Solo
Page 19
“You can stay as long as you like. We’ll get you on your feet and you can resume your life on the outside.”
Solo turned to look at the doctor, shaking his head from side to side gently. “What am I going back to? I have no job. I have no family. My sister is in there. Mar is in there. Tom is still in my head. There’s nothing out there for me.”
“What are you saying, Mr. Faraday?”
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Tom said, standing near the chair in the center of the room. “After all I’ve done for you. After everything I’ve been through with you. You ungrateful bastard. Promises won’t butter any bread. I’ll be back.”
Solo blinked and Tom was gone.
His eyes met Dr. Kline’s again. “I want to go back in.”
“Do you know what you are asking? All that you have remembered will be erased and reprogrammed again. It will be as if none of this ever happened.”
Solo carefully walked back to Mar’s door and looked through the window at her. He smiled as he saw her calm now. She almost looked as if she were sleeping.
Like an angel. He missed her terribly. “That’s where I belong.”
Dr. Kline nodded and smiled. “I can help you with that, Mr. Faraday. Actually, you’d make a perfect control case.”
Solo was irked by the selfishness of Dr. Kline, but didn’t protest. Even for the wrong reasons, Dr. Kline was giving him what he wanted.
And that was all that mattered.
“Everyone deserves peace,” Dr. Kline said, helping Solo back to the wheelchair. As Solo sat down, Dr. Kline whispered into his ear, “The wounds received in battle bestow honor, they do not take it away.”
***
She moved so gracefully and they were so very much simpatico.
“I feel like I have known you my entire life,” Solo said, his lips close to her lips, which were turned up into a slight smile.
He twirled her around and her flower-pattern dress billowed in the breeze of their tango. This was very much as it should be—and as it always should be.
Here, there was no hurt. Here, he felt no pain.
“Oh, Livvy,” Solo said as they danced. “I want to remember this forever.”
About the author
Since he wrote his first book at the age of 8 about "The Venusians" for a school project, Mike Kilroy has been hooked on writing. An award-winning journalist for more than two decades, Kilroy has now authored three novels: The best-selling, post-apocalyptic tome, Nine Meals; the swashbuckling young adult science fiction tale, The 17; and Solo, a book about the monsters that live inside all of us.