‘Oh,’ she says sounding disheartened, then bursts out laughing. ‘Don’t ruin my fantasy. I just mean,’ she goes on, ‘that I like the idea of there being one person that you’re meant to be with.’
‘Like a soulmate?’ I ask, cynicism dripping off my words. Miranda once told me that we were soulmates.
‘I guess so,’ Didi admits. ‘Like my parents. They’re still so in love after almost thirty years.’
‘So I guess from the way you’re talking you haven’t yet found your lobster?’
She pauses. ‘No, not yet.’
‘No boyfriend?’ I ask, surprised.
She pauses again. Shit. Why did I ask her that? It just came out. Now it looks like I’m trying to chat her up, or that I’m interested in her.
‘No. Not really,’ she says, as though she’s choosing her words carefully.
‘Not really?’ I press.
‘I’m sort of seeing someone,’ she says, then adds, ‘I think.’
‘You think?’
‘It’s complicated.’
When isn’t it?, I think to myself, simultaneously noting the stab of disappointment in my gut. So she has a boyfriend. Well, who cares?
Just then, and probably for the best, there’s a knock on the door.
‘Hi, Lieutenant.’
I recognize my surgeon by his Texan drawl. ‘Ahh,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know you had a visitor. Shall I come back later?’
‘Oh, no, it’s fine,’ I hear Didi say. ‘I need to get going.’ I hear her gathering up her things. Then suddenly I feel her hand come to rest on top of mine. She leaves it there for just a moment. ‘Bye, Walker,’ she says.
After she’s left, all I can feel is my hand. Even when the doc comes right in and pulls up a chair beside me and starts talking about the success of the operation and the full recovery he’s expecting, my focus is split between what he’s saying and the lingering pressure of her fingers against mine.
Didi
‘I’ll get a ride home with Dad,’ my mom tells me as she finishes putting on her lipstick in the rear-view mirror.
She’s come with me into work today for some appointments. The soldiers at the centre have nicknamed her Doctor Sex, which I think she secretly quite likes. She’s styled to the nines as usual, looking like she’s dressed to appear on Oprah rather than to host therapy sessions with wounded vets, but that’s part of my mom’s whole persona as the glamorous yet still approachable sex doctor. We look alike, my mom and I, both of us with heart-shaped faces and untameable hair, though hers is red and mine dark brown. I have her narrow chin and wide mouth too, but thankfully my dad’s straight nose.
When she’s done, she offers me the lipstick but I shake my head. Over the last two weeks I’ve stopped wearing as much make-up as I used to. I felt like it was drawing too much attention to me. And I was already drawing enough of that, thanks to being the daughter of Doctor Sex and for wearing too-tight scrubs on my first day. I still get a lot of looks, and I see the nudges and winks the soldiers give each other when I walk by, but the comments have lessened and I’m definitely being treated with more respect.
My mom says that when people see a good-looking woman, they naturally assume she can’t be intelligent so you have to fight that bit harder to prove you have a brain. This I have found to be disconcertingly true. Though on the upside, it also means people tend to underestimate you.
We get out the car and start walking towards the entrance of the building.
‘How are things with Zac?’ my mom asks.
I can feel my cheeks start to flush. Even the mention of his name makes my heart beat faster.
‘You like him,’ my mom states, smiling in amusement at my blushing.
I shrug, but can’t help smiling back. ‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘Well, yes, of course I like him.’ I think about the texts he keeps sending, always signed off with ‘xox’, and my stomach does another quick flutter.
‘Just be careful,’ she says. ‘He’s an actor, remember.’
I frown. What is she suggesting? That he’s not genuine? Or that I’m shallow enough to fall for fame over substance?
She links her arm through mine and squeezes my elbow. ‘Sweetheart,’ my mom says, ‘I just want you to be happy. You have a tendency to see only the good in people, and that’s a beautiful thing, but as your mom it makes me worry. He hurt you last time.’
