Hurricane Street. Ron Kovic
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and you. Now my girl you’re so young and pretty and one thing I know is true, yeah. You’ll be dead before your time is due,” he sings, slurring his words, his eyes still tightly shut, his head swaying back and forth, lost in another world, place, and time, far from the hospital and the paraplegic ward.
* * *
And then there’s Nick, another paralyzed vet I meet at the hospital. While Marty seems to keep much of his rage inside, getting high and losing himself in his music, Nick is much more expressive and outgoing. An army combat medic and Bronze Star recipient, Nick survived an entire tour of duty only to be shot and paralyzed during a liquor store holdup in Compton, California. From what I heard, he had been back from Vietnam a little less than a year when it all happened. He couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t hold a job, had a hard time concentrating, and eventually ended up broke and homeless, living in his station wagon in a parking lot near Venice Beach. He went down to the VA for a couple of sessions with one of the psychiatrists but it didn’t seem to help. Nick told me the guy fell asleep on him and started snoring just when Nick was telling him about a friend who died in his arms after being shot in an ambush. When Nick accused the guy of dozing off, the shrink denied it, claiming instead that he was deep in thought. Nick never went back to him again.
A few weeks later, Nick had a breakdown and ended up in a locked psychiatric ward at the Long Beach VA suffering from hallucinations, flashbacks, and severe insomnia. I’ve heard he was put in a straitjacket and confined to a darkened room where he was given psychotropic drugs and zonked out on Thorazine.
After several weeks he was finally released and returned to living at the beach in his station wagon. One thing led to another, and hungry, desperate, broke, out of gas, Nick hitchhiked to his old neighborhood in Compton, attempted to rob a liquor store with an unloaded gun he had picked up at a pawn shop, and was shot in the back by one of the clerks, paralyzing him for life. The judge, citing mitigating circumstances—his Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and heroic record as a combat medic in Vietnam—eventually dropped the charges. Nick did his rehabilitation at the Long Beach VA Spinal Cord Injury Center.
The first time I met Nick was in the back of C ward. They’ve got a pool table set up there. It’s sort of a recreation room for the guys donated by the local VFW. Everyone was crowded around the table in their wheelchairs and Nick was shooting pool. He loves being the center of attention. I remember he made this incredible shot using just one hand, holding the pool cue with no bridge. He was trying to sink the eight ball and nobody thought he could do it. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am about to make one of the greatest pool shots in the history of the world, and I will do it with one hand and both eyes closed. Would anyone like to bet against me?” Nick is a great pool player and quite frankly a bit of a hustler too. Betting’s not allowed in the hospital but Nick supposedly cleared over two hundred dollars that day.
Before the war, Nick was a struggling stand-up comic and would often perform on the Ocean Front Walk in Venice Beach with a dummy that he picked up one Sunday at a flea market. He named the dummy Edgar after the famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen who Nick says was his inspiration.
Nick hides his depression well. His moods swings are extreme and, when not hyperexcitedly talking about his latest scheme, he can often be found alone in his hospital room, staring out the window, looking like a frightened child. When I see him like this, I want to reach out to him, try to comfort him, but in the end I wheel away. He reminds me too much of my own horrors and torments, all the terrible guilt and shame I continue to suppress and keep well hidden.
Nick’s kindness and desire to be there for others is constantly on display. Forever the combat medic, he roams the SCI ward in his wheelchair most of the day looking to comfort his fellow Vietnam veterans. He is always ready to lend a helping hand, glad to assist his brothers in need whenever possible, whether it’s listening to their many problems or racing down to the PX in his wheelchair to pick up a much-needed item for someone stuck in bed. The busier Nick is, the happier he seems to be. For now, his demons and thoughts of suicide, always lurking just below the surface, can wait. In this swirl of frantic activity his tortured soul can find relief, at least for a while.
For all of Nick’s generosity and concern for his brothers, as he affectionately calls them, he has little time to care for himself. Deeply troubled and plagued by hallucinations and nightmares, he bounces from one frightening day to the next.
* * *
We continue to meet in the back of D ward and, as I get to know my new friends better, I also start sharing more of my own story. I tell them about the Bronx VA and the May 1970 Life magazine article, “Our Forgotten Wounded.” Several of them say they saw it. I tell them about the overcrowded conditions in the Bronx, the rats on the ward, urine bags overflowing onto the floor, the paralyzed men left lying in their own excrement for hours at a time, crying out for help that never comes. I tell them about Mark D., the quadriplegic Vietnam vet depicted in the magazine, sitting naked in his shower chair next to a garbage can with nothing but a dirty towel covering his private parts. I explain how it was Mark who had written a letter to Life telling them of the disgraceful conditions on the Bronx VA paraplegic ward and pleading with them to do something about it. Finally they did respond, with a disturbing photo exposé that shocked the public and infuriated the bureaucrats at the VA. There were numerous denials and letters to the editor attacking Mark and the magazine for “exploiting” our wounded veterans. After receiving threats against his life, Mark eventually left the VA and moved back to Chicago where he lived with his parents for a while before eventually taking his own life in 1971.
We meet in the back of D ward over the next few weeks, and it is during this period that I decide to begin my own one-man investigation of the Long Beach VA SCI ward. I buy a tape recorder at the hospital PX, with batteries and extra cassettes, and begin to formulate a plan. I will hide the tape player under the pillow on my gurney. I have to be careful. If they find out what I’m doing, there could be severe repercussions. They might try to punish me like some of the others who complained. No one must know what I’m up to.
At first I visit only patients I can trust—some are the guys I’ve been meeting with in back of D ward. Marty, Nick, and Willy Jefferson are the first to be interviewed. I then begin to branch out to other wards, expanding my investigation to more patients, including some of the aides and one doctor who I know is on our side.
Many complain of overcrowded conditions while others say that something must be done before another patient dies. “It’s fucking scary in here,” a patient from D ward tells me one afternoon as he leans forward to whisper into my microphone.
Some talk about the failure of medical devices: Hoyer lifts that suddenly stop working during the transfer of a patient, and IV pumps and blood pressure machines that are constantly breaking down. One veteran, a quad from C ward, begins to cry while telling me he and several others have been threatened numerous times by one of the aides for refusing his extortion demands. The aide knows that as 100 percent service-connected combat veterans, we receive a substantial tax-free check each month from the government, and he makes it clear to the guys that if they refuse to pay and don’t give him a little “gratitude” each week, they will not get the care they deserve. This goes on here all the time but no one ever talks about it. Don’t get me wrong, there are some decent aides and nurses who really do care, but they are few and far between.
I continue taping as many patients as are willing to talk to me. One tells me that he was slapped by a nurse when he complained, and another that he was dropped onto the floor when two drunken aides tried to drag him from his bed onto a gurney. Some speak of what they will do when they finally get out of the hospital. I distinctly recall one young paralyzed ex–marine lieutenant named Miller describing in great detail how he planned to get on top of a building and start shooting everyone he could with his M16 rifle.
Many are tormented by nightmares and anxiety attacks and some have simply given up—surrendering to their despair and paralysis. The look of permanent defeat is etched across their faces. Young boys of nineteen and twenty, guys like Marty and Danny and Willy Jefferson, old before their time. They are weary men in every way, seeming to have lost all hope. Their lives are over, their youth has been crushed, defiled, and destroyed. Unlike myself, they do not rage. They do