by CD Reiss
“I don’t know,” I lied, focusing on a grain of truth. I wanted out of the conversation.
“I’m asking because it’s the fucked-up-in-the-head guys who get it.”
As usual, I couldn’t get a read on what he was thinking.
“And when they do, it’s like…” Agent Orange spread out his hands. “Pow. They’re cured.”
“If they get it,” Stoneface said. “Some don’t. Some she doesn’t do anything with.”
“I noticed that,” Agent Orange added. Him I could read. He wasn’t accusatory. Not exactly. He was holding his judgment, but the judgment was getting loose.
“Guys, she works for Blackthorne. Who the fuck knows what they do? It’s not like she tells me. She’s got NDAs up the ass.”
“That shot though.” Stoneface shook his head.
“Fucking miracle,” Boner added.
“Well,” I said before finishing my beer, “I guess she’s just magic.”
“They’re talking,” I said to Greyson a few days after the rooftop beers.
We’d had a dozen casualties come in overnight, and one had been flagged for the Blackthorne psych. Everyone had watched as she spoke to the guy, and when she didn’t give him the shot, they dispersed like a crowd after the firetrucks left. I caught her outside the hospital before she got back on the truck to the offices.
“Why?” she asked. “Because we haven’t spent a night together in over a week?”
It had been busy, and our schedules hadn’t overlapped. It sucked, but that wasn’t what I was talking about.
“About your miracle shots.”
In the desert wind, her hair crossed her face like a web. “It’s not a miracle. It’s research and preparation.” She faced into the gust to clear the hair out of her eyes.
“They don’t know why some people are getting it and not others. Or if it’s going to contraindicate anything they’re prescribing.”
“I’ll tell my boss. It may be something PR has to handle.”
An errant strand crossed her face, sticking to her bottom lip. We didn’t touch or show affection publicly, but I moved it without thinking.
“I miss you,” she said.
The whoosh of the wind almost drowned her out. We stood in broad daylight, surrounded by people walking in and out of the hospital. But we were totally alone.
“What happens if I slip back?” I said.
“Back?”
“If I crack. If the split comes again.”
Her brow knotted. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“How do you know?”
She shook her head slightly, slowly, thinking about her answer just a little too fucking hard.
“You don’t know,” I said.
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Try me.”
She looked around, checking for ears and eyes. I led her to a window ledge wide enough to sit on.
She pulled the hair off her face and took a deep breath. “You’re in a group that developed dissociative disorder because you had previous trauma. You’re the only one who had a chance to relive the event while being talked through it. You faced your fear and got control. You’re the only one who’s been made whole.”
I waited for more. Some proof. Some studies. Some evidence that it wasn’t coming back. I got none of that. All I got was a look of devotion, which was nice but no cure for my concern.
“So, you don’t know shit.”
“No. Not really. But, Caden…” She reached for me, but I didn’t return the affection.
“I don’t know how I ever lived like that,” I said. “If it comes back, I don’t know what I’ll be. Loving you isn’t going to be enough to fix it, and I can’t do it again. I won’t.”
What was I threatening exactly?
It didn’t matter. I’d fought enemies I couldn’t see because they were inside me. The memory of the splits, the constant battles, the lack of sleep, the torment of feeling that there was something hostile I couldn’t escape was too much.
“I know you’re scared.”
“If I slip back, will you give it to me? The shot? Will I get it?”
“You’re not going to slip back.”
“I’m not playing this game with you. Yes or no?”
Through the veil of hair whipping over her face, I held her eyes with mine. The wind took on a rhythm that got louder and louder. I wouldn’t move until she answered.
The rhythm turned into the thup-thup-thup of choppers. Paramedics ran out to meet new casualties. I’d be managing life and limb in minutes.
“Grey,” I said urgently.
“There’s a dose with your name on it.”
Was that enough reassurance? I decided it was.
“Thank you,” I said in an exhale of relief.
Chapter Twenty-Three
GREYSON
Standing in front of the medical refrigerator, I held his syringe.
CADEN ST. JOHN
145-361-9274
To be given soon after an event as described in section 54a.
Breathing methodology B2.
A placebo, right?
Like Yarrow’s.
Supposedly.
He had to medevac like everyone else. He was exposed to traumatic situations every few days. Which one would tip him? Which one would shut him down or split him apart? Was this a cure for a man who was whole? Or a detonator for an unprotected mind?
“Lunch?”
I jumped. Ronin peered in from the hall.
“You scared me.” I put the syringe back.
“What are you looking at?”
“Just… dosages. Making sure we’re consistent.”
“We’re not. They’re different for everyone depending on height, weight, gender, how long we treated them stateside.” He pointed at the ceiling, the sky, or the cafeteria. “I hear they have tuna sandwiches.”
“They always have tuna sandwiches.”
“So, the rumors are true.”
I walked up to the top floor with him. The elevator was broken so frequently and was so slow when it wasn’t that everyone just took the stairs.
