Ravel

by Ryan, Shari J.

She gives me an interrogative look and says, “I’m not asking any more questions, Daphne.” As annoyed as I am, I can’t worry about her incorrect assumptions right now.

  “Kemper’s on his way to Germany,” I blurt out. “I had been trying to call you. I needed you.”

  “So you called Trent of all people?” I thought maybe when I told her about Kemper, she’d drop all of this with Trent. “Don’t become one of those women, Daphne. Just don’t.

  “I didn’t call Trent. He somehow found out about Kemper at the Chow Hall or something and then showed up on my doorstep.” I don’t know where all of her anger is stemming from, but she has this all wrong. She has me all wrong. Is she honestly questioning how much I love Kemper and how friggin’ scared I am right now?

  Jennifer storms around her living room, cleaning things up and throwing her shoes into the closet. “I’m sorry, Daphne. I’ve had a horrible day too. What’s going on with Kemper? He’s obviously alive if they’re bringing him to Germany.” I’m trying to be patient and understanding with her, even though I need someone to be patient and understanding with me right now. This isn’t the Jennifer I know. This isn’t the Jennifer I’ve been incredibly close to over the last six months.

  Hurt and misunderstood, I leave without a goodbye—I can’t have someone downplay what’s going on right now. She doesn’t come after me either. I don’t know what this is, but we don’t fight. Maybe something happened to Travis and I was too concerned with Kemper to ask her if everything was okay, but why wouldn’t she have just told me?

  I settle back into my house and lock the door behind me in time to see my phone light up on the table where I left it. Shit. Shit. Shit. I run over to it, seeing a number of missed calls from a number I don’t recognize. There are two voicemails. Once again my stomach goes sour.

  “Mrs. Anderson, this is Gunnery Sergeant Lamar. We have an update for you on your husband’s condition. He gave us this number as your prime form of contact. Please call us back at this number when you have a chance.” I quickly write down the number on a piece of paper and wait for the next message to play. I haven’t left my phone anywhere since the day Kemper left. I couldn’t stand the thought of missing his call. The next voicemail begins to play and my heart nearly stops when I hear his voice—a voice that sounds foreign, weak, and broken.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CURRENT DAY

  KEMPER

  MAYBE I WAS ABLE to hold myself together from the adrenaline pumping through me, but I don’t remember much of what happened between the time I arrived back at camp until this moment. I’m glancing from side to side trying to calculate timing and how I got here. I know I’m in a plane, a small plane, and I’m not sitting in a seat. I’m lying flat on a stretcher. Everything around me swirls when I move my head. I’m tired—morbidly exhausted actually. A new corpsman I’ve never seen before kneels by my side. “How are you feeling, Staff Sergeant?”

  I open my mouth to talk, finding it hard to locate my tongue or figure out how to use it. What the hell are they pumping through me? “Where—“ I try to swallow through the dryness in my throat, “are we?”

  “You’re being medevac’d to Germany. You’ve sustained a pretty serious wound to your shoulder, unfortunately impacting a major artery. You lost a lot of blood, Staff Sergeant Anderson.”

  Fuck. I try to look at my shoulder, but it’s as if my vision won’t keep up with my brain. Everything is stiff and somewhat numb. “Am I—“ I’m going to fucking be sick, “going to make it?”

  The Military doesn’t mince words. We say it how it is. It makes it easier to trust us, but this guy is hesitating with his answer. Just spit it out, man. I can take it. “Let’s just focus on the pain right now. Are the painkillers working okay for you?”

  Seriously? He’s not telling me if I’m going to join Rex up there in the big blue. Just say it. “Am I going to die, man?” My words are slurred, but I’m sure he knows what I’m saying.

  “I don’t know,” he spits out. Well, there’s my truth.

  “I need to call my wife,” I tell him. Poor Daphne. She probably already got word of my injury and she’s probably curled up in the corner of our bedroom crying, alone and scared. The night before I left for the tour was the first time she broke down. I can’t help but feel guilty as hell for putting her through this. It’s like a new form of abuse for her. She didn’t need any more of that in her life and now I have to call her up and tell her I might not make it home to her like I promised.

