by Harry Mazer
“Sand,” said Ben’s little brother, Chris, tapping his foot and gazing around the room.
“Pardon?” she said.
“Christopher, please,” Mrs. Bright said gently.
“There’s no snow in Iraq,” Chris said. “Just sand. That’s what Ben wrote in his e-mail.”
“It’s a semaphore,” his dad said.
“Metaphor,” Mrs. Bright corrected him.
“That’s what I meant,” her husband said. “God, I’m losing it.”
“Okay, good point, Chris,” Dr. Parini said. “Sandstorm. So all of a sudden, sky and earth seem to merge. The landscape you know so well? It’s blocked from view, just this wall of snow . . . er, sand. You see little pieces of the landscape peeking out—there! and there!—but they disappear just as fast. A little corner reminds you of a building. A window reminds you of a house, a wheel reminds you of a bike. The problem is, they’re just hints of things you once recognized instantly. But they’re hidden from you and you’re disoriented. So you can’t be sure of anything. What you think is a bike is a car. What you think is a school is a house. Everything is an impression, but it’s not exact. So you move ahead, but you’re no longer in control of what you know. You want to react, to say something, but—”
“But you wouldn’t,” Chris snapped.
“Wouldn’t . . . what?” Dr. Parini looked at her watch.
“Move ahead,” Chris said. “If it’s a sandstorm, you have sand in your eyes and you’d be crying. Also cringing on the ground, because of the pain.”
Ariela covered her face. Her shoulders started to heave. Niko put his arm around her and immediately felt awkward.
“I guess what I’m trying to say, Chris,” Dr. Parini said with a patient smile, “is that along with his shrapnel wounds, Ben has had what we call a traumatic brain injury. We have a few ways of measuring how serious it is, but we will need more time to determine that. Most likely his neural connections have been disturbed, and the results can be unpredictable. There may be problems with his senses—touch, smell, sight, and such. He may require physical therapy to do the simplest things, like keeping his balance or even speaking. We should also be prepared for possible memory loss. He may not recognize you for a while, or he may think you’re someone else.”
“Like stuff in a sandstorm,” Chris said, “that you can’t recognize.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Parini answered. “The thing is, he may have thoughts, memories, but they will be like a code that he can’t crack for a while. Some part of his brain will be manufacturing memories from his past, but another part will prevent him from expressing them—or even processing them.”
“I can teach him the names of all the New York Mets, and their batting averages and even slugging percentages, I think, all the way back to 1962, when they were an expansion team,” Chris said. “Well, maybe not slugging percentages.” He began rocking and humming.
Niko recognized the tune. It was the “Meet the Mets” theme, Chris’s favorite song. He would blurt it out whenever he felt stressed, even in public—especially in public. Ben was the only one who could get him to stop after one verse. Instead of scolding him or taking him away, he would just smile and sing harmony.
“You will be the best brother a guy could possibly have,” Dr. Parini said.
Chris stopped singing but continued rocking. The back of his seat hit the wall with a rhythmic thump.
“No,” he said. “Ben is.”
Rosalie Sanchez could hear Dr. Parini in the next room. She had met the family when they’d checked in. Lovely parents, so tender with the younger brother, who seemed high-functioning but a handful.
As she cleared a candy wrapper from the floor, she smiled at the soldier. She half-expected him to smile back. He had that kind of face, intelligent and sly and full of life, like he was holding something back. Like this whole thing was a prank. She found him very handsome; he reminded her of someone she couldn’t quite name.
After years of nursing you got used to things. In this hospital Rosalie had been vomited on at least a dozen times, seen a partial decapitation, witnessed a man stab his father in the waiting room, seen a thirty-seven-year-old woman who weighed fifty-three pounds. Those were all traumatic in their own ways, but the soldiers were always the hardest to take. If they died, the families were always so devastated. If they lived, the odds were against them ever leading a normal life.
“Harrison Ford, that’s who you look like,” she said softly, changing the dressing on his left arm. “Back in the early days, like the old Star Wars movie—right?”
