Chapter 34: Hospital

I woke up and knew instantly I was in a hospital. I’d been in enough by now to know what it felt like. The biggest clue was simply that everything was clean. Iraq was simply filthy. I don’t think there was a soldier in the battalion who wasn’t carrying around an extra five pounds of dirt, in his lungs, in his bowels, and in every nook and cranny of his body. Even when you cleaned something, you were simply moving it from a condition of greater filthiness to lesser filthiness. Nothing was ever clean.

I also felt both hungry and hurt. I glanced around and found that I was in a large room, one that looked bigger than a regular ward, and was by myself. There wasn’t another bed in the room, even an unoccupied one, and there was some furniture along the walls and in the center, tables and chairs. Very strange.

My chest hurt, which reminded me of why I was there, but I also felt some other aches and pains. I could move my right arm but not my left, so I looked down my body. Neither arm was overly bandaged, but the left arm had been strapped to the bed, probably to keep me from moving it; it was where the IV tubes were going. I reached my right hand across to scratch, and that hurt, quite a bit, as did anything else involved in moving my upper body. Still, after a bit, I felt able to control things, and unstrapped my arm and gave myself a good scratch.

As I slowly explored what had happened to me, I felt a large bandage covering my chest. My body parts all seemed attached, though my legs hurt. I could move them, but my right leg was very stiff. I found a button on a cord near my right hand and hit it a few times, and then set it down. Either it would summon somebody or not; in any case I didn’t think I was going to be able to get up and complain.

The button must have been hooked up to something, because about two minutes later a nurse came in. “Welcome back!” she said cheerily, approaching me.

I croaked out, “Hi!” but my mouth was dry. It took a couple of tries to get it out.

“Here, how about a sip of water.” She poured me a glass and stuck a flex-straw in and held it for me to sip.

That did the trick. I sipped some and then worked my tongue over my lips before sipping and swallowing some more. “There, thanks, thanks a lot! Where am I?” I asked.

“Baghdad, Camp Victory. How do you feel?”

“Okay, I guess. How should I feel? What happened to me?”

“Oh, you’ve pulled yourself loose,” she replied, taking hold of my left arm.

“That’s all right. I pulled the strap off so I could scratch. I’ll be careful. So, what happened to me? What’s your name?” I could see she was a lieutenant, but that was it.

“I’m Lieutenant Walthrop, Janet if you must know. I’m one of the nurses.”

“Well, Janet-if-you-must-know, what happened to me? How bad is it? And can I sit up some?”

She laughed. “Yes, a little.” She hit a button on the bed and the head tilted up some, I felt some pain as I shifted, but it faded. “Just in case you are wondering, don’t get your hopes up. There’s a Major Walthrop back home.”

“Well, I was about to tell you not to get your hopes up, since I have a fiancée back home. She’s pretty tough, too. I bet she could take your major two falls out of three!”

Janet laughed loudly at this. “Oh, you are going to be a fun one, I can tell already.”

“So? My condition?”

She nodded and got serious. “Do you remember the battle?”

I thought for a second, but decided she wanted to know if I had any amnesia. “Yeah, sure. At least until the medic shot me up with something. They were getting ready to transport me, I think. I remember getting shot in the chest, and I had a bullet sticking out of me. Hurt like hell, too.”

She relaxed. “Yes, I’ll bet it did! The doctor will give you the details, but we had to pull out the bullet and sew you up. You also took some shrapnel to your right leg, that’s why that’s all bandaged up.”

“My guys, where are they? They get taken care of?” I felt ashamed that I hadn’t asked about them first.

“They’re good, all of them. They’ve been pestering us to let them in here. They got chewed up too. How are you feeling?”

I shrugged, which hurt. “My chest hurts, and I’m really hungry. How long have I been here?”

-She glanced at her watch. “It’s 0912, Monday morning. What’s that, a day-and-a half or so? You came in late Saturday afternoon, we operated right away, and you slept all yesterday.” She gave me a little more water, and said, “Give me a few minutes and I’ll get a doctor in. Then we can see about some breakfast and get you on a phone home.”

“A big breakfast, please!”

