by Travis Mills
“Call my mother. Help my parents through this.”
—
That same day, still my birthday, I called my parents. I didn’t really want to speak to them. I think they could tell that, even though I tried to hide my true feelings. They told me happy birthday, and I broke down and they did too.
We composed ourselves and talked some more, just about this and that.
Then I said to my dad, “How could they get me like that? What did I do wrong?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.
“I stepped on it and went flying through the air. I did a 180. It was crazy.”
“Well, Travis,” my dad said, “the important question is ‘Did you look good doing it?’ ”
I chuckled. I love my parents so much. It hurt to laugh. My dad was trying to cheer me up. I loved him for that. “Yeah,” I said. “I looked pretty awesome.”
Here’s how my dad later described the feeling of that first phone call with me:
When you first hear your own son is hit, you can hardly take in the news. This was my Travis. My son.
You don’t hear the word amputee. You hear “gravely ill,” the better chance that he’s going to die. Then we heard triple amputee. Then quadruple amputee. But we still weren’t thinking that word. In my mind, all I could think was that I wanted my boy back. I didn’t care how. No arms and legs—that didn’t matter. I just wanted my boy back—that’s all that mattered.
When we first talked with him, I could picture his face. I knew I’d see him alive again. That’s what was so important. That’s what saved us from going over the deep end.
—
I felt like eating something solid. For some strange reason, Oreos came to mind. And pineapple juice. In regular life, I ate the occasional Oreo, but I never drank pineapple juice. Yet those were the only things that sounded good. I asked a nurse if she could get me some. She did.
Somehow that request found its way to Facebook—that I’d wanted Oreos and pineapple juice. That’s not an easy request to fulfill when you’re overseas. Some army guys saw the post and sent me a case of pineapple juice.
—
On April 15, the day after my birthday, I summoned the nerve and called Kelsey for the first time.
“Hey, babe,” I said. “I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
That was pretty much all I said. I was hurting, sore. I just tried to keep the conversation short and light.
Inside my head, I was a mess, a runaway freight train. All these thoughts kept rushing around uncontrolled. How could I ever be the husband and father I needed to be? I couldn’t even give my wife a hug anymore. I couldn’t hold her hand. And that was only the beginning. How would I ever drive again? How could I work and earn a paycheck? None of that was ever going to be possible. Kelsey didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t deserve this. Why would she ever want to be with someone like me?
I wanted her to leave me.
I wouldn’t blame her if she did.
But Kelsey was thinking the exact opposite. She wrote in her journal,
I was able to talk with him late last night and the result left me feeling saddened. He seemed like talking to me was upsetting him, and he told me he had to go only after a few short words. I understand that he is feeling embarrassed and scared and feeling like a failure…I mean, I cannot even begin to imagine the roller coaster of emotions he is feeling right now.
My brother told me that Travis is nervous to see me because he doesn’t know how I will react or if I will continue to love him as my husband. These worries seem so trivial to me, because I will love him through sickness and health until death do us part—I did not use those words lightly when we got married. I will be by his side every day for the rest of our lives, whether he likes it or not. I know his natural reaction will be to push me away because of embarrassment or feelings of letting me down, but I just wish I could constantly reassure him that my love for him is unwavering.
Josh said that Travis is having phantom pains, saying his feet and hands hurt when he knows they aren’t there. That just shows how powerful the human brain is, and I know he will be able to use his arms again. The thing that keeps choking me up is the times he would squeeze my hand three times to mean “I love you” or rub my back or feet while I was pregnant. Or how he’d just make me breakfast. He’d do all the hard things for me. Now it’s my turn to do all those things for him.
The fact is that this isn’t going to get better for a long time, but I do have hope and I do have faith. I love him so much. He really and truly is Superman in every sense of the word.
—
They told me I was going home.
Back to the States anyway. Plans and flights got rearranged once, and my meds were making my mind loopy. At first I was medically ready to fly, they said, but then my condition wasn’t good enough, so flight plans were delayed a day. Then another day. I freaked out and became angry, combative. For some time all I did was yell profanities.
Then I was in tears.
Not bubbling tears. Just rolling tears. Frustrated tears. Sad tears.
“I just want to go home,” I said to Josh. “Just send me home.”
Then a shiver of fear went through me and it dawned on me anew where I was again and what had happened to me. Sometimes I forgot for a split second. It’s one thing to talk to someone you love on the phone. It’s another thing to see that person again. To not feel like you’re you anymore. And then I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to go home again.
“Josh,” I said. “I can’t do this. I don’t want anybody to see me like this. Here I am lying in bed, shitting on myself. What am I ever going to do?”
“It’s going to be okay,” Josh said. “Nobody is going to judge you for being hurt. The whole purpose of the Taliban is to get us. Sometimes they win one. But that doesn’t mean we’re destroyed.”
My mind felt all dark inside. We were quiet for a long time then.
“Kelsey will probably leave me,” I said to Josh.
“Dude—” His voice was steel. “My sister will not leave you.”
—
Before I left for the States, I had another phone call with Kelsey, this one longer.
