A Soldier Saved--A Clean Romance

by Cheryl Harper

  “I bet. Why didn’t anyone guess it was you?”

  “Kinda quiet in class.” Jason crossed his arms over his chest. It hadn’t bothered him before that no one guessed he was capable of fun and light. Why did it now? “And no one knows about the prosthesis. That would be a dead giveaway.”

  She raised both eyebrows. “The one that will be replaced with a ‘cyborg leg’ later today. No one knows about that? How is that possible after five weeks together?” Her face was perfectly pleasant behind her glasses as she poked hard on the one spot guaranteed to hurt. How did she do that?

  “I mean, some people know but...” Jason ran a hand down the nape of his neck and squeezed the tense muscles there. “My mother. My doctors. The woman who runs Concord Court and the group I meet with there.” He shrugged. “Why does everyone else have to know?”

  She sipped from a mug emblazoned with the phrase “You got this” and then said, “Well, I’m not sure they do, but if you are living your life in a way that keeps your amputation and the reason for it a secret, that is something we should talk about.” Then she crossed her hands in her lap to wait.

  And she would wait. He could tell by the look in her eyes. His mother had a similar expression when she believed he was being too stubborn for his own good.

  For his first visit, his leg had only come up in passing. It was a fact he rattled off, as if it was the state capital of Georgia or the high temperature for the day. He’d covered a lot of ground in that first session with her.

  Today would be different. Had she been lulling him into lowering his guard?

  “I’m not doing that. I’m not hiding anything.” He said it firmly. In his experience, selling half-truths depended on conviction.

  She slowly shook her head. She wasn’t buying it.

  “You aren’t hiding it except by making sure no one can see it.” She twirled her pen. “Sort of the definition of hiding. Okay, let’s talk about school, then. What comes next? Have you planned your fall classes yet?” She waved a hand. “Or you’re going to do something else now. You told me your bargain with your mother was only for one class. With that behind you, you’re free to make a new choice, right?”

  Jason shifted in his seat and realized he was pretty close to fidgeting with an audience. No good.

  “That’s what I need your help with. I told you that the first day.” He had. That had been the only reason he’d come here, to get some guidance from someone who was not his mother.

  “Right. Okay.” She tapped her pen on the notebook in front of her. “What did you do in the army? That could be valuable experience to your future employer.”

  “Tactical support. I moved things. Supplies. People. Equipment.” Jason shrugged. “Unless I want to be a truck driver, and I don’t, not really, I’m not sure it’s relevant.”

  She pursed her lips. “Truck driving could be fun. You’d cover a lot of the country. That’s why you enlisted, the chance to explore.”

  Amazed that she had committed anything he said to memory, Jason braced his elbows on his knees. “And not ever be home. I want to be home for this half of my life.” Jason rubbed his forehead, tired of the question mark over his head. “The reason I made it in here was because of my mother’s counseling story. I won’t be half a world away again when she needs me.”

  “Makes sense.” She made some notes. “Lots of people with military training enter security, police forces or even firefighting.”

  “No. I promised my mother I’d do something safe.” Jason shook his head. “And as easy as it is being a part of that structure, there’s the leg.”

  “Easy, you say. Tell me about that.” Her lips turned up in a crocodile smile.

  “Following the rules. It’s easy. You train. Trust your commander and your team. You learn the protocol. You execute it. Easy. But out here, where there’s no real logic to the way things work, that’s hard.” And it was. If he had to guess, lots of people struggled with that. He couldn’t be alone. “On campus? There are groups of kids who play disc golf every day. I don’t get that. It’s fun, but lots of things are fun. Go and do those, too. You know?” He waited for her to acknowledge his point.

  “Definitely, but even here, we have things that give our lives structure. Jobs with certain hours or college courses that meet on these days and times. We have some rules. Pay your rent on the first of the month. Don’t try to cross the road unless you’re in the crosswalk. Some are laws. Some are expectations. You don’t have any trouble with those.”

  Rolling his eyes in response would be rude. He had a long road to walk with Michelle Perry, so he wasn’t going to be rude this soon. “No problem.”

  She pointed. “Let’s go back farther. High school. Elementary school. What did you want to be?”

  Why didn’t he have a better answer for this?

  “I grew up in a small town. My father was the mayor for most of my life, knew everyone’s name and their complaints and never once got frustrated trying to work on them. My mother? She had a good job at the school and led the children’s choir at church. So, my father knew every adult in town, and my mother knew every kid. And then there was me. Just me. Everybody in Rosette expected me to be the same, to take the lead, to do the right thing, and I loved them. I did my best. Whenever I messed up, everyone in town made sure my parents knew about it.” And no one had hesitated to remind him, either.

  “I expect you learned a lot about service and leadership. Those are good qualities.” Michelle wrinkled her nose. “But even good qualities can go too far.”

  “At graduation, my parents would have been happy for me to go out, get a degree and come back to Rosette to be the best accountant the town ever had. That would have been easy.” On the wall behind her desk were three certificates. He couldn’t read the writing on all of them, but the one in the middle was a recognition of outstanding volunteer service. Next to it was a framed photo of a young woman in dress uniform with people who had to be her parents. Her father wasn’t smiling but something about him said pride. Her mother was smiling, but it did nothing to cover the worry on her face.

