A Virgin River Christmas (Virgin River #4)(55)

“You said I looked like a wild man.”

“You do.” She grinned at him. “I’m used to it now.”

“What were you going to thank me for?” he asked, replenishing his glass.

“You’re kidding, right? Come on! For saving Bobby’s life!”

“You shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t even think that. I have a lot of regrets, kid, but that’s at the top of the list.”

“Saving him? Look, we’re all sorry he was so badly hurt, that he was a helpless invalid. Beyond anyone’s control…”

“You think so? Because I think maybe I knew,” he said. “I lifted him and he was limp and heavy. There was a split second when I faced a choice. There was no muscle tension in his body—he was nothing but dead weight. I could’ve put him down right where he was, covered his body with mine to keep him from getting hit worse and waited it out—the end. And then you wouldn’t have been saddled with the burden and pain you’ve had to carry for three years and he’d have been free. God, you were just a kid. And I knew Bobby didn’t want that life—men in combat talk about things like that. But I was selfish. I was thinking about myself—I acted the way I was trained to react, and I just couldn’t face letting him go. I was acting like I wanted to be a goddamn hero.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “Holy Jesus,” she finally said. “Is that how you think it was? That it was up to you? And that your actions made my life a nightmare?” She shook her head. “That’s not how it was. You should’ve just read the damn letters!”

He stared down at the pile in front of him. Then he lifted his eyes to hers. So, she’d been into his stuff, found them, knew they’d never been opened.

“Here’s how it was—”

“Marcie,” he said, his eyes darkening in regret. Pain. “Don’t, okay?”

“God, I thought I was the one who needed to understand,” she said, taking a delicate sip of the liquor. She made a face and pursed her lips, then said, “You’re gonna listen now. We lost our mom when Drew was only two, I was four, and Erin was eleven. Our dad raised us, but when I was fifteen he died suddenly—it was a coronary during a routine knee surgery. Very unusual, very rare. Erin was a recent college graduate, headed for law school, so she stepped in, became the parent, and we all stayed in the house that Dad raised us in and, of course, when Bobby went to Iraq, I lived there with Erin and Drew while he was gone. When we brought him home, that’s where we brought him. That’s where we were when you visited us—and we weren’t very good at that whole thing. We—all of us—were so new to caregiving, it must have looked to you like we weren’t going to survive it. It must have looked terrible…”

He remembered; there were days he’d had trouble putting it out of his mind. The house was a disaster, Marcie was skinny and pale and alone, she looked about thirteen. The hospital bed dominated the dining room so it was the first thing you saw when you walked in the house, leaving the family nowhere to have a meal. There was other medical equipment standing around the place—a fancy wheelchair with a head brace, hydraulic lifts, weights for counterbalance when moving that dead weight, a suction machine, oxygen tanks, basins, linens.

“We had to bring him home or leave him in a long-term care facility in another state. After a couple of months we got him into a civilian nursing home—an excellent place, with the military picking up the tab through CHAMPUS. I can thank Erin for that—she wouldn’t give up. Bobby had a large family—he was the youngest of seven—and we were all in it together, God bless them. They’ve been such a wonderful help—family to me in every way.”

“CHAMPUS?” Ian heard himself ask.

“It doesn’t always work out so good. A lot of wounded soldiers who need long-term care are assigned to military hospitals wherever there’s space, and it has nothing to do with where the family lives. I faced leaving Bobby in D.C. or the East Coast or Texas, but…We were very lucky. He had the best. And Ian—he might’ve looked pathetic, but there was no indication he was in any pain or stress. We pampered him, kept him totally comfortable at all times, and there were so many of us to do that. Bobby’s whole family—his mom and dad, six brothers and sisters and their spouses, nieces and nephews, me, Drew, and yes, even Erin got right in there. He was massaged, read to, kissed and hugged. He was almost never alone. We had a visiting schedule—he was always checked on and covered. Ian—it wasn’t torture for me. Losing him hurt, of course, but really, I lost him so long ago that by the time he passed…”

“Relief?” Ian asked reflexively.

“For him,” she said. “For me, the end of a long journey. You should’ve read the damn letters!”

He just shook his head. “I didn’t want to know he was dead. Didn’t want to know he was still alive.”

“He was alive, comfortable, cared for and loved.” She nodded toward the letters. “I wrote you about him, but also about me—it was really hard at first, grieving Bobby as though he’d already gone—but then my life became almost normal. I got out with friends quite a bit. I took a couple of vacations—Bobby’s parents insisted on it. I wrote you all about them, don’t ask me why. Hell, I wrote you everything. Every stupid thing. Like you were my best friend, not Bobby’s.”