by Harry Parker
It was never going to happen to you and now you would stand up and dust yourself off. This happens to others, you managed to think, but the pain started to build and you couldn’t move.
Anxiety overwhelmed you.
You wanted your body but it wasn’t there. Your tongue licked across your teeth and you felt a chip and a blade of grass and grit at the back of your throat. You wanted to turn over and check how badly you were hurt but neither arm nor leg moved. But the pain did move. It built and obliterated any other feeling and dragged you farther away from yourself. It wasn’t real yet but the potential of it shocked you and you feared it. It fought through the whirring fuzz that had replaced your body, coming with the anxiety and building with the fear. Your mouth creased above me. You whimpered.
The dust drifted away and behind you a man stood up. Another looked at you and didn’t get any closer. He wanted to help but you looked odd and inhuman distorted on the ground and he’d frozen. You were bent and covered in rock and dirt with body parts twisted or missing, and he couldn’t make sense of it.
Another soldier ran up from the rear and started shouting. You could hear him through the pain and recognised the voice telling them not to get any closer until they had cleared the area. And you wanted them now – to just get here now. And then your radio sounded in your ear and the initial confused reports were deadened by buzzing pain. It was about you this time – it was never meant to be about you. You heard them describe what was happening and wanted to be part of the conversation and tried to lift your hand to press the switch but there was no hand, no arm in time and space, just buzzing pain.
You heard them say your zap number: BA5799 had been in an IED strike.
And then that was all background and you realised it was hard to breathe and a weight seemed to press against your chest and you were drowning. You didn’t have enough breath to get to the surface and your chest screamed silently as tension crushed it. And then you were gone.
The detectors swept alongside us and then past and they chucked them down and rolled you onto your back. Your head lolled in your body armour and your helmet fell off. They said, ‘Sir, sir … Tom … sir?’ but you didn’t respond.
I had dropped back onto your chest. My discs rested there now and flashed in the sun. On each of my discs your information is stamped: O POS, 565799 BARNES T, CE. You were dying and when you did one of my discs would stay with your body, the other would go for notification. That would have been a certainty but now they were with you and trying to stop it happening.
They cut away your clothing and applied your tourniquet above the footless stump that was only sharp slivers of bones, dark red and filled with mud and dirt below your shredded trousers. They twisted its handle until it was tight and stopped you bleeding. They found open wounds on your other leg and pushed a tourniquet up into your groin and you had one on each leg. They realised you weren’t breathing and they breathed into you.
You came back and it was dark and pain and you tried to open your eyes but you were sightless as you fought the pain and gritted your teeth. They held a clear bag of fluid above us and pulled you out of your body armour and cut away your combat shirt and you were lying naked on the cracked earth. I still rested on your chest and their hands left streaks of your blood on your white body where they handled you.
You started pleading with them. Save me, please, you said again and again and then you asked them to make it stop and you lifted your head and it waved around blindly. They hushed you and made you rest it back down and you couldn’t see them wrapping dressings around you and strapping your leg while the pain increased until it was all of you.
You had imagined being brave if you were injured. It was always a wound from a bullet and you would have fought on, commanding your men in the battle, and afterwards you would have walked back into camp with a dressing over it and would have been a hero. But there was nothing brave about this, no dignity. You were broken and utterly pathetic lying in the dust as they crouched by you and tried to stop you bleeding out. Pain reared again and it was dark and you had never felt so utterly alone. You pleaded with them once more but it was too much and you were unconscious again.
They dragged us onto a stretcher and carried us across the field, a man at each corner and another jogging alongside holding up a bag of fluid. I had dropped around your neck and my discs rested on the green canvas stretcher staining with your blood. They left your helmet and armour and shredded day-sack on the bloodstained dirt next to the small crater. As they lifted us out of the field, one of the men behind picked up your things and brought them with him.
You came back and you were scared again and you bit something hard against the pain, it was the arm of one of the men who was carrying you. He swore at you.
You felt the stages of the journey to the helicopter. You knew from your training and watching it happen to others that you were in a vehicle and it was driving back to camp and then you were outside and could hear the whistle of the helicopter and it was all agony.
You didn’t say any brave words and there were no thumbs up, you just whimpered and pleaded in the blindness. You were loaded onto the helicopter and you wanted it to take off immediately. Why wouldn’t it take off? And then the whine escalated and we were airborne and out over the desert.
