“Don’t know what you’re on about. Anyway, look who’s talking.” Amanda’s balled fists went to her hips. “You haven’t seen me digging at you for all your Rivera this, Rivera that.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Oh, c’mon, Zan, I can see you’ve got the hots for him.”
“What!”
“You accuse me of blathering about Angel but you, in your more subtle way, do the same about Rivera.”
“You don’t deny it then?”
“Do you?”
They stood glaring at each other. A smile spread across Zanna’s face. Amanda joined in and soon they were both laughing out loud.
“We made that silly deal about not getting romantically involved with anyone while we’re here,” said Zanna, wiping her eyes. “We’re supposed to be here for the furtherance of our careers and all that. And now look at us.”
“Are we up the proverbial creek without any means of propulsion?”
“We are if Angel is anything like Rivera.”
“No, he doesn’t strike me as a humorless curmudgeon.”
Zanna screwed up her nose. “Hah-hah. I meant quiet, hard to get to know, a loner. A loner who doesn’t even know you exist.”
“Well, he knows I exist, but something seems to be holding him back.” She told Zanna about the peanut incident.
Zanna laughed. “Am, that’s hardly holding back. That seems more like an overt display by a male of the species to impress the female.”
“There was something else.”
The seriousness that had crept into Amanda’s voice took the smile from Zanna’s lips. “Oh?”
“He seems like two different people. He comes across as this sexy, macho Latino-type, like Rivera.” Zanna swatted her with the back of her hand. “But, I don’t think that’s who he is really.”
“What? You mean he’s in touch with his feminine side and wears pink on his day off?”
“Stoppit. No, I mean that when he said ‘Te deseo’ and we kissed, he—”
“When you kissed! Bloody hell, Wilks, you didn’t hang about. What does ‘Te deseo’ mean?”
“I don’t know, but the way he said it”—Amanda giggled—“it sounded really sexy. He was so tender. Oh, the feel of his hand on my face, Zanna. I’ve never known anything like it. It makes me go all girly just thinking about it.”
“Amanda!” This Angel must be something special. “Is that his real name?”
“Yes,” she said. “Well, his name is properly pronounced Ahn-hel, but everyone calls him Angel.”
“Whatever will your mother say when she finds out? She has some rather old-fashioned ideas about the sort of man who’s good enough for her daughter.”
Amanda waved a hand. “We’ll cross that bridge when—if—we come to it.”
Raul entered the Staff Lounge, yawning and stretching.
“Don’t, Raul,” Amanda said stifling her own yawn. “I’m still getting over the flight back. How the heck does Commander Gant recover so fast?”
“Years of practice,” he replied. “Of being able to switch off—and on—pretty much on demand.” He poured himself a coffee. “How did the rest of it go?”
Amanda told him that she’d met some men from Rivera’s unit, about the village visit, and the IED.
“You may have noticed, Raul,” Zanna said with a conspiratorial wink, “that a certain person got mentioned quite a lot in there.”
Raul roared with laughter. “Chica, I could never see you holding a torch for any of those guys, so why that one?”
Amanda mumbled something.
“Say again,” he said.
“Because he’s sweet.”
“Sweet! I’ve heard them called a few things in my time, but sweet has never been on the list before.”
Amanda flushed. “I hate you people.” She laughed. “And I doubt I’ll ever see him again anyway.” She turned to Raul, and placing her hands on her hips, said in a stern voice, “Do you know what they are?”
Raul shrugged. “It’s a need to know basis.”
Zanna’s forehead creased. “Need to know what?”
Raul went on the defensive. “That’s the whole point. It’s need to know and you didn’t . . . need to. You still wouldn’t, if Dora the Explorer here hadn’t gone to Afghan.”
Zanna looked from Amanda to Raul. “What am I missing out on here, guys?”
Raul protested. “Look, they’re nothing special, they don’t—”
“So why are they called Special Operations Forces then?” asked Amanda with an impish grin. “Ohhh, and whatever you do, don’t try comparing them to the SAS. They seem a little touchy about that.”
Zanna sucked in her cheeks.
“They don’t see themselves as any different from any of the other Marines,” Raul said.
Amanda snorted. “Now, you know that’s just bollocks!”
Zanna raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Your mother would wash your mouth out with soap, young lady, if she heard you talking like that. You’ve been spending too much time around undesirable elements if you ask me.”
