Perhaps you should tell Dr. X,” I told him. He began to laugh. “Don’t be absurd,” he said. That night I could not sleep. At two in the morning I dressed and returned to the hospital to look in on Immy. She was no better. Her parents had not left the ICU waiting room, and several other family members had joined them there. We sat together talking for awhile, but I had no news and could offer little comfort. My heart ached for them and for Immy. Back in the house staff residence, once again I undressed for bed, but I still could not sleep. I kept thinking of the lost medal and what Immy’s parents had told me. At last, I took some paper and wrote to Dr. X, telling him what had happened and how important the medal was to Immy’s family. Folding the note in half, I dressed once more and went back to

The medal had been moved from her shirt to her hospital gown. It had seemed so important to her parents that I mentioned it in passing to the cardiac surgery resident as we sat writing chart notes in the nursing station on the evening before the surgery. He gave me a cynical smile. “Well, to each his own,” he said. “I put my faith in Dr. X,” he said, mentioning the name of the highly respected cardiac surgeon who would be heading Immy’s surgical team in the morning. “I doubt he needs much help from Lourdes.” I made a note to myself to be sure to take the medal off Immy’s gown before she went to surgery in the morning so it wouldn’t get lost in the OR or the recovery room. But I spent that morning in the emergency room, as part of

to her parents in relief, I asked if it was another one. “No,” her mother said, “it was the same one that was lost.” Dr. X had come that afternoon and brought it to them. I told them how glad I was that it had been found. “Yes,” her father said. “We are too.” Then he smiled. “She is safe now, no matter what happens,” he told me. The following morning, the surgery resident told me how the medal had been found. On the previous day, Dr. X had made his patient care rounds much as usual, followed by a dozen of the young surgeons he was training. But instead of ending the rounds in the ICU, he had taken them all to the laundry department in the subbasement of the hospital. There, he explained what had happened, and then he and all his residents and fellows had gone through the pediatric laundry from the day before

looking for Immy’s gown. It had taken half an hour but they had found it, neatly folded, with the medal still attached. I was astonished. “The people who work in the laundry room must have been very surprised to see you all there, and especially with Dr. X himself. Did he say why he asked you to do this?” “Oh, yes,” the resident replied. Surrounded by mountains of clean sheets and towels, Dr. X had told the elite young surgeons he was training that it was as important to care for people’s souls as it was to care for their hearts.

team working on two children who had been thrown from the back of their father’s pickup truck onto the roadway. By the time I reached the floor, Immy had been taken upstairs to surgery. The surgery had lasted almost twelve hours, and things had not gone well. The bypass pump, a relatively new technology, had malfunctioned for several minutes and Immy had lost a great deal of blood. She was on a respirator, unconscious and unresponsive, in the Intensive Care Unit. On the day after surgery, Immy’s mother told me in a shaking voice that Immy’s gown had been removed in the operating room and thrown into the hospital laundry. The medal was gone. Concerned, I called the surgery resident and told him what had happened. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked me.

across its chest. I examined Immy carefully. Her heart sounds bore no resemblance whatever to the organized sounds of a normal heart. Once again, I marveled at her endurance. As I helped her to dress, I noticed a Saint Christopher medal pinned to her tiny pink undershirt. “What is this?” I asked her parents. Hesitantly her mother told me that a family member had made a special trip to Rome to have the medal blessed and then dipped into the healing waters at Lourdes. “We feel that it will protect her,” she said simply. Her husband nodded. I was touched.

LOST AND FOUND IMMY WAS A frail little girl, the only child of older parents. At three, she was only as big as the average eighteen-month-old toddler. She was unable to walk more than a few blocks without tiring and did not have the strength to play games you could not play sitting down. A desperately wanted and long-awaited baby, she had been born with a hole in her heart and a badly formed heart valve. Only the most careful medical management had helped her

to live until she was big enough to undergo extensive open-heart surgery. She had been followed since birth in our Pediatric Cardiology Clinic at the New York Hospital, and many of the pediatricians knew her and her family. Despite her physical difficulties she took full possession of all the hearts around her, including mine. When the time for her surgery finally came, her parents were deeply anxious. These were early days for many cardiac surgery techniques, and the risks were considerable, but without surgery, she would not survive childhood. As the senior pediatric resident, I met with Immy’s parents before the surgery to do an intake interview and summarize Immy’s long story. They were committed and ready and very pale. As we spoke, they sat close together holding hands. Afterward I took them

