As I Lay Waiting
As I lay waiting for my hernia operation, I was in a knot like the hard spot above my navel. Nothing in my life was trying to protrude through some mysterious membrane. Maybe that was the problem, too much guts and not enough fortitude. What force in nature was at work here? Stress? Not eating enough prunes? They gave me a brochure with pictures and a caption that read, "think of it this way." The first picture showed a tire on a wheel. The second picture showed the tube of the tire sticking out through a weak spot in the tire. That was it! I knew I drank too much a few years ago and I must have swallowed a tire. Anyway, most importantly it was to be a hernia operation and not a hemorrhoid operation and since I had no health insurance I was glad to be a Viet Nam Veteran.
The Veterans Administration hospital surgery holding room smelled like a combination of Pine Sol and Clorox, sweet chlorine. Thoughts in my head raced by like cars on an Indy track. "Sweet Chlorine," that could be a country and western song, like "Sweet Valdalia, You Always Make Me Cry." Yep, westerns, I know how this will be. Just like John Wayne, "Well, l, l, l, Pilgrim, you gone and got yourself gut-shot, did-ya?" Afterwards, you can say to yourself in recovery, "Yep, I walked down that street alone and called those outlaws out. One of them got me in the gut but I gunned them all down. I try to use my hand the stop the bleeding. The blood is running down my shirt. In great pain, I walk into the doc's office and operating room. Okay, doc get out from under the table and patch me up."
You might be able to walk into this room but you always get rolled out. What a great concept, beds with wheels. I imagined a scene from some unwritten episode of the day time soap opera General Hospital, where two young tall, blonde nurses were fighting over me because they both thought I was the cause of their false positive pregnancy test. One grabbed the bed, rolled me out and yelled, "he's mine." We sped away down the hall and out to her large, red Cadillac convertible parked in the driveway. She pushed a magic button and the bed dumps me in the back seat. She jumps behind the wheel, throws her nursing cap away to the wind, let's her long blond hair down, and we drive away listening to Ride Like to the Wind blasting on the car stereo.
I was one of four of patients awaiting surgery in the surgery holding room. The curtains are open except when the patients changed clothes. Between two beds a computer monitor stood at attention like a cyber sentry keeping files and schedules. The attending nurses moved about taking blood pressure, asking questions, and trying to find veins in which to insert the IV's. I could feel and hear a rhythm in this hospital room that created its own blood pressure, its own pulse, and its own trail of blood. You could not measure it with a column of mercury. You could not hear it with a stethoscope. You could not wipe it up with a mass of cotton gauze or mop. It had been measured with columns of men in the battlefields of the world. Its fading heartbeat of dying men pulsed in time with the marching of the Corps...The Corps...beat...The Corps...beat...The Corps...This trail of blood could not be seen. It was very hard to find, like the thin veins of old World War II GI's. It extended around the world many times. This room was filled with the invisible, "red badges of courage" everywhere.
The holding room nurse put me in the corner bed by the window. These people are all the same really the ones in camo uniforms who order you into battle and the ones in white uniforms who march you into your surgical bed. They point and command, "Attack!" She put my file on the end of the bed, handed me a light yellow gown with some sort of abstract designs on it. I hope these designs do not distract the surgeon, I thought.
Then she handed me a plastic bag, stepped outside, pulled the curtain closed and said, "take everything off, put it in the bag."
I got undressed, put everything in the bag, put on the gown and stood there wondering who designed this fashion garment. I wondered was it in style this season? How was I supposed to tie this thing up? Men do not have this problem. Everything that needs to be zipped, buttoned or tied is in front. After some thinking, I decided to take it off, lay it on the bed, tie it up, and then put it back on over my head. Up over my head it went; I laid it down on the bed and proceeded to tie it up.
The curtain flew open. "I said put his on, not take it off," the nurse said as she picked it up, held it open, instructed me to put my arms in it and tied up the back. I felt more exposed than an old piece of gun camera film. Only I was the one who just got shot down. Behind me, I heard the telling sound of curtain hangers being yanked. It was safe to turn around. That's how I got into the bed.
