Beyond the Point(75)
The scene from beyond the wall unfolded before Hannah, shocking her with its beauty. The rising sun cast an eerie red light across the desert. Heat waves swirled through the air like the ones she used to stare at when her father grilled steaks on the back deck, only this was natural heat—terrifying, since it was still so early in the morning. She could hear the short, fast pop-pop-pop of magazine fire in the distance, and as they crested a small sand hill, the makeshift CHU she’d been told about came into view, next to an open-air wooden structure, built as a waiting room for patients. Under the structure, a crowd of families waited in utter silence as the medical team arrived.
Mothers wearing hijabs fanned their children, who’d been carried on quilts or doors. Red and burgundy burns slashed and splotched the children’s faces, arms, and legs. Some of the burns oozed, others bled. Dark skin flapped in charred masses and fresh white splotches of exposed epidermis screamed with pain, though the children refused to cry. Fathers stood, stoic and dark eyed, watching as Colonel Markham passed the patients, evaluating each case by sight. He didn’t waste any time choosing the most severe cases. It’s triage, Hannah realized. Worst cases first.
“One,” Markham said, and pointed to a child stretched out on a quilt. “Two.” He pointed to another child, on the opposite side of the shelter. “Three . . .”
Hannah, breathless and sick to her stomach, waited for him to finish creating an impromptu appointment list.
“Just like every other day, don’t go crowding the gate,” he said. “We will get to everyone eventually.”
Once they were inside the CHU, Markham closed the door behind them. The structure was long and thin, with three stretchers for patients lined up diagonally down the middle of the trailer. Shelves on every wall held equipment: thermometers, Medihoney, steroids, bandages. Two rotary fans and a small AC unit churned stale air. A radio filled the room with the sounds of old Beatles songs. As Hannah moved about the room, trying to find the right place to stand, Private Murphy and the rest of the soldiers took off their uniform overcoats.
“Lieutenant Nesmith,” Murphy said, “time to scrub in.”
Hannah mimicked Murphy’s every move: she secured her M16 in a locker, removed her helmet and Kevlar, hung up her jacket, rolled up the sleeves of her tan T-shirt. Standing next to Murphy at the center of the CHU, they both snapped a pair of purple rubber gloves over their hands.
“This is the real fight. A chance to show mercy,” Markham said as he propped the door open with a rock. “Number one!”
Two soldiers at the entrance waved metal detector wands over the patient, who was covered by a white blanket, then checked the patient’s parents as well. And before Hannah could prepare, Markham had directed the patient’s parents to stand in the back corner and began to slowly lift the quilt off the small body underneath.
A young girl lay naked, shaking, watching as her skin peeled back off her arms, stomach, legs, and feet, still attached to the blanket. Without thinking, Hannah squatted down beside the patient, stroking her dark black hair. The child opened and closed her eyes with pain, the sounds of her small cries drowned out by the music coming from the radio.
“Shh . . . shh . . . ,” Hannah said, holding all of her emotion in her belly. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
The girls’ father looked on, blank and expressionless, as his daughter’s skin peeled off like brown paper, attached to the fibers of the blanket. Hannah found herself praying. Please, God, save this child.
Private Murphy started in, cutting dead skin away from the girl’s body with a pair of sterilized scissors.
“If you leave it, infections will set in,” he said. “She needs an IV. Morphine. Nesmith. Can you do it?”
Hannah suddenly remembered the training she’d done at Buckner, when she’d shoved a needle into Avery’s arm.
“It’s been a long time,” she answered.
“It’s okay. Just do what I say.”
Following his instructions, Hannah placed a long needle through a vein in the young girl’s forearm, trying carefully not to cause more pain. And as she did, Hannah did everything she could to keep herself from crying.
LATER THAT EVENING, as the sun was setting, Hannah sat in her room stewing. She had propped her bed on stilts in order to fit a trunk underneath, and had built a set of bookshelves so she could have a place for books—most of which had been chosen by Tim. As little as he’d liked to complete assigned reading in college, he was a voracious reader now. He said books tasted better when you were hungry for them. At the moment, she was one hundred pages into East of Eden. And he was right. She couldn’t get enough of Steinbeck’s words. The more she consumed, the more she desired.
On her desk, a stack of supply requisition forms waited for her signature, necessary for the upcoming site build her platoon was scheduled to complete. But she didn’t feel like reading or doing paperwork. She didn’t feel like doing anything.
She was still trying to understand what she’d witnessed that morning at the burn unit. It seemed utterly evil, what those parents had done to their children, but culturally speaking, it was completely acceptable—around here, it was discipline. Sitting in her CHU, Hannah remembered Colonel Bennett’s philosophy class her plebe year, and the conversation he’d led about justice. Was it injustice, what these people were doing? Or was it cultural difference? Was it up for debate, or was there truth, with a capital T? Did God care about those children? Did he see?