Year of the Tiger (14 page)

‘There’s a prayer group meeting after chow,’ Pulagang said to me and Greif when we were sitting on our bunks one night before dinner. ‘Why don’t you guys come with me?’

Greif hardly looked up from her laptop. ‘No thanks,’ she said. Greif was a strange bird, even looked a little like one; she was small, spare, and brown, brown hair, skin tanned nut-brown to match. An E-4 Specialist, she acted like she wasn’t one of us. Which she wasn’t. The rest of us all came from the same support company, TDY’ed to fill in some holes for guys who got rotated out. Greif came from a different company and was ‘attached in direct support of’ the combat unit to help out with the PUCs, speakers of even half-assed Arabic being in short supply. She spent her spare time studying her Arabic books and typing on her computer.

‘Are you blogging?’ I’d asked her once. I knew some guys who blogged back at my first FOB, in between crackdowns by HQ.

‘Blogging?’ She’d looked up at me, eyes magnified but still distant behind her non-regulation, wire-framed specs. ‘No. I wouldn’t do that.’

She’d turned back to her laptop without another word.

‘How about you, Ellie?’ Pulagang asked me now.

I hesitated, tossed my Beanie squid up and down a few times, watched the trickle of water from the marginal air conditioner run down the stained concrete wall. I didn’t really want to go. But I was thinking I should. Maybe just being around guys who were Spirit-filled would somehow get some Spirit back inside me.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Sure.’

The meeting was held in the MWR center – meaning ‘morale, welfare, and recreation’ – which in our case was a sagging tent that smelled like cat piss and dust just past the hajji mart they’d let a couple of the locals set up. About a dozen guys, Pulagang, and me sat on folding chairs at the back of the tent, next to the sad collection of paperbacks and out-of-date magazines that some smart-ass had christened ‘The Library of Alexandria.’ (I finally looked that up one day, because for months I’d had no clue what it meant.)

Anyway, Pulagang and me pulled up chairs in this circle of guys, and things got really quiet all of the sudden, and I felt like I used to feel whenever I was trying to pretend that I fit in someplace: like I didn’t belong, and this was the last place I wanted to be.

‘Why don’t we get started?’ one of the guys said.

I focused my attention on him. Big guy, nice body, a sort of light behind his eyes.

‘It’s great to see y’all here,’ he continued. ‘’Cause you know, when Thomas Paine said ’These are the times that try men’s souls,’ I’m pretty sure it was times like these he had in mind.’

He smiled. His voice was like chocolate. ‘I’m Trey Cooper. Why don’t the rest of you introduce yourselves?’

I felt filled with something, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t Spirit.

At first, Trey and me just hung out together and talked. We talked about all kinds of stuff. About Christ. About our lives.

Or maybe he talked, and I mostly listened.

I remember one time, we were sitting up on a berm by the southwest perimeter, watching the sun set, chucking rocks at a storage shed.

‘It’s tough, you know?’ Trey said. He picked up a rock, considered its shape, and then hurled it at the shed, barely missing our designated target zone, the door. Still, the rock made a cool noise when it hit the corrugated metal. ‘It’s like, there’s my life in Christ, and there’s my life as a soldier. And they should be the same thing. But sometimes they’re just not.’

I nodded. I wasn’t sure what to say. I would have felt kind of stupid asking something like ‘You mean the part where you have to kill people?’ Because that’s not particularly Christlike, in my understanding; but it’s what soldiers do, by definition.

I focused on my rock. It was a nice smooth one. ‘Okay, watch this,’ I said. I wound up and let it fly. I nailed the door.

‘Good one!’

Trey picked up a rock from our pile, tossed it up and down in his hand. ‘It’s just the circumstances, sometimes,’ he said. He stared at me, with that intensity that made me feel like he was reaching deep down inside me, like he could devour me whole, and I couldn’t do a thing about it. I wouldn’t have wanted to. ‘I know what we’re doing is the right thing. Protecting our country, helping these people …’

He gave the rock a final toss, then he hurled it at the shed.

‘Hey, I think you got the doorknob.’ Hitting the doorknob was worth extra points.

‘’Cause they should get to live in a normal country, you know? Have decent lives.’ Then he shook his head. ‘But the circumstances … sometimes the circumstances just suck.’

If by ‘the circumstances’ he meant that the people around there were dirt-poor and lived in shitholes with intermittent electricity and contaminated water, and that a large percentage of them hated us and kept trying to kill us, well, I guess I’d have to agree.

