An Old Soldier Goes Home

Jack has been in the hospital two days before he meets Jasmine; she comes into his room shortly after dinner with his medicine.

           “Hello Lieutenant,” Jasmine virtually sings as she deposits the paper cup of pills on his rolling table and proceeds to check all of his machines and their readings.

           “Hi,” Jack manages to articulate as he struggles to sit up and assess the nurse, turning the TV off.

           “How are you?” she listlessly asks him, just to be polite, still busy with her clipboard and pen.

           “Fine,” he assures her even as he continues to stare with undisturbed concentration at the Japanese-American third generation woman. He can’t take his gaze off her eyes; her dark irises flit from reading to numbers with hummingbird efficiency and cool practiced professionalism. “How are you?”

           Jasmine considers the question before she answers without looking at him. “Oh, not too bad,” she drawls out at length as she continues to work his chart. “Can’t complain.”

           “Uh-huh,” Jack drawls out, in imitation of her cadence, still drinking her in, finally finding his voice. “’Course, complaining never did anyone any good.”

           She tears her attention off her paperwork and meets his eyes and they lock for a second, two seconds, three seconds; she wallops him with the proverbial ton of bricks. “’Course, it isn’t every day we get a Medal of Honor winner in here,” she imitates his North Carolina accent in perfect intonation and flushes.

           Jack breaks the gaze in embarrassment; a dingy VA hospital at the end of his life was hardly the place to meet such a beautiful succubus as Jasmine. But fate, as Jack had learned early in life, could be cruel. “Aw shucks ma’am,” he delivers his line from decades of practice. “’T’weren’t nothin’.”

           “Nothing!” Jasmine squeals in true fangirl spirit as she picks up the paper cup to remind him why she’s really here. “Jumps on not one hand grenade but two!”

           My reputation has preceded me, Jack ruefully thinks. They have found me out. “Well,” he offers to explain while using fat fumbling fingers to sort out his treasures. “Sometimes you do crazy things when you’re a kid.”

           “I’ll say,” Jasmine retorts with her fists on her hips in pantomime of Superman. “Enlists at fourteen and forges his mother’s signature.”

           “You have done your homework,” Jack duly acknowledges as he swallows every pill individually. God, she is a knockout, he can’t stop his brain from repeating.

           “What’s wrong with your vegetables?” Jasmine crossly queries him after examining his dinner tray to change the subject. “You didn’t eat all your peas.”

           “You sound like my mother,” Jack advises her after he has choked down the last of his tablets.

           “I might have to call her if you don’t behave,” Jasmine exclaims while pointing an accusatory finger at him; her nails are long but still regulation. Dark violet, to match her hair, with white pinpricks as stars might shine on a still moonless night.

           Jack sighs, wearying of the repartee. “Well,” he announces with overdrawn solemnity. “They don’t take collect calls, where she is.”

           “Oh,” Jasmine pronounces in embarrassment at her faux pas and cuts the theatrics and simply does her job to get out of his room as quickly as possible.

           Jack has plenty of time to ponder this latest twist in his life; he has cancer and it’s slowly eating away at his body. He’s on numerous pain meds and even discounting their debilitating haze he nonetheless feels like a school kid again. His hormones are raging; the testosterone surges through his bloodstream, as does the adrenalin whenever Jasmine is in his room.

           The one thing he can’t reconcile himself over is her nationality. When he was growing up, racism was rampant; even though he’s learned political correctness, he can’t control his emotions. And his heart is attempting to mediate between his brain and his libido—without much success.

           Jack instead relives the day out of his life that would stand out as no other and ultimately hurl him to the front page of the nation’s newspapers, to the White House to be decorated by the President and to ticker-tape parades in New York City with millions of screaming cheers. He had gone ashore at Iwo Jima, the day after the first landing.

           Why had he been so foolhardy? he questions his actions time after time. He had reacted without thinking; when the first grenade had rolled into their foxhole, he intuited that it had come from nearby and he had enough time to partially bury it before it exploded. But what about the second?

           He shakes his head in amazement and regret, as he glances over the more than two hundred and fifty places on his body where shrapnel had been removed by astonished doctors who similarly worked in wordless wonder, all the while pondering: how had this man survived?

           The last time Jack is visited by Jasmine is the unkindest cut of all; he can’t stop the tears in his eyes. He cries like a baby; he is never going to see her again.

           Jasmine for her part understands and reflects on the cruelty of the universe. She unplugs the telephone which has a voice monitor built into it after she deadbolts the door to his room; she similarly disables the video recording of his room. Her eyes lock into his as she advances toward him, slowly but inexorably.

           Afterward, she reapplies her lipstick in the bathroom mirror; she turns her head this way and that as she checks her hair. Perfect.  

           “Remember—our little secret,” she tells him as a parting shot. “Otherwise my boyfriend would be jealous like nobody ever saw nothing.”

           Jack reflects on all the Japanese he killed on that island; he recalls the trip from Hawaii to Iwo as a stowaway. His buddies fed him from their chow and gave him water; they kept him hidden until the general confusion of February 20, 1945, when the landing craft were being manned. The first day, the 19^th, had been impossible, but the second day—it had been a cakewalk. “Our secret,” he promises her as he watches her walk out of his room.

           A few weeks later, Jack returns to Iwo Jima. He knows he hasn’t much time to live. He marvels at how the place has changed. He thinks about Jasmine again and the life they might have had together. He weeps uncontrollably at the impossible past.