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by Benjamin Inks
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Walter Reed had a bad rep by the time I medevac’d there. A shocking exposé had uncovered gross inadequacies. Soldiers were allegedly dying in vermin-infested hospital rooms, crying out to a nurses’ station that either couldn’t hear them or didn’t care. Hard for me to imagine, because when I rolled through in 2010, it was a little annex of heaven on tedious Earth.
Maybe this was because of the mass opioids swimming through my system—morphine on-demand. Maybe because the staff were the kindest, most upbeat people I’d ever met—picture Bob Ross coming to check your vitals. Or maybe it was Hannah.
***
We met in an elevator of all places. I don’t know whether to call it a meet-cute or a meet-ugly. I was celebrating sitting up for the first time in weeks. Finally, I’d been fitted with a TLSO back brace and transferred to my very own wheelchair. Freedom of mobility was extraordinary after spending weeks wondering if I’d ever walk again. Especially after touring the hospital grounds and seeing how some of the other patients were fairing. 2010 was the deadliest year in Afghanistan, but at least I still had all my limbs. No disfiguring burns or brain injuries rendering me permanently altered. Just a couple of burst fractures to my spine. And when feeling came back to my legs, I knew my injuries were something I could handle. Easily. Well, maybe not easily. I did have a Foley catheter shoved up my dick and things were mighty irregular on the other end, too. All that morphine had cemented my digestive tract. Milk of mag and other laxatives got things going, about the pace of a D.C. freeway at 1600 rush hour. I was lucky if I could squeeze something into a bedpan once a week. And whenever I could, it was always embarrassing to have to call one of the hot 2nd lieutenant nurses to come flush it down the toilet and wipe up after me. Like: please, please, please, I’d always pray hitting the call button, send the jolly Puerta Rican guy, not the cute brunette with the southern accent.
But Hannah wasn’t a nurse. I’m not Hemingway, and this isn’t Nicholas Sparks. At first sight, you could say I was struck by her beauty. More so, I was struck I could see her at eye level. The elevator opened and—bam! We were face-to-face . . . because she was in a wheelchair, too.
“Uh, right,” is what she said, realizing I was rolling aboard. We performed a wheelchair dance to allow for us both.
“Similar predicament,” I said, parallel parking beside her.
“Looks that way.”
That awkward elevator silence usually mollified by jazz music arose. I used it to study her in my peripheries, pretending at one point to yawn and stretch my neck for a full look. Her curly ponytail had streaks of chestnut, an artisanal blend of dark and milk chocolate. I remember thinking: can you dye your hair in the Army? I still don’t know the answer. The rest of her felt very civilian as well. Reflective running shorts, a polychrome Coldplay t-shirt, and a jingling charm bracelet that interfered with wheelchair operation.
Her missing left leg—that was the most military thing about her. Seeing it caused me to squirm in sympathy, so I diverted my gaze to her other leg which was olive-toned and muscular and smooth-looking, causing a very different type of unease.
The piss bag by my side made me feel naked—the tube looping out of my shorts and outing me as a man who could not properly relieve himself—as if my vulnerable insides were now on the outside and exposed to the world. I hoped it didn’t stink. A mental note was made to bring a blanket on my next corridor adventure.
“This is my floor,” I said when the doors opened.
“Mine too.”
Military-instilled chivalry demanded she exit first, despite me being better situated. Thankfully, common sense won out. Rather than play bumper cars, I elected to make space by leaving. As I did, my tiny front wheel sunk into the gap between floor and elevator.
She suppressed a laugh. A sympathetic face that seemed to ask: first time?
“I think I need an adult,” I said.
The elevator doors slammed into me only to reopen. I tried popping a wheelie but to no avail. “I guess I’ll holler for the nurses’ station.”
“No, I got you.” She executed a quick turn, locked her wheels, and then gently pulled on my backrest. “Okay—go, go, go!”
I did and was freed.
I thanked her in the lobby.
“You’ll get the hang of it.”
This begged me to ask how long she’d been here.
“Longer than I’d like,” was her response.
I tried my friendliest smile and extended a hand.
“Sergeant Fischer.”
She looked but didn’t take.
“Maybe we can just not with the whole rank thing,” she said, explaining her belief that Walter Reed’s informal ecosystem made for a smoother convalescence. “Call me Hannah.” She offered her hand, charm bracelet rattling.
“Jake. Glad to know ya.”
We exchanged room numbers, and she said to visit anytime, just down the hallway.
“We can brew coffee, or tell war stories, or drag race our wheelchairs,” she said.
And when she turned to go, all I could think was: is five minutes from now too soon?
