Promises to Keep
Authors: Nikki Sex,Zachary J. Kitchen
Promises
to Keep
By
Nikki
Sex and Zachary J. Kitchen
Copyright
2013 by Nikki Sex and Zachary J. Kitchen
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United
States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material
or artwork herein is prohibited.
This book is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All rights
reserved.
Acknowledgements
If
we’d tried to do this all on our own, it wouldn’t have been half as good. So a
very big thank you to our Beta readers, Trish, Mike, Faye, Sheree and Larry.
Also
to Traci Roe, our eagle eye proofreader.
“But
I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before
I sleep.”
—Robert
Frost
FALLUJAH,
IRAQ
Jack
felt, rather than heard, the distant explosion.
The
sensation of a slight push on his eardrums and a sickening shift in his gut
registered as the pressure wave passed through him, an instant before the
familiar, chilling noise. The distant rumble slowly rose to a crescendo before
rolling away. It sounded as large as it was faraway.
Small
bombs were quick—sharp and crisp like a Fourth of July firework.
The
big ones were more like a force of nature.
Shit.
Jack
was already tired. Bone-dead tired. Stare-at-the-wall-and-forget-who-you-are
tired.
As
the only ER doc this side of Fallujah, Iraq, Jack M. Curren was stretched thin
from long hours and hard work. He and a handful of corpsmen—who everybody
outside the Navy called medics—took care of an entire battalion of Marines.
Corpsmen
sewed up cuts, passed out antibiotics and did their damnedest to get the guys
under their care out of there alive.
The
ebb and flow of insurgency caused Jack some busy days and some easy days. By
this point today, he'd already been up and working for more than thirty-six
hours. Given the latest blast somewhere in town, he'd be up for many more hours
to come.
Dammit
to Hell.
Jack
pulled himself up off the floor where he'd been sitting with his back against
the wall, holding a bottle of water in his hand. Wearily, he stood up. He’d
have to make sure Chief Whitley knew there'd be incoming. Knowing Whitley, he'd
already be on it.
Shit.
"Chief?"
Jack called, as he shuffled to the tent that served as both exam room and
triage center.
It
was hot in the desert this time of year. Oppressively hot. Strip naked and
still find no relief hot. Start sweating the moment you get out of a cold
shower hot. It was the kind of heat that tested tempers, strained testosterone
levels and put everyone on a slow, irritable boil.
All
of the men in his little team wore the same lightweight uniform when in their
small, secured area of town: olive drab T-shirts, shorts or fatigue trousers
and boots.
His
boots were no longer the light tan they were when brand-new. Spilled blood had
turned them splotchy with rust and maroon stains. The older the blood, the
darker the splotch.
Today
his boots had very bright, very red new splashes on them.
Chief
Whitley was the highest-ranking enlisted man and Jack's right hand man. Chiefs’
ran the Navy, and they both knew it.
"Yeah,
I heard it boss," Whitley said as he strode toward him.
Chief
kept his head shaved and ran over it with a Bic razor every morning, no matter
what. Drops of sweat ran down his bald skin and into his eyes. His hairless
scalp—usually a light mocha color but was now burnt into the deepest, darkest
black—glittered, shining in the sun.
"Screw
me blind; can't they ever give it a rest?" He raised his worn and
weathered face to the cloudless blue sky. "Give us a break, you cock-eyed
bastards."
"Haji
doesn't take weekends off, not one. It must be their union."
"If
they had a union, they'd only mess with us eight hours a day," replied Whitley,
looking off into the horizon. "Yep. There it is, right over there."
Jack
followed his gaze and saw the cloud—a black, oily smudge billowing up between
the concrete buildings of Fallujah proper. "Down by the train station, it
looks like."
"I
guess so," Whitley sighed. "Well, better get ready for more
customers...Tony!"
One
of the other corpsmen popped his head around the corner. "I heard it,
Chief. I'm pulling out more gear, right now."
"Everybody
on deck?"
"Everybody
but Wynn. He went out with the last patrol."
“They
should be back soon, I hope. I think we’re going to need him.”
Bob
Wynn
,
Jack thought.
Nice kid, but too damned green and gets into trouble
—
nothing
serious. He's a slacker at times, but he goes way past that extra mile with
injured soldiers. Good hearted. Might make a decent corpsman yet.
Claxons
wailed in the distance as the men began gearing up. Jack was upfront with three
of the corpsmen, stretchers and IV poles at the ready. He was the first line,
determining who was hurt and how badly.