Trey was a Sergeant First Class in MI (‘Military Intelligence,’ for the acronym-impaired). He wasn’t an interpreter, but he’d picked up some Arabic, and he was always trying to teach me phrases, ‘to be polite and show your respect for the locals.’ I didn’t really want to get to know the locals, to be honest, but I went along with him. I would have pretty much done anything he’d ask me to. That’s how stupid-crazy I was about the guy.

Which is why, late one night when I was manning the aid station on my own (Blanchard being off-duty and the other medic out with Saddam’s Revenge), I didn’t ask too many questions when Trey and his OGA buddy Kyle brought in the PUC.

OGA means ‘Other Government Agency.’ Sometimes that means CIA, sometimes DIA, sometimes a private contractor like Blackwater. You don’t ask.

‘Hey, Ellie. Give us a hand here?’

Trey and Kyle carried this hajji between them, a middle-aged man with a gut who was dressed in U.S. Army fatigues that didn’t fit him. His arms were flopping around, and he muttered something which, naturally, I didn’t understand.

‘Put him over there.’ I pointed to a bed and went into my routine.

They laid him out on the bed and stepped away, like this wasn’t something they were supposed to see.

Hajji looked shocky. Sweat poured off him, and his skin had a grayish tone to it. Pulse shallow, fast, and thready, respiration rapid.

‘Hand me those pillows,’ I ordered without thinking. Before I even tried to get a BP on this guy, I wanted to elevate his legs and treat him for shock.

Trey and Kyle stood there for a minute, frozen in place.

‘Jesus,’ I muttered and grabbed the pillows myself, lifted up the dude’s legs with one hand, and stuffed the pillows under his knees and calves and feet.

Hajji screamed.

‘Okay. It’s gonna be okay,’ I told the guy, taking hold of his hand. ‘It’s gonna be okay.’

He opened his eyes. Stared at me.

I got out the BP cuff. His pressure was 90 over 40. Not good. Not dying, but not right either.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s see what’s going on here.’ I patted his hand and started to unbutton his fatigue jacket.

His eyes opened wider. His head shook back and forth, and he started babbling about something.

‘They don’t like women seeing them,’ Kyle said.

‘Trey,’ I said, ‘can you tell this guy I’m trying to help?’

Trey snapped out something in Arabic. The PUC didn’t calm down. So Trey said something else. It didn’t sound nice, but maybe that’s just the language.

The guy stared at Trey, at me, and then he closed his eyes.

I unbuttoned the jacket.

Purpling bruises on his abdomen and point tenderness in at least five places along his ribs. Belly a little rigid.

Okay, I thought. Okay. Before I do anything else, I’m gonna get some oxygen and some fluids into this guy, both of which come under the ‘do no harm’ heading.

So I did that. But he still didn’t look good.

‘How is he?’ Trey asked.

‘I dunno.’ I was thinking I should do the rest of my secondary survey, check out what was going on with his legs, for one thing. But whatever was wrong, it wasn’t anything I’d be able to fix.

‘You need to get him to a hospital,’ I said.

‘Fuck,’ said Kyle, pounding his fist on his thigh.

‘He’s going into shock,’ I explained. ‘There’s a lot of things that can cause that. Pipes, pump, or pressure.’ I repeated the mantra I’d learned in EMT training, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then I thought to add, ‘Like there might be some underlying cardiac insufficiency, especially if there was some respiratory compromise, but I’m guessing he’s got some internal bleeding going on, from the look of those rib contusions.’

It was Trey’s turn to stare, probably because he’d never heard me do my medic routine before.

‘Look, he needs a doctor,’ I said. ‘I’m just a medic. There’s only so much I can do.’ I was thinking we could transport him to the hospital in town, or maybe copter him to Camp Screaming Eagle Whatever where they had a full-on combat support hospital that could actually help him.

‘What about Blanchard?’ Trey asked.

‘I mean, we could call him, I guess. But he’s a physician’s assistant. It’s not like he can remove this guy’s spleen or something.’

Kyle shook his head. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘I dunno.’

For whatever reason, I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. Maybe because all of a sudden I realized that I didn’t like OGA Kyle very much. Which was weird, because Kyle had always struck me as this totally normal guy before. Like I couldn’t even really describe him: just some dude around thirty, nondescript, even a little dumpy, nobody I ever would have noticed unless I had to.

