beyond the whomp, whomp, whomp of the medevac’s swirling blades rising above or falling below my soul, I never heard God’s voice summoning me back to life.
When my soul returned to the medevac, the only words I heard, came neither from a god nor an angel, but a man--green, insectlike in his helmet—his voice muted by whirling blades chopping through the heavy air, yelling—
“Wake up! Wake up, soldier! What’s your name!? What’s your name!? What’s your name!?”
Somewhere between Chu Chi and Bien Hoa I surrendered.
I no longer fought my wounds, nor battled the medic’s interrogations to keep me awake.
I surrendered to the short, even breaths in syncopation with the steady beat of my heart, to the rock and roll movement of the med-evac as it rode the currents through the early morning twilight; to the jerk and tug and pull of more hands grabbing my stretcher and lifting me onto a gurney, and to the lights shooting by above me as I was rushed through the hallways and into another emergency room.
New doctors and nurses checked my wounds and reset the tubes and wires that hooked me up to machines, fluids, blood.
The bandages on my left arm were cut off and the wound re-examined. The butterfly sutures holding my neck wound closed were replaced by wire sutures. A fresh bag replaced the empty pint of blood dangling above my head. Then I was wheeled into the x-ray room to take pictures of my heart and brain.
Somewhere between the emergency room and the x-ray room, I surrendered to the realization I would survive, that I was no longer on the border between life and death, that I’d stopped floating between this and some other unknown realm.
After x-rays, I was wheeled into the pre-operation room where a neurosurgeon spoke to me about the upcoming craniotomy he would perform.
“Hello. I’m Doctor Chang.”
I looked at him with dead eyes.
“We’re going to have to do some surgery to remove a few pieces of shrapnel from your brain.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You have two small fragments in your frontal lobe area. We have to remove them.”
I was lucid then, clear.
“What are my chances?”
Doctor Chang held my stare, then smiled.
Not a fake smile he put on to diminish my trepidation, but a genuine smile created out of the directness of my question.
Here I was, a nineteen year old kid with wounds all over his body, a young soldier who’d been medevaced out of the bush a little over three hours earlier, asking whether I would live or die at his hand.
And so my sheer audacity, my black and white innocence broke through his professional demeanor
He smiled and patted my good arm.
“You’re going to be just fine soldier.”
And, for that one small moment, I believed him.
I lay in the pre-operation room as drops of anesthesia dripped through the IV tube into my bloodstream, and I slowly slipped away.
Not falling or rising, but floating, drifting inside the deepest sleep I’ve ever known—a sleep not unlike death perhaps, if there is a likeness to death in life.
Limbo.
Somewhere between heaven and hell.
Around me the sound of tools whirred, the vague tones of voices, the metallic clink and clatter of instruments—a dull buzz, buzz, buzz as my hair was shaved off, soft rasps as a razor cut the stubble from my skull until there was nothing, the smooth surface of skin and the crushed right forehead where the shrapnel smashed through my skull--a scalpel, a serrated blade, a pinchers and a clamp to pull and hold the cranial flap open and peel the skin off the skull.
And then there were more voices, close, closer to my ear—the surgeon and his nurses—and other sounds—the electric whirr of the saw cutting through my skull, the I.V.’s drip, drip, drip pulling me out into an endless sea—the odor of blood, the tincture of anesthesia and antiseptic—drifting out, out, out, floating on the waves...
…and somewhere…drifting out to sea…
I awoke.
The sounds of the hospital returned.
Gurney wheels rolled past where I lay.
There was a cry, a muffled moan, a doctor’s voice calling for a compress, a clip, a nurse running by.
In the far, far distance, explosions, the heavy, slow, rat-tat-tat of fifty caliber machine guns, the call and response of mortars, rockets and artillery rounds…
I woke in a room, a bed, at some indeterminable time, night, yes, surely night, or early morning, no light coming through the bamboo blinds, and yet I was still drifting, floating on a raft, floating in blackness on a dark, uncharted sea.
I tried to lift my arms, but I could not.
I tried to shift my hips, move my legs, turn, sit up, rise, but I could not.
I cannot feel my body, my face, my skin. I cannot open my mouth to call.
I do not know if I breathe, if I am breathing, if I am still alive…
I drift.
Through darkness. Through space.
In the distance, I hear the whirr of a saw as it cuts through my skull.
I drift. And drift. And drift.
And when I awaken again there is light, not white light, but a surgeon’s lights; not the light of eternity, but the light of life, the light where shadows end.
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