Once Burned

by L. A. Witt

  “Oh, I had a long day.” He smiled, looking tired. “But I think you had a longer one.”

  I wanted to be embarrassed or even annoyed that he’d caught on and that he’d suggested a low-key night for my benefit, but I wasn’t. It was actually a relief that he hadn’t made a big deal out of it and didn’t seem even a little bit bothered by the relaxing, almost boring evening I’d desperately needed.

  So, I returned the smile. “Thanks.” I slipped my hand into his. “This was definitely what the doctor ordered.”

  “I figured.” He sat up and kissed me softly. Nodding toward the TV, he asked, “Want to watch something else?”

  Want to keep things low-key and boring?

  God, yes I do.

  I shrugged so I didn’t seem too eager. “Yeah, sure. Sounds good.”

  He handed me the remote. I started scrolling through his Netflix queue, then checked out what channels he actually got. When I paused on one, the familiar logo in the corner of the screen made me chuckle. “You actually get AFN at home?”

  Mark eyed the screen. “Huh. Guess I do. I didn’t even know that was on there.”

  “You pay close attention to things, don’t you?”

  He rolled his eyes and elbowed me playfully. “Shut up.”

  I snickered.

  The American Forces Network was military produced, so some of the commercials were a little amateurish, but they had a few good shows and occasionally good movies. Tonight, they were showing a marathon of sitcoms that weren’t great, but also weren’t full of triggery shit.

  “Want to watch this?” I motioned toward the screen with the remote.

  “I’m game.”

  I set the remote on the coffee table, and we cuddled up together to watch the show.

  A few times, I almost drifted off next to Mark. I was exhausted from the PTSD flare-up, but I really was a lot more relaxed now. Still tense, but more settled. When I laughed, I didn’t have to force it. When I spoke, I didn’t have to fight to keep my voice steady.

  God, what a relief. After being on the edge of falling apart for days on end, I was finally feeling like myself again.

  Right up until the suicide prevention commercial.

  The instant I saw the man in camouflage staring at a mirror with a pistol in his hand, I froze. So did Mark.

  Then he lunged for the remote, but not before the screen turned to a misty combat scene—a flashback for the guy with the gun—and suddenly there was smoke and flying dirt and people screaming and—

  Black.

  The screen went dark so fast I jumped.

  It was too late, though. Even with the TV off and my eyes squeezed shut, the images were burned into my brain. Just a few seconds of a commercial, and my mind was flooded with memories.

  My ears rang.

  My throat burned from screaming.

  My mouth tasted like a mix of blood and smoke.

  Couldn’t . . . get enough . . . air.

  “Diego?” Mark’s voice cut through. “Can you hear me?”

  I nodded but didn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. My throat was too tight, and my lungs . . . something was wrong with . . . my chest hurt. Was I having a heart attack? Oh fuck, I was. I was fucking dying. Couldn’t breathe . . . couldn’t—

  “Diego.” His voice was firmer. “Look at me. Come on.”

  I lowered my hands—when had I brought them up to my face?—and forced my eyes open. On some level, I knew where I was, but I was still surprised when the desert sun didn’t try to blind me and there was nothing around me except Mark’s simple, sleek furniture.

  And Mark. Eyes intense. Brow furrowed.

  “Just breathe. I’m right here. And so are you.” His strong arm around my shoulders did more than the soothing tone of his voice. I concentrated on that touch. On the weight of his arm. On finding . . . some fucking . . . air.

  I rubbed at my chest like that might do something. “Fuck . . .”

  “I should take you to the ER.”

  “No.” My pulse surged just thinking about it. “There’s n-no way I can afford . . . I can’t . . .”

  Mark blinked. “Diego, if you’re—”

  “You going to pay for it?” I snapped shakily. My teeth were chattering, and I clenched them as I growled, “And make sure they don’t turn my illegal ass in?”

  His lips parted, and he stared at me. As much as I hated myself for it, I prayed he actually had a solution. It probably was a good idea to see a doctor right now. Was I having a heart attack? Was I about to?

