The Gundecker

One of the biggest benefits of joining the military, joining the esteemed ranks of the servicemen and women who came before you in the Armed Forces of the United States, is the constant, unfettered access to free medical care.

In actuality, what happens is that you’re going to spend an entire morning sick as a dog waiting in a line to be treated like malfunctioning farm equipment by a surly teenager that wishes they were fucking anywhere else, before being released back to work because you have at least two or three hours of work in you before you collapse and die.

What can you expect on your first visit to see Doc at sick call? Let’s take a deep dive:

Sick Call

Every command is required to have a sick call. Generally, right after a ship has morning quarters, if you feel like shit or you have an injury you’d like looked at, you head to medical for sick call.

Because what could possibly not make sense about having a line of 15+ sick people all waiting in close proximity for upwards of an hour? In a standard waiting line at sick call, there will be about five people who aren’t sick at all, they’re just hung over from the night before or they’ve got a late watch, so they’re going to say they’ve got scurvy.

The rest, however, are on death’s fucking doorstep. You’ve got people leaking from every orifice, throwing up in line, coughing out their lungs, bleeding out of extremities, shitting their pants, you name it, it’s probably happening any given morning at sick call. Sure, maybe a couple have a case of the sniffles, but in order to suck it up and spend all that time in line, you’re either dedicated like fucking hell to malingering, or you’re genuinely very sick.

You’ll feel a little endorphin rush when you’re next in line and the door to medical pops open, the previous patient walks out and shambles, covered in their own excrement down the passageway to get back to work because they weren’t sick enough to warrant going the fuck home.

You’ll feel your heart sink, however, when the surly 18-year old Corpsman, an HM3, looks at you like they’re taking measure of your very soul and found you wanting.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” they’ll say, their speech partially muffled by the three Zyns they have stuffed in their maw.

“Uh, my leg fell off,” you might say.

Then they’ll roll their eyes at you and open the door further so you can hobble in. When you get inside, you’ll immediately notice it doesn’t smell right. Not like a regular doctor’s office, where it smells either like nothing at all, or it smells like disinfectant. A ship’s medical smells like your grandmother’s house, it smells like old furniture and cigarettes.

There will be an examination bed, some lights like an operating room, and a TV that’s playing The Drew Barrymore Show, because if there’s one thing you want to hear when your body is being poked and prodded by a barely-trained teenager, it’s the shrill, baby-like voice of Drew fucking Barrymore.

They’ll tell you to sit down, then they’ll take your vitals. They’ll inflate the blood pressure cuff until you’re pretty sure your arm is going to pop off, then they’ll write down a number, grumbling while they do it, as though the rate at which your heart is pumping blood is inconvenient.

Then they’re going to take the cuff off you, and jam a thermometer in your mouth like they’re checking the oil on a golf cart. While it’s marinating in your saliva, they’re going to go in back, but still in full view, and they’ll answer some emails. Then they’ll play Runescape, finish a few dungeons, post on their shitty Instagram about how stupid, ugly, and fat you are and then come back to check on you.

“Your temperature is normal, you fat, ugly piece of shit,” they’ll say.

“…My leg fell off, though,” you’ll say.

“UGH,” they’ll respond.

Then they’ll ask you a question that still baffles me to this day, one I have not found a suitable response to.

“What do you want me to do about it?”

Mother FUCKER, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be here, I’d have fixed the goddamn problem myself so I wouldn’t have to deal with your grouchy nicotine-addicted ass. But what you’ll actually say is something more like:

“Uh…Can you find out why? And then treat it, if you’ve got time?“

Then this kid, who is probably 2 or 3 ranks junior to you, is going to size you up with all the pomp of the Emperor of France, deciding whether or not this peasant is worth the expertise afforded by his 14 weeks of intense medical training.

“How much water did you drink today?”

You will get this question every. Single. Time. Regardless of how much water you drank, it won’t have been enough. You could have drained Lake Superior by mouth, and they’ll ask why the fuck you didn’t drain Lake Erie too.

“Uh, I dunno. Like three or four bottles worth,” you’ll say. That may or may not be true, it doesn’t matter, for the same reason stated above.

They’ll snort as though you just said something very silly, and then shake their head. “Your stupid leg fell off, huh idiot?”

Then, you think, they’re going to check your actual complaint. But they’re not, this is what’s called a fake-out. Instead, they’re going to ask you if you have a history of having leg-fally-offy disease.

When you say no, they’re going to suddenly become very pensive, as though mulling over the fact that your leg hadn’t fallen off before, so perhaps this wasn’t a detached leg at all, but a condition presenting as a detached leg.