She smiled and helped me with my pillow and left. About two minutes later, the door opened, and a scruffy bandaged head looked in. He turned away and I heard a Hispanic accent say, “He’s here! Vamonos!” The door opened wide and Private Montoya came in. His face and head were wrapped in bandages, but he was moving around and walking. He came in with Gonzalez following. Gonzalez was pushing a wheelchair with Givens in it. Following them was Riley Fox, hobbling around on a cane. They were all wearing hospital-issue pajamas and robes. They were all yelling out greetings to me.

“Jesus Christ! What happened to you guys? You look like you invaded a bandage factory!” I told them. Montoya and Gonzalez had bandages on their heads and faces, Givens had most of his left leg wrapped up, and I could see Riley’s left arm was all wrapped up, and he was favoring his left leg.

“Look who’s talking!” commented Riley. He came around to my right side. “How you feeling? What’d they pull out of you?”

“A bullet, right here,” I answered, reaching up and tapping the bandage on my chest. “You?”

The others told me about their various wounds. Most had been shrapnel of one form or another. Montoya and Gonzalez were both tagged in the face when an RPG hit a glancing blow on Montoya’s gunshield. Riley had taken a round through the arm from the same machine gun that nailed me, and then had picked up some shrapnel, and Givens had caught a couple of hits from his position at the rear of the Blackhawk.

I asked, “You guys get a chance to call home? You know they inform your families when you get wounded.”

Everybody confirmed that they had called home. Riley had spoken to his sister. I ducked their question of whether I had called home, simply by telling them that I hadn’t had a chance yet. We were still comparing miseries when Nurse Janet returned with a doctor in tow. “Out, the bunch of you!” the doctor ordered.

“Give us a few minutes, guys. I’ll see you in a bit,” I told them.

The nurse shooed them out, promising they could return after breakfast. She returned to my side and then she and the doctor, a woman named Hawthorne, got serious. They gave me a quick exam, and I had a chance to ask them some questions. “You had to operate?” I asked.

“Yes, but it wasn’t that serious. I gather you know that the bullet didn’t actually penetrate all that deep?”

I nodded. “The medic said he’d never seen anything like it. It must have spent almost its entire force just busting through my armor. He held my head up so I could look. It was sticking half out of my chest! It was the damnedest looking thing!”

She smiled. “I bet it was. The armor saved you, no question. Without it, well, it was on a trajectory to rip half your heart out. The bullet lodged between two of your ribs, the third and fourth left ribs, right at the junction of the sternum.” She demonstrated on herself, which didn’t really work since she had on a white lab coat and was a woman, so she had some extra equipment in that region. It didn’t matter much since I remembered where it was sticking out of me.

“So, what’d you do about it? Did you have to cut me open?”

Doctor Hawthorne smiled. “No, like I said, you were very lucky. It was basically wedged between your ribs. We took a few X-rays and double-checked, but then we took the medical equivalent of a pair of pliers and pulled it out. After that we simply cleaned out the wound and sewed you back up. You didn’t even break any of your ribs, just cracked and bruised them.”

“Damn!”

“Your leg actually took a little longer, since you had some muscle damage there and we didn’t want to screw it up,” she admitted.

I shook my head in disbelief. Then I remembered how I was coughing up blood. “Uh, after I got shot, I was coughing up blood. I mean not a whole lot, but some. Did anything get me in the lungs? That happens, right?”

“Yes, but we couldn’t find anything, and we really looked hard. You haven’t had any problems this morning, right?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Medical mystery, I suppose. Is it possible that you might have bit your cheek at some point? Maybe you cut your lip?”

“It’s possible,” I admitted.

“Well, you’re going to be here for a couple of weeks, so we’ll keep an eye on that. We’ll probably run some tests on pulmonary function, that sort of thing,” she replied.

“Two weeks!”

“Corporal, you got shot in the chest. Be glad it’s two weeks and not two months!”

I shrugged and gave a smile at that. Then with my right hand I pointed around the room. “Hey, what’s with this place? You run out of rooms and have to put me in the conference room or something?” That was what the place looked like to me, a conference or meeting room.

Hawthorne looked at Nurse Janet, and the two of them chuckled.

“You don’t know?” she asked.

“Know what?”

Janet laughed, and asked, “Who you rescued?”

“No. Who?”

They both laughed. “Oh, I’m not going to ruin the surprise! There’s a reason you’re in here!”

“Okay, be that way. Can I get some breakfast? I’m starving!”

