“So how are you?” asked the email.  “Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

It’s one of the inevitably simple things that takes you by surprise, much like a grenade.  Very simple.  Heat applied to combustible material .  Too easy.  But the ramifications of pulling the pin, well, that’s not so simple.

There is the obligatory reflex answer of “not bad” snapped off without thinking.  And that is true, but it doesn’t give and specificity.  Some detail is probably wanted by the questioner.  A noncommittal answer is only going to invite follow-up questions, more probing this time, possibly with the accusation of being sheltered and withdrawn.

I fished out a cigarette and lit up.  The cuffs on my uniform were still rolled up to hide the blood stains on the cuff.  This morning, it had been a fresh clean uniform, hopefully the last for a while until I got the dirty ones to the laundry, then to be packed up until we move out of this base.  The stains had seeped through though and could be seen faintly still.  I looked down.  On my thighs there was blood, someone else’s, mixed with dirt and salt and still damp with sweat.

A reply of “I’m dehydrated and covered with someone else’s blood” is also a true statement.  For me, for most of us that don’t hang out in the air conditioning sipping fruit smoothies, this is no big deal, a simple recitation of observations.  But to transmit this to the outside world would be a bad idea since there is a lack of knowledge and context of these things.  This is simply real life, as real as it gets, life in the Third World away from the shopping malls and suburbia.  Most people cannot, or just do not, want to handle that.  Putting them on full-on blast with an answer is just not an option.

Screw this, I thought.  I had jumped on the Internet quickly to check my email one last time before cutting the connection and pulling out all the wires so that I could clear housing.  I have to clean up and get done.  Waffling over an email from left field was going to hold me up and waste time.

*click*

It’s the stream of a motion blur that swirls around til you drown…

This morning has been easy enough.  Pat down people, search them, banter in a mix of Arabic and English with the regulars.  Then the normal slack period and slow trickle until lunchtime.  Patrols come in, patrols go out. 

There was some scheduled maintenance for the afternoon.  Those due an afternoon off, like myself, were going to stick around to service trucks, generators, and other equipment i preparation for the new unit taking over.  No problem, we bang it out, and we go home.

I walked into the Command Post and dropped my ruck and armor.  The struggling air conditioner was a welcome relief from the 120 degree humidity outside.  “So what do we have going on?  What do we have to do?” I asked the NCO In Charge.

“Well, you’re going to work with Sergeant Robert until he’s done with you.”

“Okay, we have what?  Generators, trucks, forklift, the C-Vehicle.  Anything else?”

“Well, wait until after lunch, then we’ll see what Robert has.”

I don’t wait until after lunch.  I’m not hungry.  I am tired and would like to go.  Now. Waiting around for specific details was crap.  Give me a task and an end state and turn me loose.  Damn it.

“Cee Pee, this is Checkpoint Alpha.  We have a pickup coming down the lane with lights flashing,” the radio crackled.  What the hell?  I just came from that checkpoint.  What’s going on?

“Turn the camera on it and let’s see what what we got,” someone said.  We were all glued to the screen.

“Cee Pee, this is Alpha.  They’re coming kinda slow, this might be some bleeders.” 

The radio operator called down to Alpha. “Alpha, Cee Pee, can you see what’s in the bed of the truck?”

“Negative.”

“Roger.  Checkpoint Delta, this is Cee Pee.  Can you see into the bed of this truck coming down the lane?”

“Cee Pee, this is Delta.  It looks like there might be some people in the back, but I can’t really make them out from this distance.”

The pickup was clearly in the lane on the screen now, the cab blocking a clean view of the bed, only some heads poking up and frantically bobbing.  The front passenger door opened and a policeman jumped out.  From the neighboring fields, a few people stared running in towards the truck.  “Okay, we got bodies. Get that camera off the truck.  I don’t want Base Command to see this shit,” said the NCO In Charge.

Doc Luscious sprinted for the door from his position of radio operator and I was behind him by half a step.  The armor was thrown back on in one fluid move. Doc scooped up his aid bag without breaking stride and bolted for the ambulance outside.  I was hot on his heels with Cool Breeze piling out the Command Post donning his armor behind me.   Doc heaved his aid bag on the hood of the ambulance and started the engine.  I scrambled into the passenger side and jumped in the middle.  Cool Breeze, about twice my size hopped in the passenger seat.

