Gant audibly exhaled. “So,” he said to Zanna, “I hope you’re ready because this is an example of the unruly, hard-headed Marine you’ll be dealing with.”
Raul chuckled. “You told him to stay off his leg, sir. You didn’t say he couldn’t use his arms.”
Rivera’s crutches were propped against the wall behind him. He balanced on his left leg, his right foot well clear of the ground and stared at the middle height bar.
“Has he done some already?” Gant asked Raul.
“Five in and five out.”
“You can take the Marine out of the fight, but you can’t take the fight out of the Marine,” Gant said, the respect clear in his voice.
Zanna started to ask for an explanation, but Gant silenced her and pointed to Rivera.
Rivera hopped off his left leg and grabbed the bar, his hands shoulder width apart with his palms facing in toward his body. He was at full stretch, with his feet just clear of the floor. He pulled himself up until his chin was over the bar, and then lowered himself to a full stretch again. He repeated it six times in a row without pausing, and with no kipping, or swinging in his legs.
Zanna watched him, eyes wide. What if he loses his grip?
Rivera dropped to the floor. He kept his right knee bent and landed quietly and cleanly on his left foot. He shook his arms out and then hopped back up to the bar, this time with his palms facing out. He punched out another six non-stop pull-ups.
“Palm in uses the biceps to lift up; palm out uses the back muscles,” Raul said.
“So, he’s just done twenty-two pull-ups in all. Is that good?”
Raul conceded that it wasn’t bad.
“How many can you do?”
He laughed. “We don’t do many pull-ups in the Navy.”
Zanna briefly switched her gaze from Rivera to Gant.
“I’m a surgeon, not a SEAL.” He stepped aside to answer his phone.
7
Zanna’s phone buzzed with a message from Raul to meet him at Rivera’s room. She checked the time. Rivera’s physio session was due in fifteen minutes. Has something happened to him? Running was only condoned in genuine emergencies and Raul had not stipulated it was, so she power-walked down the corridor.
Raul was not outside the door. Thinking he might have meant inside the room, she entered to find Rivera snoring quietly in the calm expressionless phase of deep restorative sleep. His breakfast was untouched on the tray in front of him. And no Raul.
A flat blue box on the bedside table caught her eye. The sort that might contain jewelry. It sat on top of a red hardback folder embossed with a gold USMC logo. Intrigued, she walked around the bed, picked up the box—he’s still sound asleep—and opened it.
She looked up as Raul entered. Have you seen this? Zanna mouthed at him. He shook his head. She turned the box so he could see the medal.
Shit! he mouthed, his eyes widening. Outside, now, he signed with his thumb.
Zanna put the box down, then followed Raul outside and down the hallway. “OK, buster, what’s the scuttlebutt on this?”
“So, Myler, the Base Commander, and the Battalion Sergeant Major are here when I come for Rivera. I look to Myler for an explanation, but the Sergeant Major tells me to step into the ‘Beer Garden’ for a moment.”
“Excuse me?”
Raul laughed. “He meant, go outside for a cigarette. Make myself scarce. I wondered what the heck was going on.”
“And you didn’t see the boxes and folder?”
Raul scratched his chin. “Like I’m gonna ask, whatcha got in the briefcase, Sarn’t Major?”
“Touché.”
“Anyway, you know what that medal was, right?”
“It’s not my country’s medal. Though I doubt I’d recognize many of mine either, except the Victoria Cross.”
“That was a frickin’ Silver Star, Zanna.” He puffed his cheeks. “It’s our third highest award for acts of valor in combat. The wording on the citation says, ‘For Conspicuous Gallantry in Action’. Whatever he did, you can be sure it was bad ass.”
“Wow.”
“You betcha, wow.”
“What y’all wow-in’ at?” asked Petty Officer Second Class Joshua Abadie as he approached them.
“Nothing.” With his back to Abadie, Raul made a zipping motion over his lips.
“Is Rivera OK?” Zanna asked Abadie.
“Why?” The Deep South evident in his drawl.
“He was asleep when I came to fetch him for his therapy,” Raul said.
Zanna frowned. “He hasn’t touched his breakfast, and he’s still fast asleep. His vitals don’t point to anything amiss.”
“We had us a crisis here last night,” Abadie said.