My feet extended over the edge of the bed. I felt I was going to slide off. I kept trying to push myself back up. Looking out the window from the fourth floor the red brick walls of the hospital framed the courtyard view like looking out from a fortified firebase. A row of tall, strong, stately water oaks reached up, and touched a beautiful Carolina blue sky. Pilots call it severe clear, CAVOK, ceiling and visibility okay. In the distance, gleaming white in the morning sun, in what used to be the golf course, I could see the head stones perfectly aligned in the cemetery. In veteran cemeteries you find a perfect order to what was once perfect chaos. For all those soldiers beneath those headstones it was the last parade, the last drill, and the penultimate pass in review. The attending nurse returned, opened the curtain and asked me, "Did you eat or drink anything after midnight?"
"No," I replied, "but I could sure use a good shot of cognac now."
In the bed in the far corner a pretty young granddaughter in her twenties helped remove her grandfather's artificial hand. The nurse raised her voice and loudly asked him, "Do you wear dentures?"
"I lost it in the Battle of the Bulge," he replied. "I was in Patton's Army," he said proudly. He pointed with his hand toward the stump of an arm. His good hand, covered with age spots, and shook slightly as he pointed. His granddaughter placed his artificial arm next to his hearing aide on the table. The nurse motioned with her mouth to open his mouth. He did. Carefully, she looked inside.
A short stocky GI in the bed in the opposite corner said, "I had my seventieth birthday on a little mountain top North of Seoul, South Korea in 1952." You could tell his body once had been rock hard and bullet proof. Now, it was bent, twisted, and riddled with pain.
"The sarge promised me a three-day pass. I had my three-day pass. The next day we were overran and had to retreat. The Chinese had six armies north of the Yulu River. They gave their soldiers strong doses of opium before every battle. They could take a full blast from a machine gun. Unless you cut their legs off, they would just keep on coming. We had to take Seoul back three times. They had the Olympics near there a few years ago. They gave out gold medals. I got a Purple Heart. All my buddies got was a hole in their heart."
A wheelchair stood empty in the bed next to me. The nurses helped a large hulk of a man, who looked like an older Orson Wells, up and into the bed. They removed the left artificial leg of a GI in his fifties. His other foot looked like a swollen over-ripe, giant beet, a giant reddish and blue beet with scars carved into it by some harvesting machine of death. I knew this happened in Viet Nam. The scars of many other operations told me they were going to do another operation to try to save his one good leg, again. Land mines would have been more exact, quick and cutting. Something crushed this leg into surrender. Some GI's like to talk; some never do. I looked for more clues that would tell me his story. There was no baseball cap with a battalion insignia. Only the scars, he wore unseen all the time unlike the battlefield medals worn on one's chest in parades. I listened. He was talking to his wife on the other side of the bed. "They have found a helicopter control collective and are going to send it to you," she said to him.
"Good" he said, "I can replace the lever on the side of my reclining chair. Then I can do some real arm chair flying," he laughed.
I knew. He was a Viet Nam veteran like me, a helicopter pilot. I looked over at the large strong left hand. It once raised and lowered the control collective on a UH-1 Huey, Utility Helicopter number one. I could see the big smile on his face as he pushed the throttle to full power to take a "newbie" for a ride. Sitting on the ground empty and at nearly full power, the giant rotor whirling above would shake the aircraft like some washer on a back porch in a unbalanced spin cycle. Its single jet engine screamed like an oversized dog whistle. Nothing was out of control here. Everything was under control. It was a wait for the rotor to get to one hundred per cent power. Then he would speak into his headset microphone and say to the "newbie" passenger, "Fasten your seat belt."
Then he would place that large left on the top rounded control section of the collective and pull up slowly, carefully at first, then stronger. You did not notice the change in the pitch of the rotating blur outside. First you heard the sound of the jet engine go from a high pitched scream to a low roar. Then you felt lift off, more lift, straight up. The empty helicopter could climb almost like a rocket. The hands on the altimeter were spinning around faster and faster, finally to stop at ten thousand feet. Again you get the big smile, "I told you to fasten your seat belt." The ride is not over. With his right hand, he takes the joystick, lowers the nose, then drops the collective. You come down faster than you went up, only to settle, feather and land like a bird. Today an IV was inserted into that big left hand.
"When did you last go flying a helicopter," I asked, as I looked over at his bed.
There was no response. Then, he smiled. His wife laughed. "About a month ago."
"I knew that. You rode one in," I asked?
"More than one."
"You were having so much fun, I had to do it again," I asked?
"I went back three times. They kept fixing me up, and long as I could push the rudder pedals they let me fly. So I volunteered. They shot six out from under me. You learn how to dodge the rotor flex when you crash. If you don't duck, it will take your head off. Where else could you fly like that?" he asked.
