by Deacon Rie
“What sort of waivers?” Stephen injected.
“I don’t know, Stephen. It’s tons of stuff. Waivers for things like heart attacks, a stroke, and learning disabilities that might not even show up for 10 years." Sarah paused and began to force her words out through a sob. "This stuff is horrible but Stephen, but what choice would we have?"
Sarah paused as if replaying every medical conversation through her mind before softly speaking again, "The hospital doctor. Umm, he told me all of this stuff like she could be ‘High-Risk' and they wish they had diagnosed her earlier and that I'm supposed to prepare because if she has this type of cancer then there's like this 5-year survival number they talk about that means she has something like a 40 percent chance or something." Sarah blasted out in a tearful release. "40 percent? What the hell am I supposed to do with a number? How am I supposed to tell our little girl that everything's going to be fine when I've got 40 percent rolling around in my head?"
Stephen blinked hard to keep his eyes focused on the space in front of him as the heavy wind gusts pushed sand drifts farther into the road ahead of them.
Sarah continued and made no attempt to prevent him from hearing her tears through the words, "She fell last week and hurt her knee. When she started crying I went to hold her but when I touched her back it hurt her even more than the scratch on her knee. I lifted up her shirt and she had bruises. That was the first time I had seen them. I told the nurses at the hospital when we got there but they said bruising was consistent with the disease and that I shouldn't be overly concerned about the bruising itself. How am I not supposed to be concerned about it when my baby is in pain and I can't do a thing to help her?" Stephen's emotions roared but he couldn't separate the anger of being so far away from the hurt of not being able to hold either of them."
"She started crying for you yesterday. She told me her body hurt and that you would fix it. She said because Daddy always fixes things. She wants you home because she knows that I can't make the hurt go away. She was standing there crying and screaming at me to bring you home and I know it's because she's in pain but all I want to do is make this go away and have you here with us.” A lifetime seemed to pass in the moment Sarah caught her breath, “But this won't go away and you can't come home… and you can't fix this."
Stephen blinked and he felt a release in his eye as a tearful stream slipped over his dust covered cheekbone.
"So I held her as calmly and gently as I could until the medicine kicked in and she fell asleep in my arms. And then I cried. Without making a sound, I just sat there on the floor holding her and I cried, Stephen. I couldn't help it. I couldn't stop it anymore than I could bring you home tonight. As quietly as I could so I wouldn't wake her up. I don't know how many hours passed but I just sat there and cried."
Sarah's release of frustrations broke Stephen. She was right, he couldn't fix this. His daughter needed him more than anything and he couldn't even be there to tell her everything would be alright; even if it meant lying to her. His anger drifted into the desert as he surveyed the cloudless day. A pit formed in his stomach. It seemed to pull him down and he felt his body physically contracting as frustration turned to emptiness and the emptiness brought about a terrifying fear.
Stephen had been gripping the vehicle's guardrail in front of him, oblivious that his knuckles were turning white. Sarah had to know this was killing him. Didn't she know he couldn't do anything while so far away? This desert traipse had never been his choice. But it was his decision to step forward, to volunteer and take a stand for something greater than himself. Stephen had always known Army life would be more complicated with a family. Sarah had agreed and they had both believed that the National Guard would be a family friendly endeavor. He had always known that serving meant sacrifice, but now he question whether the trade-off had been a mistake. The guilt only made the pit in his stomach heavier.
He looked pointlessly along the long sandy road they were traveling. On the horizon he saw a rusted-out vehicle parked on the side of the road. The car had been left too far off the shoulder and it was covering up about a quarter of the lane they were traveling on. Stephen stared at the broken down car simply because it gave him a point of reference while the hurricane in his mind whipped around. Vehicles in their convoy moved to the center of the road to pass the car. Stephen became conscience that he was leaning against the passenger side door of the humvee. Perhaps it was less like leaning and more like indenting. He lifted his head a bit, aware that his tension had caused him to press his head firmly against the glass. If he hadn't been wearing the helmet he would have certainly bruised his forehead; instead there was just a tender spot from grinding his melon into the bands under the lip of the protective helmet. He adjusted the Kevlar helmet and secured it back firmly on his head.
