Purple Hearts

by Tess Wakefield

  I was suddenly aware of my tattoos and tangled hair and red-rimmed eyes. I put my hands on my hips. “Yes, sir. His kneecap was shattered by bullets in Afghanistan.”

  For a second, he said nothing. I thought I saw his jaw twitch, but I couldn’t be sure. “Is he coming home?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  He looked back at the garage, void of customers, and pulled out an old brick-style Nokia cell phone, spitting on the ground. “That son of a bitch.”

  Luke

  There are three kinds of pain. There’s physical pain, handed to you in gasping, sharp doses. No rhythm to it. Just mad stabbing when the whim hits, like a steel rod into the flesh of a peach. That’s the kind of pain I felt in flashes on the trip to Munich, watching the shadows of paramedics cross the cabin lights.

  When Frankie and I had stepped out from behind the jeep, the pain had announced itself, bloody and throbbing. The bullets had pummeled my knee and upper shin until it was a useless sack, but the pain shoved me forward, pushing me to hold the gun tighter, stand straighter with the leg that was left.

  “They’re picking us off from the northwest hill,” Clark had said between rounds.

  It’d been so quiet. Wind had whipped the NATO flag on the hood.

  “Let’s get back in and get a better position.”

  “We can’t,” Clark said. “Probably mines ahead.”

  Everyone was breathing hard. In sync, in harmony, even then. My socks were wet, sticky, squishing in my boots. I shouldn’t have looked down. Someone’s boots had fallen off their feet, splattered red. Two other pairs of boots, on a pair of bodies on the ground, faces obstructed.

  They had started shooting again.

  Then there was the ache that had smothered me when I woke up in the hallway of Brooke Medical Center back in America. It covered me like a blanket, lulling me to sleep, calling me to some higher purpose, whispering in a sweet voice, You don’t have to worry anymore, your job is to suffer, and that’s it. Don’t get up, don’t fight, all you have to do is bear it.

  I’d heard deep Texas accents answering phones. I’d looked at the hand holding the bars of my gurney. Each nail was painted with a tiny Santa Claus.

  Between the physical pain and the ache, or on top of them, or all around them, is the third kind. I suppose you’d call it emotional or mental pain, but that would imply it was knowable, that it could be labeled and stored somewhere in the brain, and you’d just keep on living.

  No. Every thought, from my arm itches to what am I going to do now? was suspended on hooks over a dark sea. There was what was happening, then it got snagged on what happened.

  What was happening: Thirty steel pins in my leg the previous afternoon. An indefinite stay. A view of the parking lot.

  What happened: That morning Gomez showed the British officers that they were cleaning dishes wrong. They ended up squirting one another with bottles of soap.

  I might walk, I might not. Two more people in scrubs had looked over the doctor’s clipboard when he said that yesterday, then to my leg, then back to the clipboard.

  Our room with the crummy wood paneling, shaving mirror standing on the green table, the exposed pipes, blankets folded in the corner where we’d left them, would be empty.

  Frankie was gone.

  An army nurse in Germany had told me he was gone. There was a knock on the door frame.

  Rooster was gone, too. The volleyball team would have to find new players.

  The door was always open here. Just in case.

  Ahmad, the eight-year-old who loved to serve and dive after wild hits, would be asking where we were today.

  “Private Morrow?”

  I turned my head on the pillow. A gray-haired man stood in the doorway. “Yes, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Ray Yarvis, Medical Service Corps. Welcome to Brooke.”

  I brought a stiff arm up to salute. He returned it. “Every new intake gets assigned a social worker, and I’m your guy.”

  He sat, bending over a paunch, and took in the damage. He had deep lines around his mouth and eyes, which were a silvery, pool-water blue. He had a two-packs-a-day voice, just like the guy who ran the lotto booth at Mort’s, the corner shop in Buda. He was the first person here to look me in the eye.

  “I do this job because I’ve been where you are. Served two tours in Vietnam, now walking on a titanium foot.” He pointed to his left shin. “Anything you feel you can’t ask your doctors, you tell me. You pissed at the army? You tell me. I’m your buffer.”

