Blame It On Bad Luck

 “How long are you back for?” It was a question I would be asked a million and one times. “Are you home for good?” was only asked about half a million. “No,” I would tell them. “I’m only home for about two weeks. I go back at the end of the month.” Their faces would sink, a look of pity mixed with disbelief. “You mean you actually have to back there?” I would smile and reassure them, “I do. I don’t want to think about it, I’m home now.”

Two weeks out of the entire year I was a free man. I could do just about anything I wanted within that time. I drank, I smoked, and I thought. I thought a lot. Those nights, if I didn’t pass out first, I would be up going over every detail of where I was, where I wasn’t, and where I just came from. Afghanistan, a country whose name had become a taboo in my small social circle back home in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Often replaced by the term, “over there” or simply, “there.” The thought that I didn’t have the right to be having the time of my life hung heavy on my mind. I knew my brothers and sisters were still over “there” and things wouldn’t be easier on them just because I wasn’t “there.”

“How many people do you think you’ve killed?” Ryan, my friend of almost ten years, asked one night at the dingy bar we chose at random. By that point, I was only two drinks in, more than I had all year, and I felt it. “There’s really no way to tell,” I would say to him every night we went out (which was every night). “The way battles are fought nowadays, you hardly ever see the guys shooting at you. Besides, I’m just Doc, the medic.“ I would come to discover the idea that war isn’t like what you see in video games and movies is surprisingly new to most people. “Well,” he said before taking a swig of his stout. He leaned in a closer, and put his arm around my neck, an attempt to lessen the seriousness of the next question. “How many people have you treated?” “Too many, but it’s what I wanted to do over there.” I felt the flush of annoyance creeping up my neck slowly, and changed the focus to the Celtics losing on TV. I knew people had questions, it’s only natural to wonder about something you’ve never experienced, but I was home. For two weeks, I wasn’t in Afghanistan, I wasn’t a soldier, and I wasn’t over “there” anymore.

There were a few days left of leave, and I meant to make the most of them. I tried to think of things to do that would remind me of the pre-army days. “Let’s go to the movies, I haven’t seen anything new in too long.” As my friends and I waited in line for whichever movie we had chosen, I couldn’t help but take everything in as if going to the movies was something I had never done before. I glanced at a poster for the movie The Expendables. I watched little kids running in and out of the arcade, screaming and laughing, having the time of their lives just being kids. I heard a few of the college kids talking. “This has been the worst week of my life.” A small, blonde girl said to her friend. They both donned crimson hoodies with the logo “UMass” proudly spelled out across the chest. “Tell me about it, I’ve had like three exams in the past four days and still owe an essay.”

The airport was almost entirely empty when we arrived early that morning. I was relieved; I hated walking around in my uniform when there were crowds. My mother and stepfather sat on the opposite side of me at the terminal. Mom was doing her best to keep it together, but her puffy, red stained eyes gave away what she was feeling. “It’s okay, I made it half way. There’s no way I won’t make it through the other half.” I hoped that my upbeat outlook on it would cheer her up, but from the look of it, the only thing she had heard was, “I won’t make it.” As much as I wanted to hug my mom, and make her feel better, I just wanted to get on that plane and get back even more. I love my mom, but I love my platoon just as much. At that moment, I felt they needed me the most. Two weeks was enough, maybe even more than enough. It was enough time for me to see that home wasn’t where I was supposed to be right now. There would come a time, very soon in fact, that I wouldn’t mind being a civilian again. To not have to wear a uniform and stand in formation. Until then, I wanted to be with everyone else, going through the hell of deployment with everyone else. When all the goodbyes were said and I had let my mom hug and kiss her youngest child, her only son, before watching him go off to war for the second time, the plane finally on it’s way, I closed my eyes and slept. For the first time in two weeks, I slept like a baby.
****
Chow time was nearly over, and Garnica was nowhere to be found on the base. He was three years younger than me, and as naïve as they come, but he and I had become the closest of friends, thrown together for being the lowest ranked guys in the platoon, “the fuckin’ new guys.” I searched his bed and the latrine, his two favorite spots. I had been kept later than normal at the aid station, to help stock and clean it, and figured he must have already made off to his third favorite spot, the chow hall.

