An Everyday Hero

by Laura Trentham

  “This is Emmett Lawson,” Greer said. “I’ve mentioned him in our sessions, remember? He’s my friend and here to help.”

  “You’re not a doctor.” Ally narrowed her eyes.

  “No, but I went through basic medic training in the army. May I?”

  Ally stared at him as if she could ferret out his motivations. Finally, she curled in on herself and in a defeated voice said, “Whatever.”

  Emmett squatted next to the couch, a little off-balance with his prosthetic leg stretched out to the side.

  “What’s wrong with your leg?” Ally’s voice was flat and distant and strangely conversational.

  “Got injured in an ambush. Lost it.” He pulled his pants up enough to reveal his prosthetic.

  “Sorry about that.” After a pause, she said in a quiet voice, “My dad was in the army. He was killed last fall.”

  “I’m sorry. Too many good men don’t come home.” Emmett didn’t force-feed her pity, only understanding. “What was his name?”

  “Javier Martinez.”

  Emmett froze with his phone halfway out of his pocket. His face had blanched except for two red streaks across his cheeks. He looked like he might throw up.

  Greer put her hand on his shoulder and stared up into his eyes. Devastation reflected back. “Everything okay?” she whispered.

  He took a deep breath and transferred his attention back to Karen. She noted his non-answer. Everything was far from okay. With a noticeable tremble, he turned on his flashlight app and shined it into her eyes while lifting her eyelids one by one.

  “Ally. What did your mom take?” Emmett wiped his suddenly sweaty face on his shoulder. He was leaning hard into the arm of the couch.

  “Sit down, Emmett.” Greer pointed to an armchair bearing the permanent impression of its owner. He didn’t argue, but took a seat and dropped his head toward his knees.

  With worry bearing down on them, Greer snaked an arm around Ally’s shoulders. “Any idea what sort of drugs she usually takes?”

  Ally stiffened. “She’s not a druggie.”

  “She’s a woman who needs help. Let us help her,” Greer said.

  After a pause, Ally seemed to collapse into herself, her shoulders hunched. “Painkillers. Xanax. Not sure what else.”

  “Pills, then?”

  Ally took a swipe at her running nose like a toddler. “I did something bad.”

  “What?” Greer asked.

  “I took the pills she had stashed and flushed them. I knew she didn’t have the money for more. I thought—hoped—things would go back to normal, but it got worse.”

  “She went into withdrawal.” Emmett’s statement jolted Greer. It had been more dire than she’d imagined.

  “She’s been antsy and paranoid, but today was really bad. I skipped school to take care of her. Exams are over anyway. She took off to score what she needed. I tried to stop her.” Ally’s wobbling chin almost got the best of her, but she took a shuddery breath and continued. “I got Miles to help me find her. He knows where this kind of stuff goes down. We found her wandering around. She was high but able to talk to us and stuff, but then she sort of passed out as soon as we got her in here.”

  Emmett levered himself up, looking shaky but with more color in his face. “Her breathing and heart rate seem normal, but her eyes are dilated and she’s unresponsive. We should call 911.”

  A tear streaked the black liner under Ally’s eye, muting it like a watercolor. “No! She’s just passed out. She wouldn’t want me to call an ambulance.”

  Emmett hesitated as if he was preparing to launch an argument. Instead, he said, “Fine. No ambulance, but we’re taking her to the hospital.”

  Without letting Ally mount another protest, Emmett tucked his arms under Karen’s neck and knees and cradled her to his chest. He limped to the door. Greer herded Ally after him. The boy from the stoop stood waiting against the far wall, the tip of his cigarette casting a faint glow. He moved forward.

  “Thanks, Miles.” Ally kept her head down and her shoulders hunched. A note of embarrassment weaved through her fear and worry.

  Emmett and Ally shuffled toward the exit. Miles slipped by her to the small apartment, but Greer grabbed his hand before he could disappear. “Thank you for keeping them safe.”

  “She going to be okay?” he asked low enough for Ally not to hear.

