by Dale Mayer
“An omelet then?”
He thought about it and said, “I don’t think eggs will sit well.”
“I’ve got lots of ham, bacon, sausages. I could cook up some potatoes with sausages on the side? What do you think your stomach will handle?”
He looked up at him and asked, “Any chance of oatmeal?”
Dennis’s eyebrows shot up. “Absolutely there is,” he said. “Do you want it with nuts?”
“Nuts, raisins, and seeds,” he said. “I’m feeling a chill today that I wasn’t expecting.”
At that, Dennis said, “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll bring you out a hot bowl.”
Nash rolled his way to the coffee area, where he poured a cup, grabbed a bottle of juice, and found a table out in the sunshine. He expected a lot of heat to that Texas sun, but, so far, he didn’t feel like it was overly hot. It just felt like it was coming but wasn’t here yet. That was unfortunate because he hadn’t been kidding. He felt a chill, and, by the time Dennis arrived with the hot bowl of oatmeal, Nash had warmed up slightly.
“There you are,” Dennis said. “I missed you the first pass.”
He looked up, smiled, and said, “I’m just sitting here, soaking up some sun.”
“Sun’s good for you,” he said. “You need the vitamin D.” He put the oatmeal down on the table in front of him and said, “Now I put walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, and some raisins in it. Also here’s a bowl of dried mango, some currants, and dried blueberries, if you want. And this bowl of fresh berries.”
Surprised, Nash looked at Dennis, at the offering, and said, “Thank you. This looks lovely.”
“I also brought brown sugar and cream. If you want anything else, please tell me.”
“No, this looks fantastic.” In fact, his stomach was sitting up and singing hallelujah at the thought of it. “I think this is exactly what my body wants.”
“Good,” he said. “It’s important to listen because what’s right for you is not right for everybody else.” And, with that, he took off.
It still amazed Nash that Dennis had any time for personal interactions in his busy days. That he made the time for the personal touches that he seemed to give everybody. Still it was much appreciated. Nash sat here, dipped his spoon into the hot oatmeal, and took his first bite. He then sat back with a happy sigh.
“I don’t see that look on too many people’s faces here,” Alicia said, her voice drifting toward him.
He smiled and said, “Especially not if it’s oatmeal.”
She looked at it in horror. “Oatmeal, yuck.”
“Oh, I know,” he said. “But my stomach has not been in very good shape, after the surgeries, and this is hitting the spot.”
“Good,” she said. “Mind if I join you?” When he pointed at the empty chair, she sat down. “Is it just the surgeries that are going sideways with your stomach?”
“Nope, I took some shrapnel there as well,” he said without any pretense of looking for attention. “I’m still trying to get everything back and functioning as it should. But my stomach’s definitely on the touchy side.”
“Ouch,” she said. “Well, in that case, maybe that oatmeal will stick to your insides and stop up some of the holes.”
“It’s not glue, you know?” he said, in mock outrage.
“It might as well be,” she said, “because that’s how my system views it.”
He looked at her plateful of scrambled eggs and fresh fruit and said, “That’s not enough for anybody to eat.”
“Hey,” she said, “I generally don’t even eat breakfast here. However, it’s kind of hard not to, when it’s here, and it’s fresh and free.”
“Is there a reason you don’t live on the grounds?”
“I didn’t think it was what I wanted to do at the time,” she said. “Also I haven’t talked to Dani as to whether she has any available space here or not. Plus I’m not sure that I want to be here all the time,” she said cheerfully. “Sometimes it’s just nice to have a break and to get away.”
“I can see that,” he said. “I felt the same thing about living on base. It was nice on base, but, at the same time, it was nice to get off-base too.”
“Exactly.”
He asked, “How’s the rest of your family?”
“They’re doing okay, all things considered,” she said. “I’m still adjusting to being here.”
“How long’s it been?”
“About seven weeks,” she said.
He nodded. “So just enough to settle in but not enough to feel at home yet.”
“Something like that,” she said and shrugged. “Not enough to go through a full patient cycle. That’s one of the things I would really enjoy.”
“Yes, because I think job satisfaction would be a huge part of this type of work.”
“Yes,” she agreed, as she forked up a bite of eggs.
He followed suit, and both of them very quickly polished off their meals. He sat back and said, “Now you get to go to work, and I get to go to work, in a whole different way.”
“Are you okay, with all of what’s happening here?”
“I am,” he said. “This is the kind of a job where you only get what you put into it. I’m not too impressed with the idea of staying like this, so I need to put my focus into what can do the most good, and that’s following everybody’s advice. So I’m heading back to my place, and I’ll get changed and ready for my session with Shane.”
“Shane seems like he is a good guy,” she said. “He appears to know his stuff.”
“That he does,” he said. “Now only if I could follow through enough on it to take advantage of it.”
“As always, you’re too hard on yourself,” she said with a laugh.
He looked at her, smiled, and said, “I’m surprised you remember that.”
