by Joe Cassilly
I started up the hall. “Can you wait down there until we get this around the corner?” one of them asked me. They brought the bed down the hall until they were beside me and turning the corner. It was then that I realized that there was a body in the bed covered with a sheet. A shudder shook my shoulders and rose to my head. A small gold trophy lay on the bed. My throat tightened and then a sound burst from my mouth with the tears from my eyes. I watched the orderlies moving the bed down the long hall as a bleary, tear-drenched image; they grew smaller until they turned the corner. The hand on my shoulder startled me. A soft voice, full of its own emotions, said, “Come on, Scott, boy, you don’t want to be bawlin’ out here in the hallway.” I tried to push, but my hands were cold and numb. Miss Adams pushed me to my bed. She handed me some tissues. After I had dried my eyes, I could see that she had been crying also.
“What happened?” I tried to ask, but my voice came out as a hoarse squeak.
She sat on the bed and took my hand. “His heart just stopped.” She sat there holding my hand for about fifteen minutes. She walked out of the ward.
I sniffed and wiped my eyes and nose with the back of my hand. “Ben, you went and left me behind.”
25
A Mother and Child
A Good Friday service was held in the chapel that evening. I had spent most of the day there. I sat and stared. I did not hear the priest’s voice distinctly. I was thinking about all that happened in the past year. Maybe each person is only born with a certain supply of tears and when those are cried, you feel emptiness or loss, but you could find no expression or release. Since I had been hurt in October, I had cried a lifetime of tears. The service ended and everyone filed out past me. It grew quiet and the priest had shut out the lights before he sensed I was there. “Are you waiting to see me?”
“No, Father. Goodnight.” I pushed through long, empty, eerie halls. I had the idea that Ben was walking beside me, his spirit as unable to leave this place as I was. On the ward, out of twenty patients, only five had been unable to leave, three at the end, me in the middle, and one guy by the door. I pushed to the other side passed the nurses’ station. The bed had been rolled back into place. There were clean sheets stretched tightly over the empty mattress. The aide was pushing a bucket down the floor, emptying urine into it. He told me that he would be in to help me get undressed when he was finished. The nurse was scratching on a clipboard a few beds away. The patients were in bed, most asleep. I felt a pressure behind my eyes and had to get out of there.
It was a long, sleepless night, but finally Saturday came. I had to get out of that ward. The day was warming up, so I went to exercise outside. I pushed all the way around to the front of the hospital, every push as hard as I could make it. I stopped every fifty yards to catch my breath and put my head between my knees. The sun was shining through my short hair and burning the top of my head. I started back and worried that I had overdone it. Suddenly, I saw bright colored clouds and felt very light headed. I leaned to the side just in time to throw up. I was disoriented. I did not hear anything but, suddenly, there was a hand on my shoulder and a woman’s voice sounded far off and indistinct. She came in front of me, grabbed my shoulders, and pushed me up. She put her hand on my forehead.
“You’re flushed and very hot.” She pushed me into the shade of a tall pine tree and then put my head back between my knees. I recognized her as a nurse from one of the other spinal cord injury wards. She was driving home and had stopped. She pulled my sweatshirt off over my head. The breeze revived me. “Nobody told you about overheating, did they?” I shook my head. She went to her car and came back with a handful of little envelopes, which she tore open and took out alcohol wipes. She wiped my face and the back of my neck. “A lot of you paras and quads don’t sweat so you can’t regulate your body temperature. Once you start getting warm, you just keep getting warmer, but you don’t notice it. If you’re not careful, you could pass out; have a heat stroke.”
I pulled my tongue off the roof off my mouth. “Thanks.”
“Let me push you back to your ward.”
“Aren’t you driving home?”
“Yeah, I’ll come back for the car.”
“Just help me up to that door and I’ll push across the inside of the hospital.”
“That’s still an awful long way.”