Tonight was the over-hyped, and long awaited steak and lobster night. Neither were really steak nor lobster, but I didn’t care. Nothing was more important to me that night than stuffing my face with as much fake lobster as humanly possible. When I rounded the corner to the chow hall, I was met with the longest line I had ever seen. I scanned the winding snake up and down until I noticed the short and stocky Garnica, who had saved us a spot in line. There was no mistaking him and his laugh. “About time you showed up,” Garnica said, as he went for his go to greeting, the classic “ball tap.” “Three days away from going home on leave and you think you can just slack off and disappear all day,” he said with a smile.

The fake meat was glorious. The steak looked brown and burnt, the lobster just the right amount of red to make it believable. Slathered in butter, you couldn’t tell the difference.

Time ran on, and the Afghan sun began to sink below the sandy mountain surrounding the base, its orange hue crept through the tiny cracks of the chow tent windows. It blew my mind how beautiful that hellhole of a country could be at times. “What are you going to do on leave? Get a girl pregnant?” Garnica asked, as he undid his belt, to let his gut breathe a sigh of relief. I laughed, “No, bro. I’m not like you.” Garnica shrugged and finished off his plate. “Honestly, I have no idea. It might sound weird… but at this point, I’d rather just stay and get this over with. I wish I had gotten leave earlier. I’m too set on being here now to think about going home for two weeks.” Garnica shook his head and waved his hand until he could muster to swallow his food. “No, man. No, It’s not weird at all. I totally get where you’re coming from. I felt the same way when I went on leave.”

A random BOOOOoooooom rang out and echoed across the base. I say random, but they’re about as normal as it gets in our area of operations. This one was different though. It was close, too close. We sat for a moment to listen more closely, but couldn’t pinpoint where it came from.

“Were those our mortars?” Garnica asked me, with a seriousness you rarely ever see from him. Another rang out, closer than the last. BOOOOoooooom!

“I don’t think so, you can usually tell the difference between outgoing and incoming.” I said, as I scanned the chow hall.

By now, it was mostly cleared out, except the cooks cleaning the mess of plates left behind. “Nobody else seems that concerned about it.” I reassured him, along with myself.

“We should head out to the aid station anyway, I left some of my things there,” he told me, as he got up to leave.

A stray cat that we see around the base had wandered into the chow hall as we began to make our way outside. It was a mangy old thing, tan with patches of fur missing all along it’s torso. As dirty as it was, I couldn’t help but think of my cat back home. I picked some leftover “steak” off my plate and gave it to the eager feline at my feet. “You and cats, man. I don’t get it.” Garnica said, as he gave it a pat on the head. “I’ll be outside smoking, don’t take too long.” That cat was in heaven, purring up a storm and rubbing up against my leg, as if its life depended on it.

BOOOOooooooom. The sound was louder, and closer than ever. The next ten to fifteen minutes are still a blur in my memory. Garnica and I would come to find out much later that upon walking back from the chow hall to the aid station, we had passed right by where the Rocket-Propelled Grenades had been landing without ever realizing it. How could we have missed it? A normal RPG doesn’t leave much carnage behind where it lands, but how could we have not seen the wounded if we had walked by the impact zone? If I hadn’t held us up with feeding the cat, would we have been hit too?

The aid station was empty when we arrived. An eerie sign for sure, but with no clue as to what was actually happening around the base, we carried on as normal and grabbed our things to head back to our tent. “Where the fuck is everyone?” I asked an equally confused Garnica. When we made our exit, I got my answer. The injured and the medics working on them lined the road that, only a few moments ago, when we walked down it, had been completely deserted. Another explosion went off in front of the aid station on the other side of the barrier, which separated the inside of the base from the hostile outside world. I remember hearing the rocks clank and ping off the side of the concrete building and metal doors. The light, ankle-deep dirt, which we referred to as “moon dust,” kicked up into the air and stung my eyes. I didn’t realize it at the time, and wouldn’t until now when I really think back on it, but I was afraid. Not so much for my own well-being, but for everyone else’s out in the road working. I somehow found my bulletproof vest and helmet in all of the chaos before grabbing an aid bag and rushing out to help.

