‘It’s Geordie,’ I told him. ‘My Christian name’s George, but I never use it. Everyone calls me Geordie. My accent and all.’
‘OK.’ He gave a twitch of a grin, opened the packet and began to read the papers. ‘Injury to your left arm,’ he said. ‘Compound fractures of the humerus. Pinned and plated in an Iraqi hospital.’
He pulled out an X-ray, fitted it into the front of a light-box on the wall, and studied it for a moment.
‘Is that what’s giving you trouble?’
‘No, no. My arm’s fine.’
‘Can I have a look?’
‘Sure.’ I pulled up the sleeve of my sweater and laid my arm on the desk. He felt it carefully along the line of the scar and looked back at the X-ray.
‘Tender?’
‘Not too bad.’
‘Can you use it all right?’
‘No bother.’
‘Turn your hand back and forth… open and close your fingers… Weights?’
‘I’ve started again with light ones. Just building up.’
‘I see. How did you do it?’
‘Came off my motor bike.’
‘Ah!’ He took my wrist and sat silent for a moment, counting my pulse rate. I liked his direct, no-nonsense manner. Then he asked, ‘What’s the matter, then?’
‘Headaches,’ I said. ‘They’re getting really bad. And I’m having nightmares that scare the shit out of me.’
‘Did you hit your head in the crash?’
‘No — not that I know of. My head never gave any trouble at the time. This only started recently.’
‘Have you been taking anything?’
‘Only the odd aspirin and Paracetamol.’
‘You’re sure you haven’t been concocting things out of your med pack? Some of you fellows are buggers for self-help, I know.’
‘No, no. I don’t touch any of that.’
‘What about booze?’
‘Well…’
‘Are you drinking a lot?’
‘A bit.’
‘How much?’
‘Too much.’
‘OK.’
He put me on the couch, brought out his stethoscope and listened to my heart. Then he took my blood pressure with the old arm clamp, looked into my ears and shone lights in my eyes. As he was working he said casually, ‘How did you come to fall off the bike?’
‘It was at night. We were 150 kilometres inside Iraq, behind enemy lines, hitting the comms towers and blowing up fibre-optic lines. And we were on the lookout for mobile Scud launchers. That night the squadron was tasked to move up and find a new lying-up position in which to hide the following day. I was recceing forward on a motorbike. The ground was very rough — a lot of rocks and loose gravel, with sudden deep ditches. We started to see lights in the distance ahead — vehicles moving — and we accelerated to cut them off. I dropped into a bloody great hole — never saw it — and the bike came down on top of me. Smashed my arm against a rock.’
‘Then what?’
‘If you’re interested?’
‘Sure.’
‘The guys picked me up and splinted the arm as best they could. Not a pretty sight. One end of the bone was sticking out through the muscle. They put me in the back of a Land Rover and called for a medevac. The head-shed in Saudi was co-ordinating rescue efforts with the Americans. They sent a message to say that a joint operation would be diverted to pick me up. A chopper would come in the following night, to lift me out along with two American casualties.’
I paused and looked sideways at the doctor. He still seemed to be interested, so I went on. ‘That worked fine. We spent the day lying up in a wadi, and soon after dark the heli picked us up on time, with some SEAL guys riding security. But we’d been flying for no more than ten minutes when we were targeted by a SAM. One moment we were cruising steadily, then suddenly everything went crazy. Sirens blasted off, the chopper began to dive and twist in violent evasive manoeuvres, the pilot fired off his chaff in the hope of decoying the missile — but no luck. Suddenly there was this almighty bang. It felt as if the chopper had been hit sideways like a tennis ball. The next thing I knew there was another terrific impact, and we were on the ground. Tony, one of the SEALs, was dragging me out of the wreckage. When we made a check, we found we were the only two alive. The co-pilot had been decapitated. The pilot had lost both arms. What we couldn’t understand was how the chopper hadn’t caught fire. Soon we saw lights coming at us. Before we could get ourselves together we’d been surrounded by fifty or sixty Iraqis. We could have dropped one or two, but not dozens. So that was us captured.’
I stopped. I was still lying on my back on the couch, talking up to the ceiling. I seemed to be out of breath. I realized that I’d been speaking faster and faster. I turned my head to the right and looked at the doc again. He was watching me carefully.
‘Carry on,’ he said.
I looked back at the ceiling.
‘I don’t remember too much about the next bit. I already had a fever — must have got dirt into my arm, the wound was infected. Also I’d banged one of my morphine syrettes into my leg, and got some more from other guys, so I was quite dopey. They threw us into the back of a truck and drove for the rest of that night. We got to some military camp. They tried to interrogate me — I got slapped around the head a bit — but they could see I wasn’t making much sense, and I didn’t give them anything but my name and number. I stuck to my prearranged cover-story — that I was a medic, and I’d come out as part of a joint Anglo-US team to recover downed air-crew.
‘Then we were rolling again, in some other wagon. That part’s even hazier. I think I was delirious by that stage. The next thing I remember is lying on an operating table, with guys in green gowns and masks standing round. Jesus! I thought. What are they going to do to me? I tried to get up, but couldn’t. I seemed to be strapped to the table. I was fucking terrified.
‘Then this tall guy appeared beside me. He had no mask on, so I could see he had a thick, black moustache, just like Saddam. Under it he was smiling — a nasty, thin kind of smile. When he started to talk I was amazed, because he spoke fluent English.
‘ “I’m going to operate on your injured arm,” he said. “But don’t worry. I know what I am doing. I was trained in England at one of your best hospitals — the John Radcliffe, in Oxford.”
‘For a moment I was reassured. I knew the Radcliffe, and I reckoned the Iraqi must have been there; he couldn’t have invented that name out of the blue. I think I said, “Great!”.
‘ “Your English medical system is very good,” he went on. “What is not so good is that you tell us lies about yourself. It is important for us to know which unit you belong to, Sergeant Sharp. Come now — we need to know.”
‘I repeated my spiel about being a medic belonging to 22 Para Field Ambulance, the unit I’d invented. I could see he didn’t believe me, and after a few other questions he asked sarcastically, “Where is it based, this famous unit?”
‘ “Wroughton,” I replied, referring to the tri-service hospital in Wiltshire.
‘He’d heard of Wroughton, because he’d been there while at Oxford. It made him pause, but not for long. All this time the lights were blazing down into my face. I was shuddering and sweating with the fever. Then with a sudden movement the Iraqi picked something up from a trolley beside him and held it over me.
‘ “You see this?” he said, and the half-smile had died from under his black moustache. “This is a hypodermic syringe, full of anaesthetic. If I plunge the needle into your arm, it will put you out. But if I touch your eyeball with it, you will never see again.”
‘ “Bastard!” I told him.
‘ “So, what is your real unit, please?”
‘ “Bastard!” I shouted again.