children, and little children standing with desperate expressions beside horribly mangled parents.
What did the terrorists hope to accomplish by this indiscriminate massacre? Worse, I overheard somebody mention that this was only half the casualties; the rest had been rushed to civilian hospitals, which eventually were overwhelmed and began diverting the overflow to the care of the U.S. military.
At one point, Enzenauer and I exchanged eye contact. The ugly irony of us bringing bin Pacha, here, at this moment in time, caught us both off guard and feeling guilty.
In this cauldron of misery and confusion, the admitting nurse asked only a few cursory questions and showed no curiosity or dubiousness about our responses before Ali bin Pacha was admitted for emergency surgery. In Iraq, it seemed, everybody has the inalienable right to get hurt without explaining why.
Doc Enzenauer dutifully emphasized the diplomatic importance of his patient to the admitting nurse, and a few minutes later repeated it word for word to an Army doctor, along with a few comments about his own credentials, which turned out to be fairly impressive--John Hopkins Med School, internship at Georgetown Hospital, specialties in psychiatry and the heart--and he was allowed to enter the surgery room as an attending physician.
I found a cup of coffee and sat and waited two hours before I could hitch a ride on a military ambulance transporting patients to the airport for evacuation to the hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. Both patients lay on stretchers, one unconscious, the other floating in and out, so dulled by drugs the difference was negligible.
An attractive nurse, who looked mildly Latina and seemed quite pleasant, rode with me in the rear of the ambulance. Her nametag read Foster, and I asked her, "What's your first name?"
"Claudia."
I didn't see a wedding or engagement band, and I asked the question I ask all attractive women. "Married?"
"Five years now. My husband's in New York City. That's where I'm from. The Big Apple, right?"
"Isn't that a suburb of New Jersey?" She did not seem to appreciate this comment, but she smiled a little dryly, and I asked, "Miss it?"
"What I would do for a real tuna ceviche. You know this meal? A Honduran dish. Served in a coconut shell. Muy delicioso. There's a restaurant in the city, Patria. Real Latin food." She laughed. "I still got four months left on this tour. My crazy husband already made a reservation for the day I get back. Is he some kind of nut or what?"
And so we passed the drive for a while; she loved her husband, she missed him, and couldn't wait to get back and make babies by the bushel.
Claudia was Army National Guard--a part-timer--and the last thing she or her husband had expected was a combat tour that interrupted their lives. I eventually asked her, "What happened to these men?"
She pointed at the unconscious patient and said, "Sergeant Elby is a truck driver. National Guard. Like me." She reached over and carefully adjusted his blanket, a gesture as unnecessary as it was telling.
"A roadside bomb, about a month ago. Both legs are gone, his left hip, too. Also his kidneys aren't functioning, so he needs dialysis twice a day. The damage from these bombs is . . ." She looked away for a moment. "He might lose an arm before we're done."
Not they're done, or he's done; we're done.
I glanced at Sergeant Elby--he appeared young, about twenty-five, and his face was heavily bandaged except for his nose, which was bruised, scabbed, and apparently broken. His left hand, also covered with scabs, stuck out from beneath the blanket. I noted a thick gold wedding band. I could not imagine this level of damage inflicted on a human body. In fact, I did not want to.
She stroked the hair of the other patient and commented, "Lieutenant Donnie Workman. He graduated from West Point only two years ago. Shot by a sniper during the assault on Karbala. The bullet entered his chest cavity and tumbled and ricocheted around, ripping up a heart valve and perforating a lung and his stomach. He's touch and go."
I watched her face as she stared down at these battered and broken men. I said, "You care deeply about them. I see that. Will you travel to Germany with them?"
"No . . . I . . ." She hesitated. "I'll hand them off . . . to the flight crew. It's a medical flight--good people, very competent, and . . . they don't lose many passengers."