Girl On the Edge

by CD Reiss

  “What did you know?”

  “I suspected something was off with the synthetic. But not this. I didn’t suspect it would tear you apart.”

  Her expression pleaded with me to understand, but I already understood more than I wanted to.

  “Why was it suspicious?”

  “The indications sheet was keyed to the intake form. If you answered yes to certain questions, you couldn’t get it, but I didn’t think about why those questions. I trusted it.”

  “Trust is a mistake.” I leaned into her until I could smell the regret on her skin. “Precision is the only thing that matters.”

  “It’s my fault,” she whispered with her eyes closed against my stare. “I know.”

  It wasn’t her fault. I shouldn’t have even let the thought cross my mind. She’d been as much of a pawn as I’d been.

  “I told you that you loved me,” I said. “Did I lie?”

  She turned from the middle distance, steadily meeting my gaze for the first time since I’d come in. “No.”

  “I lied.” I sat up straight with my hand flat between her breasts, feeling her heart beat against my palm. “Precision isn’t the only thing that matters. Love matters too. You broke me, but you loved me whole again. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Love me back.”

  It was the first demand she’d made of me since I walked in. Her voice had become steady and certain.

  “I do,” I said. “Before you, I was sure of everything. I had it all worked out. Now, because of you, I don’t know anything. I’m lost in my own life, and I love you for it.”

  She reached up to my neck and pulled me over her. I kissed her. The taste of regret was gone.

  “Be sure of me,” she said, shifting her body under mine.

  * * *

  It was still dark when I turned on the shower. The showerhead was built into the wall above a drain in the floor, making the entire room into a shower stall. A makeshift curtain cut the room in half. I could have made it back to base and put my clean body into clean clothes, but her water was hotter and I didn’t have to share the bathroom with two dozen other guys.

  The door opened, and the curtain snapped aside.

  “Hey,” Greysen said. I only noticed her eyes stayed on mine when I stopped staring at her body.

  “It’s three in the morning,” I said. “You have time to sleep.”

  She walked past the curtain and got under the water. “I have a lot to do.” The streams fell over her hair, turning it from medium brown to sable. “And I can’t just sit here and wait around for hours.”

  Magnificent. I ran my hands down the fall of her hair and to her lower back. She snatched the washcloth off the ring and soaped it.

  “I want to see you tonight.” I cupped her ass.

  “Sure.” She worked the cloth over her body with disappointing efficiency.

  “Why are you in such a hurry?”

  “Antsy. That’s all.”

  Catching a line of lather making its way down her back, I stroked her, letting my erection press gently against her bottom.

  “Ten minutes.” I kissed her shoulder.

  She stepped under the water and let the soap run off her, turning to face me with her head back. Her exposed throat made my balls ache.

  I grabbed shampoo with my free hand. “Half an hour tops.”

  She straightened her neck, looking at me with my boner and shampoo in my hand, a cascade of water dripping down her chin. “Can’t. I’m skipping hair.”

  She got on her tiptoes to kiss me, then went past the curtain to dry off quickly and economically, as if she had somewhere to go.

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  GREYSEN

  Caden was in the shower when I woke. I’d opened my eyes, compelled to do something, but I didn’t know what. Everything. Up and out of bed. In the shower. Out the door before the sunrise. It was a work day in the Green Zone.

  I blew through reports, writing up the final destination of Caden’s vial without excuses or reasons. Just the facts, ma’am.

  How had only two hours passed since I’d woken up? Only a few seconds to cross the cafeteria to the already-burned coffee the night staff had set up by the empty steam table? It seemed as if time used to be a flat sheet of paper that was now folded into an origami box.

  I looped two mug handles in one finger and dropped them on the stainless countertop.

  “We need to do a workup on you,” Ronin said.

  “I’m fine.” I poured coffee into each cup. “The effects are less and less. I felt the jolt and crash from the B12.”

  And the splitting sky—

  You were tired.

  —as if the bowl over the earth had cracked—

  You were stressed.

  —into two blue eyes watching me—

  You were worried about Caden.

  —and I was going to slip into the dark fissure between them.

  Quit it. You’re sane. You have this.

  “I believe you,” he said casually, dropping creamer into his cup. “But we need data.”

  “Of course. Speaking of data, I need to go to the hospital and check on two subjects before they’re shipped out.”

  “Then let’s get started.”

  * * *

  I was jumping out of my skin, but I’d answered the questions on the form fully, using complete, cogent sentences. Some repeated the same query with different words so that inconsistencies could be noted. I wasn’t born yesterday.

  The black-walled room was identical to the one in New York. It even smelled like the gilded grime of Manhattan.

  “You ready?” Ronin’s voice came over the speakers.

  “Yes.” What I meant was “Get on with it.”

  With a click, the soo-hoo recording started. The anonymous woman’s soothing voice seemed drunk to me, like a 45 rpm record played on 33, but I closed my eyes and stayed with it. No reason not to do it right.

