Decoration for Valor

by Joe Cassilly

  “Not hungry, huh?”

  “I’m starving,” I emphasized. “Got any food?”

  The aide wrote something on the chart at the end of my bed. I could not see it, but I suspected he told the rest of the staff that I was a restaurant critic. He then hustled off with the tray.

  By nine that morning, they had moved me to a bed on the ward. I figured the building had been built in the 1940s. The spinal cord injury center was a parallel series of six, single story, long rectangular, wooden buildings joined by a hall, which crossed through the middle of each of them. To each side of the hall were offices and small rooms like the one I spent the night in and bathrooms and showers. Next were the wards, two in a building and at the ends of those were dayrooms. A ward had twenty beds lined up against the walls. As I lay there looking at the other patients, I noticed a crowd of seven men and women dressed in white uniforms enter the ward. They shuffled together from bed to bed. They would greet each patient, look at his chart, and talk to each other about the man without bothering to talk to the man. They worked their way down one row of beds and back up the row to my bed. A nurse in the crowd said good morning. That was her job. No one introduced themselves. Anonymity was company policy. Another nurse was carrying my file from Walter Reed. She flipped it open and the three doctors gathered around her, staring at the reams of paper.

  “C-7, T-1,” said the first, the leader.

  “Mmmm,” said the other two nodding in agreement.

  “Came in last night,” said the nurse.

  Another lifted the chart from the foot of the bed. “He’s running a fever.”

  “Mmmm,” said the three doctors, nodding. One of them leaned forward and looked at the urine in the bag hanging on the bed. “Cloudy,” he said and scribbled in the chart.

  They closed the file and were preparing to move on when I spoke. “How long will I be here?”

  They all stopped in mid-step. The leader took the file from the file bearer. He opened it but the two inches of paper were too awkward to hold in the flimsy folder so he was unable to turn the pages. The first assistant page-turner quickly lent a hand. “David Jacob Scott,” the leader read aloud from the file.

  “Jake,” I corrected sharply. “It’s just Jake Scott.”

  The leader arched his eyebrows and peered over the top of his glasses at me. “I see they had plans to get you up in a wheelchair at Walter Reed.”

  “Oh, I was already up in it,” I lied. “They were letting me get used to it a few minutes at a time.”

  “Too soon?” said the first assistant page-turner.

  “Too soon,” said the leader. The pen-bearer presented the ceremonial black U.S. government pen. The leader scrawled on one of the pages. Then, they started to walk away again.

  “How long will I be here?” I asked again.

  Slightly annoyed, the leader said, “At least until December.”

  “But I have to start school in September or even summer courses.”

  They smiled and knowingly shook their heads and walked to the next patient. “This is Mr. Burnie, L-4, been here nine months,” one of them said about a big dark-haired man who was getting ready to transfer into his wheelchair. The group moved onto the next patient, a tall lanky guy with pale white skin, lots of freckles, and long strawberry-blonde hair.

  I lay there watching Burnie lift his feet onto the footrests of the wheelchair and then fit the arm on. “You going to be getting out of here soon?” I asked.

  “Soon as the doctors clear it,” he said positively. “I broke my back in a car accident. The doctors say it will be a few more months.” His big hands firmly gripped the wheels and he pushed down the aisle and went off to his routine.

  “He’ll never leave,” said the guy with the freckles looking after Burnie. “He’s waiting for these goofball doctors to make him well. They have him thinking that if he stays here long enough, they’ll have him walking out of here.” He pushed his chair up beside my bed, put out his hand, and flashed a broad grin. “Joe White.” I thought how the name “White” was so fitting with his very pale skin. I returned his greeting. He noticed the weak, soft handshake. “Partial quad, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I acknowledged.

  “How’d you get hurt?” asked Joe.

  “Vietnam, How about you?”

  “Motorcycle accident. Some girl pulled out in front of me. You’re the only guy on the ward from Nam.”

