GWOT V - A State of Desperation - Cancer Ward

GWOT V - A State of Desperation - Cancer Ward

From reading the directory (before my involuntary escort to the psych ward) I had learned that Northern Medical City was organized on functional lines.

There were separate wards for foot and leg amputations. Also for hand and arm.

What caught my eye was the Cancer Complex. It had, as many such facilities do, extensive gardens to distract the people suffering.

It also had three statues, each guarding a path. The center path, beyond the gardens, led to a sunken garden. A weeping angel labeled "Angel of Grief." I read the plaque.

"This bronze was cast from a 3D printed image of the original at the decommissioned Stanford Hospital. For All Those We Have Lost."

The statue on the left was labeled "Not Yet."

It still gives me nightmares.

A large black stone is cantilevered over the rest of the piece, like a domino about to fall.

A child of indeterminate gender is barely propping up a piece of long rebar, as if to stop the stone. The angle is not yet right and even once it is, the contest between the child and the stone is clearly unfair.

Sprawled just behind the child is an injured pregnant woman, forever caught in a cry to the child.

A directions sign just beyond indicates "Chemotherapy."

The statue on the right is a grinning skull. Just the skull. It seems to invite, as if to a party. The title is almost hidden under the jaw. "Time"

I follow that path, which is not labeled.

It leads to a long low building.

Camera and guard follow me as I open the heavy bronze door. A carefully blank faced attendant wearing solid black, a severe suit, makes no move to help or to press the button on the handicap pedestal.

Beyond is a waiting room, with the same ticket dispenser I saw at airport customs. Several people are seated waiting.

A second attendant comes out.

"Follow me," he says slowly. He sounds exasperated.

We do. He seats us in a comfortable but severe private room.

A doctor comes in carrying a tablet, closes the door.

He has a death's head icon on his hospital badge, and the word "Thanatosist."

He shakes his head.

"None of you need our assistance today." It is a statement not a question. "You shall not use photos or video of our clients in waiting." Not a statement but an order.

"I will tell you two things. Then you will leave and not return, to this or any other such facility. Unless of course it is your time.

"To get past me, or one of my colleagues, you must have a terminal diagnosis that has been confirmed by second opinion. The least I have ever made a person wait is three hours. She had Stage Four bone cancer and was on an expedite. Many people come back again and again for days. And then I often reject them. Not ready yet.

"We are all initiates of the mysteries of death. To go beyond this room is to accept this in one's heart.

"The mechanics of my task are easily searched on the Internet. Our media kit has photos and video including interviews with consenting patients and some who declined.

"It would be inappropriate and a gross violation of my oath to permit you any patient contact. So you shall follow me back to the gardens by one of several secret paths. Or I shall summon the police, which I have never done in three years of this work. But you are my first reporters."

I start to ask a question and he lifts a finger. Then he opens a different door and gestures us to it.

It is be chivvied out or make a huge public scene that will reach the Governor's ear.

Soon we are standing in the gardens again. As if casually, there is now a hospital police officer pretending to admire the grinning skull.

We therefore head to Chemotherapy.

in the interim, someone has discarded a rosary at the child statue's feet.

Bruce - A Year Of Tuesday

Bruce - A Year of Tuesday

[In which our host explains a few things, which may or may not have any resemblance to the author.]

I'd gotten nailed. Someplace I wasn't supposed to be, doing something I didn't care to explain. I hadn't been stealing but the officer had been kind enough to testalie on the police report that I'd had a TV set in my hands while I was crawling out the window.

As I was a juvenile, the Court didn't care if I was guilty or not guilty, nor did I have any rights to say, fight the charges.

Instead I was now on searchable probation. The probation officer had been pleasantly blunt.

"The world is your jail cell. Any time a cop so much as talks to you, you have to tell them you are on searchable probation. And they have the right to search you. Any time you don't feel like being searched, you can trade the world for a real jail cell, any time you like."

He thought he was threatening me.

I liked jail. Predictable and safer than home. But exposure to jail was cumulative and I did not want to go down that road, where being tough enough to get through life ended up in "Tough, kid, you're _doing_ life."

If I kept my nose clean until I turned 18, it would go away. If I didn't, I could have a record that would keep me out of most schools, most jobs, and all hope.

The stepmother, of course, was all about keeping everything on the down low. Not very well; she spent more time dealing with courts and cops than I did. She reminded me constantly that she could throw me out whenever she liked. Yet she didn't.

