Carponti clicked the TV off and threw the remote onto the blanket covering his lap. The silence grew uncomfortable in the room’s stillness.
“I forgot I took the Vicodin.”
“You forgot?”
Carponti’s eyes widened and then narrowed. “Yes, Mother, I forgot I took the Vicodin. I don’t expect you to believe me. Shit, ever since I’ve been home, you’ve been acting like I’ve had one finger on the goddamned trigger. Oh, wait. My trigger finger isn’t there anymore. My bad.”
“Carponti—”
“No. You wanted me to talk. How ’bout you shut the hell up and listen?” He dragged his hand through his bushy red hair. “I. Am. Fine. I’m not suicidal. I’m not trying to drink away my sorrows. I have a good wife and a good life that I will get on with one way or another. I lost an arm. So what? You’re the one who has a problem with it. Not me.”
Carponti reached into the cooler beside the bed and pulled out a fresh Dr Pepper and offered it to Shane. Shane accepted and kept quiet. Barely.
“I screwed up. I thought I’d only taken the meds for the phantom limb pain, but I guess I must have taken Vicodin, too. Then Nicole and I were watching the game and I thought I could handle a few drinks. I can’t help it that my tolerance is as weak as a fourteen-year-old girl’s after all of this.”
Carponti was making jokes about trying to kill himself. Cold waves of relief crashed over Shane and his eyes burned. He blinked hard and fast.
Carponti held his hand to his heart and his expression was mock offense. “I can’t believe you thought I tried to wax myself.”
Shane dragged his hands over his face. “I’m sorry.”
“Damn right you are. Now will you please get over the nub? It wants to be friends and you’ve offended it.”
Shane’s laugh nearly choked him. “The nu—your arm doesn’t bother me.”
“Bullshit. I see you watching it. Wondering if I’m freaking out. I have some bad times. Who doesn’t? Get over it. You’ve still got a life to live, too.” Carponti shrugged and snapped open his drink. “Guess I’m really out of the army now. They tend to frown on suicidal ideations.” He leaned over and pulled another snack-sized bag of Fritos from the duffel bag near his bed and stuffed a handful into his mouth. “Oh well, I’ll figure something out. Maybe I’ll work at McDonald’s. They like to hire handicapped people. I’ll be good PR for them.”
The remaining tension in Shane’s chest popped like a balloon. “You have the most twisted sense of humor.”
Carponti nodded and held the open bag up to his mouth. Golden crumbs fell down his cheeks and his chest and he brushed them off as he munched on the remains. “Thanks.” He swallowed. “You still look like shit though. When are you getting out of that chair?”
“Not soon enough.” Shane cleared his throat.
“So guess who I saw yesterday? Our favorite lieutenant,” Carponti snorted. “That weaselly little shit said he was stopping my pay. Said I was being found liable for the loss of the equipment. He hasn’t told you the same thing?”
A slow burn of rage twisted inside Shane’s guts. “No. He can’t do that. There’s an appeals process.”
Carponti shrugged. “I don’t know if he can or not but I think he already has. I’m pretty sure you’re going to get hit up, too.”
“How do you feel about public crucifixion?” Shane asked. Nailing Randall to a wall wouldn’t be punishment enough.
Carponti laughed. “That’s more like it. Our boys need you back in the fight. Someone has those missing optics and weapons.”
Our boys. Shane closed his eyes. Jesus, he needed to get back on his feet, literally and figuratively speaking.
“Randall is crossing too many lines to force this stupid investigation through. Something else is going on.”
Carponti snapped open a new Dr Pepper of his own. “Watch your back. Randall gave a senior NCO a letter of reprimand for disrespecting him.”
“Should you really be drinking soda and eating chips after last night?” Shane raised his eyebrows, his expression feigning innocence. “What makes you think I’d disrespect our esteemed lieutenant?”
“You? Right, what could you possibly say to piss off our favorite lieutenant?” Carponti nearly snorted his Dr Pepper. “And I almost died, so yes, I’m eating Fritos and whatever the hell else I want.”
