Baltimore, Maryland — October 2019

The waiting room is silent. Like a church. Friends and family members are numb, considering the possible outcomes for their loved ones undergoing the knife.

“When did we get so old?” Gina whispered in my ear. Then she laughed and hugged me, and the doctors took her away. Her surgery would soon get underway, and I had nothing to do but wait. A tumor had wrapped its way around her spinal cord. Ignoring the fatty loops that gripped her spine could be catastrophic. Of course, the surgery could render her paralyzed from the waist down. So, were there any good options?

My friend of over three decades tried to comfort me and her soldier husband: three tours, two in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, a navy-blue sweatshirt boasting an Airborne patch, a bracelet saying Remember The Fallen circling his wrist, a black, rubber ring dark on his calloused hand, the kind soldiers wear to honor others who’ve served or lost their lives in combat and which are easier to cut off if one’s hand is injured.

 

 

Sleep had eluded us in the hotel two blocks south of the sprawling Johns Hopkins University Hospital, where the doctor who specialized in this “risky” surgery plied his trade in scrubs, and would soon wield his scalpel on the pale lumps of my dear friend’s vertebrae.

I listened as the surgeon explained the situation, then the anesthesiologist, then the head nurse, who offered to take Gina’s hand if she was scared. She said she was, and the nurse promised to hold on tight.

I kissed Gina goodbye, told her I loved her, and left her alone with her husband.

Later, I awoke on an iridescent-green, vinyl couch wrapped in a blue airplane blanket. The waiting room roiled with concerned people desperate for news about their loved ones. I blinked at the large electronic board that shared patient information. Gina was still undergoing surgery. I pulled the cover over my head, wanting to leave this place, but how could I? Gina’s husband had disappeared. The hospital and its patients gnawed at his belly, a reminder of dead and dying soldiers he’d been unable to help in another hospital in Iraq.

 

 

Hours later, I sat bedside, staring at my friend who looked small and fragile beneath a thin hospital blanket.

“I want to bring him home.” Her eyes were still glassy from the anesthesia.

“Who?” I gazed at my friend, her face etched with pain. The drugs weren’t helping.

“Uncle Bud.”

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that in the midst of her suffering, Gina thought of Bud. We’d spoken of her elusive uncle—her mother’s handsome, rakish brother—on occasion over the years, and of the odd circumstances surrounding his death. She’d toted those old letters to Baltimore, and the night before the surgery, she’d presented the yellowed pages to me in a Ziplock bag. A mandate, I think. My project should her operation go south.

 

 

“And I want to know what happened?” She smoothed her short blonde hair, pushed back her bangs, then winced and closed both eyes.

“Do you want me to call the nurse?”
“No. Bud...” her voice trailed off.
“It’s been a long time, Gina. And we don’t have much to go on.” I recalled the night before when she’d extracted the fragile letters with almost religious reverence. The epistles were tiny, square, the type soldiers used during World War II.

She opened her eyes and squirmed, trying to find a comfortable position, but was under doctor’s orders not to move.

“Stay still! Water?” I reached for a plastic cup with a bent white straw, in an effort to do something.

Gina shook her head and stared out the window. I followed her gaze and focused on the clear blue sky and showy fall foliage, brilliant orange and yellow leaves basking in bright sunshine. I searched for something to say. I’d always been the one who, faced with a problem, could tackle a job and get it done, a hangover perhaps from my previous life as a reporter. But how was I to determine what happened to a man who died mysteriously almost 75 years earlier at the end of World War II?

“I will have some water.”

 

 

“Okay.” I reached for the cup and guided the straw between Gina’s chapped lips. When she was done, I placed it back on the stainless-steel tray next to the bed. Then she closed her eyes and let out a ragged breath.

I hated feeling helpless. Without thinking, I blurted out, “Let’s go get Bud!”

“Really?” She brightened instantly, a glimpse of the Gina I knew before the surgery.

I nodded. “When you’re better.”

And so, we agreed to travel to France, to the graveyard in Épinal where Joseph “Bud” Richardville had lain since his strange death in 1945. Even if Gina spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair, we’d go to France and bring Bud home.

 

Author Bio:

Anne Butler Montgomery has worked as a television sportscaster, newspaper and magazine writer, teacher, and amateur sports official. She most notably anchored the Emmy and ACE award‐winning SportsCenter. Her novels include The Castle, The Scent of Rain, A Light in the Desert, Wolf Catcher, Wild Horses on the Salt, and Your Forgotten Sons. 

 

This is an excerpt from Your Forgotton Sons by Anne Montgomery. It’s published here with permission.

Highbrow Magazine

 

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