She started pushing the chair. “Something to think about: the next time you are outside on a hot day, carry a wet towel in a plastic bag and you can wipe down with it. The moisture will act like sweat to cool you off.” We reached the door and she held it open for me to push through. “You sure you can make it from here? I don’t feel right about leaving you.”
“I’ll be okay.” I began pushing down the hall. I heard the door close and glanced back. She was walking back to her car. I went to a water fountain and took a long drink. Then, I splashed water into my face, over my head, and down my arms and chest. I did the same thing at every water fountain until I reached my ward. Then, I slept.
I bought a Sunday paper after church and went back to the ward to wait. I was not sure she was coming, but I wanted to be there if she did. I started with the comics, then the news, the travel section, and was thinking of starting the crossword. Between each section of the paper, I pushed to the door and looked into the parking lot. I filled in a few answers in ballpoint pen, read something more, and pushed to the door.
Around eleven o’clock, there were voices in the hall. I leaned forward and looked. An aide walked in and pointed to me. My mother walked into the room and down the aisle. I pushed into the center of the aisle. A broad smile lit up her face when she saw me. Her pace quickened and when she reached me, she knelt and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “Jake, you look great, so much different than the last time, so much different than I expected.” I held her hand and put it up by my cheek. I felt the softness of the white silk sleeve and recognized the scent of lilies of the valley. For a second, I remembered a year before, standing in the front hall of the big house, wearing my dress uniform, giving her a goodbye hug, standing on useful legs.
“Look what I brought you,” she said, holding up a small Easter basket.
“Thanks.” My happiness was touched with embarrassment as I realized the other guys on the ward were watching, but I could not help but take inventory: one chocolate rabbit, two colored eggs, a can of peanuts, and jelly beans, all green ones. As I dug into the artificial grass to see what I may be missing, I realized that she had not come alone. Behind her stood a woman in a bright yellow dress. She looked familiar, but I didn’t know why.
My mother looked at her. “You remember Aunt Ann. Doesn’t she look wonderful?” Ann was Mom’s younger sister, thirty years old. I had not seen her since my high school graduation, but she must have weighed another two hundred pounds more then than she did today.
Ann stepped forward and hugged me. “How are you doing, Jake?”
“Not bad for a cripple.” My mother frowned; she did not like me to use that word about myself. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you, Ann.”
“Thanks, that’s the nicest compliment you could give me.” The women sat on my bed and looked around the ward. Their noses wrinkled at the odors of urine and antiseptic and cleansers. The smells were only obvious to those whose senses were not dead to them. The silence went on too long. “Come on, let me give you the twenty-five cent tour.” They followed me from the ward and down to the weight room. I rolled to the stand-up frame. I told them how to hook the strap behind me. They stood on either side of me and grabbed my belt and then helped to boost me up. I told them what I had been doing for the last four months, but I knew from my mom’s remarks that she already knew. “How do you know things?
She looked like she had let cat out of the bag. “Suzie—I mean, Lt. Staunton—told me. She calls after she stops to visit you to tell me how you are doing.” I remembered Suzie asking if I called home. I wondered how much they talked and if Suzie had anything to do with this visit. Ann left
to find a bathroom.
“She looks gorgeous, doesn’t she?” Mom beamed.
“Yeah, Mom, I said she looked good.”
“Her weight was such a problem. She had almost become a hermit. She was so ashamed of how heavy she was. She never went out. Then, we both started walking and I got her to stick with a diet. And she started jogging and she’s lost over a hundred pounds. I needed someone to help me care for your father and she agreed to move in with us. Doesn’t she just look wonderful?”
It was at least the third time she commented on how well Ann looked. I knew we were trying to get to another topic and I thought I knew what it was. “I guess Dad’s not up to riding down here, huh?”