“Your stomach might have other ideas.” Shane maneuvered toward the door, shaking his head. He stopped and glanced back. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Carponti sniffed and raised the soda to his lips. “Yeah. Me, too.”
Chapter 20
A week later
Shane swore for the seventeenth time that morning. He was lying flat on a wide bench that supported his entire body, his legs stretched out flat in front of him. He was embarrassed and frustrated that he’d broken a sweat trying to bench-press the lousy seventy-five pounds that his trainer had instructed him to try. It was humbling enough to not be able to lift even half of what he could just a few months ago. Add in the fact that Carponti was royally pissing him off, and he was having a real banner day.
“Come on, man, I can bench that with one arm!”
Shane slammed the weights back on the bar and sat up. “Do you mind? It’s hard to concentrate with you running your mouth all the time.”
Carponti had on a bright yellow tracksuit and he stuck out like a sore thumb in the room full of dull green carpet and tan weight benches. It would be hard to miss him anywhere except next to a flock of baby ducks. Or maybe Big Bird. Carponti was expending more energy harassing his platoon sergeant than doing any physical therapy of his own.
“Man, wait till I tell everyone back on the FOB that you’re a total pussy! You can’t even lift two hundred pounds. Even Ramirez should be able to beat you now.”
Private Bill Ramirez was one hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. How the guy even moved with all his gear on remained a mystery to everyone in the platoon, but he was a tough little bastard, and he always requested to tote the M240B machine gun around on foot patrols. Considering that M240 machine guns weigh over twenty-five pounds before you added in the basic load of ammo, Ramirez was able to carry his own weight and then some.
“Carponti, go bug someone else, will you?”
“Can’t. Two women have threatened to file sexual harassment complaints if I don’t leave them alone, and they’re the only ones here other than you. Man, I tell you, the little brown-haired girl, the one missing the foot? She is smoking hot!”
Shane groaned at Carponti’s description. “Does Nicole know you talk like that?”
Carponti dismissed his remark with a wave of his bandaged arm and then tucked it close to his body again to resume his reps. “I guarantee Nicole’s heard worse locker-room talk around the CID interview rooms. I know for a fact that I saw the little brown-haired one—her name’s Kristin, by the way—checking you out.”
“Carponti, have you forgotten that a private could get me court-martialed? I’m. Not. Interested.” Shane leaned back and slid under the weights again.
“A private could not get you court-martialed. You’re both enlisted. What, did your dick get blown off or something?” Shane’s face flamed but Carponti drove on, tactless as always. “Hello! You haven’t been laid in how long? I mean, let’s see, we were gone for four months and you’ve been back for …” Carponti ticked off the numbers on his fingers. “Why don’t you try talking to her? Unless the foot freaks you out. Which would be pretty fucked up, if you ask me.”
Shane rubbed his hands over his face before gripping the bar. “Carponti, I swear if you don’t shut up, I’m going to rip your other arm off and shove it down your throat,” Shane growled.
There was a time and a place for this kind of conversation and the middle of the physical therapy floor at the hospital was not it. Shane couldn’t recall the last time he wanted to beat someone up this badly. And a week ago, he’d been worried about the guy.
Carponti started coughing suddenly a
nd Shane uncovered his face. Shane sat up and twisted his upper body, coming face-to-face with what was quite possibly the strictest-looking woman he’d ever seen on a military installation. She’d painted at least two inches of makeup on her face, and the effect was almost certainly not what she’d been going for. She looked like a cross between a drill sergeant and Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister.
Not a good look. At all.
“Gentlemen, while I appreciate that you two have the common bond of being mannerless heathens, I would appreciate it if you could keep the profanity to a minimum. Others have to share the air with you.” Her voice had the thick rasp of a heavy smoker.
Shock of shocks, Carponti kept his mouth shut. Barely. Carponti let the silence stand for a few minutes. When he broke the silence, his voice was low. Sober. “Hey, man, did you hear what happened last night in the medical hold barracks?”
