by Mila Gray
José is still in the room, and now Sanchez is gone I can tell that there’s someone else alongside him. Maybe it’s the heightened senses thing, but I can tell it’s a woman. She’s wearing perfume – something that reminds me of spring: fresh-cut flowers, dew on grass – and for a moment it overrides the stink of singed hair and crisply burning flesh. I draw it in deeply, fill my lungs with it, but then an image of Miranda pops into my head. Unbidden. Unwelcome. I shove it hastily away. I’d rather suffer the images of bloody limbs and flying bullets than think about my ex-girlfriend.
‘Walker, I’ve got someone with me. Her name’s Didi Monroe. You got a few minutes?’
‘Well,’ I say drily, ‘I was about to go run a three-minute mile and then maybe do some paragliding. Let me see if I can clear my schedule.’
‘Nice to see your sense of humour returning,’ José says.
‘Who says I was being funny?’
‘So, you got a few minutes?’ José asks.
‘No,’ I say.
‘Come on, you haven’t had a visitor in a month. Play nice.’
I take a deep breath. With the loss of mobility comes a total loss of privacy. Just another thing I’m expected to suck up without complaint.
‘Fine, whatever,’ I say, knowing that I don’t have a choice. They might call this place a ‘Centre of Hope and Care’, but that’s just a fancy term for ‘cripple prison’. The only difference between this place and Guantanamo is that here they drive you crazy with positivity, and there they do it by blasting Barry Manilow and Christina Aguilera at you twenty-four-seven.
‘OK, I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be back in half an hour,’ José says. I roll my eyes beneath the bandage. Half an hour? I have to make small talk for half an hour?
If I had a choice I’d take the orange overalls and Manilow’s greatest hits.
Didi
I take a deep breath before entering the lion’s den. I’m just grateful that José didn’t introduce me as a psychology intern, because I think Walker might be the kind of patient who rips up psychology interns with his bare hands and eats them for breakfast. Coated in strawberry yoghurt.
He looks about as willing to spend this half an hour with me as I would be to take a stroll naked through the canteen downstairs.
I tug down my too-tight scrub shirt, self-conscious after overhearing Sanchez’s comment about my boobs, but then remember that Walker can’t see what I look like.
‘Hi,’ I say in an overly bright voice. ‘I’m Didi.’ I hold out my hand then snatch it quickly back when I realize how dumb that is. I glance at his free hand, the one not in a sling. It’s resting on the bed. I could take it and shake it, but intuition tells me that wouldn’t be a good idea. He might be injured, but I have no doubt that his instincts are still razor sharp. I’ve had a quick look over his notes. José was right. He was the youngest ever marine to make lieutenant, and even prior to his injury he had been cited twice for bravery.
‘We met earlier, actually,’ I say, taking a step closer to the bed. ‘I came to see if you needed any help.’
He doesn’t say anything in reply, and even though I can’t see his eyes I can tell he’s glowering. Oh man, this is going to be hard work.
It’s hard to tell what he looks like because the bandage obscures a lot of his face, but there’s no mistaking he’s a good-looking guy – in a gruff, stubbly kind of way. He has thick dark hair, pale olive-coloured skin and a slight cleft in a solidly square jaw, which at the moment is covered in at least four or five days’ worth of beard.
He’s wearing a white T-shirt that stretches across his shoulders and emphasizes an impressive build. If this is how he looks after who knows how many weeks lying in a hospital bed, I’d like to see what he looked like before he was injured.
‘What should I call you?’ I ask. ‘Lieutenant?’ I know how important it is to maintain respect for wounded soldiers’ ranks, especially at a time when it might feel like they’ve lost everything else.
‘Walker’s fine,’ he answers in a flat voice.
‘I’m interning here for the summer,’ I say. ‘I’m just meeting people today. Getting to know the lay of the land—’
‘Which department?’ he interrupts.
‘Sorry?’
‘Which department?’
