All for You (2 page)

“Does it ever end?” she whispered, suddenly feeling overwhelmed at the stack of files on her desk. Each one represented a person. A soldier. A life under pressure.

Lives she did everything she could to save.

Olivia shrugged. “Not really.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a nine o’clock legal brief with the boss. You okay?”

She offered a weak smile. “Yeah. Have to be, right?”

Olivia didn’t look convinced but didn’t have time to dig in further. In the brief moment she had alone, Emily covered her face with her hands.

Every single day, Emily’s faith in the system she’d wanted to help weakened. When officers like Jenkowski were threatening kids who just needed to take a break and pull themselves together to find some way of dealing with the trauma in their lives, it crushed part of her spirit. She’d never imagined that confrontation would be a daily part of her life as an army doc. She’d signed up to help people. She wasn’t a commander, not a leader of soldiers. She was here to provide medical services. She’d barely stepped outside her office so all she knew was the inside of the clinic’s walls.

She’d had no idea how much of a fight she’d have on a daily basis. Three months in and she was still shocked. Every single day brought something new.

She wasn’t used to it. She doubted she would ever get used to it. It drained her.

But every day she got up and put on her boots to do it all over again.

She was here to make a difference.

A sharp knock on her door had her looking up. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the single most beautiful man she’d ever seen. His skin was deep bronze, his features carved perfection. There was a harshness around the edge of his wide full mouth that could have been from laughing too much or yelling too often. Maybe both.

And his shoulders filled the doorway. Dear Lord, men actually came put together like this? She’d never met a man who embodied the fantasy man in uniform like this one. The real military man was just as likely to be a pimply-faced nineteen-year-old as he was to be this…this warrior god.

A god who looked ready for battle. It took Emily all of six-tenths of a second to realize that this man was not here for her phone number or to strip her naked and have his way with her. Well, he might want to have his way with her but she imagined it was in a strictly professional way. Not a hot and sweaty way, the thought of which made her insides clench and tighten.

She stood. This man looked like he was itching for a fight and darn it, if that’s what he wanted, then Emily would give it to him.

It was just another day at the office, after all.

“Can I help you, Sergeant?”

Reza glanced at the little captain, who looked braced for battle. She was cute in a Reese Witherspoon kind of way, complete with dimples and except for her rich dark hair and silver blue eyes. If Reza hadn’t been nursing one hell of a bad attitude and a serious case of the ass, he would’ve considered flirting with her.

Except that the sergeant major’s warning of
don’t fuck up
beat a cadence in his brain, so he wouldn’t be flirting anytime soon. Besides, something about the stubborn set of her jaw warned him that she wasn’t someone to tangle with. She didn’t look tough enough to crumble a cookie, and yet she’d squared off with him like she might just try to knock him down a peg or two. This ought to at least make the day interesting.

Reza straightened. She was the enemy for leaders like him, who were doing their damnedest to put bad troops out of the army. People like her ignored the warning signs from warriors like Sloban and let spineless cowards like Wisniak piss on her leg about how his mommy didn’t love him enough.

This wasn’t about Sloban. He couldn’t help him now and that fact burned on a fundamental level. He released a deep breath. Then sucked in another one. “I need to know if Sergeant Chuck Wisniak signed in to the clinic.”

“I’m sorry but unless you’re the first sergeant or the commander, I can’t tell you that.”

Reza breathed hard through his nose. “I’m the first sergeant.”

Her gaze flicked to the sergeant first class rank on his chest. He wasn’t wearing the rank of the first sergeant, so his insignia was missing the rocker and the diamond that distinguished first sergeants from the soldiers that they led. Sergeants First Class were first sergeants all the time, though.

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you have orders?”

Reza’s gaze dropped to the pen in her hand and the rhythmic way she flicked the cap on and off. He swallowed, pulling his gaze away from the distracting sound, and struggled to hold on to his patience.

“First sergeants are not commanders. We don’t have assumption of command orders.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Ma’am, I just need to know if he’s here. Why is this such a big deal?”

“Because Sergeant Wisniak has told this clinic on multiple occasions that his chain of command is targeting him, looking for an excuse to take his rank.”

“Well, maybe if he was at work once in a while he wouldn’t feel so persecuted.”

The small captain lifted her chin. “Sergeant, do you have any idea what it feels like to be looked at like you’re suspect every time you walk into a room?”

Something cold slithered across Reza’s skin, sidling up to his heart and squeezing tightly. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to send soldiers back to combat knowing they lost training days chasing after a sissy-ass soldier who can’t get to work on time?”