Shane grunted and slammed the bar back onto the rack. He sat up, his legs extended in front of him. “Uh-uh.”
“A soldier tried to kill herself.”
Shane rubbed the crease between his eyes and sighed. Another suicide attempt, the third in a week at Fort Hood. The medical hold barracks were a nightmare—they were poorly managed and seriously wounded soldiers were left to their own devices there, with no one to take accountability for them. They were in the process of setting up a Warrior Transition Unit, but so far the transition process had been chaos and the soldiers were paying the price. It was worse, by any standard, than Shane’s own company, Randall and all.
“What happened?” Shane asked, stretching his arms out behind him.
“Husband left her. She ate her entire bottle of Percocets and half a bottle of Ambien. Her roommate found her. They pumped her stomach at the ER. And no, I’m not getting any ideas.”
A quiet anger pulsed through Shane’s blood but it didn’t have a chance to boil over. Carponti was on to the next subject already, one that was infinitely more personal.
“Hey, check it out, here comes Jen. Have you decided to use the fact that you’re staying with her to make a play for her yet? Because Nikki says all you have to do is snap your fingers and—”
Shane watched Jen approach, loving the way her scrubs hugged her hips. He wanted to smile in her direction, to see her smile back at him. But the awkwardness was still there, and for the life of him, Shane didn’t know how to make it go away. Watching her approach, though, was exactly the wrong thing to do. Carponti took a long, lingering look at Shane and Jen. Jen and Shane.
“Ah, crap.” Shane groaned and gave up. He was just going to have to put up with Carponti ragging on him for the next six lifetimes.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Jen said as she walked up.
“I’m fine Ms. St. James. I think, ah, Sarn’t G here could use a muscle massage. He strained pretty hard under those weights.” Carponti paused dramatically, but before he could open his mouth to say more, Jen interrupted.
“Sergeant Carponti, Ms. Dunham at the desk has some paperwork you need to review. Would you mind going to see her before she takes off for lunch?”
Carponti smiled and winked at Shane behind Jen’s back as he strolled over to the receptionist’s desk. Shane ignored him and looked up at Jen. He needed to get things back to right between them. It was about damn time for him to apologize.
“Any pain?”
“Not pain so much as everything’s throbbing.”
“That’s okay. That’s just your body getting used to exertion again. You’re not lightheaded or dizzy are you?”
He looked across the room at Carponti, who was doing his best to antagonize the Dee Snyder–looking Ms. Dunham. “I’m sure Carponti is already mentally drafting an email telling the platoon what a pathetic weakling I’ve become.” But he laughed when he said it, to ease the concern he saw on Jen’s face. “I’m okay. I’m going to finish the routine and then I’ll come find you.”
“Do you need any help?”
“No, I’ve got my new best friend, the most annoying man in the world, to help me out. Thanks, though.”
“Okay.” She paused halfway between sitting and standing, then suddenly walked away.
He swallowed. He desperately wanted a do over. He wanted to erase the past week—to greet her with a kiss the morning after that night they’d spent together. A barrier had gone up between them, and it was so tall, he couldn’t see a way over it. Shane couldn’t be with Jen. Not until he was free of the restraints of his old life. Until he could hold her properly and not worry about whether he would walk again or be able to afford a place of his own. Until he could be with her, completely and utterly, and not be a goddamned leech.
Across the room, Osterman went through his routine silently. He waved a fuck-off banner to the world by having little white headphones stuffed into his ears, the music so loud that Shane could hear the tinny sound from across the PT room. He frowned. He’d watched Osterman a lot over the past week. He’d made several half-assed attempts at conversation, but Osterman had shot down every one. There was more to it than just Osterman’s reluctance to shoot the shit like they used to do on the headsets in the Humvees when they’d been running patrols. His new taciturn nature worried Shane, and the way he treated his fiancée sent off warning signals in his gut.