“With him? A problem with his leg?” God, I hope not!
“No, Barelli in Nine. He needed emergency surgery at zero one thirty. I was sittin’ with the kid in Eleven but had to take Barelli to the OR. When I get back to the kid’s room, Rivera’s in there with him.”
Zanna did a double take.
Abadie continued, “He sittin’ on the edge of the bed, holdin’ the kid in his arms.”
“Excuse me.”
“Not like that.” Abadie sighed. “The kid’s sufferin’ from flashbacks and nightmares. He pulled two of his buddies out of a burnin’ vehicle. He wakes up screamin’ every night. I wasn’t there to help him, so I guess Rivera went to see what was goin’ on.”
“Did the other guys survive?”
“No.” Further elaboration was unnecessary. “Anyways, when I get back, Rivera’s sittin’ on the edge of the bed with his arms around the kid. You know, like, rockin’ him and talkin’ to him. He stayed till the kid calmed down and went back to sleep. It took a while. Then I helped . . . well, I walked . . . Rivera back to his own room. Guess it must have taken a lot out of him if he slept through breakfast.”
Zanna pinched the bridge of her nose to stop her eyes prickling. “Does he have nightmares?” she asked quietly.
Abadie scrutinized her. “Not the wake up screamin’ kind. And he don’ ever say nuthin’ ’bout any dreams.” He snorted. “Hah! He don’ ever say much at all.”
Zanna grinned. “No, the donkey is very safe around him.”
“What donkey?” Abadie looked to Raul for help.
Raul smirked. “I’m guessing, the one whose hind leg gets talked off.”
“Ohh-kaaaay . . . but don’ say nuthin’ to him ’bout the kid. Don’ think he would talk anyhows.” He continued on his way, muttering something about ‘crazy-ass English women’.
“Same goes for the medal, Zanna,” Raul said. “These guys don’t see it as the big deal the rest of us do. They’re not in it for the prizes. It’s just a normal day at the office to them.”
“Some office, that comes with those”—Zanna made quotation marks with her fingers—“benefits. I’m surprised it was just left lying around, though. Anyone could have—”
“They’d never have made it out the door.”
“He slept through me picking it up. And do you award them privately like that? No ceremony?”
Raul nodded. “Yeah, there will be a ceremony when his unit returns so everyone can share in the pride.”
They walked back to Rivera’s room. The medal and the folder were gone. Zanna shot a frenzied look at Raul. “Where are they?” she whispered. She opened his bedside table drawer, but that contained only some basic toiletries and a sport fishing magazine.
Raul shrugged. “Guess someone took them into safekeeping.”
“You said he would hear someone. A migrating herd of wildebeest could parade through here and he wouldn’t hear them!”
Rivera grunted and stirred in his sleep. Something he’d been holding in his left hand fell to the floor. Zanna closed the drawer, retrieved the two black rank insignia and showed them to Raul.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said. “Looks like his birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s all came on the same day.”
“Because?”
“Because he’s also been promoted to Gunnery Sergeant.” Raul grinned. “Looks like they want him back, so we better make damn sure he effects a full recovery . . . ASAP.”
Amanda stuck her head around the door. “Omigod, you’re here!” She came in, apologizing to Rivera for waking him. “Guess what? Guess what?”
Raul hazarded a guess. “You won the Lottery?
“Not quite,” Amanda said, panting. “Will—”
Zanna froze her with a death stare.
“I mean, Commander Gant asked if I’d like to go to Afghanistan with him on his next visit.”
Zanna’s eyes widened. “You didn’t say yes?”
“Of course, I did!”
“Have you been out in the midday sun without your factor fifty again?”
Amanda giggled. “Oh, shut up, Carpenter. It’s not like I’m going into combat. The commander has to go over to see about some new surgical technique they’re implementing out there. He said I could observe the workings of a Forward Surgical Team. And not only that, he said we’d come back via Germany so I’d also get to visit Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.”
“Did he say where you are going?” Raul asked.
“He says we’ll fly into Kandahar Airfield and then on to a place called Bulldog Base?”
Rivera dipped his head. “Forward Operating Base Bulldog.”
“That’s it. You know it?” Amanda asked.
“I know it.”
“What’s it like?”
Raul asnerewed with a smirk. “They say you only get two seasons in the Stan; the hot, dusty one or the cold, wet one. But it should be starting to warm up there, by now.”
