I think there is a lack of UtD fanfictions at the moment, so I decided that I should start writing some...
This one is centered around Dale "Barbie" Barbara, when he served in Iraq. I decided to write a fic about what made him quit the army.
I suppose there'll be more suffering in later chapters, than in the first two ones...
Hope you enjoy!
"Captain Barbara!" a male voice said as Barbie startled awake. "Captain Barbara! Stay still!"
Barbie tried to focus enough to see who were talking to him. He didn't really understand what the man was saying either, but he heard his own surname. He tried to move, but was suddenly hit by a bolt of pain arising from his right leg.
"Dale! You are at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital! And right now I need you to stay still!" The same voice told him, but Barbie only caught a few words of it. Now Barbie could see him. It was a man wearing a surgeon gown. He was also wearing a mask, so all Barbie could see of the man's face was the area around his eyes.
It was first then that Barbie realized that something covering his own mouth and nose, so he brought an arm up to remove it.
"Your team were caught in an attack by the Iraqi side. You have suffered a GSW to your leg, and your knee has also suffered a major trauma." The doctor said as he helped Barbie remove his mask once he realized that his patient tried to say something.
"It's 'Barbie'" Barbie said once the mask that were strapped onto him was removed. Then he passed out once again
Hours later he woke up in a post-op zone. Everything wasn't quite as hazy as when he had woken up the last time, but it was still a bit blurred. His right leg started throbbing as he became more and more awake. After a few minutes it had built up to being straight up painful.
He decided he wanted to see the cause of the pain and removed the blanket that was draped over him. He had a hard time understanding what he saw when he did. His leg was covered in gauze, and inside a freaky-looking frame. He guessed the frame's purpose was to lock his leg, and keep whatever was wrong with it immobilized. But the look of the metal frame holding his leg together was terrifying!
He only remembered bits and pieces of the last two days, and they all seemed to blend together.
"You're awake Barbie?" Barbie recognized the voice. It was one of the voices that had been in the background when he first woke up here, but he also recognized it from his hometown in Kansas.
"Henry?" Barbie barely managed to croak out. Oh my God! His throat was dry.
"Yeah… It's me… Do you remember what the other doctor told you before your surgery?"
Barbie shook his head. He remembered being spoken to, but that was it.
"Do you know where you are?"
"Iraq, last time I checked…" Barbie managed to say before he started coughing.
"That's right" the Dr. Henry Winchester said as he poured up a glass of water for Barbie. "You're in Iraq. Right now you're at one of America's portable hospitals. Your team was attacked by a group from the Iraqi side, you have a GSW, a gunshot wound, approximately five inches below your knee. And your knee has a lot of damage to it too."
Barbie took the glass offered and took a sip of it. He was sure there were no better feeling in the world than drinking water when your throat was so dry that it ached.
"How's the rest of the team?" he then asked. He was worried about his teammates. He was one of the two highest ranking in his platoon, so he felt everything that could have happened was his responsibility.
"You took the worst of it…" the doctor answered him, like if he knew what Barbie was thinking. "there were two more that was brought in here, one with a simple fracture to his lower leg. The other one had a compound fracture to his arm, and a grace wound to his side. They're both at the canteen."
"Good…" Barbie nodded, before he started worrying about who else was hurt. "Who are the two others that got hurt?"
"Let me see…" The doctor flipped through his sheets and found what he was looking for. "The one with the arm injury is Lieutenant B. Olsen, and the one with the leg injury is Corporal J. Young…"
"Okey… And they're gonna be fine…?"
"They are better off than you are, that's for sure…" Henry gave him a blink of an eye and placed himself on the bed next to Barbie's. "Sooo… You want to tell me why my best friend still has, what I think is, a record-holding tendency to get into major problems like this?"
Barbie gave a short laugh. He had expected something like this from his best friend, once he met him in this situation. Barbie had as Henry put it 'a record-holding tendency to get into major problems', while Henry on the other hand usually tried to help Barbie out of them when they occurred.
"I don't know…" he answered after a few seconds, "I've just always thought of it as fun I guess…"
They both laughed at that one, at least until Barbie moved his leg by accident.
"OW! FUCK!" He grabbed a hold of the metal railing on his bed as he tried to steady himself, but the pain flaring from his leg overran just about everything. In the meanwhile, Henry had jumped to his feet and tried to hold Barbie's leg in a still position, he tried to hold it still against the tremors that ran through Barbie's body due to the sheer amount of pain.
After about a minute, when the pain had died down to a dull, throbbing ache and Henry decided to release his grip of the brace around his best friend's leg, Barbie laid back in his bed.
"How long is it going to be like this?" Barbie asked and gestured briefly towards his injured leg, as a tear threatened to escape from the corner of his eye. He swiped the tear away before it had a real chance to fall. Henry could hear the despair in Barbie's voice. It hurt him to know that his best friend, the one that never even seemed to be able to think of consequences. The one that never seemed to know how to back down or chicken out. The one who was always sure that things eventually would go his way… It hurt Henry to know that this man, at this moment couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
"Honestly…" Henry stood up and wiped away a tear of his own, before he tried to give Barbie a reassuring pat on the shoulder "I don't know…"
"What does that mean?" He could feel his gut hit the floor. He hated when Henry didn't know… Because that either meant really bad news, or it meant that it was all depending on luck, which also meant pretty bad news as far as he was concerned.
"Well, Ace… That means…" He paused a brief moment to decide how he was going to explain this, "That means that I don't know when the pain is going to stop… I wish I could tell you something else, but it all depends on how your leg heals after the trauma and the surgery…"
"I will be walking again...? Right?"
"Looks like it... But I can't promise anything about how well you will walk, or how much pain you'll be in when you do… But for the first four months you're NOT ALLOWED to walk, for the first two-three you're not even allowed to put weight on that leg!" Henry knew this would only go one way from this point on. Making Barbie doubt something could be done, always ended with him proving that it could be done just fine… Even if it meant he risked a couple of months in cast… He had witnessed that more than once, and it might have been what set Henry on the track to become a doctor…
"Just watch me! I'll be walking as soon as I am allowed to!" There was that good old Barbie attitude that Henry knew they both needed right now. He knew that somehow Barbie would be okey.
Okey, that was the first chapter... Let me know what you think!
I love to get feedback, good or bad! Whatever that can make me better!
Question:
Would you like there to be more UtD fanfics?
What genre do you enjoy reading the most?
Why not write some yourself?