Girl On the Edge

by CD Reiss

  He swallowed.

  “Okay,” he said thickly, eyes clamping tight before opening.

  “Let me help you.”

  I took his wrists and pulled him up. He was dead weight, but I managed to swing his legs over the side of the bed and get him sitting. His shoulders hunched, and his head hung.

  “Wake up.”

  “Can’t.”

  “I’ll help you. Come on.”

  I pulled his arms, got him up a little, but he sat back down.

  “Melatonin.”

  He named the hormone responsible for sleep. If his blood was flooded with it, he wouldn’t be able to get up no matter how hard he tried.

  “Do you want something to help you wake up?”

  He dropped back until his head was against the wall. “Slap me.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t answer. His eyes closed again. I patted his cheek, but his breathing got the slow cadence of sleep again. I slapped harder.

  “Adrenaline,” he whispered.

  He wanted me to slap him hard enough that the need to fight or run would release adrenaline, which would override the melatonin. He was using his own body like a pharmacy.

  Fine. I planted my knees on either side of him. “I apologize in advance.”

  I slapped him hard. He grunted. I slapped him again. Deep, waking breath. The next slap was hard enough to make my hand hurt, so the next one was a backhand. That got him up. My hand was back for another.

  “Stop. We’re good.”

  “You sure?”

  He rested his hands on my hips, making me realize I was straddling him. “Any more and you’re going to turn me on. Oops, too late.”

  “A cold shower’s going to cure you of two problems then.”

  Standing, I held my hand out to help him up. He stumbled to standing, looking around as if the idea of three-dimensional space confused him.

  “Oh, man.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  * * *

  I was worried about him. On the way to the showers, he’d seemed disoriented, struggling to put together one coherent thought after another. He’d make a sharp comeback to something I said, then go silent or forget what he’d said. Waiting for him outside the showers, I called out to Ronin as he passed.

  “Why are you stalking the men’s showers?”

  “I’m waiting on a tired surgeon.”

  “St. John?”

  “Yeah. He’s had five hours but needs a week.”

  “They need him.”

  “I’m going to use the Defense stuff.”

  He nodded. “I’ll go get it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  GREYSEN

  DAY EIGHT - 14:56

  The battle took five weeks, but the initial offensive was over after eight days.

  Caden had gone three more nonstop. No catnaps. No lie-downs. The synthetic speed did its job twice over.

  When the last soldier was sewn up and the party had started in the mess hall, he was in no condition to celebrate. I found him standing shirtless over the linen hamper, scrubs balled in a fist, a marble statue of a man.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s over for now.”

  He opened his fist and let the scrubs fall into the bin. “I’m tired.”

  “Ya think?”

  I reached for his hand so I could check his pulse. That was what I told myself. But when I took it and slid my hands to his wrist and down to his elbow in a long stroke and he lifted his arm to cup my jaw, there was no more lying.

  He kissed me as if he’d been on hunger strike and our first kiss was the nourishment he’d been denying himself. As if he couldn’t bear to not kiss me for another second.

  Or maybe that was what I was feeling, because I clutched the back of his neck like a woman terrified of losing something. My mouth devoured him with the force of a catapult held in tension for too long yet sprung too fast. My hands released his neck and ran over the crests and valleys of his body.

  I tried to get up, but that only drove me into his arms. God, I wanted him.

  “Sleep with me,” he said.

  “Like last time?”

  “No. This time, I’m going to try to fuck you, and you’re going to let me.”

  * * *

  Late in the night, pleasantly sore and sticky where it counted, I drifted off to sleep while he stroked my shoulder in a way that was both casual and intentional.

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?” I asked with the last of my waking energy.

  “I fell asleep first last time.”

  “Didn’t count.”

  “I like looking at you.”

  “Mm.”

  He kissed my shoulder. I hoped he didn’t want to fuck again. I was tired, and I was sure that if he wanted to, he’d need thirty seconds to make me want him again.

  “All the time,” he continued. “You’re hard to not look at. When you’re working with some jarhead who would rather be dead than talking to a psychiatrist, the way you listen? Even if he’s got his back turned to you or he’s telling you to fuck off? Like there’s no one else in the world but that one guy? You’re stunning. If you ever looked at me like that, I’d tell you everything.”

  I wanted to say, “Tell me everything right now.” But my lips wouldn’t form the words, and my lungs could only breathe in the rhythms of slumber.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  GREYSEN

  The week after the first surge, the doctors went on doctoring while the surgeons were put on rest. Casualties came in at a manageable rate for the normal rotation, which I no longer oversaw.

  After our first night together, Caden had slept for twenty-four hours. Most of the surgeons had. He owned me the two nights after that. Rotation last night. And tonight? If it was up to me, I’d be his again tonight.

  The army was a huge net of people with tight knots of community. The way Ronin and I had found each other from basic, to Walter Reed, back around again to a common assignment in Iraq wasn’t unheard of. But Caden? He wasn’t part of the net. He’d sought out a commission during a time of war. As soon as his obligation was done, he could, and would, leave to pick up his life where he’d left it.

