“Rick was only seventeen,” Jack inserted.
“And he did everything he could for me. You can’t believe the things he did. He protected me from the popular girls who made fun of me, pointed at me, tortured me. He got in a fight because some guy said something mean about me and Rick defended me. He didn’t want to get married, but I wanted to so bad because I was scared of being alone, of my mom and aunt taking the baby away from me….” She looked up at Jack and smiled. “So he ran away with me. Trying to give me anything I needed to feel safe.”
Jack smiled back, stroking her hair. “You didn’t get too far,” he said, remembering. He’d gone after them, brought them back.
Her fingers were on that small diamond again, running it back and forth along the chain around her neck. “You know what I want to do? I want to hitchhike to San Diego and stand outside his hospital room and yell and cry and beg.”
“Ew,” Jack said.
“I want to, but I won’t. I can see he doesn’t want me right now and that would only make things worse. I just can’t think what I should do.”
“Did you ever check out those support groups?”
She sighed heavily. “Jack, if you’re not married to the Marine, no one has any time for you. And that’s that.”
“I thought the people in the group would…”
“Would bend the rules?” she asked. “No. Jack, I think I’m on my own this time.”
He smiled and brushed her hair across her pretty brow. He couldn’t relate to this. There was no special girl from years back that, if he saw her again, he’d regret letting get away. And he wasn’t even sure Rick and Liz were meant to be, despite all they’d been through together. But they were, individually, such incredible kids. So strong. They shouldn’t have to be that strong at their tender ages.
Could fate throw any more at them?
“Nah, you’re not on your own. Not while I’m around. Not while Mel’s around. I’ll mention to Mel that you’re not getting any support. If anyone has ideas, it’s Mel.” He didn’t feel it was his job to get them together. But if there was anything he could do to get them through this dark patch so each of them could carry on without terrible damage, he’d damn sure try.
Jack and Liz flew from Frankfurt to Kennedy International to Denver to Redding. Before heading out of Redding to Eureka, they visited a cell-phone store where Jack bought a phone. There was no reception in the mountains; they relied on pagers and landlines. But there was plenty of reception in San Diego. He FedExed the phone to Rick, to Lance Corporal Richard Sudder. He scrawled a note:
Just so I can reach you. So you can reach me.
And anyone else you want to talk to. Jack.
Then he took Liz home to Eureka. He carried her suitcase up to the porch for her and it was there that she wrapped her arms around him, laid her head on his chest and cried. “Thank you for everything you did for me. For Rick. I’ll pay you back somehow.”
He lifted her chin. “Liz, I did it because I thought it was an important thing to do. It wasn’t a loan. Forget it.”
“But I think you wasted your money.”
“Hey. We needed to see him alive. Think about it—alive and pissed off is so much better than what it could’ve been. Let’s stick with that. And move ahead the best we can.” He paused. “He needs time.”
Then he drove the rest of the way to Virgin River.
Normally, when he had dealt with something confusing or emotional, the one person he wanted to talk to, be with, would be Mel. She had this uncanny knack for zeroing in on a problem, cutting through the flab and attacking the situation with reality, honesty, wisdom.
This time he went to his bar and looked for Preacher. They’d been to Iraq together twice and had been through some ugly stuff. Preacher had been wounded pretty bad the first time and Jack had carried him about a mile to get him to medical transport, but Preacher had come away with all his parts.
The bar was quiet; a couple of guys were sharing a pitcher and playing cribbage, so Jack went back to the kitchen where Preach was slicing and dicing. “Hey,” he said.
“Jack! Whoa, man. When did you get back?”
“Seconds ago. I need to go over to the clinic, see Mel and the kids.”
“How is he?”
Jack shook his head. “He’s a goddamn mess. Hurt, pissed, so angry, isolating, doesn’t want a friend, doesn’t want help, barely acknowledged that Liz and I flew across the fucking Atlantic to carry his body home.”
Unbelievably, Preacher smiled. “Good. He’s getting stage one covered.”
“Stage one?”
“Yeah, maybe one and two. Anger and denial. He’s gonna have to grieve the leg, the war wounds, the time he lost from his young life. There’s probably going to be five stages.”
Jack leaned on the worktable, his brow wrinkled. “How do you know this shit?”
“I looked it up on the computer. You know, after you figure out e-mail, there are other things you can do on that computer.”
“So what’s next for him?” Jack asked.
“I’ll have to get my cheat sheet, but it could be bargaining—I’ll never commit another sin if you just let me live. That kind of thing. We’ve all done that. All that’s really important is—it ends in acceptance.”
Jack straightened. “How long does it take?”
“Well, there’s the thing,” Preacher said. “It depends on the person. Rick? He’s pretty tough. It could stretch out. He doesn’t let go easy.”
“Christ,” Jack said, running a hand along the back of his neck. “Why do I always think I know you?”
“I dunno, Jack,” he answered with a shrug. “But Rick—we’re just at angry? And his body, his health—that’s under control?”
“He’s still in a lot of pain, on drugs for it, shipping to San Diego as we speak. Balboa. NMCSD. He’ll heal up the stump and start physical therapy. They could keep him until he gets his leg or farm him out to some smaller facility.”
