Jackson Before Dying: A Short Story

Nodding in acknowledgment to his friend, Jackson sat down on the bottom bunk and took off his boots and eyed the socks on his feet for a moment before stuffing them inside his boots. Once he slipped off his clothes with a little help from Harry, he put on a pair of shorts to sleep in, just in case he needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Wandering into the room with his medical bag in one hand and thermometer in the other, Frank shoved the thermometer in Jackson’s mouth before he voice a protest to shut him up and prepared the injection of antibiotics and pain medication he promised earlier. As Jackson shook his head with the medical implement sticking out of his mouth, Harry snickered at his friend’s reaction. As Jackson’s
doctor and friend, Frank was glad to see the men, especially Jackson open up and grieve instead of holding in the pain as they dealt with Mikey’s death properly and he cried with them because Mikey was his friend too and the one who kept an eye on Jackson for him. Pulling the thermometer out of the colonel’s mouth, Frank looked at it with concern since Jackson had an elevated temperature of 101. “Your temperature is 101. Drop your underwear and shorts, colonel.”