by Joe Cassilly
“We were up all night talking so I left her sleeping.”
While she fixed her coffee, she told me about the divorce—how she had suspected and was glad it was over. She told me about her plans to leave the Army in June. I liked listening to her. She had come all this way to say these things and I was flattered.
“By the way, how’s your mom? Does she get down on the weekends?”
The question ruined the beginning of the day. My visitors had quite erased the memory of the letter of the day before. I opened the drawer of my bed stand, took out the wadded ball of paper, and handed it to Suzie. She pressed it flat against the mattress and read it. Tears formed in my eyes and crept down my cheeks. I lay back in my bed and put my forearm across my eyes. I felt her fingers pulling my arm down. She had finished reading and she looked at me.
I felt the tears leave cold trails across my cheeks. “You’re the first visitors I’ve had since I’ve been here. You don’t know how lonely the last several weeks have been.”
“Oh, but I do,” she responded softly. Then she kissed me, a soft, friendly kiss that neither of us hurried to end. Finally, she moved back. “Are you still planning to go to school?”
“Yeah. That is the one thing your visit has reminded me of. No matter how bad this place sucks, I’m getting out. I don’t know how I’m gonna manage or where I’m gonna live, but this is all going to be behind me soon.”
“That’s the way I feel about my marriage.”
We retreated into ourselves and thought for a minute about the similarities of our loss and loneliness. “Look, I’m going to drive back to the motel and pick up Cathy and we’ll grab something and come back for lunch. Then we have to start back to Washington. I’m afraid to drive when it gets dark. The roads may freeze.”
She started to get up, but there was something I needed to say to her alone. I took her hand between my palms. “I know it’s a long drive down here. We hardly know each other and you don’t owe me anything.” I was doing it again, rushing my words. I took a breath, trying to slow down. “Please, please, promise me you’ll come back again, sometime. You don’t have to say when. I just have to have hope.”
“Jake.” Her tone was that of an impatient teacher with a dim-witted pupil. “Aside from my mom, my sister, my lawyer, and Cathy, you’re the only other person I’ve told about what led to my divorce. I haven’t even found the nerve to tell my father. Of course, he had the good sense to be suspicious of my ex from the beginning.” She was trying to look through my eyes to see if anything was being registered in my brain. “I drove all the way down here and stayed overnight just to see you. I don’t know why you’re different from all the other patients I’ve had. Maybe it’s because of the determination I see in you, or maybe it’s because you made me feel special when I needed it.”
“Suzie, when my own mother can’t come see me anymore and I haven’t had so much as a note from anyone else,” I paused, “I’m scared to death you won’t be coming back. I’m pretty damn insecure.”
“Jake do you know why I came to see you?” I had no idea and I wondered if Cathy had told her that I asked that. “To me, you are the answer to a question I asked night after night in the hospital in Vietnam as I packed broken, torn, and disfigured bodies of young men for shipment stateside. I wondered,” she continued, her voice grew hoarse with emotion, “what the hell is going to happen to these people? What kind of life are they going to have? If I don’t hang around you, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what the answers are.”
I stopped listening after she said the word Vietnam. I shook my head and said incredulously, “You were in Vietnam?”
“What did you think I meant yesterday when I said you could help me with my bad dreams?”
“I don’t know—the divorce.”
“I meant that I have woken like you from the memories of little boys with stumps instead of hands and feet, from the sound of the silence when their breathing stopped, from the smells of death.” She was going into a trance as she said this, as if one of her own dreams were starting. I shook her arm. She looked out the window and bit her lip. She had probably seen me tossing in my sleep at Walter Reed. Our friendship contained a lot of common ground that I was not aware of yet. She grinned at me to signify that she had had enough of this getting serious so early in the day. “Well, Doctor Freud, next time I come back, we’ll do some dream analysis. I will be back. Promise.”
Before they left that day, both women had promised to come back and see me, but they would take turns. Suzie gave me her phone number in case I needed a pep talk between visits.