I’d never thought about who he might work for. What his job might be.

Because I was frustrated, and because I didn’t want to think about why I didn’t like Kyle, I decided to do my job. I grabbed a pair of scissors and started to cut off the PUC’s pants.

Hajji was pretty out of it, but this got a rise out of him. His head lifted off the pillow; his arms waved around ineffectually, and the oxygen mask muffled whatever he was trying to say.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Uh,
afwan
. Jesus, Trey, would you talk to this guy?’

Trey said something. Yelled it, almost. The PUC’s eyes widened for a moment, and then his head thumped against the pillow.

He wasn’t wearing any underwear. Was this normal for Iraqis? I realized that I had no idea. He moaned beneath the oxygen mask.

I finished cutting off the pants.

‘Shit.’

His legs. His legs were a fucking mess. Purple with bruises, hematomas – blood-filled, egg-sized lumps on his shins.

‘Shit,’ I said again. ‘What happened to this guy?’

Neither Trey or Kyle said anything for a moment.

‘It happened during capture,’ Kyle said carefully. ‘He was a high-value target. He resisted, and things got a little rough.’

‘Rough. Like, you ran over him with a Stryker?’ The words came out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

‘Ellie, this is a really bad guy,’ Trey said, a pleading note in his voice. ‘We think he’s one of the ringleaders in the gang that’s been dropping mortars on us the past three months.’

I shrugged. ‘Whatever.’ It wasn’t like I particularly cared about Mr Ali Baba here. But I still had this notion that I should do my job, which meant helping people if possible. ‘All I’m saying is that he’s busted up pretty bad, and I can’t fix him. He needs to get to a doctor.’

‘Fuck,’ Kyle repeated, sounding more irritated than anything else. ‘Okay.’ He turned to Trey. ‘Let’s make the call.’

‘Someone’s gotta stay here with her,’ Trey objected.

‘What, you think he’s going anywhere? Just cuff him to the bed.’

So that’s what they did. Meanwhile, I grabbed some blankets, covered the guy up, tried to get him warm. I was thinking MAST trousers, the anti-shock suit that you can also use for a legs-and-pelvis splint. Maybe that would help.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ Trey said, resting his hand on my shoulder.

I didn’t want to look at him. ‘Okay.’

After they left, I put on the MAST, and I tried to be gentle, tried not to hurt him, but with every little movement of his legs he moaned or screamed and thrashed around, wrists straining against the cuffs, and I kept saying, ‘Sorry, I’m sorry.
Afwan
,’ but I was still hurting him.

When that was done, I checked Ali Baba’s vitals again. About the same. I wanted to take a smoke break, but I was afraid to leave. Of course, if he started circling the drain, there wasn’t a lot I could do about it.

‘Hey, Doc.’

It was a soldier I’d seen before, National Guard like me, Private Abrams.

‘What’s up?’

‘I got the runs like you wouldn’t believe. Can you hook me up with something?’

‘I can get you Imodium. Fluids if you’re dehydrated.’

The disappointment showed on his face. ‘Poole came in with the same thing,’ he said, ‘and the doc hooked him up with some serious meds. Stopped the shit right there.’

I almost laughed, because I had a pretty good idea what the guy had come here for. Nothing like a good dose of morphine to cure the trots. Or whatever else it is that ails you. ‘Sorry. I can only get you Imodium. Come back and talk to the P.A. tomorrow if you need something else.’

‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘Well, I guess I’ll take the Imodium, then.’

I sat down at the computer to take his info. Abrams peered around me and took a look at my other patient.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Some PUC.’

‘What happened to him?’

I shrugged. ‘Got messed up.’

Abrams wandered over to the bed. ‘Man, they fucked him good,’ he said admiringly. I turned my head and saw that Abrams had lifted up the blanket for a better look.

‘Hey, hands off the patient.’

Abrams dropped the blanket, raised his hands. ‘No harm, Doc.’ He laughed. ‘Somebody beat me to it.’

It took almost an hour for the copter to come. Ali Baba’s level of consciousness took a downturn while we waited; he was really out of it and started flailing around, and even with his wrists cuffed he almost pulled out the IV. But he was still breathing when they bundled him off, and that’s all I know about what happened to him.

When it was all over, I sat on the stoop and smoked a cigarette. Trey sat down next to me.