As Purple Heart begins, 18-year-old Army Private Matt Duffy wakes in a medical ward to the sensation of a doctor jabbing his foot. The doctor asks if Matt can feel and move his feet, which he can, along with his fingers and legs, but when the doctor turns Matt’s head, it brings “a sharp, hot stab of pain” (3). The doctor tells Matt he probably has a traumatic brain injury, or TBI. Matt seems confused about what happened to him and quickly slips back into unconsciousness. Before he does so, he sees the image of an Iraqi boy in an alley. In a “sudden, silent flash of light,” the boy is lifted into the “crayon-blue sky,” rising higher and higher till he disappears “far above the burning city” (4).

Sometime later, Matt awakens again as an Army officer presents him with a Purple Heart “for wounds sustained in combat” (5). But instead of feeling pride or gratitude, Matt thinks that he doesn’t “want a medal”—he “just wanted to know what was wrong with him” (5).

The next time Matt wakes, he talks to an Army chaplain, Father Brennan, who tells him his injury probably isn’t too serious—if it was, the Army would fly him out to Germany.