by Sandra Hill
Within an hour they were on their way, taking Sally’s Toyota Avalon, instead of his truck, for comfort. He drove, though. And, actually, the traffic wasn’t too bad going north. On the other side of Beach Road, going south, it was bumper-to-bumper. Hopefully, by the time they returned, the traffic wouldn’t be so thick.
It was a balmy day and with the windows open, the scent of the salty ocean in the air, it was a pleasant drive. Reminiscent of many drives he and Sally had made along this road. So mellow was he that he sang a few lyrics from that old Wilson Pickett song “Mustang Sally.” He wasn’t much of a singer, unlike his wife, but it was a song with lyrics he used to tease her with as they drove along—or at other, more intimate times—urging, “Ride, Sally, ride!”
She rolled her eyes and said, “You should have been singing that earlier.”
“I was more inclined to ‘Lay Down Sally.’”
“You and Eric Clapton. Although . . .” She paused and grinned at him. “I did get laid.”
He was surprised that his usually modest wife could make such a bawdy remark, but he liked it. This was one of many changes he’d noticed in his new, independent partner, not all of them as much to his liking.
They got out of the car on the first of the two ferry rides so that Jake could stretch his legs. He’d brought his cane, but hoped not to need it. The limp was a given either way. She was wearing the peach sundress and had to hold her hands over the lower portion to prevent the ocean wind from billowing under and giving any spectators a Marilyn Monroe–vent-type moment.
To help her out, he positioned himself behind her with his hands on the rail, bracketing her within his arms.
“Thanks,” she said.
He kissed the top of her head and almost said, “I love you.” It would have been a spontaneous declaration, the kind of thing he wouldn’t have thought about uttering in the past.
Now, he hesitated.
And the moment was lost.
“This is a really long drive for you to make several times a week, even if you do carpool with Gus,” she noted. “Can’t you find a place closer to home? Isn’t there one in Ocracoke?”
He shook his head. “No, this one is the best for my purposes. Otherwise, I’d have to stay on base at Fort Bragg and work out there. Besides, these visits will taper off as I improve. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do more of the exercises on my own.”
“And I’ll be able to take over for the massage therapist,” she added, glancing back at him over her shoulder with a wicked gleam in her eyes.
“Promises, promises,” he said, but he was pleased that she would even be willing to take on that duty with everything else she had on her plate.
As they stood at the rail, and the wind died down a bit, he encountered a few people he knew. Invariably, they shook his hand and said, “Thank you for your service.” Luckily, they didn’t ask any further questions.
“Do you mind when people approach you like that?” Sally asked.
“I don’t look for attention, but I don’t mind, usually. Most times it’s more about them than me. They often have a family member serving in the military somewhere, or having bit the dust.”
“Jacob, I noticed that your appointments at the end of next month at the orthopedic hospital in New York and the eye center in Baltimore are back-to-back. Does that mean you’ll be out of town for an extended period?”
He nodded. “At least a week, for testing. As much as two or three weeks if they decide to go ahead with any surgery, which is unlikely.”
“Do you want me to come with you? At least to New York. I could stay at my parents’ apartment.”
He was surprised at her offer. “Can you be away from the bakery that long?”
“I could, if I had to.”
“And what about the kids?”
“They could come, too.”
“Won’t they be in school then?”
“Yeah, but I could get special permission.”
“No. I don’t want the boys hanging around a hospital. It’s no place for kids. And it’s not really necessary.”
“How about me? Do you want me there?”
“Nah. It’s really just a lot of hurry-up-and-wait crap. With the testing stuff anyhow.”
“And if they decide for the surgery right away?”
“There’s still just a lot of waiting around. I don’t want you there.” Especially if there’s bad news. I’d rather wallow in private.
She looked kind of disappointed at his words. Did she think he meant that he didn’t want her, period? How could she think that? Well, hadn’t he used those exact words on more than one occasion when Sally had begged him to let her come live on one of a dozen different bases where he’d been stationed?
The last call came over the speaker system for drivers to get in their vehicles, and he didn’t have a chance to correct her misconception. But he did lace his fingers with hers as they walked back.
They continued to hold hands as he drove the rest of the way. This felt a lot like dating, like those early days when they were just getting to know each other. When they couldn’t stand to be apart, when just a touch could set their blood racing. The whole friggin’ torturous bliss of the falling-in-love process.
Except that he’d fallen right from the start. Like a sledgehammer to the heart she’d been for him. And still was.
He would recover eventually from his physical woes, at least enough to get by; Jake was determined about that. But would he ever recover from loving Sally, if he needed to leave her, which was a very real possibility?
Hell with that!
I’m tired of thinking and rethinking every damn thing.
Forget about the Delta Force motto of De Oppresso Liber, “To Free the Oppressed.” I’m the oppressed one here. My new motto is going to be the universal carpe diem, or “seize the day.” In other words, enjoy the moment while I can.
Until I can’t anymore.
And then the scales fell off . . .