Her eyes darted down. She stepped closer and took hold of my arm. “Jake, I tried my best to take care of him, but even with Ann to help, it was very difficult. I think he was giving up. He wouldn’t do anything for himself, not exercise or try to help.” I kept trying to look her in the eye to get a hint of where this conversation was going but she was averting her face. “Jake, I didn’t want to do it but it just didn’t seem that there was an alternative. Two weeks ago, I got him admitted to the VA hospital in Philadelphia.” I turned my head sharply away so that she could not see the wretched smile that exploded across my face. She thought I was angry and began to apologize. I wiped all expression from my face and looked back.
“It’s okay, Mom. It’s just the irony of things. I understand.” In the mirror in front of me, I saw the door open and Ann entered the room. I wondered if her absence had been pre-arranged.
Mom looked at her watch. “It’s noon. What time do they bring lunch?”
“They don’t bring lunch. I have to catch it, kill it, and burn it all by myself. I was hoping that if you had room in the car for the wheelchair, we could go out for lunch.”
“Can you leave the hospital?” Mom’s voice was excited and pleased.
“Every chance I get.” I realized that Suzie had not told her everything. Mom and Ann did not have any problem getting the chair into the car and I thought maybe they had practiced with my father. While we sat in the restaurant, I told them about my plans to go to college. “When did the doctors say you would be ready to leave?”
“They haven’t said anything.”
“Well, maybe you should wait until they think you are ready.” I shook my head no. “Mom, I don’t want to waste a year of my life in there. I have to get on with life. I know I can do it if I have a chance.”
“Why don’t you come home for a week or so and see how it works,” said Ann looking from me to my mother. It was the first thing that she had said in two hours, but it brought the conversation to a dead stop. Suddenly, all I could see were problems, hooking catheters to drainage bags, emptying containers of urine, and getting around a big old house.
“Well,” I said, pausing…”Where could I sleep? How could I even get in?”
“Your mother had the house fixed up for your father. She put a ramp up to the porch, turned the sun porch into a downstairs bedroom, and made the powder room into a full bath.” Turning to her sister, Ann asked, “What do you think?” I thought my mother was starting to look a little pale; maybe she was remembering all of the problems she had with my father.
“I’d need to hire an aide,” I said, “and get some supplies. That might take a month or so.”
Ann detected that my determination had just stumbled. “Jake.” She put her hand over mine and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I took care of your father and he couldn’t do as much for himself as you do. If you want a chance to see what you can do, take this one.”
I licked my lips. “I’ll call and we’ll set it up.” The drive back to the hospital was quiet. Ann went to the trunk to lift the chair from the car. “Mom, if you don’t want me to come yet, I’ll wait.”
“Jake, do you know what today is?” I knew but I let her go on. “You said goodbye to me a year ago—to go to war. I was scared that you’d never come back. I never dreamed that you’d come back like this, that I’d see you come through the front door like this. Why, Jake, why did this have to happen?”
“Don’t ask me, Mom, I don’t know.” I stopped. Did she have another question? I went on. “Can I come home?”
“Whenever.”
That evening, I laid my book aside and thanked my father for having the house made wheelchair accessible.
26
To Look Normal
On Monday, everyone who had been away for the holiday learned of Ben’s death. Some patients told stories about Ben, some asked who he was. Joe White cursed the hospital staff for letting Ben die. Flo sat on the edge of a mat, her red eyes staring out of the window. I could not help thinking that who Ben was had separated from his crippled body. I got on a mat and laid back but I did not want to work out. A student sat beside me and took my hand and stretched and rolled my fingers.
I wondered what would happen to Ben’s body and about dying surrounded by strangers and no family. My mind wandered away.
One Saturday, my team returned from a mission. The sun was low as the chopper touched the landing strip. A jeep with a trailer and a truck sat waiting to take us to the company area. The debriefing was short. We hadn’t found anything but leeches, skin rash, and two-inch bamboo thorns. It was around nine when I collapsed into bed.
The dawn’s earliest light was shining in when a loud voice entered our barrack. “Two-five, get the hell up. You got a mission”
“You’re out of your tree, you got the wrong damn team. We just came in last night,” answered another voice.
The first voice hollered back, “The old man says you’re going back out. You don’t like it, write your fucking congressman.”