Osterman’s fiancée, Becky, was a cute, girl-next-door type, with brown hair and freckles. She helped Osterman through everything, day in and day out, no matter how silent her other half remained. But Shane saw a storm cloud gathering. Osterman’s eyes were dark and distant—he didn’t look at all like the fresh, eager kid he’d taken to Iraq just a few months before. And he was polite, freakishly so, with the girl who he’d been over the moon in love with before his injury.
He was pushing her away when he needed support, now more than ever. Becky had stood by Osterman through everything so far. She was pretty damn special to have stuck by his side through multiple burn surgeries and physical therapy. Osterman had no idea what he was doing: running off someone who cared enough to support him when things got rough.
Shane started to roll his wheelchair over to Osterman. Maybe if he kept trying, he’d eventually find a way to get through to him.
“Sorry for the disappearing act. I wanted to show you something,” Jen said, returning suddenly and lowering herself to the bench beside him. Shane wished he had something more articulate to say to her other than, “What’s this?”
“Your latest images. The doc had to rush down to emergency surgery, so I get to be the bearer of good news for once. Your right leg is healing much faster than anyone expected. In about two more weeks, we can start looking at surgery to remove the external fixators and see how you do.”
Two weeks. In two weeks, he could potentially be on crutches instead of in a wheelchair. He’d be able to stand again. He was one small hurdle closer to getting back to his men. Something surged inside him. A feeling so foreign and strange he almost didn’t know what to do with it. It fluttered a little against his heart—faint but strong—and he found a name for it.
Hope. And just as quickly, that hope shattered.
“I’m tired of this, Aaron!”
Shane looked up sharply. Becky was glaring at Osterman, who was balancing on his crutches with a scowl.
“I said I’m going to work on it. What else do you want from me?”
Becky shoved him and Osterman rocked back on the crutches. “I want you back. I’m tired of this cranky, sullen crap. What about me, Aaron? Did you ever stop to think that this isn’t just about you?”
* * *
For a moment, Osterman looked like he was going to take a swing at his fiancée. Time hung still and Shane cursed his inability to separate them before one of them said or did something they’d regret. Osterman recoiled and the look on his face was pure anguish.
“Screw you, Becky! You sat back here and watched the war on TV while I was off fighting in some shit-hole country and getting blown half to hell. You think nagging the hell out of me is the best way to help
me? I don’t need your sympathy, and I damn sure don’t need your pity!”
The Dee Snyder look-alike rushed up to intervene, but she was too late. The crack of Becky’s palm against Osterman’s cheek stunned the rest of the room into silence.
“I don’t deserve that, Aaron. But congratulations. You wanted me to leave. I’m gone. You want to kill yourself, do it alone. I’m not going to stand by and watch.” She snatched up her purse and left. The automatic doors swung wide, then slowly closed behind her, sealing the room into an awkward silence. Someone coughed after a moment, and then a throat was cleared. Osterman didn’t look around as he palmed his iPod and hobbled out of the room, his head hanging low.
“Shane?” Jen said, her voice a whisper.
Cold fear gripped his throat. He watched Osterman go, dead sure if he let the kid leave without saying something, the next time he’d see him would be on a gurney.
“I’ve got to try and catch him.” He maneuvered through the benches and weight machines and pushed himself down the hallway, hoping to make a difference, just once more.
“Osterman!” Shane powered his wheelchair through the hospital parking lot, toward the ancient medical hold barracks. It was a goddamned travesty that the soldiers who had nowhere else to go, some of whom required constant medical care, lived in these condemned buildings.
Right now, Shane had the more immediate concern of catching Osterman before he got into the building and up the stairs—where Shane couldn’t follow him. Elevators hadn’t been a part of army life when these buildings were designed half a century ago and guys like Osterman were forced to hobble up dark stairwells to mildew-infested rooms.
He hated the damned bureaucrats who made decisions like this. They focused on the almighty dollar instead of the well-being of the soldiers. They were the same bureaucrats who sent soldiers off to war without adequate ammunition or armor, then sniffed and said they were working on it when the media finally roused themselves enough to care.
“Osterman!”
Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance Page 20