  Greer wasn’t sure if he was more worried about Ally or her mom. “I hope so. We’re going to take her to the hospital.”

  Miles bit his lip, his gaze skating to the carpet. “Tell Ally I’ll see her around. I won’t tell or nothing.”

  The boy knew Ally well enough to know her weakness and her strength was her pride. Greer stopped herself from giving the boy a hug. Barely. She caught up with Emmett and Ally. He took the steps one at a time, his limp more pronounced once he hit the sidewalk and headed to the car.

  Once Emmett had Karen loaded into the backseat, he pressed the keys into Greer’s hand. The nearest hospital wasn’t more than ten minutes away even with the lights to navigate. Once she had pulled out on the main road, she checked on Karen and Ally in the backseat—situation unchanged—then tossed a glance Emmett’s way before the light turned green.

  “How’s your leg?” she asked even though he was rubbing his thigh.

  “Hurts.”

  Ally scooted and poked her head between the two front seats, her elbows resting on top of the seats. “At least you came home. None of this would have happened if Dad hadn’t died.”

  Emmett sank down in the seat, covered his mouth, and shifted toward the window. More than his leg was bothering him, but Greer didn’t have the emotional energy to devote to Emmett at the moment. She pulled into the circular drive of the hospital’s ER entrance, left the car idling, and ran through the automatic doors to snag the nearest person in scrubs.

  “I have a woman who’s possibly overdosed out in my car. She’s unconscious, but her breathing is normal.” Her words stumbled over one another in the rush to get out.

  The woman’s expression remained impassive, but she directed a young man outside with a gurney. No one was moving as quickly as Greer wanted.

  After some tense moments when the doctor questioned Ally and Greer about what Karen might have ingested, Karen was wheeled into a room and Ally and Greer banished while she was evaluated.

  Greer walked Ally to a seat. “Can I get you something? A Coke? Coffee?”

  Ally sat down, leaned her head back against the wall, and closed her eyes. “No, thanks.”

  Greer hovered and watched her until it started feeling weird. She turned away and scanned the waiting area. No sign of Emmett. A shot of panic had her run-walking through the automatic doors. Her car was gone. The red and blue from the ER sign cast eerie light around her.

  A man approached from the shadowy parking lot, his gait uneven. She let out a breath and met him halfway, walking straight into his chest.

  “I thought you’d driven off and left me.” When he didn’t offer reassurances, she pulled away to take in his grim countenance.

  “As a matter of fact, I’m going to head home. No one needs me here.”

  She thwarted his attempt to shake her off and grabbed hold of the front of his shirt. “I need you here.”

  The slight hitch to his breathing signaled her words hitting their mark, yet he didn’t speak.

  “What’s wrong? I saw your face back there. You nearly fell apart.” This time she let silence apply its unique pressure.

  “Her dad was Javier Martinez.”

  “Yes.”

  “He was my sergeant.”

  Her two worlds collided and the aftermath left her reeling. “Ally’s dad is the man you tried to save but couldn’t?”

  His anguish swirled around them like a tornado, affecting her as well. But she knew that if she let him run from this, he would never leave the cabin again. All the growth he’d achieved the last few weeks would be mown down.

  “I’m the cause of all of this
,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Yes. Ally said it herself. If her dad had made it home, none of this would have happened.”

  “The ambush wasn’t your fault. You didn’t push drugs into Karen’s hands.”

  He made a scoffing sound and pointed. “That girl is suffering.”

  “Yes, but not because of you.”

  “If I’d been faster … If I had been paying closer attention to what was going on, I might have been able to warn him. Her dad would be alive. Karen wouldn’t be in the hospital. Their family would still be together, and Ally wouldn’t be dealing with things no kid should have to deal with.”

  “You can’t rewrite history.”

  The desolation in his eyes resonated to her like aftershocks. “It should have been me. I had nothing; he had everything.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.” She shoved his shoulder and life flared on his face for an instant before it was snuffed out. “You want to discuss what ifs? What if I hadn’t met you? Where would I be right now?”