He glanced out the passenger window again and caught sight of his own reflection. A glimmer of light reflected off the window and caused him to look away. Taking a deep breath out of exhaustion, Stephen was surprised by an unexpected sense of peace that began to blanket over him. The welcome pause gave him a touch of clarity as he considered Sarah's words. In his mind he heard himself say that Sarah wasn’t the enemy here.
Sarah broke the silence and calmly said, "The doctors. They know this is big and they’ve been patient with me and really sweet to Hailey."
Stephen could tell her own patience was in overdrive. "I'm sorry I'm not there."
"I know. It's, it’s… anyway, the doctors. They talked a little about…" her voice trembled but she retained her composure, "they talked a little about a multi-phased approach. It might include surgery, radiation, chemo treatments and they even mentioned stem cells."
"Sarah, I don't know."
"I don't know either." The tension in her voice wound her tight and she began to ramble, "Stephen, it's not like I know anything more about this stuff what I’ve overheard in other people’s conversations. Somebody had to have surgery or somebody was getting radiation, such-and-such's mother was undergoing chemo treatments. I don't know near enough about these things to make any decisions on it."
He realized he couldn't be there next to them, but he perhaps he wasn’t completely helpless. He reasoned that Sarah had been carrying the weight of their household and now Hailey's sickness entirely on her own. At that moment, with her husband away at war, life was simply too heavy for her to carry alone. She needed him to share the burden and lighten her load. Stephen knew that he couldn't hold his little girl but maybe his voice could hold Sarah in a way that gave her encouragement to be strong for Hailey.
Sarah continued, "They say that because of where the tumor is, if it is cancerous then they'll likely need to do a spinal tap and possibly… probably, eventually need to do surgery."
"When?"
"The timing is up to us after the first round of chemo but if they want to isolate the spot on her spine so the sooner the better. They're worried about it spreading higher to where it could affect her brain." Sarah's voice was calm but weak, controlled but shattered.
The calmness in her voice told him that she was beginning her own recovery from the stalemate of their argument. She had probably had experience managing several difficult conversations with Hailey recently, and now she was appeasing Stephen with a same soothing voice she had used with their daughter. Stephen was okay with that. He knew his wife could be strong but he worried about the toll it would take on her.
He wanted to tell Sarah she was doing all the right things. As much as he'd like to fix this there really wasn't anything different that he could do. He truly shared her frustration of not knowing just how sick their daughter was. He wanted to tell Sarah that her comfort to Hailey made him love her even more; how he longed to blanket his arms around her and smell the sweet scent of her hair one more time. He wanted to tell her anything and everything he could to encourage her but instead, he had done the opposite.
Guilt washed him as he considered the way he had spoken to her just moments before and he questione
d whether additional words would bear any weight; perhaps he had already ruined the opportunity to be the supporting husband. While it was beneficial to keep his emotions guarded and in check, he felt a hardening that numbed him and prevented him from garnering the strength to speak his true thoughts to Sarah. He knew what he wanted to say but he didn't know where to start or how to tell her what he was feeling. The words floated around his head but at that moment nothing he did seemed to set them free. Other than the roar of the engine from the truck ahead of them, the air was painfully quiet. The humvee's silence continued, partially out of embarrassment but mostly out of respect for their squad leader who was obviously having a hard phone call with home.
Stephen knew his wife was barely holding on. While he was in the desert alongside friends making the best of an awful situation, she was at home managing a hellish situation that only got worse with each revelation. Holding the phone in silence, he was still unsure of what to say about the impossible situation they had been pulled into. He tried to clear his throat but struggled to speak.
"Alright, please hear me. We're going to get through this." Stephen knew his voice lacked the confidence necessary to convince even himself, much less Sarah. He searched for words to reassure her. In the drift of his ponderous moment he vaguely took note that their portion of the convoy had gone around the road's bend and was reaching the oddly-placed rusted out car he had seen in the distance moments before. As the truck ahead of them led the way, Tomlison began moving the humvee towards the center of the road preparing to pass the disabled vehicle.
