The Long Way Home

by Roslyn Bane

  Sam turned her head to the side as Jakes crawled up next to her, his huge muscular body barely fitting into the narrow space. “Thanks, Major.” He looked down at her leg, “Let me try to move this.” He pushed with his arms against the console. Unable to shift it he flipped onto his back, lay across the bent floor, and pushed with his legs. The metal moved only a fraction of an inch. Sam bit down on her lip trying to remain quiet as the pain intensified with his push. Do it. Push harder. Come on. She groaned softly, and the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth.

  When he could push no longer, he got up. “Shit. Fuck, Major! It’s been two hours. I’m giving you another hit. Martinez is keeping watch. I’m going to try to call out again. I don’t know if we’re getting through.” He reached into his kit, pulled out a morphine injector and released it into her thigh.

  ***

  Lieutenant Commander Kristine Matthews pulled off her gown and gloves, rolled them together and dropped them into the medical waste bin in the operating room. Her mask quickly followed, and then she rubbed her hands across her lower back, hoping to ease the ache. After seconds of futile effort, she bent forward and touched her toes, sighing as the stretch eased some of the kinks out of her back. She straightened up and twisted side to side, smiling at the nurse who was placing the surgical instruments into the racks. “Thanks for your help. It went well today. The team was on top of things.”

  “We’re a well-oiled machine, Commander.”

  “That we are. Is there anyone left?”

  “That’s it for you. David…ah, Dr. Williams is here, and Dr. Lewis is on call. You’re off unless the shit hits the fan.”

  Kris yawned and stretched her arms overhead. “I’m beat.”

  “I bet. I heard some good news. The Afghan kids we shipped out yesterday are doing okay.”

  She shook her head, trying to clear the images of the children who had arrived in a decrepit bus with burns and multiple fractures after their school was intentionally firebombed for teaching girls. “That’s good to know. They were so young. I don’t understand how anyone can do that to children. There’s just no way to make sense of it.” Kris took a deep breath and released it slowly while raising her hands overhead and stretching. “I never will understand.”

  “It’s been a long week, Doc, get some sleep.”

  “I’m going to try.” Kris stepped outside for a breath of air. A layer of reddish brown dust hung on the horizon. She wiped at the sweat on her brow and hoped that the AC in her quarters was working. Maybe if it was cool, she could get a few hours sleep, if she could get the images of the older school girls who had been beaten and raped out of her mind. She swallowed hard against the rage that bubbled up like a geyser inside her.

  Kris turned at the sound of a woman wailing. The woman struggled with a guard and pulled free. She clung tightly to a package and ran toward Kris. Horrified, Kris watched a guard raise his rifle and aim at the woman. “Stop! Don’t shoot!” Kris screamed as she ran toward the familiar woman waving her arms frantically. “Don’t shoot.” She grabbed at the woman, “Waseema, what’s wrong?”

  Waseema thrust the bundle into her arms, and Kris’ heart stuttered as tears flowed down Waseema’s face. Her breath caught in her throat as she pulled the wrappings back and whimpered as she looked at the familiar toddler’s lifeless body, already rigid and cold. Oh, dear God. No. No. Not Yagana. The dark hair was matted with blood and dirt. Seconds passed until Kris could breathe again. “Waseema, come inside with me.” She took her by the hand and led her inside to the coolness of the hospital. “I’m sorry. It’s too late. There is nothing I can do.” She wiped sticky blood from the toddler’s face with the blanket and closed the lifeless dark brown eyes. After several agonizing minutes Kris handed the child to a nurse. She spoke calmly to Waseema trying to console her until an interpreter arrived. “Let them take her, so she can be cleansed. You’ll be taken to her soon.” She stayed thirty more minutes, whispering softly and holding the hands of her friend until she calmed and was led away.

