Last Salute

by Tracey Richardson

  “You look like you’re angry at the world.”

  She turned her head toward the soft voice of the man standing behind her. It was the chaplain—an older, balding man who smiled kindly with his eyes and his mouth.

  Pam saw no reason to be evasive. He’d brought the subject up, after all. “No, I’m not angry at the world. Just at God, if there is one.”

  “May I sit with you?”

  Pam gave a perfunctory nod, preferring to be alone but not wanting to be rude. She’d sit for a few minutes with him, then make her excuses.

  “You’re a doctor here,” he said, staring straight ahead, like Pam.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you lose a patient today?”

  She supposed that was why doctors appeared in the chapel now and again. She shook her head.

  “You know, God doesn’t mind if you get angry with Him. He has big shoulders.”

  Oh, please. She hated it when people talked like God was a real person. “I’m sorry, but I should get back to work.”

  She started to rise from her seat when the man’s hand on her arm gently tugged her back down. “No, I’m sorry. We can leave God out of this, you know. Will you tell me more about why you’re angry?”

  For a long moment Pam stared at her intertwined hands in her lap, wondering if confiding in the pastor was worth the effort. Finally, she decided she had little to lose and, who knows, maybe even something to gain. If nothing else, this man of the cloth seemed a safe place to deposit her anger.

  “Why is death so…so random? So unfair.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Why do good people sometimes die young or tragically, and wicked people seem to get off scot-free? Why does it not make any sense?”

  “Ah, but you see, death is not punishment and living is not always a reward. They’re simply a part of the circle of life.”

  Pam’s anger bubbled to the surface again. “Tell that to the two kids whose mom is clinging to life upstairs in the ICU. I’m sure they’re not feeling so philosophical about death right now. Nor am I.”

  The pastor scrutinized her with intense dark eyes, but his voice was soft and gentle. “Someone you love has died recently.”

  Pam caught her breath. “Yes.”

  “Someone who didn’t deserve to die?”

  “Yes. My sister. She was an army doctor serving in Afghanistan when she was killed recently. A helicopter crash.”

  “Ah, I see. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes until the pastor spoke again. “My dear, to think of death as punitive is the same kind of thinking that is behind capital punishment. An eye for an eye. That sort of thing. Have you ever considered that sometimes living is the real punishment and death the reward?”

  Pam supposed he was right. Some people had to live with excruciating pain, or poverty, or abuse, or any number of diseases and life-sucking conditions. In cases like those, death probably was deliverance.

  “In my sister’s case, death was not a reward.”

  “But who are we to judge? Sometimes God’s plan is…”

  “I don’t want to hear about God’s plan,” Pam erupted. “A loving God wouldn’t allow or plan for ninety percent of the shitty things that happen in this world.”

  “All right. I’m sorry. I said I would leave God out of this, didn’t I?”

  Pam shook her head and wiped at a tear before it could spill over. “I just don’t understand any of it.”

  “You know something, Doctor? I must confess, I don’t understand most of it either.”

  “You don’t?”

  Wincing, he shook his head. “Nope. But we’re only human. We’re not capable of understanding everything that happens in life. That’s the way it’s meant to be.”

  “But you believe in the power of God, even when you don’t understand his plan, as you call it. You believe in a God that can’t save good people or who can’t always help the deserving.”

  “That’s true, but you believe in medicine even when you can’t save every patient, no?”

  Pam conceded his point. “So I’m just supposed to accept these things?”

  “Can you change the outcome if you choose not to accept death?”

  “I can try to fight it when it’s within my power to do so. That’s why I’m in medicine.”

  “And when it’s not in your power?”

  “No, then of course not. I can’t change the fact that my sister is dead.”

  “Precisely. Your anger and sense of helplessness will not bring her back.”

  Nothing was going to bring Laura back. She knew that. Still. “I’m not the kind of person who can accept that these things just happen. That when your number’s up, it’s up. Or that God has a plan and all that. You know what I think?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I think sometimes shit just happens, and that innocent people sometimes die. That’s what I think. What I can’t accept is the unfairness of it all.”

