How Can You Mend This Purple Heart

by T. L. Gould

  “Holy shdit!” Ski yelled. “What deed you do, man?”

  “That was fucking unbelievable, Shoff!” Earl Ray said.

  “I can’t believe they would come in here and expect you guys to salute them. Who the hell do they think they are?”

  “Shoff, you are beaucoup dinky dau!” Bobby Mac howled. “You’re a crazy motherfucker! You got balls as big as that brass’s ribbon rack!”

  “I wouldn’t know, man. Right now I can’t find ’em.” I said, reaching down between my legs.

  “You’re all right by me,” Earl Ray said. “Non-combat motherfucker or not, I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Man, I can’t believe what you just did!” Roger shouted from across the aisle, his eyes still bulging.

  Another ovation clambered up and down the floor.

  Ski sat up in bed and gave me a salute. It felt great.

  “Thanks, Ski, but I’ve got my ass in big trouble, and it’s Miss Berry I’m worried about,” I said. “I don’t know what’s she’s going to say to me.”

  “Ain’t that some shit!” Bobby Mac said. “Beaucoup dinky dau Shoff!” He raised his right leg under the sheet and let go a big fart. “Keep talking, admiral, we’ll find you!” The laughter roared off the walls.

  “Shoff is right, you know,” Moose bellowed. “We don’t have to salute those sonsabitches! What are they going to do? Send us to ’Nam?” The laughter shifted into a series of “Damn right!”

  Miss Berry returned through the brown double doors and the ward went silent. She walked straight over to me, bent down, and whispered in my ear.

  “I will deny that I ever said this, but thank you.”

  She walked back through the brown double doors, and a festering, belligerent mood was warming up on Ward 2B.

  N P O

  ROGER GEORGE’S TWO broken femurs weren’t healing properly. If they continued the way they were, Roger’s legs would bow like a wishbone. Dr. Donnolly recommended a new surgical procedure. Some guy named Schneider had developed a method for inserting a steel rod down through the center of the femur, from hip to knee; they called it a “Schneider nail.”

  Each rod was measured precisely to the femur length, and an incision was made down the outside of the thigh where the rod would be inserted through the thigh muscle and into the broken femur. It was then pushed up through the hip bone and drawn out through an incision made in the cheek of the butt. The top and bottom fragmented bone pieces were aligned by X-ray, and the rod was drilled through the center of the femur, down to the knee joint. Roger really had no choice if he ever wanted to walk upright again.

  Roger’s first surgery was planned for a Tuesday, and the Saturday night ahead of his surgery, one of the frequent visitors to the rehab wards had dropped off a couple of bottles of orange-flavored vodka. Big Al, bartender on wheels, rolled his chair around Ward 2B as each guy took a couple swigs.

  Roger thought he would show everybody how well he could hold his liquor, despite the fact that he had just gotten a pain shot about an hour earlier. It wasn’t ten minutes after his last swallow of the syrupy liquor that his vomit came up and flooded down the inside of his body cast. He lay in it all night, and when Dr. Donnolly discovered the smell the next morning, we were all sentenced to the cast changing.

  Instead of hauling Roger upstairs to where the casts were normally sawed off and replaced, Dr. Donnolly changed it right on the ward. He removed the cast in the back room and rolled Roger and his bed up and down Ward 2B so anyone who might have been involved could get a good nostril full of the day-old vomit and the three-week-old dead skin. Big Al was nowhere to be found.

  We were warned of any continuing alcohol usage on the ward. Dr. Donnolly made a personal plea to us about the dangers of mixing vodka with morphine. No more alcohol made its way to a patient who was taking injected pain medicine. Dr. Donnolly did not include the episode in his journal or in Roger’s chart.

  It was decided to put the rods in Roger’s legs a week apart. A Schneider nail was put into my left femur two days after Roger’s first surgery.

  The surgeries went perfectly, and Roger George and I were two of the first known human beings to have steel rods in our femurs. Dr. Donnolly had done his magic, and I was now free of the traction pin and cables, and Roger was free of the turtle-shell suit. It wouldn’t be long until we had our own wheelchairs.

  “Can you put those things in my dlegs?” Ski asked Dr. Donnolly.

