This short tale is my entry for the '
Heroism - the Oggbashan Memorial Event 2023
'.
Take a moment to raise a glass in Ogg's memory;
as somebody once said, they don't hardly make 'em like that no more.
Spoiler alert: To disappoint some and reassure others,
despite the title, this contains not a shred of incest.
+   +    +
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.
Men At Work
Don't call me a hero.
Please.
I'm not.
I've known heroes. I've seen people do things that still amaze me. But me? I'm just a guy; I went where I was told and did what I was supposed to do, all the while trying to maintain my
no-extra-holes-no-missing-parts
warranty status.
Now
Kate,
on the other hand...
'Petite' didn't come close. Everybody figured she'd passed the minimum height requirement by wearing heels or something.
And cute - distractingly cute, one might say. Good figure, curly brown hair cut shortish, eyes the colour of worn denim.
But tough. I sweated out something like 20 pounds that year. She didn't have anything like 20 pounds to lose, but she was right there, all the time, carrying her own load and a full medical bag to boot.
Oh, sure, we got other medics assigned from time to time, especially early on, but as time passed and informal teams firmed up, she became our usual.
The whole platoon worshipped her. She was
our
medic, the one dropping out of choppers with us into much the wrong neighbourhoods or humping damned near her own body weight to keep up with us. Asides from the routine, against both odds and expectations, she'd kept two of us alive long enough to make it back to the Role 3 hospital and then on to the general hospital in Ramstein. We trusted her, felt safer when she was with us.
Neither simpering Barbie nor dour priss, she fit in, pulled 101 percent of her own weight. Somebody else might've been disruptive, but as far as we were concerned and in the best possible way, she was definitely one of the boys. She took the jokes with a grin, handed out her own without mercy, shared cookies, took a grateful nip when the camp bootlegger (don't roll your eyes out loud, buddy, there's always one) came up with a bottle. Sure, there was a line one didn't cross with her, but that wasn't difficult and there were always several dozen 'big brothers' watching her six.
OK, and more than just that. The rifle she carried wasn't just for decoration. Keeping casualties alive sometimes involved more than bandages and QuikClot. It had happened just once - her patients became cubs and she Mama Bear. Respect is earned and hers came in triwalls.
She was ours.
Our little sister. With fangs.
OK, yeah. So, it wasn't
entirely
, um, 'sisterly'. This was a woman, a very, very pretty woman, even with plum-skin fatigue under her eyes, dust head to toe and white salt stains under each arm. While any of us mutts would have come up out of our graves to protect her, I can't think of one whose eyes didn't drift quickly over her figure when she'd dumped helmet and thirty pounds of armour, nor notice that pert bottom when, inevitably, she leaned over then to shake the helmet-head out of her hair.
And then, darkest morning, our world filled with a balrog's malevolent lightning, the flat, too-loud-to-hear blast hammering our fire-bell ears, echoes of echoes, and the only one to hear Hayden's screams was sidewindering into the open on her belly, head down amidst little silent puffs of bullets hitting the dust around her, raindrops on a millpond, until she found a grip on his harness and somehow returned our shattered prodigal to us.
There was a mud-brick shed and we had them inside it in seconds, leaving her to do her work and we ours.
It took a while. The furor didn't just stop; it eventually just slowed, faded away, each separated, single shot leaving us wondering if it was to be the last.
Until it had been and then we did what we had to do - reported in, reloaded, counted heads, welcomed the traditional five-minutes-too-late arrival of close air. The usual.
When I had a free moment, I went to see about Hayden.
Blood to her elbows, she turned to me, the look on her face one of bleak devastation. It was, I think, the first time I'd ever seen her cry; silent, sobless tears covered her face.
"I could've done it!" she whispered. "He could have made it, but he wouldn't try. He just... gave up!"
The tears began to wash away a smudge of Hayden's blood on her cheekbone. I saw an open dressing pad on top of her bag and, with a man's lifelong hesitation about female tears, used it to wipe her eyes.
"He could've lived, Sergeant." Her voice was a bare whisper now. "Why?"
She sagged and the sobs finally started, beginning somewhere about fifty feet below us, growing in power and dominion as they rose and filled her slender body.
I knelt beside her and she fell onto me, her head on my shoulder. This I could do. My arms came around her, gently, stroking her back, holding her head to my shoulder. I murmured wordless noises of comfort as her body shook, shuddered with grief and failure.
The light from the door was dimmed by a platoon-sergeant-sized silhouette. I looked up and saw his eyes widen. He looked to us, then to what was left of Hayden, then back to me. After a second, he nodded briefly and turned away. Screw policy, screw the No-Fun Form. This wasn't 'fraternization' anyway.