Monday, I received a letter from my Ranger team. Actually, it was a Christmas card that had been chasing me from Walter Reed. It was mailed in late November. It was signed by a lot of the guys in the company, so there was not much room to write anything else. I took a pad of paper and wrote to tell them I was okay and that when they got stateside, they should look me up. When my hands grew tired, I pulled out the photos. I was even able to look at the one of me and Jim out in the jungle with the butts of our rifles resting on our hips. My free arm was resting on Jim’s shoulder and my fingers formed a V.
“When I get out of here, buddy, I’ll look you up. It’s a promise.” My throat grew tight and I felt the tears on my cheeks. I reached out with my tongue and tasted them.
I went back to writing.
15
Wheels!!!
On Monday, an aide woke me at 6:30. It was bath morning. The aide rolled a gurney covered with a rubber sheet beside the bed. He unhooked the catheter from the drainage bag and clamped the catheter. Then, he slid me onto the gurney and covered me with a sheet and rolled me into the shower room. There is something really weird, odd, and peculiar about rolling along lying down. I think that our balance has evolved to want to be able to see what is beneath us.
The patients on the ward were divided into groups and each group had its day to go to the showers. It did not apply to guys in wheelchairs, who could take showers whenever. To keep everything, and I mean everything, on schedule, a suppository was shoved in my rear when I arrived in the room next to the showers. Ralph, a jolly man with pockmarks across his black face and a big belly, went through an endless supply of examining gloves. He rolled me on my side and, even though I had no feeling there, I could feel him shoving. This was an assembly line operation. Ralph would stick a blue disposable pad under your butt and move onto the next man while the suppository had its effect. There were always the same old jokes about the situation. Ralph was the “King of Crap” who had a real shitty job working between the cracks. And they always wanted him to make sure he had not lost any gloves. He came back in a while and cleaned me up. I was rolled to the next man, Lavassuer.
Lavassuer wore rubber boots, a rubber apron, and rubber gloves. He held a rubber hose with a spray attachment. I used to imagine myself as a ’57 Chevy convertible with a chrome grill and mag wheels being pulled through a car wash. He wet each man down from head to foot, then he grabbed a soapy sponge from a bucket and lathered you everywhere. There were times when I thought that I would just slide off the rubber sheet onto the concrete floor. He gave me a cloth for my face and then he rinsed me. I was covered with a towel and rolled out to dry myself the best I could. Then, it was back to the bed.
I arrived at my bed just as the troupe of doctors and nurses came by. The short bitch nurse handed the doctor my file and then stood with a smug look, waiting for the doctor to finish reading her report of Friday evening and anticipating the lecture I would get about being thrown out for not respecting her authority. The doctors hemmed and hawed, murmured, and never even glanced at me. They returned the file to her and prepared to move to the next patient. With a puzzled expression, she flipped through the file to look for the page she typed, her jaw tightened, and she glared. I knew my troubles with her were beginning, but I had business with the doctors.
“Doc,” I addressed the chief page-turner, “I think it’s time for me to get up in a wheelchair.�
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“It’s too soon,” he barked curtly.
“No, it’s not. Look how long I’ve been here!”
The doctor was perturbed that a patient would dare to question him. He grabbed the file and licked his thumb before flipping over each page. He and the first assistant pen-carrier read something and exchanged glances. I could see his brain transmitting the word “NO” to his lips so I volunteered, “I have been sitting up in my bed; so I would probably do real well in a wheelchair.”
The file was closed. “Have this patient put up in a wheelchair today,” the chief page turner ordered the short nurse. I was so glad.
These doctors aren’t so bad if you can just show them a reason, I thought. On the other hand, the doctor was walking away thinking, I’ve had it with this jerk. Let him fall flat on his face and I won’t have to listen to his crap any more. He’ll do things by my schedule.