  Kris walked away, her stomach tight and her mind numb. She wiped a tear from her cheek and hoped she could make it to her bunk before she broke down. She walked through the crowded hallway as nurses and corpsmen moved about the small hospital making their rounds, checking on the injured marines, and resupplying, getting ready for the next emergency. Numb, she went into a changing area and put on her camouflage uniform and boots. Loud voices caught her attention, and she hurried down the hallway. As she neared a small workstation, she realized that Dr. David Williams, the lead surgeon, and a senior chief, were listening to a Marine Colonel as he spoke, his gruff voice booming down the halls. Kris listened as he hurriedly explained, “They’ve been taking fire. The pilot’s leg is trapped, a tourniquet’s on. Their corpsman is dead. A sergeant’s been doing what he can, but there’s been sporadic fighting. They’ve been able to defend. There’s no sign of activity in the area now. We need them out of there quick.”

  “I’ll go,” Kris interrupted. “We’re not busy now.” Kris started running down the hall. “Get me a corpsman, I’ll grab a jump bag.” She pulled several medications from drug supply and loaded them quickly. She didn’t stop when she heard a voice behind her.

  “Are you sure?” David said.

  Kris stole a quick look into his steel grey eyes. “Yes. We can’t send a corpsman in alone. The pilot needs more advanced care.”

  Her stomach tightened as she reached for a power saw and blades. As she grabbed for battery packs, a hand closed over hers. She turned and saw David’s brow furrow and the deep lines at the corners of his eyes. “Be safe.” Kris swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry, and nodded. She loaded the batteries in the bag and tightened the straps. Before she could speak, she heard a familiar voice behind her.

  “Doc, I’m your medic. Let’s do this.”

  Kris almost smiled as she realized one of their most experienced corpsmen was coming too. “Let’s go, Morales.” With the jump bags slung over their shoulders, they ran out the door to a chopper just touching down. A moment after they lifted off, a dangerous looking marine handed them body armor and told them to put it on. The chopper raced forward into the desert.

  Chapter Two

  “HURRY, COMMANDER, SHE’S IN here. You’ve got five minutes! Ten at best. We’ve been taking fire for a few hours. We get a few bastards at a time taking shots. Sometimes they actually try to move in.”

  Jumping from their chopper, Kris and Morales ran to the downed helicopter. Someone survived this? It was leaning precariously to the left, pinned against the boulders. Mangled metal and aircraft parts lay across the field. The main rotor was completely destroyed, its blades shattered. The tail was bent in half.

  Kris’ feet rolled and slid across rock as she ran. The sound of brass chattering as she kicked up spent rounds was almost musical. She tossed her bag into the helicopter and climbed up. Creeping over the crumpled seats and bags, she gripped the mangled wall for balance. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light as she picked her way forward. Twisted metal blocked easy access to the front cabin, and she dropped her gear and crawled into the cockpit.

  The windscreen was gone, and the smell of fuel, oil, dirt and sweat mingled together. Through it all came the overpowering stench of blood and bowel. The air was thick with it. It took Kris a mere second to realize the copilot was dead. His body had released his fluids sometime after death. She reached forward and closed his eyes, and turned her attention to the remaining pilot. Blood and dirt caked the major’s face. Kris’ breath hitched as she realized she was looking at the delicate features of a woman whose eyes were nearly swollen shut. A ribbon of dried blood from under her helmet tracked past split and swollen lips and disappeared under the collar of her flight suit.

  “Major? Can you hear me?” Kris shouted to be heard over the noise of the waiting helicopter. She reached for the pilot’s neck and found a pulse, slow, weak, but steady. Relief surged through her, but faded when she noticed the pilot’s leg d
isappear into the middle of a tangle of twisted metal. Blood covered the legs of her flight suit.

  “She’s had two doses of morphine. It’s been over three hours. Our corpsman’s dead. I got the tourney on right away. I didn’t know what else to do. We tried to get her out, but couldn’t shift the metal. Her leg is stuck. I tried to push and, at first, she was trying to pull it free. Not anymore.”

  Kris continued her assessment as the sergeant spoke. “It’s okay. You did well.” Kris moved closer to her patient. “Major? Answer me, Major. Sergeant, what’s her name?”

  Martinez shouted over the noise of the helicopter on watch overhead. “Major Davies.”

  “Major Davies, look at me!” The pilot’s left eye opened suddenly and Kris jolted. The deep green of her eye was obscured by brilliant red, filling the white of her eye completely. The red glared in stark contrast to her pale dirty face. “Tell me what you feel.”

