Purple Heart (3 page)

For nearly a month after Matt’s squad had first arrived, there’d been a lull in the fighting, so his squad was instructed to establish contacts within the community. He and Justin had pulled a couple Humvees and Bradleys into a circle and made a soccer field. Then they gathered a bunch of kids who’d been picking through the trash heap next to their base, looking for tin cans to sell for salvage, and organized them into two teams: the Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Shock and Awe. Justin played with the Shock and Awe kids and Matt with the WMDs. The kids ran around barefoot on the hard, littered patch of ground, but they still outmaneuvered the two soldiers.

As he gazed out the window, Matt pictured Ali, a ten-year-old who was one of the WMDs, scoring a goal, running away from the net. Usually Ali celebrated by spreading his arms like a pair of airplane wings, like the great Brazilian forward, Ronaldo. It was a move he’d
picked up watching TV in the market, as he knelt on the ground and peeked through the forest of men’s legs.

But if it was an especially pretty goal, he’d look over at Matt and make an imaginary pair of glasses around his eyes with his fingers.

The gesture had two meanings. It meant “Did you see that?” But it was also a reference to Matt’s shiny wraparound sunglasses. The ones Ali had stolen the first day they’d met.

He’d come up to Matt one day in the market and tugged on his jacket. “Hello, Skittles,” he’d said, running the two words together as if Matt’s name was Skittles.

Matt had no candy left, but the kid was so skinny—his belly was bloated and he had legs like a stork—that Matt started digging around in his pockets for an energy bar. He gave Ali his sunglasses to hold for a minute. Next thing he knew, the boy had run off with them. The glasses, which Matt’s mom had given him, were absolutely crucial in the brutal Iraqi sun and so Matt had chased after him until he disappeared around a corner.

But he couldn’t catch him, something for which Charlene, their civil affairs officer, had given him merciless grief. “How are we gonna find weapons of mass destruction if you can’t even find a pair of shades?” she’d said.

Girls—females, as the army called them—weren’t
technically allowed in combat, but Charlene had been “attached” to their squad to conduct searches of females after the army found out that some of the enemy soldiers were dressing as women to avoid being searched. For a civil affairs officer, though, she didn’t seem to actually like civilians all that much. And she seemed to take some satisfaction in this kid running off with Matt’s glasses. “See?” she said in a schoolteachery tone. “That’s what happens when you try to make friends with these people.”

Later that day, the chaplain stopped by and said Mass. It was outside, in the town square, and Matt noticed the same kid standing there, watching as the soldiers went up to receive Communion. Then the boy got in line—he copied the way people folded their hands and bowed their heads—and he stuck his tongue out. The priest didn’t bat an eye. And the boy chewed the tiny wafer like he couldn’t get it down fast enough. A few minutes later he was back in line, for seconds.

When Mass ended and Matt stood up from the crate he was sitting on, the sunglasses were on the ground behind him.

Outside, the boom box went silent. One of the kids jiggled it and it stuttered to life again, then died. The group started to disperse, then one of kids ran to a corner of the lot and retrieved a soccer ball. One of the Stars and
Stripes soccer balls the troops handed out.

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.

L
ATER,
M
ATT 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.”

“S
O 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, you 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
M
ATT 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.

“W
HAT 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.”