Rock Steady

A World War II veteran gravely ill with Covid-19, an Army social worker on his first deployment and the relationship they forged

- BY CAPT. ERIC L. DUNGAN Muncie, Indiana

REMEMBER THE TELEVISION show Quantum Leap? I was fasci-nated by it as a teenager. In every episode, the main character, a physicist, leaped back in time and into someone else’s body and fixed something that had gone wrong in their lives. The idea of being able to make things right from the past stuck with me well into adulthood. Until fairly recently, in fact.

May 1, 2020. I’d seen my share of death and suffering in the two weeks I’d been deployed as an Army social worker at New York City’s Jacobi Medical Center. The Covid-19 crisis was unrelenting. My job was to sit with patients, a dozen or so visits a day, and listen. Offer comfort and hope. But was it too late for George Crouch, the frail elderly man in the bed in front of me?

Nurses told me he’d refused medical care and food since he’d lost his wife, Gail, to Covid-19 the day before. I sat next to his bed, outfitted in my PPE. His eyes were barely open, a solitary tear on his cheek. He was 96, a World War II veteran. One of the Greatest Generation.

“Sir, I’m Capt. Eric Dungan,” I said. “U.S. Army.” His eyes opened a crack. “I’m in the Reserves, not the Big Army like you.” An almost imperceptible smile creased his lips. Something, at least.

I’d spent years as a social worker, but this deployment was my first time in uniform. I’d joined the Reserves only six months earlier. My respect for veterans was a big part of why I’d signed up. My father, Jack, was a veteran of the Korean War era. I only wished he could have lived to see me in uniform, but he’d died in 2013.