Horse Latitudes

Kandahar, Afghanistan

Contrary to what you may imagine, there are periods of down time here in this war zone.  We have had one of these periods this last week.

I think of these periods as the horse latitudes.   The horse latitudes is a nautical term describing the part of the ocean in which sailable wind is absent - in fact, there is absolutely no wind at all.  I spent several days in the horse latitudes when I sailed from Hawaii to California as a 15-year-old, on a 30-foot boat.  It is spooky and disquieting. If you were on a Spanish galleon you might be at sea for days, perhaps weeks, without wind, waiting for the next gust, gale, or squall.  The unusual name comes from the fact that the Spanish sailors would jettison their horses overboard in these seas, because of water shortages.  Sick thought.

The trauma bay, awaiting a mass casualty

Our horse latitudes period was bookended by two mass casualties - the first being the V-22 Osprey crash, which I have described.  The second was two nights ago when a bomb went off outside the governor's mansion in Kandahar City.  Four died and many were wounded (again, this is in open press).  We received a handful of contractors, whose nationalities were ambiguous when they first arrived.  This created a bit of comedy in the trauma bay the other night when one of our surgeons was placing a central venous catheter into one of our patients, who happened to be enormous.  Clearly he was not Spanish-speaking (South African as it turned out), but the surgeon kept offering quite loudly "Poquito dolor!  Poquito dolor!," which means "This is going to hurt a little" - in Spanish.  Hey, you do what you must.

We hear rumors of what is going on outside the wire.  Mostly these are news reports that someone has happened to read online.  Even though most of us have Secret clearances, only rarely does someone throw us a nugget of information about what we might be seeing as the summer goes on.  We treat what comes through the trauma bay doors, that's all.  But the latest rumor is that President Karzai is trying to squelch the upcoming Kandahar offensive.  Some wonder if the recent quietude is somehow related to the rumors.  I doubt it.

Mass casualty night, around midnight, in the ICU

Between our mass casualties it has been calm and quiet.  But you just never know around here.  Generally you don't get a breeze, you get a squall.  "Alpha's" tend to come in groups, for example, when an IED blows up under an MRAP.  We have all had guilt feelings now and again: we don't truly want to be busy - that means our men and women are being hurt, come in broken, and sometimes die.  We clearly do not want that.  At the same time, we like to practice our craft, and being idle tends to work against the psyche.  It's a pickle.

Today, during an idle moment, I walked into the ICU and found one of our surgeons helping a young girl  "stay between the lines" as he helped her color some Disney scene.  This little 8 year old had been hit by a stray bullet and is now paralyzed below the waist.  We have all taken turns nursing her back to health - some say we have "adopted" her.  But this scene was different.  It was precious, and I don't often use that word.