To Hell and Back
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 7: Broken
PART THREE: THE FALL
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany - Day Four
Kirstie woke to the sound of her mother crying.
Eleanor Roberts sat in a chair beside the hospital bed, her face buried in her hands, shoulders shaking with sobs. James stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, his face carved from stone. They looked older than Kirstie remembered—worn down by fear and the transatlantic flight and the sight of their daughter broken in a hospital bed.
She tried to make a sound, but her wired jaw prevented anything intelligible. Instead, she moved her right hand—the one not hooked to an IV—and it caught her father’s eye.
“Eleanor. She’s awake.”
Her mother’s head snapped up, and the sound she made was somewhere between a gasp and a sob. She was at Kirstie’s bedside in an instant, her hands hovering over her daughter’s body as if afraid to touch anything that might hurt.
“Oh, baby. Oh, my baby girl.”
Kirstie wanted to say I’m okay, Mom, but she couldn’t. Couldn’t speak, couldn’t reassure, couldn’t do anything but lie there and let her moter cry over her ruined body.
“We came as fast as we could,” her father said, his voice rough. “Sam and Ellie are back home—Sam’s running the farm, Ellie wanted to come but she’s got finals. They send their love.”
Kirstie managed a slight nod, enough to acknowledge without moving her injured neck too much.
“The doctors briefed us,” Eleanor said, wiping her eyes. “Your leg, your face, everything. Kirstie, how did this happen? They said mechanical failure but—”
“Eleanor.” James’s voice was firm. “Not now. She doesn’t need to relive it.”
But Kirstie did relive it. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt the aircraft spinning, heard the metal screaming, experienced the impact over and over. The crash played on an endless loop in her mind, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
A nurse entered, checked her vitals, adjusted her medications. “She needs rest,” the nurse said gently. “You can stay, but she needs to sleep. The next surgery is tomorrow morning.”
“What surgery?” Eleanor asked, alarmed.
“Facial reconstruction. They’re going to repair her orbital socket and cheekbone. It’s the third surgery—they’ve already stabilized her spine and operated on her leg twice.”
Third surgery. Kirstie had missed two of them, unconscious or too drugged to remember. How many more would there be?
Too many. The answer was too many.
Surgery Count: 5
The facial reconstruction surgery took eight hours. They rebuilt her cheekbone with titanium plates, repaired her orbital socket, did what they could for the extensive soft tissue damage. When Kirstie woke, her face felt like it was encased in concrete—swollen, immobile, wrong.
Major Williams came to check on her post-op. “The surgery went well. You’ll have scarring, but we did our best to minimize it. The jaw will remain wired for at least six weeks, maybe longer depending on healing.”
Six weeks of not being able to eat solid food, of communicating through hand gestures and written notes, of feeling like her face wasn’t her own.
“Your leg is our primary concern now,” he continued. “We’ve done two debridement surgeries, removing dead tissue and trying to establish blood flow. But infection is setting in despite antibiotics. We’re going to try one more time—another surgery tomorrow to clean the wound and place a wound vac. But Corporal, I need you to understand: if this doesn’t work, if the infection spreads, we’ll have no choice but to amputate.”
Kirstie closed her eye—the right one, the only one that worked—and felt tears leak out. She was so tired of crying. Tired of pain. Tired of bad news delivered in gentle voices.
Her mother, who’d been sitting vigil beside the bed, took her hand carefully.
“Whatever happens, sweetheart, we’re here. You’re not alone.”
But Kirstie had never felt more alone in her life.
Surgery Count: 8
Three more surgeries on her leg. Each time, the doctors hoped it would be enough. Each time, they came back with the same grim assessment: infection persisting, tissue necrosis continuing, bone refusing to heal.
By surgery eight, Major Williams’s gentle bedside manner had given way to hard truth.
“Corporal Roberts, we’ve exhausted our options. The infection is spreading. Your white blood cell count is elevated, you’re running a low-grade fever, and the tissue is dying faster than we can debride it. If we don’t amputate, the infection will go systemic. That’s sepsis, and sepsis can kill you.” He paused. “I’m recommending amputation below the knee. We can save your knee joint, which will make prosthetic use significantly easier. But we need to do it soon. Within the next two days.”
Kirstie stared at him, unable to process what he was saying. Amputation. They were going to take her leg. The leg she’d stood on in the door of helicopters, the leg that had carried her through boot camp and deployments and hundreds of combat missions.
They were going to cut it off.
She reached for the notepad they’d given her for communication, her hand shaking. She wrote: How soon can I fly again
Major Williams read it and his expression shifted to something like pity. “Corporal ... you’re not going to fly again. Not as aircrew. Your military career is over. You’ll be medically retired.”