  The chaplain sighed in resignation. “You’re a doctor. It’s good that you fight for your patients, that you don’t accept death easily. But what makes you a good doctor doesn’t necessarily make you someone who is at peace in her life.”

  Pam didn’t like where this conversation was going. It was getting too personal, too judgmental, too uncomfortable.

  “Look,” the man said, resting his hand on her arm again, as if sensing she was about to bolt. “I’ve seen a lot of people die. And I’ve tried to help a lot of people through the grieving process.”

  “Then you must have formed some opinions.”

  “What I do know for certain is that death teaches us more about life than it does anything else. That life is meant to be lived and to be lived fully. To love and to do good in this world. Be true to yourself and follow your dreams. That’s what I’ve learned about death, because those are the very things that are important about life.”

  So Laura’s death was meant to teach her and others these great lessons about living? No. She refused to believe that. Laura didn’t need to die so that she could figure out how to live more fully, how to be happier.

  “Thank you, Pastor.” She stood.

  “I hope it helped.” His smile was hopeful.

  Pam nodded politely and left, stopping in the stairwell to lean against the cool solidity of the cinder block wall. Nothing much helped right now. She had an urge to call Trish and tell her about the conversation with the pastor. She wondered if Trish would agree with the part about learning to live more fully, to go for the brass ring while you could. Pam had gone for her dreams, and yet, admittedly, there was an emptiness in her life that her medical career hadn’t been able to fill. Even before Laura’s death, she had begun to question her purpose.

  She pulled out her phone, called up the contact list, stared at Trish’s number. She hesitated. Things had become awkward after the kiss, and now she didn’t know where they stood. Trish had reassured her they were still friends, and yet the kiss had undeniably put up a wall between them. Stupid, stupid kiss! Why the hell did I do something so stupid?

  She leaned against the wall, would have punched it out of frustration if it weren’t cinder block. Her sister was dead, and the woman who had become her closest friend, her saving grace, was emotionally inaccessible to her now. She’d be seeing Trish in a few days. She hoped they could navigate their way around this, so that she could breathe again.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dressed in nearly identical shorts, tank tops and running shoes, Trish and Pam ran the circumference of the high school’s track once, then walked it. They decided to try to do ten laps this way, alternating between running and walking, because Trish had put her foot down about jogging the entire ten laps. She wasn’t the athlete Pam was. For the sake of nostalgia, Pam had wanted to visit her old school and run the track again.

  “I bet this track brings back a lot of memories for you,” Trish said, still catching her breath from the ru
n. Pam, like Laura, had excelled at sports.

  “It does. Especially the bleachers.” Pam pointed to the north side of the track.

  “The bleachers?”

  Pam laughed. “My first kiss with a girl was underneath those.”

  Trish laughed too. “Wow. And I thought your most exciting memory here would be the time you broke Laura’s school record in the two hundred meters. I thought that was pretty exciting.”

  “Next to kissing a girl? Not even close!”

  Trish lightly punched Pam in the bicep as they walked side by side. It was a relief to laugh together. Any awkwardness between them since the kiss had evaporated on the grounds of their alma mater in the late June sunshine. There were so many memories here, the air was practically electrified with them. They were like a cloak giving Trish instant safety, sureness, confidence. Those warm feelings had propelled her to a teaching career at the same school—she’d never considered teaching somewhere else. It occurred to her now how little her life had changed over the last twenty years, other than the fact that she earned a paycheck and paid a mortgage. Trish Tomlinson, the girl who never left Huron High.

  Trish halted, light-headed with this revelation.

  “You okay?” Pam asked in alarm, her fingers immediately engulfing Trish’s wrist to take her pulse. “Do you feel faint?”

  “No, I’m fine.” She wasn’t really, but she could pretend she was and try to change the subject. Except Pam was looking at her so earnestly, so full of worry. A fat, wobbly tear splashed suddenly on to Trish’s cheek. She couldn’t lie to Pam.

