HORIZON MC

by Clara Kendrick

  She only managed to say one thing to me before they strapped her into an oxygen mask: “He was a good kid.”

  I knew she was talking about the one I’d killed, and I felt the hot wash of shock envelop me. I’d shot a kid. I’d killed him. And he’d been a good kid, according to Margo, who had been using informants too young to understand what they were even doing to get us the hits we needed to succeed as a team. It was so many different shades of fucked up that I didn’t even remember getting back to base that night. We’d abandoned our camp after the complete and utter failure of our mission, and Raj had gotten me admitted at the hospital, afraid that I had been gravely wounded and that was why I was having trouble listening or talking or walking.

  No. It was just because I couldn’t handle the level of monster I had become. The level of monster Margo had perhaps always been. I couldn’t reconcile anything, not my men dying, not the kid dying, not any of this. I could feel my entire world view unraveling, and I was afraid my mind was going with it.

  It took drugsstrong ones to get back to myself. By that time, they’d stabilized Margo, and had somehow seen fit to tell me she was still alive. Raj went with me the first time to see her, but she remained unconscious the entire time, too shattered from everything that had happened to her. I wondered if she even knew, if she’d been lucid enough to realize the blast had robbed her of both her legs. It was devastating, that kind of loss, even when the life of the person was saved. It meant that everything would require change, that you would never go back to normal, no matter how hard you tried.

  “I can’t see her like this,” Raj said, and I didn’t see him again for years.

  There were funerals to attend, but I still hung around the hospital, eager for news about Margo. I wanted to be there for her even though there was a part of me that flinched away from the thought of her resurfacing into reality. I was afraid of what she’d say to me, afraid of the things she’d revealed about her child sources. I was afraid of everything, but all that changed when I finally did get a chance to speak with Margo.

  “Why are you even here?” she asked, her forehead glistening with sweat, as I sat awkwardly in a chair by her bed. I could only imagine the perspiration was from pain, but when I tried to use some paper towels to mop it off, she jerked away from me.

  “You know why I’m here,” I said. “I’m here because I care about you.”

  “You don’t want to fuck me without any legs. Don’t feel guilty about that one. Here. I release you from my service. Get the hell out of here.”

  Part of me wanted to chuckle at her antics. I would’ve, had the circumstances been any different from what they were.

  “You told me that we would never fuck,” I said. “What’s a little accident going to change? You’re my best friend, idiot. That’s why I’m here.”

  She was silent for a long time. I thought maybe she was asleepor slipping into shock until she turned back to face me.

  “Why did you even save me, Sloan?” she asked, her eyes too big for her face, her skin too pale against the sheets. ”Why couldn’t you have let me die?”

  “I didn’t… I couldn’t…” It was impossible to put into words the explanation she wanted to hear. I wished I had died, too. But I wouldn’t have been able to let Margo die. She was too important to me. She was my best friend.

  “I love you,” I choked out finally. “That’s why I had to do it. I love you. I had to save you.”

  How were her eyes so flat, so colorless? She was going to be okay, wasn’t she? The doctors said she was stabilized. That she was going to have a complete recovery well, as complete as someone could be without their legs. Margo was going to be just fine. She wouldn’t let something like this get her down, would she? Maybe this was too soon, seeing her like this. Maybe she needed time to come to grips with her new reality. That was something I could understand.

  “Do you want me to leave?” I asked as gently as I could. “I can come back tomorrow, maybe. Or next week. Whenever you want.”

  “I never told you to love me,” she said. “I never told you to do that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I do. I do love you.”

  “If you really loved me, you would do something for me.”

  “What?” I scooted closer to her. “You know I would do anything for you.”

  Her stare was so terrible. The absolute lack of life in it made me want to recoil. There was so much loathing in it, but I got the funny feeling that it wasn’t directed at me whatsoever.

  “Take this pillow from behind my head and smother me until I’m dead,” she said. “You told me you’d do anything for me.”

  My fingers gripped the edge of her bed so hard that they turned white, as bloodless as Margo’s face.

  “I won’t do that,” I said.

  “Then you don’t love me. You don’t love me and you’re a liar.”

  “Call me a liar. Call me whatever you want. But I still love you. In spite of everything. Because of everything. I don’t know.”

  “I never told you to love me.”

  “I know. I know you didn’t. But here I am, loving you all the same.”

  “I don’t want to be alive.”

  And the worst thing of all was that I didn’t, either. I was whole, sitting here in front of her, professing my love for her, and I didn’t want to be alive any more than Margo did. It was a terrible thing to acknowledge, but there it was. I loved Margo. I loved her so much. But even as much as I loved her, and as much as I believed in the mission, in the purpose of my time as a Navy SEAL, I didn’t know that any of it was worth what I had ended up doing.

  What I had become.

  “We’re going to get through this,” I said, fighting to make my voice strong, firm. “Do you understand me? We’re going to come out on the other side of this and be okay.” I was willing myself to believe that as much as I was hoping Margo would take hold of whatever comfort she could find in it and get stronger. Things had been so tenuous with her. Maybe she was feeling like this because there was still just a little bit too much death in her. It had been a close call for her. Too close. Maybe she could be forgiven for being unable to see to her future, see that, with me by her side, she could do this. We could both do this, because there wasn’t an alternative.

