Chapter 3
There was clattering in the hall, the smell of feces and urine and that “sick room” odor humans exude when ill. Jake couldn’t tell what time it was. The bed linens were smooth, his leg propped up on a pillow. He could feel bandages wrapped around his head, a device with a wire attached to the finger of his right hand, a tube to his left – I.V. perhaps – something stuck in his chest just under the collar bone on his right side. There were wires stuck on his chest and abdomen and on his leg (?). Above his head he could hear a steady ‘beep’ that coincided with his heartbeat he concluded must be a pulse monitor. He was still in hospital then.
“Damn, it wasn’t all a bad dream.” Jake tried to roll onto his left side a little to relieve the pressure he could feel on his right buttocks. It seemed that he was constrained, somehow, but he couldn’t feel any belts or ties. His arms were free, if you didn’t count the wires and tubes. He could lift his head - it was unfettered.
Out in the hall, the noise level had increased. He suddenly understood the reason he couldn’t roll – he was on a bed pan and his cheek was being pinched by the lip of the pan. The noise must be coming from an orderly collecting the bed pans – hence the smell. “Oh Lord! Is that odor reeking from MY butt?” he wondered. In a minute or so, gloved hands had raised his left leg and torso like a baby and the pan was removed. A warm wash cloth was applied vigorously to the region. Some kind of lotion was next. It smelled faintly of fish oil and something else… oil paint? “It couldn’t be,” thought Jake, “I’m imagining things.”
Across the room he heard quiet grunts as the orderly strained to lift or roll the occupant of that bed. “He sounds pretty heavy,” he croaked. At least that was what he was going for. It came out sounding like a Canada goose call he had as a young man in Maine, hunting in Muscongus Bay for a Christmas goose for the table. His father loved goose and he loved the sweet, rich skin of the roasted bird, hot from the oven, crackling with each bite and munch in his mouth. Whatever made him think of that?
Shortly, he heard the squish, squish, squish of the orderly’s rubber shod feet leave the room, the harsh roar of the toilet flushing, more water running and the return. “Probably giving him a bed bath too,” thought Jake.
“What day is it?” came out “Warfarin tit?” Despite his rising frustration, Jake had to giggle. Rat poisoned boobies? Perish the thought!
Jake rolled a little to his side to get more comfortable. “Waa dee ish hit?”
“Tuesday. Five AM. And I have to get going out of here Mr. LaMott, I’m running late already or I’d stay and talk.” The voice was deep, masculine, Southern with a hint of Jamaican lilt to it. Black man, perhaps. Or someone who has worked the islands before.
“Warmiami?” croaked Jake.
“Nurse Johnson will be right with you, Commander. I have to go.”
~ ~ ~
That was the first time anyone had addressed him by rank since he’d left the States to come this god-forsaken island with its teeming masses of poverty, bugs, disease and religious hocus-pocus. At least the United States Consular Offices and the Embassy were like home. Clean, cool, quiet. Now if the masses outside would stop pressing so hard, maybe he and his men could get a breath or two to themselves.
Smith, the slimy intelligence attaché (privately, LaMott was sure that “Smith” was not his real name and he looked like CIA from a mile away) approached the security office at a trot. “L.C. we have a problem,” he started in immediately without so much as a “howdy, how you doing?”
“What sort of problem?” asked Jake.
“Jean-Claude has reportedly been placed under house arrest at the Presidential Palace.”
“The military?” asked LaMott.
“Yeah. Lieutenant General Raoul Cedras appears to be in charge,” replied Smith. “He’s ensconced himself, along with half a regiment at the Palace, too, ‘for security purposes.’ We expect they’ll set up on our doorstep any minute now. You and your troops need to secure the perimeter now,” he added, as an afterthought.
“Already done. Helicopters are standing by to guard the buses taking non-essential personnel out to the airport. We have more troops at the airport under the command of the XO of the Nimitz.”
More information was exchanged in terse sentences, each man going about his job with considerable dispatch and finesse. Things were likely to get worse before they got better.
~ ~ ~
The smell of food brought Jake out of a shallow doze. Jake was ravenous. Usually he ate a big breakfast an hour or two after his morning run while enroute to the office, time permitting. On the days he went to the gym, he’d bring a bag of fruit and pick up a toasted bagel and coffee at Sampson’s Bakery on Peachtree Boulevard . On occasion, he’d treat himself to a bearclaw, smiling at the incongruity of the sharply dressed agent being manhandled by a pastry the size of a dinner plate. Once a cop…
“Mr. Jake LaMott? Queried a young male voice. Probably a teenager, judging from the quavering timbre.