Doc stomped on the gas and we flew down the lane in a cloud of dust.  Loose rocks from the gravel bed pinged on the floor of the ambulance as Doc steered around the Jersey Barriers along the lane.  I started pulling out blue Nitrile gloves, pairing them off, passing some to Cool Breeze, one for me, putting a spare in my cargo pocket just in case.  I held a pair for Doc for when we stopped.  The stones crunched under the tires and the floor continued to pop from the ones being kicked up.

Brush away all the memories. Keep the cries curbside…

In my room, I was cleaning up to clear out of housing.  My bags were stacked on my bed, a mop and  broom in the corner.  I had taken off my uniform top, my tee-shirt still being soaked from the day’s heat.  In front of the air conditioner were two bottles of water that I had taken in from outside and added some mix into for electrolytes and flavor. 

I went outside to the pallet of water that was in the next housing pod.  Our First Sergeant could not be bothered with dropping off a pallet of water in our housing area.  He instead left it at the TOC, preferring that we walk the kilometer or so for water.  The reason was that if he got some for our housing area, other units would come by and swipe it.  Thus, he would be supplying everyone with water.  But, in reality, we were the only ones without water, so we did all the swiping.  And besides, what is so bad about providing other soldiers with water?

Halfway across the parking lot to my destination, I pulled out my lighter.  On my hands was a clump of red stuff, thick and granulated.  Oh, shit.  Did I forget to clean up?  Miss something?  I had worn gloves, right?  Where the hell did this come from?

It took me a second to figure it out, but it came from the powder mix I used for the water.  I had used a red powder, some kind of cherry or cranberry. 

Maybe I should avoid using red mixes in the future.  I don’t need this kind of confusion.

I’ll be ashing on the images that have all been caught inside…

We came up on Checkpoint Alpha and jumped out.  The inbound pickup was pulling in the gate and off to the side, out of the main lane, partway into the search lot.  In the bed was a mass of people, screaming, yelling, noise.  Shit, this was going to be a doozy.  Four, maybe five.  Women in black abayas were wailing shrilly making a racket.  Men in bloody dishdashas, the man-dresses, were hollering and screaming.  Doc peeled off, threw open the ambulance doors, and ran up with a stretcher that he pulled out.  Other soldiers were coming up now, one with another stretcher.  He put it down on the ground buy the bed of the truck.  Doc tossed his down on the ground next to it.

Iraqi Policemen came out the front of the truck.  The men in the back started pulling their wounded down.  One was limp, manhandled down in a supine position. Another was holding his arm.  The rest seemed fine at first sight.

The one holding his arm was standing at the bed of the truck.  He was staring at his friend being carried by six or seven other people.  Sobs and wails from him cut the air.  I took him by the shoulders.  “Habibi,” I told him.  “Lie down.  Lie down here,” pushing him towards the nearest stretcher.  His friends put the other body on it as I was cajoling him towards it.  Immediately, I put him on the other one, with a little more gusto this time.

He wouldn’t lie down, preferring to sit.  Doc was checking the other people, doing a quickie count of what the other injuries might be.  I looked at this guy in front of me.  He had a hole in the front of his forearm.  Blood was all over his shirt.  Tied above the hole was a shamagh, not quite tight enough to be a tourniquet.  “Any other wounds?” I asked him.  He was awake and alert, staring at his friend on the next stretcher.  He wasn’t paying any attention to me.  His breathing was good, though, which is a good thing.  He could certainly make enough noise, so there was not likely any perforation of the lungs somewhere. 

I looked at his dishdasha.  Other than spattered blood, there were no holes.  Nothing was on his legs.  I turned over his arm with the tourniquet and he screamed in pain.  On the back of his wrist was a three inch gash, a chunk taken out clear down to the bone.  Ligaments were visible with bits of meat hanging out.  Blood oozed thick and tarry, a minimum of fluid plasma.  The blood was bright red, in clots, moving like honey, a byproduct of his chronic dehydration.

Running up his arm, there was another hole in his bicep on that arm.  Feeling and looking around on the backside, there was no exit wound.  Very little blood was coming from this wound.  Simple gunshot wound.

Glancing over at the other patient, I saw him unattended, lying on his back motionless, staring at the sky.  The one in front of me could wait.  He was going to last another five minutes.  The other one needed attention and needed it now.

I sprinted over to him and before I knelt down, I could see part of his brain was hanging out his left side.  He was completely unresponsive.  “Hey, brother, are you with me?” I asked in English.  No, he wasn’t.

There was another dark stain on his left chest where a bullet punched into his lung.  He was still breathing, but it was labored.  His emaciated frame showed his heartbeat, but it was slow and weak.  The pulse at his neck was hard to find.

