by Kay Hadashi
Nurse Ito hurried out to fetch Josh, already dressed in hospital garb. Trinh was just coming back from lunch then.
“Big ol’ herd of nurses waiting out there,” Trinh said, coming in. “From the ICU, ER, OR. Even ladies from the cafeteria are out there.”
“Good for them,” Melanie said, panting through heavy contractions.
“How’s everything in here?” Josh asked when he took his position at her shoulder.
“Not a good time for discussion, Josh. Just hold my hand, okay?”
“Really good time to push right now, Melanie,” Chapman said from where she was waiting.
Pushing as hard as she could, Melanie swore.
“Okay, the next time you feel a contraction hit, put some of that temper into pushing.”
Melanie swore again, this time directly at her OB.
“Not the first time I’ve been called that. You need to push with all your might.”
“I’m trying to. But my leg, it’s so painful. I can’t take it being up in stirrups like that.”
“Come on, Melanie. You can do this,” Trinh said.
Nurse Ito joined Chapman, watching for the baby. “Push, Melanie! Just push with everything, right now!”
“You can do this, Melanie,” Josh said. He was right next to her, wiping sweat from her face. “Baby Sofia is almost here.”
“Push, Melanie, push!”
“It’s time now, Melanie,” Trinh said. “One last push.”
She bore down, fighting the burning pain in her back and leg.
“Okay, that’s it! Here’s baby!”
Melanie heard a whimper, followed by crying. She lifted her head to look down below. Dr. Chapman was just lifting the baby to set on Melanie’s chest, the cord still attached.
“Just one little unexpected complication, Melanie.”
“Oh no. What?”
“Sophia might not be a good name for a son.”
“Son?” When Melanie looked, the baby was already peeing a tiny stream. “A son! Josh! We have a son.”
Nurse Ito quickly took the baby away as soon as the cord was cut. Trinh joined her to wash the baby.
“We got a boy after all, Melanie,” Josh whispered to her, still wiping sweat, and now tears from her face.
“Yeah, a boy. Tay was right all along.”
“Apgars are nine and ten, Doctor,” Nurse Ito said, while she swaddled the baby. “Weight is good and he’ll be tall like his grandfather.”
“Great. Let’s get Melanie’s legs down from the stirrups.”
“I forgot they were up. You’re sure Everingham didn’t do the epidural anyway?”
“Not at all.”
Dr. Chapman gave Melanie’s belly a quick rub and then examined her legs and feet. “Do you feel me pinching you?”
“No.” Melanie had the baby back by now, but looked at what Chapman was doing. “I don’t feel anything in my left leg at all.”
“Trinh, can you see if there’s a neurosurgeon available? Or even one of the ER docs,” Chapman said.
“On it,” Trinh said, already holding the phone to her ear.
“What’s going on?” Josh asked.
“My legs are numb,” Melanie told him.
“They’re supposed to be. You had that epidural thing.”
“I didn’t. We decided against it.”
“Carlson is on his way,” Trinh said hanging up the phone. Dr. Carlson was a neurosurgeon at the hospital, somebody responsible for diagnosis and treatment of brain and spine problems.
Without waiting for anyone to tell her, Melanie began feeding the baby while the small delivery room exploded with activity. Dr. Chapman watched over vital signs and massaged Melanie’s belly, while Nurse Ito stood near the bed, watching over the baby.
“Trinh, can you get Tay for me and bring her in?”
A moment after Trinh left the room, Thérèse burst through the door looking as if on a mission. “Where’s Sophia?”
“Hey, little one. You were right about Sophia being a boy. We need to think of another name.”
While the girl gave it some thought, the room door opened and several nurses came in followed by Lailanie and Duane, making the room crowded. Dottie was at the front of the pack, swooning over the baby, and congratulating mother and father. Addie remained at the back, smiling, but with wet eyes.
“Okay, before we go any further, the name on the birth certificate?” asked Nurse Ito.
