Purple Heart

by Patricia McCormick

  The kids sorted themselves into two teams and began tearing around the lot. One kid—a barefoot boy in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt—darted in and out, then scored a goal, placing his shot between an empty Gatorade bottle and a rock that served as goalposts. Then he ran away from the net, his arms outstretched.

  The boy slowed down, then drifted out of the heat into the shade under Matt’s window. He bent over, caught his breath, and then a moment later stepped out into the sunshine to return to the field.

  Matt watched, but in his mind, he saw Ali. Ali stepping out from the shade of a doorway and into bright light. The image made his mouth go dry.

  LATER, MATT DECIDED TO SEE IF HE COULD WALK A LITTLE bit. The sooner he could get better, the sooner he’d be back with the guys.

  He used his arms to push himself off the bed, and he took a few shaky steps. Then his knees wobbled and he felt himself sinking. He leaned back against the bed.

  “Easy there, cowboy.” It was the pretty black nurse who’d taken his blood pressure.

  Matt grabbed the back of his hospital gown to make sure it was tied. Then he took another timid step forward. He teetered there a moment, then his right leg gave out and he had to grab the handrails on the bed to keep from falling down.

  “I think maybe that’s enough for today,” she said, turning him back toward the bed with a strength that surprised him.

  Her breasts were practically at eye level as she helped him into bed and he turned his face sideways so she wouldn’t think he was taking advantage of the situation. She smelled good, like baby powder.

  “Thanks,” he said after he was back in bed. “Thanks, Nurse McCrae.” Her name tag had also been right at eye level.

  She left, then came back a minute later carrying a gray army T-shirt, a pair of black gym shorts, and some rubber flip-flops. “Here,” she said. “In case you want to go for another walk.”

  “SO WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?”

  Matt had attempted a second walk. This time, he made it as far as two cots away, where a beefy soldier with broad cheeks, jet-black hair cut in a flattop, and dark, almost crimson skin was scribbling rapidly in a notebook. He hardly glanced up from his writing when Matt stopped at the foot of his bed to rest a moment. Matt stood there, too winded to answer.

  “You got any Percocet?” the guy said.

  Percocet. Matt didn’t know what that was. Or he had known, a long time ago, but couldn’t remember.

  “Percs, Oxy. Whatever,” the guy said. “Bennies, even. I’ll give you five bucks. Or three packs of Marlboros.”

  Matt understood that it was his turn to say something, but he didn’t know how to answer. “I don’t have those things,” he said finally. He was embarrassed at the way he sounded: stilted, almost babyish. The other soldier knotted his thick, dark eyebrows, then went back to writing in his notebook.

  Matt considered walking to his bed, but it seemed very far away. He cleared his throat and looked at the other soldier; he was powerfully built, tall—a good foot taller than Matt—and several years older, too.

  “What happened to you?” Matt said. “Why are you here?”

  The guy looked up, assessing Matt. “Bad case of CFU.”

  “CFU?”

  “Completely fucked up.”

  Matt nodded as if he understood. The other guy looked him over head to toe, seemed to make a decision about him, then stuck out his hand. “Francis.”

  Matt nodded again, not quite sure what to do next.

  “How ’bout you?” Francis said. “You got a name?”

  “Duffy,” he said. “Matt.”

  Francis closed his notebook partway, keeping his finger inside at the page where he’d been writing, and gestured for Matt to sit down. Behind him, on his pillow, was a stuffed animal—a tattered Miss Piggy doll. Francis pushed Miss Piggy aside to make room. “It’s my daughter’s,” he said. “She’s five.”

  Matt eased himself onto the edge of the bed, surprised by how much a relief it was to sit down. Francis was wearing a gray army T-shirt and black basketball shorts just like the ones Nurse McCrae had given Matt. There didn’t seem to be a scratch anywhere on him.

  “Yup,” Francis said. “Absolutely nothing wrong with me.”

  Matt didn’t know what to say.

  Francis tapped his temple with his finger. “Head case,” he said.

  Matt felt himself pull back ever so slightly.

