Bedridden. Adult. Violence. Life in a Veteran’s hospital in the 60s. (standard:adventure, 2077 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jun 15 2020	Views/Reads: 1204/887	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
About a patient in a military hospital in Japan during the war in Vietnam. The story in in first person POV and includes flashbacks.

Darkness lifts through closed eyelids as a nurse snaps a switch inside
the door of the ward.Harsh light invades the privacy of my mind, 
forcing it into the reality of day.  My waking mind refuses to note the 
sounds of moaning, whimpering, screams, and softly spoken expletives as 
the others wake. It almost takes a conscious effort to hear those 
common sounds.  They are so all-prevalent and pervasive as to be 
ignored by a tortured being. Somewhat like when I was a kid living next 
to a busy highway, the sounds of pain and anguish are filtered out 
before reaching my consciousness. 

Consciousness? Damn consciousness! Better to remain in that in-between
state where I drift in a land without pain, without worry, without 
being ... conscious. Without feeling limbs that no longer exist except 
in some hellish hole or branch of a nameless shrub in Vietnam; hardly 
worth looking for or saving. Shredded flesh no longer part of a body, 
too peppered with shrapnel to ever think of saving, fit only for the 
sustenance of myriad creatures inhabiting a far-away jungle. 

Consciousness? Consciousness brings only more pain, pain and realization
that I will never walk, never swim ... never love. Yes, even that part 
of me is gone, replaced by a transparent plastic bag. The world will 
never be cursed with my progeny. 

I wait eagerly for one of the small army of military nurses to travel
slowly down our row of beds, dispensing relief, giving welcome solace 
to suffering objects that were once human beings. 

Between all of us we have half the normal quota of limbs for our
numbers, three-fourths of the expected minds, and only a tiny fraction 
of the hopes and dreams of a normal group of mostly teenage MEN. And I 
do mean men; not boys, not soldiers, no longer simple kids. There are 
no children in military uniforms, at least not if those fatigues are 
covered with the mud of combat. 

One of the women, in a clean white uniform, stops at my bed; some young,
some old, but all WOMEN. No girls in this ward, not after the first few 
hours of seeing our pain and endless suffering. 

At least they can look forward to a break at the end of their shift, go
home and hug their husbands, or get drunk as a lot of them do. We, the 
patients, don't have that option. Our only alleviation being at the end 
of a needle or the sliding of a pill down a throat dry from screaming. 

Being in recovery, meaning not in immediate danger of dying, I receive a
handful of pills, along with a paper cup of warm water. I gulp them 
hastily, yearning for relief; not as much from blossoming pain as from 
the fruits of my own thoughts. Thoughts of living with only one arm, 
half-working, and no legs at all. The arm is still good, but missing 
two of five fingers. Land mines aren't selective, they'll chomp happily 
on anything available. 

I hear it was an American mine.  That's what I heard Sammy tell someone
while they loaded me onto the chopper. Doped by morphine and a shot of 
illegal "H" I was still, but barely, conscious at the time. A welcome 
time because either shock or morphine kept the pain away. I felt I was 
looking up from a well, tunnel vision, as a dulled brain recorded the 
scene. . . . 

*** 

“I found a piece sticking out of Terry,” I heard, feeling my back
thumping to the bare metal floor of a chopper. “It was stamped ‘Made in 
Detroit.' Probably for WWII.” 

I can see it in my mind. My grandmother carefully fitting a wad of
preformed TNT into a casing, hundreds of them piled up in crates at the 
rear of the room. Ever so carefully, she would have turned the shaped 
charge for a perfect fit as the casing traveled slowly down a conveyor 
belt to the next station to have a cap screwed on. Later the cold 
killer would be stacked with its fellows ... at the back of the room. 

It would have traveled, much as I had, to that godforsaken jungle. To
lie dormant, waiting thirty or forty years -- patiently waiting. 
Recently, a fuse with safety pin had been inserted. Even more recently, 
safety pin removed, it had been waiting to make my acquaintance. 


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