Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  James walked around the bed, dropped a white paper bag on the over-the-bed tray and maneuvered it within Daniel’s reach. “There’s a Coke in there, too.”

  “Thanks.” The first thing he pulled out was a clear plastic globe with cherry Jell-O. He held it up. “Who’d think a patient would voluntarily ask for hospital Jell-O?”

  James settled into the chair, crossed his ankle on his knee. “Comfort food. Mom used to make it for us when we were sick.”

  Daniel placed it on the tray for later, and pulled out a fresh-made sandwich wrapped in wax paper. “How old was Brenna when your mom died?”

  “Twelve. But she wasn’t weaned yet. Meowled piteously. Stayed half-feral ‘til Ari got a hold of her.”

  Daniel unwrapped his sandwich. He was constantly hungry lately, but unable to eat well. His nose was still packed with gauze and he was having trouble with the whole eat-breathe thing.

  “You know who Ari is, right?” James sat back with a casual air.

  Daniel shot him a sharp glance. Ari was a personal fact about Brenna that few people knew. James was testing him, waiting to see if he was intimate enough with her to know about her marriage, and that her husband was dead. Brenna’s earlier remonstrance aside, James wasn’t finished with him.

  He took a big bite out of the sandwich, chewed carefully, then popped open the soda can and took a leisurely swallow. All the while, James waited. He didn’t move on to the next topic. He hadn’t inadvertently dropped bait overboard. He’d threaded it onto a hook, and was waiting for the tug.

  Daniel put the can down on the tray, fitting it neatly into the ring of condensation that had already dripped off it. “I just spent three days in Kavsak, being shot at by men who hide behind walls. So don’t snipe at me, James. I’m tired of it. You want to bring me to my knees—to prove me some sort of impostor—just lob the bomb.”

  Brenna stirred, reached out her hand, and found Daniel again.

  James jutted his chin out, but spoke softly, not to wake her. “Brenna has a history of being used. Sexually. Because she’s beautiful, and talented. Because she’s a Rease. Because people want an ‘in’ with our family. They use her and then expose her so they can get their five minutes of public glory.”

  Anger flared through Daniel. He resented being clumped with men who used women. But he told himself to calm down. This was Brenna’s brother. He was concerned about her.

  “The day she signed your papers, she called me,” James said. “Gave me an earful about how you ‘contracted’ her to death, about the idiot you’d hired as a field researcher, about your lack of commitment to the story. And now you’re sitting on her bed with your shoes off, and she’s resting her hand a little too near your crotch.”

  He looked down. James was right. He covered her hand with his and left it where it was. She could put her hand wherever she damn pleased.

  Daniel steadied himself with a deep breath. “Time in Kavsak isn’t like time here,” he said. “A lot happens in a short span—life and death things that strip you to an essential core. Feelings aren’t masked, appearances aren’t maintained. It’s primitive. It’s savage. You survive or you don’t. You walk through three days of hell with someone, things happen fast. Had you asked me, that day I signed Brenna, if I would be shoeless in her bed today, I would have said that nothing short of an Act of God would make this happen. And yet.”

  James steepled his fingers. “Go on.”

  “As for the specifics of her call to you, she busted me to my face about the contracts. I admitted I was an idiot. She corrected me and said I was an asshole. Once I admitted that fact, she let it go. The field researcher was a grad school friend I hadn’t seen in years. I had no idea how incompetent he had become until we arrived in Kavsak. He died at our feet not long afterwards—” He trailed off.

  “And what about the story, your commitment to it? She nearly got herself killed for it, and you’re indifferent?”

  He met James’ eyes directly. “To be honest, I don’t know how I’m going to do it justice. There are a lot of challenging issues associated with it, not the least of which is its graphic nature. And, you’re right. It wasn’t my burning desire to make this documentary, not the way it is Brenna’s, or was my deceased wife’s. I realized while I was in Kavsak that I had gone for the wrong reason. But if anyone is aware of what it has cost Brenna to capture this footage, it’s me. I’m not about to dishonor that.”

  James sat back, rubbing his hand over his face. “Shit.”

