Fear and the World's Greatest Turkey Sandwich
It was little better than prison food. Three slices of cold roast turkey in between two sliced of white bread, no condiments, just a Styrofoam cup of water to wash it down and lime Jello for dessert.
Maybe I was scared when I realized I’d fucked up and the truck was too close. I was tired. It was late and dark. I know I panicked for a second because I remember pushing on the bumper like I could stop a two and a half ton, diesel powered, Army LMTV. If I hadn’t panicked maybe I could’ve gone left, or right. Maybe I could’ve dropped to the ground. Instead I tried to climb the front of the truck and I didn’t make it. If I was scared when it hit me, if I was scared for the moment I was pinned there between truck and trailer, I don’t remember it. It’s like the force of the impact knocked the fear out of me. Or maybe it leaked out of me with the blood.
When they backed the truck off of me I wiggled my fingers, wiggled my toes, breathed a sigh of relief and then I walked away from my accident. I could see the look on my guy’s faces, they were pale, sweating, visibly scared. I told them, “Go see if you can find a medic to check me out” and someone scurried off into the darkness. I took off my helmet. I dropped my gear. I ripped open my body armor and when I did my belly, which had been steadily filling up with blood, flopped out like I was somehow nine months pregnant. I think I said, “I think I’ll sit down.” When I did sit it felt like I’d collapsed into a child’s wading pool on a hot July day, warm and wet as all the blood that was inside me started pouring out. I think one of my soldiers passed out. I know I said, “I think maybe I’ll lay down.” I had to have known I was in trouble then because I told my guys to take my sensitive items, my leaders book out of my left cargo pocket and my NVGs out of my butt pack. I think I asked them to take the driver of the vehicle that hit me aside, to keep an eye on him. From where I lay he looked far worse than I felt, clearly horrified by what had happened and I was worried more about him than I was about the blood pouring out of me.
The first medic that arrived was a black man. I don’t think I knew him. I didn’t recognize his voice. I don’t know that I ever saw his face. What I remember was his feet. He must’ve been taking a piss because he was barefoot. He must’ve stepped on something when he came to my aid because I could see blood oozing from small cuts in his ashy feet. He said “I’m gonna roll you over and take a look sergeant” and when he did he said “Oh shit.”
I laughed and told him, “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that in front of the patient doc.” He called for more help.
They moved me from the site of my accident to a nearby surgical tent on the back of a John Deere Gator. I was face down, staring at the ground as they drove slowly across the compound. I don’t know who called the Chaplain but he was there, jogging beside me. He said “Do you mind if I pray for you son” and I answered, “You can try but I ain’t Catholic sir, I don't think it'll take.” I thought it was hilarious. I may have laughed out loud.
The surgical tent was cold and white. I was face down, staring at the floor. My Sergeant Major peeked in. He was a big man, old school Army, a Ranger and a veteran of the Battle of Mogadishu and when I saw his face he looked as pale and scared as the inexperienced privates that watched me walk away from my accident and for the first time I remember feeling a tremor of fear. He asked if there was anything he could do for me and I told him, “If this is bullshit and I return to duty tomorrow don’t call my parents.”
They gave me some drugs. They told me it was for the pain but I didn’t hurt. My hand felt funny. My fingers were weird. Fingers are weird. Fingers… Someone told me to count down from one hundred. I made it to ninety-seven.
Dying proved painless.
The coma was dark except when it was terrifying. I only have snippets of memory from that time and only one is remotely pleasant. I woke for just a second to find a redheaded nurse in blue scrubs singing along as Brooks and Dunn played on a small cheap stereo in a dark room. My other memories of that week are horrifying. I remember a doctor jabbing me with a needle over and over. I remember wanting to scream and not being able to. I remember choking on the tube down my throat. I remember vomiting. I remember thinking I was drowning in my own sick and for the first time I thought “I’m gonna die” but I was rescued, I think by that redheaded nurse. I remember a woman asking me softly to stop fighting the breathing tube and relax. I guess I did.
That was the worst of it. For years I couldn’t stand between the truck and the boat while Chuck and John and I hitched the trailer up to go fishing and I refused to walk between cars in a parking lot but I never once had a nightmare about the accident. It was that coma that kept me awake. The thought of that plastic tube crammed down my throat haunted me, I could still taste latex and vomit when I closed my eyes to tried and sleep.
Recovery hurt.
Recovery was worse than I ever could have imagined. Living hurt was so much more than the accident that almost killed me. Most days it was a hot, dull, ache, like a coal in my guts just waiting for fuel and oxygen to burst into flames. It did, at least once a day during dressing changes where even with gargantuan amounts of narcotics it felt like my insides were slowly being torn out, then twisted into a knot and crammed back in. I remember being hurt. I remember being tired, uncomfortable, depressed, disappointed, angry, lost, but I can only think of three times after I woke from my coma and moved out of ICU that I was genuinely scared.
The first was my visit with the tiger and the brief moment when I realized I was the weakest member of any herd.
