A Sea of Lies

by H Dillon Hunt

  He smiles sadly, his eyes focused on something in the distance. “I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just know when I’m in the ocean, I feel small. I feel like I’m surrounded by something so much bigger, so much more powerful. And I felt like you needed that.” He meets my eyes and there is sincerity there. Understanding. “I guess the same can be said for God. We can’t comprehend the vastness of something so big, so powerful. But it’s something that’s always there to bring you peace, comfort. Something even people who don’t believe turn to for answers.”

  “What do you believe, Sam?”

  “I believe in love, and to me, God and love are one and the same.”

  I nod, I like his answer.

  I’m quiet for a moment while I think about how I want to word this. It’s been weighing on me since I moved in three months ago. Might as well get it out of the way now while we’re talking heavy stuff.

  “Sam,” I take a deep breath keeping my eyes trained on the towel I’m wringing in my hands. “We’ve gotten pretty serious over the last five months, and I don’t want you to think I’m pressing you or dropping hints or anything like that but if there’s a chance that we really have a future together, there’s something we should-”

  He’s suddenly in front of me, his hands gently cupping my face and tilting it up to his. He kisses me softly before he says a word.

  “I am going to marry you Aubree, there is no maybe about it.” He looks at me so intently I feel it in my stomach. “I want nothing more than to spend my life with you.”

  I close my eyes against the burn of tears. “Do you want kids?”

  “Yeah, I’d like to have kids someday,” he says casually. “Why, don’t you?”

  “I can’t have kids,” I whisper, refusing to meet his gaze. Tears claw at my throat and burn my eyes. I don’t know what to say, what to do. I feel so helpless, like I’m failing him. I can’t give him children. I-

  There’s a soft rumble against my chest and I realize he’s laughing.

  Laughing.

  My eyes snap up to his and he’s smiling down at me with an amused grin.

  “Wh-what are you laughing about?” I snap, confused.

  He just laughs again and shakes his head. “I’m sorry baby, but I just don’t care about that.” He tells me, smoothing a hand down my hair. He does that when I get worked up, he calls it my deactivate button. “We can adopt or get a surrogate or look into your condition and learn more about it, see if there are any loopholes.”

  I just stare at him, incredulous. None of these things were options with Ryan. I hadn’t even thought about it before. It was always about what I couldn’t do, what I couldn’t give him; Not about what was possible.

  “I love you, Aubree,” he murmurs, his eyes churning with conviction. “I want a life with you, no matter how that looks. I would be happy walking through hell if your hand was in mine. If we’re together, nothing else matters.”

  I sigh the elephant off my chest. The tears I’ve been fighting leak out onto my cheeks.

  This man. What did I do to deserve this man?

  “I love you,” I whisper, burying my face in his neck and breathing him in. He wraps his arms securely around my shoulders, resting his cheek on top of my head. It’s the safest place I have ever been.

  Thank you, God. Thank you for this.

  Chapter 22

  Sam

  Afghanistan- Two years ago

  Please God let me live. Please, just let me see her one more time.

  I say the same prayer before every mission, my eyes closed tightly, picturing her face in my mind.

  We’re just a week away from going home. If this mission goes well, I’ll be home in time to see Aubree and my sisters graduate nursing school. We’re headed into Gardez for a meeting with local religious leaders. It’s routine, nothing new, but there have been insurgent forces attacking troops along the way from our base into the city.

  Our platoon gathers at the convoy as our Staff Sergeant McAdams gives us a final rundown.

  “We’ve had ambushes using EFP attacks up and down the way,” He calls in his gruff, booming voice as he walks the line of troops, patting us front and back to check for our armor plates. “Maintain convoy integrity, no vehicles in or out.”

  He stops beside me at Ryan, his fist meeting Ryan’s chest to find no metal plates in his vest. “Where the hell are your plates, Walls?”

  “In the truck,” Ryan lies smoothly. Sergeant eyes him as he moves on down the line, punching my chest and back.

