“So how’s he sleeping?” she asked while adjusting the large lens and snapping a few shots.
The couple looked at each other and smiled.
“We’re having to let him cry it out,” Luke said.
“At least we’re trying to,” Marci said, adding, “but sometimes Daddy can’t help checking on him.”
“Avery was so much easier,” he said.
“That’s ’cause I’m a girl,” Avery shouted, getting all of them to laugh as Heather kept collecting digital pics.
Ooh, those are gonna be good ones.
There was just nothing as beautiful as an authentic smile, whether on a baby wrapped in blankets or an elderly woman in a wheelchair. A smile shared a person’s soul while warming the heart of those who saw it. This was why Heather loved taking pictures, not just of her own family members but of others. Years ago she had been encouraged by a middle school teacher to keep taking photos, that she had “quite an eye.” Though it had always been a hobby, even through college, she came to realize it could be more than that once she began getting requests to take photos for families and couples.
The Collers understood her situation, with Darren serving overseas, so they were gracious and patient in allowing her to have her three children nearby. They compared notes on parenting as she photographed them. When it was time to leave and everybody said their goodbyes, Marci handed her a check, even though Heather had told them she would bill them later.
“I can’t wait to see the pictures and send them to you,” she said before they left.
Heather looked at her watch and saw that it was only a little after four in the afternoon. She glanced at the kids: Sam was trying to do a cartwheel, and Meribeth was crawling over Elie.
“Hey, guys. Guess what? I have my camera and it’s not dinnertime yet. And it’s a beautiful day. So . . .”
Sam and Elie beamed, knowing what she was going to say.
“It’s Turner Time!”
She grabbed the tripod near the blanket and fit the camera onto it. The kids were used to this by now, taking regular photos for Daddy to see at his base. For the first handful, she got them all to pose just as the Collers had, sitting together on the blanket, arms around one another.
“Smile for Daddy,” she told them.
Sam and Elie soon morphed from grins to goofy expressions, tongues hanging out and mouths opened wide, laughing and dancing and trying to share as much joy as possible with their father. Meribeth hadn’t yet figured out how to look any different from one shot to the next.
“Well done, Team Turner!” Heather said, giving her two eldest high fives.
The kids wanted to see the pictures right away, but Heather told them they had to wait. She slipped the camera into its case, then began to pick up some of Meribeth’s toys that were scattered around the grass. In the distance, they heard another baby crying. Heather turned to scan the park, and spotted a young mother sitting on a bench near the pond, a stroller next to her.
“Watch your sister,” she told Elie and Sam. “I’ll just be a minute.”
The closer she got to the young woman, the louder the high-pitched rattle of the newborn’s crying became. The young mother didn’t even seem to hear it, staring out to the water instead.
“Amanda?” Heather called out.
The woman turned her head quickly, startled. Then she wiped the tears off her cheeks and stood to lift her baby from the stroller.
“Heather Turner. We met at the base when our husbands deployed.”
Amanda Bradley looked like a girl still in high school, lost and unsure of what to do as she bounced the baby in her arms.
“Yeah, I remember, I think,” she said in a thick southern accent. The baby continued to cry. “I’m sorry. She just won’t stop crying. She doesn’t want to nurse and she won’t take her pacifier and I think it’s because she knows her daddy’s gone. She didn’t sleep last night, so I didn’t sleep either, and I had to take the day off work, which we cannot afford, and I just—”
“Amanda,” Heather said, putting a hand on her arm. “This is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s okay. It’s okay to have rough days.”
I’ve had a few myself since Darren’s been gone.
Heather stroked the baby’s curly dark hair, speaking just above a whisper to help soothe her. “Hello, beautiful girl. How are you?”
The smile and soft voice seemed to do the trick.
“What’s her name?” Heather asked.
“Alexis,” her mother said, relaxing a little and not jouncing the child as much.
“What a lovely name.” Heather smiled at Amanda, trying to give her any sort of affirmation she would accept. “Look—you’re not the only one who feels this way, I promise. I think we just have to reach out to each other, you know? My number’s on the Readiness Group contact sheet, so please, any time you need something—”
“I’m pregnant.”
The two words stunned Heather for a moment, and she knew her expression reflected her surprise.
“I haven’t told my husband yet. I don’t know how to. We already were surprised when Alexis came. We just—we got married out of high school and just wanted to have fun, you know? We wanted to save up to travel and see the world and then suddenly all of that stopped. And now—”
The tears began to show up again. Heather looked over to make sure her children were okay, then sat down on the bench and patted the space beside her, inviting Amanda to sit back down.
“We moved into a double-wide when we got married. Our folks didn’t want us to get married, but they didn’t want us living together either, and we were going to do one or the other. My husband—Lance—he’s a daredevil. Drives a motorcycle. He’s a thrill seeker. Got me to go parachuting with him. Hang gliding too. Can you believe it? That I went parachuting and hang gliding?”
“Of course I can,” Heather said. “But nothing’s as awesome and scary as giving birth.”
