Mass Casualties

by Michael Anthony

  Staff Sergeant North stands up. He has gained thirty pounds since the last time I saw him — only a few weeks ago at Colonel Jelly's meeting for unit restructuring.

  “In our southern hospital we all had to take the anthrax shot and we conducted our own independent research.” He's sweating like a hog. I can smell him from where I sit. He smells of bullshit.

  “We had a pregnant soldier down south and we gave her the anthrax shot and then monitored her health. It's a month later and she's doing fine.” He sits down and grins, obviously proud of himself. He has settled the score once and for all.

  Is anyone else picking up that his pseudo-research is a little off? When the Army finds out that a woman is pregnant, they have to send her home as quickly as possible. Also, the pregnant soldier only received one out of a series of six shots.

  The meeting ends with Colonel Jelly telling us that tomorrow and the next day will be the last two days to either get the shots or refuse them. After that, the consequences will be felt. Reto and I walk back to work.

  0745 HOURS, OR

  Reto and I head to the printer. We find the websites that we found earlier and make our own pamphlet on the real facts. We print off twenty copies. Hudge walks into the room and we hide the pamphlets.

  “Hey guys, I want to talk. Listen, I got the shot and nothing happened to me. You guys are young. I just don't want to see you two throw your lives away.”

  Denti walks in:

  “Listen, I'll say this quick. Don't be a fucking idiot. If they're going to send you to jail, just get the shot.” Denti and Hudge leave. Reto goes to the bathroom.

  Torres walks in.

  “Michael. Listen, I'm sure you've heard this before. But I know these people are assholes for making us take these shots, but don't let them ruin you. Play their game for now, but that's it. I don't want to see anything happen to you. Reto has already made his decision; there's not much I can do … just think about it, okay? Weigh your options.”

  Reto knows that he might be refusing the shot alone. We print more pamphlets. Sergeants Elster and Sellers come in and relieve us. They also try to convince us to get the shots.

  Reto and I leave. We don't talk. We take our pamphlets and methodically go into every male bathroom in our living quarters and hang the pamphlets on the walls. If refusing the shots weren't bad enough, we are now printing anonymous reading materials encouraging people to refuse a direct order. We know or can imagine the consequences, but we don't think of them. That is the only way you can do something. Focus on only doing what's right, not the consequences of any action. We are now fighting a new war.

  We go to our rooms. I turn my computer on and send an e-mail to my brother. I tell him to contact the press about what's going on. I then send an e-mail to my local and state representatives.

  WEEK 4, DAY 4, IRAQ

  0900 HOURS, OR

  The next day people try to convince us to get the shots. Many of them call us idiots and say that we can't go against the Army. Some call us pansies and tell us to man up. Others come in and tell us that we're doing the right thing and that they wish they had the balls we have … and then they tell us to get the shot and not waste our careers.

  The day goes on and more and more people get the shot, the main reason being that most don't want to lose their rank and throw away the careers they spent the last twenty years on. Dr. Bill comes in and says there are two patients on the way from the ER, GSWs. He then tells Reto and me that only a handful of people throughout our four-hundred-person unit have still refused the shot.

  “Lot of good our fucking pamphlets did …” Reto says, turning around to grab instruments for the cases.

  I tell him to be quiet and help him with the instruments. There have been a few people around the hospital talking about the pamphlets. They're the same people also saying that the GOBs are looking for those who did it. Reto and I have done research and found out that what we did (encouraging people to refuse a direct order) is considered mutinous and a jailable offense in itself, so even if we got the shots, we could still go to jail if anyone finds out that we hung the fliers.

  1400 HOURS, OR

  After a five-hour surgery, I am exhausted. I see Gagney and Reto sitting at a table in the break room. “Have a seat!” Gagney says.

  I am in no mood to listen to his shit, but I slowly take a seat.

  “Listen guys. Tomorrow is your final day to refuse. You and a few other idiots are the only ones left. Smarten up. Don't make things hard on yourselves. Do you want to go to jail? Be a good little soldier. Do what you're told” As he leaves, he is very calm.

