OT: Nice story. Don't know if true but...

["Robert L Bass" <robertbass1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

A nurse took the tired, anxious young man to the bedside. "Your son's here," she said to the old man.

She had to repeat the words several times before the patient's eyes opened.

Heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack, he dimly saw the young uniformed young man standing outside the oxygen
tent. He reached out his hand. The young man wrapped his toughened fingers around the old man's limp ones, squeezing a message of
love and encouragement.

The nurse brought a chair so that the young man could sit beside the bed. All through the night the young Marine sat there in the
poorly lighted ward, holding the old man's hand and offering him words of love and strength. Occasionally, the nurse suggested that
the young man move away and rest a while.

He refused. Whenever the nurse came into the ward, the young man was oblivious of her and of the night noises of the hospital - the
clanking of the oxygen tank, the laughter of the night staff members exchanging greetings, the cries and moan of the other patients.

Now and then she heard him say a few gentle words. The dying man said nothing, only held tightly to his son all through the night.
Along towards dawn, the old man died. The young man released the now lifeless hand he had been holding and went to tell the nurse.
While she did what she had to do, he waited.

Finally, she returned. She started to offer words of sympathy, but the young man interrupted her. "Who was that man?" he asked.

The nurse was startled, "He was your father." she answered.

"No, he wasn't," the young man replied. "I never saw him before in my life."

"Then why didn't you say something when I took you to him?"

"I knew right away there had been a mistake, but I also knew he needed his son, and his son just wasn't there.

When I realized that he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son, knowing how much he needed me, I stayed."


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