by Hazel James
“Can I help you?” She dries her wet cheeks on the sleeve of her oversized shirt. I glance at the pictures again, noting the resemblance between her and Cooper’s mom.
“Um, I’m Paige.” I swallow, unsure of what to say next. I feel like I’m admitting my role in a crime. “I’m a nurse at Barton Memorial. I was there the night Cooper and his mom were brought into the ER.”
The woman sets her mug on the ground and rises, brushing grass off her sweatpants, and shakes my hand. “I’m Kim. Cooper’s aunt. His mom, Kate, is my sister.” She moves her gaze to the middle cross. “Was my sister.”
“I’m so sorry to meet you here, like this.” I wrap my arms around my midsection in an effort to hold myself together. “We tried everything. We spent almost an hour trying to bring them back. I’m so, so sorry that it didn’t work.” My voice catches on the last word, and I choke back a sob. The emotions from that awful night fill my eyes and my lungs, making it hard to see or breathe. I’d give anything to have the sweet little boy in the picture back.
Kim wraps her arms around me and together we weep, two strangers on the side of the road bound by shared grief. “Kate and I always had coffee on Friday mornings,” she says into my neck a few moments later. “My husband put up the crosses two days ago so I could come here and have coffee with her.”
“I’m sorry I failed your family,” I confess. Most days, being a nurse is tiring, but awesome. Knowing I have a role in making people better is the greatest high in the world. But when I can’t—when I fail—it means lives are lost or changed for the worse, and I fucking hate it. That’s the part no amount of nursing school can prepare you for.
“You didn’t fail. You already said you tried everything.” Kim steps back and wipes her face. “My husband encouraged me to look at the bright side—they all went together. I have my own children. The thought of them growing up without me, or me not having them, is even more heartbreaking than the loss of my sister and her family. I can’t be with her, but she can be with her son and her husband, and that gives me more comfort than I can put into words. So in a way, I’m glad you failed, because it means their family is still whole, even if mine isn’t.”
Her words bring a new round of tears that hit me at my core. I never thought about it like that, but she’s right. My team gave it our all, but sometimes we’re no match for the reality of physics. Kim and I chat for a few more minutes and exchange another hug, and when we part, I leave the guilt I didn’t know I was still carrying at the base of Cooper’s cross. When I walk back to the truck, DH pushes off the side of the tailgate and gathers me in his arms.
“I’m proud of you. That was incredible.”
“I didn’t do anything special.”
“You did. You reassured her that her loved ones were surrounded by people who cared for them as they took their last breath. Kelsey said I did the same thing for Patch, but I didn’t believe her. Now I see what she’s talking about.” He presses a kiss to my forehead and opens my door. “Want me to take you home, or do you feel like coming back to my place?”
I consider my options for a whopping two seconds and say, “Your place.”
“Good. I have some stuff I want to show you.”
We’re back at DH’s apartment twenty minutes and two Daylight Donuts iced coffees later, because I need one more caffeine rush before I sack out for the day. The girl who rang us up practically tripped over her tongue when DH asked for whipped cream on his coffee, but he didn’t seem the least bit concerned by her. He kept his eyes—and his hands when her back was turned—on me, and I loved every second of it.
Once we’re inside, he places his keys and wallet in a hand-painted ceramic Ninja Turtle dish on the kitchen counter.
“Austin?” I ask, remembering the stickers on my card.
“Yup. It was my birthday gift last year. I took him to one of those pottery places and that’s what he made me.”
“That’s one thing I don’t know about you. When’s your birthday?”
“August 19. I’ll be twenty-five this year. You?”
“February 25. I turned twenty-two.”
“That’s a couple of days after Aunt Helen’s. This year was her third annual fiftieth birthday.” DH flashes an easy smile, reflecting his love and respect for the woman who raised him like he was her own.
“She sounds awesome. I hope I get to meet her one day.”
