Waiting light

The day the bandages were removed from his eyes was the longest day of Mr. Cuong's life.

He couldn't sleep at all the previous night. Even though his wife, Mrs. Hoa, sat beside him, gently fanning him with a bamboo fan to dispel the stuffy air, he only managed to doze off for a short while when she softly sang him folk songs she used to sing at the military medical camp in the Truong Son forest, which helped him overcome his illness.

He lay still on his hospital bed, waiting for dawn, lost in thought. Through the slightly ajar door, he heard the creaking of a metal trolley rolling slowly down the hallway, the shuffling of slippers, and the faint sound of a child's laughter, which somewhat eased the tense, gloomy atmosphere of the hospital. For decades, he had used his ears to listen to sounds and imagine shapes. If the surgery was unsuccessful, he would continue to live in darkness. He was used to it. He only felt sorry for Mrs. Hoa, who had waited so long, hoped so much.

Open your eyes slowly, don't rush...

The old doctor's voice was deep and warm. Mr. Cuong took a deep breath. His chest heaved, the pungent smell of disinfectant suddenly turning bitter in his throat. He opened his eyes slightly. Only a blinding white light, sharp as a sword piercing his retina, painful and brutal. He groaned softly, quickly closing his eyes again. Physiological tears welled up, hot and stinging. Then he tried to open them again, more slowly, cautiously like a curious person deliberately entering a forbidden sanctuary. A thin, brilliant streak of light, the color of sunlight, slanted across the window sill. Tiny dust particles danced in that streak of light.

He responded to their expectant gazes with a voice that didn't sound like his own:

It's sunny today.

Mrs. Hoa burst into tears. He held his wife's hand, squeezing it tightly. For decades, the memory of her face remained etched in his mind—the gentle beauty of a nineteen-year-old with sparkling black eyes, long hair neatly tied back with a handkerchief, and a shy smile whenever their eyes met.

***

That year, both he and she were in the prime of their lives. They met at a military medical station hidden beneath the canopy of a forest in the Truong Son Mountains, ravaged by B52 bombs, always reeking of gunpowder and disinfectant, surrounded by the sounds of emaciated soldiers, shivering from malaria and delirious, screaming for their mothers, their wives. Some didn't call out to anyone, just stared wide-eyed at the dark canvas roof until their breath faded into nothingness.

Amidst the brutal war, the young nurse named Hoa, with her gentle face like a bright moon, dispelled some of the suffocating and oppressive atmosphere. Her soft hands were steady as she used forceps to remove shrapnel embedded deep in the flesh and bones of her comrades. When needed, she was ready to help her colleagues carry the wounded across muddy paths, regardless of the roar of bombs and artillery shells raining down nearby.

One night, a young soldier was brought to the station with his chest covered in blood. Shrapnel was lodged deep inside, his breath growing weaker, his lips turning purple as he tried to whisper, "Mother..." Hoa bent down, her hands trembling for a moment before calmly pressing the gauze against the wound, telling him, "Don't fall asleep, listen to me, just hold on a little longer!" But she understood that in the soldier's eyes, which were beginning to dim, a glimmer of remembrance flickered before fading away.

When all attempts at saving him proved futile, Hoa sat down beside him, gently taking his increasingly cold hand. The soldier looked at Hoa, his lips moving, "Mother... lull... me to sleep." Hoa's voice that night choked, breaking. The soldier slightly opened his eyes, a faint smile playing on his lips. At the last line of the song, his hand, which had been holding Hoa's, dropped limply. That night, amidst the smoke-shrouded Trường Sơn forest, the young girl's voice resonated beside a soldier who had just closed his eyes, gentle as a final farewell to a son who had dedicated his entire life to the Fatherland.

Cương was a battlefield artist. He painted young soldiers slumped over the butt of their AK rifles, a lonely parachute hammock strung between two charred trees, and the wave of a young female volunteer soldier bidding farewell to the troops going to battle. He painted Hoa. She knelt on the damp ground, bandaging the bleeding stump of a wounded soldier. Sweat soaked the back of her shirt. That was the first painting of Hoa, and also the last painting he created of her with his bright eyes before sinking into darkness for decades.

