by Mila Gray
When the hot water fails to wash away my guilt, I switch it to cold – as cold as I can take it – but that just reminds me of sinking beneath the waves with Sanchez. I step out of the shower, shaking, adrenaline pumping in fits and starts. Sanchez is going to be OK, I tell myself. He’s alive. I saved one person. I saved him.
I failed so many others.
Why am I still alive?
I wrap a towel around my waist and walk on unsteady legs into my room.
My bag is packed on the bed. I’ve been discharged. I’m leaving today. I still don’t know where I’m going. My parents want me to come home, my brother is still urging me to come stay with him. Colonel Kingsley is encouraging me to re-enlist. The only place I want to go to, the only person I want to see, the only person I want to be with, is Didi, but I have no idea where she is or what she’s thinking.
I scan the room, the place I’ve lived in for three months. On the nightstand sits Didi’s iPod and beside it a photograph. It’s an old one of Miranda. The one I used to keep in my wallet. She’s standing in her garden in Hyannis the day we got engaged. It was found in Dodds’ room. I’m not sure how he got hold of it or what it meant to him. A couple of orderlies said he told them that it was his girlfriend, and the thought that he had to invent a girlfriend and that the photograph was among his only possessions sends another stab of pain through me. His words come back to me – his anger at what we take for granted.
The elevator doors ping as I’m heading to the closet to get my uniform out, knowing it’s the last time I’ll ever wear it. I pause my hand on the hanger, my ears pricking, on alert for a familiar footstep, wanting, hoping, praying that it’s her.
It isn’t. It is a woman, though. I can hear her heels clicking mercilessly as she strides my way. Must be a doctor. The footsteps stop at my door. I turn around.
‘Hi, Noel.’
I have to blink a few times to make sure I’m not seeing things.
‘Miranda?’
My ex-girlfriend smiles at me, her eyes tearing up.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, shaking my head in bewilderment.
‘I heard you were being discharged.’
There’s a long moment while we just look at each other and I take in her cool, sleek beauty. For a half-second my heart does a leap before slamming back into my chest with the heaviness of an axe smashing into rock. I shake my head at her and let out a bitter laugh. ‘Or you heard that I got my sight back?’
Her face contorts, a frown creasing her forehead. ‘Noel, that’s not fair.’ She takes a step towards me. ‘Your mom called me,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I should have called you, but I wanted to surprise you.’
She reaches out and takes my hand. I’m still in so much shock that I don’t react, don’t move to shake it off. My mind is reeling, trying to filter through all my conflicting reactions, trying to weigh up what the right response is: anger, rage, laughter, mockery, coldness, forgiveness?
‘I should never have walked out like that,’ she continues. ‘I regretted it the minute I got on the plane. I’m sorry,’ she says, her voice breaking.
I cock an eyebrow. She’s had ten weeks, longer, to act on that regret and put things right. She didn’t even call me to see how I was doing. Not just as a lover but as a friend she failed me.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, stroking my palm and looking up at me with hang-dog eyes. ‘I was going to call. It was just so hard . . . you know? I didn’t know if I could give you what you needed. I was going to call you . . .’
I pull my hand from hers, laughing. ‘Sure you were.’
She places her palm against my cheek and the action jars me because she’s not Didi and her touch is alien to me – wrong. I don’t want Miranda touching me. I jerk my head away and her hand falls instead to my chest.
She presses herself closer, her hips brushing mine. Her perfume’s cloying. It makes my eyes water.
‘Noel,’ she murmurs, ‘I missed you. I came to get you, to bring you home. I want us to try again. Now you’re not going off on deployment, it’ll be so much easier. We can be together. We can get married, just like we planned.’
She gives me a smile, her fingers twining in mine.
‘Isn’t that what you want?’
Didi
‘Married?’
Walker’s head flies up. He sees me standing in the doorway and I watch his eyes widen like a cartoon character’s and his mouth drop open.
It takes everything I’ve got to stay there in the doorway and not run away.
