Angel of Mercy (9 page)

There could have been tension in the nursing squad except for Chelsea’s innate good humor and genuinely good heart. Long gone was the Main Line debutante. Replacing her was a competent and conscientious young nurse in the service of the United States of America.

A little over a week after the date that had ended awkwardly Chelsea returned to Glynnis. Gerald had passed out while doing a routine run on the treadmill. Tim had called Chelsea with the news that another infection was running its course through his brother.

“It’s just one after another, Chelsea,” Tim said on the phone. “They clear up one infection, but the antibiotics that fight the infection cause the body to lose some of its innate immunity.. The doctor at Glynnis said that it was not unlike fighting an auto-immune disease. Ultimately he’s going to be okay, at least that’s what they think, but until then it’s rough!”

Chelsea knew that what Tim was being told was true. She had seen soldiers cashiered out of the service because their bodies attracted every infection around and they couldn’t be kept healthy long enough to be of any use to the Army.

“I’ll look in on him, Tim. I need to anyway.”

After her tour of duty in the medical center Chelsea walked across the base to Glynnis. Though she had been there several times and was known to the nurse on duty, security checked Chelsea on the way in. Such was the way of the world on American bases in foreign lands since the attacks on 9/11. After having her bag thoroughly examined and her person patted down Chelsea rode the elevator to the second floor.

Gerald’s door was open, but something caused Chelsea to hesitate before walking in. She heard Gerald talking and decided to wait until the doctor finished his examination and interview if that were, in fact, what was happening in the room. After a short time, Chelsea realized that the only voice in the room was the patient’s voice. Just then, one of the nurses walked up beside Chelsea.

“You can go in if you like,” the nurse said quietly. “Just know, though, that he is experiencing a hard day after a hard night last night. He has awful nightmares.”

Chelsea thanked the nurse for her help and walked into the room. There she saw Gerald, asleep but with the bed sheets in a tangled mess and him having sweat through the hospital gown.

Chelsea took a chair by the bed, wanting to help him get comfortable but not wanting to wake him from the dream…all while wanting to wake him. The protocol for waking sleeping patients varied depending on the nature of their condition. As a nurse who mainly spent her time in surgery, Chelsea didn’t have much experience in a situation like this. Her confusion only grew as she heard the content of what he was saying.

“Oh, no, oh no!
Oh no
! Don’t do that!
Stop
!
Stop
!”

Then his voice subsided to the point that Chelsea couldn’t hear him clearly enough to make out the words. He muttered and grunted a few times. Chelsea leaned over to touch him, in hopes that she could wake him gently. Just then his eyes opened wide and He made a strangling noise in the back of his throat.

“Gaach,
Stop it godammit! Stop it! You can’t
do
that!”

Gerald’s eyes were wild, and he reached toward Chelsea with grasping fingers. Chelsea recoiled, but pushed the button that would call the nurse before she did. The nurse who had spoken to her outside the door came in and quickly took stock of the situation.

“Please move your chair back, Miss,” she said briskly. “We need to change the patient’s bed and get him into some fresh clothing.”

Chelsea complied, and the nurse threw closed the curtain that was next to Gerald’s bed. All was quiet for a moment, but obviously the nurse had done what was necessary to waken Gerald from his nightmare, for the next thing that Chelsea heard was Gerald sitting up on the edge of the bed and then sliding into a wheelchair. The nurse made quick work of putting clean bedding on the hospital bed and getting Gerald Giacomo into fresh attire.

“He’s too weak to be able to dress himself,” Chelsea thought. “He really is in a bad way.”

Finally, dry, awake, and calm, Gerald was deemed to be presentable. She threw open the curtain and said, “Look who’s here to see you,” to Gerald. To Chelsea, she said, “Make it 5 minutes max. He’s a sick boy.”

Gerald smiled, but it was a rather weak effort. Obviously sapped by the ravages of this particular infection, it was all he could do to be welcoming. Chelsea pulled her chair back to the side of his bed.