Melanie looked at Josh for an answer, who seemed close to passing out with all the noise and confusion. When she saw Addie at the back of the room, still trying to compose herself, she knew there was only one name.
“Kenny.”
“Kenny?” Josh asked.
Melanie nodded her head in the direction of Addie, who was now in a full-blown cry, but smiling through it.
“Okay, Kenneth,” said Nurse Ito, writing the name on a name band.
“No, just Kenny. No one will ever call him Kenneth, and Kenny is so much friendlier.”
“Middle name?”
“Jack.”
“Kenny Jack Kato-Strong,” said Nurse Ito, finishing her writing.
“Sorry, but it should be Kenny Jack Francis Strong-Kato. Since he’s a boy, he should have his father’s name first.”
As Nurse Ito filled out name bands to put on the baby, Melanie, and Josh, Dr. Carlson came into the room. “Sorry, I must have the wrong room.”
Trinh pulled him back in. “No, believe it or not, this is the right place.”
Everyone was shooed out by Nurse Ito, except Trinh and Josh. While Melanie fed the baby from her other breast, Dr. Chapman filled Carlson in on what the problem was with Melanie’s back. He did a quick neurologic exam, mostly on her legs.
“Yes, well, I know this is a huge moment. You just want to spend time with your baby, but I think we should get some scans of your back, at the very least, X-rays.”
“What do you think the problem is?” Melanie asked, handing the baby off to Nurse Ito, who cuddled him for a moment before putting him in the incubator.
“I think you’re right about there being a disc extrusion, but it goes beyond that. There’s so much pressure on that nerve root right now, it’s at risk of permanent failure. If my suspicions are right, I should operate as soon as possible to decompress and relieve the pressure.”
“Today?”
“As soon as the scans are done. As you know, if you lose that nerve root, your ability to walk will be lost. This isn’t simply a slipped disc, but more like an injury suffered in a car accident and a fractured vertebra.”
Josh pressed his cheek against Melanie’s as she began to cry.
“I just want to be with my son.”
“Mel, you need to think of the future,” Trinh said. “Just get the scans and have the surgery, if you need it. Kenny will still be here later.”
“Okay.” Melanie tossed aside the box of tissues she was given. “But I want to hold Kenny again. Josh, you’re staying with Kenny. Trinh, send all those people home and then you’re coming with me.”
When the nurse bent over to take Kenny from Melanie one last time, she smiled and leaned in close to whisper. “That was very kind what you did, naming him Kenny.”
Melanie looked at the smiling face of the nurse, settling on her eyes. There was something familiar about them, something motherly, eyes she’d looked into every day of her life before leaving home.
***
After an emergency scan of her back, Dr. Carlson came back with the films and the results. Melanie couldn’t read his expression.
“There’s good news, and there’s bad news. The good is that your nerve root looks intact. The bad is that you’re way overdue for surgery. And like I said earlier, if I don’t do it today, right now, you’re at serious risk of permanent and irreversible damage.”
After getting a primer on what he was going to do, and reading the consent he gave her to sign, the exact same surgical consent she gave to hundreds of patients each year, sh
e signed. She was quickly into the OR where Dr. Everingham was waiting to be her anesthesiologist.
Carlson took her hand just before the anesthesiologist started giving her medications and gas.
“Trinh is here to be your nurse, and I’ll get that disc out,” the surgeon said. His voice had changed from a masculine baritone to a soft and familiar one.
Melanie’s mind swirled from the meds washing through it. “Mom?”
“Yeah, Honey. You’re going to be fine. This might take me a little while, but you’ll be as good as new when we’re done.”
Melanie barely heard the last of her mother’s words before her mind swirled off to sleep.
Once she was asleep and positioned on her belly, sterile surgical drapes were attached to her back covering most of her body, and the team got started.
“I didn’t get a complete story of how she hurt her back originally?” Dr. Carlson said.
Trinh took over the explanation. “When we were in the Air Force together, she was a medic in Search and Rescue. They often flew missions in helicopters, and they didn’t always go well. Like she always says, helicopters are flying shoeboxes, but the wings are the propellers, and those don’t always stay on.”