Then, with all the skill of a chimpanzee drummer and the tenderness of a jackhammer, they’ll grab your bloody stump and give their assessment. They’ll grab you in ways you’ve never been grabbed before, twisting and turning with little to no romance, and in places you’re pretty sure have nothing to do anatomically with your stump-leg.

“UGGGGGHHHH,” they’ll groan, “Let me get Chief.”

This sounds like it should be good news, right? The 18-year old convicted felon (probably) is going to go get the far more experienced medical professional, the guy that’s been doing this job for years.

This is just about the worst thing that could happen, because while the Chief Corpsman has absolutely seen more in their career, they have also lost any semblance of empathy or compassion.

The HMC will walk in, twice as surly and half as interested, because you interrupted him in the middle of updating an excel spreadsheet for one of his six collateral duties he needs so he can pick up Senior Chief.

“UGH,” he’ll groan, “what’s wrong with this fat idiot?”

“He has a stupid case of leg-fally-offy, Chief,” the HM3 will say, “UGH.”

The Chief will size you up much the same as the HM3 did, but if HM3 believed he was tantamount to the Emperor of France, HMC will know in his heart he’s actually God himself.

“So what, you just want drugs? Is that it, you fat piece of shit? I hate you,” HMC will say. “I bet you have a late watch tonight, too.”

This is essentially how every interaction with medical will go. You’ll be made to feel like some kind of crackhead trying to get easy opiates, maybe some morphine in a pixie stick, even though the problem you’re there for couldn’t have possibly ended in you acquiring heavy medication. They’ll also essentially accuse you of just trying to get out of work, because there’s plenty you could do that day with one leg.

“No Chief, just trying to see if maybe we could get my ‘not having a leg’ condition sorted out,” you’ll say.

“You know, I’ve got more shit to worry about than just sick call.”

Pause.

If I hear one more Corpsman say this shit before I retire, I am going to lose my fucking shit. This isn’t even an exaggeration, I’ve heard it like six times.

You know who else has more to worry about than their primary duty? Fucking everyone. Welcome to the motherfucking Navy. Everybody has like six jobs, but you have one primary duty, and if you accomplish one single thing during a workday, it should be your primary fucking duty.

If I found my dirtbagging ass in a life raft because the FC that was supposed to be operating CIWS was working on a training plan, I’m not gonna be chill with him because “he had other things to do other than operate CIWS.”

In fact, I will literally push him off the side of the raft over and over until a shark eats his feet.

Resume.

Begrudgingly, the HMC will look at your stump leg, poke around at the arterial spray exuding from the wound as if assessing it to be real blood or not. Then he’ll roll his eyes, because if they don’t do that once every two minutes their eyes will roll backwards into their skulls and be lost forever.

“UGGGGGH, fine, here, you lazy-eyed bitch” HMC will say, handing you a bag of Motrin with strict instructions to change your socks and drink water. He’ll have a demeanor as though you just won a battle of wits, and your victory rode on the back of the fact that you’re actually injured.

You’ll leave medical feeling accomplished, hobbling around on your single functioning leg, until it dawns on you that absolutely nothing got fixed. You still have no leg, the Motrin won’t actually help (not even those juicy 800mg ones), and you still have to go back to work even though you’re a danger to yourself and others.

That’s essentially how sick call works. You spend some time with a grouchy jerk, accomplish nothing, end up working through it anyways, and now your entire division’s legs are all falling off because your shit was contagious.

Later that week, the XO will go out over the 1MC and explain that due to a bad case of everyone’s legs falling the fuck off, there’s clearly a discipline issue and now we’re going to spend 4 hours on field day getting the ship clean, because dust bunnies are the number one leading cause of people losing their legs.

All that being said, it’s hard to blame the Corpsmen for the way they are. You spend 14 weeks learning how to plug gunshot wounds in people, then go to a command where someone’s chief complaint is that they have beer in their lungs and they should be able to go home, and tell me you wouldn’t get jaded insanely fast.

A Corpsman is a medic. They’re not even nurses, they’re literally there to patch up combat wounded and keep them in the fight, but we use them to treat things like viral infections, diagnose things like torn ACLs, and then complain that they’re not very good at it. For routine, normal things you would’ve seen your family physician about as a civilian, a junior Corpsman has about the same amount of trained knowledge as those doctors in the 1880’s that prescribed leeches, blood-letting, and cocaine because you’ve got ghosts in your blood.

But you know what? If I have a sucking chest wound with shrapnel from a missile hit, I’d rather have the Corpsman onboard than my family doctor back home, because that dude seemed grossed out when he saw my hangnail.