Chapter Nineteen
SAWYER
I stood in my bunker, taking stock of my weapons. I hadn’t fired a bullet yet on this mission, and so far it looked like the entire search would go by without a hitch. I’d been worried about this one. Scouts had reported a lot of the enemy in this area, so we’d all gone in waiting for a fight. So far, though, no signs of the enemy, and we’d picked up a good deal of their weaponry.
The sun beat down on the back of my neck, and I waved at my comrade standing in the doorway of the building.
“We’re getting out of here,” he shouted. “I think they’re sending in choppers to pick us up.”
Choppers? We never had helicopters come in to get us. I ran forward, but I couldn’t seem to get any closer to my fellow soldiers. “What’s going on?” I shouted.
“The war’s over,” he shouted back at me.
I tripped on something, and I fell, falling on my face. For a moment I sat there and then picked myself up slowly. I was in a room now, almost certain that I was dreaming but unable to prove it. I peeked up and saw not the sun, but a ceiling.
“Sawyer!”
I looked down at the ground and saw Pete wearing full military combat gear. Something in my mind told me this was wrong, that Pete had never been in the military a day in his life. But I moved forward in panic. He leaned against the wall, hand pressed to his side. When I moved it, I could see a wound, blood indiscriminately oozing from something under his shirt.
“Pete. Pete, hang in there. They’re sending medics,” I said, unsure of where I got that information.
Pete coughed, and blood splattered on the floor, on my arm. “I’m not gonna make it, Sawyer.”
“You’re going to be fine, Pete. You’re going to be fine.”
Pete looked at me, stared into my eyes. His eyes were dark, nearly black, instead of the pale blue I knew them to be. He grabbed my face with both his hands and his mouth opened up to shout.
“It’ll never be fine!” Pete shouted. “The war is never going to be over, soldier! The war never ended! The war never ended!”
I tore away from him and stumbled back. He continued to shout, still bleeding, still dying, and I couldn’t run anymore, my legs failed me, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t escape the screaming inside my head: The war wasn’t over, and I was still in it.
I bolted straight up in bed. A shout had bubbled in the back of my throat, and I held it down, sucking in a breath. My heart thudded in my chest, and I could feel sweat cold against my back, collecting between my shoulder blades. I could barely remember where I was, but I registered Quinn’s bedroom somehow as I fought to regain my heart rate.
“Sawyer,” Quinn murmured. I looked down and saw her stir; she’d put a shirt on at some point, and she looked up at me, rubbing her eyes urgently. “Sawyer, are you alright?”
I closed my eyes and tried to collect myself. She sat up and set her hand against my forehead, like she thought I was running a fever. I’d broken out in a sweat, yes, but I wasn’t running a fever.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, and she rested her head on my shoulder. I was grateful that she knew better than to hold me; if she’d done so, it would have felt wrong, claustrophobic, stifling. The gentle rest against my shoulder was all I needed to make me feel a little more comfortable while I focused on breathing.
When I’d calmed down, I found her hand tightly in mine, and I released it, embarrassed at how unbelievably sweaty I was. Not to mention the small matter of me waking up with a nightmare in the middle of the night like a damn child. It wasn’t humiliating; she knew better than most people what happened to some people when they had traumatic experiences. But if it weren’t for the fact that she was a psychiatrist and I knew she’d seen worse, I’d have been mortified. At least I wished I hadn’t woken up in her bed this way.
The sun had come up through the window, so I stood up and decided to get dressed and be on my way. Quinn either went back to bed or didn’t say anything while I pulled on my jeans, my undershirt, and didn’t bother with the button-down I’d had on before. I needed to go do some work; Pete didn’t have me scheduled for the day, but I was sure he could use a hand.
Before I could duck out of the house unnoticed, Quinn’s voice stopped me.
“Will I see you later at the office?” she asked.
I paused in the doorway. “Of course,” I said to her. I had to say that; I didn’t know whether I’d be there. All of a sudden I felt much less sure of myself than I had the night before, and in the eerie light of dawn, I couldn’t be certain.
I drove home in silence. I didn’t know the radio stations here, and I didn’t care to remember that music had changed and evolved in my absence. The songs I remembered being popular were old news now, and the new music sounded as foreign as what I’d heard overseas. I only now began to realize that I couldn’t earn back the time I’d lost here.
I crept into the house to find that no one was awake yet. All the better. I got washed up and checked my clock. I still had a few hours before my appointment with Quinn, but I wasn’t going to go to that. I couldn’t go to that, not today. We had three appointments a week—missing one wouldn’t be a big deal, I told myself.
I pulled up into Pete’s driveway and saw him sitting up on the front porch. When he saw me, he hurriedly put out a cigarette he’d lit—something that made me roll my eyes—and he looked genuinely surprised when I walked up to him.
“Sawyer, did I put you down for work today?” Pete asked.
I shook my head. “No, I just wanted to get some air.”
“Shoot, this is the place for it.” Pete gestured to an empty chair. I tried to remember my dream the night before—I had the feeling it had something to do with him, but I couldn’t remember. I never could remember them, and that was the worst thing about it. If I knew what they were about, I could at least start analyzing them, maybe figuring out what it was that was haunting me. Now, though, I was left to guess.
“You don’t have any work for me to do?” I asked. I took the seat that was offered, not wanting to be rude to my friend.
“Well, I’d like you to answer some of my questions first,” Pete said. I could tell that he was worried, and I didn’t want him to become more worried, so I resigned myself to answer whatever he had to throw at me.
“Alright,” I said. “What do you got?”
“What’s got you over here so early in the morning?” Pete asked. “It’s the crack of dawn. The goddamn rooster hasn’t even crowed yet.”