I ate three breakfasts to try to replace the weight I lost in the field. I washed my 60 in a tub full of solvent, filled my boxes with clean ammo, and packed my ruck. I picked through a case of C-rations looking for the fruit cocktail and the peanut butter. Then, we rode back to the airfield. We piled back into the Huey. I grabbed my favorite spot on the left side just behind the pilot. The rotors increased in speed until the chopper lifted about a foot off the ground. Then, it moved sideways, which was forward to me since it was in the direction that I was facing. I was fascinated by the versatility of the big machine. For an instant, I regretted letting my father talk me out of going to flight school, but I let it pass.
Once up, the chopper flew due east to a fire-support base that was taking rockets every night. Our team was to go find the bad guys and put a stop to it. When we got off the chopper, the team leader and the ATL had to go to a briefing and get maps. This meant that the rest of us should find a mess hall and eat. First rule for a Ranger: eat at every opportunity because it can be days between opportunities.
We found the mess hall. The big mess sergeant said that they would not be serving for another hour or whenever the padre finished Mass. He nodded toward a priest who was setting up his altar on one of the tables. I had been out in the field every Sunday for over a month so I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to catch some grace. The rest of the team wandered off to find a PX.
The priest was in his late fifties. His white hair was cut close to his sunburned scalp. The crows feet at his eyes were deep black lines. The Mass was quick. The sermon was a short reminder to write the folks back home because it might be what they are praying for. After Mass, I helped the priest to pack his altar accessories into an aluminum foot-locker. The priest put his vestments into a small suitcase. He sighed. “I have to catch a chopper back to Long Binh before dark,” he said as he reached for his box.
“I’ll carry the footlocker for you, Father.” It felt comforting to be in his presence. As we walked toward the chopper pad, a tall, thin, bespectacled man came trotting out from between two big tents.
“Hey, Padre,” he called, “I’m glad I caught you. I got one over at the aid tent I thought you might say some prayers over.” The thin man led the way around the side of the tent to a large metal shipping cube calle
d a conex. The priest set down the suitcase and had me put down the footlocker. The thin man opened the doors. He looked in at the three bodies in the dark body bags on the floor of the conex. The priest put a black stole around his neck and took a couple of containers from the footlocker.
“What happened?” he asked in a voice that was changed and gravelly.
“We took a couple of rockets just before dawn and their bunks took a hit.” I remembered I had been sleeping just before dawn. The priest stepped in, bent over, and unzipped the three bags.
“Padre, the Catholic is on the right there,” said the thin man.
“The prayers couldn’t hurt the other two,” the priest said. The chaplain knelt, made the sign of the cross, and then glanced back. The thin man and I knelt too. The priest began praying in Latin. He anointed each body with holy oil and sprinkled them with holy water. When he stopped praying, I said, “Amen.” The priest packed his stuff back in the case and the thin man zipped up the bags. The priest sat down on a wall of sandbags and took out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out and offered one to me. I lit a match and held it out to the priest. The lines in his face seemed deeper and longer than a few minutes before. The priest sucked hard at the end of the cigarette and held the smoke inside before breathing out a long stream.
“You know,” the priest said, leaning back and closing his eyes, “their wives, parents, girlfriends…” He paused for a thought before continuing, “…whatever, will be waking up in another couple of hours in yesterday. Fixing breakfast, dressing the kids, going to church, having a picnic, mowing the grass, anything but thinking that the man they sent here is a corpse.” He rolled the butt between his fingertips and took another drag of smoke. “Then, some officer knocks on the door.” He blew out the smoke for emphasis. “Only you and I know they are dead. To die among strangers who don’t care if they see another dead body, that is a very lonely day.” He flicked the cigarette butt so that it bounced off of the conex door. “What a fucking place to die!” I had never heard a priest curse. The priest summoned all his will and pushed himself off the sandbags, grabbed his suitcase, and headed for the sound of a landing chopper. I came behind with the footlocker.
