All those medals were
carelessly chucked into a pile of some loose change because they
meant nothing to me.
Nothing.
The front door opened with a heavy click, and
I heard Vivian’s voice.
At the sound of her approach, I looked
up.
She stiffened. Her gaze went from my face to
the drawer full of medals and then back to my face again.
“
Wait!” she said suddenly
as I began gathering the medals and stuffing them into the
backpack. “What are you doing?”
“
Pawning them off. Giving
them away. I just need to get rid of ’em.”
“
What?” She looked
appalled. “Why?”
I slammed the drawer shut. “I have no use for
them.”
She stared at me for a long moment. Unspoken
things moved in her eyes. At last, she said, “Tell me the real
reason.”
I closed my eyes, trying to sort out the
words from the tangle of voices in my head.
When I opened my eyes,
Vivian was standing before me, watching me. Waiting. “I am
listening, soldier,” she said softly, placing a hand over my heart.
“I hear you. I
feel you
.”
The innate tenderness in her voice nearly did
me in.
My eyes welled up with all the vulnerability,
all the pain, and all the anguish that I was simply too fatigued to
mask.
In time, the words came out on their own,
cascading over one another, dropping like the staccato fires of an
AK-47.
Vivian didn’t interrupt me. She just stood
there, quietly listening as I rehashed the nightmare of June
eighteenth. The mission to Karmah, the ambush, the men in my
company who’d perished, the Iraqi family I’d killed, the suicide
bomber who’d not only taken her own life, but the life of a little
Iraqi girl and the life of Shelby.
The suicide bomber who
I
should
have
suspected. Not one, but the
two
tragedies that could have been prevented had I
been a better soldier, a better leader. How the Iraqi
family—husband, wife, and their little baby—would still be alive
today had I not been too quick to open fire. How my brothers would
still be alive today had I taken out the suicide bomber. When I
finished, Vivian fell silent.
I felt her eyes on me, but I couldn’t bring
myself to meet her gaze.
Moments passed before she spoke and the
slight rasp in her voice tugged my eyes back up. “Liam, you were a
young soldier doing your heartbreaking best to do the right thing
amidst all the confusion and all the chaos.”
I laughed—a harsh, humorless sound—and I
couldn’t temper the blunted steel in my voice. “If I was doing my
best, Shelby would still be alive. Merrick would still be walking.
That innocent Iraqi family would still be alive.” My hands fisted
at my sides. “I wish I could bring them back to life. Sometimes I
wonder why I deserve to be alive when they no longer live. I failed
them.” A muscle twitched in my jaw. “I failed every single one of
them.”
“
Liam,” she said gently,
“it’s not your fault. You can’t keep on blaming yourself. What
happened… it was tragic. But it was a mistake. A terrible mistake.
And as much as you want to, you can’t change the past.”
“
I know that, Viv. And
that’s why it’s so fuckin’ hard for me to move on. I’m never going
to forget it, and I don’t
ever
want to forget. I don’t ever want to lose that as
a memory because once it’s gone, then those lives will all be
forgotten. Erased.”
“
I’m not asking you to
move on, Liam. I’m just asking you to forgive yourself. This guilt
is going to eat away at you.”
“
It’s not just guilt I
feel.” I pushed a hand through my hair. “It’s shame. It’s rage.
It’s self-loathing. Iraq has become the ‘mistake war,’ which makes
all I did while I served nothing more than a mistake. One big
fuckin’ mistake.”
“
No.” She shook her head.
“It wasn’t a mistake. You fought terror.”
My tongue felt thick, heavy. I swallowed with
difficulty. “I did not fight terror, Viv. I fought against a
phantom. A lie. All my contributions, my achievements, if you can
even call ’em that, all my sacrifices were based on one big fuckin’
lie.”