The aides showed up that morning to help me dress. They strapped a bag on my leg and attached the catheter to it. They put tight elastic stockings on me to force the blood from my feet and help my weak veins return it to my heart. Finally, I got the first pair of pants I had had for months. Funny, the things that become symbols of success. They did not come take me to therapy that morning. I waited in bed until almost lunch. Sam came in with a wheelchair. The chair had a tall back that had been adjusted so that it was at a forty-five degree angle.
He lifted a stainless steel contraption from the seat. It was a brace to support my head. A pad went on my chest and a second pad went between my shoulder blades. The pads were connected by straps that went over my shoulders. Two metal rods came up from each pad. The rods on the front pad pushed a curved pad into my chin and the rods on the back pad pushed a pad into the base of my skull. Those were also attached to each other by leather straps that went around my head. After Sam had this in place, he took me under the arms and an aide grabbed me under the knees and they sat me in the chair.
I grinned. I saw colored lights. It went dark. When I came to, I realized that Sam had rocked the chair back on its big wheels so that my feet were higher than my head. Sam’s face was smiling down at mine. “This ain’t gonna be easy, boy. You tell me when you feel faint.” I nodded weakly.
Sam worked patiently with me for almost an hour until I could sit up. My breathing was labored. My weak stomach muscles were exhausted from pushing and sucking air through my lungs.
“I gotta go back to the gym,” said Sam. “You want to go back to bed?”
I shook my head no. “Let me go with you.”
When we got there, Sam put my feet up on an exercise mat. “If you feel faint, put your head between your knees.” Sam patted my shoulder and went to work with other patients.
The triumph I felt was incredible. I had made a major step toward getting back in the world, even if I did frequently put my head between my legs during the next hour. By then, I was exhausted. Sam rolled me back to the ward and guided the chair beside the bed. He placed a smooth board from the edge of the bed to the edge of the chair. I was supposed to slide across to the bed. I was so tired that I just fell to the side and Sam grabbed my legs and rolled me onto the bed. Maybe it was the sound of the rain I heard as I drifted to sleep, but the dream began immediately.
I was lying in the jungle. The rain was beating in my face. My boonie hat had blown off. I opened my eyes and saw Jim’s face. I closed my eyes. There was the sound of an occasional gunshot. I couldn’t make out whether it was the Rangers or the Viet Cong shooting. Who won the fight? Would the Viet Cong find me alive and shoot me ? Did anyone know that Jim and I were there or would the jungle just grow over our bodies?
I was thirsty. I remembered being thirsty in the helicopter. I opened my mouth so that the rain would fall in. I stuck my tongue into the puddle but it tasted of blood. I heard the sound of choppers. They came over the clearing and hovered. Ropes came out of each side and Rangers climbed onto the skids. They rappelled down into the clearing. They spread out into the woods. One of them came upon Jim and me. “Hey, Doc there’s two guys over here.” The Ranger moved to stand guard between the jungle and the medic who ran up. He knelt over Jim. “Jesus Christ,” he gasped. He pulled Jim’s poncho from his pack and spread it over his head.
He reached over and felt my neck for a pulse. There was a stab of pain and my eyes opened. “He’s alive.” He called to the radioman, “Get a dust-off in here.”
The radioman yelled into the mouthpiece, “Five-o, five-o, this is Cowboy. We need a rabbit. Over.”
“Roger, cowboy,” came the reply through the handset, “one is inbound.” The medic started looking for injuries on me. He cut off the harness that carried my ammo boxes. Then, he saw the edge of a dark red mark with the faint purple of bruise starting by my collar. Gently, he pulled back on the shirt. “Shit.” He put his face right in front of mine. “Can you move your legs?”
“No,” I said quietly, “or my arms.” I could see my team leader and Snake, another team member, holding a poncho over me and the medic to keep off the rain. I could hear the radioman talking to the rescue chopper, assuring the pilot that the landing zone was secure. Two choppers came in. Into the first one they dragged six lifeless men, Jim and five VC, wrapped in ponchos, and it lifted off. The medic ran to the second chopper and came back with the stretcher.