  But then he closed his mouth and dropped his gaze.

  And the panic cut even deeper. The whole world was closing in around me, my own body was failing me, and the one person who was still calm and collected didn’t know what to do either. Shit. Shit, I was going to throw up. And then choke because my throat was too . . . Oh God . . .

  My vision started to tunnel and my hands were starting to tingle. Fuck. I leaned forward to put my head between my knees. That didn’t help me breathe, but it kept me conscious. I thought. Maybe?

  Strong fingers kneaded the back of my neck. “I’ll pay for it.” His tone was pleading. “I’ll give them a fake name for you. Whatever. It’s . . . I’d rather see you getting treated and make sure you’re not going to drop dead.”

  I shuddered. It was tempting, but it had only been a couple of months since I’d finally paid off the last time one of these freak-outs had landed me in the ER. I knew how much that shit cost, and I wasn’t having Mark cough up that kind of money. I didn’t want to owe him like that.

  “No,” I finally said. “I’ll . . . I’ll be okay. It’s . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut as I tried to pull myself together. “No ER.”

  Mark didn’t say another word. Or if he did, I didn’t hear it. For what seemed like days, we stayed there on the sofa, my head between my knees and his hand on the back of my neck, and I just tried to breathe and not pass out. My heart was pounding so fast and so hard, I could barely tell one beat from the next. The thump-thumps blended together like helicopter blades blurring. Helicopter blades blurring. Helicopter blades. Helicopter.

  “Can you hear me, Ramírez?”

  “. . . need a medevac . . .”

  “. . . Ramírez? C’mon, man. Stay with— Incoming!”

  Sweat rolled down my face.

  No, it wasn’t sweat.

  I swiped at my cheek and sniffed.

  An arm around my shoulders kept me steady. Mark didn’t speak, but even as my brain darted back and forth between the past and present, he was there. Strong, solid, quiet, and warm—he just stayed still and stayed with me, and I anchored myself to him as I tried to ride this out.

  Slowly, I steadied myself. My pulse was maybe halfway back to normal. Cold sweat slid down the back of my neck and under my shirt. When I cautiously opened my eyes, the tunnel vision had widened.

  I released a long breath and leaned back. Mark went with me, and he held me gently while the panic attack subsided. It would be a while before I felt completely grounded again, but the worst of it was over. The fear that I was having a heart attack was gone, and that usually meant I was on the way to okay.

  Still jittery, I looked around to orient myself. The living room was still and quiet, and my trigger-happy psyche wanted to turn it into that room in Kuwait where I’d ridden a morphine high until sliding into that dark tunnel that had ended in Germany. I didn’t remember enough of the place in Kuwait to make sense of it, only that I’d been terrified and loopy and . . . there’d been pain, but I couldn’t place it. Couldn’t say what had hurt or how it had hurt. Only that I’d been in hell. Right now, I remembered the walls being the same powder blue as Mark’s living room, but I knew that was just my head filling in the blanks.

  I was here. In Mark’s living room. In Anchor Point. Kuwait and Afghanistan and Germany were half a dozen years and a million miles away. I was here.

  Finally, I licked my parched lips and turned to Mark. “I’m . . . I’m okay.”

&nbs
p; His brow pinched. He put a hand on my leg and squeezed gently. “You sure?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I . . .” How did I get here? My gaze drifted to the TV. Enough of the commercial flickered through my mind to remind me what had set me off, but I tamped it down before it sent me spiraling again. “That commercial. Caught me off guard, I guess.”

  “I know.” He grimaced and shot the TV a glare. “I completely forgot they’ve got some of those commercials now.”

  “It’s okay.” My mouth was so dry it was almost painful. “You’d think they wouldn’t show that shit on a channel like that.”

  Mark scowled, nodding.

  I started to speak again, but the dryness made me want to cough instead. I managed to croak, “You mind if I—” I coughed.

  “Need something to drink?” He was already on his feet.

  “Thanks.”

