The Last Hour

  “I want to propose a toast to two people who mean everything to me and Dylan,” she said quietly. And I froze. She turned to me and said, “Most of you know that when we were growing up, we moved. A lot. Every three years we were some place new. I remember living in Moscow, and before that Washington, and before that China. So until I went to high school I didn’t get a chance to have friends who stayed around. Or anyone else my age who really knew what I was going through. But there was one person I could always turn to. Whenever I stubbed my toe. Or needed help with my homework. Or cried over a boy. She was always, always there. My big sister, Carrie.”

  She sniffed, and then said, “Most of you also probably don’t know that a year and a half ago, Dylan was badly injured in Afghanistan. And, as he’s told me the story, the person who bandaged his wounds, and made sure he got to safety, was Ray Sherman.”

  She looked at Ray, and I could see tears in her eyes, and they were in mine too, as she said, “Dylan said that as he was losing consciousness, nearly bleeding to death in a remote region of Afghanistan, the only thing he could hear was Ray’s voice. Telling him it was going to be okay. And not just in war, but at home, Ray has been ... a gift. He helped bring me and Dylan back together when I didn’t think that could ever happen. And for that, I’ll always love you, Ray.”

  I grabbed a napkin and wiped tears off my face, because tears were running freely and it was completely screwing up my makeup.

  Alex turned to the crowd and said, “Carrie and Ray are two of the most selfless people I’ve ever met. They both said they didn’t want to ruin my wedding day with their announcement, because they thought it might overshadow it.”

  Oh. Shit. I met Ray’s eyes, and I could feel mine grow wide, and he just shrugged and grinned.

  Alexandra continued. “But I can’t go out there and have the dance with my husband, unless Carrie gets hers too. Because yesterday, in a quiet ceremony, Carrie and Ray became husband and wife.”

  I was paralyzed with shock. She didn’t have to do that. She didn’t have to do it at all. I stood up, weeping, and pulled my little sister into a hug. There was a stunned silence, and then someone started clapping, and then someone else, and then the screaming and catcalls and cheers started. Over Alexandra’s shoulder I saw my mother hugging Ray and crying and somehow I knew then that everything was going to be okay.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said in Alexandra’s ear, my voice rough.

  “I wanted to. Now let’s go dance with our husbands.”

  So the music started, and I shivered. Because it wasn’t what I expected at all. Not a song that was Alexandra and Dylan’s. It was Falling Slowly, from the musical Ray and I saw together in Houston. The four of us went to the dance floor, and when we got there, we put our rings back on, and then I was in Ray’s arms, and I couldn’t in a million years have imagined a better wedding.

  When the dance was over, it was time for the father to dance with the bride, which was going to be ... difficult ... after what I’d said to him at the beginning of the reception. So Alexandra went first, and I waited on the sidelines, and then when they were done, it was my turn.

  We danced like robots. Worse, we danced like people who had severely wounded each other. Halfway through the song, he said, “This came as a surprise.”

  “I told you I loved him, Dad.”

  He nodded. “You were correct to demand an apology. Please forgive me. I was concerned about your welfare. But I’d have to be completely blind not to see how much you love each other. And what Alexandra said about ... well, both of you. It was touching. It made me feel that I hardly know you at all.”

  I swallowed and said, “Dad, you don’t have to…”

  “No. You know, your mother and I have been telling ourselves for ten years that we’d be better parents. That we wouldn’t let you down or hurt you. But I know we did. You, Alexandra, and especially Julia. What I want more than anything in the world is for you girls to be happy. And somehow I keep doing exactly the wrong thing.”

  “Dad. I forgive you. But please, will you apologize to Ray? And give him a chance?”

  He nodded. “I will.”

  The dance ended soon, and we split up. Dad went and cornered Ray, putting his hand on Ray’s shoulder. I waved, and pointed toward the restrooms and mimed fixing my makeup. Ray grinned and nodded, and he and my dad walked off together.

