by M. J. Rose
The floor was hard. My antique Persian rug was expensive but not thick enough to be much of a buffer between my spine and hips and the hard floor. Then I realized it wasn’t expensive anymore. Like the rest of my office, it was ruined. Not a good place to let my mind go. I shifted. Too much. The pain in my foot screamed.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Do you have any pain killers on you?”
He shook his head. “All out. Sorry,” he joked. “Used the last of my morphine before lunch. Sometimes distraction works.”
“You’ve had a lot of experience with pain?” I asked.
“I’ve had my share.”
“Have you ever been to a therapist, Mr. Reacher?”
“If you’re going to ask such personal questions, you might as well call me Jack.”
“And you don’t like personal questions?”
“I don’t like the reasons people ask them.”
“Okay then. No personal questions. But you’re right—I need some distraction from the pain … how about you tell me a story.”
“I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before.”
I looked. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
“So you don’t have kids?”
He arched an eyebrow.
“Right.A personal question. I retract it.”
“Good girl. So what kind of story do you want to hear?”
“Tell me about the best sex you ever had.”
“Dr. Snow!” He feigned shock.
“Indulge me. I’m trapped under a couch in excruciating pain with no painkillers. I don’t know what I’m saying. Besides, it’s a story. It doesn’t even have to be true. Make up a story about the best sex you ever had.”
From outside we heard the sounds of encroaching sirens echoing in the room.
“Finally,” he said.
I sensed he was relieved about the interruption more than the actual arrival of the fire department.
“How long till they get to us?” I asked.
“I don’t know what’s outside this door. Could be five minutes. Could be an hour.”
“Long enough for a story.”
He laughed, a genuine guffaw. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“The pain isn’t giving up.”
“Okay a story. But not about me.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“You think you’re smart.”
“Smarter than you think I am—but not as smart as you think you are,” I said.
He smiled.
“The story?” I prompted.
“Insistent.”
“I’d rather have morphine—but considering how ill-prepared you were …”
“Okay. Once upon a time …” he started.
“You don’t have to go that far.”
“Do you want to hear the story or critique it before I even start?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, please proceed.”
And he did.
I knew an army cop once who told me a story that might do the trick. He didn’t usually make mistakes but he was still young and green and too heroic for his own good. Following a lead, he wound up in the wrong place, seriously out-numbered. Four of them and one of him. He put up a decent fight but they beat the crap out of him. He passed out. They were stupid enough to think that he was dead and took off.
When he came to a day later he was alone in the same god-forsaken cabin where he’d followed them. A one-bedroom rustic shoebox at the foot of a mountain that very few people climbed in the rain. And it was pouring.
As far as he could tell his nose was broken; he was nauseous, dizzy and had a headache—which meant he probably had a bad concussion. There was a sink, a toilet. No food. No phone. No way of getting any help short of walking out into the storm. And he knew better than to try that with severe double vision and head trauma.
He figured he’d give it another day.
For the next twenty-four hours he slept until a gunshot woke him up.
He opened his eyes. A woman was standing at the door, rifle in hand. While he tried to figure out what was going on, he saw a black blur in his peripheral vision. Turned. A bear was climbing out the window.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked.
“What the hell was that?”
“A bear.Now your turn.”
He told her his name, rank, said she could find his wallet on the kitchen counter with his ID. She opened it. Checked.
“What are you doing here?” she asked
He explained.
She didn’t look happy. By the end of the story, her eyes were wet with tears. He expected to hear that one of his attackers was her husband or boyfriend. Turned out that one of them was her brother.
“This place belonged to our grandparents. He’s not supposed to use it but …” she shrugged. “Are you hurt?”
“Beat up. But thanks to you I’m alive to feel the pain.”
“Next time close the windows. Bears are clever and hungry. You must have been quiet for too long. He was a baby. But even so he could have mauled you badly.”
“Would you have killed him?”
“If I had to.”
“Have you ever had to?”
She didn’t answer. “How long have you been here?”
“What day is it?”
“Friday.”
“Then I’ve been here since Wednesday.”
“Have you had anything to eat?” she asked.
“No.”
“Let me get my stuff from the car—I’ve got supplies.”
“What about the bear?”
“He’s long gone. And now that we’re making noise he’ll stay away.”
