Gross blushed. “Not like that. They print books up and put ’em together. They printed The Da Vinci Code there.”
“Never heard of it,” said Monroe.
“Yeah, right. Anyway, it’s not like a factory job. Everything’s computerized. Big as a rack of football fields, too. You should see it.”
“If I’m ever out that way, I’ll let you give me the tour.”
“Count on it,” said Gross, putting his hand out. “Thanks a million for everything, Doc.”
“I’m no doctor.”
“Heck, you fooled me.”
“You just made my day, Private.”
“I’ll stop by before I ship out.”
“Do that,” said Monroe.
Outside the hall, Monroe saw Sergeant Major O’Toole, a soft-spoken Vietnam veteran who had come out of retirement to work with soldiers through the army’s Wounded Warrior Program. He was talking to a young man seated in a wheelchair near a couple of his friends, who were standing on the sidewalk. One of them was on new legs. Monroe had treated the wheelchair-bound young man, Private William “Dagwood” Collins, so nicknamed for his tall, thin build. Collins, the victim of a roadside bomb, had lost the use of both legs. He had initially refused a double amputation, which would prepare him for the next step, the fitting of artificial legs. But Monroe had heard that the young man was having second thoughts. Monroe caught O’Toole’s eye but did not stop to talk to him or Collins. He walked across the campus to the main hospital and took the elevator up to his floor.
Raymond Monroe worked primarily in the occupational therapy and physical therapy rooms of the hospital. A therapy dog, Lady, roamed both rooms, playing with toys, sniffing at outstretched hands both flesh and plastic, and allowing herself to be petted. The facilities included free weights and weight machines, treadmills, mats and medicine balls, and a well-used pool. Raymond Monroe did much of his work on the occupational therapy room’s many padded tables, stretching his patients and increasing their range of motion and flexibility through repetition. The hips and shoulders were crucial areas. Prosthetics, burns, and scars aside, the problems he dealt with here were not much different from those he had encountered when he had worked as a PT at sports medicine clinics. He was bringing people back to some degree of active normalcy, postinjury.
Monroe’s first patient that morning was Sergeant Joseph Anderson of the First Cavalry Division, who had lost his right hand near Mosul. Anderson had a wry sense of humor and a positive attitude. He liked classic rock, redheaded women, and ’66 Mustangs, and he had an admirable abundance of confidence, despite the fact that his face had been badly scarred.
“Ali Baba tossed a grenade into our Humvee,” said Anderson the first time he met Monroe. “I picked it up and tried to throw it back to him, as a courtesy. But I guess I was a little late.”
“Word is you might have saved a couple of your men.”
“I sure would like to have my hand back, though. And my dashing good looks. Didn’t work out like it does in the comic books, sir.”
“No need to call me sir. I’m a civilian.”
“I was raised to call my elders sir. ’Less they’re ladies, and then I call ’em ma’am.”
“Where was that?”
“Fort Worth, Texas. As in, don’t mess with it.”
“You a Cowboys fan?”
“There ain’t no other team.”
“I won’t hold it against you.”
“You must be for the Deadskins.”
“Don’t play.”
Anderson had a prosthetic hand. On it, he had recently tattooed something, looked to Monroe to be a word spelled Zoso. On the flesh of his forearm were three symbols inked in blue. The one on his hand was known as a continuation tattoo. Many of the soldiers had gotten them applied to their prosthetics to replicate the portions of tattoos that had been lost to injury or amputation.
“You like my new tat?” said Anderson.
“If you like it, then I do, too,” said Monroe, who was kneading his fingers into Anderson’s forearm, doing it roughly because the young man could take it. “What’s it mean, anyway?”
“It’s a symbol. It looks like a word, but it isn’t. They call it a glyph. Don’t ask me why. Four members of Led Zeppelin each chose a symbol, and they put them on their album. Four band members, four symbols. Led Zeppelin Four, get it? The greatest hard-rock record ever made.”
“All right,” said Monroe.
“I envy you for being around when they were playin,” said Anderson. “You ever see ’em live?”
“Musta missed it.”
“Tell me you were a Zep fan, Pop.”
“Can’t say I was.” Monroe issued a barely detectable smile. “Matter of fact, I didn’t even know it was a group. I used to think it was one dude. My older brother set me straight, like he always did.”
“Mine liked to school me, too.”
“That’s how big brothers do,” said Monroe.
Later, after Anderson had left, after he had treated a couple of other patients, Monroe broke for lunch. His intention was to meet Kendall in her office.
Beyond the swimming pool, in a hall that led to a bank of elevators, he saw a general and some lower- ranking, freshly scrubbed officers; several doctors were giving the visiting uniforms a tour of the facility. The group parted as a young man and an older woman came down the hall.
The young man was a private out of Minnesota who had recently gotten his new legs. He wore a harness and a leash. His mother followed him as he wobbled on plastic knees and shin poles fitted into sneakers, his hips gyrating wildly as he took tentative steps. His face was pink with effort and concentration. His forehead was damp with sweat, and he bit down on his lower lip. The young man’s mother held the leash, steadying him, just as she had done twenty years earlier in their home in Thief River Falls, when he was eleven months old and taking his first steps.
The general, the officers, and the doctors began to grin painfully and clap their hands in unison for the enlisted man as he moved through the crowd. Monroe could not bring himself to join in. He had love for the soldiers and marines he treated and nothing but respect for the countless doctors, therapists, career military, and volunteers who were making their best efforts to help them. But he wasn’t about to join these officers with their frozen smiles.
Monroe walked quietly to the elevators as the private and his mother passed.
Seven
Alex Pappas had recently bought satellite radio service for the coffee shop, as he had become increasingly discouraged by the content of modern terrestrial radio. The choices on satellite were plentiful and could satisfy the help, who were mixed in culture and thus had varying musical preferences, and the clientele, who generally resided on the upward and downward slopes of middle age.
Darlene, as the senior member of the crew, had promptly commandeered the new radio. Of the original help from his father’s era, only she remained. Inez had died of liver failure in her forties, and Miss Paulette had passed away shortly thereafter, a victim of diabetes and her weight. In the ’80s, Junior Wilson had been taken by the glass pipe and for all purposes had disappeared. His father, Darryl Wilson Sr., still the engineer in the building above, no longer spoke of his son.
Darlene was now forty pounds heavier than she had been at sixteen. When he looked at her, Alex still saw her lovely eyes and smile, and also those forty pounds. He gently urged her to lose weight and give up smoking, but she brushed off his suggestions with a gentle laugh.
She had given birth to four children, one fathered by Junior Wilson, and currently was the grandmother of