Pete didn’t have a rooster, but I saw his point. “I was over at Quinn’s and I had a weird dream, woke up, felt a little weird, thought I’d do some work to take my mind off it.”
“You were at Quinn’s?”
“Yup.”
“I’m guessing you weren’t there for a follow-up appointment?”
“Nope.”
“Shit.” Pete shoved his cap further down onto his head. “Well, I can’t stop you. Did it all go alright?”
“Yeah, I mean, it was great. I stayed the night over there because it was easier and I didn’t want to deal with my dad, coming home late and all.” The man treated me like I was still twelve, and I imagined that would probably carry over into me coming home late. “But I woke up pretty early because of a… Quinn calls them night terrors.”
“Night terrors? My Uncle Tom used to get night terrors,” Pete said. “They’re awful scary. Did she help you out?”
“There’s not much anyone can do,” I said. “It just happens.”
“What are they about? Is it stuff from overseas?” Pete asked. His wording made it clear that he was being careful in how he phrased his question, like if he said the wrong word he’d spook me and I’d go galloping off like a deer.
“Wouldn’t know,” I said. I rolled up my shirt sleeve. “I always forget when I wake up. That’s how night terrors go.”
“Shit.” Pete shook his head. He stayed quiet for a few blessed seconds. “You know, Sawyer, if you need to talk about what happened, and you don’t want to tell Quinn…”
“Nothing happened,” I said.
“Well, you say that, but you’re acting like something must have happened,” Pete insisted.
“Nothing happened,” I reiterated, a bit more cross. I was getting tired of having to defend myself to everyone.
“It’s not gonna get any better if you don’t talk about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So something did happen,” Pete countered, and I rolled my eyes. This was like grade-school fighting, the sort of cross-examination that would take place on a playground.
“I don’t think I entirely appreciate getting interrogated about this,” I muttered and stood up. “I told you that nothing happened. I don’t want to talk about it. I get that everyone feels bad or some shit, I don’t know, but I’m telling you nothing happened and I am asking you to believe me.”
Pete raised his arms in mock surrender. “Alright, shoot. I suppose that’s it, then.” I could see in his face that he didn’t believe me. In fact, through my stubbornness, I’d probably only solidified the idea that something had happened and I was being stubborn about it.
And that was the truth, too. It would be all too easy to defend myself if the truth was that I was fine, and nothing happened, and everyone was overreacting to my behavior.
Pete ended up letting me work a long day out in the yard. I appreciated the opportunity to take my mind off everything. He knew based on my schedule that I was missing an appointment with Quinn but he didn’t say anything about it. He must have known that I was growing irritated with him that day, and I didn’t want to be badgered about anything else. Especially not about Quinn, when I had no idea what I was going to do about her myself.
I’d been so damn certain the day before. But now I’d made a fool of myself in front of her and solidified the notion that I was some broken soldier she needed to put back together. I wanted to be the man she joked with, the man she had a good time with, not some patient she needed to work with. I didn’t want to look at myself as a tragic hero. I just wanted to be someone’s dumb boyfriend. I wanted nothing that had happened overseas to count for anything, and yet I wanted it to count for everything, for every good change that my life had had since I’d come home.
When I got home, Dad wasn’t anywhere to be found. That was easier than having him ignore me. As on edge as I was, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t have snapped at him if I’d seen him trying to pull some juvenile evasion bullshit when he saw me come in the door. Mom was in the kitchen putting dinner together.
“Hey, Sawyer. Grab a plate; dinner’s just about ready.”
The thing I loved the most about coming home, quite possibly, was homemade food. I made sure to thank Mom for making something, despite her protest that it wasn’t any trouble and that really, I was too nice. Years of cafeteria food and rations made me intensely grateful for a pot of homemade chili or enchiladas or any casseroles.
We sat down, and I poked at my food, doing my best to eat despite my tiredness and my disjointedness.
“You know, I got a call from the therapist’s office today,” Mom said.
I glanced up. I felt too much like she’d said she’d gotten a call from the principal’s—there was an incredibly childlike tone to the situation, and I didn’t care for it.
“She said you missed your appointment and didn’t call ahead.” Mom poked at her food.
Instead of irritation with my mom about bringing it up, I felt guilty. When I was young, and I got in trouble at school, she would glare at me across the table and call me ‘Sawyer Thomas Gains’ and pointedly accuse me of what I’d done wrong. Now, though, she wouldn’t look me in the face, only poked at her food and suggested that perhaps I’d made a mistake.
“I know,” I said, and didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t offer her an excuse. I’d had plenty prepared in case she brought it up, but they all felt deceitful now.
“Well,” Mom said, “I think it’s important that you go. Even if you want to change your schedule with her to twice a week or once a week, I still think it’s important to go. Skipping isn’t very good, anyway.”
I forgot, also, that she was the one paying for these sessions. In skipping, I’d likely caused her to be charged a fee. I hadn’t even thought about that in my selfish need to isolate myself. I frowned and nodded. I remembered that the entire reason I’d signed up in the first place was to set my mother at ease. All of this other business could come later. The people closest to me in life needed to be taken care of, come hell or high water.
“I won’t miss another,” I told her, nodding my head in agreement with what she’d said. She didn’t press me for an explanation for why I’d missed that one, and I didn’t offer her one. I wished she’d get angry with me, demand an answer from me. I knew how to work with angry people. I didn’t know how to work with resigned silence. It was all too much like that sad disappointment she’d had in the time before I left to go to the military.
Even as I told her that I wouldn’t miss another appointment, I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t want to lie to my mother, but I didn’t know how I could face Quinn again.