A soldier tale: Wounded in Iraq, struggling to rebuild his life

Tag : black & green
Staff Sgt. Victor Dominguez sat topside in the cramped turret ofthe Bradley, his men below bathed in the weak green glow of theinstrument panel, the outside dead black, like most of Iraq atnight.
His vehicle and the one behind drove slowly on this bad stretch ofroad in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad. They were trying todraw enemy fire. In theory, the tanklike Bradleys' armor wouldabsorb the hits, and the shooter, having revealed his position,would find himself on the receiving end of 400 high-explosiverounds a minute.
There was another reason they kept it slow: Any faster and they'dmiss the seemingly random pile of litter that might conceal animprovised explosive device.
What Dominguez, a gifted soldier from Homestead, Fla., couldn'tknow was that just such a device lay a few hundred yards ahead,buried inches below the road.
It consisted of a battery, two barely separated wires for atrigger, and three anti-tank mines nestled in four monsterartillery rounds, each about six inches wide and three feet long.
It was not yet midnight, July 13, 2006, and Dominguez was headedfor hell at 25 mph.
It had been a bad month: car bombs, small-arms fire, improvisedexplosive devices. "It was just nonstop fighting, nonstop peoplegetting hurt," said Gary Mette, who was commanding the Bradleybehind Dominguez's.
But this mission was going well. The Bradleys had just inserted aneight-man hunter-killer team, already vanished into the darkness;soon they'd head back to base.
Dominguez was monitoring chatter over the company frequency. Hespoke an occasional quiet word to his men. Garcia, his medic, wasin back; Turner, his gunner, scanned the roadside on the thermalsight; Sigsbee, his driver, concentrated on the road.
Dominguez had promised himself that he wouldn't get close to thesemen. He had lost men before, and he didn't ever want to feel losslike that again. But after months in Iraq, he knew about kids,girlfriends, beloved motorcycles, money-making schemes and plansfor the future. Life was getting in the way of his promise.
He was good at this job, had been from the start. In boot camp,they called him the Golden Child. He ran the two-mile in 12:02, did108 push-ups in two minutes, 30 pull-ups. He already knew how todrill, how to address an officer. He didn't just get by. He ate itup.
The nickname stuck through his first tour in Iraq and the eliteArmy Ranger School. He ate that up, too.
Before the Golden Child was golden, he was a B and C student atSouth Dade Senior High, the sort of kid who worked just hard enoughto get by.
He drove to school in a fancy new pickup. His dad was the servicemanager at a car dealership; they lived in an upscale Homesteadsubdivision.
He was a bit of a wiseacre, which endeared him to girls but not toteachers of either gender. He was handsome and knew it - vain abouthis strong-jawed face, his physical prowess, his style. He alwayswore a collared shirt, tucked in, or his Junior ROTC uniform.
ROTC was the one school activity he took seriously. He knew wherehe was going after high school, and it wasn't college or a job at adesk. He had known probably since first grade in Puerto Rico, whenhe saw his cousins in their military-school uniforms: He wanted tobe a soldier and nothing else.
In the Bradley turret, Dominguez picked up the hand-mic. "Allright," he started to say. "Let's turn around and go home."
Ooomph! was all he heard.
The weight of the Bradley pressed the explosive device's triggerwires together, completing the detonation circuit. The mines andthe artillery rounds blasted straight up into the vehicle'sunderbelly.
The 25-ton Bradley rocked. Its fuel tank exploded, and a 20-footfireball shot up into the black Iraqi sky.
Dominguez thought he saw the fire coming up through the Bradley'sfloor between him and Turner. Then for a while he saw nothing. Heand Turner had been blasted out onto the road, coated in burningdiesel fuel.
Fifty yards back, Mette saw the fire and the inky diesel smokerising. The Bradley was engulfed. He followed procedure andattempted to radio the burning vehicle.
No answer.
Disabled and sitting in the middle of the road, Dominguez's Bradleywas a prime target for a secondary ambush. Mette had to responddeliberately or risk endangering his team as well.
