Authors: Ronald J. Glasser
“I’ll walk you out,” the Captain said. “Where you going now?” he asked as they left the room.
“Fort Gordon for a while. My flight bag’s in there—” Brock pointed to the coat room—“and then home.”
The Captain waited while Brock walked in to get his bag. He hadn’t noticed the scar, red and raw, that came up across the back of the lieutenant’s neck.
“No, no,” Brock said when the Captain offered to carry his flight bag. “It’s OK, I can carry it. I should use this shoulder anyway.”
They walked outside into the warm Japanese night. There was no moon. The fuzzy red lights of the hospital’s helipad blinked at them from across the open field. The captain pulled out a cigarette and reached into his pocket for his lighter. Even as it sparked into flame, Brock swung around and knocked it out of his hand. Sputtering, it hit the ground and went out. There was an embarrassed silence.
“It’s all right, Lieutenant,” the Captain said, bending to pick it up. “There’s no one out there any more.”
“If there is any blessing in being there
it is in the shortness of things.
There is no wasting away there, no
philosophical concerns about medical
ethics, about pulling out the plugs and
turning off the machines. When they die
there they die straight out, right off
the choppers. It’s sort of clean work.
No brain tumors to worry about, no
chronic renal disease, no endless dialysis,
no multiple sclerosis, no leukemics—
and no goddamn families to have to
worry about.”
Battalion surgeon, 101st Airborne
R and R
U.S. Army Hospital, Zama, Japan
E
DWARDS PICKED UP THE
stethoscope from his desk. “Look,” he said, “you can say what you want about the Army and its problems, but I learned this much from going home: the Army treats you better dead than alive. I know,” he added quickly to keep the Captain from talking. “I know, it was my fault. I shouldn’t have got involved with taking the body back. But I did.”
“It’s coming,” the corpsman said, stepping away from the window.
Edwards stuffed the stethoscope into his back pocket. “OK. Tell the ward master. How many did they say?”
The Captain put his half-finished cup of coffee on the desk. “One VSI and one SI.”
Edwards nodded and then, as if he’d just remembered something, checked his watch against the clock over the door.
“The States are sixteen hours behind us,” the Captain offered.
“In time, maybe.” Edwards pulled his lab coat off the rack. “Better fill the whirlpools. I’ll be down at the landing pad.”
In the dimly lit corridor he looked again at his watch. Sixteen hours. It would be eighteen for Nam. What difference did it make, eighteen or a million? He pushed open the double doors to the burn unit.
The huge overhead lights were off, leaving only the night lights to flicker feebly across the shiny tiled floor. He walked quietly down the center aisle of the ward, his footsteps echoing lightly ahead of him. The beds lining the wall were barely visible, the patients no more than lumps against the frames. From the far end of the ward came the faint mechanical hissing of a respirator. He stopped a moment near one of the steel arched Stryker frames to listen. The machine’s slow, regular rhythm was almost soothing. How many times he’d heard it before. Someone had said he’d signed more death certificates than any other doctor in Japan. Probably right, he thought, continuing on his way. At Kishine, the respirator was the sound of death, not life; in all his time there, he could not think of one patient who had got off the thing.
“Hi, Doc.”
“Oh, Crowley,” Edwards said, coming to a halt near the little cubicle at the back of the ward. “Sorry, I didn’t see you in the dark.”
The side curtain had been partially pulled. Stretched out on the bed, barely lit by the dials of the respirator, was a shadowy form.
“How’s he doing, Sergeant?” Edwards asked the ward master, who was standing at attention by the machine that was slowly, insistently hissing air into and out of the charred body.
“Not too good, sir.”
“What’s his temperature?”
“Hundred and five. It was a hundred and seven before we put him on the cooling blanket.”
“Blood cultures growing out anything?”
“Yes, sir; the lab called back tonight—Pseudomonas pseudomallei. Major Johnson put him on IV Chloromycetin and tetracycline.”
Edwards bent over to look more closely at the restrained body spread-eagled across the frame. The air smelled sweet, like a dying orchard. “When did he come in?” he asked, peering at the grotesquely crusted body. Even the tips of his toes and fingers were charred and oozing; nothing had been spared.
