Page 3 of The Lies We Leave Behind

3

I woke to a scream and sat up, my face hitting the net that had sagged in the night under the weight of the humidity.

“Get it out!” someone screeched from the other side of the barracks. “Help!”

In the dim lighting I watched for a moment the scuffle to catch a rat with a shoe and a box and then lay back down and rolled over. Rats were common visitors, especially when the river rose. And, by the sound of the rain battering the canvas roof above me, it most likely had. The rats, pushed from their homes, came looking for a dry spot to harbor in. Mosquito nets weren’t just for bugs, they were also supposed to keep the rats out of our beds. Most of the time it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.

The next time I woke it was due to my bed shaking. Squinting in the sliver of light shining through one of the plastic windows someone had exposed an inch of, I shoved my netting aside and leaned over to look at the woman below me.

“You just get in?” I asked, taking in Tilly’s haggard appearance through her own net.

Her skin had a yellow tinge from the Atabrine, the medicine we took to keep from getting malaria, and there was a faint smear of blood in her wispy blond hair that she’d probably tried to wash out but hadn’t done a good job of in her haste to get to her bed to sleep. We were always in a state of mostly clean. Water conditions could change in the blink of an eye. Sometimes the shower was too hot, sometimes too cold. Never something you wanted to stand and luxuriate in. And a lot of times it was just two to three women sharing a bowl of water to splash over our faces and under our armpits with a little bit of soap. It was only when we had to keep soldiers alive that anyone cared about our cleanliness. And only our hands at that.

Tilly yawned and nodded.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said.

Fine.

I nodded, not needing to imagine the ravaged faces and bodies I knew she’d seen, or hear the wailing and moaning and blistering tirades she’d heard. I knew them only too well. All while the plane we’d boarded shook and rattled and threatened to succumb to the gunfire and bombs discharging nearby, making us wonder if we’d make it out alive physically, mentally, and emotionally—the damage to our minds and hearts possibly too great.

And yet I did it without complaint, even thriving on it. If I thought they’d allow it, I’d ask to be sent out twice a day, the job not so much a calling as a deep-seated need to try and make amends for something I knew I wasn’t responsible for, but felt guilty about regardless.

“You out again today?” Tilly asked, her blinks getting longer.

“Yeah.”

“Stay safe, buddy.”

“I’ll do my best, buddy.”

She was asleep then and I rolled onto my back once more and stared between the netting to the ceiling. My body ached from head to toe. I was stronger than I’d ever been, but my skeleton felt bruised. My bones weary. And yet I pushed myself up, pulled the netting free of my mattress, and hopped down to the floor to do it all over again.

“You taking me in?” I asked an hour later as I entered the little building sitting at the edge of the runway.

At the front desk was Gus, one of the dozen or so pilots I’d flown with since landing on Espiritu Santo four months ago. Gus was what the younger men called seasoned. He was older, wiser, and didn’t take crap from anyone. A man of few words, he was incredibly efficient, and the rumors about him were numerous. Feats of bravery, men he’d saved... He never admitted to any of it, but there was a look in his soulful brown eyes. A sadness I’d seen in others who had experienced what was considered courage, but wore on a human soul. Regardless of what he had or hadn’t done, whenever I flew with him, I felt safe. There was a quality about him that reminded me of a dad. Not my father, who’d never been anything but cold and standoffish. But someone’s dad. And the kind of dad I’d always wished I’d had.

“It’s you and me, kid,” Gus said before grabbing a clipboard and heading out to do a last check of the plane transporting us. “See you onboard.”

The flight in was easy. I sat in my seat, eyes closed, arms wrapped around my torso as the plane rose and the temperature dropped. I dozed for most of the trip, waking every now and then as we hit a pocket of air that set the empty bunks rattling, and then as we entered the war zone, Gus doing his best to dodge bullets that had missed their mark and were zipping our way.

But we landed safely and he laughed as he always did when he swung open the big door to let me out and I squinted in the bright light after napping for two hours.

“Watch your step,” he said as I tripped over a rock.

“Shut up,” I said, making him laugh harder.

“See you soon, sunshine,” he called after me.

The hospital was swarming with doctors and nurses, the smells and sights enough to make one’s stomach turn. There were seeping wounds and bandaged body parts every which way I looked.

“Morning, Lieutenant. Gonna be a doozy of a transport today.”