A shadow flickered across her pretty face but then it was gone, replaced by steel. “My job is to keep soldiers from killing themselves.”

“And my job is to keep soldiers from dying in combat.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive.”

Silence hung between them, battle lines drawn.

“I’m not leaving here without a status on Sarn’t Wisniak,” Reza said.

Captain Lindberg folded her arms over her chest. A flicker in her eyes, nothing more, then she spoke. “Sergeant Wisniak is in triage.”

“I need to speak with him.”

Lindberg shook her head. “No. I’m not letting anyone see him until he’s stable. He’s probably going to be admitted to the fifth floor. He’s extremely high risk. And you’re part of his problem, Sergeant.”

Reza’s temper snapped, breaking free before he could lash it back. “Don’t put that on me, sweetheart. That trooper came in the army weak. I had nothing to do with his lack of a backbone.” Reza turned to go before he lost his military bearing and started swearing. She’d already elevated his blood pressure to need-a-drink levels and it wasn’t even nine a.m.

He could do this. He breathed deeply, running through creative profanity in his mind to keep the urge to drink at bay.

Her words stopped him at the door, slicing at his soul.

“How can you call yourself a leader? You’re supposed to care about all your soldiers,” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear her.

He turned slowly. Studied her, standing straight and stiff and pissed. “How can I call myself a leader? Honey, until you’ve bled in combat, don’t talk to me about leadership. But go ahead. Keep protecting this shitbird and tie up all the counselors so that warriors who genuinely need help can’t get it. He doesn’t belong in the army.” He swept his gaze down her body deliberately. Trying to provoke her. Her face flushed as he met her eyes coldly. “Neither do you.”

Emily sucked in a sharp breath at Iaconelli’s verbal slap. In one sentence, he’d struck her at the heart of her deepest fear.

It took everything she had to keep her hands from trembling.

Her boss Colonel Zavisca appeared in the doorway, saving her from embarrassing herself.

“Is there a problem, Sergeant?”

Sergeant Iaconelli turned and nearly collided with the full-bird colonel, who looked remarkably like an older version of Johnny Cash.

Sergeant Iaconelli straightened and his fists bunched at his sides. “You don’t want me to answer that. Sir.”

“I don’t think I appreciate what you’re insinuating.”

“I don’t really give a flying fuck what you think I’m insinuating. Maybe if your doctors did their jobs instead of actively trying to make my life more difficult, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

“What brigade are you in, Sergeant?” her boss demanded.

She watched the exchange, her breath locked in her throat. The big sergeant’s hands clenched by his sides. “None of your damn business.”

Colonel Zavisca might be a medical doctor but he was still the senior officer in charge of the hospital. Emily had never seen an enlisted man so flagrantly flout regulations.

“You can leave now, Sergeant. Don’t come back on this property without your commander.”

The big sergeant swore and stalked off.

Emily wondered if he’d obey the order. She suspected she already knew the answer.

Her boss turned to her. “Are you okay?” he asked. Colonel Zavisca’s voice was deep and calming, the perfect voice for a psych doctor. It was more than his voice, though. His entire demeanor was something soothing, a balm on ragged wounds. His quiet power and authority stood in such stark contrast to Sergeant Iaconelli.

Men like Sergeant Iaconelli were energy and motion and hard angles. And he was rude. Colonel Zavisca was more like some of the men at her father’s country club except without the stench of sophisticated asshole. He was familiar.

“I’m fine, sir. Rough morning, that’s all.”

Emily stood for a long moment, Sergeant Iaconelli’s words still ringing in her ears. He had no idea how much his comment hurt. She didn’t know him from Adam but his words had found her weakness and stabbed it viciously.

In one single sentence, he’d shredded every hope she’d held on to since joining the army. She’d wanted to belong. To be part of something. To make a difference. He’d struck dead on without even knowing it. Her family had told her she’d never fit into the military. She fought the urge to sink into her chair and cover her face with her hands. She just needed a few minutes. She could do this.

The big sergeant didn’t know her. His opinion did not matter. Her parents’ opinions did not matter.

If she kept repeating this often enough, it would be true.

Her boss glanced at the clock on her wall. “It’s too early for this.”

She smiled thinly. “I know. Shaping up to be one heck of a Monday. Is triage already booked?”

He nodded. “Yes. I need you in there to help screen patients. We need to clear out the folks who can wait for appointments and identify those who are at risk right now of harming themselves or others.”

“Roger, sir. I can do that. I need to e-mail two company commanders and I’ll be right out there.”

“Okay. Don’t forget we have the staff sync at lunch.”