“Right here,” came out as “Rrrrar, rawr.” It didn’t seem to phase the young man any, though. Jake could hear the sounds of the tray table being wheeled into position, the tray settling onto the table top, a soft curse and whoosh as the server cursed his own clumsiness and turned the tray 180 degrees so the tray’s organization was consistent with all the other trays he’d brought to this patient. Poor bugger.
“Sir, coffee is at one o’clock, a small carafe at twelve. Utensils are all at 3 o’clock on top of the napkin. Salt and pepper packets are at 5 o’clock; salt has ridges, pepper is smooth. On the plate in front of you is scrambled eggs at twelve to two. Two slices of buttered toast sit at three to six. Two strips of bacon at 7 o’clock. A small monkey dish of grits is at 10 o’clock on the plate. At Seven o’clock on the tray is your napkin; at nine o’clock is a wet nap in a foil packet and at 11 is a carton of orange juice with a straw in the center of the side. Is there anything I can get you?” he asked.
“Unh-unh” grunted Jake. Funnily enough, it came out as ‘unh-unh’ just as he’d planned. He waited as the attendant put a napkin around his neck with a chain to retain it, much like in the dentist’s office. Except the drool here wasn’t going away after the novocaine wore off.
Jake picked up his fork and started in on his eggs, sipping his orange juice and munching on bacon with his free hand. It was awkward as hell, his right arm was encased almost to the top of the biceps. At least he could move it today. Not like the other day. He didn’t have the strength to even lift it off his chest when he’d first awakened.
As he worked his way through grits and then the toast, Jake thought back to when he first came to consciousness. At least he was able to eat solid food now. Jake had gotten terribly discouraged with a diet of liquids, thickened with some inert, tasteless, gel to avoid choking, the nurses told him. And he didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad as when he woke up the first time. He managed his own pain now. When it got to be too much, he squeezed a button and a spritz of morphine shot into his vein. Not enough to nod off on, but enough to take things down a notch. The worst pain was in his right eye. He could detect some difference between light and dark with his left eye. His right eye, though, that was like someone was shoving a red-hot poker into the eye and twiddling it around for good measure. Nothing but lightning bursts of pain-induced illumination.
Jake was just finishing up his coffee and wishing he could see enough to read a newspaper when the air filled with a lilac scent and there was a decided air of purposeful movement over in the other bed. As he concentrated on the scent, trying to “smell” who it was, Janice’s no-nonsense voice addressed him.
“Finished your breakfast, I see, Mr. LaMott.”
Janice. She was always one for stating the obvious, in his limited experience with her so far. She had the strange, flat accent. Hints of Scotch, Welsh and Irish to it. But peculiarly flat, in his opinion. Middle-aged, in his guesstimation. Maybe 50, maybe more – he didn’t think it was less.
“Here, now, sit up for me,” said Janice, raising the head end while simultaneously lowering the foot end of the bed. “Let me do the work – you’re just along for the ride,” she instructed as she lifted his legs and swung them over the side of the bed, steadying him with her other arm from tumbling out onto the floor. Slowly, she lowered his legs, allowing him to bend them at the knee.
“Sit there for me a while. Here’s your call button, If you get too tired sitting, just hold that button down and holler for help; someone will come running.”
Sooner than he expected, the lilac swoosh had returned, along with the lemon-lime scent from the other day. Roger must be with Janice.
“Jake, Good Morning. How are you doing today?” asked Roger as he picked up a chartbook and commenced documenting his patients condition. Pulse was a little elevated at 40, but that could be the strain of sitting up. Blood pressure was excellent at 120/82. Oxygen saturation was 97%, excellent for a smoker. Labs were all normal. Range of motion is slowly returning to uninjured areas, continue with 2X daily PT. “Guess it is time to let the Doctor know it’s time,” mused Roger.
“I’m going to give Doctor Lamhutt a call this morning after I finish initial rounds. We’ll see if we can’t get that bandage off your head today,” Roger remarked. “Janice, I want you to get a hold of a rolling walker with the tag-along hitch rig for the IV pole from PT to place in Commander LaMott’s billet.
Jake became very still. Someone else had done it again. Jumped him a full grade. Odd. Very odd.
