At the eye of a hurricane.. more about the injured soldier.

[lostnfound]

He won't ever walk, they say. The head injury is undefined, but sounds very serious. He is sedated, a person who is quiet right now, the eye of a hurricane.

On the outer edges, there are gusting winds. Many of the people who work in the office where his mother works, or who are friends of a friend, or who know his mother or his new wife, seem somber this week; feeling sad or shocked or even sick at the news, they wonder if there's "anything they can do", and a heaviness lingers in their hearts and in the air. It comes in waves as one or another learns of it, and each lost in their own thoughts -- mothers shudder to think of the devastation they would feel if it were their son, youths think 'how could happen to one of us?, middle-aged men consider 'his whole life ahead of him'...unable to walk? And the political: some angry at the war and at the president; a few become angry at the Iraqis and fume that 'we' just need to "get our trips out and bomb the * out of that country". Some of us want to slap the latter to bring them to their senses, and there are probably some who want to slap the former.

None of this helps. And they all walk out in the evening, drive home to their families, come back the next day, still glum, and might admit, "I can't get it off my mind."

There are those who will watch the devastation closely, close to the fury of the storm. The mother of the new wife, the close relatives. The lives of their loved ones are being turned upside down. The full strength of the storm is inflicted on those who are closest -- the mother, the wife, and in some ways at least, the child not yet born. I am sure that they must feel like swimmers tossed about in the biggest hurricane, struggling to keep going, and terrified. Trying to do what's best for the guy in the middle, who is unconscious.

A few years ago he signed up for the Navy, and got lied to, told he would definitely serve on a ship or a hospital, not in Iraq. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1152748#1152814
He was forced to become a medic and assigned to the marines. Some here said it would be the start of a great career, and it was a thing of great honor. I wish it had been exactly that. For some people, I guess it is. To me, it seems like watching a trainwreck, or a machine that eats the young. Which lives get eaten is a matter of random luck, a kind of lottery with potentially horrid consequences.

I think about the consequences on those around him, but at the quiet center of this hurricane is the one whose loss can't be fathomed, not from outside, not from inside, at least not yet.