  If Francis noticed, he didn’t let on. “So what brings you here, Duffy Matt?”

  Matt frowned. He couldn’t remember the name of the thing that happened to his brain. It was three initials. “My brain got shook up,” he said finally.

  Francis nodded. “IED?”

  Matt shook his head. It wasn’t an IED. He knew what that was: an improvised explosive device. A roadside bomb.

  Sergeant Benson, their first squad leader, had been killed by an IED. Tore his left leg off. While the rest of the squad covered the body with a blue plastic tarp, Justin had taken off on his own. They were always supposed to travel in pairs and it was standard operating procedure to stick together after an attack, to set up a defensive position in case there was a second attack. But Justin had stormed off to a nearby tea shop to ask questions. He came back, pushing an old man in front of him, his M16 pressed into the man’s back. “I found this on him,” Justin had said, tossing a cell phone into the dirt.

  The insurgents often used cell-phone signals to detonate bombs, but the old man didn’t have the hard, defiant look of an enemy fighter. He was crying and plucking at his beard; Matt could see he’d wet his pants.

  The old man fell to his knees and started kissing Justin’s boots. As Justin stared at the man huddled at his feet, his expression changed slowly from disbelief to disgust. Justin was about to kick the man, Matt realized.

  Without thinking, Matt had thrown himself between Justin and the old man, taking Justin to the ground in a flying tackle. The two of them wrestled around in the dirt, throwing furious, clumsy punches at each other until, finally, Matt had him pinned. “I know you loved Benson,” Matt said. “And I know you’re pissed. But this isn’t the time to do something stupid.”

  That night the squad had had to sleep on the floor of an Iraqi home, huddled together to stay warm. Matt woke up in the middle of the night to find Justin covering him with a thin blanket he must have found somewhere in the house. Then Justin lay down next to him, cradling his rifle in his arms, and closed his eyes. They never said a word about what had happened that day, but after that they had become inseparable.

  “Kid!” Francis snapped his fingers in front of Matt’s eyes. “Was it an IED?”

  Matt shook his head. “It was something else,” he said. He closed his eyes for a second, concentrating hard. He pictured Justin sitting next to his hospital bed. “I was on the business end of an RPG,” he said finally.

  Francis whistled. “You in pain?”

  Matt shook his head. A dull ache pulsed at the base of his skull. “Some,” he said.

  Francis reached under his pillow and pulled out a plastic bottle of pills. “I’m out of codeine,” he said. “But I got plenty of these.” It was Ripped Fuel, a capsule a lot of the guys took before they went out on all-night patrols. It had something in it called ephedra, which Justin said had more caffeine than a hundred packs of Nescafé crystals. But Matt didn’t like it; it made him jumpy.

  “No thanks,” he said.

  Francis scanned the ward. Only a few beds were occupied. Down at one end, two guys were playing poker, using cigarettes for chips. Across the aisle, one guy was showing his tattoo to the guy in the next bed. Francis downed a couple of capsules without water, then turned to Matt.

  “You keeping a journal?” he said. He tapped the black notebook in his hand but didn’t wait for Matt to answer. “Everything goes in here. Every order I got, every raid I went on.”

  “How come?”

  “They’re going to question you,” he said. “Everybody here gets interviewed. About, yo
u know, what happened to them.”

  Matt frowned. “I don’t know what happened to me.”

  “Well, you’re gonna want to figure that out,” Francis said.

  Then the doors at the end of the room swung open and a pair of MPs came striding in. The ward fell silent.

  There was a lot to be afraid of in Iraq: roadside bombs, snipers, mortar fire. But seeing a pair of military police coming toward you was just about the worst. It meant someone was in trouble with the brass. Big trouble. “I’d rather have a bunch of hajis shooting my ass off than deal with those assholes,” Justin once said. “Those guys will make your life a living hell.”

  Matt averted his eyes as the two MPs advanced, but Francis shoved his notebook under his pillow and got out of bed.

  “Sorry, brother,” Francis said, turning toward Matt. “Looks like I have a date.”