  I walked to the exit and down the hall until I found the restrooms. I walked up to the counter and fished in my purse, looking for my mascara and eyeliner. My eyes were a mess after bawling while Alexandra spoke. As I started to work on fixing my makeup, a blonde woman in a green dress came in and started to touch up her blush, then she cocked her head and said in a thick southern accent, “You’re Carrie?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “You just married Sergeant Sherman?” she asked. Her voice was not exactly afraid. But, oddly tremulous.

  “Yes, and who are you?”

  “I’m Stephanie Hicks. My husband Jim was the other fire team leader in the platoon.”

  My heart lurched, and I put down the mascara. Sergeant Hicks was also facing court-martial.

  “Well,” I said, composing myself.

  “It must be nice. Having all these millions of dollars and a rock star brother-in-law and stuff. At least if your husband goes to prison, you’ll still be okay.”

  I swallowed and said, “I think ... I think this is a tragedy for everyone involved.”

  She looked down and said, “I’m sorry. You’re right. Especially for that little boy.”

  I nodded. “Him most of all.”

  She looked up at me and said, “Jim’s real mad at Sherman for reporting it. But he’s mostly mad at Colton. And himself. I think he wishes…”

  She trailed off, and her eyes were watering a little. “We’ve got two boys, you see.”

  Oh, shit. I blinked back tears, again, and said, “I’m sorry. It doesn’t end, does it? The war and how it just keeps fucking up people’s lives.”

  She nodded. “No. It doesn’t. Jim still has nightmares every night.”

  I shivered. “Ray too. They’re ... awful.”

  She looked at me and said, “It seems like, if your husband goes free, mine goes to jail. If Ray is telling the truth, then Jim is lying. I ... I wish it wasn’t that way. It ain’t right.”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s not.”

  She came close and squeezed my arm gently. “You take care, Carrie.”

  Then she turned and ran out of the bathroom.

  Fading (Ray)

  For the last hour and half, one by one, Sarah’s parents and sisters had come in to spend time with her. All of them, that is, except Carrie and Julia.

  Sarah had asked of course, which I was grateful for, because I wanted to know the answer too. Where was she? The answer: she’d finally gone to get an exam to make sure she was okay from the accident. I breathed a sigh of relief at that news. Carrie was very good at taking care of everyone around her, but not so good about taking care of herself.

  Not a lot was happening. A team of doctors had come through, and I saw them go into my room. I didn’t follow. At this point I just didn’t want to know.

  Or rather, I think I already knew. It wasn’t just me fading now. Every once in a while, otherwise normally solid objects took on a vague transparent haze. Walls, ceilings, floors. People. I could feel the summer sunshine coming through the roof, washing over me, and I have to admit, it was relaxing. It made me want to just stretch out, lie down, let go, go to sleep. But somehow I had the feeling that if I let go, it was going to be permanent. And I wasn’t ready for that. Not until I was sure Carrie was going to be okay.

  I needed to hold on for just a little while longer. But something had changed. I was weary, the exhaustion sinking through my bones. It made it hard to stand, hard to think, hard to do anything.

  I was pretty sure that I was dying.

  And that, of course, was when Carrie came in, and Alexandra l
eft. Carrie slid into the seat directly next to the bed, which was awkward, since I was sitting there. I slipped out of the seat, but it was too late, I saw Carrie shiver and almost wince. I didn’t want to make this harder on her. I tiptoed over to the other side of the room, which was stupid since they couldn’t hear me anyway.

  Carrie looked different somehow. She’d gotten some rest, but it was obvious from her splotchy face that she’d been crying again this morning. And it killed me that I couldn’t go to her, and take her in a hug, and tell her how much I loved her.

  “How are you doing, Sarah?” Carrie asked.

  Sarah groaned a little and said, “Been better. I heard you finally went to get checked out? They said you wouldn’t go to the doctor after the accident.”

  Carrie shrugged. “I was worried about you and Ray.”