Star.
“I bet a lot of people tell you that. Okay, your arm looks good, soldier.”
Star. Arm.
“Now, time to turn over.”
Starm. Tarm. Turn.
As she began cranking his bed, she heard thumping and humming in the next room. A moment ago she’d heard the soft murmur of Dr. Parini’s voice, but she wasn’t hearing it now. The doctor might need some help.
On the way out, she glanced at Ben’s monitor. His heart rate was strong. His brain waves were active. Very active. The shape of his brain had changed by a few centimeters, warped slightly into a new configuration. “I’ve seen worse, honey,” she said. “You have to be strong, you know. Your brother needs you. And your mom and pop. Be right back.”
Oww.
Owww owwww owwww.
Ouuuuuut!
The thumping became louder as she opened the door.
September 17
Breathe.
Ariela tried to stop hyperventilating. The minivan was too small, too confined, too fast. The only person talking was Chris. No one was answering, but Chris wasn’t requiring an answer. His chatter had become white noise, protection against having to make awkward conversation. If Ariela had had to say a word, she would have screamed.
Thoughts careened inside her. All she could see was Ben’s face—his handsome, sad, misshapen face, now reflected in the windshield, the tree, the sky, the rooftops. Just a few years ago, a guy like Ben would have died. But they’d medevaced him out of an arid, sandy village with five other soldiers, cut his head open to ease swelling, attached IV drips to his arms, stabilized him with techniques only developed in the last five years. They’d slashed away his shirt and screamed instructions over him in midair while escaping rocket fire. They’d gurneyed him across a tarmac into an overcrowded hospital in hundred-degree heat, laid him out before haggard, caffeinefueled specialists, packed him up tight for shipment to the U.S. And all the while he hadn’t known a thing, just lying there with his mutilated handsome face, just another case, another young life saved by technology and passion, another line item on the ledger of modern miracles, a life unlost.
She had felt relief and comfort seeing his face, feeling his breath inches away. She had expected—what? Mutilation maybe, exposed bone or missing features, a horror movie image. He was blessedly intact and beautiful. Still, the sight scared her. It wasn’t the scars or the bandages, but something in the shape, a cant of the right side, an angle different enough to make his face somehow horribly wrong, in the way that a small defect undermined the humanness of a sculpture, a painting, a wax likeness.
And now, here was his face again, dappled in the leaves, shape-shifted among the clouds, angled in the rooftops, smiling, laughing, singing, more real to her than he had been in person.
The guilt of it all squeezed her like a wet glove—the beauty of the imagined Ben, the revulsion of the real. It made her doubt her loyalty and her empathy.
“I’m writing a poem about Ben,” Chris announced. “Ariela, writes poetry too, right?”
Ariela nodded absently. She had wanted to make the drive back to New York with the Brights and fly out of LaGuardia, not National. She had wanted to spend time with Mami and Papi, who she knew would make her feel better. But now she was having second thoughts.
“That’s great, Chris, poetry is great,” Mr. Bright replied, eyes intent on the traffic. “I—I spoke to t
he VA people after the briefing. They don’t tell you everything unless you corner them. They don’t know how long Ben will be in intensive care, but when he eventually gets home, we’ll have to be ready. He had some leg damage and may not be able to walk. But it looks like we may be able to get grant money for a reconstruction of the house. They didn’t say that was a done deal, though, and my sense is that we’re going to face a lot of red tape.”
“If anybody can do it, you can,” Niko piped up from the back of the minivan.
“Maybe a sestina,” Chris continued. “Or a villanelle. Actually those are easy. Pantoums are harder. Sestinas are the hardest, but they’re more fun.”
Mrs. Bright turned to her husband. Her face was wan and lined. She seemed brittle. “Will they pay for relocation while the house is being rebuilt?”
“I didn’t ask,” her husband replied. “Why would we need to relocate?”
“May I remind you,” Mrs. Bright said, “that your other son has asthma?”
