Battle Ready: Memoir of a SEAL Warrior Medic (15 page)

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Kevin had taken an instructor billet at the army’s famed Special Forces Medical Sergeants Course I had just left a couple of years before. The job of an 18 Delta is like that of no other enlisted provider in the military. A Special Forces medic must stay razor sharp on his trauma skills, be constantly ready for action when the bullets start to fly, and be capable of establishing trust with the local populace through medicine. This means addressing a village’s health and veterinary issues, just as I experienced working in the jungles of Central and South America. When I attended the sixty-two-week medical training pipeline, it gave me a glimpse of the grueling nature of the job. These men were truly the experts at unconventional medicine, and Kevin was stationed there training future medics as part of an integration program special operations began when SEAL corpsmen started to attend the course.

That evening I dialed Kevin’s number at the schoolhouse, and he picked up after two rings. We caught up on small talk and then cut right to the chase.

“Kevin, rumor has it that you’re thinking about becoming a physician assistant,” I said, the application to PA school spread out in front of me on the kitchen table.

“Yeah, I just got word I was picked up by the program.”

“Congratulations. Do you think you made the right choice?” Kevin was another one of those SEAL corpsmen that went out of his way to get a corpsman rating.

“Well, after being here a while and getting back into medicine, I just thought it was about time to move on. Why? You getting the itch, too?” he asked.

“Giving it some serious thought, but just looking at the application process is killing me.”

“Don’t spend too much time on that. I’ll send you a copy of mine to use as a ‘go by.’ I got it off Jessie, who did the same from Conrad Kress.”

“Kress—that guy was evil as a BUD/S instructor,” I said, remembering his torturous runs and stone stare that made everyone wonder what was coming next.

“Yeah, he was, but he was just doing his job. Once you get to know him as a team guy you’ll probably end up being tight.”

Kevin listened as I unpacked my degree track, and he told me which credits I still needed, and I realized I was still a couple of years away. After discussing it with my wife and watching her give birth to our daughter, Tabetha, it was easy to decide what had to happen next. I’d move into the position of leading petty officer for a SEAL platoon before returning for a tour in the medical department. It would be a long, painful road blending academics with operating, but I’d have to make it work.

While the teams never like to lose a frog, whether to battle, separation, retirement, or career change, the skipper did everything he could when I returned home from Panama to ensure I was able to take the remaining college courses and submit an extremely strong package. After thirteen years in special operations, I received orders to the Interservice Physician Assistant Program and returned to Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

PA SCHOOL

San Antonio seemed to be the perfect place to start a new life with my wife and daughter, what with its rich Hispanic culture and heritage. Tamara and I had been here before when we were dating and I was attending the first portion of 18 Delta, but now we would be returning as husband and wife. However, just like 18 Delta, the physician assistant program hits hard and fast. It’s akin to academically drinking water out of a fire hose. It took sixty semester hours of specified college credits to even apply for a selection process that would rival most Ivy League entrance requirements. Hundreds of candidates apply each year from all the military services, including Public Health. All try to become one of the few students who’ll spend nearly every waking moment working on converting their credits into a master’s degree in only two years’ time. The military takes the program very seriously. These men and women will act as the primary medical providers for our service members and their families at every location imaginable. You’ll find PAs everywhere, from base health clinics to forward operating bases to combat surgical hospitals. A very small number of PAs serve with special operations.

The navy takes particular pride in the profession since the founder of the physician assistant career field, Dr. Eugene Stead, assembled the very first PA graduating class from a group of former navy corpsmen. Against the odds, Dr. Stead convinced his colleagues that corpsmen who’d received considerable medical training over their career, including the Vietnam War, could help meet manning requirements of primary care physicians by extending each doctor’s reach through the use of competent assistants. Duke University agreed and allowed him to develop a curriculum based on the fast-track physician training programs used during the Second World War. In 1965 they graduated that first class, and ever since PAs have been practicing in nearly every facet of medicine.