  “You’d be fine.”

  “I’d probably have caved and gotten back together with Beau. Or gone out with Ryan. Would you call that better off? I definitely wouldn’t be playing music again. I wouldn’t have enrolled in school. I wouldn’t have a plan for my future. And I wouldn’t be desperately in love for the first time in my life with the best man I’ve ever known.”

  He took a step back as if she’d punched him in the gut. “No,” he whispered.

  “Yes.” While she wasn’t going to deny the truth of her outburst, her timing was spectacularly bad. “You can’t turn your back on Ally and Karen.”

  “I’ll only make things worse. Once I tell them who I am, they’ll hate me for being alive when Javier is dead.”

  “Then let them hate you. Maybe that’s what they need. Or maybe they need help getting their lives back together. You think you don’t deserve to be called a hero because of what happened in Afghanistan, but you have a chance right here, right now to be a real hero, Emmett.”

  He stared up at the sky and mumbled a string of curses. “You’re not being fair.”

  “None of this was fair. You losing a leg, Ally’s dad dying. That doesn’t mean we give up.”

  “But—”

  “No more buts. Listen to me: You gave me the courage to get back onstage and face my fears. Once I did, a weight disappeared. I know this is different—harder—but I’ll back you up. I promise.” When he remained staring sightlessly at the sky, she added, “You can’t feel any worse about the situation, can you? Why not try to make it better?”

  “Is it even right to lay this on Ally when she has other things to worry about?”

  “Ally is stronger and wiser than most people give her credit for. She’ll appreciate being treated like she’s not a child. More than anything, she wants the truth.”

  He ran a hand down his face and nodded. “This is my purgatory.”

  She tutted. “Church of Christ are so dramatic.”

  A spontaneous huff snuck out of him. “How do you manage to make me laugh?”

  “A rebellious nature and unchecked sacrilegious tendencies?”

  He hauled her closer and kissed her temple. “God, I love you.”

  She stopped short and looked up at him. “You do?”

  “How could I not? I was a goner when you informed me in no uncertain terms that I needed better manners and a bath.”

  “If only I’d known that’s how to attract nice guys, I would have turned to insults years ago.” She wanted to keep him diverted, but as soon as they crossed into the artificial lighting of the waiting room, reality darkened the mood.

  Would the truth set Emmett and Ally free or would it drive them deeper to ground?

  Chapter 20

  Every pang and ache in his residual limb on his walk toward Ally felt like part of his penance. The coming storm threatened to consume him. He took the seat next to her, garnering a suspicious, teenager-specific side-eye that already made him feel like she disliked him. Greer sat across from them, her steady gaze giving him a bolster of courage he needed more than ever.

  His world had gone topsy-turvy as if God, sensing he had found his footing in Madison, had tugged the rug from under him to keep him off-balance. Greer’s defiant declaration of her love had shocked him, yet drawn into sharp focus his own feelings.

  After the trauma of losing Javier and his leg, he’d assumed his life would continue in a series of dreary, uninspiring days until he too died. Greer had carved new paths and given him a will to not just live but live well. But his regrets and guilt hadn’t vanished, they had just taken up residence in a spare room.

  He fought the compulsion to walk out and keep going until his legs gave out. How was that for heroic? Yet here he sat, his hands clasped between his knees, wondering how to tell the girl at his side he had tried but hadn’t been able to save her dad.

  “Any word on your mom yet?” Greer asked.

  “No.” Ally sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Emmett couldn’t look away from her. Parts of Javier reflected back in the set of her chin (stubborn) and the turn of her mouth (sarcastic). In her, pieces of Javier would live on. It was small comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

  “Dude. What are you staring at? It’s creepy.” She finally met his gaze head-on and defiantly.

  “You remind me of your dad,” he said softly.

  With her gaze glued to him, she asked slowly, “You knew my dad?”

  He nodded. “Sergeant Javier Martinez. I was his company commander.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Ally shot an accusing look at Greer.

