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Even Tami had her emotional limits, though. Down the hall, a 22-year-old specialist named James Fair wouldn't accept the loss of his two hands. He had also lost both eyes when a bomb he tried to defuse exploded, and nerve sensations tricked him into thinking he still had hands. He kept asking Tami to pass him objects. "James, you don't have any hands," she'd reply. He'd refuse to believe her, demanding next that she hold one of his stumps.
Some caretakers intentionally kept their distance from the soldiers to maintain their morale. Captain Kathleen Yancosek couldn't get close enough. A rehabilitation specialist known by everyone simply as "Captain Katie," she was a razor-thin blonde who almost dissolved into tears when she visited her first patient on the ward, a teenage soldier who had lost a leg in Iraq. He was crying from the pain. His mother was hysterical. The 27-year-old therapist braced herself, realizing that she was supposed to be the one whom they had confidence in to help him get better.
The best way to toughen up, Katie decided, was to look past the grievous injuries and to treat her patients as friends, not as amputees. She got to know them as intimately as they would permit, moving quickly beyond their hobbies and children's names. With her soft touch and sisterly concern, she often picked up more information than the hospital psychologists. Captain Katie knew if a soldier was checking out Internet dating services, fighting with a spouse, fretting about bills, or struggling to knot a tie with one hand. She made a habit of staying up at night to acquaint herself with their personal stories and continuously updating them. In mid-November, she walked in on Sergeant Heath Calhoun on his first day on the ward. He was sobbing in the arms of his wife and questioning how he could survive after both of his legs had been blown off by a rocket-propelled grenade. Though uncomfortable at first, Katie stuck around to console the 24-year-old Ranger, and from that day on followed each phase of his recovery. When he was on furlough and had to bounce on his butt up a flight of stairs to check on his crying son, Katie commiserated. When his young wife seemed overcome by the burden of a handicapped husband, Katie fretted for their marriage. After he went snowboarding on an amputee outing to Colorado, Katie brimmed with compliments.
Aside from a limb, the biggest loss to patients was their dignity. We were half-naked, helpless, fed from tubes, drugged, and constantly poked and prodded. Tami and Katie specialized in personal care, hoping to remind the wounded they were more than medical specimens. Jim Mayer made milk shakes his calling card because they were the last thing you'd find in a hospital; they established a personal bond, like a pitcher of beer. Jim learned everyone's favorite flavor as if he were an old drinking buddy who had bought a round at the neighborhood tavern.
Most of 57's workers could have pulled up a stool. They treated us like family members, warm and sensitive. I never would have imagined such a focus on individual needs in an institution that emphasizes group uniformity. But in a season of giving, they held nothing back.
From the forthcoming book BLOOD BROTHERS: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57, by Michael Weisskopf. (copyright) 2006 by Michael Weisskopf. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt and Co.