STELLA

At a young age I was drafted and told to fight communism abroad
…Some place named Vietnam.
Thick trees covered the ghostly enemy we fought
so they sprayed our ally Agent Orange throughout.
Higher ranks told us not to worry,
even as my clothes were seared and my eyes burned sorely.

I survived that hell for one postponed.
Another battle in the land of democracy I fought for, My Home.
Free health checks at the VA filled me with fright
That I might be the next victim of our old ally.
But nothing…Just a pat on the back. Nods of empty reassurance.

So I buried those fears deep with all my might.
And did the only thing I knew in life—fought the wrong and protected the right.
Twenty years as a sheriff. Plus five at my daughter’s school.
A gun at my side and the remnants of our friend, Agent Death,
Ever coursing through my veins.

Christmas came, as it does every year.
Except this time it came with a weakness—it soon fulfilled every fear.
First went the left side, three weeks later my speech.
Ten weeks later, I lay trapped in my body,
Miles from the place that I was prepared to die for, My Home.

Two blinks for a yes. One blink for a no.
How does a tear fit into this new language and show
All that I want, all that I need, all that I feel within this former ally, my body.
The tumor engulfing my brainstem continues to grow
As does the medical parade: A pat on the back. Nods of empty reassurance.

A hole in my neck now allows me to breathe—
Roughly the size of the bullets that made my comrades cry out and bleed.
The secretions restrict any hope of escape,
Too sick to die in a place where all humans wish to pass, Their Home.
No helicopter comes for this wounded soldier. Merely a transfer. Three East.

— Jason Hogan, 2012

Locked In: Part I and Locked In: Part II are reflections by two third-year medical students at the University of Virginia on the case of a Vietnam War veteran with “locked-in syndrome,” whom they met during their rounds. One student expresses his dismay at this gentleman’s condition and treatment as if revealing a page from his diary while the other imagines himself in the mind of the patient releasing words trapped within and transforming them into lines of verse. Both look to creative writing to confront the gravity of the situation in which their medical studies placed them, to vocalize their distress rather than lock it inside as their patient was forced by illness to do.
— LC