  A STRANGE SOUND WOKE MATT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. At first, he thought it was the faint mewling of an alley cat. There were lots of strays in Baghdad, cats and dogs. His squad had adopted a tiny gray kitten they’d found nosing through the garbage during their first week in country. Itchy, they named him. The first time a mortar hit the compound, the soldiers had practically jumped out of their socks. Itchy didn’t even blink. Only a few weeks old, he was already a veteran.

  But as Matt listened more closely, he understood that the sound wasn’t coming from outside. And it wasn’t a kitten. It was a man, several beds away, weeping softly.

  “WHAT DAY IS IT?”

  Matt shrugged. “The doctor asked me that yesterday,” he said. He was in a tiny office, sitting across the table from the cute young female officer who’d brought the satellite phone to him the other day. Her name was Meaghan, Meaghan Finnerty, and she had reddish-blond hair that she kept tucking behind her ears, ears that were small and pink. They reminded Matt of seashells.

  The sign on her door—written in Magic Marker above an indecipherable Arabic word—said Evaluations.

  “Do you know what month it is?” she said.

  Matt didn’t answer.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “This isn’t a test. Your answers are confidential.”

  Matt sighed. September was Caroline’s birthday, and he remembered Sergeant McNally giving him leave to go to the rear operating base to call her with his free USO calling card. It had been three in the morning her time, so Caroline was asleep. She said there’d been a fight at the homecoming game. That had been only a little while ago, so he took a guess. “October?”

  Meaghan Finnerty didn’t let on if this was right or wrong. “How about the day of the week?”

  Matt was pretty sure he’d been in the hospital for a day and a half, maybe two; he counted backward from when Dr. Kwong had said he’d been there for twenty-four hours and tried to remember how many times the orderlies had brought around the meal carts. That added up to two days, give or take, but he still had no idea what days.

  He shrugged.

  “Can you tell me the names of your squad members?” she said.

  “Justin—he’s my boy,” Matt said. “Wolf—his real name is Hugh, but we call him that because of how he can howl. He has a wolf sticker on the back of his helmet. His mom sent us Silly String.”

  She nodded, her expression unreadable.

  Matt went on, anxious to show her how much he could remember. “Sergeant McNally. He’s from Pittsburgh. He’s a…you know, when you stand on a ladder…” He kneaded his brow with the tips of his fingers. His head was throbbing and he couldn’t think of the word. He looked at Meaghan Finnerty for help.

  “Does he use a hammer or a paintbrush?” she asked.

  “A hammer, ma’am. He makes things. Like shelves.” The word was just out of reach.

  “Is he a carpenter?”

  “Yes, ma’am. A carpenter. That’s it.” He felt like a fool.

  Meaghan Finnerty reached for a stack of what looked like playing cards. She held one up and asked him to tell her what it was.

  “A shoe,” he said in a sullen tone.

  She held up another card.

  It was the thing you wear when it rains. Matt bit his lip and tried to think of the word. Then he stood up abruptly, scattering Meaghan Finnerty’s stack of cards all over the floor. He wasn’t going to play this stupid, kindergarten game anymore.

  “I’m not an idiot, you know.” He waited for her to dress him down or kick him out of her office.

  “I know you’re not,” she said simply.

  “Then what’s the matter with me?” He slumped back down in the chair, weak suddenly from his outburst, his head pounding.

  “A lot of people with TBI have trouble finding or remembering words. And they often do what you did: use a complicated definition for a common item,” she said. “It’s a way of covering up for a lack of understanding or an inability to think of a word.”

  “Is that why I just acted like such an asshole?” He caught himself. “Ma’am. Excuse me, ma’am.”

  But Meaghan Finnerty smiled ever so slightly. “That’s a good sign.”

  “Acting like a…jerk?”

  She shook her head and stray pieces of her hair came untucked from behind her ears. “Calling yourself one.”

  “I don’t get it,” Matt said.

  “People with traumatic brain injury often have trouble with social situations; they can’t seem to interpret the actions or feelings of others,” she said. “At least you knew you were acting like an asshole.”

  This time, Matt smiled.

  “Smiling. That’s a good sign, too,” she said. “A lot of people have difficulty understanding jokes or sarcasm or abstract expressions.”