He got on the company frequency and asked for everything he couldget: the quick-reaction team from base, the hunter-killer team thathad just been deployed, two Apache helicopters for firepower andtwo Black Hawk helicopters for immediate evacuation.
Then he ordered his Bradley forward, as close as possible toDominguez's, to provide cover.
Something horrible was happening.
Turner, burning, stumbled into a roadside canal to extinguish hisflames.
Dominguez was on fire on the side of the road, rolling on theground.
Swaths of his skin dried, then ignited, layer by layer, down to thesubcutaneous fat. Parts of his left foot burned down to the bone.
His Kevlar body armor was melting to his chest. His boots weremelting to his feet. His fatigues were burned off. He reached forthe pistol he kept in a shoulder holster, but his hand was toobadly burned to grab it.
He didn't stop burning until his men covered him with a fireblanket. By the time Mette saw him, he was charred black.
Very little can be done for burn victims in the field, especiallyif the only qualified medic is injured, as Garcia was. You coverthem with something clean to stave off hypothermia. You talk tothem to keep them conscious and alert. Then you wait.
It took 20 minutes for the medics to arrive and a few more minutesto ready the wounded for take-off.
In the helicopter, dosed with morphine, Dominguez lostconsciousness. He was taken to a field hospital, stabilized, andflown on to a military base in Germany.
Turner didn't make it. Thomas Turner Jr. was 31, from the smallnorthern California town of Cottonwood. He had recently sold hisfamily's trucking business and enrolled at college to studypolitical science and international relations. He left a wife andtwo young children.
"Is Victor OK?"
Dominguez's father, Tony Aponte, knew the answer even as he asked.His son's captain was calling in the middle of the night from theother side of the world. In no way was Victor Dominguez OK.
"There was an accident." the voice on the telephone said. "He's OK,he's alive, but he's in very critical condition."
Dominguez, 22 years old, was burned on 82 percent of his body.
When Aponte and his ex-wife Ivonne Dominguez saw their son, it wasin the intensive-care unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in SanAntonio, Texas, at 2 in the morning, two days after the attack. Hewas under a heat lamp, comatose and breathing through a ventilator.
Most of his body was covered with bandages, and the parts of himthey could see were charred. His left ear was gone, as were part ofhis lower lip, parts of his eyelids and parts of his legs. His leftfoot was burned down to the bone. Fluid had leaked into the burnedtissue, causing his limbs and face to swell so badly that his skinhad to be cut to relieve the pressure.
His face looked, Aponte would recall, "like a big balloon. ... Ididn't recognize my son."
He knew him by his toes. "He didn't have no shoes," Aponte said."And I know those little toes."
It was days before Dominguez was conscious, weeks before he waslucid, months before he left the ICU.
He couldn't use his left hand and he could barely walk. Ivonne gota transfer to Texas from her Transportation Security Administrationjob in Fort Myers, Fla., and moved into a room on the hospitalgrounds. She showed up most days to help her son wash, or to changehis wound dressings.
"I'd never seen so many amputees, so many badly burnt people," shesaid.
After he emerged from the coma, Dominguez underwent two operationsa week for six months. There were more after that, at longerintervals. In all, he would spend nearly two years at Brooke, withmore operations to follow after he was released.
Diazepam, tramadol, gabapentin, hydrocodone: He took drugs for thebaseline pain that never left and for the acute pain after eachskin graft. When his dressings were changed, or dead skin wasscrubbed off and the pain became unbearable, he sucked on afentanyl lollipop, a sweetened lozenge on a stick that delivers anopioid 80 times more powerful than morphine.
He took antibiotics to kill the bacteria that attacked his mostlyskinless body, a drug to clear blood clots, another to soften hisstool. He took drugs to kill the anxiety and nightmares and put himto sleep, and one to prevent stomach ulcers from all the drugs hewas taking.
Sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, he would tense and giveorders to men who weren't there.
"Move that truck!" he shouted once. "Mom? What are you doing here?"