  I wait until he’s out of earshot before I smack him in the back of the head. “Go get some plates on, now.”

  “We were out,” he says in a low voice. “I gave mine to Homer, he got hit last week. The dumbass can’t remember to watch his six.”

  I curse under my breath and pull a plate out the back of my vest and shoving it at him, “Neither do you, dumbass. Put it in your vest. Now.”

  Ryan has a death wish. He’s our translator; he was able to join up with our unit last minute because he’s fluent in Dari. But every time we leave the base, he’s watching everyone’s back but his own. He’s a damn good soldier, he’s sharp and quick on the uptake, but he’s selfless to the point of stupidity. I make a point to stay in close range to him.

  “Let’s load up and roll out!” Calls Sergeant McAdams and we load up into the vehicles.

  True to form, Ryan hops in the only humvee in the convoy while the rest of us climb in the MRAPs. There’s a big debate that the humvees are ten times as dangerous to ride in being that the uparmor MRAPs hold up better to explosions than the humvees. I shake my head and climb in beside him.

  I think Caleb would have been just like Ryan if he’d have made it this far. Caleb was always looking out for everyone; he practically raised me and the twins. I joined the military to finish what he started, to carry out at least one thing I could that he wanted. When I decided to go to medical school, it just made sense to do this for him. Meeting Ryan has shown me how well Caleb would have done, what kind of man he could have turned out to be.

  I glance over at Ryan, wondering what makes a man capable of so much good, and still so much destruction. I’ve learned that people are not all black and white. There is so much gray matter in each person, filling in the spaces between our darkness and light. No one can be purely good, or purely evil. I like to think that I’m a good man, but how am I any better than Ryan? I’ve gone and fallen in love with his wife.

  I don’t know what will happen when we get home, but I do know that Ryan deserves the chance to atone for his mistakes. And with that, he deserves the full truth.

  “I need to tell you something,” I call to him over the hum of the engine. Ryan looks at me with a bemused expression and I clear my throat. I don’t know if it’s the dust in the air making my mouth so dry or what I’m going to say. “The night you followed Bree, when you saw her with another man. It was me. I’m the guy you saw her with. And I swear to you-”

  “I know,” he says coolly.

  I stop short, my heart hammering in my ears and looks at him. He looks calmly back at me and shrugs. “I know, I’ve known since I met you.”

  “What, but you said-” I stutter.

  “I lied when I told you I didn’t see you,” he says, calm as ever.

  I open my mouth to speak but I don’t have time to say a word. An explosion hits the vehicle in front of us and all of the sudden, it's chaos.

  A group of insurgents descend on the convoy, coming over the hill. Small arms fire picks up as we close ranks to fight them off. Ryan covers me as we run to the burning vehicle to pull men out.

  I taste gunpowder, the sound of the firefight so much louder than I expected. On the base, we hear gunfire so often it becomes a dull background noise, like a dog barking. My heart is hammering in my ears as the adrenaline courses through my veins.

  Instinct takes over as I treat the wounded. They were hit by an RPG, the outer hull of the vehicle demolished. Chunks of it lie sc
attered among the bodies as I pull them out of the path of fire. Ryan calls for backup and I radio for a medevac.

  Of the four men in the vehicle, two were unconscious; the other two were bleeding and cussing but awake, and appeared to have major injuries. I checked over the unconscious first, gunfire still raging all around me so loud I can barely think straight. My hands shake as I make sure there are no fatal injuries to any of the passengers.

  Rodgers is the first one, he’s fine. He’s banged up pretty good and will have a bad concussion, but nothing fatal.

  When I get to Shaw and look over him, I notice his leg bent at an unnatural angle. I set it straight and lift his pant leg, seeing how swollen his ankle is.“Shit,” I mutter, assessing his injuries. His ankle has a bad spiral fracture. I’m going to need a second set of hands.

  I glance over my shoulder at Ryan, still firing at the insurgents. “Ryan, get over here!”

