Chapter Four
A re you sure this is what you want?” My mom urged again as I packed my last box up to put in storage.
I didn’t want to saddle my mom with caring for my things while I served.
She had too much on her plate. So I sold what I could and packed away the rest for a time when I could unpack in my own home.
“Yes, momma. I’m sure,” I said, tired of having this same conversation. She’d tried to change my mind at least fifty times since I told her I planned to enlist.
“If this is about your dad…” she started. It was a now familiar tactic she used to try to guilt me out of this.
“It’s not about dad,” I said. It was a little about my dad, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
Her stories of him made him out to be a hero.
Is it any wonder he became this massive figure in my mind?
Someone to measure up to. Brave, strong, exactly the kind of person every man should aspire to be.
How could I not at least try to measure up to that?
“You’re just so young,” she started again.
She refused to lift a finger to help me pack.
A tactic to stall me longer and keep me talking.
It was just as well because that would just be another thing to fight about when I inevitably insisted that she didn’t need to help and that she should work on her garden or paint, something relaxing with her time off for a change.
“You were young when you had me,” I reminded her. “So was Dad when he joined. Heck, he was young when he died, too.” I shouldn’t have brought it up, and I kicked myself mentally for saying it. My dad died young, only a few years older than I was now.
I shook off the thought. It didn’t matter now. What’s done is done.
“Mom. I want to do this. I want to do it because I couldn’t live with myself if there was a way to make you safer here at home and I didn’t do it.
I want to do it because you work so hard for me and it’s my turn to work hard for you.
I want to do this because everyone deserves to grow up in a country where they are safe and free.
I want to do it because someone has to. You taught me to always give back to my community, and this is my way of doing that.
I’m enlisted. The contract is signed. I want this for my life. ”
I stopped packing and crouched down in front of her as she sat at my childhood desk.
I grabbed her hands and brought them to my mouth for a kiss on each.
They were still so smooth. She was still young, not even forty, yet.
She had so many good years left and I wanted to make sure she could live them to the fullest.
“You deserve a good life, momma. You’ve given so much of it to other people. Let me give some of my time back to you,” I vowed as I kneeled at her feet.
“Oh sweetie,” she said as she brought one of her hands up to my face, “that’s not your job.”
“Yes, it is, momma. It’s my job because I say it is.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I’m not going to win this, am I?” She brushed the hand that had been on my cheek through my hair in a familiar gesture.
I chuckled at her capitulation. “Nope. ”
The overhead lights broke through the darkness of my sleep.
The image of my mother fading and the familiar ache filled the space only she could exist. I blinked my eyes open.
They were heavy and resistant to my efforts.
Faint beeping sounded from somewhere and tape pulled at my skin from the IV.
I lost the battle with my eyes and blackness crept back in.
I stopped fighting it and let it pull me back under.
“Sir,” I said as I stood at attention in my commanding officer’s office.
“We need to go back. I have reason to believe that there’s a group of kids camped in one of the abandoned buildings.
We can’t leave them there. Not if the chatter is correct and this place will be flattened by drone.
” I petitioned the Major for this new mission only minutes after returning from our last. It was unlikely to work, but I had to try.
“We have no resources for a non-emergency rescue mission right now,” Major Moran said. He didn’t even look up from his paperwork as he responded. I clenched my hands to keep from pounding his desk to get his attention. Leave it to brass to ignore that important things.
“Thank you for the update on today’s mission,” he said, as he waved his hand in my direction.
“You’re dismissed.” He still didn’t look at me.
I stood there for a minute too long while I tried to control myself before turning to leave.
I wasn’t going to get a green light from Major “Moron.” If I pushed too hard, I would only make my squad a target for his wrath.
“Let me guess, he said no,” Icebox said when he saw me.
“This isn’t what I signed up for,” I ground out in response.
“We were all na?ve once,” he said, as he handed me a granola bar.
“We were all sold a bill of lies about protecting people,” I clarified, unnecessarily because he knew just as well as I did what our jobs really entailed.
“That we were.”
“Is it really so bad that I want to keep doing that? That I want to do the job I enlisted to do and not the bidding of some brass that’s never set foot over here?” I asked as I tore into the bar.
“Of course, it’s not bad,” Icebox said gently. “It’s just not how things are.” He was practical. Sometimes, I think he even liked it out here.
“Fuck, man. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing this,” I admitted. We were well away from any listening ears. “It’s too fucking much and not enough all at the same time.” I rarely let myself be this fucking sad out loud, but Icebox wouldn’t judge me. I was sure of that.
“You know me, Tink, Duke, and Grey will follow your lead on anything, right?” He said as we continued walking towards the edge of the base.
“Yeah. I know.”
The next time I woke up, a nurse was changing out my IV.
“Master Sergeant. Good. You’re awake,” the nurse said as he finished with the IV and turned to me.
“What…” I couldn’t get more out, but I didn’t need to.
“You were hit with shrapnel from an IED. You’ve been out for two days. We had to reconstruct parts of your left thigh. We stitched you up the best we can, but it will be a while before you can do anything more than enjoy a bit of rest.”
