by CD Reiss
“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, pushing 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.
“Hear ye! Hear ye!” Lieutenant Farrow stood on a chair with his arms wide, a clipboard in one hand.
Caden and I were eyelocked with a few feet between us, stock still at the first “hear ye.”
“Gather ‘round, soldiers and citizens, while I tell you a statistical tale of eight days in hell.”
Caden took the last two steps in my direction, closing the gap completely, but we were now surrounded by the entire camp.
“The medical team in the combat support hospital saw 231 casualties for 208 hours.” He read the team’s achievements like a carnival barker. “Not one of three operating rooms was empty for eight days.”
“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.
Farrow went on in the background. “Brogue’s on the other side of the wire, so it falls on yours truly—”
“I don’t want to share you.”
“You’re not sharing me.”
“—and so! In the spirit of giving out trophies before the game’s even done—”
“I hope you mean that the same way I do, Greyson. Because I don’t just mean your body. I don’t want to share your time or your heart or your happy fucking thoughts.”
“—most likely to have a juice box handy… Lieutenant Keston! Come up—”
“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.”
Behind him, Lt. Keston received a bedpan filled with foil juice bags. She thanked the Academy.
“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.
“—likely to be mistaken for a medical machine—”
“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.
“—Doctor Caden Has-A-Word-Missing-On-His-Tape John—”
All eyes were on us. Farrow held up a rubber chicken, waving Caden over while everyone applauded. He curled his mouth into a smirk. Caden took a deep breath and stepped toward the guy holding the rubber chicken.
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.”
“They need me.” She pinched her fingers together to put the glove back on.
“What’s with the glove?”
She froze, looking at it as if she didn’t know why it hung from her fingertips like a jellyfish.
“Jenn, you can’t hook up any more lines until you pull it together.”
“Oh, my God.”
“‘Oh, my God’ what?”
“I don’t remember putting any lines in.”
The hit had traumatized her, even if temporarily.
“Let’s double check what you did.”
We checked the IVs and stents. She’d done it all perfectly, as if autopilot had worked even if the plane was about to crash.
“I’m not doing this anymore,” she said. “Last deployment.”
It was the first time she’d ever said that.
While she reported to her superior, I peeked into the OR. Dr. Ynez worked on a casualty from the mortar attack. No Caden. I checked for him in recovery. Not there either. He could have been anywhere. I couldn’t ask without someone wondering why I cared where he was. Or worse, they wouldn’t ask.
“Greyson?” Jenn said, coming back from her superior.
“Yeah, hey. What did Yvonne say?”
“Sent me back to quarters.”
I walked her to the trailers. She was still shaky but managed to brush her teeth and carry on a conversation.
“You might not be able to sleep tonight,” I said.
“I don’t feel traumatized.” She spit into the sink.
“Your brain doesn’t care how you feel.”
“Fucking brain.” She looked at herself closely in the mirror. “I swear to God, what this war does to people.”
“Any war.”
“Any. All. I just wanted to go to college. I feel like I’m ruining the same brain I was trying to educate.”
I hugged her. “You’ll be okay.”
She patted my back and pulled away. “We’ll see.”
“We will. Come on. I’ll tuck you in.”
* * *
Jenn was safely in bed. I’d check on her in the morning. I should have gone to bed too. The mortar area was taped off. The casualties had been treated and assessed. There was nothing left for me to do. But I was energized. Hyper. Activated.
I wanted to see Caden. I told myself I wanted to make sure he was okay, but the fact was I wanted him to tell me I was okay.
His trailer was dark, and he didn’t come to the door when I knocked. He wasn’t in the chow hall. Or the hospital.
“Hey,” I said to a doctor in recovery.
She leaned over a patient who had gauze over his eyes. With her blond hair tied into a neat ponytail, I didn’t recognize her.
“Hi.” She smiled.
I held out my hand. “I’m Major Greyson.”
She shook it. “Ferguson. I’m stationed at the a
irfield.”
“Oh, nice to meet you.”
Airfield surgeons went into combat with the medevac teams. Dr. Ferguson had vibrant skin and clear eyes. She didn’t look like a woman who went to the front lines in a Blackhawk, but that assumption said more about me than her.
“I have an eye specialty, and they traded me,” she said.
“Traded?”
“For a general surgeon, oddly, not a field doc. I was going to rush back, but they’d already left on a nine-line with him. That won’t go over well.”
General surgeons were too valuable to go past the wire.
“Did his name happen to be Captain St. John?”
“Yeah. Hard name to forget. He jumped right in. Volunteered like that.” She snapped her fingers.
The medevacs did not fuck around with time. Caden must have jumped on the truck to the airfield, told them he was a doctor, and taken off.
Caden outside the wire. Everything could go wrong. What was he thinking?
He wanted to own me, but he didn’t even know me. He didn’t know I had brother in Afghanistan or that my father had been eaten alive every day by regret and guilt even as he gave more and more years in service. He hadn’t grown up with stories of blood and gore, rage and impotence. I had. The fact that I’d chosen to serve in a war zone didn’t mean I fetishized battle. It meant I went in with my eyes open.
I wished I’d had time to open his eyes, and when he got back, I was making it my job to put away all our power games and make sure he didn’t deploy again. He was going to hear about my father’s night terrors, my brother’s suicide attempt, my grandfather’s guilt. Eight days of treating soldiers who had been blown to bits was going to seem like a cakewalk.
Caden was going home after this deployment if I had to scare the shit out of him.
* * *
I couldn’t mill around the airfield like a lost lamb. I kept my eyes on the dark sky and my ears open for approaching birds. I wasn’t privy to what was happening, whether they’d landed under fire or at all. Nothing.
I should have told him the truth right away, without backpedaling or soft-shoeing. I was his. Completely. Unabashedly. Unreservedly. Instead of enforcing my will, I should have opened myself with the same nakedness he had.
My desk was piled with paperwork. Since I wasn’t going to sleep until I knew Caden was all right, and my office was close enough to the hospital to hear when they brought in casualties, I figured I’d do it.