MEDEVAC

By Travis Harman

“Is it broken?”, I mumbled

The battalion surgeon placed the lower half of my jaw back into place with the upper half as I sat on the makeshift exam table. He took a step back, looked at me curiously, and watched in awe as my jaw literally dropped.

“Yeah, I’d say that’s broke. We gotta get him out of here now. Call the MEDEVAC.”, he ordered.

I was given a shot of morphine and as the helicopter to come take me away was called, my platoon mates came to say their goodbyes. Feeling nothing but bliss, I began chatting up a storm with them.

“I guess this is it man. See ya when we get back.”, my buddies would tell me.

“Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Hey where’s my Ipod? I wanna hear some music.”, I said.

“Be quiet! Your jaw is broken!”, the surgeon barked.

He began to wrap my head with a white Army bandage, like a Revolutionary War soldier to shut me up. I was getting my ticket home from Afghanistan, but at a price. The helicopter came to our remote outpost, Combat Outpost Najil, to take me away. The trek back to the land of the free though, would be a long and treacherous one.

As my brothers walked me to the helicopter arm in arm, they loaded me onto my chariot. The first stop from our outpost was Bagram Airfield where the hospital was and all who were coming or going form the country, would do so here. They were expecting my arrival in approximately forty-five minutes, a ride that would last a lifetime.

I boarded the Blackhawk and took my seat near the left door behind the pilot. I began to strap in so I would not fall out on our swift ride through towering mountains that surrounded the Alishang Valley. I looked down to my feet to witness a man in a body bag. The bag was zipped up to his chin, only to let his head poke out. He had gauze placed over each eye, and blood on what I could see of his face. The flight medic checked his pulse and looked at me.

“He’s going to die.”, he shouted to me.

The helicopter took off, showering everything with dust as we became airborne. I sat there, stoned out of my mind watching out the open door as the mountains littered with primitive villages and lush green fields in the valley passed before me. I saw the flight medic check his pulse once more. He looked to the crew chief on board and shook his head no, signaling that this man was still with us. This drew my attention down to the floor, as I knew he would soon no longer be with us. Who was he, why were we taking this trip together, and of course, why him and not me? Whatever the reasons for coming to this war, it brought us together at that moment. All we wanted was to go home, and here we would be going home in different forms.

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Travis Harman was born and raised in central Pennsylvania. Travis spent 13 years in the United States Army with a tour in Afghanistan in 2008. He left the military in 2018 to pursue his writing career and began his formal education at Southern New Hampshire University where he obtained his Associate of Arts in Liberal Arts. Currently he is enrolled at Wilkes University for his Master of Arts. Travis’s poem, “The Path”, can be read in Veterans Voices Magazine. He has also won The Antonym Magazines November 2021 creative nonfiction contest and is published there for his short story, “Green Handed”.