Magnet & Steele

by Trisha Fuentes

  68 Days Captured:

  When the sun came up, Pvt. Hawkins began yelling at the VC soldiers guarding us. Yelling and crying, he wanted to go home. We all want to go home. Pvt. Hawkins hasn’t played with his pet lately, I think he might have eaten him.

  102 Days Captured:

  They fed us today. I’ve been counting the times they feed us according to the days I see the sun come up. I’ve been making marks into the dirt to count the times when I see the sun. So according to my markings on the ground, the VC give us rice and vegetables and sometimes some kind of meat every three days. We got meat today…at least I think its meat. I don’t know what kind of meat it was, or if it was meat. Oh hell, I really don’t care what it was, it was chewy and it filled my stomach for now. Today, they chained our feet together and marched us out of the bamboo cell that we named “Dogpatch” and transported us to another location. They blind-folded us and placed us in a transport.

  120 Days Captured

  Me, Pvt’s Hawkins, Jansen, Williams and O’Hara have been placed in a 10x10 metal box. We stretch our legs out when we can, but most of the time, we feel like a bunch of sardines. It’s a death trap built for five. It feels almost like those gooks put us in here to prepare us for some kind of death. I can smell it all around us. Men are crying, the men are crying…

  133 Days Captured

  What day is it? Oh God, help me, please, please help me! The VC took Pvt. Jansen last night. Pulled him from his sleep, I’m not even sure they chose him for anything other than his legs was the closest to the door. We don’t know where they took him. We can’t see anything other than a small square of blue sky. When we try to stick our heads out of the 1x1 opening, there is always a VC guard to conk us on our heads if we try to look out.

  177 Days Captured

  I don’t know how many days I’ve been in here! No ambush yet, no one is coming for us, I can feel it now and I’m coming to face the terms that I could be here forever. They sent back Pvt. Jansen with one of his eyes missing and his right hand crushed. I know I’m next, I just know I am and I’m scared now. I’m no longer hungry; the fear is much too strong.

  216 Days Captured

  Rain. Rain everywhere. The water has been creeping in from under the doorway and now all of us have sores on our feet from being in the water day and night. Mud has also seeped in from under the opening and now all of us eat, sleep and sit in mud and dirty water.

  238 Days Captured

  I miss my dad. I miss Francine. I miss my little boy…I want to go home!

  288 Days Captured

  They moved us again. I think the weather is changing because now we’re back outside again. Thank God because Pvt. Hawkins is dead. He fell asleep one sundown and never woke up. He was lying next to me and now I can’t get his stiffness outta my mind! I’m losing it; I’ve lost it, Oh God, help me! I want to die too!

  366 Days Captured

  I don’t know what day it is, and I’ve lost count at how many times I’ve watched the sun beat down on my body. I just wanna get outta here! Why aren’t they coming for us? Don’t they know we’re here! Oh God, help me! Oh God, help me…

  Derrie has been placed inside another bamboo cell. He’s beyond filthy with apparent abuse surrounding his face and limbs. Wearing ripped fatigues, shoeless and starving, he still held onto a plan. With six other men, Derrie has lost all hope, until…

  Derrie captured a moment when he felt a glimpse of optimism. Motioning for the other soldiers to stay quiet, the guards weren’t looking their way; they were trying to load an U.S. assault rifle M-16A1 and were having problems doing so when Derrie noticed the gate wasn’t tied up with rope. It was loose and slightly ajar and Derrie tested the opening. He could open it?

  Derrie gave the signal “on five” to the others and motioned a silent count to make a run for it. The same count a quarterback would make inside a football huddle. Five, four, three, two, one! Derrie then swung open the door and darted out and made a mad dash for his very life towards the trees. Three soldiers behind him managed to escape alongside with him while the three others were chopped down by gun fire.

  Derrie and the three soldiers continued their way unnoticed through the untamed jungle, each one of them helped each other make their way up the top of the mountain summit when one of the soldiers’ buckled under his feet. Derrie stopped first to help his comrade, while the others continued to run. But then the ascending soldiers turned back to see Derrie trying to pull up his friend and they all come back to his aid and picked up the ailing man and dragged him away on his feet. Derrie loomed over at the horizon and beyond the jungle he saw a river. He stood up straight to view more of the terrain and helicopters suddenly fly over him.

  Without warning, a bomb exploded; it’s a huge explosion and the three soldiers that escaped with him are instantly dead.

  Derrie was alive however, but wounded. He’s on the ground with limbs in awkward positions, unconscious.

  California, 2003

  Hurriedly walking down the white hospital linoleum, Francine tried to rush towards the delivery room where her daughter Sara just had another baby, this time a girl.

