Fragments of Light

by Michele Phoenix

  Down the bench from Cal, PFC Deering knelt and crossed himself three times before the plane lurched from a nearby flak explosion, sending him sprawling onto the floor. He struggled to get up again under the weight of his equipment, and Cal had to leave his seat to help the seventeen-year-old back to his. White-faced and wide-eyed, the young man clasped his knees with shaking hands, then leaned forward and threw up, his terror far stronger than the anti-nausea pills the troops had been given before boarding their planes.

  The jump light turned from white to red. Every man onboard knew exactly what that meant. The lead C-47 in the formation had crossed the T that the Pathfinders, sent ahead of the invasion, had laid out far below in amber lights.

  They’d be jumping in eight minutes.

  The plane’s evasive maneuvers, the explosions of flak, and the scream of tracers were an assault on the paratroopers’ senses, but they were all business when First Lieutenant Reid held up his two thumbs, a cue that instantly brought them to their feet. When he gave them the bent-finger signal to hook up, the men clicked their static lines onto the anchor cable running the length of the fuselage.

  Reid went to the front of the plane and tested the last troop’s line, then checked the rest of his equipment. One after the other, each man in the stick did the same for the paratrooper ahead of him.

  Standing behind Cal, Buck gripped his shoulders with adrenaline-fueled zeal, screaming, “Here we go!” into his ear at the top of his lungs. “Hellfire and brimstone!”

  At nineteen, Buck was two years younger than Cal, and his impetuous gusto was more coltish passion than measured force. He’d arrived at Fort Benning eager for battle and had quickly grown frustrated with the duration of the training that had preceded their deployment. One particularly intense fit of rage over latrine protocol had landed another trooper in the clinic and Buck in the slammer overnight.

  But for all his failures, Buck was a formidable fighter. He’d outrun, outjumped, outshot, and outsmarted every man in the platoon during training on two continents. He and Cal had been deployed to different places after Fort Benning, but they’d been reunited months ago in England, as the land, sea, and air assault neared.

  Though their appearance was as different as their personalities—Buck short and compact, Cal tall and lanky—they’d become unlikely friends, Cal’s calm and rational demeanor a mitigating influence on Buck’s impassioned impulses.

  As they waited for the jump light to turn green, Cal yelled over his shoulder, “See you down there!” He tried to infuse enthusiasm into the words, though he knew Buck wouldn’t be able to hear them over the cacophony of sound thundering around them. Perhaps sensing the sentiment, Buck smacked his helmet and let out a war cry.

  Lieutenant Reid’s face turned tense as he leaned over to glance out the jump door again. A muscle worked in his jaw. He leaned toward the cockpit and yelled into the receiver again. When he turned back to the paratroopers after a brief exchange, his expression was set and Cal knew why. The engines were racing, their pitch higher than normal, which indicated excessive speed for a jump. And he could only assume that the stomach-turning dives they’d taken to evade German fire had brought them dangerously low.

  As the C-47 lurched to the right, the soldiers reached for anything they could grab to steady themselves. The plane banked and dove again, then righted itself. Now Cal could hear stutters interrupting the engines’ roar.

  Reid gripped the handle next to the jump door with white knuckles. There was a thin trail of blood running from his hairline to his jaw.

  The light turned green, and he pushed several bundles of gear and provisions out the door, then pressed the button that released more bundles hanging from the bottom of the plane, making it jolt upward as their weight fell off.

  All seventeen paratroopers plus Reid had ten seconds to be out the door, but another burst of anti-aircraft fire erupted off the left wing as Cal’s turn came to jump. It made the plane jerk to the right, launching him forward. In a flash, he found himself pinned across the jump door, his body on the outside, legs bouncing against the fuselage, while his right arm and shoulder were still inside the plane. The power of the 140-mile-per-hour wind anchored him there as his ankle packs tore off and the men who had been standing behind him jumped past in quick succession.

