I'm actually kinda sad Lt. Hunter got killed in the end; humiliating him can be so fun. Seriously though, you gotta give major props to Josh Stamberg for playing a character well enough to make it (more or less) universally reviled. Oh yeah yeah yeah, I don't own anyone and the word arrangement is mine.
Captain Jerusalem Harms picked through a plateful of brown rice as if hoping to find something better underneath then discarded the food untouched in favor of two oranges she was pretty sure had been left on the juice bar for decoration. Off the top of her head she could think of at least a dozen MRE menus more appetizing than the lunchtime leftovers she'd been served by a scowling Iraqi woman manning the serving line. She drained a tall glass of warm instant iced tea made palatable by the juice of two lemons and a quarter cup of sugar then started back to the sick-call tent. The twenty or so people still waiting to be treated had long since procured reading material and folding chairs to whittle away time more comfortably.
"Now serving customer number 16,171," she said with a hint of weariness pushing aside the limp canvas door. It was nearly five o'clock when SSgt. Silas followed her in.
"Ma'am."
"Sergeant." Harms unsheathed a sterile scalpel and quartered the first orange. "At ease," she added offering him one of the peeled wedges.
"No thanks ma'am."
"Hey Jer, you got a second?" Jericho Harms cut in from the other side of the tent. "I need a consult."
"Be right there," she replied standing. "Make yourself at home," she said to Silas with irony not lost on even the stray pebbles on the floor.
Across the screen, as the opening notes of 'Under My Thumb' strained through the boom box speakers, Jerusalem Harms raised an eyebrow at the sight of Lt. Hunter standing stark naked in the middle of the room. His hairy, muscular torso was covered in equal parts red blotches and a rash oozing yellow pus. His thighs were peppered with long red scratches the width of his fingers and tiny bite marks that looked freshly scabbed. She walked around him breathing through her mouth to avoid the sour odor he emanated and wrote furiously on the workup sheet the second Captain Harms had provided.
"We got the mother ship," she said at last. "How long have you been sick Lieutenant?"
"Started about two weeks ago ma'am," he answered reddening from his neck up. Jerusalem walked around him, adding more notes to the paper in her clipboard.
"You should be more particular about toilets Lieutenant." The elongated red marks in the backs of his thighs would have matched any standard toilet seat if compared. "Put your hands on the table and spread your legs," she ordered taking a fresh pair of gloves from the second Capt. Harms.
"Why?" Hunter asked hysterically, cupping his penis with both hands.
"May I ask why ma'am, may I ask why Captain Harms," Jericho Harms said in a low, effective tone standing in front of Hunter with his arms crossed in front of him. The lieutenant relented and posed as asked.
"What are you taking for the pain Lieutenant?" She secured a surgical mask over her nose and mouth and cringed before spreading his buttocks with her left hand. Hunter whimpered.
"Nothing ma'am."
"Don't insult my intelligence Lieutenant, you have an open sore on your asshole," she said brusquely.
"Lidocaine cream ma'am. I get athlete's foot all the time."
"That's goddamn brilliant Lieutenant; putting a topical anesthetic, probably with dirty hands on an open wound. You should have been a goddamn doctor. You should have called me last night and told me you were going to treat everybody yourself!"
"So what do you wanna do?" Jericho asked quashing the momentum for a full blown rant. "I don't have enough Cefaclor for a full treatment and the Mefoxin is IV only plus they'd need to keep it on ice until it's administered." Jerusalem took off the mask first and the gloves second.
"If this was a simpler infection I could bring the rest of the pills next week but look at his groin! Those lymph nodes look like potatoes. There's scrotal cellulitis, tissue necrosis, I'm gonna need full medical records and major diagnostic blood work before I can give him any meds. I don't even know how walked here today. He needs to go to the FOB for treatment."
Hunter had turned around mid discussion to watch the exchange as if a fourth person's condition was being hashed out and the future being decided was not his. He looked down at the three enlarged bumps along his groin and something in his mind clicked.
"Captain, I'd rather not abandon my post," he said sheepishly. "I'll take what he said, Cefaclor."
"That's not your decision to make Lieutenant," both captains said in unison. Hunter hopped twice towards the table dragging his pants through the floor, reached for his undershirt and bent over to pull up his underwear.
"I don't need hospitalization," he said agitated, taking his pants in his hands, "ma'am, and you can't make me go with you because this may be the Army but I still have legal rights and if I say I don't wan to leave my post then I don't have to leave my post." He finished squirming on the floor with Jerusalem's boot between his shoulders and his pants still tangled halfway down his legs. Jericho Harms turned his back on his sister and began straightening shampoo boxes.
"Lieutenant you are really beginning to aggravate me."
"You can't do this!" Hunter yelled as the CD came to an end. His words hung in the air without the buffer of the Rolling Stones as he squirmed trying to get out from under Jerusalem's foot.
"And yet here I am with all my wits about me while writhe half naked on a slab of plywood with bugs literally crawling up your butt. Don't you just love subtle irony sir?" Under her Hunter relaxed slightly. She took her foot off him and he turned on his back. "Now, from where I'm standing," she continued "you have two choices. You can either agree to get up like the good boy I know you are and go sit outside in the pretty ambulance with 2nd Lieutenant Berro while I finish the work I came here to do or I can drag you out to the aforementioned ambulance hogtied like the little pig you look like right now. What's it gonna be?"