He sets my coffee on the counter next to his and draws me into his arms, cocooning me in a wall of muscles and the distinct smell of masculinity. “She is, and you will, next Saturday.”
“What?” I squeak. My palms, which moments ago were happily wrapped around DH’s waist, are now clammy, and my heartbeat has taken on a life of its own inside my chest. When I said I wanted to meet her, I meant sometime down the road, not a week after we started dating. “What’s going on next Saturday? What if she hates me? I’m not ready to—”
DH laughs and runs a reassuring hand up and down my back. “Relax, Paige. She’ll love you. And next Saturday is the baby shower. Maggie and Eric have been blowing my phone up all week so I won’t forget.”
“Oh yeah. But still, do you think it’s too soon?”
“Why would it be too soon? Besides, you’ve already met most of my family. What’s two more people?”
“But that’s different. I met them as Allison’s roommate, not your girlf—” Shit! I cringe into DH’s chest. Is that what I am? Or is this just a temporary thing? I know the sex is great and he wants me to be in his life, but…
“My girlfriend? Is that what you were going to say?”
The sound of a dying cat comes out of my mouth. Between crazy sex, a visit to the police station, diner food, and a stop at a roadside memorial, we haven’t had a chance to discuss the specifics of what we are. DH may have hinted at a monogamous relationship, but I don’t want to assume anything yet. I need to dig myself out of this hole, fast.
“Sorry for getting ahead of myself. What I meant to say was—”
“Paige.” DH nudges me back and cradles my face in his massive hands. “I make no apologies about my past, but I know what I want for my future, and that’s you. I tried ignoring it, but I can’t anymore. You said you wanted chemistry, not paper, but for me, you’re a goddamn atomic bomb. I guarantee two seconds after I left Eric and Maggie’s, she called Aunt Helen to tell her where I was going. If you don’t meet her next weekend, I’m going to get an earful. So please, do your boyfriend a favor and meet his aunt.”
His eyebrows inch toward his hairline, and he breaks out the biggest case of puppy dog eyes I’ve ever seen. Everything inside my body is shouting, twisting, tumbling on the words he just said. I want to buy a thousand lottery tickets and wish on all the stars in the sky. “Okay,” I whisper.
“Good. Now grab our coffee and meet me on the couch.” With a squeeze of my arm, he disappears into his bedroom and returns with a shoebox. He sinks into the cushion next to me and says, “Pipeline was basically two years of hell, but I fucking loved it. I started saving things that had meaning because keeping shirts wasn’t an option.”
“Why did you start saving shirts, anyway? I meant to ask you that.”
“I don’t really know. It just seemed like a way to freeze a moment in time. I remember watching Maggie pack away Austin’s baby clothes. Every shirt she folded had a story—which one he wore when he tried peas for the first time or took his first steps or said his first word. I saved the red shirt because I wanted a reminder of what I survived. It just became a ‘thing’ after that.”
Last week at work, I heard someone talking about getting a shirt every month from a company. I should do something like that for DH. I love the idea of making new memories with him, and this is the perfect way to do that. He stood on my porch talking about the chapters of his life because he knew that as a reader, I would understand that. Now I can speak his language, too.
He sifts through the contents of the box and pulls out a small red flag with a diagonal white st
ripe. “Like any concerned father, Uncle Kurt researched what Pipeline would be like. Everyone kept saying that water was the greatest equalizer. You could be a bodybuilder who could run a mile in five minutes flat, but if you couldn’t swim, you’d never make it. Before I left for the Indoctrination course, he gave me a diver flag to remind myself that tornadoes are equalizers too, but I’d safely chased those for years. It’s stupid, but it worked. I made it through Indoc and dive school.”
I trace the white line on the flag with my fingertip. After hearing all the awful shit DH’s parents did to him, I’m even more grateful for his aunt and uncle. “You said it was two years of hell. What kept you going when you wanted to quit?”
“Honestly? Food.” He lifts his shoulders and smiles.
“Why food?”
“Well… they had to feed me at some point. I just kept thinking, ‘Make it to the next meal.’”