“You only have to see them to know they’re different.” Amanda sighed. “Those bodies for a start. Their overall attitude . . . and have you seen the way they walk?” She winked at Zanna. “No, sorry, you won’t have seen that delightful trait in Rivera, but I bet he does it too.”
“Does what?”
“I call it, The Western Gunslinger Strut. Their gait takes on this supremely confident, verging on arrogant, ever-so-slight roll,” said Amanda, with a fond smile. “Raul, do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” He grinned, scratching the back of his head. “I’ve seen it. But, you’ll only see it when they’re together on base, in training, or in theater. If you saw them individually, in civvies at the supermarket or at a take-out, you wouldn’t give them a second look.”
Zanna widened her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know about that. A good-looking guy with a hot body is a good-looking guy with a hot body anywhere.”
Amanda nodded in enthusiastic agreement.
Raul flexed his biceps. “Yeah, you got a point there.”
“Dork,” Amanda said. “See you peeps later. I’ve got to be at Commander Gant’s office in ten minutes.”
“Wait up,” said Raul, growing stern. “You don’t talk about these guys, and what they do around other people, do you?”
Amanda shook her head. Raul looked to Zanna.
“Gant?” she said.
“Commander Gant’s fine, but be careful around others, OK?”
Zanna waited until Amanda was out of earshot and gave an apologetic smile to Raul. “I did twig that Rivera was probably of the secret squirrel fraternity from what he let slip when he was heavily sedated, and living pretty close to an SAS base you learn to be a little more circumspect about them than most people.”
His slow, deep intake of breath and thoughtful nod told Zanna her appraisal met with his approval.
“Raul?” Zanna asked, drawing his name out. “Can you tell me what ‘Te deseo’ means?”
His jaw went one way and his eyebrows the other. “¡Mierda! Has someone said it to you?”
“No.” I wish! We’ve embarrassed Amanda enough already. “I overheard it somewhere and just wondered.”
“What’s the context? The one I’m thinking of is pretty steamy.”
“I think it’s the steamy one.”
Raul smiled. “Was it said like this?” He put on a sultry voice, “Te deseo.”
“Yes . . . something like that.”
“C’mon, someone said it to you, right?”
“Would I be flattered if they did?”
“Only if you liked them a lot.”
“What does it mean?” she said, playfully punching him on the shoulder.
“It means, ‘I want you’, in a sexual sense.”
“Oh, OK.” Whoa!
* * *
After their return from the funeral, Zanna took Gant’s suggestion and moved
much of Rivera’s rehab out into the California, late spring sunshine. He was becoming much less dependent on the crutches, though he still had a pronounced limp without them.
His frustration at not being able to do sit-ups before the funeral was the first thing Zanna addressed. She’d introduced them back into his routine by getting him to lie on one of the picnic tables in the hospital garden, with his lower legs hanging off the end, so there was no weight or pressure on them. He was now lying on the grass, pumping out Marine crunches, with Raul holding his feet.
“You’re doing great, primo. Seventy-six, seventy-seven . . . Sweat dries, blood clots, and bones heal. Suck it up, Marine!” Raul yawned.
Not boring you are we, Raul?
Zanna studied Rivera while he worked out. The average time for a broken leg to heal—not that there’s anything average about Rivera—is six weeks to achieve fifty percent normal strength. He was way behind that due to the nature of his injuries. It wasn’t a clean, one-place fracture. As a rough guide, at twelve weeks, you can expect to reach eighty percent normal use. The funeral was at the twelve-week stage, and now a few weeks on, he was at the equivalent of around maybe the ten- to twelve-week stage. A year on, the leg would be strong enough for most of the demands made on it. At eighteen months, the break should be consolidated and be as strong as before.
Zanna envisioned the six- to twelve-month period to be where Rivera would gain ground in his rehab due to his fitness and diet regimes. He didn’t smoke. He’d politely sipped the beer and downed the whiskey toast at the funeral, but she doubted he was such an abstainer under normal circumstances. He didn’t drink anything in the way of sugary, fizzy sodas. There was some evidence to suggest that drinking a lot of cola and the like hinders the bones ability to knit. He stopped drinking coffee after she told him it caused calcium loss through the urine. She’d hardly ever seen him with a candy bar. For the most part, he ate a healthy, balanced diet; plenty of fish, chicken, and other calcium-rich food to help heal the broken bones. But on occasion, a calcium-robbing steak slipped through the net.