  I started to feel light-headed. Floaty. The pressure of the chair under me lessened. The flyaway hair on the top of my head bent as if it were touching the ceiling, which I knew was impossible. I was just—

  Upward

  Crunching overhead

  Eyes shut, I saw everything

  And nothing

  Above and below

  Blue, so blue

  The sky above crunching

  Paper-thin layers of glass cracking

  The pressure on my head was enormous

  Flakes of sapphire falling on my cheeks

  Pushing through the bowl over the earth

  Scratching my face

  Gravity in reverse

  Falling up

  Shattering the sky

  Into infinite, starless space

  And falling so far, so fast

  The pool below, glowing turquoise in the underwater lights

  A sky-blue rectangle in darkness

  It raced toward me

  Cool condensation on my face

  I hovered an inch above it, flailing

  A moment of conviction

  I did the right thing

  Before I dropped like a stone

  * * *

  The end of the fall was the surface below. I expected pain. Consequences. Death.

  Instead, there was relief. Release. Like bonds untied so aching shoulders could move and a sense that where submission ended, responsibility began.

  But responsibility to what? To whom?

  Thankfully, I got a call to the hospital. I couldn’t be in that office another second. I had to go.

  Once outside, I stood stock-still right outside the Blackthorne offices, in a sand-floored parking lot.

  What had been Caden’s cure? Trapped in complete darkness with a woman he loved. A pregnancy. The smell of blood and a feeling of responsibility.

  I saw more differences than similarities between what had happened in the basement and what had happened under the rubble, but they had been enough. Not that it mattered in my case. I didn’
t have a childhood trauma. I’d been loved and nurtured by my parents, then my friends, then my husband.

  I didn’t have a moment to recreate.

  What if I didn’t have a cure?

  What if the thing that had broken Caden was the only thing that could have cured him?

  What if the fact that I wasn’t broken meant I couldn’t be fixed?

  I backed up to the wall, trying to breathe slowly and deeply. After the bioenergetics session, the split was louder, more demanding. I couldn’t ignore this. I couldn’t pretend it would go away.

  What is your fear?

  Call it by its name.

  Heights. Losing Caden. Cancer. Death.

  Imagine the fear as an object.

  Which one? They were normal. All standard. None stuck out as something that needed to be dealt with.

  Give your fear a shape and a color.

  Put it in a place and leave it there. Observe it. Note its dimensions and its depth. Describe its boundaries.

  This wasn’t working. My fears had no boundaries.

  Fears with shape and weight were the demons of a sound mind.

  God help me.

  * * *

  Respite was a word.

  The word had a force, and it pushed against my consciousness like a bulldozer on a building. I heard it in the silence and in the whisper of the desert wind. The hum of the computer fan and the edge of Dana’s words as she came to tell me to go out to the landing pad to see off two of our subjects. I was late, and I had to sign them off.

  They looked great. They were great. Mentally, all great. But the whispers with counterarguments were everywhere.

  Not great.

  This was what Caden had gone through. I knew it. Belief that I could handle it was a habit. Running through lists of reasonable explanations was a professional routine. I still assumed I was tired or hungry but in control of my mind. If I could think about something else, it would go away.

  But I couldn’t run fast enough to the landing pad. Couldn’t find distractions deep enough in the feel of the air on my face or the fingernail I dug into my palm.

  Respite.

  If I could just taste the thought, I’d know what it was. I could accept or reject. In the rattling of the earth as I went to the waiting chopper, I let it touch the tip of my tongue, accepting its push on my consciousness.

  It tasted like poison.

  “Thank you for holding them!” I shouted over the beating chopper blades, my hair whipping out of its ponytail strand by strand as the chopper took off with Blackthorne’s two subjects.

  Colonel DeLeon gave me a thumbs-up and jogged off the pad. I followed, glad to be moving.

  “Did you get what you needed?” she asked when it was quiet enough to talk.

  “Yes. Sorry it took so long. I got held up at the office.”

  The soo-hooing had seemed to go on forever, but not as long as it had taken me to write down what I’d felt and seen during the circular breathing exercise.

  “They looked better,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s good work.”

  “Thank you.”

  Her hand was on the door to the hospital. I wanted to go forward, but she was stopping me, and this created a nagging irritation.

  “Your last name’s Frazier?” Another nagging irritation. Easy rhetorical questions.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “California? Your family’s from San Diego?”

  I assumed Caden had told her, but the question was ill-timed, and I had to bite back a snotty retort for Caden’s sake. “Officially.”

  “Follow me, please.”

  She strode through the halls as though she owned the joint, chin up, looking ahead in such a way as to say, “Don’t stop me with anything less than a life-and-death emergency.” Opening a nondescript door, she ushered me through and closed it behind us.

  The desks were wide shelves mounted to the wall. Three computers and a line of binders. Two beat-up office chairs. She held her hand over one, and I sat in it, then she leaned over a keyboard.

  “I hope I’m wrong,” she said as she tapped. “But it’s not a secret, and I don’t know if your employer’s looping you in.”

