All Comments on 'Deployment'

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Nice writing, but come on - a female officer and an enlisted man?

For those who want to know HM1 is a Navy Hospital Corpsman (medical specialist), petty officer first class (E-6).

In the military, enlisted ranks go from E-1 (recruit) to E-9 (top enlisted soldier/airman/marine/sailor) in a unit.

Officer ranks go from O-1 (butter bar second lieutenant (Army, AF, Marine) or ensign if navy, fresh out of ROTC/Academy/OCS) to O-10 (four-star general or admiral).

Doctors typically get commissioned at O-3

(lieutenant if Navy, captain everyone else), so getting her gold leaf as lt. commander (O-4) is a banner day where she's treated like a professional in charge of something instead of a clinical specialist here today, gone tomorrow. Plus officers don't advance that quickly past O-3, each rank taking 4-6 years to achieve in peacetime.

What the author's describing is being an Independent Duty Corpsman who works as a physician assistant. It's a big deal, because you typically have to eat a lot of crap for a good while and be top 2% or so of the Hospital Corpsmen to qualify for IDC.

So if he has anything on the ball clinically and savvy enough to work the system, he easily could've impressed his wife, especially if she was a freshly-gradded doc. Also, he's in a great position to make her look like a genius to get that next rank.

I know all this is a lot of exposition, but most civilians don't know the jargon or the setting terribly well, so it's unfair expecting them to get all this and understand why this guy's such a stud and why an officer would take up with him.

It's Lit, you want to get to the sweet love Deone and Michelle are making, not write a primer on military careers. Fair enough, but it's a big theme you emphasize in the first couple of paragraphs of the story without enough details for Joe/Jane Civilian to get why.

fraid to let us know who you are????????