They laughed. “Sure thing! Bacon and eggs sound good?”

“That sounds great! You’d better send up extras, though, if my guys break through your line of sentries,” I answered.

They smiled at that. “Your men have been out there since yesterday. They’ve been very worried about you,” said the doctor.

I nodded, and my chest hurt suddenly, but in a good way. “They’re very good soldiers, ma’am. They don’t make them better.”

“I think it’s more than that, Corporal.”

“We’re Bravo Three, ma’am. That’s all there is to it.”

“Sure. You just keep telling yourself that.” She made a few notes on a pad, and then said, “I’ll be seeing you, Corporal Reaper. Relax for the next two weeks. The war will still be there when you get better.”

“Understood. Thank you.”

Nurse Janet took my breakfast order, and she left, with my team almost running her over as she left the room. She laughed and yelled something to me about sending reinforcements. Everybody wanted to know what had happened, and I told them. None of them had been there to see the medic and the sergeant from the 101^st remove my armor and show me the bullet. Everybody was suitably impressed. They all told me that they had been questioned the other day about what had happened during the fight, who had done what and what the others had been doing, trying to build a picture of the battle, they were told. I nodded in understanding; I’d probably be next.

Givens put out his hand. “We all go in. We all go home.”

The rest of us reached out and grabbed his hand and repeated it back. Riley added, however, “But nobody said anything about coming out with all our original pieces!”

“Amen!” I said. Givens groaned at that, and Montoya and Gonzalez made the sign of the cross. “Fuck it!” I finished. “Hold the line!”

“Hold the line!” they all repeated.

“Hey, the doctor said something about the people on that chopper, like it was a big deal. Who were they?” I asked.

“Bunch of civilians, looked like to me,” answered Riley.

“Don’t ask us!” complained Gonzalez. “While you and Riley were fucking around with them, the rest of us were actually fighting bad guys!”

“No shit!” agreed Givens. “Next time you get to fight the dragons and we’ll rescue the damsels in distress!”

“And get shot in the chest,” I added.

“Maybe we’re good enough not to get shot in the chest. Ever think of that one?”

We traded insults for another ten minutes, and then were stopped when an orderly brought in a rolling cart with my breakfast. Actually, our breakfasts, since he had five orders of eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, and juice. Riley immediately praised me for being so far-sighted, and while the orderly laughed and set my meal up on a rolling bed tray, the other guys pulled a table and chairs away from the wall and set up house. At that point I knew they were going to be with me until somebody dragged their asses off to Anaconda Three.

After breakfast I fell asleep for a few hours, only waking when a nurse came in to take my blood pressure and temperature. By that time, it become totally obvious that my room was the new clubhouse, because they had scrounged up some snacks and a pack of cards and were now playing poker for peanuts - real peanuts! A Mister Coffee was on a side table. They stayed there the entire day, too, taking their meals at the table and complaining to me about the accommodations. (I don’t know why they were complaining. They were in a twenty-man general ward, and for some reason I was in a much nicer private suite. I knew I would be paying for that soon enough.) They didn’t leave until the night nurse threw them out and sent them back to their ward.

The next day was Tuesday, and it proved to be a very busy day indeed. By 0900 breakfast had been served and the guys were back to playing poker while I read a Sunday newspaper from New York. That was when there was a knock on the door, and somebody stuck their head in. “Can I come in?” The speaker was a man, and when the door opened, I could see the insignia. He was a lieutenant colonel.

“Shit!” I muttered. Then to him I said, “Sorry, sir. Please come in.” Bravo Three started scrambling to their feet. “Yeah, come to attention!” I ordered.

The officer laughed and came inside the room. “At ease, at ease.”

“Some watchdogs you guys are! The hajjis could come in here and you’d never even notice!” I told them.

“At ease!” The colonel kept laughing. “You’re Corporal Reaper?”

“Yes, sir, and this is the rest of Bravo Three.”

“Good, good, I’ve been wanting to meet all of you.”

“Sir?”

“I’m Lieutenant Colonel James Brubaker, Task Force Franklin. You met my boys the other day,” he said.

Eyes raised up around the room. “Yes, sir, we did. Thank you, sir. They really came through in a pinch. Any of them get hurt?”

He waved a hand. “Not like you fellows. We had a couple of sprained ankles in the guys on the ropes, that’s all. I think you guys took care of the hajjis for us.”

