Just Remember to Breathe

  I grimaced. Oh, Christ, that hurt like a mother-fucker. “None taken,” I croaked.

  “Look, Kelly,” he said. “I need you to hear me on this.”

  Kelly was sitting as far from Joel as she could get, which meant that she was jammed hip to hip against Alex. Her back was straight and she was staring straight forward, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “I think I just got scared, okay? What are we, nineteen? It’s a big fucking commitment! Neither of us dated anyone else since we started college, and … I was afraid.”

  “That’s not true,” Kelly said. “You’ve been busy playing the field since school started this year. If I do ever let you near me again, you’re getting tested for STDs first.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “Seriously, what the hell does playing the field mean anyway? Am I like some sports metaphor for you? You made it to home base, so now it’s time to go to the Superbowl or whatever?”

  He shook his head. “Superbowl is football hun, home base is baseball.”

  “Oh. My. GOD!”

  “Aww, shit. Look, I screwed up, Kels. I love you! I don’t want anyone but you!”

  “Well, now you’re back in little league, buster, and they don’t have bases. Or field goals. Or … whatever. You’re so going to have to convince me.”

  “I got you those weird flowers you like.”

  Alex started to shake, hard, suppressing laughter. I looked back down at her, and our eyes met. She smiled, and I wanted to lean over and kiss her more than anything else in the world, except that would have moved my damned hand. She stretched up, putting her lips next to my ear, and whispered, “She’s a goalie now, isn’t she?”

  I couldn’t help it. I burst into laughter.

  “Weird flowers? You are so far from convincing me, you have no idea.”

  “What do I have to do to convince you, babe?” he said.

  “Send me more weird things that I like.”

  “Done.”

  “You’re going to have to grovel. Maybe forever.”

  “Jesus Christ, lady,” the taxi driver said. “Give the guy a break!”

  I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I guffawed, shaking with laughter, and Alex broke into laughter with me.

  Kelly looked over at us, and said, “Well, you two are no help at all!”

  Oh, God! I laughed even harder, tears running down my cheeks. I wiped them away with my good hand, and said, “Kelly, I’m so glad I finally met you.”

  She gave a loud hmmmph, then said, “Only because it looks like you and hormone girl are back together.”

  I was lightheaded, and gave her a big smile. Were we? Back together? I don’t know. But whatever we were, it was better than being heartbroken.

  Kelly and Joel bickered the entire way to the hospital. At one point I leaned down and whispered to Alex, “I thought she wanted to get back together with him.”

  She whispered back, “Don’t worry, this is normal for them.”

  Jesus Christ. If this was normal, I didn’t want to see what they were like when she was upset.

  Then again, it seemed a lot less painful than what Alex and I had been doing all these months.

  And that was when the weight of it hit me again. She might be all curled up against me now, when I was injured, but could she really forgive me? I got it, finally. Because it was nothing more than a misunderstanding. It hadn’t been some guy in her room. It was just her roommates boyfriend, being friendly. I’d so totally screwed this up that I was afraid there was no going back. The significance of the photo on her nightstand, the dried roses framed on her wall, didn’t escape me. We’d loved each other, and I’d hurt her. Hurt her badly. Did I even have a right to be forgiven?

  Right then and there, I promised myself we’d talk the moment we were alone. We would hash this out. We’d break every rule either one of us had, until we really understood each other, and what happened, and whether or not we could move forward.

  Because, for the first time since that hideous week when Kowalski and Roberts died, for the first time since I landed in the hospital, I began to feel some hope. Hope, because of the woman curled up against my side. And that was something worth fighting for.

  The cab pulled up to the emergency room, and I started to stretch around, trying to get at my wallet with the wrong hand.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Alex said, fishing in her purse. She passed a twenty to the cab driver, and we got out of the cab. I staggered a little, and she wrapped her arms around my side.

  “Sorry I ruined your night,” I said to Kelly and Joel.

  “Don’t worry about it, man,” Joel said. “Watching you guys fight was way more entertaining than sitting at 1020 anyway. Besides, I’m glad we sorted it out. If we’d met alone somewhere, you might have been hitting me instead of a wall. And that would have been kind of upsetting.”

  Kelly rolled her eyes and slapped Joel on the shoulder. It was a possessive slap, and I was pretty sure she was giving in.

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice cracking a little. “Misunderstanding, okay?”

  “Yeah, we kinda heard the whole thing,” he said. “Don’t stress it.”

  At the desk in the emergency room, we did paperwork. And I bled a little on the desk, then apologized. A few minutes later a physicians assistant came over and did triage, decided that as bad as it looked, my hand wasn’t life threatening, then said someone would be with us eventually.

  “This might take a while,” I said.

  “We’ve got all the time in the world,” Alex murmured. She still hadn’t let go of me.

  So we waited. After a little while, Joel and Kelly stopped bickering, and started making out. They were getting a lot of interested looks from the other people in the waiting room, until finally an elderly lady sitting two seats down from them tapped Joel on the shoulder with her cane.

  “You two are indecent,” she said. “Why don’t you take it somewhere else.”

