by Rachel Lee
Rising, slipping away from her touch because it awakened him in ways he couldn’t afford, he started to pace. He had to keep moving, keep stretching the scar tissue. After a few turns around the tiny living room, he bent and tried to touch his toes. Better than a couple weeks ago. Looser. But his hip shrieked fit to kill.
“What exactly happened to you?”
The bluntness of Miri’s question shouldn’t have surprised him. She’d already struck him as a woman who saw the world clearly and had no particular desire to be shielded from its ugly realities. Maybe because she hadn’t been exposed to many of them...but then he remembered the story of what had happened to her parents. Ugly realities and she were not strangers.
“I was shot.” She didn’t need any more details.
“And?”
And she was going to demand them, anyway. He didn’t like to talk about it, but even as he considered telling her that, he heard the rudeness in the words he’d speak. She knew what had happened to her cousin. Why not share the latest edition of what happens when you go on a covert mission?
“And?” he repeated. “We were covertly infiltrating a country where we weren’t welcome, and we were ambushed. I suppose I shouldn’t be alive. I took five bullets and some of the blast from a grenade.”
“So you pretty much got chewed up.” Her voice didn’t waver.
“Sort of. Bullets smashed my hip, injured my spine and managed to miss major arteries. The grenade got me with flash burns and some shrapnel. So here I am.”
He hoped she didn’t ask more. The edited version was quite enough.
More than enough, it seemed, because walls in his mind were shredding, turning from concrete to flaps of paper blowing in the wind. The memories were not only insistent, they forced their way in, filling his mind’s eye with horror and his heart with fury. He was tipping over an edge, and he struggled to catch himself but he couldn’t.
In an instant he was back in the place where Al had died. Except Al hadn’t died there. They had carried him out after they cleared the threat, carried him and his severed leg and arm for miles to where a rescue chopper could dart in and take him. It had taken the chopper long enough. Long enough for Al to die. Toward the end they might have overdosed him on morphine. Gil couldn’t be sure, but Al was in so much agony, begging them to kill him.
The family didn’t need to know that, but he couldn’t forget it. Would never forget how he had failed his best friend.
But then he slipped again, this time into the place where he had nearly met his own end. Memories of the bullets striking, feeling like a sledgehammer, the explosion and concussion and...
Things began to become muddled and mixed up, turning into a stew of many places, many fights, many losses. They usually got out with everyone alive, but not every time. There were the wounds, the screams, the gore, the memory of people, innocent people, getting caught in a crossfire, memories of the enemy... All of it swirled around inside him, riveting him, taunting him, filling him with anger and pain and grief and hatred and...
He fell into the abyss.
* * *
Miri saw Gil freeze and stand as stiff as a statue. Soon, a look on his face, especially his eyes, told her he was no longer with her. He was seeing something only he could see, and it didn’t appear pleasant.
A flashback? She didn’t know, but wondered. She had some familiarity with them because of her friends but was in no position to say with any surety where Gil’s thoughts had gone...or why.
She also didn’t know what to do, if anything. Should she try to draw him back to the present or leave him alone?
Leave him alone, she decided. Any sound she made, any movement, could strike him as a threat if his mind had carried him back to war. Better to feel helpless, much as she hated it, than trigger something they both might regret.
Most especially she didn’t want to cause him any regret. “Just leave him alone” was a mantra used by some of her friends. It would pass.
So eventually this would pass. Sooner or later, Gil would break free of the prison and return. She just had to be patient and wait.
But she was feeling an urgent need to answer the call of nature. She studied where he was standing and where she sat, and tried to envision a trajectory that wouldn’t startle him.
Then she heard him expel a huge sigh. After a moment, he moved a bit, as if stiff, and his gaze trailed toward her. “Was I gone long?”
“Not really.” A surprisingly short time, considering what she’d heard from her friends. “Five minutes? It must have seemed longer to you. Anyway, if I could run to the bathroom?”
He seemed a little surprised, then frowned darkly. “I’m sorry.”
“No need.” She rose, trying to appear happy. “Hey, everybody has some problems, right?”
“I don’t do this.”
She didn’t ask what he meant, mainly because she didn’t want to stir a pot that might still be simmering. “No worries. I’ll be right back and we can talk as much or as little as you want.”
Once in her bathroom, Miri was astonished by how much tension had filled her. Hardly surprising considering what an intense man Gil was even when he was trying to be pleasant. There was always an undercurrent to him, a sense that he could spring at any moment. Like a panther or leopard, sunning itself in a tree one second and then grabbing some prey in its jaws the next.
Like a cat, she thought as she leaned against the sink after washing her hands. She’d read that cats never really went to sleep the way people did, that their ears never turned off and they could wake in an instant at a worrisome sound.
Well, in some way Gil was like that. Did he ever really relax? Could he if he wanted to?
Aw, heck, what did it matter? He’d be buzzing out of here as soon as he could.
