Natalie Markham
Appearances
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
There was one workout every hour on the hour for eight hours. Just the grueling nature of eight hours worth of workouts is enough to make most people go, yeah, no, I'm not doing that.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
All four of us are sitting on the floor together, and Sarah says that she's going to have to have her leg amputated. And I was blown away. Like, you are in the middle of doing an eight-hour workout, and you have to have your leg amputated? It was absolutely unfathomable to me.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
But I distinctly remember her saying, if I'm going to have to have my leg amputated, then I'm going to make this bitch give me every last ounce of what it's got to give.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
And she thinks to herself, You are like a whole other level of badassery than I have ever known.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
We did one workout where Sarah was having a really hard time. And like at the end of the workout, her leg was shaking so badly. And she's like, Natalie, will you please help me? Can you please help me stretch?
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
I took her shaking leg and placed it up on my shoulder and I'm holding her quad in one hand and her foot up here and kind of leaning in and I'm talking her through, like breathe into the muscle, like take some breaths, exhale slowly, picture your leg relaxing and just breathe.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
remember her like like having this moment of her leg finally relaxing and this is the leg that she's supposed to have amputated and feeling some some sense of gratitude that i could help somebody in that situation to have some kind of relief
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
And like, I'm so genuinely worried about her that in the middle of the night, I wake up and the first thing I think of is, I must be waking up because I've got to pray for Sarah. I should text her and let her know that I'm praying. And so I text out my prayer to her and send it to her.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
January 26th, 2022, a prayer for you today is what I wrote. God, thank you for Sarah. Thank you for her intelligence, kindness, humor, bravery, courage, and service to the United States and for her gift of friendship. I pray that you will give her and her family a deep sense of peace today, even as she is under anesthesia.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
Though she already has such a deep sense of drive and determination, pour into her an extra dose of perseverance and purpose. Heal her body, Lord, from this and all illness and disease.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
She wrote, Thank you so much. I can't tell you what this means to me.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
She said that when she was going into her surgery, that her blood pressure had dropped significantly. And they weren't able to perform the surgery because of that. And I remember thinking at the time, like, that's really weird. You would think that if you're going to go have your leg cut off, that your blood pressure would be sky high.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
The next day, I was like trying to reach out to her, but thinking that she's still in the hospital. And it's in the middle of me trying to get a hold of her that I receive a message from Tom through WhatsApp saying,
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
I specifically asked Tom, like, how do you know this? Because now I'm questioning him, like, why would you even say something like that? Like, how do you know for sure?
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
Dex has this way of like, she calls it gassing you up, of like being your biggest cheerleader. And so she'll be like, man, look at those guns, Natalie.
Deep Cover
Episode 1: The Warrior
The three of us are lined up, and being female and in the military, like, do you stand tough? Do you stand feminine? And then, you know, we're in a strength retreat, so we should take one that looks kind of cute, but then we should take one that looks kind of tough and so will flex. And Dex is always the one to be like, oh, we have to flex.