  “Sorry, Staff Sergeant, but you’re going to have to wait until we arrive in Germany.” I had a feeling he’d say that.

  “What if I don’t make it that long?” Why can’t I feel my arm? I don’t know of any painkillers that are this strong. I had my gallbladder out when I was fifteen and they put me on all sorts of shit after the surgery, but I still felt almost everything. Right now, they’re telling me I have shrapnel blown through my shoulder, and I don’t feel a goddamn thing.

  “We’re going to be there in an hour. Just hang in there,” he says, sitting back in his seat. Fuck, how long have I been unconscious? I want to sit up in a regular seat. I want to be in one piece and not wondering if I’m going to die. Rex, you were supposed to be watching out for me. What the fuck happened, man?

  My lids feel heavy again and I give in to the sleep, praying I ain’t fucking dying up here in a plane.

  ***

  “Can you state your name for us, Staff Sergeant?” They don’t even give me five seconds to wake up. Who the hell are all these people? I lift my left hand, noting it feels like it’s a hundred pounds and rub my hand harshly over the side of my face.

  “Kemper Anderson,” I grunt. “Am I going to live?”

  “We’re doing what we can,” a man says. I think he’s a doctor. I’m pretty sure I’m in a hospital and someone is sticking me with a needle. I look toward the prick on the top of my hand and watch a young nurse hook me up to an IV. I follow the tubes up to the bags of blood waiting to be transferred into my body. Shit. This isn’t good.

  “I need to call my wife,” I say again. I’ll say it again and again until someone lets me make a goddamn phone call.

  “We’ll connect you to her in a few minutes, Staff Sergeant. We need to stabilize you first.” There are so many people in this room. Are they all here for me? I’m thinking there’s something more going on than just my shoulder injury. Someone is stitching up my face now too, but I still don’t feel anything, which is starting to really do a number on my stomach. I may not feel pain, but I feel sick as hell.

  The feeling in my stomach subsides again, but only as I feel the need to shut my eyes. I hear loud beeps and they sting my ears. Doctors are yelling and I feel like the pressure releases from my chest all at once. The noise goes away and it’s like I’m floating and everything is going to be okay. I can’t say I don’t like this feeling, but I want Daphne. I can’t just leave her and hurt her like everyone else has. I have to fight this. I need to get back to her.

  I’ll fight in a minute. This is nice.

  Besides, I can see her here—the two small dimples on her cheeks when she gives me the smile I’m pretty sure she saves for me, and I hear her. I love the honeyed sound in her voice that makes me want to lay my head up against her chest just to hear it clearer. I wanted that homecoming. The one where she’s waiting for me with her arms wide open as she runs up to me with happy tears rolling down her rosy cheeks. She’d throw her arms and legs around me and kiss me a thousand times, making up for all the time we missed out on.

  Now it seems like I’ll only get to imagine what that moment would have felt like. This is it, isn’t it? Why isn’t Rex here waiting for me? I thought that’s how this was supposed to work. There’s no one here, though. There’s no white light. There’s no one calling my name telling me it’s okay to let go—probably because it isn’t okay.

  I try to relax in this nowhere place I’m in, but pressure fills my chest like someone’s punching me over and over. Th
e beeping noise fills my ears again and I push my eyes back open, taking in my surroundings for the second time. “We got him back,” one of the nurses says. “His vitals are okay.”

  What?

  I look back up to the bags of blood, seeing they’re mostly empty now. Pain is starting to filter in, and I’m welcoming it back. I feel the pinches in my shoulder and in my cheek where they must have stitched me up. I feel it on my ear too. It hurts, but it’s great. I want to keep feeling it. It means I’m alive and my body is fighting.

  A nurse is smiling at me. “You’re going to be okay,” she says, placing her hand over my arm. I try to take a deep breath, feeling a bit relieved. I’m going to see Daphne again. I’m not going to let her down or break my promise to her. That’s all I really care about.