  She panted. “Pain. Head hurts, leg…bad, stuck.”

  “I am going to take a look. I am getting you out of here.” Kris moved her hands down across the pilot’s arms, the top of her chest. Ribs broken, arms good.

  “No. Stuck. Shoot me.”

  It took Kris a moment to comprehend the garbled words. She shook her head vigorously “What? No!”

  “Taliban. Come back. Leave. Shoot me.”

  Kris looked at her in disbelief and finally saw the pistol in her lap. “No! No way.” She carefully removed the gun from the major’s lap.

  “Sergeant! Take this gun. Give me my bag.”

  She ran her hands down the pilot’s leg feeling the stickiness of drying blood. Unable to find any fresh bleeding she relaxed marginally. Reaching further down, she encountered metal and snaked her hand through a gap in the wreckage, ignoring the scrapes of metal across her hands. Narrowing her eyes, she concentrated, and her hand closed on tattered, soft gobs of flesh and jagged pieces of bone as the contour of the leg changed abruptly. Shattered, muscles torn, bones exposed, contaminated, no fresh bleeding. She withdrew her hand, now stained with sticky blood and pulled scissors from her gear bag. She cut through the bloody pants removing them down to where the tourniquet held tight. She cut the fabric below the tourniquet and tugged it free. Lying across the console, she tried to reach around the metal to free the leg. “It won’t move.” She heard someone come up from behind her.

  “Doc, what do you need?”

  “Give me another tourniquet and betadine.”

  Morales handed her a tourniquet and Kris attached it two inches above the other. She grabbed the antiseptic and doused the leg with it. Gunfire sounded behind her and she jerked her head up.

  Morales shoved her head down, “Stay down! Commander, you gotta hurry.”

  “Start an IV, saline.” Morales squeezed into the opening between the seats, pulled one of the major’s arms down to her side, quickly inserted the IV, and started the fluid running. Kris pulled on new gloves and readied her equipment.

  “Get the Versed. Push it.” Morales grabbed the medicine and administered it quickly; the major sighed out a long breath as her head fell forward.

  “Scalpel.”

  He handed her the scalpel. “Jesus, you’re not really going to—”

  “Give her some morphine, hold her down.” She looked at the major, considered what she was about to do and worried how much the woman would feel. “Major, this is going to hurt,” she warned even though the major appeared unresponsive.

  Her jaw set, Kris took a deep breath and moved with precision. She sliced quickly across the leg, moving the blade from right to left. She cut deep getting down to the bone and narrowly avoided getting kneed in the jaw as the major jumped and screamed.

  “Hold her steady,” Kris ordered.

  The major slumped forward, held up by her seat restraint. Kris reached her hand up. “Clamp.” There was a quick thwack of the instrument as Morales placed it in her hand. She wiggled the clamp under the bone, prying it beneath the muscle, “LAP.” The sponge was instantly pressed into her hands. Gunfire sounded again, and she flinched but kept her head down. Her pulse pounded in her ears, and then everything became strangely quiet. She grabbed the lap sponge with the clamp and tried to wiggle it back and forth under the bone. “Damn, I need a few more inches. I can’t get enough force. Take this.” She tugged the quick release of her body armor and lay across the console. Closer now, she grabbed the sponge and pulled it rapidly back and forth until she could grab both ends. She pulled on the ends and lifted the bone toward her. “Give me the saw.”

  “What?”

  “The saw! It looks like—”

  “I got it.” He thrust the heavy piece into her hands.

  Dear God, let her not feel this. With steady hands, she turned the saw on and using her left hand, aligned it the best she could in the cramped space and pressed it to the bone. The scream lasted only a second, but she knew she would remember it for the rest of her life. Kris pulled harder with the sponge, using it as a retractor to lift the bone further as the cut through the tibia deepened. Chips of bone and marrow flew up. There was a jerk as the saw cleared the tibia and she turned it quickly on the fibula. She finished the cut through the bone, flicked the switch off, and thrust the saw back toward Morales. Without asking he handed her the scalpel again and she quickly used it to cut through the remaining muscle and skin. Kris took a deep breath, her shoulders dropping momentarily. She glanced up at the major, her mouth open as she hung unconscious in her harness. Breathing shallow. Needs oxygen, fluids. Antibiotics. Get her sedated.