  I tried to bring some moisture to my mouth. “Did they tell you if I’m going to walk again?”

  “I think you are.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  He held up a chubby hand. “If they said maybe, they’re just covering their butts. Judging by other men I’ve seen with pins, I bet you’ll be up in a few weeks.”

  For a minute, I came up out of the haze. “That’s good.”

  “We’ll talk more, but there are people waiting outside to see you.”

  “What people?” I grew a dim, stupid hope. Someone from my company. Captain Grayson. Frankie, not dead after all.

  “Your people.” He nodded to the door. “Your kid brother and folks.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “You sure? I can tell them you pressed the morphine button too hard.”

  A laugh escaped. “No. Thank you, sir.”

  He stood with a grunt. “Okay, Morrows,” he called. “You can come on in.”

  The first to enter was Hailey, elephant-walking JJ, who was clinging to her leg, his light-up sneakers balanced on one of her sandaled feet. Then Jake, scooting past her holding a Dr Pepper and a Sports Illustrated.

  I didn’t know whether to be elated or just pretend I was asleep. I wasn’t ready. I was still knee-deep in Afghan quicksand and Frankie’s dead eyes and the horde of woodpeckers that were hacking at my leg.

  “Got you a DP,” Jake was saying. “They were out of everything except for that and orange soda.”

  Jake had gotten me a DP. He’d not only driven from Buda to San Antonio with his wife and kid, he’d stopped at the vending machine. I wondered if it was out of pity, or the desire for reconciliation, or both. Either way I caught his eyes as I took the cold bottle, opening it to find it was the best Dr Pepper I’d ever tasted.

  “Thank you, Jake,” I said, hoping whatever I was doing with my face resembled a smile. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “You look like a stranger. Damn, they did a number on you, huh?” Jake replied.

  “Just got out of another surgery yesterday,” I told him. The bullets had almost shattered my leg in two. It was saved by a metal plate, and five screws to hold my knee together.

  Then I noticed Cassie slide in against the wall, eyes down, clutching her purse with white knuckles. She made a beeline for the bed, leaning over me for a light kiss on the cheek, her chest pressing mine.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  When she backed away from the bed, I noticed another body.

  There, between Jake and Hailey, was my dad. Judging by the apology, I’m guessing Cassie had contacted him. Why the hell she decided to do that, I didn’t know. I searched for what to say, wondering if he was just biding his time before he told me I owed him money.

  He looked thinner, paler, than the last time I’d seen him. He was chewing sunflower seeds, spitting the shells into a paper cup. I was already starting to feel inadequate and stupid all over again, frail and dumb in my thin white robe and gimp leg.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said, the words like goo in my mouth.

  “Luke,” he said, glancing at me for a total of about a half millisecond before his eyes went back to the TV above my bed.

  “So we met your—” Hailey took her hand off JJ’s head to gesture at Cassie. “Your wife.”

  “Yep,” Cassie said in her fake upbeat voice, nodding from the wall. “Great to finally meet y’all. Luke’s told me so much about you.”

  “We don’t know j
ack shit about you,” Jake said with a half-smile.

  “Babe!” Hailey scolded.

  “What?” Jake shrugged, glancing at me with a what the fuck? face. “Guess out of everyone I know, it makes the most sense Luke would have a shotgun wedding. He’s always been so fucking impulsive.”

  Cassie and I caught each other’s gaze.

  “When you know, you know.” Cassie looked at Hailey, her head tilted as if she were overcome with adoration. “Right?”

  Cassie then turned her gaze at me, urging me with a look only I could see. Romantic phrases, romantic phrases, romantic phrases. I couldn’t think of a single one. I mean, Jesus, I’d been through a lot in the last forty-eight hours. Sue me if I wasn’t feeling like fucking Fabio. My hands started to feel clammy.

  I took the Dr Pepper from where I’d set it on the side table, and turned to her with the sweetest look I could muster. “Wanna sip, honey?”

  “Thank you, darlin’,” she said, and I could almost hear her teeth clench.

  Yeah, sorry, I tried to tell her with my eyes. Not my best.

