Girl On the Edge

by CD Reiss

  A paramedic with soot on his face ran up. “Nurse or doctor?”

  “Surgeons,” she said. “Both of us.”

  DeLeon was pulled toward an ambulance while I was taken to a patch of grass where the wounded were being triaged.

  “We can’t move him.”

  An Iraqui boy of about thirteen was sitting up against a tree. He looked fine until I got close enough to see the iron rod impaling his chest. I trotted up to him. There was no blood. His breathing was raspy. The medic called his vitals. She was obviously upset.

  “We can’t see if it’s through the spine.”

  “You’re making the lady sad,” I said in terrible Arabic.

  He turned to me. He was lucid. Good.

  “Do you speak English?” It was my best Arabic phrase, but the boy shook his head. Great.

  I tried to see the exit wound, but it was against and possibly through the tree. I ran my hand behind him as he whispered something I couldn’t understand.

  “Let’s get his shirt open.” We got the shirt open. Clean entry. Right of the sternum. “I can’t determine the angle,” I said to the paramedic. “But we have to get him to the OR. If he’s pinned to the tree, we have to cut the pipe.”

  There had been another time an Iraqi had tried to talk to me. Another incident outside the confines of a hospital. It had been…

  Dujon. Dujon.

  … bad. I hadn’t listened.

  He whispered again.

  I reached behind him again, then heard clearly what he was saying.

  “Kunbulla. Is that your name, kid?” I stopped myself and asked, “Your name?” in Arabic as I felt behind him for the pipe’s exit.

  Around us, people ran, shifted, called out. They prepped a stretcher. Ambulances moved, and the earth turned, but I was focused solely on my probing fingers and the boy’s bloody lips.

  “Kunbulla.” The boy made eye contact, trying to warn me. Apologizing at the same time as he was begging me to save him.

  Dujon.

  In complete emotional detachment, I remembered. I’d thought she’d been reading my name tape. I’d thought she’d been saying “Dr. John.”

  Right?

  Kunbulla.

  Dujon.

  My fingers didn’t find the place where the bar exited, but a solid mass, squared at the edges, thick as a pack of cigarettes, and as dense as a few metric tons of potential energy.

  Qunbula.

  Shit.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  GREYSEN

  The computer started making noise after five in the morning. I ignored it, then the night table phone rang.

  “Mmh.”

  “Pick up Skype. I need to see you.”

  * * *

  He was freshly showered. Hair wet. Face scrubbed and shaved.

  It was noon there, but his hours had to be all over the place.

  “Hi.” When his smile turned back down, one cheek stayed red.

  “Your face is scraped up.”

  He put his hand to it. Looked at his fingertips. No blood. The abrasions were too fine.

  “What happened?”

  “Qunbula apparently.”

  I gasped. “A bomb?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “I told you.”

  His look through the screen, across thousands of miles, was as hard and cold as granite. He was quite possibly more beautiful when he was like this than when he was warm with love. But I couldn’t compare what I couldn’t see.

  “You can tell me more without giving away locations. You don’t have to say what time or who you were with. Come on. Stop treating me like I don’t know the rules. And stop acting like talking to me isn’t important.”

  “Why do you push like this? I just wanted to see your face.”

  I leaned into the camera. “You have what you want. Plus my unconditional love. Nothing you say is going to scare me.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  The only thing he feared was my fearlessness.

  “Did you get the leave?” I asked. “Are you coming back?”

  He bit his upper lip and let it pop out. If the resolution had been better, I was sure I’d have seen the dampness of that top lip and a pinkish blur where his teeth had scraped the skin.

  “Do you know the Arabic word, sounds like dujon?”

  “I don’t, but my Arabic isn’t that good.” I wrote it down phonetically. I’d never learned the alphabet. “Is anyone fluent there?”

  “Yeah. I’ll try them.”

  “Where did you hear it?”

  “It was a suicide bomber,” he said.

  Where? Medevacs got to the Red Zone after the bombs went off. Was it in the Green Zone? Why were you near him? How did they get in?

  Tell me everything.

  I couldn’t ask any of those questions because he couldn’t answer them. I put my hand over my mouth partly in shock, partly to shut myself up.

  “A kid,” Caden continued. “I was trying to move him. He was… I can’t say without giving up the order of events.”

  “I understand.”

  “He warned us he was wrapped, and we got away.”

  “Are you doing all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’m sure I’m fine.” He was trying to convince himself.

  “Tell me.”

  Those two words broke something in him. Was it the right time to ask? Had something changed?

  “It’s getting harder,” he said. “The Thing. It’s different. It’s not fear and sympathy. It’s anger.”

  Anger.

  What would that split look like if it was allowed to happen?

  “Sometimes,” he continued, “I think it’s all right and I can manage. Then days like today, it’s a four-alarm fire.”

  He bent his body to run his fingers through his hair, turning his face from me for a moment. When he popped back up, I touched the screen where his lips moved.

  “We have ways of keeping it down,” I said. “But my parents are in the next room.”

  He looked at his watch. “Dad’ll be up soon.”