‘Um, clinical psychology. I’m studying for my doctorate.’
‘You’re a head doctor.’ Not a question.
‘No,’ I say.
‘I don’t need one of those.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘That’s good. Because I’m not one.’
He turns his head away from me as though not interested in what I have to say.
‘How long have you been here?’ I ask after a moment.
‘Six weeks,’ he answers with a barely disguised sigh.
‘And how would you say it’s going?’
He turns slowly back to face me. There’s a slight smile twitching on his lips. ‘And you say you’re not a head doctor?’ he says. ‘That’s a classic therapist question.’
I press my lips together. He’s right. My dad uses it all the time on me.
‘OK, on a scale of one to ten, how much does this place suck?’ I ask him, deciding to switch gears.
He smiles now, but ruefully. ‘Eleven.’
‘You know they spent twenty-seven million dollars on this place trying to make it as non-sucky as possible?’
‘Yeah? Well, they failed. At the very least they could have put locks on the doors.’
‘I see your point. If there were locks on the doors you wouldn’t have people wandering in offering to help you and getting covered in yoghurt for their pains.’
His brow creases with a frown.
‘And you could lock yourself away and ignore everyone who tries to talk to you and just suffer in silence instead. Oh wait,’ I say, ‘you don’t need a lock for that. You’re doing pretty well without one.’
His cheeks start to flush. His free hand balls into a fist. Crap. I think I might have overstepped the mark. I didn’t mean to needle him, I just wanted to gauge his reaction, find out where on the grief scale he is. José told me he’s been depressed since they brought him in.
I’ve had my own brush with grief via Jessa, so I have some idea of the different stages involved. First comes denial, then anger, then bargaining, before depression hits and finally, sometimes days after, sometimes years, comes acceptance. It’s obvious that though he’s depressed he’s also still really angry.
Walker doesn’t speak for a few moments. I think we’re a long way off acceptance here.
‘You should leave,’ he says quietly, almost under his breath.
I flinch a little, my cheeks flaring. ‘I—’
‘You know nothing about what I need or what I’ve been through,’ he says in a voice that shakes with anger. ‘No one does.’
‘What about Sanchez?’ I ask. I know Sanchez was the only other survivor besides Walker. And it seems to me that Sanchez has lost just as much as Walker.
Walker’s jaw knots, unknots. His fist stays clenched, the knuckles blanching white.
‘Sanchez wasn’t responsible for them,’ he says, and I notice the way his voice is straining, almost cracking. ‘It was my team. They’re dead because of me.’
I take a step towards him, my stomach cinching tight and a wave of empathy rising up inside me at the grief etched on his face. ‘That’s not true,’ I start to say, but he turns abruptly away, his expression hardening to stone.
‘Just go,’ he barks.
I open my mouth to argue but find I have nothing to say. The rage and the pain bouncing off him are palpable, as powerful as a shock wave. It spins me around and sends me straight to the door, which I close quietly behind me as though I’m scared of setting off a bomb.
I stand in the corridor, breathing hard and cursing myself silently. I was just meant to be getting to know him, not trying out what I learned in Psychology 101. I’m such an idiot. My first day and I’m already messing up.<
br />
‘Your negativity is your only hurdle.’
‘They really like their motivational posters, don’t they?’ I whisper to the person sitting beside me.
He looks up and I notice his eye and his mouth are sagging on one side. He glances at the poster opposite of clouds scattered across a neon-blue sky with a Photoshopped rainbow bursting out of them.
He smirks. ‘Yeah,’ he says with a strong Southern drawl. ‘They spend millions of dollars of tax payers’ money turning you into a lethal killing machine, you get some sergeant major yelling in your face every day for months, calling you every name under the sun, son of a bitch being the least of them, and then, the minute you’re injured, they surround you with pictures of rainbows and clouds and smiling babies. All I need is a fucking unicorn.’
I laugh under my breath.
