“Airman Stone, congratulations. You just gave this man permanent brain damage.”
Spencer takes his hands off and leans back. He wipes sweat off his eyebrow with a forearm. “Don’t I need to make sure he has an airway—”
“You do. But did you notice that our friend here has clear fluid in his ears? What might that clear fluid be, Mr. Stone?”
“Aw, crap.”
“Not quite, Airman Stone. Guess again.”
“Spinal fluid, sir. It could be spinal fluid.” The other members of his team stand back.
“Correct! Spinal fluid. And if our friend has spinal fluid in his ears, what does that tell us?”
“He could have damage to his skull.”
“That’s right! Poor old Rescue Randy here could well have a skull fracture. That tube of yours would have gone right through it. So, to recap: you just walked up to a guy who was already having, if we’re being honest, a pretty bad day to begin with, and you shoved a piece of silicone into his brain. Congratulations, Airman Stone, you just lobotomized your patient.”
And so it was that an inanimate man, a pretend trauma victim, solidified Spencer’s understanding of all emergency medicine’s most counterintuitive notions.
A man might need to breathe, but you can’t just give him an airway.
A man might need to breathe, but if he’s bleeding sometimes you have to deal with that first.
A man might be bleeding out, but you can’t always just stick a tourniquet on.
Spencer learned of the human body as an intricate, beautiful, elaborate system of ways to end itself. Cure this, destroy that. You need a tourniquet to stop someone from bleeding out, but if a tourniquet’s been on too long, you get necrosis—tissue death. That means that by trying to keep a patient from dying of blood loss you can give them an irreparable limb infection.
Or if the injury is at a juncture, like in the armpit or the groin, you can’t very well tourniquet that, because what do you tie it around?
Or, the trickiest of all, what do you do about a wound above the shoulders? A head wound, or a bad cut on the neck. They say “put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding,” but what are you going to do, ball up a towel, or a T-shirt, and shove it into someone’s neck? You can’t very well put a tourniquet there, because a tourniquet on the neck is the same thing as a noose. So if you’ve got a patient bleeding out of the neck then . . . then he wasn’t really clear on what to do. Surely in combat treating neck wounds must be important, because soldiers wear helmets on their heads and flak jackets across their chests; it’s their necks that are unprotected. So what do you do?
He wondered.
You say a prayer and hope something creative occurs to you.
12.
By the time he got to his first overseas assignment, Spencer knew his luck had started to bend in a different direction. He was stationed in the Azores, a string of volcanic islands off Portugal. The airbase felt incidental, an afterthought plopped down on an archipelago of nine verdant, dramatic islands. It felt like being in a Hawaii, or some other island paradise, except that there were a few people in uniform between him and the water. Even the airstrip itself fell off down a dramatic cliff and into the Atlantic.
His shifts were easy, one day on, two days off, and though there wasn’t a ton to do on the island, he had freedom, and the time to take advantage of it.
He wanted to go out and explore; no one told him no, but most of the cars were stick shift. No problem, he had time to learn. And because he never used vacation days—he had plenty of leisure time; he never felt the need to—they began adding up.
The base was quiet, and as far as he knew, had been for a while. It had been built to support a little-known weapon in World War II that Spencer remembered learning about back in history class with Alek and Anthony: the blimp. The US Navy dreamed up blimps as a way to fight German U-boats that began terrorizing allied ships in the Mediterranean.1 But it was a long trip from North America to the Strait of Gibraltar, so when the navy sent its first airships across the Atlantic, they needed a stopover, and this was it. They stopped here, on this strip right in front of Spencer, on their way to the fight. On their way to an air station down in northern Morocco.2
But now, not much happened, so Spencer had time for hobbies, and driving stick wasn’t the only skill he got to hone on the Portuguese island. It turned out the base had a small jujitsu community. There was an aerobics room with a wall of mirrors on one side and an east-facing window on the other, so you could either watch yourself, or you could look out over the Atlantic while you fought.
