Back to You

by Jessica Scott

  Luckily Captain Ben Teague approached, saving Reza the need to punch the commander in the face. The sergeant major would not be happy with him if that happened. Reza was already on thin ice as it was. He was holding steady, but there was no reason to give the sergeant major an excuse to dig into his fourth point of contact.

  He was doing just fine. One day at a time, and all that.

  Too bad guys like Marshall tested his willpower on a daily basis.

  “So you don’t have accountability of the entire company?” Marshall asked. Behind him Teague made a crude motion with his hand.

  Reza rubbed his hand over his mouth, smothering a grin. “Sir, I know where everyone is. I’m heading to the R&R Center after formation to verify that Wisniak is there and see about getting a status update from the docs.”

  Marshall sighed heavily, and the sound was laced with blame, as though Wisniak being at the R&R Center was Reza’s personal failing. Behind him Teague mimed riding a horse and slapping it. Reza coughed into his hand as Marshall turned an alarming shade of puce. “I’m getting tired of someone always being unaccounted for, Sergeant.”

  “That makes two of us.” Reza breathed deeply. “Sir.”

  “What are you planning on doing about it?”

  He raised both eyebrows, his temper lashing at its frayed restraints. His mouth would be the death of him some day. That or his temper.

  He didn’t really care.

  He started ticking off items on his fingers. “Well, sir, since you asked, first, I’m going to stop by the shoppette for coffee, then take a ride around post to break in my new truck. I’ll probably stop out at Engineer Lake and smoke a cigar and consider whether or not to come back to work at all. Around noon, I’m going to swing into the R&R center to make sure that Wisniak actually showed up and was seen. Then I’ll spend the rest of the day hunting said sorry excuse for—”

  “That’s enough, sergeant,” Marshall snapped and Teague mimed him behind his back. “I don’t appreciate your insubordinate attitude. Accountability is the most important thing we do.”

  “I thought kicking in doors and killing bad guys was the most important thing we did?” Reza asked, doing his damnedest not to smirk. He failed. Miserably. Time to crack open a cold one and kick his boots up on his desk.

  Except that he’d given up drinking. Again. And this time, it had to stick. At least, it had to if he wanted to take his boys downrange again.

  The sergeant major had left him no wiggle room. No more drinking. Period.

  “Sergeant—”

  “Sir, I got it. I’ll head to the R&R Center right after formation. I’ll text you…” He glanced at Foster, who gave him a thumbs-up. Whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. Wisniak was at the R&R Center, Reza supposed?

  “You’ll call. I don’t know when texting became the army’s preferred technique for communications between seniors and subordinates. I don’t text.”

  Reza saluted sharply. It was effectively a fuck off but Marshall was either too stupid or too arrogant to grasp the difference. “Roger, sir.”

  “Ben,” Marshall mumbled.

  “Jimmy.” Which earned him a snarl from Marshall as he stalked off. Teague grinned. “He hates being called Jimmy.”

  “Which is why you’ve called him that every day since Infantry Officer Basic Course?”

  “Of course,” Teague said solemnly. “It is my sacred duty to screw with him whenever I can. He was potty trained at gunpoint.”

  “Considering he’s a fifth generation army officer, probably,” Reza mumbled. Foster walked back up, shaking his head and mumbling creative profanity beneath his breath. “They won’t even tell you if he’s checked in?”

  “I practically gave the lady on the phone a hand job to get her to tell me anything and she pretty much told me to kiss her ass. Damn HIPAA laws. How is it protecting the patient’s privacy when all I’m asking is if the jackass is there or not?”

  Reza sighed. “I’ll go find out if he’s there. I need you to make sure the weapons training is good to go.” Still swearing, Foster limped off. Too bad Foster wasn’t a better ass kisser; he’d have already made staff sergeant.

  But Marshall didn’t like him and had denied his promotion for the last three months because Foster was nursing a bum leg. Granted, he’d jammed it up playing sports but the commander was being a total prick about it. It would have been better if Foster had been shot.

  “Damn civilians,” Reza mumbled, glancing at Teague. “I get that the docs are only supposed to talk to commanders but they make my life so damn difficult sometimes.”

  “They talk to you,” Teague said, pushing his sunglasses up on his nose and shoving his hands into his pockets.

  “That’s because they’re afraid of me. I look like every stereotype jihadi they can think of. All I have to do is say drka drka Mohammed jihad and I get whatever I want out of them.”

  “A Team America: World Police reference at six-fifteen a.m.? My day is complete.” Teague laughed. “That’s so fucking wrong. Just because you’re brown?”

  Reza shrugged. Growing up with a name like Reza Iaconelli had taught him how to fight. Young. With more than just the asshole kids on the street. He’d learned the hard way that little kids better have a whole lot more than attitude when standing up to a grown man.

  “What can I say? No one knows what to think of the brown guy. I’m sure if I was smaller people would think I was Mexican.” He started to walk off, still irritated by Marshall and the unrelenting douche baggery of the officer corps today. They cared more about stats than soldiers. It was total bullshit. The war wasn’t even over yet and it was already all the way back to the garrison army bullshit that had gotten their asses handed to them from 2003 on.

