The Last Hour (41 page)

“It’s okay,” the nurse said to Sarah. “I’ll go get the doctor, and we should be able to get that tube out in just a few minutes, okay?”

Sarah barely moved her head in a nod. I found myself pacing, nervous. Sarah’s one open eye was wandering the room, and for just a second it fixed on me. And narrowed. Surely she couldn’t see me. I stepped closer and said, “Sarah ... I’m so relieved.”

She kept looking. But then I realized what she was eyeing was the window. The sunlight outside. And that was ... frustrating ... heartbreaking … exactly right. I was sure she wouldn’t remember anything. And that was best, because who needs to remember this crap? What I wanted her to remember was being alive. I wanted her to remember her first kiss, I wanted her to remember standing up for her twin, I wanted her to remember love, and life, and all of it.
 

This twilight world? She didn’t need that. No one did.

It was more than a few minutes before the nurse came back with a doctor. The doctor took her chart off the end of the bed. “Sarah, I’m Doctor Norris. I’m just going to check a few things before we take out the breathing tube. Okay?”

Sarah just slightly nodded again. Tears were slowly leaking out of both eyes.
 

The doctor put on gloves and said, “This is probably going to hurt, a lot, but just for a moment. Sorry.” Then he raised the blanket from her left leg and very gently lifted the dressings to examine the wounds. As soon as he touched her leg, Sarah went completely rigid, and a muffled scream rose from her throat.
 

Jesus Christ.
I wanted to shove the doctor away from her, but I knew he had to do it. I looked at her leg. It was still insanely swollen. Her calf looked like a football had been stuffed inside of it, the skin an angry red around the open slit that went almost from her ankle to her knee. Huge stitches that looked almost like shoelaces held her leg together, and the whole thing was like something out of a nightmare. Very carefully, the doctor covered the wound again, and re-draped her sheet over the leg.

Sarah’s eyes were squeezed shut. The doctor said, “You’re doing very well, Sarah. Very well indeed.” As he spoke, he was writing notes on the chart. He looked up at the monitors and said, “I think we’re ready for that tube to come out. It’s going to be uncomfortable, but not like the leg. Okay? Just stay calm, and I want you to slowly breathe out.”

Very carefully, very slowly, he removed the tube from her throat. She coughed and her body spasmed, then let out a low howl.
 

“I know, honey,” the nurse said. “It’s all right.”

“The fuck it’s all right,” Sarah muttered. “Oh God, that hurts.”

Absently, I said to Daniel, “Don’t ever use language like hers.”

The nurse said, “I’m going to ask you a couple of questions, they may seem silly, all right? Do you know where you are?”

Sarah said, “A hospital. I guess in Washington?”

“Yes, you’re at George Washington University Hospital. What do you remember?”

“Car accident,” Sarah said.

“Do you know what year it is?”

Sarah frowned. Then she answered, “2013.”

“Very good,” the nurse said.
 

The doctor said, “Nina will show you how the morphine pump works. It has a limiter on it, so you can only use a certain amount, but that should help with the pain a little. But you’re coming along well. You were in a very nasty accident ... you’re very lucky.”

Sarah nodded and then said, “How is Ray?”

Oh, shit.
 

The doctor and nurse looked at each other, then said, “He’s just a couple of doors down. And your sisters are fine. In fact, if you’re up to visitors, you can have one at a time, as soon as you are ready.”

The doctor hadn’t actually told her how I was. That didn’t surprise me. But she hadn’t asked about Carrie and Jessica.
How much did she remember?

In a hesitant voice, Sarah said, “I’d like visitors. After you show me how to work the pump.”

Nothing had changed with Ray overnight. The machines were still keeping him breathing. I sat, my hand on his, for a long time. I was numb. The doctors wanted to meet at ten a.m. And I think that terrified me more than anything else.

When we got to the intensive care unit and I went to see Ray, the first thing Julia did was walk to the nurses’ station. From Ray’s room, I could see her over there talking with them, and I knew she was telling them that I’d skipped out on the CT scan and that I needed to see a doctor.

I stood, wrapping my arms across my stomach. Ray would be urging me to go to the doctor. He wasn’t one to avoid whatever was necessary. I needed to do the same. Slowly, I kissed him on the forehead and whispered, “I’ll be back in a little bit.” Then I walked back out.

A nurse approached my parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Thompson? Your daughter is awake, if you’d like to see her. She can have visitors, but only one at a time.”

My mother and father looked stricken, and he said, softly, “You go ahead, Adelina.” Dad looked lost, as the nurse led my mother down the hall to Sarah’s room.
 

Julia came back over to me. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got an appointment downstairs.”

I was afraid. I looked up at Julia, and for the first time since I was a small child I just wanted to curl up and ask my mother for a hug. But I couldn’t do that. Instead, I took Julia’s outstretched hand. “Okay,” I said, my throat dry.

Somehow she found her way back down to the emergency department. I certainly wasn’t any help. I walked as if I had blinders on, not paying any attention, my mind still up in the ICU where I knew Ray was.
 

When we got downstairs, Julia said something to a man who sat behind a desk in the emergency room. A few minutes later, the same doctor as yesterday appeared. “Carrie? Doctor Chavez, I examined you yesterday.”

I nodded and mumbled something.

“Well ... let’s go get a look.” He led us to an examining room, and then said, “So you managed to avoid any labs yesterday? And didn’t get the CT scan?”

I nodded, and Julia said, “She thinks she may be pregnant.”

“Well, then. How is your head? Any more nausea?”

I nodded. “This morning. Every morning the last two weeks.”

“That wouldn’t be the concussion, then. Headaches? Any vision problems?” As he asked the question, he shined a light into one eye, then the other.
 

“No. Nothing,” I said.

