“You feeling okay today, Callie? You seem a little distracted.”

Callie turned to find Leslie watching her while at the same time pushing her coke-bottle glasses higher onto the bridge of her nose with an index finger. She smiled at her partner. They usually worked together on the same hall. “Yes, I’m just tired, that’s all.”

She and Leslie made a good team, taking care of their hall of patients at the Desert Manor Long-Term Care Center. Callie and Leslie had gotten along well from day one, and both shared the same attitudes regarding their responsibilities as certified nurse’s aides at the facility. It wasn’t the most glamorous of jobs, but it was still important and fulfilling. In fact, she and Leslie were among only a handful of CNAs that had worked at the facility for longer than six months. Many of the newly trained aides, even after serious mentoring and shadowing a more experienced partner for over a month, found the job more difficult than they had anticipated.

What had they expected? Everyone had to go through classes and clinical training before they were certified as nurse’s aides, so it’s not as if they didn’t know what the job entailed. Callie supposed that classroom learning and practicing on plastic dummies just didn’t give some of these newer kids the idea. Working with real live people was a lot different. They came in with unrealistic expectations. Like they were going to get paid for standing around. Right. Sure. It was hard work, often emotionally draining and physically demanding. For some, the low pay and long hours just weren’t worth it. Callie reveled in it—not the low pay—but the satisfaction she got from her job. She liked being a caregiver. She especially liked the older people, much more than people her own age. Oh, the stories some of them had to tell!

She took care of many long-term residents at the facility, some with dementia, some recovering from surgery. Others had been placed there by families who no longer had the time nor the inclination to care for their elderly family members. Callie grew to feel like they were her family, a substitute for what she didn’t have when she left the building to go home alone every night.

It was here, working at Desert Manor, where she felt a sense of belonging, a sense of confidence and fulfillment. Her patients on Garden Hall, where she was most typically assigned with Leslie, were mostly elderly. Although recently, three more residents had come, two diagnosed with alcohol or drug-related dementia in their mid-forties. One had a physical handicap that prevented him from living on his own, and with no family willing to take him in and provide for his care, well . . . Most had no families, like Callie, and so she usually bonded with them fairly quickly.

Some of her residents came into the facility angry, resentful, and totally pissed off that they had come to this, and Callie understood that, too. No matter how difficult a patient, she treated them all with as much kindness and compassion as she could. She knew what it was like to be alone, to feel like no one cared about you, and in some of the worst cases, and especially those that still had family, that you were nothing more than a burden.

Callie had been estranged from her parents who lived in San Diego after she’d left their Iowa home at eighteen. They’d never been especially close, both parents embroiled in high-powered careers. She didn’t miss them, and she was sure they didn’t miss her either. She had stopped trying to figure that out a long time ago—

“You look worried.”

“Do I?” she asked, eyebrow raised as she jolted out of her reverie. She thought she’d been doing a pretty good job keeping her erratic emotions to herself this morning. She wasn’t sure how to feel about last night, with Grady. Was there a word for horrified and excited at the same time? For abject feelings of guilt while at the same time feeling renewed and reveling in the passion he’d evoked in her, feelings she hadn’t experienced in almost a year?

All morning she had replayed their night together, the texture of Grady’s skin, his callused fingers stroking her cheek, her breasts, and her thighs. Just the thought of it made her heart accelerate, a warm flush coursing through her body, immediately on the heels of renewed desire and then to come crashing down again due to a nearly overwhelming sensation of shame and guilt. She knew it wasn’t logical but couldn’t help it. To say that she was torn would be an understatement. One minute she felt like she had cheated on David, as if she had literally snuck behind his back and had an affair with his best friend, and on the other side of the equation, she knew that David was gone, but she was still alive, and she had needs like everyone else.

And Grady? Perhaps Grady was even more lost than she was. David had been her husband, her best friend and soulmate, but for Grady? Well, she sensed that throughout their friendship, David had been Grady’s rudder. From what little David had confided in her about Grady’s past, she knew he’d always been a bit on the wild side, with that devil-may-care side of him that he showed to the world. Though inside he was a sensitive soul, one who stuck up for underdogs, one who hated to see people mistreated for any reason. David had hinted that Grady had grown up in an abusive home, that his father was a raging alcoholic who disappeared into the bottom of a bottle and at those times, even as a young teenager, Grady had taken a beating so that his mother didn’t have to. His parents were gone now, both killed in a DUI—Grady’s father at the wheel—and it was then that Grady had joined the army.