“Four days after you left. Seventy percent second-degree and 15 percent third. At least Major Johnson thought it was second-degree, but it’s beginning to look like it’s all third.”
Edwards examined the crust about the boy’s swollen neck and chest. It had a sick metallic green cast to it. “When did he go sour?”
“He was doing fine until this morning. We had to give him Demerol every time he went into the whirlpool, but he’s very hard-core. Nice kid. Then yesterday, he became confused and agitated. On the night shift his temp spiked, and he became unconscious. The surgeons trached him today, and Dr. Johnson put him on the respirator this evening.”
Edwards sighed and stepped back from the bed. “How old?”
“What?”
“How old was he?”
Surprised, Crowley reached for the chart.
“Never mind,” Edwards said. “Forget it.”
“Sir.”
“Yes?”
“You’re sort of short now, aren’t you?”
“Five months.”
“That’s not long.”
“No,” Edwards said absently, “no, it’s not long.”
“The evacs should be in soon.”
“Yeah, that’s where I’m going. I’ll check on him later.”
“No need, sir, you’ll have your hands full. I’ll have you called if anything changes.”
As he walked away, Edwards could hear Crowley drawing the curtains closed behind him. The stairwell was empty, and he walked slowly down to the first floor and out onto the concrete walkway.
It was summer outside, and the night was as warm as indoors. He cut across the empty, silent field separating the hospital’s squat buildings from the helipad, where the red lights of the landing strip flickered softly in the misty dark. Far away he heard the muffled, dull thudding of the chopper whopping its way through the heavy air, and suddenly he felt alone and desperately tired.
“Gentlemen: You have been assembled here at Yokota Air Base to escort these bodies home to the continental United States. Each body in its casket is to have, at all times, a body escort. Those caskets on the plane that do not at the present time have an escort will have them assigned at Oakland. Whatever the case, no casket will be allowed to leave the Oakland area without a proper escort. Escort duty is a privilege as well as an honor. An effort has been made to find an escort whose personal involvement with the deceased or presence with the family of the deceased will be of comfort and aid. Your mission as a body escort is as follows: to make sure that the body is afforded, at all times, the respect due a fallen soldier of the United States Army. Specifically it is as follows: 1) To check the tags on the caskets at every point of departure. 2) To insist, if the tags indicate the remains as non-viewable, that the relatives not view the body. Remember that non-viewable means exactly that—non-viewable....
”
Grimly, with the chopper coming nearer—louder—Edwards walked up a slight rise, past a small, dimly lit sign:
KISHINE BARRACKS
109th UNITED STATES ARMY HOSPITAL
United States Army, Japan
Burn Unit
“Coastal Airlines loads the bodies on an angle. Be sure that if the body you are escorting is being carried by Coastal Airlines that the caskets are loaded head down: this will keep the embalming fluid in the upper body. If the body is loaded incorrectly, namely, feet down, the embalming fluid will accumulate in the feet and the body may, under appropriate atmospheric conditions, begin to decompose.”
By the time he reached the evac area, the floodlights were on and the chopper had landed. Coming in from the dark around the back of the evac building Edwards was dazzled by the sudden lights. The Huey, low and glistening, its rotors still whirling, sat like a toy exactly in the middle of the arc lights. Its crew chief and co-pilot were already in the open hatchway unstrapping the litters from their carrying hooks. Edwards watched unseen while the corpsmen hurried out to the chopper to off-load the patients. The choppers usually came in about ten in the morning, but when a bad burn was evac’ed to Japan, they were flown in the same night. Burns are a very special kind of wound, and no physician anywhere wants the responsibility of caring for them, not even for a little while. For openers, burns look bad and the patients die.
“Each of the next of kin as listed in the deceased 201 file has already been visited by a survivor assistance officer. This was done in person by an officer in uniform from the nearest Army unit. Every effort is made to pick an officer from a similar racial and economic background. These families have already been convinced of the death by either the presentation of personal effects or the relating of an eye-witness report from a member of the deceased’s unit. You need not convince the deceased’s relatives. The point to remember is that the survivor assistance officer has been there before you and the next of kin have already accepted the death.”
He was standing in the reflected glare of the landing lights, with the windy noise of the chopper rushing past him.