You were certain you were going to die. This is the end, you thought, and the pain pressed down on your chest and you were gone again. The men in the helicopter worked on you. They had to restart your heart when your body couldn’t cope with the blood loss and trauma and it gave up on you.
Four times they shocked you and each time you came back and begged them to make it stop and then you pleaded with God to save you, it was your last option. I’ll do whatever You ask, you thought, and gritted your whole body against the agony.
And you summoned anything you had left, any last hope and life you had to stay – to stay in the helicopter, to stay with the pain, to stay alive.
But you went again.
You came back once more. We were being carried from the helicopter and you knew you were outside but it was all darkness and pain and you tried to lift your head and then we were inside and it was over and you let yourself go. You had nothing left.
*
They didn’t have to split me up and my tags stayed on my chain. I was taken off you by doctors before they operated and placed in a plastic wallet with your other records.
44
I fluttered off the stick they had pushed into the ground above the graves of the two young friends. Other flags were planted in the cemetery on the hill that overlooked the shimmering grid of irrigation and the patchwork of green fields, but I was the newest.
I flapped in the hot air blowing in off the desert.
Below me, where the land stretched away from the desert to the large river in the haze, stood the soldiers’ camp. It was a solid rectangle built around old compounds with vehicles and towers and the mortars that sent bombs high into the air. The soldiers sometimes played, kicking up dust and celebrating when they scored a goal. And beyond the camp, in the village, specks of people moved around the market strip and out into the fields.
The soldiers left the camp in their armour and helmets and holding their weapons. They walked into the tree lines and blocks of houses. Most days the popping of gunfire hung over the landscape and sometimes it sprayed over me and tore out to dissolve in the desert behind.
One week after Kushan Hhan pushed my pole into the ground and led them away from the fresh piles of rock back to the village, after the sun had risen behind me and cast my long thin shadow over the graves, a dark line of soldiers were returning to the camp, crossing the fields and passing down the sides of buildings, tiny at first – a line of insects – moving over a crossroads and through the abandoned ruins below me.
They filed out over the last open field before their camp and the lead figure disappeared in a puff of brown and then a loud bang broke over the hill. When the small cloud had drifted away
there was a horizontal shape on the ground and the other soldiers came up and crouched around it.
A heavy vehicle revved out of the camp on the road and waited by the field as the soldiers carried a stretcher and loaded it on. Soon after a helicopter flared into the camp and the downdraught curled up dust. The vehicle returned to the camp and then the helicopter lifted above the walls and ducked its nose away across the desert behind me.
For days it was quiet and then cracks clipped across the fields. Sometimes they were hidden in the haze and the world seemed peaceful apart from the noise clattering in the distance.
It happened again while I was planted there. A crossroads or field would erupt in a smudge out in the flat landscape and helicopters landed and there was fighting.
It rained and became cold and the battles were less frequent. The harvest came and the colourful crops were cut away and the fields were bare again. Fighting returned with the heat and I flogged on my pole and frayed while the soldiers patrolled the countryside. But slowly the fighting was pushed farther away into the haze.
During the next summer, people returned to the ruins below me and started rebuilding the walls. They planted the field by the road and it burst into colour before the following harvest.
*
After the soldiers had departed in long convoys of lorries and containers and the sound of the last helicopter had trembled in my pole, the sporadic fighting moved away.
Finally, in one violent storm, when the desert wind stripped through me and I slapped in the wind, I ripped free and tumbled down the hill across the sand and caught on a rock. I stayed there, weighed down by gathering sand, and I rotted to join the dust.
45
The thick green canopy rolled above me, reflecting on the rear window. You were in the front, driving and humming along with the radio. Then you stopped the car and opened the boot.
You sat on the tailgate next to me and drank from a bottle of water. In the park people were walking their dogs through the shafts of light and down to the pond that suspended a morning fog. Pulling down the silicone sleeves and removing your legs, you noticed the ring on your finger and smiled as you thought of her. Then you reached for me and my pair and pulled us on, tightening the Velcro straps before dropping the boot lid shut and locking the car.
You shuffled from side to side on me, trying to keep balanced on my spongy carbon-fibre blade as you stretched your arms across your chest and then up behind your back.
I only touch the ground at one point. I curve up in a sweep to a running knee that attaches to the socket your stump was in. You started bouncing up and down as you warmed up your muscles and remembered the feel of me. I flexed below you as you moved from one of us to the other and we sprang back and you felt our energy and lightness.
