Angel of Mercy

by Jackie McCallister

“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.

  “I started to yell "Drop it!" I swear to God that I did, but something stopped me. I’ve thought and I’ve thought, and I’ve prayed to God to tell me why I stopped short of telling him to drop the basket. But I didn’t. I think there was a part of me that gave into the fear. This isn’t like when our Grandpas fought the Nazis in World War II. You could tell who the bad guys were back then. This isn’t like any other war that we’ve been in.

  “Sure, there were incidents of civilian involvement in Vietnam. My Dad told me about something called the My Lai incident. But Chelsea, this is different. Every day, every town, every kid that we look at may end up smiling at us, taking peanut M and Ms from us and then blowing us the hell up! They’re crazy! Chelsea knew that whatever she would say at that point would have been an empty platitude. What could she offer in the face of the horror that Gerald had experienced?

  “The worst part of it, Chelsea, is that for a moment after it was over…” Gerald continued, but his voice, so recently a deafening shout, was now barely audible. Chelsea had to lean forward to hear, “…I was glad.” For almost five minutes Gerald and Chelsea sat silently, each lost in a separate endeavor.

  Gerald was marching through what military psychologists often call “secondary battle siege.” It’s a state of being where the mind is driven to a place where coping is beyond its recovery capabilities. For soldiers ensconced in that state it’s all that they can do to continue on. In rare cases patients in military hospitals during wartime and civilian hospitals shortly after the end of a deployment, simply stop breathing and expire. It is a case of psychological suicide brought on by war trauma. Chelsea was in a different space. She was in prayer.

  “Dear God, what can I say? What is there to say? This poor boy, who You say is Your child, has seen more than anyone should have to see. And he blames himself for not being able to stop it. I don’t have what it takes to help him God! He needs more help than a friend.”

  Chelsea was miserable. In her grief on Gerald's behalf, she listened intently for the words that God would have her to say to the wounded soul before her. But nothing came. Eventually, Gerald either fell asleep or faked it so Chelsea would leave. She left the Glynnis Unit feeling like a failure as a nurse, a friend, and a Christian.

  Chelsea didn’t go straight home. She headed west from Glynnis toward the perimeter of the camp. She needed some time alone and the relative darkness where Kabul Air Base ended was a place that she had retreated before to gather her thoughts and spend some time in prayer and meditation. Looking out into the vast darkness that was so deep that it almost had a texture, Chelsea engaged in a familiar activity. Chelsea had communed with God while sitting on a simple bench more than once before, and been inspired, comforted, or revived.

  Whatever she needed at that particular moment, God had seen fit to send to her, and she was confident that He would be with her again. As she listened to the desert sounds, Chelsea chose not to pray aloud, or even to herself. She sat quietly and listened, allowing her soul the latitude to find the fulfillment of its needs. It was then that she heard the still, small voice
that she craved.

  Chelsea didn’t know how long she sat on that bench. In her mind, it could have been 30 minutes or it could have been four hours. In truth, it was much closer to a half hour than even an hour. But when she arose to make her way back across the base, she felt she knew what needed to be done. She had been given, by the voice of God, a small task. But she knew that even a small task, when it’s God’s task, can bring about great things. Now, with a plan in mind, she prayed a simple, yet powerful prayer from her heart.

  Father God, not my words but yours. Not my will but yours. Not my heart but yours. Amen.

  Back at her CHU, Chelsea was confronted with a crisis that blew up the calm reverie that she had established during her sojourn with God. At first she thought that poltergeists were afoot. Chelsea narrowly avoided a flying plate that Lisa Glenn had hurled across the room. Chelsea was shocked. The last time Chelsea had seen Lisa, Ms. Glenn had been in flagrante’ delicto with Lt. Matthew Clark. Where Chelsea expected to find Lisa in a state of post-coital bliss, (if not in full and current coitus), she was confronted with an angry Italian nurse. “Stop!” Chelsea shouted as she deftly avoided a pie plate that Lisa chucked against the wall. “Lisa, stop!”

