Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 82341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
A month later, I was surprised to get a response.
Dear Major,
You really came through for us! The package arrived today and I felt like a rock star with fans following me like the Pied Piper. When I got to my quonset, everyone gathered around for their share, and after they left, I ate the jelly beans so fast, I damned near ate the earplugs by mistake. Ha, ha. If you think a pair of earplugs will stop Sanchez from keeping me awake at night, you’ve obviously forgotten how he also likes to keep the damned light on until all hours so he can read those devotionals his mother sends him. I keep telling him Jesus would rather him get some good sleep, but he doesn’t listen.
Three days ago, I saved someone during a mission. I know what you’re thinking. “Doc, you’ve saved plenty of people during missions.” But this one was different. The PFC had been declared dead from his wounds in battle. He’d stepped on a booby trap and lost both legs, bleeding out before they could help him. We loaded his body along with a severely injured SVA soldier and a corporal who’d been hit with a bullet to the leg, similar to yours. For some reason while treating the SVA soldier, I kept looking back over at the dead PFC’s body thinking there was something not quite right about it. I finally reached over just to assure myself he was truly dead, and damned if I didn’t find a weak pulse!
I barked at the crew chief to keep tending to the SVA guy while I went to work on the PFC. I checked the tourniquets they’d applied when trying to save him, did CPR and pushed fluids, and kept him alive long enough to get him back to base. The surgeon took over from there. He’s in bad shape, sure enough, but they think he’s going to make it. They’ll know more once they get him off the vent. Before I left his bedside, one of the doctors came in and clapped me on the back. Told me PFC Glaston had me to thank for his life and asked me how in the world I didn’t think he was dead when he got loaded in. It had taken me a while to put my finger on what was off about the scenario, but I’d finally realized his stumps were still bleeding.
It had been one of those days in the Huey where the floor was wet and sticky with blood. You remember the kind of days I mean—the bird’s engine stayed hot for twelve hours straight and we were barely awake by the last run. I thought about how I was going to have to stay after and help the crew chief rinse her out. That’s when I noticed the blood dripping from the PFC’s stretcher.
Amazing the things that have become ingrained in my subconscious. I mentioned it to the doctor, and he said it’s similar for them in the hospital. When they hear our rotors getting louder, they know it’s time to go to work.
Weston, I think I want to become a doctor.
Am I crazy?
Doc
In the next care package, the jar of jelly beans had a sleep mask and earplugs in it for everyone in his quonset. It also had a stethoscope tucked deep inside a big jar of jelly beans. The back of the bell was engraved, “2nd Lt Wm Wilde, Medic.” And the note promised I’d buy him a new one when he graduated from medical school.
Chapter 11
Liam “Doc” Wilde
I was such a downer after Major left that the rest of the crew teased me mercilessly.
“Aw, don’t mind our medic, gents, he’s still upset about President Eisenhower passing away,” Dial said when we picked up a crew that had been stranded in the wrong place at the right time. Fortunately, their injuries were relatively minor, the kind I could treat in my sleep.
“That was last year,” one of the soldiers said in confusion. “Wasn’t it?”
“Never mind him,” I muttered, cleaning the man’s lacerated hand as Lynch nosed us up into the sky. “I’m fine.”
But I wasn’t fine. I felt like I’d gone to Nam and gotten a bullet to the gut. I’d never had a friend like Weston Marian, the kind of man you could talk about anything with and even cry in front of if you had to. He was my best friend, and now I felt like I’d never see him again.
That night I wrote him a letter like I was some kind of member of a teenage fan club. Told him how much I missed his ugly mug and bossy tendencies, how when our new flight commander had come on board, he’d insisted on a silent flight until after the rescue, but that Lynch had quickly jollied him out of it. I told him about the clusterfuck that resulted in two friendly Hueys almost crashing right over the base. And I described in great detail a prank on Staff Sergeant Timms on his birthday.