‘It’s like the Care Bears designed this place.’ He sighs.
Seeing me smile, he offers his hand. I take it.
‘Callum Dodds,’ he says.
‘Didi Monroe.’
His handshake is solid, his grip firm. Before I can stop myself, I glance down at his legs. Or rather at the space where his legs used to be.
‘Fallujah,’ he says, noticing me looking. ‘Roadside bomb.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, looking up, flushing.
He smiles grimly and taps his head. ‘I got a metal plate in my head too. Walk me through airport security and the X-ray machine’ll light up like a fourth of July firework.’
I notice now that he has a deep scar running down the left side of his face. The muscle is slack underneath it, and that’s what’s causing the downturn to his mouth and eye. He’s barely twenty-five years old but he looks twice that.
We’re sitting in the physiotherapy centre – a large room with lots of ropes, pulleys and machines. Three guys in T-shirts and sweatpants are being put through their paces and I’m observing to see how it works. One guy is being taught to walk on a prosthetic leg, another is bench-pressing weights, grunting with determination as sweat rolls down his arms.
Sanchez is over in one corner being fitted with a prosthetic arm. He’s grinning and making the physio laugh. I wonder at the difference in how people deal with their injuries and what it is that makes Sanchez so upbeat in the face of everything that lies ahead of him. I wonder how I would cope in his situation.
‘So, you some kind of doctor?’ Callum asks me, nodding at my scrubs.
‘No,’ I say, turning back to him. ‘I just had an accident this morning.’
He raises his eyebrows.
‘No! Not that kind of accident! A run-in with an exploding yoghurt pot.’
He nods. I wince. Bad choice of word. ‘Where are you from?’ I ask quickly, trying to cover it up.
‘Alabama originally.’
‘Do you have family here? On the base?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘No. No family. I grew up in care. Never met my mom. Don’t know who my father is.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. God, that word seems so painfully inadequate in this place.
He shrugs. ‘The marines is my family. It’s my whole life. Was my whole life.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do now.’
One of the physios comes over just then and drops a hand on Callum’s shoulder. ‘Get back on your feet, Corporal, that’s what you’re supposed to do now.’
I glance sideways at the physio, frowning. Is he trying to be funny? Dodds raises his eyebrows and smiles at me. But it’s not a real smile. It wouldn’t fool a child.
‘You ready for your session?’ the physio asks.
‘As I’ll ever be, I guess,’ Dodds says.
The physio stands aside and lets Dodds wheel himself over to the far corner of the room. I watch for a few minutes before standing up and heading to the door, appreciating my body in a whole new way and vowing never again to complain about having short legs.
Walker
The first time I saw Miranda she was diving into the water off the pier at her parents’ house in Hyannis. She was blonde, whippet thin, beautiful in a way that few people outside the pages of a fashion magazine are – and she knew it. She was my friend Brad’s little sister. A true East Coast princess whose parents had given her everything she ever wanted, including a brand new Mercedes for her sixteenth birthday, a nose job, and an unshakeable belief in her own position at the centre of the universe. A belief that was cemented by the actions of every boy within a fifty-mile radius for whom Miranda Scholes was the centre of the universe.
There was an unofficial contest among us all to see who could get her to notice them. And she chose me. I won. For four years I got to call her my girlfriend. I thought she was the love of my life: the girl who stood by my side at my graduation from the Naval Academy, holding onto my uniformed arm, beaming with pride. The girl the rest of the boys would make lewd comments about when they were trying to get to me. Her photo was stolen so many times from my bunk during basic training and returned to me so many times with stains on it that I hid it away and instead made do with the photos of her on my phone, which I kept password protected.
I thought I would marry Miranda. I’d spent three years saving every dollar of my wages so one day I could afford the kind of engagement ring a girl like Miranda Scholes would say yes to. Three carats, and she did. The wedding date was set for November, when my tour was due to end.