  Lisa looked at Chelsea with eyes that were flashing in their fury, and yet were rimmed with red. Chelsea immediately assumed that Lisa and Matthew had been in some kind of argument. It turned out to be worse than that.

  Lisa planted her feet shoulder width apart and folded her arms in front of her in a posture that was both determined and vulnerable. She looked at Chelsea and spat a single word. “Married.”

  Chapter Seven

  Chelsea was pretty much able to fill in the rest of the story herself. The fact that it is a story as old as military deployments didn’t mean that Chelsea’s heart went out to Lisa any less. It had only been a little while since Gloria Vesta had been telling the very same tale to Chelsea when they had leave together. The young nurse, flattered by the attention of a man who outranked her (and lonely as hell herself) had fallen hard. The officer, with full knowledge of his own capabilities with women, and knowing the cachet that his rank brought him, had wooed, wined, and dined the lovely Lisa Glenn. She had fallen in love.

  He had told Lisa that he loved her too, especially for her “sparkling laugh, her quick wit, and the way that her eyes danced in the moonlight.” Perhaps that was true as far as it went, but apparently what he really craved was her ample breasts and the chance to get his chimney swept by a willing partner. As soon as Lisa got too cozy in the arrangement, he pulled the pin on the grenade called “wife.” As much as he “loved” Lisa being with her wouldn’t be good for his career, and he couldn’t bear to hurt his sons Hunter and Cody back home.

  Now Lisa stood in the middle of the living area of the CHU and stared at the couch. It was as if the inanimate piece of furniture had been what had betrayed her, rather than Hunter and Cody’s bald and morally bankrupt Dad.

  “I think I’ll burn that damn thing,” Lisa muttered to herself.

  While part of Chelsea wanted to say that had been her plan too after seeing Lisa and Matthew feeding each other the other day, she kept her thoughts to herself.“Let’s go out and get you drunk,” she said to Lisa. We’ll talk about what colossal assholes men are and we will toast good women everywhere.”

  Lisa smiled, just a little. “Damn straight, Chelsea. Damn straight.”

  Chelsea’s head throbbed with the pounding of a thousand snare drums as she allowed the shower water to pound her the next morning. Pound her. Pounder. It was all the same to Chelsea. She had never been much of a drinker but, in support of Lisa the night before; Chelsea had matched the grieving nurse pounder for pounder, drink for drink and shot for shot. Chelsea only vaguely remembered being walked/carried home by a friendly co-worker who had been only too amused to see buttoned-down Chelsea Bannister deeply into her cups.

  As lit up as Chelsea had been the night before (and as betrayed by her body as she felt today) her last memory of Lisa was of her ordering another round for herself and “The best damned friends in this woman’s Army!” The same co-worker who got Chelsea safely home promised to do the same for Lisa whenever she ran out of steam. Chelsea felt that Lisa was in good hands…since the co-worker was Wendy Shafer.

  Chelsea, with her head against the porcelain shower walls, was wishing that she had either made better choices or was dead. Slowly, though, she came to the realization that she hadn’t thought about Gerald Giacomo in what felt like a long time. The time with Lisa had given her a mental and emotional break from the near-constant concern that she had for her friend. Chelsea wondered idly if she was perhaps getting too close to Gerald’s situation, or was even getting too close to Gerald himself.

  Later, dressed in the uniform of the day and still trying to clear her head, Chelsea decided that maybe she wouldn’t visit Gerald for a day or two. It might be good for us both, she thought to herself.

  Tim Giacomo hailed her just as she was getting ready to enter the main medical unit. “Chelsea, wait up!” Tim shouted. At least it felt like a shout to Chelsea’s still touchy sensory system. She winced as she turned to Tim.

  Tim held his tongue long enough to turn his head sideways and examine Chelsea with a critical eye. “Chelsea you look…not okay.”

  Chelsea closed one eye against the sun and looked Tim balefully. “I’m fine, Tim. Just a little tired.”

  Tim seemed to accept what she said at face value but only because he had something more important than that on his mind. “Gerald asked for you.”

