This is One Moment

  THIS IS

  ONE

  MOMENT

  Mila Gray

  PAN BOOKS

  For John

  Contents

  Prologue

  Didi

  Walker

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  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Death is the one great certainty in life. That’s what my dad used to say.

  Nothing else is certain. Not love. Not happiness. Not your health. If you’re lucky enough to be gifted with these things, which isn’t a sure thing by any shot, they can all be taken from you in an instant, like toys snatched by a jealous child.

  Or maybe that’s not true. Maybe sometimes the signs are there and you just miss them. Maybe it’s actually your fault if things are taken from you. Maybe love slipped through your fingers because you didn’t seize it with both hands when you had the chance. Maybe happiness was stolen from you because you thought you didn’t deserve it so you pushed it away. Maybe you lost your health because you ignored the glint of sunlight on a windshield.

  The hallway echoes with my footsteps – a hollow sound that matches my heartbeat. The ward is dark but for the emergency exit lights on the far door and the soft glow of a reading lamp at the empty nurse’s station.

  I walk past his room and my step falters. The door is ajar. The bed stripped bare. I stop and stare at it. The ground tips beneath me, and the world upends briefly before righting itself once again. I lean against the wall, breathing hard, staring at the plastic-covered mattress. How can he be dead?

  My brain can’t compute. Everything hurts so much, as if my ribs have been ripped open and my insides are being torn out and shredded in front of me. I can’t stop screaming. Though no noise makes it past my lips.

  He’s dead. And it’s my fault.

  A noise startles me just then and I spin around. The hallway is empty. But then I hear it again: a low sobbing noise, like someone is crying and trying to muffle the sound.

  I take a few steps down the hall and notice a light seeping out from beneath a door. I draw in a breath. I had thought the ward was deserted. For one delirious, exquisite moment the thought crosses my mind that it’s him. And my heart lifts, swells, almost bursts at the idea but then reason kicks in, tells me it can’t possibly be, that he’s gone, that he won’t ever be coming back. Still, I reach for the handle and push open the door.

  What I see is this: skin, a solid wall of muscle. Then I see her; her head thrown back in abandon, her lips parted and her eyes squeezed shut as though in pain. His hands are on her hips, gripping them tight, possessively, and she’s straddling him, her arms around his neck, hands knotted in his hair.

  For a moment I can’t reconcile what it is I’m seeing, and then, when the pieces finally fit together, I stumble backwards in shock, banging into the door.

  They startle at the noise and her eyes flash open. She sees me. He turns to look over his shoulder. I stare at him, mouth open. He stares back at me, his expression as horrified as mine.

  I turn and run.

  Nothing is certain.

  Everything can change in a heartbeat.

  Didi

  TEN WEEKS EARLIER . . .

  ‘Grumpy, Moody, Sleepy,’ José says, pointing to each of the doors in turn.

  I swallow. My first day isn’t going so well. I’ve already had to run the gauntlet of a dozen half-dressed marines cat-calling me when I walked through the wrong door and into the male locker rooms. That sounds like a porn fantasy, and normally Jessa and I would fall about laughing at something like that happening, but in reality it wasn’t in the least bit funny.

  I knew that it was going to be a tough assignment and that being the boss’s daughter wasn’t going to buy me any favours, but . . . I wasn’t expecting this either.

  Just then an alarm sounds, startling me. José takes off. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t move,’ he yells over his shoulder.

  I stand there in the middle of the hallway, staring at the posters on the walls of marines in triumphant poses with words like ‘Inspire’, ‘Overcome’ and ‘Thrive’ boldly printed across them. The centre is new and shiny and full of platitudes like this. Personally I’m not sure I’d want to see a picture of a grinning marine running to victory if I’d just had my leg shot off, but I’m not an interior decorator, only a trainee psychologist.

  Everything is state of the art (apart from the art, it would seem), including the swimming pool that’s used for therapy. Currently two hundred wounded marines and other army personnel are being treated at the centre for a range of issues, from physical injuries right through to mental illness.

  This is the first day of my summer internship and I’m being given a tour. The pool was the first stop, the locker room the second. I saw more in those few startled seconds than I think a tour of the entire facilities will give me – an array of limbless bodies, men missing legs and arms. But clearly not their sense of humour. My cheeks are still burning at some of the comments and suggestions made by the guys back in the changing room.

  ‘Damn it!’ someone yells, making me jump.

  I scan the corridor. The cursing came from the room on my right.

  ‘Damn!’

  I inch towards the door and peer around it. There’s a guy on the bed with a bandage wrapped around his eyes. One arm is in a sling. A tray of food sits on the table in front of him and he’s struggling with one arm and no sight to open what looks like a carton of yoghurt. Frustration seems to be getting the better of him.

  I take a step inside the room. He reaches for a spoon, fumbling on the tray and knocking off a dish that clatters to the ground, spraying cereal all over the floor and his sheets.

