Chapter 9: Honoring a Warrior

No sooner than her MRI study had begin, Tamara showed her scientific aptitude. Dr Beauford was doing some baseline work, still using the standard MRI because the installation of the new system wasn’t quite finished, when Tamara came into his office carrying a sheaf of papers.

“Uh oh,” Beauford said warily. “What trouble am I in now?”

“We’ll see,” Tamara grinned. “The engineer working on the new MRI gave these pages to me.”

Beauford saw that they were mostly circuit schematics.

“I was asking him about the machine’s theory ... how it gets pictures of inside the body...”

Earlier that day

Tamara wandered into the room with the new MRI because she heard someone inside there working.

Maybe it’s almost ready? she wondered and went in.

A man was working in an electrical panel outside the control room.

“Should you be in here?” he asked.

“I’m one of Dr Beauford’s guinea pigs—I was just in the old MRI room with him and when he finished, he told me, ‘Now go make yourself useful.’ So here I am. I thought learning about the new machine would be useful.”

“Ah. You must be Tamara. The doc said to watch out for you, you’re scary smart, but to answer your questions. What can I help you with, miss?”

“I have a basic idea about how MRIs work, they shoot radio waves into the body and some kind of detector receives a return signal and a computer turns that into a picture.”

“Exactly. But the details are the fascinating part.”

“Uh huh, I know. I understand how radio-frequency waves can be made—they’re called RF waves. If you basically just pass a current rapidly through an inductor, it generates an electromagnetic pulse. The pulse’s frequency is set by the inductor—the current, number of windings, wire size, things like that. Are those RF waves like the ones in the MRI?”

“You know about this stuff? No wonder the doc said to answer your questions. Let me go over how the MRI operates, okay?”

“Sure.”

“The technology is based on the atomic structure of the tissues that the body’s made of. Organic matter is mostly made of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen atoms, with a lot more kinds of atoms in much smaller amounts included. The hydrogen atoms occur in the highest numbers in the body and they’re in every tissue. Do you know what a hydrogen atom looks like—how we visualize it?”

“Sure, that was in the chemistry texts. That’s the simplest atom. A proton with a single electron.”

“Right. So we can think of the hydrogen proton like a tiny ball which is spinning on its axis. It carries a tiny electrical charge, so its spin gives it a small magnetic field, making it behave like a tiny magnet. Normally, the hydrogen protons in the body are spinning with their axes pointing in random directions. Okay so far?”

She nodded.

“Now the main part of an MRI machine contains these huge electromagnets, or sometimes they’re permanent magnets, which generate an extremely powerful static magnetic field, enough to affect the hydrogen protons. When a person enters the magnetic field, all the protons align their spins with the magnetic field. Now, see this helmet thing?”

“Yeah. I need to wear that ‘cause that’s what gets the signals from inside my head.”

“Exactly. Here’s what happens. When the computer program is ready to scan, it activates a circuit which shoots a momentary burst of radio-frequency energy out of the RF coil inside the helmet. That energy excites the spinning hydrogen nuclei, which causes them to slightly change their alignment. When the helmet’s RF pulse stops—it’s just a few milliseconds long—the nuclei return to their original state and realign themselves with the MRI’s magnetic field.

“When they flip back, they release the energy which they picked up from the RF pulse. Now, the RF coil in here not only transmits the RF pulse, it’s also a receiver and the coil acts as an antenna to detect the energy that the hydrogen nuclei emit when they return to their normal state. The coil’s circuitry then transmits the return signal’s source and intensity to the computer, which generates the images. The MRI has some separate electromagnets, called the gradient coils, and those magnets vary their magnetic field at different points in the body part being scanned to allow the computer to calculate the exact location of the source of the returned energy and its intensity. There are also different external RF coils used for other body parts than the head—like the shoulder, knee, wrist, ankle, elbow, for example. Make sense?”

“Sure, but you left out some important stuff. How do you account for parts of the body which have different thicknesses and densities? How do you keep the static magnetic field constant across the area you want to scan? How do you control for the depth inside the body where you want to see the organ? And people’s weights are different too, so how do you deal with that?”

“You thought of all that, did you?”

She nodded.

“I mentioned the external RF coils.” She nodded again. “Well, those are what we call the ‘patient coils.’ There are also shim coils to control for variations in the magnetic field and I mentioned the gradient coils, which are for the imaging. There are other coils involved, too. Say, since you are so interested, let me give you some specifications and schematics for the coils. That will show you what they do.”