It’s just such a shame that I won’t be here to see you when you are back to full strength. Zanna reflected on how long she’d been at The Hacienda—and how little time she had left. She’d give her eye teeth to be able to stay—and not just because he was here. Working with and around the other injured men, and with their doctors, nursing staff, and physical therapists was more fulfilling than any job she’d ever had. She’d heard that getting a work visa was extremely difficult for the British, but she would look into it. Realistically, even with a valid visa, she would not be able to continue at The Hacienda, but maybe she could find work in another local hospital. Even though he saw her as nothing more than his physiotherapist, the thought of not seeing him again was becoming unbearable.
20
“Amanda, stop fidgeting,” Zanna said. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”
“But why do you think he wants to see us both?”
“We’ve got just under a month left.” Zanna chuckled. “I expect it’ll just be the ‘Thanks for coming, we’ve enjoyed having you’ speech.”
“Raul says Rivera and Angel’s unit is due home in about a month. You might just get to meet them, after all. You’ll adore Angel! And speaking of adoration”—Amanda lowered her voice—“have you got a thing for Will?”
Zanna leaned away from Amanda. “Why on earth would you ask that?”
“Well, you’re always disappearing to have those little chats with him.”
“Those little chats concern the patients I’m rehabbing. And you’re the one who swanned off to Afghanistan with him. I couldn’t believe that.”
“That was the opportunity of a lifetime.” She spread her hands. “And anyway, Will is so . . . serious. But he has that edge to him, I know you go for. Like Rivera.” She shuddered. “I could never handle Rivera like you do. You always know how to react to him.”
Zanna pursed her lips. Stop reminding me of him. I’ve only got a few weeks to go before I never see him again, and I see precious little of him now as it is. “Don’t sell yourself short. You handled him fine as his critical care nurse.”
Cooper emerged from Gant’s office. “The Commander is ready for you now.”
Both women stood, but Cooper held up his hand to Amanda. “If you’d just wait here for a moment, Nurse Wilks.”
Amanda mimed being strangled as Zanna closed the door.
Gant handed Zanna a coffee and poured one for himself. He sat at his desk and she perched on the edge of the chair opposite him.
“The end of your placement with us is approaching,” he said. “How have you found your time here?”
“It’s been a remarkable experience. I’ve learned so much about so many different things. It’s been worth every minute.”
“You’ll be sorely missed. And I don’t say that lightly.”
You don’t say anything lightly.
“Off the top of your head, if you were in charge, what improvements would you make?”
Without missing a beat, Zanna replied. “Touching.”
Gant raised an eyebrow. “You already use touch so please elaborate.”
Zanna ran a hand over the base of her mug before setting it down on his desk. “What I mean is the ‘human touch’ not the ‘therapeutic touch’. Only yesterday I was watching a therapist work with a patient who’d just taken his first unaided steps on new legs. He was over the moon and there was that split second where I could see the therapist wanted to hug him but high-fived him instead.”
Gant sat back in his chair. “Zanna, this is a military facility, we can’t just go around hugging personnel.”
“I see your point.” Zanna pressed her hands together between her knees to steady her nerves before continuing. “But I don’t think we should only treat the body, we also need to help heal the mind—or the soul—if that’s how you define that part of the human psyche.”
Gant kept his steady gaze on her. “How do you define it?”
She took a deep breath—OK, you man of science. Please don’t laugh. She slowly exhaled, trying to calm her rising heart rate. But he is open to new ideas that will improve things for the patients in his care. She cleared her throat. “I believe that the brain and the mind are separate entities.”
He wasn’t laughing. He motioned that she continue.
“The brain controls function. It moves limbs, regulates temperature, pumps the blood through the system, etcetera. It’s constantly monitoring feedback and making adjustments. The way I see it, the mind is who we are. Our soul . . . our psyche . . . our essence.” She trailed off.
“Go on,” Gant said.
“We have all these new medicines and technologies at our disposal with which we can patch up the physical body and call it repaired—but, to call someone healed, I believe we have to deal with the mind too.”
“Have you been reading more about PTSD since we last talked?”
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