  I don’t know how long it’s been when all of the doctors and most of the nurses move on to the next patient, but when there’s only one nurse left, I grab her wrist so she stops moving and listens. “I need to call my wife. Please.” I pull my hand back, praying she agrees.

  “You can use the phone,” she says, pointing to the table next to me.

  “Thank you.” I try to reach over for it, but my right shoulder isn’t cooperating and the nurse is almost out the door. “Wait!” She stops and turns toward me. “Could you help me?”

  “Of course, Staff Sergeant.” She lifts the phone and places it down on my lap. “Is this good?”

  I nod with a smile. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll be back in one minute,” she assures me.

  I’m only a second away from talking to Daphne. I’m going to hear my girl’s voice and I don’t think there’s anything sweeter in this world.

  I dial her number, the number I’ve recited in my head thousands of times over the past six months. The guilt for not being able to write or call in the past month has killed me. The missions I was on were back to back and I was hardly able to camp under shelter, never mind find access to a phone. I know how upset she must have been—is. I promised her I’d at least write whenever I could. I did write. I have so many letters that I have stacked up over the past month. They’re all waiting to go out, but because I was separated from the main unit, mail wasn’t coming in or going out. I don’t know if she’s written me, but I can only imagine what she’s thinking.

  The phone rings once. Twice. Three times. Four times. No answer. Now my chest is starting to ache. Does she hate me? Did she leave me? None of this was by choice—she has to understand. She promised to keep her phone on her at all times while I was gone. Maybe she did for a long time, but did a month without hearing from me push her over the edge? Her voicemail picks up and I hear her voice. That voice. The one I tried to recall through the written words I savored each day for the past six months. Daphne, please don’t hate me.

  When the tone beeps, I pause for a minute, gathering my words, but all I can think to say is, “I am so sorry, Daphne. I love you, darlin’.” I can’t leave any more than that on her voicemail. I need to talk to her. I need her to listen and hear me out.

  I hang up the phone and drop my head back onto the pillow. I stayed alive for you. I’ve spent the last twenty minutes trudging through my memories of the last month, trying to put everything that happened into a short summary to explain what I’ve been through and why there were no phones were I was. There’s so much I want to tell her. Yet, I don’t know if I’ll get the chance now.

  My life has stopped completely and time has frozen for me at home. I know hers hasn’t, though. This is why being alone while on deployment is so much safer. There’s no guilt, no heartache, and no missed calls or undelivered letters. It’s only me, which is the loneliest thing in the world and the exact reason I thank God Daphne got me through the last six months, whether she intended to or not.

  The phone is still sitting on my lap when it rings. I stare at it for a minute, hearing it ring once more before I pick it up. Don’t be cruel to me, God. Let this be Daphne. Please, let this be her.

  I put the phone to my ear, losing my voice briefly before finding it. “Hello?”

  A soft whimper comes through the phone. “Kemp?” The voice I’ve longed for sounds like a soothing song.

  “Hey darlin’,” I say, hearing the gruffness of my voice echo against the receiver.

  “Are you okay? I called the hospital and they transferred me to you. I’m so sorry I missed your call,” she cries into the phone. “I’ve been sick to my stomach worried about you.”

  “Yeah,” I breathe. “I think I’m going to be okay. It was a close one.”

  “Do you want me to come there? I will.”

  Just hearing her offer tells me she hasn’t moved on or left me. She loves me as much as I love her because it’s exactly what I’d say to her, except I wouldn’t ask. I’d already be halfway around the world, but I’m happy she’s a little more patient than I am because I don’t want her coming here or seeing me like this. I don’t even know what I look like right now. I know I have stitches tracked all over the right side of my face, and who knows what condition my arm will be in once this is all said and done.

  “Don’t come here. There’s no telling how long I’ll be here.”