A friend of the patient knelt down at his head and began sobbing.  He reached out to cradle the wounded man’s head, but I stopped him.  “Back up!”  I hollering in Arabic.  “Back up now!  Go over there!” pointing to a spot by the truck.  The Iraqi Police took up the call and produced batons.  They began yelling and herding the women and others with their waving sticks.

“Doc!  This one has a head wound and sucking chest!”  Doc came sprinting over with his aid bag.

Doc didn’t so much kneel as collapse on his knees next to the man.  He did a quick assessment too, looking over what he had.  I pointed out what I found: “Shot to left head, brain matter exposed, shot to left lung, shot to left upper arm, that’s all I got.”  Another soldier crouched down too.  I looked back over at the first patient with the arm wounds who was struggling to sit up again.  Doc started pulling stuff out of his bag.  “Hey, Doc.  If you don’t need me to assist, I’ma tend to that other one.”  Doc Luscious nodded.  “Okay.”

La-La was pulling up with the trauma bag.  I knelt back by the first man picking up his injured arm.  He screamed again, holding his wrist with his good hand. I looked at the tourniquet.  “This has to come off,” I said, in English to the people around me.  Fumbling with knot, I could not get it undone right off.  “Anyone got a knife?”  Someone produced one from behind me.  It was a large flip open type that looked vicious and came open with a nasty snap.  One look at this and the man started clawing at the tourniquet, getting it off in a flash.  “Well, that’s better.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him in Arabic.  “This is going to hurt.”  Rummaging through the trauma bag, I pulled out the Curlex gauze to sop up the blood and stop the bleeding.

Blood was flowing a little more freely now, but still thick and viscous.  One roll I jammed in the gash on his wrist to plug the hole while he screamed out again.  “Quiet,” I told him in Arabic.  “Tell the interpreter your name.”  One of our ‘terps, MacBeth, stood over us.  “Get his info,” I told him. 

I rolled the man’s arm to the side to get a better angle at the wound.  La-La held up the arm as I unrolled the other roll of gauze around the arm to cover the wounds and hold everything together.  “Okay, I need an Ace Wrap,” I told La-La.

He rooted around the trauma bag some.  “Ain’t got none.”

“Okay, need more gauze then.”  I tied off the Curlex in a knot on the top of the wound to give a little more pressure.

La-La put another roll in front of me.  I tore it open and started wrapping his bicep.  He continued to scream out with every motion.  “You’ll be fine,” I told him Arabic.

Once I was done wrapping his bicep, I looked over at the second one.  Doc and Cool Breeze were working feverishly.  “Nine Eleven is on the way,” someone called out.  I elevated the arm up loosely by the forearm to elevate the wound in the wrist.  “La-La, here.  Hold this up.  I’ma give Doc a hand with the other dude.  If it starts bleeding through the bandage, lemme know and we’ll do something else.”  La-La took hold of the arm and I took off to the other patient. 

This second one had a dressing on his chest with a valve where the sucking chest was.  Another dressing was on his side to stem the bleeding from another wound that I missed on his trunk.  There was blood all over his stomach, but it didn’t appear that he was too badly hurt there. 

He was rail thin, skeletal almost.  Bones and hips held up his skin.  His heartbeat, faint and erratic was clearly visible on his exposed chest now.

“Okay, I need you to gently lift his head,” Doc Luscious told us.  Cool Breeze cradled his head behind his ears.  I straddled him over his chest and held his head from the base of the skull, heels of my palms on the side of his head, my thumbs along his jaw line.

One eye was swollen nearly completely shut, the other stared blankly at me.  His jaw was slack, spittle pooling on one side slowly oozing out of his mouth.  His face was covered with a short stubble of a badly maintained close beard, teeth brown from lack of care.  The skin on his face was a leathery olive, years of hard work in the sun having taken its toll.  Rasping, he still fought for air, clumsily sucking it it, making noise occasionally with what was probably agonal breathing.

“Hey buddy,” I asked him in Arabic, “you with me?”  He stared at me with his one unseeing eye.  There was still a glisten to it, the dark brown of the iris standing out, framing his pupil, normal in dilation, looking out ahead. 

Whatever stimulus was coming from the light of this world, he was clearly only seeing the next.

Doc loosely wound the bandage around the man’s head, keeping only enough pressure to keep the padding on his brain tissue in place.  The man’s chest kept rising and falling.  His unseeing eye never blinking, holding steady my gaze, staring through me, beyond me.

