Beyond the Point(101)
Avery waited a moment while Emily blew her nose.
“Ugh, I’m such a mess,” Emily said. “Okay. I think Sunday sounds good. Let’s do Sunday. But that’s five plane tickets. Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” Avery clicked “purchase” on the computer screen, then pinched the cell phone between her ear and shoulder to type with both hands. “Okay, tell me your full name . . .”
27
November 19, 2006 // Camp Buehring, Kuwait
No one ever tells you that when someone you love dies, you still have to eat.
You still have to brush your teeth and pack a bag and look at the clock and watch it ticking. No one tells you that grief feels like fear—it amps you up, making you want to run for your life, even though there’s nowhere to go, no place where death will be unreal. Grief chokes you and paralyzes you, making the most menial decisions feel impossibly huge.
“Who do you want to call?” the chaplain had asked.
She’d stared at him in utter confusion. Tim. She wanted to call Tim.
Who do you call when your husband dies and you’re twenty-four years old, alone in Afghanistan?
Who do you call when the only voice you want to hear no longer exists?
AS IF IT had chased Hannah all the way across Afghanistan, a sandstorm had arrived at FOB Sharana, hours after LTC Markham broke the news. Once again, everyone was shut up in their rooms, unable to move or operate. Trucks were halted. Helicopters grounded. Alone with her grief, Hannah waited. Two days later, the storm lifted. The chaplain told her to pack, which she’d already done, and a convoy transported Hannah eight hours from FOB Sharana to Bagram Airfield. From there, a helicopter flew her to Camp Buehring, Kuwait, where a silver-haired transportation officer told her to find a bunk in any female tent—that they’d get her on the first flight out with an available seat. Forty women slept in each tent, and for all those women knew, Hannah was going home on R & R, just like the rest of them. For all they knew, she just stayed in bed because she was lazy.
The next morning was a Sunday—the only reason Hannah knew this was because as she walked across Camp Buehring to the Mess Hall, she heard hymns coming from a tent nearby. Strong and harmonious, the voices sang a familiar song, but she didn’t let them draw her in. Instead, Hannah forced herself to eat a full breakfast—though now, stretched out on a bottom cot near the door of the bunkhouse, she couldn’t remember what she’d put on her plate. Everything tasted bitter. Everything tasted like nothing at all.
The mess hall tent had been decorated with orange accordion-style pumpkins and brown streamers. Fake ivy hung from the rafters and twisted down tent poles. She hadn’t tasted a single thing as the meal slid down her throat. Is food really the only thing that keeps us alive? Hannah asked herself. If that was true, why couldn’t they revive Tim with a piece of bread and a cup of wine?
She couldn’t understand how a person could just end. The more her mind circled around that drain, the more she felt the beginning of a battle she would someday have to fight with God. But for now, she couldn’t sleep unless she held on to her cross necklace and prayed—begged—for a moment of rest, for a moment to forget. She took Tylenol PM in the highest possible dose. When it finally came, sleep was relief, but when she woke up, the nightmare began all over again.
Hannah cried through much of the second night at Camp Buehring, grateful for the girl in the bunk above her, whose snores muffled her sobs. She envied army wives who got to hear the worst news of their lives in the comfort of their own homes. There were three parts of her heart: One that wanted to get on a plane and run away from this place. Another part that wanted to dig a hole in the ground, get inside, and never get out. And the third, loudest part of her heart wanted a bomb to drop right on top of her—because that was the only thing that made sense. If he was gone, she wanted to be gone too.
IN THE MORNING, her cell phone rang.
Hannah stared at it for a long time, reading her sister’s name on the caller ID. If she didn’t answer, she could go on pretending for a few minutes that Tim was still alive, that there had been a mistake, that some other young soldier with the same name had been killed. That some other girl was about to hear news that would shatter her life. That Hannah could piece hers together again.
But the phone kept ringing.
She’d ignored every single call that she possibly could. She’d spoken to Tim’s parents from the satellite phone on FOB Sharana, and the ache in Margaret Nesmith’s voice sank Hannah’s heart so deeply, she already feared seeing them once she made it back to the States. Hannah was completely submerged in the grief of losing a husband; she couldn’t carry the weight of their loss, too. Tim was a husband. A son. A friend. He was a different person to everyone he knew—filling a thousand different roles. But Hannah could only grieve one Tim at a time.
Text messages from Dani and others kept pouring in, but Hannah couldn’t respond. She didn’t know what she would possibly say. But Emily had called three times in a row now. So finally, with a heavy arm, Hannah reached for the phone and spent the energy it took to open it and place it on her ear.
“Hey.” Her sister’s voice was so slow and soft. So unlike her normal voice. “Did you make it to Kuwait?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing now?”