“All right. We’re going to take some blood, just wait here.”

The moment Doctor Chavez was gone, Julia sat down next to me and said, “You’re going to be okay, Carrie.”

“I don’t see how,” I said.

She sighed and put an arm around my shoulder. We waited, and a little while later a nurse came and took a vial of blood from me.
 

I was numb. And we waited. The emergency room staff moved us out of the exam room, and then Doctor Chavez came back. He was holding a sheet of paper. I crossed my arms in front of me, afraid of the answer.

“Your pregnancy test came back positive.”

I leaned forward, just slightly, and tears started pouring down my face again. “Oh, God,” I said. “I need Ray. I need him. I can’t do this alone. I don’t want to be alone.”

Julia threw her arms around me and whispered, “Listen to me, Carrie. Whatever happens with Ray, you won’t be alone. I promise you that. No matter what.”

I just sobbed, pathetic, not hearing her words, not feeling anything but the gulf of pain where Ray Sherman should have been.

“I
’m calling this hearing to order,”
Colonel Schwartz said. The reporters, jammed on one side of the room with little concession to needing air or anything else, quieted down.

The Article 32 hearing was nothing like what a lifetime of watching courtrooms on television would have led me to expect.

For one thing, it wasn’t held in a courtroom. Two weeks ago, Schwartz commandeered a conference room near the Hospital Commander’s office. Twenty or so plastic backed chairs filled in one side of the room, and that’s where the public and the reporters sat. At the conference table, across from me, was the prosecutor, an Army captain who looked to be about twenty years old, and his two assistants, both of them lieutenants. A court reporter took notes in a corner, and Schwartz sat at the head of the table. I’d spent the last two weeks on the other side of the table, between Dick Elmore, who had to be there, and Carrie, who didn’t, but came anyway.
 

Schwartz said, “I understand the defense has one more witness to call?”

“Yes, sir,” Dick said. “Staff Sergeant William Martin.”

“Is your witness present?”

“Yes, sir, he’s waiting outside.”

Schwartz waved a hand at Elmore, who stood, and walked to the door and opened it. He murmured something, and a moment later Staff Sergeant Martin followed him into the room.

I studied Martin. His face was red and sweaty. He didn’t look healthy, his uniform hanging as if it were a couple of sizes too big, or as if he hadn’t been eating well for a long time.

“Sergeant, please raise your right hand.” Martin did so, and Schwartz said, “Sergeant, do you swear, or affirm, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

“I do,” Martin said.

“Staff Sergeant Martin, I’m Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Schwartz. I’ve been appointed as Investigating Officer in this Article 32 investigation. At this time I’m advising you on your right to remain silent. You may not be compelled to offer testimony which might tend to incriminate yourself. Do you understand this right?”

“I do, sir.”

“You also have the right to have counsel present for your testimony. It is my understanding that you are waiving that right. Is this the case?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t want a lawyer.”

“Then I will allow counsel for the defense to proceed with his questions.”

Schwartz didn’t like lawyers pacing around and pontificating, and he tended to cut them short if they got long-winded. So Dick just launched right into his questions.

“Staff Sergeant Martin, can you please tell me your whereabouts on the morning of March 24
th
, 2012?”

Martin grimaced. “Yes. I was assigned to Bravo Company, 2
nd
Battalion, 13
th
Infantry Regiment, 10
th
Mountain Division. We were deployed in Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan. That morning we were in the vicinity of the village of Dega Payan.”

“And was this the first time you’d been near that village?”

“No. We were there about six weeks earlier, after an avalanche buried part of the village in snow.”

Carrie squeezed my hand. She knew the story of Dega Payan, and the avalanche.
 

“We’ve had a lot of testimony here about what happened after the avalanche, so we’re going to skip past that. But I’m interested in your observations about the state of mind of the rest of the platoon in the weeks afterward.”

Martin shook his head. “We lost three good soldiers in twenty-four hours. Paris was all fucked up ... shit, I can’t say that here, can I? Paris was badly injured. Roberts dead. Kowalski dead. And I think it’s fair to say we were all a little screwed up about that.”

“Please give us an example of what you mean by screwed up.”

“All right. Well ... for one thing, Sherman looked like a little orphan. He’d lost his whole fire team. It was about two weeks before we got replacements, and then it was back out in to the field with guys he didn’t know. And Colton ... I found him drunk one night. I’d known Colton a long time, and he didn’t drink in the field. It’s too damn dangerous.”

Dick leaned forward. “So the platoon sergeant was drinking. Did you see him drunk at any other time?”

“Not that I know of. But he took those deaths hard. I’ve known Colton ten years, and we’d lost soldiers before. But never like that ... so many, so quick.”

“All right. Please go on. Tell us about the morning of the 24
th
.”

“Like I said, we were outside Dega Payan. We had orders to patrol the area around the village and flush out some Taliban guerrillas who had been operating in the area through most of the spring. It’s a mountainous area, lots of trees, lots of places to hide. We were going out one squad at a time, and that day it was first squad, with Colton and me. And we’re marching along, spread out, and Weber walks over to take a piss, he’s probably thirty yards away from the rest of the squad, and a shot rings out. Sniper caught Weber right between the eyes. He never had a chance.”

I just looked at the table. I’d heard variants of this story over the days of the investigation.
 

“Anyway ... Colton went a little nuts. He scrambled the platoon to find the sniper, but no luck. We never caught up with the son of a bitch. But then we got to the outskirts of the village, and this kid ... he was like ... twelve maybe ... comes marching across the street with a bunch of sheep or goats or some shit. We knew him; the kid was one Kowalski had played soccer with, when we were in the village before. We all recognized him. Kowalski used to call the kid ‘Speedy’ because he had this fucked up Tajik name none of us could pronounce.”