Being the wet blanket that I was, I lamented to Sam that it seemed like a boondoggle trip with no real merit and perhaps just a sukoshi north of being dishonest. Good deal Sam, bad deal scram-Sam — without the slightest hesitation because hesitation was not in Sam’s composition — rationalized his thinking to me thusly:
“Geo… look at what the hell you just did this month. It’s ok to take a break once in a while. I mean… one time them, one time us — go on a combat deployment for the country, go on a scuba junket for yourself. Uncle Sam’s pockets run deep, homes… he’ll recover from this excursion.”
Finally, it all seemed to make sense to me after a quick mental inventory of the two axiomatic truths that defined Samuel Foster:
1. Sam is smarter than all living things
2. Don’t ever (EVER) endeavor to reason or trade wits with Sam.
“Just take a deep breath and relax, Geo; this will all be over soon… very very soon.”
Don’t Bother Arguing With Sam
Sam had always been hard to argue with, even before Somalia. After Somalia, he was impossible to counter, as I had seen him in a pristine psychopathic state, quintessentially devoid of fear while under fire. Where I had flailed incoherently for cover in a mortar attack, Sam walked calmly and deliberately to cover and concealment while wearing the exact same expression that he wore that very morning while sipping coffee in the mess tent.
A mag light shined through the “cover” I had dived behind. It was Sam’s maglight and he was shining it through my “cover” to demonstrate that I had taken cover behind a thin veil.
“You do realize this protective barrier of yours is a mosquito net, don’t you, Geo? I mean, do you feel safe back there? Because if you do feel safe, I’m totally fine with it — hhhhhah ha ha ha.”
I wanted to punch him in the face as hard as I could.
“Did you see the size of the hole in Matt’s head? He was dead before he hit the ground.”
Now, I wanted to punch him in the face even more than just a minute ago; Matt had been a longtime friend of mine; we had both gone to dive school together.
Sam and I were both certified Dive Supervisors, meaning we had the authority to plan and execute dive operations with military divers. Sam was, in fact, a Dive Medical Technician (DMT), being that, by origin, his Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) was 18D, Special Forces Medical Sergeant. A Dive supervisor and DMT were all we needed to execute our dream Scuba Diving vacation…
We got a tremendous discount from a brother, Jeff B., who both Sam and I knew well from our days together as instructors at the dive school. Jeff had retired from the Army and stayed right there in Key West, owning and operating a commercial charter boat for tourist excursions. All of our air tanks and dive equipment were free of charge on loan from the dive school; it was a standard respectful courtesy that the school extended to all of its alumni — fuckin’ SF!
By doctrine, Sam couldn’t perform both Dive Supervisor and DMT duties simultaneously, and I wasn’t a DMT, so I was the permanent supervisor for all the dive operations, and Sam was the DMT. I can tell you, I didn’t like being the supervisor for this pack of clowns. Everything was a big joke because we were on vacation, after all. For me, diving was still serious business, and I was responsible for the safe conduct of all the dives, no matter how big of a joke they were.
Don’t Drink and Dive
A couple of more spirited warriors had hit the bottle kind of hard the night before and sported a mightily nice hangover that morning. That right there was just the wrong condition to be going under compression and breathing pressed air. I wanted to bail hard on the supervisory role, but we were using military gear so I was trapped — like a rat!
“This will all be over soon, geo… very, very soon.”
At some point en route back to shore post during the first day’s dives, one of the brothers gestured to Cuz, another brother lying on the deck. He happened to have been one of the Bacchus boys from the night before. Upon hearing the symptoms that our no-feel-good guy was experiencing, I felt only compelled to reply:
“Well, shit me! I’ll be rolled in gunpowder and shot from a cannon — so, sounds like symptoms of the Bends (Decompression Sickness), and I thought I heard the distinct sizzling sound of my goose being cooked.”
I sent Good-Deal Sam over to assess Cuz for the Bends. We were going to have to get him to a Hyperbaric Treatment Chamber; luckily (LUCKILY), the dive school operated the only one from Key West to Miami. After a lengthy assessment, Sam returned to me, and he had brought along his usual cavalier, smug face.
“His pussy hurts, but he’ll be fine. I suggest we ground him this evening and make him go beddy-by early,” was Sam’s snottily delivered but wise and spot-on suggestion.
After the last dive, as I was exhaling in relief, Sam reported that brother Cuz was having trouble with equalizing pressure in one of his ears. In fact, the dilemma was not like the painful pressure of ears that will not clear down at depth; his ear had cleared at depth and equalized with his sinuses, but it had failed to equalize again during ascent. He had what Sam described as a “reverse diver’s ear squeeze.”
It seemed comical to me at face value, but at another face value — Cuz’s facial expression — it was no trifle: Cuz was in magnificent agony. The prognosis was that Cuz was going to have to remain horizontal for a period of time until the pressure in his middle ear finally equalized with ambient pressure. That meant that there was no way he was going to be able to fly back with us the next day.
We all flew out the next day, leaving one man to stay behind with Cuz. But the one man who should have stayed with him — Sam — who was qualified to treat him sure as hell wasn’t going to stay back with him, no sirree-Bob! That just wouldn’t have been a good enough deal. And as the saying went: “Good deal — Sam; bad deal — scram!”
By Almighty God and with honor,
geo sends
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Editor’s Note: Let’s all do Geo a solid. Go out and buy his book and visit his website. I promise it’s all good stuff. — GDM
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