Wake-Up Call. Joaquin De Torres
of the dossier folders laying across her desk. Zelda sat next to me and we viewed a photo of a young girl of about 16, lying on her back in a hospital gown. Her arms were bone-thin, folded across her emaciated body. Her hands were curled into claws, her eyes wide open, and her lips were stretched agape as if in a tortured scream. She was frozen in a painful pose that resembled a horrified creature in ice. Her legs, just as boney as her arms, were crossed at the knees, and her feet were contorted. Her left foot hinged up sharply and her right pulled down into a grotesque bow. Both feet looked like hooks that would have brought excruciating pain to a conscious person. The person in the photo was not conscious despite her opened eyes. She was paralyzed; frozen; living, but also dead. This was not our field so Zelda and I winced with each photo of the girl. Ivana, on the other hand, was as calm as if she were flipping through photos of streams and mountains.
“This is Patricia Miren,” she finally said. “Twenty-eight.”
“Twenty-eight?” I said. “I thought she was a teenager.”
“The effects of the atrophy over the years.” Ivana presented another folder and spread out its contents. “Here are photos of Patricia going back five years as her Encephalitis Lethargica worsened.” Zelda and I viewed the photos which showed the young woman in various frozen states. The poses were very similar with the exception that she had more weight on her in the early years.
“These photos were taken while she was at Napa.”
“Where did they find her?” asked Zelda.
“She was homeless eight years ago, living on the streets of Richmond. She was known in the area as the ‘Wal-Mart Lady’ because she pushed around a Wal-Mart cart from street to street. They said at the time she walked fine and pushed the cart up hills full of stuff she’d collected. One day, hikers found her laying in a clearing at Tilden Park, not far from here. She had a high fever, upper musculature rigidity, and body tremors.
“She was diagnosed and treated at the emergency room with several illnesses from strep throat to Parkinson’s Disease. But when she stabilized, she went into catatonic shock and lost throat flex and jaw muscle control. Unable to swallow, she has been fed using injections and I.V.s all this time. She froze a month later.” Our eyes moved from the photos to Ivana. “And when they did a neuro scan, the results warranted that they transfer her to Napa State where she was essentially ignored.”
“That’s horrible,” Zelda whispered. “Does she have cognitive functions?” Tears were welling up in her big eyes. “Is she aware?”
“She’s brain dead.”
I inhaled deeply trying to dislodge the ball in my throat. For some reason, with the photos in my hand and Ivana’s despondent tone, I couldn’t seem to erect the wall of cool professionalism that I mastered throughout my career.
“I didn’t even know about her until my audit of the Catatonic Ward when I was an oversight inspector. Once I got this position, I made sure she and about a dozen other catatonic patients were transferred here. I now treat them all.”
“Does she have any family?” Zelda asked.
“I found a mother living with her boyfriend at a trailer park in Shore Acres, but neither showed interest.”
There was a lingering question in my mind as we listened to Patricia Miren’s sad story that I hadn’t had the courage to ask. But Ivana was already looking at me, obviously reading my mind.
“You’re wondering why Patricia’s story is so important, aren’t you, Javier?” I nodded. She turned and retrieved her laptop that sat on the far side of the table. “A DVD I made is inside. It’s already cued up for you.” She turned the screen to us and maneuvered her mouse to activate the video.
“This is a composite of clips that we made as I tried to teach Patricia how to draw shapes.” The film showed Ivana standing over Patricia’s bed, supporting a pencil in her clawed hand on a drawing pad. Patricia’s face was a mask of contorted pain, the exact same face as the photos of past years. Ivana, with her compassionate voice, was talking to her in a soft, encouraging tone like a mother urging her baby. There was only slight movement from Patricia, but it occurred when a leg shifted. Ivana even took her hand and tried to guide it on the paper, but it was too rigid to move. Clip after clip, it was clear that no progress was registered in the exercise no matter how much Ivana tried to coax her, move her or encourage her. Intermittently, Ivana would turn to the camera to give a quick clinical analysis of something she saw or didn’t see. The dates on the clips showed that these exercises took place six weeks ago.
“For weeks I tried to get Patricia to write something-anything-even just jab the pencil onto the paper. But there was no movement at all.” She paused for what seemed like an uncomfortably long time, looking away and taking a breath. Zelda leaned over to me and whispered.
“This is not easy for her. It wasn’t easy for me.”
“Have you seen this already?” I asked her. She nodded ominously. Ivana seemed to gain her composure and looked up.
“Every room has a video camera situated on the wall above the bed’s headboard like a security camera, and records throughout the night. We call it a Night Cam. Now look at this. This is what was filmed from Patricia’s camera just two weeks ago.”
She started the video again and my heart froze in my throat.
* * *
Sergeant LeMarcus Henderson, 3d Infantry Division, Special Electronics Warfare Team, and two-time Purple Heart recipient from the Iraqi War, limped into the Pittsburg Best Buy in a cami jacket, ripped jeans, untied boots, and a t-shirt reading “FUCK ALL WARS!” His hair was a nappy unkempt Afro, his thick beard a matching, hanging nest. The former soldier made a bee-line for the PC and laptop department of the store, his eyes searching for some far-off object.
He reeked of beer, sweat and filth, making nearby customers wince and move away as he drew near. Best Buy floor manager Tim Wilson saw Henderson early from the cash register line and got on his walkie.
“Floor alert,” he whispered harshly into the mouth piece. “Homeless African-American man going into Computer Electronics. Need assistance in Computer Electronics. Fran, he’s coming your way!”
It was true, LeMarcus Henderson was a homeless African-American at the time; but back in the day, just eight years prior, he was a dangerous avatar who had dominion over an entire battlefield both on the ground and in the air. He worked the controls of a sophisticated new electronic frontal assault system from a single tablet or laptop called “LAP STRIKE.” At his fingertips, a Lap Striker had forward telemetry and topography readings of targets derived from drones, satellites, reconnaissance aircraft, and long-range infrared cameras in a tablet PC the size of a paperback novel, but only a quarter inch thick.
“Taking point” had taken on a whole new meaning for the Army because when Lap Striker was on point, American forces were miles away behind him. Parachuting in at night behind enemy lines, Henderson remained hidden, fusing all information preloaded and downloaded of enemy areas before calling in air, tank or artillery strikes with the push of a button. One special, almost mundane feature of the tablet was its power grid scrambler. When attached either wirelessly or with cables to a transformer or capacitor, Henderson could send a plasma jolt into the energy stream and short circuit the grid, causing a blackout to a city the size of Baltimore for at least seven minutes; long enough to cause the chaos and military defenselessness for an effective strike.
Henderson had all but forgotten those days when he was considered a hero for guiding in no less than 15 successful helicopter, drone and jet airstrikes. But during the war’s third year, an Iraqi artillery shell exploded close enough to send shrapnel through both his legs, knocking him out of the war and into a VA hospital in San Francisco. Two years later, Henderson was on the streets with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and an alcohol and cocaine problem that siphoned most of his four years of Army savings. In this last year, Henderson’s PTSD advanced into manic depression and bipolar disorder, strengthening the saddening statistic that 40 percent of all U.S. soldiers returning from