‘He told me he never got my texts. He was away shooting.’
Even as I say it I realize how lame it sounds. My mom says nothing and we reach the door to the centre, but my mood is dampened. As I pull it open, I spot Walker sitting on a bench on the lawn, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. He’s on his own, and I wonder what he’s doing outside, all alone.
I hesitate, and my mom notices me staring at him. ‘Who’s that?’ she asks.
‘That’s Lieutenant Walker, the guy I told you about last week.’
My mom nods. ‘He looks lonely,’ she says, looking at me out the corner of her eye.
She’s right. He does look lonely. And about as approachable as a tornado. He seems wound tight, slouched low on the bench with his hands dug deep into his pockets, and though he’s wearing his bandages he looks like he’s glowering hard beneath them.
‘I’m going to go and see if he’s OK,’ I tell my mom.
She nods. ‘I’ll see you at home later.’
‘Bye,’ I say over my shoulder, already heading towards Walker.
I feel the need to tiptoe as I get close. ‘Hi,’ I say softly when I’m standing in front of him.
His head tilts up at the sound of my voice.
‘It’s Didi,’ I say, echoing his body language and shoving my hands deep into my pockets. Even though he can’t see me, I feel self-conscious around him, awkward and on edge.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he answers.
I frown. His tone is off. I thought I’d had a breakthrough with him the other day – that he’d let down some of his barriers – but now they seem to be back up. His voice is flat, as heavy as winter rain.
‘How are you doing?’ I ask.
He turns his head away from me as though he’s staring off into the distance, and doesn’t answer.
I bite my lip, unsure how to continue. He’s giving off clear signals that he wants me to go away, but something deep inside is telling me not to go anywhere. I sit down, tentatively, watching him closely for his reaction and instantly notice the way his body tenses. His jaw is locked and his nostrils are flaring. The muscles in his forearms are as taut as tripwires, as though his hands are clenched inside his pockets. I want to put my hand on his arm, wishing there was some way I could melt away the tension, but I don’t. It would be tantamount to trying to pet a growling Rottweiler.
He turns towards me briefly and then goes back to staring straight ahead. What can he see? Just endless blackness?
I don’t say anything, and the silence stretches out and wraps around us. At first I can see he’s agitated by it – his lips purse and he frowns; but then, after a minute or two, his body starts to slowly relax, the muscles in his arms unknot, and his shoulders slump inch by inch until he finally lets out a sigh. I let one out of my own, though a quieter one, and feel my own body relax alongside his. How is it that I pick up on his mood so much?
After five minutes of us sitting together in silence, me staring at the lake ahead of us and occasionally snatching glances his way, he speaks.
‘What’s in front of me?’ he asks.
I turn to look at him, not understanding the question.
He nods his chin at the view in front of us. Oh.
‘Here I am sitting on a bench, could be staring at a brick wall for all I know. Or a parking lot.’
‘You’re not. There’s a path to your left that leads into the building in one direction, and in the other direction it heads down to the lake.’
‘A lake?’
‘Yeah. There’s a lawn that goes for about a hundred metres, and then there’s a lake. It’s not a b
ig lake. Maybe two hundred metres across. I guess it’s more a pond than a lake.’
He nods. There’s another pause before he asks, ‘What colour’s the sky?’
I smile, but at the same time I feel a sharp tug in my heart. What must it be like to know you might never see the sky again, or colours?
I look upwards. ‘It’s blistering blue. Swimming-pool blue. Like someone’s poured chlorine into it.’
‘Is chlorine blue?’ he asks.
I laugh. ‘Actually, I have no idea. But the sky is very blue today. And there’s not a single cloud.’
He tilts his face up to the sun and I find myself staring at him, at the hard line of his jaw and the soft curve of his mouth. I look quickly away.
