Page 24 of Battle Mountain

“You really don’t know why?” the Megan-faced nurse asked him.

He looked back at her blankly.

“Should we tell him?” she asked the mother-in-law-faced nurse.

“Show him.”

Which was followed by another ominous glance.

Then the Megan-faced nurse reached out and peeled the top sheets off of Eisele. He felt cool air on his bare legs, and when he looked down there was a mass of bloody bandages covering his genitals, and he let out a shriek.

“They got shot off,” the Megan-faced nurse explained. “We’re hoping to find you some new ones.”

“Which might be tough,” the mother-in-law-faced nurse said. “We might have to use some skin from your thigh to rebuild a penis and install an air pump in case you ever want to try to be, you know,intimateagain…”

—

But when hewoke up this time the room he was in was dark and there was no view of the capitol, and no nurses with familiar faces. The room smelled slightly of old smoke. His fever had abated and he wasn’t covered in sweat. His sheets were dry.

He tried to sit up, but couldn’t, and he realized he was restrained. A one-inch-wide nylon strap, like the kind used to keep a tarp secure over a trailer bed filled with garbage on the way to the dump, stretched tightly across his chest and held him down. He could see no release on it, and he assumed the ratchet mechanism was located under his cot, where he was unable to reach for it.

Despite the strap, Eisele was able to pull down the top blanket inch by inch with his hands by grasping the folds of the material and tugging it toward his feet. Eventually, the top of it slipped under the strap and the blanket gathered around his waist.

By pinching the sheets between his knees and then kicking his feet, he managed to work the blanket down the length of his body, where it piled over his ankles. Then, after closing his eyes for a moment and whispering a prayer to a God he’d never spoken to before, he raised his head and looked down at his groin.

It was fine. There was no mass of bloody bandages. Only a pair of light blue, urine-stained scrub pants.

His head flopped back and he blew out his breath with relief. As he did so, he realized that his activity had set off sharp bolts of pain in his right shoulder and left buttocks.

That’s right, he thought.They shot me.

—

Eisele could onlyrecall snippets of what had happened after he went down. He remembered the two painted faces above him, and the jet airplane that screamed through the icy blue sky as it descended. Then being strapped face up on the back of an ATV as it bounced along a rough trail, the impact of each pothole or rock sending sharp stabs of pain through him that plummeted him back into darkness.

Then there was the sight of a dowdy Old West town with a wide street, a smattering of buildings in different stages of disrepair, close dark pine trees hemming in the village framed by snowy mountains, and the rough handling of several people carrying him through the lobby of one of the structures as if he were a sack of potatoes. They swung him from side to side as they carried him, and he got a good look at the tin-stamped ceiling. The people carrying him wore camo clothing.

Was there really an Old West town, he wondered, or was that something that had come from a movie or television series? He couldn’t be certain whether he’d seen it or if it had been in one of his dreams.

—

Eisele came tothe realization that he wasn’t alone in the dark room. Ragged breathing punctuated the silence to his right and he turned his head in that direction.

In the dull orange light of a portable heater plugged in between their cots, he could see a blanketed form. The heater rattled andhummed as it cranked out warmth in the dark. An aluminum IV stand was above the other cot and a plastic tube extended from a bag of clear liquid to within the sheets. He couldn’t see the face of the person in the cot, but he assumed it was Rankin. Hehopedit was Rankin.

“Spike, is that you?” Eisele asked. His voice was hoarse and phlegmy.

“Spike, can you hear me?”

No response.

“Spike, if it’s you, I need you to be strong, because I’m not much help to you. In fact, I don’t know what in the hell is going on.”

Again, there was no response.

—

A few minuteslater, Eisele heard muffled voices on the other side of the closed door. Several of them, at least two men and a woman. They seemed to be casually conversing. There was a band of light under the door, and someone walked close enough to it to cast shadows.

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