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by Bart Hopkins

  Chapter 29

  Susan and Jason

  “Good morning, welcome to Joint Base San Antonio.”

  Susan looked around, confused.

  “I’m sorry, I guess I’m at the wrong base. You’ve got so many here … I thought this was Lackland,” she said to the female gate guard.

  “It is, ma’am. Three of the bases in the area were merged under one unit. Lackland is one of them.”

  “Oh, okay.” She didn’t get it, but she handed over her dependent identification card anyway, since it appeared she was at the right place. The guard scanned it into his little black machine and waved her on.

  “Have a good day.”

  “You, too.”

  She’d already driven down the road when she realized her GPS no longer worked. It didn’t recognize any of the streets on the base. It didn’t matter; she could see a large building in the distance and assumed it must be the hospital.

  On her right, she passed recruits dressed in desert camouflage, marching and chanting. Or, at least, she assumed they were recruits, since all of their heads were shaved clean.

  To the left: a small grass field, neatly trimmed, with an old airplane on display at the center.

  Sometimes she missed living on a base. There was a sense of community and pride that she’d never truly felt since they moved. Most days she didn’t think about it. After all, she had friends. They both had work. Danny had school and friends and soccer. Life moved on and there wasn’t time to do anything except jump on the train, or you’d lose your mind.

  She remembered one of the platoon wives, Michelle, giving her a large garbage bag packed with her own son’s old clothes when Danny was born. They’d only purchased a few outfits those first few years of Danny’s life. People were always giving each other things on the base. Looking out for each other.

  But what did any of that matter if your husband was shipped off to dangerous places where people tried to kill him? Or, maybe that’s why things were the way they were. It wasn’t only the service member that sacrificed. They all did; the familial closeness came from their shared pursuit of something bigger than themselves: freedom.

  It mattered. Damn it, it mattered.

  She found the hospital, surprised at just how massive it was in person. You couldn’t miss the parking lots. There were several, and large … yet somehow a free space was still elusive. She finally found one, but realized she was at least thirty minutes later than she’d told the hospital staff she would be when they called to let her know when Jason would arrive and when she could see him.

  As she approached the front of Wilford Hall Medical Center, and stared up at the entrance, she nearly ran into a man in uniform that stepped in front of her.

  “Mrs. Donahue?”

  “Yes…”

  “Hi, my name is—”

  Susan quickly identified the bronze oak leafs on the lapels, and read the nametag.

  “Major Lim,” she finished for him. “Did we speak on the phone?”

  “Yes, you have an excellent memory. I work at the Camp Lejeune public affairs office.”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “General Shapland wanted me to be here to meet you and make sure that you were taken care of,” he told her.

  “Do you always do this?” she asked as they walked inside.

  “Ah, well, no. Not normally. I can’t really say why, because I don’t know, but I think that he’s taken a personal interest in you and your husband. He told me to get on the first flight out here.”

  Susan remembered the general telling her about his son. He’d been in an accident like Jason’s. A feeling of relief passed over her, and as strange as it might seem to some outsider, she could feel the warmth that comes from being family, from Jason being a Marine.

  “I’ve already coordinated everything with the hospital. We can go straight in to see Staff Sergeant Donahue.”

  “Thanks, Major Lim.”

  “Yes, ma’am, of course.”

  They rode up the elevator in silence. Susan tried not to let her emotions overwhelm her with the weight of the situation. She was happy, nervous, and scared all at the same time. It was sort of like the feeling she had just before they wheeled her in to the delivery room for Danny. Every baby born was the greatest event in the history of mankind, but they all contained an element of fear until the baby was safely in the mother’s arms.

  “Have you ever been in combat?” she asked suddenly.

  “No. Not really. The guys that do the real work, like your husband, would tell you that I’m ‘in the rear with the gear’ or call me an ‘admin puke’.”

  “Hmm. A REMF?”

  Major Lim gave her a surprised look, which morphed into an embarrassed smile.

  “I see you’ve heard of me.”

  They laughed and it helped ease her tension.

  Marines had phrases and acronyms for everything. You couldn’t live with one without picking up a few. Friends were battle buddies. Meals were bags of nasty. GPS was their lieutenant locator. Hands were dick beaters.

  Boys never stop being boys, she thought.

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened.

  “It’s right this way,” Lim said, “just follow me.” He walked ahead of her down the hallway, back ramrod straight in his service uniform. He waved to a nurse at the nurse’s station then stopped in front of a door and turned to her.

  Jason’s door.

  “I’ll just keep myself busy in the waiting room. Let me know if you need anything. General Shapland was very clear about that … I’m here to make sure this goes as smoothly as it can.”

  “Okay. Thank you,” she replied. Major Lim nodded smartly and walked off down the hallway.

  She turned to the door and knocked.

  From within she heard her husband say, “Come in,” and all of her reservations disappeared. She pushed open the door and rushed in like a fireteam clearing a room.

  “Jason!”

  “Baby…”

  He was soon smothered by her, rough at first, and then gentle.

  “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

  “No.” He was barely audible, muffled by her hair and dress and neck.

