How Can You Mend This Purple Heart (6 page)

Where his right hand should have been was a round surgical dressing about the size of a softball. I couldn't tell if he had a catheter; the bags were always strapped to the right side of the bed.

His jet-black hair was much longer than a Marine's should be, except where a two-inch swathe just over his left ear had been shaved out and a furrow of stitches zigzagged through its center.

A large marshmallow-looking patch covered his left eye; blood had seeped into the cotton near the bottom of the bandage.

His face was a deep, reddish-brown clay color, like kiln-dried brick, and his right eye was dark black-brown with a stare of constant vigilance.

Doc Miller was at his bed almost out of nowhere with the clipboard, stethoscope, oral thermometer, and blood pressure pad.

“Let's see,” Doc said. “Not too bad for what could have happened. Says here you jumped on a live grenade to save your buddies. You could have lost your head,” he said with a smile.

“What makes you think I didn't?” the new guy laughed.

“Randy Miller,” Doc said, introducing himself as he shook the mercury down the thermometer. “Everyone calls me Doc.”

“Bobby Mac Joyce. Nice to know you, Doc. I'd shake your hand but you'd have to go to 'Nam to get it!” he laughed out loud.

“Well, you're in luck, Bobby Mac Joyce,” said. “You still have your thumb. The whole thing.”

“Well, ain't that some shit. They told me on the chopper I lost my whole arm. Must have been that green-ass lieutenant hoping I'd lost both of 'em. Guess I got the last laugh on him, he's still there!” he sneered, laughing even louder. He raised his right leg under the sheet and let out a loud, long fart.

“Keep talking, lieutenant, we'll find you!” he snorted. Every guy within earshot howled.

“I'll come back when the air clears,” Doc said.

“Shit, Doc, I know you've smelled worse than that,” Bobby Mac quipped.

“Yeah, but not anything I didn't have to.” Doc walked away, fanning the air with the clipboard.

“Hey man, I can tell you ain't combat. What the fuck happened to you?” Bobby Mac pointed his one eye and short attention span right at me.

“The name's Shoff,” I said. “A bad car wreck.”

“You fuckin' got that right!” he laughed. “It kicked your ass.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking in a deep breath. “But it ain't shit compared to you guys.”

“Yeah, well, ain't a fucking thing we can do about it now. They let you smoke in here?” He fumbled with a pack of Kool Menthols with his half-dead fingers.

“Need to put 'em down, Bobby,” Doc Miller said, returning with the fanning clipboard. “I gotta get your vitals. Can't have the smoke messing up the numbers.”

“Shit, Doc, just fill in some numbers. I'm breathing, ain't I?” he chuckled.

“No can do, Bobby Mac. Give me your right arm. Need anything for pain?”

“Shit, yeah! You think I'm gonna turn down a good thing like that? And it's on Uncle Sam. Not like I didn't fuckin' earn it!” he laughed, his one eye gleaming.

“Car wreck, huh? Looks like the car won,” Bobby Mac laughed.

“No, but the bridge did,” I said.

“You hit a fuckin' bridge? I'd rather take my chances with a grenade any day!” he cackled.

Doc Miller came over with the syringe and swabbed down Bobby Mac's bulging right arm and eased the goo into the muscle.

“Better get a couple more of those ready, Doc,” he laughed. “I used to have two or three for breakfast in 'Nam.”

“Brag all you want, but I can tell you're not a junkie,” Doc replied. “You're in great shape and it's probably what kept you from being any worse.”

“Any worse? Shit, this is heaven! Got me a hotel room, a bed with clean sheets, and somebody bringing me drugs all day and night. Don't get any better than this, man!”

Dr. Donnolly was standing at the bottom of Bobby Mac's bed looking over his chart and glancing down toward Earl Ray. Earl had been noticeably quiet through all of Bobby Mac's banter. Dr. Donnolly put the clipboard back on the heavy ring and stepped between Bobby Mac's bed and mine.

“Let's take a look in here,” he said as he gently pulled away the white tape and lifted the marshmallow patch away from the eye.

The socket was empty.

Bobby Mac's eye had been mangled by shrapnel and Dr. Donnolly had cleaned the empty hole and removed any remaining tissue earlier this morning.

“It's looking pretty good,” he said as he taped the marshmallow back down. “How's it feel?'