~ ~ ~
Lieutenant Commander Jake LaMott had deployed the 63 Marines in his detachment as effectively as he knew how. The were working really thin, he knew all too well. Having to place a minimum of three guards per bus left them very short here at the Embassy. He had sharpshooters on the roof, extra guards at the gates. All were wearing full combat gear – today was not a day for dress blues. The ambassador’s wife was a little nonplussed at having to ride the bus with the other non-essential workers but Jake had been adamant. Stubborn resistance had outranked feminine wiles in the end. She left the compound with the others.
Suddenly the radio crackled. Sitops reports. Jamaican Regulars had attempted to board the plane and been repelled with deadly force. One friendly, three nasties down and out; seven friendlies hurt, unknown nasties injuries, if any. Five troops were on the ground protecting the plane, three others were aboard. Sgt. Major was requesting Seahawk cover as the plane taxis and prepares to take off as more nasties are enroute. All 220 civilians accounted for aboard the airliner. Carrier Nimitz orders 3 Seahawks aloft to the airport and two to the embassy to beef up the troops there.
Things are getting hot in the Port-au-Prince tonight!
~ ~ ~
“Where am I?” elicited no more success than when addressed to the mess steward earlier. “Got to work on that,” thought Jake.
Roger finished slicing the bandage away from the underside of the jaw and started slicing up the side of the head, across the temple, over the crown just behind where Jake’s hairline should be and back down the other side. The bandage stayed in place, even though Roger could see bright pink and blue veins underneath.
“They say discretion is the better part of valor.” observed Roger as he examined the newly revealed skin. “I think I’ll leave the rest for Doctor Lamhutt. I’ll be right back,” he added, as he left the room. Good to his word he was back shortly. This time he had the Doctor in tow. “He also had a wounds cart, and started off by opening a bottle of normal saline. He laid some instruments out on a sterile towel and waited for the Doctors instructions.
Doctor Lamhutt grabbed a pair of forceps and went to work, loosening and lifting off layers of bandage. Working quickly but without a sense of rushing, he peeled layer after layer, coaxing and teasing reluctant patches with small tugs and lots of saline spritzed from an oversize, needleless syringe. Slowly, what emerged was the visage of a man with eyepatches, his skin horribly disfigured on the right side of his face and mostly untouched, except for a couple of small areas where the caustic had splashed or dribbled . Healing was very good, everything considered. There were some areas still in need of debridement, but overall, the worst was past. The doctor ha d instructed Roger and Janice to close the blinds and dim the lights. Basically, the room was illuminated by the small amount of light leaking in around the edges of the blinds, through the small pane in the door to the hall and from the mirror light in the bathroom. Janice was stationed with her back to the hall door, to prevent someone from just flinging the door open as the opthamologist removed the dressings from Jake’s eyes. That was where the real damage had been done.
Slowly, the eyepatch on the left eye was lifted. Jake saw light and dark areas, but everything was blurry. The doctor put some drops in Jake’s eye which smarted something fierce, but he realized that his vision was improving, even as the stinging declined to a tolerable level. Shapes coalesced into images of individual items in the room, the curtain hanging from the ceiling, a bedside table with some flowers and a magazine on it, the doctor sitting in front of him between his legs, a device on his head that looked something like the contraption the evil man wore in “City of the Lost Children,” a man of medium height on the other side of the bed table, sandy haired, wearing blue scrubs, sporting a big beard and larger belly. There was someone over by the door, a woman, maybe, judging by the overall shape of the lower two-thirds of the legs and torso. She, if indeed it was a she as she had her head and face in shadow, was also wearing blue scrubs.
“Is that you, Janice?” asked Jake. “I can’t see you in the shadows. A smiling woman, blonde with her hair in a page boy cut, stepped out of the shadow into the light from the bathroom mirror. He’d over estimated her age, going by voice alone. She was barely thirty. And pretty, from what he could see.
And what he could see was suddenly thrown out of whack as the doctor took the last of the dressing off his right eye. He suddenly felt dizzy, nauseous. Dr. Lamhutt put some drops into his right eye and the world was instantly red, flashing lightning. The pain was intense, as though one of the troubadours in the Plaza in Port-au-Prince had suddenly let out a blood-curdling scream and shoved a knife into his eye. Except the scream was his own and the pain was real, here and now. There was no escaping it. He so wanted to get up and hop up and down, anything to extinguish the inferno in his right orb. His right shoulder started to throb and he started to put his right foot out to stop his slide off the bed. It was only then, sliding towards the floor, that he realized his leg was gone from above the knee, all the way down.
