Journey Page 31

  * * *

  Suzie elaborates: The best example of this occurred back when Norty had just started as J-3, and it just might have been our very first party at this high level. I only bring it up now because it so perfectly illustrates the concept of this DC phenomenon of mix-and-match seating.

  Mary Jo Myers, Chairman Myers’s wife, was a very good entertainer and she always came up with creative ways to handle the seating situation. This particular party was at Quarters Six—the beautiful official residence of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Perched high atop a hill directly across Grant Avenue from the Fort Myer parade field, the entire formal living room offered a spectacular view of the Washington Monument.

  Nort had just started as J-3, and as I recall there were some other new Js who had recently been appointed to the Joint Staff, so in consideration of the fact that the whole group was about to embark upon a period of escalated stress in the ramp-up to the war, General Myers felt that a social gathering would be a great team-building exercise—an icebreaker of sorts—and a way for the group to get to know one another on a social level before being thrown together in the Tank.

  Norty: You could call it sort of a “meet the Js” party.

  Suzie: I sure could, honey … but I won’t. So before dinner during the initial reception part of the evening, Mrs. Myers handed each of us a small survey to fill out, asking all sorts of personal questions, things like “When was the last time you went to a movie?” and “When was the last time you read a good book that was not related to business?” and “When was the last time you ate out at a restaurant where the waiter’s first question wasn’t ‘Would you like fries with your burger?’” There were about five questions like this. Once we were all finished, she collected them all and tallied the results. Those who’d recently done all five might have scored a “fifty,” where those who’d only recently done a few of those things might only get a “twenty” or “twenty-five.” And that’s how our seating was determined; you sat with guest whose survey scores were similar to your own. She really only did it for fun and to be different, but there’s probably some merit in the fact that the “fifties” would most likely enjoy discussing the books or movies or restaurants.

  Well, sure, for them it was fun. But how fun would that be for people like me who scored a zero? That’s right, I scored a bagel. Bupkis. Zippo. Diddly squat. My assigned table was even labeled “Table Zero.”

  Norty: You know that’s not true.

  Suzie: Well, it might as well have been. Norty headed off to his table and I slipped off in the other direction to mine. Then something struck me.

  Hey, wait a minute, Norty! How come you scored higher than me? The way you work, there’s no way you did more of these things than me.

  Norty: I lied.

  Suzie: Oh, OK. So I made my way over to my table and sat down. Thing is, adding insult to injury, I was the only one there! Not only was I a zero, but I was the only zero! OMG!

  Norty: But you eventually had company.

  Suzie: You can say that again. But not at first. I was just sitting there all alone and watching this mass of guests gathered around someone, when kind of like how the Red Sea parted for Moses to cross, the swarm stepped back just enough to allow the center of their attention to slip out and search for his table—which, by the way (thank God!), happened to be mine!

  Sporting a dark suit with a light-gray patterned tie, he was not at all what I would have expected. Sure, the craggy face, swept-back graying hair, and wire-framed glasses looked familiar, but instead of the anxious, sometimes cantankerous, self-assured man I’d seen on TV, Secretary Rumsfeld extended his hand with a sincere, warm smile and almost a twinkle in his gray-green eyes. “You didn’t have to save them all for me,” he said as he eyed the still-empty seats surrounding our round, six-top dinner table. “It’s nice to have someone else to share the honor of winning Mrs. Myers’s little personality exercise.” Is this guy nuts? I thought. Then he continued: “You do know that the results proved us to be the most serious-minded and focused of this whole bunch. It’s determination like that—unimpeded by distractions like movies and TV and such—that brings us success.”

  “Oh, no!” I quickly interjected while shaking my head. “You’ve got it all wrong. This is the losers’ table, the table for the people who have no life, who don’t know how to have fun!”

  “Well, I’m a fun person!” he shot back defensively, seemingly annoyed that his entertaining and lighthearted reputation wasn’t recognized by the hostess. I just stared at him in disbelief. Suddenly, he cast aside the feigned annoyance and broke into a great laugh. Truth is, he was fun! And charming.