The words hit harder than the crash had. Not fly again. Career over. Everything she’d worked for, everything she’d become, gone.
She wrote furiously: NO. I can adapt. I can learn. Please.
“I’m sorry. The physical requirements for aircrew are absolute. Even with a prosthetic, you won’t meet the standards. And with your other injuries—the TBI, the spinal damage, the shoulder—you’re looking at a long recovery just to achieve basic function.” His voice was kind but unyielding. “Your focus needs to be on healing, on learning to live with these injuries.” on returning to combat.
Kirstie crumpled the paper and threw it across the room—a pathetic gesture that hurt her shoulder and accomplished nothing.
Eleanor spoke up. “When do you need our consent for the surgery?”
“I need Corporal Roberts’s consent. She’s an adult and she’s competent to make her own medical decisions.”
Everyone looked at Kirstie. Her mother’s eyes pleading, her father’s face stoic but his jaw tight. The doctor waiting patiently. All of them expecting her to agree to let them take her leg.
She picked up the notepad again, wrote two words: Not yet
“Kirstie—” her mother started.
Kirstie wrote more: One more day. Let me think. Please
Major Williams nodded slowly. “One more day. But if the infection worsens, if you develop signs of sepsis, we’ll have to act immediately for your safety. Understand?”
She nodded.
After everyone left except her parents, Kirstie lay in the hospital bed and stared at the ceiling. Her leg—what was left of it, wrapped in bandages and splinted and dying—throbbed with every heartbeat. She could feel it, every nerve screaming, even knowing that much of the tissue was dead.
How do you agree to let them cut off part of yourself? How do you give permission for that?
“Sweetheart,” her father said quietly. “I know this is impossible. I know you’re scared. But you have to choose life. You have to let them do what needs to be done.”
“I can’t watch you die,” her mother added, her voice breaking. “Please, Kirstie. Please let them help you.”
But it didn’t feel like help. It felt like destruction.
That night, alone in the darkness with only the beeping of monitors for company, Kirstie made her decision.
She would let them take the leg. Because the alternative was death, and despite everything, she wasn’t ready to die.
But a part of her—the warrior, the door gunner, the Marine—would die on that operating table.
And she didn’t know if the person who woke up afterward would be worth saving.
Surgery Count: 9 - The First Amputation
The morning of the surgery, Kirstie was calmer than she’d expected. Maybe it was the pre-op medications, or maybe it was the simple acceptance that comes after fighting a losing battle for too long.
Major Williams came to see her before they wheeled her to the OR.
“We’re going to take care of you, Corporal. The amputation will be below the knee—a transtibial amputation. We’ll preserve as much of your tibia as possible, create a good residual limb for prosthetic fitting. You’ll be able to walk again. It won’t be the same, but you’ll adapt.”
She wrote on her notepad: Thank yo
“You’re a fighter, Roberts. You survived a helicopter crash that should have killed you. You’ll survive this too.”
In the operating room, as they prepared to put her under, Kirstie thought about all the times she’d stood in the door of a Black Hawk, her left leg bearing weight, balanced and strong. She thought about running the Crucible, climbing the Reaper, marching with a sixty-pound pack.
She thought about her leg—the leg that had served her faithfully for twenty-two years—and said goodbye.
“Count backward from ten, Corporal.”
“Ten ... nine ... eight...”
Darkness.
Post-Op - Below Knee Amputation
Waking up was worse than she’d imagined
The pain was there—sharp, immediate, localized. But worse than the pain was the presence. Her leg was still there. She could feel it. Toes, ankle, calf—all present, all sending signals to her brain.
Except they weren’t there. They were gone. Cut away, discarded as medical waste, incinerated.
But her brain didn’t know that. Her brain insisted her leg was intact, that she could wiggle her toes if she wanted to, that any second now she could stand up and walk.
She tried. Without thinking, still drugged and confused, she tried to move her left foot. The phantom limb responded in her mind, but in reality, nothing moved. Nothing was there to move.
The realization broke something inside her. She made a sound—a keening wail that came from somewhere deep and primal, filtered through her wired jaw into something inhuman.
Nurses rushed in, administered more pain medication, tried to calm her. But how do you calm someone who’s just realized that a part of them is permanently gone?
Her mother was there, stroking her hair, whispering reassurances that meant nothing.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s going to be okay. You’re alive. You’re alive.”
But was she? Was this living—broken and incomplete and haunted by the ghost of her own leg?
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Maryland - Two Weeks Later
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