Spencer found himself welcomed into a close-knit community of practitioners, both American and Portuguese—people from a different country but with whom Spencer bonded over the form. A lieutenant colonel named John was the highest-ranking belt, so he’d taken on the role of instructor—a fact that filled Spencer with confidence, since John was small and, Spencer was certain, not nearly as strong as him. Spencer looked forward to the first fight. And just as he expected, when the two met on the mat it ended quickly. Except that instead of Spencer submitting John, it was the small instructor who was calm and triumphant while Spencer was left panting and humbled.
But that was the thing about jujitsu, what had drawn him in back when he first started following his brother to classes. A small man could submit you if he knew the form better. When you looked at a stranger across the street, jujitsu reminded you how little you knew about him or her; it worked as a kind of block against making assumptions. That skinny guy with a limp might be a black belt. He could defeat you in hand-to-hand combat if you took him for granted; you just couldn’t know. The first roll with John was a reminder. After that, Spencer kept fighting him, kept losing, but kept lasting just a little longer each time.
Then, after two months, he made a series of critical realizations.
The first was that his progress against John was only partially his own improvement. John was letting him last longer and longer: the better Spencer got, the more the smaller man let Spencer exhaust himself while believing he was in the lead. John would stay calm, go with the flow, go where Spencer yanked him, wait until Spencer was winded, and then twist the whole fight in his favor.
Spencer was still trying to use his size and strength, and John was trying to show him that in jujitsu, your body was secondary, incidental to your skill. A large man could be quick, a small man strong.
When Spencer was on the mat with other practitioners, he could sense John watching him closely, nodding along as Spencer improved, learned to stop trying to overpower people, and instead conserve energy, use technique, use leverage, twist physics in his favor.
In the third month, the matches began to even out. “Dude, gross!” John would yell, dodging drops of Spencer’s sweat while Spencer tried not to laugh.
“Sorry! What do you want me to do?”
It was then, with the wily little instructor, that Spencer learned the second lesson that had been eluding him. It had to do with one of the fundamental techniques in jujitsu, the way many matches ended. Hadaka jime, “the naked strangle” or “rear naked choke”: a bicep and forearm around an opponent’s neck, the other hand behind the opponent’s head, pressing together and clamping the carotid artery. If you’ve got the carotid pinched, blood to the brain stops and the opponent goes to sleep in seconds, or realizes he will, and submits. You win.
When he first tried to choke opponents out, they responded predictably, wriggling and shifting so that even if he thought he had them under control, he couldn’t keep their neck in position. He tried different ways of putting his arms around his opponent, but the thing he was missing was that his arms weren’t the only problem. They weren’t even the biggest problem.
The counterintuitive notion he’d yet to figure out was that if you were trying to submit someone, just as important as getting your arms in position around their neck was getting your legs in position around their lower body. You had to use your feet as “hooks”
to pull your opponent’s body back and keep it still, so he couldn’t wriggle and loosen the choke. It started with the legs. You could be the stronger of the two, you could be squeezing with all your might, but if you didn’t have your feet hooked inside your opponent’s thighs, controlling his lower body, he could twist and squirm and keep you from clamping his neck firmly enough to stop the blood flow.
John noticed the flaw in Spencer’s technique, pointed it out when Spencer was rolling with others, exploited it when he was rolling with John. Spencer spent hours on the mat, trying and failing to subdue men smaller than him (and sweating all over them in the process). There were times he thought he had it but couldn’t get his opponent to submit, and with John, if there was ever space, John found it, exploited it, freed himself from Spencer’s hold by twisting his legs and digging his chin down into Spencer’s arm, boring a bruise and wriggling room for blood flow.
It kept happening, Spencer getting opponents down to that last step, and the opponent twisting while Spencer’s Portuguese and American training partners yelled encouragement.
“Spence, you don’t have it, line his chin up with your elbow. And get your hooks in!”
