Rick glared at him. “No, Stu. I can’t just be happy.”
“You don’t have to,” Rick said. “I can just let you know how I’m getting along.”
“This might be more for me than you,” Jack said. “And if you need anything, even just someone to talk to, call. If you need me, I can come. Got that?”
“Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”
Jack put a hand around the kid’s neck and pulled him briefly against his chest, holding him close for a second. Even like that, Rick was so far away. He didn’t hug back. He put one hand on Jack’s arm and that was it. For a brief and terrible moment, Jack wished Rick would fall apart, take his comfort.
When Rick and Liz’s baby was born dead a couple of years ago, Rick had needed Jack’s and Preacher’s strength to keep him on his feet, to keep him from crumbling. He’d needed the men he’d grown to think of as fathers to bolster him so he could keep Liz from losing it. They’d spent hours talking, supporting, soothing, lending the strength of their experiences.
Right now Rick didn’t want anything from anyone, and for Jack this was horrible. It was like being rejected as a father figure.
“Hey, Jack,” Rick said. “It was nice of you to come all this way. Sorry I’m not good company.”
Jack smiled at him, a completely indulgent smile. “Rick, there wasn’t anything else I could do. Like it or not, that’s the way it is with best friends. If it was me in the bed, you’d be right here.”
A flicker of emotion crossed Rick’s features, but it didn’t last long. “Thanks. Have a good trip home.”
Normally Rick would have told him to give Mel his love, but on this visit he hadn’t even asked about her or the kids. In fact, he asked if his grandmother was holding up and that was all. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, see anyone, think about anyone. The way he was isolating himself from feeling not only worried Jack, it was completely familiar to him. Jack had been in a few bad situations in the Marines and he’d been too goddamn stoic for his own good. But, he reminded himself, he had somehow grown out of most of that. He had survived the traumas of combat.
The one who surprised him more was Liz. Jack was afraid he’d be dragging a weeping, sniveling seventeen-year-old basket case back across the Atlantic, but Liz, although troubled and sad, seemed to be in control of her emotions. “I’m afraid, you know,” she said to Jack while they sat together on the airplane. “I’m afraid he doesn’t love me anymore. But I understand I can’t know that for sure until he gets better. And he will get better. I was terrified that we’d get to Germany to find out he was—” She couldn’t finish.
Jack squeezed her hand. “I know, kiddo,” he said. “Listen, he’s hurting and he’s screwed up right now, but he has no idea what he’s getting himself into. I offered to bring him home to my house and drive him to PT as many times a week as he needed to go and he rejected that. He said he didn’t want anyone watching his struggle. Well, I talked to the social worker right before we packed up and left. When he gets to the hospital in San Diego,
everyone
will be watching him. They have a new care unit they call C-5—Comprehensive Combat and Complex Casualty Care. There’s a large amputee unit that combines everything from orthopedics and psych to drug treatment. He might be kicking and screaming the whole time, but as long as he’s there, there will be treatment for whatever is going on with him. And that missing leg isn’t all that’s going on with him.”
“What
is
going on with him?” she asked. “Because I’m not sure I get it.”
“Any guess.” He shrugged. “Could be what they used to call battle fatigue, but it’s really just the shock of seeing terrible things, doing things you wish you hadn’t had to do, denial, rage, fear. Add on top of that, he got hurt real bad and is minus a leg. He can get a good prosthesis, but he can’t ever get that leg back. He’s wounded, worried about the future and, for that matter, worried about the past. His war past. He’s going to the best possible place to get help with that. You and me? We can’t help him as much as they can. Bad as it hurts that he doesn’t want our help, it’s probably the best thing that could happen.”
“I hope he gets himself back,” she said. “Because no matter what, I’m probably going to love him forever.”
She leaned her head against Jack’s shoulder in the narrow, confining airplane seats. Without looking at Jack, she said, “Remember back when I was pregnant?” Then she laughed hollowly. “Fifteen and pregnant. God. Talk about hurt, scared and pissed off….”
“Rick was only seventeen,” Jack inserted.
“And he did everything he could for me. You can’t believe the things he did. He protected me from the popular girls who made fun of me, pointed at me, tortured me. He got in a fight because some guy said something mean about me and Rick defended me. He didn’t want to get married, but I wanted to so bad because I was scared of being alone, of my mom and aunt taking the baby away from me….” She looked up at Jack and smiled. “So he ran away with me. Trying to give me anything I needed to feel safe.”
