Our shop has two people right now that know anything about Hueys and Cobras- me, and Cpl W, the guy that came out with the skid detachment specifically to work on them. Me being here and knowing them is just a convenient bonus.

Some bad news came up, this morning: Cpl W's brother was in a serious car accident. The brother was unconcious, and rushed to the hospital.

Good news is, he woke up, with just a few broken bones and a concussion. Broken bones will heal, and a concussion is nothing to get all excercised about.

I said there was worse news. "Punch in the gut" news. For a patient that has been knocked unconcious from trauma, standard procedure is to get a CAT scan to look for brain hemhorrages or other problems. They found those "other problems".

Cpl W's brother has three brain tumors, at least one of which is malignant. I didn't get the prognosis, but it's bad enough that they're doing brain surgery about 30 hours from now, which is inherently risky and also a bad sign. It'll take 24 hours to fly back Cpl W to the bedside, so that's the schedule we're on. The Red Cross message arrived via fax, and we got him approval for emergency leave in full bore crisis speed: the CO and XO were both out flying, and the CO or XO had to give assent for the leave. They were out of range of our squadron's normal communication radio, which is unsecure anyway. So we had to squack their bird using a communications method that is, shall we say, not normally used. We got the CO's verbal assent, the duty officer signed off the CO's spot on the paperwork "by direction", and Cpl W is going to the airport tomorrow morning. If the duty driver can't take him there, I already volunteered my services, but I suspect our OIC's volunteering overrides mine.

Cpl W's only been here a couple of weeks, and he works nights, so I don't know him all that well. But Marines are family. We squabble and quarrel, but when trouble strikes, it's horns outward. I am literally sick with worry for this guy.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:30 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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