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Chapter 4 - The Hospital Ship

The change in engine sounds woke Jonas from his brief nap and he tried to clear his groggy thoughts.

That catnap was nowhere enough, he mused. Then the thought struck him—how would he find his wife and daughter?

Fighting his almost frantic concern about their safety and how he would be able to find them on the ship; he tried to think of who to contact to locate them. And then his mind cleared. Hospitals have patient wards, even when they are in ships. No problem.

As soon as the aircraft touched down, a number of crewmen ran up and helped the chopper’s passengers out while a CPO checked their IDs. When he got to Jonas, he looked at a clipboard he was carrying and then motioned a hospital corpsman over.

“This here’s Mr Bernard. He has family who came in on the EH. They both went straight to surgery. Can you make sure he’s squared away and knows the gouge?”

Jonas recalled that the word meant “situation.”

The corpsman nodded. “Aye aye, Chief. That’s what they sent me up here for.” The corpsman turned to Jonas. “If you can follow me, sir. Your two ladies are in surgery now and I’m told there’s no immediate problem for them so you can relax as best as you can. I was told to show you to the waiting area,” and then he led Jonas to a lounge-like area. “They said to tell you to try to relax. A lot of patients came in on the EH so it might be an hour or two’s wait. There’s coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and bottled water there. Just down that passageway is the head. The chairs recline so you can sack out if you need.”

Jonas thanked him and sat in a comfortable chair and, despite his anxiety, he quickly fell asleep. The exertion of rescuing his wife and daughter plus the extended time being awake had exhausted him and not even the nagging pain from his leg, with its implanted surgical rod, kept him awake.

A nurse awakened him several hours later.

“Come with me, sir. Your wife and daughter are out of the post-surgery unit and in the patient ward. You may visit with them briefly.”

She led Jonas through several passageways and they entered the ward, brushing back a curtain which surrounded two wheeled hospital beds. There lay Cassandra and Fabienne who, on seeing him, both smiled happily.

“My hero,” Cassandra said as she stretched out an arm to him. “Ouch,” she complained as the movement disturbed her legs, one of which was in a cast.

“Papa,” Fabienne called. “Everything was shaking and Manman screamed for me to get outside, but the doorway fell on my head. It really hurt. We’re going to Miami to fix it. You saved Manman and me.”

Jonas went over to her and hugged her carefully, then kissed her cheek, avoiding touching the large bandage around her head.

The nurse was standing by. “She has a protective cover over her head wound to keep away any further pressure there,” the nurse said.

“I love you, sweetie, and we’ll make sure you’re good as new,” Jonas told Fabienne.

Then he went to Cassandra’s bedside. “You must hurt pretty bad, chérie. Those burns looked nasty.”

He bent over and kissed her.

“Not as bad as they could have been, the doctor here told me. You and Henri must have done the right things for first aid, he told me. Do you know what happened to Robert? There was all that shaking and a ceiling beam must have fallen on us. I was knocked out and woke up when I felt the fire. Then you were there like a lwa, my guardian spirit.”

“Unfortunately the beam hit him full on and he didn’t survive. I’m really sorry.”

Tears welled up in Cassandra’s eyes. “Oh, I’m very sorry to hear. He was a good, decent man.”

“He was. The quake was terrible; Henri and I saw destruction everywhere. Julianna, the family, and their home and shop are okay though, but a lot of Aubry was badly damaged,” Jonas said.

Cassandra nodded. “I would love to be able to take care of my people, but Vanessa...”

“Right. We can’t go back, Fabienne would be in great danger too. We’ll have to go into exile in the States, I guess.”

Cassandra leaned back and closed her eyes. Fabienne had already fallen asleep. The nurse cleared her throat.

“You’ll need to leave now, sir. They need their sleep to recover.”

Jonas yawned. “I do too. I only got maybe two hours’ sleep in the last 32 hours.”

“We’ll get you a berth. You can’t see the surgeon today anyway; he’s been busy with everyone who came in earlier. He told me that he’d see you at 0800 tomorrow. We’re about twelve hours out from port and it’s almost 2000 hours now. When did you eat last?”

“Huh. I guess I am hungry. It’s been too long to remember when, other than a snack and a few energy bars.”

“Let me call a corpsman. He’ll show you to chow and then your berth. Let him know if you need anything for this evening, like toiletries and stuff.”

