Captured(15)

I couldn’t, even if they’d let me. I’m tired. Hungry. My arm hurts. I realize I’m hooked to an IV.

“You’re severely malnourished and dehydrated,” I hear a voice say. It’s the same doctor, sweeping into the room. Middle-aged, buzzed military haircut, thick blond mustache. “Along with a whole host of bacterial infections, marked vitamin C deficiency….”

He takes a seat on a plastic chair. “But all that is easy to fix.” He taps my temple gently with his pen, then my chest. “It’s the psychological and emotional damage I’m most worried about.”

I nod. He’s right, and I know it. The freak-out over the letter proved as much to me.

“You’re going to the San Antonio Army Medical Center for a while. They’ll get you back to normal physically, as well as helping you reintegrate socially.” He brushes a fingertip across his mustache. “You’ve been through a hell of an ordeal, Corporal West. You’ll need time to heal, emotionally, mentally, and physically.”

I nod again.

“In the meantime….” He reaches into the pocket of his lab coat, hands me my letter. “How in the hell did you manage to hold on to this all that time?”

I shrug. “I made a promise.”

He nods as if he could possibly understand. “I see. Well, tend to your own well-being first, okay?”

“Yes, sir. I will, sir.”

My own well-being. I don’t even know what that means. I should be dead. Should’ve died with my unit. With Tom. Instead of Tom. But I’m here, and I feel nothing but lost and disconnected, as if all these totally normal people who were once my service brothers and sisters are a circle I can’t penetrate, as if I’m an outsider looking in. Even hearing English is disorienting.

I find myself whispering under my breath: “I’ve gone in circles over this a million times in my head. I’ve nearly told you so many times. But I just can’t. It’ll make it harder for you to leave, and I know it’s hard enough as it is. It’ll make it harder for me if I told you in person. You’re going to be mad at me for not telling you. I know, and I’m sorry. But this is just the only way that makes sense to me.” The lie of omission. The truth I withheld from a dying man. The guilt burning like a hot coal in the darkest corners of my being.

“Tell her…she’s my everything. Those words.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“Swear.”

“I swear. On my soul, I swear.”

I hear it. Hear his voice. Am I crazy? Did the three years of captivity make me legit f*cking crazy? Maybe. Probably. All I know is, I swore on my soul.

Fuck my own well-being.

I made a vow.





CHAPTER 6

REAGAN





Houston, Texas, 2010





“I’m sorry, Mrs. Barrett, but we have to deny your loan application at this time. You simply don’t have the minimum credit score or income requirements. Again, I do apologize, but those are the rules. I didn’t make them — I just have to follow them.” The banker is a young woman, maybe twenty-five, put-together, coiffured auburn hair, perfect makeup, slim pencil skirt and sensible blazer. Snooty, but polite.

I want to cry but can’t give her the satisfaction. “I see. Well…thank you for your time.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Barrett. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

I shake my head, let a wriggling Tommy slide off my lap to his feet. “No.”

The young woman lifts her shoulders and clasps her hands in front of her, leans down toward Tommy, talking to him in that squeaky, shrill, horrible voice clueless adults use on children. “Would you like a sucker? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Sucker!”

A sucker? Really? He’s supposed to be asleep right now, and I was counting on him taking a nap on the way home so I could gather my frazzled emotions. And this bitch is handing him a basketful of Dum-Dums. He takes three, rips the wrapper off one, and shoves it in his mouth. Glee lights his features.

“I go’ a thucker, Mama!”

“I see that, sweetie.” I level a glare at the girl. “Wasn’t that nice of her, to give you a sucker without asking me first? Sure was thoughtful.”

The girl makes an innocent ooops, who-me? expression.

“I go’ four, Mama, see?” Tommy holds up the two remaining, wrapped suckers.

“You mean two, Tommy. One, two.” I reach for them. “But I think one’s enough, don’t you?”

“No. How ’bout two?”

“How about one, the one you got in your mouth?” I take the two extra suckers, which elicits screaming and stomping from Tommy.

“NO! TWO! TWO!”

I could throttle the prim little banker bitch. Deny me a loan, my last hope for keeping out of debt, and then give my toddler a sucker?

“FINE.” I give him the treats back, too close to snapping to argue or deal with his tantrum. “Fine, Tommy. Okay. Okay.”

“Fank you, Mama. You so nice.” He grins a purple sugar-slimed smile, tucks his little hand into mine.

I lift him up to my hip, carry him out to the truck, and strap him into his car seat. He’s blinking hard, the sucker lodged firmly in his mouth, dripping purple drool from the corner of his mouth, which…yep, is now smeared all over my T-shirt. I drive home, the windows open to let some air into the superheated cab. The truck, a rust-and-blue 1972 F-150, was Tom’s, rebuilt from scratch during high school. Hank’s gone over the engine a dozen times to keep it running for me. He’s patched up the AC more than once, but it cuts out more than it works.