“It’s weird. I can’t see out of my left eye, but can still cry from it?” He was struck by the strange poignancy of his eye’s inability to fulfill its primary function, yet it could still emit emotion.
“I guess the lacrimal gland wasn’t damaged too badly,” she added gently. “Well, that’s some good news, right?”
Jack remained silent. He could count the times in his life he had cried on one hand. Even as a little boy, he hardly showed emotion when he was upset. He knew his mother had enough on her shoulders, and he tried not to burden her with whatever troubled him.
It was a small mercy that she had not lived to see him burned like this. That was really the only good news he could admit to. Not the fact that a gland inside his eye could still shed tears.
The music on the radio now shifted to a breaking news report about a special air force raid on a prison north of Hanoi.
Barbara’s hand lifted off the blanket and turned the radio off.
“You should be getting some rest now.”
He knew she didn’t want him becoming agitated by hearing any news about the war. But in reality, it was the music that had stirred something inside him, not the news.
The song’s lyrics had penetrated even his thickest burns. The words of the song felt like they were written for him.
There were no mirrors in the burn unit at Brooke Army Hospital. “We just want you to concentrate on your healing,” Jack was told when he asked the nurses when he’d be given a chance to see his new reflection once the bandages were removed.
He knew he would never again look anything like his former self. After all, the doctor had told him several times before the first surgery that he shouldn’t expect his healing to be complete. But he still wondered, would he ever again even look normal?
The doctors and nurses did not know that Jack Grady had been voted “most handsome” in high school or that his buddies in his platoon called him “Hollywood.” And they certainly had no idea that across the country, there was a girl named Becky, who had not the slightest inkling as to why she hadn’t received an answer from Jack to her most recent letters.
The head plastic surgeon attempts to prepare Jack the best he can. In his softest voice, he speaks of the possibilities of additional surgeries to promote future skin growth. “Jack, it’s important to realize that what you see in the mirror will not be the end result. We will continue to be vigilant about scar tissue and constriction. We’ll make sure to do further grafting to ensure you have the best results we can give you, so you can go on to have a full life.”
Full life.Jack hears the words and instantly thinks such a thing will never be possible.
He will not tell them about Becky Dougherty, the girl with the chestnut-brown hair whose letter he had carried in his helmet throughout his entire tour, before they were lost in an explosion in the jungle of Vietnam. Instead, he remains silent, and pushes the thought of her far down inside of him. Safely sheltered in a small college town, he only hopes Becky is moving on from him, and that because of his silence, she has given up and believes him to be dead.
The doctor unwraps his bandages slowly. The air on his wounds is painful. The rawness of his skin still overwhelms him, and he thinks to himself what he chooses not to say aloud, that he wishes he hadn’t survived. “The good news is that the surgery was a success, and there is no sign of infection,” the doctor informs him.
“You’re still very swollen, Jack, so just remember what I said that this will all look a lot better in a few weeks.”
“Doc, why didn’t you do everyone a favor and shoot me up with too much morphine when I was under and just call it accident?”
“Jack …” The doctor’s voice has lowered even further. “I’m a doctor.… I’ve taken an oath to save life, not extinguish it.”
The quiet that follows is a pain in itself.
“I would like to see my reflection,” Jack pushes.
“Not yet,” the surgeon insists. “You need to heal more, then we can make a decision about when to bring in a mirror.”
He remains in the burn unit for several more weeks. He will surrender to having his nurses gently cleanse his new skin and to change his dressings to prevent infection. He will wear a collar to ensure his skin doesn’t constrict as it heals, and he will eventually be weaned from his pain medication.
And during this time, he will write not a single letter, nor make one phone call.
Jack is with his platoon in the jungle. Chief and Flannery. Stanley and Doc. Sometimes he will have conversations in his head with them. He will see Gomez’s eyes flash with mischief as he pulls out a deck of cards from his pocket, or Stanley hunched over his Bible reciting a passage or uttering the comforting words of a psalm.
On the nights when the ward is enveloped in a silent darkness, except for the rolling wheels of the medicine cart, Jack will try to banish his memories of Chief walking up the mountain in the rain, holding Stanley’s body wrapped in a blood-soaked poncho, his muscles straining to hold him, to ensure Stanley’s head does not touch the ground.
When Jack’s surgeon finally tells him he’s ready to be discharged, he asks again for a mirror.
“I’d like to see myself before I leave, Doc,” he tells him. “It only seems fair I get to do that before anyone else outside the hospital walls does. Doesn’t it?”
The doctor takes a deep breath. “We usually wait for that to happen when the patient’s back with his family, Jack.” He pauses for a moment and considers his words. “But I’ll have one of the nurses see if she can arrange something.”
Jack nods and feels as if he has won a small victory. He needs to know how others will see him so he can figure out how to reconcile the loss of his former physical appearance with his current reality.
