All for You (6 page)

The interpersonal conflict in her office seemed somehow so trivial. So distant, despite recognizing at least two commanders she’d gone toe-to-toe with.

Swallowing, she set down her papers and folded her arms over her chest. She glanced in Reza’s direction, wishing she had a translator to help her figure these rough men out.

An echo of the first argument she’d had with Reza danced at the edge of her memory. She was not going to reach anyone with carefully prepared PowerPoint sides.

She swallowed and took a deep breath, speaking before her common sense took over and talked her out of it.

“So how many of you think that behavioral health is for pussies?”

Half the room burst out with coughs attempting to cover laughter. The other half were busy picking their jaws up off the floor. It had been a reckless gamble, one that would have made her father cringe in shame, but one that worked because the tension snapped, fizzling a little bit. Granting her an opening she might not have had otherwise.

“Be honest.” She glanced at the sergeant major, who looked ready to brain the first officer or sergeant that raised his hand. “Never mind, don’t answer that.” She shot a quick grin at the sergeant major and a few more chuckles drifted out of the crowd. “Look, we all know that I’ve got you held captive for an hour and we can stand here and stare at each other or maybe we can talk about what’s going on that we’ve got so many soldiers willing to hurt themselves.”

She made the mistake of looking in Reza’s direction.

He was watching her, his dark gaze intense, his mouth flat. At least he wasn’t glaring at her. That was progress, she supposed.

She gripped the pen in her hand and motioned toward the men before her. “So maybe we can put aside the canned slides and talk about why you hate the shrinks. And maybe I can explain what it is that we do. And maybe, if we work together, we can save a life.”

The silence was back, a wet blanket settling over the room. She glanced around as the brief opening she’d attempted to walk through shriveled and shrank.

“I have a question.” Reza raised his hand. His eyes glittered darkly. “Sergeant First Class Iaconelli, ma’am. My question is: Why do we have to spend so much time chasing after the shitbirds who are smoking spice or some other shit that’s not meant for human consumption and then when we try to throw them out, you all stop the process and tell us they have PTSD?”

“Ike, your attitude is part of the damn problem.” All eyes turned in the direction of a hard-looking sergeant first class. He had no hair and there was a hint of a black tattoo ringing his neck. Sergeant First Class Garrison was a big man. “Intimidating” was too light a word for him. And yet, on his left hand, a wedding ring shone bright gold. Someone had tamed this man. She found herself wondering at the woman who’d married him then pulled her thoughts sharply into focus. “You can’t run around calling our soldiers shitbirds. They’ll always do what you expect and if you expect them to screw up, they’re going to live up to your expectation.”

“I don’t expect them to be smoking it up in the barracks on the weekend,” Reza snapped.

Emily held up one hand. “Sergeant Garrison, thank you for getting straight to the heart of the matter. What you’re talking about is not simply about drug abuse. You’re talking about soldiers who are self-medicating. Instead of using the proper channels to seek care, they’re choosing instead the easier path of smoking marijuana, or what is it you called it? Spice?”

“It’s synthetic marijuana, ma’am,” Garrison said.

She’d had no idea there was such a thing, let alone that soldiers were smoking it. “Thank you. Regardless of their drug of choice, the reason for using is often to deal with symptoms of anxiety that they’re otherwise managing or not managing very well.”

Reza lifted his hand and she swallowed the flit of nerves in her belly as she pointed at him. “Yeah, well, I’ve got real warriors who need help who won’t go to the damn R&R Center because there’s all these slick-sleeved little punks in there trying to get out of drug charges.”

It was a cold statement, one that shook her, reminding her that this was not a sympathetic room. And that Iaconelli was not a sympathetic man.

“You raise an interesting point, Sergeant Iaconelli. The facts are that most of our suicides over the last two years have been among first-term soldiers who have never deployed,” she said, speaking loudly to cover the nervous waiver in her voice.