"Okay, thank you." Sarah responded more out of duty than belief.
"When I get back to the unit this evening I'm going to stop by and have a conversation with the CO. I'll look into leave options and see if…"
There was no warning to the brilliant flash of light erupting from the tightest corner of his peripheral. Stephen's mouth did not even attempt to speak the next word, every synapses in his brain fixated on the increasing radiance which began to engulf his total vision. The prolonged calm lingered among milliseconds. His focus on the burst was brutally interrupted by a massive clap of thunder. The shockwave struck their humvee as though it were a favored child's toy truck being kicked by a jealous and disgruntled sibling. The force carelessly flipped the vehicle over itself, its unfortunate passengers the recipients of the crude bomb's deadly tantrum.
Mile 6
Nothing more than pure reflex caused Stephen to clench his fist. Because of it, he was able to maintain his grip on the humvee's passenger side guardrail. He subconsciously made an attempt to grab it with the other hand. When he did, the somersaulting vehicle caused the phone to jump from his grasp and levitate in front of his eyes. His reaching hand missed the guardrail, and grasped nothing but empty air. As the humvee spun around, time in the vehicle's cabin seemed to slow down until the sheer weight resisted a further topple, settling upright but uneven in the middle of the road. Stephen watched the panning view through the passenger window in horror. The deuce-and-a-half truck had been lifted into the air beneath a wave of sequential explosions as if it were sand being displaced by the crashing surf. Dirt slammed the humvee with the force of a hurricane and struck his view, cracking the glass. In a strange pause, Stephen stared at the steady cracks. The backdrop was a drab brown which he could no longer see through. In the stillness of the momentary millisecond, his own reflection caught his dazed attention in the shattered haze.
His jumbled mind told his face to respond to the reflection with a smile but before the signal could reach his facial muscles the brunt impact of the vehicle's halted connection to the paved road sent a compression through his own body that forced Stephen's head uncontrollably into his own lap, smacking his Kevlar helmet into his vulnerable knees. The humvee stopped moving, and Stephen looked through the cracked windshield to see the truck had been upended onto the shoulder on the complete opposite side of the road. All around him Stephen could hear dull droning like he was sitting in the window seat just over the wings of a jet airplane. Fighting off the blur in his head and a wave of nausea, he began to hear a faint yet rapid cracking sound. Unconsciously, uncontrollable breathing ballooned his cheeks while his heart rapidly drummed through his chest. He blinked hard and focused on the floorboard. In a lucid moment which lasted something less than a second he was able to isolate the cracking noise and recognized the distinct discharge of an AK-47 automatic rifle. The brief clarity was pushed out of his head by a steady ringing in his ears which grew increasingly louder. Stephen took a deep breath and looked out the window to see the truck was lying on its side. Its weatherproof tarp roof lay torn and partially exposed to the horizon; offering no protection to the injured soldiers who had been knocked around when the massive cargo truck flipped across the road. Stephen was groggy and didn't have his bearings. His head was in a disorienting fog while more smoke seemed to appear with every heartbeat; a heartbeat that pounded like a drum inside his head. It seemed to take forever for him to focus long enough to grab the handle of the humvee's door and open it. With his other hand, he reached for his assault rifle and pulled it from the humvee's mounting clip. From the wide open door, he jumped out of the vehicle but failed to control his landing and immediately fell down on all fours. Stephen couldn't shake the ringing in his head as it disrupted his senses. He still heard the gunfire and a few explosions in what seemed to be the far-off distance. Trying to focus on something which could closely represent an ounce of equilibrium, Stephen yelled back into the humvee with an order for anyone who could hear him to start shooting, "Covering-Fire!"
He tried to move forward but an odd pain pulled all of his attention toward his palms. Searing pain ripped through his hands as the consuming asphalt was beginning to burn him. He realized that his fingers were singed and he quickly dropped his rifle and recoiled his hands to his chest. He looked at the ground and had to blink before accepting that the road was almost entirely covered with a lava flow of molten wreckage. Dozens of fires jumped around the road giving it the appearance of a smoldering fire rising from beneath, threatening to consume the entire road at any second.