  “Oh, Trish, I know. I know.” Pam’s hand slipped into Trish’s and held it tightly as they resumed walking, but slower now.

  “No,” Trish mumbled. Pam didn’t understand. She wasn’t, for once, crying for Laura; she was crying for herself and her pathetic life. “No, it’s…Never mind, okay?”

  “No, I won’t ‘never mind.’ What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m so ridiculous, Pam. All this time…”

  “All this time what?”

  They walked on, and Trish didn’t speak for a long time. When she did, her tears had stopped, and in her mouth was the bitter taste of self-recrimination. “I’m such an idiot. I never even gave myself a chance to move on.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I never moved on from Laura because I never even left high school. Isn’t that pathetic? I willingly put myself in this huge rut and called it a life.”

  “No, that’s not true. And what’s wrong with staying here? Lots of people teach at their alma maters. It doesn’t matter that you never left Ann Arbor. It’s a great city, Trish. I love it here. I always have. I envy you!”

  Trish shook her head. “You got outta here, started a life, just like Laura did. But me, it’s like I was afraid to try anything new, go anyplace different, start over. Maybe I stupidly thought if I stayed here, Laura would come back home. That everything would be as it once was.”

  Pam squeezed her hand. “Believe me, moving away and starting over somewhere else doesn’t solve all your problems. If anything, it’s harder to set down roots, to feel a part of anything when you go someplace else. You felt rooted to this community, invested yourself in it, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “That’s true, as long as it’s not a way of trying to hold on to the past.”

  “Is that what you were doing? Are doing?”

  “I didn’t think so at the time. I mean, I never articulated it like this before. But now I’m not so sure.”

  “I think you’re reading too much into it. It’s Laura’s death that’s made us doubt things, question our lives this way.”

  “Maybe, but the truth is the truth, regardless of what makes you come to the realization.” Trish stopped walking, looked hard into Pam’s eyes. “I can’t move on if I don’t examine my motives for the things I’ve done, for the way I’ve lived my life. If I don’t come to terms with those things.”

  “Are you saying you want to move on?”

  “I think so, yes. I mean, I need to. If I can’t, I’ll…” Die just like Laura, she wanted to say.

  Pam seemed to understand because she nodded grimly. “Moving on from Laura doesn’t mean you loved her any less. You know that, right?”

  Trish nodded through fresh tears. “I know.”

  They walked again, Pam’s hand still in hers. It felt nice.

  Tentatively, Pam said, “Can I ask you something personal?”

  “Of course.”

  “When was the last time you slept with my sister?”

  That was easy to answer, but Trish found herself balking. She wondered why Pam wanted to know, but asking her would make it seem like she was evading the question. “When she was here for your mother’s funeral. It just sort of happened.”

  “Not when she was here last November?”

  “No. We had dinner together, but that was it. You seem surprised.”

  “That you slept with her six years ago? Or that you didn’t sleep with her last fall?”

  There was an edge of accusation in Pam’s tone. Why should it matter to her when she last slept with Laura? She studied Pam’s profile, the angry jaw, the pulsing vein in her neck. “Have I upset you in some way?”

  “No. Look, forget it.”

  “Are you angry at me or at Laura?”

  Pam dropped her hand. “Come on, let’s run again.”

  Pam took off like a shot, her long legs pumping. She was fast and Trish couldn’t quite catch her. After a lap, Pam stopped and waited.

  Trish jogged up to her. “Will you answer the question?”

  “I’m not angry, I’m just…I don’t know, okay?”

  They walked some more in silence. Then Pam stopped and faced her, her expression pained, her hands on her hips. “Here’s my problem. I don’t understand why Laura never went back to you, when clearly you were the only woman who’d ever captured her heart. And I don’t understand why you continued to be in love with someone who didn’t want to commit to you. I’m confused, Trish. I don’t understand, and I want to understand.”

  Trish instinctively fingered Laura’s ring on the chain around her neck. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you? Or weak? For carrying a torch like that for so long.”

  “No. I don’t. But I don’t understand…”

  “About carrying a torch for someone?”

