Page 19 of What is Lost

On August 16th, their battalion’s second day on the ground, the State Department started processing civilians. Many had been worked over by the Taliban. This meant the next stop for most was John’s and Roni’s medical triage and treatment down a long alley from Abbey Gate, which had been closed off to traffic by creating a bottleneckwith cargo containers. Having armed Taliban hanging out on top of the containers did wonders for crowd control.

Anythingreallyserious—an injury requiring an operation or some more complex procedure John and Roni and the other docs couldn’t perform—was shipped across base to a small hospital. Although originally operated by NATO, the hospital, with its two ORs, ICU, trauma bays, CT scanner, and blood bank, was commandeered by the U.S. military. If anything truly awful rolled in or in the event of a mass casualty event requiring more intervention than the forward medical teams could handle, that hospital was their fallback.

The problem, of course, was that if push came to shove, and they were forced to use that hospital for anything more complicated than an appendix...then, the doo-doo reallyhadhit the fan.

By 0600,they had sort of a system down: initial check by a Marine at Abbey Gate; another check—again by a more seasoned Marine—halfway down the alley; then a swing by the med tent if needed. If not, a would-be refugee was loaded onto a van and hauled across the base to a staging area behind an old civilian hangar which the State Department guys had commandeered. Another check beforebeing allowed intothatfacility and then an evacuee was led down a staircase into the bowels of the building where Marines and Staties sat behind computers and went through documents one more time.

By 0700, their med tent had morphed into a proverbial beehive, what with personnel bustling from one patient to another and the constant clash of instruments, the thump of the generator powering the lights, the constant thrum of the air-conditioning, and the wail of patients—and of infants, many of whom weren’t injured but being watched over, cooed at, and cradled by Marines while docs and nurses and techs worked on their parents.

By 1200, John was walking on his knuckles, he was so tired. His skin felt greasy; his mouth tasted as if something had come in, taken a crap then died. Though cooled, a heavy stink permeated the air: clotting blood, torn flesh, shattered bone, scorched skin, sweat, piss. Stripping off stained surgical gloves, he dropped these in an overflowing biohazards bin and shambled over to Roni’s station, two down from his own.

“I need to get out of here and someplace where I’m breathing air that doesn’t smell like the inside of a butcher shop,” he said. “You about ready for a break?”

“Give me ten.” Roni didn’t look up fromstitching a long, jagged rip that ran from the right thigh of a very thin, very quiet, very small boy all the way to his knee. “Just need to throw in the last few here.”

“Sure.” He watched her work. The kid really was tiny, maybe three or four, and looked as if he hadn’t seen a square meal in weeks. That rip also wasn’t the child’s only wound. Dark roses of dried blood bloomed on the child’s ragged shorts and tattered T-shirt. The poor kid looked as if someone has gone after him with a metal rake. Through one tear, though, he spotted a smiley face surrounded by three stars done in blue magic marker. This was Roni’s signature, something she’d picked up working pediatric emergency rooms on nights when they ran out of cute and colorful stickers. She signed kids’ and adults’ bandages alike.Everyone needs a smile, she’d said,young and old.“What happened to the boy?”

“Her.” Without looking up, Roni tipped her head toward a young woman who stood on the other side of the gurney. The woman’s dun-colored abaya was soaked from the waist down, courtesy of an open sewage canal just outside Abbey Gate. She reeked like a porta-potty left to stew all summer. “She pitched him over the barbed wire. Or tried to.” Even muffled by a mask, Roni’s voice betrayed no emotion whatsoever. She might have been talking about the weather. “She wasn’t strong enough.When he got snagged, she made it worse by trying to shove him over. The Marines just couldn’t get to him fast enough.”

“She the mom?”

“Neighbor. Claims the boy’s mom is dead.”

“Uh-huh.” He should’ve been shocked but wasn’t. A lot of adults saw a small child as a get-the-hell-out-of-Kabul card because the Marines were helping as many children as they possibly could. “You believe her?”

“Do chickens have lips?”

“Does she have papers at least?”

“This is Afghanistan, John.” Roni tied off another stitch. “What do you think?”

Pushingfrom the air-conditioned medical tent into the world beyond the flaps was a sucker punch. The air was shimmery with heat, the light bleaching the landscape to the color of old bone. To the north, jagged red mountains bit a cloudless bluer-than-blue sky where a bright coin of a sun burned. Throw in a ram’s skull, and the scene could’ve been painted by Georgia O’Keefe.

There was also a lot of noise: a near-constant din of people clamoring, arguing, pleading; the grind of vehicles; the pops of gunfire beyond the gates as the Taliban, those masters of crowdcontrol, fired randomly this way and that. Overhead, helicopters thumped, ferrying personnel and civilian employees from the various embassies. American soldiers clustered in tight, vigilant knots. Others were tasked with escorting approved civilians wanting passage out of Kabul for processing.

“Wow.” John shoved on a pair of tinted ballistic wraparounds. “Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“Yeah, but it’s a dry heat.”

“Next you’re going to tell me it’s no worse than Arizona.”

“Never been to Arizona, but this is like all mountain deserts: frying by day, freezing by night. Anyway, the weather’s the least of our problems.” Roni pulled two bottles of an energy drink from a pocket of her cargo pants and handed one to John. “I expected bad, but...” She scuffed yellow dirt with the toe of a boot. “Do you know I used the last of my local on that little boy? Stores are empty.”

“Just take it easy. We’ll get resupplied as soon as the Moose from Doha gets here.”

“Which is when, exactly? I made the mistake of asking our supply sergeant when we could count on a transport.”

“Betcha no one knows.”

“All the sergeant said was the plane’s running on military time.”

“Ah.” In the Army, that translated to a shrug. “Then, we’ll just have to suck it up.”

“How? Tell people to bite down on a tongue depressor when it hurts? If we’re forced to use non-dissolving sutures, who’s going to take them out or even understand when or that theyshouldcome out?”

“There’s always duct tape.” When she only stared, he added, “I’m serious.”

“And where would you even have tried this out?” Before he could open his mouth, she held up a hand. “Wait. You learned in Boy Scouts.”

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