The layers of dust began a miraculous dance, shaking and rolling, and I forgot about the kids. Then the sand blew up from the dead ground, swirling into a vortex. The beautiful patterns made little sense, even after the medical transport chopper dropped into view.
By then, the pain had taken me to the breaking point. I tried to focus on the good things I'd done in my life, but my mind kept returning to how it had all been a waste. Instead of enemy fire punching my ticket, I ended up on death's doorstep because of some bullshit mechanical failure.
I looked back to Taylor then down at my destroyed legs.
"Not today, Jon."
I shook my head, and absently whispered, "I hope it is."
The world faded to black.
***
I woke up in a real hospital, surprised to wake up at all.
People in white scrubs came and went in a blur. I never knew if it was day or night. Time had lost all meaning. The only thing I remember clearly is the suffering. The morphine never took the excruciating pain away, and I constantly begged for more.
A doctor wearing large glasses and a fake smile examined my legs. In a thick German accent, he said, "This is bad, but could have been much, much worse."
I replied between gritted teeth, "That's true of everything when your heart's still pumping."
"This is correct."
"Asshole," I added.
He shrugged and his fake smile grew wider.
I should've been happy to be alive, but to be honest, I was pissed. Not because of the helicopter malfunction that had led to a twisted, horrific wreck of a left leg. No, I hated everything and everyone, because my absolute biggest fear had always been becoming a cripple.
I couldn't live that way.
I wouldn't.
Faceless doctors poured into the room followed by a procession of menacing nurses, each pushing a tray full of surgical tools.
"You're not taking it, goddamn it! I'd rather be shot."
The German doctor nodded to a shadow at the head of my bed. "Hold him down. Don't let him pull out the IV."
I fought against the dozen hands pressing on my shoulders and arms, pain so intense, I thought it would kill me. "Don't do it!" I screamed. "Don't you fucking do it!"
"Relax, Lieutenant Randon. This will be over soon."
I continued to struggle, but whatever drugs they had pumped into my arm had started to take effect.
My strength faded fast and darkness crept into my vision.
The German doctor leaned over me, his breath smelling like pistachios.
Then I was gone.
***
In the end, the doctors managed to save my left leg, amputating my right leg instead.
I would've thought it funny if I weren't already plotting suicide. The hospital staff must have known. They kept my wrists strapped down and never left me alone.
A week later, the Army sent word I was stable enough to leave Ramstein and put me on a C-17 flying back to the States, destination: Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Maryland—otherwise known as the prison where I had been doomed to spend the next eighteen frustrating months.
***
As an incoming WRAMC patient, I quickly learned no one enjoys being helpless. Though angry at myself, I took most of the bitterness out on the nursing staff.
I always felt like being a miserable little cuss. If anyone wearing a uniform came into my room, I screamed at them until they retreated.
Even the nurses changing my dressings or emptying my bedpan weren't spared my wrath.
The staff always kept their cool, even when I lost mine. They met my rants with understanding eyes and unwavering friendliness. Because of their impossibly kind treatment, my anger faded to depression, and regardless of the pity I wanted to feel, my attitude improved as the wounds healed.
Then the hospital staff felt confident enough in my mental state to transfer me to a private room, and that's when life became a little more bearable.
They call that the end of 'Phase One'. I still hated the fact I was alive but no longer thought about suicide every day. Though I didn't know it, I was well on my way into 'Phase Two', affectionately known as the 'Wounded Warrior Nothing Game'. It's the part of recovery when the mind has too much time to think and the body isn't capable of doing much of anything. Stuck in a bed for most of the day, I read books, played video games, and looked at too much porn.
When you are down a limb, what else is there other than fantasizing? At least it wasn't my right arm they cut off.
***
Months later, I heard a heavy knock at my door.
"Coming," I said, rolling my wheelchair over to the foyer. I opened the door to Taylor standing in the hallway holding up two middle fingers.
"Hey, Gimp!" He pulled me up for a hug.
"What in the hell are you doing here? I thought you were still in the sandbox?"
"Nope. I'm done with that. My promotion came through, and they offered me a Joint Task Force position at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. We're practically neighbors." He took a deep breath and let it out. "Damn good to see you, Jon."
"You too, Jesse. I'm glad you're back home."
We caught up over lunch, talking about the normal things friends talk about. Taylor told me Lorie and little Jon sent their love, as did the rest of his family, then he took out his laptop.
"You gotta see these," he said. "Look."
He clicked on a folder and pictures from Afghanistan filled the screen. As he swiped though, he gave a morose report on our friend that didn't make it out. After a moment of silence for the fallen, he flipped over to the next image and my heart nearly stopped.
A mangled and destroyed Black Hawk sat partially submerged in a glorified puddle of water. All of the propeller blades had been broken off and the cockpit smashed in completely.
"Is that…?"
"Yes. I went out to the crash site while you were in Germany."
I tried to speak but couldn't.
"Thought you might want it," Taylor said. He opened up his email account, attached the image, and pressed send.