  “I can’t prove who I am to you, James. I can tell you I won’t disrespect your sister, but I suspect your family often hears such protestations. Maybe what you need to do is trust Brenna, because she also has a history of being loved by a man who cherished her, and she learned the difference between a loving man and a user.”

  “So you’re telling me you’re in love with her.”

  “I’m not telling you anything I haven’t told her first—” He stared at her hand, peeking out beneath his on his lap. She might not even be willing to hear him say he loved her. Maybe it would go forever unspoken between them, and he’d fall into Luc’s category, desiring her as a lifemate and getting friendship in return. Either way, that night they made love in Kavsak, she had asked him not to leave her, and he had promised he would not.

  If war was a drug, as Geoff Garrett had said, then Brenna had been using for thirty months. She would need help to transition back to civilian life. If he helped her get on her feet and she used them to walk away from him, then that’s what it would be.

  Meanwhile, he planned to properly court her—do whatever he could to entice her to stay.

  Daniel shook himself, trying to dislodge the gloomy cloak that had enfolded him. He looked up and saw James silently studying him. “If I ever—ever—treat Brenna unkindly, call me on it. Until then, lay off. This is our relationship, not yours.”

  A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of her brother’s mouth.

  Daniel picked up his sandwich, realized he didn’t have the breath to eat it, and dropped it on the tray again.

  James’ eyes narrowed. “How long have you had that gauze packing in your nose?”

  “I dunno.” Daniel shrugged. “Two, three days?” He was supposed to book a follow-up appointment to have it removed.

  James jumped up, left the room for a few minutes, then reappeared with a small plastic kidney bowl and a package of what looked like long, thin tweezers with rounded ends. He plucked two examination gloves out of the dispenser by the door. “You want to finish that sandwich, or just gaze longingly at it?”

  Brenna woke, focusing slowly on the bed railing while she tried to shake off the residual fog of sleep sedatives.

  She felt pain. Not the generalized pain she always felt, but a cluster of hot points where the shrapnel had sprayed over her, and two larger, throbbing patches on her thigh where the flesh was cratered.

  The military docs called it a Pattern II injury—penetrating injuries caused by multiple fragments from an exploding landmine. A tidy scientific descriptor for ragged holes, ripped-off skin, and enough imbedded dirt to start a garden.

  As Pattern IIs went, she got off easy. She had already been running. She didn’t trip the mine directly, a long plank slid onto it. She was in open space. And she didn’t bleed out before Jasha appeared, floating above her, surreal, self-appointed Guardian Angel with his men and his underground contacts.

  The call bell was tied to the railing. She pressed the nurse icon.

  She shifted in the bed and saw James asleep on a geri-chair near the foot of her bed. Sweet James, who left his New York City AIDS clinic in the hands of his fellow-practitioners and flew to Weisbaden as soon as he learned she was injured. Once there, he never left her side. His partner of fifteen years, Gary, who was a nurse, understood and sent his love.

  Her eyes wandered to the empty armchair beside her bed. Daniel was gone.

  Well, no wonder.

  In Weisbaden, half-delirious from infection, al
l she’d thought about was him. Where was he? Was he alright? Would he find her? If he didn’t, should she contact him, or just let the relationship—an artifact of war?—wither under the bright light of the real world?

  Then he tracked her down, showed up at her bedside, told her that if they had a baby together it would make his heart sing. Such a beautiful sentiment, and she blew up. Daniel, at her hands, suffered the Pattern III injury, where you handled the land mine and it exploded in your face.

  There was a tap at the door. A fifty-something nurse with strawberry-blonde curls tiptoed in to her bedside. “Good morning. I’m Lucy Hawkins. I’m your nurse today.” She leaned over the bed and pressed the cancel button on the call light, speaking softly so she wouldn’t wake James. “Are you having pain? On a scale of zero to ten—”

  The question was a mantra, repeated to patients up and down the hallway.

  “Six.” Brenna calibrated for the peacetime pain rating scale. At Kavsak Hospital it would be a three, three-point five. Amputation without anesthesia was a ten.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Brenna sighed, pulled the bedcovers up to her neck, and turned onto her side.

