"I went through a whole day not knowing my husband had been shot," 26-year-old *Lauren Fidell
says. She is amazed and somewhat appalled that her best friend and the love of her life
who she'd been with since she was 16 had been lying in Afghanistan with a bullet from an
AK-47 through his head while she had been shampooing the carpet. "I thought my body would know,
that I would feel if something happened to him. So I was surprised when they knocked on the door
that night and told me what had happened. I did not believe that he was dying. But they told me
it was imminent."
"They" were, of course, the men in uniform.
And five months ago, they brought Lauren the worst news of her life. While she acknowledges
collapsing then, today, she is unflinching. Which is not to say she doesn't cry-she does-but
rather that she is undaunted by her tears, and figures I ought to be as well.
When we speak for the first time, we sit in a very public place, a huge hall at New York City's
Jacob Javits Center in the midst of a Maritime Security Expo Exhibit where she is helping to
raise funds for the Naval Special Warfare Foundation, a nonprofit that gives scholarships to
Navy SEAL families. We sit at a large, round table in the Exhibitors' Lounge; two men in suits
sit on the other side of the table negotiating a contract. In the course of our conversation,
Lauren tears up a couple of times; I tear up a couple of times. When anyone notices, they
politely avert their gaze.
Lauren plows ahead. She remembers every detail of that night, June 24th, 2003, she tells me,
as if she were watching a movie-somebody else's tragic tale.
It was 10:30 p.m. on a warm June evening. Her children, 2- and 5-year-old boys, were in bed.
Her younger sister was visiting from out of state. "I was getting ready for bed and I had just
laid down on the couch to watch TV when there was a knock on the door," Lauren says. "I was
halfway across the living room when I realized that it was too late to be a neighbor knocking.
I stopped. I had a bad feeling." Lauren stood there, in the middle of the living room, stuck.
They knocked again. "My sister came to the top of the stairs and said, 'open the door.
It's just a neighbor.'"
But six men stood in their dress uniforms on Lauren's porch. "They were very stern looking.
One of them was the commander of my husband's group. One was a CACO officer," she says,
referring to the Navy's Casualty Assistance Calls Officer. "The CACO officer said my name,
then he said who he was and where he was from."
Lauren looked straight at him. "I know who you are," she said. The CACO officer spoke:
"Your husband was in a convoy that was attacked and he was very
seriously injured and is not expected to live."
Lauren began to scream, "I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready yet." Despite the fact that her
husband was a Navy SEAL, one of the elite units specially trained in dangerous maritime and
amphibious operations, that he'd already been called away several times to undisclosed
locations in the fight against terrorists, that she was pretty sure he'd been in Afghanistan
these past 8 weeks, she says she hadn't thought about him dying. "I'm not ready yet," she wailed.
"I wanted to talk to him," Lauren recalls. "But they kept saying, 'He's not conscious.'" He
had been shot many hours earlier in a clash south of Kabul and had been transported to a hospital
in Bagram. "What are his chances?' she asked. "He's dying. It's imminent," they told her. Hoping
for a different answer, Lauren asked them again. And again. "It's imminent," they repeated.
"I want to talk to him," she said.
"He's unconscious."
Lauren kept insisting over and over again that she wanted to talk to him. But they kept
explaining, as if she were not comprehending, "He's unconscious." Finally, they understood
that Lauren didn't care whether or not he was conscious, that she thought maybe he could
hear her, that she needed to try to talk to him. Eventually, they got through to the
hospital. "One of his buddies there beside him said, 'Lauren, I'm going to put the phone
up to his ear," Lauren recalls.
She spoke to him. She reminded him that she was an occupational therapist and it didn't
matter what his injuries were, she just didn't want him to die. "I went to school for this,"
she said. "You're going to come home and I'm going to take care of you. It's going to be okay."
She told him what their boys had done that day. She told him that she loved him. "Everything
happens for a reason," she said. And then she told him that if he had to go, it was okay."
Recalling the incident five months later, she wonders why she said that. "I didn't mean it,"
she admits.
At some point, after several hours, the men in uniform left. And friends began to arrive.
The Navy SEALs are a small and tight-knit group, with 1200 stationed in Virginia Beach.
Most of the 5000 active SEALs had spent their entire careers together, back and forth
between SEAL postings in San Diego and Virginia Beach. They'd trained together, worked
together, fought together, ate and slept together for weeks at a time. Their wives, often
home alone, had babysat each other's children, gone to the movies together, shared Thanksgiving
dinners, formed deep friendships. And, in the dark hours of the night, on June 24th, they
mourned together. A cluster of women sat on Lauren's bed talking, crying, and listening as
Lauren tried to face death. At 3:30 in the morning, Lauren realized the time and felt some
relief. "It's morning there now-and he lived," she said. Then she worried. "I thought,
'Oh my God, what if he has to retire from the Navy? He's going to be crushed.' Meanwhile,
everyone around me knew he wasn't coming home."
"I fell asleep then. And when I woke up, my sister and my best friend, Teresa, were sitting
on my bed. My eyes were still closed when they asked, 'You awake?'" Lauren was, but she
didn't want to be. "They said, 'Lauren, we just got word that he passed during the night.'
"It took a second to register, like I was in a time warp. I was really mad at him. He
promised me he'd come home."
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