The encouragement didn’t seem to do its job as Amanda continued to wipe fresh tears away from her eyes.
“After he joined the army, we got the news that he was going to be deployed. He had just come out of basic training.”
“Sounds like Darren, my husband. I know the feeling.”
“I knew instantly that we’d have to move back in with my mom and her husband,” Amanda said. “But Lance told me to relax, that it’d be fine. He said I could stay right here near the base, near the other wives and kids. But I explained to him I couldn’t make it alone. Not with work and Alexis and nobody else—”
“But you are making it,” Heather said.
“‘One day at a time, Sweet Cakes.’ That’s what Lance likes to tell me. ‘One day at a time, we’ll make it.’ But he’s not up at night with a colicky baby. And he’s not trying to figure out this breastfeeding thing.”
“That’s why God lets us women do that,” Heather joked. “It’s because men wouldn’t be strong enough to figure it out.”
“I’m not strong enough either. And now . . . I didn’t know. We didn’t know. We weren’t thinking that it could happen again so quickly, but it did. I just can’t be pregnant. Not with him gone. Not while I’m on my own.”
Heather studied the pretty young woman, her face flawless even with barely any makeup on. Amanda’s eyes searched for something she couldn’t see.
“You and your children are not alone,” Heather said. “Come on—I have a pot of spaghetti sauce I made that can serve a dozen. There are some other moms I want you to meet.”
“No, really, that’s kind of you, but I can’t.”
“Listen, Sweet Cakes, I’m not taking no for an answer,” Heather said in her best deep country drawl.
Amanda let out an unexpected laugh, surprising even herself.
3
Darren sat next to Lt. Col. Jacobsen and Michael at the conference table along with several ranking officers, all of them listening to Sergeant Carter as he stood and spoke about their latest objectives in the
war. They had congregated in the Tactical Operations Center. The wall in front of them was decorated with a variety of maps, with the center revealing a WANTED poster of Osama bin Laden.
“Despite the sweeps, intel says Al-Qaeda still owns too much dirt in Sadr City,” Carter told them. “So the marines are moving in for door-to-doors tomorrow, and we’re backing them with two platoons.”
Lt. Col. Jacobsen leaned forward in his chair. “When exactly do we get them back?”
“Six weeks. Maybe seven.”
“Tough duty,” Jacobsen admitted. “So Chaplain Turner, in about three how’d you like to go for a visit? They’ll no doubt have something to talk about by then.”
“Of course, sir. Just say the word.”
The door opened and a private stepped inside.
“Excuse me, sirs. We have soldiers arriving . . . It’s not good.”
Everybody rushed outside, where the throb of low-flying Black Hawks forced them to scream in order to be heard. Officers and medics crowded near the road as vehicles from a convoy began to arrive. The first out of the lead Humvee was Cpl. Blaylock, who wiped the blood and sweat off his face as he approached them.
“That your blood, Corporal?” Jacobsen barked out.
“They hit us with two RPGs, sir. First grenade missed, but the second one hit Cosgrove’s vehicle, and we—”
“Who exactly is injured, Corporal?”
Blaylock breathed in for a moment, his eyes wide and unblinking. “Mitchell, Cosgrove, and—”
A high-pitched scream from a young girl interrupted him. They turned to see the rear gate of Transport-1 open and figures appear from the back of the truck. Darren froze, a brief second of sheer panic locking him in place until he willed it away. A soldier cradled a young Iraqi girl in his arms. She couldn’t have been more than six years old.
Dear God please no . . .
“Abdomen wound,” the soldier yelled out. “Get her down!”
Behind them came another focused soldier, a woman, who leapt down onto the dirt road and then helped a distraught Iraqi man down as well. Both of them were covered in blood.
“Hurry! Hurry!” the man said in a thick accent, his eyes red and watery and wrecked.
“His two daughters, sir,” Corporal Blaylock explained.
As medics took the wounded girl, she gave another ragged cry of pain. The father followed, his desperate prayers audible even in the chaos of the incoming soldiers. Darren watched them, hurting with them as they disappeared into the tent.
“Hey—who’s gonna take this one?”
He turned around to see the same soldier at the back of the truck holding another girl, this one even younger. He rushed to the back to take her, to carry her to her sister and father and the medical team. But as he saw the pretty face with closed eyes and felt her lightweight body in his arms, Darren already knew. The voice above him only confirmed it.
“We couldn’t save her, Chaplain.”
So small, so beautiful, so soon. Darren stood for a moment, just looking down at her, the body resting in his arms just like Elie might, just the way she used to do when she pretended she was sleeping, arms hanging down and her head to the side, so he would carry her. But each time he placed Elie onto her bed and then kissed her good night, she would bounce back up and wrap her arms around his head.
This little girl is never going to bounce back up and give her daddy a kiss good night. Never ever again.
“Guess you should just . . . Do what it is you do.”
The words from the soldier with the thick southern accent snapped Darren back to reality, back to this place where he needed to act and move just like everyone else. He nodded as the young soldier climbed off the truck and stood in front of him, his face looking as harrowing as his own probably did.
