Ripple Effect

by Jerald, Tracey

  “I think I knew the exact moment when it happened,” I whisper. I can’t see her as she slips off her gloves, but I hear the snap. Dr. Fields is at my side instantly.

  “You were aware you were pregnant?” she asks me quietly.

  I nod, even knowing I can now set Cal free—truly free. I wanted this part of him to love forever. And knowing that last part of our love was killed for what? For greed? I dissolve in another round of tears.

  “I have to get more fluid into you, Mrs. Sullivan. Can you drink anything?” Feeling my shudder, she squeezes my hand before making some quick notes on her chart. “Are you allergic to any anesthetics?”

  I shake my head, but— “I won’t be knocked out. Not after…” I shudder as vivid images of what I just lived through flash through my mind.

  “We can numb you using twilight…” Dr. Fields begins, but I adamantly shake my head.

  “No.”

  “Eliza—”

  “Libby. Please call me Libby,” I plead.

  She nods. “Libby. I can’t guarantee you won’t feel both physical and emotional pain,” she warns me.

  My breathing accelerates. “What’s what I lived through but that?”

  Her eyes close in acknowledgment. “By now your family has been made aware you’ve been rescued. Do you want to contact them first?”

  “Only my brother knew I was pregnant. I…I need this moment between me and my child before I call them.”

  Her hand lies gently on my shoulder. For just a moment, we’re not victim to doctor. We’re woman to woman, and she’s trying to absorb some of my pain. Oh, how I wish I could let her bear some of it.

  “Relax. As soon as I feel comfortable you’re hydrated a bit more, we’ll begin.” Her head snaps to one of the other women in the small room. “No visitors. Not now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The woman steps out.

  “Just relax, Libby. Someone will be in here with you at all times.” She starts to leave before I call out hoarsely.

  “Wait!”

  Dr. Fields turns around.

  “Linc? The others?” my scratchy voice manages.

  And her lips curve into a smile. “Rest, Libby. Everyone who was still alive, including Mr. McCallister, was safely rescued from the Sea Force. What you did…” She shakes her head. “Let’s just say it gave the SEAL team the distraction they needed to do their job.”

  I let out an enormous sigh. And while I only understand about 10 percent of what she said, I heard the most important thing. Linc’s alive.

  Now, all I want is to be left alone to be free to let all my emotions loose.

  * * *

  Hours later, after the D&C is finished, there’s an uproar outside the medical suite.

  Everyone’s heads turn.

  Not mine.

  Because my eyes are wide at the roaring of “I don’t give a shit if you throw me in the brig. Let me in to see my fucking wife, God damnit!”

  It can’t be.

  I begin to shake as the door flies open, and suddenly Cal’s filling the entrance. “Libs?” His voice breaks.

  Until that moment, I wasn’t sure if I had any strength left in my body, not with a litany of physical injuries a mile long let alone the medical procedure I was recovering from. But the wounds to my heart start repairing themselves seeing the gold band on the third finger of his left hand gleaming starkly against the all-black ensemble he’s wearing. I stumble on weak, bruised legs to the arms of man I love.

  “Ca…” I try to say his name, but I can only mouth it. My voice has disappeared.

  He lowers his head on mine and whispers, “I’m right here. I love you. I swear it. I will always be yours.” The wetness of his tears mix with mine as they freely drip down his face. “Thank God you’re alive.” He buries his head against my neck, his shoulders shaking.

  There’s still so much to understand: How is he here? What happened? But in comparison to what I endured, it can wait. I have time to figure it all out.

  Cal once said I was his everything and more. As he lifts me in unsteady arms to carry me back to the sick bay bed, I can’t reconcile the man who said that with one who deserted our marriage.

  And that’s when I really begin to sob. Because it’s safe to mourn not picking up a telephone when in your heart you really wanted to.

  “Shh, Libby, I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

  77

  Present Day

  Elizabeth

  “I know you’ve been asked how you don’t have fully developed PTSD after this, Libby. How did you manage to move on with your life?”

  I think about this question because the answer is a very personal one. “I was told to feel the emotions and not to bottle them up.”

  “Who gave you that advice?” Dr. Powell asks. “Not that I think it’s incorrect. In fact, it’s probably what I would have recommended.”

  “One of the SEALs. I was up on the flight deck on the Lassen, heavily guarded, a few days after I was rescued. It was before Cal, the Alliance team, and I were being flown back to the States. I could see the Sea Force in the distance. I was shivering.” I start to shake now in memory. “He began to talk with me.”

  Cal’s warmth seeps through me as he hugs me closer. It gives me enough strength to continue. “Coming face-to-face with a living funeral pyre that I, myself, almost died on, it left more than the physical marks on me. I was afraid to go to sleep, afraid to wake up—I was just afraid.”

  “I think that would be understandable,” Dr. Powell says gently.

  “But the biggest emotions I felt were desolation and shame,” I admit.

  “Survivor’s guilt.” He nods.

  “It was more than that. I lived, yes, but our child hadn’t. To have that confirmed may have been more awful than anything I endured on the Sea Force. Then there was the loss of time. I was damning myself for being stubborn and walking away when I took a vow to Cal that I wouldn’t.”

