Placing her hand on Snowflake’s broad head, she smiled a little. “No, I love dogs and cats. I’d have one myself, but I’m so busy I couldn’t be home to let them out or to get much exercise. That wouldn’t be fair to them.”
Nodding, he watched Holly’s features grow tender as she gently ran her hand from Snowflake’s head down his spotted grey and black back. “Even though he was trained by the Army to find bombs and explosives, my dog always knew when one of the guys needed a little love. He’d always go over and do what he’s doing with you.”
Holly felt her secret heartache and whispered, “Snowflake senses things … things I usually don’t tell anyone.” Giving the shepherd a kind look, she lifted her chin, finding comfort in Nick’s interested expression. Dog and owner, she realized, were mirrors of one another. That gave her the courage to go on. Her hand stilled on Snowflake’s shoulders as he sat there, his head resting on her thigh like a warm blanket.
“I had an older sister, Noelle, who was three years older than me. She was born on Christmas Eve. I was born on Christmas Day three years later. That’s why we got Christmas names,” she said, smiling fondly, seeing Nick’s eyes grow warm with understanding. “Noelle followed in my dad’s footsteps and joined the Navy when she was eighteen. She became a medical corpsman. I went another direction because I knew I didn’t have what it took to be in the military.”
She moved her fingers slowly through Snowflake’s silky fur. “I’d just graduated college when, a couple of weeks later, my parents were both killed in a car accident.”
Nick winced. “That must have been terrible for you both.”
“It was. And it seemed like nothing but bad luck followed me and my sister that year. When Noelle came home from Iraq for the funeral, I was absolutely terrified of her.
“In what way?”
Nick’s voice held out such comfort, she allowed herself to continue.
“She had PTSD. She was a Navy corpsman attached to a Marine company and was often at fire bases near the enemy. One day, she was tending Marines along with the doctor who came with her, and the base was nearly overrun by an assault of enemy soldiers. She thought they would all be killed, but at the last moment, our A-10 Warthogs arrived and drove back the enemy.”
She took a small sip of her chocolate. “When Noelle came home for the funeral, I saw deadness in her eyes for the first time. I felt as if I didn’t even know who she was. She was closed up, hard, and deeply depressed.”
Reaching over, Nick covered her hand for a moment. “That comes from being in too many firefights, Holly. Seeing things no one should ever see. They stay with you, unfortunately. They never leave.” He waited a moment, then pulled his hand reluctantly away from hers.
“I was too grief-stricken to realize it at the time. I was bawling my eyes out at the funeral, but Noelle just sat there like a robot, unfeeling. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t understand what had happened to her.” She swallowed hard and held his gaze. “I tried to talk to her, find out why, but she got angry at me and told me I’d never understand. She told me to leave her alone.”
Holly pushed her hands against her face for a moment, “And it devastated me. We’d been so close growing up. I was always the little sister tagging along after her. And after the funeral, she went to a local bar in Missoula and got drunk. She never drank before leaving for the Navy, Nick.” Snowflake leaned up, licking her closest hand, now limp on her lap, repeatedly with his pink tongue. She gave the dog a grateful look and scratched behind his ears.
“PTSD will do that to you.” Nick sighed heavily, “It will make you depressed and numb, Holly. You don’t feel any of your emotions except for anxiety. And a lot of men and women in the military have PTSD. There are two ways to dull that anxiety: take prescription drugs or drink. It sounds like Noelle chose alcohol as a way to bury her anxiety.”
“You have PTSD, too, don’t you Nick?”
Mouth tightening, he nodded. “Yeah. Snowflake and I saw too much, like so many others. There are things I wish I could forget, but I know I never will.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket. “Here, I want to show you something. I don’t know if this will make you feel any better …” He pulled a frayed photo from his wallet and slid it in front of her. “This was Dude, a yellow Labrador, my first WMD dog.”