***
We fell into a rhythm of sorts, encouraged by the highly structured yet stale environment in which we lived. Every morning I’d wheel my ass down to her room for French press coffee, much richer than what they served in the cafeteria. I learned that she had been a schoolteacher before joining the Marine Corps, which came as a double surprise. I would have pegged her for Air Force. Parents from her third-grade class banded together and bought her that jingly bracelet she wore as a going-away present, one charm from each of her twenty students. I didn’t ask how she’d managed to hold onto it through war, a combat injury, to the here and the now at Walter Reed. But her charm bracelet story was the most wholesome thing I’d heard since . . . ever. She laughed at that one.
“Though not a good-luck token,” I said.
She laughed at that, too. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve still got my right leg.
Hannah loved teaching, it turned out. “Too much,” she said. “I realized I could sit back and do this for the rest of my life, no problem. So I joined the Marine Corps.”
“Naturally.”
She grinned. “It scared me that the only life I’d know would be the one I started when I was twenty-three.”
“Yeah—no. I totally get it,” I said, trying not to reveal how self-conscious I felt. Twenty-three was my exact age. And the only life I’d known was the one I started at eighteen.
***
Best judgment put her at least four to eight years older than me. Certainly someone I would be allowed to have feelings for in the civilian world, though in the military there was always the question of rank, which she still refused to disclose. A sergeant dating a staff sergeant might not look so odd. A sergeant dating an officer—don’t even think about it. I wasn’t an air-headed romantic—these are just the scenarios your mind runs in a painkiller-induced fugue. Outside of these bedside fantasies, we were just two plainclothes people who enjoyed each other’s company. I convinced myself not to have any expectations beyond that. Two fit, attractive people who just so happen to understand the unique disposition of the other. We could relate. Chat about the growing pains, phantom pains, and-or psychological pains of being a wounded warrior. For instance: I could gripe about the Foley tube I’d finally—mercifully—had removed, and she could view me as more than just a limp, watery-eyed victim.
“I sympathize,” she said. “That’s an unusual experience for a male. Just be glad you’ll never have to deliver a baby from the same area.”
And what could I say in return? Oh, you can’t understand—you only lost a leg! In this way, we held each other accountable. Casting a life-preserver that kept us both from sinking.
“You want kids?” I asked, because I’m incapable of holding a nuanced conversation.
She practically cackled. “Can you imagine me hobbling after a two-year-old?”
“Well, I mean—you’ll have a prosthesis, yeah?”
“I suppose that’s true. Currently I’m focused on the next step now—no pun intended. Not the next step five years from now.”
Sooooo . . . She’s twenty-eightish? Can’t be much older than thirty.
She ran a hand through her hair. “Let’s just say I’ll have an interesting dating life when I get back on my feet. Foot. And by interesting, I mean nonexistent.”
“That’s what you predict?”
“That’s what I know. I’m not stupid, I saw the look on your face when you first saw me.”
A few starts, stops, and stutters, and I confirmed it’s true—she was very startling. That was my first reaction. “But then I saw you in those running shorts and thought: Damn, nice legs. Er. Leg. Very toned.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If you had a Foley in right now—I’d rip it out.”
I crossed my arms over my groin. “Oof. You don’t hear a comment like that,” I said. “You feel it.”
And when the nurse came in because we were laughing so loud, we both said sorry and popped smoke to the cafeteria where we could be as loud as we wanted.
***
There was no shortage of visitors at Walter Reed: B-list celebrities, sports icons, politicians angling for a human-interest selfie. A cohort of Gold Star moms dropped by my room one afternoon and stayed till nightfall, ultimately surprising me with an X-box, a small tradition they’d all started together.
“A whole damn X-box!” I said to Hannah.
“Wow, not half an X-box?”
I told her not to joke. It was humbling being in their presence. They reminded me of my mom, who had stayed a week in D.C. when I first arrived. I’ll never forget being combat wounded, doped up on morphine in Germany, then handed a phone to notify my family. I was so scared. Mom would kill me if she found out I got hurt. Worse, it would kill her. A heart attack over the phone. It rang a few times and I thought I was safe—I could mask the truth in voicemail. Just a few small fractures. Certainly not a broken spine if that’s what you’re thinking. Of course, she answered, and all I could think to say was, “Heeey, Mom . . . Is Dad around?”
So I could hardly look these Gold Star moms in the eye, knowing what they’d been through.
Hannah had a different philosophy.
“Just imagine how hard it was for them to face you.”
Oh. Well . . . fuck. She was probably right.
***
Powerlessness was often the hardest thing for me to accept. This is temporary, being my daily mantra. Soon my spine would be strong enough to support my weight, and they’d let me stand up again. Until then I felt feeble. More a nuisance than anything. The thing is: I’m a shallow man. Take away my powers of physicality and what am I left with? What’s my identity? Army Sergeant turned Wounded Warrior. I didn’t want my woundedness to define me. Problem is, you have no choice—that’s how people view you. Yes, yes, I’m down here in this chair, but I used to be a real badass! Most of the time, I secretly gushed over the warm attention. Except when it struck home just how incapable I really was. Like the first time I saw Hannah doing physical therapy.