“Hey, stranger,” she said. “How are you?”

Gerald made an effort to smile and exchange banter with her. But he couldn’t. Whether it was the infection, the content of his latest nightmare, or a combination of the two, all of Gerald’s efforts to be what culture calls “manly” fell to pieces. So too, did Gerald. He looked at Chelsea in silence for a moment. Then his eyes filled with tears that soon spilled down his cheeks. Specialist First Class Gerald Anthony Giacomo was sobbing and didn’t appear to be recovering any time soon.

Chelsea was surprised. Not by the fact that a soldier was in tears, for she had seen that many times in the medical ward in which she worked. But she was surprised by the immediacy and the frank and total broken-heartedness of Gerald Giacomo at that moment. She pulled her chair even closer and laid her left hand on Gerald’s shoulder. For a good 15 minutes, there they sat, nurse and patient, friend to friend. Soon the natural empathy that was so much a part of Chelsea came to the front. She cried as well.

Just as it appeared that Gerald was coming under some semblance of control, Chelsea heard a squeak behind her. Thinking that a doctor or nurse might be coming in, she turned to look. It was the nurse who had helped Gerald last. She was closing the door to give the patient and his guest some space, and some privacy. Sometimes, the best psychology in the world was a friendly ear. Clearly the nurse hoped that might be the case for this particular patient.

Suddenly Gerald dried his eyes and got his breathing under control. He looked at Chelsea with eyes that were still wet but were steady in their gaze.

“I’m a bad man, Chelsea. Stay clear of me.”

Chelsea’s brows knitted ash she looked at Gerald. Her heart went out to him as he was obviously struggling with something that had occurred recently.

“You're not a bad man, Ger…” was as far as she got before he sat up on the bed and slammed his hand down on the bed. Later, Chelsea was reminded that he looked just like his brother did when he had slammed his hand down in front of her recently. For now, though, she just looked at Gerald in surprise as he reiterated his point about his own deficiencies.

“Damn it to Hell, Chelsea I am a bad man! You don’t know me, and you don’t know shit about what I’ve done, but I’m telling you that I’m a bad man!”

Chelsea tried to pat Gerald’s arm and tell him that it was all going to be okay. She wanted to offer him the platitudes of her profession, but he was willing to hear nothing of the sort.

“I’ve seen things, Hell, I’ve
done
things that I never thought I would see or do. I was raised to be a good and kind man and now…”

Gerald voice trailed away. Chelsea was at a loss as far as being able to think of what to say. So she sat quietly, waiting for Gerald to continue. When he did, it wasn’t to say anything that was of help to Chelsea.

“Just get the hell out of here!
Just go! And don’t come back!”

Chelsea stood up, but she didn’t immediately leave. Instead, she stood over Gerald’s bed and stared into the malevolent eyes that stared back at her. She quickly and silently asked God to place the words in her mouth that He wanted her to say. As He generally does, He answered.

Love is patient, love is kind. Love doesn’t take into account a wrong suffered. Three things abide, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love,”
were the words that came to her. She took strength and courage, but mostly compassion, from the words of I Corinthians 13 that God had placed in her heart as she looked at Gerald’s angry eyes.

“I will go, Gerald. But I will come back. God Bless you,” she said as she stepped away from the bed. Rather than answering, Gerald lay back on the bed, spent from his efforts. Chelsea quietly left the room. On her way downstairs, she had a frank heart to heart with God.

Thanks for the help, Lord, but wow! Where did that even come from? I won’t let him push me away, though. He’s in a lot more pain than from whatever is causing his infections. But I won’t abandon him! He’ll have to try harder than that to get rid of me.

Stubborn in her conviction, Chelsea walked out of the elevator and right into Tim Giacomo. Literally right into him. Both of them were head down and into their own thoughts until they made contact.

“Oof,” Tim said as he bounced back away from contact. “I’m sorry Chelsea. I should have been looking.”

Without acknowledgment of the bump or any other preamble Chelsea said, “You’re going to see Gerald. He’s not in a good place.”

