To Love a Soldier

by Sophie Monroe

  We were running out of these things to keep us occupied and were almost ready to take Brady up on his playing pool offer. Well, maybe things weren’t that bad, but it was almost considered. I got to Liz’s house and went right in. We were all past the point of knocking; we were family now. Lisa and Liz had books upon books of designs, dresses, cakes, flowers, and anything else they could get their hands on laid across the kitchen table and counter. They were already a bottle of wine down by the time I arrived.

  “Hey, bitch,” Liz said, holding up her wine glass. “Sorry, we started without you.”

  “Liz, don’t call her that,” Lisa reprimanded her.

  Waving my hand, I shooed away her glass. “It’s okay. I can’t drink anyway, remember?”

  “Well, you can, but then the baby will come out stupid like John,” Liz laughed.

  Rolling my eyes at her, I couldn’t help but crack a smile. “That’s not nice. Speaking of stupid, where’s Brady?”

  “Nice one. He’s coming over after work. He said he’ll hang out quietly until we’re done.”

  “Does that mean he’s spending the night?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a new thing,” Lisa jumped in. “Liz here was all weirded out at the thought of me knowing they were having sex. I had to keep pushing for him to stay over, so she’d get over herself. She’s twenty-one for crying out loud.”

  “Mom!” Liz said. “It’s still weird, but whatever.”

  We spent most of the day sifting through books, but it was quickly becoming overwhelming. It wasn’t going to matter much anyway, since I was going to look like I swallowed a basketball in a wedding dress anyway. I didn’t have it in my heart to deny them the fun of planning everything out, so I went along with it and enjoyed it for what it was. In the back of my mind, I wished John was home so that we could be doing this together.

  “Anyone hear anything from John?” I asked. I had to. We all asked each other every time we were together.

  “Nope,” Liz said.

  “No, honey. I’m sorry,” Lisa said, placing her hand on mine.

  “No, it’s fine. I was just checking. Did he sound normal last time you guys did talk to him?”

  “Yeah, for the most part,” Liz said. “I mean, he sounded a little off, but he’s probably homesick.”

  “She’s right,” Lisa said. “And remember the conditions they have to live in day to day over there. It’s rough on anyone.”

  “I guess you’re right.” I put my head back in the books.

  “Ladies, I’m exhausted. Let’s pick up tomorrow morning, okay?” Liz asked.

  “Sounds good to me,” Lisa said. “Mandy, it’s late, honey. Why don’t you sleep in my bed and I can crash on the couch tonight? Then we can pick up in the morning.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like a plan. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “Of course not,” Lisa said, beaming. “You’re family. My future daughter-in-law and mother of my grandbaby.”

  I was really tired, so the thought of not having to drive home was a relief. I borrowed a pair of Liz’s sweats and a tank top. Closing the door to Lisa’s room, I gladly went to lie down. I stared at the ceiling for a while, just thinking of John coming home. Finally, I started feeling sleep creeping up on me. I closed my eyes and relaxed my head, and I was about to fall asleep when I heard banging on the wall. It grew faster and faster. What the fuck? It was followed by the sound of Liz moaning. Oh, gross! I had forgotten Brady was even in the house.

  I knocked on the wall. “Keep it down in there!” I yelled as quietly as I could yell through the wall.

  “Sorry,” Brady’s voice came through the wall.

  Disgusting. I put a second pillow over my face and bent it to my ears. It was enough to drown out the sounds of sex and soon I fell asleep.

  I woke up to the smell of coffee. It smelled heavenly, but it was torture at the same time. I had stopped drinking anything with caffeine shortly after I’d found out pregnancy was pregnant. I got up and rushed to the bathroom. My morning sickness, which seemed to be an almost every day, all day sickness, was still with me. When I was done, I washed my mouth out and went downstairs. Everyone else was up and eating breakfast.

  Lisa offered me some pancakes and we all had breakfast together; the morning started off good. We continued sifting through the books and were having a good time, while Brady was content watching TV in the living room, where he was able to drown us out. Liz’s phone began to ring and she walked to the counter to grab it. She looked at the number and squinted.

