Application of Impossible Things: A Near Death Experience in Iraq (13 page)

Tough luck.

Get on with it
, I told myself.

I opened my eyes.

I wasn’t able to see out of my right eye, the one my hand had been covering as I’d settled for a short nap. My left eye was fine. I let both hands rest on my thighs. Both were covered with blood.
Such a beautifully saturated, vivid color
, I thought,
that alizarin crimson
. I lifted my right hand back up to cover my eye.

The inside of the Land Cruiser was charred looking, smoked with powder burns or whatever it is in an IED
*
that causes that black toasted look. There was blood all over. I looked over at Ben [colleague] and said his name at the same time I noticed a hole in his thigh. The femoral artery should have been there, I was sure, but he wasn’t bleeding.
Perhaps the hole had missed the artery
, I thought, even knowing that was impossible.

Ben moaned loudly. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Oh shit.’ He rocked a little, bending forward and sitting back up. He didn’t respond to my voice. I touched his arm, but he didn’t look at me.

He can’t hear me
, I thought. He’s panicked.
Let it go for now
.

We all sat straight in our seats, then, the vehicle rolling straight down the road, and after Ben stopped moaning, it was dead silent.

The truck rolled for what felt like a couple hundred meters, then made a perfect and silent turn to the right, rolling off the road onto a clear area of sandy dirt. I didn’t see Ian [our driver] move, but it was such perfect control—he must have been conscious and steering.

The truck stopped.

I put my right hand back down on my leg and studied it again; the skin was completely shredded on the little finger and ring finger. The skin was all there, just pocked with holes like a parmesan cheese grater’s surface. The other fingers weren’t so bad, though the whole hand was bloody.

It felt as if that took a long time, and now when I relive the moment, it was slow and leisurely. It felt important to take in what things looked and sounded like, to assess the state of this new environment. In addition to the eye and hand, my trouser legs were soaked in blood, though I couldn’t see any holes in the fabric. My legs and feet felt fine, and they were still there. I optimistically made the assumption that the blood came from one of the others.

No one else was moving, so I thought I had better. I started to lever myself toward the center console. My right wrist wasn’t working properly. I quit using that arm, putting the hand back over my eye.

Moving in what felt like full consciousness but slow motion, using my left hand for leverage, I maneuvered myself onto the center console, twisting around from the waist to face the front of the truck.

I was looking for the transponder, but there wasn’t one. That probably didn’t matter; one of the other trucks had to have seen us get hit. If they hadn’t actually seen it, they would notice our radio silence; they would see the distinctive vertical black column of smoke rising straight up into the air. They would know. They were on their way and would have radioed base.

I tugged at the med kit
*
next to Mark’s feet, but his legs were jammed against it. I had no strength to pull and no leverage. I gave it up. I think I tried to pull Mark’s long gun
*
out from between the med kit and his legs, but that was jammed, too. Now I’m not so sure—did I try to pull his long gun out? Maybe. Maybe not. Why didn’t I take his handgun? I didn’t think of it. It was not a priority at this point—to be armed. I didn’t hear any small arms fire or additional explosions that might have indicated a coordinated attack. I was sure the rest of the team would come quickly to help us.

I looked at Mark and Ian in the front seats only long enough to determine that they, like Ben and I, weren’t bleeding out. Were they conscious? What were their injuries? I don’t know. I didn’t focus on that. Maybe I didn’t want to know, but I’m not sure it occurred to me.

I unclipped Ian’s seat belt, hoping that would help get him out more quickly when the team showed up to help us. I can’t remember unlatching Mark’s, but maybe it was the other way around.
Remember to unlatch Ben’s
, I told myself.

I pushed myself off the console, turned, and sat back into my seat. By that time, I had forgotten to unhook Ben’s seatbelt.

I leaned back and looked out the window.

