Salt water taffy
I spend a lot of time in hospitals. Walking through the sanitized hallways to a new room what feels like every month. I know I shouldn't keep track of people I served with. Of people I knew in the 20s, 30s, but they're my people. I found them in the field, or rather, some of them found me.
"Hey sargent." I knock on the open door, peering inside. First Sargent Jackson Michael's. I met him when he was 18. I had snuck onto a base in Europe when the war was heating up. Air force if I remembered right.
"Captian!" Michaels voice was weak, almost a whisper, but I could still hear the pride. He was smiling. His family had left to get dinner moments ago, I didn't like visiting when families were there, created too many questions.
"Don't get up on my account Michaels." I laughed.
He had shrunk. Where there had once been a tall, muscular child now laid a shrunken bespectacled elder. His family had brought him some candy. During the war, his mother would sent care packages with saltwater taffy to the base every month. He had always shared it with whoever was near him at the time. It got to a point where the boys all knew to linger at mail call, just incase he got a package from home.
He saved the blue ones for me. Said he had noticed how I looked at the ocean when we flew over it. Thought it would bring me some joy or something. Cute kid.
"I guess it's time then." He chuckled, "I heard the other boys families say they had a ginger visitor before they went off." He adjusted his bed to where he could sit up comfortably, "Thought it was you."
I sat in the small chair by his bed. The hard plastic hurt my bones, but I didn't care. "Just came to see an old friend. Heard you had a fall." I looked over the whiteboard at the foot of his bed. The list of past major surgeries sprawled down the board in dark red marker like a list of accomplishments. Proof of a life well lived.
"Not as bad as yours. We were convicted you were dead" His laughter ended in a harsh wheeze, "Captian. Tell me the truth"
I looked at the picture of his family on the rolling tray. He'd married young, had children young, saw things nobody should ever see or do all before he was twenty. He had been a child. Still was one to me. One of my children. "It's time isn't it? That's why you're here."
"It's time." I confirmed. No sense in prolonging the explanation. He was ready. He'd been ready when his wife had passed, he'd been ready when our plane had gone down, he'd been ready so many times before. This one though, this was time.
"Well" he straightened up in the bed. "Then I better get ready to meet the boys shouldn't i?"
We sat there for hours. Reminiscing on the past, the last few decades. The changes everyone had gone through.
"Not you though," he said, "you don't change. Your hair maybe. I see you cut it. But you still look the same as you did in '40."
His breathing was shallow. Each word a new battle to string into still hospital air. "No not you. You'll meet us all. One day."
He looked st me with half closed eyes before grasping my hand with all the strength He had left. "My captian."
"Yes sargent." I pat the back of his hand. "I'll meet you all."
He raised his arm, as if attempting a salute. I returned it.
The monitor flattened when I left. Nurses rushing to see the commotion, family members running in. I caught his grandsons eye as I walked past. A flicker of recognition before following his parents.
The photo at the funeral was of his unit. Fifteen men standing side by side in a pub somewhere in Europe. With a tall redheaded woman holding up a pint to them.
"You look like the woman in the picture." His grandson said, stepping back from the small gathering. "How did you know him?"
"He's an old friend. Your daughter. She's going to college soon?"
"Yeah, we," I cut him off, "have hee apply for this. She will get it." I handed him the pamphlet I carried to all the funerals I went to. I took care of my men. Thst meant their families too. Chosen, blood, coincidental.
"I, how did, "
"He was a good man. Looked out for a lot of people. Only right we look out for him." I shook his hand before turning. I had a class to tech, and was three states away from my university.
I could cancel it, I thought, tell the students something personal came up. But no. I already knew if I gave myself time to think about another funeral I wouldn't make it out of the house for a few days. Blaire would worry. She always did, but really she didn't need to.
I turned to look at the gathering of people. "Into the wild blue yonder sarge. You were a good man."
The flight home was short. The plane pulled out over the water for a better angle of decent. I unwrapped a candy. Blue saltwater taffy.