  She reached the elevator and waited for it to approach her floor and thought about her mom for a second; after Angelo retired, he sold their home and he and her mother moved to Italy ten years back and she lost touch with them, but Francine knew in her heart that her mother was happy.

  The elevator door slowly opened up and Francine walked in. Moments later in the delivery room, her daughter Sara handed her mother the baby. Francine cradled it within her arms and eyed her hair. It was strawberry blonde!

  “Mom, we want to name her Suzette,” Sara asked, gazing up at her mother still holding the baby.

  On the verge of tears, Francine looked down at her daughter. “Oh Sara honey, thank you…”

  “Oh mom, isn’t she just the prettiest little baby you’ve ever seen? And I’m not just saying that because she’s mine.”

  “Oh honey, she is indeed unique, and look at all that strawberry blonde hair!”

  Just then a nurse came in with a baby cart and interrupted the two cooing at the infant.

  “Just procedure, ma’am,” the nurse relayed, opening up the blanket on the cart, “The baby needs to be assessed.”

  Francine walked over to the cart and placed her granddaughter gently into the rolling bassinet.

  The nurse then rolled the baby out of the room, but then stopped short causing Francine and Sara to look her way.

  “What’s wrong?” Francine asked, concerned.

  “Oh, don’t mean to alarm you, but did you get a chance to finish the application for the birth certificate?”

  Francine bent over to grab the piece of paper by her daughter’s head and handed it to the nurse. “Here it is anything else?”

  “No ma’am.”

  Francine watched the nurse wheel out her granddaughter before she turned to Sara and asked, “How ya feeling?”

  Sara gazed up at her mom, “Besides feeling numb from where they cut me and sewed me up, I’m feeling terrific!”

  After visiting hours were over, Francine decided to take a detour on her way out of the hospital and ended up back at the nursery. It was crowded that day; a lot of babies had been born. Many families were still there waiting by the viewing windows which made Francine have to wait her turn.

  Waiting in the distance until a small crowd finished viewing the infants; Francine began to survey an assortment of families. A young couple was surrounded by two older couples, four sets of grandparents and two single dads.

  Amused by their joyous actions, Francine laughed along with them as they continued to try to get the newborns attention by tapping on the glass. Her smile however, dropped when they all begin to leave. On their way out, she noticed that one of the visitors used a wheelchair to get around and she watched them drudge away, and then disappear around the corner.

  Her turn now and Francine walked over towards the window. A nurse be
yond the glass wheeled in the infant when she noticed the name plate above her granddaughter’s crib. “Um, no…not Steele. Why did they use Steele?” She looked beyond the glass again for the nurse, but doesn’t see her. She does however, notice an OB nurse wrapping a baby up in a cloth in another glass room and tried to get her attention by tapping on the window.

  Tap…tap…tap.

  No answer. She then knocked on the window again and accidently interrupted all the babies in slumber, and like dominoes, one by one started to cry.

  The nurse pushed through a nearby door, “Ma’am, please refrain from knocking on the glass.”

  Francine looked into her eyes, she wasn’t a sympathetic nurse of any kind and she walked over to the window and tried to explain. “You made a mistake,” Francine clarified, “My daughter’s last name isn’t Steele, its Gersh. Steele was her maiden name, her married name is now Gersh and I’m sure she’d want to keep her daughter’s last name, and so would her husband—of course.”

  The nurse looked oddly at Francine. “What’s the problem again?”

  Francine tapped the window by mistake, “This.”

  “Ma’am, the glass,” the nurse asked of her reaching out for her hand, but Francine was too quick and she jerked it away.

  “Oh, good heavens,” Francine said exasperated now. “This,” she pointed at the glass window. “My daughter’s last name isn’t Steele, its Gersh.”

  The OB nurse walked over to the glass and concentrated on Francine’s tapping fingers. “Ma’am please,” and reached for Francine’s hand once more, but Francine quickly hid them behind her back.

  “OK, I’m sorry, but there’s still a problem.”

  “We never have problems in this ward, ma’am,” the nurse proudly stated. “We make sure everything is done correctly. We even put the babies in alphabetical order.”

  “That’s all fine and dandy, but there’s still a problem,” Francine said a little annoyed with this unsympathetic nurse, “And maybe I’m not explaining myself correctly, because you still don’t understand!”

  “But I do, I do understand!” The nurse exclaimed, “You see, we have each baby correct, and there’s never a problem. Baby Boy Anderson, Baby Boy Davenport, Baby Girl Evans, Baby Boy Jackson—”

  Francine was definitely upset now. “No, no, no!” And without falling off the deep end, she walked over to the glass all over again but this time closer. “Look woman, my daughter’s last name is Gersh! Not Steele—” And just like that, Francine’s whole world stopped.

