Authors: Katherine Owen
I don't answer for a minute or two, trying to breath evenly again. I sigh, frustrated with the barrage of the same set of questions from two different doctors now. "All I can remember is this feeling of racing against time. That I needed to do everything I could to get back, taking the terrain triple time. I can't remember anything else."
There's a long silence. I sway in the blackness, feeling light-headed and worn out all at the same time, while Major Richards continues to stroke my hand.
"Okay, I want you to just lie back and rest. Listen to me."
She doesn't talk though. She stops while I wait in this utter blackness, silently pleading for her to go on. I hear her sigh heavily and sense her sudden hesitation. I go on high alert. I brace myself, both mentally and physically, for what she's going to say to me next.
"Lieutenant, you were ambushed—under fire with your partner Lieutenant Holloway. Do you remember?"
"An ambush?" My mind races, but the images are no more than flashes of dark and light. "No."
How can I not remember any of this?
"Ethan? Is he okay?" I ask. She takes another deep breath as if playing for time. Apprehension begins to close all around me and my breathing gets more labored. "Tell me what happened."
"I can only tell you what we have been able to piece together."
Her qualifying statement seems to be some kind of warning for me. I hold my breath and wait for her to continue.
"You and your partner were ambushed. You were under heavy fire. But, somehow, you brought all the gear and Lieutenant Holloway back to camp. You carried it all. All the gear on one shoulder and Lieutenant Holloway on the other back to camp. Ten miles back to camp in under four hours. You called out for the medics as soon as you arrived. Do you
remember
any of this?"
"No. It was pitch black. Rough terrain." My voice is barely audible.
A fear, greater than the one I have about the blackness, begins to swirl around me like an oppressive heat wave.
"Where's Ethan? Lieutenant Ethan Holloway." I enunciate his name slowly, as if she's hard of hearing or merely a five-year-old child. "Where is he?" I choke out.
She sighs again.
I take a jagged breath, then hold it, and just wait.
"Lieutenant Holloway is dead." Her voice is so soft that I strain to hear her words.
It takes a minute longer for them to even register.
Ethan is dead.
The minutes go by. I breathe in and out and swim with the blackness. My eyes sting; I fight for breath and control. My mind seems to fracture into a million pieces, while my body embraces absolute stillness, like the tectonic plates of the Earth shifting underground, wreaking permanent destruction.
Ethan is dead.
Five minutes? I still haven't said anything. This stranger, this woman, continues to hold my hand, continues to stroke it back and forth. I breathe, matching the rhythm of her strokes. I still don't say anything. The darkness of grief is as unbearable as the one that envelops my sight. My best friend is dead and I don't even remember how it happened.
"No," I finally say, making sure she understands that I won't accept this outcome.
She grips my right hand tighter. "I want you to know how sorry I am. I understand you two were close. You grew up together?"
How does she know that? Leave it to the Navy to provide a complete history in my case file. Bitterness fills me up.
"In Austin. We grew up together in Austin. Signed on to the SEALS at the same time. Live together. Fight together. Shoot together." I recite our shared motto, as if by doing so, I can undo everything she's just told me.
"What I also want you to know is that we're going to do everything we can to help you get your sight back," she says in this gentle voice. "And, in the meantime, we'll do everything we can to help you cope with the loss of it."
She lets go of my hand. Helplessness invades me. This unfamiliar feeling of being lost and swallowed whole in darkness takes over.
"We'll talk tomorrow," she says.
I scowl at her promise and even more as her voice gets farther away from me.
"We've got a lot of work to do. You need your rest."
"Let's start now."
"No. It's late. We'll start first thing in the morning. Lieutenant, you've got to give your body and mind time to heal. Whether you remember it or not, you've been through a lot."
"Where am I?"
It's a belated question. I should have asked that already. Now, I'm afraid to know the answer.
"Stateside." She pauses. "This is Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. Get some rest, Lieutenant. It's after midnight. I'll be back tomorrow morning, and we'll start our work then."
I hear the click of the door and feel the oppression and combat the sudden fear of being alone. All of it presses down on me.
Two things cause me to shake: I'm not in Afghanistan any longer. Most wounded SEALS are treated in the field and return to the line. This fact implies: this is serious. Secondly, Ethan. Something has happened to Ethan and I can't remember any of it.
He's dead.
There's a part of me that cannot even fathom this outcome on any level.
I lay back against the pillows, open my eyes, over and over, hoping to see something,
anything
, but the result is the same every time. Blackness. It's like being a prisoner in solitary confinement trapped in complete darkness—this not seeing thing.
I try not to think the word, but it comes out of nowhere into my head.
Blind. Blind. I'm blind.
Ethan is dead. Ethan is dead. Ethan is dead. Darkness hasn't just taken my sight; it takes my mind as well. I try to reel it back to a better place, but I can't.
I listen intently for human sounds, but all there is is the endless ticking of a clock and only the intermittent sound of muffled footsteps outside of my hospital door, but nothing more. When I'm relatively certain I'm alone, I allow myself to feel the incredible sorrow of losing my best friend. The tears stream down my face. I don't even make an attempt to wipe them away. My left shoulder and the middle of my chest begin to pulsate with this intense pain, as if this is a coordinated assault on both my soul and physical form.
