Chapter 19
.
It was late March when I was shot in the leg, and sent to the army hospital. The doctors told me I would need a few weeks to recover, but then i could go back to the fighting. This was somewhat dissapointing, but I would have to do my duty. I saw one man laugh when the doctors told him they'd had to amputate his leg. Strange as it might seem, he was relieved to be out of the fight. Although this was an american hospital it had wounded from both sides. This gave me an opportunity to observe how the doctors treated the enemy. There were two doctors I observed, Brewster and Tyler. Brewster seemed to value all life, whether they were human or alien. He worked hard to save lives, felt that the uniforms came off in a hospital. Tyler however did not consider life so sacred. He refused to operate on wounded aliens, he and Brewster seemed to argue a fair amount. I spent two weeks in this hospital, healing, rehab to help my leg heal. I also played cards with other american soldiers. Although we shared this Post Op with wounded aliens, we generally tried to avoid talking to each other. Not much point in being too friendly at this point, we all knew that we'd most likely be sent back to the war, they'd be sent to a P.O.W. camp, and possibly they'd eventually be released and sent back to fight us. But there was one incident, I was trying to sleep in Post Op, and an alien was shivering, doctor Brewster was trying to warm him up. I was so tired I just gave them my blanket I wish I could say I was being noble, but I just wanted to shut him up and sleep. The next day, the Red Cross brought care packages to the wounded, including one candy bar each. The alien gave me his candy bar, his way of thanking me for the blanket. I supposse, in a sense, we were friends. But he died from his injuries a few hours later. I never even found out his name. During this time I saw this nurse talking to a patient about his girlfriend and child back in Miami, they talked for several hours until he fell asleep. He never woke up, the nurse knew he was dying. She told him that he didn't feel anything because of the medicine that they gave him, but the truth was that his spine had been severed. She told doctor Brewster that this was the first time she was ever grateful for a severed spine, at least he wasn't in any pain. My last night in this hospital, when the doctors thought I was asleep, I saw doctor Brewster make a difficult decision. There were two patients, one human, one alien. By this point in the war doctors had determined that organs could be transplanted from aliens to humans and from humans to aliens. The alien needed a transplant, if he didn't get it in the next 30 minutes he would very likely be paralyzed for the rest of his life. The human could not be saved, he would be dead in a matter of hours. The problem was that he could hold on for hours, and if he did the alien would be paralyzed. So, when he thought he had no witnesses, Brewster euthanized the human and performed the transplant. Perhaps he felt that this man was already dead, but it was clearly not easy for him to lose any patient. I never told anyone what I saw. I wasn't afraid of doctor Brewster, I just wasn't sure I could blame him. I didn't tell anyone until after I heard that Brewster had died years later. In April my leg had healed, and I was sent back to Milwaukee, for better or worse.