“I’m good there. I was able to save some personal items from my wrecked home.”

“So sorry about that, sir; I hope things go better for you going forward.”

“Thanks.”

The corpsman led Jonas to the ship’s mess where he had a quick meal. As a hospital ship, food was kept prepared and was available the entire day. Then a crew member brought him to a compartment and showed him a berth there.

~~~~

Jonas woke at 0600; his military training wouldn’t let him sleep if there was a mission to be done, and saving his family was his current mission. He showered and went to the mess area. After eating, he found his way back to the ward where his family was located but a corpsman stopped him.

“You’re not supposed to be here, sir,” the corpsman began.

“My family is in there,” Jonas responded.

“Ah. The Bernards? Okay. Your wife is having her burns treated now and your daughter is getting a CT to follow up on any possible further internal bleeding. They should be fine, though. Wait over there; a nurse will get you when the surgeon is ready to talk to you.”

After an hour passed—a long tense hour—a nurse appeared and brought Jonas to a small office cabin just as a doctor wearing surgical scrubs appeared at the door.

“Colonel Haskins, this is Jonas Bernard,” the nurse spoke to the doctor.

“Hello, Mr Bernard,” he nodded to Jonas, “and have a seat and relax. Your wife’s burns are being treated now and she’s doing okay. She obviously had top notch first aid and that helped enormously. We expect that she’ll recover with hardly any scarring. Your daughter’s injuries are somewhat more serious; she has a skull fracture which I hear you know about. That caused bleeding under the membrane lining the inside of the skull. The medical term is ‘subdural hematoma.’”

“But how is she... can you fix it?”

“She’s stable now and her first CT shows that the bleeding’s stopped and the one we did this morning looks okay too. But we don’t have the facilities on board for the delicate neurological surgery she needs to repair it, to look for any remaining blood vessel damage, and remove the pooled blood. There might be too much for the body to absorb it all. I’ll be arranging a medevac flight to Miami for her; we have about a dozen other seriously injured patients, three U.S. citizens, scheduled for that flight.”

“Um, sir, I’m a citizen and so is Fabienne.”

“I heard that, but is your wife?” Haskins asked.

“No, but...”

“Not a problem. I’ll get my master chief in here to talk to you about that. He’s had some experience with mixed U.S. and foreign dependents.”

Haskins punched a number into the desk phone. “Master Chief? Got a patient with a citizenship waiver issue. Need you in 2043 ... roger.” He turned to Jonas. “Be just a minute.”

“Thanks, sir... ah, you’re a colonel? This is a Navy ship so I thought only Navy docs...?”

Haskins chuckled. “Army light colonel. I’m in the reserve and on TDY from the University of Florida medical school for this disaster relief effort. The Army, Air Force, and Navy have doctors.”

“Ah, I think I knew that. Army docs in Germany rebuilt my leg. I’m Marine; medical retired; wounded in Afghanistan...” Jonas began, and then the cabin door opened and a big man in a Navy corpsman’s uniform appeared.

The newcomer glanced at Jonas and then did a double-take, his eyes widening and jaw dropping. Jonas looked at the man and gasped.

They both spoke at once: “...Jo...Jonas? What...?” ... “Bert? Damn! Is it you?”

Haskins looked from one to the other. “You guys know each other?”

The two men approached each other for a man-hug.

The man referred to as “Bert” looked at the colonel. “Yes, sir; this jarhead saved my sorry ass in A-stan. Jeez... must be fourteen years now. I was attached to his company and we saw a lot of combat together. This guy was damned good; really took care of his squad and even helped me treat some Marines when they got hit. He learned about giving field first aid like a sponge.”

Haskins grinned. “So I guess introductions are not in order, but for the sake of protocol, Mr Jonas Bernard, this is Master Chief Gilbert Bronson.”

Jonas looked at Bronson’s insignia, three chevrons, arc above, with a superimposed eagle and a pair of stars. “You’ve come up in the world, man. Made a master CPO? Two stars above the eagle is a master chief, right?”

Bronson chuckled. “Hey, they think I’m good, so they promoted me a bunch, but it’s probably because the higher I went, the less damage I could cause. Aye, I’m a master chief hospital corpsman now. How come you’re on shipboard here? And how’s that leg? Give you any problems?”

“I live in Haiti and my family got hurt in the earthquake; got sent here. Yeah, the leg. I set off the airport alarms when I flew. And I can forecast rain all the time too. But it’s okay; only when I’m tired, I feel it and limp a bit.”

