Hell And Back

Chapter 2

(Warning: There will be a racial slur in this chapter, but understand the mental state of the POWs at that point.)

The flight back to civilization took the better part of the day. After all, it'd been a 16 hour flight to Wutai from base, so it only stood to reason that the journey home would be just as long. For the most part, after the simple shock of being rescued abated a bit, most of us just fell asleep where we sat.

I have to mention that at this point, other than talking to the medics as each of us had, still not a word was spoken between the sixteen of us that had been taken away from the camp. No celebratory discussion, nothing. We were all that programmed after our stay in Wutai, that not a one of us even thought to talk.

Then again, we were also just dying of sheer exhaustion.

I was awoken from my nap (which in retrospect had lasted the better part of ten hours so it hardly qualifies as a nap) when the ship finally set down and the cargo bay doors opened. The group of us made our way off the ship, being all taken to the hospital on the base.

Mercifully, we were asked if we wanted to been seen by the doctors first or if we wanted a shower. I, and the rest of the men, all opted for a shower before anything else.

Taking off the remaining shreds of the uniform I'd been wearing for the last seven months, and then standing beneath a good, hot blast of water was hands down the best feeling I'd ever had. It's funny how something that you took for granted every day before an event like that suddenly became better than sex. I'll never forget how black the water was as it ran down the drain between my feet. I scrubbed for probably the better part of an hour, fearing that any of the stink from the camp would remain once I was done. The other men were all doing exactly the same, too. Still, not a word was said amongst us.

Clean water. Clean mother fucking water. For the last seven months I'd come to think that all water left in the world either was in rice paddies an' muddied, or what they put in the 'horse trailer'.

I reckon I failed to mention the 'horse trailer' thus far. Since, though, it would turn out to have a bearing on some things for the rest of my life, I'll elaborate. This was one of the 

punishments or tortures, whatever ya want to call it, that the Wutains kept for us. I don't know what it was really called, I just always figured that the word the Wutains used around the damn thing sounded like 'horse trailer' to me. Besides, it was basically a metal box sunk into the ground, with a door over the top of it that had, at some point, been on the back of a livestock trailer. Really, it was the septic tank for the Wutain's officer's barracks in the camp. When you'd gotten on their bad side, a frequent punishment was to be taken and thrown into it. Then they'd close that lid, giving you about 4 inches of air space above the sewage.

I'd had the displeasure of being put into it once after my escape attempt. I don't know, really, how long I was kept in there, but it was surely more than a day. I made damn sure never, ever to get put in there again. To this day, I don't like being in water other than to shower. Swimming, being immersed? I'd rather not, thanks. Some things are just a mind fuck.

Once cleaned, we were inspected briefly. As should come as absolutely no surprise after the conditions we'd been kept in, the doctors decided that we were all riddled with parasites. That said, we were all taken and had our heads and beards shaved off, before we were sprayed down with some ungodly chemical. That made me, for one, want to run right back in the shower since it burned, especially where I still had open sores. Of course, that meant pretty much my whole body.

When I say that we had our beards and heads shaved, I don't want to give you the wrong impression. It so happens that a side effect of malnutrition is your hair ceasing to grow much and starting to fall out. In truth, there wasn't a whole lot on my head, nor on that of any of the other men who'd been there for any length of time TO shave off. However, my beard was still relatively impressive, since even at that age I'd been able to work up a good five o'clock shadow after shaving in the morning. I guess facial hair hangs in there longer than what's on your head.

After, we were sent for our individual exams with the doctors. We got to wait for our turn in the room where we'd be kept for the immediate future.

As was typical of the military hospitals at the time, we were all kept in a ward together, our beds lined up, eight to a wall, in one room. They took us back in no particular order, and I was the sixth to go.

I was stripped out of the boxers I'd been provided with and scrutinized. Not wanting to watch as they washed out my wounds, I sat with my eyes closed. Though it hurt, it was nothing compared to what I'd just been through and I sat quietly as I was treated. The doctors spoke 

about me, using words I really just didn't understand, aside from the occasional mention of abscess, infection, and their medically sterile use of the term "insect larvae".

Once they'd treated my external injuries and had me bandaged here and there, they began to question me about various scars and other things. I was made to explain to them the assorted tortures that I'd been put through over the months, all of which they wrote down in silence, with the occasional nod punctuating their listening.