  While he was in the kitchen, I took a few more slow breaths to center myself. This feeling was weirdly miserable and amazing. I hated the shakiness and the queasiness, but I fucking basked in the feeling that the worst was over. This was the calm after the firefight. When the adrenaline was crashing, the sweat was drying, the blood was pumping, and I was an impossible mix of restless and lethargic. I couldn’t move, but I couldn’t stop shaking. The fear was gone. The bullets weren’t flying anymore. I wasn’t okay, but I would be, and just knowing that was enough to make me almost sob with relief.

  Mark’s soft footsteps pulled me out of the fog, and I looked up as he sat beside me with a glass of water.

  “Thanks,” I said again and took the glass. After a careful swallow, I added, “I’m sorry you had to see all that.”

  “Don’t be. But are you sure you shouldn’t go see someone? Just to make sure you’re—”

  “I’m fine, Mark.” I met his eyes, hating myself for the pitiful sound of my voice. “This happens sometimes. It’s pretty terrifying until it’s over, but I’ll be fine.” I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. “And I don’t want to owe you that kind of money. Or get . . .” My shoulders sagged just thinking about the hell my life could turn into if someone at the ER gave my paperwork the side-eye.

  He sighed, and I thought he might argue. He didn’t, though. After a moment, he spoke in barely a whisper: “They’d really deport you? From a hospital?”

  “They’d . . .” I sighed. “They’d get the ball rolling, let’s put it that way.”

  Mark studied me. “How does that even work? I mean, does someone just grab you and drop you over the other side of the border?”

  “Not quite. There’s a process. And it takes some time, but not much.” My voice was still shaky, but better. “They say you get thirty days to get your shit together and leave the country. But you have to go on your own dime, and I don’t have that kind of money.” I raked unsteady fingers through my sweaty hair. “So I’d have to let them send me, and I don’t . . . I don’t know if they’ll get me somewhere close to home, or if they’ll just dump me off in Tijuana or Juárez or something. The really, really scary parts of Tijuana or Juárez. That’s what happened to my family.”

  Mark stiffened. “Your family was deported?”

  “Yeah. My mom lost her job because she was taking too much time off to take care of my dad while he had cancer. After my dad died, my brother tried to keep them afloat, but then he got laid off, and . . .” I exhaled. Just thinking about it was heartbreaking. Exhausting. Fucking excruciating. “Someone in their apartment complex reported them, and the next thing we knew, my mom, brother, and grandmother were in Juárez.” Closing my eyes, I sighed. “And sometimes I think I should just let ICE deport me. I could find some way from wherever they dump me to where my family lives.”

  “Do you want to go there?”

  I chewed my lip. “I’d like to be with my family, but they keep telling me to stay away from Juárez. It’s getting bad again. The crime, I mean. And they’re barely scraping by anyway. I try to send them money when I can, but sometimes I . . .” I exhaled. “Honestly, all I want is some fucking stability, and at this point, I don’t give a fuck which side of the border I’m on.” My throat tightened, and my voice was thick as I added, “But I don’t know how to get that stability, you know? I don’t know where the fuck I should go right now. Or where I can go. This country doesn’t want me, and . . .” I sniffed.

  Mark gathered me in his arms and stroked my hair. “Hey. Easy. You don’t have to make that decision tonight.”

  All the air rushed out of my lungs. It was such a simple statement, but it shook away some of the panic that had been holding on. Eyes squeezed shut, I slid a hand up his arm and let myself melt against him.

  I didn’t have to make a decision tonight.

  Tomorrow was anybody’s guess—every damn day was—but no one was knocking down the door tonight and throwing me out of the US, and I grabbed on to that comfort like the rock that it was.

  Mark held me close and kissed the top of my head. “Neither of us is going anywhere tonight. I promise.”

  I just nodded against his chest. Most days, I could cope. It was stressful, and there was never a time when my situation wasn’t gnawing at me, but it was kind of like being in combat—you eventually adjusted to the possibility of getting mortared or shot at with no warning, and you ate and slept and shot the shit with your buddies because what the fuck else were you supposed to do?

