Purple Heart (5 page)

When it came time to list the things he did know, he couldn’t think of anything he knew for sure.

A
LETTER FROM
C
AROLINE WAS SITTING ON HIS BEDSIDE TABLE
when he woke up the next morning. The army, despite all the many ways it was screwed up, always managed to get the mail delivered—even when they were out in some nowhere town in Iraq. And now they’d forwarded the letter from his old barracks to the hospital.

He looked at the envelope. On the front someone had scrawled the name of the hospital. On the back was a message from Justin.

Inside was Caroline’s familiar writing.

Matt read the letter three times over, culling through it for hidden meanings in every word. Why did she mention
Brad Rigby? And why was she dreaming about him? What did that mean? Everything else suddenly seemed stupid. She was back home and “sooo scared” about a pop quiz in bio while he was in Iraq with some traumatic brain injury.

The normalness of her letters—the bland, ordinary details of high school life—used to make him feel good, like things were the same at home even if he was gone. He’d told himself that that was what he was fighting for: so Caroline and his mom and Lizzy could go to the mall or watch that show they liked,
Gossip Girl,
and do whatever they did and not have to worry.

But now it bugged him that she was suddenly like some expert on the war, telling him to clean his gun and asking if he wanted single-serving packs of tuna. And she’d signed her letter “love ya.” That was what she and her girlfriends said when they hung up on their cell phones—or what you say to your mom when you leave the house. What was that supposed to mean?

He looked up from the letter and saw Francis standing next to his bed. He was holding a jar with some kind of cream in his hands.

“‘A lightweight lotion that packs all the moisturizing benefits of beta-carotene into a sheer, easily absorbed base,”’ he read from the label in a lisping, mock-gay voice. “‘The natural way to repair and
revive sun-damaged skin.’”

He opened the jar and sniffed. “My kid sister sent it to me,” he said. “I told her I needed sunscreen.” He shook his head. “Girls. They’re like a different species, you know?”

Matt put his hands to his cheeks, an imitation of the
Home Alone
kid. “OMG!” he said in a high, girly voice. “That’s what my girlfriend says,” he said in a normal voice. “She’s like…turned into…you know…that girl, the one who drives her kids around with no seat belt?”

Francis cocked his head to the side. “Britney Spears?”

“Yeah,” said Matt. “Her.”

“Dude,” Francis said. “That brain thing you have. Are you sure you don’t have Alzheimer’s?”

Matt noticed then that Francis was also holding a picture. “What’s that?” he said.

Francis handed him the photo, a picture of a little girl with the same lopsided smile Francis had, standing on a porch all decorated with red, white, and blue streamers. The house looked like it was in a city somewhere, in a not-very-good part of town.

“My kid,” Francis said. He stared at the picture for a while. “I told my wife…” His voice drifted off. “Have everybody come to the side door. The mailman, the neighbors.”

Matt had no idea what he was talking about.

“When the army comes to your door, to give you the bad news,” he said, “they always use the front door. The chaplain, the guy with the letter from the president, they come to the front door.”

Matt nodded.

“So if everybody we know uses the side door, every time the bell rings, she doesn’t have to, you know, imagine the worst.”

T
HE BLOND NURSE, THE ONE WHO LOOKED LIKE
B
ETTY—OR
was it Veronica?—had wheeled him to his appointment with Meaghan Finnerty, then left. Matt sat outside the door to her office, studying the things in his notebook.

Kwong had said that Matt might have trouble learning new information. So Matt had written a couple of facts from the World Series trivia book and made a sort of study guide—putting a few of the questions on one side of the page and the answers on the other. Then he folded the page in half, like he used to do when he was studying Spanish vocab, and tested himself.

Which pitcher broke a sixty-two-year-old record when he struck out twenty-nine batters in the 1965 World
Series? What year was the series postponed because of an earthquake? Who holds the series record for most home runs?

He covered the answers with his hand and tried to focus. But as soon as he looked away from the book, his mind went blank.

Meaghan Finnerty opened the door. He was surprised at how glad he was to see her. Then his heart sank: She took out her little deck of flash cards.

But he went along with her, concentrating harder than he ever had in school, struggling to identify pictures of random objects—a radio, a butterfly, a lamp—then trying to fill in the missing words in sentences about situations from what Meaghan Finnerty called everyday life.

