“‘Is he going to be alright?’ That was the first question Joe asked when I walked up to his bed side,” Chaplain Janis Dashner wrote in her journal on March 3, 2004.
He had been watching me as I stood at the bedside of a patient directly across from him. Both of them had just come by helicopter to the CASF, and both had been injured in the same mortar attack, though they didn’t know each other. Now, a common experience bonded Joe to the guy across the aisle from him,
Joe had serious injuries to both of his legs, which were held together with pins. As he wiggled his toes, he couldn’t believe that he still had his legs. The guy in the other bed was worse. Shrapnel had torn apart his body armor and helmet. The equipment had saved his life, but a piece of shrapnel got in, up under the front of the Kevlar helmet.”
The man had undergone head surgery but was very confused. Joe was touched by the other man’s condition.
“Joe told me that they had been put in the same vehicle after the attack, but didn’t know what to do for him. Joe kept talking to him ‘Hang on buddy, we’ve got you. You’re going to be alright.’ Now, as Joe was talking to me, that life affirming declaration became a question. ‘Is he going to be alright?’” Dashner recorded.
Although she had heard similar questions over the years, she never quite got used to them. Her heart remained tender.
“I never know the answers to these questions, none of us do, not the doctors, nor nurses, nor the medical technicians who work tirelessly to save lives. God knows that answer,” Chaplain Dashner wrote.
Dashner’s experience had taught that friendship was essential in the recovery process. She focused on this truth as she concluded her journal that night.
“I know that Joe and his buddy are alive and heading to Germany tonight. I know that Joe is still watching over a friend who has been through a life-altering event with him. I know they both have a chance to live beyond these events, a chance that others do not have. I know that without a buddy like Joe it would be a hard and lonely recovery for one soldier.”
Thank you for the strength that friendship provides. Enable me to be a better friend to someone today.
“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” (Proverbs 17:17)