  “Can you make it until tonight? I can send them to a movie.”

  “I’ll spend the afternoon deciding where to bruise you.”

  “I miss you.”

  “About that...I have some bad news.”

  “Let me guess.” I let my fingers fall from the screen. That needed to be the only expression of disappointment. I couldn’t lay more on him. “After today’s incident, all R&R passes and nonmedical leaves are withdrawn.”

  “Baby,” he said softly, with a voice that never let me feel infantilized, only loved with the depth one loves their own blood. “I know I can’t stop you from doing what you want.”

  “You didn’t marry me for my obedience.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  The implication in his tone was that maybe he should have. I let it go. I heard my dad startle awake as if a bomb had just gone off.

  “They’re up,” I said. “I love you, Major.”

  “I love you too.”

  We hung up, and I leaned back in my chair. If this Thing was like the old Thing and it was getting louder more frequently, we were back in the old pattern.

  I could stay. I could be that obedient women he hadn’t wanted. I could live in our house and patiently wait for something to happen. Be the bedrock of his chaotic life. It wasn’t as if I had nothing to do in New York.

  Trusting him came naturally. He’d never presented as a player or a cheat. Even when I’d broken into his locker, I had been ready to have completely misjudged him. But when I considered that if he needed rough sex to stay sane, he’d have to get it, and I’d have to deal with it. My blood curdled. Even the thought of him touching another woman made my palms sweat and my skin prickle with angry heat.

  That wasn’t on the table. If he’d wanted a milquetoast housewife, he’d had his p
ick. He’d married me because I pushed his boundaries and let him push mine. But not every limit needed to be tested.

  Some lines had to be crossed so others wouldn’t be.

  Part Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  GREYSEN

  The Phrog’s dual rotors buzzed like a swarm of bees. My knuckles were striated in white and pink, and my palms already ached in the center. I kept my eyes on my boots and focused on the pain, feeling it in three dimensions as the shooting ache ran from my right wrist to my shoulder. That helped. Focusing on pain always did.

  Nothing had changed. Not for me.

  The Iraqi sky was still an infinite blue, but now I knew why that blue had always spoken to me, calling me into it. It borrowed the color from my husband’s eyes.

  On the way to the Blackthorne offices in Baghdad, I was flooded with fear that I’d drop out of that glassy vacuum and into the solid mass of the earth. Falling away from that blue was falling away from Caden.

  “You all right, Frazier?”

  I let go of the bench long enough to direct a thumbs-up at Dana Testarino, a PA and fellow contractor. She’d called me by my civilian name, reminding me that I was rankless and unprotected. I had no unit, no position, no military hierarchy. Ronin wasn’t there to rib me. Jenn wasn’t there to defend me. I was surrounded by a dozen other contractors. We were professional advisors. Experts in our fields. We’d bought our own kits and supplies mostly. I had a cold case strapped to the floor between my feet. It held prefilled syringes of the same compound they gave subjects before the soo-hoos. It was called BiCam145.

  “Some of the subjects are active military,” Ronin had said. “They’re in your files. Major St. John and Specialist Leslie Yarrow have placebo instead of serum because we can’t predict how they’re going to react.”

  That was how I got confirmation on the other subject with childhood trauma. That was too bad. I liked her. I didn’t want her to suffer, and I didn’t want her to see me reenter Iraq as a contractor. I’d thought I didn’t have a bone in my body that could feel shame, but I was wrong.

  “What is it?” I’d asked.

  “It triggers the bioenergetic breathing response. It opens doors. One dose for each subject, premeasured. When the hub touches skin”—through the plastic, he pointed at the rubbery white base of the needle—“it turns blue, and when it’s removed, it’s self-sealing.”

  I picked one out of the box. “Why?”

  “To make sure the BiCam goes into a body, not another vial.”

  “To prevent corporate espionage, I presume?”

  “Only the latest and best technology.”

  The latest and best was strapped down tight, and didn’t budge when the Chinook swooped around, dropping in a stomach-twisting plunge that brought me closer to my husband and his grounded blue eyes.

  * * *

  Blackthorne HQ occupied a U-shaped, three-story gray brutalist shithouse in the Green Zone. After they took our bags and we were split into military and personnel specialists, we were led to the plaza in the center of the U, next to a dry fountain. Birds chirped. Flowers and tree branches swayed in the breeze. People walked the verandas above, hustling from one place to the next.

  Dana sat to my right. A rabbi in his twenties named David was on my left. To the left of him, two men who looked like really tough accountants stood in the shade. Dana and I were partnered. She could administer medications but not diagnose. David was a psychologist. We were the new mental health team.

  “It’s so nice,” Dana said, indicating the trees, the birds, the infinite blue sky. “You’d never think there was a war going on.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, but I didn’t.

  A man in a dark suit approached with a file tucked in his elbow. He was six-four, under two hundred pounds, with a rubbery gait that made him look as though he’d fall down with each step. He was in his fifties, with black hair graying at the temples and a widow’s peak.