  By that time other “losers” had arrived to fill out the table, and in fairness to Mary Jo, she really wasn’t trying to embarrass anyone; she just wanted us to understand that there’s more to life than work—that it’s every bit as important to take some time for yourself and let loose. Good advice, and we grew to become close friends.

  Looking back, I remember being so nervous that whole dinner. I think I always come across so confident and sure of myself—and maybe now that’s the case, but it sure wasn’t back then. In my mind, suddenly I saw myself as Suzie Ptak, the schoolteacher from Arkansas. I couldn’t help but wonder what my dad—a retired Air Force major—would have thought about his daughter hobnobbing with the head of our Department of Defense. I doubt if he would have been thrilled with what I was about to say: “So Mr. Secretary, I have to say that your recent decision to change the name of all the CINCs (Commanders in Chief) to ‘combatant commander’ is really stupid.” He looked up from his linguini and kind of furrowed his brows; I suppose it had been a while since anyone called his decision “really stupid”—to his face, that is. I continued, “We all know that the commander in chief is the president. I mean, we’re not idiots. So why can’t we also have commanders in chief of the various commands?” He stared at me for a moment, then nodded with the realization that what I proposed was absolutely brilliant, and then right there on the spot, he agreed to rescind his order and revert to the old nomenclature.

  No, that didn’t happen. Except the part about him staring at me, that part’s true, but it was with more of a “Who the hell is this woman?” kind of a look.

  “I want you to know that I truly do respect your opinion,” he said in a way that I took to mean I really couldn’t care less what you think about this, but you’ve sure got chutzpah to have said it! “But you know that I’m not going to change it back, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” I responded, wondering what just happened, but glad that I had the chance to speak my mind.

  He stood, and I started to do the same, thinking that it was an indication that he was moving on to either go home or “work the room.” But instead, he signaled me to stay seated. “Oh, I think you really need to meet my wife. You remind me a lot of her. Don’t go anywhere, Suzie. I’m going to find her and bring her over. You two will get along just fine.” He ran over to her table and did just that. And it was true. As soon as she opened her mouth I could tell—I could have been listening to myself.

  Norty: That night driving home, Suzie was on a high. “Norty, you should have heard me; it was amazing … I was one-on-one with the friggin’ secretary of defense and I told him how dumb a thing it was to change those titles!” Gulp.

  “You mean the secretary of defense who just happens to be your husband’s boss? At least he was before the party. I’ll let you know if that’s still the case when I get to work on Monday.” She blanched, for a moment thinking that I was serious. But she knows me too well. I was—and still am—totally in awe of how she pulls off these things. I found it to be totally hilarious.

  “Now that I think about it, why was I so nervous?” she continued in the car. “I was sitting there conversing with the secretary of defense, and he was listening to me. Who’s to say that next time he won’t act on my suggestion? Or maybe the next time won’t even be him; it could be the president instead.”
Double gulp. That’s Suzie, true to her promise that she would never be my puppy dog. But we did agree that it was wise for her to stop when she did. In the big picture, that event was an appropriate venue for her comments. It was supposed to be a team-building exercise and it was. And we grew to have great affection for both Joyce Rumsfeld and the secretary.

  Suzie: Right. And I decided that I would allow myself one zinger per social event and that’s it. So if somebody tossed me a softball and I swung at it, that’s it for the night. If they tossed me another, I had to let it go. Because I can get really caustic at times and as much as I might kid about it, at that level I just needed to be careful. I may come across as cavalier but I’ve always been in awe of what Norty has achieved, and nobody could be more respectful of the delicacy of some of those relationships. But that’s never going to change the fact that I will always be the loud one and Norty will be the quiet one.

  Norty: Thank you for pointing that out to me.

