Paradise General Read Free Page B

worry about for a while—instead of crabgrass, I’d be battling dust and sand.
    It had been three years since my tour in Iraq, and the war continued to go badly. The Army still needed warm bodies to fill its medical needs, but since I had already done time in the “Sandbox,” they offered me a comfortable stateside slot doing routine physicals. I turnedthem down flat. It wasn’t bravery or bravado; I simply needed to go back. I wish I could explain why. And my family wished I could explain why. They’d been through hell during my last deployment, especially after seeing pictures of me cradling a rifle. This time, I assured them, I’d be safer. I had grabbed an assignment to a CSH, or combat support hospital, today’s equivalent of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH. No more rifles; no more convoys; no more face time with crazed insurgents.
    The nature of the war had changed, with IEDs becoming the conflict’s four-letter word. Just thinking of an Improvised Explosive Device sent shivers up my spine; we’d dealt with them in 2004, but the ones hidden on the roads these days packed a more powerful punch, enough to blow a five-ton truck ten feet into the air. I simply didn’t want to picture what something that violent would do to a delicate human body, but would soon find out. From what I had been told, we’d see fewer gunshot wounds and more blown-up bodies. A voice on the phone from Medical Corps Headquarters said, “Be ready, Major, business will be booming.” The horrible play on words made me grimace.
    The truth was I would be busy. The timing of my deployment meant I had volunteered to be a part of the next great military campaign that sounded suspiciously like an energy drink: “The Surge.” I didn’t know what exactly I was getting into, but at least this time I’d be with a group of doctors rather than running around with a bunch of young, savvy combat troops. I prayed my new colleagues would be capable and easy to work with, but I wasn’t overly hopeful. Doctors, as a rule, tend to be big on ego, short on social skills.
    As I put my feet up on a lawn chair, my mind wandered back to the office and the last patients of the previous day, one an overweight smoker with diabetes who couldn’t find time to exercise because he was too busy. But he was remembering to take his medicine … most days. Hell, man, I thought, I’m going to war tomorrow to take care of people who don’t have choices about their health—you do. Yet I simply shook his hand and told him to keep up the good work …
andplease try not to drop dead before I get back
.
    The other patient on my worry list was a four-year-old with a fever and an ear infection. He seemed a little more listless than he should have been. Maybe I should have done some tests. Maybe I was just fretting like a grandmother. Either way, I wondered if people realize how often we doctors worried about the decisions we made, carrying our worries home to spend the night. Maybe I could call from Fort Benning later and find out how the kid was doing.
    I watched my wristwatch sweep away the minutes—cursing it for not hurrying so I could get my journey started, yet at the same time swearing at it for racing too rapidly. As the sun peeked over the horizon and reflected against the foothills of the Rockies, I realized I was lonely and scared, and hadn’t even left my driveway. My orders didn’t say exactly where I was headed; simply iraq in small letters—as if I wouldn’t notice—but the grapevine hinted my destination was going to be some ramshackle combat hospital near Tikrit, hometown of Iraq’s favorite son, Saddam Hussein. My new unit would be the 399th CSH.
    The neighbor’s dog trotted over and smeared a good-luck slobber across my face, then promptly turned and scooted across to a nice green patch of turf, where he squatted and dropped a big turd. All