“What about snakes or voles?”
“We don’t have those, either.”
“Dragons, then.”
Bob laughed. It was a running joke that Mike was the world’s most protective father. He wanted to keep Emily safe from falls, bee stings, bad boyfriends, and wars, but that wasn’t why he was watching her. He was still drinking in everything about her, getting to know her better, every day.
“Dragons. You got me there.” Bob shut the trunk with a solid ca-thunk.
“Daddy, look!” Emily came running up, and Mike knelt to get down on her level.
“What you got, baby?”
“Flowers.” Emily smiled at him, her eyes as blue as heaven itself, her fingers covered with earth. She opened her palm, showing a crumpled mash of thistle and onion grass.
“How pretty, that’s great! Thank you!” Mike held out his hand, and Emily shook the smelly pile into his palm. It was the first time she’d brought him flowers, instead of dirty Kleenexes, broken crayons, and empty juice boxes. Maybe someday he’d stop noticing the firsts, or counting his blessings, but he doubted that day would ever come.
“Save dat, Daddy.”
“I will.”
“Are we goin’ to da berfday party?”
“Not yet.”
“When is Fenny gonna come?”
Mike loved the way Emily said Stephanie. “Any minute now.”
“Where is da party?”
“In another state, called Connecticut.” Mike didn’t mind that Emily asked so many questions, when he had the answers, which wasn’t always. “The party is at my friend’s house. Dr. Chatham.”
“How old is he?”
“Older than I am. Very old, like forty years old.” Mike was looking forward to giving Chatty a hard time. “He has three big girls, remember? They can’t wait to meet you.”
“Is Uncle Bob and Aunt Danielle gonna come?”
“No, they have errands to run.” Mike realized that Emily might be worried. She’d spent nights at his apartment but he’d never taken her away for a day trip. “Don’t worry, we’ll have fun together.”
“I miss Smoochie Kitten.”
“I do, too. We’ll see her when we get home.” Mike had gotten a new kitten and told everybody it was for Emily, which was his prerogative as a father. He visited Jake every time he saw Don and the boys, and it made him happier than he let on. He was a cat man.
“Want more flowers? I know where.”
“Where?” Mike didn’t want her near the street, though there were only a few cars in sight on this quiet Saturday morning, too early even for leafblowers and lawnmowers. Sunlight dappled the driveway, and the air felt cool and fresh.
“Dere!” Emily pointed to the hedgerow, then waved off a gnat.
“Good. Don’t go past that. Gimme a kiss.”
“Okay.” Emily presented her cheek to be kissed, and Mike obliged, loving its sweaty softness, then she ran off, with Bob chuckling.
“Someday she’ll learn that means she’s supposed to kiss us.”
“I hope she doesn’t.” Mike smiled, rising, and he put the stinky plants into his breast pocket. “That’ll keep the vampires away.”
“Bob, wait, I found one more box!” Danielle emerged from the front door, carrying a cardboard box.
“I just closed the trunk!” Bob called to her.
“So open it!” Danielle called back.
“Need a hand?” Mike asked, no pun intended. Time and therapy had made him more accepting of his amputation, and he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that exposed his stump. He felt better and lighter without his prosthetic, which he wore mainly at work. He was running his own practice, and Tony and Dave had come on board, doing the surgeries until he could, someday.
“Thanks.” Danielle smiled as she gave Mike the box, then fell into step beside him. Its top flaps were closed, and its contents clinked slightly, like glass against glass. “I’m not even sure where this came from. It might be from your old house.”
“What’s in it?” Mike checked on Emily, who was crouching on the lawn, yanking up crabgrass.
“Bottles and T-shirts. See if it’s anything you need.”
“I doubt it.” Mike had gotten rid of almost everything. Some of it had too many memories, and the rest he didn’t have room for in his apartment, which was another blessing, helping him move on.
“How it got upstairs, I don’t know.”
“Let me see.” Mike set the box on the edge of the trunk, opened a flap, and looked inside. It contained a bottle and old T-shirts, but they didn’t belong to him. “It’s not my stuff.”
Bob opened the other top flap. “Oh, I packed this from Mike’s and brought it home. I forgot all about it. The bottle is from Mike’s, but the shirts are mine. I used them to cushion the bottle, so it wouldn’t break.”
Danielle rolled her eyes. “Why didn’t you throw it away, honey?”
“It’s expensive, and Mike might want it. Mike, you want it? It’s really nice Scotch.”
