Fade to Black - Proof

by Jeffrey Wilson

  Claire stirred slightly and Jack bent over, picked her up, and cradled her head on his shoulder. Then he went to the rocker and sat down. He slowly rocked his baby girl against his chest. He kissed her hair and stroked her cheek as he sat there, thinking about the painful morning ahead of him. No matter what it took, he would sort this out and come back, healed, to his family. No nightmare, no Hadji bullet, would keep him from his family.

  Jack was stirred from his thoughts, and the comforting feel of his daughter, by the feeling of someone watching him. He looked up to see Pam leaning against the door, watching him and smiling. She looked gorgeous, her face glowing in the morning light, her eyes happy and full of love. Jack smiled back and reached out a hand to her. She came to him, took his hand and kissed him gently on the cheek.

  “How long have you been there?” he whispered.

  “Just a few minutes,” she answered then sat in front of them on the small ottoman, specially built to rock back and forth with the chair. “You are so beautiful, sitting there holding our baby,” she said, and then kissed his hand. “Would you like a nice breakfast?”

  “I would love one,” he answered. “Let me put her back and see if she’ll stay down and I’ll help you.”

  Pam rose, kissed him again, and then held her hand for a brief moment on his cheek.

  “I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  Claire stayed peacefully asleep as Jack laid her back in her crib, covered her to her waist with her blanket, and kissed her on the cheek. He stared at her for a moment more then headed downstairs to join his wife.

  Pam was still pouring water into the coffee maker when Jack shuffled in. They had long ago given up what had been an every morning conversation about how they should program the machine and fill it at night so that they could wake up to fresh coffee. Jack hugged his wife from behind and kissed her neck. Then he opened the refrigerator and got out juice, milk, and eggs.

  “Eggs okay?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Sure,” Pam answered. She took the juice from him and poured them each a glass, while Jack continued his search for ham or bacon. Finding neither, he grabbed some Italian sausage instead.

  “Spicy okay?” he asked. He turned and looked at his wife who looked amused. He gave her an unconscious “What?” look.

  “Spicy is fine,” she said softly. “You slept last night? No nightmares?”

  Jack placed his ingredients on the counter and started slicing open the sausage casings as he spoke, dropping the spicy meat into a pan, to which he added a splash of olive oil.

  “I did sleep,” he answered as he worked, “and no nightmares.”

  Pam looked satisfied, and kissed him on the cheek. Then she stood beside him, grating cheese and bumping him playfully with her hip. When the sausage was simmering in the pan and the rest of the ingredients were ready to pour in, he added the eggs and cheese to the pan, and mixed it all together. Pam often told him with a chuckle that if there was no folding, there was no omelet, and you really just had “cheese eggs,” which was fine with Jack.

  As Jack whipped his sausage and cheese eggs around in the pan, he was distracted by thoughts of things he had held back from his wife. Even as they worked together in the kitchen, Jack felt a distance between them, at least in his mind, created by untold fears and unshared experiences. Pam had been there for him, had stood by and loved and cared for him, true to their vows. Could he really repay that by holding back from his partner—from what truly was the better half of the one person they had become—the things that frightened and worried him most? Did he really want to go this alone, without his one and constant source of strength and courage? He looked at his wife, who sat glowing at the table, and in that moment he decided that he wanted that wall gone. He would tell her everything—the gunfire, the missing ceiling, the visits from dead Marines—everything. Most importantly, he would share his fear that he might be going crazy. He would tell her also of his overwhelming feeling that in some way he was a part of all of it, that he was a Marine.

  He scraped their breakfast onto two plates, his stomach fluttering. He doubted he would even be able to stomach the breakfast that moments ago he had hungered for. He turned to her, a plate in each hand.

  “Juice?” he asked.

  “Got some for both of us,” she said and pointed at the two full glasses on the table. Jack placed the plates down and slid into the seat beside his wife. He took a couple of anxious bites despite his wrenching stomach, and then felt Pam’s hand squeeze his knee. He looked up at her.

