Chapter 5
5. The Beginning of the Beginning
As much as Sergeant Raid wanted to begin Robert's rehabilitation his way, he couldn't, because Robert was still an invalid, according to the medical staff. He could use some of the machines on him as long as they were for physical therapy, and according to medical doctrine. He stayed within those guidelines religiously, and watched the readouts with a practiced eye, as did every tech, and Doctor on staff. They kept saying, "It has to be his neck, nothing else makes sense." It was their mantra, and they never went away from it.
They would find out much later that the neck was not the problem. The disconnect was actually taking place in his brain, and another serious operation would be needed to return him to normal. When he was shot, a tiny piece of bone splintered off from his left
parietal lobe,
and was pressing on a blood vessel in the brain, restricting blood flow to an area of the 'Gyrus Bump' causing it to malfunction. The neurologists studying him overlooked it, when studying his brain scans. This was the early 1970s, and technology, when it came to studying the brain, was still in its infancy. Electroencephalogram's, magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission imaging, and deep brain stimulation, are two to three generations away from these doctor's knowledge. At this moment, all they have available to them are Madame Curie's X-rays, and the scientific method. They will go from one clue to the next clue to the next until they find the answer. It is a slow tedious process, but some of the brightest minds in medicine came about during these times and their names grace the front of Medical Buildings all over this planet.
After 88 days of extensive physical therapy, Sergeant Raid knew he was beaten by this system, and stood at attention before his commanding officer to tell him so. There were no recriminations, no browbeating, no insults, just questions to be answered to the best of anyone's ability to do so, while trying to figure out why this one young man still couldn't walk. He had put on 23 pounds of muscle, mostly on his shoulders, chest, arms, thighs, and calves. He could do 50 leg lifts without stopping; however, he could do not do one squat. He could do 200 push-ups, pull-ups, and planks better than any other recruit they ever had, and they had to stop him before he became overheated. Anything they tried on him, he did, and eventually excelled at. Finally, they came to the end of their rope, and put him through the toughest final exam they could come up with. They put him in a steam enclosure, where the temperature was 99 degrees Fahrenheit, humidity hovered slightly above 99° %, and put him through as much of the 'Crucible' as possible. Every part of his body was stressed to the maximum. He was forced to use hand-to-hand combat skills from his wheelchair, and when thrown out of the chair by his opponent, to use everything he had learned from the ground. They were amazed at his ability to adapt and defend himself against both lighter, faster opponents; and slower stronger ones. He always found a way to win, and that was not supposed to happen in a training exercise.
Why couldn't he walk? It was driving his sergeant's crazy.
For a boy from the Bronx, who had never touched a weapon before, he seemed born to it. When they put the M16--A4 into his hands, it was like a grafting of a tree limb. This boy shot the black out of the 10ring, and when ordered to hit a different mark on the chart, he hit it unerringly. When his sergeants asked him where he learned to shoot like this he said, "You guys taught me." They wanted to kill him for complementing them, when they knew they had taught him the very basic firing lessons from each position, and yet he excelled. The only thing he failed at was walking, and this was getting very old.
In class, he was always number one. No one else ever came close. His school records told them he was highly competitive and that they would have to come up with something harder. What was harder to teach than the Uniform Code of Military Justice? They had no idea. For Robert, the Marine Corps Manual, was his Bible. He went to bed with it at night, reading pertinent paragraphs until he understood the intent as well as the words. If he had a question about it in the morning, he asked, and didn't stop asking until he got an answer that satisfied him. He was a very annoying student. His questions about incidents in Vietnam brought about many tense moments in class. His instructors had to explain about the breakdown of the moral fiber of the rank-and-file members of the corp.
There was the increased use of recreational drugs in whole units that went out into the bush and when they came in contact with the North Vietnamese regulars or the Vietcong fighting became very bloody. It often took place around civilian targets, which were decimated in the process. Instead of helping clean up the civilian areas after the fighting was done, many times our troops would go through the area and kill everyone in sight, believing they were aiding and abetting the enemy. Sometimes it was true, many times it was not. It didn't matter, they were still civilians, and someone higher up should have made that call. Robert wanted to know why that happened, and what officer gave the orders for the massacre. He wouldn't let it go until he had the answers to Mei Li or Hue, or half a dozen other cities that were laid waste by American GIs. What he found out went further than he realized. During the Tet Offensive of 1968 the North Vietnamese entered the city of Hue unopposed, they were using clipboards with names of people accused of helping authorities in the South. They arrested and collected over 4000 civilians, brought them to a central stadium, shot and killed them all. By the time US and South Vietnamese soldiers arrived to drive the North Vietnamese out of the city, the stench was so bad these bodies had to be burned en masse to prevent a plague from affecting the city. Neither one side or the other could claim the high ground, when it came to protecting civilian lives. Robert's mind was still a muddle of contradictions, as was the Vietnam War as a whole.