  ‘Here –’ I start to say, but he lets out a roar, stabs the spoon through the lid of the pot and next thing I know I’m splattered head to foot in a cold shower of strawberry yoghurt.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, feeling it drip from my hair onto my blouse.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he growls, raising his head.

  ‘Um,’ I say, blinking yoghurt out of my eyes. ‘My name’s Didi. Didi Monroe.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ he snaps.

  ‘Getting a yoghurt facial, it would seem,’ I mumble, wiping my face with the back of my arm. Great, I just blow-dried my hair. I’m going to need to go and take a shower now and find some n
ew clothes to wear.

  ‘Are you a nurse?’ the guy asks, scowling in my direction.

  I shake my head and then, realizing he can’t see me, say, ‘no.’

  ‘Well, what are you doing in here, then?’

  I blink at him in astonishment. ‘I heard you shouting. I came to see if I could help.’

  ‘I don’t need your help. I don’t need any help,’ he shouts. ‘Just get out!’

  I’m speechless. Totally speechless. What an asshole. ‘Fine,’ I stammer. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy your breakfast.’

  I walk out into the corridor, cursing under my breath, still dripping yoghurt. This day can’t get any worse. And then I look up and see a poster of a gurgling baby with the words ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you’ written across it in Comic Sans.

  José jogs back along the corridor just then and taking one look at me standing in a puddle of pink yoghurt, his eyes widen. ‘Oh shit,’ he says, trying not to laugh and failing. ‘You met Grumpy, I take it.’

  Half an hour later I exit the bathroom wearing a very unflattering pair of green scrubs that are one size too big. I spent a good ten minutes trying to style them into something that doesn’t make me look like a swamp monster and failed. The pants are so long I’ve had to roll them up at the ankle, and the top is long in the arms but strains against my boobs. I’ve put on lashings of lipstick, hoping to divert attention away from my chest, but I can tell by the look on José’s face that it isn’t working. I may as well wave goodbye to my dignity for the day.

  ‘You’re wearing the shit out of those scrubs,’ José tells me, laughing. ‘You’re going to make a lot of wounded warriors very happy today.’

  I shoot him a dark look, but the grin has now taken over his face and I find myself laughing too.

  José is twenty-nine, an army medic who’s already done three tours in Iraq and has now transferred to the centre, where he’s in charge of this ward. He’s trained in physiotherapy and he also seems to have been trained in positive mental attitude. Either that or he’s been around all these posters for far too long. He’s been given the dubious responsibility of showing me around.

  ‘So,’ he says, ‘you want to continue with the tour?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘I’m sure there’s some ritual humiliation I’m missing out on. We’d better hurry up and find it.’

  José nods his head in the direction of the doors. ‘Right, let’s go.’ He checks the time. ‘We’ve got half an hour before I take you to your first patient.’

  I get a buzz in my stomach followed by a swirl of nausea when he says the word patient. I’ve never had a patient before. I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to have patients. What if they see right through me? What if they figure out I have no clue what I’m doing? No, I remind myself. I have a degree in psychology. I’m studying for a doctorate. I’m smart. I’m capable. I can do this.

  ‘Don’t be nervous,’ José says as he holds the door open for me. ‘They’re big teddy bears underneath.’ We pass Grumpy’s room. José hesitates. ‘Well, most of them.’

  I glance quickly inside. An orderly is clearing up the cereal on the floor while the guy in the bed with the bandages sits facing the window, his jaw pulsing angrily. Teddy bear wouldn’t be the term I’d use to describe that one. Grizzly bear, maybe.

  ‘What happened to him?’ I whisper as soon as we’re past the open door.

  ‘That’s Walker,’ José says, still walking. ‘He was with Alpha team. Youngest lieutenant in the marines, I hear. Nearly everyone in his unit was killed in an ambush.’

  I come to a standstill. ‘Oh my God.’

  José glances back over his shoulder at me. ‘Yeah, six men died. Only him and one other guy survived.’

  Guilt sweeps over me that I thought he was an asshole.

  ‘Welcome to the realities of war,’ José says before striding off towards the elevator.

  Walker

  They say it’s normal for your other senses to heighten when you lose your sight. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know the smell of burning flesh clings to me. It’s there all the time, every breath I take acrid with it, making me want to gag. Even now, with the chemical stench of floor cleaner in my nostrils, I can still smell it.

  They took the remains of my breakfast tray away and asked if I wanted another, but I shook my head. I don’t want breakfast. I want my fucking eyesight back. I want my life back the way it was.

  I lean against the pillows and turn to what I guess is the window, but it could just as well be a wall I’m staring at. I’ve given up trying to picture things. What’s the point? The only images that fill my mind are the ones from that day. They play on a loop in my head. There’s no pause button. No way to record over it. That’s all I see. That’s all I think I’ll ever see . . .

  . . . A blue sky unmarred by a single cloud. A broken-down, rusting car on the side of the road. Jonas glancing over his shoulder, nineteen years old – too young, too nervous – looking at me for reassurance. Me yelling at him to stay frosty. We’re on foot patrol in Helmand province. The most dangerous territory in Afghanistan. We cannot afford to be less than one hundred per cent focused.

