John has visited my office for years. Same order, quiet nod. One of those guys you don’t think twice about until you do.Last week, I told him my girlfriend and I were going to Vietnam. Just talking. His face transformed completely.
“I was there,” he said. Fall of Saigon. Orphaned kids were loaded aboard flights to save as many as possible.”My stomach sank.
I was a baby.
Told him. Watched his hands stop on the counter. Eyes welled. “Then I might’ve held you,” he muttered.Nobody talked for a moment.
The hands that saved me always puzzled me. Those who got me out. One was now in front of me.
Talked awhile. He recalled the turmoil and anguish of that day. His voice was thick, he clutched my shoulder before leaving. “I’ll sleep better tonight,” he remarked. Know you made it.”I thought it was over. Beautiful, unbelievable moment. He paused before leaving.
“There’s…something else,” he continued, lowering his voice. “Something I should say.”
Then everything changed.John sat back, massaging his hands like he was summoning up the bravery to speak something buried for decades. He sharply exhaled and looked at me.
I had a child there. In Saigon.”
My chest felt strangely pressured. “You had a child?”
He nodded. Linh, woman. We met while I was stationed there. We fell in love despite expectations. We had a boy before I realized it.” Cracked voice. “I tried to go with them, but failed. I lost them all when the city collapsed. I looked and asked, but they vanished.”
I remained mute. Listening. Processing.
“I’ve never stopped looking,” he said. “Never gave up on finding them. I got nothing. Recordless, clueless. Just a name, memory, and photo.”
He grabbed a yellowed, faded picture from his wallet. John as a child cuddling a baby near a kind mother with black eyes.
“I don’t know if he made it out,” he said. “If Linh did. I just… Not sure if he’s alive. If I could find them and know they’re okay, that would be everything.”
One thing tugged at my heart. Something more than chance. Greater than a military veteran-adoptee fortuitous meeting.
The baby in the image caught my attention, then John. My head spun.
“John,” I whispered. “What if I helped?”
Blinked at me. “You mean what?”
“I’m going to Vietnam,” I said. My contacts there specialize in finding lost relatives. That photo and any details you remember can go with me.”
His breath jerked. You’d do that?
I nodded. “Yeah. I would.”
He cried. He appeared hopeful for the first time in a long time.
We reviewed everything he remembered for an hour. A district Linh lived in. The hospital that delivered his son. Her hair braiding style. Writing that down felt like holding his hope.
I visited an old archival buddy just after my partner and I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City. After I gave her the photo and tale, she offered to help. She copied the photo and gave it to wartime family tracers and researchers.
Days passed. One week. Then two.