A loud bang from the side of the building makes me jump. Glancing over my shoulder, I see a couple of maintenance guys throwing sacks of garbage into a dumpster. I turn back to Walker and see that he’s sitting bolt upright on the bench, his hands white-knuckled, gripping the edge of the seat. He’s breathing hard, almost hyperventilating, and his face has turned ghostly white.
Without thinking, I put my hand on his arm. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask.
He throws my hand off and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and sinking his head into his hands. ‘I’m fine,’ he mumbles, but clearly he isn’t fine. The noise must have thrown him. It’s a classic post-traumatic stress response – hyper-reactivity to noises or smells, anything that triggers a memory of the event, in Walker’s case probably the explosion.
I scowl over my shoulder at the maintenance men and then, before I can stop myself, I put my hand on Walker’s back, between his shoulder blades. He doesn’t throw me off this time. Instead I feel his muscles harden, then relax, slowly. I stroke his back until his breathing calms and he sits up straight.
He takes a deep breath in and I let my hand drop from his back.
He nods a little as if to himself, a nod that I take to mean thank you, even though he hasn’t said a word. And even though he can’t see me, I nod back.
‘Yo.’
I look up. It’s José jogging towards us in his white scrubs. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘I got caught up in something. You ready to come back inside? You get enough vitamin D?’
He nods at me. ‘Hey, how you doing, Didi?’
I smile. ‘I’m good.’
Walker gets slowly to his feet. I stand too. He looks so vulnerable with the bandages on, and all I want to do, what I have to fight against doing, is hug him.
‘Bye,’ Walker says, turning his head briefly in my direction.
‘Bye,’ I say as José starts leading him back inside the building. They stop a few feet away from me and Walker turns and looks back towards me.
‘Thanks,’ he says, and I hear the note of embarrassment in his voice.
A lump rises up my throat. ‘You’re welcome,’ I answer.
Walker
Some days are worse than others. Some days I’m not just lying in a coffin hearing someone shovelling dirt on top of the lid, some days I’m buried miles underground and nothing reaches me, not even sound, just the terrifying roar of silence.
I keep having nightmares that wake me, ones where I’m screaming louder even than Dodds, ones that stay painted on the backs of my eyelids for the rest of the day so it feels as if there’s no divide whatsoever between day and night. Everything blends into one. I’m back there, in Helmand, hearing the scream of a bird of prey – a solitary note that hangs in the air and that acts as a catalyst, a starter whistle, for the beginning of the end, for the tearing apart of machine-gun fire.
And then the images fly thick and fast like bullets and there’s no way to dodge a path through them. All I can do is stand there and let them slam into me: a boot lying in the road containing a foot, shorn-off bone gleaming white, a smouldering fragment of twisted-up metal, a bloodied tourniquet . . .
José forced me up out of bed and outside this morning, telling me if I didn’t get some fresh air and some exercise he would have to get the doc to pay me another visit. They’ve already prescribed me antidepressants, but I’m not taking them, and the last thing I wanted was another visit from the doctor.
José parked me on the bench, and that’s where Didi found me.
‘You feeling better?’ José asks as he leads me back to my room.
‘Yeah,’ I say to him. And for once it isn’t a lie.
My first reaction when Didi sat down next to me was to ask her to leave me the hell alone, but I bit it back, not wanting to be rude to her again. I didn’t feel like talking at all, but she seemed to sense that.
I wonder how many other people I could sit in silence with. My mother calls me every other day or so and never stops talking, never waits to hear my answers to her questions, just rattles on and on. Maybe it’s nervousness, not being sure what to say to the blind guy. Or maybe it’s the fact that silence is anathema to most people.
I’m constantly surrounded by noise here, by people asking me how I’m doing or handing out diagnoses or trying to get me to open up; by television and radio and the constant chatter of visitors and doctors; by the screams and explosions in my head. And what I mostly crave and can never find is silence. What I don’t want, however, is the savage loneliness that usually accompanies it. It’s good to know you can have company in silence – that you don’t have to be in it alone.