  The tension crackles between us like radio static. My breathing’s shallow, my attention on the surrounding countryside, dry and dead as a mummified corpse. There’s silence all around, gravelike silence, rent only by the cry of a bird of prey riding the currents far above us. Something’s not right. I can sense it. My intuition’s riding off the scale. Something about the car and the way it’s sitting on the side of the road with all its doors flung open bothers me. Sunlight glints off the windshield and for a moment I’m blinded, both by the light and by the realization of what it means. It’s not the sunlight blinding me, it’s the reflection from a rifle sight.

  I open my mouth to yell out, call my men back, but Lutter has reached the car and my command is obliterated by the roar of an AK-47. Bullets start to pock the car. The windshield shatters. We’re under attack. My men hit the ground, dive for cover, Sanders behind a rock, Sanchez and Lutter behind the car.

  While half my brain struggles to compute – This can’t be happening. This is happening – the other half of my brain is already pinpointing the location of the shooters, estimating wind direction, taking aim. I start firing back, lying flat on the ground, bullets whipping past my shoulder, smacking into the dirt all around me. There’s more than one shooter. We’re being attacked from several directions. It’s an ambush. I call in our position. Yell for back-up. I can’t hear anything – no roger that– over the noise of machine-gun fire. Did they hear? Are they coming? How long do we have to hold them off for?

  Beside me Harrison goes down, pitching face first into the dirt. Bailey – loud-mouthed, twenty years old, on his second tour – is lying in the centre of the road, clutching his leg, screaming a high-pitched scream that cuts out in the next second as a bullet slices through his windpipe.

  Heart on fire, adrenaline scoring acid through my veins, blood drumming in my ears, I ignore the dancing bullets and sprint towards him, lace my arm beneath his shoulders and drag him back off the road, down into a ditch. His eyes roll in his head, big with fear, bright with pain. He makes a choking, gurgling sound and blood foams over his lips. My hands are hot with it, slippery with it. I fumble for the tourniquet on my belt.

  Taylor, the unit medic, is at my side. He jabs a morphine shot into Bailey’s thigh and snatches the tourniquet from my hand. I roll onto my stomach, poke my head above the ditch and do a head count.

  Sanchez and Lutter are still sheltering behind the car, taking turns to spot and return fire. Sanders, barely concealed behind a boulder, makes a mad dash for it, out into the open, before throwing himself down in the dirt beside Sanchez. He’s opting to ride out the ambush with them, behind the solid wall of metal. Oh shit. With a burst of clarity, I see the plan.

  The car. They’re trying to get us all to shelter behind the car. I scan the hillside where the gunmen are shelteri
ng and catch a glimmer of sunlight bouncing off metal. Rocket launcher.

  I stand up, my knee jolts out, a hot eruption of pain behind my kneecap. ‘Sanchez!’ I holler. ‘Get back!’

  I hit my radio button.

  Sanchez turns to look at me.

  ‘The car!’ I yell.

  I see the flare of understanding cross his face, and then it’s gone, obliterated by a wall of white light that opens up the sky, rips apart the earth beneath my feet and sends me hurtling head first into an abyss.

  I’m still falling.

  ‘Hey, Lieutenant!’

  It’s Sanchez. He always bangs his wheelchair into the door to announce his arrival. I hear the electric whir of the chair as he manoeuvres his way into the room uninvited, and grit my teeth. It’s not that I don’t appreciate his company – it’s better than listening to Fox News all day and the endless bullshit from the stream of neurologists, orthopaedic surgeons and trauma counsellors that flow through my room; it’s just that Sanchez is relentlessly positive. The guy lost a leg and an arm and you’d think he’d won a season ticket to see the Lakers. I don’t know what to do with that.

  ‘You seen the hot new intern?,’ he starts before stopping abruptly. ‘Oh shit. Sorry, dude.’

  Maybe if I ignore him he’ll go away.

  ‘She’s Doctor Monroe’s daughter, I hear. You should check out the bazungas on . . . shit. Sorry.’

  I grimace at him.

  ‘She’s hot, that’s all,’ he goes on.

  Hot. Right. That’s a pointless descriptor for me these days.

  ‘She looks like Vanessa Hudgens, only with bigger – you know . . .’

  I have no idea who Vanessa Hudgens is, and even if I did I couldn’t care less.

  ‘I don’t know what Doctor Monroe’s thinking, letting her into this zoo. It’s like throwing fresh meat to hungry raptors.’

  Someone clears their throat in the doorway. I turn my head.

  ‘Sanchez?’

  It’s José, the medic guy who’s in charge on this floor. ‘You got an appointment over in prosthetics. You’re late.’

  ‘All right, all right. I gotta go,’ Sanchez says to me. ‘They’re fitting me for my bionic arm. I’m going to make Robert Downey Junior in his Iron Man suit weep with envy. See you later.’