“She said something about being in a hard landing?”
“Probably more than one, for as much as they flew. A hard landing in a helicopter is anything but. Any time a helicopter lands bottom side down, it’s called a landing, no matter how much damage is done. What the rest of us might call a crash, the military calls a hard landing. The only time they call it a crash is if some other part of the helicopter hits before the bottom. That’s how she has explained it to me.”
“She was the real deal, then?” he asked.
“She was as studly as any of the men. She had to be, just to cope with all the brutality and stress of Special Forces. But you’d never know that now, especially when Thérèse came along. She’s taken after her mother.”
“How so?” Carlson asked.
“She’s at peace with the world, and all she wants is peace in the world. When the rest of us feel like slapping some jerk for whatever reason, that’s the farthest thing from Melanie’s mind. Just like her mother.”
***
It was winter on the Korean Peninsula when Staff Sergeant Melanie Kato, Search and Rescue medic, stood in the open door of the rescue helicopter. They were flying low, barely over the treetops, on a night mission to rescue the crew of another helicopter that had gone down in the Demilitarized Zone that separated North and South Korea. They hadn’t known until airborne that the downed bird was in fact a small spy helo used by the CIA for surveillance. For late-night so-called ‘dark ops’, they would ordinarily have a second support helicopter go with them, probably an Apache attack helo, since their only weapons were two outboard .50 caliber machine guns used only in self-defense situations, and their rifles. This time, they only had another SAR helo in high orbit, carrying their officer in command of the operation. Logistics aside, all Melanie wanted was a clear area to land somewhere near the downed craft and no combatants to deal with. Clinging to a strap, she stood in the door, watching the landscape below.
The crew chief held up three fingers. “Three minutes to gear drop!” he shouted over the heavy drone of the twin turbine engines and rotors.
She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. Their helicopter would drop to a low hover and they would push out crates of her medical gear and jump out before the helo would lift up and bank away, waiting to be called back again. She had two bins that needed to be shoved out the door, followed by her leaping in the dark, hoping she would land on her feet without breaking a leg or arm. The worst thing that could happen to a rescue team was to lose their medic.
It was complete dark as the helo began its vertical descent. She could see the area around downed craft below them, a cornfield now fallow with patches of snow in ruts, a few small fires still smoldering in the wrecked cockpit of the small Cayuse. When the descent light turned on, it illuminated a small patch of the ground. At thirty feet up, the crew chief began hollering, swinging his arm in a circle.
“Go, go, go! Get your shit off my bird!”
She shoved her two bins overboard, watching as they hit solid ground.
Her earbud crackled to life with a message from their captain, who was in the other helicopter that was in high orbit.
“Swede and Clocker out first,” Captain Collins called over their radio comms. “Set up a wide perimeter. Poi Dog, you go out right after Zito. Just get the Cayuse crew onto litters and back in the Bad Karma. Don’t screw around wasting time. Over.”
“Roger that,” Melanie said into her mouthpiece.
It was the same message as always, don’t screw around on the ground, and do most of her treatment on the deck of the Bad Karma, their rescue helicopter, on the way back to base.
“Clocker, set enough munitions to blow the Cayuse. Light it up once you’re off the ground.”
“Roger that,” he said into his mike.
“I’m giving you ten on the hard deck before you’re up and away, Poi Dog. Out.”
Melanie didn’t get the chance to respond. The rest of the SAR crew began crowding the doorways on either side of the helicopter, waiting for their signal to disembark. She kept her hands on the backs of her teammates, watching the sky around them. If one helo could be shot down, there was every reason to think it could happen again.
They were still ten feet up, winter ice crystals from the ground swirling through the air. In two more feet, they would be told to leap.
Interrupting the crew chief was a yellow streak through the air.
“Rocket! Incoming rocket!”
An alarm sounded with a wheep wheep wheep blare. As the helicopter lifted and banked, the team scrambled for the safety of the interior, reaching for anything they could grab.
