September, 2019, Afghanistan
Jessica Courtland swallowed hard. She couldn’t cry. She didn’t dare. Sitting in the empty surgery lounge at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany was the last place she thought she’d ever be. Jess slowly rubbed her dirty face with hands that, until a few hours ago, had been covered with blood. The blood of Navy Chief Dan Callahan, her boss. She wanted to forget what had happened, but the firefight between the Taliban and the Seabee crew along with the A-Team of Special Forces, raged behind her tightly shut green eyes. Tears leaked out from beneath them, anyway.
She felt the grit of the fine sand of Afghanistan still on her face, clinging there because of the sweat, the terror and adrenaline as she’d tightened a tourniquet on Dan’s left thigh. A Taliban bullet had found him, cracking his femur, cutting the main artery, blood spurting out in almost hypnotic rhythm from the open fracture. Jess had been closest, firing her M4 rifle at the horsemen charging like wild men toward their position near the village that sat on the slopes of the Hindu Kush Mountains. They’d been there two days, bringing in a well drilling truck and other necessary equipment via crane helicopters in order to sink a well so the pro-Taliban village could have fresh water. Their only source of water was dirty, full of parasites and worms. It killed babies, young children and the elderly.
She was sitting on a green plastic couch in the small surgery lobby area. Outside, she could hear nurses talking in low voices at their desk. Was Dan going to make it? She’d sat, numb and in a daze on that C-17 medical jet that took off from Bagram Air Base and flew to Landstuhl. It was the place where those who were badly wounded or dying, were taken for the most advance medical treatment. Grateful to have been able to accompany Dan, who was unconscious all the way in, Jess felt fiercely that he shouldn’t be alone. Not right now.
Her hands draped tiredly across her thighs. Three hours. For three hours they’d been in surgery with Dan. On board the specially modified C-17, Dan was one of eight wounded men and women who were on their way to Germany. The physician on board, a woman doctor, had sat with her at one time, giving her an update on Dan’s status. She said it didn’t look good. Jess felt her eyes burn with tears, but gulped them back down. She hoarsely thanked the doctor, leaning back against the bulkhead while she sat in a nylon seat, uncomfortable and hurting emotionally.
Jess sat up, realizing she had to get cleaned up. There was blood on her blouse and desert-colored cammie trousers. The coppery smell made her nauseous. It was Dan’s blood. His life was spilling out onto the sands of Afghanistan. Her black hair had come undone from the ponytail she wore, and it was dirty and dusty, laying around her shoulders. Torn, Jess didn’t want to leave the lounge. It was as close as she could get to the operating theater where Dan had been taken. It was crazy, but she felt if she left, he’d die. She prayed Dan would live. He had a wife and three beautiful children. Dan was attached to the Port Hueneme Naval Mobile Construction with her for five years. They’d dug wells in Iraq and now, Afghanistan, helping people. This hurt so much. She worried about Dan’s wife, Sophie. They had been married when they were eighteen and he was now thirty-five. Oh, God…. Jess knew Sophie had been told that Dan had been wounded. She was waiting at home, not knowing, either…
Jess was so internalized over Dan and Sophie, that she almost failed to realize someone had silently entered the surgery lounge. It wasn’t a noise that had alerted her. She’d been in the Navy Seabees since she was eighteen and at twenty-eight years old, she had developed a strong survival intuition. And it red flagged her even though she had tipped her head back against the bulkhead eyes closed. Sitting up, she opened them and saw a tall, lean Navy SEAL walk past her. She saw the hard look on his square face with a three-day growth of beard on it. His hair was dark brown, longish, his cammies bloodstained, dirty, and his boots, the same. He wore a drop holster with what Jess was sure was the signature SEAL Sig Sauer P226 pistol riding low on his right thigh. There was nothing weak about this man, his hands are covered with dried blood and mud, like hers. He sat down opposite of her, never meeting her eyes.
Her heart tugged when she looked at him as he wearily slumped into the seat, his long-fingered hands slowly rubbing his dirty face. He’d just come out of combat, no question. They shared blood on their uniforms. Jess didn’t have the emotional resilience to say anything to him, much less start up a conversation. The SEAL looked as internalized as she felt. Neither of them had any strength left within them to push into the outside world now and be social. Grief made everyone withdraw deeply into themselves. Shock was funny, Jess thought sluggishly, going now forty-eight hours without sleep. It numbed her out emotionally, made her feel like a robot without feelings. But she knew there was a deep well of emotions writhing like a tempest within her. She could feel it in her knotted stomach that ached with a phantom pain all of its own. Her eyes would burn from time to time and she’d force the tears back that wanted to fall. Even though she didn’t know this SEAL, it still gave her a sense of camaraderie, if nothing else.