  “Your heart was suffering,” he concludes.

  “Very much so. And when I couldn’t hold it in anymore, that individual was there. He recommended I talk to a specialized Navy trauma psychologist.”

  “So, you’re aware there’s a difference between a doctor like me and a trauma-informed care specialist?”

  I nod. “Very. It was explained to me during my first phone call with my doctor. I think he best explained them as guiding principles.”

  “And you felt comfortable talking to a man after everything that happened?”

  That question startles me. “I was with men who were just as traumatized as I was, Dr. Powell. Possibly more so. It wasn’t due to my sex that I was harmed; it was because I was there.” I place an emphasis on the last word. “Dr. Rhumed helped me identify what my ultimate goals were.”

  “And those were?”

  Without hesitation, I answer. “To be able to let my emotions run their course. To grieve the loss of the life of my baby. To mourn my marriage and to find my way back to what drove me to say ‘I do’ to Cal.”

  “Let’s talk about the last one. What do you mean, mourn your marriage?”

  Cal audibly swallows before answering. “Because there was still infidelity.”

  Dr. Powell gasps even as Cal’s arms around me tighten from where I’m still perched on his lap. He does nothing to avoid Dr. Powell’s accusatory expression. “I thought you said…”

  “I didn’t.” Cal’s voice is firm and strong.

  “I’m confused.”

  I spin so I’m facing Dr. Powell a little more fully while allowing Cal to hold the things most precious in his life—me and his child. “Some people would say I’m crazy for saying this, but Cal had an affair with Alliance.”

  The confusion washes clean away from Dr. Powell’s face, leaving nothing but understanding. “Go on, Libby.”

  “The reality is, my husband cheated on me from the moment we met by lying. And that, combined with the trauma I’d just endured, left me feeling like nothing. I felt like it might be
better if I just wasted away,” I conclude softly.

  The baby bumps hard against my stomach. Cal rubs the spot gently but doesn’t say anything. During counseling sessions with Dr. Rhumed, we’ve had this discussion numerous times throughout the years. And the answer is I belong right here in his arms where my heart beats in cadence with his. “There’s a feeling of being unable to trust your deepest emotions after a trauma. I wanted—no, needed to know that I could trust everyone around me. So, in order to live again, I had to live without Cal because I couldn’t trust him anymore.”

  I turn in his arms. “I’m so sorry.” Even though we’re long past this, saying it still feels like I’m punishing him. Tears are coursing down my face at a rate more rapid than he can wipe them. He stops trying and just presses his forehead against mine.

  Without lifting it, he addresses Dr. Powell. “Let’s be clear, Doctor. We were both wrong for very different reasons. I kept secrets; Libby wouldn’t listen. But it was due to my actions that our communication was damaged beyond repair. We make a conscious effort so that mistake won’t occur again.” He straightens, tucking me against him. “People all over the world have heard our story and judged each of us saying one or the other of us should have capitulated, forgiven sooner, forgotten what occurred before, or walked away.” He shakes his head against mine. “No one should judge us or our life together. Not unless you’ve lived it, actually walked through every moment with us. There is so much this woman had to forgive me for that I understood she had to let go to heal.”

  “It was you my heart reached out for though.” I sink one hand into his hair and cup his cheek with the other.

  His smile—my smile—breaks across his face. It comes so much easier now. He brushes his lips across each of my cheeks before kissing me softly. “I’m the luckiest man in the world because I got you to fall in love with me twice.”

  “I never stopped loving you,” I counter.

  “Hmm.” Cal steals another kiss. “You have to admit, it was better the second time around.”

  “That’s because I taught you to woo me. You had the inside playbook,” I tease.

  Cal reaches up and touches his thumb to my bottom lip. “I hope when we’re a hundred, I get to kiss the sass off your lips. I don’t think I can live without that.”

  “I don’t think I can live without your smile.” I trace it with my forefinger. It comes so much easier these days, as if he’s given himself permission to be happy now that the lies and the subterfuge are gone.

  Dr. Powell clears his throat. A light flush hits my cheeks. Cal grins, which temporarily scrambles my brain cells. “I’m sorry, Dr. Powell, you were asking?”

  “Well, I was asking about your goals,” he begins.

  Right. “Dr. Rhumed helped me identify a safe environment to recover from what happened, where I could find out who I was again. It might seem silly, but I couldn’t do that here in Charleston.”

  “Why not? I would think with your family, you’d feel safe.”

  “I felt smothered, well intentioned as it may have been. But it caused me to forget what I was working toward and frankly—” This is difficult to say. “—my family triggered memories by constantly asking how I was. No one meant any harm, but it still brought me back to the bar on the Sea Force when I needed to be safe on dry land.”

  “Where did you go?”

  I lean back against my husband. “All I did was wait for Cal to find me,” I say secretively.

  Dr. Powell looks at Cal in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  Cal kisses the top of my head before sliding me off his lap and tucking me next to him. “I didn’t either. I even knew she was leaving. I had a text telling me where she was.”

  “And it still took you two months,” I huff.

  Cal smacks his hand to his face before shaking his head.