“No, you keep it.” Mike turned to check on Emily, who was squatting on the lawn, warbling a tuneless song to herself and digging in the dirt. Sunlight caught her hair, making it shine. He found himself thinking of Chloe, his grief coming and going, though he’d fallen in love with Stephanie. He’d learned that the human heart could expand to fit as many as needed, whether that was sound cardiology practice or not.
“Throw it away, Bob,” Danielle was saying, behind him. “It probably went bad and it’s half-empty.”
“Danielle, it doesn’t go bad. Why waste it?”
“We have money. Why hoard it?”
“It’s The Macallan Estate Reserve, a collector’s bottle. This probably costs a couple hundred bucks.”
Mike turned at the name, which rang a bell. “What, Bob?”
“Tell her you don’t throw this away.” Bob was holding up a bottle of Scotch with a black-framed label that Mike recognized, shaken.
“Daddy, Daddy!” Emily jumped up, pointing to the street. “Daddy, Fenny’s here!”
“Don’t run in the street!” Mike called back reflexively, as Stephanie’s red Saab pulled up at the curb.
“Hi, Emily!” Stephanie called from her open window. She cut the engine, got out of the car, and reached down just in time to catch Emily in her arms, lift her up, and give her a hug. “Honey pie, I’m so happy to see you!”
Mike walked toward them, then gave each a quick kiss on the cheek. “Stephanie, mind if I borrow your car? I’ll be right back.”
“No, why?” Stephanie smiled, bewildered, and handed him the keys. “Aren’t we supposed to be leaving?”
“We will when I get back. Gimme an hour. I have to take care of some unfinished business.”
Chapter Eighty-one
Mike walked through the door at Lyon & Haggerty, and every head turned in the large waiting room, packed because Saturday mornings were the busiest. The seats were full of moms and kids, reading, listening to iPods, or texting away, their thumbs flying.
“May I help you, sir?” asked the receptionist, her ponytail swinging.
“No thanks, I’m here to see Jim.” Mike strode past her, opened the door to the hallway, and stalked past the team photos and mounted hockey sticks, calling out, “Jim? You here? It’s Mike.”
Two female staffers in peach scrubs turned to him. “May we help you?” asked one. “Sir?” said the other.
“I’m fine, thanks.” Mike barreled past them. “Jim! Jim!”
“What’s going on out here?” Jim asked in surprise, emerging from an examining room, and Mike whirled around to face him.
“We need to talk about Chloe.”
Jim’s eyes flew open. “Mike, whoa. What do you mean?”
“You tell me. I found a bottle of Macallan in the house. Sorry, The Macallan, the same overpriced bottle of booze you keep in your desk drawer. My gut tells me she didn’t drink it, you did.”
“I went over for the article, I told you that.”
>
“How many times did you go over?”
“Once.”
“You’re lying. You told me you sip it, but the bottle was half-empty. That means you were over there plenty of times. Why were you over there so much?” Mike kept walking toward him. “And why are you lying about it, if it was innocent?”
“Mike, calm down.” Jim edged backwards, gesturing to a staffer. “Melinda, call security. Do something.”
“I am calm, Jumbo. You’re the one who’s not calm.” Mike backed Jim down the hallway. “Why are you running away from your old friend and partner? I’m Dr. Mike the war hero, remember? I’m the guy in your brochure. And while I was in Afghanistan, you slept with my wife. You could’ve been the one who got her pregnant.”
“No, wait, I couldn’t have gotten her pregnant. I took a shot, I admit it, but she said no. Nothing happened, I swear.” Jim backed down his new hall. Patients from the waiting room crowded the doorway, astounded. Examining-room doors were opening on all sides, and appalled moms and kids stood in the thresholds watching, among them, a shocked Rick Lyon.
Mike kept advancing. “You hit on my wife? What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Sorry, Mike, what can I tell you?” Jim backed himself against the wall of team photos. Mike saw the absolute truth in his eyes.
He felt a wave of sadness for Chloe. She had been so vulnerable, and ripe for someone like Jim to take advantage of her. But something in her had resisted Jim. Mike’s impulse was to deck him, but he knew that the moms, patients, staff, and Lyon had heard every word. Tongues would wag all day, and the gossip would be on Facebook by lunchtime. If Lyon believed business was about reputation, Jim was as good as fired.
Mike had hit him where it hurt the most.
In his wallet.
