As The Sparks Fly Upward

Again today, an event which wilfully dragged the 581st Troop Medical Clinic out of groundhoggedness. I am beginning to wonder whether these “random events” were scripted especially for me.

At around 3 PM today, the lights went out in the clinic (and, it turns out, in most other locations on post). Fortunately, being a sick-call clinic only, we had no acute patients in the building, and were able to quickly manage those in our care. We ended up having to close clinic early and to postpone completing our notes until tomorrow, something we very rarely do.

This marks my second experience being in a medical facility and having the lights go out; the first was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) around August of 2001. The Walter Reed blackout was obviously more serious, as we had complete darkness in a few crucial areas of the hospital for a period of time. Thanks to some quick-thinking doctors and nurses, the patients were kept safe, and eventually some of them had to be temporarily relocated to the National Naval Medical Center a few miles up the road.

I used today’s extra time to go for a run, and made it to the track by about 4:30, the earliest time in the afternoon I have run since arriving on Al Asad. I soon figured out why people don’t jog much during the day here: though the temperature was probably only high 80s, there is something about that middle-eastern sunlight which just bores through a person. Around my second lap, I noticed that I could feel the heat radiating not only from above, but also up from the hard black asphalt under my feet (Al Asad’s track, which pre-dates the arrival of the Multi-National Force, does not have that nice rubbery material found in American tracks—it is pure, hard pavement, cracks and all). By the time I finished my two miles, I was downright lightheaded. Fortunately, there are water bottles everywhere in Iraq (outnumbered only by specks of dust), including a stack right beside the track, so I grabbed one and poured it over my head and into my mouth. Then I hopped on the bike, and made my wobbily way back to the dark clinic. Within a couple of hours, power was restored, and I was happy to see that all of the chocolate treats which you kind people have sent to our clinic (and which have not yet gone the way of all chocolate) were not melted, and had remained cool in our various fridges and freezers. Whew!

—

(WARNING: POETIC WAXING AHEAD)

Thinking back on the Walter Reed blackout always reminds me of the much bigger event that happened a couple of months later. I was at WRAMC on 9/11/2001, when the events occurred which inexorably led our country into this present war. In fact, I was the chief of medical residents during that academic year, which means that I had some responsibility on that day to assist in gathering the troops and organizing some kind of medical response to the Pentagon attack. (My harried, and ultimately helpless experience of that day will indeed make it to this web page in time.) I did not make it to the Pentagon on the day of the attacks, but I was there a few days later working in the DiLorenzo Clinic as the rescuers moved rubble around looking for signs of life (futilely, as it turned out). Now, six-and-a-half years later, I am here in Iraq, amidst a very different kind of rubble.

I am an itty-bitty player in all of this, but I have to acknowledge that my life has been directly affected by September 11th, certainly less so than many (i.e., someone on the south face of the 81st floor of tower #2 in its last moments, or their family member), but more so than most. This was true on day one when I dealt with not only my own personal version of the national angst over the fact that such a thing should occur, but also the very practical consequences of my job, working at the best-known (and best) of military hospitals, just a few miles away from one of the attacks. I had a couple of very very long shifts at Wally World on 9/11 and the subsequent days, and sitting there with my colleagues, waiting for the patients who never showed up, I felt rather acutely the helpless feeling that was so prevalent among good people around the world over during the next weeks.

And now, right now at this moment, I am sitting in a plastic-aluminum pre-fab trailer in Centurion Can City, Al Asad, Iraq, seven thousand miles from home, writing these words on my Dell laptop and then sending them via military satellite to their ultimate location in a server near Japan. From there, they are retrieved and read by a few flesh-and-blood humans including people like you, who for some reason care about my part in all of this, understanding as you do, that there is (corny though it may sound) a connection which binds us—an ultimate common-ground, as it were, which links the Rupards and the Glenn Olsens and the Tompkinses, and the Anismans, as well as the bin Ladens and Husseins of the world.

What a long, strange trip it continues to be…