“Like there's a hole where there shouldn't be a hole,” he snarled. “It's kind of drafty.”

“It won't be too long before we can fit you with a replacement,” Dr. Donnolly assured him.

“In the meantime, I'll keep an eye out for you!” Bobby Mac hooted.

Dr. Donnolly grinned and moved down the ward glancing again at Earl Ray. Earl had been watching and quickly turned his head as he and Dr. Donnolly made eye contact.

“Where're you from?” Sgt. Bobby Joyce asked, his one eye back on me.

“Missouri, how 'bout you?”

“Barlow by-God, North Carolina.”

“You don't sound like you're from North Carolina. Where's your accent?”

“My old man's full-blooded Cherokee. Sent me off to the Marines to keep my ass out of trouble,” Bobby Mac laughed. “Didn't work. Got into more shit in 'Nam than anybody. Got to where I didn't even want to go home between tours, but they made me. Wait 'til he sees me now.”

“They coming up soon?”

“Shit, I don't think he even knows I'm in the States. The brass tried to find him to let him know I'm here, but the old man moves around a lot. He gets drunk so much he can't find his way back home,” he laughed. “My mom left him and me when I was five or six. Life ain't so bad. It's all in how you look at it. Just don't give a shit.”

“I hear you,” I said, wishing I had just a small dose of his don't-give-a-shit. “So you jumped on a live grenade? Jesus, that takes balls.”

“No balls at all, man. Just did what I was supposed to do.”

“Yeah, not everyone always does what he's supposed to do,” I said, almost choking on the words.

“It was fucking nothing.”

Sergeant Bobby Mac Joyce was halfway into his voluntary third tour and the amount of time he had spent in combat was approaching two and a half years. On that fateful day in Vietnam, a grenade tumbled from the air, landing between him and five of his platoon buddies. He dove head-first in an effort to grab it and toss it back into the black hole of the thick jungle foliage. The hot frag exploded just before he could release it. It was a partial dud and detonated with half its potential, sparing his life. He was recommended for the Silver Star.

He had been a Marine's Marine—always ready, always first to go, no questions asked, always decisive, do what it takes to stay alive—and the Corps comes first.

But the half-breed Indian kid from North Carolina who stepped onto Vietnam soil in mid-1966, gung-ho to kick ass and take names, was generations gone from the Bobby Mac lying next to me.

With his twenty-second birthday only weeks away, he was the oldest patient on the ward. By now, combat and survival were the only two things he knew. They were the only two things he had done for nearly two and a half years.

He had learned to stand up to superiors' orders, his experience telling him time and time again that what they were asking him and his buddies to do was beyond the brink of stupidity. It had reached a point where he could do without them, but they couldn't do without him. He knew the enemy better than he knew himself and he thrived on making it a game of survival, a game of war—his war. For Sgt. Bobby Mac Joyce, it had become a war of one-on-one and everyone else could go to hell.

Even before the explosion, he had decided the third tour was going to be his last. He had tired of the rain and the heat, tired of the bullshit, the revolving door of lieutenants wanting to use him for training exercises, and he was just plain tired of killing people.

“So your old man's Cherokee?” I said. “My great-grandmother was Cherokee on my dad's side.”

“Ain't that some shit! By God, life just got better. I'm lying next to a relative!” he howled out. “We'll have us a by-God family reunion right here!”

“Yeah, let's just fuckin' celebrate,” Earl Ray spat out.

“What's your name, Marine?” Bobby Mac volleyed back at Earl.

“What's it matter to you?”

“Hey man, just trying to see who I'm sleeping in the same room with,” he laughed.

Earl Ray slid into his wheelchair and rolled over toward Sgt. Bobby Joyce. As he glided past me, he looked over and spat out a dry spit. I watched from the corner of my eye as he rolled around to the right side of Bobby Mac's bed.

“Glad to see that frag didn't get your dick,” Earl Ray said, pointing to the familiar plastic bag.

“Yeah man, ain't no way with this club on my hand I could hold onto that pitcher to piss in, and I couldn't find anybody to hold my dick for me, either!” he laughed.

“The name's Earl Ray,” he said, blowing air up from the corner of his mouth.

“Bobby Mac Joyce. Glad to know you, Earl Ray.”

