Mass Casualties: A Young Medic's True Story of Death, Deception, and Dishonor in Iraq (5 page)

The medics and doctors in the ER are looking the patients over, deciding what type of care they need.

The same soldier who told us not to leave sticks his head through the door. He tells us two Iraqis need surgery. A gunshot wound to the leg and arm. The other has shrapnel to the head and neck.

We've got to ready our instruments. Before we can grab our instrument trays, the ER soldier is back: “Four injured Iraqis on the way. All need surgery. Not sure about wounds, sounds like all GSWs [gunshot wounds].”

Six patients now need surgery — three OR beds. Grab Basic Instrument sets: different clamps, scissors, retractors, and forceps. Don't fucking think!

I'm in the single room. Denti is in the double room with Torres — a thirty-one-year-old with broken English from Guatemala. Torres joined the Army, specifically the medical field, because his younger brother joined the Army and died while in combat — in Iraq.

Prepare for an all-nighter. “Four more on the way, they're thirty minutes out.” The Soldier yells again, for the third and hopefully final time.

2100 HOURS, OR

It's complete chaos. The FST people try to take over operations of the hospital. Gagney's all pissed off and he starts yelling again. Not only is he getting in everyone's way, he's annoying the doctors.

The three surgeries are going quickly. I'm working on an Iraqi that needs both his arm and leg amputated. The injured American isn't as bad as they thought; he can wait to be seen until tomorrow. Torres and Denti are working on Iraqi patients.

Working on the Iraqi relaxes me a little bit. I know I'm doing my best to try to save him, but I also know that, truthfully, if he dies it won't be as big a deal as if an American dies. If that happened on my table, everyone would read about it back in the States and his name would be on a wall, forever engraving my inability not to save his life. But if an Iraqi dies, I know that most likely he will be given a pauper's funeral, and back in the States his name won't appear except as a statistic. It's not a pleasant thing to think about, but I need something to take the edge off.

Everything moves like a dream. It's finally here. It feels more intense than I ever imagined. Everyone is doing exactly what they did this afternoon. I can feel myself slowly put a wall up, though. I'm unconsciously separating myself from any emotion that might be bubbling to the surface. I look around at everyone in the OR with me: the doctor, the nurse, the anesthesiologist. It seems like everyone else is on autopilot, too. Today is just another day in a place nobody will ever hear of. I look at some of the doctors and they are laughing, full of energy and ready to work all night if need be. I can tell they've perfected the emotion block. I'm trained for it too, even if I need to get better at it in the operating room, and out.

2300 HOURS, OR

I overhear a conversation between Dr. Bill and Gagney in the next room.

“Listen, you may be in charge of the OR for the enlisted section, but I am in charge of the ENTIRE OR. No one needs to hear you losing your shit. You aren't helping anyone by screaming your head off. In fact, you're hurting the situation. I let it go this afternoon because it was only a mock scenario. But right now, this is happening. People are injured and could die. You're going to cause more damage; you have to relax. Come back tomorrow, leave, get a level head.”

Gagney is visibly embarrassed and I see him lower his eyes to the ground. I avoid eye contact as he walks past me.

0100 HOURS, OR

There are just a few of us left. Sellers is out back working diligently putting together instrument trays; Waters chatters on about nothing.

Back home in the States, she's a waitress at a strip club, but I have a feeling every woman who works there says they're a “waitress.” Waters continues speaking, and the more she does, the more I can tell we are never going to get along. She has the undeserving self-worth of a high school prom queen who now works at a strip club, and I have the deserving self-worth of a wallflower that never went to his prom. I know that she is the type of girl who will use her sex appeal to get her way, and I know that I am the type of guy to fall for it. “Hey girls,” I say, with Reto standing next to me. “Are you all good? It's late and we've got to be back for an eight hour shift in a few hours.”

I've seen the look Waters then gives me many times before. It's the look I get while talking to a girl that thinks she's out of my league.

“Gagney did screw us over the most.” She bats her eyelashes. “Maybe you can stay a little later. Besides, you guys need the practice. So you two should stay and do the next cases.”

Waters turns soft then as she changes tactics and tries to convince us of the virtues of staying late. “Gagney will probably let you come in late anyway. You're young too, and don't need much sleep. Besides, I'm sure there will be plenty of late nights. You might as well get used to it.”

We should have just fucking told them we were leaving instead of asking. Reto has now fallen for her trap and decides to take one of the cases. Waters takes the other one. I stay for another hour and help put instrument sets back together. As I leave for the night, their patients are just coming in. I tell Reto I'll cover for him so he can sleep late tomorrow.

0200 HOURS, MY ROOM

When I get back to my room, my new roommate is asleep and snoring. Reto told me his name is Specialist Markham. He sounds like a hibernating bear with sleep apnea. He's probably going to die, but I'm too tired to care.

Do I wake up in four hours at 0600 to eat then go to work, or do I wake up in four and a half hours at 0630, skip breakfast, and go directly to work? I'm asleep before I can even think about it.

WEEK 1, DAY 3, IRAQ

0600 HOURS, BARRACKS

My eyes crack open at the sound of my alarm. I only went to sleep four hours ago, and now I have another full day ahead of me. Markham is still asleep and snoring. I want to “accidentally” make some noise as I get dressed because my pounding headache is being aggravated by the sound of him choking on his tongue. I slam my door as I leave to go to Denti's room.

Denti is wide-awake, smiling, well rested; he went back to his room after the first case. He's lighting up a cigarette, telling me I look like shit. I have to stop myself from hitting him, all hair-gelled and teeth brushed. He's so full of bullshit.