  * * *

  TRANSCOM was a fascinating assignment. During my three years at TRANSCOM, we transported 2.5 million passengers, 3 million short tons of cargo, and 5,667 battle casualties in support of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition to our support of the wars, we provided humanitarian relief operations for the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan; Hurricanes Rita and Wilma across the U.S. Gulf Coast; and in the summer of 2006 we evacuated over fifteen thousand people from Lebanon as Israeli and Hezbollah forces battled along the southern Lebanese border. In August 2008, the conflict between Russian and Georgian forces had ignited, prompting our delivery of vast quantities of humanitarian relief supplies for Georgian refugees and the immediate transport of all two thousand Georgian troops from Iraq back to Georgia when they were recalled to support the endeavor.

  Perhaps the most important of all our missions is the movement of injured warfighters from the battlefield to medical treatment facilities. This is a complex process requiring close collaboration with doctors, hospitals, and evacuation crews. In 2007, we transported over 9,900 patients from the USCENTCOM AOR (Area of Responsibility) and over 16,000 patients globally.

  Should the worst occur and a warfighter perish in the defense of our nation, we made it our business to ensure that they received the most dignified transport from the battlefield to final destination. During our time at TRANSCOM and with our commercial partners, we transported thousands of our fallen heroes to the airfield nearest the interment.

  Suzie and I were relishing our time in St. Louis and were building lifelong friendships. I learned about industry and I learned a lot about supply chain and a lot about labor in both the maritime and airline areas. We were building a rock-solid reputation with the folks we supply. We had even become Cardinal fans, and the Redbirds were headed to the World Series. Life was good.

  That’s when I got the word that I had cancer.

  * * *

  Sometimes when you face a life-and-death situation, it just doesn’t seem real at first. It’s more like an out-of-body experience that you’re observing—almost as if it were happening to somebody else. That’s how it was for Suzie at first; it wasn’t that she was in a state of shock; she was more … numb.

  That changed in a heartbeat when I stepped onto the gurney and a single observation jarred her back to reality. I like to think of it as the “great equalizer.” I may have walked into San Antonio’s Wilford Hall Medical Center with four stars on my epaulets surrounded by a support staff including aides and security personnel, but in those final moments before being wheeled into the OR, I was wearing the same faded green cotton open-backed smock worn by every other patient in a similar pre-op situation, and of course there’s nothing on underneath. Apparently my butt was in full view, and that lone image drove home the reality for Suzie. This is not a dream.

  In an instant, numbness became confusion. What am I supposed to do now? Then, as they wheeled me away, I saw a look I’d never seen before: fear. Who could blame her? It hadn’t even been a week since we learned that I had cancer.

  * * *

  Suzie continues: While it’s true that I wear my emotions on my sleeve, I really do take everything in stride. But not this one; I was terrified. What made it even worse, this thing must have been so bad that nobody used the “c” word. When Norty first told me about it, he said, “It turned out to be malignant.” Dr. Brennan said he was removing the “affected tissue.” The nurses talked about “cases like this.” Of course I was petrified when this “abnormality” was so scary that nobody could even say the word.

  Norty: I had been having a little discomfort on my tongue over a period of several months and I ultimately went to the doctor to have it checked out. They took a biopsy of it and determined that it was cancerous. I don’t smoke and I don’t chew tobacco, so this was pretty unusual.

  “We’re going to want to get that taken out as soon as possible, Norty,” the doctor warned. “And I want Dr. Joe Brennan in San Antonio to take care of it. He’s the very best head-and-neck surgeon in the Air Force.”

  “This Saturday [October 14, 2006] Suzie and I have a pretty big event to attend in Washington; it’s the dedication of the new Air Force Memorial. All the generals are flying in for it, and President Bush will be there to officially accept the Memorial on behalf of the nation. That means we could fly to Texas as early as this Sunday, if time is really that much of a factor.”

