Decoration for Valor

by Joe Cassilly

  “My therapists say I’ll have to wait another few weeks before I can try this at the hospital. Wait till I tell them Monday morning. Once I can do this, they will let me stand up in a frame.”

  Suzie sat cross-legged on the floor beside me. “How long are you going to kneel there?”

  “As long as I can.”

  “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Okay.”

  “How do you feel about Vietnam?” she asked.

  “You mean, was it worth spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t know the answer to that. I liked my Ranger unit and I liked the work we did. I learned a lot about myself, stuff I would never have learned under other circumstances.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like watching out for my brothers and trusting them to watch out for me. Like esprit d’ corp. Like bravery.”

  “Yeah, what’s bravery?”

  I grinned. “Bravery, my dear, is not having sufficient time to realize that you should be scared shitless. Why do you want to know all this?”

  “I want you to talk to Cathy. Tell her not to go to Vietnam.”

  I cautiously turned my head so that I would not lose my balance. I did this weird thing I can do with my eyebrows where one brow goes up and the other comes down. “How the hell is Cathy going to Vietnam?”

  “Dummy, didn’t you know? After she finishes nursing school, she owes her Uncle Sam a few years in the Army and she wants to volunteer to go to Vietnam.”

  “I volunteered to go to Vietnam,” I said softly.

  “Oh, great,” she paused, shaking her head. “Look, she’s a sweet kid. I just don’t want her to see the things that I’ve seen and have the dreams that I have had. At least tell her,” she added as her voice grew angry, “that it isn’t all fucking red, white, and blue.” I watched her draw her knees to her chest and sit rocking. She looked at me. “Well?”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to her.” I watched her continue to rock. “Who was hurt worse in Nam, me or you?” She put her forehead on her knees and didn’t answer.

  I changed the subject. “Do you wonder what happened to your marriage?”

  She looked up and heaved a sigh. “Maybe we never gave it a chance. I left him right after we were married for Fort Sam Huston for training, then two weeks leave, then Vietnam and then back to Walter Reed. We probably didn’t live together for more than a month at a time. Hell, I’m in the war and he’s home protesting it; not much in common.”

  I knelt beside her another five minutes and then I noticed my hands were growing cold and my circulation wasn’t getting blood to them. “Can you help me up?”

  “How are we going to do this?”

  “Well, I thought that I could get into this chair because it isn’t as high as the wheelchair, and then I can lift over into the wheelchair.”

  “Okay, so what do I do?”

  “You could grab the back of my pants and lift my butt when I lift with my arms and pull my rear end around into the chair.” We tried that but the sweat pants slid up and around me without lifting. I caught my breath. “Okay, I got another idea.” I could feel myself blushing. “Clasp your hands between my legs and lift from there.”

  I counted to three and lifted with all my strength and we almost had me into the chair when Suzie said, “Did you go through all this just for the cheap thrill of having me grab you between the legs?” We started laughing.

  “Don’t make me laugh, you goofy broad, or I’ll fall on the floor.” I managed to fall forward into the chair. Suzie let go and ran into the bathroom. I could hear her peeing. I dragged my legs around so that I was sitting in the chair. When she came out of the bathroom, I said, “You are the only person I know whose sense of humor causes bladder spasms.”

  21

  Slow Dance in a Wheelchair

  We were driving back to the hospital after dinner. We had talked for hours in the restaurant about our families, hometowns, and growing up. Suzie asked again if I had heard from my mother. “No, not since the letter that I had showed you.” It was 10:30 when we parked. While Suzie was getting the chair out of the car, I turned the key so that the radio was playing. Suzie wheeled the chair next to the door. She went to put the sliding board from the car to the chair.

  “Let me try it without it.” I found some handholds and tried to throw myself at the chair. I landed half in and out. Suzie went to drag me in. “No, no I got it.” I twisted, I wiggled, I struggled, and I made it, though the sweatpants started sliding down again. I fitted the arm into the chair and used it to pick up so Suzie could tug the pants back in place. I set down and took a deep breath of the cool evening air. “Damn, I hope this gets easier.” We started to back away from the car. “Wait, listen.” It was the radio. “This is a great slow-dance song.” I closed my eyes. “I’m gonna miss dancing.”

  Suzie sat on my lap and put her arms over my shoulders. “Maybe not so much.” I wrapped my arms around her waist and we leaned toward one another until our foreheads touched. We moved slowly from side to side in time with the music. When the song ended, we kissed.

  We were still kissing when a voice said, “Boy, I think you best come inside.” Suzie jerked with fright and would have screamed except that she bit my tongue, which was in her mouth. I was startled, but the sudden pain on the tip of my tongue made me forget about the surprise. I looked over. It was Miss Adams, walking in for the night shift. She had not stopped, but glanced back before she went inside and then stood just inside the door, looking out of the window.

  “You bit my tongue,” I said, trying to rub the pain into the roof of my mouth.

  “I know,” she said impatiently. “I’m sorry, but can’t you ever get away from these crazy nurses.”