  Sarah just barely nodded, then asked, her voice very quiet, “How is Ray?”

  Carrie shook her head. “I don’t know. The doctors want to meet at ten o’clock. I’m terrified about what they’re going to say.”

  Daniel swallowed and looked at me when she said those words. He had a look of worry on his face, which had only increased through the night as he undoubtedly noticed that I was increasingly less here.

  Sarah swallowed and said, “He’s a great guy. I see why you love him so much.”

  Carrie gave Sarah an odd look. And it was odd ... after all Sarah barely knew me. The sum total of time we’d spent together prior to yesterday was maybe ninety minutes.

  But then yesterday changed everything, didn’t it? And sitting around in here getting more and more morbid wasn’t helping. I wanted to be with Carrie. But I knew that touching her made it worse somehow. So I looked down at Daniel and said, “Hey. Let’s take a walk.”

  I don’t either (Carrie)

  The pain was starting to get to Sarah again. Her face had become whiter and whiter over the last twenty minutes, and beads of sweat on her forehead reflected the fluorescent lights on the ceiling.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She blinked her eyes, several times, and said, “I think I need another shot. And maybe to go to sleep.”

  “Get some rest then. It’s going to take some time to get your strength back up.”

  Her eyes darted to her leg, still hideously swollen under the blanket. “Yeah,” she said. Her voice was grim. She shifted her position just a little, letting out a small cry, then reached for the cord hanging next to her bed. She pressed a button on it several times and said in a bleak voice, “I guess it’s not time yet. They said the dosage is regulated.”

  I swallowed. “Do you want me to go talk to the nurse?”

  “Not yet,” Sarah said, her voice strained. “I think it’s only a few more minutes.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  She shook her head. And then she said, “Carrie?”

  “Yeah,” I replied softly.

  She said, “I dreamed about Ray. When I was ... before I woke up. I ... this is going to sound crazy, but it felt like he helped me come back. I just wanted you to know.”

  I blinked my eyes, trying to push back tears, and bit my knuckle.

  She looked at me, concern in her face, and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

  I forced myself to smile through the tears and said, “You didn’t make me sad, Sarah. I’m ... I’m really glad you dreamed that.” I sniffed.

  “I think I need to sleep a little,” she said.

  “Do you want me to stay with you?”

  “Will you? Please? I don’t want to be alone.”

  It was almost a relief to switch off the light and close her curtains so she couldn’t see me. I sat in the dark, in the corner of her room, and let my tears run freely as she finally got relief from the morphine pump and drifted off to sleep.

  What she had said, it sounded so much like Ray. No matter how frustrated he’d been over the investigation and court-martial, he’d never stopped supporting me, never stopped doing everything he could to help me. My thoughts drifted back to the day Moore finally called me in to be questioned.

  It was a small panel, but it couldn’t have been more awkward. Gerald Smart, from HHS, attended, but the teeth were Doctor Moore, Lila Renfield and, thankfully, Lori Beckley. Unlike the Army’s relatively open process, this was conducted behind closed doors, and Ray couldn’t attend with me, so he waited, pacing outside the room, all day long. Piece by piece, they went through my research and lab notes, documentation, photographs, and logs for our field work.

  Lila, of course, never missed an opportunity to get a dig in. “The two of you shared a tent?” she asked. “Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Not at all,” I replied. “We had a tremendous amount of equipment to carry up into the mountains.”

  “It just strikes me as odd,” Lila said.

  My mouth got ahead of me at that point, because I fired back, “Surely you don’t sleep with every man you work alone with?”

  Moore’s eyes had flown open wide, and Lori had stifled a laugh. After that, the day was almost anticlimactic. The fact was, other than the complaint from Nikki, there was nothing there, and everyone in the room knew it. Moore had finally called the day to a close at four in the afternoon, and the moment I stepped outside, Ray had swept me into his arms.

  I wanted him here with me now.

