He Won't Be Coming Home
Enemy Saviors
I could feel the energy draining from my body, like the blood emptying onto the ground. There was a deafening silence pressing in all around me, quickly replaced by a high ringing in my ears. I tried to breathe, but all that entered my lungs was a cloud of dust and dirt.
As the ringing persisted in my ears, I could hear the sound of boots on the packed-dirt ground coming closer. I wanted to get up, I wanted to run away from this place, but I couldn't. I could scarcely breathe, let alone try to get up. The footsteps stopped very close to me, and I wondered what was about to happen, my fate completely in the hands of the enemy.
I felt hands gripping my shoulders, pulling my torso off the ground, and a cloth material was wrapped around my neck over the bullet wound, tied tight. I was on the verge of choking, but at least it would subdue the bleeding. I didn't know if I really wanted to be alive for whatever was in store for me, but I didn't have a choice at the moment.
Slowly I opened my eyes, feeling the hands on my shoulders, clutching the material of my uniform, drag my body forward, my legs in the dirt behind me. I looked up through bleary, dusty eyes to try and see who my captor was, though I knew the answer already.
He was an Iraqi, and I coughed, wanting to tell the bastard to just leave me in the dirt with my fallen men to die alone, to just let me go. One of the men flanking my left started speaking in a language I didn't know but had come to recognize, the words leaving his lips rapidly. I turned my head to look at up at him with hatred, and the next thing I knew, he was raising the butt of his rifle toward me. I felt a hard crack against the side of my head and slipped into darkness.
I took a breath. And then another. Wherever I was, I was alive. I could hear movement around me, light footsteps pattering against the floor, some getting closer, some retreating. Taking a deep breath, I slowly opened my eyes. I was in a dingy room on some kind of cot, and the lighting was rather dim. I felt a panic rise up through my stomach, sinking deep into my bones, when I realized I had no goddamn idea where I was.
I slowly turned my head to the side, seeing a few more cots lined up next to mine, some with occupants, others empty. I could see the bandages littering their bodies, and when I saw and Iraqi woman tending to one, changing his bandages and shooting him up with a syringe, I realized where I was.
For some reason unknown to me, the soldiers I had been fighting, that had shot me and my men, had taken me to their hospital. I didn't know why, but I had a vague idea that there was something they wanted from me if they had decided to keep me alive. And I knew that I wanted to get away from there before something awful happened.
I tried to sit up, to move my legs to the side and get my feet on the floor, but stopped with a deep groan as I felt a searing white-hot pain shoot up from my right knee. I tried to keep as still as possible on the cot, gritting my teeth against the pain as I tried to calm my beating heart.
I shakily reached a hand up to my neck, expecting to feel an open gash, but instead felt the small threads of intricate stitching holding my wound shut. I let my eyes trail down my body until I caught sight of my knee. There was dried crusting blood covering the skin that was showing, considering I was only in my boxers, and chunks of flesh torn away. I could see the shattered bones of my kneecap and the sight made my stomach leap up into my chest as my head began to spin, throwing me back into my world of darkness.
My entire right leg was racking with pain as I came to again, a pain so intense, so excruciating, I could feel the bile in my stomach threatening to rise. I could feel poking and prodding inside my knee and screamed in agony, my eyes snapping open to see two male Iraqis looming over me, working on fixing up my knee.
Quickly I sat up, kicking the doctor on my left away while pushing the other with my fists. They both stumbled back and started shouting at me in their language, the looks in their eyes malicious.
Despite the pain in my leg, I got off the cot, stumbling as I made my first few steps. I could feel the tears leaking down from my eyes as my body writhed in pain, but didn't even bother to wipe them away. One of the doctors tried to pull me back to the cot as more people gathered to watch the scene I was making, and I pulled my fist back before slamming it into his jaw, knocking him down onto the cot next to me.
I tried to scramble away as best as I could, but soon I was surrounded, being pulled back toward the cot.
"Get off me!" I screamed at them all, but no one listened. I tried to get away, kicked, punched, screamed, did anything I could think of to just get away, but I soon began to lose my strength. I could see trails and spatter marks of blood all along the floor, oozing from my knee and dripping down my leg. I could feel that same queasy lightheaded feeling begin to feel my skull, and collapsed to the floor, closing my eyes and breathing out deeply in defeat.
After my little outburst, the doctors placed guards nearby in the room, and I had no choice but to calm down and keep to myself unless I wanted to be killed.
They had kept me in their little hospital for quite some time, and day after day went by with nothing to do but lie on that cot, my muscles sore and aching. Little by little I was starting to heal, and I knew that the longer I was in the hospital, the better. Because as long as I was in the hospital, I was safe. As soon as they took me away from this room with the line of cots and the dingy walls, things were going to get a lot worse.
And I felt for sure that I would never get to see my beautiful wife and sons ever again.