  “Oh God,” Kelly said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” Joel mumbled.

  “Maybe you two should get going,” Alex said. “We’ll be fine here.”

  “You’re sure?” Kelly asked.

  By this time Joel was standing, tugging on her hand.

  “Yes,” Alex said, nodding. “Go!”

  Kelly leaned in close to Alex and whispered, “I probably won’t be home tonight.”

  Alex grinned. “See you tomorrow then.”

  Joel looked over at me, said, “Later, Dylan. Nice to meet you.” He stuck his hand out to shake, and I automatically did the same, then gasped in pain. We did not shake hands.

  I nodded to him. The two of them hurried out of the emergency room, hand in hand.

  “They’re funny,” I said.

  She grinned. “Yeah. But they love each other.”

  She leaned in a little closer to me as she set it.

  I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the pain in my hand, and said, “What about us? What are we exactly, now?”

  She looked at me, her eyes stealing away my breath, and said, “Do we have to figure that out right now?”

  I said, “Not right this second. But soon. Before… before we get our hearts broken all over again.”

  She winced. “Good point, I guess.” He looked away, and I could see her lower lip quivering.

  “Alex,” I said. “Listen to me.”

  She turned back toward me.

  “I want to talk about what happened. Between us.”

  She nodded, then said, “Why?”

  “I think we need to clear the air. Alex… we’ve been dancing around this for weeks. Sometimes flirting, sometimes not. Remembering, but not. Playing by rules that seemed to make sense, but maybe they don’t really. I think it’s time to be honest about what’s going on with us.”

  She blinked, and took a deep breath. Her expression radiated anxiety.

  “Talk to me, Alex. Why are you afraid of this?”

  Her mouth twitche
d at the edges into a smile. She whispered, “Because I’m happier right now than I’ve been in a long time. I don’t want to screw it up.”

  I took a deep, shuddering breath. It was clear she really meant it. She was happier right now than she’d been in a long time, because she was with me.

  All the more reason to be honest, about everything.

  “Neither do I,” I said. “And I’m afraid if we don’t talk, I’ll have assumptions, or you’ll have assumptions, that the other doesn’t share. And we’ll screw up again. And that… I don’t think I could take it.”

  “Just answer me one thing,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Do you love me? Really? Still?”

  I pulled her closer, and said, quietly, “More than life itself.”

  She wrapped her arms around me and leaned against my chest. “Okay. Then I’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about.”

  So, now that you’ve mentioned the pill (Alex)

  “Okay,” I said. “Then I’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about.”

  I couldn’t seem to stop holding Dylan. My hands were gripped around his waist, and I could feel the hard muscle of his abdominal muscles under them. There was no question Dylan was not the same boy I’d fallen in love with. He’d grown, matured in ways I couldn’t have foreseen four years ago. Sometimes I could look at him and see the hardened soldier he’d had to become: occasionally grim faced, chest and arms built like a boxer, short cropped hair, and especially his eyes; eyes that sometimes stared off into the distance as if he were a million light years away. That was the Dylan it was hard getting used to: the one who could get so angry he would slam his fist over and over again into a wall until he broke bones. I sort of understood what had happened to the man, but it was difficult to match up the reality with the boy I’d known and fallen in love with.

  The Dylan I’d fallen in love with was gentle, and kind. Thoughtful. Funny. He was still all of those things, but had an edge to him that was new and, to be honest, it was frightening. This was a guy who’d carried weapons in a war for most of last year. This was a man who had killed, who had seen his friends killed in battle. There were depths to him that were all new, and scary as hell.

  “So…” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. “Where do we start?”

  He smiled brilliantly, but I could tell he was in a tremendous amount of pain. “I have no idea,” he said.

  I leaned my head back, letting out a low chuckle. Finally, I said, “Let’s take our time. Here’s what I’ll promise. I promise to give it a chance.”

  He nodded. “Me too,” he said.

  “In some ways, you know, we hardly know each other.”

  “It’s true. I mean… we were seventeen the last time we spent any time together.”

  “I was sixteen. And yes… that’s a long time.”

  “Plus,” he said, “It wasn’t exactly our normal environment. As much as the Middle East sucks in my mind, there’s no denying the incredible romance of it all.”

  I looked up at him, meeting his gaze again, and he said, “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “There’s a side benefit to this. We get to learn about each other, get to know each other, all over again.” His voice dropped to a husky near whisper, and he leaned close and said next to my ear, “We get to fall in love all over again, for the second time. How cool is that?”

  I smiled so wide it hurt my cheeks, and put my lips next to his ear and whispered, “I’d say you’re worth falling in love with twice.”

  The old lady who had run off Kelly and Joel cleared her throat, then began grumbling. I rolled my eyes a little, but pulled back all the same. It was just as well, because a few moments later Dylan was called.

  I stood and walked with him, holding his uninjured hand. In a curtained off examination room, a young doctor, probably a medical student, took a look at Dylan’s hand, and said, “Holy mother, what did you do?”

  Dylan grimaced. “I kind of punched a wall. Pretty hard.”