I just wish I hadn’t reacted to that bang. Jesus, Didi must think I’m pathetic. I wish I could explain to her that with the sun on my face and her description of the sky I was already back there on that mountain road, and the bang – whatever might have caused it – to me was the sound of a car exploding.
I wish I could tell her, but how would I find the words? How would I ever describe to her what happened? Why would I want her or anyone else for that matter to have those images in their head? And mostly, why would I ever want her to know how I failed, how all those deaths are my fault?
José takes me to the chair in my room and leaves me. I sit in a slump. I know by now that it’s in front of the window. At least now I can picture the view. I think about the last session I had with Doctor Monroe when he tried to encourage me to think of the future and start planning for it, but I push his words away. What future? What life?
I still haven’t moved from my place when a few hours later I hear a familiar footstep out in the hallway. My heart rate speeds up and I catch myself holding my breath. There’s a quiet knock on my door.
‘Hi,’ Didi says.
‘Hi,’ I say, turning my head in her direction.
‘I just wanted to see you,’ she says. ‘I mean, see how you were doing.’
‘I’m OK,’ I say. Better for hearing her voice, but I can’t tell her that.
‘I just wanted to put something on the iPod,’ she says. ‘It’s something I thought you might like to listen to.’
I nod, but can’t summon the energy to ask what it is. I’m tired. Everything today seems to take monumental amounts of energy.
I hear her crossing to the bed and then opening her laptop and switching it on. A minute or so later I hear her snap the lid shut and I start trying to think of things to say to make her stay, but I can’t think of anything. My conversation skills are limited, my brain too foggy to come up with anything.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’
I nod. Stay. Please stay.
She doesn’t move, and for a moment I think that maybe she’s heard my silent plea and is going to come over and put her hand on my arm or on my back like she did earlier. She takes a step closer, and my whole body is suddenly tuned to her, to her presence in the room.
Her hand falls on my shoulder. Beneath the bandages I squeeze my eyes tightly shut. I will her to stay like that. Her hand feels like an anchor, something holding me, pulling me away from the hard, narrow edge.
I sit there, lips pressed together, words gathering behind them, all jumbled, nonsense, the essence of which is thank you, please stay, please don’t go. br />
But she doesn’t hear them, can’t hear them, and after thirty seconds her hand drops away and she’s gone.
Didi
I’m halfway home when I realize I’ve left my laptop back at the centre. Damn. I need it. I have a paper to finish. I turn the car around and head back to the base, checking the time. It’s close on eleven p.m. I stayed late because I wanted to observe a cognitive behavioural therapy session, and then I helped the art therapist pack up her materials.
The parking lot is empty when I pull in and I hope it’s not too late. I think I left the computer in my dad’s office, which might be locked – he went home hours ago as he had a date with my mom – but it’s open and the laptop isn’t there. I scour my memory, and finally remember that I left it in Walker’s room.
I head down in the elevator to his floor, hoping he isn’t asleep. As soon as the doors open, I hear the soft murmur of a radio at the nurse’s station, and then the sound of talking and what sounds like crying coming from Dodds’ room. I pause for a moment, holding my breath and listening, before hurrying off. I don’t want them to think I’m eavesdropping.
The light is off in Walker’s room, but the TV is on and an eerie blue light is escaping out of the door, which is ajar. I peek inside. Walker looks to be asleep. He’s lying on his side with his back to me. I can see my iPod on the nightstand and my laptop still on the floor, leaning against the chair leg.
I step inside the room quietly, heart pounding, and start tiptoeing towards it.
‘No!’
I spin around, my heart slamming into my ribs.
Walker has rolled onto his back and is thrashing his head back and forth. ‘No!’ he shouts again. ‘Get down!’ He mumbles something I can’t make out and then a howling sob bursts out of him. ‘Sorry . . . Sorry,’ he sobs. Tears start soaking his bandage. His hands are fisted tightly in the sheets. Before I can stop myself, I cross to the bed and take one of his hands in mine.