  “What is it, Jack?” She looked at him softly, knowingly. This was a woman with whom he could have conversations from across a crowded room with just their eyes. She knew him.

  “I have some things I want to tell you,” he said. He looked at his plate instead of his wife. “There are more things than just dreams. Scary things,” he said and waited for her response.

  Pam looked at him, her face anxious but without judgment.

  “You can tell me anything, Jack.”

  “I know,” he said.

  He started with the waking visions he had after his nightmares, telling her of the smell of dust and gunpowder that lingered in their room, the sound of the Blackhawk, seeing the smoke‐filled sky instead of the ceiling. He told her of the day after the first nightmare and how he had what he called an “anxiety attack” in the faculty lounge, and of the sounds he had heard behind the school. Then he hesitated.

  “What did Dr. Lewellyn say?” his wife asked, showing no apparent concern that these things might be evidence that her husband was nuts.

  “Well,” Jack said, grateful for the delay before he came to the visits from Simmons, “He wasn’t that worried. He said that nightmares can linger, and the anxiety can produce some hallucinations, more like memories, when we’re awake.”

  Pam considered this a moment. Jack watched her closely, worried what he might see. All he saw was love and concern. No fear and no judgment.

  “Did that make you feel better?” she asked.

  Jack smiled. All these terrible things that he brought into their lives, and still she seemed concerned only that he was all right.

  “Yes,” he replied, “but there’s more.”

  And he told the rest. He told her of seeing Simmons in the hallway, and how he had chased the phantom out of the back door of the school. He spared her the gory details, but was candid about the reaction of Chad and Anderson. Then he told her the worst part, of the bloody bathroom and Simmons in their backyard, and how he told him again that he belonged with them—with his Marines. He told her of being sucked down in the cyclone in their bed after finding himself lying beside the bloody body, and how he had again ended up in Fallujah, just another shot up Marine dying slowly in the dusty street. When he finished, he studied her face, looking for signs that this was just too much. But again, there was none.

  “Well that part sounds like just another dream, right?” She asked. She laid her hand on his arm gently. Her hand felt warm and comforting. He could tell how desperately she wanted to believe everything was all right or to make it all right if it wasn’t.

  “Well, yeah. I mean, I guess so.”

  Jack thought for a moment. He hadn’t really thought of that event as a dream. It just seemed too damn real. More like a haunting. But she was right, wasn’t she? He had woken up on the couch afterward. It had to be a dream. How bizarre that it hadn’t occurred to him until Pam said it.

  Pam squeezed his arm and pushed her now cold plate of breakfast away. Then she took his hand in hers.

  “Jack, I love you. I love you no matter what.” Tears rimmed the bottoms of her soft eyes, but not enough to spill out onto her cheeks. “Honey, there is nothing you can’t share with me. I’m here for you. I just don’t want you to go through this alone.”

  Jack forced himself to hold her eyes with his, which now welled up with tears of their own. He swallowed hard, and asked the question he had to hear an answer to. His voice trembled.


  “Do you think I’m crazy?” he asked. Tears now spilled down onto his cheeks.

  Pam rose. Her hand tightly gripped his arm and she slid into his lap at the table.

  “Oh, God, Jack, no!” she said and hugged him tightly. She held him and stroked his hair as he clung desperately to her, crying out loud now. “No baby, not at all. I love you so much.”

  Jack pulled her off his shoulder and looked into her face, feeling warm.

  “I keep thinking about that movie,” he said, actually thinking about it just now for the first time. “You know the one, with the guy from Gladiator? The one where the guy is a mathematician and thinks he works for the government? In the end it turns out the people he sees aren’t real and he’s just crazy. Schizophrenic, I think.”

  “A Beautiful Mind?” Pam asked.

  “That’s it,” Jack answered. “A Beautiful Mind. That guy saw things and he had schizophrenia, remember? Maybe that’s what I have. Isn’t that having split personalities?”

  Pam hugged him again, tightly. “Oh, Jack,” she said. “Baby, you’re not crazy. You have some sort of stress disorder, but you do not have schizophrenia.” She pulled back again and looked at him, wiping the tears from his face. Then she smiled. “Baby, I love you no matter what. Forever. We will get through this, darling,” and she kissed him lightly on the lips.

