Assignment Six: Sam Clark

The helicopter took off from the landing pad like a majestic pterodactyl, ascending over the verdant forest filled with the enemy. Given by the United States to the people of Sarkhan, our transportation was an aging beast, rust in every corner, twentysome years old. My legs dangled out of the door, vulnerable to enemy fire. But I didn’t care. I was a young medical engineer, first day out on duty, my conscious as clear as the pristine, white scrubs resting upon my back. Soon, however, my scrubs, and with them my conscious, would be stained forever. The first few men the helicopter took up were easy; tonsils, meningitis, the things they taught us in medical school. Later though, my charges grew ever more difficult. The frequency of amputations, psychological counseling, and the like grew as steadily as the attacks upon our helicopter. For every man I saved, twenty others died attacking us. And yet I was happy. I saved lives, magnificently completing surgeries I bombed in medical school. You haven’t performed surgery until you perfect a triple heart bicomplexity on a helicopter hit by grenades. Before all other experiences, my first day performing surgery under enemy fire was perhaps the most intellectually stimulating. For the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to live, to look at the world and say “this is mine.”