“I think your Apaches did that, sir.”

“How’s your guys, sir, the pilot and the other guy?” Riley asked.

He shrugged at that. “Better than they would have been if you hadn’t got there in time. Bill Watson, he’s the pilot, he’ll be fine, but he’s going to need a dozen bolts to hold his leg together. He’ll be out of the Army.”

“And making twice as much money flying around southern California telling people the weather and traffic,” I replied.

“Yeah, probably. The guy in back never made it; he never got off the table. He’s going to Dover.” I nodded. Dover was where the body bags were sent to, where the morticians were. “The other two are going home that way.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry about that, but I think they bought it in the crash. Why’d they go down?” I asked. I had learned to separate the deaths I couldn’t prevent from those I could have. He looked at me and I explained, “By the time we got there, they were already too low and there was smoke coming from an engine. Then they got hit by an RPG and went in. I’m surprised anybody got out.”

By that time the other guys had all gathered around. Colonel Brubaker nodded and said, “We’re not really sure. We brought in some Chinooks and carried the Blackhawk home, along with your Humvees. We’ll look at the engine. On the radio Watson said he was having some engine problems and was flying slower than he liked, but then he issued a Mayday call and said he thought he ate some birds. He started losing power. That must have been right before you guys got there. He went off the air. We were spooling up even as he called it in, but it still took us a few minutes to get there.”

I nodded at him and shrugged. I recalled that the Blackhawk was supposed to have been designed to avoid missile hits and bird strikes, but shit happens. He must have had at least some control when it went in.

Brubaker continued. “Well, I just wanted to stop by and thank you for getting to our helo. I don’t like to think what would have happened if you hadn’t. It would have been a disaster beyond what you can possibly imagine!”

That made me wonder, a lot! “You’re welcome, sir, but can you tell me ... us something? Who were those people on the bird? They looked like a bunch of civilians!”

“Yeah, who were those people?” asked Montoya.

“Everybody’s been laughing, like it’s some big secret!” complained Riley.

“You haven’t been told?” the colonel asked, an astonished look on his face.

We all basically shrugged and said, ‘No!’

“Jesus Christ! You guys rescued Tolley Hunter!”

Givens, Montoya, and Gonzalez all looked amazed, their eyes bugging out. Riley looked at me with a look of confusion. I simply asked, “Who?”

“Tolley Hunter!”

“Who’s Tolley Hunter?” I asked.

The room immediately erupted, with half my guys talking all at the same time as the colonel. “You’ve never heard of Tolley Hunter?” asked Brubaker, overriding the others.

“I am guessing she’s a singer?”

“Yeah, you could say that! She’s the biggest thing since Britney Spears! She’s over here on a USO tour!”

“What kind of music you listening to?” demanded Givens.

“Give me a break, Givens! I’m from West Georgia! We listen to both types of music, country and western!” I told him. I remembered that as a line from The Blues Brothers.

“Shit!”

Montoya was muttering in Spanish to Gonzalez, the gist of which was that I was an ignorant gringo. I flipped them both a middle finger.

“We’ll have to get you a couple of her CDs, Grim,” commented Riley. “You’ll love them. Her tits are almost as big as Kelly’s!”

“Fuck you, too, Riley!”

The colonel took that in stride, laughing at us. Then he lifted a rucksack that he had been carrying. “Listen, I can’t stay long, but I really wanted to thank you for saving my guys and our passengers. You know full well what would have happened to all of them.” He set the bag on the bed, and it clinked. Opening it, he reached in and pulled out a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of bourbon. “Courtesy of the 101^st.”

Maybe you could get that stuff routinely at Camp Victory, but it was the first booze any of us had seen since we deployed. “Damn!” I said quietly. I reached in and pulled out the bourbon, a bottle of Maker’s Mark. “Damn!” I repeated. I pushed the rucksack over to Riley and said, “Hide that and find some paper cups.”

“I prefer Scotch,” he replied with a smile. He looked at the bottle. “Johnnie Walker Black. I like your style, Colonel! You are a man of taste and distinction.”

“Rank hath its privileges. Save that for later,” I said. Gonzalez scrambled over with a stack of small Dixie cups. “Care for a snort, Colonel?” I asked.

He smiled. “It’d be rude to say no.”