All for You

by Jessica Scott

  “Shut the goddamned door,” Giles growled. Reza toed it shut and it slammed with the finality of a crypt vault. “The hospital commander called directly to Colonel Horace. He skipped all the levels of the chain of command and went right to my boss.”

  “Glad to see the phone books are up to date,” Reza said. His skin prickled with awareness that the man in front of him was about to unleash the fury.

  A man that Reza owed his loyalty to. And the remains of his career. Reza was under no illusions—he should have been forced to pack his bags after the Colorado fiasco a few months ago.

  He still had a job. But given the look on Giles’s face, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could count on that.

  God, but life was so much simpler when he was drinking. The temptation to reach for the bottle hissed in his ear. Seductive. Warm. Comforting.

  He swallowed and straightened. He could take an ass chewing.

  He’d done it before. He could do it again.

  All the old man could do was yell at him, right?

  Apparently, it was Reza’s day to be wrong. Again.

  Giles moved with a speed that should have been impossible for an old infantry sergeant major, but his elbow was against Reza’s throat before Reza had even registered he’d moved.

  Pictures rattled as Reza’s body slammed into the concrete wall. A memory, harsh and raw, scraped against the threat blocking his lungs. Another elbow. Another time.

  Fear, both old and new, mixed in his veins, and he was once again sixteen years old. Fighting a man who was twice his age and size.

  Reza struggled to breathe and keep his composure but his mind couldn’t grasp that the man with his elbow to his throat wasn’t the man who’d put his mother in the hospital all those years ago.

  The memories twisted and writhed. Reza focused on Giles’s face. Facing the anger right in front of him. Ignoring the ghosts.

  He forced himself to react, shutting down the muscle memory that had his own hands curling into the sergeant major’s shirt collar. Releasing his grip, he relaxed, pushing down the ingrained urge to fight.

  Giles’s breath was hot on his face.

  Silence hung in the air.

  Another moment and the sergeant major released him. “I don’t appreciate your smart-ass comments,” Giles said with a snarl, shoving him away. “I can’t protect you from this.”

  Reza breathed deeply through his nose to calm the adrenaline running through his veins, more than sick of dealing with the sergeant major’s PTSD and whatever other psychosis he carried around with him. “I didn’t ask you to.”

  Giles rounded on him, shoving his cigar into Reza’s face. “You’re one ungrateful son of a bitch, you know that, Ike? Colonel Richter had to pull some major strings to keep your ass out of a sling after the Colorado fiasco and now you’re home, swearing at senior officers? How fucking stupid are you?”

  Reza wisely chose not to answer.

  “Are you drinking again?”

  His temper flared, bright and hot inside him. He didn’t get a chance to argue.

  “The only right answer is ‘No, Sarn’t Major.’”

  “No, Sarn’t Major,” Reza mimicked. A truth, for once. No matter how hard it was, he hadn’t had a drink since the accident in Colorado had nearly cost his best friend her career.

  He didn’t care about how his drinking fucked up his own life. But when it came to his friends? Yeah, that was too far. Funny though, how no one—not Claire, the little sister he’d never had, and not Sarn’t Major Giles—believed him when he said he wasn’t drinking.

  He’d failed at not drinking often enough. He couldn’t really blame them for not believing him. But it had to stick this time. It had to.

  The problem was, if he started drinking again, he could be out of the army by the end of the month—thrown out on his ass as a rehab failure. And the army was the only good thing he had in his life.

  “Ike, you need to dial it back. You can’t go around swearing at the hospital commander and expecting to get away with it. That chest full of medals won’t do you a damn bit of good at a court-martial.”

  “I haven’t done anything worthy of a court-martial.” At least, nothing he’d been caught for.

  “Yet.” Giles stalked to his desk. “I got the colonel to agree to let me handle this.”

  “And by ‘handle this’ you mean choking me out?”