Kelsey described it in her journal:
Travis was finally able to call and talk to me. Really talk. He asked for privacy, and when the nurse left the room he broke down on the phone in tears saying, “I can’t take care of you with no arms and legs,” over and over and over, and “I have always taken care of you, that’s my job. It is not your job to take care of me.”
I reassured him everything would be taken care of and he had nothing to worry about. My love for him does nothing but grow, along with my pride and respect.
And in a later entry,
I was informed yesterday by Travis’s surgeon that he will not be able to fly today because he has a slow bleed in one of his extremities. They are not sure which one, but once they get him into surgery to do a washout they will be able to see it and stop the bleed. They say it is a very slow drop in his hemoglobin levels, and nothing to be worried about. However, they would rather have him completely stable before they fly him over the vast Atlantic Ocean.
I heard he has been awake today a lot and my brother has been by his side, although Travis has not asked to talk to me or anyone else family-related today. The nurse, Flo, said he is on a roller coaster of emotions right now, and that he will be for a long time to come, understandably.
A chaplain was able to see him today, and Travis was open to talk, which is a very good sign. The chaplain was able to help him better understand what has happened and what this means. I mean, all this tragedy is hard for any one human to process, and Travis has done it with superhuman abilities. Later, when I talked to Flo, she said Travis and Josh were both sound asleep in Travis’s room.
Kelsey wrote another entry, this one addressed just to me:
Travis—one of your nurses, Major Kate, told me that they brought some music in for you
to listen to and that you were dancing around and singing to Kesha. And then “Amazing Grace” came on and you started crying. I know how much this song means to you and what it means to you. Soon you will be able to snuggle with Chloe and hum her this song. I thank God that you will have that opportunity to hold Chloe again, and that Chloe gets her daddy back and is able to be raised and protected by you.
You are a hero in every sense of the word. A superman. I love you so much. Words cannot express my gratitude for you surviving this. I would not have been able to live without you.
—
On April 17, five days after the blast, I was cleared for travel and flew from Germany to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Josh stuck by my side. We had another great critical care transport team. Those people were really something else. On our way, we heard that my parents and Kelsey were flying over to Maryland to meet me.
Once we landed, hospital staff loaded me and a bunch of other wounded guys up in a huge semi-truck of an ambulance and we navigated the Beltway over to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda. A number of the other wounded guys were marines, and marines don’t respect anybody who isn’t a marine. But Josh said these guys were respecting me. One of them said, “This is a tough, tough dude.”
I was pretty out of it, but my mind was with it enough to make some crack to one of the medical staff that we were all rolling along in a “meat truck.” He grinned.
Right away when we arrived at Walter Reed, they needed to do another surgery on me. I’d had some stitches open up on the flight over. This surgery occurred maybe twenty minutes after being wheeled through the front door.
I heard that Kelsey and my folks had arrived. At first I said to Josh that I didn’t want to see her. I was still feeling like less of a man. But Josh said, “Look, she just wants to tell you that she loves you.” Josh went to go prepare them, to sort of explain what it was going to be like to see me for the first time. His leading line was “Remember—he’s still alive. But it’s going to be a bit traumatic to see him. Just be prepared.”
When we saw one another, everything was sort of a bustle of activity all at once. I couldn’t look my parents in the eye. I was standoffish with Kelsey. I didn’t want to look at anybody or have them looking at me. Medical staff were all around doing their thing. It was noisy and confusing. Since Kelsey was physically present in the hospital, she needed to sign a bunch of paperwork right away to allow them to cut some more off my leg so they could sew it up again. Everything happened really quickly. She felt queasy and overwhelmed and was trying to read through the forms, and I snapped at her and said, “Just sign the damn papers!” I don’t know what was wrong with me. I never talk to her like that. She signed the paperwork while I was getting prepped. Then they took me in for surgery. That was our romantic first meeting.
When I came out of sedation, it was the following day. There was some family trouble. I tried to piece together the story. My dad had become really sick on the flight over and needed emergency surgery for diverticulitis. He didn’t want to have the surgery because he wanted to stay with me, but I saw him and told him to go take care of himself. I insisted. So they took him in for surgery, and he ended up in a hospital room seven doors down from me. As he recovered, he could take his IV pole and walk down and see me. Josh flew back to Fort Bragg and got Deanna, who was six months pregnant, and they both flew back to Walter Reed.
Beside my hospital bed was a small stand-up plaque with a Bible verse on it. I don’t know where the plaque came from. Somebody gave it to me. I read the words slowly in my mind.
Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.
JOSHUA 1:9
Hmph, I thought. I wasn’t too happy with God just now. Where was God when I stepped on an IED?
The thought was barely out of my head when I heard Kelsey say it was time for me to meet Chloe again.
Chloe!
In all the bustle, it hadn’t dawned on me that my daughter was here too. Tammy, Kelsey’s mom, had flown over with them, and she’d been taking care of Chloe when Kelsey and my parents had first met me. I took a deep breath, letting the announcement sink in.
I wondered if Chloe would start crying at the sight of me. I wondered if she’d be afraid of me. I had white monitors affixed to my chest, and the stumps of my arms were all taped and bandaged and a bit bloody. I had tape on the side of my face from my ear to the base of my neck, and it was holding some sort of tube in place. Chloe was not yet seven months old. At the very least she’d have forgotten who I was.