“So, if you want to fill up your car and you only have twenty dollars, can you afford eight gallons of regular and still have money left for a Coke?” she asked.

Matt just looked at her. Everyday life wasn’t about filling up a gas tank or ordering a bucket of wings. Everyday life was about getting your gas mask on in ten seconds or calibrating the distance between your position and a sniper’s nest.

He tried to concentrate. But all the information—the cost of a gallon of gas, the price of a can of Coke—slipped out of his mind as soon as he took his eyes off the page.

His head had begun to ache and his attention had started to drift, when the cry of the muezzin sounded.

The muezzin’s call, broadcast from atop a minaret summoning the faithful to prayer, was a regular feature of the Iraqi soundscape. It occurred five times a day, and Matt had long ago gotten used to the strange noise. But this time it felt like it was ringing in his ears, as if the muezzin were standing right next to him. He could see Meaghan’s lips moving, but all he could hear were the long, drawn-out strains of the ancient, mournful call. He wiped his hands across his upper lip. He was sweating.

“Are you all right?” Her words reached him as if they were coming from inside a long tunnel.

“Yeah, sure, I’m fine.” The last note of the call to prayer lingered in the air for a moment, then stopped. Matt shook his head, trying to get the sound out of his mind, and waited for his breathing to return to normal.

Meaghan Finnerty seemed to be studying him.

“I’m fine, really,” he said.

And they went back to the everyday experience of figuring out which was the better buy: medium popcorn and a soda or an extra large and a free soda.

A
SKINNY KID WITH PIMPLES DOTTING HIS FOREHEAD WAS
waiting for him with a wheelchair outside Meaghan Finnerty’s office.

This kid was about his age. He had one earbud stuck in his ear and a dab of zit cream on his neck.

“Okay if I walk?” Matt asked.

“Nope.” The kid set the brake on the wheelchair with his foot. He was wearing high-tops. Few of the people in the hospital wore combat boots, Matt had noticed. Most of the doctors wore clogs, although one wore socks with sandals, and the nurses all seemed to wear sneakers. It felt more like a mall than an army hospital sometimes. The pimply kid shrugged. “Doctor says you’re not allowed.”

Matt sighed and lowered himself into the chair, secretly relieved. He was keeping track of how many steps he’d gone since he’d gotten here—so far, sixty-four was the max—and Meaghan Finnerty’s office was actually pretty far from the ward.

He wheeled the chair around a corner, then turned up the volume on his iPod. It was so loud, Matt could hear the clatter of the cymbals. “What are you listening
to?” he asked after a while.

“It’s kinda old-school,” he said. “The Clash. Mood music for Iraq.”

Without another word, the kid pulled the other earbud out of the pocket of his scrubs and handed it to Matt. And they went down the hall, tethered to each other, listening to “Rock the Casbah.”

Matt and Caroline used to share a pair of earphones like that on the bus on the way home from school. They’d sit in the last row and sometimes Matt would just marvel at the look of her knee next to his. Her legs were pale and lean and her skin was impossibly soft, and when she wore a short skirt to school, it drove him crazy. Sometimes, when the squad was riding in the Humvee, he had to fight the urge to take off his helmet and look at the picture of her in her cheerleading uniform, to look at her legs and imagine the two of them together again, sitting in the back of the bus.

When the song ended, he handed the earbud back.

“You don’t have anything, like, seriously wrong with you, do you?” the kid asked.

“No,” Matt said. “Other than not being able to remember what a raincoat is.”

The kid stopped the wheelchair a minute. “Like any internal bleeding or anything?”

Matt shook his head.

“Good. Because I think I can probably pop a wheelie on this thing if we get up enough speed.”

T
HE CHORUS OF
“B
ORN IN THE
USA”
CAME FLOATING OUT
of the ward as Matt walked in. The soldier with the yo-yo—his name was Clarence, Matt was pretty sure—was fiddling with the dial on a radio that had suddenly appeared on his bedside table.

“107.7 FM. Classic Rock,” he said. “Freedom Radio. Courtesy of the U.S. Army.”

After the last few chords of the song died out, an announcer with a Southern accent came on and said there would be a Bible study group meeting on Wednesday and confidential evaluations at the combat stress clinic on Thursday. Life in the Green Zone.