  Silence blares through the phone. I can hear her thoughts working their way through her head. “Why didn’t you write or call over the past month? I was so scared and worried. Every day I’ve been scared that something happened to you. I knew I’d be notified like I was, but it didn’t make it any easier.”

  “It’s a lot to explain, but please know it was never a matter of me not wanting to call or write. I have letters I wrote to you. They just weren’t picked up.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing your voice right now,” she says softly. “Kemp, what happened out there? Tell me. I need to know.”

  As I’m about to rehash the last ten hours, a couple of nurses and a doctor walk back into my room. “I’m going to have to call you back, Daph. I’ll be okay. I love you.”

  “Oh. Call me back as soon as you can. I love you, Kemper. So damn much. So, so much,” she sniffles into the phone.

  “I will. Bye, darlin’.” I hang up the phone, and try to push myself up into a more comfortable sitting position.

  “Staff Sergeant, how are you doing? Heard you had a close call,” the doc says.

  “There’s a lot of pain,” I tell him.

  “There is quite a bit of damage to your arm and I’m afraid we’re going to have to surgically remove the shrapnel trapped inside of your shoulder.” He lets out a stiff breath. “Unfortunately, I’d be hard pressed to say we’re going to be able to send you back out into the field once we complete this surgery. You have an extreme amount of nerve and muscle damage.”

  “Is that why the pain in my arm keeps coming and going?”

  “Sometimes when pain is too great, the brain deactivates those nerve endings. However, that’s different than what we’re talking about right now.” The doctor moves over to my right side and sits down on the stool beside me. “What I’m trying to tell you is, we’re going to do our best to save your arm, but I can’t make any promises.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CURRENT DAY

  Dear Journal,

  He’s alive. That’s all that matters.

  Thank God, he’s alive.

  - Daphne

  DAPHNE

  I BANG ON JENNIFER’S DOOR, fumbling with my hands, and trying to calm my racing thoughts. “It’s unlocked,” she mutters. I can hardly hear her.

  I push the door open and find her sitting on the couch with her knees pulled into her chest. “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  “It seems like the better question might be, ‘Are you okay?’ Because today is about you, right?” Why is she being so hostile? I’ve never seen this side of her.

  “Tell me, Jennifer. Tell me what’s wrong? Because this isn’t you, and I know something happened.”

  “Travis is missing. It’s why he hasn’t written or called.” It was a coincidence that neither
of our husbands wrote or called.

  “What?” How? I don’t understand. Did she just find this out?

  “I’ve known for a month. They’re doing everything they can to find him. No one will tell me if he’s gone AWOL or if he’s—“ This is the first time I’ve ever seen Jennifer cry. She’s my rock, the person I lean on, and I haven’t been there for her. She’s been putting on a fake smile for the past month and here she is breaking down. “They don’t know if he’s been taken.”

  I don’t know Travis all that well. We only met a few times before his deployment since he left a before Kemper, and we were only on base for a couple of weeks before that. Everything happened so fast.

  I sit down on the couch beside Jennifer and wrap my arm around her shoulders. What is there to say? Is this common? Do people just go missing out in the field? The thought never entered my mind, but I’m obviously ignorant to everything that could go wrong. “Can I do something to help you?”

  “This,” she cries into my shoulder. “It hurts so much. I don’t know what to do. All I want to do is go over there and look for him myself. I feel so helpless and I never knew what the word helpless meant until four weeks ago. Now I wish I didn’t know.” She presses a tissue up to her nose and inhales sharply. “I have nightmares every night, Daphne.” I pull away a bit and turn to look at her. “I see the enemy torturing him, beating him. I see him tied up and bloody. I shouldn’t be able to imagine this stuff, right?” I don’t know if it’s a rhetorical question or if she really needs an answer, but I do know our minds are capable of way more than we think.

  “Fear will eat away at you,” I tell her, knowing it doesn’t satisfy as any type of real answer. “Are they looking for him?” Obviously they are. I just don’t know what else to say.

  She straightens her back and drops her feet to the ground. “Well, of course they’re looking for him. They wouldn’t just leave him missing.”