From the moment Brandon starts speaking, till now I haven’t been able to take my eyes off him. The whole time, my ears and heart have been attuned to every word. Every image. Every emotion he’s taken us through.
He’s just taken us through a harrowing recount of his daring rescue mission. The one where civilians and members of his own unit were vulnerable. At risk and being fired on by enemy forces. He talks about how they shot at the helicopter. Shot out the engine, and damage the propellers.
“When I went hurtling toward the ground, I had only one thought,” he says, folding his hands in front of himself, “it wasn’t about my life. It wasn’t about what I may or may not leave behind, what I had to lose or gain by being a hero. It wasn’t about being heroic.” He pauses, clearing his throat. “As you all know, you don’t do this job because you want to be a hero. Because you want accolades or praise. You do this job because you care about people. Life. Liberty. You do this job because you want to protect those things, even if it means at great cost to yourself.” He gestures with his hand, mimicking the trajectory of his shot down helicopter. “So, when I saw that I was about to go down in flames along with my fellow rescuers, my thoughts were on how I could make sure that whatever I did in the next few minutes, and led to freedom. Liberty. People’s lives getting to continue beyond this point, even if it wasn’t my own.” Here, I can hear genuine tears in his voice.
Brandon walks forward, locking eyes with me. “Those few minutes of fire were terrible. The most terrifying thing I’ve ever live through in my life. Something I had night terrors about for years after I came home, but even as I feared the fire around me, I grabbed around for people I could free. Team members I could get away from the blast, should it happen. I focused on shielding myself and civilians alike from gunfire, but an explosion did come.”
My breathing catches here, as I notice him gripping at his arm. The arm I remember that has extensive scarring and damage. “That explosion damaged my arm. My muscles and tendons. But the real damage to that part of my body came when, even in the midst of that explosion, I tried to lift burning metal and other debris off my compatriots. The civilians I had intended to save. I didn’t want them to be burned alive by a rescue mission gone bad, so I pushed my limits and that arm to try to save them. I didn’t realize until later that I had tried to do all this with muscles and tendons already shredded.” He pauses. “You see, I didn’t feel any pain until later. I didn’t feel the extent of my injuries until I woke up in the hospital wing of our base. And even then I didn’t know that have a price I ultimately paid until I return home, after being formally discharged.”
A long pause stretches here, and in it I’m left to reflect miserably on my behavior. How I just ran away from him. Treated him like he couldn’t or wouldn’t know what I needed, or that he was being unfair to me.
“People think coming home is the end of it. They think it’s where they want to be after being on the battlefield. Being deployed for so many months or years on end, but as you know, and as I’m sure many of you have experienced, coming home is the beginning of the real battle. Of the real fight with your demons, and of paying the price for your bravery and sacrifice. Often in disabilities in the mind and body that you didn’t start out with, and you don’t know how to handle. I won’t tell you it’s going to be easy.” He looks around the audience, but then comes back to me, as if I’m the period on his very being. The end of everything he wants to be or will ever be in life. “I’m not going to tell you it’s going to happen within this timeframe or that, or that healing is going to be complete and total for each one of you, but I will say that there is a way to cope. There is a way to create a new you. A new life worth living after combat, and that’s what we at the New Hope Veteran’s Association strive to do. Help each and every one of you create a new lust for life, a new way of being, not taking you back to the way you were. We all know you will not be the way you were before you saw the other end of a gun. There is no coming back from that, but there is a chance to rebuild. There is a chance for things to be better for your service, not worse.”
As applause begins to echo around the room, I feel really horrible. The worst woman in the history of womankind, to be honest with you. How could I ever think about leaving him? Walking out on him like that? How could I treat him that way? More applause greets the end of his speech, and that’s when I know I really fucked up. I really made a mess of things. Made an enemy of him, and when he showed me nothing but kindness. Nothing but love, and I just kicked them to the curb. I just ran away. I know I was dealing with the loss of my dad and everything, but that doesn’t excuse it. That doesn’t make it right. I fidget, seeing him step off the stage having finished his speech. He’s headed right this way. I know I was afraid of him rejecting me. So I rejected him first. But now I don’t know if there’s any way I can make it right with him. Why would he accept someone like me back?
After he showed me nothing but compassion love and kindness and I left him. Kicked him out of my life completely, why would he take me back?
I wouldn’t, if I were him. But I’m not him.
And, as he makes his way to my seat, and I stand up to face the music, I see no anger. Just concern.
The same concern I saw in his eyes when he pulled me from that mountain cliff over three months ago.