  “Oh, God, I love you so much, on my God, Jason, oh my God.” The words ran together as she hugged him. Like gray, ominous thunderheads, her eyes started with just a few drops, and then came the downburst. The flood came and Jason held her tight. And, then, just like a summertime storm, the clouds were gone and the sunshine came back out; she was able to smile, simply content. Glad her husband was home. Thankful to still have a husband.

  “I love you, Sue,” he said into her hair. Her scent caught him off guard, so comforting and familiar.

  They stayed like that for some time, neither talking. She listened to the heart beating in his chest. It was strong and true. She pulled back, putting her hands in his, and got her first good look at him.

  Lacerations covered one side of his face, crossed his cheek, and ran up the side of his head. They stretched diagonally, jagged lines extending from his bandaged ear to forehead, jowl to eye, and jawline to nose and mouth.

  His arm had the same pattern of jagged cuts etched across the muscles there. She touched his upper arm and traced an invisible path down to his forearm and hand. She noticed that one of his fingers was completely wrapped in bandage.

  She didn’t say anything out loud, but instead sent a silent prayer of thanks to the man upstairs for the presence of both of Jason’s legs. She didn’t know if it was selfish or petty to be so grateful that they were intact. One of the guys in Jason’s last active unit, Doug Jones, had lost one of his legs. On the outside he was positive with everyone about it, worked hard, and inspired people.

  On the inside, things weren’t as easy. Never are.

  Doug’s wife had filled Susan in on how things really were while their kids played at one of the base parks, a quick walk from housing. The children remained blissfully ignorant to the discussion
s—on the surface. Kids were too intuitive to not notice at all. Behind the scenes was a heartbreaking tale of on-and-off again depression, alcohol abuse, and arguments. Doug’s wife was a tough woman—Susan wasn’t sure she could handle that.

  “You look great,” he told her.

  “Thanks.”

  “You don’t have to say I look great,” he quickly added.

  “Oh, you do,” she said and kissed him. The stubble was rough, but she welcomed it. Yearned for it really. “You, here, looks great to me. Are you in any pain?”

  He nodded and shook his head. Smiled a crooked smile.

  “I am, but it’s not as bad as it could be. They’re giving me some pretty good pain killers through the IV.” He looked at her again and shook his head. “It’s so crazy, so surreal, that we’re here like this,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Danny’s okay?”

  “He’s good. I didn’t tell him, yet.”

  “No, I wouldn’t either.”

  “Yeah, I just didn’t want him to worry.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, reached out, and pulled her closer and she sat down next to him on the bed.

  “That Major Lim seems like a good guy, right? Not too bad for a desk jockey. He rolled in here in the middle of the night and went to town, getting things for me, making sure I was squared away, comfortable, doctors seeing me, drinks, food, everything.”

  “He works for General Shapland,” she said.

  “Out at Lejeune? How’d you know that?”

  “I spoke to him when I started calling people about you.”

  He looked at her and smiled.

  “They just let you talk to General Shapland, huh?”

  “Well, I spoke to a couple other people first.”

  “A couple?”

  “Okay. Maybe ten or eleven.”

  “I love you, babe.”

  “Love you, too.”

  She hugged him again and enjoyed his warmth for a few minutes. He cleared his throat and shook his head, incredulous.

  “Jesus Christ. Wow. I … I’m just so happy to be alive. Amazed at my very existence.” He was so quiet, thoughtful, that he spoke just barely above a whisper. “We were just driving along, same shit, different day, doing what we did. And it’s what you hear about and you don’t expect to happen. Even when you know people it happens to, somehow it still doesn’t feel like it’s going to happen to you, you know?

  “The explosion—fuck—it ripped into us like nothing I’ve ever felt or seen. I don’t remember everything. Just bits and pieces. That roar, like a lion right in my face; that heat all over the left side of my body. My head hit the window, or the door frame, I don’t even know which, and then I was out. I missed the firefight. They tell me that Steve-O pried me out of the hummer, then carried me half a mile to get me out of there.”

  “Glad he was there,” she said. “Or I wouldn’t be hugging you right now. And thank goodness for Facebook … that’s how I found out, from Steve’s message.”

  “Yeah. I should buy him a beer or something,” he said, and they laughed.

  She traced her fingers over the wounds on his face. They were raw with energy and pain, and the face she’d known was changed forever. This was the new face of her husband.

  Looking down, she saw that he was staring at her intently. His face and eyes were wide open to her, like that of a small boy seeking the truth from his parents on some childhood issue of grave importance. While she watched, his eyes clouded over.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He was quiet for a moment, getting the words straight in his mind even though he’d had the question bumping around in there for several days.

  “Are you going to be able to love this face? Look at it every day and not be freaked out by it?” he asked. She might have thought he was joking if he didn’t have that desperate tone in his voice.

  She realized that this tough guy she’d married, her Marine, really needed affirmation from her … and she didn’t hesitate to give it to him.

