Shards of asphalt ripped the
barricade against the thin-walled trailer, throwing Brad from his bunk and a
near-comatose sleep. He scrambled for his watch as the burst of sandbags
outside pre-empted the claxon’s late warning.
Another mortar shell erupted on the pavement, the sound muffled by a voice from
the radio: Your butt OK? Better be, ’cause I need it, or there won’t be
anything alive to transport outta here tonight.
“Damn, Elizabeth, I think that
makes number 38, doesn’t it? Thank God for that wall,” Brad said.
“Enemy’s been busy, Major. But
this one’s over, gotta be. And, like I said, I need you here at the
hospital.”
Brad sat up on the bare floor,
leaning his head against the bed, still below the level of the sandbag barrier
outside. Another look at his watch: he was due two hours of daylight sleep, and
last night’s flight transporting military patients had drained him.
“Come on, it’s only 3:00 PM, Cossar, and I was down pretty hard.”
“But that’s why you doctors make
the big bucks,” she chuckled. “Oh, that’s right, forgot—you volunteered.”
The two-way radio cracked a bit as
the last insurgents’ shell hit a random target within the base, the strike
still close enough to pepper the sandbags and weaken Brad’s grip on the casing.
He found the radio on the floor.
“And my four months is about up,”
he said. “Bet you called just to see if my guts were splattered across the
Sunni Triangle.”
“You trauma guys are really too
smart, particularly the sexy ones. You can see right through a nurse like me,
or at least you’d like to.”
Brad grimaced. All he wanted to do
was crawl back up into bed.
“Relax, Cossar, I’ll make the next
air transport to Landstuhl.”
“For now, I need some help in the
ICU, so head on in to the hospital,” she said.
“Why can’t Haynes handle it?”
Brad stretched across his bunk and
popped the pillow back into shape.
“Called in sick this morning. Said
he had the flu, but if you ask me it’s probably the rough morning-after virus.
Besides, Colonel Haynes never seems to be much help in the OR, unless it’s
something simple. And if you add in this new issue.”
“What issue?”
“Last week after lunch, one of my
nurses thought she smelled something on his breath, even through a surgical
mask. She wrote him up. He bit my head off when I showed him the report.”
“That’s the Haynes from
Mississippi I know,” Brad said. “Continuing the party at work.”
Cossar laughed. “Said he had a
cold and the smell was from sucking on menthol.”
There was quiet outside
and from the radio. The shelling was over.
Then the quiet ended.
“Sorry, my dear Major. We just got
word that the medical administrator has pointed a Black Hawk our way,” Cossar
said.
Brad threw his feet to the floor
and reached for clean underwear and socks from the small dresser near his bed.
He tossed the radio to his left hand and stepped over to the sink.
“Shit. How many casualties on
board the helicopter? Can’t be more than six.”
He picked up his toothbrush and
opened a bottle of water.
“Not sure. Guess we’ll find out
when it puts down.”
“OK, Lieutenant Colonel, I’m
headed your way.”
He pulled the radio clear of his
spit into the sink and ran the faucet, drowning a familiar Gee, thanks, sweety!
as she clicked off.
Brad grabbed his Air Force PT gear
and pitched the radio onto his desk. It landed atop Leslie’s photographs of
wedding cake and groom’s cake designs, samples emailed a couple of days ago and
waiting his approval. His reply using the base computer station would have to
wait. The insurgents’ attack had changed things.
Skipping a shower, he threw on the
blue running shorts, gray shirt, and tennis shoes, and stepped out onto the
warm asphalt of September Iraq. After the All Clear command, the warning sirens
were silent. There
was little traffic as he jogged around the sandbags to the Air Force Theater
Hospital. Situated near the 12-foot concrete wall that surrounded the base, the
hospital was shielded against direct mortar strikes. He hoped that the only
misery ahead was the load arriving with the Black Hawk.
Beads of sweat slid into the
corner of his mouth as Brad reached the rear hospital entrance. He pushed his
ID badge in the face of the security post then cleared the metal detector.
Minor medical and clerical personnel jammed the rear hall. He slipped into the
physician’s locker room, changed into surgical scrubs, and entered the main
corridor. The wall-sized mural of Saddam Hussein greeted him, the deposed
leader dressed in full military regalia as though still directing the
Republican Guard that once trained on the premises. Al-Bakir Air Base had
become Balad Air Base Theatre Hospital.
Brad pulled open the curtained
entrance to Surgical ICU. He stared at the patient bays, all but one empty and
separated by thin shelves stacked in disarray with supplies including vials of
medication. Squeezed between two bays was a clerical work area: a six-foot
folding table anchored by two computer monitors and littered with piles of
papers and empty coffee cups, along with displaced boxes of surgical gloves and
more syringes of narcotic pain medicine. The blue curtains serving as walls
made the area appear no more high-tech than a movie set. Yet the equipment
within and behind the drapes was state-of-the art for 2006, the same high
standards required of the surgeons and nurses who worked there.
One of those nurses was Elizabeth
Cossar, standing in starched, light-blue uniform, a below-the-knee skirt
finished with beige stockings and black, thick rubber-soled shoes. Her commanding
pose rivaled that of the fallen dictator.
“Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth
Taylor Cossar, I am reporting for duty,” Brad said. “And, my dear, it’s only
’cause I love you and you’re my favorite nurse over here.”
“That’s right, Major. You’ve
learned, and you’re sweating … and I like that.”
“Glad you do, but I’m really too
tired to sweat much more,” Brad said, raising an eyebrow.
“I jogged over here because you
predicted disaster. But I’ve seen morgues more exciting than this place,
Cossar.”
She turned away.
Brad imagined the disapproval on
her face. “How much longer ’til the helicopter sets down?” he asked. “Do you
think maybe we should clean up this mess before our guests arrive?”
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