Haskins looked at the master chief. “His wife and daughter, both should be okay,” he said; then he looked at Jonas. “How were you wounded, Mr Bernard?”

Bronson was looking at Jonas and saw him flinch. “Doc, I know he doesn’t like to talk about that. We spent time together in Landstuhl recovering from our wounds from his final combat mission and he hated to discuss that last battle. Let me tell you what this dumb grunt did.

“As I recall it, our Marine company was attached to an Army battalion combat team operating close to the Pakistan border near Ganjgal, Kunar Province; we were supposed to be guarding the approaches to a village where the U.N. had set up a field hospital and food distribution center. The Army battalion commander ordered Jonas’ company to be split up with just one platoon monitoring the approach road from the east. Jonas told me that his company commander had objected to dividing his forces like that, especially since his company was under strength.”

Jonas broke in. “Right; the skipper got overruled and was royally pissed. I was an E-5 and the first squad leader, but since my platoon sergeant had been wounded a week earlier and we hadn’t gotten a replacement for him, I was now the platoon’s senior sergeant. I was made acting platoon sergeant so I got to go to the skipper’s meeting at battalion HQ with the other officers and noncoms and heard the full mission plans plus the rest of the unofficial scuttlebutt about the mission. Then we had to hustle to get our unit into position. Our skipper got us set up on a rocky bluff overlooking the approach road to the U.N. camp; we were in the closest position to the border of the rest of the company. The LT, our platoon leader, deployed us but we were awfully spread out.”

“I remember we were under strength, but I think it was by a fair amount, right?” Bronson asked.

“Yeah. A lot. My platoon, the one you were attached to, we were short by eleven, down from full strength. That’s only about three-quarter strength. We did have a weapons platoon detachment that had two M249 SAW teams — light machine guns — and two 60 mm mortar teams. We were humpin’ it to get ready and got into position none too soon because the Taliban came calling the next day. Damn, I don’t like to talk about this shit.”

“That’s okay, I remember what went down,” Bronson said. “That next morning, it was cold and foggy. I was with the radio guy at first, remember? We heard vehicle noises coming from the east. Pakistan was only about 14 clicks away east. There were lots of trucks and those effin’ Toyotas the T-men love and obviously their target was the U.N. encampment. From the number of trucks, there were maybe 200, maybe 250 men. We could see their heavy mortars and rockets in the backs of the open trucks. They would have wiped out the whole effin’ village and the U.N. camp too.

“When we saw them start to deploy the rockets, the LT gave the signal to engage, but he was nailed by a machine gun burst when he tried to signal to some exposed Marines to get to cover. Jonas took over then and with only maybe 37 Marines, he repelled that whole damned T-men attack. I heard there were 96 enemy known killed on the slope in front of our position and another hundred or so on the road, then more trying to retreat when air support arrived. We lost eight Marines, six, I think, in close-in combat. Also, twice Jonas left his covered position to pull an exposed, wounded Marine back to me to get treated. And he continued fighting even after a round fractured his tibia; that was after shrapnel from a mortar took a chunk out of his thigh. I personally saw him kill maybe seven T-men using his M4 and the LT’s nine-mil—and this really nasty knife he had—before his leg got hit.

“Just after he took the round in his leg, he had two T-men rushing him, got one with the nine-mil and one with that damned blade of his. And a minute later, he just about beheaded a T-man with the knife; only the guy’s spine kept his head on. He also nailed a T-man who rushed us on my blind side when I went to give him aid. So he alone accounted for eleven in near and close combat and saved my frikkin’ ass too. Hey, Jonas, that goddamned knife you had—I still remember that sucker—looked like an effin’ samurai sword—a katana? But shorter. Guess you didn’t like the Marines’ Ka-Bar?”

Jonas shrugged. “Hell, I won’t touch a Ka-Bar. My uncle was in the Brit Royal Marines and he gave me this Fairbairn-Sykes he carried in Korea. It zips through kevlar like paper and ‘cause it’s thin and double edged, it won’t get caught between someone’s ribs like the Ka-Bar can.”

“You were like a demon with that thing. Anyway, while I was trying to clean and tape up Jonas’ shrapnel wound, he had his M4 propped up in front of us and was goddamned still firing it, keeping the T-men down. Just as I finished gettin’ him taped up, the birds arrived and they sprayed the area with ordnance and soon the shooting stopped. While I was finishing up splinting him, a dustoff bird landed and we got medevaced. I had a bullet hole in my thigh, so I got pulled out too.

