Fight of My Life: Part 2

Part 2

I got to Brandon’s house with a palpable buzz. We set up the call in his office and got a hold of Rome. I told the guys about the opportunity, along with my intent to take off the following day. We processed the information and quickly formulated a plan to cover the next two weeks of communications, as these would undoubtedly be the most hectic. We ran thru the rest of our meeting as usual, surprisingly (sarcasm intended) this isn’t the first time something like this has happened since we started running Grappler internationally a few years back and we basically knew how to handle it.

Wrapping up the morning at Brandon’s I gave my Goddaughter a kiss, her Father a hug, Rome the bird call, and left with confidence knowing they had things covered. I stopped by the wind tunnel to inform my supervisors of this upcoming leave of absence. They re-assured me that they supported my decision to go, and with that I was off. I dropped into the Gym to scoop a jump rope and get in one last sweat, grabbed the warmest clothes I could find, bought a ticket and caught a flight.

Landing just before midnight at JFK, I took an Uber to Washington Heights and found my way to a check-in desk at Bard Hall, one of Columbia University’s housing buildings. The showtime for the next morning was written on a whiteboard in the lobby and the project leaders were gaggled behind a small table, generally filling us in as we shuffled thru one and two at a time. They clearly hadn’t slept in days and were running on adrenaline, bodega coffee and a sense of purpose.

I grabbed a key, towel and bed sheets, and made my way up to the fifth floor. There, I found a small room furnished with a radiator and plastic mattress under a light that would only turn off by unscrewing the bulb. A minifridge-microwave combo had been hurried in next to the desk and yet to be unpacked or plugged in, atop that box a toiletry kit and laundry card. The shower was a long walk down a cold tile hallway to a communal bathroom, which always seemed to have the windows open.

‘Whatever,’ I thought. It was movement, and removed me from a stagnant situation.

I woke up the next morning, thru my laptop in a backpack, and trekked down to the banquet hall where the project would be more thoroughly explained. I ran into a few familiar faces, a lot of familiar body language, and immediately felt in sync with the environment. Two days of onboarding, briefings and training later I found myself in a New York ICU, at midnight, managing equipment and emotions that had been the furthest thing from my mind just days earlier.

Long bus rides through NYC’s vacant, dark, snow-packed streets were brightened up with shared stories from deployments. Bitter moments were championed with diligent gratitude for the opportunity and capability to help. After a few weeks of observantly learning and operating inside the work rhythm we felt comfortable, if not at ease with the nightly routine and standards of care. Teamwork opened a pathway for bonding. Everyone looked to support each other, because why not? what else are you going to do? Untold acts of kindness and heroism occurred nightly with little more acknowledgement than some witty sarcasm or a middle finger salute.

Now, hard work is nothing new for anyone who has successfully completed a special operations training pipeline, it is pretty much a baseline requirement to get your Cool Guy Shirt, but burnout is a real thing. Twelve-hour shifts anchored by extended commutes and shitty sleep conditions will take a toll on anyone*.

Months averaging 72-hour weeks left little time to soak up any vitamin-D, or decompress outside of some mindless Netflix. A friend’s wife introduced me to a yoga app and the 30 minutes I had before work to simply breathe, stretch and watch the sunset over the Hudson River helped keep my sanity, but there was still very little time to exist outside of the harsh reality of the situation at hand. There was a lot of sickness, a lot of fatigue, and at the risk of being grim, a lot of death. That is the truth, and that is what we expected.

We were there because we could maintain this rhythm as long as needed, without making mistakes. That takes maturity and awareness to know when to take a break. Sensing my ping-point approaching, I took an opportunity to fly home, see some old buddies, jump in the ocean and play with the stars. Naturally this gave me time to get back to the gym. Light drilling inevitably led to sparring, which led my buddy Preston to say, “You feel good dude, do you want to fight on that June card for Combat Night?” Well damn, I did feel good and it was only an amateur bout.

“Sure, sounds fun.”

Life comes at you fast.

*One day during a blizzard I had to sleep with the window open because the radiator was pumping out so much heat, only to wake up shivering on a soaking wet sheet from the sweat generated on that plastic mattress. We did eventually get moved to a hotel in Yonkers, which served as rotational lodging for travel nurses throughout the pandemic; one washing machine and two dryers serviced five floors worth of scrubs and, for about a week, a Denzel Washington movie set. On the bright side there were temperature-controlled rooms, blackout curtains, and more hills to run. By the end of the project a couple buddies and I would make the 15-minute walk from hospital to hotel thru the brisk morning air. We were able to solve all of the world's problems, at least the ones we hadn’t already figured out with our colleagues on shift. Unfortunately, Gregg forgot his notepad, Andrew has bad handwriting, and my memory is overloaded, so the answers are stuck in time. It was Fun.