  “Of course I’m going to love that face! I’m going to love it forever,” she told him. “It’s not even that bad … sort of looks like a shooting star.” She held his good cheek in the palm of her hand. “My shooting star.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered and the gratitude in his face made her heart hurt … in a good way.

  Chapter 30

  Greg and Claire

  Greg dwelled on his situation during the drive back to Austin. For nearly four hours the scenarios played through his mind again and again.

  The ultimate question was honesty versus dishonesty.

  He could go home to Claire, undo his tie, and pretend that nothing had happened. Had some drinks. Saw some old friends. Hangover in the morning. Glad there aren’t any more reunions for another twenty years! Nothing to it. Right?

  Wrong.

  Every time he thought about being dishonest with Claire, there was a pain in his heart unlike anything he’d ever felt. His deeds weighed on his soul and pushed against his face, leaving a frown that he feared would never go away if he told her untruths. Sordid lies. It wasn’t lost on him that he’d already been deceptive with her. He realized, too late, that if he had to hide Facebook messages from his wife, he’d already done something wrong.

  He cried when he thought about the pain she would feel, and he pleaded with God: If I get this one chance, I’ll spend forever making up for it.

  <<>>

  “Greg, is that you?”

  Claire called to him from another room, but he found it hard to move any further than the foyer. Just sort of stood there, at a loss for words. His wife’s simple question went unanswered. Moments later she rounded the corner, and saw him standing there. The bag in his left hand dropped to the floor.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. The concern on her face amplified the fear and anxiety he felt crawling through his insides. Forget it, just forget it, don’t tell her! a voice in his head screamed. He momentarily considered taking its advice and saying nothing; but he couldn’t do that, not if he wanted to live with himself.

  “Can we talk?”

  “Greg?” There it was again, that sound in her voice—fraught with worry for her husband. He hated himself, but what could he do now? The only other options weren’t even thinkable. They were the dark thoughts that lurked in the shadowy corners of his mind.

  She moved near him, and he held up his hands in an effort to try and stop her. Claire was a snapshot of confusion; Greg was a masterpiece of pain. Soon, she would join him.

  He waved her to the couches.

  “I’ve got something to tell you, and you’re not going to like it,” he began. “And you might not like me after I tell you, but I’m begging you to hear me out.”

  Claire was a smart person, but it didn’t take much intelligence to sift through the possibilities that come from an introduction like that. Her silence was a testament to her strength. She decided that she would hear him out, even as the dread filled her stomach.

  Driver’s seat rehearsals hadn’t helped—Greg was scared shitless—didn’t know where to begin. In the car he’d started at the beginning, the high school story he’d never fully shared, the break-up, the messages on Facebook … but facing Claire, he didn’t think a backstory was going to help. The opposite maybe. Better just to jab the needle in all the way and hit the plunger.

  Greg stood over his wife, shuddered, and began to talk.

  “I messed up.”

  Claire stared at him, waiting for more.

  “There was someone at the reunion,” he said and shook his head. “She … she kissed me.” To his own ears, he sounded timid and uncertain—like he’d approached the cashier in a foreign country and taken his first shot at speaking French or Swahili.

  But it was the truth. When Candy had kissed him on the beach, he’d thought he was going to lose control. Almost started to kiss her back while he allowed her to kiss him. But, then something inside of him snapped all of a sudde
n … and a picture of Claire, crisp and true, framed itself in his mind.

  He’d pulled away and told Candy: I can’t do this.

  Why? Candy had asked. Pleaded.

  It took him a few seconds to reply, but when he did, it was easy and simple. Because I love my wife, Candy. You and I … our time is gone. And I’m sorry if you ever felt bad. But, our relationship’s failure allowed me to find the woman I was meant to be with.

  He left her there, standing on the beach, grabbed his shoes from the rocks, and started walking. He made it to Sixty-ninth Street before he realized his shoes were dangling from his left hand and he’d never put them on. He laughed then, and sat down on a concrete slab that was supposed to be a bench. He couldn’t find his socks, so he just put the shoes on without socks, then got up and kept going. It might have been four or five miles that he walked, but he never looked back, metaphorically or literally.

  “Did you have sex with her?” Claire asked.

  “No.”

  And, just like that, he’d lost control of the situation.

  “Did you know her?”

  “What do you mean by—” he started, but she cut him off.

  “Did you know her, Greg! Was it someone you knew?”

  “Yes.”

  “An old girlfriend,” she said. It sounded like more of a statement than a question to Greg, but he answered anyway—he was in no position to argue semantics.

  “Yes.”

  “And, what, you knew that she was going to be there…?”

  His throat and mouth went dry.

  “A few weeks ago, she sent me a Facebook message about the reunion,” he said. “We exchanged a few messages.”

  “So this was premeditated?” Her calm voice scared him more than if she had shouted.

  “No, I never planned on doing anything with her.”

  “Were you serious with this girl, what’s her name?” She continued to methodically pick the information from him, like low-hanging apples.

  “Her name is Candice Graves,” he replied. “We were serious, but only as serious as high school kids can be.”

  “Right.” Claire’s face was flush with the fire that smoldered just below the surface.