Sally went into the white hospital-like room at the rehab center with Jake where he shucked down to his briefs and hitched himself up onto a metal table. He was wearing a pair of the black-and-silver-striped boxer briefs she’d bought him for Christmas before his last deployment. They made his butt look even better than usual.
Noticing her perusal, he laughed.
She was about to slap said butt when a tall, slim, extremely physically fit black man wearing rimless glasses walked in, carrying a clipboard. Jake introduced him as Martin Alexander, his massage therapist.
He wasn’t at all what Sally had expected. Though she wouldn’t admit it to Jake, she’d been half expecting some voluptuous blonde in a skintight, thigh-high nurse’s outfit that would show a thong when she bent over.
Jake winked at her. With his one eye! And she knew that he knew what she’d been envisioning. Maybe that was one reason why he’d invited her to come with him.
Turned out that Martin, a fortysomething former marine, had a master’s degree in physical therapy, and he specialized in injured military men. In fact, he was some high uppity-up in Wounded Warriors, which Sally found out about when he told them that the biker division of his organization planned to participate in the Lollypalooza parade.
First, Jake lay on his back, and Martin worked his thigh muscles. “I see changes, Jake. Do you feel any improvement?”
“A little. Going up and down the stairs still brings tears to my eyes—eye—but not as much as the beginning when I almost passed out.”
Sally’s heart went out to her husband because she knew he was making the effort mostly because the kids wanted him upstairs at bedtime. Yeah, having him in her bed this weekend was a bonus, but knowing Jake and his sexual creativity, they could have done the deed anywhere. And had, numerous times in the past.
“Sally, come over here and put this on,” Martin said, handing her a white cotton over-the-neck apron that tied around the waist. “I want to show you what to do with some oil, and I don’t want you to so
il your pretty dress.”
She stepped over and caught another of Jake’s winks, which she ignored. He’d told her how he fantasized about her in a baker’s apron and nothing else. She assumed he was imagining the same thing with this apron.
“Put some oil on your hands and use just your fingertips, like I am, on the thigh muscles. Can you feel the knots in there?”
She nodded. It felt like cords of hardened plastic under the skin.
“The goal is to work those muscles that have scar tissue on them until they soften up. Don’t be afraid to knead hard. He may piss and moan, but, with massage and a structured exercise routine, he might eventually recover some of the tone and movement.”
Sally noticed that he said “might.” That had to be disheartening to Jake.
Martin showed her different ways to work the thigh and calf muscles, which were marked with odd one-inch scars everywhere. Dozens of them. She also gave a smaller amount of attention to the good leg, which had the same kind of scars, but way fewer. She wanted to ask Jake what had caused these scars but sensed that he wouldn’t relish her asking in front of someone else, maybe not at all, the way he was so closemouthed these days.
In truth, Jake had always been secretive about his Special Forces work.
When he was home, he didn’t want to talk about where he’d been, what he did, or with whom. It was only by chance that she occasionally learned something about Delta Force missions on TV. Once she’d made the mistake of Googling Delta Force and learned some things she’d rather not know. She’d had trouble sleeping that night.
After working his leg for about a half hour, and, yes, Jake did piss and moan, with good cause, Martin turned him over onto his stomach.
Sally gasped. She’d felt the ridges on Jake’s back when they made love. She’d seen him naked since his return, of course, but she must not have noticed the extent of his injuries. In retrospect, she recalled that when they’d gone to the beach, he’d worn a T-shirt. To avoid the direct rays of the sun, she’d thought. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
“Okay, Sally, the massage here will be pretty much the same as the legs. The scar tissue tightens up, and if Jake isn’t careful, he could end up with a stooped posture to compensate for the pain. Watch what I do. I won’t have you work on his back today because you’re too short with him on this table. At home, it would be better if you straddle him to get maximum pressure. Like on the floor, or a firm mattress.”
Jake, whose face was turned away from her, snorted back a laugh.
If they’d been alone, she would have smacked him on his very nicely rounded butt.
After that, when Jake was about to go into the weight room for exercise and then the whirlpool, Sally said, “I think I’ll go out and hit some of the shops in the strip mall across the street. I rarely get to just browse.”
“Good idea,” Jake said. “I should be done in an hour.”
Sally was troubled when she left the rehab center. She wasn’t sure why. Even so, she strolled through the different stores, buying herself some lingerie in a boutique and kites for the boys in a beach shop. Then, in a drugstore where she’d gone in to get some basic toiletries, she found something special for Jake at the checkout that made her smile. When she got back to the rehab center, Jake was still in the locker room getting dressed, so she sat near the front desk and flipped through a magazine.
One of the attendants, a college-age kid, came up to the girl working the front counter. “Hey, Diane.”
“What’s up, Andy?”
“Man, oh man! You shoulda seen that guy in the whirlpool. His back was a mess of stripes. You know what causes that, don’t you. A whip. Someone whipped that guy but good. Musta been a bloody mess when—”
“Shhh!” Diane said, glancing toward Sally. “You’re not supposed to talk about clients, you idiot. You’re gonna lose your job.”
“Oops,” Andy said and slunk away through the employees’ door.
“Sorry,” Diane said to Sally.