  At 9:00, I switched off with Julia. I needed to take a walk and get some clarity before I met with the doctors. I was getting impatient. Impatient to know how he was doing. Impatient to know what they were doing to help him recover. I was frustrated with being stuck in the hospital. I wanted to move on. Move on to the part where Ray wakes up and recovers from this accident, move on to a place where we could be together.

  When I got out to the waiting area, I stopped and said, “I need to get some air. Can I borrow someone’s phone? And call me if anything changes?”

  Dylan looked up from the chair he was slumped in and said, “Why don’t I walk with you? Alex can call us.”

  He wasn’t looking so good. “Okay,” I said. “But I’m not in a talkative space.”

  One side of his mouth curled up in a grim looking smile. “I’m not either.”

  He leaned over and kissed Alexandra, and stood. The two of us set out, taking the elevator to the ground floor, and I walked outside. The August heat hadn’t hit yet. It was still relatively cool out, the sky cloudless. A perfect day to go floating down the Potomac, or have a picnic, or lay in the sun beside a pool. Dylan walked beside me in silence, his hands in his pockets. His limp was more pronounced than I’d seen it in a long time. Probably the fatigue.

  We walked as far as Constitution Avenue. Along the way, we walked by the State Department on our left. I remembered receptions there when I was a girl, Dad’s appointment as Ambassador to Russia, and how kind Secretary of State Powell had been when we were introduced.

  Past the State Department, across Constitution, I could see the Lincoln Memorial, the trees swaying in the wind, and far to our left, crowds already forming around the Washington Monument. Directly across from us and to the left, nestled amidst the trees and invisible from the road, was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial: a black slash in the ground, sunken below the surrounding ground level, memorializing the names of all the fallen from that war.

  “Do you think they’ll have a memorial for your war here one day?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. It’s not over yet.”

  I didn’t look at him. I just kept staring across the street at the trees. And I swallowed, trying to spit out what I needed to say.

  “Listen, Dylan.”

  He nodded.

  “You’ve been ... a really good friend to Ray. And to me. You’re like a brother. And I know this is just as hard on you as it is on me.”

  I heard his teeth grind together, and he looked away from me.

  “I just wanted you to know that whatever happens, we’re in it together, okay?”

  “Thanks,” he muttered.

&nb
sp; Then I sniffed, and said, “Ray doesn’t know it. I wasn’t sure until this morning. But we’re going to have a baby.” Damn it. I felt tears rolling down my face when I said it.

  Dylan turned and looked at me. Then he whispered, “It’s gonna be okay, Carrie.”

  He pulled me to him and put his arms around me. I grabbed onto his shirt like it was a lifeline and I was drowning, and I began to sob. “I don’t want to lose him, Dylan.”

  He gasped and replied, “I don’t either,” and I could tell he was about to start crying too. We stayed like that for several minutes, until I felt like I had myself under control.

  I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  He pulled back, keeping his hands on my arms, and said, “Don’t be. If there’s anyone that’s ever been worth crying over, it’s Ray. All right?”

  I bit my lip and nodded, and said, “We better get back.”

  So, slowly, because his limp was still bad, we walked back up to the hospital entrance. It was 9:45, and the doctors would be there to see me in fifteen minutes. And I was terrified.

  Let’s play army (Ray)

  Did you know that when you’re a ghost, you can imagine a baseball and it will appear?

  I didn’t either until I made it happen. Of course, it wasn’t a real baseball, which was a good thing, because my first throw hit the windshield of a car. Luckily, it went right through, and rolled down the street. Daniel ran after it, his little legs pumping as fast as they could. He’d taken to the idea of things not touching him a little too easily, and ran right in front of a moving truck to grab the ball. My heart screwed up in my chest for a second as the truck ran right through him and kept going, and then he came back with the ball, grinning, and threw it to me.

  I caught the ball, and that’s when I saw Carrie and Dylan walking back toward the hospital. I stopped for a second, and Daniel said, “Hey, toss it back.”