  Like a soldier who’d witnessed the unthinkable, I tried not to think about it.

  “Captain Fobbit!” Sergeant “Little Red” Ryder cried from across the dusty field, a football crooked behind his shoulder.

  Caden, the fobbit in question, held his arm out to indicate he was open. Ryder released the ball across the sky like a drill, cutting the blue only to have it enfold around its wake. Caden picked the ball out of the air but was tackled by Ronin and Pfc. “Salt Mine” Trona. They slapped his back when they got off him. I held my hand out to help him up.

  “What’s with that Ronin guy?” He grabbed my wrist so I could pull him up. “He was all over you. He think you’re Jerry Rice or something?”

  “Ryder usually throws to me.”

  He snapped the ball back to Ryder without an answer, and we headed for the line of scrimmage.

  “You shouldn’t let them call you fobbit,” I said. “It’s not nice.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Means you never go outside the wires. Means you don’t know shit.”

  “Maybe I don’t.” He smirked as if he really believed he lacked a necessary piece of knowledge about anything important.

  Sergeant Ryder called out the play numbers, and we fell back. This time, I got the jump on my coverage, and the ball landed right in my hands. Ronin got to me, knocking me three feet out of a run in an attempted tackle, but I wouldn’t go down. He reached around me, trying to strip the ball away.

  I cried, “Foul, foul,” but we were both laughing and fighting to the death as I pushed toward the Humvee tire marking the end zone.

  Ronin’s weight was suddenly off me, and I ran for the line, where I spiked the ball into the sand.

  My victory was short-lived. Caden was on top of Ronin with his knee in his back, p
ushing his face into the ground while Ryder and Trona were arriving to pull Caden off.

  “You don’t touch her like that, you hear me?”

  Ronin was on his feet. “What is your fucking problem?”

  “Watch your goddamn hands.”

  Ronin held up his palms. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on here…”

  “Like fuck you don’t,” Caden said.

  Trona picked up the ball and tossed it to Ryder.

  “All right, whatever. Fuck this.” Ronin slapped the dirt off his hands and walked away.

  Ryder and Trona passed the ball between them. Game over.

  “What was that about?” I asked Caden.

  “What’s going on with him and you?”

  “Football.”

  Of course, I knew what he meant. And yes, my answer was evasive. But he was acting like a child, and children aren’t owed explanations for adult decisions.

  “Why are you lying?”

  I got right in his beautiful fucking face. “Because you’re being an asshole.”

  I stormed off.

  * * *

  That night, in chow hall, he sat with the other surgeons, and I sat with Ronin. It was as if, after the bell, we’d gone back to our respective corners of the ring without even knowing we’d been boxing.

  How did I know he was watching me? How did I know every time he glanced my way as if he happened to be looking out the window?

  I was watching him as well.

  “I got orders to go to Abu Ghraib,” Ronin said.

  “Are you even allowed to tell me that?”

  “If I did, then I am.”

  I pushed corn around my plate, trying to pretend Caden wasn’t there. My will was weak. When I lifted the fork to my mouth, our eyes met across the room, and he looked away.

  “Well, I guess your work here is done,” I said.

  “The army’s work.”

  “Yeah.”

  Caden got up with his tray. Why did that tie my heart into a knot? The surprise of seeing him get up? The broken string of our mutually denied gaze?

  “Before I go, I want to make you an offer.”

  “That’s intriguing.” Not as intriguing as Caden leaving his tray on the pile and walking out of chow hall with one of the guys on the Australian surgery team, chatting and laughing over who even knew what. Livers and spleens.

  He had no business laughing over internal organs when I felt so crappy about fighting with him.

  “I’ve known you since the beginning,” Ronin said. “Since you broke your wrist in basic.”

  “And you pushed me over the wall.”

  “Any other guy would have laid you down gently and called for help. I made sure you finished the course.”

  I nodded. “You did the right thing.”

  “I know. Because you and me? We understand each other. I need to not be tied down. You need to be pushed.”

  “And you have an offer to push me?”

  “The offer has two parts. You can take one without the other.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Part one. I’m going to Abu Ghraib in advance of a different kind of battle. A psychological one. We’re going to be fighting the enemy using a new weapon: their own culture.”

  “How?”

  “I can’t say, obviously, but it’s within the Geneva Convention protocols. It’s a war of the mind. No bloodshed. No death. None of this shit.” He checked to make sure no one was in earshot, then leaned forward. “You have a way with talking to shell-shocked men. You get it. And you speak Arabic. I want to talk to my command about loaning you out from your unit. Now this is up to you, and it’s totally voluntary. It’s a unicorn. Cherish the moment. You have a choice in the matter.”

  My ambition muscled out my patience and sense. I was interested before even hearing the details. “What’s the second part?”

  “It’s optional.”

  “Okay.”

  “You come to Abu Ghraib with me.”

  “With?”

  “Here it is. Straight out. Friends with benefits has been great, but I’d like to spend more time with you.”

