“
Whoa.” The corners of my
mouth twitched. “That was a
pretty
long and dramatic speech. But that’s not what I
was gonna ask you.”
“
Oh.” He blinked twice.
“What
were
you
gonna ask me?”
“
If you’ll come along with
me when I visit Merrick tomorrow.”
“
Of course, man.” His
voice turned gooey. All that thug-like street cred seemed to have
evaporated into thin air. “For sure. I want to see Merrick,
too.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Liam
The man in the wheelchair did not resemble my
friend. This man was a shrunken version of Merrick. His face was
gaunt and all sharp angles and planes. As a breeze fluttered the
curtains, his skeletal features caught the shadows that fell from
the windows.
My gaze inadvertently strayed to his legs…
legs that were withering away, all the musculature—gone. Just
gone.
I opened my mouth, but I was too stunned to
speak. I felt as if I’d just landed a kick in my gut.
“
Hey!” Merrick spoke
first. “I don’t need your fucking sympathy, all right, guys? What I
need is your normalcy.”
I started to apologize, then stopped myself.
Meanwhile, Julian took a step forward and both men exchanged a fist
bump, followed by a mock explosion.
Get it together.
I reminded myself.
Situations are only as awkward as you make them out to
be.
Taking a deep breath, I moved forward and
greeted Merrick with another fist bump.
Merrick laughed. “If you two fuckers ever try
to greet me with another fist bump, I will throw you a left
hook!”
At that, my uneasiness dissipated and I bent
at the waist, clapping his shoulder as I gave him a hug.
When it was Julian’s turn, he reached in for
a hug and squeezed Merrick’s biceps “Phwoar!” he exclaimed.
“Somebody call the SWAT team. Check out those guns, will ya?”
And Julian was right. Merrick’s arms were
fully bulked up. I must have been so busy staring at his legs that
I hadn’t even noticed his arms.
“
Sit down, guys.” Merrick
waved his hand in an impatient gesture. “Sit down. I’m sick and
tired of looking up your nostrils.”
Julian sat down on the plush couch lining the
wall and I did the same.
“
So…” Julian began. “How
did it look up there?”
The question took Merrick by surprise. Hell,
it even took me by surprise. “Up where?” Merrick asked.
“
My nostrils,” Julian
answered.
Shaking his head, Merrick smirked. “You need
to trim that hedge with a weed whacker.”
“
What?” Julian grumbled.
“I just had it waxed the other day.”
I stared at him for an excruciating moment.
“You wax your nose hair?”
Julian didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah.”
He could not be serious. “Why?” I
spluttered.
“
So I can breathe better.
It helps clear my anterior nasal passageways. Now every breath
feels extra deep, clean, and almost refreshing.” Julian said it
dryly, as if quoting an academic text.
Merrick made a dismissive snort. “Fuck the
bullshit, Julian. You’re so full of it.”
Julian just shrugged. Now Merrick turned to
me, noticed me studying him, and paused for a second.
“
The house looks great,” I
said in my lame attempt at making conversation.
“
Thanks.” He reclined in
his wheelchair. “This whole place was retrofitted for my arrival.
The doorways have been widened, and of course, all those ramps you
see replaced all the stairs. Even the bathrooms have—”
“
Dada! Dada!” came a
toddler’s voice from across the room.
“
Get over here,
Nina-bo-bia.” Merrick’s arms were open wide and the smile on his
face was so bright it could rival the sun. “Come over here and meet
Daddy’s friends.”
The pretty little girl with a headband bigger
than the size of Mexico ran up the ramp and threw herself into
Merrick’s arms. Laughing, he picked her up and plunked her down on
his lap. “Nina.” He spoke to the toddler as she squirmed about in
his lap. “Meet Captain Liam Underpants and Julian the Bionic Booger
Boy.”
Even though she didn’t
look like she was old enough to understand a word he was saying,
she let out a gleeful gurgle and said, “
Booh-gah
.”