  She got out of the way of the screen. It was split into six boxes, each with a photo of a soldier. All men. Four white. Two African American. One I recognized.

  Jacob Frazier.

  “What—?”

  “His squad was ambushed outside Al Taqa. These six were captured.”

  Captured.

  Jake’s been captured.

  I said it to myself over and over, looking at his deadpan expression on the computer screen.

  “Is he related?” she asked.

  “He’s my big brother.”

  And I owe him everything.

  I didn’t know where the debt came from. It was more of a feeling than a narrative.

  “They’re searching for them,” she said. “I’d rather you found out from me than some rumor in the cafeteria.”

  What were they doing to him? How much pain was he in? How much panic?

  Jake was tough, but torture broke the strongest of us. It bent the mind around the body. I’d seen it in my patients. Resilient men and women were broken by the force of it.

  “Wifey,” DeLeon said tenderly, “they’re going to find them.”

  Behind her, my brother’s face and five others looked flatly through a screen. Lies of time.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  CADEN

  Maybe I wasn’t the most perceptive guy who ever walked the earth. Maybe I was a little detached and self-involved. When it came to other people, I could be slow. I processed vital data about patients and casualties quickly, but data about their moods and thoughts? I had no idea how to analyze that, and I didn’t care to.

  At the morning staff meeting, we were warned a dozen diplomats were landing at Baghdad International. They’d take Airport Road twelve kilometers to the Green Zone. We were all on call because that was the only stretch of road between the airport and the Green Zone, and it wasn’t called IED Alley for nothing.

  A couple of choppers dropped down like clockwork, and the meeting ended as we all ran to the landing pad.

  “Wasn’t bad,” said the kid with a bullet bite in his calf. “We got ‘em through.”

  “What’s the trick?” I asked just to keep him talking while I examined the wound.

  “Keep pushing. Just keep pushing.”

  * * *

  I was cleaning fragments out of someone’s flexor carpi when I decided not to say, “He’ll be home getting his wife off in no time.” One, it was inappropriate, and I had functioning social filters.

  But there was a second reason I didn’t say that or anything, and I put it together during the busy work of cleaning shrapnel out of a wrist and arm.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Greysen.

  How she’d changed.

  When I’d arrived the night before, she’d been lethargic, but more precisely? She’d been emotionally listless as well. She hadn’t asked questions or answered sharply. She hadn’t pushed back on my manipulation.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been sick, but it was the first time she’d been mentally weak.

  And in the morning?

  Fully in motion but without the cutting sensitivity I took for granted.

  She’d said she was feeling the effects but she was fine. Had she split?

  My Damon self had battled for expression when the sun set, but she’d been changed during the night.

  If she’d changed. Big if. But if she’d changed, it wasn’t with the appearance of the sun. It was something else. I stitched up the hand, putting together every word she’d said and how she’d said it.

  Be sure of me.

  Last words I remembered her saying before good night and the soft breaths of sleep.

  A command or a request?

  I should have told Ronin about my suspicions about her split, but I wasn’t in the mood for him. I d
idn’t want to commiserate or brainstorm with him about the state of my wife’s mind, especially with Jake in Iraqi hands.

  Finding her was like hitting a moving target. Someone said she was in the supply room, then the chow hall, then the parking lot, then the landing pad. Once I got off work, I continued the chase to the Blackthorne office.

  “I’m sure they’re going to find him,” I said when she closed the door, cutting off the sound of keyboards and ringing phones, leaving only the traffic and wind from the open window.

  “You don’t look sure. You look hopeful. Not sure.”

  “Fine.” I threw myself onto the couch. “Hopeful. He welcomed me into the family on day one, and he was always good to you.”

  She didn’t sit next to me. She leaned on her desk with her arms crossed. “You’re talking about him in the past tense.”

  “Are you all right? Are you upset?”

  “Of course I’m upset. What do you think? Who knows what they’re doing to him? I don’t know if he’s even alive or if he wishes he was dead.” She covered her face with her hands as if she wanted to mask her emotions with her hands. “And I can’t do anything. I’m a few miles away, and I can’t do anything.”

  “You’re going to meet an intelligence guy tonight apparently?”

  She dropped her hands. “I just want information. I have to know as much as they’ll tell me.”

  “What are you going to do with that information besides make yourself crazy?”

  Her lips tightened to the length of a matchstick. She bowed her head quickly, turning away so she could face the open window. She hooked her finger in the grate.

  “If you’re at the right angle, you can see the Tigris River from here.” She pressed her cheek to the grate to find the angle. “Sometimes I watch the Humvees and trucks going out to the port and see the boats and I wonder what it’s like to go someplace. To just run into the unknown. It’s like I’m stuck in a matrix of limited possibilities. Going around in a circle, like that carnival ride where you stand against the walls of a round room and it spins and spins. Then the floor drops out, and you don’t fall, but you’re stuck to that wall by centrifugal force, just spinning and spinning.” She turned to me fully, leaving her thumb and pinkie hooked in the grate. “What does it take to get out of it?”