Briggs released me, and I sprinted for Rodriguez, staying in the relative safety of the tire tracks for as long as I could. Dropping to my knees as I reached him, I checked his pulse as I called out his name. He was unresponsive, but his pulse was strong. His left arm—from bicep to wrist—was shredded, so I slapped a tourniquet just below his shoulder to stop the bleeding and checked the rest of him over. None of his other wounds required my immediate attention, and Jones was sprinting toward me to help. I signaled for her to grab Rodriguez and get him to a truck, then I headed for the command vehicle.
The fires were mostly out by the time I reached it. Edburg called my attention to a body lying at his feet. Judging by the missing chunk of his skull, Marx, the vehicle’s gunner, had died on impact. Giving Edburg the task of taking the body to a vehicle, I continued searching through the wreckage.
“Doc, over here,” Jenkins said.
She was standing beside Malone who looked like he’d been beat up pretty good, but was conscious and responsive. I hurried over to check him out. His left pant leg was torn and bloody just below the knee. Using my trauma sheers, I cut up the pant leg to expose the wound. It was bleeding heavily, so I applied a tourniquet and checked the rest of him over.
“I think his right arm’s broken,” I said to Jenkins. “Get him on a vehicle.”
Turning to scan the area, I asked. “Anyone got eyes on the fourth?”
“Here,” O’Donnel called out.
I followed his voice to find Smiley. O’Donnel had cleared away enough debris for me to get to the wounded driver. Smiley was conscious, his chest rising and falling with labored breaths, but lying still. His gaze didn’t follow me as I approached.
This squadron was like my family, and like a family, I was closer to some than others. Jeffries was my buddy. I’d nicknamed him Smiley shortly after he’d joined us two years ago, because he was the happiest son-of-a-bitch I’d ever met. Born into a big family from some podunk town in Alabama, he was so damn grateful to be serving his country that no amount of bullshit seemed to wipe the smile from his face. Didn’t matter how far we were marching, how hot the sun was, what kind of shit poker hand he had, or how many times Staff Sergeant Kline yelled at him, the corners of Smiley’s lips were always upturned in a lopsided shit-eating grin.
Sometimes he drove me crazy with that goddamn smile.
But I would have given anything to see it as I crouched down beside him. He was gasping for air, so I cut away his shirts to see what kind of damage he’d taken to the chest. A large purple bruise was already forming from his belly button to his nipples, most likely due to impact from the steering wheel. I checked his pulse, feeling it increase while growing steadily weaker. His jugular veins were popping out of his neck.
Despite the difficulty he was having breathing, there were no holes in his chest. I suspected he had collapsed lungs, crushed ribs, and likely a pericardial tamponade. Judging by the location of the bruise, his heart was probably injured and bleeding into the surrounding membranous sac. If that was the case, the sac would fill with blood and strangle the heart, preventing it from fully expanding and contracting. The condition would be fatal without surgery.
I inserted bilateral 14-gauge needles into his chest, hoping his jugular vein distention and difficulty breathing could be alleviated by decompressing his chest and allowing his lungs to expand.
“Second intercostal space, mid clavicular line,” I whispered to myself. The medical term for below the collar bone and in line with the nipples was like a mantra, having been drilled into us and repeated like a goddamn nursery rhyme.
He was still struggling to breathe around crushed ribs, and I couldn’t tell if any air was expressed via my needles. As I put my head to his chest, I could hear the muffled beat of his heart.
“Am I gonna make it, Doc?” Smiley half-whispered, half-wheezed.
The question took me back in time to my training days.
Staff Sergeant Bates was pacing the front of the classroom, lecturing us about procedures and taking questions when one of my fellow students asked, “What’s the most difficult part of being a combat medic? Is it the long hours? Or dragging men off the battlefield?”
Staff Sergeant Bates stopped suddenly, his hand scratching at the whiskers on his chin while he considered the question. “While those both take their toll, they’re not what’ll drain you. No, what’ll really take it out of you is having to make the call… having to look at a fellow soldier and know they’re too far gone to save. That it’s not even worth your time to try. Worse yet, every once in a while one of these soldiers will ask you if they’re gonna die, and lying to them… it’s rough but necessary.”
Confused, I raised my hand.
“Welch,” he asked, nodding my direction.
“Lying to them?” I asked. I joined the Army because I was hellbent on doing the right thing. Lying seemed like the easy way out and I wasn’t looking for any free passes. “Why would you lie? If you know you can’t save a person, shouldn’t you be honest, Staff Sergeant? A soldier deserves the truth. They need to know, so they can prepare for death.”
He chuckled, but the sound was self-deprecating, bearing not even the slightest hint of humor. “Prepare for death. You make it sound pert near magical, Welch. Let me ask you somethin’, soldier. You ever look a dying man in the face?”
Yes, I had, but I had no desire to divulge that information. “No, Staff Sergeant,” I lied.
“Well, I have. More than I can count. The first one was Private Nelson and I’d known him since boot camp. He took a bullet to the gut and it went septic. He smelled like shit, looked worse, and there wasn’t a damn thing magical about it. There is no preparing for death. Private Nelson didn’t call out to his priest, or God, or even his momma to save him. No, he called out to me like I was the second coming of Christ because he believed I could hold back death. He wasn’t looking for honesty. He was looking for hope. You’re a stronger man than me if you can feed a dying man honesty instead. Trust me, Welch, when the time comes, you’ll lie. Then you’ll carry the guilt of that lie around with you forever, wondering if you did the right thing. But the next time you find yourself in that situation, you’ll make the same fuckin’ call.”
Smiley was a good man who’d served his country well and without complaint. He’d once told me he never wanted to be anything other than a soldier. Now, he’d die for following that dream. I wished like hell I could take his place, but death didn’t barter for souls.
Trust me, I’d tried.
I patted his hand and lied my ass off. “Yes. It’s gonna hurt like hell, but you’ll live. I got you, Smiley.”
“We have hostiles incoming,” Briggs said in my ear. “Time to go.”
The sound of machine guns firing meant that the squadron was giving me cover fire. Smiley groaned as I threw him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry and hauled ass back to the Buffalo.
