Lee dragged himself up against the bars, wriggling against them with his shoulders, pushing along the ground with his feet. His left hand was still fiercely protective of his right hand and he felt he couldn’t let go.
“Keep the pressure on,” the medic said, with both hands reaching through the bars. He held the needle between his teeth as he spoke, saying. “I’m going to peel the bandage back slowly and close up your wounds one by one.”
Lee nodded, watching as the Navy SEAL pried the bloody cloth back just enough to reveal the bloody stump where once his little finger had been.
“I’m sorry,” he added. “But I’m going to need to close off the severed veins. I’m so sorry, but this is going to hurt.”
The medic handed Lee a small lump of wood, saying, “Bite on this. The last thing you need is to crack a tooth.”
Lee pushed his wrist and forearm hard against the bars, trying to hold them still as the medic pulled the needle from his mouth and began stitching up the bleeding stump on the edge of his hand. Lee couldn’t look. He bit on the wood and concentrated on his breathing, trying to take steady breaths as the needle passed in and out of the skin and flesh on his hand. Each jab felt like a burning hot knife searing through his skin. He kept his eyes focused on the window, looking out beyond the bars to the trees in the distance, watching as bats flittered among the branches.
The pain came in waves and felt as though it would never end. Every muscle in his body tensed. Slowly, the medic repositioned the bloody rag, working in silence, moving the cloth back and revealing what had been Lee’s ring finger and then his middle finger.
Lee tried to distract himself. As best he understood the layout of the camp, he was looking roughly west, out toward where he had flown over the Yellow Sea in his rescue helicopter. Lee had no idea how far inland he was, but in his mind he imagined hills rolling gently down to the coast. Mentally, he was trying to escape this prison and the pain surging through his hand.
The medic was rough, pulling at his hand from time to time and repositioning his arm, pushing and pinching and prodding. He had his face pressed hard up against the bars, with both forearms protruding through and anchoring Lee’s forearm as he worked on his hand.
“Done,” he finally said, relaxing his grip. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have helped more, but at least we’ve stopped the bleeding and closed off the wounds.”
Lee turned and looked at his hand for what felt like the first time. Coarse black stitches, irregular and chaotic weaved across the bloody stumps set hard against his hand. The skin had been pulled taut. A semi-clear fluid seeped from around one of the stumps. The other stumps were bloody and bruised.
“Thank you,” Lee said, his voice shaking. He held his right hand by the wrist, afraid to touch the hand itself, unsure how much of the surging pain would return.
The medic slumped away from him, exhausted by the effort. He pushed his back against the bars on the far side of his cage. Cell was too nice a term for the filth they squatted in, Lee decided. These were animal cages.
Already, his head was clearing. He was still in agony and his hand throbbed, but just that tiny sliver of compassion and help from the medic lifted his spirits and helped him focus.
“What a clusterfuck, huh?” the medic said. Above his head, boots marched by, crunching on the gravel.
“Will we ever get out of here?” Lee asked.
“Do you mean here?” the medic replied, pointing at the ground, “Or here.” He circled his hand, indicating all around them, which Lee supposed was representative of North Korea as a country.
“Either,” Lee replied. “Both.”
“I don’t think they’ll keep us here long, as in, here in these cells. These are holding cells at best. I think they’re normally used to shelter animals during winter. As for here in this camp, I suspect we’ll be taken to Pyongyang before too long. There’s nothing the US public hates more than seeing its soldiers dragged through the streets of some foreign capital. They’ll keep us alive till then, at least. It’s too good a PR opportunity to miss. From there, who knows? Maybe we’ll spend a decade as pawns on a chessboard until some kind of trade can be arranged.”
Lee was silent. He doubted the North Koreans would be so hospitable to someone from South Korea. More than likely, they’d kill him to avoid any complications. As far as anyone from the south would ever know, he died in the helicopter crash and his body was never recovered. In some ways, that might be the better option for his parents, as it would avoid putting them through a living hell for the next decade, giving them a chance to grieve once and not for years on end.
“And as for your hand,” the medic continued. “That’ll be a wound sustained in the crash, or they’ll offer some other plausible scenario.”
Lee nodded.
“As far as getting out of North Korea,” the medic said, “I don’t care how we leave, so long as it’s not in a body bag.”
Lee’s head dropped. There was silence for a few moments.
“You were the pilot, right?” the medic asked.
“Yes.”
“What have they figured out?”
“Uh,” Lee began, not sure where to begin. “I don’t know. What a nightmare! This should have been a textbook run up the coast, drop you guys offshore and then back to Incheon for breakfast.”
He laughed, lost in thought as he spoke, “I was supposed to be playing golf today. Oh, to walk on a carefully manicured lawn taking my frustrations out on a small white ball. What bliss that would be!”
Lee held up his mutilated hand, saying, “Bit of a handicap, wouldn’t you say?”
The medic grinned.
“I thought they were after a young girl,” Lee continued. “Took three bloody fingers to convince them I was as stupid as I am.”
Lee turned to face the medic as the temperature outside plummeted and a chill crept into their prison.
“I hope that boy is worth it, or a lot of good men died for nothing.”
The medic was silent, nodding in response, letting Lee talk.
“He recognized me,” Lee said. “I don’t know how or why, but he did. Freaked me out!”
“Did you see anyone else on the run out there?” the medic asked. “Did anyone else make it to shore?”
“No. No one,” Lee replied. “Wait, there was someone, but they caught him. A pack of dogs ravaged him on the beach. I washed up on the rocks, just north of him. I saw him die.”
The medic nodded. He turned and crawled to the cell door and struck at the bars with a clump of wood, calling out in Korean, saying, “Open up. I’m finished here.”
Lee was confused. He didn’t understand what was going on. He scrambled over by the medic, reaching through the bars with his one good hand.
“What are you doing?” he asked quietly.
Suddenly, the realization that he had been betrayed swept over him, chilling him more than the cold of night. The Navy SEALs had all been wearing black wetsuits, not army fatigues. The medic’s eyes had the classic epicanthal fold characteristic of people throughout Asia, but his accent was from the American midwest, Lee was sure of it. And he was wearing boots! Lee had been stripped of his boots. All the clues were there, but he’d missed them.
A guard stepped down and opened the adjacent cell door. His keys rattled as he fought with the old, rusted lock.
“I don’t understand,” Lee called out, still reeling mentally from all that had transpired. He trusted this man. “Why?”
The medic turned, speaking in English as he said, “We had to know if you were telling the truth.”
The door opened and the medic crawled through, getting to his feet and dusting himself off.
“But…”
“Oh,” the medic replied, stepping in front of Lee’s cell. He crouched in front of Lee, smiling and pointing across the courtyard as he added. “You thought that was the interrogation over there? No, that was the prelude. This was the interrogation, and you did admirably. You told me what little you knew.”