“That’s okay,” Sally said.
But it wasn’t okay. And not just because of the unprofessionalism. Sally wasn’t dumb. She’d known that Jake was hiding something from her. The lack of fingernails. The nightmare. What she now realized must be stab wounds all over his legs. And now the whip marks on his back.
It was like she’d had scales on her eyes—on her mind—and they were falling off now.
MIA, my ass! Sally thought. More like POW.
Torture!
Three years of torture?
Where?
He hadn’t been sitting in a cave eating grubs, that was for sure.
Oh, Jacob!
Sally swiped at the tears that filled her eyes. She didn’t want Jake to see her upset. She needed time to think about this, what it all meant. And why he couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her about it.
She managed to be composed when he emerged a little later, looking hot in a blue golf shirt that matched his eyes, and which was tucked into belted black pants that accentuated his wide shoulders and narrow waist. And, yes, she meant eyes, as in plural, dammit! Oh, my Lord! she thought suddenly. Did whoever captured him deliberately damage his eye? How? The monsters!
“You okay?” she asked, standing to walk out with him.
“Sore, but good. How about you?” He was looking at her suspiciously.
Did she have tear tracks on her face, or something? “Great,” she said cheerily.
“You went shopping.” He pointed at the half-dozen bags she carried.
“Yep. And I bought something special for you.”
“Ah, you didn’t have to,” he said, taking a small bag from her. Glancing inside, he let out a hoot of laughter.
It was a six-pack of cinnamon chewing gum.
Taking her free hand in his, he laced their fingers, and squeezed. “Maybe we should skip the dinner out on the town, and go home to make use of all those leftovers. A shame to let all that food go to waste.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“You don’t mind?”
She shook her head. All she could think as she looked at him was, Torture, torture, torture.
He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss. “How’s my breath?” he whispered against her open mouth.
She forced herself to smile and said, “You might need a stick of gum, or two.”
Chapter 14
They gave new meaning to car games . . .
Jake could tell that something was wrong with Sally, but she wouldn’t tell him what it was, claimed she was just tired. He suspected that she was repulsed by his battered body and what she would have to do to help him regain some mobility.
She wouldn’t be the first woman unable to deal with a partner’s war wounds. A pilot back at Landstuhl, who’d been badly burned in an explosion, mentioned in a group therapy session one day that the first time he got naked with his wife to have sex, she vomited all over him. A sexual buzzkill if there ever was one!
He would deal with that issue later. No way would he want Sally working on his body if she was gagging as she did so. And, frankly, Jake didn’t know how much longer he would be around. He was like the long-haul trucker traveling at night; he could see only as far as his headlights. Unlike the trucker, though, Jake didn’t have a GPS map in place. His final destination might be California, or Alaska, but a vehicle breakdown might cause him to end up in the Rockies, so to speak.
That comparison is so lame, Jake thought.
In the meantime, he sought to take Sally’s mind off whatever was bothering her by engaging in love play. Yes, love play in a car. It wasn’t the first time they’d done it, but it had been a long, long time ago. Back when they were easier with each other.
“Hey, Sal, remember that time when we were driving back from Fort Bragg? Matt was asleep in the infant seat in the back, and I was so tired you were afraid I would nod off at the wheel. I had just come off a three-week deployment to Nigeria.”
“I don’t remember,” she said, even as her face flus
hed to a pretty shade of pink.
“You came up with a car game for us to play to keep me alert.”
“That was not my idea,” she said indignantly.
“Ah, so you do remember.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What brought this on?”
He yawned, wide and loud, and said, “I’m suddenly feeling really tired. Hope I don’t fall asleep at the wheel.”
“Do you want me to drive?”
“Nah. I’ll get by.” He sighed.
“I could sing.” She immediately went into an improvised version of “The Wheels on the Car Go Round and Round.” then asked, “Would that work?” Even with her excellent voice, that children’s song—which was about a bus, not a car—got old fast, as he well knew from days when his boys were younger and more than a half hour in the car was an ordeal for them. Sally and the kids would sing it over and over till they reached their destination and his ears were ringing.
“Not even close. I have something else in mind.”
“You have a wicked mind.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled, and from this angle, gave him a perfect view of her slightly crooked incisor on the left side. Somehow that imperfection gave her an impish look. A sexy imp.
“You first,” he said.
“Okay, I spy something blue. Two guesses. One minute.” She glanced at her watch and began counting down the seconds.
Jake glanced up through the moonroof, pretending to look at the sky. Then he looked out the driver’s window at the ocean. But then he announced, “My eyes—well, my one eye.”
“You rat. You are too good at this,” she accused him. “What’s my penalty?”
“Take off your panties.”
She pretended to be shocked, before asking, “How do you know I’m wearing panties?”
What? “Are you kidding me? With the wind earlier, you could have been mooning all those people on the ferry.”
“My bad!” she said with a little moue of apology, then reached under her dress and pulled out a black lace thong, tossing it onto his lap. “Fooled ya!”
“Brat!” he said. “My turn now. I spy something rose-colored.”