  Jack let out a heavy sigh. He had so underestimated this wonderful woman, and he vowed he never would again. Far away, Jack heard the happy chatter of his little girl. That, combined with the soft touch of his wife’s hand on his cheek, filled him with happiness and hope.

  It really was going to be all right.

  As long as he had his girls.

  Chapter

  13

  The familiarity of the little waiting room, and his comfort with Lewellyn, did little or nothing to relieve his anxiety as Jack sat and waited for his next visit with his doctor. He did feel much better after his talk with Pam, as he should have known he would, and the hour and a half spent playing all together on the family room floor had helped even more. But now he felt incredibly anxious. He felt like he was waiting to be dissected, his mind opened by the sharp blade of the psychologist’s probing questions. He was terrified, just like the first day.

  What the hell will we find today?

  Lewellyn had relaxed him the day before with his blanket pronunciation that Jack was not crazy, but what else could he say, really? It wasn’t like they would tell you outright. “Well, Jack, you are clearly and totally insane. Open and shut case. Can you come back tomorrow at ten?” Just what did you say to a crazy person, anyway?

  Jack flipped the page on the three‐month‐old National Geographic and tried to force the thoughts from his mind. He had been given hope, first by Lewellyn and then by Pam. He couldn’t sit here and let his obsessive fears steal that away now. They would figure this out together, the doctor had told him, and that was what he would hold onto.

  “God, it’s nerve wracking, isn’t it?”

  Jack’s breath caught in his throat, and he smelled him before he turned his head to look, feeling like he moved in slow motion. The smell of Iraqi dust assaulted him, but he turned slowly anyway. He knew what he would see. It would be Simmons, with his horrible, bloody death grin.

  He was wrong.

  Beside him, his legs crossed casually at the knee and a People magazine open in his lap, sat a Marine officer. He was older, his close‐cropped hair grey, his face tan and lined with crow’s‐feet. His digital cammies looked clean, but the boots beneath the bloused pant legs were worn and coated with dust. The rank insignia on his collar indicated he was a lieutenant colonel. Jack stared at him, his mouth open. The man smiled back.

  “I said its nerve wracking isn’t it?” the man repeated, leaning in a bit, as if perhaps Jack had not heard him.

  This was insane!

  He had fallen asleep again, that was all. He was asleep in the chair and having a dream, though this one certainly had a new twist. Jack closed his eyes tightly, balled up his fists, and willed himself to wake up. He opened his eyes again, but the man still sat there, his face now amused.

  “Not that easy, Casey. Sorry.” He held out his hand. “I’m Commander Hoag,” he said, and Jack reached out and shook his hand as if in a trance. He looked more closely at the man’s uniform and saw that, sure enough, it said Navy instead of Marines. The Navy provided medical, dental, and religious support to the Marine Corps, which lacked its own such services and was, after all, a part of the Department of the Navy. Jack wondered how he knew that. The man sat back, and closed the magazine in his lap. “Sergeant, I’m the regimental chaplain for First MEF. How are you hanging in there, Sar’n?”

  “I’m Jack,” Jack responded numbly.

  “Yes, well,” Commander Hoag took off his round glasses and cleaned them on the bottom corner of his uniform blouse. “That’s what we need to get into, don’t you think?” He replaced the glasses on his face and looked at Jack patiently.

  “Get into?”

  “Yes,” the commander answered. “We don’t have time now, of course. But before you go in there to talk to your friend, I wanted to ask you what you thought this was all about.”

  Jack felt tears well up in his eyes. He should be getting used to that sensation.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “Me going crazy, I guess.”

  The Navy chaplain shook his head and watched him softly.

  “No Casey, you’re not crazy,” he said. “Not at all. It’s about Pam. It’s about your love for Pam and Claire. That’s what keeps pulling you to this place.”

  Jack felt that the chaplain’s words held some terrifying meaning, but he couldn’t quite grab at it. What about this was so horrible? What the hell was this ghost of a man talking about?

