(5 of 11)
I am running full speed through Orly Airport in Paris. My flight from New York got in late and I am about to miss the plane to Moscow that will carry me to Vientiane, Laos, and on to Hanoi. As I round a corner, I slip on the polished floor and down I go. I know immediately that I have refractured the foot I broke the previous year ... By the time we land in Moscow my foot is swollen and blue, and I know I must get it tended to. I have a four-hour layover, so airport officials get me a taxi and instruct the driver to take me to the closest hospital on the outskirts of Moscow. After X-raying my foot, the doctors confirm it is a fracture, apply a plaster cast, give me a pair of crutches and send me back to the airport.
What will my Vietnamese hosts think when they see me get off the plane with crutches and a cast? They don't need the burden of a disabled American descending on them--and how am I going to climb over the earthen dikes that I am coming to film? ...
It is awkward getting down the plane's steps, because I am juggling the crutches and a purse, a camera and a packet of letters from the families of POWs. I look up to see five Vietnamese walking toward me carrying flowers. They are the welcoming committee of the Vietnam Committee for Solidarity with the American People. The name sounds propagandistic to me, but the fullness of its meaning will soon be made clear in unusual, very human terms. As I'd anticipated, they look shocked and want to hand me the bouquet, but I can't hold it and the crutches at the same time. Standing on the tarmac, they hold a quick conference in Vietnamese with numerous glances at my cast. I understand their concern: these are the people who will be responsible for my well-being over the next two weeks. Clearly my condition is worrisome.
Privately I am not certain how I will manage out in the countryside, especially if there is a bombing raid, as running for cover doesn't seem to be in the cards; but I say I don't want to change our plans, and everyone nods. In retrospect I wonder about my insistence at continuing despite the danger. Yes, I was numb with exhaustion and pain. But more to the point is my character: to turn away out of fear is just about unthinkable ...
It is just dawn as we drive through the city to the Vietnam-- Soviet Union Friendship Hospital, where I am to have my foot examined. I can see camouflaged vehicles coming and going, their lights off. At the hospital, two male Vietnamese doctors who have been briefed about my arrival lay me on a table to take an X-ray of my foot--or at least they try to. No sooner have I lain down than the air raid sirens blare and I have to be helped into the hospital's bomb shelter, now filling rapidly with doctors and those patients who can be moved.
This is my first time sharing a bomb shelter with Vietnamese, and it makes the experience all the more surreal. I feel unspeakably guilty to be taking up space and the attention of two doctors while my country is attacking theirs. My interpreter for the day, Madame Chi, tells them I am American and this stirs up a lot of excitement. I search their eyes for some sign of hostility. There is none. Those unhostile eyes will stay with me long after the war ends.