I smiled at her. “How old is she?”
“
Fifteen months.” Merrick
adjusted the stretchy pink headband so she could see a little
better. “Yeah, Diane loves to dress her up in these frilly things.
Hell if understand these headbands, though. I swear they’re larger
than the size of her tights.”
Julian cocked an eyebrow
suggestively. “Maybe those
are
Diane’s tights.”
“
Stop talking about my
wife’s tights or I’ll clock you.” Merrick chuckled as he set Nina
down on her little feet.
In the blink of an eye, she took off at a
fast clip, running up and down the ramp. Up and down. And up and
down she went. Non-stop. For a long while, all I could do was stare
after that little ball of energy.
Merrick looked on, pink with pride. “Nina
sure loves those ramps.”
“
She’s a beauty,” I
commented. “Future heartbreaker.”
“
Yeah.” Julian added,
“Future man eater.”
“
Shut up, guys. She’s only
a year old.” Merrick shook his head, but he couldn’t help the smile
creeping up his face. As he eased back in his wheelchair, his gaze
landed on me.
“
What?” I asked, uneasy
under the weight of his gaze. Merrick had a way of looking at me as
if he could see beneath all the layers of my deception.
Finally, he said, “What took you so long to
come and see me?”
Suddenly, the room felt charged with
awkwardness and I had no idea how to defuse it without addressing
the nightmare of June eighteenth. Long seconds passed before I
spoke. “I felt responsible for what happened that day.” I swallowed
hard. “The day you got injured.”
“
Tell me.” Merrick looked
me squarely in the eye. “What do you remember about that
day?”
His question took me right
back to our mission to Karmah. The air was thick with dust and
debris as our Bradley tank sped across the rugged terrain. “I was
the first to spot that Iraqi woman walking down the dirt road. I
thought she looked completely out of place in that ghost town. That
raised a red flag, but then she was holding the hand of that little
girl… and I remembered thinking there was no way. No way she could
have had an explosive device strapped on to her.” Suddenly, my
lungs couldn’t pull in enough air and my head throbbed with a
blinding, stabbing ache. “I was wrong.
I
was so fuckin’ wrong
. And I’m so
sorry.”
Merrick was quiet for a
moment. Then he said, “Let me tell you what I remember. I remember
seeing that Iraqi woman way before you even spotted her. I saw her
first. Like you, it didn’t even occur to me she was a possible
threat because of that little girl by her side. So I did nothing.
But I do remember nudging you in her direction. When our tank
rolled past that Iraqi woman,
both
of us had our eyes trained on her. And after
that, I was thrown off by the blast and I don’t remember much
except for a lot of chaos.” He paused. “So it wasn’t your fault,
Sykes. I spotted her, too. I could have done something, but I chose
not to. And if you blame yourself and accept responsibility for
what happened to me, then it means I should blame myself, too. It
means I should accept responsibility for putting
myself
in a wheelchair.”
He laughed—a harsh, humorless sound. “Trust me, I’ve played that
same old loop, analyzing every single detail in my head until it
drove me fuckin’ crazy. In the end… I realized what happened to me
was nobody’s fault except that fucked-up Iraqi woman who turned out
to be a suicide bomber.”
“
But…” I stared at
Merrick. “I don’t remember you seeing that Iraqi woman.”
“
We all remember that day
differently,” he said simply. “And I refuse to dwell on it anymore.
It happened. It’s done and I can’t go back and change
it.”
In the pause that followed, I exhaled
hard.
And I thought of all the things I
regretted.
All the things I wanted to go back and
change.
The weight of my responsibility for what
happened to so many innocent lives felt heavy enough to crush
me.
“
Listen.” Merrick’s face
was hard, determined. “No one—not even
you
—is in any position to be the
judge of what happened over there. We were imperfect animals
operating in a fucked-up situation. Car bombs, grenades, sniper
fires, IEDs—all the shit happened in a matter of seconds.” He
snapped his fingers. “Seconds! Add onto that we were stressed and
sleep deprived, always on the edge with a hundred and one different
things rushing through our heads. Mistakes happened. They were
bound to happen. But we did our best with the cards we were
dealt.”