I quickly adapted to the pace of PA school. The only trouble was holding my marriage together while getting through eighteen hundred hours of classroom and laboratory time within the first sixteen months of school. In the beginning Tamara and I both agreed that completing the program would afford us the best opportunity for our family to succeed, but really the classroom replaced the “team room” so little changed regarding the amount of time I had to spend with my family. After waking each day at the crack of dawn, I had to either work out or find some last-minute study time before a make-or-break test. Then I would go to class for the day, come home for dinner, and then head out to the library or study group. It wasn’t at all what Tamara had expected. Needless to say things continued to sour so she packed up Tabetha and visited New Mexico trying to sort everything out while I finished the program. They came back for my graduation, and I thought we could rebuild the marriage now that the didactic portion of the program was over. Sadly, the emotional distance between us was too great for anything more than friendship.

12

TEAMMATE, MENTOR, FRIEND

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

—N
ELSON
M
ANDELA

Once I finished up the classroom requirements at Fort Sam Houston, we packed up our belongings and headed for my next stop, Naval Medical Center San Diego. Surprisingly, I found myself checking in at the exact building where I’d reported as an undesignated sailor for Hospital Corpsman School. Only this time no one was questioning my warfare qualifications. For the next year I would undergo all the same clinical rotations a general practitioner serving the fleet would require, not to mention monthly exams and presentations to my colleagues and journal club. I was becoming a regular academic and hoped I would feel equally as comfortable as a midlevel medical provider. In fact, that was the easy part.

No matter how successful I was in medicine, I had already failed in my mission to salvage my marriage. Soon after arriving in San Diego, we filed for divorce. It didn’t matter that I knew it was coming or that it was something we both agreed upon. It didn’t matter that we still cared for one another as individuals and tried to be understanding of each other’s circumstances. It’s still extremely painful when two people realize the dreams they once shared will never materialize.

All that would pale in comparison to being separated from my daughter. Going from holding my flesh and blood each day to not having her anywhere near me was the most painful experience in my life. I might have only had a few moments with her each day, but they were the most valuable moments in my life. Often when I would come in late from the library, study group, or hospital wards, I would go to her room just to sit and watch her sleep. Now I would have to make a twenty-six-hour round-trip to a small town outside of Albuquerque to see my little girl. I would have much rather flown than make that drive, but every penny we had was spent on bills we accumulated by either trying to save our marriage, relocating Tamara back home, or paying lawyers’ fees—leaving both of us penniless. By the time it was all over, Tamara had to move in with her mother, and I barely had enough money for gas and food.

I lived close to work at Balboa in sunny San Diego and rode my bike in each day. The money saved paid the bills and covered the gas I would use traveling back and forth to New Mexico. The drives were brutal, after spending a forty-to-sixty-hour week on the hospital wards or clinics, depending on the rotation I was on. I would jump into my car and drive thirteen hours to Tamara’s mother’s home. Time was limited, so if traffic allowed me to get there earlier than expected, I would pull over and catch a thirty-minute catnap in the car before washing up at a local gas station. Then I would pick Tabetha up by 8:00
A.M.
From there it was a drive into the city to stay with Diana or Mom, depending on how Cassandra’s mental condition was at the time. It really didn’t matter where we stayed. All I knew was that for the next thirty-two hours, I was going to be with my little girl.

Returning to San Diego was always even harder due to the anxiety that generally accompanies morning traffic on the California freeways. Yet somehow I always seemed to make it back to the hospital with enough time to shave and throw on my lab coat before morning rounds. This chaotic routine took a lot out of me, and it was starting to show in my grades, but that didn’t matter as much to me as the idea of having my daughter grow up without knowing her father. Every time I’d hit that long stretch through the Arizona desert, I’d tell myself that any man can be a father, but you have to work hard to be a dad.