Even this early, the day showed no sign of slowing down and all she wanted to do was go home and take a steaming hot bath. She’d been trying to work out a knot behind her left shoulder blade for days now and things just kept piling up. She needed a good soak and a massage. Not that she dared schedule one. She’d probably end up cancelling it anyway.

“There’s that smile. Relax. You’re going to die of a heart attack before you’re thirty. The army is a marathon, not a sprint.”

“Roger, sir.” She waited until he closed the door before she covered her face in her hands once more. She could do this. She just needed to find her battle rhythm. She’d get into the swing of things. She wasn’t about to quit just because things got a little rough.

Her cell phone vibrated on her desk. Oh, perfect. Her mother was calling. Not that she was about to answer that phone call. She couldn’t deal with the passive-aggressive jabs her mother was so skilled at. Besides, she was probably just going to press Emily to give up on—as she put it—slumming in the army and come home.

She’d worked too hard to get where she was and she damn sure wasn’t about to go limping home. How could she? Her parents had looked at her like she was an alien when she’d told them about Bentley. As though she had somehow been in the wrong for her fiancé’s betrayal. As though, if she’d been woman enough, he never would have strayed.

If she ever went home again, and that was a really big if, she would do it on her own terms. She’d walked away from everything in her life that had been hollow and empty.

She was rebuilding, doing something that mattered for the first time in her life. Every day that she avoided calling home or being the person her father and his friends wanted her to be was a victory. No one in her family had supported her when she’d needed them. She might not have found her place yet in the army but just being here was a start. It was something new and she wasn’t about to give up, no matter how much Monday threw at her.

Tuesday really needed to hurry up and get here though, because as Mondays went, this one was already shot all to hell.

T
he text message of doom vibrated on Reza’s phone as he pulled into his company ops parking lot. Reza was wanted in the sergeant major’s office.

He did his best to avoid the brigade headquarters. There were too many names memorialized on the walls. Too many ghosts that walked the halls, overshadowing everything they did. Demanding that Reza do better. Train harder. Do more to bring their boys home.

He swallowed, gripping the steering wheel as his phone vibrated in his lap again.

He supposed he couldn’t avoid the sergeant major forever.

Maybe today the ghosts would leave him be.

He walked down the long hallway of the Reaper Brigade headquarters, fear choking him as the memories of lost friends hung like empty, cold spaces in the sterile, buffed hallway. He wanted to keep walking but his boots slowed, stopping in front of the memorial for their fallen brothers and sisters. Smiling faces. Easy grins.

They’d had no clue that the photos on the wall would be how they were memorialized for all eternity. His gaze landed on his old first sarn’t and his throat tightened. Story’s loss was still fresh enough to hurt.

Reza scrubbed his hand over his mouth, swallowing, trying to push the lump down.

“Ornery bastard,” he muttered, staring at Story’s pic. Story hadn’t smiled in his picture. He’d never smiled, that Reza could recall. But that had done nothing to dampen Reza’s loyalty to his friend. He clenched his fists by his sides.

Funny how he’d gotten so used to seeing “private” or “sergeant” as the rank of the dead. First Sergeant…

He’d served with Story as a drill sergeant back at Sand Hill eons ago, when they’d both been more motivated, less cynical. Before the war had chipped away at their humanity.

His eyes burned and he blinked rapidly. Shit, he couldn’t go into the sergeant major’s office all misty-eyed. He’d never hear the end of it.

Reza didn’t have time for long chats. He had men to train. They were about nine months out from another deployment—Reaper’s 4th tour into Iraq—and that meant that there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. He hoped Foster had moved on with the weapons training without him. It was better to suffer during training than bleed in war.

The sergeant major knew that. So why was he wasting Reza’s time with an office call? Probably some spouse complaining about Tricare again or something else that the military couldn’t fix for them.

Reza was of the mind-set that if the army had wanted you to have a family, it would have issued you one. He stayed single for exactly that reason. There was no end to the number of soldiers he had to pick up at the R&R Center because they’d married the first girl they’d lost their virginity to and that girl had turned out to have the heart of a pit viper.

Reza walked into the command group. A skinny private who looked like he needed to report to the dermatologist motioned for him to head straight in. Sucking in a deep breath and shoving away the sadness that always shadowed him when he was in the headquarters, he rapped on the door frame.

Sarn’t Major Giles glared up from his computer. “Get your ass in here, Ike.”

Sarn’t Major Giles was not a friendly man. There was no teddy bear hiding beneath his tough, sandpapery exterior. As far as Reza knew, the man didn’t have a heart and his veins were filled with pure meanness. He’d told Reza once that all that kept him going was training his troopers. That would explain why he was on marriage number four but hey, Reza wasn’t there to judge.

