Djibouti Chapter

[jburke]

I'll take a chance with this forum.  Below is a chapter from my novel.  It is in the middle of the book.  To set the scene:
Jake Matthews is a Navy OB'GYN who has been sent to Djibouti, Africa to assist with a pregnancy problem.  Before he can solve the problem, he encounters Master Chief Charlie Albright, who has a gunshot wound from a battle with Somalia rebels.  Jake, with two spooks from the US Embassy, takes Charlie to the local hospital for surgery.

CHAPTER: Djibouti

An hour later, the ship’s launch deposited us on a decrepit pier that reeked of dead fish and petroleum oil.  To the east, a tepid sky announced the
dawn.  Two unidentified men in black
suits quickly loaded JB, the Master Chief, Vignalli, and me into a windowless
panel van and sped across town.  Neither spook spoke the entire trip, even
when I asked them why they wore sunglasses at night.

“How ya doing, Master Chief?”  I asked.  His wound looked good before we left the Swordfish, but he still refused
pain meds other than Tylenol.

“Charlie.”  He said.  “Call me Charlie while we’re here.  I’m not a Master Chief, just a worker from the embassy who had an accident.  I realize that you have no idea what’s going on and I
apologize, but nobody can know any of us are here.”  His tone allowed
no argument or misunderstanding.

“I’m not here because of a pregnancy, am I?”

“What pregnancy?  Of course not.  You’re here because I need you.  Lucky you
arrived when you did.”  He didn’t
elaborate.

“Charlie, you’re right.  I don’t know what the hell is happening here.  I can live with that for now, but someday you owe me
an explanation.  Until then, I’ll do whatever I can for your leg, but
cut the bullshit.  We both know
that this is a gunshot wound.  I
need to explore it, clean it out, and patch you up.  I’ll be straight with
you—I’m way, way out of my league here, and frankly scared shitless.”

“Bedside manner could use a little fine tuning, Doc.” 

“I’m just being straight with you.  The last gunshot wound I treated was on a goat at trauma school in San Antonio,
Texas.  My patient ended up as stew
that evening.  Now, I need some straight answers.”

He nodded.

“Where is the bullet?  I couldn’t get x-rays on the Swordfish and if you are carrying a bullet in your leg, it will change everything.  LaRouche tells me you
can’t undergo general anesthesia, and that’s not for medical reasons.  My
new friends in black up there,” I nodded toward the two guys in the front, “are
assigned to keep an eye on things.  I get that, but there is only so much
I can do using a spinal instead of putting you under general anesthesia, which
I can’t do.”

“Understood,” He looked me directly in the eye.  “Do what you need to do, I’ll be okay.  The bullet went clean through and I
suspect it’s still in the chest of a Somali rebel I tackled when the fun
started.  There was only one shot
fired—I got a hole in my leg and he’s dead.  The math is simple.”

“Okay, that helps.  I did a blood count on you and you’re low.  If you lose
any more blood during surgery, I’ll need to transfuse you.”

 “No way in hell are you giving me blood from this blood bank.  This part of the globe is dying of AIDS and I have other plans.  As far as you’re concerned, I just became a
Jehovah’s Witness.  I am not, repeat not, getting a transfusion.  We wait until I’m back on board the
carrier, or I use your blood.  We clear on that?”

“No, we’re not clear on that.  You bleed out on me and I’m giving you blood,
period.  You’re not dying on my
watch.”

Charlie reached over the seat and tapped one of the Men in Black on the shoulder.  “Shoot him if he tries to give me blood.”  Man in Black nodded.  The hair on my neck stood up.  Charlie looked at me and winked.

“No anesthesia, no blood, no surgical assistant, no official ID, nobody knows I’m even here?  That about sums this up.  I might as well do this
procedure with both arms in casts.”

“That can be arranged,” JB whispered in my ear.  I shut up the rest of the way to the hospital.

The next two hours were anticlimactic.  As the sun bled into a dull sky, we arrived at the Djibouti Royal Hospital. 
A short man in a white coat ran out to greet us, waving his arms and
chattering in rapid French.  Two
goats looked out a first floor window.  White Coat had a brief,
heated conversation with Man in Black who opened his coat, put one hand on a
huge gun, and extracted an envelope with the other.  The envelope quickly
disappeared into a white pocket.  White
Coat vanished just as quickly. 

I took Charlie to the OR where, following my shaky instillation of spinal anesthesia, I probed, flushed and sutured his leg.  Vignalli earned an extra stripe that day staffing the duties
of both anesthetist and scrub nurse. 
He even managed to figure out how to create a x-ray on a machine that
belonged in the Smithsonian.  No fractures, no lead fragments, no hits, no
runs, no errors.  Nobody left on
base except a goat, who had wandered into the OR to check on my progress. 

An hour after surgery, we were in an antique ambulance stirring up clouds of dust as we headed to the Embassy.  I
decided that a hurried post-op journey was preferable to risking infection from
goat shit.