“Oh, I remember that,” she said. “It’s easy to remember a lot of things from back then.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”
“Same to you,” she said, and he pulled back from the table and headed to his room.
Just something had been a little off about her tone, as if she’d wanted to be friendly, but, at the same time, either that social skill was a little rusty or maybe she was worried about being too friendly. Also, in a place like this, maybe that was an issue too. He didn’t know. All he knew was that it was nice to see a friendly face of somebody he had a connection with from a long time ago. This recovery work he had to do was hard enough without having to go it alone.
Chapter 4
It was odd to see Nash on a regular basis. Alicia didn’t try to avoid Nash. After all, he was one of her patients, but, at the same time, she realized she was looking into his case a little deeper every time. She was seeing his progress, even if he wasn’t, and, of course, it was slight at this stage. More color showed up in his cheeks. He had a stronger appetite, a little more strength as he moved. Several weeks later she finally mentioned it to him, when she came in early in the morning to hand out medicine. “You look better,” she said.
He looked at her in surprise. “If that’s the case,” he said, “then I must have been in pretty rough shape before.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But you have more color in your cheeks, and you’re looking just that much brighter in your face, in your appearance.”
“Good,” he said with a smile. “Glad to hear that.”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know,” she said. “It’s obvious this morning.” She gave him a small finger wave and dashed out the door, adding, “Sorry to leave, but I’m running late.”
She made her way to the next patient and on and on. By the time she finished her rounds and was back in her office, she sat down with a hard thump.
Amanda, one of the other new nurses, popped her head in and asked, “You okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “Just somehow got a little bit behind. I guess I spent too much time talking with one patient, and then you know how it is.
You are running a couple minutes behind, which ends up being twenty minutes behind.”
“Oh, I do know,” she said. “The thing is, a lot of the patients here are lonely, and we do need to spend a few minutes with them.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that we can get behind on the schedule though.”
“Nope, sure enough. Yet, at the same time, I don’t think it’s a big issue if you’re only slightly behind.”
Amanda had a much brighter, sunnier disposition and that eternal optimism. Of course Alicia had had that same disposition before, and it had held her in good stead. But these days? Well, it just wasn’t there. She was much more down-to-earth and pragmatic.
By noon she was ready to scream because several files she had been working on had been deleted. She had to go back and reenter all the information. Only as she had finished adding the second one in the program did she realize how she could have saved herself all the extra work by downloading these copies from the cloud. All of it just added to her irritation. By the time she walked into the cafeteria, she was ready to sit on the deck with a cup of coffee and not see anyone. So she picked up a sandwich, a cup of coffee, then headed to the farthest corner of the deck, in the shadows, away from people. She sat on the side of the table that had her in the sunshine, put her feet up on the railing, left the sandwich on the table beside her, and just leaned back and closed her eyes.
“Looks like you’re having a rough day,” a man murmured in a calm voice beside her.
She recognized the voice and, with a wave of her hand, said, “Some days are like that.”
“Absolutely,” Nash said. “Can’t say I’ve had such an easy day either.”
“Sorry,” she said without turning around. “I just needed a few minutes to decompress.”
“Want me to leave?”
She finally turned to face him, noting that he sat at the same table on the opposite side, more in the corner. She sighed and said, “Sorry, I’m just being difficult. I don’t mean for you to leave.” She gave him a half-hearted smile and said, “I just wanted to come outside and to sit for a moment.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Just relax. I don’t need conversation. I saw that you weren’t doing so good and thought I’d let you know you weren’t alone.”
“Thanks,” she said, as she shifted her position so she didn’t quite exclude him, and she sat back, looking at her sandwich. “I grabbed a sandwich, but I can’t say it’s really what I want now.”
“You could take it back.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “That’s what I got.”
“You could always save it for later.”
She unwrapped it, took a bite, and then looked at the sandwich in surprise. “This is really good.”
“You can also add to it,” he said.
“Maybe I will. I’ll enjoy this first though. I find having all the free food is devastating because I want more than I need.”
“I think that goes for all of us,” he said. “Not overeating is a challenge. Particularly if I’m really tired.”
“Of course you automatically head for carbs, don’t you?”
“In my case it’s usually protein,” he said, “but sometimes carbs.”
“It is what it is,” she said, as she polished off the sandwich. She looked at his plate, noting he had lasagna. “Oh, my gosh, there was pasta?”
“I think there’s always pasta,” he said. “But this time it’s gluten-free lasagna, so that’s hard to pass up.”
She smiled and said, “I may have to get a little bit.”
He said, “Go, enjoy.”
She stood, stopped, looked at him, and asked, “What about you? You’re not eating yours.”
“No,” he said. “It’s delicious, but my stomach’s not terribly impressed.”
“So maybe …” and then she hesitated.
“What?” he asked curiously.
She shrugged, then said, “I would ask if I could have a few bites of yours.”
Immediately he pushed the plate across the table and said, “Go ahead. We have shared more than a few meals.”