  But some days . . .

  I shivered.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I will be.” I lifted my head to meet his gaze. “And I’ll be better in a few days. I promise.”

  “I know.” Mark kissed me gently. “There’s no pressure from my end, okay? I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not over here tapping my foot or anything.”

  I closed my eyes and released another breath. I felt like kind of an ass for being so relieved that he’d said it. I should’ve known he wasn’t like that, so why the fuck did I need reassurance?

  “Diego,” he whispered, cradling my face in both hands. “This isn’t some flaw or personality quirk, you know? You came back from Hell. I’d be worried if you didn’t have some PTSD from that.”

  I opened my eyes and gazed into his.

  He smiled. “Just tell me how I can help when it’s bad. Or how I can avoid making it bad. Or worse.”

  “Thank you. I really appreciate it.” Sighing, I leaned into him again. I’d only meant to make some contact, but once I’d started, I couldn’t stop. I moved all the way in and rested my forehead on his shoulder, and I loved how he felt against me. I loved how I felt against him.

  I let my eyes slide closed. Sleep threatened to take over. That wasn’t surprising; now that the panic attack was over, the way-too-familiar exhaustion was tugging me down. “So tired.”

  “I’ll bet you are.” His fingers carded through my hair. “You want to go to bed?”

  I looked up at him. “You want me to stay here?”

  He blinked. “Did you think I was going to kick you out?”

  We held each other’s gazes for a few seconds.

  Then he took my hand and brought it to his lips. “When you came over tonight, I wanted you to stay. That hasn’t changed.”

  Wordlessly, I nodded.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, though?” he asked softly.

  “Yeah. I’ll be fine.” I wasn’t sure if I was telling him or myself.

  He ran a hand down my back. “But if you’re not, just say so. Okay?”

  I nodded again. “Thank you.”

  “I see you in my office like this again,” I growled at the two kids standing at attention in front of my desk, “you’re not going to like what happens. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

  I shifted my glare to their lead petty officer, who was also standing at attention, but not quite as rigidly. To the two seamen, I said, “Dismissed. AT1, you stay here.”

  The LPO swallowed hard. His men didn’t look at him. He didn’t look at them.
After they’d left my office, his posture stiffened a bit more.

  I folded my hands on the desk and stared at him. “This is the fifth time in ten months that people from your shop have been to XOI. You want to tell me why that is?”

  He set his jaw. “I don’t have any excuses, sir. The assistant LPO and I will look into it, though.”

  I regarded him silently for a long moment, deliberately making him uneasy. I waited until he shifted his weight. Some color bloomed in his cheeks too. This wasn’t someone accustomed to being put on the spot. He was a young LPO—no way he’d been in more than ten years—and from what I’d gathered when I’d first arrived, the Aviation Electronics Department had had almost as much turnover as the upper chain of command. Odds were he’d inherited the disciplinary mess just like I had. It wasn’t his fault, but it was his responsibility to get it squared away, and I needed him to know I wasn’t joking.

  “I’m going to make you the same promise I made your two junior Sailors,” I said flatly. “I see you in my office like this again, it’s not going to end well.”

  The AT1 nodded grimly. “Yes, sir.” It came out as little more than a croak.

  “Dismissed.”

  He couldn’t get out of my office fast enough. I had a feeling he was going to go catch his breath, then march into his shop and give those two junior Sailors an earful for making him get an earful. That was what I would’ve done.

  Alone in the tight confines of my office, I tilted my head to one side, then the other, trying to work out some tension. It wasn’t the idiot Sailors and disciplinary bullshit that had me wound up, though. It was the man who’d been sharing my bed.

  I couldn’t get last night out of my head. Diego’s episode had scared the hell out of me, and the things he’d said afterward had burrowed under my skin and wouldn’t move. I’d been certain he was either going to pass out from hyperventilating or have a goddamned heart attack. The ER had seemed like the most common sense place to go. I wouldn’t have minded if the doctors had rolled their eyes and told us it was just a panic attack. At least I’d know he was okay.