  With his neck bent at a painful angle and his chin pressing into his chest, Cal could see some details below him. A structure burned off to the east. Canons fired. Small lights attached to equipment bundles floated down around him. And somewhere in the distance—too far in the distance for him to see—Cal knew Drop Zone C lay out of reach.

  It all crossed his mind in a fraction of a second. The fear. The assessment. The resignation. With the ground too close, landing would be treacherous at best—that’s if he survived the artillery fire arcing into the sky.

  A plane plunged by, its wing on fire, its tail severed. The heat coming off it brought Cal back to reality. As dangerous as the jump was, staying with his plane was much more of a risk. Summoning every ounce of strength he could muster, he used his body as a pendulum, swinging up and out, gaining just enough rotation to pull his arm free. Then the prop blast caught him and he was falling. His chute deployed, released by the static line, and pulled him up hard.

  Cal looked down, forcing his mind off the flak exploding above him, trying to see something—anything—that looked like a safe place to land.

  He could see nothing but fog and indistinct terrain as he drifted sideways, the green silk of the canopy above him miraculously intact. The few lights he’d spotted while hanging from the jump door were out of sight now and the ground was coming up fast.

  He grabbed a handful of the webbing connected to the parachute’s shroud lines and tried to turn himself around, knowing on an instinctive level that the next few seconds would make the difference between life and death. The maneuver failed, hampered by velocity and lack of time.

  Cal was vaguely aware of skimming a rooftop. His head jerked back as his helmet connected with something solid. There was only one name in his mind before the world went dark. He said it out loud.

  “Claire.”

  Chapter 3

  I rang the bell. I rang the heck out of that bell. I rang it until the voices down the hall stopped cheering and started asking me to stop ringing the dang bell.

  Completed Treatment was engraved on the brass plaque above it. And as I took in some of the faces celebrating with me—nurses and techs who had become mainstays during my chemo days—I felt something unfurl. I thought it might be hope. Or maybe it was future plans. The months that had been metronomed by visits to the Cancer Center, where soothing colors contrasted with the beeps of machines dispensing life-saving poison, were over.

  I was bald. I was chunkier than I’d ever been. I was tired and still growing into my new “bosoms,” as Darlene called them, but I was done. The nausea, the fatigue, the blood draws and delayed treatments and pep rallies from caring nurses—all behind me.

  Darlene hadn’t been able to come for the big moment, but she’d given me a bright-red shirt with Perky, bald, and cancer-free! written on it in all caps.

  “Not pink?” I’d asked when she handed it to me over a hamburger and fries the week before.

  “Pink is for sweet people. But red? That’s for fighters like you who take on cancer with cold-blooded courage and show it who’s boss.”

  I was fairly sure the description was an overstatement—what with the hours I’d spent, on several occasions, pouring out my frustration and pain to her in rants and tears—but I appreciated the sentiment. “I’ll wear it with pride.”

  “And you’ll puff out your chest too—brand spankin’ new as it is. Own your victory, Cecelia Donovan. You’ve earned it.”

  “Did you get the whole bell-ringing?” I asked Nate as we were leaving the hospital. His sole job for the day had been videoing the moment, then whisking me away for a malted chocolate shake. The late-January chill wouldn’t keep us from our tradit
ion.

  “The next county over caught the bell-ringing, Cee.”

  He’d been patient. Patient and strong and kind—in a painstaking, let’s-get-this-done way. Only on a couple occasions could I remember him getting short with me or expressing something less than full-bodied support. He’d shaved my head when fistfuls of my thick auburn hair had started falling out toward the end of October. He’d researched natural remedies for the side effects of my treatment and been there with me through the vomiting, the out-of-whack emotions, the changes of course—over and over again. And he’d somehow made our cancer-tinged Christmas a gentle, meaningful occasion. He’d endured it all with a steadfastness that shouldn’t have surprised me. I’d always known that I’d married a good man, and he’d proven it to me all over again.