Chapter Eighty-two
It wasn’t until almost dark that Mike and Chatty got a chance to talk alone, sitting in chairs on the elevated deck, while the party went on below. Mike held Emily as she snored softly on his shoulder, her body warm and slightly sweaty. She smelled of hot dogs and mosquito repellent, which was somehow sweeter than perfume.
Chatty sipped his beer, smiling. “So you didn’t hit Haggerty?”
“No, because I’m a father now. Also I only have one hand and I need it.”
Chatty laughed. “Now you’re thinking, Scholl’s. Besides, the mom network will get on his ass, and Lyon will cut him loose.”
“I know, and he’s not the guy I thought he was, anymore.” Mike was trying to make peace with it, but it would take a long time. “My hitting days are over. I still can’t believe you got away with clocking Davy.”
“Of course. If he brought me up on charges, he knew I’d tell what he said about the investigation. He wasn’t about to open that can of worms.” Chatty snorted. “On a lighter note, I like Stephanie. She’s great.”
“So’s Sherry.” Mike scanned the party for them, but it was too dark to see. The only light came from yellow paper lanterns strung between the tall oak trees, which made shifting shadows of the partiers. Barbeque smoke hung in the air, an aromatic haze.
“Did you notice that they hit it off immediately?”
“Yes, because they’re two of a kind.”
“Run for cover.” Chatty chuckled, and so did Mike.
“Your daughters are beauties. So grown up.”
“Thanks. I’m not ready for Lena to get a learner’s permit. I don’t want her out of my sight, meeting guys like me.” Chatty gestured at Emily. “Meanwhile, my girls love the baby, but I don’t know if they understood she’s real. They carted her around like their old American Girl dolls.”
Mike smiled. “Those big dolls? I saw those, online. They’re not cheap.”
“No, and you gotta buy the clothes, the books, the DVDs, then take the trip to the store in the city. It’s a pilgrimage.” Chatty snorted. “I sat next to McKenna on the train.”
“Who’s McKenna?”
“A doll. I sat with a doll in the club car on an Acela. Think about that. Consider the visual.”
“Manly.” Mike chuckled. “I have a kitten, did I tell you? Also manly.”
“Ha! This is a very manly conversation.” Chatty rubbed his chest in his white polo shirt, a bright patch in the darkness. “Only real men can have conversations like this. Men from war.”
“Hoo-ah!” Mike said, and they both laughed.
“They’re closing bases and Landstuhl, too, did you hear?”
“I heard, because the war’s over.”
“Right, that’s why they’re building a hospital at Ramstein.”
“One-stop shopping.” Mike kept his hand on Emily’s back, without really knowing why. “Sew ’em up and put ’em on a plane.”
“They’re shutting down the 556th, too.” Chatty sighed, heavily. “Man, I still can’t deal with it. I replay it over and over, but it always turns out the same.”
Mike knew he was talking about Phat Phil, Oldstein, Jacobs, and Tipton. “Me, too.”
“I think about them, all the time. I think about them all. They’re always in the back of my mind.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” Mike thought about them, and everything else. The blood, the wounds, the soldiers, The Kid With The Dragon Tattoo, The Virgin.
“To them.” Chatty raised his bottle in tribute, and Mike felt his throat catch.
“Hear, hear.”
Chatty set his bottle down on his leg. “I don’t sleep well, or not much, really. That’s the main thing that drives me crazy, the not-sleeping.”
“You gotta see somebody about that. I do.”
“That’s what Sherry says.”
“She’s right. Listen to her. Don’t avoid it.”
“I know, I’m not myself. On the Fourth of July, we went to the fireworks and I started shaking.” Chatty shuddered. “I had to come home.”
“I hear that. We went to a chick flick last week, and I cried like a baby.”
Chatty shook it off. “Too bad Segundo’s mom got sick. He really wanted to stick around and see you.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Great. I love having him, he runs my office like he ran us. He’s gonna marry his girl, but he’s still a tub. I told him, how you gonna fit in your dress?”
Mike smiled. “Hold on. I have a birthday present for you.”
“Scholl’s, the invite said ‘no presents.’”
“That doesn’t apply to me.” Mike dug in his pocket, pulled out the heart milagro, and gave it to Chatty. “Happy Birthday, Batman.”
“Ha!” Chatty held it up, where it glinted in the light from the kitchen. “Thanks, man!”
“Tell Segundo. Now you’ll have all the good luck that it brought me.”
“We are lucky, man.”
“We sure as hell are.”
Mike grinned, but it was too dark to see Chatty’s smile. The sky had deepened to a soft black, with just a few stars. “Hey, look up. Same sky, different stars.”