Jack smiled back, stroking her hair. “You didn’t get too far,” he said, remembering. He’d gone after them, brought them back.
Her fingers were on that small diamond again, running it back and forth along the chain around her neck. “You know what I want to do? I want to hitchhike to San Diego and stand outside his hospital room and yell and cry and beg.”
“Ew,” Jack said.
“I want to, but I won’t. I can see he doesn’t want me right now and that would only make things worse. I just can’t think what I should do.”
“Did you ever check out those support groups?”
She sighed heavily. “Jack, if you’re not married to the Marine, no one has any time for you. And that’s that.”
“I thought the people in the group would…”
“Would bend the rules?” she asked. “No. Jack, I think I’m on my own this time.”
He smiled and brushed her hair across her pretty brow. He couldn’t relate to this. There was no special girl from years back that, if he saw her again, he’d regret letting get away. And he wasn’t even sure Rick and Liz were meant to be, despite all they’d been through together. But they were, individually, such incredible kids. So strong. They shouldn’t have to be that strong at their tender ages.
Could fate throw any more at them?
“Nah, you’re not on your own. Not while I’m around. Not while Mel’s around. I’ll mention to Mel that you’re not getting any support. If anyone has ideas, it’s Mel.” He didn’t feel it was his job to get them together. But if there was anything he could do to get them through this dark patch so each of them could carry on without terrible damage, he’d damn sure try.
And anyone else you want to talk to. Jack.
He lifted her chin. “Liz, I did it because I thought it was an important thing to do. It wasn’t a loan. Forget it.”
“But I think you wasted your money.”
“Hey. We needed to see him alive. Think about it—alive and pissed off is so much better than what it could’ve been. Let’s stick with that. And move ahead the best we can.” He paused. “He needs time.”
Then he drove the rest of the way to Virgin River.
Normally, when he had dealt with something confusing or emotional, the one person he wanted to talk to, be with, would be Mel. She had this uncanny knack for zeroing in on a problem, cutting through the flab and attacking the situation with reality, honesty, wisdom.
This time he went to his bar and looked for Preacher. They’d been to Iraq together twice and had been through some ugly stuff. Preacher had been wounded pretty bad the first time and Jack had carried him about a mile to get him to medical transport, but Preacher had come away with all his parts.
The bar was quiet; a couple of guys were sharing a pitcher and playing cribbage, so Jack went back to the kitchen where Preach was slicing and dicing. “Hey,” he said.
“Jack! Whoa, man. When did you get back?”
“Seconds ago. I need to go over to the clinic, see Mel and the kids.”
“How is he?”
Jack shook his head. “He’s a goddamn mess. Hurt, pissed, so angry, isolating, doesn’t want a friend, doesn’t want help, barely acknowledged that Liz and I flew across the fucking Atlantic to carry his body home.”
Unbelievably, Preacher smiled. “Good. He’s getting stage one covered.”
“Stage one?”
“Yeah, maybe one and two. Anger and denial. He’s gonna have to grieve the leg, the war wounds, the time he lost from his young life. There’s probably going to be five stages.”
Jack leaned on the worktable, his brow wrinkled. “How do you know this shit?”
“I looked it up on the computer. You know, after you figure out e-mail, there are other things you can do on that computer.”
“So what’s next for him?” Jack asked.
“I’ll have to get my cheat sheet, but it could be bargaining—I’ll never commit another sin if you just let me live. That kind of thing. We’ve all done that. All that’s really important is—it ends in acceptance.”
Jack straightened. “How long does it take?”
“Well, there’s the thing,” Preacher said. “It depends on the person. Rick? He’s pretty tough. It could stretch out. He doesn’t let go easy.”
“Christ,” Jack said, running a hand along the back of his neck. “Why do I always think I know you?”
“I dunno, Jack,” he answered with a shrug. “But Rick—we’re just at angry? And his body, his health—that’s under control?”
“He’s still in a lot of pain, on drugs for it, shipping to San Diego as we speak. Balboa. NMCSD. He’ll heal up the stump and start physical therapy. They could keep him until he gets his leg or farm him out to some smaller facility.”