I was x-rayed extensively, and they discussed the findings of that with me. They said that I had several fractured ribs in various stages of healing and that my left leg had mended itself, though not perfectly aligned. I didn't really care about that, though. I was able to walk just fine even if it wasn't ideal.

Next, they took a sample of my blood for whatever.

Then, they requested another 'sample' to check for internal parasites. Now, I made have just spent over half a year without any dignity what so ever, but I found the remaining spark of defiance that I possessed. I refused. They told me that it was to determine if I had intestinal parasites and that it was for my own good. I reminded them that I'd just been in a shit hole for the last several months, and working in a rice paddy that the locals used for a toilet. Of course I had intestinal parasites! I didn't need to give a sample for that! Besides, how in the hell was I supposed to 'unload' when I'd hardly eaten enough lately to have anything to even evacuate?

They backed down after a brief argument, and just agreed to treat me with the appropriate medications to get rid of whatever may or may not have been living in my gut.

And with that, I was allowed to return to my bed.

In short order, a nurse had me hooked up to an IV line as was happening to all the guys when they returned from their exam. I was so dehydrated that I was actually able to feel the difference the fluids being dripped into my vein made. I can only equate it to being a dried up sponge finally dropped in water.

Still, all the IV fluids in the world weren't going to help my dried throat and I asked the nurses for some water. I was informed that we were only going to be allowed small drinks and meals for the time, since there was a danger of us actually making ourselves sick if we went overboard.

So, I was handed a small paper cup of water.



I remember sitting there in my bed, holding the cup. Before that moment, I'd never really appreciated the fact that clean water has a smell all unto itself, but it surely does. You would have thought I'd been given a glass of pricey wine by the way I inspected it before finally drinking. That was heaven.

After all the guys had done their round through the exam routine, we were fed. Our dinner wasn't very fancy. Some toast, a small portion of boiled chicken…

…and rice.

Not one man in that room, no matter how hungry, touched that fucking rice. Simply put, there was zero to no chance that any of us were ever going to eat that shit again.

There was, though, served up a cup of tea. Now, while I had occasionally been given a cup of tea while in captivity, it was such a novel and wonderful thing back then that it still equaled a gift from God to me. I took my sweet time nursing that teacup, loving every last drop of it.

If the water before had been heaven, then the tea was concentrated liquid sex.

I even went so far as to ask the nurse in hushed tones when she collected my dinner tray if I could possibly have a second cup. She glanced around nervously, before quietly agreeing to bring me another if I didn't rat her out.

For the time being, that nurse was the love of my life, second to the tea, of course.

That next cup was even better than the first, since she'd gone to the trouble of putting just a little sugar in it for me.

Shortly thereafter, it was lights out.

Once dark, and with the nurses gone, the strangest thing happened. We still hadn't rightly spoken to one another, but once alone…

I'll be damned if John wasn't the first to start tapping against his bed rail, introducing himself. I turned my head to the left, because it happened that he was in the bed next to my own. I couldn't help but laugh a little, as I followed suit and gave my name to the others, by doing as he'd done, clicking my bed rail. The introductions continued in that way around the room until we all finally were able to put a face to our comrades in that dim hospital nightlight. We were just so damn hard wired not to speak… Then again, though we were out of Wutai, we were still all confined, weren't we? Our circumstances were different, but for the time being, we were still all prisoners together.



Not long after, we gave into our continued exhaustion, and fell off into sleep. That night, we were so spent that nothing remarkable happened. Finally, we were awakened by the nurses coming in with our breakfast.

Now, that breakfast was more in line with what I was wanting. A bowl of hot cereal, a scrambled egg, and a small slice of ham.

With a cup of tea.

Amen.

I downed it all quickly, and took the load of pills the nurses set on my tray. It's true that your stomach shrinks over time when your rations are small, and though the meal presented was less than a fourth of what I would have downed back in the day, I was stuffed to the gills.

Our IV bags were switched out and we were escorted, one at a time, to the bathroom. Though I was lead there, I was allowed to go inside and take care of business on my own. Then, I was given a toothbrush.

Once again, one of those stupid simple things… but it was great. I gave my teeth a good cleaning, before finally daring to look at myself in the mirror.