  Margo whispered something, then turned away from me.

  “What? What did you say?” I leaned closer again. “Margo, I didn’t hear you. What was that?”

  “Baby killer.” She didn’t look back at me, and I was certain I had misheard her. Certain she hadn’t said what I thought she said.

  “Do you need something?” I asked her. “Want me to get the nurse? Tell me what you said, Margo.”

  “I said you were a baby killer.” She enunciating each word as if it was the most important thing she’d ever said, and maybe it was. I didn’t know. There was no way of knowing.

  “Are you in pain?” I asked her. “If you are, I’ll call someone. You don’t need to be in pain.”

  “Baby killer,” she said again, louder, stronger. Was it wrong to be glad to hear her voice with that kind of power in it even with those two words she kept repeating?

  “I’ll get someone,” I promised her, standing up, finding the call button for the nurse, pushing it. “Just hold on.”

  “You’re a baby killer,” she said. “You should’ve just let me die. I didn’t want to live. Not like this.”

  “You’re going to be okay,” I said. Only it wasn’t just a reassurance. I was begging her. I needed her to be okay. “You’ll be up and about in less time than you think. You’re going to be just fine. Lord, with the kind of technology we have these days, you’ll probably get along better than the rest of us. The bionic woman. That’s what we’ll call you.”

  It was a weak attempt, my broken rambling, but it was all I could think of to do. I just wanted to keep talking, to keep her active. If she was mad at me, good. Mad was better than suicidal. I couldn’t lose Margo. Not after I�
��d lost my soul. I needed her.

  “It’s not the legs,” she said, looking away from me. “I don’t give a shit about the legs. It was the kid, Sloan, goddammit. Why did you kill the kid?”

  “To save you.”

  “No. Fuck that. You shouldn’t have killed the kid. Fuck you. Fuck you for doing that. I’m not worth that.”

  “He would’ve killed you, Margo.”

  “He could’ve lived.”

  “No. Not with your life at stake. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

  “We shouldn’t have been there.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head, certainty deepening the lines on her face. She had aged so much in such a small amount of time. Did I have the same lines on my face?

  “Those people were just defending their homes, their lives,” she said. “We shouldn’t have been there. The intelligence was bad.”

  I glanced back and forth between Margo’s face and the bag that was dripping drugs directly into her bloodstream. Where was the nurse? Was she getting too much morphine? Was she hallucinating?

  “We shouldn’t have been there,” she said. “Listen to me. We shouldn’t have been there. That kid should’ve lived. All those people should’ve.”

  “Can I help you?” the nurse asked, bustling in. “What seems to be the problem, here?”

  “I think something might be wrong with her drugs,” I said. “Or she might be in shock or pain.”

  “What would you have done, if they had invaded here?” Margo demanded suddenly, vehement, digging her fingers into my arm. “You would’ve done the exact same thing. All of us would’ve. We all would’ve armed ourselves in any way possible. We were the ones at fault. The intelligence was bad.”

  “I think it’s time for some rest, don’t you, Margo?” the nurse asked carefully, injecting the IV port directly with a syringe I hadn’t seen him carry in. Could people outside the room hear the kinds of things Margo was saying? For how weak she looked, her voice was awfully loud.

  “You’re a baby killer,” she told me, her words slurring a little as the drug took hold. “You’re a baby killer and I’ll never forgive you. You should…never…”

  “There we are,” the nurse said, as brightly as if he’d just delivered a baby. “She’ll feel better after a little nap. I don’t think she’s been resting very well.”

  “You think it was the exhaustion talking?” I asked him. “Or the painkillers? Something? The things she was saying…they were troubling. I don’t think she would’ve said them unless there was something really wrong with her.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” the nurse said, gazing levelly at me. “But you should be clear there is something really wrong with her. She doesn’t have any legs anymore. A good deal of her agitation is probably stemming from that, and that’s completely natural.”

  He said he hadn’t heard anything Margo had been saying, but that didn’t mean I thought he could be trusted. He might very well have heard something. He could’ve been standing outside for longer than I cared to imagine. I just felt paranoid, overall, with the way this was all going down. This was never supposed to happen. Not to me. Not to my team. And certainly not to Margo.

  I stayed there, waiting for her to wake up, but she stayed under for days. Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe it would give her body a little time to heal. If we were lucky, her mind would jump on that bandwagon.

  But when she finally did come around, it was clear that lots of things had changed.

  “I don’t want to see you anymore,” Margo said, startling me from my doze. I should’ve been alert for when she woke up, as if that might be a comfort to her, but I’d fallen asleep while on duty. It made me angry at myself.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “I was napping.”

  “I don’t want to see you here anymore, Sloan,” she said. She glanced at me, then studied her hands, folded in her lap. She looked better than she did earlier, so that was something, but I couldn’t piece together why she wouldn’t want to see me anymore.

  “Would you like me to get the nurse?” I asked. “Anything wrong?”