I came upon Sargent Smith hard at work on a casualty. For the few years I had known Smith, I never really liked him all that much. He was lazy and dopey. It drove me crazy how someone like him could get the respected rank of sergeant in todays U. S. Army. After that day though, seeing him so composed, in control, and doing the best he could to save a mans life, I’d argue that you probably couldn’t find a better medic than Smith.

“I need an IV in his arm!” He yelled to me as I came running up. Smith had already been hard at work, putting a tube through the man’s throat in an effort to assist him in breathing. It was a bad scene; the burns and shrapnel wounds covered his face, making him totally unrecognizable. His nametag was the only evidence of who he actually was. It read DynCorp, a company of contractors from the states, sent to help us with equipment upkeep. He wasn’t military, but an ordinary American here to make sure our computers and generators worked properly. The thought wouldn’t bug me until much later when all was said and done.

The sweat running down from my helmet was too much to bear as I attempted to find a vein in the guy’s arm. I didn’t care anymore; a helmet wasn’t going to stop an RPG round anyway. I tore my cumbersome gear off as fast as I could and threw it to the side. If I were going to die, I would die comfortable at least. “I can’t find a vein, he’s lost too much blood and I don’t feel a pulse.” I told Smith as he was beginning to help the man breath with a bag through the tube. I would have to go in through the sternum. I desperately searched for the FAST 1 in the aid bag, a device that has what looks like a million tiny needles. It’s designed to act like an IV, but instead of fluid going into the veins, it goes through the bones of the sternum. I took a deep breath with the FAST 1 in hand. I had practiced this same medical skill thousands of times on dummies, so that I could do it right at this very moment. I didn’t hesitate, bringing it down with two hands, square on the chest. It made a sickening thump, but it worked. Fluid was moving, and after a few moments the pulse returned.

It was and still is one of the greatest feelings in my entire life followed by the second greatest, quickly after, when he stopped breathing. I bagged him as fast as I could, hyperventilating him to make up for the loss of air until he began to breathe on his own again. We had just saved this mans life, twice. Smith gave me a pat on the back and smiled before turning back to the casualty. “Hang in there, buddy. We’re here for you. Keep fighting,” Smith reassured him, as I continued to bag. I doubted he could hear Smith’s words until I felt his vitals start to get stronger; I leaned in closer and told him, “Stay with us.”

It wasn’t until the worst had passed that I heard the conversation behind us. “He’s gone, there’s nothing we can do anymore.” It was Sergeant Roberson. One of the smallest females you’ll ever see, and there she was, reassuring a man in tears, ten times her size. The other contractor they had been working on didn’t make it. “There has to be something you can do!” The man yelled at her, as she shook her head and began covering the body with a blanket. Garnica was across the road from me, covering up the body of the contractor he had been working on. I had never seen him so expressionless, and I couldn’t bring myself to feel as happy as I was ten seconds ago.

The hours that followed were some of the toughest of my entire deployment. This would be the first time we lost any American casualties in our aid station. We were still kicking ourselves for having two local Afghan nationals die on our table a few weeks before, and now this. We had saved six out of the nine critically wounded, but we weren’t ready to call that a victory by any means. “You medics are the finest in the entire unit, I want you to know that.” The Commander would tell us and we would smile and shake his hand. Nobody truly felt like it. Garnica and I hung around the back of the aid station after most of the medics had left to go to bed. We both had our headphones on, listening to anything that would help take our minds off the day. Blame It On Bad Luck began to play in my ear. “I don’t want to go on leave.” I told him. “Really? Even after all of this shit?” he said somberly. “Because of that shit,” I replied. He sat down next to me in silence and we both just smoked in the dark for the next hour or so. He finally spoke up as we began to make our way to bed, shattering the quiet that finally fell upon the day. “Don’t worry, bro. I’ll hold down the fort until you get back.”