  The problem with lunacy—at least the version that possessed her—was that it was inconstant. You woke up, looked around and calmly identified your room. You knew who your brother was. You knew your lover was missing. You knew what to do if you found a stamped, addressed envelope on the ground (mailed it). Those were signs of alertness, of orientation, of executive brain function.

  But they lulled you. They made you feel normal—right until you felt the snap. And then, though you were where you were, you weren’t. You were in the feeling of someplace else, in a different time, with other people, doing something else. You felt terrified, panicked, and your heart was pumping, your breath was ragged, your hands were shaking and the sweat ran off you. And it was real so real until you felt the snap again, or you blinked, and you came back, and the feeling that was true, wasn’t.

  Or you zoned out, transported, but also where you were, through infinite momentary time where you looked down for a single instant, then lifted your face to a clock that said three hours had passed.

  The worst was when something triggered your chemistry, and the earth began sliding beneath your feet, carrying you inexorably toward the edge of a precipice and there was nothing to hold onto and you were sucked over the side, free-falling down and down into anger, accelerating, the heat so intense you burst into flames but the flames felt good because the only thing that extinguished the chemistry was the burn. And you saw it coming, felt it happening, knew you were going over and couldn’t stop it.

  Like when you were talking to your lover about not wanting his babies.

  She clamped her eyes shut, covered her face with her palm, and forbade herself to make a sound. It would be better to be relieved of sanity altogether.

  Nurse Hawkins returned with a syringe and administered the medication through the IV port taped to the back of her hand. “The wound care specialist will be in later to change the dressings. This afternoon, there’s more physiotherapy, and Dr. Lee will be here…whenever. Probably after morning rounds.”

  “Dr. Lee?”

  “For the psych eval.”

  She dropped her head onto the pillow and closed her eyes. Psychiatric evaluation? The little rush of opiates swept her under.

  The oblivion was short-lived. By oh-seven-thirty, the tech—a brisk but kind black woman named Ludie—had rousted her from her druggy haze, ‘ambulated’ her to the bathroom with the help of a walker, helped her sit down to pee, and handed her the implements to brush teeth and hair, to wash and change into another gaping gown, and to get back to the freshly-made bed she had miraculously conjured in the meantime. Before she could thank her, Ludie vanished. Brenna pictured her working her way down a long, long hall with no time to waste.

  Luckily, all the ambulating and bed-changing woke James up. He was sitting forward on the chair, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hands. “Christ,” he said, when he finally realized she was glaring at him. “You look glum.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought this was my pissed-off face.”

  James groaned. “Oh, don’t hold back for me, Rease. Really. Don’t let it bother you that I haven’t so much as taken a piss or had a cup of coffee. Go right ahead and spew—‘cause I can see that’s where you’re headed.”

  “You ordered a psychiatric evaluation on me.”

  He rubbed his face. “Yeah. I did.”

  “Jesus, James.”

  “You’re in trouble, Li’l Bear. Deep-shit trouble. I had to.”

  “You’ve set me up.”

  “I’ve been sitting by your bed since Weisbaden. You can’t sleep, for the nightmares. You wake up screaming. You’re having flashbacks. You zone out. Your emotions are all over the road. You’re depressed. Shall I go on?”

  “I can’t see a psychiatrist.”

  “You need meds. Anti-depressants. Anxiolytics—”

  “You can prescribe them for me.”

  “You need supervision. They have to titrate them, try adjuvants, different combinations. It’s not my area of expertise.”

  “I can’t see a psychiatrist. It’ll get out.”

  “It won’t get out.”

  “It always gets out. Forty-five hundred staff at Naval Medical Center. Hundreds of patients. Thousands of visitors? Don’t be naïve. The Queen of the Billiard Ball in psych care, and no one’s going to talk?”

  “Your life is at risk.”

  “I’ll be crucified.”