General Sladen told me then that I could stand at ease, and I was altogether more comfortable physically than I'd been before. But I was still upset in my mind. I kept thinking how awful it would be if there'd been some mistake, and they'd picked out the wrong fellow to decorate.
I still didn't know what it was General Pershing had pinned on me, so as soon as I dared I squinted alng my nose. I couldn't see anything but a little blue ribbon with white stars. I knew that the medal beneath it was the Congressional Medal of Honor. There'd been two of those in our family before. The first one had been given to a major-general who was related to my mother's family.

I am so happy, it was the only medal I missed in my cabinet.

As for the medal itself, when I got back home, a question arise for which I really didn't have an answer: What exactly do I do with this thing? I don't know what most of the other recipients do, although I've asked a handful of them. A few have ordered up replacements so that they have something to wear and to show folks when they ask to see it, while they store the original in a safe-deposit box. Others keep the medal in a sock drawer or on their nightstand. As for me, I never bothered to ge a duplicate and I eventually took to carrying the original around in my front pocket. As a result, it's taken several accidental trips through the washing machine, so the gilded surface is a bit tarnished, and the blue ribbon has begun to fade. But that doesn't bother me a bit. In fact, I kind of like it that way, perhaps- in part- because I don't truly regard it as mine.
Like it or not, there are eight other guys with whom I served to whom that medal rightly belongs, because heroes- true heroes, the men whose spirit the medal embodies- don't ever come home. By that definition, I'm not a true hero. Instead, I'm a custodian and a caretaker. I hold the medal, and everything it represents, on behalf of those who are its rightful owners. That, more than anything, is the truth that now sustains me- along with one other thing too, which is a belief I hold in my heart.
I know, without a shred of doubt, that I would instantly trade the medal and everything attached to it if it would bring back even one of my missing comrades in arms.

I dedicated the medal to her, And when I landed in Eldoret, she welcomed me, held the medal and said 'This is my medal' - it was something special.

I don't consider the Medal my personal property. As a recipient, I feel I am wearing it to represent all the men and women who have served over the years with the same dedication and courage. Having said that, it did make me very awre of my responsibilities as a recipient, talking to kids, trying to instill the values of service, courage, honor, and duty, so it's been a very good part of my life. Personally and professionally it added a dimension. I certainly don't dwell on events of thirty-one years ago. That was thirty minutes out of my life and it came and went and life goes on. I've led a wonderful life since then.

I was resting, and some sergeant comes up to me and says, 'There's a guy from your home state wants to talk with you.' I said, 'Who?' He said, 'I don't know. Just follow me.' So I follow him into another room, nothing but lights in that room. A desk and a commanding general standing at the foot of it, a brigadier general of the Third Division. His name was Osborne. I was told to go up and see him. I'm wondering, 'What the hell am I going to see him for?' And he tells me, he says, 'Do you know you received the Congressional Medal of Honor?' All I could say was, 'What?' I'll never forget that. 'What for?'
Then he asked me to relate my story. Why? I figured. Hell, I said, 'Geez.' I figured I might get court-martialed. And I told him I just felt I was doing my job, doing what I was trained to do. I didn't think I was a hero deserving of the Medal. That's when he told me the reason they didn't let my family know was they were afraid of reprisal from the enemy. Even though they finally released names and all, they still didn't let my wife know I'd received the Medal. They just told her I was alive.
Then we were sent to a port of debarkation, and I was given a choice of flying home or going home by troopship with the rest of the fellas. I figured, geez, that's a good time to recuperate, get built up a little. I think I weighed ninety-eight pounds. That ship took nineteen days to reach San Francisco. I was seasick I think eleven days on that boat. I went to Italy and back on a ship, never got sick. I went over the Japan Sea, one of the roughest, never got sick. And here was the smoothest ride back home, and I got sick. Anyway, we docked in San Francisco and I was the first one to debark. They gave me that honor.