  “Really. Where’d all these other guys come from?”

  “Car and motorcycle accidents mostly. Two diving accidents. A few falls and one gunshot. Look, I gotta run to therapy. I’ll check on you at lunch.” The wheelchair spun around smartly. He rocked it up on the rear wheels and, with a few strong shoves, glided from view. I envied the grip he had in his hands.

  I had been awake since 4 a.m. My eyes closed.

  10

  The Hell in My Mind

  I had been asleep for a couple of hours when the dream came. The Huey helicopter, with its big side doors removed and stripped of the backbenches, clawed its way into a headwind. Raindrops hit my pants with such force that they went through and stung my legs. My hands were numbed by the wind and rain. The two Rangers on my left sat watching the green below change from open clearings to jungle. Beyond them was the chopper’s door gunner leaning on his mounted machine gun. I looked back over my shoulder. On the opposite side of the aircraft sat three other Rangers in the doorway. In the middle of the floor sat our team leader and our Vietnamese scout. The team leader had a map spread on the floor and, from time to time, would lean over to peer out the door, trying to recognize landmarks. I could understand his worry. More than once, the choppers had dropped us off in the wrong area. The fear was that there was no way to get artillery or air support if you were hit going in and they did not know where you were.

  We had one landmark to the east, a huge mountain that rose out of the flat landscape, Nui Ba Dinh. Even at night, the lights of a fire support base on the top were beacons to steer by.

  As I felt the chopper losing altitude, my grip tightened on my machine gun. I checked the ammo belt that fed the gun from an ammo box on my hip. Jim, who sat beside me, wiped the beads of water from the silencer of his.45 caliber submachine gun. He looked at me. We both managed a grin, but his eyes showed the tension.

  The chopper banked sharply and only the centrifugal force kept us from free falling to our deaths. Just as quickly, the bank swung in the opposite direction. The chopper was plunging toward the jungle. I leaned my head out of the door and saw that we were heading down a canyon of trees. Suddenly, there were green blurs flashing past us. The nose of the chopper pulled up steeply and then it flared sideways and dropped into the clearing.

  The voice at the back of my consciousness began screaming at me, pleading, “Not the dream, not the dream.” It was a sobbing voice, a voice full of fear, not of what would happen—the voice knew that was history—but fear of the sights, smells, and sounds, the memories of which were trapped in my mind and about to be released.

  I peered toward the edge of the jungle. Something had moved. Maybe it was a plant being whipped by the downdraft. No! There was someone there. The chopper bumped the ground. I wanted to turn and holler at the team leader, but he had already gone out of the other side. Jim, in a crouch, was running away from the chopper. I jumped off instinctively as the chopper started to lift up. As I came up to Jim, I felt something wet and hard hit me in the face. Jim was falling into a prone position. Over the roar of the chopper, I could not hear Jim’s silenced gun but I could see it bucking in his hands as Jim fired into the tree line. I also saw the gaping, bloody hole in his cheek. I reached up and wiped my face. I had been splattered by Jim’s flesh, blood, and teeth. The rattling of the door gunner’s machine gun made me grab the trigger of my own gun. The calming feeling of the big gun’s power took away my fear. I settled to the job at hand. I directed the tracers from the barrel into the spot where I had seen movement. Pieces of rotted wood flew up. The man tr
ied to crawl away from the fire, but I stitched him from the hip to shoulder. The air around me was buzzing with bullets, but most of them were being fired at the chopper.

  We had landed in a semi-circle of bad guys. Those in front had shot the windshield out, killing the pilots. The nose dropped and it slammed into the ground from about twenty feet up. The door gunner was thrown back into the wreckage. He managed to pull his gun from its mount and continued firing. The door gunner on the other side had been thrown out and was hit by the main rotor blade which had sheared off. The Rangers who had gone out of the right side had a little luck and reached a huge downed tree for cover.

