End of Winter (Rewrite & Expansions into Book Four)

Victory and Rescue

"We'd met them in blood and steel."
"We'd killed them in the dark and cold."
"So naturally the Rangers 'rescued' us."
"Because we're REMF's."

2/19th Special Weapons Group
Restricted Area, Alfenwehr West Germany
Winter—January, 1985
Day 19 of Repairs
Day 11 of the Second Incident
Afternoon, 1400 Zulu

Bomber was standing next to me, both of us carrying XM16E1s we'd pulled out of the armory of the War Fighter Tunnels, dressed in the remains of our uniforms. We looked dirty, bloody, on our feet and standing tall, but we were both exhausted, chewing on Vicodin like candy, and still in pain. My pinky was taped to my ring finger, Nancy was pretty sure they were going to have to pin the bone, making it so both palms had metal in them. The white of my left eye was solid red, blood filled, a demon's eye. I poked out the glass in the left lens of my glasses and wore an eye patch. The rifle butt had broken my cheekbone and the eye socket.

I hoped they could fix my eye.

Melkin and Parker were opening the door, Parker standing so he'd be the only one in the line of fire. Lancer had insisted on being part of the door team, quoting the "most expendable" rule that guided our lives. He made constant jokes about being blind, but twice I'd walked into the bathroom and found him sitting in a stall crying softly.

One of the times Dobbs had been sitting with him, holding his hand.

I'd kept silent about that.

Dobbs was behind us, an eyepatch from the medical clinic over her empty socket, her face speckled with scabs. Her eye had gotten infected and Nancy had just removed it rather than risk the infection getting into her brain or nasal cavity. I'd seen Dobbs's chest too, it was covered in scabs like an Irish girl's freckles, as was her left shoulder. Nancy had put in a lot of stitches; she told me privately that Dobbs had won the shrapnel game, with 128 separate holes. Bomber had come in second, his legs torn up with 78 little holes in them. Stokes was third, most of it in that big ass of hers. Foster had beaten everyone at stitches or staples, clocking in at almost 200 of them. Dobbs had come in a close second with 145. None of the rest of us were even close.

Foster had taken what he called "the most painful shit of his life" yesterday, and I'd stood over Nagle while she'd used a metal rod to stir through it, looking at. I have no clue what she was looking for, since it was shit, but hey, she knew shit I didn't. His color was good, he could wiggle his fingers and toes, his drainage tubes were clear of infection, his breathing was good, his heart rate and pulse strong. He was doped up on morphine all the time, but he was in good spirits

I still had a chest tube in just like Parker, the LT still had a drainage tube in his skull and was often light sensitive or suffered from migraines. But he refused to rest during them, working even while his hands shook.

Twice Nagle sedated him, four times he suffered seizures, and when he slept he often mumbled about Vietnam. Even awake, he often became dazed and returned to Vietnam, mumbling to himself or outright talking to people who weren't there or that he was mistaking us for.

He was dying in front of us.

And there wasn't a goddamn thing we could do about it.

Nagle had spent all her time sleeping, reading a manual, or following the manuals' instructions working on us. Lanks and Stokes had gotten a lot of practice too, mainly working on Nagle. They'd had to put a chest tube in her at one point, which apparently went in differently on a woman. Where me and I both had them a few inches above and to the side of our nipples, hers was on her side. She had to sleep sitting up, pneumonia having set in. She told me that if a female had large breasts, and injured her ribs, it put her at risk of pneumonia and bronchitis. The other females bitched, but she pretty laid it down that they had to sleep sitting up; the LT backed her up, and they got used to it.