“Okay, you guys lift his body and I’ll handle the head and we’ll just roll him back on the stretcher,” the medic directed. They tried to be careful, but a surge of pain shot through my brain and I blacked out. When I came to, I was in a chopper bouncing through the dark. They landed. I was wheeled into a brightly lit room. A nurse and a medic cut off my clothing. A portable x-ray machine was rolled in and they shot me from every angle. My head was shaved. A doctor leaned over and looked into my face and explained that I had a broken neck and they were going to drill two small holes into my skull. He held up a device that looked like small ice tongs and said that these would be put into the holes in my skull and that weights would be hung on a rope tied to the tongs to pull my vertebrae into alignment. Those tongs would be in my skull for six weeks. I was too tired to care what happened and his voice was like a dog growling into an empty can. When they moved my head to align my neck, a wave of pain broke over me and I passed out.
“Hey, wake up.” Someone in the VA hospital was shaking me. It was nine o’clock at night. I had slept through the dinner. It was an aide waking me up to undress me. I went right back to sleep. There was no more dream.
The next morning, I was up early watching for the first aide to come on the ward. They got me dressed and strapped the neck brace on. I noticed that the chin pad was beginning to rub a sore, but I was too anxious to get back into the chair to worry. The aide showed me how to use the trapeze that hung above my bed to get into the chair. The trapeze was an iron pipe suspended by two chains from the ceiling. A loop of web cargo strap hung from the pipe for me to put my forearm in and swing over to the chair and lower myself.
For an instant, I started to feel light-headed, but I quickly put my head between my knees and took some deep breaths. Then, I pushed against the chair frame and sat up.
“Are you okay,” asked Joe White, who was an early riser.
“Yeah, could you do me a favor and see if you can adjust the back of the chair so it’s more straight up.”
“Roll out here so I can get behind you.”
My smooth palms slipped on the rims so I put my hands on the rubber tires and pushed into the aisle. Joe loosened the clamps and pushed the back of the chair forward. “Howzat?”
“Yeah, that’s good, thanks.”
I slowly pushed back and forth on the ward. I stopped often to catch my breath. I was surprised at how many muscles tired from working to pump air. I looked at the people and places I hadn’t seen on the top of the gurney. I stayed up until about ten. Then, an aide helped me back into bed for a nap.
After lunch, I decided to push and see Sam. I rolled to the hall that divided the ward. From this
point, the hall sloped downhill on either side of me. To my right, it went fifty feet to the hall that ran to the mess hall. To my left, it went down to the other wards and the therapy rooms. I turned left and the chair quickly began picking up speed. I tried to slow it by dragging my palms against the pushrims, but the friction started burning my hands. It was now a runaway wheelchair. I grabbed the brake handles and jammed them forward, unfortunately not at the same moment. The right brake bit into the tire first causing the chair to make a sharp turn and slam into the wall. A nurse, who had suddenly walked from a door and just missed being run over, put her arms across the front of my shoulders and helped me slide back into the chair. “Still on your learner’s permit, huh?”
My initial fright went to embarrassment and started to become anger, but her tone was friendly and she was trying to make me smile. She backed me away from the wall. “Been driving long?”
I heaved a long sigh. “No, that was my first time coming down hill.”
“Are you going to PT?” I nodded. “Ask them for some wheelchair gloves. They’ll help you get a better grip on the wheels. How about if I steady you the rest of the way?” I nodded again. She held onto the chair until we turned into Sam’s shop. She left me there so I could push in by myself.
Sam looked up from strapping weights onto a patient’s hands and smiled. He grinned broadly. “Hey did you come down by yourself?”
“Not quite,” and I related my almost disaster. Sam walked over to a drawer and took out a pair of black gloves with thumbs but no fingers that closed on the back with Velcro. I put them on. They gave me a grip on the pushrims and that helped push and stop the chair. I pushed around the gym, practicing turns. When I stopped to rest, I sat watching two guys standing in metal frames. “Hey, Sam.”
“Yeah,” he said as he helped a patient roll under the barbells.
“When do you think I can do that?” He had to turn around to see what “that” was.