The second was a dark night in a windowless room somewhere between the ICU and the soon to be familiar semi comfort of Ward 68. There were no windows in that room, just blank, beige, cinder block walls, a small TV and an old analog clock that told time with hour and minute hands. My parents left at 8pm. The nurses made their rounds. I fell hard asleep and dreamed I was in the field with my old company from Schofield Barracks. In my dream we were billeted in an odd building, sleeping on cots in what looked like a surgical theater. We leaned on the railing of a U shaped balcony smoking cigarettes and telling jokes while surgeons worked below. I woke after what felt like hours to find that the clock on the wall read 9:00. I must have been sleeping hard because I thought it was AM, so I sat up thinking it was a new day and my parents would arrive at any minute.
But they never came. 9:00 became 10:00 and by then they were officially “late.” 10:00 became 10:30 and I began to worry. My dad isn’t ever late. For weeks, one or the other of my parents arrived every day before 9:30 and stayed until the end of visiting hours but that “morning” was creeping steadily toward “noon” and they still hadn’t shown. I dosed off. I woke worried. I tried to watch television but there was nothing on, somehow my drug addled and exhausted brain mistook late night network slop for midday network slop. I tried to read. I don’t know why I didn’t ask the nurses the time when they came in to check my vitals, maybe it’s because the time was so clearly visible on the wall. Maybe I didn’t want to bother them. Maybe I was dozing.
I had no way of finding my parents. I had no phone. This was before widespread cell phones and if they had one I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have known their number if they did. As I lay staring at the blank walls and that stupid analog clock I became convinced that something awful had happened. What other reason explained their absence? Maybe there’d been an accident. Maybe there was a problem back home. My Pawpaw was bad sick and my brother was in PLDC. Only catastrophe could explain their absence. So I sat, awake, hurt, and increasingly scared, staring at that stupid clock as “noon” passed, then 1:00, then 2:00… At some point I drifted off only to wake again at 7:00 convinced by then that an entire day had passed and my parents hadn’t come. I was near panic, convinced that something awful had happened, scared to death that I had to face that blank wall alone when my parents arrived promptly at 8am.
I was so embarrassed that I’d mistook night for day that I’m not sure I ever told anyone what had happened. I’ve been in scarier situations before and since but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such anxiety and slowly building terror as I did that long, wakeful night. I know I’ve rarely felt as alone as I did staring at those blank walls and that stupid fucking analog clock.
In retrospect, it makes sense though. Drugged, hurt, locked alone in a blank room with no external stimulus and no real ability to tell time it’s little wonder I almost lost my mind. The next, and scariest incident caught me almost completely by surprise because it started with a hospital turkey sandwich.
Well, to be more accurate, it started with blood work that indicated issues with my pancreas and several weeks of gnawing hunger and burning thirst. Due to the massive injuries to my guts I initially couldn't eat or drink. Instead I survived for several weeks on IV fluids, ringers lactate and a bag of white fluid that reminded me of the bagged milk they served in public school lunch rooms. At first I hurt to much and was to weak to notice or care but as my conditions improved I started getting hungry.
Each day in a teaching hospital you’re visited by a herd of new doctors clad in short white lab coats and supervised by an old doctor in a long white lab coat. Each day they poke and prod you like a butcher judging meat, then they discuss you in terms you can’t understand, speaking right in front of you as if you don’t exist. Before they leave one will ask, “Do you have any questions?” even though they haven’t really explained anything and they have to know you don’t understand half of what they've said. After a few days in a normal room with my stomach starting to rumble I finally asked them “when can I eat.”
It was only then they told me I had pancreatitis. Or they thought I had pancreatitis. Enzymes in my blood work indicated that my pancreas was inflamed and considering my injuries the diagnosis made sense. Or it would have if I showed any symptoms. I was hungry. People with pancreatitis as bad as my blood work indicated aren’t hungry, in fact the thought of food often causes pain in pancreatits patients.
I had the reverse problem. My stomach felt like something was gnawing a hole in it. My lips were chapped. My throat dry. I would commit murder for Jello. I would do terrible, unthinkable things for a Coca Cola. I was so desperate I would have done several felonies for a shit ass Pepsi. I have never in my life before or since been as hungry as I was laying in that hospital room and I once went four days without a resupply in JRTC surviving off MRE chicklets, M&Ms and rationed water. Fast Food commercials on the TV made me salivate like a dog. My stomach growled so loudly others could hear it.
Some days hospital staff would mess up and bring me a menu. I'd carefully selected my breakfast, lunch and dinner options only for a lab coat to cancel my food order. Once the staff even brought me breakfast. I could see it. I could smell it. I could almost taste it but the lab coats caught me and took it away. Each day I asked when I could eat. Each day they said it depended on the blood work. Each day they drew blood. Each day the pancreatic enzymes stayed the same. Between the ringers and the milky white liquid I didn’t technically starve, I just felt like it.
