A Texan’s quick action saves tough Afghan boy
By LISA FALKENBERG
2008 Houston Chronicle
Two thoughts pulsed through Bryan Mikus’ mind as he assessed the screaming,
bloodied 10-year-old boy curled in the fetal position in the Afghan clinic.
First he cursed the land mines. Then he cursed fate. “Not a kid, man,
anything but a kid.”
What the 35-year-old civilian paramedic from Humble did next won’t earn him
any medals. As a medic and team leader for a security contractor, the Army
reservist and former Marine won’t be eligible for military commendations.
But his actions helped save the life of one little herdsman, who was chasing
an errant goat when the animal tripped an old Soviet land mine that had
waited more than two decades to unleash its blast of shrapnel.
The events, described to me by Mikus and others who were there, happened
weeks ago near the village of Shindand, in Farah province in Western
Afghanistan. Mikus’ company, London-based ArmorGroup, provides security for
contractors converting an abandoned Soviet base into a military training
center for Afghans.
Mikus, a self-described “computer nerd” raised in Boerne, used to fix trader
computers at Enron and was a server administrator at Reliant while working
as an emergency medical technician on the side. He decided to build on his
EMT credentials a couple years ago at Texas A&M and “reinvented” himself as
a medic.
Distress call sounded
On March 16, Mikus was off duty and showering when a colleague pounded his
door to summon him for the wounded child. The boy, whose name was Mirweiss,
had come within about six yards of the mine when it exploded.
Bleeding and disoriented, Mirweiss walked roughly 22 yards before
collapsing.
“He’s just a tough little kid,” Mikus told me. “But I mean, they kind of
make them a little bit different over here. They’ve got 6-year-old kids that
are running two miles in the morning to go get water.”
A local defense ministry guard who saw the blast flew down from his
watchtower and sped his motorbike into the minefield to rescue the child. He
flagged a roaming patrol, which rushed Mirweiss to the clinic.
Mikus has a soft spot for children, he says, but, as a “baby paramedic,”
he’s terrified of working on them. He consulted his trusty Pocket
Pharmacopeia at every turn.
The boy’s skin, from forehead to knees, was coated in blood. Pieces of
shrapnel needled his belly, chest, thigh and left scrotum. Mikus, with the
help of Spc. Michael Bailey, a 23-year-old medic from the South Carolina
National Guard, stopped the bleeding, cleaned and dressed the wounds and
numbed the pain with Lidocaine.
They administered antibiotics to ward off infection – a wise move since
doctors later determined projectiles nicked Mirweiss’ colon.
When the boy’s father, Dost Mohammad, was allowed in the room, he ran to his
son, hugging and kissing him, as he wept.
Mikus knew the boy’s condition was critical. He got permission to transport
Mirweiss to a Spanish-run hospital more than an hour north in Herat.
In an armored Toyota Land Cruiser, Mikus drove the boy and his father. Along
the way, Mirweiss’ blood pressure spiked and plummeted. He vomited. He began
praying to Allah and frantically apologizing to his father for losing the
goat.
At the hospital, a crew of about 20 Spanish doctors, nurses and technicians
stood ready to donate their services. Mikus said he was told Mirweiss
underwent up to 12 hours of surgery to stem internal bleeding and fish out
shrapnel.
An emotional moment
When visiting days later, Mikus brought new clothes to replace the bloody
shreds he had to cut from the child’s body. Nurses showed the medic some
pencil sketches Mirweiss had drawn.
The last one nearly brought the medic to tears. It showed the boy’s goat
stepping on the mine, the explosion, his own small body tossed like a doll.
“No 10-year-old child ought to be able to conjure that imagery, and here he
was, doodling away like it was just another day,” Mikus says. “You know back
in the states, a kid and his parents would have gone to therapy for years.
Different world, though.”
Mikus’ wife, Melissa, a 29-year-old business analyst, said nothing surprised
her about her husband’s efforts to save Mirweiss, but that tales from his
job never cease to inspire her.
“When I get to tell people stories like what happened with the kid, they’re
like ‘wow’ and I’m like ‘I know, that’s the guy I married. You all thought
he was a goofball, but this is the kind of guy he is.'”
Mirweiss is still recovering from his injuries. Dad is tending the goats.
“It still hurts to move sometimes, so I’m not going outside a lot yet,” the
boy said through an interpreter, in response to my questions. On Tuesday,
the boy and his father visited Mikus to thank him again and offer a gift: a
family prayer rug, made by Mirweiss’ mother and sister, that his father used
to pray for his son’s survival.
“He is a good man,” the boy’s father said of Mikus. “I have not seen a
doctor so concerned for my family. I owe him my life.”
Dost Mohammad lost his job as a defense ministry guard a few days ago after
missing too many days work to be with his son at the hospital, Mikus told
me. Mikus and colleagues are searching for another job.
Private security contractors often get a bad rap in the media, stereotyped
as mercenaries, thrill-seekers, Blackwater-brand shadow soldiers who can
kill with impunity.
Mikus’ story shows us the good they can do. He not only helped save a life,
he may have changed one as well.
It seems that Mirweiss, who has spent nearly his entire young life herding
goats, lately has been begging to go to school for the first time.
He says he wants to learn to “fix people” just like the medics, doctors and
nurses who fixed him.