"The most fun you can have with your clothes on?" I asked.
"You got it, they wouldn't let us fly naked," he laughed.
The others in the room were listening and laughed. An attending nurse walked over and said, "Well it's time to fly on out of this room," and wheeled him out. One-by-one, they wheeled them out.
I was scheduled to be last. There was a complication with the number three operation so my surgery was delayed. The nurse and I were alone in the surgery holding room. The TV displayed a scene of an explosion of an improvised explosive devise in Baghdad. In a few years those injured GI's will be here. The attending nurse was updating the computer files. I complained I was getting hungry.
She told me, "Soon you won't even think about being hungry. What do you think about the war in Irag."
"What choice do we have. We must get a backup oil supply or accelerate a change to renewable energy resources. We cannot depend on the Saudis anymore. They are the only ones to ever bomb the mainland America. But we have a special relationship with them; and we need their oil so it is okay. They give billions of our money to the terrorists. Their mullahs issue fatwa's to kill all infidels and crusaders on sight. The Saudi, Islamic, Fascist Wahabbis seek to restore the Caliphate on earth. Imagine the entire world run like Afghanistan under the Taliban. It's sort of like the Stone Age with electricity and no women's rights movement. Well, to be more exact, just no women's rights. So, if we have to fight a war and women have to give up all their basic rights, well, that's the price we have to pay for oil.
"We can fight a war if we have to, but this woman is not going to give up any of her rights," she replied.
"We will have to keep a huge American Army there for generations in order to secure the oil supply. Unfortunately, the longer we stay, the more they are going to hate us, and the more dead Marines it is going to cost us," I said.
Then she asked me what I did. I told her I was working on a proposal to develop a wind energy cooperative in eastern North Carolina.
She asked me, "would it create jobs?"
"Yes, I told her thousands over time and it would help make America more energy independent."
"I am a single mother with three sons. My two youngest twins graduated from Catawba College over a year ago. They have yet to find jobs. One is starting to become clinically depressed and wants to stop looking. He keeps getting turned down everywhere, told there are no openings and now yells at her, what's the use? My oldest is a Marine," she added.
I told her, "When I was in the Air Force I ran hundred of missions with the Marines and she should be very proud." I looked up at the TV and looked back at her. "He's in Irag."
"Yes, been over there almost a year and in the Marines over three years. His wife and two kids are living with me. He wants to get out and go to college on the GI bill. If he re-enlists he will go directly back to Irag. His brothers have told him it is impossible to get a job here. He just emailed me. He is going to reenlist and asked me to tell his wife."
After she told me this she inserted the IV needle into my left hand. Before she turned on the valve to the IV with the anesthetic to render me unconscious she reached over, looked directly into my eyes and said this to me. "We will do a good job on you, get you fixed up right, so you can get back to work, create those jobs and bring our Marines home."
They did just that the care I received was better than anywhere else, private or public hospital. In a very few days I was feeling even stronger than before. I did get back to work. I realized that I was still a soldier, this time fighting the real war. The real war is economic. In the age of twenty-first century global competition we were in for a fight of our lives. It is not just a fight for money. It is a fight for our pride and self-reliance. It is a fight for jobs, good jobs with full benefits and the security to know that your job will not be exported in a year or so. It is a fight against poverty and ignorance. It is a fight for a good quality education. It is a fight to insure all children have access to proper health care. We are loosing. We are loosing thousands of plants and millions of jobs each year. The plants are not being bombed and the people are unemployed not killed in action. Yet what weapons do I have to use? Are we to wait for the magic of the market place? Do we all have to sit around and wait for the "magic hand of Adam Smith to move? Do we just give up and wait for the magic handout from the government? When will this happen? When American workers get so impoverished they will work for forty-seven cents per hour? Is this a simple international labor market situation? Is this our governments answer to global competition? Abject poverty for tens of millions?
I do not have any new JDAMS to launch from 40,000 feet that will drop in and destroy these evils. I only have charts and spreadsheets and wind energy maps. However, my economic development proposal is more than a prospective business plan and economic analysis. It is more than the timely application of local pro-active political power to help solve an economic problem. It is more than a region's response to global competition. It is more than counties seeking to work together for a greater economic and public good. It is hope and this operation would repair me to be sent back into battle to fight the real war.
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