Polar Bear
At my word, people surged in and had the table cleared in seconds. I spread antiseptic pads across the surface and set up a makeshift operating station.
When I unzipped the medic bag and laid out its contents, a low murmur of awe rippled through the crowd.
I pulled on a pair of sterile latex gloves — cuffs folded outward — and took out a small glass vial and a syringe. As I drew the drug into the barrel, Bill asked in a tight voice,
"That… what's that?"
"Lidocaine, two percent. Local anesthetic."
I injected the lidocaine at several points around the wound in Bill's palm. After a moment, once I confirmed the area had gone numb, I got to work in earnest.
I swabbed a wide margin around the laceration with Betadine, then irrigated the inside of the wound once more with saline. I wished I had something finer than 3-0 in the bag, but I loaded a 3-0 nylon suture onto the needle holder and picked up the surgical needle. With forceps in my left hand, I gently approximated the parted edges of skin.
Everyone held their breath. The diner was filled with nothing but the metallic click of instruments and Bill's ragged breathing. Stitch by stitch, as if working a line of fine embroidery, I began to close the wound.
The first knot. The second. The third…
You start on vinyl flooring. Once you've got the hang of it, you move on to pigskin. It was a motion I had repeated until I was sick of it — in the aid station, in the field, over and over again.
Every time the needle punched through skin and the sensation traveled up into my fingertips, I slipped back into a memory from a lifetime ago.
After the endless tedium of Nonsan Training Center, where my first stretch of military service began, I received my MOS: 4111.
While my bunkmates pulled long faces about landing as ground-pounders or cannon-cockers, I was cheering on the inside.
Medic. A so-called medic.
Man, this is a total cakewalk.
Those rose-colored expectations shattered the moment I finished advanced training at the Daejeon Army Medical School and reported to my unit. I hadn't been assigned to a rear-echelon military hospital, or even a forward division medical battalion.
I'd been sent to the Republic of Korea Special Warfare Command — to an independent operational team where I was the only medic.
From that point on, my service ran on a completely different track from any ordinary medic's. I wasn't really a medic at all. I was just a special forces soldier who happened to carry a slightly heavier aid bag than everyone else.
At first I still lived with the enlisted men. Then one day all hell broke loose.
"If a team doesn't have a medical MOS, put a medic on it anyway."
That single sentence from the commander made me — still an enlisted private — the equal of the special forces NCOs. Everyone else was cadre. I was the only enlisted man.
At first they looked at me like extra baggage, a headache they didn't need. But I adapted well enough that for a while the "Special Forces Medic Ghost Story" made the rounds.
I didn't get out of the operational team until I was a short-timer. I'll never forget the face of the next medic who came in on the same pipeline I had. He looked like the sky had fallen on him.
I ran and crawled through every evolution the special forces NCOs did — the thousand-li marches, airborne school, cold-weather survival. My main job was stitching up the wounds they took in training and dressing the ones that split open.
The clumsy suturing I'd learned from a medical officer was, strictly speaking, against regulations. But through countless rounds of "live" practice, it had settled perfectly into my hands. And in the Foreign Legion, with the GCP, it proved useful in actual combat too.
While those fragments of memory flickered past like a panorama, my hands moved like a machine.
I tied off the last knot, snipped the excess thread, and the ugly, gaping wound had closed into a clean, neat line.
I set down the forceps.
"Done."
The instant the word left my mouth, a cheer erupted from somewhere, shattering the silence I had made. A moment later the diner filled with thunderous applause.
I looked up, bewildered.
The truckers who'd been watching were clapping and whistling at me as if they'd just sat through a hell of a show. For a moment I had no idea what to say in the face of that strange, fervent reaction.
When the applause died down, Bill and his partners came over. Bill carefully flexed the hand that was still numb from the anesthetic, his face a mask of disbelief.
"Jesus. I owe you, friend. I don't even know how to thank you… I won't forget this as long as I live."
The big guy beside him offered a handshake of his own.
"That's right. Thanks to you, this fella's gonna make it. Without you, we'd have been stuck here a whole damn day."
I just shrugged.