I watched out the ambulance window as Djibouti awoke.  The poorest country in the region, it is a refugee camp for over flow from Ethiopia and
Somalia.  I had been warned about the poverty, but the streets and
doorways of the city teemed with the homeless and hopeless.  Dark faces
with dead eyes and dead souls watched us pass.  Rags covered skin
stretched over thin bones.  Many of the bodies scattered in whatever
shelter they could find would not awaken this morning.  An emaciated woman
in a doorway holding a naked infant stretched out a hand to another walking
skeleton.  Then she flopped back against the wall and dropped her head
onto her chest.  The infant listlessly attempted to find a nipple, gave
up, and accepted the inevitable. 
Only months old, this child knew death’s call.  Crusted eyes didn’t blink as flies landed on them.

Several children ran past pounding on the ambulance windows, but they lacked the energy to pursue us beyond a block.  Their
eyes mimicked the empty hands stretched toward us.  We drove past a communal well with people lined up waiting to
fill pots, bottles or anything they could find with enough water to survive
another day.  Even with the windows up, the stench of decay, death, and
despair permeated my conscience.  The world forgot these people.  Relegated to the dung heap of
civilization, they awaited certain death.  Until then, they wandered
aimlessly, all remnants of hope fading.

Hawkeye Pierce, my hero from the MASH TV show, whispers one-liners to me that I throw out when I’m stressed.  Black humor
is my survival technique against the horrors of the world.  Today there was no snappy repartee’
that quelled the grief.  This
misery left my heart empty, feeling ashamed to be alive, fed, and knowing I am
no more or less human than those staring back.  The white man’s attitude that they are only Africans, only
black, stung.

“How do you live with this everyday?”  I asked no one in particular. 

Man in Black said, “Live with what?”  Without slowing, he honked at a man with a makeshift crutch hobbling across
the street in front of us.  The skin on his swollen legs cracked and exuded
purulence.  My mind recalled pictures from a tropical disease seminar I
once attended.  I was shocked to realize he had elephantiasis, something
unheard of anywhere else in the world.  

I turned away from the window the remainder of the trip.  I could not watch the parade of walking dead without asking if there really is a God,and where is She?

[Chuck Stromme]

Two things come to mind.

The first is that this chapter might be too wordy to convey the urgency of the scene. Your second sentence - "To the east, a tepid sky announced the dawn" - is an example. Rhapsodic and urgent don't mix well for me. Action themes benefit from tight writing.

The second is related to the first. If you want to write an opinion piece on the woes of the third world, great. However, throwing some editorializing into an action chapter clanks with me. For instance, "The white man’s attitude that they are only Africans, only black, stung." If someone rejects that hypothesis (the white man's attitude) then they might not be eager to accept the rest of the book. The same for the "where is God?" thought in the last sentence. That's a pretty big question for a throw-away final clause and it doesn't seem to develop any other part of the story.

Allow me an analogy, please. This is like a Depression-era bank robbery scene where the author opines on the harm that will be done to the poor depositors instead of the chaos of the robbery and chase.

I'm just sayin'.

Chuck

[Edythe Stromme]

Sunglasses at night? By the time you posed the question about the sunglasses wouldn’t it be daylight? I think you could convey that their eyes and thoughts were hidden without this sentence.

I understand what Chuck is saying about the urgency, etc. but I sort of like the tepid sky. Is it hot? Humid? I like your references to odors. I think a little liberty with narrative is what makes it your story but that’s just me. I don’t need breakneck speed to feel urgency.

You make good use of dialog to move the story along and provide information without using the omniscient author voice.

Love the goats in the window. Sets the “tone” without "excessive" description.

The flies on the crusted eyes is a little overworked, for me at least. Needs something else unless you do it with a wry twist… “…the usual flies on crusted eyes.” ?

You say the white man’s attitude stung but it’s not clear who it stung. Them or you?

I liked the driver’s response, “Stand what?” That says a lot more than the actual description.

Not sure about the God reference. Does it tie in with a theme?

It left me curious and hoping you will provide more chapters. I like the character but wish I had a name or a little more idea of who he is. That may have come earlier. Does he toughen up? Learn to not look? I heard a talk the other night where the speaker told of seeing 100-300 children a day in some sort of makeshift clinic in a European country. He operated in a state of semi-shock and repressed his feelings almost totally. I can easily imagine that would be the effect of too much horror.

Thanks for sharing and keep writing!!

[jburke]

Thanks to you and Chuck for the feedback, without which an author remains blind to their own words.

[Edythe Stromme]

You are most welcome. That's what we are all here for after all--to share our writing in a supportive community and get honest feedback so we can improve our skills and write some more. Another good thing is that since we all see from different perspectives you get to see how very different reader responses can be. This helps prepare us for the "real" world where critics criticize for the sake of criticizing with no thought at all for the writer's feelings and no desire to help him or her improve their craft.

jburke said:

Thanks to you and Chuck for the feedback, without which an author remains blind to their own words.