I listened in silence, and when Merrick
finished speaking, his face was dead white.
“
How are you holding up
now?” Julian asked, breaking the silence.
Merrick took a deep breath and the color
slowly returned to his skin. “I’m adapting. The worst thing is when
people feel sorry for me. It makes me feel disgusting, like I’m of
lesser worth and physically unclean. If that even makes sense.”
Julian looked down at his lap.
“
I don’t want sympathy,”
Merrick went on. “Certainly never pity. But I guess some people
will always feel sorry for me no matter what. Fuck, I even feel
sorry for a lot of able-bodied people.” Merrick stared at me for a
long moment before he gave a small nod—of understanding or
sympathy, I was not certain. “At one time, I even felt sorry for
you.”
“
You felt sorry for me?” I
couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice.
“
Yeah. A couple of the
guys from our unit came over to see me. Perez and Harmon, even
Reed. When I asked ’em where you were, they told me you wouldn’t
come because you blamed yourself for what happened to me.” He
paused. “I felt sorry for you.”
At a loss for words, I simply stared at him.
I didn’t know how to respond to that.
“
You remember those
just in case
letters?”
Merrick asked.
I nodded my reply.
He took a slow breath before continuing.
“Well, I’m thankful my wife and my daughter never had to see them.
And for me, that’s reason enough for living.”
When I still didn’t respond, Merrick took
advantage of my silence. “Look,” he went on. “I know it’s not easy
for you, and I’m not saying it’s been easy for me either. But I
want you to know that despite being in this wheelchair, I’m still
fighting and I’m still making progress. I have to work harder, and
I experience payback pain when I push my body too hard, but I’m
still in the game, man. I’m still in the game of life.”
“
Fuck my life.” Julian
made a derisive sound. “I’m
still
in a Nicholas Sparks novel.”
Merrick’s gaze slid in his
direction, and the look in his eyes said,
Who the fuck is Nicholas Sparks?
“
Booyah!” Julian slapped a
hand to his forehead. “That’s it! That. Is. It! Merrick—you and
me—we’re writing a book together,
you
handsome stud, you
.” He leapt to his feet
and punched the air. “And I want half the rights to your
memoir!”
Merrick seemed surprised for a moment, then
impressed. And for the next half hour, the two men went back and
forth, collaborating on this memoir.
In the background,
the
Rocky
theme
song was blaring out of Julian’s iPhone.
I found myself staring at Merrick, and at
some point or other I could no longer hear the music. It was as if
someone had just hit pause on the soundtrack.
Here was a guy who could never walk again,
and despite facing this grim reality, he remained resilient,
strong, and surprisingly optimistic.
With both his words and his actions, Merrick
epitomized what was good about the army. And he epitomized what was
good about the world.
Out of left field, little Nina sprinted up
the ramp and Merrick caught her as she launched herself into his
arms.
Something tugged at my heart. For Merrick and
his daughter, life might not be fair, but it was certainly
full.
Chapter
Thirty
Vivian
“
So how’s it been?”
Chelsea propped her elbow on the kitchen table and rested her chin
on her hand. “Having your brother back home?”
“
It’s been really good,” I
said truthfully as I set a mug of coffee and a plate of cookies on
the table before her. “He’s been so good for Liam. Honestly, I
don’t know what he did or what he said to him, but Liam’s been
doing much better.” I smiled. “A lot better, actually. The other
day he was even checking out culinary schools online and he’s been
talking about applying for jobs.”
“
What about Julian?”
Chelsea leaned forward, helping herself to a cookie. “If he’s so
good with Liam, maybe he should get his degree in psychology so he
can become a PTSD shrink and treat all his friends.”