“Oh shit!” said Jake as he passed out. This time, they all understood what he had said.
~ ~ ~
“Damn, it wasn’t all a bad dream.” Jake tried to roll onto his left side a little to relieve the pressure he could feel on his right buttocks. It seemed that he was constrained, somehow, but he couldn’t feel any belts or ties. His arms were free, if you didn’t count the wires and tubes. He could lift his head - it was unfettered.
Out in the hall, the noise level had increased. He suddenly understood the reason he couldn’t roll – he was on a bed pan and his cheek was being pinched by the lip of the pan. The noise must be coming from an orderly collecting the bed pans – hence the smell. “Oh Lord! Is that odor reeking from MY butt?” he wondered. In a minute or so, gloved hands had raised his left leg and torso like a baby and the pan was removed. A warm wash cloth was applied vigorously to the region. Some kind of lotion was next. It smelled faintly of fish oil and something else… oil paint? “It couldn’t be,” thought Jake, “I’m imagining things.”
Across the room he heard quiet grunts as the orderly strained to lift or roll the occupant of that bed. “He sounds pretty heavy,” he croaked. At least that was what he was going for. It came out sounding like a Canada goose call he had as a young man in Maine, hunting in Muscongus Bay for a Christmas goose for the table. His father loved goose and he loved the sweet, rich skin of the roasted bird, hot from the oven, crackling with each bite and munch in his mouth. Whatever made him think of that?
Shortly, he heard the squish, squish, squish of the orderly’s rubber shod feet leave the room, the harsh roar of the toilet flushing, more water running and the return. “Probably giving him a bed bath too,” thought Jake.
“What day is it?” came out “Warfarin tit?” Despite his rising frustration, Jake had to giggle. Rat poisoned boobies? Perish the thought!
Jake rolled a little to his side to get more comfortable. “Waa dee ish hit?”
“Tuesday. Five AM. And I have to get going out of here Mr. LaMott, I’m running late already or I’d stay and talk.” The voice was deep, masculine, Southern with a hint of Jamaican lilt to it. Black man, perhaps. Or someone who has worked the islands before.
“Warmiami?” croaked Jake.
“Nurse Johnson will be right with you, Commander. I have to go.”
That was the first time anyone had addressed him by rank since he’d left the States to come this god-forsaken island with its teeming masses of poverty, bugs, disease and religious hocus-pocus. At least the United States Consular Offices and the Embassy were like home. Clean, cool, quiet. Now if the masses outside would stop pressing so hard, maybe he and his men could get a breath or two to themselves.
Smith, the slimy intelligence attaché (privately, LaMott was sure that “Smith” was not his real name and he looked like CIA from a mile away) approached the security office at a trot. “L.C. we have a problem,” he started in immediately without so much as a “howdy, how you doing?”
“What sort of problem?” asked Jake.
“Jean-Claude has reportedly been placed under house arrest at the Presidential Palace.”
“The military?” asked LaMott.
“Yeah. Lieutenant General Raoul Cedras appears to be in charge,” replied Smith. “He’s ensconced himself, along with half a regiment at the Palace, too, ‘for security purposes.’ We expect they’ll set up on our doorstep any minute now. You and your troops need to secure the perimeter now,” he added, as an afterthought.
“Already done. Helicopters are standing by to guard the buses taking non-essential personnel out to the airport. We have more troops at the airport under the command of the XO of the Nimitz.”
More information was exchanged in terse sentences, each man going about his job with considerable dispatch and finesse. Things were likely to get worse before they got better.
The smell of food brought Jake out of a shallow doze. Jake was ravenous. Usually he ate a big breakfast an hour or two after his morning run while enroute to the office, time permitting. On the days he went to the gym, he’d bring a bag of fruit and pick up a toasted bagel and coffee at Sampson’s Bakery on Peachtree Boulevard . On occasion, he’d treat himself to a bearclaw, smiling at the incongruity of the sharply dressed agent being manhandled by a pastry the size of a dinner plate. Once a cop…
“Mr. Jake LaMott? Queried a young male voice. Probably a teenager, judging from the quavering timbre.