The girl – I know her, somehow; there’s something familiar about her – turns too. She’s blonde, slim, so beautiful she looks airbrushed. A little frown of puzzlement mars her perfect face. ‘Hi,’ she says.
‘Who are you?’ I hear myself ask, my voice sounding husky and unfamiliar to my own ears.
‘I’m Noel’s fiancée,’ she says with a smile that makes my insides churn.
‘Fiancée?’ I repeat. My eyes flash to Walker.
He’s wearing just a towel wrapped around his waist and the girl’s hand is still resting on his chest. What were they just doing? I blink again, trying to clear my vision, but she’s still there when I open my eyes, still with her hand resting on his chest as if she owns him. Oh my God, he’s engaged. It takes a few seconds to sink in but then it all becomes clear. Startlingly clear. That’s why he was pushing me away the whole time.
I’m such an idiot. He was using me. He had a girlfriend. I’m such a fool. My chest feels as if it’s being carved open, a sob starts to build, and all I know is that I can’t let it out. I clamp my lips together and bite my tongue.
‘Didi.’
Walker steps around the girl and moves towards me. I stumble backwards into the hallway, away from him. I don’t want him near me, touching me. I haven’t seen him or spoken to him for three days and for those three days all I wanted was to touch him, see him, hold him, and now, suddenly, I can’t stand the thought of being anywhere near him.
Walker stops in his tracks, his face twisting up as if he’s in pain. ‘Please, just listen,’ he pleads.
‘To what?’ I ask. ‘To you trying to explain to me why you lied? Was it just a joke to you? Another sweepstake bet? How much did you win?’
Is that why he didn’t return my calls? I left messages with the person who’d taken over from José, asking for Walker to call me on the landline, but he didn’t. Probably because he’s been busy with his fiancée.
‘What?’ he asks, shaking his head. ‘You know—’
‘I know nothing,’ I say, tears choking my throat closed, ‘except that I’m an idiot and I should have listened to my parents. They were right all along. I should never have got involved with you. What a mistake.’
‘Didi,’ Walker says and takes another step towards me, his arms outstretched.
‘Who is she?’ Walker’s fiancée demands, glaring at Walker before turning to me with a sneer.
‘I’m nobody,’ I tell her, still walking backwards. I spin on my heel and head back to the elevators, tears blinding me. There are footsteps behind me and I swipe angrily at my face. Walker catches me by the arm and pulls me around to face him.
‘Didi,’ he says, his tone desperate. ‘It’s not what you think.’
I snatch my arm from his grip. ‘Oh, really?’ I ask. I can’t stop the tears from falling. ‘I lost my internship because of you, Walker. I’m probably going to be pulled up in front of the ethics committee. Everything I ever worked for I threw away for you. For nothing.’
His hand falls to his side.
‘You were so busy trying to get into my underwear that you didn’t even spare a second thought for Dodds when he was trying to talk to you. I hope that’s on your conscience too.’
All the blood drains from Walker’s face and I know immediately that I’ve overstepped the line. I didn’t mean to say that. Walker staggers back a step and a dagger slices through my ribs. I want to take it back. Turn back the clock. I want to take it
all back. It’s not his fault about Dodds. It’s mine. It’s all of our faults. But it’s too late to take anything back. Too late to make any difference.
That girl – his fiancée – has walked up behind him and has put her hands on his shoulders, is steering him backwards towards his room. And he’s letting her. But he stares at me the whole time like a drowning man slipping slowly beneath the waves.
Walker
I don’t know how I make it through the funeral. It’s all a blur. The chaplain speaks at length, but I don’t hear the words. All I’m aware of is the grave yawning in front of me and the deeper yawning hole opening up inside me, threatening to swallow me whole, bury me deep.
Miranda is standing next to me. I think she thinks she’s playing the part of the dutiful wife. I told her I didn’t want her to come, but she refused to hear me and I was in such shock I couldn’t argue with her. She swipes at tears and I almost turn and growl something at her. She didn’t even damn well know Dodds, would never even have glanced his way if she’d passed him on the street, but I don’t have the strength. I barely have the strength to stand, to keep breathing.
