She was Stitch, the legendary coreman who had become a myth in his battalion. The one who had supposedly dragged three Marines out of a burning APC. He had spent 10 years thinking she was a ghost. I thought you died, Graves said. The convoy hit the IED on Route Michigan. They told me everyone in the lead vehicle was KIA.
Everyone else was, Sarah said, her voice dropping to a whisper. I was the only one who crawled out. The silence in room 402 was heavier than the lead vests used in X-ray. It was the silence of a graveyard. Colonel Silas Graves, a man who had stared down warlords and politicians alike, looked at the nurse standing by his bed and felt a crushing wave of shame. He had thrown water at her.
He had called her weak. He had told her to get a real man, and she was Stitch, the woman who had become a myth in the battalion mess halls. The coreman who had once performed a tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen and a pocketk knife while taking mortar fire in Fallujah. I Graves started his voice cracking. He cleared his throat, trying to find the iron that usually coated his vocal cords, but it was gone.
I didn’t know, Sarah. Stitch. I didn’t know. Sarah pulled her sleeve down, hiding the skull and the crossed knives. The fierce warrior faded, and the tired, overworked nurse returned. She slumped into the visitor’s chair, something nurses were strictly forbidden to do. “Nobody knows, sir. That’s the point,” she said, staring at her hands.
Sarah Mitchell is a ghost. Stitch died in that Humvey in 2012. I made sure of it. Graves shifted the pain in his leg. Now a dull throb compared to the ache in his chest. Talk to me. The report said the IED was a daisy chain. Three 155 mm shells buried under the asphalt. It said the lead vehicle was vaporized. How are you sitting here? Sarah closed her eyes. The hospital room melted away.
Flashback. Kandahar province. 2000 12. The heat was physical. A heavy blanket that smelled of burning trash and goat dung. The convoy was moving slow, scanning for wires. Sarah was in the back seat of the lead MP, wedged between Corporal Tex Miller, no relation to the other Miller and Sergeant Ruiz. They were joking about what they’d eat when they got back to base.
Tex wanted a burger. Ruiz wanted to sleep for 3 days straight. Sarah was checking her med bag. She always checked it. It was a nervous tick. Then the world turned white. There was no sound at first, just a massive pressure wave that lifted the 14-tonon vehicle like a child’s toy and flipped it into the air.
When the sound caught up, it was the sound of the earth splitting open. Sarah woke up in the dirt. Her ears were ringing so loud she thought she was underwater. The air was thick with black smoke and the copper taste of blood. She tried to stand, but her left leg wouldn’t work. She crawled. She crawled toward the burning wreckage.
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