I have very few memories of my dad. All of them are bad.

If I try to think of him, I get this overwhelming feeling of heavy pressure on top of my back. And in my ass.

I'm guessing her memories of him were, if that, at least more than that, and perhaps even pleasant.

So yeah. Two and a half years of high school left to go, unless I took a GED test and got out early. Which wouldn't be prudent.

If life is a video arcade, I'm a pinball. Not a pinball machine, a pinball. I bounce off people and things. Sometimes I score. Often I get hit. Sometimes I go down the chute and wait to get banged again by the plunger. And spend a lot of time waiting in between quarters.

It would probably help if I could plan. I could kind of plan. I could make notes. But the plan tended to turn to shit when my head stopped working, which was incredibly often.

The probation officer had turned me over to a court counselor. That worthy soul had not even talked to me, only to my stepmother, and turned in a report to the Court that was pure fiction.

Again, no right to dispute.

When I'd immediately been referred to domestic violence counseling (I'd never laid a finger on her; the reverse was not true); anger management counseling (OK, that was fair), theft counseling (I'd gone to great lengths not to steal, including being beaten many times and injured at least twice)...

Suddenly an amended pre-sentencing report was filed that got me off the hook for all that. You see, my stepmother had money and would have had to pay for it.

So instead, I was referred to the 'free' option - a social worker.

She seemed fresh-faced and eager. Willing to be helpful.

I thought about it for a minute, asked if she was recording. She wasn't. So I spilled my guts, in that little cubicle room with seven other people BSing rookie social worker trainees in the other cubes. I just told her who I was and how it was.

After the second time she excused herself to throw up, she didn't come back.

I hadn't even gotten to the _good_ stuff.

###

Her supervisor was less willing to be helpful. She kept interrupting me, telling me that it couldn't have been like that.

"Look, ma'am, I was there and you weren't," I said finally, and ceased speaking.

Right to remain silent. It worked on cops.

It apparently didn't work here. Because my PSR now said "pathological liar, refusing to cooperate with counseling."

See, no right to contest or argue.

So the Judge banged his gavel and said, "Seven days, Juvenile Hall."

###

Things got kind of blurry after that.

###

When I could think again, I was in a concrete cell. I was wearing a orange jumpsuit. I had no personal belongings in the cell. There was not even toilet paper for the toilet with sink built into the top.

I was very thirsty, so I drank what water I could. Tried to get my bearings.

A paper plate covered in glop was slid under the gap in the door. No utensil.

It was all delicious. By which I intuited that it was my first meal for some time, days perhaps.

An endless time of hopelessly trying to remember the interim later, I heard.

"Turn around. Put your hands against the hatch in the door."

I was handcuffed through the door and walked to a room. Three people were in the room. Two deputies, one civilian.

It was a hearing of some kind. I have no idea what. They asked me questions. I gave the best answers I could, which wasn't much because I didn't really remember anything between Judge-gavel-7-days and eating off that paper plate in the isolation cell.

They had me sit on a bench outside the hearing room.

Through some trick of acoustics, I could hear them talking.

I'm pretty sure that was not intended.

But it saved my life.

###

"I'm very sorry," I said immediately when they walked me back in. "I panicked. I was scared."

I said these things because that was what they wanted to hear from me.

Now I was lying. But I was starting to blend in. Acculturating, I found out much later.

They knew I was lying. That's the hell of it. But their job was to break my defiance in juvie before someone broke my internal organs with a toothbrush shank.

###

I was back - back? - in GenPop. General Population.

Everyone gave me a wide, wide berth. My roommate was incredibly polite and respectful, as it is wise to do when one must share a tiny space with a scary person. I returned his courtesy scrupulously.

I mostly remember watching TV on the transparent set on a mount in the high corner of the cell. Cartoons and the Weather Channel.

The food was the same paper plates. But I was allowed a plastic spork now.

Four days later, they walked me to a cage, threw the dirty stinking clothes at me that I'd gone to Court in, and I walked home twelve miles for lack of $3 for a bus.

###

"Did you learn your lesson?" my stepmother sneered at the door.

My brain constructed three plans.

But I'd learned a new skill, in that hearing.

"Yes, ma'am," I said quietly. Listened to her rant. Nodded in all the right places. Abased myself. Lying to survive.

It still didn't get me any food that night.

That was OK, I'd eaten pretty good for a few days.

But it was a much better outcome than the three plans, which involved blunt objects, mixed chemicals and arson respectively. And murder, of course.