Then you flicked me out in front and tottered across the car park to the road beneath the avenue of trees that circled the park. You walked us up onto the smooth tarmac and started to run, pushing down through us, gaining height, and then you leant forward to turn the height into forward motion. And I compressed under you and sprang on, clicking with each step, whipping over the tarmac and down, bounce and on.
We were running and I felt light underneath you as I pounded into the hard surface. Your hands were open and pumping next to you as you concentrated on balancing. I flashed underneath as you passed the walkers and the bicycles and ran on through the park, free of the weight of your other legs.
Each impact hurt your stumps but you were used to it and worked your limbs back and forward through it. You could feel the wind around you and breathed deeply as your heart pumped in your chest and down through your stumps. I compressed and sprang on below you and you puffed in and out above. We overtook another runner.
We did this twice a week; we were part of the park now. Nobody cared any more or stopped you to tell you how amazing I was or ask how it felt. It felt normal and light and fast and free – and you were running.
You paused at the bandstand and shuffled around with your hands on your hips as your breath condensed in the morning air. You looked at your watch and then I was bouncing you forward again. A dog chased after a ball on the playing fields and then another barked alongside me at my strangeness but you ran on and told the owner not to worry.
The low sun shone solid through the trees into your eyes and you accelerated, lengthening your stride, and could feel the sweat in your liners and the pounding, clicking, flashing of me below you. We were in full flight, at the edge of balance and control, and you pushed yourself faster still: as fast as you could, as you did every time.
And the car was just there and your breathing was ragged and your heart pounded and I pounded, and there was the stitch in your shoulder blade.
The rubber pad at the end of me caught on the road. There was no way of controlling me and I was suddenly folding up under you and your hands were out in front, stopping us on the road. And I was pulling away from your stump with the liner that shifted in your sweat as you fell around me and I sheered to an unnatural angle.
They came running over, shocked at the speed of your sudden collapse and the cracking noise I made on the tarmac. They came with their dogs or the squeal of bike brakes. They asked if you were okay and you pushed yourself over and sat in the middle of the road, at the centre of the crowd of help bending over you. They were surprised when you smiled and told them not to worry. They said your leg was broken, pointing at me bent behind you. You adjusted me and said that luckily I wasn’t real.
It did hurt but you didn’t want them to know. When someone offered to call an ambulance you laughed and said there was no need. Another pointed at your hands and you noticed that the palms were bleeding. They asked if you needed to be carried anywhere but you nodded at the car and said you’d be fine.
They drifted away once you’d convinced them that you were all right. You removed me, adjusted me back on and then limped to the car and sat in the boot, catching your breath and thinking how unpleasant a sudden fall like that was.
You looked at the deep red grooves down your palms and the black grit pushed under your skin. It stung and hardened into pain as you stared at them, but then you smiled and started to laugh at the pain and the blood that dripped from your hands. And tears came because you could, and it didn’t matter any more. It was normal.
You replaced me with your other legs, shut the boot and drove to work.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Lee Brackstone for understanding this book, his sound advice and making the whole process a pleasure. Gary Fisketjon for his time, experience and keen eye. Thank you both for making this a better book. Gillon Aitken for taking me on and Matthew Hamilton, my agent, for guiding me through it all. Everyone involved at Faber for their enthusiasm and love of books: Ruth Atkins, Lisa Baker, Luke Bird, Lizzie Bishop, Angus Cargill, Catherine Daly, Walter Donohue, Hannah Griffiths, Katie Hall, Matt Haslum, Kate McQuaid, Anne Owen, Eleanor Rees, Alex Russell – there will be some I have missed. For encouragement, help and early reads: Nick Bridle, Catherine Goodman, Jamie Jackson, Graeme Lamb, David McLoughlin, Tom Mangnall, Andy Michael, Edna O’Brien, Ed Parker, Sam Parker, Orlando Roberts, Harry Whelan. And Caro, who has been there during all of it.
About the Author
Harry Parker grew up in Wiltshire. He joined the British Army when he was twenty-three and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is now a writer and artist, and lives in London.
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2016
by Faber & Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2016
All rights reserved
© Harry Parker, 2016
Cover design by Faber
Cover images © Shutterstock
The right of Harry Parker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988<
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ISBN 978–0–571–32584–9