  “So . . . Hawaii or Switzerland?” I said once we were in the car. I’d refused to plan any celebratory travel until the last treatment was over. There had been too many surprises from the moment I was diagnosed, and I didn’t want to jinx my dream trip by expecting it to happen on a predetermined schedule. I turned in my seat. “Hawaii has beaches, but the sun on my hairless scalp . . . not sure that’s wise. Switzerland, on the other hand. Mountains. Lakes. Chocolate.”

  Nate nodded and steered the car into the left-turn lane. He pulled into our usual spot next to the Shake Shack without commenting.

  “Nate?” I realized how little he’d said all day. I’d been so focused on all the lasts that were yielding to new firsts that I hadn’t really noticed the remoteness of his disposition—even during the now infamous bludgeoning of the chemo bell. He’d videoed the milestone, but looking back, I could recall neither smile nor encouraging words. Just his quiet presence on the outskirts of the high fives and attagirls swirling like confetti in the hall.

  “Honey.” I leaned forward a little to try to meet his gaze and laid a hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”

  For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, “I’m done.”

  “We’re done.” I nodded. I closed my eyes, let my head fall back, and laughed, reaching out to squeeze his arm in excitement and relief. “Nate! We’re done!”

  He turned in his seat and carefully removed my hand from his arm. “I told myself I’d see you through it.” His voice was thin, like he was out of breath. “And I—” He looked at me then. Right into my eyes. I realized with a jolt how long it had been since his gaze had been that direct. “I saw you through it, Cee.”

  I felt my lungs constrict as a trickle of dread ran down my spine. “Nate . . .”

  He straightened and faced forward, gripping the steering wheel too tightly. “I—I need to breathe. Not Hawaii, not Switzerland. Not a friggin’ malted shake . . .” A muscle in his jaw clenched as he sucked air in through his nose. “I need to breathe,” he said again, a tremor in his voice.

  I tried to still the thoughts ricocheting in my mind.

  “What are you saying . . . ?”

  “I need out.” Just like that. Flat voice. Flat gaze.

  I looked at him and tried to swallow the shock and unasked questions clogging my throat.

  “Okay, so you need a break,” I said, inwardly begging for that to be all this was. Him needing to get away. A day. Maybe a week.

  His headshake was nearly imperceptible. I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe. Something impenetrable descended over his form and countenance. The look on my husband’s face was hard and merciless and stunningly sure. “This is what we’re going to do.”

  I bit my lip as my stomach clenched in disbelief and my lungs froze. The voice. It wasn’t his. It was too cold to be Nate’s.

  “We’re going to go in there and get you your shake.” His words had a stony undertone. “Then I’m going to drive you home and get my stuff.” He turned the engine off. “We can figure out the details later, but, Ceelie . . .” He glanced at me, and I saw something that looked like hard-earned freedom in his eyes. “I’m done.”

  We never got the milkshake.

  Nate’s declaration on the heels of the day’s monumental high was too much for my mind to process. I felt it shutting down, a spectator to my own mental break. I could hear Nate talking, but his words were garbled and slurred. He shook me by the arms and spoke so loudly in front of my face that I could feel his spittle, but nothing registered.

  We drove home. He came around the car to help me out. Or to evict me. That’s what it felt like. When I didn’t get out of the car—not out of stubbornness but from sheer lack of strength—he said something about my drama getting old and stalked into the house. I sat there. For a couple minutes. Or maybe a lot longer.

  The walk up the front steps felt overwhelming. My skin tingled and I couldn’t seem to take in a full breath. There was a large duffel bag by the door. That was fast, I thought. Nate was pulling jackets and baseball caps out of the hall closet and stuffing them into another bag when I walked in.

  He looked up. There was purpose on his face—maybe even excitement.

  “I’ll get a room at the La Quinta for now,” he said, pausing only briefly on his way to the living room. “You can reach me there if you need anyth—” The words seemed to bring him up short. Habit. No longer necessary.

  I sank into the wingback chair and shook my head. Tears blurred my vision. “Nate.”