“Right here,” came out as “Rrrrar, rawr.” It didn’t seem to phase the young man any, though. Jake could hear the sounds of the tray table being wheeled into position, the tray settling onto the table top, a soft curse and whoosh as the server cursed his own clumsiness and turned the tray 180 degrees so the tray’s organization was consistent with all the other trays he’d brought to this patient. Poor bugger.
“Sir, coffee is at one o’clock, a small carafe at twelve. Utensils are all at 3 o’clock on top of the napkin. Salt and pepper packets are at 5 o’clock; salt has ridges, pepper is smooth. On the plate in front of you is scrambled eggs at twelve to two. Two slices of buttered toast sit at three to six. Two strips of bacon at 7 o’clock. A small monkey dish of grits is at 10 o’clock on the plate. At Seven o’clock on the tray is your napkin; at nine o’clock is a wet nap in a foil packet and at 11 is a carton of orange juice with a straw in the center of the side. Is there anything I can get you?” he asked.
“Unh-unh” grunted Jake. Funnily enough, it came out as ‘unh-unh’ just as he’d planned. He waited as the attendant put a napkin around his neck with a chain to retain it, much like in the dentist’s office. Except the drool here wasn’t going away after the novocaine wore off.
Jake picked up his fork and started in on his eggs, sipping his orange juice and munching on bacon with his free hand. It was awkward as hell, his right arm was encased almost to the top of the biceps. At least he could move it today. Not like the other day. He didn’t have the strength to even lift it off his chest when he’d first awakened.
As he worked his way through grits and then the toast, Jake thought back to when he first came to consciousness. At least he was able to eat solid food now. Jake had gotten terribly discouraged with a diet of liquids, thickened with some inert, tasteless, gel to avoid choking, the nurses told him. And he didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad as when he woke up the first time. He managed his own pain now. When it got to be too much, he squeezed a button and a spritz of morphine shot into his vein. Not enough to nod off on, but enough to take things down a notch. The worst pain was in his right eye. He could detect some difference between light and dark with his left eye. His right eye, though, that was like someone was shoving a red-hot poker into the eye and twiddling it around for good measure. Nothing but lightning bursts of pain-induced illumination.
Jake was just finishing up his coffee and wishing he could see enough to read a newspaper when the air filled with a lilac scent and there was a decided air of purposeful movement over in the other bed. As he concentrated on the scent, trying to “smell” who it was, Janice’s no-nonsense voice addressed him.
“Finished your breakfast, I see, Mr. LaMott.”
Janice. She was always one for stating the obvious, in his limited experience with her so far. She had the strange, flat accent. Hints of Scotch, Welsh and Irish to it. But peculiarly flat, in his opinion. Middle-aged, in his guesstimation. Maybe 50, maybe more – he didn’t think it was less.
“Here, now, sit up for me,” said Janice, raising the head end while simultaneously lowering the foot end of the bed. “Let me do the work – you’re just along for the ride,” she instructed as she lifted his legs and swung them over the side of the bed, steadying him with her other arm from tumbling out onto the floor. Slowly, she lowered his legs, allowing him to bend them at the knee.
“Sit there for me a while. Here’s your call button, If you get too tired sitting, just hold that button down and holler for help; someone will come running.”
Sooner than he expected, the lilac swoosh had returned, along with the lemon-lime scent from the other day. Roger must be with Janice.
“Jake, Good Morning. How are you doing today?” asked Roger as he picked up a chartbook and commenced documenting his patients condition. Pulse was a little elevated at 40, but that could be the strain of sitting up. Blood pressure was excellent at 120/82. Oxygen saturation was 97%, excellent for a smoker. Labs were all normal. Range of motion is slowly returning to uninjured areas, continue with 2X daily PT. “Guess it is time to let the Doctor know it’s time,” mused Roger.
“I’m going to give Doctor Lamhutt a call this morning after I finish initial rounds. We’ll see if we can’t get that bandage off your head today,” Roger remarked. “Janice, I want you to get a hold of a rolling walker with the tag-along hitch rig for the IV pole from PT to place in Commander LaMott’s billet.
Jake became very still. Someone else had done it again. Jumped him a full grade. Odd. Very odd.
