“How was therapy last night?”
Kaleb looks up from a folder. “Good morning to you too.”
“You seem much improved. Good thing they made you go.” I’m hoping for the glimmer in his eyes when he laughs but he resists any humor today.
“Yes, much improved, thanks.”
My mood fades as his expression darkens.
“Andie, about yesterday.”
“I shouldn’t have listened—”
“No, it’s not your fault. It’s mine for elaborating.”
“But you didn’t say much.” I hate the sudden wall between us and take a step toward it. “Kaleb, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just needed to clarify that. Now, we should get to work. There’s a lot to do today. You need to forget what you heard yesterday, especially what we discussed. What happened is in the past and not relevant to our work.”
So why does he peek at the door?
My pulse pounds.
“Wait. Are you afraid of something?”
He shakes his head. “Only that I’ve been unclear about our relationship here. My job is to protect you and take care of you, but I am not your friend. You are my assistant, that’s all.”
“But I—”
“Just do your job and let me do mine. If that’s not possible, I’ll have you reassigned.”
“You’d reassign me? For overhearing one little conversation?”
“Can you do your job or not?” The bite in his tone doesn’t match the person I knew yesterday. When I check his eyes, there’s no harmony there either.
“Yes, of course. I’m an excellent filer.” I can hear the hurt in my own voice as I shuffle toward my piles.
“Thank you for understanding.”
I don’t. At all. Lines move in his jaw as he takes his place behind his desk.
Fact: He didn’t like that conversation any more than I did.
The rest of the day is excruciating, and I’m not sure how to act the following morning either. It only takes my entrance to learn that we have a new script. Cold and indifferent is the theme now, I guess. The musty smell starts to sting my nostrils again.
“Morning,” I mutter.
“Morning.”
I feel his gaze from across the room, but he avoids contact when I try to meet it. I get through one whole folder before bursting out, “Is it because you don’t trust me?” and his face hardens.
“It has nothing to do with you, Andie. It’s policy.”
“It’s policy that we have to spend eight hours a day in total silence?”
“It’s policy that we can’t be friends.”
“You can talk to people without being friends.”
“You and I can’t.”
I suck in my breath. “Kaleb…”
“Andie, let it go. I need you to do that for me.”
“Because you’ll get in trouble?”
There it is. That anxious flicker again. Irrefutable evidence that there’s a reason not to.
“Yes. I’ll get in trouble. So will you.”
“How much trouble?”
“A lot.”
“Like, prison level or laundry duty level?”
“Um...”
“You don’t even know, do you.”
“Andie.”
“Is this office bugged?”
He releases the slightest curve of the lips. “No, probably not.”
“Oh, okay. So how else would they know we talk and might be criminal friends?”
He shakes his head, his mouth spreading into a deeper smile that slices through me now that I’m not allowed to enjoy them. “They just would.”
“Really? That’s the best you’ve got? And you survived rebel interrogations for thirty-four days?”
I now know what pure exasperation looks like.
“You’re asking a lot of questions for someone who’s supposed to be filing.”
“And you’re doing a semi-decent job at not answering them.”
“Andie.”
“One more. Do you care whether I sort the formal reprimands by date or subject?”
He rubs a hand over his head. “No, I’ll leave that to your discretion.”
“Oh, okay. So you trust me with file folders at least.”
“Andie, come on.”
“What? It’s just, I’m holding a half-inch stack of memos proving you don’t give a crap about the rules. All except this one, apparently.”
“I do care about the rules. I’m a soldier.”
I jerk open a folder. Loud wrinkle of cardboard, hard stare, all drama.
“Investigation has disclosed that on June 12 Lance Corporal Novelli was derelict in the performance of his duties in that he willfully failed to discipline a resident of Building 9B for being in violation of resident conduct code 17.42a.iii-6c.
“June 26. Lance Corporal Novelli was derelict in the performance of his duties in that he willfully failed to discipline residents of Building 9B for being in violation of codes 17.42a.iii-6c, 17.42a.iii-6e, and 17.42a.iii-4b.
“July 18. Lance Corporal Novelli has refused orders to discipline residents for being in violation of resident conduct code 17.42a.iii-6c and will be subject to a nonjudicial hearing. He shall report at 0900 on Thursday, July 23 to account for his lack of actions.”
I catch my remaining critique at the look on his face.
“You shouldn’t be reading those.” There’s that hand again, scrubbing hair and features in agitation.
“This is my job. I have to read them to know how to file them properly. Who’s this resident?”
