Love Story | War
Mine!
A Short Story
“Careful. Careful! CAREFUL, DAMN IT,” Maxim shouted at Ben from the passenger seat of the Humvee, bracing himself with one hand on the dash, and the other on the grab handle above the door. His battle buddy didn’t seem to be acting with the caution the situation required.
The two men were Senior Field Technicians assigned to the Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit during the Gulf War. Before U.S. forces drove Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait, the Iraqis had set hundreds of oilwells ablaze, sabotaging them so that nobody could suck sweet crude from the ground to power the world’s energy addictions. A group of civilian “Hellcats” would come in to extinguish the fires at some point in the future, but before that could happen, soldiers needed to first find and defuse any landmines left behind.
Maxim and Ben were on the reconnaissance team. As such, they were among the first few to go in and map the terrain. In their semi-armored vehicle, their job was to scour the Al-Ahmadi oil field, using glorified metal detection equipment to identify likely mines. It was dangerous and delicate work.
The sky was dark with billowing smoke, but that didn’t give Ben an excuse to be reckless the way he was. He had a civilian driving record riddled with tickets and accidents from when he was a teenager, but somehow the Army saw fit to assign him driver duty, while Maxim manned the mine mapping equipment from the passenger seat. “I thought people were supposed to change when they grew up,” Maxim said to his buddy as he was jolted left and right inside the vehicle.
It was the second-to-last thing Maxim remembered saying before the accident. The last thing he remembered saying was a loud “MINE!” after pointing toward a metallic reflection in the sand immediately in front of the vehicle.
“BOOM!”
The mine made a loud explosion, but perhaps not as loud as might have been expected, Maxim would later recount.
Still, it ripped through the floor of the Humvee, ejecting Ben out of the driver’s side door and thrusting Maxim’s head upward into an overhead support beam, knocking him unconscious.
Ben escaped with only a few scratches, and after an hour or two with a medic, found himself back with the main unit. But Maxim wasn’t nearly as lucky. He awoke 24 hours later to the sterile smells of the 44th Army Evac hospital with a severe headache.
The headache was the least of his problems. After shaking the fog of anesthesia, he discovered something so much worse. He no longer had legs. They had been amputated below the knees.
Gone quickly was the brain fog. Replaced by shock. There was the sensation of itchy toes, but looking down below his thighs, he saw only bandaged nubs that stopped well above where his feet used to be.
It took a few days for the loss to totally set in. Not just the loss of physical abilities, but of independence as well. He wasn’t going to take well to being wheeled to the bathroom or the mess hall by someone else. And he hated the idea of someone helping him get dressed.
Maxim became enraged at the unfairness of the situation.
Rebecca was the army doctor and surgeon assigned to Maxim’s case. She had been the one to amputate Maxim’s legs after the explosion. The credentials on the office wall above her left shoulder indicated she had received her medical training at Camp Pendleton in California, not far from Maxim’s hometown. The piece of paper didn’t really mean much. What mattered more was her decisiveness in clutch moments. Her steady hand and skill with the scalpel had stopped the bleeding and repaired the vascular damage.
“I know it is hard to see the bright side now,” Rebecca told Maxim on one of their first conversations after the surgery. “But it’s fortunate that I was able to save the knees.” That fact would make it much easier for him to walk with the help of prosthetics. She assured him she would be with him throughout his recovery. “You won’t have to do this alone,” she said. “Ordinarily, we’d send you home for rehab, but you’ll be staying here. I will personally supervise your treatment. I won’t be happy until you are able to walk in a completely natural way.
Rebecca seemed strangely familiar. It turned out that she was someone from his past. A childhood friend of Maxim’s little sister Kim and of his now-fiancée Cammie. His initial memories of her were as a nerdy pimple-covered middle schooler, playing the board game, “Dream Date” with the other girls. He recalled in that game how the boy-crazy girls collected “Love” cards that matched their dream mates and used “Sabotage” cards that kept other girls from getting the men they dreamed of. He also recalled how Rebecca had an annoying laugh she would make whenever she played a “Sabotage” card.
At first, those memories of the younger Rebecca made it difficult for Maxim to see her as an authority figure, even though as a captain, she outranked him. He saw her as her awkward and conniving middle school self. But as the two began to work together on his recovery, Maxim got past that.
“People change when they grow up,” he said to himself, as he began the therapy regimen Rebecca prescribed.
As the weeks and months went by, Maxim experienced a rollercoaster of emotions. At times, he felt determined and motivated to work hard and overcome his physical limitations. Other times, he felt depressed and hopeless, struggling with feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. He also had to face the reality of living with prosthetic limbs and the challenges that came with it. He would need first to get over the physical pain and discomfort of the artificial limbs. Their prosthetic sockets rubbed his lower thighs raw at first, but soon toughened them up with callouses.
With Rebecca’s help, Maxim regained some physical and emotional independence. He was soon able to attach his limbs without much assistance, and get about without her help. Rebecca regularly wrote letters on Maxim’s behalf to his fiancée, Cammie, to update her on his progress. Although not trained as a psychologist, she helped Maxim work through feelings of inadequacy. She reinforced his wholeness and goodness, even when her letters to Cammie were met with a “Dear John” letter from Cammie, breaking up with him.
“Your disability is not who you are,” she told him. “It is just something you are dealing with. I’ve cleared my schedule of all other patients I was working with, so I can focus my attention on you.”
Through his work with Rebecca, Maxim began to feel a sense of optimism about his future. He learned to adapt to his new way of life. He was grateful for her support and encouragement, and their professional relationship gradually turned into a deep friendship.
On the day Maxim first put his prosthetics on by himself, Rebecca celebrated by preparing a surprise picnic for him, complete with his favorite foods and a beautiful view of the sunset. They spent the evening laughing and sharing personal details about themselves. And when the stars came out, Rebecca pointed out the constellation Cassiopeia, sharing the love story it conveyed.
With each personal detail shared, Maxim found himself falling in love with Rebecca. Those feelings were reciprocated. She admired his courage and determination and felt shared accomplishments with him as he recovered and rebuilt some lost muscle strength and endurance. And as their feelings for each other deepened, Rebecca even suggested to him that the explosion and amputations were blessings. “How would we have gotten together and fallen in love without them?” she suggested.
Maxim agreed.
The relationship developed further, and on the second anniversary of the devastating explosion, Maxim got down on one knee . . . one of the knees that Rebecca had saved . . . and proposed marriage.
“Of course!” Rebecca replied enthusiastically, taking the ring and placing it on the appropriate finger.
But, unbeknownst to Maxim, the minefield explosion that brought them together had been a mild one. While it ripped into the bottom of his Humvee, it had done relatively little damage to his legs. Some shrapnel and bleeding, sure. The amputations, thought, were totally unnecessary. But Rebecca had no intention of sharing that fact with Maxim. She had looked at him as her “Dream Date” from the time she was in middle school. And she had learned from that game how to be a master of the “Sabotage” cards, keeping other girls from getting the man she wanted.
“Mine!” she thought to herself about Maxim, letting out an annoying laugh. She was happy that he could walk in a natural way down the aisle.
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