“Nonsense.” Mama waves her hand. “I have a shower coming up here soon anyway. That’ll warm me and they’ll change my bed then. Now, come here, Willa Rose.”
Obediently, I scoot onto the mattress and tuck myself against Mama.
She glances over at me. “Ready?”
“Yes, Mama. Please just tell me.”
“Okay, so it’s about Dr. B.”
I pick my head up. “What about him?”
Mama bites her lip.
What does she have to be coy about? “Are you two…” I wiggle my eyebrows. “You know?”
Mama laughs, and it’s a laugh I want to remember. It doesn’t sound like a sick laugh. It sounds like her old laugh, clear and bell-like. Her smile is wide as her head tips back and she laughs.
My laugh is quiet at first. But soon it’s not. It’s loud, and not unlike hers, and pretty soon we’re laughing so hard, we’re crying and Mama’s turning, hiding her head in the pillow as it becomes a wracking cough. Her cough settles before we earn a nurse’s attention, and Mama nestles back in her pillow, wiping her eyes.
“Oh, Willa, you have a way of saying things. Phew.” Mama sighs happily. “Now, where was I? Oh, right. No, we are not…you know.”
I wipe my eyes, too, and return my head to her shoulder. “Okay, so what is it, then?”
“You can’t tell anyone, Willa, because it’s skirting a breach of ethics. It could cost Alex everything if word gets out.”
“What?”
Mama’s eyes search mine as her voice lowers. “Dr. B—Alex, rather—we go way back. We served together on a few deployments, then we bumped into each other again at a veterans function five years ago. When we realized we were both living in Los Angeles, we agreed to stay in touch, just as friends, mind you. You ever see or speak to his wife and you’ll understand why.”
I frown. “Mama, you’re a total catch, inside and out. You’re still smokin’.”
Mama chuckles and gently cups my cheek. “Thank you, honey. I think I had a few pretty nice decades, but no matter. The point is the medical ethics board would argue Alex shouldn’t be my doctor since we have history. They’d say it would be easy for him to let emotion get in the way of his care—”
“That’s the last thing I want to hear about your cancer doctor, Mama, is that he’s not fit to take care of you.” Has his judgment been clouded? “Why are…what were you thinking?” I hiss.
Mama sighs. “He is completely capable of compartmentalizing. We don’t know each other well. He’s very sensible, very honest with me. I’m telling you it would look bad, not that it is. Trust me, I’m doing the right thing, letting him be my care provider. Alex is the best at this, Willa. I know it’s a little murky, but he needed to do this for me, and I wasn’t going to say no, given his credentials.”
“Why did he need to do this?”
Mama’s eyes leave mine as her hand fiddles with the blanket draped over her bony knees. “I saved his life on our last tour together, before he was given a medical discharge.”
My mouth drops. “You saved his life? How?”
Mama bites her full bottom lip, the original to the replica she gave me. “I don’t like to think about it often. It was an awful day.”
I squeeze her hand. “I don’t want to pressure you.” Mama doesn’t talk much about her deployments, but I know it’s taken years of therapy to help her cope with many PTSD triggers.
“It’s okay, Willa. I just need a minute.” Dropping her head back on her pillow, Mama stares up at the ceiling. “I think you know enough about the military by now to understand that a combat medic, being part of a medevac team, is a dangerous, nerve-wracking job. You fly into conflict zones, perform life-saving medical care on the ground. Bullets whirring past you, explosions, screams. If you make it back out, you’re in a chopper with critically traumatized bodies, possibly fatal injuries, working with what you have until you’re back on base with everything you need.
“I don’t want to get into the specifics of the mission and how it went south. It’s enough for you to know that it did. The point is, Alex and I were there, a pair who worked well in the field. We were both exceptionally cool-headed, excellent compartmentalizers, we worked fast together and had this odd ability to communicate without words. Alex was holding…” Her eyes squeeze shut. “Alex was trying to save a soldier’s life when he took a bullet to the leg. It shattered his femur, severing his femoral artery, not that I knew specifically at the time. I saw him take the hit and then I saw lots of blood.”
I suck in a breath. Mama’s one of those medical types who loved raising her daughter to understand her body. We spent nights nerding out over anatomy books with me inside her arms, where she taught me the Latin names for my bones and body parts. It led to my first social faux pas when I lifted my shirt in kindergarten, pointed to my belly button and told the class, It’s my umbilicus!
All that to say, I know the significance of what she’s saying. I know that an artery carries blood from your heart to the rest of your body, except when it’s severed—then, it’s pumping your life source right out of your body, faster as your panic increases and your heart rate accelerates. It’s a fatal injury and a swift death unless drastic measures are taken.
“Shit, Mama.”
Mama nods. “Everyone was already crawling back to the chopper. Alex was the last man out there, holding Williams, who was gone by that point. The captain was screaming at me to get in, but I couldn’t leave Alex, so I ran out, ripped off the bottom of my shirt, and tied the world’s fastest tourniquet around his upper thigh, then dragged his ass back to the chopper.”
She slides her gown off her shoulder, pointing to the nasty scar on her shoulder blade. A wound that got infected, she told me years ago, when she decided I was old enough to know the truth. “Took a bullet that lodged nicely in my scapular, but I got us to safety, otherwise unscathed.”
Stars dance around the edges of my vision, alerting me to the fact that I’ve been holding my breath, listening to this story. My exhale is one big gust of air. “What happened?”
Mama shrugs. “We both received treatment. Alex went in for surgery. I did too, but not urgently. My wound got infected, didn’t respond well enough initially to antibiotics, but eventually, it came around. I got off easy, but Alex lost his leg from the mid-thigh down. He was lucky he survived at all.”
A shaky exhale leaves me as fresh tears prick my eyes. I know my mama’s brave. I’ve always been proud to say on Veterans Day that my mother served her country in places so many people are afraid to go. But this is a new depth of understanding. It’s the most specific she’s ever been with me.
“Mama.” I palm away my tears. “I don’t think I tell you enough how much I admire you. You’re badass. And brave.”
Mama wraps her hand around mine and squeezes. “You’ve told me plenty, Willa. I know you’re proud of me, and I know being a military brat for a single mom wasn’t easy, but you were always such a trooper. New schools, new homes, new neighbors. You always bounced back from another change with that wide smile and your wild hair, walking up to kids’ doors with a soccer ball on your hip, banging on the windows, inviting them to come play.”