  “I’ll protect you.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll be labeled, dismissed: Mentally ill. Who’ll ever trust my work? Any show of passion, any emotion, will be suspect. She’s out of control again. Jesus, James. You’re throwing me to the wolves.”

  “You’re suicidal.”

  Suicide was a cold impulse. Not hot. She jerked her chin up. Exposed her neck. Pressed her fingers beneath her jaw, and showed him the spot. The calm came over her. Time shifted. “That’s right, Aleksandar. Just pull it.”

  “What?” His face came into view. “Pull what?”

  “The trigger.” She waited for the bliss. Any moment, this would all be over.

  “Brenna? Shit. Brenna.”

  She stared at him. Gradually, he came into focus. Her brother, sitting on the edge of her bed, his head in his hands.

  She reached a shaky hand toward him. “Aw, man,” she whispered. “What are you saving me for?”

  “Martindale.”

  Special Envoy Brendan Rease’s Chief Executive Assistant opened the door to his State Department office suite in Washington, D.C. and padded across the Aubusson rug to his superior’s desk, steno pad and pencil in hand.

  “Yes, sir?”

  The Envoy closed the thin folder he was reading and tossed it across his desk toward his assistant. “I asked for a comprehensive report on this man.”

  John Martindale, a tall, slender man who had been in the Envoy’s employ for nearly twenty years, picked up the folder and held it sideways to read the tab. “Daniel Ellsworth?”

  “That thing reads like a curriculum vitae and a few credit reports.”

  “Sir. This is the comprehensive report.”

  The antique chair creaked under the Envoy’s weight as he clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back, reciting facts. “Born and raised in Portland, Maine. Only child of a surgeon and a clinical psychologist. Swim team captain at public high school. Undergrad at Northwestern. Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia, where he met Aya Tanaka. Wedded her immediately after graduation and stuck like a burr until two years ago, when she and an unborn son died on the Beltway. First and only employer: EBS. Professionally respected. Steady advancement. Emmys, Peabodys, etcetera. Lives in Cleveland Park, within his means.”

  “That sounds right.”

  “I want to know everything, Martindale. Drinking. Gambling. Infidelity? He’s a good-looking man.
He would have opportunities.”

  “Not so much as a sidelong glance. The investigation was thorough. Mr. Ellsworth is clean.”

  “And he’s taken up with my daughter?”

  Martindale blinked. “Perhaps he sees virtues in her that others miss. Sir.”

  The Envoy gave him a sharp look. “That will be all.”

  Daniel opened the room door with his foot, balancing a tray of specialty coffees in one hand, a brown paper bag from the market with fresh fruit in the other, and a separate bag from a pastry shop between his teeth. He was freshly-showered, wearing clean jeans and an open-collared blue-plaid shirt with a white tee peeking out at the neck.

  Brenna sensed him circle the bed. Smelled his Old Spice aftershave.

  “Good morning.” He slipped his hand around the side of her face, and kissed her on the lips. The man had guts, coming within range of more Pattern III injuries.

  She caught his face. “If you were smart, you’d walk out my door and keep on going.”

  “Well, I guess you’re going to have to tell your friends I’m an idiot.” He rolled the tray closer. “I brought treats. Hungry?”

  “I thought you left.”

  “Left-left? Nah. Shower. Clean clothes. Food run. Give me a side here.” Rustling the pastry bag, he set out danishes, cinnamon buns, and croissants. “I bought an assortment. I wasn’t sure what you like. You’ll have to tell me so I can bring the right stuff.”

  His casual air made her feel normal, as if she hadn’t just scared the hell out of her brother, reliving her little encounter with Maric’s son. As if she wasn’t about to be hauled off in a white jacket.

  After breakfast, a diminutive Korean man wearing a white lab coat popped into the room. Dr. Lee, the embroidery over the pocket said. The psychiatrist.

  He introduced himself all around. He held his hand toward the door for James and Daniel. “Excuse us, please. Few minutes.” He had an accent, not American-born.

  James squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, and transformed into a full-blown Rease, heir to The Magnificent. “I’m afraid that a private interview with my sister is not possible.”

  “The patient has right to privacy.”