Michael Palmer: The Last Surgeon

As usual, Junie Wright looked like royalty perched on the massive passenger seat, her iPod earphones in place.

“Let me guess,” Nick said as he eased the RV down the street and toward the interstate south to D.C., “the Temptations.”

“Nope.”

“Sam Cooke?”

“Way off.”

“Not more rap.”

“Yup, it’s my main man, Jay-Z. Pure sex through and through. Ummm-hmm.” She punctuated the statement with a seductive shoulder shake and flashed him the smile that had raised so much money for various charities that it could have eliminated a chunk of the national debt.

An ample African-American woman with wide bright eyes and what seemed a perpetual smile, Junie was raised in the projects of Baltimore. After battling a thousand dragons on her way to a high school diploma, making it through nursing school was a relative breeze. She had been working for the Helping Hands Medical Foundation for some time when Nick returned to medicine and began volunteering first one night a week, then, after a half a year, two.

When the foundation went under due to mismanagement of their funds, Junie did what she often did in so many crises-she took control. First she formed a tax-exempt corporation with Nick as CEO and herself as chairman of the board. Then she mediated the sale of the RV to the corporation for one dollar. She proclaimed Nick the full-time, salaried medical director, and used his rugged good looks and history as a decorated combat surgeon to raise money and recruit volunteers. But by far her biggest challenge over the years-especially since the disappearance of Nick’s best friend, Umberto Vasquez-had been keeping the medical director afloat.

“We’re gonna get wet tonight,” she said, setting her iPod aside.

Nick nodded, keeping his focus on the road. Junie was good at many things, but making small talk was not one of them. The seemingly innocuous statement was her way of asking if he was okay and ready for their customary long night. One of the many symptoms that had gotten in his way since the horror of Forward Operating Base Savannah had been insomnia-fitful, perspiring, leg-cramping, nasty insomnia, coupled with more than one person’s share of lurid nightmares.

“I can handle it,” he replied. “I’m tough.”

He turned the massive wipers on against the drops that were serving as reconnaissance for the storm that was predicted to hit full force by about eight. Junie, deciding that matters with him weren’t dire enough to push, repositioned her earpieces and settled back into her seat. From the other side of the highway, lights flashed past hypnotically, summoning up, as they frequently did, the vision of another set of headlights…

“That was some job you did in there, Dr. Fury, sir.”

Nick grins at the name, taken from one of Vasquez’s favorite comic book heroes-Sgt. Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. Now, after five months, most of the hospital staff and many of the other soldiers have picked up on it.

Dr. Nick Fury.

“You’re the one who plugged that sucking chest wound in that kid, Umberto,” Nick says.

“Well, you’re the one who taught us how to do it .”

“ So, congratulations to us both. Listen, my friend, I have something I’ve been meaning to give you for some time. But before I do, I want your promise not to refuse it.”

“But -”

“ Promise .”

“ Okay, okay. I promise.”

Nick reaches into the pocket of his scrubs and hands over his Combat Medical Badge, presented for medical service during active combat. It is a handsome award-oval, an inch and a half across, with a caduceus beneath a Greek cross at the center, overlaid on a field stretcher.

“I take this into the OR with me for luck,” Nick says. “I want you to have it not only for what you do around here, but for the way you do it.”

“I can’t-”

“ Uh-uh. You promised.”

Umberto sighs.

“I’m honored, sir. I’ll take real good care of it. Promise. In exchange, have a see-gar.”

The stocky Marine staff sergeant, nearly half a head shorter than Nick but probably the same weight, produces two long cheroots, and the friends move to the front of the massive field hospital to light up. Nick is gritty with fatigue from what is now an eighteen-hour day. Vasquez never seems to tire.

FOB Savannah, one hundred kilometers southeast of Khost, isn’t usually the busiest field hospital in Afghanistan, but today it probably has been. A convoy heading to the base along main supply road “Tiger” had been ambushed. Two deaths, twenty casualties. Four OR bays in continuous action all day. Bellies, limbs, heads, and the sucking chest wound in an eighteen-year-old named Anderson. Nice work by Umberto, who never failed to take one of Nick’s combat emergency lectures. Nice work by the whole team, including Nick’s fiancée of six months, Sarah Berman, also a surgeon.

She was career Army when they met. Nick, fairly new to a private practice in Philadelphia on September 11, 2001, had been hit hard emotionally by the tragedy, and had opted out of the reserves and into active duty. The two of them were as made for each other as they were fated to connect.

Nick and Vasquez lean against a Humvee parked in the dirt lot to the left of the main door and savor their cigars.

“You going to re-up when your tour is over?” Vasquez asks, his Dominican accent barely detectable.

“Maybe. I really love the work and the guys. So does Sarah.”

“ You’ve really hit the jackpot with that one, Doc. ”

“ Tell me about it. ”

“ The guys are crazy about her, and even more important, they respect her. She’s still at it in there.”

“Almost done. No need to save her a cigar, though.”

Nick, a self-proclaimed “adrenaline junkie,” has had three or four cigars in his life. This one, given his exhaustion, exhilaration, and the night air, is the very best. He warns himself against getting too fond of them. Sarah hates the way they make his kisses taste. It is nearly 3A.M.A firm breeze sweeps across the desert, but provides little cooling. Far away, near the camp perimeter, a pair of headlights appears-twin stars jouncing toward them through the blackness.

“Who do you suppose that is?” Vasquez asks, inhaling deeply and exhaling through his nose. He flips on his radio and calls the guardhouse. “This is Vasquez at the hospital. Who’s bouncing across the desert at us?”

“That’d be Zmarai from the clinic down the road, Sergeant. He’s coming to check on his people from the firestorm this morning. Also, wants to mooch some supplies off you guys.”

“Vasquez out,” Vasquez says, turning to Nick. “Zmarai-now there’s a scary dude. Beady eyes. Bad teeth.”

“I’ll bet he thinks the same of you,” Nick counters. “He does a good job running that place and the little store. At least we have positive news for him this time. The two civilian casualties are both gonna make it.”

The lights from Zmarai’s truck move closer. The Afghani is a local leader who has his fingers in most of the area’s pies, and often passes through security on his way to pick up supplies for the tiny clinic he runs. They know him well.

The battered, ancient Chevy pulls into the floodlit perimeter and stops fifteen feet from the massive wooden door to the hospital.

“Hey, Zmarai,” Nick calls out as he approaches, “what’s in the truck? I sure hope it’s pizza.”