SomeNetBlog

He thought himself well.

Posted: October 31, 2008 1:14 am by KG4RCP
Filed under: Kevin, Uncategorized

Hello to everyone!

What follows is a sample of my writing which is between three and eight (I suppose) years old. I recently found it when searching for something entirely different. I’d forgotten all about it, and because

it was salvaged from a hard-drive crash, it was only numerically named.

Enjoy!

He thought himself well.

His legs, like those of a chronic diabetic with peripheral vascular disease, were amputated below the knee. All that remained his two strong lower legs were a memory.

It was the IEDs.

It was the Humvee.

It was the desert sand.

It was Hell.

He thought himself well.

His neighbor in the bed adjacent his was blind, having been burned over much of his upper body when a booby trap exploded near his convoy.

He was the lucky one. His platoon buddies rushed to the scene of his burning vehicle and pulled him from the inferno. The others weren’t so lucky. Their screams still echoed in his mind. They returned to haunt him at the most inopportune times, like when he thought himself once again in the lush mountain stream canyons in North Alabama. The sound of the wind rustling through the leaves, and the muted sounds of water rushing over rocks, in conjunction with the songs of a thousand birds calling to each other for friendship, food and mating came rushing through his mind.

He wondered about his wife, and he wondered about his life. The familiar strains of “Ru—by, don’t take your love to town,” flashed through his memory in a queer sort of way. Why would he think of a “man whose legs are bent and paralyzed,” when he had no legs to stand upon?

He reached down to scratch his balls with the three fingers of his right hand. Tugging at his crotch, he pulled his scrotum against the rough fabric of the denim. It was a trick, and he wondered about his missing thumb. He thought it’s a good thing his manhood wasn’t compromised… or was it?

He thought himself well.

He thought about the thumb that had dealt countless decks of cards in Pinochle, Tonk, Uno and Poker.

He’d seen very few ‘thousand yard stares’ that some Viet Nam veterans spoke of having once they returned stateside. It was the ‘seeing beyond you, and your immediate surroundings’ mentality pervasive during jungle warfare. You didn’t know who your friend or enemy was – if you could see them; it was true also in Iraq where a seemingly empty box on the roadside could conceal death.

It was definitely different fighting men who concealed rockets in donkey carts, and IEDs in empty book boxes. And the kids…

Children who should be playing with toys and romping about with others were instead carrying Kalishnikovs, bearing the wounded signs of an aborted childhood in their faces.

The all too familiar metallic sounds of ‘kelatch-kelunk-click’ had replaced the tinkling bells and calliope-like strains of “Pop Goes the Weasel” on the neighborhood ice cream truck.

The occasional ‘who-ish, foom’ and the accompanying explosion of a mortar round, broke the high-pitched shrill sounds of the imam calling the Islamic faithful to evening prayers blared through the 1950’s era crackling megaphones and echoed off the walls of every dusty building for miles around.

The nurse came into his room, “it’s time for your meds, sir,” as she prepared to wheel him into the treatment room.

As much as he wanted, he didn’t imagine her in privacy. She was to him, merely a means to an end. He was silent except for a muted, “I’m ready.”

His mind was racing as the seconds ticked by. The briefest scene became a weeklong story, and the scenes were ticking by like a hundredth’s digit on a stopwatch.

The white daisies at Marianne’s June wedding… the first time he saw his newborn son… his mama and daddy’s 45th wedding anniversary… the motorcycle trip to the Smokies… camping out by the lake every other weekend during May… friends, family, church… tens of thousands, if not millions of images flooded his mind.

He was there in spirit… those images were permanently etched in his neurons, the ganglions and synapses, the once mysterious grey matter that made up his memory.

As they entered the room, it was soothing and remarkably neutral in theme. Not quite white, neither grey, yellow, blue, pink or green, the room seemed to be all colors. He inhaled slowly and deeply. It smelled like home. He thought himself well.

Closing his eyes he found himself in the middle of the fields near his country house. His neighbor’s cows were grazing silently in the brambles and scrub brush adjacent the barbed wire fence.

Breaking the scene was the metallic snap of probes being fitted together and into the machines.

“Sir, we’re going to place these electrodes on your scalp now,” said the nurse as she deftly attached wire after wire to his now-bare head.

“When I’m through with these, you’ll need to turn to your side so we can access your occipital input.”

He was as silent as a sheep before its shearer, and only nodded acknowledgement.

The placements took at least 15 minutes, and every circuit was tested, and the entire system tested when all but the occipital input was secure.

‘All systems go,’ he thought to himself as they completed the last circuit test.

‘Go, go, go!,’ echoed the voices in his head as he recalled the track and field event from his high school days. He could still hear the familiar crunch of gravel under his track shoes as he remembered flying around the corners of the quarter mile track.

The smell of male sweat, and the sound of the spectators filled his senses.

He caught his breath.

“I can see you’re already there,” said the physician. “That’s good, continue as you are.”

The doctor walked over to complete the final circuit.

Taking a tube in one hand, and an electrode in another he stepped forward.

Placing the electrode on the pillow, he took his shaved head in his hand and tuned it 45 degrees to his right, then twenty degrees down.

Gently screwing one fitting to the other, he secured the connection. All that remained was the shunt.

Glancing to the side the physician saw the pressurized bag, the stopcock, the pump’s digital readout, and the multi-display screen that showed breathing, pulse rate, blood pressure and electroencephalographic display. It was critical to have the voltage, timing, intensity, frequency and duration perfect.

Inside the control chamber, there were other machines displaying measurements and analyses of myotonic contractions, blood pH, oxygenation levels, sedementation rates, generation rates of T-cells, stem cells, white and red blood cells, even the movement of myelin. Every vessel, cell and tissue in his body was being monitored, including every electrical, chemical and motor function for capacity in every conceivable fashion.

“We have a picture,” said one of the anonymous scientist technicians.

“What are you thinking, Ted?” The physician looked into his eyes.