From the first time she’d met him, it seemed like Grady had felt life had dealt him a raw deal. He wasn’t a bully, didn’t go around picking fights, but he was quick to act. Quick to fight. At times, she’d seen that glint in Grady’s eyes when he got angry, as if daring life, or even God himself, to strike him down.

In the beginning, when David had brought him to the tiny apartment on base before they moved to this small house in the city, she had seen that look in his eyes, that anxiousness to go into combat. He was itching to go, as if a good fight would get all that anger out of his system. For several months in the early days, she had wished that David had never met him. Grady was a bit too untamed, a little bit too gung ho about going off to war. Even after his first tour, when the both of them had come home, Grady’s excitement hadn’t faded. Both had been tested by combat, and while David had settled down somewhat, grown more serious, trying to appreciate every moment of life, Grady had not lost that passion for battle. She shook her head, her thoughts running away from her. Grady wasn’t a madman, a killer, but he didn’t mind killing if he had to. He thrived on the adrenaline rush, like he was addicted to it. Sometimes it had seemed like Grady only felt alive when the adrenaline was racing, when he was battle-tested, or those moments when he stood on the precipice of life and death. She had no idea what had triggered that propensity in him, and David had never told her, if he even knew.

So she felt guilty, no doubt about that, but she also felt the powder of Grady’s zest for life and excitement burgeoning up inside her, the first signs of real life she’d felt in longer than she cared to admit. That didn’t stop the guilt weighing heavily on her.

Damn it.

David wasn’t alive anymore. He would be the last person to begrudge her happiness or tell her that she couldn’t move on. Still, her loyalty to David ran deep. Even in death. She felt she had betrayed his memory even though she knew she hadn’t.

“Ready for break?” Leslie again interrupted her musings. “Melissa and Diane just got off theirs, and it’s now or never. When we get back, we’ll have to get the residents into the dining room for lunch.”

“I’m not really hungry, but I could use a drink,” she joked. As the two of them walked down the hallway toward the nurses’ break room, Callie veered into the dining room and walked outside onto the patio. She smiled at one of the residents sitting in his wheelchair out there, smoking a cigarette.

“I sure hope your oxygen is turned off this time,” she told Jerry as she stepped toward him and glanced at the portable oxygen tank hanging off the back of his wheelchair. Thank goodness it was. Just last week, she had caught him smoking, the cannula pulled down below his neck, oxygen still flowing.

“Yes, I had Becca make sure that it was turned off before I came out here,” he nodded, his voice rough and gravelly, deepening as he began to cough. “One more time and they were gonna tell me I couldn’t smoke anymore.” He coughed again, a wet, rumbly cough. “Liability issues, they said.” He looked out into the fenced-in yard, shaking his head as he continued to smoke.

Callie turned away, smiling as she reached into her scrub pocket for change. She inserted two quarters into the soda machine. She pressed the button for a diet cola, waited for the clomp clomp as the can dropped into the tray, and then reached for it. Tapping on the top, she popped it open before she walked inside and then continued on her way to the break room. Leslie was already inside, pulling a brown paper lunch bag from the refrigerator. She lifted an eyebrow at Callie.

“You didn’t bring anything to eat today?”

Callie shook her head. “I didn’t feel like it. I’ll get something on my way home later on, before I go to work at the dispatch center.”

“I don’t know how you do it, Callie. Where do you get the energy?”

Callie shrugged. “Nothing much to do at home.”

Of course, she didn’t tell Leslie that if she didn’t work jobs, she would never be able to make ends meet. She had received a twenty-thousand-dollar payout from David’s small life insurance policy from his Servicemembers Group Life Insurance policy, but some of that had already been used to pay for expenses immediately following his death. The rest she’d tucked away into a retirement plan account, only to be used in the direst of circumstances. Still, at thirty hours a week here at the facility, more if she could pick up an extra shift, and the roughly fifteen hours a week at the police station working as a dispatcher, she barely made enough to cover the mortgage payment on their—her—small house, and car payment, utilities, and whatnot.