“It has to heal and shrink. They can’t fit him until it’s ready—no swelling, no redness, no tenderness. They’ll get that stump in a shrinker, looks like a skull cap kind of. It’s real important, before they fit the prosthesis, that it’s not swollen or anything. They’ll work with him in PT to avoid muscle contractures and desensitize that stump to get beyond the phantom pain. A lot of physical therapists will put a healthy, healed stump in a bowl of crunchy dry cornflakes and grind it around to kind of teach the nerves that the leg ends there.”
Jack’s eyes grew wide. “How do you
know
this shit?” Preacher just tilted his head and smirked. “You looked it up, I know.”
“Well, I wanted to understand the news you brought home.”
“And how is the news?” Jack asked.
Preacher shrugged. “Pretty much on target.”
He assessed the condition of the other patients and came to the conclusion there was no predicting how people got through trauma like this. Some were downright cheerful in spite of terrible pain, some were horribly depressed. He judged himself to be right about in the middle—neither cheerful nor catatonic with gloom. Once they started slacking off on the narcotics, it was harder to sleep. It was like trying to catch a nap in an amphitheater—there was always noise, light, movement. There were cries in the night, sometimes from a breakout of pain, sometimes from nightmares. One guy cried for his mother in his sleep. Moans, groans and, unbelievably, even laughter punctuated the darkness. Rick was afraid to succumb to sleep lest he scream and expose the depth of his vulnerability.
Once the cell phone had arrived, there was already a message waiting—Jack. “Rick, give me a call when you get the phone so I know we’re operational. Call anyone you like—there’s no limit on the minutes.” Rick didn’t call him. He kept thinking he would pretty soon, but after a few days the phone twittered and the caller ID signaled Jack. This time the message was more commanding. “Rick, if you don’t call me back, I’m going to drive down there to be sure you’re getting by all right.”
Trapped, he returned the call. “Sorry,” he said. “I just haven’t felt like talking.”
“Understandable,” Jack said. “We don’t have to talk long. How are they treating you? Tell me what’s going on.”
Rick sighed. This wasn’t what he had in mind. But, it was better to have Jack on a phone than in his face, so he’d have to play along. “I’m still in the hospital, moving to barracks with other PT patients tomorrow. I get around in a chair or walker. Mostly the chair because it’s easier. Another week or two and I’ll get a preparatory prosthesis and start walking.”
“Preparatory?”
“The first step before the real fake leg.”
“Ah. How are the other guys there doing? Meeting anyone you can, you know, talk to?”
Rick was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Not a lot of laughs around here, Jack.”
“Maybe that’ll get better when you’re in barracks.”
“Yeah, maybe. Listen, I’m pretty tired….”
“Really? Haven’t had enough rest yet?” When Rick didn’t respond, Jack said, “Okay, buddy, I’ll let you get some rest. I’ll call tomorrow.”
One thing about the barracks, the men were in various stages of recovery. They weren’t all newly injured like Rick. One guy was practicing tying his shoes with two prosthetic arms while another was strapping on his preparatory prosthesis in the morning and using only a cane to assist him with balance. But the routine was different here—no more food on a tray or bath out of a basin at the bedside. Here it was a mess hall and showers. Rick had to admit, a real shower felt damn good, even if he did have to have his stump wrapped because the wound wasn’t completely healed. And he sat on a stool in the shower to be safe. But getting himself to the cafeteria for a gang meal wasn’t his idea of a good time.
There were guys here who played poker, passed around pictures of their wives/girls/kids as well as magazines—mostly porn. “Gotta keep the pipes clear,” one guy laughed as he tossed a nudie magazine on Rick’s bed. There were men in barracks with no hope of ever clearing the pipes, paraplegics who’d lost movement and feeling from the waist down. Rick knew that if his brain and emotions were engaged right, he’d see they had it worse and experience some gratitude. But his head was tangled around powerful feelings of doom and an overwhelming sense of loss that he couldn’t talk about. Hell, he couldn’t even understand it. He just felt it so deep, as if everything had slipped away from him and couldn’t be rescued—the life he’d had before war, the body he’d had, the dreams and goals.
He’d like to talk about it but just couldn’t bring himself to. Liz called a couple of times and even though he didn’t pick up, he listened to her messages over and over. She loved him, she was praying every day that he was doing okay in rehab, that he was feeling more positive.