  He doesn’t think twice, he ducks behind what remains of the MRAP and kneels beside me.

  “I need your help or Shaw’s going to lose his leg,” I tell him. “His ankle is fractured. It’s pinching an artery and stopping the circulation.”

  “What do I do?” he asks, shouldering his M4.

  “Grab here and pull when I tell you, but not too hard. We have to pull with the same force, so go easy.” I say, showing him what to do. It works, the blood flow returns to his leg and I fashion a splint to hold him off until we can get him back to the base.

  I can hear our backup in the distance, and the sound of a chopper as the medevac draws nearer. The gunfire dies down, and I think we’re out of the woods. I hear a shot close range and I spin around to see Ryan sink to the ground. I pull my gun and fire at the remaining insurgent.

  I hit the ground before he does, ripping Ryan’s vest off and pressing my hands firmly over the heavy flow of blood seeping out of his side. There’s too much blood, there’s too much blood. I swear under my breath and try to dress the wound anyway.

  “Stay with me Ryan, don’t close your eyes,” I grunt, the blood still spilling out between my fingers. His eyes droop lazily.

  “Sam,” His voice is hoarse, barely there. “There’s a letter....under my trunk. Give it...to Bree.”

  “You’re going to give it to her yourself,” I tell him firmly.

  He summons the last bit of strength he has, grabbing my vest and looking me dead in the eyes, “You take care of her.”

  “No, you will. You will.” The medevac chopper is closing in and landing. I yell over the noise and try to keep his attention as he sinks back, his eyes falling shut. “You are not dying today. Ryan, listen to me. Ryan!”

  The medevac team rushes to us, helping me get him and the other injured out of there. As we’re on the chopper and headed back to the base, I check Ryan’s pulse.

  “He’s flat-lining, get me the defib!” I yell, starting chest compressions.

  I shock him once, nothing.

  Twice. Nothing.

  Three times. Nothing.

  “He’s gone,” A medic tells me. “Time of death…”

  He calls it.

  I lose it.

  Chapter 23

  Bree

  Present Day

  When I got pregnant with Jackson I was eighteen. I didn’t get my period that month, but that’s not why I took a test. I was on a contraceptive that made it to where I rarely had a period, which was both a blessing and a curse. It was great because cramps are a bitch but it also made me question every month that I didn’t get a period if I was preggers when I got fatigued or nauseous.

  At the time, I was a regular consumer of drug store pregnancy tests. It wasn’t a monthly occurrence, but it was often enough that I had a box on hand just to give myself reassurance when I was doubting my birth control.

  One month in late spring, I was sleeping past noon every day and the smell of pickles made me gag. I thought this was ridiculous because I loved pickles.

  I woke up one morning and was thinking about this while I got ready for work. I decided to take a test real quick just to rule out pregnancy. I had the nice kind, the ones with digital display instead of a little pink line. Only the one I used that particular morning was defective. Or at least I thought it was.

  I followed the instructions exactly, but the little screen just said READING. In the fifteen minutes it took me to finish getting ready, it never changed. I stuffed the test in a drawer and left for school without a second thought about it. I had taken enough of these tests to know I was just being dramatic, I couldn’t possibly be pregnant.

  It wasn’t until a few days later that I went to dig something out of that drawer that I found the test. It didn’t say ‘READING’ anymore. It said ‘PREGNANT’.

  Any thought I had ever put into the moment I found out I was pregnant was correlated with sheer terror. It’s not that I didn’t want kids, I did someday, just not right then. I was only eighteen for God’s sake. But what I felt in that moment, reading that little gray screen, it was something I never expected.

  I stood in front of the mirror and placed my hand over my stomach, waiting for the panic to set it; but I felt peaceful, serene even. I wasn’t scared or angry or disappointed. I just felt this fierce protectiveness and overwhelming love for the tiny little human in my belly.