  “Oh, she’s all right.” I pulled her toward me and held her very tightly. “Thank you for everything today.”

  “I think that we’re even.” She glanced toward the watching nurse and then kissed me softly. “Good night. See you in the morning.”

  “Good night.” As I pushed towards the door, I heard the VW roar out of the drive.

  Miss Adams held the door open for me. “Scott, boy, you are a mess.”

  “Yes, ma’am, and how are you?”

  “And I suppose that that wasn’t your cousin either?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  The next morning, Suzie and I went to Mass in the hospital chapel. She asked me if I was Catholic or just liked guilt. I said I was Catholic and asked her if she was or was just keeping me company. The priest gave an interesting sermon about how when Jesus came from heaven and took a human body, He became disabled. The priest explained that a disability meant not being able to do what you were once able to do. Therefore, Christ becoming man meant that He suffered the frustrations of not being able to use His divine abilities. I listened; maybe God did understand what I was going through.

  We had coffee from the vending machines. Suzie said she had to start driving back because she had to work that night. I pushed out to her car with her. I pulled her onto my lap; it was beginning to feel like a very normal position for us. “When can you come back?” I needed to know.

  “In a couple of weeks. Next weekend, I want Cathy to come down so that you can have that talk with her, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I spent the rest of the morning polishing my new cowboy boots, reading the paper, and writing a letter to my mother. Then, I thought it was time to get beaten at checkers by Ben. I rolled to the other side of the ward. Ben was sitting up in his wheelchair. I dragged a table up next to him where he could see the board. I set the board up and then Ben would tell me what to move. We were into the game when he suddenly looked at me and he must have just realized that I wasn’t wearing hospital clothes. “Where’d you get them new duds?”

  “A friend of mine took me out of here shopping yesterday. It was a disaster. I flipped the chair and fell out. Tore my hand up, got treated l
ike crap. I tell you, after yesterday, I had real doubts about whether I got what it takes to survive outside of this hospital.”

  “Are you crazy?” said Ben, sounding annoyed. “You must be crazy! If I had your arms, I’d lift outta that bed and push me outta this dump and down to the Richmond stadium. I’d get a big beer and a chicken-fried steak with hot sauce all o’er it. I would watch a ball game.”

  “You want to watch a game? The Orioles are playing a spring training game.” I interrupted Harvey’s son and asked him to push Ben to the dayroom. We sat watching the television in silence. The game got to the top of the ninth and it was a foregone conclusion who was going to win. I had a question I needed to ask Ben.

  “How do you keep from getting, like…” The word I was going to use did not convey my meaning but I could not come up with another. “…Down?”

  “What makes you think I don’t get down?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Every time I come in, you always have a smile—except when you have your teeth out—and you know more funny stories and jokes than anybody I ever met.”

  He finished watching the game and then he turned and looked out the window for a while. I thought he was ignoring my question, but he turned back to me. “Everybody at sometime has to fight their way out of despair. Maybe it is being crippled or losing someone you love. We all do what is easiest for us. You can either smile or be bitter, you do what comes easiest, you don’t plan it. To me, it would take too much energy to be bitter or blue.” Then, it was my turn to sit and think. What would be easiest for me?

  Ben interrupted my thoughts. “Do you believe in God, Jake?”

  “Yeah, but I sure as hell wish I knew what He has in mind for me.”

  “It helps to know, whether you get any help from anyone else or not, you are not going through this alone.”

  I remembered the priest’s words. I thought that if anyone had a right to be bitter it was Ben, yet he just kept plugging along. Maybe he was getting help from God. I asked one of the visitors to push Ben back to his bed. I stopped at the foot of his bed for a second. “You know, Ben, that little trophy is right. You are a great coach.”

  As I rolled back to my bed, I made plans to get the paperwork started to get my car. When I got that car, I’d get Ben to the stadium for a ball game. Monday morning brought a fresh determination to challenge the hospital. When they brought the gurney to take me to the showers, I asked for a wheelchair. It was sort of a clunker chair they used just for showers. I think the bearings were rusted; it felt like pushing a brick. Once I was wet, soapy, and slippery, my butt kept sliding forward in the seat. I had to hook my arms over the chair handles and slide myself backward. My life was becoming one long checklist of things to master in order to get out of this place.

  I was still having trouble getting dressed by myself. The elastic support hose that they gave me to prevent my feet from swelling were so tight that even the aides had trouble getting them on. I also had trouble fastening the straps to the leg bag around my leg and hooking the catheter to it. I was able to get my shirt and pants on, but it took both hands, a lot of grumbling, and many attempts to button the buttons and pull up the zipper.

  That morning, as every morning, they brought me a little paper cup of pills. The nurse handed them to me. I looked in. Eight pills.

  “Can you tell me what these are?” I asked.

  “They’re the same thing you’ve been getting since you got here.”

  “I know that, but nobody told me what they are for.”

  She picked up a small pill. “This is valium.”

  “Valium, how?”

  “Five milligrams.”

  “Why do I need valium?”

  “It’s to control muscle spasms.”