  Gunfire bounced off the sides of the helicopter. Someone hollered into the wreckage, “We gotta go!”

  “Get her out,” Kris ordered. She pushed her hands up against the pilot’s shoulders as Morales unhooked the harness, and the Major collapsed onto her, still mercifully unconscious. She supported the pilot’s chest, and felt ribs shift, while Morales and the sergeant wrestled the major out of her seat. They pulled her back into the belly of the chopper and onto a stretcher. Climbing over the console, Kris scrambled back to them. She grabbed two Kelly clamps, clamping two vessels oozing blood.

  “Doc, now!”

  “I need a few seconds.” She grabbed some sponges and applied a pressure dressing. “Go, go, go!”

  They moved as fast as they could toward the back of the downed chopper. She grabbed the jump bag and one side of the stretcher. The four of them ran toward the Evac helicopter as it was touching down a hundred yards away. Gunfire sounded all around them. Where are they? Where’s it coming from…where’s air cover? Dirt flew up at their feet. Suddenly fire erupted in her chest, and her hands stung with the bite of rocks cutting into them.

  Morales screamed, “Fuck, doc’s hit, doc’s hit.”

  Before Kris could roll over, strong arms lifted her, and she realized she was hanging upside down over Morales’ shoulder. Pain pounded through her with each step Morales took. Moments later she felt more arms grabbing her, as she was wrestled inside the chopper. She had a momentary feeling of weightlessness and realized they were airborne.

  “Doc, talk to me.”

  “Oh my God! How…how bad is it?” She panted, already breathless. “Where is it?” Her hands grabbed at her chest, she felt blood on her hands. She licked at her lips and gulped for air, as white-hot pain flashed through her body. She tried to sit up, but he held her down.

  “Move your hands, let me see. Lie still.”

  Everything ceased to exist except for Morales and her pain. Her mind scrambled trying to keep up with what he was doing. He worked quickly, cutting through her shirts and exposing her chest. She heard him mutter “Fuck” as he looked at the wound.

  “Can’t…breathe…up.”

  “Stay down.” She watched as Morales reached into his bag, ripped open a package and pulled out an occlusive dressing. His firm hands pressed down onto her chest where she knew the air was rushing out. He grabbed gauze and applied a pressure dressing to her shoulder. “You’ll be all right, doc, I’ve got you
. You’ll feel less pressure in your chest now.”

  Kris nodded and whispered. “Help her.”

  “She can wait.”

  The sergeant had come over “She doesn’t look good. Geeezus Christ.”

  “Shut up! Be quiet,” Morales hollered. “Ignore him, doc.” He grabbed a stethoscope, and she watched as he closed his eyes, his head cocked to the side. “Breathe, doc, breathe.” He put the stethoscope down and looked at her wound, “You’re still bleeding a little. I’m going to clamp it. Doc, look at me. Stay focused on me.” It was quiet for several seconds as he studied the wound. He muttered, “There has to be another bleeder. I gotta find it.”

  Kris hissed as his fingers probed into her, she reached for his hand, “Hurts.” Something sprayed across her face. Oh, Fuck.

  “There it is. It’s a little one, near your shoulder.” He sprinkled quick clot on the wound and covered it with gauze. “You’re doing good, doc. Stay with me.”

  Kris looked over at the major. She tugged on Morales’ sleeve, “Fluid.” She pointed a finger at the major, shuddering between gasps, “Give her fluid.” Hearing gagging, she turned her head and watched as the Sergeant vomited in the back of the helicopter.

  Kris heard the gunner groan “Holy mother of God, her tit is gone.”

  “I got it, doc. Stay still. I got you both.” His voice was reassuring and calming. She felt a prick of pain in her arm, and she knew he had started an IV. Her vision grayed “Up, can’t breathe, up.” Jakes propped her up slightly as Morales moved over to the major. Kris watched as he hung another bag of fluid above the major and checked her dressing.