She picked up the photo that was partially torn from a lot of handling over a long time. Holly studied the photo. Nick was in his Army Corps combat gear, a floppy, desert camouflage hat on his head, with Dude sitting next to him in his harness, panting. Nick was smiling, and so was Dude. “You two look so close,” she whispered, holding the photo gently between her hands. “Like you belong together. I love this photo so much because Dude is actually smiling. Look at his lower teeth exposed! That’s amazing!”
“Yeah,” he rasped, “you’re right, he would smile like that when he was trying to lift my spirits or when we were happy doing something together. I got him assigned to me when I was nineteen and I had him until I was twenty-three.”
“What happened to him, Nick?” Holly searched his anguished eyes.
Snowflake whined, got up, and went back to his master’s right side, lying his head on Nick’s thigh. Automatically, Nick’s hand came to rest on his head, as if needing the dog’s love and reassurance.
“Dude was following down a scent inside a walled Afghan village,” he said, his voice laced with pain. “I had him on a sixteen-foot leash and there was a door torn off this mud and rock hut of a barn where goats were kept. He went in there, following the scent and disappeared. The next thing I knew, I felt this blast of heat and a pressure wave throwing me backward, off my feet. I remember not being able to hear because both my eardrums were blown out in the blast. Some of my team later told me I tumbled end over end for at least six feet before I hit the wall around the village. They found me unconscious.”
Fingers against her lips, her eyes huge, Holly whispered, “Oh, no! Poor, beautiful Dude … and you … you could have died, too, Nick!”
CHAPTER 3
“Dude saved my life so many times,” Nick choked out, his voice a hoarse whisper. When Holly slid the photo gently back into his hand, he hungrily absorbed that momentary touch of her fingers. “He was my first dog, and he was this incredible human being in an animal’s body.” Giving Snowflake a loving look, Nick patted him. “I gave up living after Dude was killed. I was not only wounded, I was messed up inside, as well. It’s hard to explain how close we had been and I was grieving for the fact that I’d never see him smile at me like that again.”
Holly shook her head. “Hey, it’s not hard to understand how much you two shared. He kept you and the other guys safe for so many years. You slept with him, you fed him, and you cared for him. Not only was he your protector, you were his,” she posed quietly.
Nick felt a twisting, gut-wrenching grief reawaken in his heart. “You’re right, Holly, Dude was all those things to me, and more. He kept me sane. There were times when I felt I was part of a computer war game looking at the carnage after a firefight. I just couldn’t take it all in. No one could.”
“Noelle once told me that I couldn’t understand the terror, the constant threats to her and those she worked with over in Iraq. She felt lost, sometimes, with nothing to hold on to, nothing to make her remember the good things about our life before she served. She saw so much suffering every day over there.” Tilting her head, Holly held his devastated gaze, Dude’s photo resting in his palm. “Did Dude remind you of the kinder, more positive aspects of life?”
Giving her a careful look, Nick cleared his throat and rasped, “You’re pretty insightful, but then again, I knew you would be. Yeah, Dude kept my humanity, my sanity, and reminded me of a different, better time before I deployed. I couldn’t believe how those people lived over there in Afghanistan. They were always on the edge of survival and starvation. There was no guarantee that they’d have a crop of grain grow and mature so that their family wouldn’t starve the next winter. Or that
their fruit trees would have a big crop instead of a little one.” He shook his head, “I just never realized until I got over there, how little the Afghan people had. Every day was a Herculean effort to survive. It was a heartbreaking place to be, Holly.”
“And Dude helped you get through every day?”
“Very much so. At night, when we were back behind the wire, we had a corner in a room with some pieces of cardboard to sleep on, plus a couple of blankets. But it was Dude who kept me warm. He was alive, loving, licking me, always playful, and he made me laugh when I wanted to cry. There were days that were horrifying for me, Holly. Death lives right next to you all the time. On some nights I was so damned tired, my speech was slurred. I’d just lie down, wanting desperately to sleep because I was physically worn out.”
“I don’t think people realize how much our dogs and cats give to us. It was probably even more brutal on you when it got cold over there.”