Hand to God I didn't recognize myself. For starters, the last time I'd laid eyes on my reflection, I'd been close to sixty pounds heavier, and I'd had hair. The skin around my eyes and nose were dark from all the outdoor labor I'd done, however, where my beard had grown in and had since been shaved, the lower half of my face didn't match at all. Not to mention, there were patches of red where the skin infection I'd contracted had been at work eating away.

I looked so gaunt… honestly, I couldn't stand to be there staring all that long. I would make it a point after that to not look in the mirror for a good long time, until I was looking a little more like the Cid I recognized.

Back in my bed, I looked around at the other guys. It was only then that I dared to try and talk to any of them. I looked over at John. "Colonel?"

His head snapped over toward me, his eyes looking pleasantly surprised. "Captain?"

"Howdy… Feelin' all right?" I asked, not really great with conversation but starved for it nonetheless.

The older man turned onto his side to look at me straight on. "That's… quite an accent you've got there, Captain. I'd figured that you'd sound… different."



I had to smile. Like John, I'd assigned him a voice in my mind as well. Since he'd been our record keeping guy, I'd given him a typical nerdish voice. However, the man spoke in a gravelly, low tone. Funny how our minds work. "Yessir, I reckon I do compared to most. I was born an' raised in Rocket."

"Good old country boy," John replied with a growling laugh. "But as to your question, I'm actually feeling great. Yourself?"

I gave a nod. "Goodly… I was jus' happy to see a fuckin' toilet finally."

That earned me another laugh. "What, you didn't like having to whiz through the bars of your cage?"

For the first time since I'd been shot down, I laughed. I honestly fucking laughed. "Truth be told… I generally saved it all up an'… pissed myself when I was waist deep in the rice field."

"North field, or the south?" he asked, aware that one of the paddies grew what was fed to us, and the other was reserved for the Wutains that ran the camp, respectively.

"Don't worry, I always waited for the south."

John smiled, revealing to me that he'd lost many of his teeth along the way. "Good work, Captain."

"Can I ask ya somethin'?"

The colonel gave me a nod. "Of course."

"Seemed to me that… you an' the other guys could all understand what the Wutains were sayin'. Did you understand it before ya got there?" I asked. Honestly, I'd only managed to make out a handful of words during my captivity. Then again, I'd never been linguistically brilliant.

"No, I picked it all up as I was there, just like most of the other guys. You never figured it out?" John propped himself up on an elbow and quirked an eyebrow at me.

Well, if that didn't make me feel like a retard right there. All I had managed to learn was at the end of the whip out in the rice paddy. "Naw… All I learned was forward, faster, right, left, and stop."

"Well, that's all you needed to do your job there and survive. They had me in the officer's quarters during the day, acting as their Goddamned maid. I got a lot more contact with the little bastards, and had to communicate with them. No shame there, Captain." John gave me another toothless grin.



He and I continued to BS about things for a while, and it wasn't long before the other men seemed to follow our lead, breaking their silences and speaking amongst themselves.

John eventually drifted off for a nap, and I sat listening to the other guys. Most of them were talking about going home to see their girls, a conversation I couldn't rightly join into under the circumstances.

As that day progressed, everyone seemed to relax a little more. All thought of 'God, don't let this be a dream' seemed to evaporate. We were examined again in the course of the day, injuries tended to once more, and medications continually injected or presented in the form of pills. Toward evening, we were ushered off, one at a time for something else.

I was the first to go. Taken to a smaller room, I was sat down, and then a doctor entered. He sat in a chair before the exam table I'd been put on, and started to ask me questions.

It took about five seconds to realize that he was a psychiatrist. Personally, I wasn't really thrilled about the situation. He went right into rather painful questions about what I'd endured. Quite frankly, at the time, that was really the last thing I felt I needed. My answers to him were curt and simple as a result. I just didn't want to talk about it.

"You seem to have a lot of hostility, Captain. I want to assure you that it's normal for you to be feeling like that right now," he said at some point, continuing to write about me in the notebook he held.

That pissed me off. "Hostility? I jus' don't wanna talk 'bout this shit right now! Relivin' the last episode of my life really ain't on my top mother fuckin' list of things to do today."

The pretentious bastard just nodded, and wrote some more.

I opted that I wasn't going to give him anything else to write about and fell into an obstinate silence.

Needless to say, I was soon released to go back to my bed.