Suddenly, the open door of the humvee made a high-pitched plucking noise. It sounded like someone had taken a large can off a grocery store shelf and smashed it into the ground. Something whizzed by his ear, and Stephen quickly realized he was being shot at. Ignoring the smoldering ground which was painful to every touch, he snatched the rifle and darted to the rear of the humvee by executing a horribly controlled fall.
Tomlison and Chelp were already there. They were clearly disoriented but they were alive and both had their rifles. "Where's Hooper?" Stephen yelled inches from their faces.
"What? What did you say?" Chelp held his ear and yelled back in confusion, making it apparent that any attempt to verbally communicate with him would be hopeless for the moment.
Tomlison was only a fraction more with it. "I don't know? I didn't see before I got out."
Stephen heard the humvee taking shots more frequently now. He couldn't tell if there was more shooting directed at them or if his hearing was beginning to recover. Stephen's throat was dry and the burning air singed his lungs as he took breaths and began shouting to his two squad mates, "We've gotta get over there and cover the guys in the truck. Get to the other side of the humvee, draw fire. Can you hear me?" He wasn't entirely reassured by the dazed look on his men's faces. "Guys! Cover my ass!"
He watched Tomlison rise and quickly find a target. The corporal began firing three round bursts into a small bath house that appeared to be the source of the insurgent's protection. With two or three buildings behind the bath house there was plenty of opportunity for cover. But the people shooting at them didn't appear to be using the bath house as cover to escape. If anything, those houses were a source for reinforcements. It wasn't a hit-and-run operation like they had heard of with other convoys. Stephen realized these insurgents had no intention of leaving. They were there to wipe out anyone unfortunate enough to be on
this road wearing an American flag on their shoulder. Chelp, not needing words to understand what was going on, flipped his rifle to full-auto, rose on the other side of the humvee and proceeded to deliver an entire magazine's worth of covering fire.
Stephen sprinted away from the humvee into the flames of the open road. Gunfire continued to reign down from the bath house as bullets riddled the back of the truck even after Stephen slid behind it. Using the cover of the truck's broken tailgate he leaned forward and prepared to return fire.
Stephen leaned towards the humvee to yell back at whichever of his men might be engaged but before he could get a word out a heavy volley of gunfire erupted. He looked over and saw a soldier emerging from the exposed side of the truck's wheel base. The man was bleeding from the ears and nose and walking upright. The soldier casually walked across the smoldering road as if he were deep in thought over an afternoon stroll and could not bother to be disturbed with the purposes of gunfire aimed towards him.
Realizing the soldier was concussed and deep in shock; Stephen scrambled to his feet, lunged toward the man and grabbed him by an outstretched but limp arm. He yanked the man back and ran him to the cover of the truck's wheel base. Whether it was the soldier or Stephen briefly exposing himself, they successfully caught more of the insurgent's attention. Another barrage of bullets was focused on Stephen's position and what was left of the truck's smoldering underbelly. Nevertheless, the wrecked truck served as a ricochet point for bullets narrowly missing their target.
Carefully, yet urgently placing the dazed soldier into a seated position behind cover and assuring himself that the man didn't have the strength or wherewithal to get up and wonder off, Stephen crawled back to the edge of the truck and tried to see where the enemy fire was originating from. He took a deep breath to clear his throat and prepared to make another attempt to call out to his men. In somewhat of a counter-instinct, Stephen turned his eyes towards the bathhouse. It was then that he saw him. Their eyes connected in surprise, as if both had simultaneously called out to one another. In the millisecond which followed, Stephen saw the oddest peculiarities about the man. The hair on his head was dark and unkempt. Sideburns were long and straggly. His beard, dark as well, was thin and short. Youth. Stephen could see the scar upon the man’s forehead met no wrinkles. The man couldn’t be out of his twenties. Stephen saw the fear and confusion in the man’s eyes as their stare appeared to transgress the battlefield with a moment of shared humanity. But it was short-lived. Stephen could see the very moment that the man’s eyes abandoned youthful anxiety and overwhelmed with rage.