  The team leader was screaming into the radio to two gunships that were about two miles out backing us up. The Cobras had already started toward the landing area when the Huey did not come back up.

  Once the Huey was down, the bad guys turned their fire toward the Rangers. I was quickly going through ammo in the box on my hip. I had to drop the box on my other hip so that I could get it in position to feed it into the gun. While still firing, I grabbed the quick release on my pack and let the pack slide down my right arm. Jim was having a hard time breathing as his face and throat began swelling shut. He was going into shock. The clouds above had suddenly released torrents of rain that washed streams of blood down Jim’s neck. I knew I had to kill the bad guys quickly so I could care for my friend before he lost consciousness and bled to death.

  A Viet Cong soldier near the front of the helicopter stepped into the open and aimed his rifle at me. I swung the machine gun toward him, but I snagged the ammo belt and the gun jammed. At that instant, the lead Cobra leaped over the treetops, dropped its nose, and the roar came from its mini-gun. As I watched, the man dissolved into a bloody mist hanging on the raindrops. The Cobra swung out of the way to let its sidekick come up and take a shot. Just then, one of the bad guys fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Huey. The missile exploded on the fuel tank, which blew up in a fireball covering the door gunner in burning fuel. He jumped from the burning chopper. In my dreams, the burning man seemed to float slowly through the air. His dying scream filled my ears; the reeking odor of burning aviation fuel filled my nostrils.

  Suddenly, hands grabbed my shoulders. The voice in my brain pleaded with me to wake up. These were the sights, sounds, and smells that terrorized me. My own crying voice reached my ears. Joe White’s face was looking into mine. His mouth growled, “Shit man what kind of fucking dream are you having?” I looked at the faces of others around my bed looking at me. I reached into my water pitcher and wiped water over my face. My fever seemed to have gotten worse.

  11

  Veteran’s Hospital

  The cold, dreary days of January settled into a monotonous routine that offered little hope. I was wheeled on a gurney to therapy after breakfast. There, a red-haired therapist named Florence with a high-pitched voice and a Virginia accent worked on my hands and arms. She flexed the muscles and balled my hands into fists, stretching the tendons. Flo chatted with the other therapists as she worked. They talked about soap operas that they were never home to watch, Florence’s soon-to-be ex-husband that she hadn’t seen in years, and all the sluts they knew in Richmond. It was a distraction to me, but I felt ignored in the room of patients and staff. They talked over top of me but not with me. At the end of the hour, I was wheeled into a line of other gurneys and elderly patients in wheelchairs by the door to wait for an aide to push me to my next stop.

  The next stop was occupational therapy for an hour. There were guys making leather billfolds, while others made patterned cloth on a loom or painted landscapes or still lifes. The therapists fitted wide leather straps across my palms and fastened them with Velcro at the back of my hands. Into slits in the palms they slid a spoon or a fork and I practiced picking up marbles or some food substitute. After an hour of this, I had reached the limits of boredom or frustration. Then, it was back in the line and back to the ward for lunch.

  Whatever else there was on the plate, I could always count on grits being there and, at least one meal a day, there was a slice of purple pickled apple on a wilted lettuce leaf. I wanted to have somebody investigated for taking kickbacks from the grits supplier. I sent so many lunches back untouched that the dietitian came to me after a couple of weeks.

  The tray was sitting beside me still wrapped in cellophane. The pudgy woman regarded me through watery eyes set above her rosy cheeks and said, “The food we send to the ward is scientifically selected to provide the nutrition you need to get healthy.”

  “Yeah, well let’s see you eat it,” I said.

  She glanced sideways with disgust at the cold blob of grits. “How do you expect to get well if you don’t eat.”

  “I don’t expect to get well eating that crap.”

  “We’ll just wait until your hungry enough, mister.” She waddled from the ward as though she had a rash. Of course, I would never get hungry because all of the other guys who went to the mess hall brought me sandwiches, fruit, and anything else they could smuggle out, including hot coffee, which is a real trick if you think about pushing a wheelchair with a cup of hot coffee.