With further surgeries pending, they couldn’t give her crutches for fear she’d fall. Yet it was worth the risk to get her up on those PT walking lanes to stretch her good leg and put weight on it.
She was standing and doing dips, much against the wishes of her physical therapist who hovered ready to catch her.
“Holy cow, are you taller than me?” I asked.
“That depends,” she said, “how tall are you?”
“Five-ten.”
“I’m only five-nine.”
Phew.
“And a half.”
Goddamn it. They said I lost a quarter inch of height after surgery, so that put us nearly neck and neck. I don’t know why I fretted over these things. Maybe when your identity has already taken a blow you try and reclaim what small vanities you can. I wondered if Hannah felt the same about anything.
The therapist guided her to a chair, and I wished it were me. I wanted to stand strong and upright and catch her if she fell. All I could do was be her buddy. And like a groveling kid brother I asked if she wanted to watch the movie Avatar, which neither of us had seen due to being deployed.
She said yes and came to my room for a change of scenery. Also, I had the X-box.
“Come in—come in!” I said, “hors d’oeuvres start at five. Can I get you a glass of chardonnay?”
Her hair was down. She kept fidgeting with loose strands, tucking them behind ears that were pierced with gold hoops.
We laughed out loud when the movie’s protagonist turned out to be a Marine in a wheelchair.
“He’s fucked up like us!” she said, pointing.
Throughout the movie I wrestled with the urge to reach for her hand, but the right moment never came, and I couldn’t decide if I should try casually or make a permission-based thing out of it. Then my back started burning from sitting up all day and a nurse had to come transfer me into bed. Suffice to say, whatever dim-lit mood we started with was spoiled. The nurse informed me that I would be upgrading to a walker soon. This seemed even more emasculating than a wheelchair. With a wheelchair there’s a relaxed dignity: a speed and grace in zipping around the hospital corridors. In a walker I would become a hundred-year-old millennial, struggling once again with a basic mode of human existence.
We both loved Avatar. “And fuck that crazy colonel for picking on the aliens!” Actually, that part annoyed us. Not quite disillusioned with the military just yet, it was hard not to see ourselves as the villain. But we were also the protagonist.
“Would you be a tall blue alien on another planet?” I asked.
“Sign me up.”
“What about Earth?”
“Earth’s overrated. We have a beautiful world here, though most never see it. Too busy in cubicles. I want to soar on pterodactyls surrounded by limitless color and splendor.”
This comment evolved into a discussion of morphine. We both agreed: it was simultaneously a cold and hot sensation. It’s possible for the human body to replicate this in extreme scenarios. Like when sleep-deprived, your body pulses cold to power you down. Or when kissing someone on a first date, your body sends heat to make you feel good. These are natural drips you’re capable of, whereas morphine is a false but steady flow.
“Let’s try and simulate morphine,” I said. “We’ll stay up all night—kissing.”
I could hardly believe the words escaped my mouth and was terrified of the power she now had to either gently diffuse the suggestion or explode it altogether. How awful it would be to pass her in the hallways and it be awkward instead of something to look forward to. And it sounds young-adultish to describe how giddy-relieved I felt when she unlocked her wheelchair and brought herself closer to my bed.
“It’s certainly worth a try,” she said.
“For science,” I said, sitting up.
“For science.”
I’ll spare gushy details, except it’s worth noting that her charm bracelet by my ear sent tingles throughout my body. And similar to how I started this foolhardy make-out sesh, something inward compelled me to press pause. Is this okay, my mind raced. Should we be more grown-up about this? The truth is there is something impossibly immature about nascent love at any age. So when I pulled away and asked, “What are we doing?” her playful response of “We’re convalescing” was all the justification I needed. After we were again separated by the squeaky cart of a nurse about to enter my room on rounds, I went to sleep soaring on something other than opioids.
***
Like every great romcom, there comes a time where the couples are pitted against each other by asinine conflict. Usually due to a white lie, job loyalties, or soft trickery that the audience has seen cooking since scene one.
What happened with me and Hannah was I had just been trained on how to use a walker and wanted to shuffle by her room and impress her with my elevated mobility. However, instead of Hannah, there was a custodial worker tidying up her room, which Hannah would have loathed the thought of. When this staff member saw me, she was so polite and humble—clearly a civilian doing her best to keep up with military formalities. She said, “Captain Reese is out for physical therapy.”
I nodded and turned to leave. I couldn’t let this kindhearted worker know she had just shattered the make-believe world I had grown so comfortable in.
Hannah was a fucking captain.
I roamed the halls, unsure of what to do with this information. Should I be mad at her? Or is that a reaction mimicked from movies. If I do get mad, could I be penalized for insubordination—ha!
