NIGHT SWEATS

NIGHT SWEATS

The continuous splatter of gunfire was making it harder and harder to hear.  The walls in this Beirut office building were being destroyed by the incessant barrage of enemy fire.  They were throwing everything they had at us, from assault rifles to machine guns.  My ears seemed to be shutting down.  I could barely make out what the sergeant was yelling; every sound seemed muffled.

We had just overtaken this vantage point, hoping to use it as the best means of securing our sector, however, this office did not provide us with a 360 degree view of the area.  By now there were only six of us left in the squad, not enough men to keep the third floor secure, and we were fighting for our lives.

The plaster walls seemed to explode when hit by enemy fire.  Plaster shards hurled outward from impact much like double edged razor blades impregnating the room.  Our faces were bleeding from a hundred cuts, and our arms and hands were pierced with dozens of wooden splinters from the shattered wall studs.  The barrage had begun about thirty minutes earlier; before long the darting pains had subsided, or were being suppressed by other crises.

I barely heard the sergeant call my name.  He ordered me to clear the stairs to my rear; we were being overtaken from below.  As I stepped, turned and crouched on the third floor landing at the head of the stairs I could see enemy soldiers just one flight down.  Opening fire with my M16 I blindly sprayed the stairwell with thirty rounds.  An M21 assault rifle returned fire on me from the second floor.

I took one round in my lower left rib cage.  At first it felt as someone had driven a white-hot fireplace poker into my lower chest and shoved it completely through my body.  The pain was unbearable enough from the bullet, but the impact of the round slammed me into a wall several feet back.  I lost vision and hearing.  The pain was increasing in multiples of a hundred every second.  I could feel the warm blood pouring from my chest.

An immense feeling of weakness overtook me.  No more sharp pains, no vision or hearing, just my thoughts kept me aware I was still alive.  I drifted off, knowing dying was imminent, but amazingly I was okay with it.  And then... nothing.

I had no idea how much time had passed, but I felt as though I was coming awake, out of a deep sleep.  The memory of what had happened returned slowly.  Was that real?  Is this real?  I was still too groggy and not fully aware of where I was.  I knew something was real though, I was not slumped against the wall in excruciating pain, and the smells were of a clean and sanitized type, not the same as the stench of a bullet ridden building in a war zone.

Was that war real?  I began to believe it was just a nightmare.  I was too comfortable, and in no pain, I was waking to a new day.  I couldn’t get over how real that dream was, it was so intense and so vivid.  It was scary now thinking back that I had dreamt that I had died, a bit funny, too, that I was taken in by my own imagination.

I struggled for a moment to open my eyes but with no success.  I began hearing low, indistinct sounds.  Nothing was clear until I heard the sound of an irregular beeping, several double beeps in a row and then a period of silence.  The sequence repeated every few seconds.  Within minutes the beeping stopped, and a clear, unfamiliar male voice commented that there was a flat line on the monitor.  In a near whisper he said the suffering was over.  I drifted off again.