“Sir. Sir?” One of the corpsmen was shouting above the whining of the motor. “One of ’em’s got a head wound, the other is just burned.”
“Call the neurosurgeon,” Edwards shouted back. He gave the empty chopper one more look and then followed the medic into the air evac area. By the time he reached the building, the medics had placed the two litters on the movable stretcher racks and one of them, working on the patient nearest the door, was already setting up an IV.
“He’s OK, Major,” the air-evac Sergeant said. “The head injury’s over there.”
“One hundred and seventy,” the corpsman said as Edwards approached the litter. The wounded soldier, his head wrapped, was lying unconscious on his back, with the blood pressure cuff still wrapped around his arm.
“Expecting trouble, Tom?”
“Well, sir, I figured I’d leave the cuff on. He don’t look too good.”
“I’ll give you that,” Edwards said. He began to unwrap the gauze from around the patient’s head. The boy was breathing; other than that, he looked dead. Edwards pinched his neck, but there was no response. As he unwound the gauze it became wet and then blood-soaked. Now he was down to the four-by-four surgical pads, and finally to the wound itself. Carefully he lifted up the last pack. Despite himself, he closed his eyes.
“He’s 47-percent burned,” the Sergeant said, reading the cover sheet of the soldier’s medical record. “Took an AK round a little in front of the right eye. Removed the right eye, traversed the left orbit, removing the left eye, and came out near the left temple, apparently blowing out the left side of his head.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be careful, Bob. Honest, I’ll be careful...
”
“Send him to neurosurgery,” Edwards said. “We’ll treat his burns up there.”
“An IV?”
“No, just send him up.”
He walked across to the other wounded trooper. The corpsman had just got the IV started.
“Sorry it took so long, sir,” he said. “Hard to find a vein.”
The boy was awake, nervously looking at the needle the corpsman had stuck into the back of his hand.
“Hi,” Edwards said. “How do you feel?”
The soldier looked up at him apprehensively. The skin on his face had been seared red and all his hair and eyebrows and lashes had been burned away.
“I know you’re nervous,” Edwards said soothingly. “Just try to relax. I’m the chief of the burn unit. I’ll be your doctor for a while until you get better.” As he pulled back the blanket the soldier grimaced. “Sorry,” he said, lifting the cover more carefully.
The burns, red and raw, ran the whole charred length of the boy’s body. Unconsciously Edwards began adding up the percentages of burned area, tallying them in his mind. He suddenly realized what he was doing and, for a moment, as he stood there staring at the burns, he looked stricken. “How did it happen?” he asked gently, carefully dropping back the covers.
“I...I was carrying detonators...”
“Dear Bob: We are fighting very hard now. I haven’t written Mom and Dad, about it. I don’t want to worry them. But we are getting hit and badly. I’m the only lieutenant in the company who hasn’t been hit yet. And last week I lost two RTO’s. They were standing right next to me. It gets a bit spooky. I know what you said about my flack vest, but you haven’t been here and you just don’t know how hot it can get. On the move, it’s just too damn heavy. You can’t carry a 60-pound rucksack in 110-degree heat and an 11-pound flack vest, I make the point wear his, but then someone else carries his gear. It’s like your complaint about patients demanding penicillin—sometimes you just can’t use it. It’s the same with a flack vest. Besides, it wouldn’t stop a round, and that’s what we’ve been getting lately. But I’ll wear it when I can. By the way, you’re beginning to sound like Mom. About what’s been happening lately. I’m not complaining, don’t get the wrong idea. There is, honestly, something very positive about being over here. I can see it in myself and my men. Not the war itself, God knows that’s hopeless enough, but what happens to you because of it. I’ll never be the same again. I can feel myself growing. Unfortunately you only see one end of it. That’s a bit sad, because there are other endings and even middles. A lot of guys get out of here OK, and despite what they say, they’re better for it. I can see it in myself. I’m getting older over here in a way that I could never do at home or maybe anywhere. For the first time in my life, everything seems to count. All the fuzziness is gone, all the foolishness. I can’t believe the things that used to bother me, or even that I thought were important. You really see yourself over here. It works on you, grinds you down, makes you better. Got to go: Thanks for the R and R. Say Hi to all the guys in the burn unit.