In the pause that followed, she took a step
closer, her hand coming up to caress my face. “Lieutenant Liam
Sykes, you were a soldier and a commissioned officer doing your
duty. It may have been the wrong war at the wrong time, but that
does not reflect on your character, courage, or sacrifice.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Vivian wasn’t
done talking.
“
All those opinions you
hear in the news, they don’t define who you are, nor do they define
the rightness or wrongness of the war. You are a hero who served
your country even in the absence of moral clarity. Still, you
volunteered to serve, and that alone makes you a hero. You have
nothing to be ashamed of, Liam, and everything to feel proud of.
Your service in Iraq was an act of love for your country, and I owe
you a debt of gratitude for that. You put yourself in harm’s way
and sacrificed a part of your life for all of us. I—” She stopped
and amended herself. “America honors you. And for that I say thank
you. Thank you for your service and your sacrifice. Hold your head
up high, soldier. Your service is honored, your sacrifice is
appreciated, and you should be proud that you served your country
with honor.” She held my gaze as she took a step back and squared
her shoulders, one hand coming crisply to the corner of her brow.
“I salute you, Lieutenant Sykes.”
I couldn’t help but crack a semblance of a
smile at her theatrics.
“
Say it,” she
said.
“
Say what?” I
asked.
Her eyes gleamed with humor. “At ease.”
I laughed. “At ease, soldier.”
When she relaxed her stance, her smile faded
and her expression softened. Moments passed before she spoke. “I’m
so sorry, Liam. About what happened.” The sympathy in her eyes was
like another blow.
Guilt twisted in my heart and I slanted my
gaze away. “So now that you know everything, you don’t hate
me?”
She rested her hand on my
jaw, gently turning my face to hers. “I may hate the war, but not
the warriors.
Never
the warriors. And you have no idea what your life’s greatest
achievement will be, Liam. For all you know, you may be destined
for other types of greatness to come.”
I was practically brought to my knees by a
rush of humility that this compassionate, kind, and amazingly
beautiful woman had so much faith in me. She believed in me
utterly, unerringly, and completely.
The backpack dropped with a loud thud as my
arms came around to circle her waist, drawing her tight to my
chest.
Closing my eyes, I sighed into her hair,
breathing in her sweet, intoxicating warmth.
God help me, I loved her so much it ached.
And I didn’t know what it was, but telling Viv about June
eighteenth… it felt like the first step toward healing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Liam
Blood thrummed through my veins and every
muscle in my body was taut with nerves. Dr. Evans was scribbling
furiously on his notepad, and my eyes darted around his office,
consciously mapping out escape routes.
It was something I did out of habit.
I did it the moment I’d stepped into this
office, and I couldn’t help but do it again.
It helped me cope with new places, new
surroundings, new people.
Gradually, the pounding in my heart steadied,
and my breathing settled into a slow, steady rhythm.
However, when I was running these calming
exercises in my head, everything else got completed tuned out.
It was some time before I even realized Dr.
Evans was talking to me.”
“
I’m sorry.” I blinked at
him. “Can you please repeat what you just said?”
Dr. Evans cleared his throat. “I was just
saying how it was rather interesting that you used ‘worthless’ to
describe yourself nineteen times. And…” He glanced down at his
notepad. “You used ‘angry’ twenty-two times.”
My gut clenched like a fist and I failed in
my attempt to not appear incredulous.
“
Tell me,” Dr. Evans said.
“How do you feel about that?”
Hotly uncomfortable with
my assessment, my fingers tightened around the steel arms of my
chair. “Look, I realize I’m becoming a cliché—the broken-down
soldier with PTSD, the wounded vet Hollywood loves to portray. And
I hate being that stereotype.
I fuckin’
hate it.
I feel like an actor in a movie
with no sense of direction. I want to yell CUT! I want to hack away
at all those scenes and images and voices in my head until they’re
nothing more than just a scrap of film on the editing
floor.”
Dr. Evans fell silent for a long moment.
“Tell me,” he said at last. “Why do you feel so much anger?”
