"Doc!"

               “Jesus, shut up Lance! I’m tired of listening to you bitch about your wife. Even the rag-heads on the other side of that ridge are tired of hearing how she is screwing her college professor. Just shut the fuck up – we’re in a freaking live combat zone for God’s sake.”

                But I couldn’t just let it go, this was my wife, the woman that I had been in love with since the 5^th grade. I had thought that she loved me too but I’d been in this freaking sandbox for 3 and a half months and she was pregnant. Six weeks pregnant. I had done the math until I couldn’t add 1+1 and there was just no way that I was the father. Add to that the fact that my neighbor, old Mrs. Greenwood, had written me a letter telling me about how much time that “fancy educated man” from the community college was spending at my house and there was no getting around it. Tammy was cheating on me.

                I needed to get my head back on track though. Gary was right, there were shells going off all around us and I could feel the sharp sting of rock splinters pelting my right cheek as I hugged close to the stone wall beside us. I needed to stay alert, both for my own sake, but also so that if one of our guys got hit I would know it and get to him as soon as possible. In a firefight seconds could literally mean the difference between life and death.

                And just as I had that thought I heard a high pitch whistle. Suddenly everything was enveloped in a cloud of dust, sand and grit. I could barely see or hear and I was coughing so hard I thought I was going to puke. I tried to look around me to see exactly where I was and who was ok or needed help. As the dust cloud began to settle I found that I was the only member of the fire team still on my feet.

Gary, who had been right in front of me, was now on his face, a huge hole where his left shoulder and neck had been. Sean, who had been behind me, was now a little to my left on his back, holding his side and wailing. Our rear-guard Kevin was also on the ground. His helmet was about a foot away from his head and I could see blood covering his face and shoulders. He was moaning and whimpering. I could just make his words out, “Is anyone there? Lance? Gary? Sean? Anyone?

I pulled my pack off my back and knelt down beside him. “Kevin, I’m here! I got you!” I opened my canteen and splashed some water over his head and face. I needed to see where the blood was coming from. There, running up his left jawbone to just past his temple was a deep slash. It looked like someone had taken a broken piece of glass and tried to saw his ear off. I yanked a pressure bandage from my kit and slapped it on the side of his head, wrapping it tightly to stop the bleeding. From what I could tell, as long as the bleeding was under control he’d be fine. He probably had a serious concussion but there really wasn’t anything I could do about that out here. I ran my eyes over him quickly to see if there were any other injuries but aside from a few handfuls of tiny shrapnel splinters he was ok. Those were not immediately life threatening so I pulled his helmet back over his head and moved over to check Sean. The whole time Keven had kept whimpering, “Is anyone there?”

Sean was still on his back holding his side, only now he was also rolling slightly back and forth. His wails had subsided into smaller cries and moans of pain. His eyes were shut tightly and his face was a twisted grimace. I tried to pull his hands away so that I could get a look at the wound but he fought my grip. I yelled at him to relax and let me do my job but it was like he wasn’t hearing me. I clawed through my kit and found a morphine syringe. “This’ll do the trick,” I thought and gave Sean the dose. Then I waited a few seconds for it to kick in. He began to relax almost immediately. I pulled his hands away to find a credit card sized piece of jagged metal sticking out of his side just under his ribs.

“Damn that’s gotta feel really good,” I murmured as I gently but thoroughly probed around the wound to try and determine the extent of the damage and to see if I should leave it in or pull it out. It didn’t feel like there was any major organ perforation but I could tell that there was some internal bleeding. Best to leave it where it was for now and let the field surgeons take it out. I pulled some bandages and gauze wraps from my kit and began to stabilize the chunk of shrapnel. Then I taped everything tightly for good measure.

Ok, Sean and Kevin were good to go and Gary was unable to be helped. I stood up to look around for the radio. I needed to call in our position so that we could get a medic team in here to get these guys to safety. That’s when I noticed how quiet it had become. The only sound I could here was Sean murmuring over and over again, “Is anyone there?” “Is anyone there?” “Is anyone there?” I shivered. It was creepy how he just kept saying that. I turned to look behind me and that’s when I saw it.

The shell had hit directly between Gary and Sean. The body was in three pieces. The head and half of one arm was right up against the rock wall that we had been sheltering against. The rest of the body was lying about 3 feet from there, shredded. I shuddered again as Kevin whispered, “Is anyone there?”

I don’t think I’ll need to worry about Tammy cheating anymore.