  My ambition sat down, crossed her legs and arms, and scowled. “Christ, Ronin. Is this a unicorn too?”

  “I’m not looking for a long-term commitment or anything big, but—”

  “But I won’t sleep with you in Balad, so you want to push me because I need to be pushed?”

  A smile stretched across his face. “You get me.” When I rolled my eyes, he took my hand. “In the past week, I realized I like you more than I thought. I know, I’m being a typical male, but I’m not lying. I want you, and if that means cornering you into a new job, I’ll do it.”

  “You put the brutal in brutally honest, did you know that?”

  I pulled my hand away, but it was too late. Caden had come back into the room. Our eyes met, and he was not smiling. I could hardly think sandwiched between these two men. One of them had to go away, and it wasn’t Caden.

  “Give me a day,” I said to Ronin, picking up my tray. I wanted to get out of there before I suffocated. I needed to consider the half of his offer that wasn’t wrapped in carnal payoffs.

  “You want to put me second in line after Captain Fobbit over there, that’s your call. He’s going to put you in a cage and throw away the key.”

  The way he thought he knew me was exhausting enough. He couldn’t have a clue about Caden.

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Give it time. He will.”

  “No, I mean I’m not putting you second in line. There is no line.”

  I put my tray on the pile and went to Caden. A string between us pulled taut enough to trip anyone that crossed between. A string of my intentions. My forward motion and his patience as I walked in his direction, my determination to tell him exactly how I felt even as I defined my feelings to myself.

  I didn’t owe him an explanation about Ronin or any other lover. I could do whatever I wanted with my body, and if he’d expected some kind of fidelity, he should have brought it up. I didn’t owe him my time or my attention.

  I owed him none of those things, but I wanted him to have them. My fidelity. My time. My attention, my honesty and respect—all given as gifts whether he wanted them or not.

  My mother told me the moment a person falls in love is often quiet. It often comes in the night, or when you’re paying attention to something else, but it’s always in the rearview. You don’t meet love in the moment. It’s not an ambush. Someone chips away at the stone façade around it, breaching your fortifications, crippling your defenses, and the moment you fall in love is the moment you realize what you’ve built the wall around was love. You fall in love with your conqueror.

  I didn’t love him.

  Not yet. But bit by bit, he was chipping away at my battlements.

  Walking toward him, his face softening as mine hardened, I knew I could love him. One day, I’d look in my rearview and see what had been there all along.

  I was two steps away. I could see the hair on his face and the set of his jaw. Another step and I could whisper to him. I still didn’t know what I would say or which part of love’s barricades I’d start with. I didn’t know if I’d open with reassurance or a challenge, but I was sure, when I got there, I’d say the right thing.

  Caden took the last two steps in my direction, closing the gap completely.

  “I need to know,” Caden said softly. “What’s going on with him?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  His eyes lit up like the end of a short fuse, getting brighter when ignited with a little anger.

  “I don’t want to share you.”

  “You’re not sharing me.”

  “I hope you mean that the same way I do, Greysen. Because I don’t just mean your body. I don’t want to share your time or your heart or your happy fucking thoughts.”

  “Nobody owns me, Caden. Those things are given freely or not at all.”

  “Give
them to me then.”

  He was getting them, but he wasn’t entitled. His tone made my hair stand on end and my palms sweat. I didn’t know whether to fuck him or run away.

  “You can’t demand any of that.”

  “Give me everything or nothing. If it’s no, just say so now. Is it no?”

  I felt cornered. Caught in the middle of a tunnel as the walls shook from an oncoming train.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Maybe.”

  “This game you’re playing isn’t a game to me. You can hurt me.”

  Again, I was caught. This time between reassuring him and telling him I wouldn’t be emotionally blackmailed. Between admiring his willingness to be vulnerable and disdaining his manipulations. All and/or/but nothing.

  That was when the earth shook.

  “Mortar fire!” someone shouted.

  A dozen doctors, nurses, and medics dropped everything and ran for the door, including Caden.

  He turned for a half second to address me. “We’ll talk later.”

  He didn’t wait for me to agree but ran behind the last nurse. I was left with a newly buzzing chow hall and a list of questions.

  I went outside, hearing the click of debris falling on rooftops. The mortar had fallen halfway between the chow hall and the airstrip. One of the supply sheds was on fire. The medical teams mobilized, and what looked like chaos of running and shouting was actually a well-rehearsed effort to get the wounded into the hospital.

  My job was to stay out of the way until everyone was moved. Hoses came out. Fires were doused. The smoke in the air cleared. I went to the hospital to see if there was anything I could do.

  Jenn was setting up an IV line. Her hands shook.

  “That was scary,” she said when she was out of the patient’s earshot. “I was practically on top of it, but I had to pee… so…” Her eyes filled up as she put on a latex glove. “I walked over to the latrine.”

  I squeezed her biceps. “You’re in psychological shock.”

  “I’m fine.” She took off the glove.

  “You’re shaking.”