The doctors assured me the shrapnel in my leg would do no further harm if they “let sleeping dogs lie,” or at least less harm than trying to take it out would cause. “Hey,” I asked them. “What if it decides to cut its way out all on its own?” My great-uncle told me about his own experience with that unique flavor of post-traumatic unpleasantness. He’d returned home from the Gulf War, where he’d (briefly) been a tank commander. Some courageous Iraqi had blown his tank to bits of razor-sharp shrapnel with a lucky hit from an anti-tank rocket. Uncle survived with many souvenirs embedded in his flesh, including miscellaneous bits of bone that were all that remained of his former tankmates. The bone had mostly been reabsorbed. The metal? Too deep and too dangerous to remove. But every so often, a piece would pop out of his scarred flesh, and he’d wake up beside it the next morning.
Being human, I hadn’t learned a damned thing from his experience. When they drafted me, I asked for a position in the tank corps. I mentioned my uncle’s name in my application and the list of medals he’d earned. Maybe that earned me that position. “Safest place to be,” I told myself, “surrounded by a meter-thick wall of steel.” That was the theory. When the Russians blew my tank apart around me, fragments of that armor and my buddies became my own retirement legacy.
“The fragments will mostly stay in place for the rest of your life,” the doctors told me. “Trust us. Don’t lose any sleep over them.”
Easy for them to say! When my appointment was over, could walk home. , I was going to be stuck in the damned rolling chair they’d provided for many months, more probably years. I was too stubborn to accept that. So as soon as I got home, I rolled myself to the barn and cut a fresh length of knotted ironwood that was probably