The main thing was that he was probably feeling pretty uncomfortable right now. He’d said he didn’t do that. She could only guess that he meant he didn’t flash back to the war. But whatever it was, it had left him exposed for several minutes, and he could be perceiving it as a failure on his part.
So she needed to get back out there and normalize things again, so he didn’t get the impression she was trying to avoid him. He didn’t deserve that.
Still, the breather had been good. She smiled faintly at her reflection and then marched back to the living room, only to find him staring out at blowing snow, his hands clasped behind his back. Despite having the heat on, she felt a chill snaking through the house. One of these days she was going to have to figure where her weatherizing needed some work.
“I’m thinking about a cup of tea,” she said. “You want some?”
He turned a bit, exposing the side of his face. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”
It had been a while since lunch, and soon she would need to provide some kind of meal, but Miri found herself drawing a complete blank. Cooking was not at all her favorite thing, though on her own she was quite capable of scrounging up a halfway decent meal from her fridge or pantry.
But now she had someone else to think about. Distracted, aware that Gil was apparently going to share not one thing about what had just happened, she headed for the kitchen. Didn’t she have several cans of New England clam chowder? Especially tasty when she threw in some bacon bits, a staple in her refrigerator. They could make anything taste better, from salad to soup to scrambled eggs.
Rearranging cans in the cupboard, she found the clam chowder she remembered, and an unopened bag of oyster crackers. A footstep alerted her and she glanced over her shoulder. Gil had joined her.
“You okay with clam chowder?” she asked. “From a can.”
“Haven’t had that in ages, and I like it. What can I do?”
“Not much.” She smiled. “Canned soup is hard to turn into a group cooking affair.” She paused. “Are you all right, Gil?”
“I’m fine,�
� he said immediately. “But I guess I owe you an explanation.”
She shook her head as she lifted down three cans of the soup, hoping he would be hungry. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. Not a thing.”
He took the cans from her hands and placed them on the counter while she brought out the oyster crackers.
“My dad especially loved these crackers with soup,” she remarked. “He was a fan of almost every kind of cracker, but these were a treat. I don’t know the difference other than shape, but the habit stuck with me.”
“I haven’t had them in years.”
“Well, you can rediscover them this evening. I suspect they didn’t get soggy in the soup as fast as a regular soda cracker, because to me they don’t taste any different.”
“I’ll let you know.”
When everything was on the counter and she’d closed the pantry, he touched her forearm lightly. “I do owe you an explanation, unless you just don’t want to hear it. But talking might help me understand what I just did.”
At that she gave him her undivided attention. Miri was eager to listen. She felt seriously attracted to him, and that frightened her, because he was a great big unknown.
“I’m listening.” Such a lame answer to what she suspected had been a difficult offer for him to make. He’d already pretty much said he didn’t talk about anything except to other vets. He felt alienated, different.
Well, he’d been living in a different world from folks like her. Coming back had to make him feel like the odd man out.
She waved him to the table as her teakettle began to whistle. One green tea bag in her mug, boiling water, then she turned the kettle off. Sitting facing him seemed like a safer place than kitty-corner to him. If she grew any more attracted to Gil, she’d be daydreaming about him, wasting her time and setting herself up for a fall. Man, even now he looked scrumptious, but as near as she could tell there was no part of himself that he was prepared to give anyone.
She tamped down her female awareness of him and forced herself to wait patiently. Ordinarily she wasn’t short on patience, but Gil had some unusual effects on her. She very much wanted to hear what he might say, and the longer he hesitated the less likely he was to speak.
“I’ve never had one before,” he said slowly, “but I think I had a flashback.”
That struck her. “Never?”
His expression grew slightly wry, surprising her. This was a grim subject, she would have thought.
“Never,” he repeated. “Not in any real sense. Memories, yes, but not the kind that make me feel I’m right in the middle of it all again. I think I’ve been too busy. Just about the time something might have begun bubbling up, I was off my leave and back on duty.”
“Where flashbacks don’t intrude?”
“I can’t speak for everyone. For me, no. It was like if I stayed on the rails, I couldn’t divert. I diverted today.”
When he fell silent in thought, she dared to speak again. “That must be...unsettling, to put it mildly.”
“Very,” he said bluntly. “I don’t like my mind playing tricks on me. It’s the best weapon in my arsenal.”
She felt her mouth trying to fall open and quickly looked down, lifting her tea bag in and out of the hot water. She liked it strong. “I, um, never thought of my brain as a weapon.”
“Of course not. You’ve never had to. But consider my position. What soldier could function without a brain? A zombie?”
The way he said it drew a small laugh from her. She believed he did so intentionally. Trying to get over rough ground as lightly as possible? “Okay, I get it. It just wasn’t a comparison I’m used to drawing.”
He nodded. “Anyway...” A sigh escaped him. “That came out of nowhere and I don’t like it. Who would? All of a sudden I was back in some of the worst times I’ve had, reliving them. It’s one thing to remember. It’s another to relive.”
“Absolutely!”
“Maybe I will have some tea. Green tea?”