Present time

Tamara finished explaining her visit with the MRI engineer to Beauford.

“So then I was looking at the coils here,” she pointed to a drawing. “The spine coil is built into the back of the seat...”

Beauford nodded, “Right...”

“ ... and look. See how the transmit and receive detectors are set up? That’s much more efficient than how the head coil is designed. Let me show you the geometry of the RF waves that both coils produce.”

She took a piece of paper and began drawing.

“Wait, Tamara. I need to get Roger here.”

He ran out and a minute later, he returned with the engineer and another man.

“Tamara, you know Roger Gordon, obviously. This is Tim Saunders, he’s our in-house engineer.”

Tamara greeted him.

Beauford said, “Let me show you what Tamara’s figured out. Tell them, dear.”

She went over her drawing and did a few rough calculations.

“I don’t know enough calculus yet to be more accurate, so this is an approximation of the efficiency increase you can get in the head coil, by using the spine coil detector design as a guide.”

Both engineers looked at her notes and Gordon whistled.

Tim exhaled in a great whoosh of breath. “Damn, she nailed that. My god. You’re only ten? God help us; what will you be able to do when you’re older?”

Gordon was thinking; then he spoke. “You know, they weren’t planning on using a head coil on the upright model. The upper part of the spine coil is for the brain, and the machine’s sides near the head contained the rest of the original head coil circuitry. When they converted this design to full superconductivity, they brought back the head coil—but it looks like they used the original design factors without considering the new design’s efficiency. That was an outstanding discovery, Tamara. You know, my company gives rewards for suggestions that improve products. I’m gonna submit this under your name, okay?”

Beauford chuckled. “Tamara, please warn me about this, next time I tell you to make yourself useful, okay?”

Miami, Florida: early December

It was now more than two months after the Alexandre family had arrived in Miami when the Defense Department official who had coordinated the family’s identity change contacted Wilson. The official wanted to schedule the award presentation with the president and phoned Wilson to see if a date in mid-January would be possible. Wilson agreed, since both Nadine and Tamara would most likely be fully mobile by then, and the dates would work with the family’s schedule. They would be flown to Washington on a Thursday, the award would be presented on Friday, they would get an official tour on Saturday, and return home Sunday. Nadine’s schedule was his greatest concern; she had almost finished her required course work in the nurse’s assistant program and would need to begin the clinical part next, so the Washington trip would work on his selected dates.

Wilson also realized that he would need to replace his Marine dress blues; his uniform had been damaged in the earthquake. On checking, he found that there was a small military base exchange store in Doral, near Miami International Airport, so he visited the store and explained his needs. That’s when he learned that enlisted Medal of Honor recipients get a uniform allowance. He was measured for the uniform at the BX store and the order was placed, along with an order for all of the medals, ribbons, and badges he had been awarded.

White House, Washington, D.C.: mid-January

On a cold, sunny Friday morning in mid-January, the Alexandre family arrived at the White House by limousine and a White House staff member escorted them inside. But instead of the usual award ceremony, typically attended by assorted dignitaries, including brass from the armed forces and politicians, press, and even prior Medal recipients, the officials at the State Department, CIA, and FBI had insisted that the ceremony be conducted in private. President Inyoue was unhappy about the idea of a small ceremony; truly “secret” ceremonies were never allowed, but an explanation of the Alexandre family situation persuaded him. The award would be announced in the Navy’s general orders, which were public, so the award was not made in secret. Only the Marines whom Wilson had saved and their families had been invited, together with only a few government dignitaries. Master Chief Gilbert Bronson’s hospital ship had been deployed to the Mediterranean, so he was unable to be there.

From the military, the Marine commandant and his deputy were to attend. From the Executive Branch, the Defense secretary and his deputy, the secretary and undersecretary of the Navy, the secretary of State, an undersecretary, and an assistant secretary, were to be there. Congress was represented by two members: Senator Carlson, who was the official who made the inquiry which resulted in the Medal’s award would attend, of course, and he also was the father-in-law of one of the Marine guests. The House representative was from the Alexandres’ congressional district.

When Wilson and his family entered a reception room in the White House, his former unit members greeted him. The two men rushed to Wilson to embrace and congratulate him.

