How the Iraq War Changed My Life Forever

Love, resilience, and my husband’s war wounds

Karie Fugett
Human Parts
Published in
19 min readJan 20, 2019

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Illustration: Malte Mueller/Getty Images

TThe first time I saw an amputee was in April 2006 at Bethesda Naval Hospital. I was 20 years old. The man was attractive, in his late teens to early twenties, with overgrown brown hair, the beginnings of a beard, and both legs missing just above the knees. A woman with a platinum blond bob struggled to push his wheelchair up a series of inclines as they navigated the window-lined hallway connecting the basement cafeteria to the main hospital.

I was in the garden outside smoking a Marlboro Light, a worsening habit since I’d arrived in Maryland. The garden, with its freshly blooming cherry trees and carefully landscaped flower beds, had become my escape. Three weeks earlier, my husband, Cleve, had been wounded by an improvised explosive device while driving a Humvee in Iraq. We had been married three months.

Cleve’s doctor had him on a number of medications I could hardly pronounce that made him drowsy, so he spent the majority of most days sleeping. I spent my days watching him sleep, eating too much vending machine food while watching him sleep, and exploring the hospital’s maze of hallways after I couldn’t watch him sleep any longer. I felt misplaced in this unfamiliar world of doctors and patients, illnesses, injuries, and prescriptions. I was lonely. But the garden felt familiar, like childhood afternoons in my grandmother’s azalea-lined backyard. I found myself there, cigarette in hand, often.

I didn’t want to be the lonely wife waiting by the phone, watching the news for any sign that something could be wrong. I quickly found, however, that love can be very convincing.

I watched as the woman forced her small frame into the handlebars of the wheelchair, using all her weight as other able-bodied patrons buzzed past. The man, who I assumed was her husband, casually adjusted himself, leaning back and taking a bite of a meatball sub from Subway. I looked down at the space where his legs should have been, wondering who took them from him. I thought about Cleve confined to his hospital bed and wondered if he would ever walk again or if he would depend on a…

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Karie Fugett
Human Parts

I’m human, just like you. Author of ALIVE DAY (Dial Press, 2023). More about me @ https://kariefugett.wordpress.com/