“Winters were always cold over there and our rooms weren’t heated. Dude was a short-haired dog, but his coat got thicker for the winter. He’d crawl right up to me, put his head on my shoulder, press his big, long eighty-pound body alongside mine and sleep. He kept me warm. He made me feel safe when I knew there was no safety anywhere in that godforsaken country. And if I had to cry, I’d just bury my face into his fur and let it all out. He never moved then, he knew I needed to cry. Then, I’d finally be able to sleep.”
“Dude was special,” she agreed. Her voice turned gentle, “Did you receive any other wounds from that blast at the Afghan barn?”
Shrugging, he said, “Mostly shrapnel, rocks, and mud hitting me full on. I had a Kevlar vest on, but my face, neck, arms, and legs took the brunt of it.” He touched a small white scar along the left side of his jaw. “A rock got me there. I remember becoming conscious on the Medevac flight back to Bagram. I had a lot of facial cuts, minor bleeding, but no severe wounds. When we got to the hospital at Bagram, the doc told me later I’d had a hundred stitches total on my body. I stayed there for two days and then they released me back to my unit.”
“That wasn’t long enough to heal,” Holly noted grimly. “Did they give you any counseling to help with Dude’s loss?”
He gave her a wry look. “No, but I got sent back to the States after my CO took one look at me.” Giving Snowflake a tender look, he added, “The Corps wanted to hook me up with another WMD dog right away and get me redeployed.”
“Wow! That had to twist you up,” Holly said. “They weren’t giving you time to adjust, breathe, or move through your grief over losing Dude.”
“That’s the military, Holly. They needed WMD handlers and dogs more than anything else over there. IEDs were everywhere, all the time. The military was much more interested in saving a lot of American lives than worrying about how well I was handling Dude’s loss. I understand and I don’t blame anyone for the situation. I wanted to save American lives, too.”
Shaking her head, she whispered unsteadily, “Well, I’d need time to come down from the shock of being blown off my feet and work through my loss of Dude. I guess I don’t have that kind of emotional toughness.” Her lips thinned for a moment. “Noelle told me once that I was like a clam without a shell, and that anyone going into the military had to have that shell in place to survive everything they experienced over there.”
“I guess I’m not good at having that shell, either,” Nick admitted, continuing to stroke Snowflake’s head. His dog was looking up at him, blue eyes filled with concern. He knew his dog felt his every emotion and this time, he didn’t try to hide it. “I tried, but it never worked well. Dude was my shell. When he’d snuggle into my arms and we’d sleep together, I felt like things would be all right. I knew he was there to protect me if it came to that.”
Holly gazed warmly at Snowflake. “Tell me how Snowflake has helped you. I’m sure he has—he’s so loving!”
Nick nodded, scratching Snowflake’s black ear. “When I got sent back to the training school stateside, they assigned me to this guy. I was angry, hurting, grieving, and depressed. I didn’t want to take Snowflake,” and he gave his dog a sad look of apology.
“I’ve never heard of Australian shepherds being used as WMD dogs,” Holly said.
“They use all kinds of breeds. Dogs with longer noses have a better sniffer,” Nick told her.
“How did he get his name?” Holly smiled a little, watching the shepherd respond to their interest in him.
“When he was a puppy, his flanks had a lot of gray with black spots over it.” Nick moved his hand across Snowflake’s back. “The breeder’s little daughter named him.”
“The name fits him,” Holly agreed. “He’s so smart and alert.”
“Well, herding dogs are like that, although I was told by the instructors that Snowflake was the smartest of all their dogs in training at that time. He’s super athletic and was used to herding sheep. So, in our case, he saw me and our Army company as his sheep band to protect,” Nick said, managing a small smile. “He must have felt the emotional shape I was in because he was very affectionate, always had his body against my leg unless he was hunting for IEDs. A dog can sense all your emotions. And when I took him back after training was over, to Afghanistan, I think he considered me his number one priority.”
“Even though he hunted for IEDs every day?”
