Brotherhood

My hands are covered in the crimson warmth of his blood. I try to ignore it, yet every beat of his heart fires another salvo of his life on my hands. I yell, “Justin, apply direct pressure to the wound with this battle dressing!” I try to focus on my training; “Keep your cool, Sean,” I tell myself. Everyone else around me is going ape shit. I see he is getting paler; it’s the first sign of shock. He’s clawing at me and everyone around him. I glance into his eyes and time stands still. He looks through my soul and pleads, “Please, don’t let me die.”

I just arrived back to Camp Pendelton after two weeks of leave. It was good to relax with my parents and family after completing Field Medical School. We were all anxious about the upcoming days. We knew we were shipping off to Kuwait. We just didn’t know how soon. I remember getting on that C-130 and thinking, “This is going to be a long ride.” The plane was shaking like a sixteen year old boy on prom night. “I bet this is how Buddy Holly felt,” I hollered over to my partner Justin. It seemed like forever when we finally landed in Bahrain. It wasn’t long before we were in route to Kuwait. Little did I know, but endlessly long days were ahead of me.

Three months in country and the same old routine. Get up, report to morning muster, eat chow, hurry up and wait. We liked to play football to pass the time away. I was catching my breath after running down Justin to save a touchdown when the explosion went off. The thunderous blast sounded as if the heavens had opened up and let loose upon us. I dropped to ground in a defensive response. “What the hell was that?” Justin yelled to me. “I don’t know!” I screamed back. I could just see the billow of the black smoke up over one of the sand dunes. Everyone started to race towards it. I was half the way there when I heard guys yelling for a Doc. I grabbed my pack and made it over to find a jeep in utter shambles; the smoking wreckage lay upon the sand like something out of a Terminator movie. There were three bodies on site; in the jeep were two already dead and one lay writhing in pain on the hot desert sand. We went to work on him straight away, all the time I was freaking out inside.