Tim’s brow furrowed, and he motioned Chelsea to a more remote spot in the lobby. When the two friends had a little more privacy, Tim asked, “What do you mean ‘not a good place’?”

Chelsea briefly recounted for Tim the conversation that she had just concluded with Gerald. Tim nodded a couple of times but otherwise didn’t respond until she had finished her tale.

“He has said a few things like that to me as well. Nothing as put-together as what he said to you but bits and pieces. Things like ‘You don’t know me as you think you do,’ and ‘I’ve changed’. He sees a therapist as part of his treatment here. Maybe that will do him some good.”

Chelsea commiserated with Tim a little more and then left Glynnis, promising to connect with him again later in the day to compare notes from their separate visits with Gerald. She walked across the base to her CHU and ran into another issue. This one was named Lisa Glenn and Lieutenant Matthew Clark.

Chapter Six

Lisa and Matt had been seeing each other in a somewhat clandestine fashion for about three months. Their difference in rank became an issue when they began seeing one another in a somewhat clandestine fashion with their clothes off. Chelsea had suspected, by the 24/7 flush in Lisa’s face that they were going over more than medical records when they were together. Since the amorous couple couldn’t be overtly affectionate in public without raising eyebrows, the CHU shared by Lisa and Chelsea became home base for creative disrobing.

Just such creative disrobing was underway when Chelsea got back from seeing Gerald Giacomo at the Glynnis Unit. Lisa and Matt were giving extraordinarily thorough physical examinations to each other on the couch in the shared CHU. Chelsea could have fired off a mortar round and the couple on the couch wouldn’t have known that they weren’t alone. Though she certainly considered that option, just for the pure sport of it all, instead Chelsea quietly opened the door and went for a walk.

Chelsea had a six hour tour the next day that would have her off duty by 1500 hours.
That will give me time to get to Glynnis and see Gerald and/or Tim. It will also give Lisa some privacy. Good God y’all,
Chelsea thought.

On her way to Glynnis Chelsea thought about what she would do or say if Gerald turned on her as he had the day before. Though she knew that playing it by ear would be her ultimate decision, it still helped to play out different ways that the coming conversation could go. “If he says this, Ill…” “If I say this, he might…”

When Chelsea arrived at Room 2D she realized that, at least initially, no conversation would be possible. Specialist Gerald Giacomo had suffered some respiratory distress that morning and had been fitted with a full on oxygen mask. Chelsea quickly noted that the news could be worse. But it could also be better. Gerald had been fitted with a non-rebreather style of oxygen mask.

The non-rebreather oxygen mask is used when a patient needs oxygen but doesn't need help breathing. This mask is used for people in serious conditions like serious trauma injuries, poisoning or any other condition that calls for the patient to receive lots of oxygen. Oxygen enters the lungs between breaths by the use of a reservoir bag. Air in the room is prevented from entering the mask by a valve so that only pure oxygen is inhaled.

So while Gerald’s condition was more severe than to entail the use of the common nasal cannula, he wasn’t on a bag valve.

The bag valve mask is a manual respirator used for patients who are in critical condition, such as those who aren't breathing well or perhaps not breathing at all. Gerald was awake and aware that Chelsea was in the room. In fact, he gave her a little wave and a “What are ya’ gonna do?” with upturned palms, but he wasn’t able to talk. Chelsea told him that she would be back in just a little bit but that she was going down to the cafeteria to grab a quick bite. Gerald gave her a thumbs up.

It only took Chelsea about 15 minutes to be back in Gerald’s room. Once a girl who liked to linger over lunch, Chelsea had that habit driven out of her when she first enlisted in the Army. The earliest days of Boot Camp had been hungry days for Chelsea who had to train herself to ingest the food put before her on the dead run. The new habit served her well in a medical facility where an emergency was never far away.

