III
My shift starts in ten minutes but I need to finish this letter. I make myself write to Aisling every day, whether or not I have anything to say. It’s the only way I’m going to keep from stealing a jeep and heading off to the front lines with a PLEASE FUCKING KILL ME sign planted on my chest. That and the fact that she is far, far away from this place
The sound that swells behind the hovercraft whines and distant crumps of ballistic ordinance is a low, powerful hum; as if someone has buried a massive subwoofer somewhere near the front that pumps out megawatts of unearthly low bass. Whenever we hear that, we know that the next crop of wounded is going to be bad, their wounds ragged and infected. They hover them in by the dozens every few days, bleeding, broken men, their uniforms in tatters, their hands and feet shredded, blood oozing from cracked faces, skulls sheared off, gelatinous gray brain matter bobbing underneath, coated with dust (how the fuck am I supposed to clean that off?). I’m no doctor, so they have put me on stretcher duty. I ferry the wounded into the pre-op ward. Inside, they either die, or recover enough to get thrown back into the conflict. If they’ve suffered enough, they can go home. By suffered enough, the Forces mean that you can’t shit or piss without a bag.
This time is no different; the suffering extreme. Under the poisoned pink and green sky the hoverpad tarmac is covered with bleeding, screaming men, fresh from the front. Some of the orderlies wear earplugs, and some listen to music. Anything to drown out the wails of suffering. I don’t do either. Would I want to see some dickhead with headphones on if I was brought in here?
A nurse tells me to put my hand inside a man’s chest and hold his ribs up while she jams a tube into his lungs, inflating them. A rank smell that pushes in through my nostrils tells me that he has voided his bowels. Just as the nurse is about to finish, he wakes up right in the middle of it, looks at me and starts screaming. The nurse yells at me to hold him down and I try, but he’s throttling me. Suddenly he stops and his arms go limp. Another nurse has jammed a sedative into his leg.
Some of the other soldiers have been turned inside out. I see a man with spidery red capillaries on the outside of his skull. As he screams, the capillaries pulse like snakes. One man has been deposited dead. His body is sheared cleanly from shoulder to opposite hip, as if a large knife has cut him sideways. The larger part twitches with involuntary muscle spasms. The missing piece lies several feet away in a pool of black blood.
There is one soldier in the midst of this bedlam who doesn’t scream. He is holding a makeshift bandage over his gut and when I lift it, I see that something has torn out his stomach and part of his intestines – they are spilled out over the ground. In spite of the wound, and the pain that it must be causing, his eyes are clear, and he’s smiling.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says. As if he has to reassure me. But he does. And he knows it. “It will all be over soon.”
I ask him what will be over but suddenly both of his hands grasp mine. His smile vanishes and a faraway, uncertain look comes over him, as if just moments ago he had caught a glimpse of some wonderful refuge only to see it obscured by something dark and foreboding. My gut starts to hurt - as if I can feel what he is feeling - but I also feel a steady warmth crawling up my arms and down my legs. The dying soldier tries to speak but death arrives first, stealing his words. The living light in him quickly vanishes, leaving a face with shark eyes, seeing nothing. I look up at the sky, in the direction of any possible god, and wonder if it can see this insignificant drop flow into the ocean of human war blood. The only sign is a wash of air from a departing hovercraft.
It is only later that I realize that the soldier has no dog tags and no other form of identification. None of the other men can recognize him or remember him. With a mounting cynicism, I imagine that he was Christ come again. But because of a bullet, he will never have the chance to fulfill his destiny. Unknown in life and in death, unheeded and unknown, he leaves humanity in darkness.
When Triage is over, I grab a few cans of beer and slink off to a hot shower and my bunk. Hell has been endured for another day. I take out a small holocube of Aisling and hold it up while I tip the cold can of beer down my throat, swallowing it in one greedy gulp. I put the cube away and try to get some sleep, but it doesn’t come; I lay awake, my wide eyes stare up at nothing.
I wonder about going home after experiencing so much horror and if I’ll be able to adjust to a normal life with Aisling. I’m afraid I’ll return home a stranger, incapable of adapting back to the rhythms of our former life. I think that one look of pity from her then would destroy me.
Months pass. I read messages from Aisling greedily. I wonder what she is wearing and how she feels when she writes the letters. I picture her writing in the living room in front of the bay windows, on her laptop with a mug of tea next to her. As she writes she looks out at the houses, and the streets, watches as cars slide by, sees the neighborhood kids playing laser tag. And somewhere beyond all of that, is me. In one of her letters she mentions something about a superweapon that is supposed to end the war. I don’t care about superweapons, I only want to touch her again, to smell her after sex, to watch her make me breakfast. But she is far away. Only the sky connects us. I hope hers is still blue.
Something happened today that I think is worth recording; but I’m not sure what it means yet. Each day’s rounds begin in the recovery ward. The room is full of hard eyed soldiers who sit waiting to heal only to be shipped back to the front. They seethe with helplessness, angry at their own ability to survive. I was on my way into the ward when suddenly – for a moment – I felt like I was walking through an invisible wave of some odd force. As I approached the recovery ward, dark thoughts welled up from an unseen place – images and feelings of hate and rage. I stopped for a moment and tried to calm down and take some deep breaths, but the feelings persisted. I turned away back towards the latrine and as I walked away from the rec ward, the feelings suddenly vanished. I stopped in my tracks, turned around, and went back. But as soon as I came close again, the same feelings. This time I shrugged them off and went inside.
It was worse.
Everyone was shouting at the same time - aggressive; angry thoughts bent on my destruction, rage coiled and ready to be sprung. I was about to tell them to stop, but when I looked around me, I realized that no one in the ward was talking. It was all in my head and no one else could hear it. I forced myself to complete my rounds. Several of the men jibed at me that I wasn’t my cheerful self. All I could do was smile painfully and keep moving. By the time I was finished, I ran to the latrine and vomited.
I took my lunch as far away from the rec-ward as possible but the cruel surprises did not stop there. The ICU unit was next, filled with soldiers in great mental anguish. Some are drugged into immobility, others suffer in spite of the high-tech pain blockers that have been administered. When I entered, the combined agony of twenty men enveloped me like an acid mist. It was worse than the rec ward in that I physically felt the torment – legs, arms, chest, shoulder, eyes, teeth. The pain was continuous and I was not able to finish my rounds, but ran outside where everything slowly faded.
It is getting worse. The few tentative questions put to the camp counselor were met with a dubious look and a quick tapping of keys. But now, when the wounded arrive, I can barely stand to my duties. The agony strikes like static electricity discharges – but constant and without dissipation. But also in every bunch there are those near death who have begun to accept it and have let go of their pain and themselves. They sit, bleeding themselves out, waiting for the end. To my new odd senses they are oases - a cool soothing balm out of the raging sandstorm of pain. Sometimes I just sit near them and hold their hands, resting in their shade of their peace, before wading back out into the howling madness.
I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.