I could tell he tried to give me the facts while holding back the worst of it.
“You should have a visitor today. Major Moran has asked us to contact him when you wake up.” He had leaned back against the side table that was pushed into the corner like this was a casual conversation and we were friends. “Just between us, the guy seems like an ass.”
I laughed at that and discovered that besides destroying my leg, I must have bruised my ribs pretty good. I couldn’t move enough to check it out.
“He is an ass,” I said. I smiled at the nurse before he handed me the remote call button. “Call if you need anything.”
When he left me alone, I tried to take stock of my condition.
Thanks to whatever they put in the IV, I wasn’t in any pain, but I could barely move.
I used the remote to sit my bed up and check out my leg.
It was still there, that was a relief, but a white bandage stretched from hip to knee.
I could wiggle my toes, but that was about it for movement.
The TV droned on in the background as I tried to go back to sleep. Maybe if I wasn’t awake when Major Moron got here, I’d be able to avoid the inevitable a bit longer.
My luck wasn’t that good.
“Master Sergeant Gonzales,” he said as he positioned himself at the foot of my bed, “for your bravery in the line of duty, I’ve written a recommendation for a purple heart.” He straightened himself up like he earned it and not me.
“However,” he continued, “because you took liberties and put the lives of members of your squad at risk after I specifically denied your request for such a mission, you are being discharged under general discharge, other than honorable. We request that you do not reenlist.”
Well, fuck.
That wasn’t as bad as I expected. The Marines and I needed to part way as it was. Maybe now I could do some actual good in the world.
I didn’t have any more visitors for almost a day. I spent that time in and out of sleep and testing just how much I could move my leg, which only frustrated my nurse.
Tink, Grey, and Duke ambled into my hospital room sometime around noon on my fourth day in the hospital carrying a large pizza box and a six-pack of root beer.
“Apparently, it’s frowned upon to bring hospital patients actual beer,” Duke said as he handed me a can. I’m sure he actually tried it, too.
“Speaking of cans,” Duke continued, “did Major Moron already visit and boot you from the noble, blessed ranks of the Marine Corps?” He passed the drinks around before settling into the nearby chair, cracking his open and taking a long pull.
“Barely waited for me to be awake,” I said as I sipped on my root beer.
“I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t a hallucination.
I’m pretty sure he mentioned a Purple Heart somewhere in his speech.
Though he looked a bit green as he vomited the words.
” I exaggerated for the sake of the story, miming vomiting to get a laugh.
It worked. Hospital room or not, joking with these guys set the world to rights and eased my troubles.
“Got a present for you,” Tink teased as he reached into his coat pocket. A familiar pile of papers emerged, and he threw them on the bed next to me. It took everything I had not to rip into that pile. The guys weren’t dumb. They knew how much these letters meant to me. I had a terrible poker face.
“O-oh.” Fucking hell. “Thanks.”
I looked away from them, hoping that they didn’t see how my fingers twitched to snatch the pages up and rifle through. Hope bloomed in my chest at the thought of a new letter.
“Tink thought you might want something to warm your bed while you’re stuck in here,” Duke said as he wagged his eyebrows suggestively. Leave it to Duke to cut right through the issue and state it as bluntly as possible. He left no room for hiding things. It was part of his charm.
I aimed a pillow precisely for Duke’s hand as he raised the root beer to his mouth. I knocked the can straight into his teeth.
“Watch it,” I said. We fuck around, but I didn’t want him getting ideas about sweet Grace.
“Sorry, man,” he said with a shit-eating grin on his face. “I didn’t realize you had it that bad.” Somehow I didn’t believe his apology. “I’m an ass,” he continued. He threw a wink at me and I knew he wasn’t sorry one bit.
“Damn, straight you are,” Grey chimed in around bites of his pizza.
“So I take it Icebox didn’t get the same treatment,” I said to change the subject, my hand still itching to grab the letters. “Seeing as he isn’t here, gracing me with his presence.”
“Nope. He gets to clean up literal shit and a lovely little dock in pay, but they let him stay,” Tink supplied while he passed me another slice of pizza. “Good thing, too. You know he has those plans for when he gets out and an honorable discharge will go a long way to making them happen.”
“Good,” I said definitively. “Where’s the napkins? Am I supposed to wipe my hands on the sheets? We’re men, not animals.” I held up my grease-stained hand, the IV tape tugging on my arm.
“Did your mom teach you that line?” Tink asked as he threw me paper towels from the bathroom.
“No, but your mom did.”
He just rolled his eyes in response.
“I love you guys,” I said, after enjoying another slice of pizza. I never doubted these guys had my back, and I’m glad they didn’t hate me after getting them booted from the Marines.
“How much morphine have you had?” Duke asked as he got up and inspected my IV drip like he knew what he was looking for. Maybe he did.
“Tons, I think.” I laughed off my sentimental mood. The world glowed, but I didn’t think it was just the morphine coursing through me.