  The doctor shook his head. “That’s one hell of a punch. We’re going to need to get ex-rays. This is going to hurt like hell, I’ve got to clean the wound or it will go septic. Couple questions… any previous hospitalizations?”

  “Um, yeah,” Dylan said. I knew he had answered this on the intake form. “Roadside bomb, in February. Screwed up my leg pretty bad. TBI.”

  “How’s the leg doing?” the doctor asked.

  “I walked in here. The other guys from my hummer are dead. I’m doing okay.”

  I shivered at the matter of fact way he said it.

  The doctor looked over his glasses at Dylan, then said, “You taking any medications?”

  Dylan hesitated, looked at me as if considering something, then answered. “Oxycodone. We’ve been tapering the dosage down for a few months. Paxil. And trileptal.”

  I swallowed. He was taking a boatload of drugs. I had no idea.

  “Trileptal,” the doctor said. “For seizures?”

  “Yeah, I’ve had them occasionally. My primary care doc in Atlanta has been reducing the dosage of everything, but when we tried to stop the anticonvulsants, well… I had seizures. It wasn’t pretty.”

  The reality of his war injuries was hitting me hard. Dylan Paris, the guy I knew when we were teenagers … he was a disabled veteran, with severe injuries.

  “Hmm…. I think just continue the oxy for the pain. We’ll get some x-rays done, then decide what to do about the hand. It’s going to be a long night for you, Mr. Paris. Wait here, I’ll be right back with you.”

  Dylan sighed, then closed his eyes. I held his left hand, and he said, “You don’t have to stay. This is going to take all night.”

  I leaned over and kissed him on his eyelid. “Dylan, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here with you.”

  “You’re crazy,” he said.

  “Crazy for you.”

  He let our a short, barklike laughed, then kissed my forehead. “You didn’t know I was on all that stuff.”

  I shook my head.

  “The Oxy we’ve taken down to very little in the last couple months. It’s awesome stuff when you have big gaping holes in you. They started me out on morphine, believe or not. Holy cow, that stuff is dreamy. I’ve been trying to get them to keep it to an absolute minimum. A little pain won’t kill me, but drug addiction will.”

  I nodded, just listening.

  “The uh… paxil… well… you know. I told you I’ve got some uh, anger issues. Post traumatic stress. Depression. All that fun stuff.”

  He sounded almost ashamed of himself.

  “It’s okay, Dylan. That’s perfectly normal. Half the people I know are taking paxil or something like it.”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, well, I’m not a big fan of drugs of any kind.”

  “Except your cigarettes.”

  He shrugged, then smirked at me. “That’s different. Think they’d notice if I had one in here?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  He frowned. “Bummer.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments, then he said, “It doesn’t bother you? The anticonvulsants and all that shit? I’m like taking half the pharmacy. I could break down and have a seizure any time, it still happens sometimes, even with the pills. I can’t even get a drivers license because of it.”

  I frowned, then said, “Does it bother you that I’m on birth control pills?”

  Dylan nearly choked, and I got to see something I hadn’t seen on his face in years. He blushed.

  I started to giggle, then broke into real laughter.

  “Okay. You made your point,” he said.

  I still snickered a little, so he decided to turn the tables on me.

  “So, now that you’ve mentioned the pill…,” he said.

  “No. Not ready yet.” I shook my head, a little theatrically.

  He raised his eyebrows, grinning.

  “Stop that.”

  “Stop what?”

&n
bsp; “Stop eying me like I’m a piece of meat.”

  He grinned. “I was thinking more along the lines of hmm… strawberry shortcake?”

  “Oh, no. You are so not going there. I am not short. And you are ridiculous.”

  “That’s why you love me.”

  We heard a loud cough and throat clearing behind us, and the doctor whisked the privacy curtain to the side. “This way, please, Mr. Paris.”

  Screw the rules (Dylan)

  Before the long, long night at the emergency room was over, I tried twice more to send Alex home. She refused to go. Instead, during the hours I was waiting for treatment, she lay curled up on the chair next to me, her head resting in my lap as she slept.

  The last time we’d been like this, her sleeping next to me, was on a plane a thousand years ago.

  It was four in the morning before we finally got out of there. By that time, my hand was wrapped in a heavy cast, immobilizing the fingers. Two of my finger bones had been fractured, and the skin torn open on all of them. At one point, when Alex was out of the room, the doctor had suggested I come back to see a psychiatrist and possibly seek out some anger management classes.

  “Look,” he said. “We see a lot of guys in your situation. You’ve been in combat. I’m guessing you’ve lost friends.”

  I nodded confirmation.

  “It’s not unusual to have long term emotional responses to this stuff. Combined with the brain injury, it could be a real problem for you.”

  I sighed. “I was seeing a therapist at the VA in Atlanta, before I came up here for college.”

  “I think you need to consider setting up an appointment here.”

  “I already spend three mornings a week at the VA for physical therapy.”

  “So one more won’t hurt.”

  I nodded. “I suppose. I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” he said.

  A moment later Alex returned, carrying two large cups of coffee, and the doctor changed the subject.

  In the cab, after leaving the hospital, she said in a sleepy voice, “Just come back to my place for the night?”