I smirk and roll my eyes. “You’re such a man. I’m making a mental note to include food in all of your future bribes.”
“Sexual favors are very inspiring too,” DH quips, his lips turning upward into a devilish smirk. “But let’s not get distracted, or I’ll never make it through the box.” He reaches inside again and busts out laughing as he removes a thick, gray string about seven inches long that smells faintly of Pine Sol. “This was from airborne school. I was the guidon bearer, but my black hat—that’s what we called our instructor—said we weren’t worthy of actually using the company flag.”
My brows draw together. “So he made you carry a string?”
“A mop. He made us carry a raggedy, smelly mop. If you looked around in formation, you’d see guidon, guidon, guidon, mop, guidon.”
I giggle thinking about DH, a man who can make women’s panties fall at the flash of a dimple, standing at attention with a string mop at his side. “Did he make you carry it the whole time?”
“No, he changed his mind before our last big run. He told me to go get the real guidon, but the guys in my company protested and said they wanted to run with the mop, too. Then they started chanting, ‘You can’t top the mop.’ The black hat gave in and told another guy to grab the guidon and run beside me.”
“Was that your favorite part of Pipeline? Airborne school?”
“No, freefall school was.” He picks through the box and hands me a piece of white duct tape with ‘22’ written in permanent marker. “This was my roster number from my helmet.”
“What’s the difference between airborne and freefall?”
“Airborne school is for static line jumping at a lower altitude, somewhere around a thousand feet. Your parachute is connected to a cable inside of the aircraft. When you jump, it automatically pulls your chute a few seconds after you exit the aircraft. Freefall school is skydiving. You jump around thirteen thousand feet and pull your own chute.”
“I remember you asking me if I skydived when you came into the ER.” Little did I know how much that night would change my life. I came to Oklahoma for a job, but in the few months that I’ve been here, I’ve gotten so much more.
DH rubs his beard and cocks an eyebrow. “You’ve already chased a tornado. You should go skydiving with me.”
I hold a palm up and vigorously shake my head. “No. Absolutely not. I refuse to hurl myself out of a perfectly good airplane.”
“We’ll see about that. I just need to find a way to bribe you. I wonder if sexual favors will work for you, too.” He leans in and brushes his lips over my ear, creating a crop of goosebumps down my arm.
I sit up and retrieve my iced coffee to put some distance between DH’s too-talented mouth and my erogenous zones. “What happened to not getting distracted?” I ask with a sidelong glance.
“Fine, fine. Have it your way.” He smirks and turns his attention back to the box, showing me more trinkets and mementos from his training. The last thing he pulls out is a well-worn maroon beret.
“The last part of our graduation ceremony was putting this on.” He runs his thumb over the fabric. “I know it’s just dyed wool and leather, but it symbolizes all the blood, sweat, and tears we shed over the course of the Pipeline. I put my beret on and looked out into the crowd at Uncle Kurt, Aunt Helen, Eric, Maggie, and Austin, and I thought my heart was literally going to burst. That was the first time in my life that I knew for certain I would never turn into my parents.”
Several quiet seconds pass as I make space for this new information. DH is nothing like I expected. He reminds me of that line from Shrek about how ogres are like onions because they have layers. He doesn’t open up to just anyone. Being that person for him is amazing and humbling. “Thank you for sharing all of this with me,” I say quietly.
“Don’t thank me yet. I need your help getting ready for my road trip tomorrow.” He grabs a chair from his dining room table and slides it across the hardwood floor to his computer desk, which houses one of those fancy Macs where the monitor is the size of a small television screen. He gestures for me to sit in his computer chair, then opens a drawer and pulls out a small gray box.
“I’ve tried doing this twice, but didn’t get any further than this.” He runs his left thumb over the latch, flipping it open and closed, like he can’t decide if he has the courage to lift the lid.
“What’s inside?”