  Ryan was over that day, I was supposed to be finding aspirin for him. He came and found me in the bathroom and saw me standing there, my hands on my flat belly and the positive test lying on the counter in front of me. I didn’t get a chance to be nervous about his reaction.

  His face broke into the most breathtaking smile. He fell to his knees in front of me and placed his hands gently on my belly. He looked up at me with wet eyes, beaming. “We’re having a baby?”

  “Yeah,” I laughed through the tears now spilling down my cheeks. “We’re having a baby, Ryan.”

  We made a plan for ourselves. We got married and got a house. Everything was good, everything was right. And when I lost the baby it snuffed out all of our light. All of the happiness we shared. We started with so much light, so much joy, and we ended with so much pain.

  Knowing what I know now, knowing that my body is not built to carry a baby, I am sure I will never feel that joy again. The joy that a woman feels when she finds out she’s pregnant with a baby from a man that loves her with his whole heart. The prospect of a family with that man, a happily ever after.

  Now here I am, happier with Sam than I have ever been for any period of time in my life. I watch that happiness crumble around me in heaps. I see Sam’s face, the love that I always see there morphing into the disgust that Ryan wore so boldly. I feel my heart fracture and crack in my chest. The anxiety and the terror and the I can’t do this I always expected to feel begins seeping over me.

  The test didn’t take any time to read this time. It’s right there, clear as day in my shaking hands.

  I’m pregnant.

  I can feel it all over again, the way it feels to lose a baby. The empty panic. The untargeted anger. The all-consuming helplessness of failing to protect the one person in the world that is completely and totally dependent on you.

  I feel the beginnings of a panic attack clawing through my chest, I can taste the bitterness of adrenaline. I can hear my heartbeat in my head, my legs feel like two fragile twigs.

  I grasp the edge of the sink in front of me in a white-knuckled grip as I try to catch my breath. All I can see is the happiness Sam and I have had for the past few months shattering around me.

  “Bree, you in here?” Maddie’s voice echoes through the employee bathroom. Her eyes find mine in the mirror and her face blurs from my tears. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  She rushes to me and takes in the positive pregnancy test on the sink. Realization settles over her features and she nods, placing her hands reassuringly on my shoulders. I try to focus on her face, but the edges of my vision are fading like I’m staring down a tunnel.

  “Bree, you’re having a panic attack,” Her voice is a
dull echo under the ringing in my ears. “I need you to take a deep breath.”

  She curses under her breathe, and helps me slide to the floor. She tells me to stay put like I have use for my legs anymore. I watch in a haze as she runs from the bathroom. The anxiety in my chest feels like its smothering me, like it’s sucking the oxygen out of my lungs and filling my head with cotton. I can’t breathe. I can’t stop crying. I can’t take losing another child. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

  My vision starts to swim as the door swings back open. I catch a glimpse of Sam before it goes black completely.

  ***

  There’s nothing worse than waking up after blacking out from a panic attack. Sound comes back slowly, like turning the volume up on a stereo, and then all at once too loud. The disorientation and brightness of everything is enough to bring on another attack. It’s always so. Damn. Cold. The sickly sweet smell of plastic covers my nose as the cold flow of oxygen pours over my face.

  I rip the oxygen mask off and throw it to the side. Did I mention being irritable? I get really freaking irritable. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve passed out from a panic attack and it’s three times too many. Four now.

  I blink my eyes open slowly, taking in my surroundings. Someone has thankfully dimmed the lights in the hospital room, so there’s no abrasive fluorescents to assault my eyes. I catch the tail end of Sam ushering his sisters out the door and closing it behind them. He turns as I open my eyes fully and rushes over to me.

  “Aubree,” he breathes, relief washing over his features. Everything comes back to me in a rush and I’m crying before I’ve even sat up all the way. Sam slides onto the bed beside me and envelops me in his arms. I sob against his chest, my heart cracking into a millions pieces. It breaks all over again for Jackson. It breaks for Ryan. It breaks for Sam and what this means for us, what will surely become of us when I lose this baby because my stupid body can’t function properly.