The most popular volunteer was a young man who came in twice a week and wrote letters home for those who were unable to hold a pen themselves, which included most of the patients at one point or another.
The first week he was there, Scott dictated letters, one to his grandparents and sister, and another to Sherry.
Scott found it simple to tell the man what to write in the letter to his family. It was much harder to say the words he wanted to say to Sherry out loud.
The man, who looked to be about twenty, leaned in close and in a soft voice, said, “Pretend I’m not even here. Act like you’re speaking directly to her.”
Scott tried, but he couldn’t do it. Through long nights in Vietnam, he had thought of nothing but her. How soft her hair was. The smell of her perfume. More than anything, he thought of their last night together before he left for basic training. With the earnest young man sitting in front of him, Scott couldn’t find a way to put his feelings into words. He did the best he could, and the young man, whose name was Kevin, added a bit here and there for him.
He heard back from his family less than a week later.
“Oh, Scotty,” the letter began, in his grandmother’s familiar scrawl, “we’ve been so, so worried about you. We found out you’d been wounded, but could never get any information about how badly. We are so thankful that you are alive and will be home soon. Grampa and I have moved into the upstairs bedroom, so you won’t have to go up and down the stairs. Please come home as soon as you can. Doctors are fine, but my chicken soup will fix you right up.”
Tears filled Scott’s eyes. So typical of them. Almost eighty years old, and they’re the ones doing the stairs every day so that I don’t have to. Cheryl and I lost the lifetime lottery when it came to a father, but they almost make up for it all by themselves.
As happy as he was to get the letter from home, he waited ever more anxiously for some word from Sherry. With help from Kevin, Scott sent her two more letters. Finally, after he had been in the hospital almost four months and had despaired of ever hearing from her again, a small, thin letter arrived.
It had been sent to the correct APO, or Army Post Office, but the letter had bounced around the globe from there. It had been sent to his unit, but arrived after he had been wounded. It chased him to the hospital in Da Nang, but was by then several weeks behind him. For reasons evident to no one, it had been sent first to Germany, then back to the original APO, before it was finally dispatched correctly to him in the hospital in San Francisco.
Scott’s right arm was still not functioning, and he found that it was nearly impossible to open an envelope with one hand. He held the envelope tight between sweating fingers for long minutes. Finally, he flagged down a young nurse and asked her if she would read it to him.
“Of course,” she said with a smile. She looked at the handwriting on the envelope. “Girl back home?”
Scott nodded. “Fiancée. I hope we can get married as soon as I get home.”
The nurse, a little on the heavy side and no one’s idea of beautiful, nodded.
“She’s a lucky girl.” She neatly tore the end of the envelope off and a single page of stationary slipped out. As it did, the smell of Sherry’s perfume wafted toward Scott. He breathed it in.
“I’m going to want to keep that.”
“Of course. Okay, let’s see. ‘Dear Scott, I hate to put this in a letter, but I don’t have any other way to reach you. I…’ The nurse stopped and looked at Scott. His smile was frozen, but slowly melting away.
The nurse read through the next few paragraphs and pity spread across her face. “I have met someone else, and he has asked me to marry him—“
“—That’s enough.” Scott looked away.
“I’ll leave it here for you on your table.”
“No, please don’t do that. Take it away.”
She glanced at the page, read the rest, and then tucked it away in the pocket of her uniform. “I sure will. Private McKenzie, is there anything else I can do for you?”
Scott couldn’t make eye contact with her. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even move to acknowledge her question.
The nurse left him alone.
Chapter Six
Two years to the day after he had enlisted, Scott McKenzie was released from the hospital in San Francisco. He didn’t precisely receive a clean bill of health, because he was never likely to achieve that. He had regained most of his normal functions, though, and that was the victory the Army was looking for.
He received an honorable discharge. Because his wounds were considered severe and the army judged he was unlikely to be able to find work, Scott was eligible for the upper end of the Veteran Disability Compensation. It would pay him monthly for as long as he was alive.
He was issued a sturdy cane, but he felt like an old man when he used it. As soon as he was outside the hospital, he leaned it against the wall and walked away. He wasn’t steady on his feet, but he didn’t fall over.
If I start using that damn cane, it feels like I’ll always be using it. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hobbling along if I don’t have to.
Johnny Johnson, one of the orderlies that Scott had come to know well enough to call a friend, loaded him into his beat up 1962 Cadillac convertible and gave him a lift to the bus station. Johnny carried Scott’s bag, helped him buy his ticket, and did what he could to transition Scott back into the real world.
Scott got on a Greyhound headed east. Evansville was the only place he knew to go. Home is where your family is, where they have to take you in. He had called ahead and talked to Cheryl, who was midway through her senior year in high school. He let her know he would be home before Christmas.
He settled into a seat toward the back of the bus and hoped that no one would sit beside him. He didn’t object to people, but he was still awkward standing and walking, especially on a bus. He didn’t want to have to hold his bladder through each leg of the trip, but also didn’t want to step all over someone to get to the cramped facilities.
Scott didn’t have a book, and he didn’t buy a newspaper. He leaned his head against the cool, tinted window and watched America roll by one mile, one billboard, one tiny town at a time. After seeing nothing but the inside of a hospital for so long, the changing view was a blessing. He dozed off and on, changed buses four times, and ate a lot of vending machine and small-town diner food. All of it was a marked improvement on his diet of the previous two years.
When he was half a day away from Evansville, he called home from a payphone to let them know what time he would be in, barring any breakdowns, traffic, or major storms.
When the bus finally rolled into Evansville, Scott was glad to get off the bus. It had gotten him there, but sitting in one position for that long didn’t agree with his injured body. He limped off the bus and looked left and right, expecting someone might be there to greet him. He turned up the collar of his green army-issued coat against the wind and spitting snow. He didn’t recognize anyone. He tipped the driver a buck to haul his suitcase inside the depot for him, then sat and waited.
The inside was like every other bus depot across America in the early 70s—dingy, with dirty tile floors, molded-plastic seats attached to each other, and a sense of despair that hung in the air. Bus stations were the dropping off point of the lower middle class and poor. In large cities, hustlers flocked to them to find marks who were literally fresh off the bus from Kansas, or Iowa, or any of the other flyover states. Evansville wasn’t big enough to attract any of that. It just smelled of too many weary travelers and too little disinfectant.