Free Scat by Carl Hiaasen Page A

corridors teeming with nurses and orderlies and patients; Nick had never seen so many young men and women in wheelchairs.
    The doctor took Nick and his mother into a private room- Using a cross-section diagram of the human body, he explained that Captain Waters lost his right arm and most of the shoulder when something called a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, had struck the Humvee in which he was riding.
    "We know," Nick's mother said tightly. "They phoned us from the base in Ramadi. Can we see him now?"
    "Did they also tell you that, because of the severe damage to the shoulder, we might not be able to fit your husband with a working prosthetic?"
    "Like a mechanical hook, you mean?"
    "It would be difficult," the doctor said, "but we're not giving up hope."
    "Can we see him, please?"
    The doctor led them up a flight of stairs, then down another long corridor. Every patient they saw was missing an arm or a leg-sometimes both legs. Nick tried not to stare. Before entering his father's hospital room, he paused to brace himself.
    Capt. Gregory Waters was propped upright in bed, though his eyes were closed. His chest, wrapped with gauze and heavy tape, moved up and down slightly when he breathed. Nick noticed that his dad's hair had been shaved, and that one side of his face was pink and mottled with welts. A clear tube carried amber fluid into his remaining arm from a plastic bag strung on an aluminum rack beside the bed.
    Her eyes welling, Nick's mother stood wordlessly at the foot of the bed. She looked shaky, so Nick put an arm around her waist and walked her to the only chair in the room.
    "He's still on lots of pain medication," the doctor said, "so he'll be groggy when he wakes up."
    "Could you get my mom a glass of water?" Nick asked.
    After the doctor left, another long hour passed before Nick's father awoke. He smiled sleepily when he saw them. Nick's mother hugged him and stroked his face. Nick squeezed his left hand, and his father squeezed back firmly.
    Glancing at the bandaged knob where his right arm used to be, he joked, "Now I'll have to sew up the extra sleeve in all my shirts."
    Nick's mom said, "Very funny, Greg."
    "So I'll have to learn how to throw a curve left-handed. No big deal."
    Always a good athlete, Nick's father had been a pitcher in the Baltimore Orioles farm system when he'd first met Nick's mother. According to the newspaper clippings in a family scrapbook, Greg Waters' fastball had once been clocked at 94 mph.
    He never made the big leagues, so he'd gone back to college, earned a degree in business administration, and taken a desk job with a sprinkler supply company in Fort Myers. After three years of being bored out of his skull, he returned to baseball as a pitching coach for a minor-league club. He was happy, but the money wasn't great. That's one reason he'd joined the National Guard-the sign-up bonus had paid for Nick's first year at the Truman School.
    For one weekend every month, Greg Waters went to Tampa to train as an army soldier. The country was at peace, and neither he nor his family ever imagined that he'd be sent overseas to face real combat. Everything changed after the invasion of Iraq.
    "Did they say when I can go home?" Nick's father asked. "It all depends. Tomorrow you start rehab," Nick's mother said.
    "What fun." Greg Waters blinked heavily. "I'm so damn tired."
    Nick's gaze fell upon the rounded white knob of gauze and tape where his father's muscular right arm had once been. The bandages were so shiny that they looked fake, like part of a mummy costume for Halloween.
    His mom said, "Greg, you get some rest. We'll come back at dinnertime."
    "You're not gonna try to feed me like a baby, are you?"
    "No, sir. You're going to feed yourself."
    "That's my girl." Nick's father grinned. "Nicky, you holding up okay?"
    "I'm good, Dad."
    "It's a rough deal, I know, but things could be worse," he said. "I was lucky to get out of that place alive. The guy sit-ting next to me in that