  “Oh, and by the way …” he says looking over his shoulder, “I looked it up in the regulations, and you can legally be shot for refusing a direct order during a time of war. We could take you out back and shoot you tomorrow; just something to think about, I know I have….”

  I look at Reto and I know that he won't back down. They can't use scare tactics to force us to take the shot. The question is no longer whether or not the shot is safe, it's do we succumb to their threats? We are here to be men and fight for our country, not for the land that it is on, but for the virtues that it stands on: liberty and freedom.

  1500 HOURS, MY ROOM

  It's comforting to finally know the answer. No more seesawing back and forth in my mind. On the way to our rooms Reto and I talk about sports, the weather, anything that will let our minds escape what's going on. When we get back to the room, I smoke four cigarettes and take three sleeping pills. Not surprisingly, I still can't sleep. I decide to go outside and smoke the rest of the cigarettes in my pack. I take two more pills. My mind is restless no matter what I do. I'm afraid I'll overdose. I look over at Markham in bed and I want to wake him up. I want to talk to him; I want him to tell me I'm doing the right thing. I lie back down.

  My mind begins racing and echoing every thought and fear I've had over the past few days.

  I figure the worst that can really happen is that I find myself in jail in a few days. I know I can handle jail. I will just spend my time reading and writing. Mandela was in jail for three decades.

  The worst thing that could happen in jail is another inmate tries to rape me. I decide I won't let that happen and I'll die fighting. I might soon be dead because, worst-case scenario, I find myself in jail and someone tries to rape me … and I don't let them and I die fighting … and I don't die from a mortar attack or a terrorist … instead, I die for what … an ideal … a belief … is it worth it… ? is anything worth it… ?

  WEEK 4, DAY 5, IRAQ

  0900 HOURS, OR

  It's 0900 and the sun is already shining. It hurts my eyes and burns my skin. Reto walks toward me, and I can tell by the bags under his eyes that he didn't sleep well either.

  “I'm out of cigarettes,” I say. He takes two out of his pack and hands me one. We light up.

  “Listen, man, I'll understand if …” he trails off.

  “Let's just go,” my voice gives me away. I force myself to look at Reto, and I'm surprised to see that it looks like he wants to give in. He's silently begging me to give in.

  We're not going to cave. We are going to refuse the shot for the final time. We know the possible consequences and we are ready.

  Something starts happening after I realize that we'll actually be refusing for the final time. My body feels strange. I've never felt this before. I'm scared of the feeling, but I like it. My head is floating up as if it's attached to a balloon. My shoulders are back. Twenty-one years old and my father would be proud.

  “You know, there's got to be some type of middle ground here. Things are never 100 percent black and white,” Reto says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, there's got to be some way we can beat them at their own game without getting the shots and without going to jail….”

  As soon as he says this, I think of something. I am a complete idiot. Reto is an idiot. I start laughing. Reto looks at me. I laugh harder. Reto is smiling.<
br />
  “What, what, man? What's so funny … ?” I laugh harder. Reto is smiling a huge smile. He can tell I thought of something. I calm myself down enough to talk.

  “We are fucking idiots.”

  “What, man?”

  “This will work. Why the hell didn't you mention this middle ground shit before? You know you could have saved us a lot of worrying. And I could have saved about four packs of cigarettes….”

  “Tell me.”

  I grab two pieces of paper.

  “Follow me.”

  We start walking.

  “My roommate Markham doesn't have to get the shot because he had an adverse reaction to some shot and he's allergic to latex.”

  We walk in the hospital and toward the doctors' break room. I always knew that working side by side with these doctors day-in day-out would have its benefits.

  I walk up to Dr. Bill with Reto following closely behind. We look like two schoolgirls, excited and giggling. I whisper in Bill's ear, hand him the two pieces of paper, and he hands them to a friend sitting next to him. The friend signs them. Reto and I are now allergic to latex. I almost cry as Reto and I run back toward the building for our anthrax shots. We hand our paper to the person who's supposed to be administering the shots, and we turn and run back to the OR.