  “What do you mean, pulling me? What the hell does that mean?” Jack felt his thin grip on control slipping away. He was sliding down a slippery slope here, and what waited below was something his mind knew of, somewhere deep and unavailable. He felt panic grip him, and his throat tightened. He realized that he didn’t want to hear the answer—that he didn’t want to hear another goddamn word.

  The door opened suddenly. Bright light from the hallway exploded into his softly lit room and Jack jumped to his feet. He felt like a teenager caught touching himself to his mother’s fashion magazine as the receptionist stuck her head in the doorway.

  “Dr. Lewellyn is ready for you, Jack.”

  Jack jerked his head back and forth between the attractive receptionist and the Navy chaplain, who sat quietly with his legs crossed, smiling and watching him. The girl didn’t react at all. She just looked at Jack, puzzled, maybe even a little concerned.

  “Sir? Jack?” she corrected herself. She was probably taught to call the nut jobs by their first names. Soothing. “Jack, are you all right?”

  Jack twisted his head, his body so tense he felt a tearing pop in his neck, and looked at the empty chair where the chaplain had just been.

  She didn’t see him. How in the fuck?

  Jack dropped heavily back into the oversized leather chair, rewarded by a ripping fart sound that in other circumstances would have made him laugh. He shook his head, trying to calm down.

  “Do you want me to get Dr. Lewellyn?” There was real and unmasked worry in the receptionist’s voice now.

  “N…n…no...just…just hold on.” Jack struggled for control. Of course she hadn’t seen him, because he hadn’t seen him either.

  Just another goddamn, terrifying, fucking nightmare, right?

  There had never been anyone in the room but him. Jack clamped his jaw tight and when he did he accidentally bit his tongue. A familiar, coppery taste filled his mouth. Then he looked up at the receptionist, his face more controlled, despite the sweat that now ran down to his neck from both his temples.

  “No, I’m fine,” he said and rose. He forced an awkward smile. “I was, uh…well I fell asleep and had a helluva nightmare again, to be honest. I’m ok
now, really.”

  The receptionist looked skeptical.

  “I’m sorry I scared you. Dr. Lewellyn is treating me for these damn nightmares.” The quiver was gone from his voice now and he sounded more convincing.

  “Okay,” the girl answered. “Well, Dr. Lewellyn is ready to see you. Are you ready now?”

  “Absolutely,” Jack answered and followed her out of the room. He glanced over his shoulder as he did, looking again at the empty chair. His eyes caught a glimpse of an open People magazine, out of place on the floor beside the empty chair, and he shuddered. Then he followed the receptionist down the carpeted hall to the dark door with Dr. Lewellyn’s name on it.

  The psychologist greeted him warmly and shook his hand, his grip firmer than the chaplain-ghost. Jack mumbled a greeting in reply and walked heavily over to the couch where he assumed his position. Lewellyn sat in the same chair as before and crossed his legs.

  “You ok, Jack?” he asked, his gaze soft and patient.

  Jack squirmed a bit on the couch, unsure how to proceed. “Uh…yeah. I’m uh…” his voice trailed off. He hung his head and took a deep breath. Then he leaned back and tilted his head up. He looked at the ceiling, halfway expecting to see a purple sky and tracer rounds overhead. “I’m not so good, Doc. Something…well I had another nightmare. I mean, I think it was a nightmare.”

  Jack proceeded to tell Lewellyn about the Navy chaplain and their brief chat in the waiting room. Lewellyn listened quietly and then folded his hands in his lap. For a moment he said nothing.

  “How is Pam doing?” he asked finally.

  Jack was stunned for a moment. What the hell was wrong with this guy? Had he not heard what he just said? Jack had just had a conversation with an imaginary Naval officer in his waiting room, and all he had to say was, how is your wife? What the fuck was going on here?

  “Doc, don’t you think it’s a little fucking weird that I just saw another ghost in your waiting room?” The irritation was sharp in his voice.

  The psychologist uncrossed his legs and leaned forward on his elbows.