  The cigar was back, an inch from the tip of Reza’s nose. “Don’t push your luck.” Giles was a full head shorter than Reza but Reza knew better than to tangle with him. Reza might have been all-army combatives champion a few years ago but that didn’t mean he could beat the sergeant major in pure meanness.

  The sergeant major’s drivers wouldn’t even wake him up in the field. They flat-out refused because he woke up swinging every time.

  “Don’t come back in here again,” Giles said, sitting down at his desk. He thrust a sheet of paper at him. “Wisniak is being admitted to the hospital. Here’s the list of shit he needs.”

  Reza accepted the paper, barely managing to avoid swearing under his breath.

  Dismissed, Reza stepped into the hallway and headed for the door. It was only when he was in the quiet cab of his truck that he rested his head on the steering wheel and released a shuddering breath.

  The flask he kept in the glove box whispered his name. Calling him. Just one sip.

  He breathed deeply. He’d never thrown the flask out. He’d wanted to believe that he was strong enough to do this on his own. That he could be around the alcohol without drinking.

  It was a daily test.

  He knew what it would taste like: bitter and sharp, and it would burn the whole way down.

  And the numbness would follow. A comfortable numbness would spread through his veins. The pressure on his chest would be gone.

  He’d be able to focus. To relax.

  Instead he sat there, breathing in. Out. Slowly.

  Struggling to hold on to the sobriety that was his only chance of remaining a soldier.

  It was a long time before he drove back to the company ops.

  The flask remained unopened.

  * * *

  Emily knocked on the door, waiting for the soldier inside to answer. A muffled sound was the only response, so she pushed it open gently. Slowly.

  Sergeant Wisniak wasn’t a skinny kid but he wasn’t fat, either. He was just kind of puffy. Soft, maybe, might be the best description for him. She’d been seeing him for about a month now and the thing that struck her most about the soldier sitting quietly in the sterile room was the utter emptiness in his eyes.

  A week ago, he’d been excited. Motivated that the fog in his head was starting to lift.

  Eager to be the leader of men that he’d always wanted to be.

  Today, that eagerness was gone. Left in its place was an empty shell.

  “Sergeant Wisniak?”

  He blinked up at her.

  “We’re going to admit you,” she said quietly.

  Blink. Blink.

  “Do you think you can tell me what happened?”

  He looked away.

  Her heartbeat was the only sound. She stood there a moment longer, hoping he would answer. Hoping he would confide in her.

  Hoping he would give her some way to help him.

  But he said nothing and the silence grew too heavy.

  She left, wondering how she was going to find the strength to make it through the rest of the day.

  * * *

  Reza walked into the first sergeant’s office and closed the door. It still didn’t feel like his space. He wondered if it ever would. Maybe if he wore the rank it would feel real. Right now, it felt temporary. Transient.

  But that didn’t take away a single iota of the responsibility he had. He might not be getting paid for the job but he damn sure would give it everything he had.

  He stared at his computer screen, his lungs tight with frustration.

  He sent Foster a text message, telli
ng him to round up Wisniak’s stuff and get it up to the hospital.

  He was just glad that Marshall was out of the office. Maybe Reza could get some work done without his commander dumping more shit on his desk.

  He glanced up as Sloban walked into his office. The young specialist should have looked rested and recovered from his month-long stint in rehab. Instead, he looked harried and stressed out.

  Sloban had changed so much since the last deployment. The kid with a steady trigger finger and bright, laughing eyes was long gone, buried from too many head injuries and no time off from the war.

  Sloban had done three tours. Three tours that had taken a vital piece of his soul and left this shattered man in his place.

  Guilt slithered up and threatened to choke him.

  Reza hadn’t been able to protect Sloban. Not from the chain of command. Not from the nightmares that hunted his sleep.

  Sloban’s body might have survived but the war had broken him anyway.

  It was breaking all of them.

  “Doesn’t look like your vacation did any good,” Reza said lightly. Hoping the kid would crack a joke. Hoping he’d see a flicker of the warrior he’d known.