  He looked up at me for a moment, then went back to unplugging his record player. The one he’d bought for our anniversary. The one he’d played music on the last time we’d danced. He set it aside with a handful of LPs. “I wanted to wait. Really, Cee. I planned on waiting longer. But . . .”

  I could feel myself frowning, trying to make sense of this brutal turnabout. A hand went to the turban that covered my head. “We talked about this. The hair and the”—I swallowed hard—“the surgery. You told me it wouldn’t change how you—”

  “But everything else has changed!” He looked surprised at the volume of his own voice. I hadn’t heard Nate yell at me that way before. Not with such disdain.

  “Please don’t do this,” I whispered, wondering how the day I celebrated victory had turned into the day I lost my future.

  Nate went to the desk in the alcove off the living room and started pulling out papers and blueprints—the work he’d started bringing home when I’d been at my worst. He was moving more slowly now, as though he was running out of steam.

  He put down the leather messenger bag he’d been filling and sat on the armrest of the couch, taut and gaunt. He was quiet for a moment. Then he murmured, “I need to do this. I need out—away.”

  “But I’m better. The cancer—”

  “It’s not just the cancer,” he said through gritted teeth, every syllable loaded with frustration. “It’s . . . I don’t know. It’s everything.”

  “Nate . . .” I shook my head. “I thought—I felt . . .” At a loss for words, I just stared at him, praying he’d understand what my mind couldn’t formulate. “We’ve been better. I know we grew apart a bit, but . . . it’s been better. Right? Especially since the diagnosis. We’ve been good.” I said it loudly. To convince Nate. To convince me.

  He ran tense fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. “I’ve tried to convince myself—us—that we are. But we’re not. You have to see that too. We might be better, but ‘better’ is a long way from ‘good.’”

  I shook my head. “Relationships change. People evolve. We can get back to good again.”

  He stood and stared at the floor for a moment. Something that looked like regret crossed his face just long enough for me to wonder if I’d imagined it. “I’ve pushed through, Ceelie. I’ve done all I can for as long as I could.” He closed his eyes as if the enormity of the milestone was finally hitting him. When he opened them again, they fastened on mine with chilling clarity. “I didn’t want to do this now. Not this way. But . . .” He tucked the messenger bag under his arm and walked to the door to pick up the duffel. “I’m done.”

  Chapter 4

  I sat in the house for two days.

  W
hen I wasn’t in the wingback chair, I was sleeping on the couch. I went to the kitchen on occasion for a yogurt or some fruit, then I went back to the living room on wooden legs and sat some more.

  I couldn’t talk myself into going upstairs to the bedroom. Not even to change my clothes or shower. I couldn’t bring myself to face the pictures on the dresser, the half-empty closet, the unmade bed—vestiges of a marriage that had felt strong enough to endure my surgery and treatment.

  So I sat. I steeped in the silence. I let the shock and disbelief and upheaval torment my waking moments until my body escaped into sleep. But they were still there when consciousness returned, a gut-shocking, humiliating, dismantling force I couldn’t seem to shake.

  At the end of the second day, I stood and found my purse. It was sitting by the front door, where I’d dropped it after our aborted Shake Shack trip. My phone was in the front pocket. It took courage to click the home button—once I connected with the world again, I’d have to speak the words my mind still couldn’t entirely fathom. Nate left me. Nate . . . left me. Nate. Left. Me.

  There were too many texts to count. Congratulations on the end of my treatment from friends, from random coworkers. There were missed calls and voicemails. Two from my boss, Joe. Six from Darlene.

  Those got my attention.

  Darlene never left messages—it was a red line for her. “I’ll talk to you and I’ll talk to your husband, but I will not talk to that dang robo-voice on your phone.”

  I let my head fall forward and focused on breathing through a panic I didn’t fully understand. Without listening to the messages, I hit Call Back and waited for my friend to pick up, but it was a male voice that finally said, “Hello?”