I glanced over at the head nurse who had just sunk down on a stool on the other side of the counter from me, his face weary.

“You say that every time, Percy,” I said.

He gave me an apologetic look.

“We got a fresh truckload in a couple hours ago and...” He trailed off. A fresh truckload meant wounds that hadn’t had much time to be tended to. And a high likelihood that not all of the men onboard would make it. But I’d be damned if they were lost on my watch.

“How many?” I asked.

“Twenty-one.”

“Well, twenty-one just happens to be my lucky number.”

“I thought sixteen was.”

“That was two days ago, Percy.”

He gave me a sad, tired grin. “Let’s hope you’re right,” he said and hurried off, his shoes squelching on the bloodstained floor.

Each patient loaded onto the plane came with his own set of instructions, pinned to his shirt, his pants, or the sheet covering his body. Some were unconscious and would only require a periodic glance, others had lost limbs, their wounds wrapped but not necessarily cleaned yet as there had been no time.

Some would need help shifting in their cot to ease discomfort, others needed pain medication to be administered at different times and in different quantities, oxygen might be a necessity depending on elevation levels, and then there were the stomach wounds.

Doctor Fischer, the man in charge, pointed to a soldier with a thick bandage around his torso. “Keep an eye on this one as you climb.”

“Yessir.”

“You’re aware what could happen?”

“Well aware, sir.”

Stomachs had a penchant for expanding if the plane rose too fast, bursting stitches and causing a wound to become life-threatening—and messy. On a plane filled with men in excruciating pain with only one nurse to tend to them all, it was best not to have to perform a surgery onboard. To counteract such issues, the stitches had to be cut and then redone as soon as it was safe to do so.

I’d only heard of one incidence of that happening since arriving at Espiritu Santo, and thanks to the gory details, I swore to myself it would never happen on one of my shifts. Poor Carlotta had returned the following day looking as though she’d seen a ghost.

“There was blood everywhere...” she’d said, her voice trailing off as she stared through the rest of us.

In addition to the stomach wound I’d have onboard, I also had a soldier with a brain injury.

“Is he coherent?” I asked Percy, who’d returned to help load the patients.

“Not exactly. He’s mostly quiet but sometimes babbles nonsense. He’s been here for a couple of weeks. We thought he was getting better. He had some other minor injuries so we kept him here, but those healed. His head hasn’t.”

“Non-aggressive?”

“Benny? Nah. He’s harmless.”

“And he’ll stay in his bunk without a fight?”

“Definitely. He’s happy to just stare at the wall, maybe at you because you’re pretty, and jabber on about nothing, sing, or just be silent. He won’t give you a lick of trouble.”

“Anyone else I need to know about?”

He went down a small list and I made some notes for myself, and then the two of us, Doctor Fischer, and three other nurses helped load the troops carefully into the plane.

As I helped one young man across the tarmac, his uninjured arm around my shoulder, he cracked jokes about his missing arm, which had been blown off by gunfire, along with a chunk of his left thigh.

“I was just looking for a quick way home,” he said. “And some cute girls to flirt with.”

He gave me a wink and I tried not to laugh. He was eighteen but looked younger, with freckles smattered across his face and a mop of red hair.

“Well, I hope you find some,” I said as I helped him into his bunk and strapped him in.

Once all the patients were onboard and in their bunks, I went about double-checking that they were secure, tightening straps as needed, checking IVs, and placing a gentle hand on arms, fevered heads, and an exposed shin or foot to comfort—and to check temperatures. Several of the men were slick with sweat, shaking from cold despite the heat.

I tucked blankets, adjusted pillows, and peeked beneath bandages, all the while murmuring words of reassurance.

“You about ready?” Gus asked, poking his head in.

“Give me two minutes,” I said, glancing toward the man with the brain injury and the guy with the stomach wound in the bunk across from him.

“You got it,” he said and shut the door, taking what breeze there was with him and leaving me in suffocating warmth and the overwhelming smell of sweat and urine.

“How are you doing, Benjamin?” I asked the man with the bandaged head. His chart listed him as Benjamin Wells. I kneeled beside him, my eyes on his, but his gaze didn’t meet mine, instead moving all around my face, landing here and there but never lingering in any one spot.

“He goes by Benny,” the man in the bed above him said.

“Benny, huh?” I asked, watching his big brown eyes glance off my nose, my chin, and my hair. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Benny. I’ll come check on you again later.”