Chatty looked up. “I should get my goggles.”
Mike thought back to the night they sat outside their tent, when he first came back after Chloe’s death. “Remember that night?”
“Yeah.”
Mike didn’t have to explain which night. “Is it crazy to say I’m glad we were there?”
“No, I’m glad we were, too,” Chatty answered, after a moment. “Now why is that, I wonder? How can that be? War is not a good thing.”
“No, it isn’t.” Mike had thought about the subject many a night, when he was having sleep problems of his own. “Here’s what I think. If I hadn’t gone over there, I wouldn’t be the father I am. I wouldn’t be the man I am. War changes everything, and everybody. It changed me, and the sacrifice changed me. I’ve decided to live my life in a way that honors that sacrifice, and all the sacrifices.”
Chatty looked over. “For real, Scholl’s?”
“For real, Chatty.”
“That’s deep. I’ll have to mull that over, my friend. I’ll hav
e to cogitate on that.”
“Be my guest.”
Chatty snorted. “Did you get smarter while I was away?”
“No,” Mike answered. “You got dumber.”
And they both laughed until they cried.
These two heroes, who were finally home.
Acknowledgments
Now to the thank-yous, where I get to thank all of those experts and kind souls who helped me with Don’t Go, and make clear that any and all mistakes herein are mine.
First thanks go to my medical experts, Vladimir Berkovich, M.D., Lt. Colonel USAR, a decorated veteran who served in the Army Medical Corps in Afghanistan and Iraq. He took his valuable time to answer all of my questions and read the manuscript, making a number of corrections and suggestions. I could not be more grateful to him for his kindness, expertise, and guidance—and more important, for his service to all of us, and his sacrifices in harm’s way.
I also want to thank Dr. Marc Baer, D.P.M., who also took the time to read pages of this manuscript as well, and who is a wonderful and caring podiatrist. Thanks to my pal Missy Dubroff, for reading the manuscript and making comments.
I’m a bookaholic, and I want to acknowledge the books that I read on the subject of medical care in combat, which informed the background of Don’t Go. Primary were some extraordinary textbooks: LTC Brett Owens and LTC Philip Belmont Jr.’s Combat Orthopedic Surgery: Lessons Learned in Iraq and Afghanistan (Slackbooks, 2011); Bella May’s Amputations and Prosthetics (Davis, 2002); G. Murdoch and A. Bennett-Wilson’s Amputation: Surgical Practice and Patient Management (Butterworth-Heineman, 1996); LTC Shawn Christian Nessen, Dave Edmond Lounsbury, and Stephen Hetz’s War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq: A Series of Cases, 2003-2007 (Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 2008).
I also read some great nonfiction, many, but not all, by returning vets. I would recommend: Milo Afong’s Hogs in the Shadows (Berkley, 2007); David Bellavia’s House to House (Free Press, 2007); Peter Bergen’s The Longest War (Free Press, 2011); Donovan Campbell’s Joker One (Random House, 2010); Sarah Chayes’s The Punishment of Virtue (Penguin, 2006); James Fallows’s Blind Into Baghdad (Random House, 2006); Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War (Random House, 2008); David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009); Matt Gallagher’s Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War (Perseus, 2010); Dr. Ronald Glasser’s Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds: A Medical Odyssey from Vietnam to Afghanistan (History, 2010); Dr. Dave Hnida’s Paradise General: Riding the Surge at a Combat Hospital in Iraq (Simon & Shuster, 2010); Cdr. Richard Jadick’s On Call in Hell: A Doctor’s Iraq War Story (NAL, 2007); Sebastian Junger’s War (Grand Central, 2010); Robert Kaplan’s Imperial Grunts (Random House, 2005); Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (Doubleday, 2009); Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson’s Lone Survivor (Little Brown, 2007); Karl Marlantes’s What It Is Like to Go to War (Atlantic Monthly, 2011); Thomas Middleton’s Saber’s Edge: A Combat Medic in Ramadi, Iraq (University Press of New England, 2009); Patrick Thibeault’s My Journey as a Combat Medic (IBJ, 2011); Benjamin Tupper’s Greetings From Afghanistan, Send More Ammo (NAL, 2010); Howard Wasdin and Stephen Templin’s Seal Team Six (St. Martin’s Press, 2011); Bing West’s No True Glory (Bantam, 2005). I also enjoyed a novel on the subject, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (HarperCollins, 2012).
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