Just Remember to Breathe

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  That’s when I saw Randy Brewer, and felt a sudden twist in my stomach. I literally felt my heart lurch into gear, the pulse making the arteries in my neck throb. I grabbed Kelly’s wrist, gripping it hard.

  “What’s wrong?” she shouted in my ear. “Is it Dylan?”

  I shook my head, unable to speak, even to tell her that Dylan didn’t drink.

  Randy saw me, and leaned against the bar, leering at me. Slowly a grin broke out on his face, and he winked at me.

  “That fucker,” Kelly said.

  I turned my back on him, toward her, and blurted out, “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  The guy she’d been talking to leaned in, and said, “What’s wrong baby, I’m not boring you am I?”

  Kelly smiled sweetly, and I don’t think he saw the daggers headed his way. “Yeah, you are,” she said. “You should go find something more exciting to talk about, then come back okay?”

  “Bitch,” he said, then let out a loud belch and wandered off.

  Kelly met my eyes, her smile genuine, and we both burst out into laughter.

  “You really know how to pick ‘em, Kels.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said, still laughing. “Am I boring you, baby? Wow.” She giggled.

  “Hey, did you hear from Joel?”

  Her tone was still light, but she said, “Jesus, Alex, way to kill the mood.”

  “Oops, sorry.”

  “Yeah, I heard from him this morning. He wanted to go out tonight. What the hell? I’m breaking up with you, because being in love is too much, so lets just date casual while I screw other people? What the hell is wrong with him? What the hell is wrong with all guys?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope its not contagious.”

  She grinned, then said, “Only sexually.”

  I groaned, laughing, then jerked when I felt a hand close around my upper arm, then a voice thick with lust in my ear. “Hey, Alex. I’ve been looking for you, how ‘ya been?”

  Randy. I jerked away, but he didn’t let go.

  “Let go of me, Randy. Get away from me.”

  “What the hell? I just wanted to say hi.” He looked offended, but didn’t let go. He started rubbing my arm with his thumb. “Come on, Alex, I made a mistake last spring. But it wasn’t that bad.”

  I looked him in the eyes, and said in a furious tone, “Get your hand off of me, now.”

  “Babe, I just want to talk to you, okay?”

  “I don’t want to talk to you!”

  Some of the people around us were starting to shift positions, sensing the tension and anger. Some guy tentatively said, “I think she wants you to leave her alone.”

  “Alex, listen to me. Look… I admit I screwed up. I had too much to drink, and I shouldn’t have pushed so hard …”

  I saw a flash of movement to my left, as Kelly stood up, reached in her purse and brought out a bottle of something and lifted it up to his eye level. His words transformed into a scream, and he backed away suddenly, hands at his eyes.

  “Fucking bitch!” he screamed.

  “Stay away from her, asshole!” Kelly screamed back.

  Seconds later a bouncer waded through the crowd. “What the fuck is going on here?” he shouted.

  I was frozen in place.

  “I pepper sprayed his ass. He sexually assaulted my friend last year, and he wouldn’t let go of her just now.”

  Someone else in the crowd said something to the bouncer and pointed at me. The bouncer’s eyes landed on me. He was huge, at least six five, maybe two hundred fifty pounds of muscle. He walked over to me and said, “That true? The guy wouldn’t let go of you? And you told him to?”

  I nodded.

  “All right. Next time you fucking call for me. I’m Wade. You don’t pepper spray people in the bar, got it?”

  I nodded, quickly.

  “All right.” He turned away, then grabbed Randy by the arm. “Come on, asshole. You’re done for the night.” He lifted, and half dragged Randy through the crowd and away from us.

  I turned back to Kelly, my eyes wide. “Oh. My. God. You didn’t just do that.”

  She grinned.

  I grabbed her by the shoulders and hugged her. “Kelly, you are the best friend ever! I love you!”

  But my eyes darted back toward the door, where Wade the bouncer was dragging Randy. For the thousandth time I found myself wishing I’d reported him when it happened.

  I don’t really know why I didn’t.

  I’d briefly dated Randy last spring, after Dylan and I had our last fight. It was a stupid fight. I was drunk, and had been agonizing over the danger he’d been in. I said some things, things I regret. That I was afraid it wasn’t working any more, that the distance and danger was ruining us. I mean, it had been a long time since we’d seen each other. A long time. And so much had happened.

  Dylan’s eyes went cold without any warning. I can’t even describe what his look did to me without breaking into tears. It was a look of incredible sadness, and worse, of contempt and disgust. He disconnected the Skype connection without a word. No warning, no word, no nothing.

  I tried to call him back, but there was no answer.

  The next day, I tried again. His Skype account was gone. So was his Facebook account. He didn’t just de-friend me… he deleted the account entirely. He didn’t answer my emails or letters, and until this week it was like he had just … disappeared off the face of the earth.

  After a month of pure devastation, Kelly started urging me to date again. And I tried. I really did. I went out a couple times with Randy. Then one night, Randy and I were having drinks, and then we had a couple too many. And somehow I found myself back in his room, and he tried to make out with me. I wasn’t ready. Not by a long shot. But the next thing I knew, Randy had shoved me down on the bed and was trying to rip off my shirt. I tried to fight him off, but I could barely move.