The glass had a film on it. On top of the thick ballistic glass, the film made it difficult to see out, and without my glasses, I couldn’t see well out of my left eye anyway. This frustrated me. It had to be my right eye that got hit—that eye had good long distance vision. My left eye was nearsighted. I had to turn my body at an acute angle to gain a fuzzy view behind our vehicle. I couldn’t see the other trucks, only desert.

I looked back at Ben. He appeared to be unconscious and still wasn’t bleeding. An Iraqi face appeared at the gun port on Ben’s side, which had had its cover blown out. The man was in uniform: one of our Iraqi police escorts. His eyes were huge when they met mine.

‘Help!’ he shouted, turning his head toward the back of our vehicle as he did it.

So the team is pulling up behind us
, I thought. He looked at me again with those huge, frightened eyes, then disappeared.

I looked down at my legs again, BDU’s
* c
overed with blood. I lowered my right hand and looked at it, skin chopped up on my fingers.

I heard a shout and Ben’s door jerked open. Jack appeared, leaning in to look at us.

I leaned forward a little and toward him. ‘I’m ok,’ I said urgently. ‘Get Ben—his leg is bad.’

‘You’re O.K.?’ Jack asked.

‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Get the others first—I’m ok. Ben’s leg is bad.’

I think other men from the team came then, behind Jack. Someone cut Ben’s seat belt, reminding me that I’d forgotten to unhook it.
Shit
—I leaned over and tried to unsnap it, but by the time I found the release button, they’d cut through the belt and were pulling Ben out, laying him on the ground.

Ian was next. Men helped him out of the front driver seat. I couldn’t see where they took him. I tried to look out my window to see how the trucks were deployed and where we were, but all I saw was a patch of nearly bare ground, dirt, and a Land Cruiser with no movement. None of the men were visible.

My own door was pulled open. ‘You okay, Nat?’ Jack asked.

‘I’m ok,’ I told him.

‘Let’s see your eye,’ he said. ‘Move your hand.’

I lowered my right hand and watched his expression, which didn’t change. I thought that was probably not a good thing, but he didn’t toss cookies and he didn’t start yelling so maybe the eye itself was still there. Finding out wasn’t a priority, and I immediately moved on mentally. Jack reached out and plucked the remains of the rim of my sunglasses out of my brow—it felt as if it had been imprinted into my numb skin when he plucked it out. ‘Okay,’ he said, handing me a bandage. ‘Hold this over it.’

I held the bandage against my face, and he helped me out of the truck. When I put weight on my right foot, I stumbled, pain stabbing up through my heel.

‘Okay?’ he asked again.

‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘Just my right heel.’ I hopped, keeping weight only on the toe of the right boot. It didn’t hurt that way.

He helped me to the center of the ring of trucks and told me to lie down on the ground, take my helmet off. I lay down on the ground, took my helmet off.

I rested my head back against the dirt and relaxed, wondering where everyone else was. I was glad to be lying on dirt. I liked touching the ground, the warm desert sand and grit. I took a deep breath of the warm air and studied the blue sky. The hot sun felt good soaking through my clothes. I wondered why they pulled me out of the truck before they’d helped Mark because I could have waited until they helped him. I was conscious, not bleeding. I wondered if it was because I was a client, technically their first responsibility or something. I hoped not and was glad they’d helped Ian before me. The sky was a beautiful blue, and the dirt was warm, familiar, comfortable. It was so calm and quiet where I was.

A few minutes passed before someone came to get me, told me to come with him. I remember wondering where everyone else was—
a team of at least a dozen men, the IP
*
escort—where were all those men?
I wondered if they were deployed around our perimeter, working on Ben, Ian, working on Mark, manning the radios … at the time I thought
I should be seeing some of this activity
, and I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t, why it was so quiet and calm where I was.

The man helped me hop to a Land Cruiser, and he placed me in the back seat. I forgot my helmet, leaving it lying in the dirt.

I knew most of the men on the team by sight, yet for some reason I paid no attention to individuals as they helped me. I was only aware of good, competent men helping, taking care of business. For some reason Jack was the only man that I recognized during this whole event, the only team member I remember speaking to aloud after I’d spoken Ben’s name as we’d rolled silently down the road just after the blast.

