by CD Reiss
“I have to get Dana out of here.”
“I know how you feel, man. I know how you feel.” I took an extra second with my hand on his arm. I had nothing to offer him but that time.
As I got up, a sniper bullet grazed my back. It burned.
“Doc!” Trona yelled.
Mari scrambled over to me as I crouched.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve got to stay low.” Mari checked me out, ripping open the back of my shirt. “This is going to hurt.”
“She said.”
“Jesus Christ,” she mumbled as she checked the wound. “He missed your vertebra by a quarter inch.”
“Easier to miss it than to hit it, right, Trona?”
“Right,” he grunted. “When are they coming?”
The light from the tiny square window had gotten long and bright as day waned. A medevac wouldn’t land under fire a second time.
“Soon,” I lied. “They’ll pick you up soon.”
“I’m not worried about me,” he said, gritting his teeth against pain. “I don’t want them shooting you, bro. We need you.”
The first medevac landed just before midnight. Mari and I stayed behind to fit in more wounded.
I didn’t know what was going on outside the little cinderblock building, but it was quiet for long stretches leading up to a string of pop-crack-pop, then more silence. I had blood and dirt all over me. The room stank of bodily fluids, gunpowder, and flesh.
In the middle of the night, looking at the sky through the glassless window, I’d gotten lost in what some might have considered prayer.
I’d thanked the capital-U Universe for letting me be there to help, for letting me live, for the men who protected me so I could patch people up.
I’d thanked it for my clarity of mind. The end of the buzz of anger and the hum of cowardice. I was whole, and for that, I counted the stars in Orion’s belt and thanked them for Greyson. I could die in an hour, but I’d die myself as one man, one unconflicted consciousness.
The moans of the wounded mixed with the high-pitched creak of crickets just as the thup-thup of a medevac came over the horizon. We mobilized everyone to move.
Trona got up on his own and flicked a piece of Benito’s brain off a front button.
I had a young boy, about the same age as my qunbula kid, with an exploded foot. When they’d brought him to me, I’d frozen for a second with the memory but had shaken myself out of it.
Not the same kid. Obviously.
“Don’t go,” he said with panicked eyes as the helicopter landed. Decoding the Arabic took a second.
“I bring you.” I was sure I’d gotten it wrong, maybe telling him he was bringing me, but he understood well enough to calm down.
“Doc,” Mari called, helping a man with an open wound for a leg onto a stretcher, “we’re out.”
I picked up the kid with the shattered foot and carried him to the medevac. Shots were fired. I kept running, looking straight ahead, and fell.
Chapter Twenty-Five
GREYSON
It was three in the morning. We were in a lull created by the fact that we couldn’t get a medevac out to pick up the last of the wounded and two medical staff. One of whom was my husband.
The hardest thing I’d ever done was sit still in that hospital. Especially since I knew he wasn’t that far away. Especially since I had working legs and feet. I couldn’t do a damn thing, really. I’d never get there before they could send a medevac out, and leaving would make it all worse. Logically, I was exactly where I needed to be.
Yet I felt a physical pull toward him. When I went outside to get air, I saw the three bright stars of Orion’s belt. Caden was under the same sky, and he was looking with me. He was my blue sky, my clear day, the protective shell over my world. At night, we were strung together by the stars.
“How’s Karlson?” Ronin stood next to me, steamed and pressed, looking at the sky as if trying to figure out what I saw.
The beating of helicopter wings rose above us. It wasn’t the first time I’d hoped it was a medevac going out for Caden. I’d given up on hope in favor of trust that he’d be back.
“Fine,” I said. “And Humbert. Yarrow’s the only one who fell apart.”
“Good, good.”
The helicopter took off, a black mass blotting out the dots of light and disappearing like hope.
“They’re going to get the last of them,” Ronin said.
“Thank you,” I said to the stars.
“Past two days were like Balad Lite.” He shook a cigarette out of a pack and offered me one.
I took my eyes off the sky to decline the smoke. “We didn’t even know what we were looking at then when it came to mental trauma.”
“Fuck, we didn’t.” He lit up. “We knew from Vietnam. Korea. But they weren’t real soldiers, right? We kicked them out and didn’t treat them. We pretended trauma was for pussies. Real men bucked up and went back onto the field. Played the game and won.”
It was his turn to look pensively into the sky.
“What’s your deal, Ronin? You’re a callous asshole except when you’re not.”
He shrugged and blew out a cone of smoke. “I’ve seen things I never want to see again, and I didn’t do shit. Didn’t say shit.” He tapped his ash. A single bright ember curled away in the wind and vanished. “You should have come to Abu Ghraib. You would have said something.” He took a pull of his cigarette. “You would have saved me.”
“And going up there would have destroyed me.”
Smoke came from his lips when he laughed. “You? Nah.” He stamped out his butt. “Nothing breaks you.”
I looked at the night sky, waiting for the one man who made Ronin wrong. “Did you have PTSD from Abu Ghraib?”
“I’m just trying to balance the scales.”
