How Can You Mend This Purple Heart (11 page)

“Dyou are a dlucky guy, Earl,” Ski said. “She eez a special woman, dyou know. Dyou should call her back.”

“Yeah, some day. Some day when I'm feeling lucky.”

A Festered Hair

“I KNOW IT'S
a couple of days from now, Ski, but we've got a Fourth of July surprise for you,” Dr. Donnolly grinned.

Ski scrunched his forehead down and peered at him.

“It's good news, Ski. Your legs are doing well enough we're going to remove the upper half of the casts. We'll take this stabilizer bar out from between your legs, too. You'll be able to bend your knees. We have to keep the rods in for now, though.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ski grinned proudly. He gave a long exhale as his entire body relaxed into the mattress.

“It's even better,” Dr. Donnolly smiled. “We're going to attach rubber heels to the bottom of both casts. Get you ready to stand up.”

Ski sat up and put his hand out. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

When they wheeled Ski back onto the ward, Miss Berry and Doc Miller were waiting to greet him. They helped the two corpsmen roll his bed back into the empty slot; Ski was riding high, grinning from ear to ear. He was sitting straight up, legs bent, his knobby knees pointing toward the ceiling; his powder-white skinny thighs, naked to the world, were proudly on display.

“You'll catch a cold like that,” Miss Berry winked, tugging at his pajama top to pull it down over his crotch a bit.

“But eet feels good on my legs,” Ski grinned, pulling the garment just slightly back over the top of his thighs.

“No modesty among this bunch,” she said.

Miss Berry grabbed Doc Miller by the arm and walked him over to the nurses' station.

“Okay, everyone, let's get this ward ready…and get this over with,” Miss Berry sighed.

It was the Friday of the Fourth of July weekend, and the big brass was coming up. Doc Miller was extra nervous, and the part of Miss Berry that wore an officer's uniform was being forced to the surface. She was openly uncomfortable as she moved down the freshly polished center aisle with a rigid focus that we had never seen in her before.

All the bed sheets were changed, the beds wiped down, clean pajamas for everyone, and all the nightstands rid of everything not government-issued. It was an informal inspection, but everyone knew the brass was expecting to be received as if royalty was passing through.

“Hey, Doc,” Earl Ray called out.

“Yeah, what is it, Earl?”

“We know the brass is coming up, but who is it?”

“These are the big guys. The admiral and his staff from Norfolk headquarters.”

“I've never seen an admeeral,” Ski said. “I don't think they are allowed in 'Nam!”

“Non-combat motherfuckers, all of 'em,” Earl Ray said.

“Just like me,” I said with a little sarcasm.

“No, not quite like you,” Earl said. “At least you went through boot camp. These guys wouldn't know a boot if it kicked 'em in the ass.”

“Ain't that some shit,” Bobby Mac hooted. “We must be real important if an admiral is coming.”

“Yeah,” Earl Ray said. “We're supposed to think they give a shit.”

Every bed in which the guy was able to sit up was cranked to a forty-five-degree angle. The shades were raised to exactly the middle of the windows, and the beds were aligned as perfectly as possible up and down and across the ward.

The nurses' station was cleared of all paperwork, and Miss Berry fidgeted in the chair, just wanting to get this over with. She had been through brass visits before, but this one was her first as the nurse-in-charge of an entire floor.

She patted the desk like a drum roll and started toward us. “I want you guys to be on your best behavior today,” she said, smiling. “These guys should only be here for a few minutes, and everything will be back to normal.”

She gave us a smile from the open doorway. “Wish me luck. I'll be back up here with them in ten minutes.”

Six of them strutted through the doors with the admiral in front. He had more gold braids and decorations than a Macy's window Christmas tree. He took about ten paces onto the ward and stood rigid, looking down to his right at Earl Ray. Earl was sitting up at a neat forty-five-degree angle, staring down at his half-left leg.

The admiral turned and faced Earl. “Where's your salute, young man?”

We weren't sure if we had heard him right.

“I said, where's your salute, young man?” he said again, moving closer to the foot of Earl's bed.

Earl Ray Higgins sat up straight, placed the fingers of his right hand above his brow, elbow straight out from his shoulder with his left arm stump jetting out from under his pajama sleeve. He snapped down a hard, sharp salute, never looking up from his stare.

It came out of me like a snake striking at prey.

“Are you shittin' me?” I blurted.

Earl Ray, Ski, and Bobby Mac—all three let out a “Holy shit!” At least that's what I heard. I was certain the rest of the ward hunkered down. The full reality of what I had just done hit me. My gut went into spontaneous combustion, and my balls shriveled like raisins.

The admiral stepped past Ski and stood cadaver-like at the foot of my bed, staring at me from under the gold, scrambled-egg bill of his cap. He turned to Miss Berry; her face had melted like wax.

“What is that you have to say?” he barked at me.

“With all due respect, sir, I think you're the one who should be saluting him,” I blurted out.

My balls were now the size of grape seeds.

“I want this man up for Captain's Mast as soon he's able,” he commanded at a volume meant to make certain the whole ward would hear it.

He raised his head slightly, burning an arrogant stare at me as if I was a bedpan, and turned away.

Ski, Earl Ray, and Bobby Mac had smiles like Cheshire cats. Roger George's eyes were the size of cotton balls.

Miss Berry floated passed the end of my bed, just shaking her head.

The admiral and his posse completed their tour, and I suppose they got a medal for it. As they passed my bed on their way out, a Lt. Commander, the lowest-ranking one of the group, lifted my clipboard and read my name out loud. I returned his smirk with a fuck-you look. He tossed the clipboard onto my bed and shuffled off the ward with Miss Berry, the admiral, and the rest of his entourage.

Before the doors had fully closed, Ward 2B erupted in ovation.

“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.