Harry Parker - Anatomy of a Soldier

I hung on a stand attached to your bed. Four of them were wheeling us along corridors to the intensive care unit, and one looked down at you and was worried. She told the others you were still delirious.

You mumbled. You weren’t where they were: not yet in the hospital corridor with the strip lights pulsing above. You were on a table back in camp, and they were pushing you through your room and past the TV room and the dining room and the boot room, and then into a house where your family were waiting. Your friends — all the people you served with, all your brothers — were pushing you through the corridors and laughing at you and you laughed with them. But you were scared and wanted them to stop, but they wouldn’t. You didn’t want to play this game any more — it wasn’t funny.

You mouthed words and then your head rolled from side to side and you furrowed your brow.

‘Don’t,’ you said, ‘please don’t.’

Something was wrong but you were safe with your friends. And then there was another voice, coming from somewhere else and starting to penetrate. You couldn’t understand that it was saying your name from above and telling you something — you knew it wasn’t a friend.

‘Tom,’ it said, ‘Tom.’

It was the woman pushing the back of the bed. I was next to her, swinging from a hook. She wore blue scrubs and had pulled her mask down around her neck.

‘He’s away with the fairies,’ she told the nurses. ‘Completely delirious.’

‘What’s he saying?’ one of them said, as she pushed the front of the bed around a corner.

‘Not sure. He’s mumbling.’

‘Well, it would be good if he looked less shell-shocked by the time we get to the ICU,’ she said. ‘His parents are waiting to see him.’

You looked hot below me and your face was greasy.

You could still hear them all laughing at you and you couldn’t stop. You wanted to stop but you kept going faster and faster through the rooms.

‘Tom, Tom,’ the voice cut in again. ‘Listen to me.’

You couldn’t tell whose it was, but it was harsh and unfriendly.

‘Tom, my name is Sarah, I’m a doctor. You have been blown up. You stepped on an IED. We’ve just had to amputate your second leg.’

This information hammered through you. You wanted to be back in camp, or anywhere else, but you knew it was true and you remembered. You opened your eyes. You were in the corridor and you looked up at them and the ceiling flashing past. You saw me suspended above you and the blurred tube connecting us. The doctor’s upside-down head stared down at you. All your friends had gone.

‘Tom, can you hear me?’ she said and smiled.

You nodded below me.

‘Do you understand?’

You nodded again.

They wheeled us through automatic double doors and we were in a ward where the bays were filled with beds and broken bodies and machines that winked above them. A nurse walked past with a kidney dish.

A man approached us.

‘He’s in this bay, over here,’ he said.

We were wheeled next to the window. You were unconscious again when the nurses started to plug you into new machines. They placed a plastic peg on your finger and stuck round electrodes to your chest. The machine above faltered and then charted your heart. One of the nurses looked at the displays and noted the readings in a file. Another squeezed me.

‘Still on blood?’ she said.

‘Dr Pearson wants him to have one more after this,’ the doctor who brought us in answered. ‘And also get him started on AmBisome, for the fungal infection.’

‘Has that been added to his prescription?’

‘Should be. I’ll check. He’ll need monitoring. It was touch and go in surgery earlier.’

‘We heard.’

Soon only one nurse was left adjusting the machines. Then she went too and you were on your own. I was still above you, feeding into your arm. You mumbled once but were mostly still.

*

The nurse came back with a man and a woman. They stood by the bed and looked down at you, then glanced at me and the digital displays behind. They were worried but relieved you were back.

They saw where the doctors had worked on you and marvelled at the change. Then they looked at your face and smiled, even though you had no life in your skin. The nurse told them the plan: the new medications you were on, and how you would be monitored until they were sure the infection had been managed. She pointed at me and said I was just a precaution to get you back up to speed. She explained they could talk to you, that you’d been conscious since surgery.

The woman put a red handbag on the windowsill and reached for your hand.

‘Tom,’ she said, ‘Tom? It’s okay now. We’re here.’

You didn’t move and they pulled up chairs and waited. The man went to get a drink of water and came back and they sat together. They were gazing across the ward staring into space when you came round and spoke.

‘I’m hot,’ you said and tried to lift away the blanket. ‘Can I have some water?’

She looked down at you and smiled.

‘Hello, Tom,’ she said. ‘It’s us.’

‘How are you feeling?’ the man asked.

‘I’m really hot.’

‘I’ll go and find you a nurse.’

When he left you looked at her and smiled. You still felt odd. Worse than the other times you’d come out of surgery. She smiled and told you it would be okay now.

He returned.

‘Someone’s just going to get you something, Tom,’ he said. ‘You’ve been through the wars again, I’m afraid.’

‘Sorry,’ you said.

‘Don’t be silly. The doctors reckon it’s all for the best. You’re back in intensive care as a precaution, just until the infection’s gone.’

‘He never should’ve gone up to that other ward,’ she said. ‘Not with that infection.’

He placed a hand on her arm. ‘Well, they’ve caught it now,’ he said.

‘How are you?’ you asked them, but closed your eyes and slept.

*

I was nearly empty when you woke. They were still there and you smiled at them and the man held the plastic cup to your mouth. A nurse came over, asked if you wanted to sit up and helped arrange the pillows behind you.

You felt disembodied. Everything was somehow abstract. You looked down and they watched your reaction. You saw where the blue thermal blanket dropped down flat to the mattress. There was no longer the bulge of a foot. With your knee gone it was shorter than the other leg. It shocked you, but it wasn’t you yet and you smiled at them and said you were all right.

‘It was very badly damaged anyway, Tom,’ the man said. ‘You’ll probably be more mobile this way.’

‘And we spoke to Dr Pearson,’ she said. ‘He said you’ll have no problems with prosthetics. They were very pleased with the operation.’

You slept again. She left and he stayed all night and watched you, willing you to get better. A nurse told him he should go in the morning. When you woke you looked around. You’d been here before but it seemed different. It was sunny outside and the window was full of green leaves. The tree was in the corner of a breezeblock courtyard. A man was loading cages of laundry into a van among the central-heating pipes. There was a green and pleasant land out there, you thought, but it felt very far away.

You looked at where you now finished. You would never feel a foot on the floor again, but it didn’t matter yet. Somehow you knew you were still on the edge, you needed to survive and feet didn’t matter. You just needed to endure. You looked at a passing nurse and hoped they would protect you from the pain or getting worse and having to have more cut away.

I was empty; my plastic walls had collapsed together and red showed only around my seals. The rest of the blood I’d carried since a young man donated it after a lecture, joking with a mate in the queue, was now in you.