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farglebargle -> RE: Operation Iraqi Freedom (10/15/2007 10:27:18 AM)
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At the beginning of Our War, we targeted both the power generation capability and the water and sewage treatment facilities. For the most part, these remain destroyed.
For the most part, the horrible fact that the most helpless and blameless pay the ultimate price for Our War isn't really thought about.
The most powerful depiction of the true costs of our wars I've yet to find is from the novel T2: The Future War by S. M. Stirling.
p. 115
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The next patient was an elderly woman with a very high fever, nausea, and very bad diarrhea. She complained of pains in her joints and headache as well. Dr. Ramsingh had gone to the HQ to talk to the captain about this. Two patients was hardly an epidemic, but these suggestive symptoms couldn't be ignored.
The old lady looked up at her with fever-bright eyes when Mary put the thermometer under her tongue.
"Don' wann be a burthen," she said.
"You're not," Mary assured her. "You'll be fine soon."
She certainly hoped so. That there might be cholera in this camp was inexcusable.
p. 116
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There was a commotion at the head of the ward and Mary looked up.
"This is a the hospital ward," the matron was explaining. "You have to take them to the clinic."
"Don't tell us to take them somewhere else," a man was saying, shouting, actually. "Can't you see they're sick?"
"Help up!" the woman beside him said desperately.
Mary headed toward them. Oh God, she thought, *it's children*. One of them a babe in arms, the other about the size of a four year-old. Her gut went cold. Cholera was very hard on the very young and the very old. Her eyes met the matrons' and they made a mutual executive decision.
"If one of you will stay with Matron and help her fill out a chart, I'll help the other put these children to bed." Mary put the tray on the desk and held out her arms.
The man and woman glanced at each other, then the man held out the child he was carrying; a boy, Mary saw. She took him and led the woman down the ward toward a pair of cribs that Mary now thought insanely optimistic of whoever had put this place together. *Just two*, she thought sadly.
"What are their symptoms?" she asked the mother. She didn't need to be told "fever"; she could feel it burning through the blanket. *Ice*, she thought, *where are we going to get ice?*
"Diarrhea," the mother said, her voice shaking. "It just won't stop."
It was the symptom Mary had most dreaded hearing. She efficiently stripped and cleaned the little boy and put a Pampers on him. *These aren't going to last long,* she thought bitterly.
p. 117
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She listened to the near-panicked mother as she started listing the symptoms all over again. Mary gave the woman a second look, noted the hectic flush, the too-bright eyes. *Help!* she thought, as short and desperate a prayer as she'd ever prayed.
Mary brought a chair over and sat the mother down. "Conserve your strength," she cautioned. "You're going to need it." Then she went to the supply cabinet and came back with some bottles of water boosted with vitamins and electrolytes. "Get them top drink as much of these as possible," she instructed. "I know they're sick to their stomachs and won't want it, but they need it, so get it down them." She put a couple of facecloths and a bottle of alcohol down on a bedside table. "When they get too hot, wipe them down with this. I'll be back shortly."
p. 128
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Mary held the Stratzman baby, Sonya, rocking her gently. The poor little
thing was no longer able to drink on her own the only sound was the tiny
labored breathing and the creak of the canvas camp chair beneath her.
*And I don't think the IV is doing any good.*
Sonya's fever was a hundred and six the last time it had been checked and it
felt hotter by the moment; her face was withered and thin, like a tiny
grandmother's. Mary no longer noticed the smell; it was all-pervasive through
the clinic now.
Sonya's four-year-old brother was doing a bit better that she was, but not
much. He lay in the next cot, eyes half-shut; they were dull and sunken in a
hollow-cheeked face. The lids barely flickered as one of the volunteers
changed the soiled pad under his hips and rolled him to one side to straighten
the bedclothes beneath; there were bedsores where the bones of his pelvis and
shoulder were wearing through the skin.
Mrs. Stratzman had labored over her children to the point of exhaustion,
leaving her with little in reserve when she came down with cholera. She'd
died this morning. Her husband was delirious, but he was the most likely to
survive. Through with this kind of fever, there were no guarantees.
Mary herself was very tired, that limbs-filled-with-wet-sand, burning-eyed,
hard-to-talk exhaustion that almost made her want to weep.
*As if I didn't have enough reasons to cry,* she thought. And then: *You're
healthy, you've got no one to lose anymore, you're young enough to probably
throw off the infection if you do get it.*
Right now if felt as though she was stealing this time from other patients, but
babies responded better if they were held occasionally. And it gave the
nurses, both professional and volunteer, a chance to sit down.
She opened her eyes slowly and realized that she'd dropped off for a moment.
It could only have been a few seconds because Matron was still with the same
patient, in much the same posture as she had been. Mary yawned, then looked
down at little Sonya. The baby's eyes were half-open and her mouth was slack.
A spear of anxiety shot through her and she quickly checked the baby's pulse.
The infant's skin was already cooling, and where the pulse had been far too
rapid, now it was utterly gone.
She sighed. *At least someone was holding her when she died; she didn't go
alone in her crib.*
Yet Mary regretted that she hadn't noticed. Not that there would have been
anything she could have done about it.
Nurse Mary Shea rose and took the baby's chart off her crib, carrying it and
the small body outside. Beside the clinic was a large tent where the bodies
were stored prior to being buried. She handed Sonya to a soldier wearing a
hazard suit and respirator; he glanced at Mary and she could see the misery in
his eyes through the bug-like lenses of his mask. She shook her head and
shrugged and he nodded; sadly, she thought. Then Mary made a note on the
chart of the child's time of death and gave him the paper.
She returned to the clinic only for a moment, just long enough to inform the
head nurse of little Sonya Stratzman's death. Matron looked her over.
"Take a break," she said. "Don't come back for twenty minutes of so. We
won't fall to pieces."
"Thank you, " Mary said, from the heart.
She turned and walked away grabbing her jacket on the way out. Outside the
clinic she paused, but not for long. *I've got to get away form the smell of
this place,* she thought, and headed for the gate. She just had to get
somewhere that didn't stink of death and disease.
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