She came back lugging two big canvas bags. One she dropped by the bed, the other she took to the kitchen area and unpacked a feast. Roast beef sandwiches on fresh bread. Chips. Beer. Oranges.
He couldn’t walk to the table without her help. The storm in his head threw off his equilibrium. But once he was sitting again, he was okay. He’d been through worse—in survival training had gone days without eating anything except what he could forage. He knew to pace himself. But damn, that orange was a revelation. He was astonished something so simple could taste like that. And the beer.
Afterwards she helped him back to the bed.
“Anything you need?” she asked.
“Yeah, actually, I’d kill for a shower.”
“We’ve got nothing but cold water from a rain barrel. “
“I don’t care about the cold …”
“You can’t stand up in a shower by yourself,” she said.
Asking for help wasn’t something he was good at.
“Maybe …” he stopped, smiled, started to lie back down.
“You can’t, maybe I could help you? I’ve got a bathing suit in here somewhere. Let me find it.”
A couple of minutes later, she came back wearing a black swimsuit. Simple and uncomplicated. Showed off every curve. She wasn’t skinny. Had the kind of body that women think they shouldn’t have—but that men wish more of them had. Then she helped him out of his clothes.
“You seem pretty adept at doing this,” he said.
“You’re not the first man I’ve seen in his underwear.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed I was.”
She put her arm around his waist. The touch of her flesh on his was like an electrical shock. After the last two days and the beer he shouldn’t have had, her touch went right to his addled head … and to his groin.
Reacher had mostly been looking off into space as he told the story. Suddenly he looked down at me. As if he was gauging my reaction.
“Like the woman in your story, you’re not the first man who’s referenced getting an erection in front of me.”
“No, considering what you do for a living, I suppose not.”
“Should I be insulted by that comment?”
“No, you shouldn’t be.”
He gave me the kind of glance I could re
ad without help.
“You’re doing a great job. You ever think of being a writer? Maybe you are a writer? I don’t even know what you do.”
He ignored the questions. “So where was I?”
“She was taking him …” I was careful to say ‘him’ not ‘you’. “Taking him outside to the shower.”
Reacher nodded.
It was the craziest night. Cold water from the shower mixing with hot summer rain. Lemony-smelling soap. He used the wall of the lean to for balance and tried to soap himself.
“You look like you’re having a tough time. Can I help?” she asked.
He handed her the soap.
Taking it, she lathered up and then washed him. Like he was a baby, with gentle hands and a slow touch, trying not to put any pressure on all the black-and-blue bruises decorating his body. He shut his eyes and took in the smell of the cedar planks, the soap, and her hair as her hands moved over him.
She didn’t say a word. Just washed him.
Once the grit and grime was gone, she turned off the water, wrapped him in a big towel and helped him back inside where she dried him.
“Why don’t you sit in the chair while I get you some clean bedding,” she said when she was done.
She came back wearing an oversize t-shirt. Moving efficiently, she changed the sheets, pulling, reaching, and stretching. Just as she was finishing, she noticed something on the floor. Bending over, she picked it up. It glinted in the light.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Bullet casing,” she said and pocketed it. Then she helped him back to bed. “You should sleep now. In the morning I’ll take you to the hospital a few towns over—just to make sure you’re okay.”
“No need to go to all that trouble. If you can just drive me to a bus stop I’ll get myself back to the base. They can check me out there.”
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” she said.
He lay down.
She shut out the light.
After a few minutes his eyes adjusted to the dark and he could see her sitting on the edge of the couch, toweling dry her hair.
When she was done, she stood up and walked over to the bed.
“Move over soldier—there’s only one cot here and I’m too old to sleep on that lumpy couch. It was fine for weekends when I was a kid … but …”
“You’re not a kid anymore?”
He made room for her. And then he fell asleep smelling her lemony soap.
She didn’t let him sleep long. This time instead of the sound of a gun shot, it was her hands that rubbed him awake.
Before he could say anything she put her finger on his lips and whispered: “I’ve always wanted to do this to a man—trap him and take advantage of him. Just be the guy for once. So since you’re basically helpless and have no choice in the matter, I’m going to make my wish come true.”
It was an hour of crazy torture. He couldn’t take over—couldn’t take charge—every time he tried to lift his head up the dizziness overtook him. So he did something he’d never done. He submitted. And after the first few minutes didn’t care. He just lay back and let her do what she wanted.