  Gagney stops us as we are entering the OR.

  “Hey. Not so fast. Why are you two clowns smiling? Did you get those shots!?!”

  Reto and I look at Gagney. Not even he can ruin this moment.

  “Yeah, we took care of it,” I say.

  MONTH 8

  “I NEED SOME THING TO TAKE THE EDGE OFF.”

  WEEK 1, DAY 5, IRAQ

  1800 HOURS, SLEEPING AREA

  Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living; however, he ended up having to kill himself because he wouldn't compromise his way of life. I wonder if it could then be said that he examined life and found it not worth living.

  Today I'm celebrating my twenty-first birthday. Actually, my birthday was last month, but I didn't celebrate or mark the occasion. I think it's finally time for me to examine my life.

  WEEK 1, DAY 7, IRAQ

  2200 HOURS, OR

  We've been on second shift for two days now and not a single case has come in; first shift, however, has been getting at least six a day. It's boring, which is why we are playing baseball inside the hall of the OR.

  “HOME RUN!!!” Reto yells as he throws his broom handle baseball bat to the ground and runs for first base on our makeshift field. I chase after the baseball, a rolled-up Ace bandage, and Reto runs from first to second base. “That's not a home run,” I yell as Reto goes from second to third base. “A home run is when you hit it over the door frame, and that was under it.”

  Reto doesn't listen and heads for home plate anyway, which is a crumpled up pair of pants.

  The OR door slams. Reto and I look to see who it is to make sure that we're not getting in trouble. We invented our OR version of baseball yesterday, and we've already gotten three complaints about the noise. We look over, though, and are relieved when we see it's just Proust, a specialist and a medic in the ER. He's twenty-two but looks about seventeen — six feet tall, white, and has a pot belly and random tattoos all over his body. He also lived in my barracks in Wisconsin and always walked around naked. He also masturbated at least twice a day — I know this because he would announce it so that he could have some privacy in the bathroom. I didn't like the fact that he walked around naked, but I did like the fact that Denti had to sleep next to him. It was funny to hear stories about Denti waking up to an eyeful of Proust's ass.

  The dirt on him concerns raunchy e-mails he sent his girlfriend, Clementine. She's twenty-seven and a staff sergeant in charge of the supply section for our unit. She's about 5′8′ with washboard abs, dark Portuguese skin, and size D fake breasts that her ex-boyfriend bought her. For reasons unbeknownst to any of us, nobody in the command (especially First Sergeant Mardine) likes Proust or Clementine, and the second it was found out that they were a couple, they were forbidden from seeing each other and put on separate shifts so that one would be sleeping while the other worked.

  Long story short, Proust and Clementine couldn't see each other so they e-mailed each other really raunchy, nasty messages. This girl Consuela, who works in supply with Clementine, hates her because Clementine wants Consuela's job. Clementine works late one night and reads the e-mails from Proust. She gets horny and decides to “take care of herself” in the bathroom. While she's there, Consuela walks in and sees the computer on. Proust's email is still on the screen, so she prints off twenty copies of this completely raunchy e-mail. I mean, Proust was talking about all the toys he wants to use on her and vice versa. Around midnight, Consuela takes the copies of the e-mail and tapes them to the back of all the bathroom doors — male and female.

  First Sergeant Mardine sees the papers on the doors and orders someone to take them down. Consuela is sent down south, and Clementine is fired from being in charge of supply. She is now First Sergeant Mardine's assistant so that she can “keep an eye on her.”

  Thankfully Proust is alone and not with his significant other, Clementine. Ever since the two of them got in trouble for that email incident a few months back they've been trying to hang low and stay under the radar.

  “You guys have got to come see this,” Proust yells over to Reto as I take my at-bat.

  “What it's about?” I yell as I swing and miss.

