Occasionally you are reminded how different you are from other students at school. Most of the time you can pretend you're not but then the most random little event will trigger something inside of you. And that can scare you.
I was walking with a friend toward the Stanford Quad last week along Serra Street. It was a beautiful day, clouds playing across a blue sky while a brisk wind kept it just on the chilly side. The two of us had spent a carefree afternoon walking around the new Graduate School of Business complex looking at some of the new sculptures, discussing them (she's a writer for an art magazine), and generally catching up since we hadn't seen each other since I'd returned.
Two people crashed into each other on their bicycles about one hundred and fifty meters ahead of us while we passed the fountain in front of Memorial Auditorium. I could hear a few people yelling and sprinted over to see if everyone was okay. One of the girls was standing up and seemed to be okay while the other was lying on the pavement on her side, screaming.
The first thing that flashed in my head was how only one woman was even attempting to help. Everyone else was just standing around. I let a wave of anger pass over me and then focused on the girl. She was on her right side, grimacing and incoherent. After making sure someone called 911, I looked her over. She was unable to move her left shoulder but claimed to be otherwise hurt, which a quick scan confirmed.
Her name was Hillary. I rolled up my sweatshirt and put it under Hillary's head while we talked for the next seven or eight minutes. First the police (a wonderful deputy name Harris Kuhn who is a good friend of the Stanford veterans) and then the fire department showed up and took over, much to my relief. This should have been a pretty unremarkable event - Hillary gets hurt, gets help, end of story - but it wasn't. Not to me.
Kneeling over her, telling her she was going to be okay, telling her help was on the way - all of the sudden I was back in Sangin during a clearing op with L/3/7, watching an Afghan soldier with no legs slowly bleed out muttering "Allah, Allah" over and over again. All I could do was shout at him in English to stop moving because we were about to drop a GBU on a compound only sixty meters away. He ended up dying on the MEDEVAC bird. Did I check his tourniquets and do a blood sweep every time we moved him? I think so.
I think so. But I'm not sure. It never leaves you.