Garrison straightened where he’d been leaning against the wall. “Y’all know I got blown up a little over a year ago. I had a really tough road back. The thing I learned over that time is that our boys are struggling. Whether we see it or not, our boys need our help.” He turned his gaze to Emily.

Reza scowled and shook his head. “Look, Garrison, you’re not the only one who got blown up downrange. But the point I’m trying to make is that it’s our boys who won’t go get the help because of all the ash and trash taking up the appointments.”

Emily held up her hands but Garrison interrupted her. “Ike, you need to shut your damn mouth. Just because you drink yourself to sleep every night as therapy doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t need a different way to cope.”

“Fuck you, Garrison,” Reza spat. “I’m the reason the rest of your platoon came home from the last deployment.”

A red-haired sergeant stood. His right hand was bunched in what looked like a perpetual half grip and it took Emily a moment to realize that it was a prosthetic hand. Her skin went cold. She’d never seen physical evidence of the war this close before.

“Girls, girls. Can we please listen to the good captain explain to us the services she offers? I for one would like more information on how to not accidentally almost kill myself in the future.”

The room groaned beneath the joke and Emily saw his name tag. Staff Sergeant Carponti. His eyes lit with an impish grin and she wished she knew the story behind how the young sergeant was able to defuse the anger between the two big sergeants with such ease.

“That’s not funny, Carponti.” Reza settled back against the wall.

“It was my accidental overdose. I’ll make jokes if I want to,” Carponti said. “You can’t because that would just be wrong on multiple levels. But I can make all the inappropriate jokes I want.” He turned and grinned in Emily’s direction and she instantly liked him. “How do we fix this shit, ma’am?”

“There are no easy answers,” Emily said once everyone’s attention was off the two combatants. “But while Sergeant Iaconelli mocks the issue of bad homes, the simple fact is that the generation of soldiers we are dealing with have been raised differently than many of us were. A large portion of our force comes from broken homes, have been victims of trauma at a very young age.” She deliberately avoided looking in Reza’s direction. “What I’d like you all to think about is the fact that many of you are combat veterans. Many of you have lived through terrible experiences as adults. But how would your life be different if you’d been beaten as a child? Or sexually abused? You can mock the younger generation and say they’re weak.” She paused, scanning the faces of the warriors in front of her, looking for any sign that her words were breaking through their hardened shells. “Or you can look at the fact that some of them are even functioning as an act that takes the greatest strength.”

Emily hung back as the crowd of officers and sergeants filtered from the stuffy classroom. There had been no further outbursts as she’d continued the discussion but she’d lost one very important player.

Reza had stared at his feet for the rest of her briefing, his jaw pulsing with more and more anger as she’d gone on. Something had struck a nerve with him and she had no idea what.

She also did not know him well enough to approach him about it. But that did not mean the worry would leave her alone.

She stuffed her notes into a plain manila folder as the sergeant major approached. He was a hard, weathered man, a man who’d spent too much time in the sun without sunblock. Who smoked and drank and lived life as hard and as fast as it would allow him.

“Thank you for coming, ma’am,” Giles said, offering her a hand that swallowed hers whole. She felt engulfed. Surrounded.

“Thank you for letting me go off topic,” she said quietly. “I think we do too much slidesmanship in the army and I haven’t been around that long.”

He grinned and it lightened the bleak darkness in his eyes. “Don’t say that too loudly. You’ll get kicked out of the officer corps.”

She smiled and folded her arms over her chest. “Do you think anyone listened today, Sergeant Major?”

His gaze shifted to some distant battle and for a long moment, there were ghosts dancing in his eyes. He came back to himself with a grim set to his jaw. “I think so. Maybe one or two. But sometimes, that’s all you can do. And sometimes, it’s enough. Good job today.”

He left abruptly and Emily wondered if this was what life was always like when dealing with men like this. Still, she had the feeling she’d been given high praise from a man who did not look like he handed it out easily.

She picked up her hat and her papers and started for the door, somewhat disappointed that no one had stopped her to ask questions. Usually at least one or two soldiers lingered after her briefing, wanting more information. Usually it was for a “friend.” Today, though, there was no one.