I remember thinking,
These poor guys
, suspecting that the men on this team, the ones who walked away, might have a harder time dealing with this for awhile. They would have to go on in the same environment, doing the same things, taking the same risks but now with a physical memory of helping fucked up people after a hit. They would be in the same environment but with their minds and emotions changed. I would be occupied for awhile in healing. I would be busy with something new, in a new environment, captivated by the moment, however shitty that moment might be. If I could, I wanted to let them know that I was ok and that they did all the right things, all that was possible to do. I told myself that once things stabilized, once I arrived at Walter Reed or wherever I was going, I would find a way to tell them how grateful I was and how much I respected and loved working with them today and for the past fifteen months.

Ian was sitting beside me in the truck they’d moved me into. We looked at each other. He signaled something to me, but I didn’t understand. He did it again, something to do with my eye, or his eye, or the bandage I was holding to my eye, or one he needed for his eye. I shook my head, confused. He tried again. I didn’t understand. I turned away to look out the window, frustrated. I was embarrassed for some reason, for us, for my not understanding.

Now I can’t figure out why we didn’t just speak to each other; why I didn’t just speak to him. I suppose he started out not speaking, and since he was signing without speaking, I followed his lead. Now it seems absurd. Hey Ian, what were we doing? Now it amuses me, two people who could talk perfectly well signaling incomprehensible messages at each other … I can’t help laughing as I write this.
What were we doing?!

I stared out the window then, though, frustrated, embarrassed by my dense inability to understand, wondering what he wanted, trying to decipher it. And still wondering where everyone was. No one was visible outside the window, just a couple of static Land Cruisers. No men, no movement. Nothing was happening. Just dirt and stationary trucks. Desert. Sky.

It felt as if we sat there for a long time. Now I think it was five minutes, not much more and maybe less.

What has been accomplished by this?
I thought staring out at the desert.
What has changed now for anyone, having blown us up? What has been moved forward or resolved? Nothing. It's utterly empty. This is how violence is profoundly pointless.

The radio was on open mike … ‘We’ve got two superficial, two critical,’ someone said.

I remember thinking,
Mark is the other critical.

‘Correction … two superficial, one critical,’ the voice almost immediately stated.

And I knew Mark had died.

I don’t know why I knew it was Mark. It could have been Ben, couldn’t it? His femoral artery was gone. But I knew it was Mark.

I wondered if I’d be blind in my right eye. I wondered if there was some advantage to that, remembering a dream I’d had after my grandmother died. In it she was blind. She made beautiful pictures in my mind and told me in a very intense voice, ‘Natalie, you don’t need eyes to see.’

Maybe if one eye was physically blind, it would allow me to see other worlds more clearly
. I got a little thrill thinking that, but then thought that I could probably do both, as I often had—see other worlds and see the physical world out of that eye, and that’s what I wanted.

Jack opened the front door of the truck Ian and I sat in. He grabbed the radio handset. The helo
*
was on its way and couldn’t find us. Unable to get direct comms, the men were having to talk to base, base relaying to the helo. That’s how things get screwed up. If the helo couldn’t find us, we’d drive to base. I didn’t want to have to drive to base. I didn’t want fifteen minutes on the road to think about how bad my eye could be, to anticipate getting through the stupid gates. I wanted someone to take charge of my body and move move move. I wanted the medevac helo.

I told myself to quit whining. If we had to drive, that would be interesting in some way, too.

We heard the helo pass over us.

‘You just flew over!’ Jack shouted into the radio. ‘They just passed us!’

‘Don’t shout,’ a calm female voice replied. ‘Try to stay calm.’

‘I’m not shouting!’ Jack yelled.

I grinned—too classic!

‘Turn the helo around!’ He shouted more softly into the mic. ‘We’ll pop smoke! Tell him to follow the road back and watch for us—we’re deployed’ … something like that. He told them what side of the road, what color smoke—maybe. Something.