I clenched my jaw. “In the army, when I
courted my anger, fed it, harnessed it… it helped. It helped
me.”
“
But you’re no longer in a
war zone,” Dr. Evans countered. “And if you don’t get in touch with
all that anger and learn to somehow deal with it in a constructive
way, it can become destructive.”
“
Let me tell you a little
bit about the enemy I was fighting in Iraq.” My voice hardened.
“They preyed upon the poor and helpless and offered them easy
solutions to complex problems. It sounds to me like that’s exactly
what you’re trying to do right now. Offering me these easy
solutions.” I scoffed. “It’s not that simple.”
“
It may sound simple, but
that’s the first step.” He paused. “And here’s the second step:
whenever you feel your fight or flight mechanisms kick in, hit that
emotional pause button and go some place where you can feel safe
again.” Seconds passed before he asked, “Is there a place you can
go? Where you feel safe?”
A deep current pulled at my heart. At last, I
said, “It’s not a place, but a person.”
“
In that case,” Dr. Evans
said, “go to that one person who makes you feel safe.”
In the next moment, the room began to twirl
and a sudden pain seared my brain.
It pounced from the shadows, catching me
unaware.
I doubled over from the pain, crushing my
hands against my temples. “Sorry.” Closing my eyes, I waited for
the pain to subside. “Some days my headaches are so severe I feel
like throwing up.”
“
With TBI, it’s normal,”
he assured me. “Do you hear ringing in your ears, too?”
Taking a deep breath, I opened my eyes and
gave a curt nod.
Dr. Evans rose from his chair and poured me a
glass of water. “Here.” He handed me the glass and I accepted it
gratefully. “Let’s take a break.”
I drained the glass in one gulp and let my
head fall back against the chair.
In the pause the followed, Dr. Evans said,
“How about you just sit back and relax, and I’ll tell you a story.
Do you think you can handle that?”
I nodded again.
“
This story”—he began—“is
about two wolves.” He stopped abruptly when he saw me wincing in
agony. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? We can always
reschedule.”
“
I’m fine,” I grunted. The
sharp pain in my head was gradually shifting to a deep, persistent
throb. And though I’d already heard this Native American fable
about two wolves, I made a vague gesture, asking the doctor to go
on.
“
Are you sure?” His voice
was tinged with concern.
“
Yes.”
“
All right,” he said.
Leather creaked as he sat back in his chair and crossed his legs.
“One evening, an old Cherokee
told his
grandson about a battle that goes on inside people’s souls. He
said, ‘My son, the battle between two wolves is inside us
all.
One wolf is filled with anger, guilt,
resentment, regret, and self-loathing. The other wolf is filled
with love, peace, hope, compassion, acceptance, and forgiveness.’
The grandson thought about this for a moment, and then he asked his
grandfather, ‘Which wolf wins the fight in your soul?’ And the
Cherokee simply replied—”
“
The one I feed,” I spoke
quietly, finishing his sentence.
“
The one
you
feed,” Dr. Evans
repeated. “So you see, it’s not the load that breaks you down. It’s
the way you carry it.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Vivian
Weeks passed and I began to notice the subtle
changes in Liam. He started reading again, mainly Tom Clancy
thrillers, and more recently, Hugh Howey. He cooked us scrumptious
meals, and he helped out a lot with the household chores. He also
came to me more often and simply asked me to hold him.
And I did. Every time he sought me out, I
gathered him into my arms, letting the warmth of my body imprint
itself to his.
I held him until his heartbeat steadied.
Until the migraines eventually subsided. Until his palms were no
longer sweaty. Until his demons were tamed. Until he felt safe, at
peace, defenses unnecessary.
As long as he needed me to hold him, I held
him.
And when I held him, I felt closer to him
than at any other time, like there was an invisible cord tethering
us together.
I never questioned, and I never tried to
soothe him with words. I simply held him in my arms, giving him a
small respite from the darkness that shuttered his soul.