One day the lab coats thought of a solution. On their orders a tech came to my room and forced a feeding tube through my nose and down my throat, a gagging, vile, reminder of the hated breathing tube that had almost killed me just weeks before. The plan was to pump a bottle of Ensure through my feeding tube into my stomach to see how I reacted. For a day that tube dangled from my nose like some pathetic elephant's withered trunk. It gagged me if I swallowed too hard. It tugged on things if I moved wrong. Another hated piece of plastic crammed into my body but at least it meant food.
Except the lab coats never brought Ensure. The feeding tube never got used at all. Instead someone, most likely in a long lab coat, decided to just feed me instead.
My first "meal" was the abomination that is a “liquids tray.” Broth and Jello choked down with that feeding tube still crammed through my nose. It wasn’t a “good” meal, but oh God you can’t understand how much better it felt to wet my lips, how glorious it was to swallow, even around the plastic hose shoved down my throat. The lab coats drew blood. They checked my enzymes. It still indicated pancreatitis but I still showed no symptoms. So the next day they brought me a turkey sandwich.
It was little better than prison food. Three slices of cold roast turkey in between two sliced of white bread, no condiments, just a Styrofoam cup of water to wash it down and lime Jello for dessert. I still had that hated feeding tube down my nose so every bite was misery. The tube moved around when I chewed and masticated pieces of white bread and dry white meat had to slide past as they made their way to my stomach. But it is indescribable how good that sandwich tasted. It was glorious. No Thanksgiving dinner, not the turkey my dad spent hours slowly smoking over hickory wood nor my brother’s Cajun brined and deep fried Butterball has ever tasted better. White bread and dry turkey tasted as good as any meal I’ve eaten before or since. I don’t think I ate more than four or five bites before I got “full” but they were the greatest bites of food I’d ever eaten and I once crushed a large taco Pizza after being in the field for thirty days eating nothing but MREs.
And despite all the doctor’s fears I was okay…at first. There was no pain. I didn’t feel nauseous. I didn’t projectile vomit. I felt fine. Better than fine, I felt fucking good. I had a full belly as I hobbled toward the bathroom for my daily shower, dragging my IV pole behind me. But once alone in the bathroom my smile slowly faded. I don’t remember what came first, but something, some process, started as I waited for the shower to warm up. Slowly I realized I was bloating. My belly was swelling like it was once again filling with blood but sitting did nothing to relieve it. I felt like my abdomen was a balloon slowly inflating, bigger, and bigger, and bigger until I thought for sure I would pop. But I didn't. Instead I started sweating, I could feel the beads forming heavy and hot on my forehead. Nausea hit me next, crashing into me like a sick, green, toxic, wave. I got dizzy. I got weak. I suddenly felt not just afraid but genuine panic…
“Oh God were they right? Is my pancreas fucked? Am I going to die here in this shower because of turkey on white bread?”
I remember fighting to stay on my feet as the room began to spin. I remember clutching at my IV stand as I tried to move to the toilet. I remember wanting, needing, to vomit. I remember leaning over the toilet bowl and nothing coming. I remember feeling like I would burst, like I could explode and spatter the bathroom walls with viscera like a scene from some midnight movie. I remember desperately searching for the nurses call button, trying to find it, trying to summon someone to save me.
Just then, when I thought for sure I was doomed, when I thought my body couldn’t take any more and surely something had to rupture, I burped.
This wasn’t a normal burp. It was no small thing. I burped so long and so loud it reverberated off the tile walls and I thought for sure it could be heard in the hallway. It was a burp as glorious as the sandwich had been. A burp from the deepest depths of my belly. The kind of burp that would make a six year old boy gleefully jealous. Six bites of turkey on white bread and a glass of water produced this glorious exhalation of gases, a cacophonous purging. And just like that my ordeal was over. The nausea, the pain, the bloating, the heat, all disappeared as quickly as it’d started. I felt not just fine, but better than I’d felt in weeks.
Slowly I realized what had happened. Between my injuries, the coma and the weeks of forced fasting my body had forgotten how to expel gas. Like a fussy infant I had to learn how to burp again. I’m not sure if I mentioned the incident to anyone. I finished my shower, they changed my dressings, and then I had a half cup of Jello and settled in for my afternoon routine of Judge Judy and local news.
To the best of my knowledge the pancreatic enzymes in my blood never went back to normal levels. When that turkey sandwich didn’t kill me the lab coats decided to take the feeding tube out of my nose and by breakfast the next morning I was eating as normally as you can in the hospital. Eventually they quit drawing blood. I guess they quit checking the enzymes. I assume they went back to normal because no one has mentioned my pancreas since. It took two or three meals before burping became normal for me again and I no longer had to go through the bloated, nauseous, hot feeling as my body tried to remember how to do it’s most basic jobs.
I’ve been in some scary situations since: tornadoes, hurricanes, fights, armed encounters, high speed pursuits, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as genuinely frightened as I was in the moments before I remembered to burp. Nothing I’d been through before, not my accident, the tiger, nor the long night alone in a windowless room or anything that has happened since was as viscerally frightening as laying on that hospital bathroom floor, gagging on a feeding tube, feeling like my body was going to pop like a balloon, all for four bites of the greatest turkey sandwich I’d ever tasted.
