Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(6)

“Sit up straight, would you?” I said. “You look like a rag doll.”

“I’m entitled to sit like this today.”

I tipped the Perrier bottle into the glass. The ice clicked. When it settled, I took a sip. “You blow one too many noses?”

“I had to refer a kid, thirteen… he was thirteen. Had to refer his parents to an oncologist they’ll go broke paying. And it was hopeless. There was no… ah, never mind.”

“Sorry, that’s… well, it’s part of the job. But sorry.”

“Asshole.” He crossed ankle over knee and drank his beer. He was a redhead and, in the ultimate irritating cliché, had a temper to match.

“I am an asshole.”

“That some kind of opening for another war story?”

It hadn’t been an opening any more than Dan’s snide comments were actual insults. My friend was making a request. He’d lost his brother on 9/11 and listening to me tell a war story made him feel as if he’d deployed with me.

“I had this guy on the table,” I said. “We were low on morphine, so no one got it until we put them under, so he was screaming his head off. And rightfully so. His humerus was shattered.”

“Very funny.”

We clicked glasses, and I continued. “His arm was hanging on his body by half a bone. Rotator cuff was torn up. Skin had third-degree burns. I could put him back together well enough to get him to Baghdad, but it would have taken five hours. So meanwhile, you know what he’s screaming?”

“Get the fuck on with the story?”

“‘I’m a guitarist.’” I paused with my drink at my lips long enough to mutter, “He played fucking guitar.” I put the glass down. “Meanwhile, they tell me there’s another guy who’s about to lose his leg. They clamped off the femoral artery, but it’s going stiff real fast and he’s going to need a graft.”

“Who’s triaging these people?”

“Someone who loves rock. But what do you do? You can save the arm or the leg. You can’t save both. One gets a quick amputation. The other gets screws and pins. Which is it?”

“Do I get vitals?”

“Answer.”

“Was either in shock?”

“This isn’t a drill, Dan.”

“Hang on—”

“There’s no time.”

“Jesus.”

“Which?”

“All right, all right, asshole. What did you do?”

I finished my drink. “Decided it’s easier to hold down a job with two legs and one arm than the other way around.”

“You got something against music?”

“It was a calculation. Life over limb.”

“You are one sick fuck.” He put his elbows on his knees and shook his head in disappointment, but his smile told me he admired me. “How does your wife even deal with your shit?”

My wife had lived it with me, that was how.

“She didn’t believe me. She came to Balad Base before the second Fallujah offensive to make sure we weren’t fucked in the head. She wouldn’t believe I could turn it on and off. She was like a pit bull, man.”

She cared. More than her big brown eyes or the silken hair she kept twisted in a bun, I remembered her caring about my psychological well-being. I was no one to her, but she didn’t want me to suffer. That first session, when I laughed at her, I also started to fall in love with her.

She hadn’t believed that either. How could a man so detached feel love? How could I be brokenhearted one minute and perform surgery the next without opening myself to a crippling emotional breakdown?

Eventually, she learned I could do both. More than nimble hands and the will to finish med school, at-will detachment was my most valuable skill.

“I maintain going was stupid,” Danny said. “Noble, but stupid.”

“Like I said, I met Greyson.”

“The internet works fine, thanks.” He picked up his glass. “That’s where I met Shari.”

“When do I get to meet Shari? Or do I have to go on the internet to do it?”

“Soon. You want another?”

“Sure.”

He went to the bar. The sky turned orange with the sunset.

You didn’t meet women like Greyson on the internet. She’d spent her adult life in the army, and if she hadn’t met me, she’d still be wearing boots and brown. She’d be fucking some other lifer.

She’d be living her life the way she always thought she would.

I’d rescued her from all that.

She’d be just fine.

Deployment after deployment. A slave to pay grade and rank. Stable.

Greyson wanted her boundaries pushed. She wasn’t happy unless she was doing more, going faster, expanding in all directions. The military limited her ability to find how far she could go.

I hadn’t considered that maybe the limits were the point.

When Dan came toward the table with the drinks, I resolved yet again to make sure Greyson was happy.





Chapter Four





GREYSON





I didn’t just have to get used to New York or civilian life. I didn’t just have to acclimate to finding work instead of having it given to me. I had to get used to being married.