It takes a special breed of health-care professional to work day after day in a combat amputee ward. Bombs leave the human body ravaged by burn marks and shrapnel wounds. The pain can be excruciating, the surgeries seemingly endless. Depression runs rampant. Many wounded vets are in their twenties, some in their teens. Coping with the life-altering loss of a limb can be devastating on the victim, his family, and the caregiver.
As bad as it was during the day, it was always far worse at night.
Leigh stopped by the first bed on her right, occupied by Justin Freitas. The corpsman, barely nineteen, had lost both eyes and hands ten weeks earlier while attempting to defuse a bomb.
“Hey, Dr. Nelson. How’d I know it was you?”
“You smelled my perfume.”
“I did! I smelled your perfume. Hey, Doc, I dropped the remote to the television, can you hand it to me?”
“Justin, we talked about this yesterday.”
“Doc, I think maybe you’re the one that’s blind. I have hands, I can feel them.”
“No, baby doll. It’s the nerve endings, they’re confusing your brain.”
“Doc, I can feel them!”
“I know.” Nelson fought tears. “We’re going to get you new hands, Justin. A few more surgeries, and—”
“No… no more surgery. I don’t want any more surgery! I don’t want pincers! I want my hands! How can I hold my little girl without hands? How can I touch my wife?”
The anger ignited like a flashpoint. Dr. Nelson barely had time to signal for help before she was forced to wrestle with her patient, fighting to prevent him from bashing the stubs of his bandaged forearms against the aluminum bed rails.
An orderly rushed over, helping her to pin Justin Freitas’s arms down with Velcro strips long enough for her to inject a sedative into his IV drip, delivering him into an anaesthetized delirium.
Stalling to catch her breath, Dr. Nelson made notes on his chart. Sixteen more amputees lay in wait in this ward. The first ward of eight.
Every ward had its gatekeeper, a combat veteran who knew the pulse of his fellow soldiers. In Ward 27 it was Master Sergeant Rocky Allen Trett. Wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade eight months earlier, the double-leg amputee was sitting up in bed, waiting to greet her.
“Morning, Pouty Lips, you’re late. The little one giving you a rough time at home?”
“What’s the term you like to use? It’s been… challenging. You seem in good spirits.”
“Mona came by with the kids.”
“Okay, don’t tell me… the boys are Dustin and Logan, your daughter is Molly.”
“Megan. Blue eyes, just like yours. Great kids. Can’t wait to go home. Listen, I know I promised not to ask—”
“I called our prosthetist again this morning. He promised me no later than mid-September.”
“Mid-September.” Rocky struggled to hide his disappointment. After a few moments he regained his composure, pointing across the aisle. “Keep an eye on Swickle. He was bawling his eyes out earlier. Wife handed him divorce papers for breakfast. Says she can’t deal with having a gimp for a husband.”
“Lovely. Rocky, what about the new guy… Shepherd?”
Rocky shook his head. “Forget the prosthetist; that boy needs a shrink.”
“Baby doll, we all need a shrink.” She kissed him on the forehead, returned his smile, then proceeded to bed station 17, one of several areas that had been curtained off for privacy. “Sergeant Shepherd, my name is Dr. Nelson, and I’m your—”
She pulled back the curtain.
The bed was empty.
The Manhattan sky was awash in blue. A steady breeze coming from the East River kept the scent of soot to a minimum. Rows of industrial air conditioners hummed nearby, the mechanical groan of their rotating fans reverberating the roof’s asphalt turf. The sound of traffic joined in the serenade seven stories below, the horn frequency increasing ever so slightly as lunch hour rapidly approached.
The VA hospital’s helopad was empty, the medevac chopper on a run.
The lanky man in the gray sweatpants and white tee shirt walked barefoot along the eight-inch-wide concrete ledge surrounding the rooftop helopad. Long brown hair flopped with the breeze, his features and faraway look reminiscent of those of Jim Morrison, the late lead singer of the Doors. The soldier shared the artist’s restless soul, imprisoned in a tomb of flesh.
His left hand felt like he had dipped his arm elbow deep in lava. The pain was excruciating, driving him to the edge of madness. There’s no arm there, you asshole. It’s phantom pain… just like your existence.
Patrick Ryan Shepherd closed his eyes, the one-armed man beckoning the sounds and scents of the urban jungle to flow into the hole in his memory—
— flushing out images from a long-lost past…
The breeze is steady, the sky awash in blue. The stickball bat is gripped firmly in the boy’s balled-up fists.
Patrick is eleven years old, the youngest kid in the game. Brooklyn is made up of ethnically divided neighborhoods, and this area of Bensonhurst is predominantly Italian.
Patrick is Irish, the runt of the litter.
An outsider pretending he belongs.
It is Saturday. Saturday’s have a different feel than Sundays. Sundays are more somber. Sundays are dress pants and church. Young Patrick hates church, but his grandmother makes him go.
Sandra Kay Shepherd is disabled, having fallen from a ladder at work. The sixty-one-year-old is also an insulin-dependent diabetic. Twelve years earlier, Sandra’s second husband walked out on Patrick’s grandmother with no explanation.
Patrick’s mother died of breast cancer when he was seven. Patrick’s father is in jail, serving the fourth year of a twenty-five-year sentence for DUI manslaughter.
Two outs, the bases are loaded, only there are no bases. First and third are parked cars. Second base is a manhole cover. Home plate is a pizza box.
Young Patrick lives for these moments. In these moments, he is no longer the runt. He is no longer different. In these moments, Patrick can be the hero.
Michael Pasquale is on the mound pitching. The thirteen-year-old has already been embarrassed twice by the younger mick. The Italian throws the first pitch at Patrick’s head.
Patrick is ready. He steps back and wallops the rubber pimple ball with the broomstick, the base hit whizzing past the pitcher’s left ear. The bounding shot skids beneath several parked cars before disappearing from sight.
“Sewer ball! Ground rule double. Go fetch, German Shepherd.”
“Don’t you mean Irish Shepherd?”
Patrick moans as the older boys escort him to the concrete crevasse. The rules of stickball are simple: He who hits it retrieves it.
Two boys lift the manhole cover, unleashing a vomit-inducing smell. The liquid muck is five feet down, and Gary Doroshow, who normally brings the metal rake, is away with his parents at Coney Island.
“Down you go, Shepherd.”
“Are you sure it went down there? I can’t even see it.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“Get your mick ass down in that hole.”
Patrick descends, rung by rung, the collar of his tee shirt pulled high over his nose against the overpowering stench of liquid shit.