That would lead only to GenPop. For life.

###

My head still didn't work. But I was learning to roll. To spin. To always use what little I had to improve my situation, if not my sanity.

Can't wash your clothes because the garage is kept locked?

There's a sink. There's bar soap.

Need more bar soap? There's a dumpster behind the hotel, right?

Food?

Dude, I _invented_ DoorDash before smartphones were a thing. Go get food for people, eat off the round up and the portions people didn't want.

Learning to smile when I felt sick. To grin when I wanted to paint the world red. To joke when a rocket's main thruster would be cooler than my incandescent rage and furious anger.

One of the things I'd overheard in the can.

"Improvise, adapt, overcome."

It became my mantra. And like the three people in the hearing who didn't give a shit one way or another, it also saved my life.

A postcard came in the mail ten months later. I got it because I usually got home before the step-creature, and took any mail with my name on it.

"Congratulations on serving your probation," it read. Apparently I'd only gotten one year - not until I turned 18.

It didn't matter with the police. They still treated me like I was on searchable probation; that I wasn't was a mere detail, easily correctable, and I didn't want to call attention to it unless it really mattered.

But the fact of it mattered to me.

GWOT V - McNasty

GWOT V - McNasty

It should be obvious at this point that Sergeant Driscoll is not his real name. If one reviews campaign records of the Border, especially of Campos Sector, you don't find anything about him.

Nor was I court martialed for shooting him, which he clearly and richly deserved. (I'd shot lots of other people, some of them even in the Army of the Republic ... but shooting my NCOIC would get me talked about.)

###

"Sir."

As befit a senior NCO of the California Republic's armed forces, he could say "Sir" and mean "What the fuck you want, asshole?" with the best of them.

"Sergeant."

And so could I.

"First I'm going to hand you this sheet of paper. Then we're going for a drive."

The sheet of paper was on my printer already. I handed it to him.

It was a one page performance evaluation, a standard form.

I knew what it said of course.

He started to explode.

I put my hand on the butt of my pistol.

He flinched.

Damn. It would have been nice if I'd actually started screaming. Because then I could have dropped him and had a good chance of getting through the court martial, especially after planting the drop gun on his extremely fresh corpse.

I still had said drop gun on me. Waste not, want not. And with any luck, I'd still get a chance to plant it.

"To the vehicle," I ordered.

He looked at me. Realized that holy shit, I was an officer, and holy shit, I was giving him an order, and double holy shit, I would literally fucking shoot him for disobedience.

The vehicle had been sluiced out but not well cleaned. It still had blood and piss and shit and mud on the floorboards and seats. Especially the driver's seat, which I sat in and motioned him to sit beside me.

We pulled out smoothly. I was driving towards the Border. Of course.

###

"Sergeant," I began.

"You're not an idiot. You were in line for a promotion before the last three weeks. Before I came into your life, and you became a worthless good for nothing piece of shit."

"Sir, I respectfully request that you treat me with dignity and respect."

"Kiss my ass, traitor," I replied. Making sure that we were going fast enough that a crash would severely injure us both.

"What?!?"

"I have two soldiers and a medic who are dead now who should be alive. And a third missing a leg."

"How is that my fault?!?"

"Issuing orders directly contrary to my own, intended to defeat both my standing instructions and specific orders in life threatening situations."

I sped up further. Merged to the tertiary road that would take us to CA-8.

"How so?"

I noticed he wasn't bothering with the pretense of Sir any more.

"I gave SOPs to my driver and my gunner. My driver followed them. My gunner did not. You, in the presence of both of them, overrode my SOP. Said I was dangerously unstable and that if I said 'Punch It' or 'Open Fire', these suggestions were to be ignored.

"I just spent a year executing people for breaking military law. You fucking mutineer."

"Why are we in this vehicle?" he asked warily.

"I've evaluated that your survival is dangerous to the Republic and to my unit. So I reserve the right to kill you, even at the risk of my own life. Because I am loyal to my soldiers and you aren't."

I'd already said traitor and mutineer. But he wasn't listening, or didn't yet understand.

"I'd much rather get you on board with the program. Get you performing to your capabilities. Accept that three people are dead because you fucked up, but you learn from it. Or I swear by a God that I don't believe in that I will waste you. Training accident. Helicopter fall. Weapons malfunction. The Border is so fucking dangerous.

"And all I'd be doing, _Sergeant_, is what you tried to do to me. Turn about is fair play."