The sobbing slowed, finished with a soft hiccup. She stayed there another minute before her arms squeezed my waist and let go. "Thanks," she whispered, then looked down at herself
"Jesus, what a mess," she muttered. Producing a tissue from somewhere, she wiped her eyes, blew her nose and then, almost as if an afterthought, reached down and closed Hayden's eyes. We used the water in Hayden's canteen to flush away most of the blood off her, then I helped her get him into a body bag. The soft sigh of the zipper closing was the harshest sound I'd ever heard.
Her eyes were wide then as she grasped me by the arm.
"Please don't tell anyone," she said. "You won't, will you?"
"Everybody's entitled to one meltdown, Doc. This was a tough one."
"No! Keep this between us. Please!"
Her eyes were locked onto mine.
"Sergeant Weinstein saw," I said.
"I can handle him."
"OK then."
"Thanks, Sarge. You're a prince."
For the first time since we'd met, she stood on tiptoe and kissed my cheek. Then the woman was gone and the medic was back, moving to see to the lesser casualties among her cubs.
I didn't see her again until we were back inside the wire and then she disappeared into her own circle.
+
I awoke in the darkness, wondering, listening. I would sleep through jets and helicopters taking off a hundred yards away and even through the thud of artillery or rockets, but one distant round of small arms fire on the far side of the base would have me off my bed, rifle in hand, pulse in my ears like a methedrine bat.
I lay still now, listening to the susurration of night noises outside the tent. It was quieter than normal. My tent was empty but for me, the others being on leave, outside the wire and such.
What had it been?
"Sarge?"
The voice was low, hesitant. Her knuckles rapped gently on the tent frame and I realized what had woken me.
"Doc? Just a second."
The hell? Was somebody hurt?
I pulled on a pair of gym shorts and opened the door. Her form was outlined against the scattered tangle of camp lights. Rifle slung over one shoulder, she was dressed in a pair of civilian shorts and an issue t-shirt.
"I'm sorry to disturb you," she whispered. "I know it's late."
I tried to stifle a yawn, took a quick look at my watch. 0130.
"Z'ok, Doc. Is everything all right? What can I do for you?"
"I really need to talk, Sarge."
"Something that can't wait until tomorrow?" I saw the look in her eyes, changed my mind. Obviously not. "Hang on. I'll get dressed and we can go over to the gym. Or maybe the cooks will have coffee on or something."
"I'd prefer a bit more privacy, please. Can... may I come in? Just for a minute, I promise."
I looked up and down the line of tents. The night seemed deserted, but this would be pushing things. On the other hand, rules were sometimes guidelines...
"Of course." I stepped back out of the way.
Inside, I held open the flap of fabric marking off my cubical and she slipped past me. We had electricity by then and I fumbled for the switch. I pulled the light blanket up over the mattress (yup, one of those, too) to straighten up the bed and sat down on one end, my hand pointing at the other end in invitation. She sat, her rifle between her legs.
"So, what's up?"
Her gaze was down at the floor, her shoulders sagging.
"I just really need to talk to somebody, Paul." It was the first time she'd used my given name and it added to my curiosity.
Her voice seemed raspy, uncertain. Looking at her in the stark light of the single unshielded bulb, her eyes looked swollen.
I made a non-committal noise.
"You want some water?" I asked.
She nodded slightly.
"Please."
I fumbled under the cot, found the half-opened flat of bottled water, pulled out two.
She started to twist the lid open, found her weapon in the way. She laid it down carefully on the floor, opened the bottle, took a tiny sip, then another.
"Thanks."
"I'll put it on your tab."
I waited for her to say something, but she simply sat there.
"So, um.... You said you needed to talk. Is everything ok?"
"Yes, I do and no, it's not." She took a bigger drink, set the bottle down and looked up at me. Her eyes indeed looked like she'd been crying.
"I haven't slept for two days, not since we got back." I could see the admission was a hard one for her.
"Have you seen the stress debrief team? They're supposed to be pretty good. That was a pretty crappy day."
Her voice was almost a whisper.
"No."
I thought about that, too. A lot of people didn't want to talk to the shrinks. That a medic didn't was maybe unusual, but what did I know? In any case, she wanted this to be informal...
"Happy to talk to you, Kate, anytime, you know that." I tried, almost successfully, to stifle a yawn.
She looked contrite, reached over and touched my arm with her hand.
"I'm sorry..."
She looked at over the curtains dividing the tent into sections, her eyebrows up.
"Just us, Doc. So, what's up? Bad dreams?"