“Hey, you lowlife grunt,” Jim Emery accused him, “you had to use an assumed name to join the Corps?” Emery had been a lance corporal in Wilson’s platoon. “Congrats on your award.”

“Thanks. Yeah, I was underage. I had to fake it to get in,” Wilson demurred.

“I see you’re lookin’ good, man. Life treat you well after Germany?” Carter Thompson asked.

At the battle, he was a private first class and had been one of the group of replacements who had joined Wilson’s company about two weeks before the battle. He was also Carlson’s son-in-law. This had been his first major engagement.

Wilson answered, “Not bad at all.”

“Man, every time I think of what coulda happened out there, I still get the willies,” Thompson told him. “You were a frikkin’ ninja out there, man, swingin’ that samurai sword of yours. And yeah, you deserve that medal. I’m glad that Dad pushed for it.”

“Thanks, buddy. Don’t put yourself down. You exposed yourself when you helped Nichols clear his M249. If we had lost that machine gun, everything would have gone to ... big brown cigars,” Wilson said. “The Bronze Star with ‘V’ you got shows your courage.”

The senator came over to talk to Wilson then and Wilson thanked him for his sponsorship. After the group chatted together for a while, a woman came to Wilson and took him aside.

“The president wants to talk to you briefly.”

He met Inyoue, who greeted him and said he just wanted to get some personal insights before the ceremony and that afterwards, he and the first lady would have lunch with Wilson and his family. A woman was sitting near them while they spoke and Wilson saw that she was taking notes.

President Inyoue chuckled when he saw Wilson looking at her. “She’s my memory. I’ll use her notes for my presentation.”

Then an aide came in and coached Wilson on what to do when he was on the dais. Fifteen minutes later, the president led him to the room where the presentation was to occur.

The presentation was brief. There was an invocation by a member of the Chaplain’s Corps and then the president went to the podium. He spoke for a few minutes about Wilson’s heroism and then reminded everyone that because of an ongoing critical diplomatic situation, the news of Wilson’s award needed to be kept relatively private.

At this point, Wilson was called to the dais and the president went to him; they exchanged salutes, and the two stood side-by-side facing the audience. The Marine deputy commandant walked over to a table behind the podium and picked up the medal, holding it by the ends of its star-sprinkled navy-blue ribbon. He then walked to the front of the dais, holding the medal by its ribbon in front of him. Facing out toward the gathered group, Wilson stood on Inyoue’s right and the deputy was on his left.

The Marine commandant stepped to the podium to read the award citation.

“Attention to orders. On behalf of Congress, the president awards Staff Sergeant Wilson J. Alexandre, U.S. Marine Corps, the Medal of Honor for his conspicuous bravery and courageous actions while serving as a platoon sergeant with Alpha Platoon, Charlie Company, 8^th Battalion (Anti-Terrorism), 2^nd Marine Division, attached to the Combined Joint Task Force-76, during combat operations near Ganjgal, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, on March 14, 2008. After his commander was killed by enemy fire, Staff Sergeant Alexandre took command of his platoon and directed its defense, which prevented an overwhelming force of enemy from proceeding to their objective. Twice Staff Sergeant Alexandre left his covered position to bring an exposed, wounded Marine to cover for medical treatment. Even after he was seriously wounded, he kept fighting and directing the members of his unit. The effective leadership and conspicuous personal courage that Staff Sergeant Alexandre exhibited allowed his unit to achieve the blocking action assigned to his unit, resulting in the saving of hundreds of lives in the U.N. encampment and the Afghan village they were assigned to protect. Through his extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty in the face of an overwhelming and determined enemy, Staff Sergeant Alexandre reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.”

After the commandant completed the reading, the deputy commandant handed the medal by its ribbon ends to Inyoue as Wilson turned away so that the ribbon could be fastened around his neck.

The small group watching stood and applauded as Wilson turned to face the front and returned the salutes of the president, the commandant and the deputy commandant.

Following the ceremony, some of the dignitaries present gathered to congratulate Wilson and left. The State Department officials told him that they wanted to meet with him and Nadine following their lunch with the president; at this time, though, there would be a brief reception for the attendees.

When Tamara was able to speak privately with Nadine, she grabbed her arm.

“Momma, one of those men who was there when Papa got the medal is really evil. I also saw him sneaking a photo of you earlier.”