Jack
knew that life and death depended on his decisions. It was all about triage.
Small wounds waited. Life-threatening ones were stabilized as best they could
and then flown out on the choppers.
Treat
'em and street 'em.
In a
few minutes, several HUMVEEs pulled up. When the driver of the lead vehicle got
out, Jack recognized him instantly. It was the patrol that had been sent out
that morning.
Dammit.
It's our guys.
"What
happened, Lieutenant?" Jack asked the driver.
The
young officer grimaced, pain evident on his dusty face. "We were coming
back into camp when some son of a bitch set off an IED, right in the middle of
the convoy. The bastard was watching and he'd waited until he could get most of
us. One truck's gone, completely gone, and we've got casualties in the two
vehicles behind me. Everybody else is back there, securing the perimeter."
"Big
one?"
"Shit,
it was big. I'd guess a bunch of old artillery shells with gas cans piled on
top of them. Fuckin' fire everywhere."
"Damn."
Explosives were bad enough but Jack knew from painful experience, when
flammables like gasoline or diesel oil were added to an IED, it created an even
bigger world of hurt.
"Let's
get 'em out!" Jack’s urgent order rang above the general confusion.
Marines
rushed to pull their injured comrades out of the trucks. Jack ran from man to
man to see how badly they were hurt, with the Lieutenant right at his side.
The
first guy's head was lolling to the side with a large shrapnel wound in his
scalp. He was obviously dead. Jack took a few seconds to check for a carotid
pulse.
Yep.
Probably never knew what hit him.
"Take
him over there," he ordered the Marines who were holding him. They looked
at him blankly. He pointed to an empty, shaded area. "Take him over there,
out of the way and cover him up. Don't drop him."
They
obeyed swiftly and silently, but Jack caught the fear in their eyes. He
wondered briefly if that had been their first run in with a dead man, up close
and personal.
It's
fucked up, but they gotta learn sometime.
Jack
tugged the Marine Officer's Jacket. "Say, where's your Corpsman?"
The
Lieutenant pointed at the last HUMVEE
It’s
just like that knucklehead Wynn to goof off when we've got work to do.
Jack
ran over, ready to give Wynn an ass chewing. He was trying to understand why
he’d be sitting in the truck when there were hurt Marines all over the place. He
pulled up short as the door opened and a young Marine in full battle gear
pulled something off the seat and into the dust.
At
first, Jack thought it was some sort of pile of charred up gear the men had
salvaged from one of the bombed out trucks.
Then
he saw the boots. It was a man, a charred up man.
The
burned man’s boots were American made, but that was the only thing he could
identify of the charred human wreckage. Jack had found his missing corpsman.
Just
then, he wished he hadn’t.
"Doc
got hit," the Marine said flatly, as if in a daze.
"Doc"
was what Marines called their Corpsmen, the trained medics that went out with
them on missions or assisted the doctor at base camp.
As Jack’s
worst fear was confirmed, his pulse—already speeding—kicked into overdrive.
Only once before had he seen a man burned to this degree, and Jack still had
nightmares about it.
Being
burned alive was his own particular, wake-up-screaming, night terror.
"Dammit,
Wynn," Jack breathed. "Help me lift him," he said to the Marine
as he bent down.
When
Jack reached for him, he almost recoiled from the smell coming off of the man’s
body. Wynn blindly jerked his arms back and forth, trying to make contact with
someone, anyone.
Jack
flinched when his wounded corpsman touched him. He couldn’t help it; his
stomach was roiling. It took all his effort not to throw up.
Cloying
and oily, the overpowering scent of burned flesh mixed with gasoline flooded
Jack's nose and throat. He spat on the dirt, trying to get the awful taste out
of his mouth.
Wynn
coughed. "Help me, guys—you gotta help me..."
Wynn
didn’t sound panicked or in pain. He spoke slowly and carefully, like a boxer
fresh out of the ring—the kind that’s taken
way
too many hits to the
head. Some sort of enthusiastic prizefighter, whose manager threw in the towel far
too late.
Jack
swallowed hard and murmured back, "You’re gonna be OK, buddy. We got you.
We got you now."
"My
mom's gonna be pissed," he said.
A
primal, instinctive response, Jack reflected on how often wounded soldiers, no
matter their age, always thought of their mom first. It showed how important a
mother’s influence was in life. Even bad mothers come into an injured person’s
thoughts.
This
young man was no different.
Calm.
Keep him calm.
"Don't
worry. You got your ticket home, right here," Jack answered as he took
stock of his young corpsman who’d been an energetic, blond-haired, goofy kid
just a few hours before.