“Yes, I do,” Chris said. “But it is much more occasional than it used to be. When I reached puberty, it became noticeably milder. The renewal for my albuterol prescription expires on November twelfth, and there is one refill after that, so we could order today and then again thirty days afterward without having to get a new prescription.”
“You could stay at our house,” Niko piped up.
“Thanks,” Mr. Bright said. “But I think we can tough it out. Even do some of the work ourselves. Chris is a gamer—”
“Frank, please,” Mrs. Bright said, her voice clipped and raw. “Do it ourselves? With both of us working, and Chris in school, and visits to Washington?”
“We have to be positive—”
“Our lives have changed, Frank. We don’t know how serious his injuries are, how long he’ll need home care. Maybe years. Retrofitting the house isn’t for hobbyists. We can’t wait and wait on this.”
Mr. Bright nodded. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “Okay, Lisa, that’s a good point—”
“You can’t just wish away what just happened and think everything’s going to be okay!”
The van fell silent. Ariela felt the momentary urge to say something soothing, something observant and interesting about the surroundings, but she didn’t. Words were worse than useless; they were the enemy, hooks on which to hang anger and misunderstanding.
He’ll be fine. What if he won’t?
We’ll make a comfortable home for his rehab. What if it takes forever?
We’ll just have to wait and see. As if we could do anything else?
Ben’s life was all about management—recovery, rehabilitation, marking increments of progress. She felt for the Brights. They weren’t wealthy. They would need help, expert help, and that would be expensive.
Ben would need to be surrounded by people who loved him.
Chris began snapping the elastic on the pouch behind the driver’s seat. “What I like about the sestina is it’s mathematical. You take the last word in each stanza and the next stanza preserves those same last words but in a different arrangement, retrograde pairs, which would be the pattern of 123456 going to 615243, and then 364125 and so on. Only they like to express it in letters, so that would be ABCDEF, then FAEBDC, then CFDABE, then—”
Ariela heard a brief, high-pitched sound that she took to be a stifled giggle, but immediately noticed that Mrs. Bright’s face was deep red and she was choking on her tears in the passenger seat.
As Chris kept barreling on, Niko leaned forward and put his arm on Mrs. Bright’s shoulder. She seemed to stiffen but she didn’t brush him off, and he didn’t let go.
“Fascinating, Chris,” Mr. Bright said. “I think it’s a perfect idea. If you want, you can start writing it now. And please, sweet guy, stop snapping the elastic.”
“He can’t write in the car, he gets carsick!” Mrs. Bright said sharply.
Chris dropped his hands and turned to stare out the window. “I will not get carsick,” he said under his breath, closing his eyes. “I will not get carsick.”
“I think we all have agreed that it isn’t a good idea to plant the image,” Mr. Bright said.
“Oh, I planted the image,” Mrs. Bright replied. “The whole thing is psychological. Your driving has nothing to do with it.”
“I will not get carsick. I will not get carsick!” Chris was rocking now.
“Easy, guy, I think I have a plastic bag,” Niko said, unzipping his backpack.
“We have some in the glove compartment,” Mrs. Bright said. But as she reached for it, her fingers missed the latch and her body lurched to the left. Behind them, a truck blew its horn. Mr. Bright was now veering into an exit ramp toward a large roadside rest stop.
Ariela closed her eyes and prayed.
“Did he puke?” Ariela asked Niko as he walked out of the rest stop men’s room and toward the food court.
Niko shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“Aren’t you supposed to stay with him?” Ariela asked.
“He’s fine,” Niko replied. “He’s in one of the stalls, composing poetry. He’s like, ‘I am in the bathroom now. Six words. Last word is now . . . ’ I stayed in there for a long time. People would come in, I would just smile. One guy heard Chris, looked at me, turned white, and booked. Another guy, with this thick Long Island accent, says to me, ‘He’s autistic, huh?’ I thought that was pretty rude, but I think he was really saying ‘artistic.’ I couldn’t tell.”
Ariela looked nervously over his shoulder. “The Brights told you not to let him out of your sight, didn’t they?”