  “That’s weird,” she said. “Hello? Yes. Yes, I remember you.” There was a long pause before she said anything else. All color drained from her face and the phone fell to the floor with a bang. She looked devastated. She was pale as a sheet as she dropped down to the floor.

  Brady ran in from the living room after hearing her yell. “No! No!” she screamed over and over.

  “Liz?” Brady asked.

  “Liz, what is it?” Lisa snapped.

  “He’s gone,” she screamed, rocking in place. “My best friend is gone!”

  Her sobs echoed through my head like a freight train. I didn’t know what to think. She didn’t have too many friends; her best friends were Brady and me. She pounded her fists against the floor. Lisa ran over and cradled her and Brady grabbed her hands; blood ran down her knuckles.

  “John. He’s gone!” She let out a painful howl. “He’s dead. They killed him! They fucking killed him!”

  “No!” Lisa screamed. “No, you must not have heard right. You know about the blackouts.” Her hands were trembling as she picked up Liz’s phone and held it in her hand.

  Brady did his best to console them both, but it was futile. I stood, emotionless. Is this real? Am I dreaming? It can’t be real. He’s coming back home. He’s coming back to me. I sat at the table and stared at them. It wasn’t registering. I wasn’t letting it! Liz pulled herself up using the counter and Brady’s help. She slowly walked towards me. Step by step. Each step bringing the painful truth closer to me. I wanted her to stop walking. This was it; it was real.

  “Please, NO!” I yelled. My eyes welled up. My throat started to feel like it was closing. My heart! My heart had never felt such pain. Stabbing. Stabbing. It was being crushed. It hurt so fucking bad.

  Liz got up off the floor and jumped on me, squeezing me tight. Everything felt surreal. Like slow motion, or if it wasn’t happening at all. My brain was refusing to register anything that was going on. All I could do was hug her back as we cried into each other’s hair. I couldn’t even breathe it hurt so much. By now, even Brady had his head in his hands and was crying. Lisa got herself up and looked at the phone before placing it to her ear.

  “Hello? Yes, this is Lisa. John’s mother,” she said into the phone. “Yes, Paul. Yes. How did it happen?” I saw her take a deep breath. “No, please, Paul. I have to know.” Her eyes glistened as she looked up. She stared blankly at the ceiling, listening, almost as if she was staring at the heavens at her beautiful angel looking down at her. She let out a couple of uncontrollable sobs and tried to catch her breath. “Okay, I will. Thank you, Paul.”

  Lisa walked slowly to me with phone in hand. She held it out. I couldn’t. I didn’t want it.

  “Mandy, he needs to talk to you,” she said.

  “Who? Who needs to talk to me?” I managed to choke out. The only voice I wanted to hear on the other end of the line was John.

  “Sergeant Thompson. John’s friend,” she said, her hand shaking.

  I took the phone from her and Liz let me go and hugged her mother.

  “Hello?” My voice cracked.

  “Mandy?” the man said.

  “Yes.”

  “Mandy, I’m so sorry to have to give you the news. Anytime someone is lost, there is a blackout of communication, so the military has time to notify families before anyone else. I’m doing this for John. It was his last wish and I promised my brother I’d fulfill it,” he said.

  I fo
ught my best to hold back, so I could listen. I couldn’t do it. He had to wait for me to calm down.

  “I’m sorry, go ahead,” I said.

  “Don’t apologize,” he told me. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, so please forgive me. John,” he paused. “John died saving three of his brothers who were pinned down by insurgents. I was one of them. We were about to be overrun when he came out of nowhere. He fought them off, all of them. There were seven, and John took five out while we managed to clear out the other two. We owe him our lives for sure. He took a bullet halfway through the fight, but he kept going.”

  “Oh my God, no! My love! No!”

  “I’m so sorry, Mandy. He was a good man. Best I’ve ever known. He pulled me down to him while he was dying,” he said, becoming emotional.

  “No, no, no.” It was all I could say.

  “He said…” Paul paused again. “He said, ‘Tell Mandy I’m sorry. I tried. Tell her I’ll love her eternally and to raise my baby boy into a man I’d be proud of.’”

  “John!” I yelled into the phone. “Please, God, no!”