On the day he bid farewell to the military medical station as he left for the battlefield, the young artist sent the nurse he secretly loved a promise that after the war, he would take her back to his hometown, a place with soft grassy slopes and many flowers. Before he could hear her reply, he hastily set off. That promise became the belief that helped them overcome the bombs and bullets together.

War, as recounted later on the podium of glory, often takes the form of glorious epics, of decisive battles and resolute victories. But the reality of war is far more brutal. There, upon waking in the morning, one does not know which of the comrades who shared a blanket with them the night before are still alive and which are dead. Today, the path is covered with lush green leaves; tomorrow, it will only be a stench of bomb craters reeking of flesh and bone.

Cương lost his sight on a sweltering midday. The roar of jet engines ripped through the sky. The gray shadow of an F4 loomed over him. The ground shook like an earthquake. At that moment, Cương was leaning out of an A-shaped bunker, trying to capture the image of a communications soldier winding cable. A deafening barrage of artillery fire erupted. Cương was thrown backward. Blood trickled from his ears and nose. Flashes of light ripped through his retina. All sound ceased. The clear blue sky receded. Only a thick, suffocating blackness enveloped him.

He woke up in the military hospital. There was only darkness. Pitch black. Endless. At that moment, what suffocated his heart wasn't death, but the image of Hoa. He had become a disabled man; how could he possibly bind and torment another woman?

Back then, Hoa only received news that Cuong had gone missing in battle. She suppressed her grief and completed her mission. When peace was restored, she shouldered her faded backpack and searched the places the troops had passed through. She tirelessly searched for her old comrades. After years of relentless effort, Hoa found Cuong at a rehabilitation center.

Go home! I'm blind! I don't want to cause anyone suffering.

Hoa neither accepted nor refused, she asked to stay at the nursing station, changing bandages and caring for Cuong every day. Then, amidst those peaceful days, they realized they were no longer comrades from a time of bombs and bullets, but had become each other's only support, eventually becoming husband and wife. There was no lavish wedding, no bridal procession, just a simple meal, a glass of wine, and the heartfelt wishes of their fellow wounded soldiers.

The days that followed were another battle. Mr. Cuong fell into a series of sad and inexplicably irritable days. He once thought, if only his comrades hadn't pulled him out of the bomb crater that day, perhaps everything would have been easier; he wouldn't have to live in darkness, and Hoa wouldn't have had to tie her youth to a blind war veteran. Every time he heard his wife's quiet footsteps in the house, he felt both grateful and pained, because the greater Hoa's love, the heavier the debt he felt he carried.

There were times when, as Hoa walked out the door, Mr. Cuong would reach out to the wall, wondering what he was living for. He had wanted to give up, had thought about pushing Hoa out of his life so that his wife could be free to find happiness elsewhere, but then, just hearing the sound of her footsteps returning, he couldn't bring himself to do it.

One morning, after quietly tidying up the shattered pieces her husband had dropped in his despair, Hoa placed a blank notebook and a charcoal pencil in his hand, encouraging him to redraw using the sounds he had heard, the shapes, and the memories he held in his heart. Initially, Cương's pencil strokes were shaky and disjointed; he often crumpled the page because he couldn't draw what he wanted. But Hoa wouldn't let him give up, telling him about life every day, about the children running in the yard, about the tiny life growing inside her. From the darkness, Cương began to rebuild his world using memories, imagination, and the simple stories of his wife, who had patiently stood by him throughout those long years…

***

With advancements in medicine, the doctor announced that Cương's cornea still held a glimmer of hope and that surgery could restore some of his sight. Hoa wept with joy, but Cương remained silent for a long time. He longed to see his wife's face, to see his children. But he also feared the surgery would fail, fearing Hoa would be disappointed once again. Thankfully, fate intervened!

The doctor said his eyes still needed time to recover; although he couldn't see as clearly as before, he could still perceive shapes and colors to some extent. He pressed his face against his wife's hands, and in his mind, he envisioned the first drawing he would make of her after his eyesight recovered. She, decades later, at nineteen, her hair gray, her face full of wrinkles, yet still the most beautiful woman in his heart.