Hung

by Holly Hart

  "Don't let them take me alive, okay?" I say, completely seriously.

  I don't mind dying, I've known that that was more than likely to happen ever since I arrived in this godforsaken country – but being taken alive by the Taliban would be a fate worse than death.

  Tommy looks serious. I don't like seeing him like this, he's usually a boisterous, effervescent ball of life.

  "Okay, brother. You'll do the same for me?" he asks quietly, and yet, strangely enough, I can hear him perfectly over the cacophony of the raging battle. I nod. I don't need to say anything else. And then, a humming sound fills the air.

  "You hear that?" Tommy screams in elation. "I think it's the god damn air force!"

  "I can't hear a thing," I shout back, clicking a new magazine into my M4. It's true, but that doesn't mean a plane's not overhead, it's just that I've gone partially deaf from firing hundreds of fucking bullets into this valley.

  "You ready to do that routine again?" I shout over the din. Tommy nods. "Let's mix it up this time," I say, grinning with morbid humor, unclipping two grenades from my belt and tossing one to Tommy.

  "I like your style." He grins back, and we pull the pins at the same time, count to five, and then lob them as far as we can downhill.

  "I'm running low," Tommy warns, but we need to keep up the covering fire and force the Taliban to stop approaching, at least until we get some help, so I just acknowledge the statement with a grunt.

  "I'm out," Tommy informs me next, dropping to his knees to reload and shelter. My machine gun is, too, so I switch to the carbine. I'm not aiming my shots now, not really, just firing madly downhill. I can see the barrel of my gun actually steaming, burning off whatever little vapor there is in this dry air. I see a glint in the distance, sun shining off something, but I don't have the time to look up – it could be a plane, or it could just be a vulture prowling for its next meal. After today, it's not going to struggle.

  “I'm out," I echo, dropping to my knees. Like a well choreographed dance routine, Tommy rises just as I fall, and it's my turn to reload. I grab the magazine from my waist, I eject the last one, I slammed the new one home, I pull back the slide, I get ready to stand.

  "Fuck."

  It’s just one short word, but it's one that will change my life. I look left and I see Tommy standing with a shocked, uncomprehending look on his face, and I watch as his weapon drops to the floor and a crater of red balloons outwards, almost like someone has dropped a can of paint on his chest.

  I crawl over to him, and Jake's already there – he knows something's wrong. He's licking Tommy's face, whining in a way I've never heard before; it's a terrible, keening, howling sound that I hope I'll never hear again. It's the sound of death.

  "Oh, fucking hell, Tommy, how you doing buddy?" I say, plastering a smile on my face, but knowing it's not fooling anyone. He's covered in blood, and I press my hands down on the worst wound – the one on his chest, but there's blood pouring out from his shoulder and his leg, and I didn't even see but there's blood coming from his stomach now and I can't stop it. I feel like my thoughts are scrambled, like I don’t know who or what I am anymore.

  "I'm dying, Mike. Get out of here," Tommy croaks, his voice gurgling through the blood now pouring down his throat. I know he doesn't have long.

  "I'm not going anywhere, Tommy," I say, holding his hand, squeezing it tightly, trying to comfort him.

  It doesn't matter – he sighs once, and then he's gone. It's not like in the movies, there's no long, drawn out death – one moment the life is in his eyes, the next it's gone, and all that is left behind is a sense of overwhelming loss. Jake's there, just licking his face frantically, and the sight breaks my heart.

  I roar, a frightful, unhinged sound, and I stand up, and I don't see people or bullets coming towards me. I just see a red mist of anger and sadness and loss and I depress the trigger and I feel the gun bucking into my shoulder. The pain feels good, and I keep the trigger pulled back; it feels like a bronco is kicking my shoulder and then, just like that, it's all over. The magazine's empty, and I'm just standing there in the open.

  And then I feel a stinging in my thigh, as though an insect has bitten me, and within seconds I realize that it wasn't an insect, because now it feels like a hot rod of burning steel has been plunged into my leg to cool off, and I fall to my knees with shock. Now Jake's come to me, he's licking my face, and I know it's the end.

  I'm on my back, I don't know how that happened, but I can see my leg and it's covered in blood. I put one hand on it, compressing the wound, and Jake's lying on me now, so I hug him, whimpering into my chest.

  An explosion. I don't know where it came from, but I feel a scorching, buffeting wind all over me, there's sand flying in every direction and I hear the heavy whomp whomp of rotating helicopter blades above me and I close my eyes – the last thing I see is something glinting in the sun, and Katie’s face in my mind, and then it fades to black.

  Chapter Two - Katie

  "I feel like I've put on ten pounds since we got here," I say, pouting at Sophie. "Whoever thought they'd build a Pizza Hut out here in the desert…"

  I pick up another slice and wave it under my nose, teasing myself. At least, that’s what I’m trying to do – but as soon as the scent reaches my nostrils, I recoil and a dizzying wave of nausea overcomes me, sending my head spinning and my stomach turning. I drop the slice back onto the table and lean back, sucking in a huge breath of air.