  “I’m so sorry,” the man said and then hung up the phone.

  I dropped Liz’s phone onto the ground and looked around. Misery engulfed the room. We could swim in the tears. I kept looking back and forth until I became dizzy and saw blackness.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Dealing with Loss

  Mandy

  Opening my eyes, I felt the worse pain in my head. It didn’t take me long to realize I was on the couch. My face felt swollen, my eyes stung, and my throat hurt so bad. Brady was standing above me, fanning me with a pad of paper. I slowly sat upright and saw Liz and Lisa holding each other on the couch, still crying.

  “Mandy, you passed out,” Brady said. “Thank God I was standing there and caught you.”

  “This is all true, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Yes, it is.” He wiped a running tear off his cheek.

  “How could he do this to us?” Liz cried out. “He fucking promised me!”

  “It’s not his fault, Liz,” Lisa said. “He wanted nothing more than to come home to all of us, just like your father did. Here’s a hard fact about life. It happens. We all know it’s not fair. We’ll never know why he had to die. We all have a purpose here and once it’s fulfilled, it’s lights out…”

  “He promised me, Mom. He lied to me,” Liz sobbed.

  “That’s not fair,” Lisa said. “You’re right, it’s not fair, but you can’t blame him. You can’t. It’s war and I just lost my son. My only baby boy, so stop! Just stop!” She practically yelled.

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t know how to live without him.”

  “I don’t, either,” I cried out, joining them. “I can’t do this without him.”

  Brady sat next to me and let me cry in his arms. I welcomed it, realizing I had no one now. I had just lost the only thing that mattered to me. I lost my love, my best friend. My everything. My worst fears had come true.

  We all spent the night awake, together, taking turns being strong for one another when one of us would break down. By 8 am, the extreme mental and physical exhaustion took over. We ended up falling asleep sitting up, leaning on one another. At one point I woke up to see Brady still awake, he was covering Lisa with a blanket, and I noticed I had one on too. He laid down next to Liz on the floor and finally looked to be going to sleep himself.

  The weekend passed, every minute feeling like an eternity, yet nothing changed. We stayed together all day and night on Sunday. Brady went on food runs and got us anything we needed. Then we took to the beds rather than sleeping sitting up. Lisa let me have her bed again. I stared at the door to John’s old bedroom when I went upstairs. I couldn’t go near it. Liz walked upstairs and stood next to me, staring as well.

  Once again, I cried myself to sleep. I had dreams all night long. Each one was of John and me together, happy and having fun, until the end when he would start bleeding from his chest, and I would wake up screaming, soaked in sweat. It was another horrible night. I lay in bed until it got light out and went downstairs.

  Liz and Lisa were already up and sitting on the couch. They were like zombies, and it killed me to see them like that. Brady was trying to make everyone breakfast when there was a knock on the door. Liz and Lisa both looked at each other; they knew who it was and got up together to answer it.

  Lisa opened the door and stepped back. Standing at the threshold were two sharply dressed Marines in full dress uniform. They were the notification officers for the fallen. I stepped back. I didn’t feel like it was my place to be there. John was Liz’s brother, and Lisa’s son. I wasn’t really family; we weren’t even married, even though all the materials cluttered the kitchen still.

  Lisa asked the uniformed men inside and showed them to the couch. They took off their caps and sat. She held her pointer finger up and excused herself. She walked over to me and locked her arm in mine. “You’re family, Mandy. You deserve to be here,” she said. “John loved you dearly, honey.”

  My eyes welled up again. I couldn’t handle all the tears. I had no idea how my body was able to keep producing tears! I walked over with Lisa and the men stood and gave us their seats.

  “Mrs. Kane,” one man said.

  “Yes, and this is John’s brother, Liz, and fiancée, Mandy, carrying John’s son,” Lisa said.

  The man’s head lowered. As if his job wasn’t difficult enough, now he had to find out that his fallen brother was leaving behind an unborn child, too. “I deeply regret to inform you,” he said, taking a deep breath, “your son, United States Marine, John Kane, was killed in action two days ago on foreign soil. You should take great pride in the fact that John served his country bravely, and his memory is honored by his fellow soldiers, who can now live because of his bravery and sacrifice. He’s on the angel flight home as we speak.”

