Goodbye, My Good Knight –

It was early morning in the hospital room, when the soldier awoke from his deeply painful slumber. He was all alone in the room except for me. He smiled knowing I was there and said, “I told you all along I’d come back from Nam. And I knew you wouldn’t run off with the milkman too.”

I giggled, “And you did come back. And I am so grateful too. I just wish you weren’t so wounded. You saw many horrible things. I just wish there was more time to heal.”

“Thank you for helping as much as you could to heal my wounds.” He looked at the heart monitor and the IV stand next to his hospital bed that had been standing sentinel that long night as he approached the hour of his demise. “Well, as best you could under the circumstances.” he said upon reflection. He looked away and sighed heavily knowing his fate. “Please tell me that you are going to be okay after I am gone?” Both of us knew he wasn’t going to be there by the end of the day. “It seems so futile that I only came back just to say goodbye to you again.It seems all I am good at is saying goodbye to you.”

I silently cried, “I will miss you, you big lug. But, we both know it’s your time to go and …” I felt the squeeze of his hand on my young breast as he lay there. I teased him, “Oh, you! Really! Couldn’t resist copping a feel, could you?”

He chuckled. He sounded happy for the first time in a long time. “Sorry, I just can’t believe the flat chested little girl I left behind has finally grown up. And now she is a woman.”

“Well, not quite yet. But, thanks to your sacrifice and support, I will be. I know leaving for Nam wasn’t easy for you. You wanted to stay. You had no choice. Leaving me behind was the right choice looking back on it. You couldn't do what you needed to do if you were struggling with thinking about me in a fox hole. Even so, I watched you come home and hide your valant service to your country because they warned you. They were so right. People would have spit on you and kicked you had you been open about who you were. And they would have called you a baby killer too, even though you were just a medic and saved babies.” She bristled at her fellow countrymen for their abhorrent intolerance of duty and honor.

Hearing her lament, he pressed her, “Do me a favor.” It broke her contemplation of the horrible way he was treated when he landed in San Francisco.

“What?” she asked wondering what it could be.

“Forgive them. Remember, the same people who hate me will hate you too. They have a political agenda, just like Charlie when he was hiding in the rice paddies waiting to ambush us. People with political agendas can be dangerous because they don't care whose lives they destroy to get what they want. They don’t admit that war, even a political one, is about power, not hate. It is about whom they can control. Destroying someone makes them fill with pride, not remorse. They lie when they say they want to make love, not war. The opposite of war is peace, not hate. And there is no peace in them. And the end object of a political agenda is destroying someone’s freedom.” his said bitterly.

“Thank you so much for fighting for my freedom my love. I will forgive them. I promise.” she said.

“Good. Because the only thing I want to leave you with after two years of my life over there is freedom. The freedom to be who you were meant to be.” he answered proudly.

Then he spoke his final words to me. “Take care of yourself. Have a good life. I love you.”

I choked out, “Thank you again. I love you too.”

A nurse came in with my mom and dad. My soldier was gone. They hooked me up to the IV and then the heart monitor. Next, they wheeled out of the room getting ready to take me down to the operating room where I would become complete as a woman. My dad squeezed my hand and my mom cried. I looked down the corridor and my sisters waved at me. I waved back.

Looking back at my hospital room, I saw him for the last time. He was standing in the doorway saluting me. I said quietly to him as they wheeled me down past my sisters, “Goodbye, and thank you my good knight!”

Copyright © 2018 by AuP reviner

... Thank you Veronica, aka laika, for the suggestion