“Hey man, remember yesterday at the gym when I almost died?” We're walking along the road to the dining facility on the same road the Humvee stopped us. A crowd of people is standing around and taking pictures.

There's a six-inch-deep and two-foot-wide indentation in the ground. In the parking lot, Humvees are peppered with shrapnel; all their front tires are blown out, and the tires on one of them have melted into the ground.

A soldier taking a picture says, “It happened last night during the second attack.”

“Holy shit!” Denti gasps.

“We were standing in this exact spot last night. Two times in one day I was almost …” Denti begins and trails off . No one is listening. No one cares how close he, Reto, and I almost came to dying. Three more people in the crowd speak up about their own near-death experiences last night. Millions of people almost die every day, and thousands do die everyday. But listen, I don't have to be psychic to guess what Denti's thinking; I know how his mind works …
These people on the road may not be impressed, but they're gonna love it in the D-fac at breakfast.

“So there I was …” “Minutes away …” “No I wasn't scared …”“The bomb hit right after we'd …,” “Seriously, I was minutes away from death.”

I'm just shoveling it in.

0700 HOURS, OR

When we get to work we have four cases already lined up. They are all I&Ds for the mass casualty patients from yesterday. As we prepare, Specialist Torres and Reto come in.

Denti and I have our rooms set up for surgery, but no one is here yet. We take our gowns and gloves off and head to the break room to wait for the doctors. They're most likely tired from last night, too, but unlike us, they can come to work whenever they want.

Torres, Reto, and I complain about having to wait around for the doctors, but we shouldn't. It's an unexpected break and we don't see too many of those.

0800 HOURS, OR

Staff Sergeant Gagney walks in; he is an hour late for work and Reto and I stare at him as he saunters into the room and plops himself in a chair near us.

“Aargh,” Gagney sighs, trying to make a production of how tired he is.

“Man, am I tired. Hey Reto, go make me a cup of coffee, will you?” Gagney says as he pushes further back in his chair.

“I was up late all night working on a schedule for you guys,” he says, as he gives a fake yawn.

Reto just stares at Gagney with fire in his eyes and doesn't move to get him a cup of coffee. I try to avoid eye contact with Gagney so he won't ask me to go.

“Aaaghh,” Gagney sighs again as he now stands from his chair, feeling satisfied that we understand how hard he worked and why he has an excuse for being late. He walks over to the break room and posts the schedule on the door. It's three pages of yellow-lined paper and only covers this month.

As Reto, Torres, and I are crowding around the door to read the schedule, Denti walks over and rips the schedule from the door: “For Christ sake. Look at the schedule. Anthony. You're on first shift today; tomorrow you're on second shift. The day after that you're on third shift and the day after that first shift.”

He starts talking to me slowly as if I'm a child. “That means tomorrow you work three to eleven. But the next day, you work eleven to seven, got me? And the day after that you work seven to three. That means you'll be working sixteen hours.”

Reto grabs the schedule and starts analyzing it.

“How the hell are we going to sleep if our shifts change every day? Elster, Gagney, Hudge, and Waters all have the same shifts every day. It's just us fucking specialists getting screwed over.”

Torres grabs the schedule from Reto. I know he can barely understand it, but he stares at it as if he is reading a book. “So what does this mean? We will be working a different shift every other day? Why? That doesn't make sense.”

“It means we're getting screwed. Gagney is such an idiot!”

0900 HOURS, OR

“Needle holder …” Dr. Bill yells, taking me out of my daze. I don't know how many times he's asked for it, but I grab the closest one and hand it to him. It's the wrong kind, but he uses it.

1445 HOURS, OR

When I first met Chandler at our training in Wisconsin, I didn't like him. He seemed too goofy for me to be able to talk to or take seriously, but as the days go on and we've formed a common enemy — no, not Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, Staff Sergeant Gagney — I would say we're now friends. In fact, the first day I met him, he had a saying that summed up how people feel about him: “I'm like mold. You may not like me at first, but I grow on you.” He had all kinds of bumper sticker sayings like that. He once even told me a line that he wrote in a Valentine to his fiancée, Jill: “My love for you is like herpes. It may subside at times, but it will never leave you.”

Denti is ripping the schedule off the door again. “He has us changing shifts every other fucking day.” Hudge and Chandler are looking at it now.

“What!” Chandler squeaks out as he spits up the sip of Pepsi he was drinking.

That's another thing about Chandler. It seems like he has a can of Pepsi permanently glued to his hand.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Denti is going on. “First of all, there are no days off scheduled for any of us, except for Gagney. Next to his name in parentheses it says, ‘will make own days off,’ whatever that means.”

“This is wicked retarded,” Hudge says, her voice thick with a Boston accent.

Chandler starts laughing.

“Look at this. Gagney and Elster are on first shift every day together. I'm sure that's going to be fun,” Denti says, making reference to our first day where Gagney chewed him out in front of all of us.

“It always seems to be something with this guy doesn't it?”Hudge says. “He can't even make a schedule without somehow making it the worst schedule possible.”

“We've got to say something,” Chandler says. “We can't let this stand. He's probably just trying to make a point that he can do whatever he wants. You want to know what the worst part is, and no offense Hudge, but the reason that Elster, Waters, and you are all on shifts that don't change is because Gagney knows you three are the most vocal people. He knows that the rest of us probably won't complain.”

“Fuck that, I'll walk right up to him and shove the schedule down his throat,” Denti angrily exclaims.

Reto jumps from his chair. “Let's go talk to him.”

The six of us walk together toward the main OR, we're like a gang about to kick some ass. I start snapping my fingers and bobbing my shoulders like in
West Side Story
.

“We need to talk about the schedule,” Hudge announces as we reach Gagney's desk.