*≈*≈*
Chapter 6. Wreck of the day
Jordan
"Banditos." I grimace, remembering, and look over at Ashleigh. Her shoulders sag as she acquiesces with a nod and I go on. "That's what they called them there. People that preyed on the tourists. The seamy side of Barcelona. In a country where the laws were different and perpetrators like them were so rare and hardly ever caught. Banditos that lured the tourists out into the countryside. They preyed on couples——oblivious, trusting souls, like my parents, looking for adventure and willing to leave the protected confines of resort life and the safe side of Barcelona and venture out in an unfamiliar and unprotected place. And then, the banditos did whatever they wanted. First, they blindfolded them and told them if they cooperate everything would be okay. Then, they stole their cash and all their credit cards and within hours racked up thousands of dollars with their accomplices. Males. Females. Banditos. They worked in groups of four or five. They stole my parents' virtues and, then, made sure they would never identify them again. Banditos. They left this out of the brochure, when they lured us to Barcelona." My tone is bitter and I do nothing now to hide it.
"How come you never told me the whole story?" she whispers, shocked.
"We didn't want the paparazzi to get a hold of it." I grimace as she looks over at me in disbelief. "What? Scare the shit out of you at seventeen on how cruel and unusual life could be? That would hardly be fair."
I force myself to smile and move from the refrigerator to the counter in a regular rhythm, intent on the task of baking chocolate cupcakes for Max's preschool. This is incongruent to the funeral planning that Ashleigh and I have been doing, but I cannot seem to stop myself from performing this ordinary task. A mother's wish, I guess. The busier I keep myself, the better contained the raging grief inside of me will be. That's my hope, at least.
"And, now? Why are you telling me, now?"
Ashleigh pushes a tendril of her long hair behind one ear. Her face is streaked with old tears. There have been two of those—crying jags. Well, she cried, while I felt nothing, but the pervasive grief. It's invaded my system and taken over. Ethan has been dead for ten days. His funeral is tomorrow.
"I don't know. It's weird. I've never been able to talk to you about it—what happened to them. But now, I can't stop thinking about it, and them, and what I saw then. It's some sort of…well, it's some weird, fucking form of closure, I guess."
I shrug my shoulders in bewilderment. I haven't been able to explain the nightmares I've been having about my parents and all the horrible moments I lived through when I was just seventeen that resurface now.
"Why?" Her gentle tone is almost my undoing. I move abruptly toward the refrigerator, again, turning away from her.
"Ashleigh," I say in a low voice. "Ethan." My voice trembles with just saying his name. "It was just like my dad. I can't get the image of Ethan's face out of my mind. It haunts me. I wake up every day and, for the first minute; I feel fine and then, that horrible last memory of his face rushes at me. I can't get it out of my mind."
"I wish you would have listened to me about that." She waves her hand through the air and then frowns at me. "You don't always have to be so fucking brave, you know." She twists her hair around her finger. A sure sign she's thinking deeply about something.
"Right now, I'm just so empty. I can't feel anything. Sometimes, I wake up and my world seems so ordinary, but then, I remember and I struggle to make it to the bathroom before I'm throwing up, sickened at the thought of him dead and remembering his face and how he looked. His beautiful face."
I sink down in the chair and hold my face in my hands.
"It won't always be like this. You know this. Remember? I was there when the stuff happened with your parents and you picked yourself up and you started over. Look at you. You fell in love and married Ethan. You have Max." Her desperate tone matches the one I continually hide from her. I live in my own private hell.
"I thought I was pregnant. Maybe, I was. I told him I thought I was. I wrote him an email, ecstatic because I'd missed my period. What if that upset him? What if he got killed because of me? Because he was distracted? Because of me," I whisper.
"No," she says, shaking her head. "He would have been thrilled, not distracted at all. Are you pregnant?"
"No," I whisper. "I got my period this morning."
"I'm so sorry." Ashleigh comes over and puts her arms around me.
I cannot find my way back to the surface. Grief is like this turbulent ocean wave that holds me down below the surface of the living. I feel as if I'm drowning most of the time. Ashleigh holds me in her arms and tells me everything is going to be okay. I want to believe her, but I can't.
"He's gone, Ashleigh. He's gone. I can't believe it. I just can't believe it."
"I know. It's so God-damn unfair."
Her swearing makes me want to smile. I pull away from her and she brushes back the hair from my face.
"Jordan, I just want you to know; I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here for you."
"I know." I try to smile, but the effort is too much. Finally, I swallow back the emotion building in my throat and in a trembling voice say, "Keep the tequila shots coming at the funeral. We're going to need them."
My best friend enthusiastically nods and steals a round of frosting with her outstretched finger and tries to smile. I watch in fascination. I'm reminded of Brock Wainwright doing the very same thing just six weeks ago.
For a moment, I let go of the hatred I have for him now, but then, it returns full force; I stagger back overwhelmed by its visceral force. I turn away from Ashleigh's probing gaze.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm just going to go change," I say. "Frosting everywhere."
"You're sure you're okay?"
"Geez, Ash. I'm fine."
I race down the hallway, gasping for air. I shut the bedroom door and sink down to the floor. In the sanctuary of my bedroom, I cajole myself to cry. Just cry for him. No one is watching. The heaviness is all around me. I close my eyes and welcome the blackness. I welcome it.
Dear God, let me cry.
But, no tears fall.
≈ ≈
Ashleigh has gone to pick up Max from preschool and deliver the cupcakes we've spent the afternoon decorating. Of course, I had to make them perfect, and after more than two hours of loving labor, little gray marshmallow replicas of sharks peak out of each one. I smile to myself knowing Max will be pleased. I'm doing everything I can to keep up the normalcy for him.
Ethan's last image flashes through my mind. Regret for the thousandth time for demanding to see him that way courses through me. I just had to see him in order to believe that he was really gone and then his face was so reminiscent of my father's. Now all these buried memories over the death of my parents resurface.
I feel the fear. I live with it.