  "I know what you mean," Sophie agrees.

  "It wouldn't be so bad if there was something – anything – else to do, but I feel like all I ever do these days is come here. I'm happy – time for pizza! Oh no, now I'm sad – time for pizza," I say, still puzzling over why I suddenly feel so ill. Surely my blood sugar isn’t low – I had a pretty good breakfast…

  "I know, right," I say. "Couldn't they build a movie theater here or something? I swear I heard someone talking about it…"

  "You've been here what, nine months?" Sophie asks me with an amused look on her face. "I've been here three times – I'm coming up on three years in country now, and you know what?"

  "What?" I ask.

  "The army's been promising to build a movie theater that whole time. Probably longer – I dunno. Think it'll ever happen?"

  "I guess not," I reply, deflated, and return to pushing my Texas barbecue pizza around the paper plate it's sitting on, watching the grease congeal on top of the white surface. "I don't think I can handle it for much longer, you know…" I admit.

  The truth is, I'm fed up with living out here in the desert, I'm fed up with eating nothing except pizza or warmed up army rations, I'm fed up with only having three minutes of hot water to shower under every day, and more than anything, I don't know how much longer I can handle them wheeling in another half-dead, bleeding soldier for me to patch up just so they can send them back out to get shot at. The only thing that’s managed to break up the monotony for me in all this time – Mike – I haven’t heard from since he went back into combat. Even though I barely know him, I think about him, and what he did to me for hour after glorious hour, every day…

  Sophie looks at me seriously. "You're thinking of going back home?" she asks.

  I can tell she's trying to disguise the hint of sadness in her voice, but I know her well enough to make that impossible.

  I nod, trying to avoid eye contact. I've seen enough nurses come and go to know what she's getting at – and I've only been here a few months, not a few years! It's so hard – on the one hand, if you don't make friends, then you're alone in the desert thousands of miles away from home; but if you do, then you have to watch them leave.

  "I am. I don't know how much more of this I can take, you know? They've been asking me when I'm going to renew my contract, but…"

  "How long have you got left?" Sophie asks me with a sad – yet accepting – look on her face. "Three months?"

  I nod.

  "It's not my place to convince you to stay, you know,"
she says. "Honestly, I don't know why I keep coming back…"

  "The money?" I ask with a sad laugh. There's no way I'd get paid ninety thousand dollars a year for nursing back home – I know, because I've tried. I was lucky to get thirty-five, and that doesn't stretch far when you've got rent to pay – and health insurance to sell your soul for.

  Out here, everything's covered – though if they tried to charge me to live in the rickety plywood shack they've put me up in, I'd laugh in their faces.

  Sophie's about to reply when I see her look down and fumble with something attached to her belt. Then I feel it; my pager's buzzing.

  "Here we go again," Sophie sighs, pushing her plate away and staggering to her exhausted feet.

  "Same shit, different day," I agree with a knowing smile, taking a deep breath.

  "Ready?" she asks.

  I give her a resigned nod and we start running. The operating theater’s about half a mile from the mess hall, and I've done this run more times than I can count. You can normally tell when it's going to be a bad one, because the bleeders come in by copter.

  Mostly they land over by the heliport, but as we get closer to the hospital I can tell that whoever the poor kid is that’s on board, he’s in a real bad way – because they sure as hell don’t land non-critical cases right by the operating theater...

  The thumping of rotor blades is directly overhead now, and I raise my hand to protect myself from the maelstrom of dust, dirt and flakes of stone that are being kicked up by the downdraught, kicking myself for not bringing my goggles. As we pass through the eye of the storm, I duck, twist, and make myself small enough to stay out of the way of the worst of the detritus. As I do, I yelp with pain, and my hand shoots to my belly.

  What the hell?

  "Something isn't right!" Sophie screams over the din, immediately snapping me back to reality as I realize she’s not talking about the weird signal of pain from my tummy. I realize she's right – I just don't know what. I look up, still shielding my eyes, and it's not hard to figure it out.

  The Blackhawk helicopter overhead looks like someone's put it through a blender – it's covered with bullet holes and there's a plume of filthy black smoke coming from near the tail rotor.

  "Come on, we're nearly there!" I shout in reply, concentrating on the things that are under my control, and allowing all the extraneous noise – like that weird bout of nausea – to flood away, putting it in a quiet part of my mind I know I can return to later.

  All around us I can hear the base screaming to life –sirens on top of desert-camouflaged fire trucks suddenly blaring loudly, and army Hummers gunning their engines violently, speeding their way towards the stricken craft’s eventual landing spot.

  When we finally make it to the prefabricated hospital building, lungs gasping for air, Sophie's got her hands on her knees, gratefully sucking in clean, fresh air and hacking the filth out of her lungs. I’m a little bit fitter, but even so, the unexplained issues with my belly and my head are messing with my mind.

  "It's not going to make it," I say quietly, watching the helicopter trying to set itself down on the asphalt about a hundred yards away.

  "Get back from the window," Sophie shouts, her breath still ragged with exertion. "If that thing goes down, it's going to do it hard," she shouts, darting around a corner, but I can't move – I'm locked to the floor with a dread sense of fear.