  “Let me put it this way: I am not liking what I’m seeing. I want Dr. Brennan to give a second opinion, but the sooner we get that out, the greater the chances are that we can save your tongue. Every bit as important, I want it out before it has a chance to metastasize. My strong advice is for you to express your regrets and allow the president to accept the Memorial without you.”

  By Saturday we were at Wilfred Hall Medical Center in San Antonio with Col Dr. Joseph Brennan, unquestionably the Air Force’s best otolaryngologist/head-and-neck surgeon. With his experience, skills, and reputation, Joe Brennan could have gotten out and made millions in the private sector, undoubtedly becoming a famous surgeon. But instead, after 9/11, Joe decided to stay in the Air Force and devote his life to treating the wounded. He spent the year before my surgery about fifty miles north of Baghdad in the Sunni Triangle at the Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad. That’s one of about eight or nine deployments he’s made to Iraq or Afghanistan.

  During the Fallujah Offensive, he was treating over fifty patients a day—life-and-death cases where he had four to five minutes to clear the shrapnel from a patient’s airway or that patient would die. We talked about some of his experiences:

  It’s essential that we be as close to the front as possible or by the time the patients get to us, it’s too late. Most of the injuries we treat are a result of roadside bombs or other improvised explosive devices—deadly high velocity shrapnel that rips apart arteries and splays throughout the body; but they’re so small, they often appear to be harmless little specks, like measles. Their devastation is indiscriminant, as are we. Allied personnel, Iraqi civilians, combatants—it doesn’t matter; we treat them all equally.

  Joe was excellent with me, he was superb with Suzie, and he is a real patriot who is motivated by passion instead of his pocketbook.

  I felt confident as the anesthetic took effect; I knew that I was in expert hands.

  Suzie: There I was sitting in this tiny little waiting room, thumbing through a year-old issue of Popular Mechanics (the only other choices were Car & Driver and Parents) wondering if the procedure was almost over.

  Dr. Brennan had estimated four hours or so; surely it had been at least that long. I glanced at my watch. Five minutes had passed since the last time I checked, which meant that it had only been about a half hour since he left. It was going to be a long day. I put down the magazine and closed my eyes; surprisingly, I nodded off. Two seconds later, I was jarred awake by a loud, tinny rendition of the Air Force Song. Groggily I looked around for the source. It was my cellular ringtone.

  I rummaged through my purse to fin
d the phone and quickly glanced at the number. I didn’t recognize it, and debated not even answering. “Holy mackerel, what if it’s the doctor?” I suddenly thought, frantically hitting the “connect” button before they hung up.

  “Hello,” I bellowed into the device.

  “Suzie, Pete Pace here. I’m calling to see how Norty’s doing. Scratch that, I know that he’s doing fine. I’m really calling to see how you’re doing.”

  I was floored. This man was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the highest ranking officer in the entire U.S. military—who had the presence of mind and the thoughtfulness to call me during the surgery, and we had a war going on! That speaks volumes about his character and kindness.

  “The truth is, General, it’s very sad. To see him this morning in that hospital gown with his little butt sticking out, it was awful.”

  “I get it, Suzie. I totally understand,” he said with compassion. “That would make me sad, too, if I had to look at his butt first thing in the morning!”

  I cracked up. In the middle of all this, he actually got me to laugh. Momentarily, at least.

  “The doctor said he’s removing a third of Norty’s tongue; maybe more if that’s what it takes to get everything.”

  “He’s not much of a talker anyway, so I wouldn’t worry about that,” he deadpanned in response.

  Again, I laughed out loud. “Sir, I can’t thank you enough for thinking of us.”

  “Hang in there, Suzie. Lynne sends her best, too.”

  This time he actually succeeded in calming me down. By the time I got off the phone, I didn’t feel quite so doom and gloomy anymore.

  It was well over four hours later that Dr. Brennan stepped into the waiting room, still wearing his surgical scrubs. “First of all, Norty’s doing fine. He’s still out and he will be for at least another hour, but he did just great. We ended up removing about a third of his tongue.”