  She took the tiniest drop, almost none at all. Then I remembered. Diabetes, you idiot.

  “Well, I’m still pretty exhausted,” I said. As much I wanted to talk to Jake, I was too tired to fake it with Cassie right now. She looked like she was on her last bit of fuel, too.

  “We’ll leave you to it,” Hailey said, and she and Jake turned toward the door.

  Dad spit another shell and stepped out of the room without a nod. But he had come. That said a lot.

  “Are y’all—” I called, and Jake paused. “Are y’all gonna come back?”

  Hailey looked at Jake.

  “I’d love to have you back,” I added, and tried not to sound desperate.

  “Yeah, I mean, but we’re not all roses,” Jake said, his eyebrows knit together, glancing at Cassie. “I’m not gonna, like, change your bedpan.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to,” I said.

  “But, yeah, we’ll come back,” he said. Hailey nodded. “The fact that you got close to being taken.” He paused, swallowing. “That puts a lot of things in perspective, doesn’t it?”

  At the doorway, Hailey whispered something in JJ’s ear.

  “Tank you for the LEGOs!” he called.

  My heartbeat was still fast as they left, but I felt energized, hopeful.

  Cassie was still against the wall, slumped, but her lips were turned up, watching them go. She pulled a chair next to my bed. “Any news of Frankie?” she asked.

  The smiles left both our faces in turn.

  Cassie

  I’d gotten back from San Antonio a few days ago, after spending as little time as possible with Luke’s family. It wasn’t too hard. I still didn’t know the whole deal with all of them, but no one seemed to want to really talk, anyway.

  Frankie was dead. That was all I could think about. Just when I’d forget, something would remind me again. Right now it was the smell of potato chips. This kept happening. One moment I was fine, happy even, and the next I would burst into tears. Frankie had always smelled like potato chips because his mom put them in his lunch every day, and instead of eating them all at once, he had liked to carry them around with him in a Ziploc baggie. He’d do that thing where he’d position them in his mouth to make it look like he had a duck beak. Cassie, look, he’d say, and I’d look up from whatever sand structure I was building. Ha ha, I’d say, and roll my eyes, because he did that every day.

  Now he was erased from the Earth. Every time I was reminded of this fact, I was shocked all over again, like my whole body had stepped on a tack.

  I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of Toby’s giant Longhorns sweatshirt. I was lying on his floor.

  “Hey! Hey.” Toby looked down at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Just thinking,” I said, swallowing what was left of the tears.

  “Family stuff again?”

  “Kind of.” I hadn’t figured out how to tell Toby any of it. It felt like explaining Frankie meant explaining Luke, and that felt so small compared to anything else. Where I knew I should feel guilt about lying to Toby, I felt only grief. I had never lost someone before Frankie.

  “Well. Get up. Let me cheer you up.”

  I sniffed and sat up.

  A dissonant chime echoed through Toby’s apartment. Topy looked at me. My phone.

  “I thought I’d left it at home again,” I muttered, making my way down the hall. I found it sitting near the front door, on the table where he kept his keys. A number I didn’t recognize lit up the screen. Something’s wrong with Luke. My stomach dropped.

  “Hello?” I asked, my fists clenched.

  “Cassie?” It was a man’s voice, unfamiliar.

  “Yeah,” I said, my mind flipping through the worst.

  “This is Josh van Ritter, with Wolf Records.”

  Wolf Records? My brain was trying to catch up. Not Luke. Not bad. Good. Very good. “Oh, hi!” I said, trying to make my voice sound normal.

  “Yeah, are you familiar?”

  Was I familiar with one of the biggest indie labels putting out right now? Uh. Yeah. “Very. I mean, huge fan,” I told him, padding as quickly as I could to Toby’s room, and pointing to the phone, my mouth open in a joyful silent scream. I put the call on speaker.

  “So Todd Barker, the manager for Les RAV, sent me your Bandcamp page and I’m interested to see what else you’ve got going on.”

  Toby had sat up in his bed and scooted, somewhat undignified, to the edge, and was now riveted. He glanced at me and said, loud, “Hi, Toby Masters here, also in The Loyal. I hope you don’t mind Cassie’s got you on speaker.”