  Sloban twisted a cigarette in his hands. New nervous habit. “It sucks, Sarn’t Ike, let me tell you. Rehab totally fucking sucks.”

  “I thought you weren’t due back for another week.”

  Sloban’s smile was bitter. “I was but Captain Dick Face pulled me back because he said my medical board was almost complete and since I wasn’t going to stay a soldier any longer, I didn’t need any more treatment.”

  A warning crawled up Reza’s spine. Why hadn’t Marshall told him he was pulling Sloban out of rehab? As the first sergeant, that was something he should have been told about. “Who went and picked you up?”

  “Sarn’t Song and Sarn’t Pete.”

  Reza nodded slowly. Song and Pete were two of Marshall’s boys that had come with him from First Brigade. He’d never liked either one of them. Thought of them as bullies. Marshall thought they were great soldiers, though, and they got away with damn near anything they pleased.

  “You don’t look like you’re doing too good,” Reza said.

  “I’m not using,” Sloban said. “But it’s not as easy as it sounds.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. Reza wished he didn’t notice how they shook. “Marshall said the docs aren’t giving me a good rating for disability.” There was panic in Sloban’s voice. “I can’t work like this, Sarn’t Ike. If I could, you know I’d be fighting to stay in. The docs…if Marshall’s right…”

  Reza ground his teeth. He knew exactly who to call to find out what was going on with Sloban’s packet. “Let me talk to Marshall and make some calls. I’ll find out what’s going on. Just stay clean, okay?” He breathed deeply. “And I haven’t seen your packet yet so don’t give up on me. Let me see if I can fix this.”

  A flicker of something flashed across Sloban’s face. Reza wished it was the rock solid kid he’d known. “Sure, Sarn’t Ike. Whatever you say.” Sloban pushed out of his chair, pausing near the door. “I’m sorry to be such a pain in the ass. I know you’ve got other things you need to be doing.”

  “You’re not being a pain in the ass, Slo. You’re a fucking warrior.” Reza drummed his fingers on the desk, itching to pick up the phone. He hadn’t been able to see Sloban’s slow spiral into addiction but damn it, if he could help the kid now, he was going to. He’d move the fucking planets to make sure he got the right ratings. Slo had given the army everything he had. The least the army could do was take care of him now that they’d broken him. “I’ll fix this.”

  A promise he didn’t know if he could keep.

  He made it anyway.

  Relief washed over Sloban’s face and stabbed Reza with the expectation he saw there. “Thanks, Sarn’t Ike. It means a lot to me that you don’t treat me like shit because I fucked up.”

  “You didn’t screw up, Slo.” I did, for not catching your problem sooner. But he didn’t say that out loud. Maybe if Reza hadn’t been drowning his own demons in the bottle, he’d have seen what was happening with Sloban.

  But he hadn’t.

  Sloban left, leaving Reza wallowing in the morass of his own hypocrisy. Sloban had deployed and gone through some bad shit. He hadn’t dealt with it well. Not at all. He’d turned to meth and Reza hadn’t been able to help him. Because he hadn’t seen.

  But that didn’t mean Reza would turn his back on him now. Sloban had been one of his and Reza protected his own.

  He picked up the office phone, calling the R&R Center to see if he could hunt down the doc who had Sloban’s packet.

  It was a long shot. The medical separation process was an archaic, tangled mess that no one, not even the docs, fully understood. It took months to put a soldier out of the army for medical reasons.

  Some guys, like Sloban, deserved to be taken care of the rest of their lives. They were heroes. They’d deployed, gone where the army had asked them, done what it had asked them.

  He glanced down at his cell phone. Foster was heading to the hospital with Wisniak’s stuff.

  The psych doc’s words haunted him. How was he supposed to have loyalty to a soldier who’d never deployed, never gone to war? How was he supposed to help someone who took resources away from the men and women who needed it? He had no loyalty to someone like Wisniak, who’d never sacrificed anything and couldn’t cope with life, let alone the army.