  “But I’ve hardly had any spasms since I got here and the ones I have had help tone my muscles.”

  “They give it to everybody as a precaution.”

  “Well, they could take everyone’s appendix out as a precaution.”

  “The doctors write the prescriptions, I just deliver it.” She was starting to lose patience.

  “Doesn’t this stuff cause depression and isn’t it addictive?”

  “Look, if you don’t want to take it, don’t. I’ll just mark ‘medication refused.’”

  “Then I refuse that pill.” The rest of the pills turned out to be vitamins, something to make my urine acid, a stool softener, and a laxative. The breakfast of sprinters, I thought. “Look, I really don’t like pills. How about I take the vitamins and then I’ll eat some prunes and cranberry juice for breakfast?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  After breakfast, (“No grits, thanks”) I pushed down to physical therapy, trying to think of a way to convince Flo to let me show the new trick I learned over the weekend. I was in luck; there was a bunch of student therapists. Flo was running from one to the other, watching them. All I had to do was get her to watch something besides me until I was ready. Ben was by the door. I went to him. “Ben, when Flo starts working on you, can you get her talking?”

  “Get her talking! I’d like to see how to get her to shut up.”

  Ben was rolled in and a student started raising his arms back over his head to stretch the shoulder and back muscles. “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” said Ben. I never asked him if stretching his muscles actually hurt or if Ben was anticipating the possibility. I went and slid out of my chair onto one of the platforms that had exercise mats on them. The height of the platforms was the same as the seat of the wheelchair.

  A student with bright red hair and lots of freckles came over with Flo. Flo instructed the student, “Just start with stretching the legs and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  I lay on my back and the student took my leg and put my heel on her shoulder and straightened my knee. She brought my leg up over my body and then out to the side and then in and repeated this ten times. Then, she did my other leg. Flo stopped back and watched as she took my fingers and rolled them into a fist and flexed my wrist forward.

  When Flo walked back to Ben, he looked at me and I nodded. Ben asked her, “Flo, what kind of hot dates did you have over the weekend?” Flo was hysterically funny. She told the most outrageous stories about the men she had been out with. He might have been a red-necked truck driver, and she would tell how they got it on while she was sitting on the steering wheel of his Peterbilt as they were going 70 miles per hour. Or maybe she had been with Richard Nixon with her explanation of why they call it the Blue Room at the White House. Of course, the more the crowd laughs, the more she goes on. The really strange thing was that she was so convincing that there was always a suspicion that she might be telling the truth.

  Once she was distracted, I told the student that I wanted to stretch my back. I rolled over onto my stomach and pushed up on my arms. While I was stretching there, I looked at the freckles all over the student’s and arms and legs. I thought to myself that I could never remember seeing a centerfold of a naked woman with freckles all over her body. I wonder if there was some sort of prejudice to photographing them. I checked on Flo. The whole therapy session was in an uproar, except for some students who were blushing and looking at each other with questioning glances. Flo was telling how she had been locked in a freezer all weekend with her butcher and his knockwurst. I pushed back up onto my knees. The student put her hand on my hip to steady me, but she did not know it was not part of my normal routine. Flo started to pull her skirt up in the back to show where she got freezer burn, but changed her mind when she told them it was too painful to wear panties.

  “Can you please put the stool up on the mat?” I asked the student. In another minute, I was kneeling up.

  When Flo got around to checking on the students, she looked at me and frowned immediately. Then, she snapped at the student, “What is he doing up there?”

  “Oh, come on Flo, you know it was my doing,” I said gruffly to get her focus away from the student.

  “You know you’re not ready to do that yet.” She
was gritting her teeth with anger.

  “Flo, gimme a break. Look at me! I am doing it! Not only that, I did it this weekend. I stayed up for a whole hour on Saturday and Sunday.” (So I lied a little.) “If I think I can do something new, why not let me try it? Everybody doesn’t have to go through this place at the same crawl.”

  She looked around and directed the student to go start with another patient. “Suppose you had fallen and hurt yourself?” She sounded concerned.

  “Then all the doctors would have said that I’m an idiot for rushing things.”

  “Yeah, but I’m the one who will lose her job.” She sat on the mat beside me. She put her hand over mine. “Look, I have a seven-year-old mongoloid son at home whose old man hasn’t been back since he first saw him. I can’t afford to lose this job.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want to get anybody in trouble. I just want to get well and get the hell out of this place so I can start college in a couple of months. The doctors want me to wait for nothing.” I felt bad that I could have gotten her in trouble. “I won’t try new stuff if you’re not around. On the other hand, maybe you’d like me to try new stuff when you’re on a coffee break.” She smiled and shook her head. “You gotta let me move on. I’m getting bored with the same old stuff.”

  She turned away and looked down thoughtfully. “Are you okay up there?” she asked.

  “Yeah, thanks.” She motioned for the red-haired student to come back. Flo walked to another student.

  I looked at the freckled face beside me. “If you play your cards right, you can look forward to this excitement every day.” That student never worked with me after that, but Flo was friendlier from then on and took more of an interest in how I was doing.