  “I’m sorry, Ski. No one has invented a procedure for shin bones. You need a hollow bone like the femur for this surgery.”

  It had been nearly three months since Ski had been added to our row of beds on Ward 2B. Smoking was no longer permitted inside the hospital, and time seemed to gather somewhere above us toward the ceiling. The hours, days, nights, and weekends merely floated away.

  It was just another typical day on the ward—wheelchairs spinning along the center thoroughfare, their skilled pilots moving forward with chores and errands meant only to occupy time and thought. Some were headed off the ward and down to physical therapy, others moving slowly along the rows of beds looking for someone who needed someone to talk to or someone who would listen.

  The old ladies came from the Red Cross, their wrinkled lips forever smeared with bright red lipstick, handing out paperbacks, chewing gum, candy bars, and crackers with peanut butter. They always smiled, never stayed long, and seldom said a word. They enjoyed very much what they were doing.

  Doc Miller was everywhere as usual. He moved with the speed and ease that comes only from the total knowledge of his duty and a keen, familiar instinct of all things around him. We had a new corpsman that had just arrived for his three weeks of on-the-job training.

  Welcome to your world for the next four years. If you’re really lucky, you’ll stay stateside. We told the kid he better realize how lucky he was to get assigned to Doc’s ward. He just had that helpless look you might imagine of someone who took a wrong turn into a dark alley and had no way out.

  The last thing Doc needed this week was a new guy to baby-sit. Not that he didn’t take this part of his duties seriously. He knew this kid might end up with a Marine unit in Vietnam someday.

  Doc Miller had an obligation to himself to make sure this kid learned as much as possible and learned it well. And Doc had some say as to whether or not the trainees had what it would take to join a combat unit. The better you were as a corpsman, the more likely you were to go to Vietnam. It was ironic; the farther down the graduation rank, the better the duty station. It didn’t take long for some guys to catch on.

  Ski was to take his first steps today on his rubber-heeled half-casts. He had been smiling all morning; a brand new pair of crutches was leaning against the nightstand. Doc Miller brought over a wheelchair for Ski’s first launch to an upright position.

  “Ready for this?”

  “A Madrine eez aldways ready,” Ski barked.

  “Hop in.”

  Doc Miller helped Ski slide his legs over the edge of the bed, careful to keep them from bumping against the bed frame or into each other. Ski sat looking down past his legs at the floor as if it were a bottomless pit.

  He took a deep breath and slowly eased himself closer to the edge. Doc Miller cradled the bottom of Ski’s legs under his arms, staring cat-like at the rods. Ski leaned over to grasp the far armrest of the waiting chair. His arms, atrophied from weeks of no activity, began to quiver from his weight. He made a half turn back to the bed and forced his left elbow and forearm against the mattress.

  “I’m slipping, Doc!”

  “Hold on, Ski. Let me get these up,” Doc said as he grunted and lifted the heavy plaster legs upward.

  Ski scooted his ass away from the edge of the waiting abyss as far and as fast as he could.

  “You okay, Ski?” Doc asked. “Damn, I’m sorry, Ski.”

  Ski sat resting against the raised head of the bed, sweat dripping from his nose.

  “I’m okay, Doc. Let’s try eet again.�
�

  “You sure? We can wait for another day.”

  “Let’s do eet.”

  Ski took a drink from the water pitcher, took a deep breath, and Doc Miller cradled his plaster lower legs under both arms for a second try.

  “You sure you’re ready for this?” Doc asked.

  “A Marine is aldways ready.”

  Ski sat tall in the wheelchair, almost laughing with pride, the rubber heels on the bottom of his casts rested on the floor.

  Doc Miller grabbed the crutches and handed them to Ski, smiling like someone about to become a new father.

  Ski was about to stand upright for the first time since the explosion. He couldn’t remember what it was like to be on his feet. His instincts told him it would be easy. Just grab the hand grips, thrust with your upper body, and push your legs upward. No sweat.

  He made a fist around the padded hand grips and slowly began pushing upward as Doc supported him from the front. Ski was standing for the first time since his buddy tripped the booby trap wire five months ago. He looked at Doc Miller with gleaming hazel eyes and a toothless smile.