When we were alone, I broached what Caden had told me the day before. “The medical staff is asking what the shots are about. How are they supposed to be sure it won’t react negatively with something they’re administering?”
“Legitimate concern, but we covered it in trials.”
“Why everyone who needs it isn’t getting it.”
He shot out a derisive laugh. “Try giving it to someone who hasn’t had the prep and see what happens.”
“What happens?”
“Usually nothing.” He held open the cafeteria door for me. “Usually.”
Night.
Caden and I on his narrow bed, bodies draped over each other. His chest rising and falling under my head. The beating of his heart. His fingers drifting over my shoulder as the doors of my mind clicked gently shut, one by one, in surrender to sleep.
I knew the sound of choppers overhead. I could hear them from miles away. I could tell if they were going to land on the north pad or by the hospital. I could tell a Blackhawk from an Osprey, speeding to save lives from a standard landing.
Caden’s hand stopped moving just before I heard it. Blackhawk. If it came from the south, it was going to the airfield. If it came from the west, it was touching down on the hospital landing pad.
We remained twisted together, frozen as the thup-thups got louder, our full attention on the sky.
The day had started normally, but the insurgents had had a different plan. I overheard the soldiers and marines as they came in. US positions had been hit on four fronts. Massive casualties.
In Balad, I could have helped. If no one needed a psychiatrist, I could push paper, carry containers, take orders.
In Baghdad, I felt useless. Men were coming in torn apart, bloody, screaming for their buddies, and I couldn’t help. Couldn’t even talk to them until a doctor found a flagged file. Then
Dana would come with the BiCam and I’d have a purpose.
I went to the chow hall to get out of the way and found Dana at a table with a cup of coffee and a gossip magazine.
“Hey,” she said.
“What are you reading?” I sat down.
“Anna Nicole Smith died. So sad.”
“Yeah, that’s terrible. Aren’t you supposed to be waiting at the office until they open a flagged file?”
“I brought everything,” she said, tapping something between her legs. I looked under the table. It was a big medical cooler. “She was thirty-nine. Overdose.”
“Yeah.” I blew on my coffee. It looked like Dana didn’t have the kind of gossip I was hoping for. “How’s everything with Mr. Trona?”
She flipped a page, eyes still on the magazine. “Went on a security detail two days ago.”
“I’m sure he’s fine.”
“He was on the run that was ambushed this morning.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know he was part of that.”
“Did you know Anna Nicole Smith dropped out of school at fourteen?”
“Yeah. I mean, no.” I went from agreement to honesty in four words. A teardrop fell onto her magazine, leaving a dark-gray burst. “Do you want to go check the hospital? See if he came back?”
I handed her a tissue. She took it without looking up.
“There’s still no word.” She turned the page. “But I’m sure they’re going to be fine once they get a medevac in.”
“The medevacs have been back and forth. Maybe he’s back.”
“Nothing’s gone out since the one that got shot down.”
She did have the gossip I was looking for but not what I’d been hoping for.
There was no delicate way of asking if there had been a doctor on the medevac or if that doctor was my husband. Worry hardened over my confidence, crystalizing like ice on the window as Dana commented on every page of the magazine to distract herself.
Had Caden been on that Blackhawk?
I was cold and brittle, useless to Dana or anyone.
He wouldn’t have gone up with casualties coming in. Even if they’d had an injury they needed a surgeon for, they couldn’t possibly have spared him. Right?
He’d just been made whole again. God wouldn’t take him away so soon after, would he?
The building trembled in answer to my question. The helicopter pad was above us, and something was coming or going. I leaned to look out the window. A Blackhawk with a big red cross on the tail sped across the sapphire sky.
My beeper went off.
“We’re on,” I said. “I’ll help you with the cooler.”
“Fucking nightmare,” DeLeon said to a nurse as she passed. Dana and I carried the cooler between us. “Wifey,” she barked, peeling off the nurse and redirecting herself toward me.
I stopped short, jerking Dana to a stumble.
“You have three flagged on their way.” DeLeon softened. “It was a rough ride. They’re going to need you.”
“Wait!” I called before she could turn her back on me.
“You’re asking about him,” she said.
“I am.”
“I don’t have time to give you a hug and a pat on the back.”
“I know.”
“Four hours ago.” Her voice was flat and emotionless. Just the facts. “The medevac he was on was shot down over an active zone. We have reports of multiple fatalities and casualties, military and civilian, including chemical burns.”
“Is he—”
“He’s not dead, far as we know.” A nurse pulled her away, but she called back, “Keep it together, Wifey. We need you.”
Trona was one of the first off the medevac. Third-degree burns from his right shoulder to his fingertips. Right behind him, children came without their mothers. Soldiers with uniforms burned off. Paramedics with blood drained from their faces and cheeks hollowed out as if joy had been sucked from their mouths.
A paramedic left the ER and promptly vomited on the floor.
“I’ll get towels,” Dana said.
I ran up to him. “Hey,” I said, bent over so I could see the long drop of saliva from his profile. “Come sit.”