I decided I was more impressed than anything. Staff here knew she was a captain, and I doubted they were blind to us sneaking and flirting around. Still, it felt different when she wheeled toward me grinning from here to Baghdad.
“Look at you!” she said, and then stopped, sensing my reluctance. “What’s wrong?”
I executed a textbook salute. “Good afternoon, Ma’am.”
She sighed. “You’re going to get weird now, aren’t you.”
“You’ve got some big balls, you know that.”
“Yes, they’re Marine Corps issue.”
“Because you have the most to lose here, Captain.”
“Seriously? You really think they’d court martial the one-legged woman? Dress blues, the whole circus, wheeled before my superiors. Can you even explain the rules on fraternization?”
“I know it’s not allowed.”
“Jake, are we in a combat zone? Am I in command of troops? Or am I in a hospital missing eight pounds of leg and about to start the long, depressing process of being med-boarded out of the Marine Corps?”
If this were a romcom, it would make more sense to play-up this dispute. Drag it on so the audience sits and wonders if we will or if we won’t. That’s not what happened. We were both adults. We both knew the risks. And it was the easiest thing in the world to toss these concerns behind us and carry on. I worked in the odd joke now and then. Like, after we discovered I could grip her wheelchair handles and she could be my walker, she’d say: “Take us outside,” and I’d reply: “Aye, Captain.” Or after the nurse would finish with rounds, Hannah would command from bed to “Close the door,” and I’d reply: “Yes, Ma’am.”
So no, our gentle rule-breaking was merely a speedbump on our road to intimate connection. We adored each other, as people often say when they can’t admit the L-word.
In the end it was my sudden orders back home that split us apart.
I was well enough to fly, which means I was well enough to vacate Walter Reed. It was now the responsibility of a Warrior Transition Unit to determine my fate. Either med-board like Hannah or reclass to an office MOS less intensive on the spine. On our final night, I hobbled into her room around 0100 and a bemused doctor found us cuddled asleep a few hours later. Apparently, we were talk-of-the-town at the nurses’ station.
We tiptoed around defining what we were. Neither of us quite ready to admit how much we meant to each other. So we had this misfired Casablanca good-bye. Something I regretted immediately upon boarding the aircraft.
“In my most vulnerable moment—you were exactly the goofy guy I needed,” I think she said, touching my face.
In all of my moments she was exactly the headstrong girl I needed, I wished I would have said in return. Instead, I fumbled. At a genuine loss for words. Walter Reed was the only reason we connected, right? We were incompatible out in the real world. Here she was stating otherwise, reducing her rank and baring her soul—it’s so clear now that we had surmounted barriers. If I had more time to think things through, I probably would have recognized she was reaching out for me to reciprocate, allowing me to take an equal initiative.
But I failed. I stared like a deer in headlights, until her warm expression morphed into something blank and shy.
I should have begged to exchange emails. I should have tattooed hers on my forearm.
“Well, take care of yourself,” she said.
And half an hour later when I’m locked in a transport litter on a C-130, I imagined ripping out of my confines, standing and sprinting off the tail ramp to tell her how much I love her. We’d kiss and kiss, and she’d give me her charm bracelet and I’d offer my dog tags: a down payment on our plans to one day reunite. But all I could do was lie prone and laugh-cry about how an airplane is always involved in these situations.
This was right before everyone and their mother joined social media, mind you. So a few years later, when everyone is online and personal information is no longer sacrosanct, as I lie awake stationed at a starry Bagram Airfield, the thought sprints across my mind to crack open my laptop and type Hannah Reese into the search bar. After doing this, the screen loads and a rush of something more actionable than nostalgia fills me.
Her profile shows a figure on a paddleboard. I confirm it’s her by the titanium leg standing firm and glinting below the knee. You’re not supposed to get prostheses wet, so there she goes again breaking the rules. My message is already taking shape when I click on her picture. Is that you, Captain Reese? But when her profile opens to a collage of photos chronicling her life outside the Marine Corps, I freeze. Something swells inside me, then it withers and dies. It’s not pain or disappointment I feel, it’s my soul acknowledging that I’m not messaging an old friend and lover, I’m a voyeur spying on someone I no longer know.
Here’s Hannah in a white dress.
Here’s Hannah’s newborn son.
Here’s a clip of Hannah chasing him at the beach.
And it fills my heart to see—she’s keeping up just fine.
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A Purple Heart recipient, Benjamin served three years in the Army and has worked an odd array of jobs—private investigator, personal trainer, security supervisor at a senior community. So far, the highlight of his résumé was teaching literature as a grad student at George Mason University. Past publications include Line of Advance, Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, The Little Patuxent Review, The Ilanot Review, Adelaide Magazine, and O-Dark-Thirty Review.