  The other soldier took Lisa’s hand. All three of us were trembling. “Ma’am,” he said, clearly taking everything he had to stay calm. “I personally knew John. I served with him during his last tour. He was a great man, Mrs. Kane. You should be proud in the fact that he was the man he was because of how you raised him.”

  He turned his attention to Liz. “And I know you from his pictures. You’re his little sister he called Tizzy, right?” he asked. “You look older now, though. He never stopped talking about you. You were what kept him going then and all the soldiers in the unit knew never to think of talking to you if they ever met you because he’d break them in half.” He smiled, kindly.

  Liz crawled into Brady’s arms and broke down. The officer stepped back and the first man stepped forward again.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “These are some of the personal belongings John had on him. The rest is being taken from his camp and will be shipped back to you immediately.” He handed over a small box to Lisa and put his card on top.

  “Please call me for anything, okay?” he added. “If you need professional help, or even just a shoulder, call me. We are here for you, and your family.”

  “Thank you,” Lisa said, walking the men to the door. The men left; Lisa didn’t bother shutting the door and turned to look at us.

  “I don’t think I can open this,” she said. “I don’t think I can.”

  Brady eased Liz over to me. We sobbed on each other while he turned to Lisa. “I’ll take it,” he said. “If you want me to open it, just tell me.”

  “Do it,” she said. “Just open it.”

  He raised the lid and pulled out some paper from inside the box. They looked to be some handwritten letters. He quickly sifted through them, reaching back in and pulled out a wallet, a pen, and John’s favorite survival knife, holstered in its sheath. Brady looked up at us and then back down. His eyes grew wide and he quickly put the cover back on the box.

  “Brady,” Lisa said. “Whatever it is, just take it out.” He shook his head no. “Brady, just do it.” Liz said.

  He
opened the lid and looked in my eyes. His eyes became glassy. He shook his head left to right one more time. I knew it had something to do with me. “Just do it,” I cried out.

  He took a breath and reached in. He pulled out something small and kept it secured in his palm. He walked over to me, shaking his head again. I put my hand out, palm up, and shook my head up and down. Yes, it was John’s. It was on him. I want to be able to touch him one more time. He placed it in my hand and pressed down. After he stepped back, I looked down. It was glossy paper with a hole in it. It had blood on it; I shook when I realized it was John’s. This must’ve been in his vest pocket by his heart when he was shot.

  I used my other hand to turn it over in my palm. It flipped in my hand and stared at me. It was me, looking happier than I ever had, with a massive smile and a gleam in my eyes. It was the selfie I had taken and printed out for him. I was near his heart. I was there, close to him, when he was killed. I pushed the picture against my heart and cried. I thought I knew what crying was, but I didn’t, not before this moment. The pain was unbearable and I thought it would never end. I just wanted to hold him, even if just for one more time. I prayed in my head; I even begged. “Please, please, God, bring him back to me. I can’t take this pain. It hurts. It hurts so much.”

  “Oh, Jesus!” Liz cried out, practically jumping on me. “Oh, Mandy.”

  A police car sped down the driveway. It was Officer Reed. He got out of his cruiser and ran to the front door, where Liz met him with open arms. His eyes were puffy and I guessed he had already heard the news.

  “Joe!” Lisa said. “He’s gone, Joe. They took him from us.”

  “Mrs. Kane, I’m so sorry,” he said. “He was my best friend. He was the man I aspired to be.”

  Joe, a fellow Marine, stayed with us. We all spent the day and night sitting around and telling story after story about John. It was therapeutic, but so difficult at the same time. The door barely stopped swinging that day. Friends, neighbors, so many people showed up to give their condolences to the family and offer support. As the sky turned to dusk, the most heartbreaking view was in the Kane’s front lawn. A huge mass of people had gathered with candles, flowers, and flags strewn across the grass. People were standing for hours with lit candles burning, showing their love for John, and their support for his family. Police drove by all night with their lights on and sirens off. Officer Reed left before dark, so I know at least one of the police cars that drove by held John’s best friend.