Everything takes on a dreamlike quality. Nothing feels real any more. Dodds dying, lying right there in front of me in a coffin draped with a flag, Sanchez here for the funeral, still pale, holding the hand of a sobbing Valentina. He catches my eye across the top of the coffin and gives me a grim smile of greeting that I ignore, pretending not to have seen it. That part is easy at least.
I notice José is here too, hovering at the edge of the crowd, his eyes downcast, his shoulders heaving. My stomach twists at the sight. I know exactly what he’s going through right now, the weight of guilt piling onto him like an avalanche.
I become aware of an itch at the back of my neck. Heat spreads out, scratches a path down my spine. I turn. Didi is standing a little way behind me. She’s with a woman. Her mother, I’m guessing, from the similarities between them and the Medusa-look her mother gives me. Didi refuses to look at me but I see the tears tracking down her cheeks, the tremble in her bottom lip. What must she be thinking? Why am I standing here with Miranda? Why am I not doing anything to fix this? I turn back around to face the coffin, my vision blurring all of a sudden. Maybe I should try again after the funeral to speak to her.
Or maybe not.
Miranda dabs again at her eyes. I wrench my arm from her hold. She glares acid up at me. I’m ruining her performance.
I feel nothing. That’s the problem. I’m tumbling head first back into that abyss, the one Didi hauled me out of, and there’s a part of me – most of me, not just a part – that wants to hit the bottom. Finally. I failed five men. I had just managed to drag myself over the precipice with Didi’s help, was starting to imagine a way forwards and back into the light, but now I’ve failed someone else. And this time there’s no forgiveness, no redemption. Giving up Didi seems like the only thing I can do. The right thing to do.
A sacrifice. Atonement. A way to right the wrongs, make it all balance out. The thing I want most. The thing I deserve least. If I give it up and walk away now, will it count?
Some time later, after the volley of gunshots and the lowering of the coffin and the folding of the flag which gets given to Colonel Kingsley in lieu of the fact Dodds has no family and nobody to take it, everyone scatters between the gravestones which poke like rows of milk teeth between the grass.
‘Come on,’ Miranda says, pulling on my sleeve. ‘Let’s go home.’
I don’t move. I stand there instead, staring at the coffin and the gaping depths of the grave.
Didi
The hallway echoes with my footsteps – a hollow sound that matches my heartbeat. The ward is dark but for the emergency exit lights on the far door and the soft glow of a reading lamp at the empty nurse’s station.
I walk past Dodds’ room and my step falters. The door is ajar, the bed stripped bare. I stop and stare at it. The ground tips beneath me, and the world upends briefly before righting itself once again. I lean against the wall, breathing hard, staring at the plastic-covered mattress. How can he be dead?
My brain can’t compute. Everything hurts so much. It’s as if my ribs have been ripped open and my insides are being torn out and shredded in front of me. I can’t stop screaming. Though no noise makes it past my lips.
He’s dead. And it’s my fault.
If we hadn’t been so wrapped up in ourselves . . . if we had stopped to actually look at him, we would have seen the signs. They were so obvious, even a freshman psych-ology student could have spotted them. His depression, his mood swings, the way he started giving his things away. He gave me the playing cards. He gave Sanchez his lucky lighter.
Suddenly I remember the night we watched The Shawshank Redemption. He left just after the scene where the old man hangs himself. I falter and have to lean against the wall to steady myself. Vomit rushes up my throat and fills my mouth. I gave him the idea. For a moment I think I might collapse.
I should have known. I should have guessed. It’s nobody’s fault – that’s what my mom and dad have been telling me over and over. Dodds wanted to die. It wasn’t a cry for help. He wanted out. One way or another he would have found a way to do it. But is that true? Can I believe it?
