My War - Installment 39

He took the picture anyway, that is, after the commotion settled down, so that the doctors would be able to see if it needed to be manipulated back into position. The patient had been livid with rage; a torrent of curse words erupting from his mouth. If he had not been attached to the bed, I'm sure he would have leaped off, and disregarding his pain, grabbed the X-ray man by the neck to chock him to death, or at least knocked him senseless. The rest of us were very defensive while "X-ray man", a name the technician had just acquired that morning, finished his picture taking rounds.

With the excitement of the morning over things started to settle down to some serious relaxing; like what else was there to do? Jack and I watched a soap opera. I soon dozed off again and did not awaken until the lunch wagon came rumbling and clattering onto the ward. I was beginning to believe that my mind and body were using sleep as a defensive or escapist mechanism to help alleviate my boredom. I decided that after lunch I would make it a point to stay awake and have a chat with the doctors when they came. I still had not asked if I could try the, swing to the side of my bed routine, to try placing some weight on my right leg during sheet changes on my bed. I would have to wait and see.

Spec-six Thompson came onto the ward to bring a bedpan to someone. On that ward a patient was devoid of any privacy when going to the toilet. Any way his presence gave me a chance to call him over; I wanted him to do some more shopping for me, if he was up to it.

Since I had never had an R&R and being that I was headed state side when my leg stabilized, I would not be able to shop for some of the things that men serving in Vietnam seemed to traditionally buy to take home. I had a few things in mind to buy. I could handle not being able to buy some of the fancy stereo equipment. There was just too much variety of electronics on the market to decide without looking and of course listening to it. I knew what kind of camera I wanted so I would get Thompson to pick up an Ashai Pentax 35mm camera with and f1.2 50mm lens and some film. I would just have to get him to pick up a small stereo record player and a bunch of contemporary, easy listening, music albums for me. Of course all this depended on whether or not he would be willing to get it for me.

It took very little persuading, on my part, to get Thompson to agree to do the shopping for me. I gave him some money and thanked him again and again for his kindness. A little something else to look forward to, I told myself. The camera would really be a great item to take home; I'd even be able to snap a few shots of the ward and all the turkeys I was spending so much time with.

The doctors came by right after Thompson had left with his bedpan full. They said I could give the standing a try, but just take it easy while doing it. Their decision to let me try the standing bit made me feel pretty happy. I could relax now and practice some more self hypnosis to pass the time.

My self hypnosis was working out great. I would wake up more refreshed and with a better attitude after practicing it for a few hours. I kept giving myself suggestions to, hopefully, heal my leg faster and to generally make me more comfortable and contented with my confinement. The nicest part was that it was working. I seemed to be proving to myself some of the things that I had read about self hypnosis, and that I had practiced on others. I already knew that it worked; it was just that it seemed to make more of a difference right then and under those circumstances. I also was using it to discipline myself to reading the Bible daily. God's word was helping me to accept my situation more than anything.

Philippians 4:11 "Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content."

OFF TO THE TELEPHONE

Supper had been over for forty to fifty minutes when Jack and noticed a whole group of doctors and corpsmen hurrying onto the ward. They quickly grabbed one of the traction patients, bed and all and whisked him out to heaven knew where. It was not unusual for medical personnel to come onto the ward and look at someone; we were not aware of them having checked this guy out before the entourage came in. We were at a loss, without the slightest idea of what was happening. Traction is a very isolating situation. There had been a guy, just across the room, whose name we did not even know and now he was gone. Why? We would probably find out later, so we returned to our soap opera.

I had made arrangements earlier in the day with some of the medical staff to be wheeled to the telephone sometime after supper. They informed me that they would come and get me at the proper time, in order that the time would be correct on the east coast of the United States.

Transport time arrived and I was moved to the pay phone down the hall. I got an operator on the telephone and, after some minutes of talking, explaining and repeating and repeating I managed to convey to, the Japanese female, operator that I wanted to make a collect call to my father Thomas Rollason at area code 717 – number - 564-2910 in Pennsylvania in the United States of America. I could just visualize the trouble that my folks were going to have figuring out what was going on when she would get them on the line.

When I did get through to them it turned out to be 0300 hours in the morning, so much for the figuring of my friends on the medical staff. By the time I got hold of Emily it was about 0345 hours and thirty-six dollars worth. Her father worked for Bell Telephone and wanted me to know immediately how much the call was going to cost me when I got back home.

I was left in the hall alone for a time waiting for someone to come along and push me back to my spot on the ward. Finally, a corpsman came to check on me.

"How did it go, Sir? Did your calls go through?"

"Yes, thanks. Everything went fine. It was just a small issue of the time being screwed up a little."

He pushed my bed along slowly, to keep the weights from swinging and clattering into the bed frame. When we got back to the ward I noticed that the soldier who had been taken away earlier had returned. As my bed was moved close to his I asked the corpsman to stop for a minute. The young man was asleep, probably sedated; the leg that was in traction was cut open, on the outside of the leg, from ankle to hip. There was, it appeared, a saline solution being trickled along the entire length of the incision, flushing it and keeping it from drying out. I did not have even the foggiest notion as to what kind of a procedure they had done on him. The whole cut was wide open; very puzzling. Little pumps hummed and whirred; the fluid bubbled and trickled through the wound continuously. I scratched my head in puzzlement, and then motioned for the corpsman to move me back in place.