  My eyes are locked onto the stricken aircraft: it’s about twenty feet off the ground, and even I can tell that the pilot's struggling to keep it under control. The smoking tail rotor is still spinning, but way more slowly than it should be, and the craft’s rocking back and forth. I feel like I can see the pilot struggling at the controls, fighting with the machine. The fire trucks and emergency vehicles have assembled in a ring about a hundred feet around the stricken helicopter’s expected landing spot, and there's a tense silence to the air, broken only by the death squeal of failing mechanics.

  "Katie, what are you doing? You'll get yourself killed," Sophie begs from next door, but I can't pull my eyes away from the scene. As though in a daze, I feel my legs starting to operate all on their own like there’s some unknown force pulling me, taking me through the lightweight hospital door and back outside. I blink, and I'm suddenly by the ring of emergency vehicles. I don't know what's going on – this isn't my job! I’m a nurse, not an emergency paramedic – I’m supposed to wait for them to bring the patients to me…

  "Miss, what the hell are you doing?" I hear a military policeman scream at me, and the anger and concern in his voice breaks me out of my trance.

  "I – I don't know," I stammer, eyes still fixed on the struggling helicopter in front of me.

  CRACK!

  Soldiers duck all around us, bracing themselves for the inevitable as the helicopter falls to the ground. I close my eyes, imagining the shards of rotor blade that are about to be thrown towards me at a thousand miles an hour.

  I take a deep breath.

  And then another, my eyes still squeezed firmly shut.

  All around me, it's like everyone else is doing exactly the same thing – holding their breath, waiting for the end.

  I open my eyes – rejoicing in the realization that I'm not dead!

  God only knows how, but the pilot somehow managed to land it safely. I can't help but think that someone should give that man a medal... I break into a run.

  "Come on!" I scream, running full pelt towards the smoking aircraft. It's hard to focus on it as I run; it looks like it's jerking up and down, but I know that's just me. My lungs are still burning from the last hell for leather run back from the mess hall, but I push them as far as they'll go.

  "We need some help here!" a shocked looking private screams at me from the helicopter, his torso covered in blood.

  "I think he's going to die," he says, and just like that, something inside me snaps and a professional takes over.

  "Speak to me, soldier," I shout, addressing him formally.

  The young man’s in shock – that much is obvious, but I need him to tell me what I'm dealing with. He looks at me with sad, exhausted, lost little eyes, and under any other circumstance I'd have put my arm around him and given him a hug, but right now I don't have time.

  "Kid, I need you to snap out of it," I shout firmly over the noise of the dying helicopter. "Tell me what I'm dealing with."

  He turns and looks at me properly, and while he gets his head screwed on I start examining the scene.

  Blood – I've never seen so much blood…

  The Blackhawk has open sides, and there's blood literally dripping off the edges. The inside of the aircraft looks like a scene out of a horror movie – there's a body that looks like it's been butchered, so many bullets have punched through it, and two exhausted medics are leaning over a live casualty.

  "We took heavy fire, it was a hot LZ. One guy didn't make it…"

  "I can see that, soldier," I say. I'm not trying to be cruel, but I need details.

  "Sorry, ma'am. The sergeant here, he's lost a lot of blood. I think a bullet nicked his femoral artery – there's no exit wound, and he must have been hit by the blast wave from the air support…" The kid tailed off, but I barely noticed, eyes fixed on the most unusual, heartrending sight as I climb into the helicopter. There's a whimpering dog desperately licking dried blood off the soldier's face, and I know the sound it's making will stay with me forever – it's howling in grief.

  I know that soldier, I think, my stomach knotting with fear as I realize exactly who it is that’s lying prone, dying, in the blood-soaked helicopter. The man I fell in love with three months ago. The man I slept with.

  I have to save him.

  "I need a stretcher!" I scream behind me without turning my head. "You're going to be okay, soldier, stay with us," I say to the dying man – my dying lover – pressing my hands down on the entry wound to stop the bleeding. I don't know if he can hear me, but I need him to know it.

  "What's his blood type?" I ask the
medic crouching over him.

  "Tags say O pos, ma'am." I breathe a sigh of relief; we've got loads of that. He's going to need it. Behind me I can finally hear the sounds of men running up behind me. I turn my head and breathe another as I see soldiers sprinting towards me with a stretcher in hand.

  "You!" I point at the nearest soldier. "I need you to get into the hospital and tell them we're going to need eight pints of O positive out of the fridge, now. Got it?" The soldier nods like he's glad that someone's finally given him an order and runs off. I turn to the next one. "You – I need your belt."

  He looks at me like I'm stupid. "My belt? What the hell do –" I cut him off; I don't have time to argue.

  "I need to stop the bleeding. Now take it off, that's an order." We both know I don't have the authority to order him to do anything, but a man's life is on the line, and he does what I say without question, chucking me the belt. I thread the canvas material around my helpless lover’s upper thigh, just above the entry wound, and pull it as tight as I can.