by: Marty Chrisman
Luke forced his eyes open just long enough to look around. It took a few minutes for his eyes to focus and for his fuzzy brain to register the fact that he was in a military hospital. He’d made it, somehow he had made it. He had survived that hell hole of a prison camp. He let his eyes close, drifting back into a deeply drugged sleep.
The next time he regained consciousness it was because he felt a prick in the back of his left hand as someone changed his IV. “Owww….” He muttered, opening his eyes and startling the pretty blonde nurse who was working on his IV.
“Well, hello there, blue eyes.” She said with a grin “Glad to see you finally decided to wake up. You remember me?”
“You were on the chopper.” Luke said his voice hoarse from disuse.
“That’s right. My name’s Jenny and I’m your primary nurse.”
“I’m Luke. Luke Duke….”
“Nice to meet you, Luke Duke. With that accent you have to be from down south. Tennessee?”
“Georgia.” Luke corrected her with a thin smile. “Hazzard, Georgia.”
“Well, since you didn’t have any dog tags on when you were brought in….how about giving your rank and serial number too so I can fix your paperwork. I’d be willing to bet there are some folks out there that’ll be mighty glad to hear that you’re still alive.”
“Sergeant. United States Marines Division D. 233-08-4402.” Luke recited automatically.
“Gotcha Sergeant Duke.” Jenny told him with a grin, as she picked up his hand to check his pulse. “I’ll make sure that information gets entered in the official record.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Four days. And you’ll probably be here a couple of more weeks.”
“How bad am I hurt?”
“How bad are you? Have you seen yourself in a mirror lately? You look like death warmed over.”
“That bad, huh?” Luke said with a short chuckle that he cut off as his chest tightened painfully making him cough violently.
“I wouldn’t do that just yet…” Jenny told him, gently touching her hand to his forehead “You’ve got pneumonia…that’s why your chest hurts so bad.”
“Any other good news?” Luke asked when he was finally able to stop coughing.
“Yeah….it looks like you’re not gonna lose your leg after all.”
“My leg?”
“Yeah, you had a pretty bad infection in it. It was touch and go for awhile but I think the doctor finally has it under control. You’re gonna have a pretty nasty scar though. He had to operate to make sure he got all the infection out.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“Other than the fact that you are severely dehydrated and you’ve lost almost 40 pounds….naw, I don’t think so….” She looked at Luke and grinned broadly “You’re one of the lucky ones….at least you get to go home.”
“Home….” Luke repeated with a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. That word had never sounded so good before.
“Yeah….you’re getting discharged as soon as you get out of here.”
“You mean I’m really going home….not just back to the states.” Luke said in a surprised voice He hadn’t expected that. He still had a year to go before his enlistment was up.
“You’re really going home, blue eyes. Just as soon as you’re strong enough to make the flight back.” She finished adjusting the drip on the IV and then said “I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.”
Luke lay there staring at the ceiling and smiling happily. Home. He was really going home. Back to Hazzard and his old life and his family. Slowly he took stock of the various aches and pains in his battered body. His chest hurt but not that bad unless he tried to take too deep a breath or started coughing. His leg was what hurt the worst. A dull throbbing pain even when he didn’t move it. He couldn’t remember hurting it but for the last few weeks he hadn’t been operating at full speed either. He also realized how weak he was and just how tired. Unable to keep his eyes open any longer, he drifted back to sleep.
When the supper trays were passed that night, Luke ate the first decent meal he’d had since being captured by the Viet Cong even if it was still military chow. He found out from one of the other officers that he had been in the prison camp for almost 3 months and that Luke and Billy Jo Riggs were the only two men from his unit who had survived their captivity. Since Billy Jo wasn’t in as bad a shape as Luke was he had been sent to a different hospital to be treated and then he would be sent home too.
Luke spent the next three days sleeping more then he was awake. Part of it was the drugs he was being given for the infection in his leg and the pneumonia and part of it was pure exhaustion from not getting much sleep over the past three months. His body needed the rest so he could regain his strength and his stamina. He woke up for meals and when the nurses changed the dressings on his leg but the rest of the time he slept.
Over the next ten days, Luke slowly regained his strength and regained 20 pounds of the weight he had lost. Before long, he was up and walking around with the aide of crutches. He couldn’t put any weight on his injured leg but the doctor believed that it would heal without any further complications and that he would regain full use of the his leg eventually. Luke knew that he was one of the lucky ones. God had chosen to spare him for some unknown reason while so many others around him had died. Luke had no way of knowing that his ordeal was far from being over just because he had been rescued from the prison camp.