He mumbled something and I leaned in.

“He said Lila,” the man below him said.

I looked down at a face held together on one side by dozens of stitches.

“Who’s Lila?” I asked.

He shrugged. “No idea, but it’s the only word he ever says.”

I stared at Benny and then reached out and gave his arm a squeeze.

“Lila,” I said. “We’ll try to get you home to her soon.”

I moved on to the soldier with the stomach wound then, glancing at my list of names and injuries to identify the soldier and his reason for being on my plane. He was unconscious, having been given a large dose of pain medicine for the ride, but his face showed that regardless of what he’d been given and the deep sleep he was in, he knew he didn’t feel good.

I undid the belts securing him, lifted his blankets, and then his bandage. The stitches were fresh, the skin beneath red and angry and swollen. I sighed. Out of all the injuries onboard, this one worried me the most.

“We’re off in one!” Gus shouted from the front of the plane. He was standing behind the pilot’s seat, giving his passengers a quick once-over.

“Warn me if we have to climb fast,” I said, leaving the injury exposed so I could keep watch on it from my seat.

“You got it.”

And with that, he slid into his seat and began throwing switches.

“Buckle up!” he shouted as the engines kicked in.

I hurried to my seat, buckled myself in, and stared across the belly of the plane at the stomach wound. Crossing my fingers, I prayed to whoever or whatever might be listening that we all made it through this flight with no problems.

“Here we go!” Gus yelled.

With a lurch, we pulled out of our parking spot and turned onto the runway. I winced as we bumped over rocks and dipped hard into the divots sprinkled across the crude pavement, watching the patients that were awake squeeze their eyes shut and grip their beds. There was a slight pause, the motor loud and echoing through the fuselage, and then the plane started rolling, lumbering at first as it hit yet more holes in the tarmac, causing the beds to shake and rattle, the noise almost suffocating in its intensity, and then the road smoothed and we were in the air.

While we ascended, I breathed. Deep, slow breaths, filling my lungs with the stagnant air, holding it, and then blowing out. I wasn’t afraid of flying, or even being shot down. What did push that extra rush of nervous energy through my veins was knowing it was only me to tend to the twenty-one injured on board. Should more than one start to bleed out, I was almost guaranteed to lose a man.

I turned my attention to Miles and his stomach wound. He was still out like a light. He’d be fine so long as we didn’t have to go too high. But just as I thought it, the plane tipped sharply, pushing me back in my seat.

“Hang on!” Gus yelled.

A loud explosion nearby reverberated off the metal of the plane and I pressed my hands to my ears to try and block the sound, my entire body buzzing from the blast.

“We’re gonna have to get higher!” Gus shouted again as the distinct sound of gunfire discharged nearby.

I exhaled and nodded, undoing the latch of my buckle and getting unsteadily to my feet. Holding on to the harness, I grabbed my medical bag and unzipped it, feeling around until I found the case holding my scissors. Shoving it in my pocket, I made my way toward my patient.

I could see from several feet away that Miles’s stomach was already expanding as we quickly ascended. I stumbled and fell, just missing the knee I’d injured the day before.

“You okay?”

I looked up at a soldier staring down at me from a top bunk.

“Fine,” I said, hurrying to my feet and to Miles.

“Shit shit shit,” I said, staring down at the flesh that was tearing around the stitches as the stomach ballooned. I grabbed the scissors from their case, not caring as it fell to the floor and slid out of sight. “Hang on, buddy. I’ve got you. I’m not going to let you bleed out.”

Bracing one hand against the man’s hot flesh, I began to cut as quickly and carefully as I could so as not to do further damage. As I moved down the line of crude black thread, I watched the skin pull back, exposing fatty tissue and muscle below. Grabbing the bag of supplies I’d secured to the foot of his bunk before takeoff, I pulled out a clean gauze and draped it loosely over the wound before securing it with tape. I checked his pulse and exhaled. He was still alive.

Sagging against the frame of the bunk, I glanced over at Benny.

“You doing okay, Benny?”

He stared at my cheek, my ear, my chin.

“Lila.” I saw him say the name but couldn’t hear it over the noise of the engine.

I nodded.

“Lila,” I said, and felt the plane level. With a sigh of relief, I bent down to retrieve my scissors case and then began to make my rounds to the other patients.