Kelsey brought her over to me, laid her on my bare chest, and held her there so she wouldn’t slip or fall. Chloe’s hair was downy and soft. She was dressed in a wonderfully crazy-colored polka-dot jumper.
I lifted my head to look into my daughter’s face. She smiled, perfectly calm. I looked her in the eye, and she looked up at me. She was the first person I’d looked in the eye—and it felt fine. For several moments, we held each other’s gaze.
“I love you, Chloe,” I said.
She cooed.
I was the same dad to her.
—
Chloe was gone from my room, and I was trying to be polite to the doctors, but I kept having these terrible phantom pains. They came and went, but mostly seemed to stay and grow. The fire burned hotter and hotter. The morphine wasn’t doing much. After a while the pain grew unbearable.
I gritted my teeth and tried to keep it together. A nurse was in the room. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but if you could just please give me a little more pain medicine. My fingers are on fire, but I know they’re not there.” Then I screamed. And I don’t ever scream.
What I didn’t understand yet was that the severe pain I experienced came from the injured nerve fibers in my limbs. An injury such as mine can trigger a progressive, falling-domino type of sensation where the neurons fire more than normal. The phenomenon is like a car engine revving past the point of redline and staying there. All pain is magnified. It’s a horrific, searing feeling you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.
I don’t know how long this extreme pain went on. Minutes. Hours. Days. I yelled and yelled again and again. I could hear murmurs of the doctors above me talking to my family members. No, they didn’t know if the pain would ever subside.
Images swirled in my head. Time meant nothing to me at this point. I remember telling a nurse that I wished I would die. Time passed and the intense pain remained. One night my dad was with me and I begged him to turn my leg around. “Dad! I know I don’t have a leg, but it’s backward. You’ve got to turn it around.” I cried out all that night, my dad told me later. I screamed. I shouted. I thrashed about in agony.
A doctor showed me a chart and said, “Travis, on a scale of one to ten, describe your level of pain.”
“Ten,” I said.
They administered some sort of painkiller as part of a medicinal study on me. I don’t remember what it was.
Again the doctors asked me to describe my pain.
“Ten,” I said.
They tried a second study. Afterward, the same question.
“Ten,” I said.
They tried a third study. I don’t know how long these studies took to implement. When this study was over, they asked the same question.
“Ten,” I said.
I couldn’t stand the torment.
“I want to die,” I said again. I didn’t know who was listening. I didn’t care. It was the truth. I was as tough as they come, but I couldn’t take these phantom pains. It felt like I was being filleted alive. The skin was ripped off me. Spikes were driven through my heels. My toenails were yanked out. Gasoline was rubbed all over my skinless flesh. I was screaming again. Screaming. A match was tossed on the gasoline and my body exploded in fire, burning, burning, burning.
“There’s a relatively new and controversial experimental study,” a doctor’s voice said from above me. “It’s only ever used on extreme
cases. Basically, we pump him full of Ketamine and put him into a coma. We leave him there for a while, then bring him back out. It’s like turning a computer off and then rebooting it again. The hope is that we can reset his pain tolerance. It’s not a guarantee. And there are risks.”
“What sort of risks?” came a voice off to one side. My eyes were closed. They were having a meeting about me, and I didn’t hear the answer just then. I’d heard that on the street, Ketamine is known as Special K or Cat Valium. It’s similar to PCP. I’d never tried either, but I’d heard that if you take enough Ketamine, it feels like you’re not in your body anymore. You have wild hallucinations. Sometimes people describe the feeling as “near death.” On the street, they call this being plunged into the “K-hole.”
Okay, then. If I had one chance in a hundred of feeling better again by going into a Ketamine coma, then that’s where I would go. I was awake enough at one point to agree to the procedure. I knew I might never wake up again. I knew it might fry my mind completely. I might become a basket case for the rest of my life. I didn’t care. Anything was better than this unbearable level of pain.
—
For five days straight, they fed me 600 milligrams of Ketamine per hour around the clock. I heard later this procedure has only been done thirty times in the world.
In the coma, I saw nothing. I felt nothing. I heard nothing. I thought nothing. I remember nothing.
After five days in a coma, I started coming back to reality, feeling slightly awake. You’d think that the first thing I’d do would be to say my wife’s name really softly—Kelsey—all romantic, like you see in the movies. But I just yelled a bunch of words. I felt hazy, frightened, confused, and I yelled that whole first day I was off the Ketamine. I let loose with one long string of loud gibberish. They needed to reassure patients in other rooms that I wasn’t being tortured. “Oh, he’s coming out of a Ketamine coma,” they said. “Just let him yell.”
For the next four days, I was in and out of hallucinations. I didn’t sleep at all during that time, and within the hallucinations, I saw everything perfectly. I mean—perfectly. At first, I was chasing two kids from my hometown. They stole something from Walmart. The kids and I were in a car accident. They crashed through my window. I thought I killed them. Then they were alive, and I said, “Hey, why didn’t you tell me I got hit by an IED, you jerks.”
