Changes

|title=Birdy

|author=William Wharton

|date=February 1992

|isbn=0679734120

}}

His shattered face swathed in bandages from a series of reconstructive surgeries, Al Columbato leaves one military hospital for another. This time it is not for treatment, but to help a childhood friend. When he arrives even Al, well used to Birdy's strangeness, is shocked at his condition. Birdy is in a secure mental unit in a catatonic state, crouched upon the floor unmoving, unable even to feed himself. It is Al's task, given to him by the hospital psychiatrist Dr Weiss, to talk to Birdy, to try to rouse him from his stupor. The two boys have been friends for years, the closest friends imaginable. War had separated them and now that war is over they are together again, and yet they are still apart, for one has returned with terrible physical injuries, the other with his senses destroyed. And only Al knows that Birdy is living his life as he always wanted to live it, as a bird.