I Told You Sukhi's Story. I Wasn't Ready to Tell You All of It.
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I told you Sukhi's story.
The patrol. The BP reading. The tablets he took in secret. The morning we found him unconscious at 9,000 feet.
I wasn't ready to tell you all of it.
Because the full story isn't about one mistake on the eve of a Himalayan patrol.
It is about eight. One for every letter of SCRIPTED. One for every place communication failed him — and I failed him — before he ever reached for those tablets in the dark.
This is the complete picture.
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S — Structured Formats
I examined twenty men the night before we launched. One by one, in a room, in front of each other.
There was no structured format for a medical examination that carried stakes this high. No privacy protocol. No sequence designed to surface what a soldier might be hiding.
I followed routine. Routine failed Sukhi.
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C — Confirmation
I told Sukhi his blood pressure was slightly elevated. I told him to rest and sleep well.
I never confirmed what he had understood. I never checked what he was thinking. I assumed my words had landed as I intended them.
They hadn't. What he heard was: you might not make it.
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R — Rehearse
I had not prepared for this moment. The difficult medical finding on the eve of a high-stakes mission. The soldier who needs to hear hard news without losing his identity in front of his team.
I hadn't rehearsed that conversation. I didn't know it was a conversation I might need to have.
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I — Inquire
I did not ask the one question that would have changed everything.
How are you feeling about tomorrow?
Three seconds. Six words. The answer might have been nothing. Or it might have been the six words he couldn't say unprompted.
I didn't ask. So he didn't tell.
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P — Periodic Updates
After I checked his BP and told him to rest — I left.
No follow-up that evening. No check before we moved out. No moment where I returned to him privately and said: how are you feeling now? Has anything changed?
The silence between that examination and the morning was filled with a decision I never knew he was making.
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T — Trap Errors
The next morning Sukhi's BP read 100 over 60.
I was pleased. I cleared him fit.
What I read as recovery was actually a drug effect. He had taken antihypertensives in secret — wrong dose, no supervision — and the number I trusted was a trap. It looked like fitness. It was anything but.
I didn't question the reading. I didn't ask what had changed overnight. I walked straight into the trap.
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E — Examine
Previous patrols on this route had lost lives.
Did we debrief those patrols? Did we ask what communication had broken down, what information had been withheld, what environment had made honesty too costly?
If we had — if those lessons had been captured and carried forward — I might have known to examine differently. To create privacy. To ask harder questions.
We didn't debrief. So I didn't know.
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D — Document
Nothing about my conversation with Sukhi was documented.
What I said, what he heard, what I observed, what I decided — none of it written. No record of the elevated BP beyond the number itself. No note that his teammates were in the room. No documentation of the clinical reasoning that cleared him fit.
If something had gone wrong at altitude — if Sukhi had not survived — there would have been no account of what happened the night before. Only silence where the record should have been.
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Eight letters. One soldier. One preventable near-disaster.
SCRIPTED is not a checklist. It is the map of every place where communication breaks down under pressure — and the discipline to close each gap before it costs someone their life.
S — Structured Formats C — Confirmation R — Rehearse I — Inquire P — Periodic Updates T — Trap Errors E — Examine D — Document
Twenty-seven years. The Indian Army Medical Services. Operating theatres, high altitude patrols, hospital leadership. SCRIPTED is what I learned — but it is not everything I learned. There is more. Much more.
Sukhi made it home.
And thirty years later, he is still teaching me.
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