"We're all on the same road. I just did what needed doing. Figure I'll need a hand myself someday."
"No, this ain't something you just do. Anyway — can you at least give us a name? I'd like to pay you back someday."
"Chan."
"Chan? Like Jackie Chan?"
Bill's partner's eyes lit up. I snorted and shook my head.
"No. Lee Chan, Korean style. Last name's Lee."
"Oh, Korean. That explains it!"
His expression was the look of a man who'd just watched every last puzzle piece click into place.
"Koreans always do things right, don't they? Good with their hands, hardworking. But where the hell did you learn all that? You look like you should've been a doctor."
"The army."
At that short answer, something in their eyes shifted again. Past gratitude, into something closer to awe and respect. They seemed to sense I wasn't just another trucker.
We made small talk for a while. I pressed some Tylenol and propolis into Bill's good hand and told him, firmly, to get to a hospital for follow-up care as soon as he could.
I considered giving him antibiotics, but the wound was relatively clean and he was a healthy guy, so I decided to hold onto the hard-won antibiotics. Instead I applied propolis extract topically to keep bacteria from taking hold, and I gave him twice the usual supplement dose of propolis capsules.
Whether propolis can stand in for antibiotics is a debated theory, but I figured it beat nothing. At the very least, I'd seen it work.
We parted with a promise to cross paths again.
After they left, a strange sense of satisfaction settled over me. The pure contentment of having helped someone. A feeling I'd forgotten in a bleak world.
After a short rest I got back behind the wheel and headed for the next stop: Mountain Home.
Outside the window, the monotonous American countryside rolled by — small towns appearing now and then, farmland stretching wide. Unlike Canada, which had been nothing but gray, here a faint blue seemed to leak through the clouds. The weather was still overcast, but I could feel it: I was heading south.
I was rolling down the highway when an unfamiliar voice came over the CB.
The channel exploded with cheers and a chorus of agreement. Tank and Bill jumped right in.
I hesitated. I didn't want the noise of a reputation, but I couldn't just ignore their goodwill. I picked up the mic and kept it short.
When my voice hit the channel, there was a beat of silence. Then an even bigger roar of cheers and whistles burst out of the speaker.
The voices of strangers — fellow truckers. You could hear the pride in it, and that stubborn camaraderie of the road. Something in my chest went tight. I turned the radio down.
As I got closer to Mountain Home, camouflage-painted military vehicles started appearing on the highway — Humvees and heavy transport trucks.
Must be a base nearby.
I muttered it without much thought.
Well. At least the gangs won't be strutting around in the open.
I finally pulled into the Mountain Home truck stop and was looking for a parking spot when an old Peterbilt that had been following me pulled ahead and gave two short, cheerful blasts of the horn.
Honk, honk—!
I looked over, puzzled. The driver's window came down, and a man with a thick, scruffy beard shouted at me.
"Hey, friend. You the Korean Chan? The Polar Bear?"
I hesitated a second, then nodded.
"That's me."
The playful look vanished from his face. With a serious expression, he brought his hand up beside his forehead in something like a salute.
It wasn't a regulation military salute, but there was unmistakable respect in it. Real regard. He held it for a moment without a word, then dropped his hand, gave a single nod, and drove off toward a parking space on the far side.
I stared after him, a little dazed. I hadn't expected Big Bill's radio call to spread this fast.
Korean Chan.
Polar Bear Chan.
Already, on this bleak stretch of highway, a small story was traveling from mouth to mouth.
A few words, since I expect some debate over the plausibility of this episode.
Regulations prohibit medics from performing suture surgery. The story in this work, however, is drawn from the author's own experience — I have in fact performed suturing on multiple occasions. (The unit I served in was different. Whether the Special Forces medic ghost story is true remains unconfirmed.)
For reference, military MOS numbers were revised in 2012. The old specialty codes 810 and 4111 correspond to the current 411-101.
In the radio traffic in this work, 10-4 is one of the Ten-codes originally used in police radio. Commonly used codes are as follows:
10-4 — Affirmative / message received
10-9 — Repeat / say again
10-20 — What's your location?
10-33 — Emergency