Wynn’s
eyelids were gone. Jack found himself looking into two opaque marbles as they
stared sightlessly into the distance. His ears were burnt away, as was his
nose. Black or white, Jack wouldn’t have even be able to tell the man's race if
he hadn't already known.
"Dammit!
Somebody get a stretcher over here!"
Jack
and the Marine gently lay the wounded corpsman down. He talked to Wynn, trying
to soothe him.
"Where
you from again, Wynn?"
"Iowa."
"Cornhuskers,
right?"
"That's
Nebraska. We're the Cyclones." He slurred the words, but other than that
he sounded almost normal. If he’d been breathing in during that heat flash he
would have been killed instantly.
"Right,
right. I'm from L.A. It's all the same to me."
"Grew
up on a farm."
Of
course you did. Just like in a bad war movie, the innocents are always fresh
off the farm.
"You'll
be back there in no time, Wynn."
"No,
I got to get back to North Carolina—that's where I left my girl."
Instinctively,
Jack put a comforting hand on the burned man's forehead. The skin crumbled away
in his fingers. Jack could see whitish-gray bone from where living flesh used
to be.
Ah,
shit.
"Sir—I
got a kid coming soon. Ain't seen her yet. Laura was pregnant before I shipped
out. That's why we got married so fast."
In
spite of the burns, his speech was calm. Wynn displayed no indication of
extreme pain; no guarding, no clenched teeth, no moans, writhing or rapid
breathing.
He
should have been in agony from the physical damage that he’d suffered.
Jack
recognized the signs immediately. Almost one hundred percent of this man's body
was covered in third-degree burns—the worse kind imaginable. With all of his
nerve endings seared away, the young Corpsman was literally, feeling no pain.
This
was not a small mercy for the poor bastard… it was a huge one.
Fuck!
Fuck! Fuck!
Jack
forced the anger and frustration out of his voice. "You'll be OK, Wynn.
Everything's good. We’re gonna get you fixed up and on the next bird out of
here."
"That's
cool. I knew you guys had me." Wynn slurred, trying to smile with what was
left of his lips.
"Relax,
we'll get an IV started and I'll help you get ready to go on the next one.
OK?"
"Do
what you gotta do, Doc."
The
IV went in quickly with practiced hands, lifesaving fluid began to flow into
Wynn's veins—not that his life would be saved.
"Chief!"
Jack stood and scanned the area for Whitley. "We need to call in a MEDIVAC
right fucking now!"
“Already
on it.”
Jack
pulled a syringe out of his pocket and turned back to the wounded man.
"This will make you feel better," he said as he injected morphine
into the IV. "We'll get you out of here soon, I promise."
Wynn’s
body visibly relaxed as the drug hit his bloodstream.
"You
hang tight. I'm gonna see about getting you a ride."
"Sweet,"
replied Wynn, slightly slurring his words. "Nothin' but a thing. Goin'
home."
"Yeah."
Jack started to leave.
"Doc?"
"Yeah?"
"You
gotta take care of something for me."
"What
is it, Wynn?"
Wynn
raised his left hand. "You gotta get my wedding ring to my wife. I lost
one the first week we were married. She'll tear me a new one if I lose this
ring, too."
Jack
stared at the faded wedding ring on the twisted and scorched hand.
"No
need. You'll get it back to her soon enough. Just relax."
"No
sir," Wynn replied, still slurring from the drugs. "Somebody'll steal
it, sure enough." He tried to move, to pull it off, but his fingers
wouldn’t work.
“Let
me,” Jack said. He didn't want to see the man struggle, so he eased the ring
off for him. "Easy there. I got it." He cringed as large fragments of
blackened skin slid off with it, exposing bone. “Don't worry about it. I'll
make sure it gets back with you."
"No."
Wynn tried to sit up, his body tense and straining. "Take it yourself.
Don't mail it. Don't give it to one of those rear-echelon jerks. You take it.
She's got a place not too far from Lejeune. You can give it to her when you get
back."
Shit.
As if I need this kind of responsibility.
"OK.
Sure, dude. I'll take it, myself." Jack slipped it into his pocket and
buttoned it in. "I just tucked it away in my top shirt pocket."
"You
promise?"
"Sure,
I promise. Now, lay back and relax, OK?"
"OK."
Shit.
A dying corpsman and a promise I didn't want to make.
Yet
Jack couldn’t refuse the young man.
Especially
since I was the one who got him killed him.
