1
Tyler
“CLEAR!” I hear my own scream ringing in my ears, booted footsteps running. Shouts from the crowd. My cry is lost in the noise and chaos.
There is dust in my eyes. There is always fucking dust or sand in my eyes over here. I haven’t blinked in a year and a half without grit in my eyes. Now isn’t the time to think about that. I shove my way closer, knocking people away, heedless of if it hurts them. Better bruised than dead.
Shouting in my earpiece at Robbins, “CLEAR, DAMMIT!” I screamed again.
“Negative, Leeds. They’re just fucking with us.”
I’m running, trying to get to him, to knock him out of the way.
I’m too late.
I’m always too fucking late.
There’s a shriek. I don’t know if it’s the IED or if it’s a person or what’s left of one. People are running now. Robbins is on the ground, twenty feet from the mailbox outside the bus station. Now it’s blown apart, a charred hole surrounded by ragged spikes that look like teeth. It hadn’t been a decoy. It had spewed shrapnel when it blew.
The fluid looks black, like oil spilling out of his gut because the blood is so dark pouring onto the dust. I stick my hands in to the—the meat of him—to apply pressure, try and stop the bleeding. It’s no use. My hands are coated up past my cuffs in his blood. I wipe it on my pants and stagger up to find the rest of my guys. I try shouting into my communicator, but my head is ringing from the noise of the explosion still, so I can’t hear anything.
“Gibson! Foles! Do you copy?” I barked as I stepped over and around debris, weapon fragments lodged in the ground, chunks of shrapnel littering everything and the sharp tang of incendiary explosion that coated my tongue and throat with every breath.
I found them both together, just to the side of the device. Their limbs a gruesome tangle, metal and torn fabric and blood and the stink of burning flesh. I turned and vomited in the dirt and radioed the base. By that time, Jeeps were already pulling up ahead of a makeshift ambulance. I just went to my knees in the dirt beside my men, keeping watch over their remains.
Cold sweat drenched me as I jerked awake, startled by my own cries. I scrubbed my hands over my face to clear my vision. Just a dream. Just a dream. I was thousands of miles away from that place now. Except part of me never left. Part of me had died right there with my men.
I rolled off the bed to the hard floor and started doing push-ups. I did a hundred, then burpees, then sit-ups, then planks. Anything to keep moving, to drive the thoughts away. If I worked my body hard enough, my brain got too exhausted to focus on my nightmares. So I punish my body to try and save the last shred of my sanity.
I feel the tension start to ease as the burn in my shoulders starts. I push harder, do more reps. Finally, I exert myself enough that I don’t feel the clammy coldness of fear sweat any longer.
But no matter how many pushups I do, I can still smell blood and cinders with every breath.
By the time the sun came up, I’d hauled all the bags of garden soil up from the flatbed trailer and started emptying them in the new flower beds. The sun was already broiling, and I had stopped for a drink of water when my brother walked up.
“It’s six in the morning. Insomnia back?”
“Nah, just felt like getting to work,” I said, brushing him off. He was drinking coffee and wearing an ironed shirt. How he could stand it in this heat was beyond me. Maybe because he wasn’t lifting forty-pound bags of dirt and breaking a sweat.
“You need to get back into counseling. You said it helped.”
“I’m good. I like this place and the work. I don’t need a new shrink.”
“Look, I know you liked working with the one last year—”
“I’m fine, Jer,” I said, a little sharply. I didn’t want to hear it. We had taken different paths. He cared about me, but it made me itch—him thinking he could play brother’s keeper with me.
That’s why the fresh air was good. It blew away the stink of blood that stayed with me. I kept moving and sometimes that was enough to keep the demons at bay.
I turned back to my work, and eventually he gave up and left. I was better off alone. It had taken some getting used to, but it worked for me.
2
Layla
“You’ve helped me so much. I can never thank you enough,” Claire said, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
“I’m just glad you’re starting to feel better. You’ve done some hard work to get here. I’m very proud of you,” I said warmly.
“The thing that helps me so much at night is those chimes you gave me,” she said with a sniff, swiping at her eyes. I put my arm around her.
“Wind chimes are great for that. I have some at my house too. It’s just a sweet reminder of someone you miss, and at night when you’re awake is when you notice the sound.”
“That’s exactly what it does. And to have that music in the wind in memory of her.”
“Of Jade. It’s good to say her name, Claire. She was with you for a short time, but she mattered and always will,” I said.
“Thank you. Jade. My Jade Kathleen. You know what? Last week, I was reading a book that mentioned a child, and I realized I hadn’t been counting days and weeks. I couldn’t say immediately how old she’d be if she’d lived. I figured it out, but I think the not counting was a good sign.”
“It’s an incredibly good sign of progress. It doesn’t mean you love her less or miss her less. Just that you’re realizing you have permission to go on living. You don’t have to keep watch over the days,” I told her.
She hugged me, “I’ll see you Friday.”
She stepped out of my office into the hall. I took a long breath, so glad I’d been able to help her after her miscarriage. Sighing, I sat down to my computer and polished up my informational flyer. I printed one out and took it to Caroline, the receptionist.
“Hey, Layla. What’s up?” she said.
“I just finished off my flyer for the PTSD group. Will you copy it and post a few on the notice boards?”
“Be glad to. This is your passion project, right?” she said.
“Yeah, I’ve worked with survivors before. It’s hard, there’s a lot to untangle, but it’s really rewarding.”
“I’ve never be able to listen to their stories. I can’t even make it through Netflix documentaries, much less look somebody in the eyes who’s been through that.”
“That’s the most critical part to me, though. It’s not easy, but it’s saying, ‘I’ll be a witness for you to what happened to you, I’ll help carry that.’”
“Wow. That is powerful, but I couldn’t do it. I’d cry and they’d probably end up comforting me,” Caroline said.
“You’re a lot tougher than you think. You work on the front line here at the health department, and it’s not an easy crowd. Not the clients and not the workers either.”
“You’re right about that. Although sometimes they bring me donuts,” she said with a wink, “thanks for the jelly-filled this morning.”