But no matter how much Reza liked to avoid him, there was no one more effective at taking a scared nineteen-year-old private and giving him the confidence to be the first man in the stack to kick in a door. Giles might not be nice but he was effective.

“Iaconelli,” Sarn’t Major said, kicking his feet up on his desk. “What happened at the R&R Center today?”

Reza frowned. “Nothing significant to report.” It was his way of trying to brush off answering the old man. He really didn’t feel like rehashing the entire conversation with the doc and then her boss. Sergeant Majors tended to get cranky when sergeants stepped out of line—something Reza was prone to do more often than not.

Giles chomped on the cigar in his mouth, his eyes pitiless and cold. “I’ll give you one more chance,” he said quietly. “Explain to me why I’ve got a full-bird colonel calling over here, pissing on the boss’s leg about you.”

Ah, hell. Reza clenched his fists at the small of his back. “I got into it with one of the docs over there. She wouldn’t confirm whether one of my dudes was there or not.”

“So you cussed out her boss?” Deadly, quiet words.

A chill slithered up Reza’s spine and settled around his shoulders.

“I may have uttered a creative turn of phrase, Sarn’t Major.” He’d made it his life’s work to try and get the sarn’t major to crack a grin. He’d never once succeeded. Not once.

A slow flush crawled up Sarn’t Major Giles weathered neck. Today was not that day, either.

“Shut the goddamned door,” Giles growled. Reza toed it shut and it slammed with the finality of a crypt vault. “The hospital commander called directly to Colonel Horace. He skipped all the levels of the chain of command and went right to my boss.”

“Glad to see the phone books are up to date,” Reza said. His skin prickled with awareness that the man in front of him was about to unleash the fury.

A man that Reza owed his loyalty to. And the remains of his career. Reza was under no illusions—he should have been forced to pack his bags after the Colorado fiasco a few months ago.

He still had a job. But given the look on Giles’s face, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could count on that.

God, but life was so much simpler when he was drinking. The temptation to reach for the bottle hissed in his ear. Seductive. Warm. Comforting.

He swallowed and straightened. He could take an ass chewing.

He’d done it before. He could do it again.

All the old man could do was yell at him, right?

Apparently, it was Reza’s day to be wrong. Again.

Giles moved with a speed that should have been impossible for an old infantry sergeant major, but his elbow was against Reza’s throat before Reza had even registered he’d moved.

Pictures rattled as Reza’s body slammed into the concrete wall. A memory, harsh and raw, scraped against the threat blocking his lungs. Another elbow. Another time.

Fear, both old and new, mixed in his veins, and he was once again sixteen years old. Fighting a man who was twice his age and size.

Reza struggled to breathe and keep his composure but his mind couldn’t grasp that the man with his elbow to his throat wasn’t the man who’d put his mother in the hospital all those years ago.

The memories twisted and writhed. Reza focused on Giles’s face. Facing the anger right in front of him. Ignoring the ghosts.

He forced himself to react, shutting down the muscle memory that had his own hands curling into the sergeant major’s shirt collar. Releasing his grip, he relaxed, pushing down the ingrained urge to fight.

Giles’s breath was hot on his face.

Silence hung in the air.

Another moment and the sergeant major released him. “I don’t appreciate your smart-ass comments,” Giles said with a snarl, shoving him away. “I can’t protect you from this.”

Reza breathed deeply through his nose to calm the adrenaline running through his veins, more than sick of dealing with the sergeant major’s PTSD and whatever other psychosis he carried around with him. “I didn’t ask you to.”

Giles rounded on him, shoving his cigar into Reza’s face. “You’re one ungrateful son of a bitch, you know that, Ike? Colonel Richter had to pull some major strings to keep your ass out of a sling after the Colorado fiasco and now you’re home, swearing at senior officers? How fucking stupid are you?”

Reza wisely chose not to answer.

“Are you drinking again?”

His temper flared, bright and hot inside him. He didn’t get a chance to argue.

“The only right answer is ‘No, Sarn’t Major.’”

“No, Sarn’t Major,” Reza mimicked. A truth, for once. No matter how hard it was, he hadn’t had a drink since the accident in Colorado had nearly cost his best friend her career.

He didn’t care about how his drinking fucked up his own life. But when it came to his friends? Yeah, that was too far. Funny though, how no one—not Claire, the little sister he’d never had, and not Sarn’t Major Giles—believed him when he said he wasn’t drinking.

He’d failed at not drinking often enough. He couldn’t really blame them for not believing him. But it had to stick this time. It had to.