“Specialist,” Darren said. “What’s your name?”
“Bradley. Lance Bradley.”
“I’m sure you did all you could,” Darren said, with all the pride and admiration he could muster.
The young soldier simply nodded, his face not believing the words. Then he walked away, vanishing around the truck. Darren turned slowly toward the medical unit.
There was no need to rush.
4
The bright light of day disappears as Darren steps into the medical tent. The movement around him blurs, while the voices all sound like static noise. He forces each step, the body in his arms feeling fake, feeling too slight and thin.
“Listen to my prayer, O God. / Do not ignore my cry for help!”
At least he can pray now. At least he can cry out for help, unlike the dead girl in his arms.
“Please listen and answer me, / for I am overwhelmed by my troubles. / My enemies shout at me, / making loud and wicked threats. / They bring trouble on me / and angrily hunt me down.”
Darren looks into the first treatment room, unsure where to take this sweet burden. A group of medics and physicians surround a soldier, desperately working to save him. He keeps moving, walking past three soldiers who kneel with their weapons at their sides, praying for their comrade.
This is it. This is real. This is the fight. The battle. The guts it’s going to take to get through. Just to keep breathing.
“My heart pounds in my chest. / The terror of death assaults me. / Fear and trembling overwhelm me, / and I can’t stop shaking.”
King David’s words haunt and heal at the same time, whispering in his memory like ancient melodies.
He stops and looks into another treatment room, sees a couple of medics pull a sheet over the face of a soldier on a stretcher.
“Oh, that I had wings like a dove; / then I would fly away and rest! / I would fly far away / to the quiet of the wilderness.”
He blinks, his eyes stinging, and then spots the Iraqi down the hallway, locking eyes with him for a brief moment. The man stands beside a stretcher holding his other daughter, demanding answers in Arabic while a translator tries to communicate to the surgical team. An oxygen mask covers the young girl’s face, and an IV is stuck into her arm.
“Tell him we’re putting her to sleep and taking her to surgery!” the physician says. “He can’t come!”
The translator explains to the irrational father that they must operate on her this instant. And that he cannot accompany them. The father protests in vain as they wheel her away.
Darren watches, holding the girl’s dead sister in his arms.
“But I will call on God, / and the Lord will rescue me. / Morning, noon, and night / I cry out in my distress, / and the Lord hears my voice.”
The Iraqi is left alone in the hallway, and then he begins to walk toward Darren. The father’s eyes widen as he gets closer, a scream erupting from the depths of his soul.
Rescue this man, Lord. Please, Lord, hear my voice. Help this man. And help me.
5
Heather scrolled through the photos of the Coller family on her computer monitor, marking her favorites for editing. The news channel on the television behind her remained on, a steady sort of white noise that had become the background to her days. The only time she ever really heard it was when someone reported news from Iraq, as the reporter on TV started to do now.
“Tragically, officials confirm two soldiers from Fort Stewart were killed by Iraqi insurgents today . . .”
She spun in her seat and saw a newsperson dressed in khaki pants, a button-down shirt, and a vest, holding a mike in the middle of the desert. As she focused on the screen, Heather forced her eyes to remain open to see if any names scrolled in the feed. For several moments she braced herself for impact, for a reality she had refused to dwell on for longer than a few fleeting seconds every now and then.
For a few minutes the reporter gave details of the insurgents and what the army was doing, but Heather only focused on whether or not she would hear or see the name Darren Turner.
A pounding knock on her door jolted her.
No no no no. Please God no . . .
She swallowed a gasp of
air and then held her breath, her eyes wide and worried as she looked at her front door.
She couldn’t move. She began to shake as a hundred thoughts went through her mind. She knew what happened when the worst news became true. A Casualty Notification Officer would arrive along with a chaplain, both prepared to share the unthinkable and then hope and pray to somehow help the shocked widow.
That word . . .
Widow.
The knocking continued, and she stood up and slowly began to walk toward it.
She kept moving, knowing that was all she could do, knowing that’s what Darren would do and what he would encourage her to do now. As she turned the handle and pulled back the door, she watched Tonya’s slight smile vanish as her friend realized what Heather had been thinking.
“Oh my gosh,” Tonya said, rushing to put her hand on Heather’s arm. “I am so sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I should have called.”
Breathing in and out, trying to slow down her racing heart, Heather said, “Yeah, you should’ve.”
They were on the same team—they knew the gravity of the situation.
“I just wanted to let you know—the notifying chaplain and casualty officer are at the wife’s house now, so we’re next. Till family arrives.”
Heather nodded as she scanned the front lawn, noticing how the grass needed cutting.
Family arriving. What a terrible thought.
“Heather. Our husbands are okay.”
“Which makes me feel even worse,” she said.
“Someone’s on the way from Base Family Services now,” Tonya told her. “I’ll bring my girls here to keep an eye on your kids till they get here.”
The children were in the backyard, playing without a care in the world. Sometimes it seemed like the trampoline could keep out all the bad news this world had to offer them. If only that were really the case.
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