But the strangest thing about the Green Zone was the quiet—or rather, the ordinariness of the sounds. Cell phones trilling. Toilets flushing. The hiss of air as someone pulled the tab on a can of Coke. The sounds were both odd and familiar—out of place, ordinary, and extraordinary at the same time. Matt thought about Itchy, the cat, and how he’d grown accustomed to the pounding of mortar fire and wondered if he would stop noticing these
everyday sounds and get used to the quiet.

He opened his notebook to the page with the baseball trivia questions and tested himself again. He was pretty sure Sandy Koufax was the guy who held the strike-out record, but he couldn’t remember if the World Series was postponed because an earthquake in 1989 or 1998. He unfolded the page. It was 1989. He repeated that to himself: 1989, 1989, 1989. He tested himself again. But he couldn’t remember. Was it ’89? Or ’98?

A warm breeze filtered in through the open window, carrying the crackle of static, then the lulling voice of an Iraqi sports announcer narrating a soccer match. Soon, Matt felt fatigue descend on him. He closed his eyes and let the notebook slide from his grasp.

Then he heard gunshots. The staccato
pop-pop-pop
of an AK-47.

Matt bolted upright, clutching the covers in his fists. The popping grew louder, closer; the shots seemed to be coming from every direction.

He didn’t have his gun or his helmet. He didn’t have his vest and he wasn’t wearing his boots. He was in a hospital bed, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and flip-flops.

For a moment everything went quiet. A single shot rang out, ricocheting off the concrete.

And suddenly Matt was back in the alley. In the distance, he could see a little boy, ducking in and out of a
doorway. A candy wrapper fluttered from a coil of razor wire. The quivering radio voice of a woman singing a love song floated through the air. Machine-gun fire erupted. Bits of plaster rained down from overhead. A dog, a mangy stray with a crooked tail, trotted across the street, oblivious to the battle around him. A single shot rang out. The child was lifted into the air, paddling his arms like a swimmer. He looked surprised, then confused, then absolutely terrified as he soared through the turquoise sky, higher and higher, until all Matt could see were the soles of his shoes.

Matt opened his eyes. All he could see was the deep green of the army blanket. He flushed with embarrassment. He had pulled the covers over his head like a baby.

His whole body was shaking violently. He listened for a moment. The ward was hushed, the only sounds were the steady beeping of a medical monitor a few beds away and the distant rush of water from a toilet flushing.

Slowly, carefully, he pulled the blanket away from his eyes. He heard a voice from a few rows away. It was the shop teacher with the bad back. “Dumb hajis,” he said. “Shooting off their machine guns just because they won a soccer game.”

Matt looked around. He saw the guy with the yo-yo showing a nurse one of his tricks. Francis was scribbling in his notebook, and the two guys at the end of the
room were playing cards. No one had even looked in his direction.

Matt wrapped the blanket around his fist, put it to his mouth, and sobbed.

M
ATT WAS WAITING OUTSIDE
M
EAGHAN
F
INNERTY’S OFFICE
in the hallway when she arrived for work early the next morning. The sun wasn’t even up yet, and the hospital was shrouded in the silence that descended on it only rarely, in those predawn hours after the last of the night’s casualties were taken care of and the day’s new patients had yet to arrive.

She stiffened, unconsciously bringing her hand to her service revolver as she saw him sitting in the darkened hallway.

“One hundred and three,” he said. “There are one hundred and three steps between here and the ward.”

She scowled, but she eased her hand away from her holster.

Matt held up the notebook that Francis had given him. “I know for sure,” he said. “I wrote it down.”

She turned her wrist to check her watch. It wasn’t even seven in the morning. He had no business being off
the ward, and she could report him if she wanted to.

“Can we do some more of those picture cards today?” he said quickly. “Ma’am?”

“At our appointment,” she said. “This afternoon.”

Matt stuffed his hands in his pockets and went to leave. He took a step, then turned to face her. “You’re, like, the guidance counselor here, right?”

“Not really,” she said.

“But if a person has something they need to talk about, they can talk to you?”

“You can talk to Father Brennan,” she said.

“It’s not a religion thing. It’s a memory thing.”

Meaghan Finnerty cocked her head to the side and studied him. In her gaze, he saw a flicker of sympathy, something he hadn’t sensed from her before, and he looked away, out the window, so she couldn’t see the tears that had suddenly welled up in his eyes.

It was still sort of dark out; all he could make out in the dim, gauzy light was the silhouette of a palm tree. He counted to ten to try to regain his composure before turning to leave.

“Come in,” she said.