Angel of the Night (3 page)

By this time Pfc. Kitcavage was beginning to stir. Wendy kept his face as cool as she could under the circumstances by moving her own head so that it shaded the patient. She spoke softly to him.

“Just lay still. Help is on the way. You fainted.”

Randy Kitcavage was completely addled. Heat stroke, in addition to its other symptoms and effects, can cause such extreme disorientation to the point that the sufferer doesn’t know up from down. As far as Kitcavage was concerned he was standing on two feet talking to the nurse in front of him. Raised to be a polite young man, he started to hold out his hand for a shake. Then he vomited on her.

Wendy hadn’t been expecting that reaction, but she was ready. She gently rolled the patient onto his side so that he wouldn’t drown in his own puke, and rubbed his back while he lost everything that he had eaten for the last six hours. Only when his body stopped heaving did she try to talk to him.

“What’s your name, son?” Wendy said softly.

“P-private F-f-f-first class Michael K-Kitcavage, ma’am.”

She was glad to hear the rattle of a hospital gurney close at hand. Pfc. Kitcavage was starting to shake a little. Even in the extreme midday heat on a summer day in the Registan Desert a heat stroke victim will begin to feel cold all over. This is a result of two factors. First, the ice packs that Wendy had placed on him have some influence. But mostly the cold comes from the shock of the body fighting the heat on its own.

Pfc. Randy Kitcavage’s own cooling system was
working overtime. Wendy knew that it was time to get him to the medical center for some real treatment before his heart gave out. She had done everything that she knew to do at the site of where Kitcavage had fallen, but she knew that it wasn’t
enough. Wendy looked up at the two medic interns who had brought the gurney to the field. She gave a quick nod, and they went to work.

The two attendants carefully lifted Michael Kitcavage onto a blanket. Then they rolled the blanket and tucked in the ends, much as a parent would swaddle a baby. By this time, the patient’s teeth were starting to chatter. The two medics took their places at either end of the gurney, double timed off the field and to the medical center 50 yards away. Wendy started to follow the gurney, but realized that she had lost track of Henry Washoe. She turned a complete 360 degrees looking for the young private, only to find him on his knees beside her.

“Oh no! Not him too!” Wendy thought as she quickly knelt down beside the young man. But Private Washoe wasn’t suffering from the heat. He was sobbing out a desperate prayer.

Our Father who art in Heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil

For Thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.

Wendy and the broken-hearted young man said, “Amen” together. She touched him on the elbow and said, “Let’s follow your friend to the hospital. I think he’s going to be okay.”

Private Washoe rubbed his eyes and looked at Wendy with eyes still leaking tears. “You don’t understand ma’am. We wouldn’t have been outside today if it hadn’t been for me.”

The end of Private Washoe’s sentence was punctuated by a great deal of gulping and sniffing as he tried to get control of his emotions. Wendy took his arm and helped him along. She needed to get to the clinic as quickly as Pfc. Kitcavage did, but she also felt a responsibility to the broken young man who had been playing soccer with Kitcavage just a short time before.

“He needs to talk about whatever it is that has him so shattered,”
she thought.

“Private Kitcavage is a grown man. He shouldn’t have been out here. Neither of you should have, but I think you know that by now. But why in the world would it be your fault any more than it was his fault?”

Henry Washoe tried to stop walking to answer Wendy’s question, but she wasn't going to be delayed in getting to the medical unit. “Walk and talk. Walk and talk. Tell me why it was your fault because I want to know. But we need to keep walking.”

Just then Wendy saw Pfc. Kitcavage’s gurney arrive at the ramp to the medical center. She started to jog as Henry’s confession spilled out of his mouth.

“Because I called him a pussy!”

She knew, immediately and without hearing any more, what had happened between Kitcavage and Washoe earlier in the day. Pfc. Randy Kitcavage had wanted to heed the directive to stay out of the midday sun and avoid strenuous physical activity. His friend Henry had wanted to play a little ball and had taunted Kitcavage with the universal slur that was sure to get a rise out of the young man.

“Pussy!”

Kitcavage, just as most red-blooded men of any culture in the world, wasn’t going to stand for that. No twenty-something man will readily bear the title of vagina. So he went out to the playfield and played soccer with his friend as a proof of manhood. An hour later he was being rolled into the Kabul Air Base Medical Center as a result of his foolhardy show of machismo. Henry Washoe felt responsible.