The best thing to do when he got like this was to talk to him.
"Hey, you're here," Ivonne would say. "You're here with us."
And then, in a while, he was. Only he wasn't sure he wanted to be.
When an Army Ranger is in pain, he touches the Ranger patch on hisleft shoulder and keeps going. The mission - whatever it is - takespriority.
But by Christmas 2006, Dominguez could go no further. He weighedlittle more than 90 pounds. The only solid food he could eat wasramen, and he usually vomited the noodles up within minutes. Still,he wanted to get out of the hospital.
"I was begging, begging them to let me out," he said. They did. Helasted a week before the doctors persuaded him to return.
He ran through the attack constantly in his mind - the last fewseconds, the last 20 feet. "What if we'd turned just a bit sooner?"
"At least you're alive," people told him. "It could have beenworse."
They meant well, but made him want to scream. How could they know?The only people who could even come close to knowing were laid outon painkillers next to him. Or they were still in Iraq, stillfighting, still dying.
Dominguez had never felt so alone.
He had a failed marriage and a 4-year-old son, Victor Jr., hehadn't seen since his deployment in 2005. It wasn't the right timewhen Dominguez was fading in and out of consciousness. AndDominguez didn't want to see him now. Not when he looked like this.
Shortly before the attack, Dominguez had become involved withsomeone new. He loved her, but he was quickly, helplessly drivingher away. They had known each other since high school and hadgotten together when he was on leave in the spring of 2006. Thingsmoved lightning-fast.
She had stuck with him after the attack - not all of them do - andthey planned to marry at the old Versace mansion in Miami Beach.
And now it was going bad. Maybe she didn't want to live with abadly burned man. Gladys Velez, his best friend, thought that.
Dominguez had a different take. It was his fault, he felt; theymight still be together, but he got jealous, angry, suspicious.They argued.
"I was unsure of myself, ashamed of the way I looked," he said."People always used to tell us we were a good-looking couple. Aftera while, I wondered why this girl who was so beautiful was stillwith me. I had no confidence. It was all gone, like ripped out ofme. That caused a lot of problems for us."
She still lives in South Florida; he asked that her name not beused.
The breakup came last fall, a year and a half after Dominguez'sinjury, when he was still hospitalized. In some ways, he took itworse than the attack.
"He used to call me at 2, 3 in the morning, crying like crazy," hisfather said. "I was afraid because of the way he talked to me. Iwas very, very afraid he was going to kill himself. Because he wasmadly in love with her."
Aponte told his son what any father would: "It's going to take sometime, Victor, a little time, maybe a lot of time, but it's going tobe over. You're going to get over it. And you still have us."
At the time, it sounded hollow. Dominguez was angry at the world,at God, at whoever or whatever it was that allowed Turner to dieand kept him living like this: "Why did I make it and he didn't? Hewas still married. He had a happy marriage. He didn't get to enjoyany time with his son."
And what about him? He didn't have the woman he loved, and hewasn't the father he wanted to be. How could he be? He'd spentyears in a desert on the other side of the world, and now that hewas back, he was ... this.
How was he ever going to play with his son or teach him anything?What kind of father could he be? He was angry at himself, hiscrying and his weakness. He stopped talking for weeks.
"When is this going to get better?" he wondered.
But it did, bit by bit. He stood up without help. He washedhimself. He cooked a meal. Simple actions turned powerful. It waslike touching the Ranger patch. He kept going.
In March of last year, Dominguez walked unassisted for the firsttime since the attack. It was at Brooke Army Medical Center, aftera long night at a recognition ceremony with his parents.
"My dad was on my left, my mom was on my right," Dominguez said. "Iwas holding on to their shoulders. By the time I got to the door, Iwas only holding on to my dad. I took those last five steps on myown and flopped down on my bed."
That same month, he saw Victor Jr. - Little Victor, people call him- for the first time in more than a year. It was in a Starbucks atthe San Antonio airport.