  That reminded him of Angela’s poem about what smiles hide.

  “I did all the right things. I sang in the church choir,” Jason admitted and shook his head. Was he saying it out loud? He’d admitted that once while he and some buddies had been playing cards outside Kandahar and almost never got them to shut up about it. “Team captain. Student council. President of the senior class.” He sighed. “Only thing I never managed was the grades. My mother always wanted me to do better than average. She told me I gave up too easily.” He didn’t want that to be true.

  “So, another four years of not quite measuring up sounded like misery then. And the army could give you what you wanted, a chance to get out of Rosette, measurable standards and goals...” She trailed off and raised both eyebrows, waiting because there had to be something more to the answer.

  Surely there was. Escaping a perfectly happy childhood made no sense.

  “I don’t know. In my town and in lots of small towns, if I judge by the stories I’ve been told, there’s an appreciation or a kind of hero worship for servicemen and servicewomen, so it seemed like this noble thing I would be doing. Every small town for a hundred miles had parades to celebrate every holiday, and their veterans marched or rode on floats. That’s how I met my first amputee. Got yelled at by my first veteran because of my rudeness. I darted in front of him to grab candy, nearly tripped him. Had a lecture from my mother about the respect we owe veterans. Nearly got a whack from the cane.” Jason squeezed his knee. The throb wasn’t pain as much as a reminder that there used to be a leg there. “If I joined, I could serve and help people and still do everything I wanted.” Jason frowned. Had he even thought it that far out before he enlisted? He’d certainly never imagined being the old soldier limping through a parade.

  “Sometimes we have thes
e subconscious pushes that we don’t even know are guiding our decisions.” Michelle dropped her notebook on the table. “I’ve known you for a week now, and I see a guy who takes himself pretty seriously, one who is aware of his place in this world and who feels a duty to step up. Forthright. Fair play is important to you. You want to believe in ideals and in justice, and you are prepared to make difficult decisions to accomplish that.” She nodded. “Tell me where I’m wrong.”

  Jason stretched again, uncomfortable with every bit of what she’d said. “I’m a guy who is completely out of touch with this world.”

  “No way. I know lots of people like you. I talk to them every day, men and women who signed up to serve. That’s why I love what I do. Some people,” she said and dipped her chin down to make sure he knew she was talking about him, “believe that only broken people come to therapy, but I am telling you, the soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen and airwomen that come in here? They are ready to be stronger than they’ve ever been. All they need, and all you need, is to deal with the weak spots. You aren’t broken. That wound? The one that led to the amputation and the one that’s keeping you from moving forward, that’s it. That’s all you have to overcome. When you remember how far around the world you’ve been, this is the same as turning into your driveway. You are so close, Jason. You can do this.”

  Jason blinked as he absorbed her speech. “I’m guessing you understand what you’re talking about. You were army, too.”

  “I was. And that’s why I’ll volunteer my time with Concord Court until Reyna tells me to go away. This world needs people who believe in justice and service, even if they have wounds that have to be healed first.” She tilted her head. “Maybe that’s it,” she said slowly.

  More nervous than he had been since he set foot in her office the first day, Jason cleared his throat. He’d ask what she meant, but she was going to tell him anyway. She’d picked up her notebook, so whatever it was, it would be a doozy.

  “You don’t believe you’re a hero.” She studied him closely. “Do you?”

  His first reaction was to shake his head firmly. “No. I did a job.”

  “When you were a kid in Rosette and you watched veterans come home to parades, you knew they were heroes.” Patience settled on her face again. He didn’t care for it.

  “Yes,” he snapped. “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Because you were doing what was expected of you while they...” She shrugged. “I don’t get it.”

  Jason closed his eyes. Was he going to say this out loud? “I lost my leg because of a car accident. My transfer truck crashed. There’s nothing heroic about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I could have done that in Rosette.” Before she could respond, he added, “You know how my mother got me here? She told me about her own experience with therapy when grief over my father’s death made her miserable. I wasn’t there for her. I’m not a hero. I’m a guy who messes up. Sometimes.”

  “You love your mother. The truth is, you might not have seen her grief if you’d been here and you might not have been able to help anyway. You were doing the job you were trained for. There are a lot of people too afraid to step into the gap and you did it. Whether an enemy combatant caused your injury or not, you were hurt in the service of your country and the others you served with. I’m asking you, if another soldier were telling you this and feeling less than he should because his injury came from an accident instead of an enemy shot, what would you say to him?”

  Jason crossed his arms over his chest. What would he say?

  “Every job matters. Every person in the crew matters.” Jason rubbed his forehead. “I said it every day to the guys I worked with and who trusted me and I knew it was true. It takes every man and woman to accomplish the objective, wherever they serve.” Some of the tension left his shoulders. “I wouldn’t let a guy who’d nearly been killed in an accident following my orders wonder for one second if his life mattered less than another one who was shot in battle. Not for one second.”