  Matt swallowed. “Can you, you know, can you help me?” He couldn’t believe it; he was near tears again. He needed to remember what happened in that alley. Someone was going to question him any day and all he knew was what Justin had told him. And he could hardly remember that. Worse, bits and pieces were coming back to him, things that made no sense.

  “We’ll do what we can here.”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “If it turns out you need extensive help, they’ll send you to Germany.”

  Iraq had felt terrifyingly strange when he’d first arrived; after only a few months, it was the only place he could imagine being. Now it was the idea of going to Germany—of leaving his buddies—that seemed terrifying.

  “We’ll know in another day or two,” she said. “I’ll evaluate you again and see if we can get you back out in the field.”

  Matt stared at her, his brow furrowed. He pictured himself standing in a meadow.

  “We don’t want you out in the field unless you’re able to quickly process information, respond to orders, that sort of thing.”

  He nodded slowly, tentatively. It dawned on him: “Out in the field” was one of those abstract expressions she was talking about.

  “But you have to be prepared…” she was saying. “You may have trouble concentrating. Especially when it comes to integrating new or complex pieces of information.”

  Matt knelt down, gathered up the picture cards on the floor, and handed them to her.

  “Raincoat,” he said as he turned to leave.

  Meaghan Finnerty frowned.

  “That last picture you showed me. It was a raincoat.”

  THE NURSE WITH THE FUZZY PIGTAILS CAME TO HIS BED THE first thing the next morning, lugging a dusty green duffel bag. “Your buddy dropped this off,” she said, setting it on the bed. “Private Kane.”

  “Justin?” Matt said. “Is he here?”

  She shook her head. “He said you might want this stuff,” she said. Then one of the other nurses called out for her and she walked away, her white shoes squeaking with efficiency as she crossed the room.

  Duct-taped to the bag was a note from Justin.

  Dude,

  You are still the baddest, cold-hard killer around—even if you are wearing a little blue hospital gown that shows your bare white ass. Good luck
with the sex change operation.

  Party on,

  J

  P.S. My dad can finally stop harping. Looks like I’m going to get a medal for saving that nubile white ass of yours.

  P.P.S. Charlene says you can borrow her nail polish anytime.

  JUSTIN’S DAD WAS A VIETNAM VET; HE’D GOTTEN A BUNCH OF medals, including a Bronze Star with a V for valor. He was gung ho about the war, sending Justin letters saying how he’d better kill some hajis and bring home a medal. Justin didn’t answer his letters; he said he wasn’t going to write back until he had something to say that would shut his dad up. Matt smiled at the word nubile. An old word of the week.

  And Charlene, who was only about five feet three but could bench-press more weight than half the guys in their battalion, was the biggest hard-ass in the group. “I’m in combat just as much as you guys are,” she’d said, holding out a quarter-size piece of shrapnel she wore on a cord around her neck. “Souvenir of a firefight from March.” The guys had given her merciless shit when she’d pulled a bottle of nail polish out of her duffel—until she showed them how to use it to repair a leak in the tube of her gas mask.

  Matt tugged on the drawstring of his duffel bag. Stuffed inside were a couple pairs of clean underwear, a can of foot powder, his DVD player, along with the sixth season of South Park, his yearbook, a can of Pringles, and a packet of Skoal. At the bottom were his letters from Caroline folded inside a Ziploc bag, along with the picture he’d kept taped inside his helmet. He’d only been in the hospital for, what? forty-eight hours?, but the things in the duffel bag looked like souvenirs from another life, like the baby pictures and old report cards his mom kept in a scrapbook—especially the picture of Caroline.

  It was a photo of her in her cheerleading uniform. She was looking off into the distance, at something that was happening on the football field, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. He had another picture of her—a photo of the two of them at the prom, standing under an arch covered in plastic flowers—but he liked this one best because she hadn’t known her picture was being taken. She was just standing there, in front of everyone in the bleachers, unaware of how little-girlish she looked, twirling her hair around her finger, concentrating, trying to understand what had just happened on the field.