Shoup Airlines

Paging Nurse Ratched

So along with my eye drops I was quarantined to Med Quarters for 48 hours. If you have not seen or read One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest stop here, go see it and then continue to appreciate this entry.

First off, all civilians working on base feel they have to act like Dril Sergeants. I don’t know why, but they look stupid doing it and are horrible at it as well. Here at the lovely oasis known as Med-Quarters, they take it to an entirely new level. In fact, they make Nurse Ratched look like Florence Nightengale!!

The actual quarters are drab and gloomy. Everything is white: the floor, ceiling, walls, bathrooms, lockers, sheets, etc… and it’s not even a sterile white, it’s a dirty, old white. I don’t know how anyone can spend more than one day in this place and not come out a manic depressive!

With all of that, I still can’t complain. There is nothing to do but eat and sleep. The food sucks, H.A.R.D!, but the sleep makes up for it. The beds are surprisingly comfortable and I have a room all to myself because I look like one of those zombies from 28 Days Later. Tomorrow, I should be released back into general population, aka the world of technicolor!

Hawk Eye Pink Eye

Whatever it was that hit me in the eye, kick started something else. Something much worse. I think it was just a piece of sand because I rubbed my eye, it teared up a bit and the irritation was gone. I didn’t think much more about it.

On the march home, my eye started bugging me again but this time it wasn’t going away. I really began to get concerned when it felt like something was still in my eye (there was, it was puss). I turned around and asked the guy behind me if my eye looked odd. He didn’t even have to say anything, just the look on his face confirmed what I thought, pink eye.

We got back to the barracks and I finally had a chance to see for myself. Nasty!! My right eye was bright red and oozing with what looked like green snot! Of course, we still had to run downstairs and do the day’s PT. I showed the Drill Sergeant and he said I’d go to Sick Call in the morning. No problem. We did the PT and then my left eye started bugging me. As we finished, I asked the guy behind me, Thompson, how I looked. You’d think I asked him to shoot his own mother with the look on his face. So I went back to DS Foster and showed him my eyes. “Well shit, Shoup! Guess you’re going to the hospital now.”

I thought FHP had died along with all those other crap HMO’s in the early 90′s, I thought wrong. Turns out the Army absorbed them! It was 9:30pm when I got to the URGENT Care Center. It was three and a half hours later before they saw me and when I say “saw me” I mean ushered me ino a room and another hour before someone actually came in and tended to me.

The Army has no bedside manners either, so my sarcasm was in full display at 2:30a.m.

“Oh my God! What happened to your eyes?”

“See the way I thought it worked, you tell me what’s wrong.”

“Wow! Your eyes look horrible!”

“Man, there is a lot of puss around your eyes!”

“That’s nothing, you should see what my nose can produce!”

After what seemed like the entire staff had toured through my room, a Specialist rinsed my eyes out with saline and gave me some eye drops. Total time: 5 minutes. Total time spent at the hospital, including waiting for transportation: 5 hours. Not a bad ratio, 1 minute of doctor time for each hour of wait, IF YOU’RE A FRELLLIN’ SNAIL!!!

They have mulligans on the firing range?

Today was spent back at the range doing the exact same thing we did yesterday in the exact same weather conditions minus the rain. Luckily, they let us all fire again so I got another 18 rounds in. Seventeen were dead center in the ring. What about the 18th you ask? I had a double fire, meaning the M-16 decided to go full automatic on its own accord for two rounds.

At first, I thought I had selected Burst (full automatic) on accident, but checking the rifle it was still set to Semi. So when we walked out to see where the last three rounds had hit I laughed when I saw one round way above the left shoulder of the target.

DS Holter (a funny guy trying to play it serious) walks up, sees the skewed round and as soon as the grin appeared on his face it was gone and he yelled “What the hell happened, ya fall asleep?” I ask if there are mulligans and you can see him trying not to smile. So he comes back with, “You think the enemy will let ya have a mulligan?” Touche! But I’m not done… “I was practicing my suppressing fire, Drill Sergeant!” Ah, there’s the smile! 40 push-ups was a small price to pay for making a Drill Sergeant laugh.

Finally, the sun broke out around 1pm and dried everything up. We spent the rest of the day coaching those that still needed to zero. I remember sitting there wondering why they were so adamant about ear protection yet no eye protect… Ow! Something just hit me in the eye!