“Allah be with you,” I told him softly in Arabic. 

We set his head back down gently.  I looked back to the first patient as La-La called me.  The other patient’s wrist was visibly darkened as the tarry blood seeped through the dressing.  “Hey Doc, if you don’t need me right now, I’m going back to that other dude.”  Doc grunted an okay as he dug back in his aid bag.

Coming back to La-La, the bandage was soaked through on the wrist.  His blood might have the consistency of asphalt, but it was still not stopping.  “Okay, I need some more gauze.”  Looking through the trauma bag still open on the ground, I didn’t see any.  Shit.  What the hell?

The other day we had used up a bunch on a group of four that had come in riddled with holes.  Then, the following day, we had another one.  Normally, we would restock the bag immediately.  But with the pending change of command for our replacements, the aid station was closed down and the stocks packed up in conex containers.   We couldn’t get to them because they had been checked and sealed by customs already.  This was all done because we did not think that the incoming unit had attached medical staff.  In fact, we were specifically told by the incoming unit that they would not have any medics, and would rely solely on 911 to support them.  We would find out shortly that they did have medics, and they wondered why we were not planning to just leave the medical stocks. 

I was going for a standard field dressing to put on top of everything, and thinking maybe a tourniquet, when Doc Luscious came up behind me with more Curlex.  He jammed a wad on top of the dark spot to the renewed howls from the injured man.  An Israeli field dressing was unraveled and wrapped around the wadding with the man writhing the whole time and making as much noise as possible.  “This one has an exit wound?”

“Yup, two shots to the left arm, wrist had exit wound, about three inch gash.  One wound to the bicep, no exit.”  I told Doc.

“Nothing else on him?”

“Nope.”

“Well, let’s give something for the pain.”  Doc whipped out an autoinjector of Morphine while holding the wadding f the pressure dressing.  Holding it out in front of him with his free hand, he pulled the cap off, then asked La-La to hit the purple colored end.  A needle popped out.  Doc sized up his target and jammed it in the man’s thigh.  Another scream came out of him.  “Hold this for a ten-count, La-La.  Then pull it out.”  La-La took it and counted to ten, then pulled it straight out.  

“Okay, now bend the needle,” Doc told him, “and set it over here.”  He put it down.

An ambulance pulled around the corner of the Hesco barrier from the main road.  Air Force medics jumped out.  Doc went over to meet them and give them the rundown.  They went to the brain injury patient and went to work on him.

Our arm patient was sitting back up again.  He was staring at the other man still gazing blankly at the sky.  Eyes glazing as the morphine was hitting him, he didn’t have the struggle left to call out his friend’s name.  Only some mumbling escaped.

But I couldn’t put it down.  No, I couldn’t put it down…

There were still streaks of dirt on the floor.  The water from the bottles was hot since it had been sitting outside all day.  Still, after two washings, the ingrained dirt and dust was still coming out of the floor.  No matter how much I cleaned, there was still dirt coming up.  This was a Sisyphean task.

One more pass with the hot water and floor cleaner this time.  Then that was it, no matter the result.

I took the bucket of water and tossed it out the door onto the sidewalk.  Water flowed off into the surrounding ground, leaving an alluvial wet spot of dirt that was rapidly evaporating off in the summer sun.

Let’s break the window panes and separate the walls from all the nails…

“Shit, we’re losing him.”  The Airman straddled the man and began pushing on his chest rhythmically doing compressions.  The chest of the man collapsed with each press down.  The other took out a respiration bag and began ventilating him.  My patient sobbed some more, no tears falling from the dehydration and fluid loss.

‘Cause maybe if we’re loud, we’ll stay alive while everybody wants to join the fight…

“Okay,” I yelled outside.  “The Internet is going off.”  I produced a knife and slashed into the wires coming from the ground outside my trailer.  The last few remaining lights on the switch flickered out.

Cut even if we barricade the door and seal it with the blood found on the floor…

“C’mon man, stay with me.”  He continued to do compressions stopping every ten or so to check for a pulse.  One and two and three and …

We’re always going to cross the finish line…

The room was set up back in its orginal configuration.  I picked up my bags and took them outside to the five-ton truck that was going to carry us over to housing. 

While everybody wants to run and hide…

Satisfied with what they could get from him, they prepared to load him into the ambulance.  Adroitly, the medics moved to the corners of the stretcher and two others appeared to assist.  In one fluid motion, the stretcher was lifted and moved to the ambulance.