Lieutenant Commander Jake LaMott had deployed the 63 Marines in his detachment as effectively as he knew how. The were working really thin, he knew all too well. Having to place a minimum of three guards per bus left them very short here at the Embassy. He had sharpshooters on the roof, extra guards at the gates. All were wearing full combat gear – today was not a day for dress blues. The ambassador’s wife was a little nonplussed at having to ride the bus with the other non-essential workers but Jake had been adamant. Stubborn resistance had outranked feminine wiles in the end. She left the compound with the others.
Suddenly the radio crackled. Sitops reports. Jamaican Regulars had attempted to board the plane and been repelled with deadly force. One friendly, three nasties down and out; seven friendlies hurt, unknown nasties injuries, if any. Five troops were on the ground protecting the plane, three others were aboard. Sgt. Major was requesting Seahawk cover as the plane taxis and prepares to take off as more nasties are enroute. All 220 civilians accounted for aboard the airliner. Carrier Nimitz orders 3 Seahawks aloft to the airport and two to the embassy to beef up the troops there.
Things are getting hot in the Port-au-Prince tonight!
“Where am I?” elicited no more success than when addressed to the mess steward earlier. “Got to work on that,” thought Jake.
Roger finished slicing the bandage away from the underside of the jaw and started slicing up the side of the head, across the temple, over the crown just behind where Jake’s hairline should be and back down the other side. The bandage stayed in place, even though Roger could see bright pink and blue veins underneath.
“They say discretion is the better part of valor.” observed Roger as he examined the newly revealed skin. “I think I’ll leave the rest for Doctor Lamhutt. I’ll be right back,” he added, as he left the room. Good to his word he was back shortly. This time he had the Doctor in tow. “He also had a wounds cart, and started off by opening a bottle of normal saline. He laid some instruments out on a sterile towel and waited for the Doctors instructions.
Doctor Lamhutt grabbed a pair of forceps and went to work, loosening and lifting off layers of bandage. Working quickly but without a sense of rushing, he peeled layer after layer, coaxing and teasing reluctant patches with small tugs and lots of saline spritzed from an oversize, needleless syringe. Slowly, what emerged was the visage of a man with eyepatches, his skin horribly disfigured on the right side of his face and mostly untouched, except for a couple of small areas where the caustic had splashed or dribbled . Healing was very good, everything considered. There were some areas still in need of debridement, but overall, the worst was past. The doctor ha d instructed Roger and Janice to close the blinds and dim the lights. Basically, the room was illuminated by the small amount of light leaking in around the edges of the blinds, through the small pane in the door to the hall and from the mirror light in the bathroom. Janice was stationed with her back to the hall door, to prevent someone from just flinging the door open as the opthamologist removed the dressings from Jake’s eyes. That was where the real damage had been done.
Slowly, the eyepatch on the left eye was lifted. Jake saw light and dark areas, but everything was blurry. The doctor put some drops in Jake’s eye which smarted something fierce, but he realized that his vision was improving, even as the stinging declined to a tolerable level. Shapes coalesced into images of individual items in the room, the curtain hanging from the ceiling, a bedside table with some flowers and a magazine on it, the doctor sitting in front of him between his legs, a device on his head that looked something like the contraption the evil man wore in “City of the Lost Children,” a man of medium height on the other side of the bed table, sandy haired, wearing blue scrubs, sporting a big beard and larger belly. There was someone over by the door, a woman, maybe, judging by the overall shape of the lower two-thirds of the legs and torso. She, if indeed it was a she as she had her head and face in shadow, was also wearing blue scrubs.
“Is that you, Janice?” asked Jake. “I can’t see you in the shadows. A smiling woman, blonde with her hair in a page boy cut, stepped out of the shadow into the light from the bathroom mirror. He’d over estimated her age, going by voice alone. She was barely thirty. And pretty, from what he could see.
And what he could see was suddenly thrown out of whack as the doctor took the last of the dressing off his right eye. He suddenly felt dizzy, nauseous. Dr. Lamhutt put some drops into his right eye and the world was instantly red, flashing lightning. The pain was intense, as though one of the troubadours in the Plaza in Port-au-Prince had suddenly let out a blood-curdling scream and shoved a knife into his eye. Except the scream was his own and the pain was real, here and now. There was no escaping it. He so wanted to get up and hop up and down, anything to extinguish the inferno in his right orb. His right shoulder started to throb and he started to put his right foot out to stop his slide off the bed. It was only then, sliding towards the floor, that he realized his leg was gone from above the knee, all the way down.
“Oh shit!” said Jake as he passed out. This time, they all understood what he had said.
© 2004 by Wil
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