She followed the sailor out of the interrogation room and headed for the exit. He saluted her and turned to head back down a hallway toward a bunch of offices.
Cole had said for her to call him when she was done, but Avery decided she would just walk over to the hospital instead. She wanted to see her friends and talk to her captain. She’d been given the week off, but knowing if she didn’t do something she’d go crazy, she planned to request to be put back on the rotation schedule as soon as possible.
Walking across the base helped settle her mind a bit. She returned salutes from enlisted sailors as she passed them and thought about how crazy it was that just a few days ago, she was buried deep within an Afghani mountainside.
The second she walked inside the hospital, she was greeted from all sides by her coworkers. Everyone was shocked to see her back so soon, but thrilled that she was all right. She still had some fading bruises on her face, but the rest of her cuts and scrapes were covered up by her uniform. She was very aware of the Budweiser pin Cole had given her, fastened to her T-shirt. For whatever reason, she’d seen it that morning when she was getting dressed and couldn’t resist putting it on. It was silly. She wasn’t a SEAL. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But she’d still pinned it onto her shirt.
She knew how much their pins meant to the SEALs. And Cole had given her his. It almost felt as if she was back in high school and a boy had given her his class ring to wear.
“You look great!” Rita Lipson, one of the nurses Avery worked with often, exclaimed as she hugged her tightly.
Avery did her best to hide the pain the woman’s tight grip caused.
“I can’t believe you’re here already!” Beverly Moses said a little more sedately as she too hugged Avery tight.
“To be honest…I was bored. My parents are in town and they went off to play tourist while I took care of some official navy business this morning. The last thing I wanted to do was go back to my apartment and sit on my butt. Is the captain in?”
“Yeah, last I knew, she was in her office,” Rita said.
“Rita and I have a break in about ten minutes, will you come and sit down with us?” Beverly asked.
Avery hated to be mean, but there was absolutely no way she could sit and talk about everything that had happened to her right now. It was too soon. And she didn’t like the excited gleam in her coworkers’ eyes. She liked them, but she didn’t want to be the subject of gossip or their entertainment for the day.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t. Hopefully I’ll be back on duty soon and we can talk then,” she told them as she turned to head down the hall.
“Happy those bastards didn’t get you down,” Rita called after her.
Avery headed up the stairs; she hated using the elevators. They were old and somewhat persnickety. Besides, at the moment, she didn’t think she could stomach being inside a small metal box. With her luck, it would stop working and she’d be trapped in there and have a mental breakdown or something.
Her captain’s office was on the third floor of the five-story hospital, and by the time she arrived, she’d said hello and endured hearing “glad you’re okay” about sixty times. Avery knew her fellow nurses and doctors were simply expressing their joy at having her back alive and well, but at the moment, all she wanted to do was move on from what happened, not be reminded of it every time she saw someone.
One of the things she liked best about Captain Cora Rosner was how down-to-earth she was. She didn’t have an admin who guarded her office door like a hawk. She was open to anyone who wanted to come in and talk, and she didn’t take any shit from doctors or senior officers who tried to pull rank.
Avery knocked on the door and smiled when she heard Captain Rosner say, “Come in!”
She poked her head around the door, and the second her superior officer saw her, she was on her feet and headed her way. “Avery! What in the world are you doing here today? Boy is it good to see you though!”
She hugged her, but she was careful not to hold her too long or too tightly. When she pulled back, she kept her hands on Avery’s shoulders and stared at her bruised face and winced.
“I got a debrief from the base general over in Afghanistan, but man, it’s always easier to read the words on paper than it is to see what happened to you in person. Are you all right?”
For some reason, the older woman’s question hit Avery hard. She tried to hold her tears back, but they leaked out anyway.
Captain Rosner didn’t miss a beat. She pulled her over to a chair in front of the desk and sat Avery down. Then she went over and closed and locked her office door before pulling a second chair close, facing Avery and putting her hands on her knees as she sobbed. Cora stayed silent, supporting but not stifling her.
When Avery had mostly gotten herself under control, the captain said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
And strangely, Avery did. So she told her commanding officer everything that had happened, leaving out the top-secret details about the traitor. When she was done, Avery took a deep breath and realized that she felt better. Not great, but better.
“It sounds like it was hell,” Cora said.
Avery nodded. “It was.”
“But on the bright side…” The captain let her voice trail off.
“On the bright side, I now apparently have a badass Navy SEAL boyfriend,” Avery said with a small smile. “And I survived. And maybe now some of the doctors who’ve been in combat will stop acting so sanctimonious toward me.”
“That’s the spirit,” Cora said. Then she reached for Avery’s hand. “Let me guess. You’re here because you want to be put back on the schedule.”
Avery nodded.
“I haven’t been where you are, but I understand wanting to keep busy. I’ll put you back into rotation on one condition.”
“What?”
“That you go talk to Doctor Halterman.”
Avery tensed. She knew she needed to, but it made her nervous.
“I know you don’t want to,” Cora went on as if she could read Avery’s mind. “But while I can sit here and sympathize with you, and I’m sure your SEAL could too, we didn’t experience what you did. Dr. Halterman can help you sift through your emotions so you don’t have any unwanted surprises down the line.”
When Avery didn’t immediately agree, Captain Rosner went on. “Let me put it this way, if someone came into the hospital and told you a story about how they’d been held captive, buried alive, almost drowned, then shot at as they were escaping in a helicopter, would you look down on them if they said they needed to talk to someone about it?”
“You know I wouldn’t,” Avery said softly.
“Give yourself a break,” Cora said. “And that’s an order. I’m not saying you have to keep seeing the doctor for weeks on end, but try it out. See what he has to say. You never know, he might have some insight for you that you hadn’t thought of before. It’s worth a shot, right?”
“Right,” Avery agreed. If last night was any indication, she was more messed up in the head than she’d thought, and the idea of being able to lie down and sleep was more of an incentive than anything her captain might’ve said.