A sob bursts up my throat as I push open the door to Walker’s room. It’s as empty as Dodds’ room – the bed stripped bare, the closet door hanging open. I can’t believe he’s gone and I have to lean against the wall again, shuddering as I try to breathe through the pain. I stumble towards the nightstand, trying to ignore the assault of images that rush at me – of the first time I ever saw Walker, sitting on the bed stabbing at the yoghurt pot, or one of the last times I saw him, standing in the doorway, staring after me as my dad led me away sobbing, following the stretcher bearing Dodds’ body.
I kneel down by the bed and reach beneath it, searching for my phone. I lost it that same night, and after racking my memory I’m fairly sure the last place I had it was here. I find it wedged down behind the back of the nightstand and pull it back. It’s dead. I stare at it, wondering if Walker tried to call me during those three days we didn’t see each other, or if he was too busy with his fiancée.
A noise startles me and I spin around. I get to my feet and walk out into the hallway. It’s empty, no one in sight. But then I hear it again – a low sobbing noise, like someone is crying and trying to muffle the sound.
I take a few steps down the hall and notice a light seeping out from beneath Sanchez’s door. I draw in a breath.
There’s another noise. A moaning sound.
Heart thrumming, I push open the door.
What I see is this: skin, a solid wall of muscle. Then I see her, her head thrown back in abandon, her lips parted and her eyes squeezed shut as though in pain. His hands are on her hips, gripping them tight, possessively, and she’s straddling him, her arms around his neck, hands knotted in his hair.
For a moment I can’t reconcile what it is I’m seeing, and then, when the pieces finally fit together, I stumble backwards in shock, banging into the door.
They start at the noise and her eyes flash open. She sees me. He turns to look over his shoulder. I stare at him, mouth open. He stares back at me, his expression as horrified as mine.
I turn and run.
Nothing is certain.
Everything can change in a heartbeat.
Walker
Didi,
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I miss you.
I think about you all the time. Every second of every day.
I love you.
I —
I scrunch up the paper and toss it onto the floor. This is so damn hard. It was never this hard to speak to her in person. I wish I could sit with her now in silence and feel my way to the right words.
Thinking about her makes my throat tighten up, my chest constrict. I fucked up. How do I make it right? Is it too late?
My mom knocks on my bedroom door just as I’m writ
ing her name onto a clean sheet of paper.
‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she says, eyeing the snowballs of scrunched-up paper littering the floor.
My heart leaps. ‘Who?’ I ask. I haven’t been in touch with any of my friends since I got back, and none of them have been in touch with me either, so no one knows I’m back.
‘A Major Ryan?’ my mother says. ‘He said you know him.’
The chaps? What’s he doing here?
I swing my legs off the bed, feeling foggy and light-headed as I sit up. I’ve not been sleeping and my head is all over the place. My mom purses her lips at the sight of me. I haven’t shaved in four days and my clothes are rumpled. I spend most of the time just lying on my bed staring at the ceiling.
‘What does he want?’ I ask, rubbing my face to try to wake up a little.
‘I don’t know,’ my mother answers, tight-lipped. ‘Why don’t you come and find out. He’s in the front room. I’m just making him tea. I expect you down in five minutes.’ She looks me over. ‘And straighten up before you show your face, darling.’
I shake my head at her departing back. I’m twenty-four and she makes me feel like I’m four. I have to get out of here – but go where? Do what? Even a trip to the bathroom these days requires as much energy as climbing Mount Everest. I’m back to square one. I’m not sure why I got on the plane and came back here. That’s a lie. I do know why I got on the plane and came back here. It was because there were no other choices, and at that point Miranda could have told me we were getting on a plane to Kabul and I would have gone, I was in such a deep daze. I should never have walked away, though, should never have left Didi. And now it’s too late.
Ten minutes later, having changed my shirt but not shaved, I enter the front room. The chaps is standing over by the window, and he turns and smiles when I walk in, his eyes crinkling.
‘Lieutenant,’ he says, walking towards me.