"I was worried he wouldn't recognize me because I knew I didn'tlook the same," he said. "And I didn't want him to be scared ofme."
Dominguez waited in his wheelchair, so nervous that he was almostshaking.
"He walked up to me and said, 'Papi, you got burned bad.' I said,'Yeah, baby.' "
Dominguez had been waiting for this, prayed for it, even, the firstreal prayer of his life.
"I love you," Little Victor said.
One day this spring, Dominguez put on his prosthetic ear and droveto the plastic surgeon's office. "I brought some pictures of mebefore, the way I looked before this happened," he said.
Seth Thaller, chief plastic surgeon at the University of Miami'sMiller School of Medicine, shuffled through the pictures. Theyshowed Dominguez in Iraq, scowling for the camera, head shaved, jawrectangular. Thaller called in an associate, Rajiv Iyer, who hadserved in the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing in Balad, not far fromwhere Dominguez and his men were injured. They had passed throughthe field hospital where Iyer served.
"You might have worked on them: Sigsbee, Turner," Dominguez said.Iyer might have worked on Dominguez, for that matter. But Iyerwasn't sure. He had worked on a lot of people.
"I don't expect you to remember me," Dominguez said. "When we'reburned, we all look the same."
When the chitchat was done, Thaller asked Dominguez what he wantedfixed. "The lip is a priority," Dominguez said. "And the rest ofthe face."
The lower lip was swollen fat. The right side was OK, but the leftcheek and temple were finely pitted.
"I wonder if you could take a sander to my face, smooth it out likethe right," he said. Also the scar on his chin, the partiallyreconstructed nose, the bald spot around the scar on the back ofhis skull.
Iyer leaned in so he could see the texture of the skin on the leftside of Dominguez's face. "It's not that bad," he said. "But ifyou're conscious of it ... "
"I'm very conscious of it," Dominguez said.
Thaller told Dominguez to take his clothes off. Dominguez did andsat back in the examination chair, legs spread, arms at his side,while the doctors moved around him, talking about tissue expandersand prefab skin.
The Army surgeons had done a good job, but there was more work tobe done, and it couldn't be done all at once, or even fast. Itwould be frustratingly slow and frequently interrupted becausethere wasn't enough tissue left for the surgeons to shape.
"This is going to be years," Thaller said, and Dominguez nodded.
Summer has come. Six-year-old Little Victor is spending it with BigVictor in Homestead. Dominguez is no longer in the Army. He willnever again be Staff Sgt. Victor Dominguez, Airborne Army Ranger,and that hurts. Maybe it always will.
He still loves the woman he came close to marrying. But she hasmoved on. He's OK with that.
He's not going to date anyone for a while. For this summer, atleast, he's just going to be Dad. Dad has signed Little Victor upfor sports camp and karate lessons, which is great except that Dadpractically has a heart attack whenever Little Victor stubs histoe. Dad sneaks cigarettes on the porch and thinks Little Victorhas no inkling. He doesn't curse around him, and hopes LittleVictor won't ever.
"I don't want him to ever think his dad isn't a good person,"Dominguez said. "I want him to always be able to count on his dad,think his dad is a respectable man. Because that's what I want himto grow up to be."
There will be more surgeries, but he has put them off for the restof the summer so he can spend more time with Little Victor.
Little Victor wants to play. He gets the short foam bat from hisroom, digs the big foam ball out from under the couch. He iswearing blue jeans, Air Jordans and a T-shirt; Dominguez is dressedmuch the same. The street outside is empty.
"Remember how to hold the bat? Show me. Elbows up, and turn yourfoot."
Little Victor doesn't pivot as hard as Dad would like. He chasespitches and swings wildly. But Dad tells him to tighten up alittle, and it works: He smacks a drive that bounces and rolls intothe neighbor's yard.
"Papi!" he shouts, and Dad gives him a cheer before limping off toretrieve the ball.
It has been raining, and there are puddles on the street. But thesky has cleared, and there's macaroni and cheese for lunch. Itlooks as if it's going to be a pretty good day, actually.