Every move she made felt intensified. Her hair on his chest was like electric currents. Her fingers were electrified. Her tongue left traces of liquid fire. He was burning up from the inside. She controlled the pace for him. Not letting him speed her up or slow her down.
It was like nothing that had ever happened to him before. He was open. All of him. Just that time. Just with her.
And after that last critical moment, he thought that he’d go through being beat up all over again for another night of this.
In the morning she drove him to the base. They took him to sick bay and gave him a battery of tests. When they were done and brought him to his room, she was gone. There was an envelope waiting for him on the bedside table.
Inside was the spent casing from the bullet she’d shot to scare the bear away and a sheet of paper with two sentences scrawled in blue ink.
‘Needing someone doesn’t make you weak, it makes you feel. And feeling is how you know you’re alive.’
By the time he’d finished, the police and the fire department determined there were no other incendiary devices in the building. They cleared a path and carried me down the steps and into a waiting ambulance. One of the EMT’s called Dulcie for me, let her know I was okay.
Jack Reacher went with me to the hospital. My foot was broken. The bones were smashed and I needed surgery. He was gone by the time I came out of recovery but Nina—my mentor and my daughter’s godmother—was there. So was Dulcie.
It hadn’t been a complicated procedure and I was fine. In a cast, and outfitted with a cane, they let me go home that night.
The Butterfield Institute didn’t fare as well. The building’s structural damage was so severe it had to be torn down. There was insurance money if Nina wanted to rebuild, but she wasn’t sure she was going to.
Maybe it was time for me to go out on my own. The Snow Clinic. I liked the sound of that. It was something to think about.
The police found no trail to the bomber. It seems Nina’s patient had been using an assumed name.
____________________________
The letter came in the mail a week after the incident. No return address. Three stamps. Somewhat bulky. Inside was a piece of paper folded around a spent brass casing.
If there’d been any question that Jack Reacher had been telling me a story about himself, the eighteen words scrawled on the lined sheet removed all doubt. He’d recognized something about me in himself. And he’d passed along a message he might or might not have ever heeded—but one I hoped I could.
Needing someone doesn’t make you weak, it makes you feel. And feeling is how you know you’re alive.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In 2006, Lee Child and Barry Eisler were chatting on the LeeChild.com message board. The two thriller writers were kicking around the idea of their characters taking each other on: Lee’s Jack Reacher versus Barry’s John Rain.
After reading their back and forth, I jumped in and said I’d love to have my character, NYC sex therapist Dr. Morgan Snow, get both of those tough guys on the couch and analyze them.
It’s been a while, but I finally got my wish.
This summer I asked Lee Child and Barry Eisler if they’d allow Dr. Snow to shrink them. I also asked Steve Berry, whose Cotton Malone I thought would also be a great therapy candidate.
Reacher, Rain and Malone would never willingly go to therapy, but their creators agreed that if I could figure out how to get them there, they’d go along with it.
No matter how many books you’ve written, you lose all confidence when you sit down at your computer and take on three iconic thriller characters.
Emailing the stories to each of these NYT bestselling writers was nerve-racking. I hoped, but didn’t dare expect, that they’d each approve of what I’d done.
They all did.
Steve edited Cotton’s dialog and filled in some details about his rare books store. Lee read his story and was amazing with his praise. Barry suggested we head over to Google Docs and write the Rain/Snow scene together in real time—we did and had a total blast.
This project shows the true generosity of these three authors. That’s why all the proceeds of the audio book and a share of the proceeds of the ebook are being donated to David Baldacci’s Wish You Well Foundation. That supports family literacy. (http://wishyouwellfoundation.org/)
It’s the least Morgan Snow and I can do.
ABOUT THE WISH YOU WELL FOUNDATION
The Wish You Well Foundation, established by Michelle and David Baldacci, supports family and adult literacy in the United States by fostering and promoting the development and expansion of new and existing literacy programs. To combat illiteracy in America, the Wish You Well Foundation raises funds that help provide literacy solutions while keeping abreast of the evolving needs of those with low literacy skills. For
example, monies are awarded to programs identified for their best practices in dealing with issues of illiteracy. To learn more about the foundation or to find out how you may help visit www.WishYouWellFoundation.org