“Position before submission!”
“Spencer, Spencer! Go for his legs! It’s not just the arms, it’s the legs!”
“Get your hooks in, Spence!”
Four months into the tour, Spencer finally submitted John, following John’s own guidance. It was a surge of confidence. Just as he’d learned you couldn’t take for granted defeating anyone because they could be more skilled than you, so he learned you could beat the highest-ranking fighter around if you trusted your training.
He went back to the fire station—rebuilt just a few years before; another perk of the post here on these islands—connected to the Internet, and typed up a message. “Alek, I’m getting good at this!”
Alek was five and a half hours ahead, at his classified base somewhere in Afghanistan. Spencer wasn’t sure if Alek would be asleep or lifting weights in the MWR, the base rec room, but sent the message anyway.
Spencer’s screen lit up with a reply. “Good at what, like checking rashes?”
“No, I’ve been doing jujitsu. I’m finally starting to figure this shit out. I’m not getting my ass beat every match.”
“Ah. You’re lucky, man. Nothing to do here. I’m like a security guard. I’m a mall cop.”
“Well, adventure starts soon.”
The idea of a European tour with his best friend still felt more like a fantasy than a plan, but Spencer was beginning to plot out cities. It was only two months until he’d cash in his leave and set out for a three-week trip of a lifetime. Alek was going to have money and time too; his deployment was going to end just before Spencer’s leave would begin, so it lined up perfectly. They’d walk through all the sites from their middle school history classes together.
Alek had invited someone else on his deployment, because three seemed like the right number and they’d save money on rooms, but wasn’t having much luck. Spencer asked, “Did Strasser decide?”
“Yeah, he can’t go. I’m asking Solon, but I don’t think he’s gonna have enough money.”
“Okay. Well let me know. Getting excited, man.”
“You have no idea. I’m desperate to get out of here. But I still think we need to park in Germany for a while.”
“Yeah, it’s just that—there’s so much I want to see, you know? This’ll probably be my last chance to do something like this. What if I never get to Europe again? I know you have that girl there . . .”
“It’s not just that. Don’t want to be moving every day, I want to soak it in a little.”
“If you just want to stay in Germany that’s cool, man, just do that.”
“Nah, it’s okay. I’ll come with you. I want to go to other places in Europe anyway.”
Spencer wasn’t convinced. By now he knew Alek was only intent on Germany, Switzerland, the places he’d traced his family roots to. And Spencer knew there was a girl in Germany. But for some reason Alek seemed to be trying to put on a good performance, to convince Spencer he’d changed his mind.
“All right,” Spencer said. “Well, we don’t have to decide right now, let me know if Solon comes through. What else is going on down there?
“Literally nothing. I just need to get into some action here, I can’t just sit on my ass anymore. I’m like praying that we get attacked. I’m going crazy.”
“Aw, that sucks. I’m having a frigging blast over here. Drinking beers, hanging on the beach, swimming in the ocean. This is the life!”
“You piece of shit. All right, it’s midnight here. I gotta go to bed.”
“Hang in, brother. Later.”
And Alek was gone.
Spencer had an idea. If part of the reason for the trip was to see in person what their middle school history teacher had taught them about, there was another person who might be interested. He checked the time back in Sacramento and figured it was maybe late enough that Anthony would be awake. Worth a try.
ANTHONY’S FACE CAME ON SCREEN.
“What’s up, bro?”
“What are you doing, man?”
“The morning routine, you know.”
“All you ever do is watch SportsCenter.”
“Pshhht. Not just SportsCenter. I can’t miss First Take either. His & Hers every day too. That’s my religion. Wait, hold up a minute.” The image blurred, Spencer saw pixels move, rearrange, Anthony’s face resolved again. “So, any action over there?”
“No, but check this out.” Spencer unplugged his laptop and panned it around slowly so Anthony could see.
