Read Online The Light of Hidden Flowers by Jennifer Handford - Free Book Online

sludge and instantly stained the sides of the Styrofoam. I added a few creams and a few sugars. I didn’t trust drinking it straight.
    I sat down and asked the guys to come to order, then initiated some chitchat that fell flat. No one wanted to talk about the Yankees, or major league baseball at all, for that matter. I opened my notebook, and called on my first guy. Tony was an above-knee amputee who lost his leg while on patrol, and had had a tougher time than most, having to endure over thirty surgeries, while battling grueling headaches, almost daily.
    “How’s your week been, Tony?”
    Tony grumbled then proceeded to report in short, angry sentences how the week was crap, how physical therapy was a joke, how he couldn’t sleep, the Ambien no longer worked, how the food sucked, and how he woke up in the night and felt like his leg was there, but when he reached for it, it wasn’t. “It’s like a goddamned prank, every night.” At that, his voice cracked and he had to wipe at his eyes. “It’s not fair.”
    The wipe at his eyes was my signal to move on. None of them wanted to cry in front of the others. “Andy, what about you? How are you making out?”
    Andy had a better attitude than most. He lost both his arms when clearing a schoolhouse that had been booby-trapped by the Taliban. When Andy moved a box of books, it detonated and blew off his arms. Thanks to his buddy, who’d tied some expert tourniquets and administered blood-clotting powder, Andy was dragged away from the scene and then evacuated to Germany, and then to Walter Reed. A miracle, really. The fact that his face was spared was even more of one. I had yet to point that out.
    “I’m getting used to this thing,” Andy said, lifting his prosthetic right arm. “Still, though . . . what I’d do for just one arm. I’d trade a leg, even. At least I’d be symmetrical then.”
    A few of the guys laughed awkwardly.
    I prided myself on listening more than talking. These guys had been through enough without having to hear a bunch of sanctimonious babble, but there were some facts about amputees and moving on that these guys needed to know.
    “All right,” I said. “Let’s get to it. The sooner you accept that your limb is gone, the sooner you will heal—not just your body, but your mind and spirit. Every day is a challenge, guys, but it’s not a challenge you can’t overcome.”
    The guys shot me dirty looks.
    “Think of Michael,” I said. “Think of Rob and Derek.”
    Michael Gordon was a soldier who’d visited us about a month ago, a triple amputee—both legs and an arm. He had a wife and a baby waiting for him, and his determination was ironclad. He looked at my group of sad sacks and told them to get on with their damn lives, to live for the guys who didn’t make it. After that meeting, a couple of my guys—Rob and Derek—had complete turnarounds. Started working harder at their PT and OT, reached out to family members, found at least some shreds of the spirituality they had lost. Those guys had since been moved to another group—a step two group, further in their recovery.
    I reined in my urge for further platitudes. Lecturing them on why they shouldn’t feel shitty wasn’t going to make them feel less shitty; I knew that. I just wanted them to know they weren’t alone, to remind them to hold in their heads the examples of three men like themselves—guys they knew, who’d lost pretty much what they’d lost, but who’d found it in themselves to push on to the next step. I believed in each and every one of them, but couldn’t come right out and say it. Instead, I sounded like a hard-ass, telling them to man up.
    Lucy had accused me of this more than once or twice: of being too hardheaded to let anyone in, of being incapable of just feeling rather than fixing.
    I never claimed to be blameless in our divorce. There was plenty to go around.

    After two hours with the guys, I left the hospital and drove to the kids’ schools.