“We were both hauled off to Landstuhl since my leg wound was pretty close to the artery. But him, the docs had to rebuild that lower leg for him. So this grunt’s cojones plus his leadership got that attack stopped. Got the Navy Cross for that; the brass awarded it to him at Landstuhl and a few of the other wounded grunts in his unit got decorations too. I was able to get back to duty after my surgery and rehab but I heard that Jonas was gonna be medically retired. They needed to put a metal rod in his leg. And say, Jonas, maybe a year or so after you left Landstuhl for the States, a Marine colonel contacted me and I had a really intensive interview about that battle. He wanted every bit of scoop I could recall. He said they were verifying your decoration info.”

Haskins looked at Jonas. “That’s quite some story, Mr Bernard. How’s your health been since then?”

“I do okay, sir. I’ve been working as a mechanic. The leg limits me some, and I have some eye and hearing issues. The VA gave me an initial 50 percent disability rating, service connected, but I don’t get to use it much in Haiti. I’m doing way better than the 50 percent now, but having that rating will be useful in the U.S. for medical care.”

“Speaking of that—let’s talk about your family now,” Haskins said. “I know a highly regarded neurosurgeon at University of Miami’s Miller Medical School and that’s who I’ll be referring your daughter to. And the master chief here can smooth the way to remove any bureaucratic nonsense you might get. I’ll leave this in his hands. I’m going to check on your family now and the nurse will tell you when you’ll be able to see them again. I gotta run now, it was really an honor to meet you. Ooo-rah, Marines!” he said and strode out the door.

Bronson turned to Jonas. “I checked before I came up here; your family—didn’t realize it was yours—is gonna be on the air evac to Miami in two days. Okay, what do you need from me? The doc mentioned some citizenship issues.”

Jonas explained that his wife wasn’t a citizen but her life was in danger from a political situation in Haiti and about the threat of kidnapping that he heard about his daughter.

“Now that one’s way above my pay grade. I’ll bring in someone who can help with that, much better that I can,” Bronson said, as he picked up the phone and dialed. He spoke for a minute and told Jonas, “Okay, she’ll be here in a few.”

They chatted until there was a tapping on the door.

Bronson opened it. “Jonas, this is Lt Commander Jayne Sterling, she’s our chief community relations officer. Tell her what you told me.”

They shook hands and Jonas repeated his story about the threats to Cassandra and Fabienne.

When he finished, Sterling shook her head. “That’s awful; you certainly need to get out of there. Let me contact the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince; we can arrange to get an emergency visa for Cassandra. Do you have any papers for Fabienne? No? We’ll do something for her too.”

She called the embassy and was on the phone for ten minutes, pausing to get information from Jonas. While she was on the phone, Bronson spoke to Jonas.

“You know, if they’re in that much trouble...” Bronson began.

“They are. My father was assassinated by Duvalier loyalists when I was a toddler in Miami, you know. I’m thinking that these people now must be involved with the same group that’s trying to take over Haiti again. I’m guessing we’ll have to go into hiding in the States now.”

They chatted for several more minutes, Jonas telling Bronson a little about their problem.

Sterling hung up. “Mr Bernard, you’ll need to get to the embassy. We’re just about ready to dock in port right now so you can get a shuttle from the pier. I’ll get you some ID so you can use Navy resources. Come, I’ll show you to Security; then I need to go along with you to the embassy. I need to coordinate the ship’s visit with the military attaché there.”

The nurse popped her head in then. “Doc said you can see your family after 1800 hours. They have some treatments and tests up till about then.”

Jonas and Bronson said their farewells and promised to stay in touch. As Bronson was leaving the stateroom, Sterling was making some notes on a pad. She looked up at Jonas.

“We’ll go to the security office and get a temporary ID for you and then I’ll need to vouch for you at the embassy. You have your IDs, I hope?” she asked.

“Whatever papers I could save I have in my backpack here. They’re all of my official docs. As a Marine, I never quit keeping my ‘go bag’ ready in case of emergencies and this is sure as hell the worst one imaginable for my family.”

“I hear you. Let’s move out; there’s lots of stuff to do.”

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