[00:00.00]Text
[00:02.69]The story began on a downtown Brooklyn street corner.
[00:08.05]An elderly man had collapsed while crossing the street,
[00:13.51]and an ambulance rushed him to Kings County Hospital.
[00:18.96]There,when he came to now and again,the man repeatedly called for his son.
[00:27.43]From a worn letter found in his pocket,
[00:32.08]an emergency-room nurse learned that his son was a Marine
[00:37.83]stationed in North Carolina.It seemed there were no other relatives.
[00:44.30]Someone at the hospital called the Red Cross office in Brooklyn,
[00:49.87]and a request for the boy to rush to Brooklyn
[00:54.83]was sent to the Red Cross director of the North Carolina Marine Corps camp.
[01:01.81]Because time was short the patient was dying
[01:07.27]the Red Cross man and officer set out in a jeep.
[01:13.22]They found the young man wading through some marshesin a military exercise.
[01:19.07]He was rushed to the airport in time
[01:24.14]to catch the one plane that might enable him to reach his dying father.
[01:30.98]It was mid-evening when the young Marine
[01:35.56]walked into the entrance lobby of Kings County Hospital.
[01:41.20]A nurse took the tired,anxious serviceman to the bedside.
[01:47.57]"Your son is here,"she said to the old man.
[01:52.12]She had to repeat the words several times before the patient's eyes opened.
[01:59.38]The medicine he had been give because of the pain from his heart attack
[02:05.34]made his eyes weak and he only dimly saw the young man in Marine Corps uniform
[02:13.88]standing outside the oxygen tent.
[02:18.84]He reached out his hand.
[02:22.60]The Marine wrapped his strong fingers around the old man's limp ones,
[02:29.55]squeezing a message of love and encouragement.
[02:35.51]The nurse brought a chair,so the Marine could sit by the bed.
[02:41.75]Nights are long in hospitals,
[02:46.30]but all through the night the young Marine sat there in the dimly-lit ward,
[02:52.25]holding the old man's hand and offering words of hope and strength.
[03:00.30]Occasionally,the nurse suggested that the Marine rest for a while.He refused.
[03:08.37]Whenever the nurse came into the ward,the Marine was there,
[03:14.12]but he paid no attention to her and the night noises of the hospital
[03:20.59]the clanking of an oxygen tank,
[03:24.96]the laughter of night-staff members exchanging greetings,
[03:30.83]the cries and moans and snores of other patients.
[03:37.31]Now and then she heard him say a few gentle words.
[03:43.66]The dying man said nothing,
[03:48.52]only held tightly to his son through most of the night.
[03:55.00]It was nearly dawn when the patient died.
[04:00.35]The Marine placed on the bed the lifeless hand he had been holding,
[04:07.01]and went to tell the nurse.
[04:10.78]While she did what she had to do,
[04:14.85]he smoked a cigarette his first since he got to the hospital.
[04:20.49]Finally,she returned to the nurse's station,where he was waiting.
[04:26.66]She started to offer words of sympathy,but the Marine interrupted her.
[04:32.43]"Who was that man?"he asked.
[04:36.79]"He was your father,"she answered,startled.
[04:41.55]"No,he wasn't,"the Marine replied."I never saw him before in my life."
[04:49.59]"Why didn't you say something when I took you to him?"the nurse asked.
[04:56.25]"I knew immediately there'd been a mistake,
[05:00.80]but I also knew he needed his son,and his son just wasn't here.
[05:07.88]When I realized he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son,
[05:15.04]I guessed he really needed me.So I stayed."
[05:20.78]With that,the Marine turned and left the hospital.
[05:25.96]Two days later a message came in from the North Carolina Marine Corps base
[05:32.49]informing the Brooklyn Red Cross
[05:36.43]that the real son was on his way to Brooklyn for his father's funeral.
[05:43.51]It turned out there had been two Marines with the same name
[05:49.86]and similar numbers in the camp.
[05:54.53]Someone in the personnel office had pulled out the wrong record.
[06:00.70]But the wrong Marine had become the right son at the right time.
[06:07.67]And he proved,in a very human very,
[06:12.72]that there are people who care what happens to their fellow men. |