  “Where are you heading?” Teague asked.

  “R&R. Need to check up on the resident crazy kid and make sure he’s not going to off himself.” He palmed his keys from his front pocket. Reza slammed the door of his truck and took a sip of his coffee, wishing it had a hell of a lot more in it than straight caffeine.

  He’d rather have his balls crushed with a ball-peen hammer than deal with the R&R Center. He hated the psych docs. They were worse than the bleeding heart officers he seemed to find himself surrounded with these days. Just how he wanted to start off his seventy fourth day sober: arguing with the shrinks.

  Good times.

  * * *

  “I don’t really think you understand the gravity of the situation, Captain.”

  Captain Emily Lindberg bristled at the use of her rank. The fact that a fellow captain used it to intimidate her only irritated her further.

  She inhaled a calming breath through her nose and spoke softly, deliberately attempting to keep her composure. “I’m sorry, Captain, but I’m afraid you’re the one who doesn’t understand. Your soldier has experienced significant trauma since joining the military and his recurrent nightmares, excessive use of alcohol to self-medicate and his inability to effectively manage his stress are all indicators of serious psychological illness. He needs your compassion, not your wrath.”

  “Specialist Henderson needs my size ten boot in his ass. He sat on the damned base last deployment and we only got mortared a few times. He’s a candy pants who has a serious case of I do what I want-itis and now he’s come crying to you, expecting you to bail his sorry ass out of a drug charge.” Emily could practically see smoke coming out of the big captain’s ears.

  Once upon a time she would have flinched away from his anger and done anything to placate him. It was abusive jerks like this who thought the army was all about their ability to accomplish their mission. The mouth breather in front of her didn’t care about his soldiers.

  It was up to folks like Emily to hold the line and keep the army from ruining yet another life. There had already been more than fifty suicides in the army this year and it was only April. “What Henderson needs, Captain Jenkowski, is a break from you pressuring him to perform day in and day out. My duty-limiting p
rofile is not going to change. He gets eight hours of sleep a night to give the Ambien a chance to work. And if you don’t like it, file a complaint with my boss. He’s the full-bird colonel in charge of the hospital.”

  “You fucking bitch,” he said. His voice was low and threatening. “I’m trying to throw this little motherfucker out of the army for smoking spice and you’re making sure that we’re stuck babysitting his candy ass. Way to take care of the real soldiers who have to waste their time on this little weasel instead of training.”

  The door slammed behind him with a bang and Emily sank into her chair. She had a full three minutes before her next patient and it wasn’t even nine a.m.

  A quick rap on her door pulled her out of her momentary shock. “You okay?”

  She looked into the face of her first friend here at Fort Hood, Major Olivia Hale. “Yeah, Olivia. I just…”

  “You get used to it after a while, you know,” Olivia said, brushing her bangs out of her eyes.

  “The rampant hostility or the incessant chest beating?” Emily tried to keep the frustration out of her voice and failed.

  “Both?”

  Emily smiled. “Well that’s helpful.”

  Moments like this made her seriously reconsider her life in the army. Of course, her parents would be more than happy for her to take the rank off her chest and return home to their Cape Cod family practice. The last thing she wanted to do was run home to a therapy session in waiting. Who wanted to work for parents who ran a business together but had gotten divorced fifteen years ago? At least here she was making a difference, instead of listening to spoiled rich kids complain about how hard their lives were or beg her for a prescription for Adderall so they could prepare for their next exam.

  Here she could make a difference. Do something that mattered.

  Her family wouldn’t understand.

  Then again, they never had.

  Yeah, she’d pass, thanks.

  “Can I just say that I never imagined that I’d be going toe-to-toe with men who had egos the size of pro football linebackers? Where does the army find these guys?”

  “Some of them aren’t raging asshats,” Olivia said. “Some commanders actually care about their soldiers.”

  An Outlook reminder chimed, reminding her that she had two minutes. Emily frowned then clicked it off. “It must be something special about this office, then, that attracts all the ones who don’t care.”

  She’d recently moved to Fort Hood because it was the place deemed most in need of psychiatric services. They had the unit with the highest active-duty suicide rate in the army. She was trying her damnedest to make a difference but the tidal wave of soldiers needing care was relentless.

  Add in her administrative duties on mental health evaluations and sometimes, she didn’t know which day of the week it was.

  “Does it ever end?” she whispered, suddenly feeling overwhelmed at the stack of files on her desk. Each one represented a person. A soldier. A life under pressure.

  Lives she did everything she could to save.

  Olivia shrugged. “It doesn’t.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a nine o’clock legal brief with the boss. You okay?”

  She offered a weak smile. “Yeah. Have to be, right?”

  Olivia didn’t look convinced but didn’t have time to dig in further. In the brief moment she had alone, Emily covered her face with her hands.

  Every single day, Emily’s faith in the soldiers she’d wanted to help weakened. When officers like Jenkowski were threatening kids who just needed to take a break and pull themselves together to find some way of dealing with the trauma in their lives, it crushed part of her spirit. She’d never imagined that confrontation would be a daily part of her life as an army doc. She’d signed up to help people. She wasn’t a commander, not a leader of soldiers. She was here to provide medical services. She’d barely stepped outside her office so all she knew was the inside of the clinic’s walls.