  Suddenly, his smile collapsed, and his eyes squeezed into paper slits. His entire body began shuddering, not from his weakened physical state, but from the ground and air that he thought was thundering around him.

  The blast of the land mine went off in his brain like a blinding inferno. It thundered through his head in white-hot pain. He was spitting at the metallic, smoky taste scraping his tongue. The flashback sent piercing shrapnel ripping through his legs and teeth; his nostrils were flaring from the phantom smells of pungent gunpowder and burning dirt.

  Sweat came gushing from every pore of Ski’s body. He flung the crutches into the air. Survival instincts and the razor edge of combat had taken over.

  Doc Miller reached for him, but it was too late. Ski plummeted to the floor, crawling on his stomach and dragging his heavy plaster-covered legs under my bed. Doc raced to the cabinet to ready a hypodermic.

  “My dlegs! My dlegs! Corpsman! Corpsman! Over here! I’ve been heet!”

  The cries stabbed against my back from underneath my bed as I squirmed to reach down for Ski. He came crawling out on the other side, banging the rods against the floor and bumping his right cast into the nightstand.

  The look on his face was that of a wounded animal. His eyes were glaring, searching with fear and pure survival. He was measuring his surroundings. His nostrils were making a slurry, sucking noise, and his jaws were locked so tight you could hear his teeth mesh. He was ready to kill anything and anybody that moved.

  Then it was gone.

  Ski slid forward, lying prone on the cold, hard floor, his face pushed against the nightstand, looking confused and bewildered.

  It was only for an instant. The pain came rushing up his legs and into his consciousness like a fireball.

  “Corpsman! Corpsman!” The cries for help bounced off the nightstand and echoed like an empty silo. Ski reached for the hole in his mouth where his front teeth used to be. “Corpsman!” he choked as his fingers probed for the back of his throat.

  Earl Ray had not hesitated. He was over the rail of his bed and onto the floor and crawled under Ski’s bed before Doc had taken five steps. He had moved so quickly, he almost beat Ski out from under my bed. The two were huddled together, Earl Ray leaning against the nightstand, his fellow Marine safe in his grasp.

  Earl Ray was cradling Ski’s head with his left half-arm, assuring him everything was okay. “It’s over Ski. It’s over. They can’t get you here.”

  Ski’s lips formed the word “corpsman” again and again, but nothing came out. His breathing was hard and deep, his stomach heaving with convulsions.

  Ski’s dog tags and Star of David pendant had snapped from his neck and were coiled on the floor next to Ski. Earl Ray reached down and clutched the beaded chain in his right hand.

  “It’s over, Ski,” Earl assured him. “The bastards can’t get you here.”

  Doc was on his knees, leaning against Earl, injecting the hypodermic into Ski’s arm. It was the good stuff. Ski’s grip on Earl had relaxed, and Earl, through the pride and love of a fellow Marine, began brushing Ski’s close-cropped hair, the dog tags and Star of David clanging happily below Earl Ray’s elbow.

  I was staring down in awe and wonderment. It was a selfless act of one man taking care of another. No hesitation, no questioning, nothing in return. It was the deepest connection between two human beings I’ve ever witnessed. Earl looked up at me, and I looked back with the stone-cold reality that I would forever be an outsider.

  Doc Miller and two other corpsmen lifted Ski back into bed and Doc called down for the portable X-ray cart. He immediately began making out the report, being extra careful not to leave anything out.

  Dr. Donnolly was on the ward as soon as he had finished in OR. Doc Miller had ordered the head corpsman in radiology to get the word about Ski’s flashback and fall to Dr. Donnolly. For the large number of patients and the massive size of the U.S. Naval hospital, it was still a tight network of military efficiency that fostered immediate communications.

  “How are you doing, Ski?” Dr. Donnolly asked, leaning over Ski and touching the casts over his legs as if to feel inside.

  “Nawt too bad,” Ski responded in a sluggish voice.

  “We need to take some X-rays right away, Ski. I have to see if anything serious is going on in there,” Dr. Donnolly said, almost apologizing. “That means we need to lift your legs up a bit. You ready to let us take a look?”

  “A Marine is always ready,” Earl Ray said, sitting on the edge of his bed.

  “Damn dright,” Ski whispered, trying to smile.