“You can hang in a men’s room just so long before people start looking at you funny,” Niko replied. “You pretend to be peeing but the sound component is missing. Guys get weirded out by that. Look, he’s a big boy and he has the right to privacy. And I need some coffee, so would you please, please, please get me some if I stay right here and guard the door?”
Ariela glowered at him and turned toward the nearby Starbucks. Watching her go, Niko slumped against the tile wall. He felt about eighty-nine years old. Every muscle ached, and his head was pounding.
In the days since he’d heard the news about Ben, he’d barely slept. Each time he drifted off, he would see some version of the same scenario. Ben would be riding in a tank through an Iraqi village, his face wary and hard, scanning the hostile surroundings. The other soldiers, depending on the version of the dream, would be asleep, laughing, texting, looking at the GPS, downloading tunes, anything but paying attention. He, Niko, would be in the dream too, but he’d be lying on the path somewhere behind the tank. From his vantage point he could see a bomb in the road, off to one side, right in Ben’s blind spot. It was one of those huge spidery devices like the one in The Hurt Locker, wired for maximum damage, and a grinning Al Qaeda guy stood hidden behind some rubble, hands poised over a detonator. Warning Ben was the only way to save his life, but for some reason, Niko would be crawling in the sand with only the use of his hands—and although he’d tried to scream, no sound would came out of his mouth . . .
At that point, Niko would bolt awake. For the rest of the night into morning, he’d be unable to go back to sleep because of the voices shouting in his brain: You should have convinced Ben to stay . . . or You could have enlisted, so you could cover his back . . .
But convincing Ben to do anything was like trying to talk the words off a street sign, and Niko would be more competent herding yaks for a living than serving in the Army. Ben had the backbone of a soldier. It was one of his many qualities—entertainer, scholar, lover, passionate believer.
None of which did him much good in a coma.
“Did Chris come out yet?” Ariela’s voice called.
She was heading toward him with a steaming cup. Niko shook himself out of the reverie and looked over his shoulder at the bathroom door. “Not yet. Thanks for the joe.”
“Ben’s parents are eating at the Arby’s,” she said. “His mom’s crying and his dad looks like he
wants to leave her there.”
“Guess Chris’s time is up.” Niko blew on his coffee, took a sip, and headed toward the men’s room. “Once more unto the breach.”
Niko pushed open the entrance door. The triangular rubber stop that kept it ajar earlier had been pushed aside, and he jammed it in place again. He walked a narrow green-tiled hall that led into the bathroom to the left. Once inside, the first thing Niko noticed was the relative quiet, the conspicuous absence of a voice track. By the sink, a dad was drying his little son’s hands, and they quickly left.
“Chris?” Niko’s voice echoed off the tiles. Chances were Chris had fallen asleep on the john. Only one stall door was still shut, Niko knocked gently. “Yo, dude, are you awake?”
At the force of his knocking, the door swung open slowly. No one was inside.
Niko quickly peeked in all the stalls, slamming the doors fully open against the metal walls to make sure Chris wasn’t hiding. No dice. He stepped to the back of the bathroom and tried the window. It was bolted shut.
“Chris?”
He was gone. Disappeared without a trace. Niko cursed himself. Ariela had been right; he never should have let Chris out of his sight. He must have slipped away in a crowd, maybe even hiding himself on purpose.
Niko ran out the door. Chris had been wearing a New York Jets jacket. As he rushed toward the food court, Ariela ran up beside him. “Niko, what happened?”
“He ran out,” Niko replied.
“What do you mean, ‘ran out’? You were right there!”
“I guess I didn’t see him!”
“That’s impossible. He’d have walked right by you!”
“I don’t know, Ariela, he just did. I’ll check the parking lot.”
He raced out the glass doors. Chris was a wanderer. When he was feeling off his game, he liked to walk and walk. He couldn’t have gone far, though. It had only been a couple of minutes. The sun was setting just beyond the cars, forcing him to squint.
There. A flash of characteristic Jets green and white disappeared behind a Jeep Cherokee.