his birthday

His name is Harold and he has only one leg. He’d lost the other in Vietnam, had come home to a country that hated him, and him without the means to run away. He has a recurring dream that his leg has regenerated itself, regrown, only to wake to find himself the same cripple who’d drunk himself to sleep. Never married, he has a steady girl, lately, named Deb, who’d lost her boyfriend in ‘Nam. Deb isn’t much to look at, but she gets him, and that’s good. Tomorrow is his birthday. He’ll be 61. Forty-one years in a wheelchair. As a present, Deb is setting him up with a doctor who specializes in high-tech prosthetics. Her goal is to have him up and walking within the year. It is a surprise. He will not be happy. Too much effort, he’ll reason, too little reward, not to mention too, too late. It will not be a happy day.