“It has to heal and shrink. They can’t fit him until it’s ready—no swelling, no redness, no tenderness. They’ll get that stump in a shrinker, looks like a skull cap kind of. It’s real important, before they fit the prosthesis, that it’s not swollen or anything. They’ll work with him in PT to avoid muscle contractures and desensitize that stump to get beyond the phantom pain. A lot of physical therapists will put a healthy, healed stump in a bowl of crunchy dry cornflakes and grind it around to kind of teach the nerves that the leg ends there.”
Jack’s eyes grew wide. “How do you know this shit?” Preacher just tilted his head and smirked. “You looked it up, I know.”
“Well, I wanted to understand the news you brought home.”
“And how is the news?” Jack asked.
Preacher shrugged. “Pretty much on target.”
Rick began his stay in San Diego in the Naval Medical Center orthopedics ward, which he shared with other young men recovering from recent injuries. While there, he was evaluated for his pain management and physical therapy program. Before the end of the week, he was having PT every day and had been issued both a walker and wheelchair, but he had little interest in leaving the ward.
He assessed the condition of the other patients and came to the conclusion there was no predicting how people got through trauma like this. Some were downright cheerful in spite of terrible pain, some were horribly depressed. He judged himself to be right about in the middle—neither cheerful nor catatonic with gloom. Once they started slacking off on the narcotics, it was harder to sleep. It was like trying to catch a nap in an amphitheater—there was always noise, light, movement. There were cries in the night, sometimes from a breakout of pain, sometimes from nightmares. One guy cried for his mother in his sleep. Moans, groans and, unbelievably, even laughter punctuated the darkness. Rick was afraid to succumb to sleep lest he scream and expose the depth of his vulnerability.
Once the cell phone had arrived, there was already a message waiting—Jack. “Rick, give me a call when you get the phone so I know we’re operational. Call anyone you like—there’s no limit on the minutes.” Rick didn’t call him. He kept thinking he would pretty soon, but after a few days the phone twittered and the caller ID signaled Jack. This time the message was more commanding. “Rick, if you don’t call me back, I’m going to drive down there to be sure you’re getting by all right.”
Trapped, he returned the call. “Sorry,” he said. “I just haven’t felt like talking.”
“Understandable,” Jack said. “We don’t have to talk long. How are they treating you? Tell me what’s going on.”
Rick sighed. This wasn’t what he had in mind. But, it was better to have Jack on a phone than in his face, so he’d have to play along. “I’m still in the hospital, moving to barracks with other PT patients tomorrow. I get around in a chair or walker. Mostly the chair because it’s easier. Another week or two and I’ll get a preparatory prosthesis and start walking.”
“Preparatory?”
“The first step before the real fake leg.”
“Ah. How are the other guys there doing? Meeting anyone you can, you know, talk to?”
Rick was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Not a lot of laughs around here, Jack.”
“Maybe that’ll get better when you’re in barracks.”
“Yeah, maybe. Listen, I’m pretty tired….”
“Really? Haven’t had enough rest yet?” When Rick didn’t respond, Jack said, “Okay, buddy, I’ll let you get some rest. I’ll call tomorrow.”
One thing about the barracks, the men were in various stages of recovery. They weren’t all newly injured like Rick. One guy was practicing tying his shoes with two prosthetic arms while another was strapping on his preparatory prosthesis in the morning and using only a cane to assist him with balance. But the routine was different here—no more food on a tray or bath out of a basin at the bedside. Here it was a mess hall and showers. Rick had to admit, a real shower felt damn good, even if he did have to have his stump wrapped because the wound wasn’t completely healed. And he sat on a stool in the shower to be safe. But getting himself to the cafeteria for a gang meal wasn’t his idea of a good time.
There were guys here who played poker, passed around pictures of their wives/girls/kids as well as magazines—mostly porn. “Gotta keep the pipes clear,” one guy laughed as he tossed a nudie magazine on Rick’s bed. There were men in barracks with no hope of ever clearing the pipes, paraplegics who’d lost movement and feeling from the waist down. Rick knew that if his brain and emotions were engaged right, he’d see they had it worse and experience some gratitude. But his head was tangled around powerful feelings of doom and an overwhelming sense of loss that he couldn’t talk about. Hell, he couldn’t even understand it. He just felt it so deep, as if everything had slipped away from him and couldn’t be rescued—the life he’d had before war, the body he’d had, the dreams and goals.
He’d like to talk about it but just couldn’t bring himself to. Liz called a couple of times and even though he didn’t pick up, he listened to her messages over and over. She loved him, she was praying every day that he was doing okay in rehab, that he was feeling more positive.
He’d always been able to talk to Liz. Even though they’d started out as lovers, right out of the chute, they had always been best friends. They’d been thrown into the deep end of the pool, with pregnancy, fetal death, war. They’d never have stayed together so long if they hadn’t been able to talk and write about their issues. They held on to each other through so much confusion and fear, got each other through not just by talking, but by listening. Jack had taught him that: Don’t worry about saying the right thing, Rick. Let Liz tell you what scares her and tell her you won’t abandon her—that’s all she really wants from you. Had Jack talked to Liz? Advised her? Because it seemed as if she’d always done that for him, too.