  The afternoon was my best time. I was wheeled into a small gym of specially adapted exercise equipment. Flat on my back, I was rolled under a barbell that was suspended by ropes from the ceiling. A well-muscled black man named Sam fit the right amount of weight on and I started lifting. My arms had grown weak so I only lifted fifty pounds in sets of ten. I rested and then did it over and over until my hands and arms started to shake and would not do what I asked of them. I felt good here. I was finally doing something that I could feel making me stronger so I could get out of here. Sam would keep an eye on me. I think he appreciated that I did not want to leave after an hour but wanted to stay all afternoon. One day, my arms gave out and I dropped the weights.

  “Hey, white boy, you’re gonna hurt yourself,” called Sam with relief when he realized I hadn’t. I shook my head. If I could control these muscles, then they were going to do what I told them to.

  After the barbells, Sam strapped light weights onto my wrists and I did curls or other stretching exercises. After dinner on the ward, I would talk to other patients who might come by my bed or watch my small television until lights out. Then, I would lie on the bed, fighting sleep even though exhausted. I had started to pray every night. I could not let the dream start. Sometimes, I made it through the night, but other nights, I was awakened by an aide or nurse because I was crying or talking in my sleep.

  I was there for six weeks. I had not had any visitors. I finally got a letter from my mother. It was lying on my bed when I came back for lunch. My crippled fingers fumbled frantically to open it.

  “Dear Jake,

  Thank you so much for your beautiful letter. It meant a lot to me. I want you to know I love and miss you. I am sorry I haven’t written or visited you, but we have had a tragedy. Just after the first of the year, your father had a stroke, which has left him paralyzed down his left side and partially blind and unable to speak. I know that you will understand that he requires round-the-clock care.”

  I could not read on through my tears. My lips trembled. I buried my face in my pillow to hide my sobs. That son-of-a-bitch, I thought, he wanted to keep Mom away from me and see me in this dungeon. Now he has his way. I hate him. I hate him. When the aide came to roll me to the gym, I shook my head and waved him away. I was giving up. What the hell’s the point, I thought. I’ll live here like the rest of these bastards who have no one on the outside. God, why in the hell are you doing this to me. What did I ever do that was so bad that you should punish me like this? I believe in you, God. I believe you have the power to make me better. Please, in the name of Jesus Christ, I beg you—please help me out of here. Send me some hope.

  § § § § § §

  It had been a long drive. Suzie had thought of turning back several times when her car had become enveloped in swirling snow. She was not sure why she wanted to see Jake, but she was hurt
ing and needed a friend, but not someone too close. She thought of him because she had helped him over some bad days and it seemed natural to collect on the debt. Her passenger was napping in the front seat. Poor kid, she thought as she remembered her own all-niters cramming.

  Suzie was surprised at how easily she found the hospital. Finding Jake was a different story. The hospital had miles of corridors. When they finally got to the spinal cord injury wards, they were sent to the gym. The therapist told them Jake had not come in today. They walked back to his ward. Every man on the ward, patients and staff, watched the two women walk to Jake’s bed.

  § § § § § §

  The dream had started. The chopper ride, the landing, the shooting, the drenching downpour beating relentlessly on us, the smells of gunpowder, of burning aviation fuel, of burning flesh, the sights of pain and blood and death. I turned away from the image of the burning door gunner. I thought of Jim. Jim could not breathe now. He was lying on his side. His face was gray. Blood was bubbling from his nose and mouth. He was fighting to suck air, but bits of bone and teeth had exploded into the back of his throat and were obstructing his windpipe. I was kneeling, trying to unjam the gun. I knew I had to help Jim. My mind was overwhelmed. The burning chopper exploded again. I never saw the chunk of metal that was blasted off of the chopper that hurtled toward me and slammed into my back just between the base of the neck and top of the shoulder blade.