I nodded. "Excuse me. I'll be right back."
"Sure."
I rolled my wheelchair to the bathroom, not wanting to break down in the middle of the dining hall.
Once I regained my composure, I went back to the table and broke the ice again by explaining how I could still wiggle my toes even though they weren't there.
Taylor suggested we join a group of Air Force guys playing cards at another table. We played, laughed, and had a good time. After a while, he looked at his watch and said he needed to get home.
Taylor stood up and reached into his back pocket. "Read this over," he said, handing me a thick envelope.
"What's this?" I asked. "Suicide note, I'm guessing. Is today the day?"
"Not for us." Grinning, he leaned down, hugged me again, and left.
I excused myself from the poker game and wheeled over to a quiet corner of the dining room.
THE DEATH AGREEMENT had been printed across the top of the first page. Confused, I browsed through the letter, a contract of sorts. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. The pages talked of friendship and what it meant to be remembered, each section dealing with a different aspect of a person's death.
The letter Taylor had given me explained that he believed someone could stop worrying about dying if they knew a trusted person would tell their story after they were gone. He proposed we do this for each other. Nothing fancy, just the truth. If I died, Taylor would give my eulogy. If he died, I'd speak for him.
I thought that the contract was some sort of evolution of his original idea back at Rucker. I read it over a dozen times, studying all eight parts, each section containing a few stipulations. I scratched out an item here and there and added in others. The document could help us. It could remind us to enjoy life. It could propel us to leave a mark on this world.
By the time Taylor visited again, I had worked through several revisions of The Death
Agreement. We went over everything and compiled a final version. Then Taylor had it printed on heavy stock paper in a crisp, legalese-style font. The finished contract felt heavy in my hands and looked more professional than any legal document I had ever seen.
Taylor had left plenty of free space to make notes and future additions. Even the United States Constitution had left room for improvement.
We sat across from each other in my small dorm as a notary public officer hunched over the two copies lying on the table between us. We signed and stamped The Death Agreement, making it official.
I popped open a couple of beers, and we drank to celebrate.
***
Taylor came to visit every other Saturday.
We hung out watching television or playing video games mostly, but when my pain subsided, and I felt well enough to travel, we began to explore around the closed-down sections of the campus.
Most of the facilities had been abandoned and off-limits by this point. In 2011, the government had ceased primary operations of the hospital under Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC as it's more commonly known, and most patients and staff were transferred to the newly-built location in Bethesda, Maryland. The public eye had been focused on the state-of-the-art treatment center, so hardly anyone paid attention to the old hospital, which had maintained a medical presence in case some unforeseeable event required MEDCOM to backtrack. A small group of patients still needed to be on-site to justify the skeleton crew. How they picked who got stuck with the sub-par care is anyone's guess. I think it had a lot to do with the attitudes of the wounded soldiers. The last thing command needed was some camera crew filming a disgruntled soldier in the lobby of their pride-and-joy pork belly project.
Fine by me. I preferred the quiet. Besides, it allowed Taylor to freely push my wheelchair down the empty streets while we listened to the sound of nature reclaiming the world.
Weeks passed. My attitude improved, and a prosthetic leg replaced the wheelchair.
Suddenly, I was able to do things on my own again, albeit with a little help from crutches. Stairs, for example, had become my nemesis. Though I was still in constant pain, I could stand, and that's all that mattered.
Bursting into my room one morning, Taylor said, "Get your lazy ass up! We got work to do!"
"Give me a minute," I said.
"We ain't got all day."
"Yeah, yeah. Give me a sec. I think I know where we should go first."
We had mapped the place during our previous wheelchair strolls, picking out which of the old, abandoned buildings we wanted to break into, but there was one place in particular that seemed like the best starting point.
I closed the book I had been reading. For weeks, I had dug into the history of the campus. Through my research I had discovered the hospital was originally been built in the early 1900s, the location chosen because President Lincoln had used the land as a field hospital during the Civil War. Gravely wounded Union soldiers were sent to that camp, most of whom had required amputations.
A few historians said that some of the original buildings still existed. They had been incorporated into the design of the main hospital building. Fascinated by each new fact uncovered, I wanted to go there. The more I learned, the more excited I became. I couldn't wait.
Taylor tapped his fingers on the refrigerator. "What the hell is taking so long?"
"Okay," I said, writing the down an interesting fact into a three-ring spiral notebook.
We left and began our first real exploration.
His motives were different from mine. He had believed the rumors that Walter Reed was haunted by the soldiers who died on the grounds. I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not. Prior to the helicopter crash, I didn't subscribe to ghosts or anything paranormal. To be honest, I didn't much care to listen to him go on and on about the nonsense that some people had supposedly witnessed.
Did we see and hear things? Yes, I'll admit that. Was I scared? Goddamn right I was scared. But ghosts? Sorry, I wasn't buying it.
Out of all of the things we had seen on our expeditions, I was most shocked by what we discovered in the closed-off wing of an unnamed ward. Before getting into specifics, it's important to know how difficult it had been to access.