He listened to me. I wasn’t an officer without a commission. I wasn’t an interloper. My status as a contractor didn’t matter to either of us. I could listen to him, and he could distract me from worrying about Caden.
“It was so fast,” he said. “One minute we’re landing; the next, we’re crashing. Me and the doc get out and we don’t know what to do first.”
The doc must have been Caden. I didn’t react. At least I tried not to.
“I take the guys on the Phrog, and he goes into the street. Got shot at almost right away.”
I clutched the fingers of my left hand in my right so tightly my ring pressed against my pinkie.
“But he tripped over this woman…” He took a deep breath in an attempt to keep it together. “Saved his life, but she was…” He shook his head.
“And you?” I said.
“She was melted.”
I let him see it in his mind for a few seconds before steering him back. “You took care of the pilot and copilot?”
“Yeah. And two other medics. All fine. Not bad. Minor shit. But we were stuck. All of us. And it was…” He shook his head instead of using words.
“Greyson!” Dana called. She waved me toward the ICU. “Pfc. Karlson’s in recovery.”
“He was one of mine!” the paramedic exclaimed. “I pulled him out! Is he all right?”
“They don’t put dead men in ICU,” I said.
“Go find out!” He practically pushed me off my chair. “Then let me know.”
He was suddenly like a kid, and I was suddenly carrying the weight of Caden’s absence.
“The doctor,” I said before walking away. “Is he all right?”
“He was when we left him.”
They’d left him there, probably to make room on the Blackhawk.
I followed Dana into the ICU. She had the shot on a tray by Karlson’s bed.
I put on my game face.
If Caden was dead, I’d know from the way the sky shattered.
Chapter Twenty-Four
CADEN
I agreed to land under fire because I was there to get people off the ground, not run back to the Green Zone with my tail between my legs. And yeah, I was terrified. I’d imagined, more than most people, falling out of the sky. It was number one on the list of ways I didn’t want to die.
But I’d medevaced dozens of times. Every time I went up, it got easier.
We were circling around a freeway with a hole in the center and debris at the edges. I couldn’t say how close to the ground we were when we were hit, but my stomach had already flipped from the descent, then we started spinning.
It wasn’t anything like I’d thought it would be. I’d always imagined the fall would be quiet and empty, with nothing but my thoughts and regrets. But it was loud. Centrifugal force pulled me against my seat, and I didn’t have an inward-looking thought in my head. I heard and understood the pilot’s mayday call. I saw the paramedics with utter clarity and noted that the instruments were all strapped down. I was as lucid as I’d always feared, but I was not afraid. My brain was too busy.
The Blackhawk screwed itself into the ground not far from the hole in the freeway, bending and creaking as a billion dollars in metal bowed around me. The prop smacked into the dirt, creating a ditch.
Then it stopped.
Arms. Legs. Fingers. Toes. Eyes. I took inventory of my body and senses. I was sideways. My ears buzzed, but it wasn’t a discrete anger roaring to break free. It was just my ears.
“Doc?” A paramedic leaned over me. Frankie Beans. I knew him. Soft face. Brave heart.
“I’m good.” I pressed the buckle of my belt and shrugged off the straps. Frankie helped. I moved slowly in case I had a break I couldn’t feel. I’d ache in the morning for sure. “Who’s hurt?
”
“Unger took a hit to the head.”
“No vital organs,” I joked, crawling across the cracked space to what had been the front.
“Fuck you,” Unger, the copilot, said. Blood covered his face, and his temporal vein was still gushing.
“Everybody out!” our pilot shouted. “Move!”
He shoved paramedic Mari Barron out his window, handing her box of supplies out behind her. Frankie was already putting pressure on Unger’s head.
“Doc!” the pilot shouted. “You! Now!”
I grabbed my case and let him push me out.
I was just a guy, not fearless, and I was no hero. But I was pretty good at my job under pressure. Everything narrowed down into tight focus. I made the decisions I was supposed to make and let the warriors do the rest. The wounded and the medical staff were put in a concrete bunker with stripped electrical circuits on one wall that used to route power to the highway’s lights. I took care of men, children, and women—Iraqi, American, and one Australian.
“Trona,” I said, leaning over the contractor. He’d taken a bullet in the arm. Clean exit. “Didn’t expect to see you on the job.”
“After a building fell on you, I didn’t expect to see you ever.”
The paramedics had cleaned him up. I started on the sutures. “We have a way of living through stuff, I guess. This is going to hurt.”
“More than it already does?”
“Probably not. But you’ll throw a football again.”
“They were everywhere,” he said as I worked. “I never saw anything like it. Benito got his head blown off right in front of me.”
That would explain the blobs of green-gray on the front of his shirt.
“We’re going to get you back,” I said.
“It was quiet,” he said. “We avoided Route Irish. I thought—” He cut himself off as I finished up.
“You thought you were safe.”
He shook his head quickly. “Never safe, right?”
“Sometimes you’re safe.”