  I screamed, and it was pure luck that his roommates were coming back in right at that moment. They pulled him off me, and I stumbled out, crying.

  It would never have happened if Dylan hadn’t cut me off so suddenly.

  It would never have happened if I hadn’t drunk too much.

  “You okay?” Kelly asked.

  I looked over at her and nodded. “I was just thinking about Dylan, and … and everything.”

  “Oh, shit,” Kelly said. “You’re still head-over-heels for him, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said, at the same time I nodded.

  Kelly grinned. “Try that again.”

  “Oh, shit, Kelly. I still love him.”

  “You know he was a complete asshole to cut you off like that.”

  “I know.”

  “He didn’t give you a chance to explain. It was just stupid. He let his stupid male pride kill the best thing he ever had.”

  I nodded. This wasn’t helping. Not. One. Bit.

  “You’re going to try to get him back, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you. You’re lying to me, Alex.”

  “No. Not a chance. He blew it, Kelly. He broke my heart. I can’t go back there. Never. Not a chance.”

  “Sure, Alex, sure. Whatever.”

  She went back to her drink, and I looked in the mirror over the bar. Was a lying to her? To myself?

  I didn’t know the answer to that.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Bring it, jarhead (Dylan)

  8 am Monday morning. It was time for my torture session at the VA.

  When I was first injured, they evac’d me to the hospital in Bagram, a sprawling affair hidden behind blast walls and littered with shipping containers and temporary facilities. I saw it briefly from the doors of the hospital, still somewhat conscious. I remember watching the hospital flying by below me, and realizing that I was probably going home.

  I remember being wheeled into the ER, but nothing after that until I work up in Germany. There, the doctors told me that there was still a significant risk of
losing my leg: the muscle and deep tissue damage was pretty bad. I spent almost thirty days in Germany, then they shipped me to Washington, DC, where I stayed until my discharge from the Army in the middle of May. They’d saved my leg, but at that point I was still in a wheelchair.

  It was at Walter Reed that I met the outreach coordinator from Columbia University, who urged me to apply. I was doubtful. Beyond doubtful. I didn’t think I’d be able to succeed in College, must let at a top rate college Columbia.

  My mother though pushed me to do it. She pushed me to get out of the wheelchair, to follow through with my physical therapy, to do everything the doctors said and more. She worked with the guy from Columbia, who smoothed the path ahead of me, including the fact that I’d long since missed the application deadline. And so here I was.

  Look, I get it. I’m a pretty lucky guy. Roberts is pushing up flowers in a cemetary in Birmingham, Alabama. I met his family back in August. I’d finally gotten free of the wheelchair, and I went out there to have a beer with his dad, hug his mom, and cry. Sometimes I wish he’d been the one who lived. I mean, it was just chance. Why did it kill him and leave me alive? I don’t know.

  The flip side of being a lucky guy is, sometimes I’m not the same guy I was. I want to draw a picture in your mind. Just imagine a brain … a big gray blog, connected to your body through the brain stem and spinal cord, floating and cushioned by fluid and protected by my big thick skull. Now take a sledgehammer and hit it, hard.

  That’s pretty much what happened. It’s been tough to accept, to be honest with you. I may not have been the best student in the world, but I was pretty damned smart. Used to be anyway. Now… I have some problems. Can’t remember things sometimes. Like where I’m supposed to be, or what day it is, or how to add and subtract. It’s much worse when I’m tired, but you can see some evidence pretty frequently, when I forget words. I’ll just be talking up a storm, then all of the sudden I’ll forget simple words: like blue, or sky, or my own name. It’ll be right there on the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t get it out.

  In any event, when I got accepted to Columbia, the Atlanta VA made arrangements for me to continue my physical therapy here in New York. Three times a week I’m down at the VA on East 23rd to get poked and prodded, stretched and pulled.

  “Morning,” I said when I was called and walked slowly, without the cane, to Jerry Weinstein’s office.

  Jerry’s a big guy. A monster. A fortyish Marine who lost a leg in Iraq back in 2004, he’s got zero sympathy for any bullshit from me. Strangely, I like him. But God if he doesn’t love to cause me pain.

  “What’s up, Paris. Why are you so cheerful? It’s Monday morning.”

  I looked at him, tried to keep a straight face, and said, “I can’t think of any place I’d rather spend my Monday mornings than with a washed up Marine with a cruelty fetish.”

  He guffawed. “You’re gonna get extra work for that, dogface.”

  “Bring it, jarhead.”

  He stood with a grin, asked, “All right, how’s the leg?”

  “Better. I’ve been off the cane for a few days. I carry it around just in case. Still moving slow as hell, though.”

  “What about the noggin?” he asked, tapping the side of his head.

  I shrugged. “Struggling some, especially with math. I used to be really good at math.”

  “Hmm,” he said, nodding. “Any light sensitivity.”

  “Yeah, always.”

  “Headaches?”

  “Might be better, I’m not sure.”