I risked a glance.

He looked... ashen.

Hmmm.

"I wasn't trying to get you killed! I thought the Americans would..."

"Traitor," I interjected. "Conspiring to get me kidnapped is a bit worse than you know. Some of us are examples. Some of us are famous. I can get my ass killed all day, but I am forbidden to be captured."

"You walk in here and take over," he began.

Finally, truth. I bit my lip and merged to CA-8. Eastbound.

I had no desire to take this problem to San Diego, or even El Cajon. El Centro would do. But I was just about ready to dump his ass at the Yuma check point and have him frog marched into Arizona.

"You're totally inexperienced in the operational arts. You have no prior military experience. You're a naive incompetent, dangerous because you speak the language of warfare but you don't understand it and you haven't done it. 'Student of military history' my left nut!"

"Why am I alive then?" I interjected.

"Your ass was saved by air cav!"

"And I had the presence of mind, when ambushed, to call for air cav! You're a veteran NCO. Do you really think I'm a scrub Lieutenant at heart just because you hate my guts? Or can you evaluate someone you hate - which is a core military skill at your rank, and at my rank - and do better?"

He sighed.

"Shit."

And actually engaged his brain. I could almost see the gears stripping and the lube dripping from his ear lobes.

"Yeah, you've got some moves. But you're patchy as hell," he reluctantly conceded.

"Sergeant Driscoll, you are by far the best NCO I have met in California service. That is my evaluation, and the evaluation of your previous rating officer, and the evaluation of the Regimental SNCO as well as the NCO Board. The problem with your most current evaluation is not your skills but your failure to use them appropriately!"

He seemed shocked. Like he couldn't believe his ears. So I repeated the whole thing, slowly but not so slowly as to be insulting.

"I know the old US Army was toxic as fuck. I've executed enough Army officers and NCOs to see it for myself. But you're in the California Republic now, for reasons known only to you and to your God if any, and you don't have to do shit Snake style.

"My gunner is missing a leg because you jacked him up. My driver is crying in a ball wondering how bad she fucked up when all she did was save my life. And also yours. Because if you'd gotten me captured or killed, you'd be explaining this mess to my CO, Collections and eventually, Pat the Governator. Who would probably find a new career for you in forestry management."

Running crews with hand tools, which any veteran NCO could do in his sleep. Until he drank himself to death in shame.

"You get a week, Sergeant," I said as I executed a high speed pit perfect combat bootlegger on the freeway. As we went sideways and our tires screeched and his hands tightened on the oh shit handles.

"You have seven days to either persuade me that you really are that shit hot NCO I need, or get me killed in a training accident. After seven days, I hand you that eval, or a worse one, and you'd better start checking your gear and watching your back real hard. Did I mention that our doc was once a personal friend of mine and she has no silly Hippocratic qualms whatsoever? You can get hurt and die under her knife. Probably will even if you get me first," I warned musingly.

"Where do we start?"

"We go back to base. You keep calling me Sir and meaning Asshole. I keep calling you Sergeant. But you start fucking performing like a fucking Sergeant in the Army of the California Fucking Republic!"

I stopped myself. Then decided, fuck it.

"I don't want to be your friend. I don't even want to be the Doc's friend. You both get to do your jobs until you get killed or I find someone better. So prove yourself to me. Sergeant. And if you can find someone who can do _my_ job better than me, get me killed and find someone better."

He was silent. Seething.

"Copy. Sir."

I slammed on the brakes full power emergency stop.

When we stopped, my right hand was on _his_ emergency seat belt release. The belt was fully engaged but blood was running down his forehead from where he'd braced with a hand to keep from breaking the windshield with it.

If I'd pressed it down, he'd have gone through the windshield. And then I'd have punched it and gone over him. And we both knew it.

"FUCK FUCK FUCK!"

"Not Copy, Sergeant. Wilco. Or we can keep doing this all day."

A pause.

"Wilco," he finally ground out.

I lifted my hand.

"I shall take you at your word until you give me reason not to. Sergeant. When we get back, I expect you to drop everything and retrain everyone on convoy SOP. The right way. We will have a drill just before dinner. And we will continue it instead of eating dinner if you haven't trained people properly. I'm hungry. So get it right. Sergeant."

His 'Sir' was grudging and angry. But it was the first time I'd gotten a real one out of him.

"I hope you get killed." A pause. "Sir."

"As long as you stop trying to make it happen, Sergeant. That's fair."