When she got back to Gerald’s room, he was looking out the window. She sat down, waiting for his acknowledgment that she was there. He continued looking out of his bedside window. Sure that he wasn’t going to look at her, Chelsea prepared herself for a solitary stay. Just then, Gerald slipped his hand through the metal bars of the bed, reaching for Chelsea. She placed her hand palm to palm in Gerald’s. Still without looking at Chelsea, he turned his hand do that their fingers were intertwined. They sat together just like that until Gerald fell asleep.

Chelsea dozed a little as well. When she awoke, Gerald was looking at her. Gone was the glazed and wild look that Chelsea had seen come over his face more than once. It had been replaced with a look of peace and contentment.

“Hello,” he said simply.

Chelsea was a little embarrassed that she had come to visit Gerald and had used the time to nap. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

Gerald waved her down with his hand. “Don’t sweat it. You probably don’t get much sleep yourself. But can we talk now?”

Chelsea nodded. She was glad for the chance to visit with Gerald when he seemed to have his wits about him and his emotions under control.

Gerald looked at the blank wall that was at the end of his bed. His voice, when he next started to speak, was a little shaky, but it grew stronger as he told his tale to Chelsea Bannister.

“What I’m going to tell you will have nothing to do with my injuries and the infections that have me laid up. Something happened seven months ago, not long after I got to this God-forsaken part of the world. My unit had been stationed in the area since summer, I had been with them since early fall. We were struggling, with absolutely no success, to root out the Taliban and those sympathetic to the Taliban cause and establish an American presence in one of the most violent and lawless regions of the country. It was the heat, the frustration, the fear, and I guess just simple rage that caused what happened next.

“On the morning of January 15th or 16th, I can’t remember which, the company's 3rd Platoon—part of the 11th Stryker Brigade, left the settlement of tents and trailers at Base Camp Rampart Delta in a convoy of armed Stryker troop carriers. The trucks rushed across the desert until we came to Lashkar Gah, an isolated farming village. It’s about 75 kilometers west of Kandahar.

I was driving one of the Strykers. To provide perimeter security, we parked them at the borders of the settlement, which was nothing more than a loosely connected mud-and-straw hut compound. Then we walked. We knew that local villagers were suspected of supporting the Taliban, providing a haven for strikes against U.S. troops. But as we walked through the alleys and scrubby fields of Lashkar Gah, we saw no armed fighters, and no evidence of enemy positions.

“Instead, we were greeted by a maddeningly familiar sight: Afghan farmers living in…well squalor is too luxurious of a word for it. They survive without electricity or water. They are bearded men in tattered clothes; children eager for candy and money. It was impossible to tell which, if any, of the villagers were sympathetic to the Taliban. It could have been none of them! It could have been all of them.

“It could have been half of them! We never knew. We
never ever
knew! Sure, the insurgents, for their part, preferred to stay hidden from American troops, striking from a distance with IEDs. But they always knew, and we always knew, that they could create havoc with a weapon, a teenager and one of the robes they wear.”

Gerald paused long enough to ring the nurse for some water. He hadn’t talked this much in a long time, and the exertion was dragging his voice down into a guttural croak. Once his thirst was slaked, Gerald continued.

“While the officers of 3rd Platoon peeled off to talk to a village elder inside a compound, two soldiers Pfc. Coates and Corporal Walker walked away from the unit until they reached the far edge of the village. There, in a nearby poppy field, they began searching out someone to kill.”

Gerald glanced at Chelsea, who asked for clarification. “You mean people who were supporting the enemy. You were looking for the people that you were searching for from the beginning. Isn’t that right?”

Gerald shook his head violently. It was as if he was trying to drive the picture out of his head at least as much as he was disagreeing with Chelsea’s assertion.

“That’s what you would think, Chelsea!” he said with some of the harshness of the last time that he had been angry returning. “That’s what ‘Be All That You Can Be’ and ‘Today’s Army’ would lead you to believe isn’t it? But it wasn’t like that. Those two guys were looking for someone to kill, and it didn’t matter who it was.”