“Brace! Brace!”
Melanie reached for a strap but missed it.
The rocket hit the tail end of the fuselage but didn’t detonate, just tumbling through the air. The evasive maneuvers of the pilot had averted disaster, but the helicopter was barely under control. Still trying to grab anything, she got a hold of the flight suit of the crew chief, but didn’t have enough fabric in her hand. When the craft continued to spin out of control, she tumbled backward.
Two more alarms began to sound, but Melanie barely heard them. Instead, she was dropping through the air, and she wasn’t sure how far she was going to fall before she hit. Her training kicked in, and she turned onto her side as she fell.
When she hit, it was with her rump first. The jolt sent a flash of pain up through her spine into her ribs. She’d also hit her head.
She wasn’t sure if she was waking from being unconscious for a moment because it was so dark. Even through the pain, she unhooked her rifle and took up a defensive position. All that kept her conscious was the stabbing pain in her back.
She listened to the chatter of calls between her pilots and that of the command helo in a high hover. The situation was barely under control, while the Bad Karma continued to spin.
“Rescue medic! Rescue medic! Come in, Poi Dog!” her CO called.
Melanie heard the thumps of her teammates hitting the ground nearby. Duane started calling her op name. “Dog! You okay? Where are you, Dog?”
“I’m okay, Zito. Twenty feet to your three o’clock.” She reached for her mike button. “Poi Dog on the deck, kicking dirt. Out.”
Once her team had a defensive perimeter set up, Melanie went to the burnt-out shell of what had been the Cayuse helicopter. She found the remains of the pilots, the only crew on board.
“Op command, this is Poi Dog. The mission is recovery, not rescue. Repeat, two dead squirrels, over.”
“Roger that, Dog. Bag them up, call your bird back, and get out. Clocker, set your charges. Command, out.” Their CO came back on. “Be advised, we have two bogies closing fast, twenty minutes out. You need to be up and away in ten.”
“Roger that,�
�� she said into her mike. Working in near pitch-black, Melanie called for the Bad Karma to return to her location, and to maintain a low hover while her crew got the bodies of the two CIA operatives loaded for the trip home. She had a long bag open and rolled a burned body into it. “Zito, does Collins not realize we could work faster if he didn’t interrupt us all the time with pointless calls?”
Zito kept his rifle level while he scanned the terrain around them. He was her ‘six’ on missions, the one responsible for watching her back while she did her work as a medic. He was also from Maui, and they had formed an easy friendship during training. “He has to do something to earn his paycheck.”
She opened another body bag. “Gettin’ tired of this stuff. Ever think about what you’re gonna do once you’re back home?”
“Get married,” he said.
“To a girl?”
“To the prettiest one on Maui.”
“Brah, that’s me.”
“Not when you’re messin’ with dead guys. I thought you were going to some big, fancy doctor school?”
“Like I can afford med school with what the government pays us.”
“You save every penny you earn.”
“And six years of military wages will just about cover one year of med school tuition, maybe two if I’m homeless and don’t eat.”
Their headsets crackled to life with a message from their CO. “Cut the chatter and get off the deck.”
“Roger that,” Melanie said, zipping closed the second body bag. She and Zito dragged them from the burnt craft to an open landing zone and signaled for the Bad Karma to descend. “Clocker, we’re clear. Are your charges set?”
“Wired and armed. Det set for five minutes. We need to hustle.”
Melanie heard the whining of an animal in the dark. “Anybody else hear that?”
The team scanned the area. “Probably a dog smelled dead bodies. Came to take a look.”
Melanie heard it rummaging through the wreckage. “Can’t leave the dog to get blown up.”
“What is it with you and animals?” Swede asked. “It’s a stray. Who cares?”
“Not gonna let it die like that.” Melanie found a couple of stones and threw them at the dog to scare it away from the wrecked helo that was due to be blown to bits in less than four minutes. “Hey! Get out of there!”