As the hours passed, and other guys were sent in to be shrunk, I just talked to John when he was awake. When someone would return from their session, I couldn't help but study them. They always returned with one of three emotions. Either they came back mad at the world like I had, blank, as though nothing had happened, or… they were crying.

The ones that came back in tears, well, I pitied them, I did. I also tried not to make it seem like I noticed their red eyes or jagged breaths, because they already seemed so ashamed. It 

did make me wonder about the different things we must have all gone through, though. Maybe the fact of it was that I was lucky to have gotten through it how I had. I mean, I felt relatively mentally intact, and my body wasn't injured in any real life altering way.

I can't say that for some of the other guys.

One, named Major Steven Hemmings, was missing his right hand. I came to learn later that it had been cut off when a guard had caught him picking a discarded piece of fruit out of the garbage heap that it was his job to tend. He'd been a concert pianist before joining the military…

Another, Lt. Jared Westin, could barely walk. Apparently, his ankle had been busted during his capture, and it had reset itself sideways. He eventually had surgery to try and straighten it out a bit, but even after that he would have a noticeable limp. I've had the pleasure of seeing him a few times since those days, as he kept working for Shin Ra while I was in the Space Program.

Having rested for two days, I think we were slowly getting our sleep cycles back on track. Maybe because of that, we didn't seem to fall into the profoundly deep sleep we had before. Instead…

Well, that's the night the flashbacks began.

It was the youngest member of our group that it happened to first. It was only about an hour after lights out, when all the sudden Captain McGreggor started screaming. I was still awake when it occurred.

"Get off of me! Get off of me you fucking slant!" he yelled, thrashing around in his bed.

John was the first to move. He got out of his bed and pulled his IV pole with him across the room, just as someone else turned the lights on. "Captain! Wake up and snap out of it!"

McGreggor was blanched white, sweating, and looking up at the colonel like he didn't know him from Adam. "They… they were doing it again…"

"No one's doing anything to you, Billy," John replied, in an almost fatherly way.

The captain immediately just broke down, crying.

The fact that the Wutains even now could hurt us started to sink in with everyone. Capt. Billy McGreggor may have been the first to suffer a flashback, but he wouldn't be the last. Not by a long shot.



A nurse ran in soon, and McGreggor was offered a sedative to get him through the rest of the night, which he readily accepted. In fact, several of the men asked for them at that point.

I should have.

Because I was the next one to go off.

Sure, I feel asleep after the lights were turned off again. From the outset, though, it was rough going. I was having dreams, one melting right into the next. All from various times in my captivity.

It was when my mind slipped into a replay of one of the 'interrogations' I had while in the camp that it got out of hand. Probably about half way through my time there, I was taken from my cage in the night, and dragged into a building. Seeing as that I didn't know Wutain, I had no idea what I was being yelled at or questioned for that night. The man that had initially interrogated me when I'd gotten there, who spoke English, wasn't present.

After a good amount of screaming in my face, as I sat tied to a chair, they decided to get creative with me.

I can't even really write about what was done to me, even all these years later. It was hands down my worst moment there, and I still get nauseous if I think on it at all. Whatever the worst is you're imagining, short of them having cut off my manhood, is probably close to what was done. Regardless, I seemed to leave the dream state, and come into full consciousness, where it was really happening to me again.

I was yelling and fighting, trying to stave off that attack again, feeling the pain clear as day.

When I finally came around, I was laying on the floor beside my bed, my IV line ripped out of my arm, my nose bloodied as I'd busted it either in my fall to the tile or in my thrashing thereafter.

Once more, it was John that had come to the rescue. He was holding me down flat on my back, his hands on my shoulders. "Highwind! Come back! It's not real!"

For the first few seconds, I swear to you, he looked like a Wutain officer to me, and I continued to struggle. Then, suddenly, the haze cleared and I could see him for who he really was. I didn't break down crying, though, like Billy had. Instead, I just felt angry and fairly ashamed.



I was soon hoisted back into my bed, my IV site washed and bandaged, my face cleaned up. The nurses didn't even ask me if I needed sedation, just sticking a needle into my arm and injecting me with some form of tranquilizer.

Within ten minutes, my world faded and I was cast down into a much quieter sleep.

I wasn't as mentally 'okay' as I'd thought.