  The way Michelle bugged her eyes out made him laugh. Maybe it was time to roll his eyes when he wanted to. She wasn’t holding back.

  “Don’t let yourself imagine for one second that your sacrifice is less important, either. Thank you for making my point for me.” She pointed at him. “I love it when that happens.”

  “And you only had to lead me there by the hand and stand on my shoelaces to make me stop long enough to say it.”

  She shrugged her shoulder. “It’s what I do. The training kicks in and everything falls into place.”

  Jason laughed. He’d expected lots of probing questions that turned into issues with a capital I, not laughter. But he was going to walk out of here better.

  “You told me about the old guy at the parade when we first met, too. His reaction, his wound stuck with you. Maybe because you were young or even then knew that war was dangerous, life and death. It’s a scary thing.” She pointed her pen at him. “Imagine if another man with a similar wound had used the opportunity to talk to you about his experience. Would your life have turned out differently? This injury wouldn’t slow you down. You could be that guy for others. You will be that guy, the one who shows life goes on and gets better. I have no doubt.”

  Jason straightened in his seat. An almost stranger believed he could lead others.

  “You want to serve. You have valuable experience that can help many vets. You can write.” She tapped her pen again. “And school... Well, you’re on the fence about that. Counseling. You could be good at this or at leading groups returning, but you’d need some training. Sawgrass has a great social work program.” Then she chuckled. “Reyna called me this morning to talk about her need for a career counselor. Have the two of you chatted about that job? She’s so good at pulling all the strings together.”

  Jason scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yes. And I’ve worn out my fingers searching for information on how that would even work. I don’t have a counseling or social work degree.”

  “Okay, but our concept, mine and Reyna’s, was that I would run the program, but we’d have someone on hand to facilitate groups, and help with web searches and applications. This could be great for you and for every vet at Concord.” She scribbled a note on a piece of paper. “Here’s the professor you should talk to at Sawgrass. He’s head of the department over there, and he can give you some direction about what an undergraduate degree in social work can take and where you can go with it. He’s on board to help us find government and nonprofit support programs, so he knows all about this project.”

  Reyna would make this plan happen, and her plan included him. Since every time he met Reyna Montero, she was conquering each step with a firm expression on her face, he was pretty sure she could do anything she set her mind to.

  Except keep the pool group away from the pool.

  He checked the clock. He’d nearly run out his hour. A little career talk but nothing that hurt. Good visit.

  “And this new prosthesis,” Michelle drawled. “How is that going to change your life?” She waved a hand at the clock. “We started early. We have more time.”

  Jason swallowed his sigh.

  “It will allow me to run. Basically, I will run faster and better than I ever have.” Jason shrugged. “Cyborg.”

  “Have you missed running?” She reached over to pick up the notebook again. Clearly they were in new therapy territory.

  “Missed it? I wouldn’t say that. It’s hotter than the face of the sun out there. Running isn’t a joy for me. It never has been.” Jason stretched his leg. “But it helps. Gets me out of my head, you know?”

  She nodded. “Tell me about this cyborg leg.”

  “You’ve seen something similar. It’s metal, designed with a special curve to give each step extra power. Apparently, it’s the tip of the iceberg. I can change my leg according to my mood, as long as the money holds out. Be
better than I ever was with both feet.”

  “I’ve seen them. There’s no way to hide that, Jason. People will see your prosthesis. They will ask you about your amputation and your service and all of that stuff you’ve been avoiding.” She picked up her mug. “Are you ready for that?”

  He looked down at his left leg. Today, no one would know he was any different. He was wearing jeans and running shoes and he’d walked into this building without a single hitch in his step. Learning to run on his new leg wouldn’t be as easy.

  “I don’t know, but I’ll have to get there.” He exhaled loudly. “Do you ever get so sick of the conversation that runs on a loop in your head? I can’t sleep at night because I’m telling myself I have to get over all of it and then I’m worried I’ll never be over it, that I’m stuck in this weird limbo forever. Running will help with that. I’ve got to learn how.”

  Michelle agreed. “Yes, you do. You will. And it’s going to go smoother than you imagine. You are also going to run into people who ask dumb questions. Kids will stare and point. You will be reminded that you aren’t the same as you were before. There will be days when the leg fails you because all bodies do that, but more often than all that, you are going to run. You are going to run and sweat and leave all that worry behind for however long you run. You know this. Having this new prosthesis made is the proof of exactly what I said, you know. You aren’t broken. This isn’t easy. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone, but you can do this because you want to do this.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And you better have news to report when I see you next. Let’s drop it to once a week.”

  He should tell her about falling and the immediate rage and fear that had swamped him.

  But she was offering him an open door.

  Relieved, Jason asked, “Is that because I’m doing so well?”

  “It’s because you need some time to make progress on your own.” Michelle stood up. “Find out about social work, try running on your new leg.” She pursed her lips. “The third thing... What was the third thing?” She studied the ceiling. “Oh, you should also tell someone about your leg, someone who doesn’t know but might want to.”