“How noble.” I wrapped my sweater around my chest against the coldest part of the desert night.
“And futile.”
“I’m going to wait inside.”
He turned to walk with me, opening the door so I could pass.
“This was a shitstorm,” he said. “It’ll be a good time to give Caden his shot.”
“No fucking way.” I went through without looking back.
He caught up to me in front of the reception desk. “Don’t you want to know?”
“If he’s going to collapse in a heap like Leslie Yarrow? No, I don’t want to know.”
“It’s a placebo.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Then let me set up a saline shot with my own hands.”
“Do you not get how research works?”
I stood with my legs apart and my arms crossed. “No. At this point, I don’t.”
He lowered his voice. “This has been a traumatic trip for him. It’s the perfect time. We need to show we had consistent treatments for both of them so we can isolate the cause of her breakdown. That’s how we determine—”
“Blah blah blah. No. I’m not going to be responsible for breaking him.”
I walked away before I had to hear more bullshit reasons.
He wasn’t putting Caden in danger. Period. We’d worked too hard to throw it all away.
I was on the roof when the medevac landed. Caden had been over the wire many times since he’d treated a pregnant woman in a closet in Fallujah. Still, I half expected him to get off in a fugue and go to his room with his legs and arms drooping with paresis. But he was on his feet, shouting vitals and instructions.
Small things. I thanked the night sky and the rising sun for small things.
We’d met in a Balad Air Base scrub room. He’d been undressed and obnoxious. I’d been impressed with the least impressive things about him.
In Baghdad, I couldn’t wait to see him. I went into the scrub room again. He was naked from the waist up as a nurse helped him change from a blood-spattered shirt into clean scrubs.
“Caden.” I stood at the door. “I was so worried.”
“For nothing,” he said, getting his hands under the faucet. “You know I wouldn’t die without asking permission first.”
His next step was soap, but he kept his hands still under the faucet. I wove through the rushing surgical staff to stand by him.
His hands were shaking.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Stoney!”
“Yo,” Stoneface said through his mask. He was already scrubbed in. When he saw Caden’s hands, he nodded. “I got this.”
Caden shut the water and walked out. I ran after him, silently walking next to him until we were in a quiet hallway with a window at the end. He stopped and leaned against the wall.
“I thought I was dead,” he said, looking at the hands that had betrayed him. His fingers still quaked as if they wanted to run away from his arm.
I slid my hands into his, squeezing as if I could keep them still.
“You’re not.”
“They were shooting at us and I tripped. I thought…” He took his eyes off his hands and met my gaze. “All the things we haven’t done, it was all my fault for coming. I was leaving you alone. I wanted to have kids, and we never did. I could see them in my mind, and I was so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I can still see them.”
“Are they cute?”
He laid his lips on my cheek for long seconds, breathing deeply. I felt connected to him by that breath. It was made of steel cables, connecting us near or far.
“They look like you,” he said.
“I’m still with you. And if you’re fine… I’ll tell Ronin you’re okay because he’s going to ask you to get the BiCam shot.”
“I saw Dana before I scrubbed in.” He took his face from mine with a shrug. “I told her I’d take it.”
The squiggle of the blood streak leading to Leslie Yarrow appeared in front of my eyes. It was the path her head had taken across the room as she was dragged while she fought with the chaos in her mind.
“What? Why?” I asked.
“It’s the same shit they were giving me in New York. It’s fine. It might even be better.”
The cables didn’t fray. Didn’t break. But my control was slipping away even as I tried to grasp our connection and pull it tight.
“Can you just not?” I took his hands and tried to reforge our link with a hard gaze. “Just don’t take it.”
“Do you know something I don’t?”
I did. I knew the one thing that would make giving the shot futile, because the thing about placebos was that they were useless if the subject knew. “It’s a placebo.”
He laughed and kissed me on the lips with a deep sense of appreciation. “Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem,” I sulked, crossing my arms and lowering my voice, “is Yarrow got this placebo too, and she had a breakdown a few minutes later. So, either the thought of the shot created the reaction—”
“Which you just killed by telling the patient.”
“—or it’s not a placebo.”
His eyes were so intense I nearly melted under their heat. Blue was a cold color associated with ice and distance, but when he directed it my way, it warmed me.
“I’m whole,” he said. “Shaken, yes. But whole. Was she?”
I put my hands on his chest, wishing he hadn’t put the shirt on before I had a chance to kiss his skin. “No, but—”
“Okay, take it easy.” He took my wrists and kissed my palms. “I’m going to finish this treatment with them and be done with it.”
He kissed me before I could protest, and there was so much love and trust in that kiss that I let it melt my objections away. I pulled him into me, and he wrapped his arms around my body as if he was afraid I’d run away.
When I felt his erection against me, I groaned into his mouth, lifting my leg over his waist. He pressed his hardness against my damp softness.
“My room,” he said, cupping my breast.
“We’re not finished talking about this,” I said, grinding into him.
“We’re going to talk about our life together. I’m going to give you the entire world. We’re going to talk about which part you get first.”
“You. You’re the part I want first.”
