The physiotherapist started working on you, moving your damaged stumps and examining your muscles with her thumbs, mobilising them while you flinched and stared at the floor through the hole in the treatment table. You talked her through all your wounds and she inspected them under the bandages. You enjoyed talking to her and laughed at the pain she inflicted and how hard she made you work. She told you she’d get you walking soon.

  At the end of each day you chatted in deep sofas with the others and balanced cups of tea between your stumps or on armrests. You watched TV with them and then you went to your bed and slept.

  For two weeks we wheeled around the centre, always pulling the piece of paper from under my cushion before we rolled on to the next session. You became stronger, I went faster. You started to know those who were helping you and you loved them for it. They cast your legs and prepared the equipment that would make me obsolete.

  *

  Some friends came to see you at the weekend and we went into the garden. They walked slowly alongside you and you tried to act as if nothing had happened; you tried to hide the effort of wheeling me. You were self-conscious being at waist height and looking up at people who once had to look up at you. You tried to hide your stumps from them with a jumper in your lap but as you pushed me it kept falling off and it frustrated you.

  You gently lowered yourself off me onto the grass. They watched you do it and looked at where you no longer had legs and at the white bandages, stained with secretions from your wounds, poking from your shorts.

  They’d brought you beer. It was normal for a while. They talked about what they’d been up to, about other friends and how well you were doing. But then your left stump started to hurt. You wanted to go inside and get some drugs – to be alone.

  You nearly fell as you pulled yourself up into me. They wanted to help but didn’t know how to say it. So they followed as you wheeled yourself back towards the centre along the path. You thought they were watching you from behind so you pushed me faster.

  And then my front castor was trapped. You pushed forward and pulled back on my rings but couldn’t get over the lip – you blamed me for this – and then my rear wheel dropped into a gap between paving stones and we were stuck. You became frustrated and embarrassed and groaned. You tried to rock me out and swore when you couldn’t.

  We fell back until my anti-topple bars caught us. But you didn’t trust me and thought we were going to fall and you flailed out, reaching forward as I tipped over. You put your foot out to stop yourself, but you had no foot and you dropped down onto your stump. It banged hard on the ground. The unnatural pain shot through the cut bone. You contained yourself from shouting out in front of them but the shock showed as tears in your eyes. You sat there with your head bowed, as the stain on your bandage grew with fresh blood. I was next to you on my side. You were suddenly exhausted.

  One of your friends grabbed hold of me and another lifted you tenderly into me and your head slumped forward as your friend pushed us over the path. The bumps and jerking made you feel nauseous and you wished he’d stop but he wheeled us out of the garden and back to the centre.

  28

  I was screwed to a wall by workmen in a new disabled toilet at a rehabilitation centre that needed more capacity. I reflected the handrails, basin, dryer and shiny toilet. A red panic cord hung down from the ceiling.

  Many of them came in, often on crutches or in wheelchairs, and I reflected them as they awkwardly pulled the door shut. They held the rails, flushed and used the sink. Some didn’t need to sit on the toilet and emptied urine out of a tube.

  A new man appeared. At the start a nurse came with him and helped wipe, but after a few weeks he had the strength to do it on his own.

  Now he was back and pulled himself from the chair onto the toilet seat, his stumps jutting out in front of him. He wore a T-shirt and shorts and looked down between his stumps as he went. Once he had finished, he flushed and then wheeled up to the door.

  But this time he caught his reflection in me and stopped. What I showed was different from how he imagined himself. He saw the freakishly short limbs and the space between them
and the floor, where he used to exist. He knew I reflected what others saw, and it shocked him. He shook his head in disbelief. He was unnatural, created by violence and saved by soldiers and medics: he’d survived the unsurvivable and it showed. He felt disgusted.

  He pulled his shorts off and then his T-shirt and dropped them on the floor. Naked, he stared into me and down at himself and shook his head again without wanting to. He saw the grotesque scars and folds of flesh and the pink skin grafts that covered his wounds. He saw the violence of the bomb. Who could love that, he thought. Then he closed his eyes and started.

  It hurt, but less than everything else, and his expression didn’t change and there was no pleasure. When he’d finished, his severed nerves buzzed and he bent down his head and breathed. His semen was brown with blood from the trauma and he looked at it in surprise.

  He went to the tissue dispenser, flushed again, put his clothes back on and left. He never looked in me again.

  29

  I was spilt with twenty identical others from the cardboard box we were packaged in. I clinked against them as we rolled out across the green mattress.

  BA5799 lined us up into rows of ten and then thirty and pushed us one by one into a magazine. He held me between his thumb and finger and rolled me through the jaws, sliding me back so I could descend and depress the spring. I was fifth from the top, one above a tracer round tipped with red.

  We rattled as the magazine was dropped and hurriedly packed away.

  When the magazine was attached to a weapon, we lifted up one position as the top round was loaded into the chamber; now I was fourth. After a few hours, the magazine was removed and the top round reinserted, pushing me back down. But once the rifle kicked above us, I jumped up a place and then another. After a pause we jumped again and the bolt carrier was above me. I was next.

  The excitement stopped; it wasn’t my turn yet. I descended as the magazine was replenished by four more like me.