He’d always been able to talk to Liz. Even though they’d started out as lovers, right out of the chute, they had always been best friends. They’d been thrown into the deep end of the pool, with pregnancy, fetal death, war. They’d never have stayed together so long if they hadn’t been able to talk and write about their issues. They held on to each other through so much confusion and fear, got each other through not just by talking, but by listening. Jack had taught him that:
Don’t worry about saying the right thing, Rick. Let Liz tell you what scares her and tell her you won’t abandon her—that’s all she really wants from you.
Had Jack talked to Liz? Advised her? Because it seemed as if she’d always done that for him, too.
He wasn’t sure how she got on the naval base, but he opened his eyes one night and she was there, sitting on the edge of his bed. He could hear the sounds around him, so he knew he was awake—there was snuffling in beds, moaning, humming, snoring.
“What are you
doing
here?” he asked her, panicked, immediately afraid she was going to be in deep trouble. Maybe arrested.
She reached out a hand and ran her pretty fingers over his temple, down his cheek, softly over his lips. “I thought maybe you needed me, Ricky. And I knew I needed you.” Then she leaned over him and touched his lips with hers. He inhaled sharply, smelling her scent, tasting her special taste. His girl. Not a girl, a woman, and she never let him forget she belonged to him and he belonged to her. He’d had some dates, some making out with girls before Lizzie, but she was the whole deal for him. They might have started out a couple of clumsy, stupid kids, but by now they knew each other’s bodies and needs and their sex was rich and powerful and satisfying.
She fed him sweet kisses and he swallowed her little moans. “Shh,” he said to her. “We’re going to get in so much trouble.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I pulled the curtain.”
He glanced and saw that they were as alone as they could be in a barracks, the privacy panels separating his bed from his neighbors. And the sounds of sleep and dreams were all around him. He went after her mouth again. Her perfect, soft, round mouth, her full lips. He ran a hand down her side to her hip and over. She was wearing that tiny denim skirt. Ohhh, that little skirt. He slid his hand under and she was bare. He let his fingers explore while she kissed him; his baby, she was wet and ready. This wasn’t a good idea, he thought. Not here. But he was ready, too.
“Come here, baby,” he said, lying her down next to him. And she answered with that soft little moan he knew so well. “Come here, I need you. I need you so bad right now.” It was crowded in his little bed, but he rose onto his side, looking down at her. His Liz, his beautiful, sweet, loyal Liz. He slipped one hand under her shirt to capture a breast, the other went under her skirt to probe her a little. He had to cover her mouth with his to silence her moans. But then he pushed up her shirt and pulled her pretty nipple into his mouth and he didn’t care if she moaned. He was in heaven.
Sometimes this was all it took; Liz had always been so hot. He’d run his tongue around her nipple, suck a little, stroke her between her legs and she’d plunge right into an orgasm. “Don’t wait for me,” he whispered into her mouth. He licked, sucked, stroked and she came apart, hot and wet, gasping. He heard himself laugh softly. Then he positioned himself over her, mounted her, rising above her, finding and entering her. God, she felt so good he thought he was going to die.
He pumped and drove into her and heard her hum. “Don’t forget,” she whispered. And his hand snaked down between their tight bodies to find that clitoris again, rubbing it. He knew his woman; this was what she wanted.
“If we don’t get caught, I’m going to put my face in you and stay there an hour,” he promised her. “I just can’t get enough of you.”
“Please,” she said softly. “Please please please please…”
And he erupted. Went off like a rocket, pulsing and coming until there was nothing left inside him. His eyes were pinched tight, he was bathed in sweat, and for a second he wondered how she’d gotten him on his back. And then he opened his eyes and realized he was alone.
She’d only been there in his mind, in his dream. But God, what a dream. It was so real, so perfect, exactly as he remembered.
He panted for a while, catching his breath. He looked and there had been no privacy screen. But it seemed everyone was asleep; no one was sitting up looking at him. He had a momentary hope he hadn’t been talking in his sleep, but a glance around told him it had all happened in his head, under his sheet.
And then he realized that in his dream, he’d held himself over her with two complete, undamaged legs, kneeling between her legs. He gasped at the memory, so vivid. Soundless, hot tears rolled from his eyes across his temples. Oh, Liz…Oh, baby….