  “All right. When was your last CAT scan?”

  I thought about it. Then shook my head. “I don’t know. It was in Atlanta… three weeks ago? A month ago?”

  He nodded, slowly, then said, “All right, time to get another. I’m going to set you up for an appointment with the brain docs for next week. Let’s see that leg.”

  He did an examination of my right leg. It hurt. The muscles in my thigh and calf were still extremely weak: you could visibly see that my right leg was way smaller than the left.

  “Coming along,” he said. “I think it’s time you got back to running.”

  “Running? I can barely walk!”

  “Yeah. Time to quit stalling, Paris. Just make sure you have a friend with you, in case you fall over or something. But I want you up and running, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Start out short distance, but get out there and do it. You hear me?”

  I nodded, grimly, then said, “I don’t have any friends.”

  “Yeah, well, hire someone, then. But get out there and do it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You only say that because you love me.”

  “Sure, Jerry.”

  “All right, asshole. Time for your workout.”

  Grimly, I nodded and stood. I kept thinking. Who could I ask to spot me when I was running? There was no one. Or, there was one person, but … could I ask her? Was it crazy to even think so? I didn’t want her taking pity on me. I didn’t want her doing it because she knew I was friendless and alone. I didn’t want her doing it because of our past, which was against the rules to talk about anyway. And the hell of it was, no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I couldn’t stop imagining her scent, I couldn’t stop thinking of how wonderful it once felt to hold her in my arms.

  A little hair of the dog (Alex)

  Dylan and I had settled into a bit of a routine. We were both on the same schedule, work study with Doctor Forrester on Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 3 pm until 6. We were making a lot of progress, and had categorized most of Forrester’s library within the first two weeks. Once, maybe twice a week, we’d go get some coffee afterward, and talk.

  Dylan was different. I’d known that since we first encountered each other again, but sometimes I could see it in conversation. Yeah, he was physically different, of course. But he was also quieter. When we knew each other in Israel, he always had a goofy smile, made silly jokes. Now, not so much. Occasionally I had to prod a little to get him to talk at all. It was disconcerting.

  This day was different. I’d been delayed in class, and I got to Doctor Forrester’s office a few minutes late.

  When I walked in the door, Dylan looked like… I don’t know. Like he was sick. His face was pale, and he was staring out the window, not actually doing anything, and he was breathing really quickly.

  “Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  He looked at me, startled. He was wearing sunglasses in the office, something he did pretty frequently, now that I thought about it. It was almost like he was hung over. But Dylan didn’t drink. At least he didn’t used to.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m all right, just a rough morning.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “No,” he said.

  Well, that wasn’t ambiguous.

  We went to work, sorting through the last of Forrester’s collection. Next time we’d be moving over to the library of rare books and manuscripts to start searching for additional materials. I dreaded the change. Not because there was anything horrible about it, but mostly because I’d come to really enjoy our sessions in Forrester’s office.

  Speak of the devil. The door opened, and Forrester stumbled in.

  His eyes went to Dylan, saw his pale face and sunglasses, and he grinned. “Good afternoon, you two. The morning after is always a little rough, isn’t it Dylan.”

  Dylan sort of grunted, didn’t really answer.

  “A little hair of the dog?”

  “No thank you, sir.”

  That was the first time I came close to really disliking Forrester.

  An hour later we were sitting in the coffee shop. He was looking worse, his face even paler than before. I said, “Dylan, I’m worried about you. You sure you’re okay?”

  He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his hands against his eyes, and I saw they were shaking.

  “Hey,” I said. I leaned forward when he put his hands down, and took one of them in my own.
“I know we’ve got our… um… history. But if you need to talk, I’m here.”

  He looked almost as startled as I was when I took his hand. He looked at me, and swallowed. I let go, and you know, it kind of hurt to do that.

  He shook his head, quickly, then muttered, “Brain injury. I’m not sure I’m going to make it through school. I’m not…”

  He tried to say something else, then just stopped. I’d seen him do this several times over the last couple weeks. He’d be saying something, then just clam up. He closed his eyes, emphasizing the dark circles under them, and took a couple of breaths. Then he said, “I’m not … smart. Not like I used to be. Can’t remember things.”

  Oh, Dylan. I had to blink back tears.

  “Maybe I can help,” I said, very quietly. Please, just say yes. Okay, Kelly was right. I still loved him, and seeing him like this, on a bad day, made me want to go quietly somewhere and cry. Please, I thought, let this man heal. And God, please protect my heart, because I can’t take it breaking it again.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” I said, sadly. “Think about it.”

  “There is one thing,” he said in a husky whisper.

  “What?”

  “My doc says… I have to start running again. And … well… you’ve seen how I walk. I need a spotter. Basically someone to follow me and call the ambulance when I fall over.”

  “You want me to … run with you?”

  He nodded. His eyes darted away from me, as if he was looking for an escape route, then back. “Look… I shouldn’t have asked. I just don’t really know anyone here.”

  My heart might have stopped. “I’d be happy to go running with you, Dylan. When?”

  “Tomorrow? At six?”

  “In the morning?”

  “Is that too early?”

  Yes.