The problem was, if he started drinking again, he could be out of the army by the end of the month—thrown out on his ass as a rehab failure. And the army was the only good thing he had in his life.

“Ike, you need to dial it back. You can’t go around swearing at the hospital commander and expecting to get away with it. That chest full of medals won’t do you a damn bit of good at a court-martial.”

“I haven’t done anything worthy of a court-martial.” At least, nothing he’d been caught for.

“Yet.” Giles stalked to his desk. “I got the colonel to agree to let me handle this.”

“And by ‘handle this’ you mean choking me out?”

The cigar was back, an inch from the tip of Reza’s nose. “Don’t push your luck.” Giles was a full head shorter than Reza but Reza knew better than to tangle with him. Reza might have been all-army combatives champion a few years ago but that didn’t mean he could beat the sergeant major in pure meanness.

The sergeant major’s drivers wouldn’t even wake him up in the field. They flat-out refused because he woke up swinging every time.

“Don’t come back in here again,” Giles said, sitting down at his desk. He thrust a sheet of paper at him. “Wisniak is being admitted to the hospital. Here’s the list of shit he needs.”

Reza accepted the paper, barely managing to avoid swearing under his breath.

Dismissed, Reza stepped into the hallway and headed for the door. It was only when he was in the quiet cab of his truck that he rested his head on the steering wheel and released a shuddering breath.

The flask he kept in the glove box whispered his name. Calling him. Just one sip.

He breathed deeply. He’d never thrown the flask out. He’d wanted to believe that he was strong enough to do this on his own. That he could be around the alcohol without drinking.

It was a daily test.

He knew what it would taste like: bitter and sharp, and it would burn the whole way down.

And the numbness would follow. A comfortable numbness would spread through his veins. The pressure on his chest would be gone.

He’d be able to focus. To relax.

Instead he sat there, breathing in. Out. Slowly.

Struggling to hold on to the sobriety that was his only chance of remaining a soldier.

It was a long time before he drove back to the company ops.

The flask remained unopened.

Emily knocked on the door, waiting for the soldier inside to answer. A muffled sound was the only response, so she pushed it open gently. Slowly.

Sergeant Wisniak wasn’t a skinny kid but he wasn’t fat, either. He was just kind of puffy. Soft, maybe, might be the best description for him. She’d been seeing him for about a month now and the thing that struck her most about the soldier sitting quietly in the sterile room was the utter emptiness in his eyes.

A week ago, he’d been excited. Motivated that the fog in his head was starting to lift.

Eager to be the leader of men that he’d always wanted to be.

Today, that eagerness was gone. Left in its place was an empty shell.

“Sergeant Wisniak?”

He blinked up at her.

“We’re going to admit you,” she said quietly.

Blink. Blink.

“Do you think you can tell me what happened?”

He looked away.

Her heartbeat was the only sound. She stood there a moment longer, hoping he would answer. Hoping he would confide in her.

Hoping he would give her some way to help him.

But he said nothing and the silence grew too heavy.

She left, wondering how she was going to find the strength to make it through the rest of the day.

Reza walked into the first sergeant’s office and closed the door. It still didn’t feel like his space. He wondered if it ever would. Maybe if he wore the rank it would feel real. Right now, it felt temporary. Transient.

But that didn’t take away a single iota of the responsibility he had. He might not be getting paid for the job but he damn sure would give it everything he had.

He stared at his computer screen, his lungs tight with frustration.

He sent Foster a text message, telling him to round up Wisniak’s stuff and get it up to the hospital.

He was just glad that Marshall was out of the office. Maybe Reza could get some work done without his commander dumping more shit on his desk.

He glanced up as Sloban walked into his office. The young specialist should have looked rested and recovered from his month-long stint in rehab. Instead, he looked harried and stressed out.

Sloban had changed so much since the last deployment. The kid with a steady trigger finger and bright, laughing eyes was long gone, buried from too many head injuries and no time off from the war.

Sloban had done three tours. Three tours that had taken a vital piece of his soul and left this shattered man in his place.

Guilt slithered up and threatened to choke him.

Reza hadn’t been able to protect Sloban. Not from the chain of command. Not from the nightmares that hunted his sleep.

Sloban’s body might have survived but the war had broken him anyway.

It was breaking all of them.

“Doesn’t look like your vacation did any good,” Reza said lightly. Hoping the kid would crack a joke. Hoping he’d see a flicker of the warrior he’d known.

Sloban twisted a cigarette in his hands. New nervous habit. “It sucks, Sarn’t Ike, let me tell you. Rehab totally fucking sucks.”

“I thought you weren’t due back for another week.”