“Yeah,” Nick said, ruffling Snowflake’s fur along his neck, “In some ways, he reminded me of Dude. Both had that nurturing instinct.”
“You slept together like you did with Dude?”
“Yes. I always had a feeling that Snowflake knew how dangerous his work was. He was far more athletic and aggressive than Dude ever was. It was as if he understood in his dog’s mind that he was responsible for all of us. But that’s the herd dog’s genes at work, too. A Lab isn’t a herd dog, although they have one of the best noses in the business, which is why they’re used so much on deployments.”
“Well,” Holly said, smiling down at Snowflake, “he’s a very special dog.” She lifted her chin, meeting, and holding Nick’s gaze.
“He’s all of that and more,” he agreed.
“And so are you.”
“No,” Nick protested, “I’m nothing special, believe me. I’m just a survivor, that’s all.”
“Well,” Holly said pertly, drinking the last of her hot chocolate, “you’re special to me.”
Those words sent a burst of warmth to his heart, threading the first strands of hope through him to have some kind of normal life once again. “I’m just trying to survive, Holly, that’s all. I’m trying to get my new life under me and get into some kind of fixed routine that will allow me to adjust to civilian ways of living. I’m hoping the shadows of Afghanistan will start to fade away.”
“I know,” she whispered gently. Then, changing the subject, “So when would you like to go to work as my van driver?”
“How about the day after tomorrow? I need to move my duffle from my parents’ home to here, and I have a three-hour class tomorrow afternoon learning to write software code.”
“Sounds good,” she said. “Would you mind bringing Snowflake along? My shut-ins love dogs and cats, even though they don’t have any. Can a WMD dog tolerate being petted by a bunch of strangers?”
“Sure. Snowflake loves people. Anyone he meets, he automatically adds to his doggie list of dependents.” Nick found he was drowning in Holly’s soft gaze. She represented so much of what he’d lost over in Afghanistan. Just sitting here with her had tamped down most of his anxiety.
Holly fed him far more than hot chocolate. She gave him a sense of belonging, a sense of peace, and a feeling of acceptance. Nick wanted to ask her so many personal questions, but he didn’t. He’d seen photos of her with her parents and her sister, Noelle, on her desk. He didn’t see any photos that showed her with a special man in her life.
Was it crazy to wish that he could be that special person? What could he give her except sleepless nights when he awoke screaming from the n
ightmares and flashbacks he still had? Yet, his foolish heart murmured that he had a chance with Holly. To Nick, it felt like a dream that could never come true.
*
Where had the last six weeks flown? Holly laughed as she placed a small pumpkin that she and Nick had carved a funny face into, inside the van. Tomorrow was Halloween and he had suggested a week earlier that they buy some small pumpkins, carve faces in them, and give the pumpkins to their ten elders. It was a great idea!
She’d grown so used to Nick driving the van and helping her carry in the dinners to her elders, that she wondered what her life would be like without Nick in it. Never mind that Snowflake was deeply loved and eagerly welcomed by all her clients. How they looked forward to the shepherd bounding into their homes, his stub going a million miles an hour, eagerly licking their paper-thin hands. The dog always brought laughter and smiles, and that was important to Holly.
She knew how depressed older people could become. Many of the loved ones that had once inhabited their lives were now dead and gone. Their families might be a whole coast away, unable to take them in and care for them. So they lived alone, with just a radio and TV to keep them company.
Nick, after he’d seen the situation with her shut-ins, had suggested that he bring Snowflake around for a half hour or so visit with each elder, once a week. She loved that he put himself out to others like that. Snowflake, of course, enjoyed being idolized, and all the elders were better off because of their volunteer work. As for Nick, his participation was bringing him out of a deep, dark well, slowly returning him to life.
Having invited Nick and Snowflake to her apartment for Halloween dinner, Holly had warned him that the local kids would arrive at her door in droves. She had been concerned that the laughter of children, their high energy, and excited voices might put him on edge. Of course, she had asked him and he was fine with it.
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