A nurse took the tired, anxious serviceman to the bedside. “Your son is here,” she said to the old man. She had to repeat the words several times before the patient’s eyes opened.
Heavily
sedated because of the pain of his heart attack, he dimly saw the young
uniformed Marine standing outside the oxygen tent. He reached out his
hand. The Marine wrapped his toughened fingers around the old man’s limp
ones, squeezing a message of love and encouragement.
Occasionally, the nurse suggested that the Marine move away and rest
awhile. He refused. Whenever the nurse came into the ward, the
Marine was oblivious of her and of the night noises of the hospital –
the clanking of the oxygen tank, the laughter of the night staff members
exchanging greetings, the cries and moans of the other patients. Now
and then she heard him say a few gentle words. The dying man said
nothing, only held tightly to his son all through the night.
Along
towards dawn, the old man died. The Marine released the now lifeless
hand he had been holding and went to tell the nurse. While she did what
she had to do, he waited. Finally, she returned. She started to offer words of sympathy, but the Marine interrupted her. “Who was that man?” he asked.
The nurse was startled, “He was your father,” she answered.
“No, he wasn’t,” the Marine replied. “I never saw him before in my life.”
“Then why didn’t you say something when I took you to him?”
“I
knew right away there had been a mistake, but I also knew he needed his
son, and his son just wasn’t here. When I realized that he was too sick
to tell whether or not I was his son, knowing how much he needed me, I
stayed.”
SHARED FROM: http://academictips.org/blogs/
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