  “Hi there, Toby. So I see you’ve got a few singles up. Do you have a full EP as well?”

  “Kind of, but we have new stuff, too,” I said, matching his quick words, pacing around Toby’s room. “I can send you our first EP and we’ll probably get more tracks out after the New Year.”

  “Tell you what, I’m booked solid until the end of the year, and it’s kind of crucial that our bands tour anyway, so I’d love to see you live. I’m going to fly down for your show in March at the . . .”

  “Sahara Lounge,” Toby filled in.

  “Right. You play me songs for a full album, we’ll talk. Sound good?”

  After exchanging contact info, we hung up happy. My head spinning around with which of the new stuff to play, heart fluttering, walking to the kitchen on the balls of my feet.

  Toby followed.

  “That was Wolf Records,” I said to Toby, manic. “On the phone.”

  Toby’s voice went high. “Cassie. That was Wolf Records as in Wolf Records. Holy shit.”

  “That’s the one.” I smiled, feeling my head shake, shocked.

  He laughed, and began to talk logistics.

  Suddenly, as had happened several times over the last forty-eight hours, my thoughts ran smack into a wall. I could barely move from room to room, let alone think about banging on an instrument in front of people.

  I sniffed, trying to make my throat loose again.

  “T, I need a second.”

  “Okay, no problem,” he said, absent, still flipping through records. “I’ll just find this real quick.”

  He held out the album, a preacher with a Bible. “You know how many bands would kill to be considered by Wolf Records?”

  I sighed, pushing sleeves to my eyes, wishing his giant sweatshirt would swallow me whole so I could be in darkness and softness and nothingness. “Yes. I do happen to know that,” I muttered.

  “They’re one of the only indie labels that puts out Billboard-level stuff. They’ve got great shit going on. And they want us!”

  “I know!” I shouted. “I fucking know that!”

  He stared at me, mouth open. Tears were coming soon. I clenched my gut hard, keeping them in. I hated feeling like a child, like a kid who’d gotten sick at a sleepover and was ruining the fun. I opened my mouth and took a breath, holding the small, rocky ocea
n that had started to occupy my stomach whenever I thought about the last few days.

  Toby opened his arms. I went to him. Lorraine, Toby’s cat, seemed to understand. She wound between our ankles, purring. “Remember my friend who was in the army?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and I could feel him tense under me.

  “Well, Frankie died.”

  “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry, Cass,” he whispered. “I didn’t know.”

  “We’ve been friends since we were little,” I said.

  Toby said nothing, waiting, stroking my hair. I let myself remember Frankie as I’d last seen him, at the airport, looking at Elena with total devotion. I let myself remember how he looked when I’d first met him, wearing a Power Rangers shirt with his little belly always hanging out.

  I breathed again, no longer able to hold back. For now, the present—the night and the floor and the cat and the feel of Toby’s paisley chest against my cheek—these were the only sure things. I held him tighter, and let myself weep.

  Luke

  Someone was sitting beside my bed. The sound of the chair scraping on hospital tile had woken me up, and I could feel their heat near my leg. I kept my eyelids down, allowing a slit of light, but couldn’t make out who it was. Must be visiting hours. If it was my nurse, Tara, she’d be pulling off the covers, lifting my legs with her cold, thin hands, chatting about her son, her feet, her car, whatever else came to mind to distract me from the fact that she’d be lifting my balls and ass into a bedpan.

  This person was silent, still, maybe sleeping.

  I wondered if it was my dad. He could do that, just sit in any chair and close his eyes. Long hours at the garage and taking care of two boys solo would wear you out, I guess.

  I kept my eyes closed. It was a match of wills. Who would give in first?

  We did not “ask questions.” You were supposed to just know. You were supposed to just know how to change your brother’s diaper, why the sky was blue, how to brush your teeth, if ghosts were real, how to switch the lightbulb that went out in your room, how to preheat the oven, how much shampoo was too much, who was pitching for the Rangers, how to shave your face, how to drive a stick, why your mom died.