Via Dolorosa(79)

He had stood in the doorway of the burnt-out building, much like he stood in the doorway of his hotel room now, praying for something, anything, even if it was just to have time freeze for all eternity so no further decisions would have to be made…

“Finally, I went outside. I had my rifle up. I didn’t know how long I’d been out and I didn’t know if the insurgents were still in the mosque across the street. I passed out the door and walked against the remaining wall until I was able to duck into an alley and survey the battleground. They were dead, all of them. I could see the way they had been broken and ruined, much like my hand, and how none of them even remotely resembled the people they had been in life. And that was at least comforting, because it allowed me to believe that perhaps their souls—the essence of who they’d been—had someone managed to escape unscathed just prior to their deaths, and that somewhere, anywhere, they were at least okay.”

“Myles was still alive,” the bell captain said, his voice just barely above a whisper. “My son was still alive.”

“He was,” Nick admitted. “The only one. I saw movement across the street and saw it was one of Myles’s hands, sliding through the dirt. I felt something heave in my chest and staggered to my feet. I felt nauseous and unsteady, almost drunk. My pack and rifle suddenly gained a hundred pounds. I dropped them both to the ground and stumbled out of the alley toward the street. A part of me prayed to be gunned down, but I never heard a single shot. So I kept walking, and when I reached Myles, I could see that he had managed to turn himself over and that he was staring up at me.”

He did not see the benefit of describing to the bell captain what he actually saw, and how he had stumbled around the bodies of the others on his way to Myles—how he had tried not to look at any of them and, although the blood and ruination of their bodies had been bad, the worst had been the barbed-wire tattoo exposed on Angelino’s upper arm, now that his uniform sleeve had been shorn away, and how it suddenly looked like the most cruel and unnecessary thing in the world, the tattoo’s permanence mocking the brevity of the young boy’s life. He did not see the point of describing to Granger, either, the way his son’s body was broken and the way his face had been twisted and bloodless and pale. He also did not tell the bell captain how Myles’s first word, or attempt at a first word, had been the abbreviated, “Lieuten—” and how, after a hesitation and a dry-swallow of saliva, the young boy had simply begged for Nick to shoot him in the head because it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.

And Nick considered shooting him.

Shoot me. Shoot me in the head.

Hang on, he’d told him.

Shoot me in the head. It hurts. Please, Lieutenant. Kill me.

You’ll be okay, he’d promised the boy. No, he couldn’t shoot him. The reality of the world was rushing back to him, with all its instincts of survival.

My legs, groaned Myles Granger, his voice hitching and sounding extremely small, extremely far away. I don’t want to lose my legs, Lieutenant.

You’re not going to lose your legs, Myles.

I don’t want to die, Lieutenant.

You’re not—we’re not—you’re not—

“I don’t know how I did it,” Nick told the bell captain, “with my hand ruined and feeling as sick and as weak as I did, but I managed to loosen and remove Myles’s pack and all the things that made him heavy, then hoisted him up over my shoulder.”

“He was young and skinny, skin and bones,” Granger said. “He weighed next to nothing, soaking wet.”

“I carried him back across the street and back into the alley. He was sobbing against my back. I set him down in the alley and that’s when I really had a look at his legs.” He stopped himself there, not wanting to tell Myles Granger’s father about the state of his son’s legs. “After a while, we made contact with the rest of the platoon. Your son died two days later in triage.”

Granger looked at him as if he wanted the story to continue—as if, by some chance, Nick’s retelling could alter the reality of what had happened if only he’d change the ending.

“I can’t change the ending,” Nick heard himself say, not caring if Granger understood him or not. “You and I both live with guilt, Mr. Granger. So if you’re going to shoot yourself in the head, please shoot me first. Because I’m tired of thinking about it all, and I’m tired of seeing and hearing your son, too.”

The irony wasn’t lost to him—that he, Nick, was now asking a Granger to shoot him in the head and put him out of his misery. And as had happened the first time when the roles were reversed, it seemed as though the bell captain was actually considering it. Surely it would have been simple, and it would have ended it all permanently. Nick promised himself that when the bell captain finally leveled the gun at him, he would not look away and would not even close his eyes. He would take death on and watch it come and he would be better for it.

“Do it,” Nick said.

“I…can’t,” said Granger. He looked at the gun in his hand, resting on his plump thigh. “Can I?”

“It’s yes or no,” said Nick. “But whatever the decision, we have to live with it.”

“Or die with it,” said Granger.

“Yes,” Nick agreed. “Or die with it.”