“It doesn’t matter. Someone on Floor 1 who was late to dinner a few times because her Supervisor wasn’t dismissing her from work detail on time. I let her eat anyway.”
“And you also refused to discipline her for it?”
“Of course I did. It wasn’t her fault.”
I swallow my pain at his.
“What happened at your hearing?”
“I lost privileges.”
“What kind of privileges?”
“Important ones. Why are you so nosy?”
“Why would you sacrifice yourself for some random refugee?”
He returns to his screen. “We should get back to work.”
“Why can’t we talk anymore? That can’t be a rule.”
“Andie, I told you to drop it!”
“I can’t.” I care about you. There it is. I care.
“You don’t know a thing about me or this place! You just need to stay in the shadows and follow the rules until this war is over and you can go home, okay? Put your energy into not asking questions.”
“But the facts—”
“Facts will get you hurt, Andie.”
We both quiet as his plea settles around us. It was a plea.
I have to force my hands steady. “Okay, but what about you?”
“You can’t concern yourself with me. My situation is different.”
“Yeah, because you’re a soldier sworn to obey your superiors. They could execute you for not following the rules. How are you not in prison already?”
He stiffens and my blood goes cold. After a long, agonizing stare, he leans toward his phone.
“What are you doing?” Panic replaces my frustration.
“You’re giving me no choice but to reassign you.”
“No! Please, Kaleb, don’t. Just…” I cringe at the desperation oozing out of me, but I’m in no position to stop it. Our impasse is wrong, and it kills me that he can’t see it. Or won’t. I don’t know which is worse.
I drop the file on his desk. “I want to obey you, but how am I supposed to let this go when I’m holding a folder proving the person you are? How do I ignore this?” My fingers press into the pile of documents, his eyes on mine. The hard silence is painful, but neither of us knows where to go from here.
“I told you we live in a complex world,” he responds finally. “You can’t understand it. You have to stop trying, Andie.”
“But I want to. Just help me understand and maybe I can let it go.”
He draws in a ragged breath and closes his eyes.
“Please, Kaleb.”
I rarely read anything he doesn’t want to give me, and this moment is no exception. I wait in agitation as his fortress stands against me and my threat. Something’s changing in the silence but I have no way of knowing if it’s an outcome I can accept.
“Why do you think they want me in therapy so badly?” he asks after the long pause.
I’m relieved the conversation continues, but I’m unprepared for it. “Um, what you went through had to be traumatic. You probably need a lot of help to recover and sort through the horror of what happened.”
“It was. But that’s not why, and that’s the problem.”
Fact: I’m lost.
“Okay, then why?”
“It’s not for me. It’s for them.”
Bracing doesn’t work when it’s directed at the wrong truth. I lose him to some invisible object behind a withered poster on the far wall.
“Kaleb?” He’s different when I draw him back, resolved in a way that’s even more disturbing.
“It’s not my health they’re worried about. It’s details.”
“Right, so you can relive it openly.”
“No. They want information. They want to know if they should be concerned that I’m a threat.”
No. This can’t be in the script.
He leans forward, focused on a new scene beneath the floor. I find myself squinting too, desperate to see it, even though I’m not sure I’m strong enough to face it.
“After my abduction, I spent three weeks in intensive care and another four in a regular hospital bed. They saw the physical evidence of what I went through. They have more photos and analytics of my body than I do. Once I could function again, they debriefed me for another month. Asked questions, wanted every detail. They had psychologists, military analysts, a whole team of experts documenting my every breath. Do you know what it’s like to see a log of your trips to the bathroom? I wasn’t a returned war hero, Andie, I was an artifact. A strategic golden goose to be picked apart and mined for military intelligence.” He winces and presses his palms against his eyes. “Fuck, I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
A hard look follows, complete with that darkness so at odds with his bursts of radiance. “Listen to me, Sorenson. I can’t stress this enough. You cannot, under any circumstances, repeat what I just said. Not for my safety, but for yours. You don’t know who I am, what I am to them, and the less you know the better. I shouldn’t have brought you into this, and for that I apologize. Now it’s on you to mitigate the damage.”
“Brought me into what? What are you to them?”
He clears his throat. “Nothing. I’m sorry, just go back to work and don’t bring this up again. One word and it’s off to laundry.”
I stare at him as he buries any contradicting evidence in his screen. No, I don’t know what it’s like to see a log of my trips to the bathroom, but I do know what it’s like to witness an explosion of agony through a stronghold. It’s not the threat, but his expression that sends me back to uncomplicated piles to nurse my own wounds. He was right. Facts can hurt. They can gut you when they’re used to separate you from the one person you’re desperate to know.