  “Good morning! I’m Ferhad Ghazi.” He had a slight accent I couldn’t place, and when he opened his arms, I saw a small notebook clipped on top of the papers. Like everyone there, he kept a handgun in a shoulder holster. “Welcome to Blackthorne HQ.” He smiled like a salesman. My first instinct was to stand when approached, but I wasn’t in the army anymore. “I am your ambassador for the Green Zone office.”

  * * *

  How far away was Caden? What was he doing? Who was he with? He hadn’t responded to my flight plans. Had he gotten the email? Did he know I was on the same continent, under the same flag, flying against the same sky?

  We shed the accountants on the first floor. They went behind a set of double doors with a guy built like a toolshed. Ferhad brought David, Dana, and me to a large space with dozens of desks. Plants dotted the corners, and motivational posters hung on the white walls. Metal grates over the windows cut the sunlight in half.

  “We take pride in our people,” Ferhad said as we walked through the room. His voice was smooth and sonorous indoors. “So, we’re fully staffed to take care of them. We utilize the military’s medical facilities, but as you know”—he nodded to the three of us—“we supplement with our own professionals.” He stopped on the other side of the room, at a door with a black box by the handle. “Your ID cards open this area.”

  He swiped his ID card over the black box. The red light turned green, and the door clacked. He opened it into a reception area. We were introduced to the receptionist and led to a clinic on the other side of the building. Examination rooms. Crash carts. Gurneys. Labeled plastic bins. The only thing that differentiated it from a military hospital was the quiet.

  “Your office, Mister Rothstein.” Ferhad opened the door to a relatively pleasant office with a desk and worn but cushioned chairs.

  “Ladies…” Ferhad took us to the office next door.

  Dana was shown her desk in the clinic. My office looked much like David’s except for the cold case of syringes sitting ready on my desk.

  “We need a refrigerator for this case,” I said, pointing at the cooler of BiCam.

  “Down the hall,” he said.

  I heard a loud ho from outside. Looking out the window, I saw a man fall off the roof of a four-story building. I gasped and pointed.

  Ferhad laughed.

  “Did you see that?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, waving me to the window on the other side of the room. “Look from here.”

  He showed me the angle to look from. Another figure jumped, but now I could see them turn midair and rappel from the side of the building. “It’s our training facility.”

  “That’s so cool!” Dana exclaimed.

  “That’s so scary.” I was still shaking.

  “Yes, but look at the bottom. The blue and yellow?”

  At ground level, around the corner of another building, I saw a sliver of blue and yellow stripes, like a pillow covered in a termite tent.

  “I see it. Is it an inflatable bag?”

  “Yes. So see? You don’t have to worry.” He pressed my shaking hands in his in a gesture that was not seductive but healing. “Have you seen your quarters yet?”

  “Not yet!” Dana was chipper. You’d never have known she’d just been on a military transport.

  “We got you a lovely place very close by. Let’s get that put away, and I’ll have a car bring you.”

  * * *

  I helped Dana unpack her apartment first, then she helped me. It only took a few hours.

  We were in furnished apartments in the Green Zone. The building wasn’t new, but it was made from sturdy brick and cracking stucco.

  Caden was inside the hospital compound, just under a quarter mile away. It was visible from the third-floor cafeteria at work, and if I could get to the roof of the apartment building, I’d bet good money I could see it.

  My bones were made of iron filings, and he was a magnet, drawing my body’s brittleness to the surface. Tonight, I’d go there. I’d fight exhaustion and jet lag. I’d see him
. Touch him. Smell the coffee grounds and cut grass on his skin. I’d let him have me. I’d beg him to break me.

  “You’re smiling,” Dana said as she wiped down my counter.

  “Weird, right?” I put the last of my clothes in the old armoire and closed the door. It was next to the couch because there was no space in the bedroom.

  “There’s plenty to smile about,” she said with the twang of an accent I’d noticed before. “We’re making good money. Helping the country. Having an adventure. It’s great.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “New Jersey. You?”

  “All over. But I landed in New York last.”

  “We’re practically sisters!” Dana opened a can of Coke she’d picked up from the chow hall and leaned on the counter. “Have you seen the guy I’m next door to?”

  “Nope.”

  “Name’s Bob Trona, and he’s totally hot in this Tom Hardy kind of way.”

  “Hm. Name rings a bell.”

  She picked up the novel I’d set aside and flipped to the inside flap. “He was in Band of Brothers and—”

  “I mean Trona.”

  Putting a few cups and plates in the cabinet, I saw out of the corner of my eye a piece of paper slip out of the book. She picked it up and gasped so loudly I thought she’d hurt herself.

  “What?”

  She held up Grady’s sonogram with a big shit-eating grin. “This! You’re—”

  “No, no. That’s not me.”

  She turned it over to look. “The name’s all rubbed off.”

  “It’s been through a lot. It came from a soldier in Fallujah I never met. His wife. It’s a long story. It’s… I don’t know. I feel obligated to take it around with me in case I meet a relative or something.”

  “You’re so nice,” she said, placing it on the table before turning back to the book.

  I smiled. Of course she thought I was nice. That said more about her than it did about me.