In the daylight the sunlight toured the perimeters of his eyes like a firefight, but the night was the worst, for then they were the brightest and the strangest.
I thought I should say something to him, but could never bring myself to utter a word because I was too lost in my misery and waiting for the change of day to night, night to day, and I was thinking of the children. Or I tell myself that now. My thoughts were mostly on me and how sad it was that a man like me had been born into a time of war and that none of what was good in me and great about me could be given to the world.
The children crossed my mind, but I must admit I saw them less as my mission in life than as crosses I had borne on my back while climbing Christlike toward the front lines. Heavy crosses that had caused me to fall hard to the ground, driving the pain into my lungs, putting me here where I would die in inches far from home.
"Why do you fret for yourself," the old man said one morning. I turned and looked at him and his eyes were as animal bright as ever and there was no expression on his crunched, little face.
"I fret for the children.".
"Ah," he said. "The children. Your job in the Corp.".
I said nothing in reply and he said not another word until the middle of the night when I drifted into sleep momentarily, for all my sleep was momentary, and opened my eyes to the lamp light and the cold hospital air. I pulled a Kleenex from the box beside my bed and coughed blood into it.
"You are getting better," he said.
"I'm dying," I said.
"No. You are getting better. You hardly cough at all. Your sleep is longer. You used to cough all night.".
"You"re a doctor, I suppose?".
"No, but I am a soldier. Or was. Now I am a useless old man with no arm.".
"In the old days a man your age would have been retired or put behind a desk. Not out on the front lines.".
"I suppose you"re right. But this is not the old days. This is now, and I"m finished anyway because of the arm.