Part 6
For ten minutes, I treated the conflict as though George had left it for me to solve alone.
I called the cemetery and asked about a later hour. There was none. I asked the nursing program about another checkoff. My instructor reminded me that the end-of-term deadline was fixed and that I had already received the only make-up allowed.
Then I took out George’s letter.
Go to class even when somebody needs you.
The advice angered me. Dead men should not be allowed to make sensible points when you most want to argue with them.
Victoria answered while I was still staring at the page.
“I can postpone the burial,” she said.
“He waited long enough.”
“Then I’ll be there for him.”
“I’m supposed to be there.”
“You are. Just not at one.”
Asking was harder than giving her instructions.
“Can you hold the flag for me?”
“Yes.”
“And tell him why I’m late?”
Victoria’s voice softened. “I suspect he knows.”
On Thursday morning, Mrs. Chen drove me to campus in her twelve-year-old minivan. A cardboard air freshener shaped like an orange swung from the mirror, and three catering pans rattled in the back.
“You studied?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You eat?”
I held up the sandwich she had packed.
“That is not eating. That is displaying.”
I took a bite.
The checkoff room contained a hospital bed, a mannequin, and my instructor holding a clipboard. I had thirty minutes to demonstrate hand hygiene, transfer a patient safely, measure vital signs, and respond to a change in condition.
My fingers shook while I fastened the gait belt.
“Would you like to stop?” my instructor asked.
“No.”
I adjusted my grip and began again.
When the mannequin’s blood pressure fell and its recorded speech became slurred, I noted the time, kept it from swallowing water, and called for emergency help. For one second, the beige plastic face became George’s on the sidewalk.
Then I heard him correcting my index card.
I finished with forty seconds left.
My instructor marked the final box and set down her pen.
“You passed.”
There was no applause. I washed my hands, collected my bag, and walked into the hall, where Mrs. Chen waited with the engine running.
The military honors had ended by the time we reached the cemetery. George’s grave lay on a slope beneath an oak tree, the soil still dark and loose. Victoria stood beside it with two older members of his former unit. One wore a hearing aid. The other leaned heavily on a cane.
Nobody asked me to explain myself.
Victoria handed me the folded flag.
“They played taps,” she said. “The birds argued through most of it.”
“He would’ve liked that.”
“He would have complained about the bugler’s timing.”
The two veterans introduced themselves. One remembered George landing on a narrow road with a damaged hydraulic line. The other remembered him stealing canned peaches from an officers’ mess.
Their stories contradicted each other in three places. I believed all of them.
After they left, Victoria and I sat on the grass. I took out a peanut butter sandwich wrapped in wax paper and broke it in half.
I offered her one piece.
“Black coffee?” she asked.
“Bad black coffee.”
“Appropriate.”
We ate beside George’s grave while dry leaves moved over the grass. The flag rested across my knees, heavier than cloth should have been.
For years, Victoria had imagined finding George soon enough to repair everything. I had imagined that enough breakfasts, appointments, and anger could keep him alive. Neither of us said those things aloud.
When only the crust remained in my hand, I wrapped it in the paper and put it back in my bag. I did not leave food on the headstone. George had hated waste.
Before we stood, Victoria touched the edge of the folded flag.
“He wrote about you in his letter,” she said.
“What did he say?”
“That you would try to refuse help in complete sentences.”
“That sounds like him.”
“He also asked me not to turn you into a symbol.”
“Good.”
Victoria looked toward the rows of white stones.
“I nearly did.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
The wind lifted one corner of the wax paper. I caught it and tucked it beneath my cup. This time, I had eaten my half first…
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