There was a strange quiet just before it happened. I could smell the filth; I could sense something I could not put my finger on, all fleeting, all in micro-seconds, those flashes in the brain of some impending something not nameable. Yet, around me, there were visions and smells and sounds that should be considered normal, but somehow were not, that somehow held some kind of warning. I could see a dust haze on the horizon. I had reached for a canteen to deal with my burning thirst, of course wanting more than just a drink, wanting to bathe, wanting to slide into a pool of clear water, wanting the solitude of my own thoughts away from all of this as I slid underwater and felt relief.
Someone behind me started to say something that was forever unsaid. The ensuing pressure collapsed me to a rag doll of a person, flattened on the dirt, quivering for life like a chicken with its neck just wrung. I was battling against something my senses told me was trying to end my life. I struggled to call out, but I was voiceless and I watched my blood soak into the ground. It was a violent red slag that I tried stupidly to relate to some kind of art, some impressionist creation that I would force into a meaningful image. The grimy, nasty sand was a diligent blotter for all the red that would seep from me. I was about to die.
** ** **
Somewhere there was the smell of cooked bacon, still hot and sizzling, more than tempting. I did not die. I survived by will and with the help of the Med Corps guys and the evac guys and the field hospital guys and finally the med center guys. After a period of time they told me I had lost a leg. There was other damage to my body they were able to repair, but the leg they could not save. I realized it right away; I knew it full well before they had said anything about it. But I still denied it and tried to convince myself otherwise. When they first told me I started to cry and I hated that. They tried to divert my attention from the fact, but I sobbed and slobbered and tried to stop crying. I was focused on it. It being the leg, The leg that was missing. Gone. The leg was gone. I had to accept that fact.
The transition to acceptance was gradual, but happened and was a trigger that snapped me forward to figuring some kind of plan for how I would cope. They said you needn’t worry, we’ll look after you, make sure everything will be all right. Everything all right? Everything? Not everything, surely. If everything were going to be all right I wouldn’t be missing a leg. Oh, we didn’t mean that, they said. Oh, really? Then everything isn’t everything, is it? There’s a leg missing. My leg. Splattered in the sand maybe or vaporized in the air to float away over the desert, falling in particles of red mist that get absorbed, taken in, and ingested by a land accustomed to blood being spilled.
There really was no pain, they had made sure of that. I had fought the effects of being in that goofy land where you are floating between sleep and consciousness, and now I was fully awake. I was ready for confronting the daylight, being awake, and accepting the prospects of no leg. No leg. I was not dead and other Joes had worse injuries.
I missed my leg. I reached down to feel for where it should be. There was a stub, the end point, then no more. I had this longing sweep over me, this sharp pang for something gone away; my leg. All of a sudden I had this longing for my leg. As if the leg were a person I had known, a person who would never come around again to drink a beer or shoot the breeze. The missing leg had taken on a vague kind of persona, one who had exited my life, who had gone away from me, and left me to bleed and suffer pain and suffer remorse.
This was all ridiculous. My leg was removed and gone and that was that. However, I began to wonder if I had lost more. Surely something more of me was missing. Perhaps it was part of my soul, part of my very being. The thoughts were fleeting and jumbled, very philosophical, very, very esoteric. I also decided they were very pretentious, so melodramatic and essentially caught up in self-pity and self-loathing.
But the loss was there nonetheless. I could not dodge that; I could not hide from that reality. Now what was the new reality? They would, after physical therapy rehab and psychological counseling, strap on an apparatus they wanted me to call a leg. My new leg. Attached, but not really connected. This appliance would be supportive if I worked hard enough, diligently enough, day by day, week by week until I assumed the posture of the saved, the redeemed, the rescued lamb now set to take on the world. God damn it, I hurt. This stump hurt, my whole body hurt. Not real pain, just imagined pain. But it wasn’t only my body that hurt. My soul ached. Was that imagined, too? I ached for that lost part of me. My leg. Gone.
He came to see me today. He claims he is a doctor. He tells me I am doing well. How does he know? What does he mean by “doing well?” Medically well, clinically well, visibly, on the surface doing well? He has no inkling of what is going on inside me. He asks about me; he doesn’t mean it. He isn’t sincere. He fidgets with his watch, he doodles on the sheet on his clipboard, and he never, ever looks me in the eyes. He is young like I am and he is afraid as I was and he is now more afraid than I ever was. I might say something upsetting. There are several staff members behind him. He hasn’t introduced them so I don’t know if they are interns or students or curious onlookers for whatever reason.
He is not an awful young man, young like I am, young and callow and wondering if he’s going to get laid tonight. I understand that. He doesn’t understand me. He has no idea who I am or what I am and he really doesn’t care. He has rounds to make. Its okay, but I wish he would not tell me that I am doing well. He doesn’t know. I am not doing well. I am doing lousy.
I had been wondering if I had lost more than my leg. Lost more, some part of my soul, some slice of who I am. No. Definitely not.
There is no use crying for yourself, no sense in feeling sorry. I must defy that emotion so easily given into by so many. I am a long way from the heat, dirt, and tragedy, the agony of the unknown and forgotten, the relentless battle for sanity and a sense of the real; nearer to my true core of being. I must drop that stuff, purge the memories, and not carry that with me. Now is the time for a new commitment to me. Step into the light, feel the gentle breeze from the future.
They want me to have an artificial leg. Okay, that’s real. I can live with that.
She is coming today. Please don’t let her cry. She will see me. She has loved me for a long time. Will she still love me? It’s what I am wondering, of course, wondering what she will say when she sees the leg is gone. How will she react? Magnanimous, sympathetic, consoling? Resentful? What can I believe, what can I understand is true?
I must face Rachael today and she will be confronted by me. I can’t presume to know what the outcome will be. I know what I hope for and I can only wish it happens as I want.
They have shown me the artificial leg I would have and assured me how well it will be for me. Right now that is the only real I know.