The stigma against getting help was alive and well at Fort Hood.

She tucked the folder beneath her arm and started for the door. The hallway was old and beaten down, decorated with photos from the battles of this war and legends of previous wars. She didn’t linger, uncomfortably reminded that she had no combat experience. That she was not welcome in this part of the post.

She slid her sunglasses on as she stepped into the bright Fort Hood afternoon, grateful that the day was nearly over. She wanted to go for a run. Needed to cleanse the toxic hostility from her skin.

She rounded the corner and stopped. Reza leaned against a black Harley Davidson, arms folded over his chest, his expression as grim and forbidding as it had been inside.

She could keep walking. Ignore the hostility screaming off him. She didn’t know him. Didn’t know why he’d chosen to wait for her outside the classroom, but her senses were not tingling alarm. At least not the kind of alarm that made her think potential psycho.

No, this alarm was something else entirely. Something she was too afraid to acknowledge.

She could walk around him and avoid him but that would be the coward’s way out. It would be admitting that he unsettled her. She lifted her chin and headed in his direction, toward her waiting vehicle.

“You’ve never experienced pure hell on earth until you’re in the middle of a firefight,” he said quietly. “There is nothing like the feeling of piss running down your leg as you’re throwing everything you’ve got at an enemy that would drag your carcass through the streets if you lowered your defenses.”

She stopped in front of him, unsure if she met his gaze or not between her black-rimmed sunglasses and his. She glanced down at his chest and at the stack of black badges over his heart. “This one is the combat action badge, isn’t it?”

He looked down at the knife encircled in a wreath. “Yeah. Why?”

She frowned. “Because you’re right,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what it feels like.” She glanced down. “I’d like to think that my first time in combat, I won’t cower in a bunker, too afraid to move,” she whispered. Lifting her gaze again, she found the words she needed. “I’d like to know I won’t be a liability on this next deployment if the base gets attacked.”

Her words surprised him. She could see it in the slight part of his lips, the sudden absence of tension in his jaw. “What do you think you’re asking for?” he asked, his voice rough.

“You have a field training exercise coming up, right?” She tried to find the words she needed but she was still learning the language of the military.

His lips curled in a faint smile. “Yeah.”

“I’d like to tag along. See what your soldiers do.” She tipped her chin. “I’d like to understand better. Would you be able to make something like that happen?”

Would he be able to make something like that happen?

Would he like to be held down and have a smiley face drawn on his nuts? Sure, why not. Every day brought a new experience; why not bring a psych doc out to an infantry company’s training exercise?

Because what was the worst that could happen, right?

“Why?”

“Why what?” she asked.

“Why do you want to understand something you will never be part of?”

She offered him a funny sort of smile, a smile that hid a thousand secrets. A smile that reminded him that there was still goodness left in the world. A smile that shined a light on the dark part of his soul. “Let’s just say it’s intellectual curiosity and leave it at that.”

He frowned down at the tightly buttoned-up captain and had the strongest urge to see what would happen if she unbuttoned enough around him to relax. She made him want things that he’d long ago given up on wanting for himself.

He was not meant for relationships. He managed to hurt everyone important to him. It didn’t matter if it was intentional or not. She was out of his league and he knew it but the stubborn tilt of her chin stroked admiration to life inside him. His little captain had faced down a room of combat vets today and hadn’t even blinked.

“You’re one confusing lady,” he said quietly.

“Keeps guys like you on their toes.”

He met her gaze sharply. Her eyes danced in the midafternoon sunlight. If he didn’t know better, he’d guess she was flirting with him.

“What are you doing, ma’am?” he asked, his voice rough.

Her throat moved, the muscles tight beneath her skin. “That’s the first time you’ve used any military courtesy with me,” she said. “That’s the problem. I wear the uniform but guys like you, they don’t see me as one of you. I want to feel like a soldier. Like we’re on the same team.” She paused, her fingers tightening around the notebook she cradled in one hand. “I want to understand what it is that you do.”