Lieutenant Colonel Mike “Iron Man” Sterling thought he was looking at a timid, middle-aged civilian nurse. To him, she was just a barrier between him and the medical care he demanded. He saw the graying hair and the soft voice, and he saw weakness.
He didn’t see the woman who had once held a dying Marine’s artery closed with her bare fingers for two hours in the dusty heat of Sangin. He didn’t see the legend whispered about in the barracks of the First Marine Division. He refused her help, barking for a “real” corpsman.
He had no idea that the woman standing before him didn’t just serve the Corps. She had saved it. And when she finally rolled up her sleeve, the ink on her skin would bring the entire hospital to a standstill.
The automatic doors of the Naval Medical Center San Diego, affectionately known as Balboa, slid open with a sharp hiss. They admitted a gust of unseasonably warm November air and a man who looked like he was carved from granite and regret. Lieutenant Colonel Mike Sterling did not walk; he marched.
However, the hitch in his left stride betrayed the agony radiating from his hip. He was a man of the old breed, a Marine’s Marine, with a jawline that could cut glass and eyes the color of a stormy Atlantic Ocean. Even in civilian clothes—a tight-fitting polo that strained against his biceps and tactical cargo pants—he radiated authority.
He was the commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, the legendary “Dark Horse” Battalion, and he was not accustomed to waiting. He gripped the reception counter with knuckles that turned white. The young Petty Officer behind the desk, a Hospitalman Apprentice barely out of high school, looked up and swallowed hard.
“Sir?” the young man squeaked. “I need a consult. Orthopedics.
Now,” Sterling growled. His voice was a low rumble, like a tank idling in a garage. “My hip feels like someone replaced the joint with broken glass.”
“Do… do you have an appointment, Colonel?”
Sterling leaned in.
“Son, I have a battalion deploying in three weeks. I don’t have time for appointments. I have shrapnel shifting in my hip from Fallujah, and it’s deciding to migrate south today.
Get me a doctor.”
He paused for emphasis. “Preferably one who knows the difference between a femur and a fibula.”
The lobby was bustling. It was Friday afternoon, the “witching hour” for military hospitals.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