“I know,” she said, sitting once more, “but somehow everything seems different now.”
He stiffened slightly and said, “You mean because I’m a broken mess?”
She looked at him in surprise and said honestly, “No, because I am.”
Nash stared at her. “Interesting comment.” He shoved the lasagna closer toward her. “Try it,” he urged. “No point in wasting good food.”
She hesitated, then reached across and pulled the plate to her. Using his fork, she had a couple bites.
He wondered if she found it easier to do that than face him. Her words had opened up a well of questions that he wasn’t sure how to even broach. But it gave him insight into how different she was and how he didn’t really understand who she was at this point. When she finally finished eating, he asked, “Do you want more?”
She looked up, smiled, and said, “No, that’s plenty of food for me.”
“It was plenty before the lasagna,” he said in a teasing manner.
She nodded. “It’ll be hard to keep the weight off here.”
“You’ve always been skinny,” he said, dismissing her comment.
“No, fashionably thin,” she corrected, and he laughed out loud.
“You were always about the fashion.”
At that, there was an odd pause, and she stopped, stared down into her plate, and said, “Yes, but I’m not that person anymore.”
“No,” he said quietly. “Neither am I. Remember? We’re both new people. New people who seem to still like each other.”
She looked up at him in surprise.
“Or am I wrong?
“We always used to be good friends,” she said. “I can’t see that that’s changed, although we don’t really know who the other is right now.”
“That’s very true too,” he said, “but I’m not sure that’s an issue.”
“Not sure it is either,” she muttered. “It’s strange to see you again.”
“But a good strange, I hope?”
She chuckled. “You are reminding me just how much change has happened in my life. How some of those changes are for the better.”
“Good,” he said. “If that’s the case, then maybe you’ll accept making changes in your life.”
“Maybe,” she said cautiously. “I’m not sure how one does that. The initial changes occurred because of trauma. I really wouldn’t want more trauma in our life. Not even to make another change for the better.”
“No, but it sounds like you haven’t quite healed from that initial trauma.”
She looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“It just seems like that event still dominates who you are right now,” he said. “And that means a lot of healing still needs to happen.”
Alicia looked at him steadily. “Are you a pro on that now too?”
He reared back slightly. “Sorry, I guess that was very invasive of me, and I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “But you don’t go through the kind of stuff I’ve been through and go through the many visits with the head doctors and not learn some of what’s going on with yourself.”
“And I didn’t mean to snap,” she said. “Nor do I mean to mitigate all the trauma that you went through. It never occurred to me that I might not have healed.”
“Whether it’s the trauma or the grief,” he said, “it takes time.”
“It’s been two years,” she said. “Two years since he’s been gone, and nine years since he was diagnosed.”
“He held on that long? Seven years?” he asked in surprise.
She nodded. “He was diagnosed just a year after we split.”
“Did you ever wonder about our breakup?”
“No,” she said. “I just knew, at the time, that it wasn’t right. I wasn’t ready to commit to a long-distance relationship. I wante
d to do so much in my life and see and explore.”
“Did you get a chance to do any of that?”
“No,” she said quietly. “Jerry got sick when I was in college, so that I changed course, went into nursing, couldn’t do anything else. Took as many telecourses as were available, so I could remain home with him from the start. Thankfully I had student loans, plus Mom and Dad helped set up me and Jerry in our own place.”
“Well, you could have continued with design,” he said quietly. “Lots of people would have.”
“Nobody was there to look after him,” she said. “Mom and Dad, each with their own reasons, couldn’t handle it, could not cope with Jerry’s illness.”
“It does take a special person to be a nurse, to be around a loved one who is dying from cancer.”
Alicia shrugged. “I ended up as his full-time caregiver, staying home to be with him.”
“And that would have been both tough and wonderful,” he murmured.
She looked up at him and said, “Most people don’t see it that way.”
“I don’t care about most people,” he said with a wave of his hand. “If you knew in hindsight that you had say, five years, to spend with somebody you loved, would you not want to spend every moment with them?”
“That’s what sometimes keeps me sane,” she said. “The fact was that I did make that decision. I did stay home with him. It’s also one of the reasons why my parents divorced because neither of them quit their jobs to stay with him. So, when they lost him, I think they felt guilty, wondering that, maybe, if they had stayed home, they could have done something more for him. Or even simply that they would have had more time with him.”
“Hindsight is wonderful, isn’t it?” he said. “When you think about it, we can all make the perfect decisions, but life isn’t about that. If I had never gotten into the vehicle that day, I would never have been hit with an IED because I wouldn’t have been there. Yet it would have been somebody else. But I did get in that vehicle that day, and it was my job to get in that vehicle that day. And now I sit here like this, and I wonder at life, the mockery it makes of us.”
“I don’t think it’s a mockery,” she said. “I think you get a chance to step up and to be the person you want to be in that situation, or you don’t. And, if you don’t step up, then you hate yourself. And, if you do step up, and it all goes ugly anyway, you can still hate yourself.”