Chapter 13 Nate
thirteen
nate
The dust came first. Always the dust.
Fine particles hung suspended in shafts of morning light, cutting through blown-out windows. The air tasted like chalk and cordite. My boots crunched over pulverized concrete and shell casings as our squad advanced through the partially collapsed building.
"Clear," came the whispered confirmation from the point man, hand signal reinforcing the message.
We moved in ranger file, deeper, room by room, the distant rattle of gunfire elsewhere in the city a constant soundtrack. Three days into Operation Phantom Fury, and Fallujah had become a warren of firefights, ambushes, and booby traps.
I adjusted my trauma bag, the weight of it reassuring against my hip. Three emergency casualty evacuations in the last 24 hours. All successful. All Marines who would see home again because our training had held, because the golden hour hadn't been squandered.
The squad leader held up a fist. We froze.
Muffled voices ahead. Arabic, rapid and tense. The squad leader used hand signals. Two, maybe three fighters in the room beyond the partially open door. Ready positions.
Then everything accelerated.
The door kicked in. Shouts of "MARINES!" and "GET DOWN!" in English and broken Arabic.
Gunfire erupted, deafening in the confined space. The insurgents had been waiting. Return fire immediately. Plaster dust and concrete chips sprayed as rounds impacted walls.
A flash of movement from behind a fallen bookcase. Fast. Small.
Thompson, on edge after losing his fire team leader yesterday, swung his rifle toward the movement—
"NOOOOO!" The shout died in my throat, but it was too late.
A child. A little girl. Seven, maybe eight years old. She had darted from her hiding place, perhaps toward her parents, perhaps in blind panic.
The sound of Thompson's rifle seemed to echo longer than the others.
The girl crumpled, pink shirt darkening to crimson. Her mother's scream was high, keening, primal, and cut through the ringing in my ears.
"CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIRE! CIVILIANS!" the squad leader bellowed.
I was moving before the last insurgent hit the floor, shedding my rifle, trauma bag already open. I skidded to my knees beside her tiny form.
GSW to the abdomen. Too much blood. Too much damage for a child her size. But my hands moved anyway, training taking over where hope faltered.
Not her. Not a child. Not on my watch.
Her father cradled her head, weeping in Arabic, words I didn't understand but meaning I couldn't miss. Her mother rocked back and forth against the wall, palms bloodied where she'd clawed at the concrete.
"Get me an evac! NOW!" I shouted, my voice cracking as I frantically packed combat gauze into the wound. "I need pressure here! Someone hold pressure!"
Her father tried to help, his hands shaking as he pressed where I showed him. Blood seeped between his fingers, too much, too fast.
"No, no, no," I muttered, ripping open another packet of hemostatic gauze with my teeth. "Stay with me, kiddo. Please. Stay with me."
Her pulse weakened beneath my fingers. Her breathing became shallow, irregular. Her eyes, wide with fear and incomprehension, began to lose focus.
"Goddammit, more pressure!" I barked to no one in particular, shoving another Marine's hands onto a secondary wound. "We need blood! Where's the fucking evac?!"
"Doc, there's no evac coming in time," Miller said, his voice steady but gentle. "You know that."
I ignored him, working frantically, methodically, my training a litany in my head. Stop the bleeding. Maintain the airway. Treat for shock.
"Come on, sweetheart," I pleaded, switching to chest compressions as her breathing stuttered. "Come on. Don't do this."
Her mother wailed, a sound so primal it seemed to vibrate in my bones. Her father spoke rapidly in Arabic, pressing his forehead to his daughter's, tears falling onto her increasingly pale face.
"She's losing too much blood," I said to Miller, to anyone listening.
"I need a line in. I need fluids. I need—" My voice broke.
What I needed was a fully-equipped trauma center, not a dusty room in a half-demolished building with a limited field kit.
What I needed was to be back home, in Virginia.
What I needed was to have never come here.
But I kept working. One compression. Two. Three. Pause to check. Nothing. Again.
"COME ON!" I screamed, abandoning all pretense of professional detachment. Sweat and tears mingled on my face, dropping onto her still chest. "brEATHE, GODDAMNIT!"
I was aware of the room falling silent around me except for the mother's keening and my own desperate counting. I was aware of Thompson sinking to his knees, of Miller standing helplessly nearby. But they receded to the periphery as my world narrowed to the tiny figure beneath my bloodied hands.
One compression. Two. Three.
Her gaze had emptied. The frantic rise and fall of her chest, now only moving because of my hands, stilled when I paused.
"Doc." Miller's hand on my shoulder. "Doc, she's gone."
"No." I shook him off, resumed compressions. "No, she's not. She can't be."
I ripped open another field dressing. Packed another wound that had stopped bleeding only because there was no more pressure behind it.
"She just needs more time. She just needs—" My voice caught as I felt the first signs of rigor already setting in around her jaw. Even then, I couldn't stop. "She's just a kid. She can't—"
"Doc." Miller's voice firmer now, his grip on my shoulder tightening. "She's gone. We need to move."
Thompson had curled in on himself, rocking slightly, tears cutting clean tracks through the dust on his face. "We shouldn't even be here, man, we shouldn’t even fuckin’ be here..."
I stared at my bloodied gloves, at the combat gauze soaked black, at the tiny, still figure beneath them. Time seemed to bend inward on itself.
I couldn't save her.
I hadn't saved her.