  “Where was safe, Libby?” Dr. Powell asks again.

  “There was only one place I remember where I knew in my heart Cal wanted me more than Alliance.”

  “Akin Hill?” Dr. Powell picks up his notes and flips through, guessing.

  “No, only one. And it was the place where he broke the first date with me. Fortunately, the apartment wasn’t rented since the owner had been remodeling it when students were looking for housing at the beginning of the semester.”

  I’ve managed to shock Dr. Powell. “But, you reconnected at Akin Hill, got married there. That wasn’t where you felt him the strongest?”

  “I needed the knowledge there was a time and a place he wanted me where he forgot about”—I air quote—“‘the other woman.’ Even if it was just for a moment. That was it.”

  Dr. Powell turns his head to Cal. “How on earth did you figure it out?”

  Cal growls. I smile beatifically up at him. He shakes his head. “It wasn’t easy. And since she prohibited me from using my job to track her, I had to figure it out the old-fashioned way.”

  “How’s that?”

  “With my heart,” my husband of the last eleven years says.

  78

  Calhoun

  Year Six - Five Years Ago from Present Day - February

  Life is not always about shitty timing, Cal. Sometimes it’s about shitty things being done or said. In my heart, I know there’s a part of me you’ve always wanted to come back to. I know all the secrets and the lies. I wish you had trusted me enough to tell me, but all you did was lie. Over and over. I need to figure out how to trust you again; how to believe you’ll stop hiding. I don’t know how to open a door you won’t walk through. And so do you. Once you’ve figured out where you said that to me, come find me. You should know where to look.

  Her text has haunted me for two months since she left her parent’s care. If it wasn’t for the regular updates I’ve received from her parents and Josh assuring me Libby’s safe and healing, I’d have lost my mind.

  Confession is supposed to help people move forward. With the way Libby held me so close to her after her ordeal on the Sea Force, I hoped she would understand the motivation behind my work. And God love her, she did.

  What she didn’t understand was the lies.

  “I would have loved you, Cal, if you’d been a professor, a lifelong military man moving us from pillar to post, or the businessman you claimed to be.” Her bruised hand was clutching mine in the sick bay of the Lassen at the time. Her swollen face was turned away from mine as my heart began to understand the emotional desolation she’s been living with the last several months. “Right now, I just can’t trust myself to never know if you’re lying to me,” she carefully explained. IV fluids were being pumped into her so there was enough liquid in her for tears. “It’s almost more crushing than what happened over there.” She waved her arm in the wrong direction of where the Sea Force was.

  I didn’t correct her. I was too busy trying to rein in the emotions. I knew I promised myself I’d let her go, but I just couldn’t. “Libby…” I choked out.

  “I’m not the woman you married, Cal. I’m not sure if you ever were the man I did.”

  I couldn’t hold back the wetness. I just didn’t want it to burden her then. Pushing to my feet, I whispered a kiss over her lips. “Let’s get you home. Celebrate with your family. Then…” I let the word hang there. In my head, I was pleading, Before you make any decisions.

  She tipped her head back. “All right.”

  Exiting the sick bay, I leaned back against the cold metal of the bulkhead. This was the part where I told myself it would be okay, where I loved her enough to give her what she was going to give me.

  Freedom.

  But I’m a selfish man who needs the sun to survive. And I haven’t seen it in months. Glaring at my shadow showing on the driveway outside the home I shared with Libby, I don’t notice the other car until I almost walk into it.

  Sam. And he brought Josh with him. I don’t know whether to curse or be cautiously optimistic they have some news as to where Libby might be.

  “Hey, man. Iris talked to Li
bby today,” Sam calls out.

  I grit my teeth before I respond. “That’s great.” If there’s one thing I’m happy about, it’s that my wife has cautiously forgiven her best friend. Then again, it wasn’t Iris lying to her every single moment of every single day.

  Josh shoves Sam before reaching out a hand, “Cal,” he says warmly.

  I grasp it firmly. “Good to see you, Josh.” My brother-in-law and I have never been closer, our love of Libby bonding us in a way nothing else can.

  “You’re a moron,” he tells me cheerfully, and not for the first time.

  “I know,” I say mournfully as I let them both in the house that feels like a tomb every time I walk into it.

  “Why don’t you just track her?” Sam demands a few minutes later after he’s snagged beer for the three of us from my fridge. He kicks up his feet onto the coffee table. Josh does the same.

  I pop the cap off mine, flicking it next to his feet. Libby would have a coronary if she saw the three of us, I think with just a touch of amusement. Then a vein of bitterness runs through me. “She’d have to be here to have that coronary.”

  I don’t realize I’ve spoken out loud until Josh answers me. “If you don’t go Sam’s route, then you have to dig down deep, Cal. You’re a trained investigator, for Christ’s sake. Before computers, what the hell did you do?”

  “I was in school, I was in the military. There wasn’t a time when I didn’t have a computer at my disposal,” I growl.

  Sam laughs. “Man, I remember back in college days when we couldn’t write a paper with all of our references being online sources. Even your class, Cal. Why did you have to be such a dick?” Sam throws a pillow at me I don’t even attempt to catch.