8 Seconds of Courage by Flo Groberg & Tom Sileo

Author:Flo Groberg & Tom Sileo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

8 FREAK ON A LEASH

I woke up two days later in a daze that’s difficult to describe.

At first, I thought I was still on the battlefield because of all the harrowing sights and sounds still swirling through my head. In one moment, I would hear Brink and Ochart talking on the radio about the white Toyota Corolla lurking behind us in Asadabad. The next, I would picture my four fallen brothers lying in a circular formation. These voices and images—mixed with powerful painkillers and unfamiliar surroundings—left me in a wholly confused state.

It felt like tubes were attached to every inch of my body and I couldn’t move. Then I imagined that I was seeing some guy with dark dreadlocks, dozens of tattoos, and a patchy beard standing directly above me and looking straight into my eyes. I ignored him for a moment while trying to figure out where I was.

As the spinning in my head slowed down ever so slightly, I remembered being loaded on a bus and packed in like a sardine with many other wounded men before falling asleep. We were heading for a Boeing C-17 that I knew would take us out of Afghanistan, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where we had landed. Was I in Germany—where almost all soldiers wounded in Afghanistan or Iraq were taken before heading home—or was I already in a stateside military hospital?

Once again, my racing mind was interrupted by what seemed to be a person staring down at me. Suddenly, the hazy, long-haired figure spoke.

“Hey man,” he said in a familiar voice. “We’re so proud of you.”

Suddenly, my eyes stopped moving and met his. Hold on, is that who I think it is? No, it can’t be.

I recognized the man’s face. He didn’t look like a doctor or nurse, but exactly like Jonathan Davis, the lead singer of Korn, the alternative, heavy-metal-type band that I’d been listening to since high school. Even in Afghanistan, I would listen to head-pounding songs like Korn’s “Freak on a Leash” to get fired up and focused before a mission.

I started to smirk through the mask that was helping me breathe when I realized that I had to be hallucinating, much like the night I saw Mickey Mouse running next to me at Ranger School. Why the hell would the lead singer of one of my favorite bands be in my hospital room?

Just as I started drifting back to sleep, the man spoke again.

“What they told me you did over there was incredible,” he said. “You saved a lot of lives.”

As soon as my eyes reopened, I asked him where I was.

“You’re at Landstuhl [Regional Medical Center] in Germany,” he said. “The doctors and nurses here are taking good care of you.”

His explanation made sense, which caused me to ponder the possibility that I wasn’t hallucinating after all. My eyes narrowed as I took another look at the guy’s face.

“Wait a second,” I said. “You look like the dude from Korn.”

“You’re right, bro,” he said with a chuckle.

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