From ground level we couldn't find any way into that part of the building. All the doorways and windows had been filled in with bricks and painted over.
Taylor figured a basement hallway from the adjacent building connected them, so we looked all over, but still couldn't find a way.
"If there was ever a path, it was sealed off long ago," I said.
Taylor shook his head. "Uh-uh. There's a way in. I know it."
Undeterred, he led me up the levels, searched each floor in turn, and only found more bricked up doorways. On the top floor, we discovered something odd. It wasn't a door, but a nailed-shut window that led to the roof. On the other side, a small door above the closed-off section called to us.
We pried the frame loose and stepped into the cold wind.
I could tell that no one had been in there for decades. Lead paint peeled off the walls. Crude medical devices lay broken and scattered across the rooms. Instead of electric lighting, kerosene lamps lined the hallways.
We explored each floor of the dark abandoned ward, finding stranger and stranger things as we went. Though the atmosphere was ominous, and the old, torturous looking equipment sent chills down my back, none of it compared to what we discovered on the basement level.
Something seemed off as soon as we entered the large, open room. A rotted wooden wall caught Taylor's attention. It should have been against the foundation, but it seemed as if something lay beyond.
I tore away the wood, revealing a tunnel. Though my heart thudded against my ribs, it wasn't that strange—many government offices are connected below ground—and yet every part of my being told me to run.
I cautiously followed Taylor through the winding hallway. He stopped and said, "Whoa. Did you feel that?"
It seemed if the room had suddenly grown cold for a moment. "No," I lied. "Feel what?"
"Come on. I think we're near the other side."
We kept going, and a few minutes later we reached the end. Instead of linking to another building, the path abruptly stopped at a small sub-basement room, completely empty except for an old, rusted surgical saw hanging by a string tied to a peg in ceiling.
I stared at the strange discovery, admiring the white maple handle.
The saw began to swing. It started slow, almost unnoticeable, but then it began to move faster and faster.
Taylor stepped backward. "What…the…fuck?"
I backed away, too, pulling at his shirt.
We did what any sane people would do. We retreated.
Once safely back in my dorm room, Taylor carefully unfolded his copy of The Death Agreement and wrote about what we had experienced.
Though spooked, I searched my mind for a logical explanation of how something could move on its own. I shuddered. Instead of answers, I just wanted to forget it had happened.
Taylor didn't make that easy. He tried to convince me we had found proof of an afterlife, that the ghost of some surgeon still haunted the terrifying and secret operating room. He had jokes, too: "Jon Randon died today, ten pounds of shit found in his pants."
"Kiss my ass," I shot back.
"You can't deny that happened."
"Whatever," I said. "Let's just not go there again."
"The thought never crossed my mind."
***
As time went on we managed to gain access to most of the sites on our list: the fire hall, the smoke stacks, the morgue. While rummaging through the old abandoned boiler room, Taylor turned to me and said, "I found a place online where people posted photos of the abandoned locations they've visited."
I turned a large, galvanized steel wheel that creaked loud enough to wake the dead. "Making another list of places we can check out?" I asked. Urban exploration had become a real passion, but i
t was the darker places which really held his interest.
"Something like that. It led me to another site, a forum or something where people share disturbing stories, real things that had happened to them. Out of the ones I read, I don't think they're all true, but I would bet that some were. Jon, I read this one story. It's been bothering me ever since."
"Oh yeah? What's it about?"
"I have no idea. It's strange but I can't remember. I tried to find it again but…" He shrugged.
"It'll come to you."
"Yeah, all in good time, I suppose. I'm probably just being paranoid. But hey, I wanted to ask you something. Do you mind if I talk about this place? I've got all the notes and I think the people there would like to hear about what we've seen, especially about that room with the saw."
"Don't post anything that could get us identified. Remember what happened while on leave in Spain? You promised to not get me arrested again."
"Oh come on, how was I supposed to know her brother was a cop?"
I laughed.
"Thanks, Gimp," he said.
"Zip it. I'm almost done with the crutches and payback is hell."
Taylor sat in one of the hundred-year-old wheelchairs we'd found stacked up in the attic of the psych ward and updated his copy of The Death Agreement. I drank in silence while thinking about the places I'd like to visit once the doctors finally released me.
I remember thinking how I wished that day would've been more eventful. Out of the dozens of times we'd gone exploring, it had been one of the more boring outings.
In the end, that day became more significant than I ever could have imagined. It was the last time I saw my friend Jesse Taylor alive.
SECTION II - LOOK AFTER FAMILY
On the Friday after Taylor had last come to visit, he had called me.
"Hey, I'm really sorry, Jon. I know I'm supposed to show up tomorrow…I can't make it."
"Everything all right?"
"Just dealing with some personal issues right now."
"No worries," I said and waited for him to explain; he didn't. It was unlike him to keep me in the dark. We weren't supposed to have secrets. I cleared my throat and said, "Maybe next week? I think we should leave the base. Rosewood Asylum is in Owings Mills, not too far."