  “What’s wrong is your ears, apparently,” Margo said sharply. “I told you I didn’t want you here anymore.”

  “Okay.” I had to take some time to absorb that. “Do you want me to get ahold of Raj, or another one of the guys? Anyone I can call for you?”

  “I don’t want to see any of you.”

  “I think it would be good for you to have some support, here,” I argued gently. “I don’t like the idea of you all alone.”

  “You think Raj might do what I asked?”

  “You know damn well that any one of us would fall over ourselves doing what we could for you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Tell me what you want, Margo. I’ll do it.”

  “You won’t.” There was more fire in her eyes this time, but she still looked like a different person. I wondered if the Margo I knew and loved would ever make an appearance again. It wasn’t looking good right now, though I didn’t want to lose hope. I didn’t want to give up on her.

  “I won’t help you kill yourself, if that’s the thing you’re asking.”

  “That is what I’m asking.”

  “The answer’s no. And for the record, I want you to stop talking like that, got it? That’s not helpful to anyone, least of all yourself.”

  “And what would you know about it?” Margo pointed at the part of the bed that should’ve held the rest of her legs.

  “I know that everything works out. That everything can be solved if you just give it a little time. That this, too, shall pass.”

  “Oh, you think I’m going to grow my legs back?”

  “Not literally, Margo.”

  “You think that the kid you shot is going to come back to life?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “You’re right. It’s not. So go.”

  And I wanted to, goddammit. I wanted to leave her there to wallow in her misery, to spout poison at the walls, at the luck of things. The horrors. But it was easier to stay there with her, to try and figure things out, to be supportive. Even if it wasn’t what she wanted.

  “I don’t want to abandon you,” I said finally.

  “You’re not. I’m telling you to leave.”

  “It feels like I’m abandoning you.”

  “I’m not the one you need to feel guilty about. How are you going to live with yourself, Sloan?”

  And that was really the question, wasn’t it? It was easier to loaf around in the hospital room, busying myself with being strong for her. The moment I left the hospital, though, I would be alone with myself, alone to face my sins, and I knew they were many and dire. I wasn’t a religious man, and my parents hadn’t taken me to church before, but I wondered if it really was as easy as it sounded, going to confession. Cleaning your soul with a handful of prayers. A couple of circuits around a rosary. It didn’t seem like it should be that easy. I didn’t want it to be. I wanted to suffer for what I did, because on some level, I knew I should. As crazy as Margo’s rants were, I knew that what I had done was wrong. I hadn’t enlisted in the Navy, hadn’t gone through the grueling process of becoming a SEAL, to kill kids. Not even if it was for the “greater good” and all that bullshit.

  The thing was, though, that I didn’t know whether I would change things, if I had the chance to go back and try again. I would still try to save Margo. She was one of mine, a part of my team, someone I loved the kind of love you could only have for someone who had come through hell with you. And if I had to kill the kid all over again to save Margo, then God help me, I would. I would do it in a heartbeat.

  “If you don’t leave right now, I’ll have you thrown out,” Margo said, but there wasn’t much heat to her words. She sounded tired, most of all, and to be honest, I was tired of it, too.

  “I’ll go, then,” I said. “Call me if you need anything.”


  “You know what I need.”

  “Anything that isn’t that.”

  And I never saw her again. She took me off the guest list, told officials at the hospital to turn me away if I tried to visit, and eventually disappeared. We talked about her, Raj and me and the rest of the team, talked about what might’ve become of her, what she might’ve been doing. It was painful, thinking about her alone, without her support team, without us, but maybe I’d misjudged the situation. I wasn’t one of them, but loads of the guys had families and friends to return to after their tours were over. Maybe Margo had someone. She’d never talked about family, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She was probably convalescing at home, figuring out a way forward even if she hadn’t wanted one.

  I hoped all those good things for her, but I couldn’t honestly say I was surprised the day I received the news that Margo had committed suicide. Perhaps the most hurtful thing was that I was a little impressed that it she had held on that long. It was perhaps a year after she’d kicked me out of her hospital room. I never knew if she even got to the point of prosthetics. If she ever took any steps forward again. It didn’t sound like it, if she’d finally achieved what she’d threatened to do.

  And so I supposed everything was a waste. Margo had taken her own life even if I’d done the unthinkable to save it. When the news reports and hearings began on whether we should’ve even been in Iraq in the first place, some of the things Margo was saying in the hospital started to make sense. She’d known, somehow, in her spooky way.

  And now I knew that nothing mattered. That I didn’t have a soul anymore, or a heart, either. That sometimes it was so hard to keep going forward that I was afraid I would end up just like Margo, that maybe it would’ve actually been a mercy to do the thing she asked, the thing I hadn’t wanted to do for her. Because the more I thought about it, the more I wanted it for myself, and the more I understood how hard it was. I had too much of a sense of preservation as a former SEAL. It would’ve been nice, I supposed, if I had someone I loved and trusted enough to ask to do this for me. Margo would’ve, I bet, if I’d asked her.

  But now Margo was gone. She was gone and I was gone.