Blood on the ground

I have been reading Flags of our Fathers about the infamous picture taken on Iwo Jima.  Tonight I read about the assault on the island, the whole part.  It was the most costly American campaign the whole war.  Death was inescapable, bodies were everywhere, and rest was hard to come by.

Yet when I laid down, I started thinking about the incident that got me fired, and the circumstances around it.  I found myself thinking of how I would have handled my questioning had the nerves not gotten the better of me.  Hind sight is 20/20 and after being delved into the Marine mindset, so many thoughts have gone through my head.

There are memories in my mind that fill me with angst.  Thinking of the hospital gets my heart racing.  I loved that place and gave it my all, it was my home.  I was trained there, and had many friends throughout the hospital. My mom died there, and the hospital screwed up and skipped her autopsy.  All I got was an apology.  I tried to let it go, make myself better because of it.  Still the ache of betrayal is in the back of my mind.  There is always pain associated with death, and to this day "her" room haunted me.  Knowing its where she died, I eyed its window often in passing.  I spent too many hours in that room.  I slept on the floor.

There were people that I worked with that hated me.  I don't know why, other than I got on their nerves.  People are threatened by me because-- I wish I knew. I think its because I have a confidence about myself that ticks them off. I could care less about how they look, but rather I care more about how they are. Some people were just looking to protect their own skin.  Some actually thrived on destroying others.  I didn't like the people that I could see through.  They were as deep as a kiddie pool, and their loyalties ebbed and flowed with the changing of the moon.  They were like the devil, a smile on their face and a knife in their hand behind their back. 

There were those that used me, those that were just other pawns, and those that were loyal tried and true.  Most everyone fell somewhere in between.  I knew I was a gossip item, and I tried to ignore it all.  My life after all begs to ask the question "where are the hidden cameras?" because you can't make up fiction this good here folks.

I was dedicated.  Sure, God and family came first, but after that was my career.  I was proud.  I was the best there was, when I wanted to be.  I could get any image if it could be gotten.  I had compassion for my patients such that I would cry either on shift or later at home for some of them.  I prayed for many that never knew it.  Each patient was family to me.

I sit here in the dark at 2am with tears rolling down my eyes.  My sister told me that being fired from a job is like a bad break up.  In retrospect, I saw it coming, but at the time I was blindsided.  The lady that complained about me worked with me and held up my lead apron to protect me because it fell down when I was pushing the imaging plate down.  We had camaraderie.  I hated her pain, I couldn't take it away.  I would bear it for her if I could.  I told her so.  My partner just stood there in silence like always.  Passive but willing to assist. 

Later he was too feared for his own job to testify to the unemployment referee as to my behavior in the room.  Things are bad I keep hearing from others.  I really don't hear too much.  I am almost afraid to.  Its like when you get out of an abusive relationship you don't want to go back.  Like I want to know how my ex is having a jolly good time without me, I don't.  I want to hear how miserable they are without me.  I was called once, and it was only out of respect for my supervisor I answered the question.  Anyone else would have told them to shove it.

So now I live in semi-denial.  I pretend that I don't ever have to take an x-ray again because right now the thought of it pains me so dearly.  In all reality, I don't.  I can resign myself to giving up my special power, and go on in the world as if the past 10+ years of my life was all a bad dream.  I'm damn good, perhaps too damn good.  The job prospects are horrible.  I don't want to work pm or midnights, and I want to stay out of the city.  I worked long enough to have a cush job in a clinic with no holidays, right?  Turns out there are no jobs.  Nothing with benefits, unless I go into the city.  The part time hours posted out there honestly suck so much I would rather work at McDonald's. Not that anyone ever calls anyway.  This ideal job came up in Nashville- and then the flooding happened and they never called me back. 

Its like I can go on with life now that the war is over.  Or can I?  Why am I lying awake when normally I can't stay up past midnight anymore?  Its like PTSD.  I am so traumatized, I must be drawing on this pain to relate to the Marines on Iwo Jima.  Not that it could ever come close to comparing, because it never will.  I feel like I lived a whole different life back then, and this is now, and its time to move on... so why does it still hurt me?

I don't know.  I do know that I just had to write about it.  Give me flack if you will, but I never mentioned anyone's names, not even the hospital's.  Its my life, and I ain't takin' this post down - so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.  See, I know that someone is going to complain, they always did... the infamous "they." 

So now its all just memories slowly fading out.  The pain of betrayal is likely the strongest thing that remains.  Not anyone in particular, just this entity which I loved and worked hard for, and in all honesty could care less about me.  I am just a number, someone who was paid too much and worked too many hours.  Someone they could easily hack off with the least resistance, like an unneeded mole.  Perhaps that is what truly hurts.  Knowing that you put some ointment on it, and a band aid, in a few weeks no one will even remember you were there.  Except me, the mole.  Shriveled up and dried out, cut off from what fed me.  Removed from the body that I enjoyed being a part of. 

What will fill this hole?  Another job? Forgiving myself, my former co-workers? Perhaps if that stump of a mole was really a seed.  Then when this seed gets planted, who knows what might sprout up? What fruit it will bear?  Perhaps then it will forget it was just an off-cast, when it is busy growing and producing fruit.  How does a cut off mole turn into a seed?  Well if it was your imagination, you could do with it what you wanted too.  This is all a giant metaphor.  No longer is the hurt useless, and while I was useless there, I will be useful, fruitful even, elsewhere.  Make sense now?

Will the tree bear the scars from battle?  Or will the body bear the scar from the mole removed?  Only time will tell.  Right now its all too fresh, too much blood still on the ground.