She came to visit me in the hospital the week they shipped me back to base in pieces. She came with my parents, but she waited until they’d left before she told me she was breaking things off.
‘Things are different now,’ she said in a faraway voice. She wouldn’t even come and stand by me when she gave me the news. She stood over by the door, eyeing her escape, no doubt, and delivered her speech with cool perfection, as though she’d rehearsed it for hours in front of the mirror, which, knowing her, she probably had. She hadn’t touched me the whole time she was there, other than for a brief cold sweep of the lips across my forehead when she first entered the room. I think I knew from that moment, when she avoided my lips and wouldn’t take my hand, that she was no longer mine. It made me wonder, though, if she ever had been. How else was it possible that she could be so cold?
‘I don’t think I can be there for you or give you what you need,’ she explained with the clinical detachment of a doctor.
‘I just need you!’ I yelled at her. ‘I just need to know you’re there for me. That’s all.’
She didn’t say anything. No, that’s a lie. She did. She said, ‘Sorry.’
I hate that word. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard it in the last six weeks. Enough times to last me a lifetime.
So that was it. She said ‘sorry’ as if that one word was enough to wipe the slate clean. Then she walked over to the bed and I heard the clink of something metal being dropped on my nightstand.
I heard her sobbing as she ran down the hall, and I reached over, fumbling blind, to find out what it was she’d left behind, knowing before my fingers closed around it that it was her engagement ring, but not ready to believe it.
I roll my head back against the pillows and take a deep breath in, then out. Fuck this day. Fuck this life.
Didi
A dozen red roses sit blazing on the table by the door. I notice them as soon as I walk into the house and smile to myself while simultaneously rolling my eyes. My parents are the most loved-up couple since Anthony clapped eyes on Cleopatra.
They’ve been married twenty-eight years and they still go on dates and they still make out like sex-crazed teenagers at any and every opportunity, including when there are other people in the room. In fact, an audience seems to spur them on. When I was a kid I was crucified by the embarrassment of it, especially when I had friends over. One time my parents gave an impromptu sex-ed lecture to a group of my friends using a condom and a banana as props. My mom is a famous sex therapist with her own radio show and several books that have made The New York
Times bestseller list. She thought she was doing us all a favour because the sex education at our school had seemingly been written by the Pope, but my friends went home and told their parents, who weren’t that happy that their eleven-year-old daughters were being taught how to roll condoms onto pieces of fruit.
Now, though, I’m no longer embarrassed. I’m thrilled that my parents are still together while most of my friends’ parents are long-divorced. But at the same time, though I’d never admit it out loud (partly because it would be an open invitation for them to sit me down on the couch and delve into my psyche), I also blame them for my own relationship issues. Well, them and one particular ex-boyfriend.
They say that a girl’s relationship with her father colours all the future relationships she will ever have with men. If you have a good dad, it raises the bar – you’ll have high expectations of men and how they should treat you. Well, I not only have the highest expectations of men, but I also have the highest expectations of love. I’ve spent my life staring it in the face. I know it’s real and not just a fiction. I know it’s attainable.
I just don’t know if it exists for me.
‘Did you see the flowers?’ my mom asks as I walk through into the kitchen where she’s busy cooking up a storm.
‘Yeah, what’s the occasion?’ I ask, dumping the bag full of my yoghurt-stained clothes on the floor. ‘The anniversary of the first time you and dad peed in front of each other?’
‘Ha-ha,’ my mom answers as she expertly dices an onion, pausing to brush her wild red curls out of the way with her forearm. ‘They’re actually for you.’
‘For me?’ I ask in surprise. ‘Who are they from?’
My mom raises an eyebrow at me. She wouldn’t know, is what she’s saying. In our house privacy is sacrosanct. When I was a kid, my parents used to encourage me to shut my door and ‘experiment with self-love’.
My mom frowns at the sight of my green scrubs. ‘Why are you wearing surgical scrubs?’
