After a time, the huddles broke up, and a nurse pulled a chair up to his gurney, turned it around, and sat down backward, with her face almost touching Zinni’s.

“I’m the senior nurse,” she said. “Can you clearly understand me?”

“Yeah,” Zinni said.

“We have recently received an experimental drug called ketamine,” she continued, “and we’d like to use it on you. An officer like you can give us good feedback on its effectiveness.”

Zinni gave her a tentative nod. These were medical people. He trusted them to know what they were doing.

“The drug is experimental,” she added. “We’ll need your permission before we can use it. You should know that you’ll remain conscious throughout the operation and won’t have tubes jammed down your throat, the way you normally might in an operation of this kind.”

“That sounds good,” Zinni said. “But how can I be conscious?”

“It’s a hallucinogen,” she said, “but it’s an effective anesthetic without the ill effects of normal anesthesia.”

“I guess that’s okay,” Zinni answered, “and not having tubes jammed down my throat is appealing. So let’s do it.”

“That’s a good decision,” she said. “I’m sure you won’t regret it. And you’ll be helping us.”

THE KETAMINE turned out to be living hell. Though there was no physical pain, he had nightmares so vivid that he actually felt he was living through them: One was like an out-of-body experience—floating above his body as the surgeons were cutting into it. In another, he horribly relived the chaos, carnage, and deaths of the battle where he had taken his wounds. In another, he was dead and in a box, returning to his wife and family back in the States. The nightmares were so present, powerful, and fierce that he started thrashing around wildly during the operation, and had to be tied down and heavily sedated.

He woke up in a sweat, strapped to a bed in the intensive care unit.

With him was his first sergeant, Alls, with tears in his eyes, grasping Zinni’s hand. He’d been holding Zinni’s hand since he’d arrived in intensive care (Zinni had been vaguely aware of the squeeze; it had been a small and welcome comfort). After giving Zinni a heads-up about his company—who had been hit and evaced—he left.

“You went through a really rough trip,” the nurse told him after he had gone.

“I know,” Zinni told her. “I still remember it.”

At that moment, he tried to move. And that was when he began to realize something was wrong. Not much above his waist worked right—like his arms.