Amanda looked around the group. “But it is safe, right?”
“Some say it’s safer than Chicago,” Raul said.
Amanda clutched his arm. “Should I go?”
He shrugged. “I guess the commander wouldn’t have offered if he didn’t think you could handle it, but it ain’t Disneyland. You’ll need to attend a safety course and read up on what precautions to take.”
“See,” Amanda said to Zanna.
Zanna placed her left hand on her hip and wagged her right forefinger at Rivera. “You should have been in the gym almost an hour ago. Do you plan to spend all day lazing around in bed?”
“No, but I was waiting for you ladies to leave first.”
“Why?” asked Amanda.
“To spare your blushes more than mine.”
He was topless, and he threw back the bed sheets as far as his thigh to reveal his bare right leg. Amanda’s color rose. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Rivera bared his teeth in a devilish grin. “You wanna see it again?”
Amanda flushed a deeper crimson.
Zanna snapped the sheet back over his leg. “See you at the gym in thirty minutes.”
Amanda arched her back. “Zanna, the headmaster wants a progress report from you today.” She changed her voice to a gruff authoritative one. “His office, fourteen hundred.” She reverted to her own clear-cut, soft voice. “That is two pm, isn’t it?”
8
“Take a seat on the table, please,” Zanna said.
This was Rivera’s first PT session since the external fixator had been replaced with a titanium rod inside his tibia and his lower leg was now encased in a removable fiberglass brace. He swiveled around to sit with the edge of the padded table against the back of his knees.
Zanna bent to remove the cast. Rivera’s knuckles whitened and he stifled an intake of breath. “I’m sure it’s still sore,” she said, “but I bet you don’t miss those screws on the fixator being adjusted every day.”
Rivera shook his head.
OK, so Will didn’t manage to activate your ‘talk’ switch during that last operation. “You know, Commander Gant is very pleased with your progress. Now the fixator’s off, we can move steadily forward.”
Rivera replied with a quick upward tilt of his head, which Zanna had worked out meant he agreed with, or was pleased about, something. Oh, and there’s that cheeky grin. “Right, swing around and put your legs on the table so I can take a look at them.” She examined the older scars and the fresh ones livid from the recent operation. “Do you mind if I touch them?”
“No.”
She gently investigated the right calf and shin. The lumps and bumps in the muscle were still evident, but the flesh was cooler and there was already a noticeable increase in muscle tone. She palpated the area above his left knee where the deep cut was now healing with a three-inch scar. A pastel spectrum of fading bruises ran from his knee up under his shorts. She squeezed his thigh muscles. Heck, bloody oak trees! The right one did not yield under her fingers the way the left one did.
“Lie back.” Zanna placed a pillow under his broken leg. “Your right thigh has gone into spasm. I’m going to fix that, OK?”
He gave a curt nod and put his hands behind his head.
Gant had implied Rivera wouldn’t be the most communicative patient she’d work with, but she didn’t think of him that way. He always responded politely to her questions, albeit in his taciturn manner.
She applied a little almond oil to her hands and got to work on the muscles above the knee, firmly but considerately kneading her fingers into the knotted fibers, encouraging them to release. Every now and then she would glance at Rivera to make sure she wasn’t causing any repercussive pain in the lower limb, but his impassive stare gave nothing away.
Raul sat in Rivera’s wheelchair. “Hey, Zanna, me an’ him are used to being moved around all over the place and for both of us this place is not too far from our hometowns, but do you get homesick?”
“No, not really. I miss certain things that you don’t have here, but that’s normal. And family are only a phone call away. Where are you from?”
“Me, San Fran. Him, LA.”
“City boys, eh? I’m from a small village in the middle of England called Tillington.”
Rivera lifted his head. “Is that near—?”
She sighed. “No, it’s nowhere near London.” Since her arrival, she had been asked countless times whether she lived near London. Why do Americans think everything is near London?
“—Credenhill.”
Zanna stared at him. “How the heck do you know that?”
“Been there.”
“Credenhill or Tillington?”
“Both.”
“No way! So, you know The Bell pub then?”
One side of his mouth twitched. “My sergeant insignia is embedded in the canopy over the bar.”
Honor Courage Commitment Page 5