“Two memory cards.” Open. “From my last deployment.” Closed. “I’ve never seen the pictures, but Patch is in most of them.” Open. “I want to print some before I go see Kelsey and Abigail.” Closed.
As a nurse, part of my job is to make my patients better and ease their pain while their bodies repair what’s damaged. But sometimes, you can’t avoid the pain. Sometimes it’s a necessary part of the healing process, like setting a bone or draining a wound. In those cases, my job is to be with them, sharing their pain as if it was my own. I can’t change the outcome of DH’s explosion or the effect it’s had on his life, but I can sit here beside him as he faces the last photos of Patch before he died. “Then we’d better find the best ones.” I slide my hand up the side of the box, flip the latch and unseal the lid.
With a deep breath, DH removes the first memory card and inserts it into the card reader next to his monitor. I run my left hand over the expanse of his back while he pulls up the photos, hoping that my touch provides him some sense of comfort. I brace myself for the first image and the onslaught of emotions that come with it, so the sound of DH’s laughter catches me off guard.
“You look like a baby!” I gasp, covering my mouth.
A smooth-faced DH is arm wrestling with Patch, who’s losing miserably—even with the addition of his second hand. “I had him in upper body strength, but Christ that guy could run. He smoked me every time we went out.” He continues clicking through the pictures, marking certain ones as he goes: Patch opening a birthday package, him sleeping with a stuffed Smurf from Abigail, the team gathered around a card table eating crab legs.
“Wait. You guys had crab legs in Afghanistan?”
“One of my teammates was from Maryland. His dad owned a restaurant and sent us a refrigerated box of crab. It cost him around six hundred bucks, and it’s still the best seafood I’ve ever had.”
“And here I felt bad for the terrible conditions you lived in,” I tease.
It takes us more than an hour, but DH finally reaches the last photo. He and Patch are standing side-by-side facing away from the camera, their backs a canvas for an identical drawing of a winged woman holding a globe. A scrolling banner beneath her reads, “That others may live.”
“That’s the Angel of Mercy with the pararescue motto—These things we do, that others may live,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “One of our buddies drew it on our backs. We were supposed to get that as a tattoo when we got home. After everything happened, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
He covers his face with his hands as the weight of the photos finally hits him. The nurse in me wants to fix this—to fix him—but neither of those options are possible. Instead, I
wrap my arms around as much of him as I can to let him know he’s not alone in his grief.
Several minutes later, DH slides his chair back and pulls me into his lap. His hands grip my hips as I kiss the tears off his damp cheeks.
“I need you,” he whispers, kissing me with a fierceness I’ve never felt before. My hands grip his shirt, anchoring me to his body, while he runs his lips down my neck to the fabric covering my breasts. My body reacts, arching into him. He captures my moan in his mouth and drives his hips into me, each thrust a silent surrender to the shadows behind his eyes.
“I’m here. Take me.” I offer my body to DH, and he willingly accepts it. What he doesn’t know is that I give him a little piece of my heart, too.
“YOU LOOK DIFFERENT,” UNCLE KURT notes, his chipper voice contrasting the early hour. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s gotten up at five a.m. every day to have an hour of Bible time. Then, he and Aunt Helen cook breakfast together because according to her, starting the day with the love of her life means she started it right. I can’t argue with that logic, though. They’re celebrating their thirty-third anniversary this fall.
Uncle Kurt drizzles Aunt Helen’s famous white gravy over his homemade biscuit and passes the ceramic gravy boat to me so I can do the same. I’ll need an extra hour at the gym for this, but it’s a small price to pay. “How do I look different?”
“You look happy,” Aunt Helen interjects. She unties her red and white gingham apron and joins us at the table, a smile dancing over her lips as she takes her seat. When I told them about my plans to drive to San Antonio on the anniversary of Patch’s death, they insisted I come over for breakfast before I left. I agreed without hesitation. I owe them that much, at least, for where we were a year ago today—me, flat on my back at rock bottom, wishing that tornado wouldn’t have turned.
