The Bronze Star Clyde Gave Back

“Take it to him,” he said. “Today. Don’t wait for the weekend.” I could not say thank you. My mouth would not do it.

I nodded at him, and I think he understood, because he looked out his front window instead of at me while I cried.

Then I walked out under those bells.

The Robley Rex Veterans hospital is a long tan building on Zorn Avenue that looks like a school from the fifties.

You park in a garage and take an elevator, and a volunteer in a red vest tells you which floor. The stroke unit is on four. The hallway smells of floor wax and warm soup.

I got there at ten after four. I had missed the therapist. I was ready to be sorry about it.

Vernon was in the chair by the window with a blue blanket over his knees. His right hand lay in his lap like a glove somebody had left behind.

He turned his head when I came in, and I saw him study me for a long moment, his eyes going from my face to my hands to the little box.

Kim, the day nurse, was by the bed, charting. She is a thin woman from Shepherdsville with a laugh you can hear down the hall.

A second nurse was adjusting the drip stand. An aide was setting down a supper tray he would not touch.

“Mrs. Hensley?” Kim looked at my face and set her clipboard down. “Are you all right?” I did not answer her. I could not afford to.

I walked to the head of Vernon’s bed. I opened the velvet box. The medal lay there with its ribbon folded under it, and it caught the light from the window like something alive.

I knew what I wanted to do. I did not know until that moment that I was going to do it in front of everyone.

I took the medal out. I unfolded the little pin on the back of the ribbon. And I pinned it to his pillowcase, right at the center, where his cheek would lie when he slept.

Then I took the dog tags from the box and walked back to his chair and looped the chain gently around his left hand, the good one.

The room went quiet. The aide set down her spoon. Kim put her hand over her mouth. Vernon looked at the ribbon. He looked at me. His left hand closed on the chain, and I saw the knuckles go white.

“Vernon,” I said. “It’s all right. It’s here. I have it.” His mouth worked.

I have been married to that man for fourteen years, and I have learned to read his silences like a farmer reads weather. But I had never before seen his face try so hard to do something it could not do.

The muscles on the left side of his jaw strained, and his eyes filled, and a sound came out that was not a word.

I leaned in close. I put my ear almost against his lips. “N,” he said. “Vernon.” “N. Nor. Ah.” It was the first thing he had said since Sunday. It was my name.