His doctors sent their test results to centers of excellence all over the country, and the world, asking for their opinion on why this patient couldn't walk. Finally, from the University of California at San Francisco, a doctor 'Posited', "It could have something to do with the metal implant in his head, causing a disturbance in the electrical fields in his brain. I am studying this phenomenon, but it's too early for me to render an opinion on it now." The same result came from a doctor, from the University of Bonn, in Germany. They were the only two results that matched from the 137 universities they had questioned. It wasn't very much to go on, but it was the only thing they had to go on, so they decided to open Robert's head."
Two doctors, 5700 miles apart, agreed that it could have something to do with the metal implant protecting Robert's brain. However, there was no replacing it, without putting Robert's life at risk by leaving his brain exposed. Grafting a piece of human bone, from a cadaver, into his head, and have it re-grow, and re-establish itself to protect the area was a possibility, but it had never been done before successfully. What were they going to do; they went to the Germans for an answer. Why the Germans you ask? For all the terrible experimenting they did, on peoples of all nationalities, prior to and during World War II, this knowledge produced more cutting-edge medical science, during the post war era, than any other country. That's why German scientists wound up working for our space agency as well as the Russians, and our medical research groups as well as other research groups throughout the West.
Germany was left destitute of its scientific brain trust, until a new generation could grow into it. Everyone the West could quantify as a top researcher, scientist, or Doctor was taken, given top pay for their work, and eventually given citizenship in their new land. After laboring under the harshest conditions for years, under Hitler's thumb, and working for pennies, these men flourished and proved to be the best that their generation ever produced.
They became the bedrock of our primitive space agencies, founding fathers of our research centers, titans of engineering and mathematics, and unbelievable on Wall Street. In the 15 years, between 1945 and 1960, these men were added to the boards of directors of every prestigious college in this country, as well as every high-profile business worth its name. Several had been added as directors of government agencies, three were named ambassadors, and others were on J Edgar Hoover's watchlist, along with the Reverend Martin Luther King.
Everyone, from President Dwight Eisenhower down to the shoeshine boy in front of the Washington Post building, knew Hoover was gay, but no one, in his right mind, ever said it out loud.
On May 1, Robert was in New Orleans waiting for his flight back to New York. He was a changed man, even though he still could not walk. He was now 1 inch taller at 6'2" tall and weighed 228 pounds. His shoulders were broad. His chest was muscled. He had an eight pack of abdominal muscles, his ass was tight, his thighs were like tree trunks, and his calves were made of steel. However, his sergeants were still worried about him. They had no idea what was going to happen to him the day he took his first steps. Even though he went through intensive physical therapy stretching his hamstrings daily, no one knew what would happen the day he put pressure on them. When he forced his 1
st
foot forward to take a step under his own power, would everything hold together, or would he collapse like a house of cards. The unknowns were killing them. His muscles were fine, it was his tendons, cartilages, and connective tissues they were worried about. The physical therapy stretched and pulled everything throughout a full range of motions, but never with any weight put on them. This was always the worry in the back of his sergeants' minds.
When his flight was called, he turned his wheelchair to his sergeants and saluted them.
"I know you're going to give me hell for this, but I'm going to say it just this once to you all.
"Sirs," you have taken a boy and in 90 days made a man out of him. Whatever happens now is up to the doctors in New York. If they can fix me, I will come back to you so you can continue my training. I know I am not finished. I can only thank you for getting me this far. Goodbye."
"We work for a living, Marine. We do not answer to the word 'Sir.'
Robert put up his hand, with his middle finger raised, as he was wheeled towards the aircraft. He noticed this one was taller than the Convair 880 he came down on three months ago. The four engines were placed different also. As he was helped up the front steps, he was again greeted by the staff.
He said, "Please call me Robert. My father gets the honorific of Mr. Graziano. What type of aircraft is this? It's different than the one I came down here on?"
The flight attendant said, "This is the new Douglas DC8. It is Delta's newest purchase and will become the premier aircraft of its fleet. It is wider and longer then both Convair aircraft, and faster, also."
"If these aircraft get any faster, they are going to break the sound barrier."
"The captain said, "No, Robert, there is no chance of that happening. We will be at least 100 mph below the sound barrier at all times. We do not want to rip the wings off this aircraft, because it is not made to go trans-sonic."