I overheard the two sharing stories for more than an hour before Earl returned to his bed. For the first time since he had called me a non-combat motherfucker, he had a grin on his face.

Sgt. Bobby Mac Joyce's presence brought a much-needed and contagious optimism to the ward. Even Doc Miller and Miss Berry were inspired by his easy cheerfulness and his unabashed live-for-today exuberance. It was real and everyone could feel it.

His ever-present jolliness and wantonness at everything, at anything, at life, exuded his totally don't-give-a-shit attitude. So much time at war, so much time crawling through pitch-black nothingness, at being invisible, at witnessing death and mutilation, so much killing, and so much absence from civilization—it was enough to make a guy laugh.

The ward settled in for the night and just after the lights went out, Bobby Mac called over to me. “Hey Shoff, you ever watch that show,
Laugh-In
?”

“Yeah, all the time.”

“Well, you know how those Rowan and Martin guys sign off? Dan Rowan says to Dick Martin, ‘Say good night, Dick,' and Dick Martin says, ‘Good night, Dick.'”

“Yeah, they do it every time,” I said.

Sgt. Bobby Joyce slid the softball-sized club covering the stump of his right hand under the sheet, lifted it slightly, peered down with his one eye at his limp penis, and called out, “Good night, dick!”

When I stopped laughing, I raised my sheet and in my best soft, female impersonation, I said sweetly, “Goood night, dick.” We laughed out loud with Ski raising his sheet over his head, “Gootnight deek!”

It went up and down and across the ward for fifteen minutes, generating laughter with every guy awake pronouncing to his catheter-laden best friend a “Good night, dick!”

Just Among Friends

THE NEXT MORNING
, I was jump-started by a loud crash next to my bed. The day's first ratchet job on Ski's legs was in full progress. As Dr. Donnolly twisted down on the rods, Ski flung both arms uncontrollably from the sheering pain, hitting the nightstand and knocking his metal bedpan to the floor.

Ski's runny bowel movement from last night spattered everywhere—on his bed, my bed, Doc Miller's pant legs, on the nightstand, and all over the floor between us.

The bedpan tumbled like a giant coin wobbling on its edge, shuddered loudly in a crooked circle, and finally plopped down on top of the spillage.

“Thanks, Ski!” Doc Miller laughed, shaking his leg; his bell-bottom white uniform was freckled shit-brown from pant cuff to knee. “Glad to get this over with so early in the day.” Even through the pain, Ski was noticeably embarrassed.

Dr. Donnolly finished micro-turning the sockets and leaned over Ski. “We'll get another set of X-rays and see how well we're doing. I won't make an adjustment for a couple more days. Give you a little break.”

“Thdank you, sir.” Ski said. “Eet doesn't hurt all that bad.”

“Thank you, young man.” Dr. Donnolly peered below his brow at Ski and grinned with appreciation.

Dr. Donnolly turned to his right, his dedicated attention now on Earl Ray Higgins. He began slowly removing the elastic wrap and bandage from the stump of Earl Ray's left arm. Earl blew a puff of air from the corner of his mouth as the last piece of gauze, stuck to his flesh, pulled loose.

“It's looking a lot better, Earl,” Dr. Donnolly said. “It won't be too much longer until we can start measuring this for your new arm.”

“Yeah, I can hardly wait,” Earl grunted.

“Let's have a look at the rest of you,” Dr. Donnolly said.

“You don't mean the rest of me, you mean what's left of me,” Earl puffed.

Dr. Donnolly peered at Earl with heavy concern. “We're going to have you walking before you know it,” he assured him.

“Easy for you to say,” Earl grumbled.

Dr. Donnolly removed the wrappings from Earl's leg stumps, exposing the bright red, partially healed ends, and examined them like an archeologist peering into the past.

Dr. Donnolly's skill with a surgeon's knife was beyond any training. The scalpel was like a magician's wand in his hands. He studied every wound, bone fragment, ligament, and tendon of a shattered limb with an intuitive knowledge of piecing them back together.

He would craft and shape the ends of legs and arms like an artist with clay. With just the right cuts and the perfect tapestry of sutures, most often four or five times on the same limb over several surgeries, he would engineer the flesh and muscle to fit precisely into the sockets for the yet-to-come, custom-fitted plastic replacement limbs.