  Chelsea remembered her best laid plan but was hesitant to turn the Giacomo boys down. She needed a little more information than what she had been given thus far.

  “He asked for me specifically? Why? Is something wrong?”

  Tim raised his arms in the universal signal for “Who knows?” “I don’t think there is anything in particular wrong. He just seemed a little bit agitated this morning. After he asked me to tell you he would like to see you he seemed better. Can I tell him that you will come?”

  Chelsea would have liked an evening to herself to sleep, read, relax, or whatever crossed her mind. But her better angels won the day.

  “Tell him that I have a seven-hour tour today. I will try to see him at 1600 or 1630.”

  Chelsea was immediately rewarded for her altruism by the smile on Tim Giacomo’s face. It was as if a personal burden had been lifted. “It probably was,” Chelsea thought to herself.

  Work was tricky that day, and it had nothing to do with the last vestiges of the hangover that Chelsea had owned since the start of the day. Four people died on the spot, and two suffered injuries when their jeep hit an unmarked truck from behind at the Afghan-Pakistani border the previous night. The truck exploded on impact, and there was a suspicion that it had been booby trapped and left on the darkened road for the very purpose of injury.

  Shrapnel from the explosion, as well as the impact with the dash area of the Jeep, had caused severe injuries o the two surviving passengers. The injuries, both brain traumas, were considered to be severe enough to require the hand of Captain McGuire. The patients were airlifted in, and Captain McGuire asked Chelsea to assist.

  The approach to patients with severe penetrating or closed head traumatic brain injury (TBI) is guided by the certainty that, as time progresses, cerebral tissue can be irreversibly lost. Early intervention, either surgical or medical, is therefore the standard. The hours lost transporting these patients over 100 miles to Kabul were unfortunate, but necessary.

  Captain McGuire performed a decompressive craniectomy to relieve the pressure that was building up in the brain of the driver of the Jeep. This technique is not without risks as patients who have had the procedure often are symptomatic six months after the procedure to a greater degree than patients who don’t have the procedure done. Captain McGuire was well aware of the studies that laid out the risks but felt that the speed and volume of the brain’s swelling made the procedure necessary this
time.

  Shortly after beginning the procedure Captain McGuire pointed out the presence of a subarachnoid hemorrhage that had the potential to cause harm. Subarachnoid hemorrhage (or SH in the medical/surgical unit) is bleeding in the area between the brain and the thin tissues that cover the brain. With Chelsea's help, Captain McGuire was able to stop the bleeding and the outlook for the patient was guardedly optimistic. The entire surgical procedure lasted just under nine hours.

  A quick shower after work and Chelsea was on her way to Glynnis. She hoped that she would run into Tom on the way so he could give her a heads up as to Gerald’s mood. There was no such luck to be had, however, so Chelsea knocked softly on Gerald’s door and entered Room 2D.

  Gerald was sitting up in the bed, eating some odd-colored Jello. He waved Chelsea in.

  Chelsea sat down next to the bed and raised one eyebrow toward Gerald’s snack. “Would you like me to go get you something…else?”

  Gerald turned his Jello cup one way and then the other before answering. “You know, I think I’m okay. I come into contact with a lot of hungry kids in the course of my job. I can eat my Jello in peace knowing that even the kids wouldn’t want it.”

  Chelsea laughed, partly because she thought that it was funny but also in relief because it was nice to see Gerald in a relaxed mood. She was guarded, though. She had seen his moods shift faster than the weather during monsoon season.

  “I can understand the comfort that must come from such a feeling. But don’t you think your Jello looks a little…radioactive?”

  Gerald pondered the bite that was on his plastic spoon before sucking it into his mouth with an audible slurp. He swallowed before answering Chelsea. “It probably is, but what the hell? If I glow in the dark, I can be my own headlight out in the field. The damn Humvee that I was driving just before I got hurt kept blowing a light at the worst times.”

  Chelsea put her hand on her cheek and asked, “What do you mean the worst times?”