She nodded. He rose before she could, added some water to the kettle and placed it on the burner. “You wouldn’t believe how many places in the world I’ve drunk green tea. Or some really black tea. Anyway, no point going there, because I can’t tell you.”
Those last few words seemed to be tied up with a frown that appeared on his face. “I can’t really tell you anything,” he said after a minute. “I’ll just have some tea with you and we’ll forget this.”
She didn’t like the withdrawal. Maybe he couldn’t talk about his missions, or even the countries involved, but he could surely share his feelings about it.
“You know, Gil, you not only reminded me of granite when we first met, but now you’re reminding me of a bottle of champagne that’s been shaken and the top is about to pop.”
He lifted his brow at that, and there was not only a change in his expression, but a change in his posture. Not so straight and square, leaning more heavily on his cane... Shrinking? No, not that. Maybe weary, and not just physically.
The teakettle whistled and he ignored it for a few seconds, then seemed to shake himself. “Tea bags?”
“Just sit. I’ll get it all. How do you like your tea?”
“Straight. Listen, I’m not helpless.”
“I don’t think you are. But I’m fussy about people rummaging in my cupboards. Space is limited, so everything has a place.”
Another attempt to divert the conversation? she wondered as she pulled out a small canister with green tea bags, plus a mug, and put everything in front of him as he eased into his chair again.
He was soon dipping his own tea bag. “Part of what happened was that I went back to the day Al was killed.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. For some reason she hadn’t expected that, or to hear it so bluntly. Not with the way he’d been edging around it.
“And to the day I got wounded this last time,” he added. “But when it comes to reliving experiences, I’d choose to relive my own wounding a thousand times instead of Al’s.”
Now she was on unfamiliar ground. She didn’t want to sound trite, but what he’d just shared certainly deserved an acknowledgment. “That says a lot,” she said carefully. “It must have been horrific.”
His jaw worked and his gaze didn’t meet hers. He didn’t want to talk about it. That was fine by her. She’d learned all she needed to know when they’d been advised not to have an open coffin. Her imagination was already too good.
He dropped his tea bag onto the saucer she’d earlier placed on the table, beside hers. Then he lifted the mug and drank deeply. Evidently his tongue didn’t scald easily.
He blew out a long breath. “I’ve had too much time on my hands,” he said, as if that explained it all. “Too much time for my mind to wander into places it shouldn’t go.”
She chewed her lip for a moment. “Isn’t it going to have to go there eventually?”
“Probably. But I won’t complain if it waits a few decades.”
He looked at her then, and she was astonished to see a half smile on his face, reflected in his eyes. Talk about a fast mood change.
“I’m not always gloomy and rigid,” he said. “I’ve been known to have a good time and crack a few jokes.”
She tilted her head, thinking he was a puzzle. This felt like a non sequitur. “I believe you,” she murmured.
“No, you probably don’t. No reason you should. When you met me, I had a certain role to perform for my friend and for the army. Now I come here and all you see is someone who’s been wounded and isn’t even sure he’s ready to pick up any thread of life.”
That grabbed her attention. “You’re just tired,” she suggested. “You’ve been through a lot and you’re probably awfully tired most of the time. Wouldn’t that be normal?”
“You don’t have to make excuses for me,” he replied, his smile f
ading. “I’m not good company. The worst part is that I don’t especially care if I am. I came here with some lamebrained notion, thinking I could share a few stories with Al’s family that they might enjoy knowing, but I haven’t managed it yet. And the main reason I haven’t managed it is because all I can damn well think about is him dying!”
Chapter Five
Gil strode out of the kitchen, if you could call it striding while he was leaning on a cane. His hip felt as if fiery pokers were digging into it and that at any moment it might just suddenly give way.
He was glad that Miri didn’t follow him, though. He was venturing too near to some things. Flashbacks to those awful hours when Al had been hit, when they’d gathered him up and raced over rugged, defiant terrain to reach the landing zone and the helicopter that might save his life. Six men, using everything training and God had given them to keep up a punishing pace.
But they’d been too late.
Until the day he died, Gil was never, ever going to forget Al’s screams, his demands and pleas that they just kill him, his prayers that God would take him now. Al had never reached the painless place of shock. He’d never lost consciousness. He’d suffered every damn second.
Until the very end, when he was gone before the chopper set down. Morphine? Maybe. They’d done the best first aid they could, but his wounds were severe, severe enough to have killed him. Maybe the horror was that he’d hung on so long. But then, Gil hadn’t seen a whole lot of clean kills in combat. Nope.
He could still hear the sounds, smell the odors, feel the effort, the fear, the bullets blowing out the muzzle of his rifle. He was there again, but without losing his place in time and space. He could still see Miri’s living room around him, could hear her stirring in the kitchen. The sound of the wind blowing crystals of snow against the glass reached him. Not a flashback, but a powerful memory.
The memories he could handle. They were never far away. But slipping his cogs and falling into the past? No thanks. Wherever his future might lead him, flashbacks would only complicate everything. Especially if there weren’t obvious triggers he could avoid.