“Dammmmnn. It’s like paradise. You get to go off base at all?”
“All the time. Actually, I got an idea for you. We’re gonna do a big blowout trip.”
“In Portugal?”
“No, man, like everywhere. All through Europe. I think I’ll have a few weeks saved up by the end of the summer, maybe almost a month, so we’re gonna do a big tour.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me and Alek.”
“You should, man. You may get posted anywhere after this, right? You could be back in Texas.”
“Yeah, but I’m saying you should come meet me.”
“Where do you want to meet?” It was taking Anthony a minute. “Wait—you mean like meet you in Europe?”
“Yeah, son! This’ll be my last hurrah. You have the summer off, don’t you? When else are you gonna go to Europe?”
“I don’t have money like that. I mean, one day I will.”
“I know you will. That’s why—look, here’s what you should do. Get a credit card. You’ll pay it back.”
“Man, if your mom could hear you talking like that. I wouldn’t even qualify for a high enough limit.”
“Just try. Take out a credit card. Do whatever you’ve got to do.”
The more Spencer thought about it, the more certain he was Anthony should come. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. When have you not been down for an epic-ass trip? Remember Tahoe?” Right before basic training he and Anthony had gone to a cabin for three days. They were finally twenty-one so they picked up some Coors on the way, rented jet skis, and buzzed along the lakeshore looking at mansions with tanning beds, and four-wheelers out front, pretending to be prospective home buyers. “We haven’t had an adventure forever. I have a credit card, and I run it up, but I make my payments on time.”
“Yeah, but you have those military paychecks.” Anthony wasn’t arguing so forcefully. Spencer knew he just needed to push a little more.
“Just get a credit card, man. Go on Credit Karma and see what you qualify for.”
Anthony was silent for a moment. “You know—it’s funny. Literally just yesterday one of the guys in the store room, out of the blue, started telling me how I needed to be building up credit.”
Spencer smiled. They hung up, but as the days went on, he started getting messages from Anthony,
whenever he logged on to Wi-Fi at the firehouse.
“Coworker at store room was telling me about frequent flyer miles.”
Another one: “Logged on to Credit Karma. They recommended this card based on my credit and it randomly happened to be a card for traveling. Bonus points for airfare and stuff. It’s meant to be!”
Then, one day in May, Spencer was checking his email in the firehouse after another shift, when his computer started chiming with an incoming call from Anthony, who had started yelling before his face came up on the screen.
“—it, oh shit! I got it! I’m approved! It’s a ten thousand dollar limit!”
“Are you serious? Ten thousand? My limit’s not even that high!”
“So, I guess we’re going?”
“We’re fucking going!”
13.
A FEW WEEKS LATER, Anthony’s messages became less enthusiastic. It was as if some sense had come out of nowhere to change his mind about the whole idea of Europe. He was getting cold feet, starting to worry, and the trip was beginning to wobble, threatening to fall apart.
Once Anthony signed on, Alek had gone back to his original plan. He’d stay in Germany and the Alps where his family had lived. He said he’d still try and meet up, at some point, but Spencer wasn’t hopeful. Alek now seemed intent on doing his own thing. So Anthony had replaced Alek, and now Anthony was thinking about dropping.
“What are you worried about, man?
“I guess homesickness. Remember how I went to Cabo that time for spring break?” It was the only time he’d been out of the country, and he’d been so depressed he didn’t even want to see people. “That was five days, and we’re going for almost a month.” Plus he’d budgeted $4,000 for the trip; the ticket was almost $2,000, and after buying all the luggage and travel gear he needed, he was almost at his limit, before even paying for a single hotel.
“Look, it’s just money.” Spencer figured maybe he could change Anthony’s mood by refocusing on the plan, start thinking about what they were actually going to do instead of what Anthony was going to leave behind. “So look, it’s going to be a big loop, right? Italy, Germany, France, and then the big blowout in Spain.”
The 15:17 to Paris Page 7