  Dr. Donnolly ordered a dose of morphine. Several X-rays of both legs were snapped and hurried down for processing.

  Earl Ray lay on his side, keeping an eye on his friend and brother-in-combat.

  Ski slept restlessly over the next hour, fluctuating between the searing pain and the effective power of the drugs.

  Dr. Donnolly came through the double doors holding a brown manila envelope marked with large red letters: RADIOLOGY. He pulled the cloth curtain around Ski’s bed.

  The ten minutes seemed like an hour. Dr. Donnolly pulled the curtains open and scribbled something in the bulging clipboard and quietly left the ward.

  Ski looked over at Earl Ray and slowly toward me and back to Earl Ray.

  “A Marine eez always ready,” he said.

  Nothing was said the rest of the evening, and most of us just shoved our evening chow around the compartments of the metal food trays. Around 1800 hours, the nurse on duty came over to Ski’s bed, and the worst of our thoughts and the shock of the reality for Ski, was taped to his bed frame—a small, square piece of blue paper with the letters “NPO.”

  If you had been on Ward 2B for more than one day, you knew what it meant: Non Per Os, nothing by mouth—the first step in preparation for surgery the next day. Ski’s supper turned cold in the food cart.

  Early the next morning, Ski was readied for surgery, and he and his bed were rolled off the ward headed for OR and the amputation of the lower half of his right leg. He reached over and shook my hand. “Weesh me good luck.”

  I couldn’t say anything.

  Earl Ray was sitting in his wheelchair and rolled over to Ski as they pushed his bed past him. He whispered to Ski and shook his hand.

  The empty slot where Ski’s bed had been looked like a gigantic hole in the ground. I hadn’t realized, at least for me, how close we had become and how much I missed him being there. I prayed they would start his surgery and realize they had made a mistake.

  It was around three in the afternoon when they brought Ski back to his place between Earl Ray and me. He was still very sluggish from the surgery and was puking up green bile from the anesthesia. Doc was the first to welcome him back to the ward. He took his vitals and helped him with a drink of water. Doc put his hand on Ski’s shoulder and apologized for letting him down. “I’l
l make it up to you somehow, Ski,” he said as he slowly backed away and headed toward the green and white tiled entryway.

  Earl Ray had spent the morning repairing Ski’s dog tag chain and polishing the Star of David pendant. He slid down into his wheelchair and rolled slowly over to Ski. As he slipped the shiny metal beads over Ski’s head, he took Ski’s right hand and whispered, “Welcome to the club, my friend.”

  Incoming!

  THE SHINING BRIGHT silver spokes and chrome handles flashed like sparklers as the foot pedals spun out of control just off the floor. Big Al came out of the third spin and touched down the front wheels with the precision of a fighter pilot landing on an aircraft carrier. The chair glided forward, took a lightning left turn, and rolled to a slow stop at the nurses’ station desk.

  “Incoming! Incoming!” he announced with the volume and diction of a court bailiff as he pushed the bulging envelope onto the nurses’ station desktop. The envelope housed the paper trail of yet another young combatant, a reverse chronology of his journey from the jungle to the operating room. It was five inches of official procedure, a neat little package of all the critical details of his wounds, his surgeries, his amputations, and his chances of survival.

  Big Al idled in front of the desk and flirted with Lt. Rowland, nurse-in-charge of the 1600-to-midnight duty.

  Miss Rowland had a sure posture about her, perfectly upright with shoulders straight back and firm. Her long, gleaming hair, rolled up like thick folds of shiny black taffy, lay firmly pinned beneath a gold-braided nurse’s cap. Her crisp white uniform fit her slim body with the same tightness as her posture. She was much too beautiful to be in here, and the sullen look in her eyes was much too mature for her young, lovely face.

  Big Al would push as close as he would dare against the barrier between enlisted and officer, nurse and patient, with his flirting. Lt. Rowland would maneuver past the compliments with grace and with the same crispness of her uniform.

  “You’re too beautiful to be sitting in here all evening. You and me, Linda, we’re meant to be. Fate put us here. You believe in fate? I do. Fate took my legs. Fate’s gonna get ’em back for me. You get off at midnight, right? As fate would have it, I get off at midnight, too. So it’s a date?”