  “Greer didn’t know. I didn’t either until you told me his name.” He cleared his throat. “He was a good man.”

  “You were friends?”

  The chain of command precluded true friendship, but Sergeant Martinez had been an integral part of his company. “His men respected him, and I hope I earned his respect.”

  Her gaze sharpened. “You were his commander. That means you were in charge?”

  “I was in charge.”

  She glanced toward his leg and pointed. “Did that happen the same time my dad was killed?”

  “Yes. He was right in front of me when the explosion went off.”

  He wasn’t sure what he had expected. Tears. Anger. Hysterics of some sort. In a flat, emotionless voice, she asked, “Was he in pain?”

  Based on his massive injuries, he must have been in intense pain, but how could he tell her that? Yet, had he really experienced pain? His own injury taught him the debilitating pain came later. In the moment, adrenaline masked all feelings, and mind and body had one purpose: survival.

  “I can’t say for sure if he was in pain or not, but based on my own injuries, I’d say no.”

  “Your leg didn’t hurt?”

  “Not right afterward. Everything goes numb. In fact, I tried to stand back up. Only when my leg wouldn’t support me did I realize something was wrong.”

  “What kind of injuries did my dad have?”

  He hadn’t expected her to want the gory details. “It’s not important. I want you to know—”

  “It’s important to me. Tell me what happened. Everything.”

  Her eyes were years—decades—older than her body. Fundamental understanding flowed between them and left them isolated from even Greer, who loved them both.

  “It should have been routine patrol. We’d completed dozens without incident. It was hot, but a beautiful day. The sky was blue with a few puffy white clouds. The kind I used to stare up at as a kid and imagine they were animals. I lagged behind your dad. It was when he turned to bust my chops about falling behind that the explosion took us out.”

  He paused and closed his eyes. “Next thing I know, I’m on my back. My ears are ringing. I can’t hear. But I can see the impact of bullets in the dirt around us. I returned fire. After I realized my leg was toast, I crawled to your dad.”

&n
bsp; “Dad wasn’t dead?”

  “Not … not yet. I grabbed his flak jacket and pulled him with me into a shallow ditch on the side of the road. He…” This part was the hardest, and he swallowed down a slug of emotion. “He was staring at me, his hand out.”

  The dirt under him had turned into bloody mud … but some images were only for him to bear.

  “My training kicked in. I applied a tourniquet and put pressure on his chest wound, but I could tell his lung was perforated and an artery hit.”

  “Did he say anything?” Ally asked softly, her hands knitted together and pressed between her knees.

  Between the ringing in his ears and the general chaos, he’d never figured out what Javier had been mouthing. Emmett closed his eyes and forced himself back into the moment he’d done his best to bury six feet deep.

  He opened his eyes to find himself gazing into a pair of chocolate-brown eyes fringed with the same dark lashes as Javier Martinez.

  “Ally. He repeated your name until the end.”

  The impassivity of her expression crumbled beneath an onslaught of grief. He didn’t know what to do except take her into his arms and offer comfort. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

  She didn’t shove him away and curse him for his inability to save her dad. Instead, she buried her face in his shirt. He rubbed her back and murmured meaningless apologies. Remembering Greer was bearing witness, he turned his head, fearful of her reaction even though she’d already seen the worst of him.

  She brushed tears from her cheeks, her nose red and her eyes puffy, but she nodded and the rightness of his confession settled like the final fistful of dirt in a grave.

  When Ally’s sobs faded into hiccups, he said, “I wish things had been different.”

  “Me too.” Ally pulled away and took a tissue from a box on a table next to her. “But it’s not different. My dad is gone and my mom is messed up. What am I going to do?”

  “You mean, what are we going to do? The situation may not be different, but some things have changed. You’re not alone.” Greer squatted on the floor in front of Ally.

  A doctor came out and approached them, his movements brisk, bordering on impatient. The three of them stood. “Are you Mrs. Martinez’s daughter?” he asked.