“Good, because—”
The doors at the end of the hall swung open. Dana appeared with a metal tray, stopping short when she saw us tangled together. “Oh! There you are. I, uh…”
I got both feet on the floor.
“It’s fine,” Caden said.
“I have to give you this,” Dana replied, setting down the tray with a syringe that told stories.
“No—” I started.
“All right.” Caden passed her on the way out, stopping long enough to say, “But give her a sedative.”
The doors closed behind him.
“I’m not sure he needs it,” I said.
“When he came in he looked a little—”
“He doesn’t need it!” I shouted.
Ashamed of my tantrum, I went past her to follow my husband.
He was already sitting in the exam room, rolling up his sleeve.
“Caden, listen to me…”
“I’m fine.”
Dana came in with her tray and, not wanting to yell again, I clammed up, crossing my arms and wondering how the hell I was going to get him out of this.
She sat next to him and pulled on latex gloves, smiling from ear to ear. “Thank you so much for taking care of Bobby.”
“How’s he doing?”
They chatted while she swabbed his skin.
I stood over them, remembering slipping on the squiggle of Yarrow’s blood on the linoleum, her red face, the heat and depth of her confusion and pain. She screamed with the voice of an abused child. Would he sound like a little boy locked in a cellar when he got the shot?
“Baby?” Caden asked, his voice far away, drowned out by darkness and horror.
I couldn’t risk stuffing him back in the bag. Not for his promises or mine.
Dana raised the needle.
“I’ll do it.” I held out my hand. Momentarily bewildered, Dana froze with the needle between herself and Caden’s arm. “It’s my responsibility.”
“All right,” she chirped.
She placed the syringe back on the tray and stood. I sat across from my husband and got gloves on, ready to deliver a death blow to his sanity or a round of nothing at all. Caden leaned forward with a smirk. He liked this. I knew he thought I was sexy with a needle in my hand. After this, he’d fuck me as if it would be the last time he used his dick.
Dana waited impatiently.
Ronin had told me she didn’t need a babysitter. Well, neither did I.
“Can you get his paperwork for me?” I asked. “I want to make some notes after I’m done.”
She nodded and left.
“You’re really sexy when you boss people around,” Caden said.
I pressed his arm down to hold it steady, feeling the way the skin gave but the muscle didn’t. How complex the structure of his cells and nerves was. How touching him made me realize how fragile he was. How quickly I could lose him.
With my right hand, I held the needle to his arm, holding his elbow with the left hand. I felt him watching me. His impatience to do this thing so he could get me into bed.
The shot was nothing. Had to be. Ronin would lie, but about this? No. Not about the research.
But he had bosses.
Maybe they lied.
Maybe they’d made a mistake.
Maybe Leslie Yarrow and Caden St. John had become test cases.
“Come on, baby,” Caden said. “I want to get moving here.”
If I didn’t give him the shot, Dana would. Ronin had authorized her to do her job with or without me. And since I’d asked them to send a second syringe? Squirting this one on the floor, if I even could, would just delay the inevitable. When the syringe didn’t change color, they’d know I hadn’t given it to him. They’d fire me. Send me home.
When the new syringe came, Dana would give him the shot he was convinced he could handle.
I was trapped.
Caden was trapped.
The BiCam had to go into someone before Dana returned, and it wasn’t going to be Caden.
Quickly, I turned the needle downward.
And away.
The diagonally cut tip turned toward me, the white rubbery hub hungry to turn blue when it touched my skin.
So fast, but carefully, with all my attention on what I was doing, I pushed it into my left bicep, lowering the plunger until the syringe was empty.
Caden leaned back.
“We’re done here,” I said. By the time I dropped the syringe on the metal tray, the hub was already blue.
Hubris is excessive, defiant pride or self-confidence.
That wasn’t what this was. I’d given myself the shot out of certainty. Trust. I was sane and whole, so much so that even my fears and quirks confirmed my core mental soundness.
My body had been broken at the wrist, pierced at the sternum, snapped at the collarbone, but nothing could change what I was. Who I was. If you’d asked me if I believed humans had souls, I would have given you arguments about genetics and upbringing that added up to a denial. But I must have believed. When I gave myself that shot, it was because I trusted that I had a sane, unbreakable core. I was confirming the unconfirmable.
I believed in my soul. I believed it would never change. I believed that to protect Caden, I’d be able to shrug off whatever confusion this stuff created.
My attention was locked on Caden as he leaned back with his sleeve rolled up and the alcohol drying on his arm. His focus further established what I already knew. I was safe.
“Why?” was all he said.
“It’s for the best.” I stood, suddenly uncomfortable with inaction.
I had to move forward. Whatever that was, it was a direction. My heart pounded with anxiety. I felt trapped in an inert state that would corrode me. It wasn’t an overwhelming feeling. It was more like an irritation. An itch on the sole of your foot in otherwise comfortable shoes. Definitely within the normal range.
I walked out. Forward into the lobby and outside, where dawn broke the blackness of the sky into blues. He was right behind me. I knew it without hearing him.