She and David had talked about bumping up his life insurance, but at the time, between his first and second deployment, she had felt hesitant. Like if they did it then, it would be inviting bad juju, bad luck, or just plain tempting fate. Being young, however, they’d both believed he’d come back, as he had before, and they put it off. It had been a mistake, but she couldn’t do anything about it now. She’d get by. Besides, if she had enough money to fall back on, enough so she didn’t have to work, she’d have gone crazy by now. Trapped within the small house, her grief over her loss would have eaten her alive. No, it was better that she work.

She was tired, no disputing that, but it was a good tired, a tired that fairly well depleted both her physical and mental energy every day, making it possible for her to fall asleep a few minutes after she went to bed. She craved that oblivion. Still, there were plenty of nights where she tossed and turned, unable to sleep, frustrated with her inability to turn her mind, her thoughts, and her memories off.

Last night had been one of those nights, definitely triggered by what she and Grady had done. She had sat up in bed after Grady left, holding David’s smiling photo in its simple black frame on her lap, wavering between tears and nostalgic smiles. These days, those drop-to-your-knees waves of grief didn’t come as often as they used to, but when they did, they took her breath away, prompting her to relive the news of his death over and over again. It was obvious that Grady still struggled with his own grief and feelings of guilt. He’d lost his best friend right in front of his eyes. They’d never talked about it. Someday, she would ask, but not yet. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Living without David was torture, and while she put on a brave front and smiled to her patients at the long-term care center and was friendly to her coworkers, she didn’t exactly encourage friendships. Not the kind where you got together with friends and peers after work. How many times had she turned down invitations to go to the bar on paydays, or to a special function associated with either workplace? There were too many to count. Nevertheless, her work record and performance levels were excellent for both her jobs, so while her supervisors sometimes suggested she enhance her reputation as a team player by joining in on more events, they certainly couldn’t fault her work ethic.

“You sure you’re okay? What’s on your mind?”

Callie glanced up at Leslie, who was biting into a cheese-and-bologna sandwich, eyeing her as if she could reach into her very thoughts. Leslie was one of the few people she had confided in about David. She didn’t like to talk about it, didn’t want people feeling sorry for her, but Leslie was different. She came from a long line of military family members and she too had suffered the loss of some of them.

“You’re thinking about David, aren’t you? Did you have a bad night last night?”

A bad night? Her face grew hot. No, not really. The sex with Grady certainly wasn’t bad, which had taken her by surprise, both the concept and the physical act. Despite Grady’s barely constrained and often volatile temper, he had been a tender and considerate lover. Her cheeks flamed hotter as she gazed at her friend. Leslie stopped chewing, her eyes widening as she reached for her water bottle.

“Spill,” she encouraged, food forgotten. “Get it off your chest. Better that than letting whatever’s bothering you fester.”

Callie sighed deeply. “One of David’s old buddies came by last night. He and David were best friends . . .”

“And?”

Warm tears flooded her eyes, but she blinked them back as she confessed. “We slept together . . . at least part of the night, anyway,” she managed. “I feel so guilty, more than I ever thought possible. Like I’ve—”

“Like you’ve betrayed David?” Leslie put her sandwich down onto her paper bag, brushed off her hands, and then reached across the table to grasp Callie’s. “From what you’ve told me about David, I don’t think you have to worry that you’ve betrayed him. Do you think David would be angry or offended? And to be honest, doing it with his best friend, a guy that he obviously admired and respected? You don’t have anything to feel guilty about, Callie.”

Callie looked up at Leslie, offered a tremulous smile, and shrugged. “Logically, I understand that. David wouldn’t want me to grieve forever. I know that. It’s just that my heart is taking a little longer to catch up.”

Another firm squeeze and Leslie released her hand to resume eating. “Things will work out, so don’t beat yourself up over it. Is the guy . . . is he feeling guilty about it too?”

Callie shrugged. “I have no idea. He was gone when I woke up.”