"I'll get dressed," he said meekly.
---------------------------------
"Sorry for the delay SSgt. Silas," Capt. Harms said walking back to her side of the tent where Silas had made himself comfortable on her folding chair. She waved off his attempt to stand up and sat on the table looking over his worksheet as if nothing had happened only six feet away. Harms counted the checkmarks on the yes and no columns and heard her brother's next patient walking in next door. She changed CDs on the boom box and waited until Robert Johnson's "Terraplane Blues' kicked off.
"Please undress to your underwear," she said snapping on a pair of gloves. Silas cleared his throat and stood up, his reaction time a beat off. He folded his BDU jacket on the back of the chair and the shirt over it. Capt. Harms walked around him and rubbed nits off the hair behind his ears. She tapped Silas' shoulder and motioned for him to raise it with a hand standing closer than any junior high chaperone would have liked as she combed the dark hair under his arm for more lice eggs to confirm the diagnosis. She picked up his shirt and looked closely at the seams before scribbling a shorthand version of the findings in the 'physician's notes' box.
"Do you want to hear my highly scientific conclusion Sergeant?" She asked with a half smile.
"Yes ma'am."
"Pediculosis Trifecta! Head, body and pubic lice."
"My um,"
"You can get crabs on your armpits Sergeant," Capt. Harms cut in. "I don't see it often but it only means you probably didn't get it from sexual relations with a… partner of suspect background if you will. You did well not scratching too, there'll be no scarring."
"Yes ma'am."
"You are on Bactroban for ten stitches?" She asked looking down at her notes.
"Yes ma'am"
"When did you get those?"
"Ten days ago ma'am, the first stitches came out early."
"Let me see them." Silas rolled up the right leg of his white boxers. Harms bent down to take a closer look. "Good wound care, neat stitching; your medic took Home Economics Ranger. Any pain? Swelling? Fever?"
"No ma'am."
"I can take these out right now Sergeant, save you a trip to sick call next week."
"Thank you ma'am." Capt. Harms rummaged through supplies looking for a suture removal kit in a mess unbecoming an officer. She discarded generic aspirin, moleskin gauze, scalpels, antibiotics and jungle rot cream.
"Aha!" She punctured the plastic bag keeping all the utensils together and fished out an alcohol prep pad. "Come closer to the light," she said sitting down to have the stitches at eye level. She cleaned the edges of the cut with one side of the prep pad and the surrounding area with the other. "Bar fight?"
"No ma'am."
"I should've known, your juice bar is nothing to write home about," Harms said following the alcohol with an idophor pad. She picked up one end of the suture and cut the first knot almost flush with the skin then pulled the slender thread with forceps and discarded the first stitch on a lined trashcan. "How long have you been deployed Sergeant?"
"Eighteen months ma'am"
"Plus six months training stateside?" She added pulling out the seventh stitch.
"Yes ma'am."
"How do you feel?"
"Doesn't hurt ma'am."
"Ranger, I'm a board certified trauma surgeon and I've been picking lice all day. Don't fuck with me today."
"I'm fine ma'am." Harms sighed exasperated as she affixed butterfly strips along both edges of the newly minted scar. She dropped the tissue forceps and the suture scissors in the open bag with the prep pads, pushed her chair back and cranked up the volume on the boom box.
"How much leave did you sell back on reenlistment?" She asked standing between Silas and the spot in the wall he'd been staring at through the consultation.
"Sixty days ma'am. How did you know I reenlisted ma'am?"
"Not so wild guess Sergeant," Harms shrugged. "You can get dressed now."
"You know Sergeant; my short term memory is terrible and I'm not writing any of this down so even if you tell me the little green people are sending you messages..." Silas nodded. "How are you sleeping?" He looked beyond Harms' head and back. He cleared his throat.
"Not that well."
"Headaches? Irritability? Nightmares? Insomnia?" He nodded. Harms pulled her bag of tricks closer and shuffled the assorted supplies in it. "This is a sleep aid," she said opening a sealed box. She popped four blue pills from their foil packets and slipped them in her jacket pocket. "These are only one milligram each. Start with one before bed and two if there's no improvement. They won't make you groggy if you can get a full night sleep and just so you know, there's no way to O.D. on six milligrams of this stuff." Harms folded the foil packet until it fit inside the box of 'Rid.' "You can throw these out when you get back to your tent but I'll bring more next week in case you don't." She tossed him the shampoo.
"Next."
Here's my rambling disclaimer after the fact: the timing above is a bit iffy. Sgt. Hotness had been in Iraq for 15 months when he frolicked with the French national yet I'm keeping Hunter alive though he was only on two more episodes after the mattress mambo. The episodes from about #8 on forth are on a pretty tight timeline that would mean setting all this earlier on, scrapping the French national altogether or hoping to find an audience willing to let me play with the time space continuum. I hope it's option 3.
The other obvious note is that I'm not a doctor. I don't even like most of the medical parts of E.R., Nip/Tuck, and CSI so I confess I prescribed using Google and borrowed greatly on my cat's medical records from the time she had parasites and it developed into a pretty bad infection because she wouldn't stop licking her butt. I just really wanted to have fun with Lt. Hunter before he has to be killed off. Again, bear with me, I am getting somewhere, I promise.
Thy Author