“Okay, buddy, you’re next,” I told my guy.  We lowered him down flat on the stretcher.  “La-La, still have that sharp?”  I asked about the morphine needle. 

“Doc secured it already.”

“Cool.”  Two others came up to the stretcher and glanced quickly at our guy.  “Okay, lift on three. One, two, three, lift.”  And everyone pulled up to bring the stretcher smoothly up.  We went around to the back of the ambulance  His head was by me, so I had to turn around quick so that we could get him in head first.

We had to bring him to shoulder height to get him in.  Same drill.  “Ready?  One, two, three, lift.”  And he was up and in with no problem.

Doc came up with the paper that had the patient information.  While we were working, the interpreters had gotten names, ages, and information about the incident for us.  “And this guy here,” Doc said pointing to the arm injury patient, “had 10 milligrams morphine.”

“Okay, we got it from here,” said the attendant on the back of the ambulance.  “Are these your stretchers or ours?”

“They belong to us.”

“Okay, we’ll do a one-for-one for now.  Later, we’ll come back and straighten it out.”

“No problem.”

“Can you close the doors for me?  Thanks.”  And the ambulance took off.

But now it’s too late…

The housing representative came in and looked at the room.  “Hello,” I told her.  “This is a lovely studio that can fit two decorated in Early Modern Government.  It comes with plenty of room for a little kitchen area and a common space for entertaining.”

She smiled a little while she glanced around and then signed the release forms. I was done.

…

We picked up the garbage on the ground and kicked dirt on a couple of puddles of blood.   I pulled off the Nitrile gloves and threw them out.  Hmm, some blood on my cuffs.  Rolling up the cuffs of my sleeves, the problem was out of sight, so it was fixed for the time being.  I reached down to my ankle pocket on my pants and pulled out the bottle of hand sanitizer that I always kept on me.  Squirting some in my palm, I rubbed my hands together to make sure that I was reasonably clean in case something had punctured or rubbed against me, or something. 

In theory, I was supposed to burn these uniforms.  But this was one of my favorites, old, broken in, worn thin like pajamas.  There were burn marks on one of the legs, reminders of past times when I was careless with a cigarette in the gun truck rolling on patrols and convoys.  Like hell I would burn them.  I would, however, write up a memo stating that to cover myself and then take it to the laundry near the hospital that had a separate medical laundry just for this sort of thing.

We got back into the ambulance that we had driven down and rolled back up to the Command Post.  Doc Luscious was positively ecstatic, smiling widely as he dropped his gear back in next to the door where he kept it for easy access.  “Hey can I bum a light?”  he asked me.

I gave him the lighter and we smoked together outside.  “Yeah!  I got to do some work today.  I got some action today.”

“You know, the other doc, what’s his name?  The one here yesterday.  Rogers?  He’s going to be pissed at you.  He came down here for a shift hoping to get some patient action going on, and all he got was one guy with the clap.”

“Yeah, he’s going to be pissed when I tell him.”  Doc took a drag.  “The clap?  They came here for that?”

“Well, it was a urinary tract infection or something.  We wrote it up as the clap.  Doc was pissed.  He was counting on a bleeder when they called ahead about it.  Told us the guy was unconscious.  Turns out he’s on meds, didn’t drink water, surprise! what a shock!, and passed out in the heat.  So we called it the clap and sent him back.  I think Doc was ready to shoot him just to make it worth his while.”

Doc Luscious smiled and took a drag on his cigarette.  “Yeah.  But I got some action today!  Heh.”

…

I climbed in the back of the truck.  My bags were in the corner, next to my armor and K-pot.  Rules were that when riding in the back of a truck, or in any tactical vehicle, I was supposed to put on my K-Pot.  Instead, I laid down flat, staring up at the sky.  I was now invisible to the outside world.  For all intents, I no longer existed on this plane.

The sky was a deep blue, fillling my view.  Some clouds were passing over.  The rumble of the truck’s deseil surrounded me as we took off.  Vibratations came up and wafed over my body.  It felt good.  Soothing.  Relaxing.  Like a massage.

Slowly, the truck rolled to our new desitinaton in transient housing.  Clouds spun lazily as we turned corners.  A MEDEVAC chopper came roaring over, passing on the edge of my sight.  I was still enveloped in blue sprinkled in white.   What turns we had made were beyond me, having lost all sense of direction long ago.  Soothing.  Relaxing.

I started to close my eyes and drift away.  We had come to our new home.

Lyrics: “Common Reactor” by Silversun Pickups. Copyright Silversun Pickups.