  She’d had no idea how much of a fight she’d have on a daily basis. Three months in and she was still shocked. Every single day brought something new.

  She wasn’t used to it. She doubted she would ever get used to it. It drained her.

  But every day she got up and put on her boots to do it all over again.

  She was here to make a difference.

  A sharp knock on her door had her looking up. Her breath caught in her throat at the single most beautiful man she’d ever seen. His skin was deep bronze, his features carved perfection. There was a harshness around the edge of his wide full mouth that could have been from laughing too much or yelling too often. Maybe both.

  And his shoulders filled the doorway. Dear lord, men actually came put together like this? She’d never met a man who embodied the fantasy man in uniform like this one. The real military man was just as likely to be a pimply-faced nineteen-year-old as he was to be this… this warrior god.

  A god who looked ready for battle. It took Emily all of six-tenths of a second to realize that this man was not here for her phone number or to strip her naked and have his way with her. Well, he might want to have his way with her but she imagined it was in a strictly professional way. Not a hot and sweaty way, the thought of which made her insides clench and tighten.

  She stood. This man looked like he was itching for a fight and darn it, if that’s what he wanted, then Emily would give it to him.

  It was just another day at the office, after all.

  * * *

  “Can I help you, Sergeant?”

  Reza glanced at the little captain, who looked braced for battle. She was cute in a Reese Witherspoon kind of way, complete with dimples, except for her rich dark hair and silver blue eyes. If Reza hadn’t been nursing one hell of a bad attitude and a serious case of the ass, he would’ve considered flirting with her.

  Except that the sergeant major’s warning of don’t fuck up beat a cadence in his brain, so he wouldn’t be flirting any time soon. Besides, something about the stubborn set of her jaw warned him that she was ready for battle. She didn’t look tough enough to crumble a cookie, and yet she’d squared off with him like she might just try to knock him down a peg or two. This ought to at least make the day interesting.

  Reza straightened. She was the enemy for leaders like him, who were doing their damnedest to put bad troops out of the army. People like her ignored the warning signs from warriors like Sloban and let spineless cowards like Wisniak piss on her leg about how his mommy didn’t love him enough.

  This wasn’t about Sloban. He couldn’t help him now and that fact burned on a fundamental level. He released a deep breath. Then sucked in another one. “I need to know if Sergeant Chuck Wisniak signed in to the clinic.”

  “I’m sorry but unless you’re the first sergeant or the commander, I can’t tell you that.”

  Reza breathed hard through his nose. “I’m the first sergeant.”

  Her gaze flicked to the sergeant first class rank on his chest. He wasn’t wearing the rank of the first sergeant, so his rank was missing the rocker and the diamond that distinguished first sergeants from the soldiers that they led. Sergeants First Class were first sergeants all the time, though.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Do you have orders?”

  Reza’s gaze dropped to the pen in her hand and the rhythmic way she flicked the cap on and off. He swallowed, pulling his gaze away from the distracting sound, and struggled to hold on to his patience.

  “First sergeants are not commanders. We don’t have assumption of command orders.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Ma’am, I just need to know if he’s here. Why is this such a big deal?”

  “Because Sergeant Wisniak has told this clinic on multiple occasions that his chain of command is targeting him, looking for an excuse to take his rank.”

  “Well, maybe if he was at work once in a while he wouldn’t feel so persecuted.”

  The small captain lifted her chin. “Sergeant, do you have any idea what it feels like t
o be looked at like you’re suspect every time you walk into a room?”

  Something cold slithered across Reza’s skin, sidling up to his heart and squeezing tightly. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to send soldiers back to combat knowing they lost training days chasing after a sissy-ass soldier who can’t get to work on time? Or cries every time his sergeant yells at him?”

  A shadow flickered across her pretty face but then it was gone, replaced by steel. “My job is to keep soldiers from killing themselves.”

  “And my job is to keep soldiers from dying in combat.”

  “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

  Silence hung between them, battle lines drawn.

  “I’m not leaving here without a status on Sarn’t Wisniak,” Reza said.

  Captain Lindberg folded her arms over her chest. A flicker in her eyes, nothing more, then she spoke. “Sergeant Wisniak is in triage.”

  “I need to speak with him.”

  Lindberg shook her head. “No. I’m not letting anyone see him but his commander. He’s probably going to be admitted to the fifth floor. He’s extremely high risk. And you’re part of his problem, Sergeant.”

  Reza’s temper snapped, breaking free before he could lash it back. “Don’t put that on me, sweetheart. That trooper came in the army weak. I had nothing to do with his lack of a backbone.” Reza turned to go before he lost his military bearing and started swearing. She’d already elevated his blood pressure to need-a-drink levels and it wasn’t even nine a.m.

  He could do this. He breathed deeply, running through creative profanity in his mind to keep the urge to drink at bay.

  Her words stopped him at the door, slicing at his soul.

  “How can you call yourself a leader? You’re supposed to care about all your soldiers,” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear her.