  “You guys have just got to see it,” Proust says, backing away from my batter's box.

  I put the broom handle bat down and we follow him into the ER.

  “I was randomly looking through our paging logs and I found some interesting pages between certain people in our unit. Since you guys are the only ones on shift that I like, I figured I'd show you,” Proust says as he sits behind a computer screen.

  Certain people throughout the hospital have pagers, and the paging log is a computer program that everyone has to log into if they want to page someone.

  “I was just randomly playing with the computer and then I found that there is a log of every page ever sent to anyone within the system.”

  Proust starts naming eight people that are having affairs and shows us all the pages with the texts being sent back and forth between them.

  I miss you baby.

  Meet me by the bathrooms.

  I'm thinking about last night big boy.

  I'm wearing your panties you left at my place.

  Reto and I go through all the pages with Proust, but it's not that impressive; we already knew all these people were having affairs.

  “That's just the tip of the iceberg. Here's yesterday's pages between Staff Sergeant Blett, she's married to a man back home, and Chief Ward Master Pyne, who is also married to someone back home.”

  I found someone to cover guard duty for you. Come straight to my office when they get there.

  “That son of a bitch!” I yell at the computer.

  Reto and Proust look at me and I point to the screen.

  “I'm the person he's talking about. I'm the guard they sent so they could get it on.”

  ‘Thank you so much for this,’ Blett said to me, and then she runs into Chief Ward Master Pyne's office. Forty-five minutes later, she comes out putting all of her gear back on and tightening her belt.”

  Later I go into the bathroom and take half of a pill out of my pocket. Denti went to a doctor a week ago and told him he was having problems with his back. The doctor gave him a prescription for Percocet, and Denti then sold me some of the pills at five dollars apiece. I usually only take half a pill at a time, partly because I don't want to get too messed up in case something important happens and partly because the pills cost five bucks a pop. I take them because I know I shouldn't be taking them, but they make me feel good. I don't have to deal with the pain and … I know that it can be harmful, but … it helps me forget that this is the Army and a high-ranking sergeant made me do e
xtra guard duty just so she could have an adulterous quickie.

  WEEK 2, DAY 3, IRAQ

  2200 HOURS, OR

  “Soldiers keep disappearing and no one says anything about it. One day they're here and the next day they're gone, and it only happens to the female soldiers.”

  Hudge is on the computer sending an e-mail to her mom; she doesn't look up as she speaks.

  “They're all pregnant, silly.”

  “So you're telling me that all these girls have gotten pregnant here in Iraq?”

  “I think one of the three has a husband and was trying to get pregnant while on leave. The other two haven't been on leave, yet, have husbands back home, but got pregnant here,” says Hudge.

  The whole situation is like the reversal of the old milkman story from World War II. All the men are off fighting the war and the women at home get lonely, and some of them sleep with the milkman. Then the men come home and there's a little baby waiting in their house. The wife tells him that someone just left the baby on their doorstep. Meanwhile, the baby grows up to look an awful lot like the milkman. In Iraq and in our unit it's the reverse. The men stayed home, and while the women are away they get pregnant.

  WEEK 3, DAY 4, IRAQ

  0100 HOURS, MY ROOM

  The pins-and-needles feeling you get when your hand or foot falls asleep is now vibrating throughout my entire body. My body feels numb, yet I feel as though every inch of my body is being poked with a needle. I feel as if I am the static on a television screen.

  I took one-and-a-half Percocets, the last of the pills that Denti sold me. I also took one sleeping pill and smoked three Camel Light cigarettes.

  I can feel all the different substances working at once. The sleeping pill is making my mind hazy, the Percocet is combining with the sleeping pills and giving me the reverberations, and the nicotine is what's keeping me awake. As my mind drifts off from the pills, I can feel the nicotine coursing through my veins. It's like giving my mind the equivalent of a B12shot. I still can't move my body, but my mind is awake and aware. It wants to sleep but it can't.