  Pam’s face colored. Her collapsed expression said she knew exactly what Trish alluded to.

  “I’m sorry.” Trish reached out and touched her arm. “I didn’t mean to be such a bitch.”

  “No, I deserved it. And you’re right. I do understand that part. I just hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?”

  Pam grinned, her eyes sharpening with mischief. “We both need to find some hot, spectacular woman who completely blows us away and makes us forget about anyone else.”

  Trish smiled back. “And if we can’t?”

  “Then I’ll have to keep trying to convince you that I’m worth taking a chance on.” Pam continued grinning, but her eyes were dead serious.

  Trish tilted her head, smiled back. “You’re a lovely woman. And I have no doubt you’re worth taking a chance on.”

  “As long as it’s someone else taking a chance on me?”

  Trish’s breath caught in her throat. Memories of their kiss flooded her mind. Memories so intense that a twinge of arousal rushed back into her belly, her thighs. What’s wrong with me? she wondered with no small amount of shock. This gorgeous, smart, successful, lovely woman is interested in me, and all I can do is think about the past and all the reasons why I shouldn’t give her a chance.

  Pam laughed lightly. “You look like you’re having an anxiety attack. I was only teasing, you know.”

  Trish playfully bumped her shoulder, happy to have dodged a serious discussion about the two of them. She needed time and distance to give her a little perspective about Pam. Laura too, an
d the shifting balance of dynamics. “I’m starving. How about we go grab lunch, then get back to Laura’s journal?”

  “You read my mind. How about the Red Hawk Bar and Grill on campus?”

  “Perfect. I think I’ve earned a giant cheeseburger and fries.”

  * * *

  Pam ravenously tucked into her battered fish and fries and watched Trish do the same with her burger. From tall glasses, they sipped microbeer that had been brewed at a distillery nearby. It was a companionable silence, but Pam remained embarrassed by her earlier comment. The one about how she was worth taking a chance on. She’d known as soon as she opened her mouth that she sounded like an egotistical jerk. Trish was never going to give her a chance, and the more she dwelled on it, the more she didn’t want to be like Trish anyway—stuck on someone you could never have, to the point of not allowing yourself to love anyone else. No. The sooner she could let go of this useless teenaged crush, the better. If only there wasn’t that little smudge of mustard I’d love to lick off her lips, Pam thought helplessly.

  “Should we?” Pam said, forcing a change in direction. She removed Laura’s journal from her backpack on the seat beside her.

  Trish nodded her approval, and Pam opened to where they had left off.

  “Dec. 28:

  “I’m lonely today. I guess because it’s the holidays, though things look the same around here, except for the little piece of mistletoe some optimistic person hung up in our staff lounge area. I miss Pam. I miss home, wherever the hell that is. More like the idea of home. But I’ll get over it. I always do. In the meantime, I’ll let this loneliness keep its grip on me for a day, and I know I’ll spend it thinking about regrets, playing the what-if game in my mind. Like what if I’d quit the army by now. Where I’d be and what I’d be doing. And who I’d be doing it with. I suppose Trish would still take me back after all these years—”

  Pam stole a glance at Trish, who seemed to have stopped breathing for a moment, but she nodded for Pam to go on.

  “—if I went back to Ann Arbor as a civilian. I could practice medicine there probably. Or start a practice with Pam like we’ve talked about. And days like today, I dream of those things—having a home with someone, going to work every day, taking nice drives on the weekends, maybe a Saturday picnic somewhere, a jog along the river, going to a game at the Big House. It feels good to dream about those things on a day like this. But tomorrow, I’ll wake up glad I’m here in the middle of a war zone. Glad to see my colleagues, to joke with them, to bug the colonel to let me go to one of the FOBs. Glad for that one big chest that holds all of my earthly belongings. Glad to know there’s really only one person in the world who needs to worry about me, but she’s my sister, and so it comes with the territory. The only thing that encumbers me is duty, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s enough for me, and it’s enough (usually) to erase any regrets and smother any ridiculous dreams. Duty is my religion. My wife.”