  There was no answer at the clinic. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The only doc he could get after duty hours was in the emergency room.

  He’d follow up on Sloban’s packet first thing in the morning.

  He wrote up the serious incident report about Wisniak’s being admitted to the hospital and sent it to the commander, then tackled the hundred and twelve e-mails in his inbox.

  The silence in the office was beautiful. He fell into the work until there were only a handful of e-mails that needed further action.

  The day that had started with a bang ended with a whimper and Reza couldn’t have been more relieved.

  Shutting down his computer, he headed for the gym, needing the time with the weights to wear him down enough so that he could sleep without a drink.

  Because tomorrow was a new day.

  One more day sober.

  * * *

  By the end of the day, Emily didn’t think she was going to have the stamina to do anything but curl up into a little ball of misery and die, but the weight pressing on her chest demanded she do something to ameliorate it. She’d long ago discovered the link between endorphins and her anxiety levels, and knew that if she didn’t go for at least a little run she was going to have to drink to get through the rest of the week.

  And Emily did not drink. At least not much.

  She certainly wasn’t going to fall into the same routine as her father. A martini at lunch, another after work, all with top shelf liquor, of course.

  No, she didn’t need that. There were other, better ways to cope.

  She pulled into the parking lot at the gym, ignoring the chime of her cell phone. She couldn’t deal with anything else from work today.

  Wisniak had been admitted to the fifth floor psych ward earlier that morning. He hadn’t said anything during the entire process.

  Once, he’d told her that all he’d ever wanted to be was a soldier. A leader of men.

  He’d built this ideal up in his head of what he was supposed to be. He’d never been good at anything. He’d thought he could be a good soldier.

  But he wasn’t living up to his own idealized image. He was so traumatized by his past and by his own perceived failure as a soldier that every day was a struggle.

  What he did to himself was far worse than anything anyone in the unit could do to him. His sense of failure was staggering in its depth.

  She simply counted her blessings that he’d come to her when the thoughts had gotten too dark this time.

  It could have been so much
worse.

  Walking into the locker room, she changed quickly into an Under Armour t-shirt and running shorts. After stretching, she straddled the treadmill as she entered her weight and time. She wanted—no, she needed—to go hard and fast. Her family members worked out with trainers to maintain their appearance, and when that failed they went under the knife.

  Emily worked out simply because she’d learned to love it.

  Popping her ear buds in, she cranked up the hard core techno she’d learned to love before her sister had looked down her nose at it. Finding her rhythm, she focused on her breathing and just ran.

  In. Out. Her breath was rhythmic and steady. Her arms swung and with the constant motion, the tension in her chest melted away. She glanced in the mirror to the gym behind her. There were several guys lifting weights. One man’s expression was so intense and scrunched up it was almost comical. He was the kind of guy who would make very loud noises just to prove his own badassery on the weights.

  He probably made that same face in bed when he was coming. She giggled despite herself and saw a couple of heads turn in her direction. She looked down, embarrassed that she’d drawn attention. She wasn’t there to get stared at.

  She clicked to the next song and then added incline. Her lungs protested the extra effort but she needed it. Needed the pain. Needed the pride that came in beating her previous standards. It was never good enough to simply show up. She had to do her best.

  Soldiers were counting on her. Soldiers like Wisniak, who needed an advocate to stand strong for them.

  She’d seen firsthand what happened to soldiers who lacked an advocate. It was why she’d joined the army in the first place. She’d lived a life of spoiled privilege.

  Memories rose unbidden, taunting her with their relentless familiarity. Try though she might, she couldn’t un-hear her father’s biting words when she’d told him she had joined the army.

  “Are you trying to embarrass me?” he’d asked.

  “No, Father. I’m making this decision for me.”

  “For you? What about Bentley? What about Chloe?”

  Bentley might have been her fiancé three hours before, but she was no longer bound by that loveless pledge. And Chloe?