“I followed him around and called him chicken and stuff like that. I wouldn’t let it go even after he told me to knock it off. But when I told him that he was a pussy he said ‘Get the ball!’

Henry looked to the ground. Wendy was sure that he was about to lose it again, and this time in the entryway to the medical center. She took her hand away from his arm and put it on his shoulder.

“Look at me,” she said.

He met her eyes with eyes that were full of pain and remorse. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Your friend is going to be just fine. He will likely have to stay in the hospital for a couple of days. After that, it will be light duty for at least a week, but in the long run he’s going to be as good as new.”

Wendy wanted to say more. She wanted to tell Washoe that the next time he wanted to call someone a pussy he ought to remember this day. But she didn’t for two reasons. First, the relief on his face when she said that Kitcavage was going to recover was palpable, and she didn’t want to dilute the good news with any more lecturing. But second, she knew that ultimately the lecture would fall on deaf ears. Soldiers had called one another “Pussy” for time immemorial. And there wasn’t anything that could be said to stop it.

“Men!” Wendy said as she left Washoe in the waiting area and went into the back where Kitcavage was receiving treatment.

Wendy’s brave and encouraging words to Henry Washoe rang hollow in her ears when she got into the treatment room and saw what had transpired with Kitcavage.
He had been conscious and increasingly lucid when Wendy had turned him over to the interns, but his condition had taken a turn for the worse when he arrived at the medical center.
He had lost consciousness again.

Wendy stepped toward the treatment bed in which Kitcavage had been laid.
She saw that his lips were blue.
She knew that this was a sure sign that the patient was in shock.
Dr. Wahi Jiminu, a civilian physician from Kabul who filled in at Kabul Air Base when the patient load was particularly heavy, was working on getting the heat-struck soldier stabilized.

As Wendy had suspected, Kitcavage was suffering from tachycardia, which is a pulse rate of 120/bpm or higher.
Kitcavage’s heart was beating 131 times a minute, well in excess of the safe range over time. Dr. Jiminu had attempted vagal maneuvers, which are manual efforts to slow the heart rate and are the first course of treatment attempted in a case such as this.
When Wendy entered the room, she realized that the vagals must have proved unsuccessful since the attending nurse was administering a dose of Rhythmol intravenously.

Rhythmol is commonly used in pill form for patients who have occasional bouts of atrial fibrillation.
Taken as such it generally works in about two minutes. The drug works immediately when taken intravenously.
Pfc. Kitcavage’s body relaxed noticeably when the drug hit his system.
Though he remained unconscious, (his body’s coma-like reaction to the stress was not uncommon given the extreme heat load that it had borne) he was
now
in less danger of suffering a heart attack on the treatment bed.

Dr. Jiminu nodded appreciatively at the news delivered by the nurse that the patient’s heart rate had slowed to 94 beats per minute.
“Let’s wrap him in cool packs so that he doesn’t go into deeper shock.

As the doctor stepped away from Kitcavage’s treatment bed, he saw Wendy waiting near the door.
“Are you the nurse who found thi
s boy out in the playfield
in this heat?” he asked.

“Yes,
D
octor,” Wendy answered, hoping upon hope that what she had done was fully according to protocol.
The upbraiding that she had recently taken from Dr. Hudspeth was fresh in her mind.
She didn’t know if she could take another browbeating from a physician.

“Well you did bloody fine work.
Just capital,” Dr. Jiminu said, slipping into the idiomatic speech that he had picked up while attending The London School of Medicine.
“It was a lucky thing for this chap that you happened upon him.”

Wendy was going to tell the doctor that it wasn’t due to her “happening upon him” but rather that Private Washoe had come to tell her.
But she bit back the words.
Washoe was a mess, and she didn’t want to get him into any further trouble.
If the doctor knew the whole story there would official reports to the commanding officer, and punishment meted out. On the spur of the moment, Wendy decided to do Washoe a solid and not blow the whistle on the soccer situation.

“Thank you, doctor.
I’m glad I was able to do my part.”

“Well you did that and more.
What we are doing right now is surrounding him with cool packs.
You know what they are I assume.”

Wendy nodded.
Cool packs are fabric pads, cooled to 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
They help heat victims regain a proper body temperature in a slow and regulated manner, all the while not being irritated by rough or sticky dressings.
Dr. Jiminu acknowledged Wendy’s silent assent and continued.