We finished out the evening, Jack and me, watching some American shows that had been dubbed in Japanese. My thoughts while watching the shows were not on the action, but on Emily and the phone conversation we had just had a short time before. My picture of Emily, which came to me by way of Vietnam, was in my hand and I looked at it longingly. My waking thoughts were full of Emily, but it still made no sense to me why this beautiful young girl had suddenly decided to “fall in love” with me. I just would not be able to fully believe it until I could experience her in person; not until I could see her and hear her face to face, then I would start to believe, maybe!

"They must have gotten a new cook in the kitchen", I said to Jack,

“Why do you say that,” he replied.

"Because the menu has changed, "there is no hair in the eggs this morning. Matter of fact, there are no eggs." Instead we had pancakes. "Perhaps the old cook has some time off to grow more hair."

I could just discern the soft whirring of the motors that operated the suction and pumping devices that were attached to the guy across the ward. He was awake that morning, but looking as if he had been heavily drugged.

Jack was up and about early, a ridiculous statement for someone that is bed ridden. John the black fellow on my other side quietly fell back asleep while eating his breakfast, pieces of pancake had fallen all over his chest. His mouth hung open and syrup covered his chin. Yes it looked as if it was just another regular day in the traction ward.

The morning was progressing normally. I noticed when I looked out the window that it was snowing. There was not very much to be seen from the windows, especially since they were clear across the ward. The view was that of any very large city, just the tops of buildings and more buildings as far as the eye could see which was not very far that day. There were no really large building like I had originally expected, but then I didn't know where, in this the largest city in the world, the 249th General Hospital was located.

The snow must have started falling the previous evening and when one of the corpsmen came in I asked how deep the snow was. He told us that it was nearly two feet deep and that the storm had dumped the deepest snow to fall on Tokyo in the past twenty years. Tokyo was just full of excitement, so much, in fact that I thought I would take a nap.

Thompson had rotated to another shift and had a few days off before he was due to come back, so he had plenty of time to check on my items. It just seemed like it was taking forever. Patience, my boy, you need more patience. After breakfast I tried my standing up act for the first time and helped the nurse change my sheets. It felt good to get off of my back and backside, if even for those few brief moments. The snow had stopped by noon and was all ready beginning to melt and form beautiful icicles outside of the windows.

A corpsman had come on the ward and I asked him if he could get me a deck of cards from somewhere.

"No problem, Sir. I'll be right back."

"Thanks sergeant, I really appreciate your getting these for me. While your here..."

I had him rearrange the furniture so that my bed could be pushed up against Jack's. Now we had another diversion; we could waste time playing cards.

The weekend went by slowly, but finally Monday arrived, and with it, Thompson would be returning to work, hopefully with all my goodies. The regular cook must have just had the weekend off too. We were back to our usual fare.

I was becoming quite a hand at grabbing my trapeze and swinging off the bed to help make it. It had taken very little effort to get the maneuver down pat, thanks to my gymnastic ability, and I looked forward to it each day. The old nurse, the major, gasped every time I'd zoom out over the side of the bed to help her, my youthful exuberance making her nervous.

The afternoon passed slowly while waiting for Thompson's shift to take over. Jack and I played some gin and watched a little TV to pass the time. Super came and it was another meal not worth remembering; breakfast, even with hairy eggs was better than any of the other meals. I hoped that I would not be in this hospital or any other hospitals for very long. The food couldn't be much worse at the next hospital. State side at least there would be a chance of improvement, because there would be Americans cooking American food instead of Japanese cooks cooking American food.

Thompson came in for his shift early; he entered the ward pushing a gurney loaded with, well partially covered with packages. All mine, I chuckled to myself. Thompson pushed the gurney up beside my bed with a smile on his face.

"Here you go, Sir. I hope the albums are all right, I picked out twenty that I thought you might enjoy."
"Twenty record albums plus all this other stuff, amazing how much more money do I owe you Thompson?"

"None, I owe you some change!"

"I find that hard to believe, but then you must know."

"I've got to go on duty. I'll check with you later. Here's your change."

"I just don't know how to thank you, Thompson. You've really been a great friend to me. I sincerely appreciate all that you have done."

"No problem. I'm glad that I could do it for you. I've got to go now."

"Thanks again!!"

He handed me an envelope containing my change and then left to go on duty.

Wash up time came straight away so I had to wait a little longer before examining my purchases. I still could not get accustomed to the helplessness and dependency of being tied to the traction frame and bed. Not being able to do anything or to be in any position other than on my back; not being able to do a simple thing like rolling onto my side, was really frustrating at times.

Time had arrived for me to inspect my prizes. I grabbed the bags of records to see what Thompson had chosen for me. I began to riffle through the albums; I was awe struck by the prices on the jackets. The records had been purchased at a PX and the prices were cheaper than the PX prices in the States, these albums unbelievably priced between, $1.70-$2.20. There was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Sergio Mendez and Brazil 66, Peter Paul and Mary, The New Christy Minstrels, Percy Faith, The Ray Conniff Singers and many others. Thompson had even bought a stereo head set so that I would be able to listen privately and disturb no one.