Still, all my time in the teams, from BUD/S to Central America, couldn’t change the fact that there were only so many hours in a day. Whether I liked it or not, I had to limit my trips to twice a month and every three-day holiday when I wasn’t on call. I’d like to say that it was solely my love and devotion for my daughter that enabled me to keep this tempo up for more than half a year while I recovered from financial ruin, but truth be told, there’s no way I could have accomplished any of this without some very close friends. Although our jobs never really allowed us to spend time together as a group, I would refer to them as my “fire team.”

Derrick Van Orden was a young tadpole when I first met him coming out of BUD/S; I had the honor of mentoring his work, and that of other young SEALs, which would eventually dwarf anything I ever accomplished. Out of all the things he and the others were able to achieve, there was only one thing that I envied—Derrick’s role as a husband and father. From the first day I met Derrick and Sara, I knew they had everything prioritized. After arriving in San Diego, I would escape to their home at every possible opportunity. Sara would feed me while Derrick and I caught up on everything going on in the teams. She’d then send me home with meals and groceries I couldn’t afford. What I enjoyed the most was spending time with their kids. That family taught me what I needed to do in order to be Dad, and it made me never want to leave. Eventually, though, I had to get back to the time-intensive world of medicine, and with Derrick’s operational tempo in the teams, and Sara managing four kids ranging from high school to elementary, anything more than a weekly visit was impractical. That’s where Jim, Jerry, and Pat took over.

Jim Elliott was a reserved, fit, and clean-cut doctor who was going through his intern year at Balboa. We first met during one of my first hospital rotations and immediately hit it off. Even though I tried to hide how precarious my situation was, he was able to figure it out by piecing together my activities.

“Hey, let’s go to lunch while we have the chance. You know things here can get crazy quick,” Jim said one afternoon, making a joke about our current rotation on the psychiatric ward.

“Go ahead, brother. I’m not hungry. Besides, I could use the time to study.”

“Nah, come on, it’ll be quick, and I’ll treat. I’m not going without you, and I’m starving,” he said in a friendly but persistent tone.

As we walked to the sandwich shop on the hospital grounds, we casually talked about his alma mater’s loss in the Sugar Bowl. We grabbed a couple of hoagies and went outside to eat under the California sun.

“Mark, we’ve talked about my divorce, so you know I have some understanding of what it’s like to be separated from your kids,” Jim said, alluding to being apart from his son and daughter. “But I also know you’re broke. I see how you make the drug rep’s coffee and bagels every morning, and how you try to attend each of the sponsored luncheons, too.”

I kept listening despite my throat going dry as he went through a litany of circumstantial evidence. “Look, you don’t have to go at this alone. No matter what you say, you’re taking this,” he said as he inconspicuously slid a folded stack of bills under my hand.

I wasn’t sure how to respond until I remembered what my mom told me years earlier.
People want to help, mijo. You just have to let them know how.
Suddenly my eyes were tearing up as I stared off into the distance. “OK, but what I really need is help getting my mind off all of this. I can’t seem to concentrate right now, and if I fall too far behind I’ll never catch up.”

“Keep it, we’ll do both.”

The rest of the year, Jim never left my side, and a couple of rotations later we picked up an ENT (ear, nose, and throat) resident named Jerry Castro and a classmate of mine named Pat Hare. Between all of them, I always had a place to stay, food in my belly, and my mind focused on school and my baby girl. None of them ever asked for anything or gave anyone even a hint about what was going on. I might have been away from Special Warfare, but with my family and friends, I was never without a team.

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Following graduation from PA school, my classmates and I shipped to Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, the final step to becoming commissioned medical officers. After twelve weeks of instruction, we were commissioned as ensigns in the United States Navy. Prior to that, we were merely officer candidates, which meant we wore the uniform but had no authority whatsoever. I always marveled at the strange looks I would receive when seasoned sailors stared at the rank on our collars, trying to figure out whether they needed to salute or not. Those days were over. As newly minted ensigns in the Medical Service Corps, we were excited to report to our very first medical clinic for duty.