Gerald took a deep breath. He was sweating profusely, and Chelsea wasn’t sure that continuing the recitation was a good idea. As if Gerald could read her mind, he turned to her. “Let me finish,” he said in a voice that had gone eerily calm. “I have to finish.” Chelsea nodded, fully suspecting that she didn’t want to hear what she was about to hear, but knowing nevertheless that it was something that Gerald needed her to hear.

“His name was Banda Yahir. I don’t even know how we found out, but we did. He was about 12 years old. He was carrying a basket with some scraps of bread. Coates and Walker got one another’s attention and crouched around the corner of the huts. Coates was on the southeast corner, Walker on the southwest corner about 10 feet from me. It wasn’t unusual to do that while we ascertained whether or not there was any danger. In fact, it was pretty much accepted protocol.

Corporal Walker yelled something at the kid. Something like, ‘Hey asshole! Drop the basket, towel-head.’ Or something like that. I can’t remember even though he was standing almost beside me. Anyway, the boy stopped, but he didn’t drop the basket. I don’t know who fired first, Walker or Coates, but they both fired. They cut that little boy down.

The loud report of the guns echoed all around the sleepy farming village.”

Chelsea was horrified. It was all that she could do not to cry out, but with the strength of a force more powerful than herself, she remained silent.

“We needed to identify the body, so some of the guys fetched the village elder who had been speaking to the officers that morning. He turned out to be the father of the dead boy. His moment of grief-stricken recognition, when he saw his son lying in a pool of blood, was later written up in the official report by saying, “The father was very upset."

Gerald paused in his recounting of the tale and looked hard at Chelsea. “What kind of chickenshit thing is that to say? The boy’s father was very upset. The boy’s father would have been upset if we had torn up his pumpkin patch or ripped out a row of rutabagas. Christ!”

Then Gerald looked away and to the wall again. The flat off-white of the wall seemed to give him comfort, or courage. Chelsea wasn’t sure which. In any case, he started speaking again.

“But maybe the worst part was the father's grief did nothing to interrupt the party that had broken out for the soldiers who had done the killing. First, they followed the routine Army procedure required after every battlefield death, they cut off the dead boy's clothes and stripped him naked to check for identifying tattoos. Next they scanned his iris and fingerprints, using a portable biometric scanner.

“Then the soldiers began taking pictures of themselves celebrating their kill. Holding a cigarette in one hand, Walker posed for the camera with Yahir's bloody corpse, grabbing the boy's head by the hair and pulling it back so that the face took on an otherworldly sneer.

“No one was more pleased by the kill than Staff Sgt. Gilbert Caulfield. He was our platoon's squad leader! It was like just another day at the office for him. Caulfield started messing around with the kid, moving his face and mouth and acting like the kid was talking. Then, using a pair of shears, he sliced off the dead boy's scalp and gave it to Coates, as a trophy for killing his first Afghan.

“Later that night Caulfield broke out a bottle of whiskey that he said he had been saving for a special occasion. He said that he had thought about keeping it until the night before he got to go home. Instead, he served up drinks and proposed toasts to Walker and Coates. He called them the two baddest asses in the whole United States Army.”

Gerald stopped talking. Chelsea wasn’t sure if he was done or just composing himself for more. Finally, in a quiet voice she said.

“That’s awful, Gerald. I can see why you’re upset.”

Gerald turned on her! In an instant, she knew that she had triggered another outburst. She didn’t know what she had said to do it but here it was and louder than ever!

“You just don’t get it! I was there, right beside Coates! I swear to God, I knew what they were going to do but I…didn’t…
stop
…them!”

Just as quickly as the storm had risen in his eyes, it then dissipated. He shook his head and put it in his hands. He began to sob. Chelsea tentatively put her hand on Gerald’s shoulder and said, “You can’t blame yourself.” Gerald didn’t raise his head from his hands, but in a muffled voice he answered, “Just listen to the rest of it. Don’t say anything else until I’ve finished. Can you do that?” Chelsea sat back in her chair. Gerald turned and looked at her. The expression in his eyes was distraught. Yet they held her eyes with a steady gaze.