  Doing a double-take at the window, Francine noticed the baby to the left of her granddaughter. Inside the nursery there were two babies; a girl, her granddaughter, and a boy, their carts closer than usual and next to one another and on the end of each cart, their name plates: “Baby Boy Magnet” and “Baby Girl Steele”.

  Outside of the nursery, Francine’s entire body rotated around to mesh into the glass. Touching the window with both hands now, she pressed her nose up against the window. “Magnet and Steele,” she delivered, “I’m not imaging this, it says ‘Magnet and Steele’.”

  Francine then stepped away completely and became frantic recalling the wheelchair that she’d seen previously. She looked down the hallway both ways fast and panic spread through to her skin.

  “Something wrong?” The nurse asked, noticing Francine’s apprehension and fright.

  “Where did he go?” Francine asked the nurse looking oddly back at her. “Oh my God!” She exclaimed bringing her hands up to her head and clutching them there. “Where did he go?” Francine looked down the halls again but they were completely empty, clear. Go find him, she thought and Francine sprinted down the hallway, clutching her handbag, fumbling with it within her hands until it fell to the ground. She stopped short to pick it up but then the handbag fell away from her again and she decided to leave the damn thing there and continued running down the hall towards the exit of the hospital.

  Running and running, she ran until she reached the hospital parking lot and halted. Looking both ways, then in a full circle, she doesn’t see anyone remotely to what she remembered before until she spotted a man faraway getting into a Suburban. The SUV reversed out of their parking spot and proceeded towards the street.

  Francine had no other choice but to take off towards it and screamed, “Derrie!”

  Running and running towards the SUV, Francine had to stop the car somehow and surged for the vehicle and braced herself for a hit and threw herself into the truck’s top right front bumper.

  *****

  It was a hot summer day in Encino, when Chris and his buddy, Jared were leaving the Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center after viewing his new baby boy. Chris was beyond excited about becoming a father for the very first time. He and his wife, Charlotte had been trying to conceive for around two years. It had been a normal delivery, if you could call being in labor for 27 hours, normal. Charlotte gave birth two days ago and had been very tired from the whole ordeal. Chris did the best he could with her delivery, but Charlotte got annoyed with him too many times and didn’t want Chris in the delivery room so he was forced to become a 40’s dad and wait out in the waiting room with the rest of the family members and not unlike the fathers of the past used to do. Chris didn’t mind it though, when the nurse finally came to him and told him that he had been the proud father of a 6 lb. 3 oz. baby boy, Chris was ecstatic and was able to rejoice with his best friend Jared, his mother and his father. Yeah, it was great to have his father there. He hadn’t seen him in quite some time and it was a good feeling to finally be able to experience a milestone like welcoming a new baby into the world with his dad.

  Chris clicked on his left hand turn signal to make a left when he heard, “It was nice to have your dad here.”

  Chris turned to look at Jared, “Yeah, I know, it was nice to have him here, period.” He then looked into his rear-view mirror and checked on his dad in the back seat. He could only see the tip of his forehead and his salt and pepper hair. “I don’t know how much longer I could have taken it ya know?”

  “Oh man, I don’t know how your family went through all that,” Jared agreed, gazing out the car door window.

  Chris made his left hand turn slowly through the hospital parking lot. “When I first found out that he was still alive, I’ve spent the past five years trying to get him outta there.”

  “Your poor dad man, spending half his life in that God damn psychiatric Veteran’s hospital…and I know it’s probably eatin’ you up that he doesn’t even recognize you! His own son, man, that’s rough,” Jared uttered, taking a peek back at Chris’ dad in the back seat as well.

  “I don’t care,” Chris explained, “He’s still my dad. I couldn’t just let him rot in that loony bin; allow his brain to continue to deteriorate like that. I don’t even like to think about it, much less talk about it.”

  “Chris! Watch out!” Jared shouted, reacting to something he saw running in front of their Suburban.

  Chris stepped on the brakes and a loud screech of rubber could be heard, but it was too late, they hit the pedestrian. Chris got out of the truck first and rushed to see what happened.

  Just outside their vehicle, a woman was spread out onto the pavement. On the verge of unconsciousness, the woman muttered, “Derrie…it’s me…Derrie…it’s me.” Very weak and opening and closing her eyes, she tried to speak, but she was fading fast. “Magnet…Steele, Derrie…the babies…Magnet and Steele…”

  Chris stood up and looked back at his dad and he was OK, thank God…Goddammit! “What the hell was she doing? She could have gotten herself killed!”