56. Salem
SALEM
“ G ood boy,” I tell Sim, scratching behind his ears after he takes care of business, and I clean it up. “What do you think of Blue?” I ask as he stops to smell the base of a tree. “I love him, so you’ll see him more. You good with that?” He sniffs the air, then howls.
I grin. “Okay, I guess that’s a yes.”
He sniffs the air again and yanks at his leash.
“Hold on. No pulling.”
He slows down for a bit before yanking again. “Hey, hey. Relax.”
When we turn the corner of our block, I check that there are no other dogs around and unhook his leash. He takes off toward home. I watch as he bounds up the steps, and then I freeze.
Seven-foot-four, buzz cut, brown duck jacket, black hoodie, and jeans. I’d recognize my brother anywhere.
“Where the hell have you been?” I fume. He doesn’t flinch from where he’s bent down, hugging Simba. He probably tracked me from the corner.
“I can explain,” he says.
I’m up the steps and in his face in less than two seconds. “Do you have any idea what we’ve been through?” I bellow. “We called every fucking hospital across the country! We hired a private investigator! How could you disappear again without calling? Where the hell were you?”
The door rips open. “What’s going on?” Blue asks, glaring at my brother.
Denzel flicks a glance my way. “You got him?” His lip quirks up as he nods to Blue. “Hi, I’m Denzel, Salem’s brother.”
Blue’s face doesn’t relax despite his mouth forming an ohhh . “Arnaz, his boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend.” Denzel nods. “My parents and I were worried that he’d die with a crush on you.”
“Enough,” I cut in. “Explain.”
“Can we go inside?” Denzel asks. “You woke up half the neighborhood.”
I nod for him to move. He lifts his backpack and heads into the house.
After storing his shoes neatly in the shoe bench, he follows me into the living room.
“This is my sister, Ana?s,” Blue says. “Ana?s, this is Salem’s brother, Denzel.”
She sucks in a breath. “Oh my god.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt. I can come back,” Denzel says.
“Or we can leave?” Blue offers.
“No,” I say to him before addressing my brother. “We can do this here or upstairs.” I reach for my phone. “I need to call Mom and Dad—they need to know.”
“I called them when I landed. Look, you have every right to be angry with me, but just hear me out.”
“This better be a hell of a story.” I cross my arms.
“It’s the truth.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Uh—after my friend attempted suicide, sitting with him there in the hospital…I don’t know.
It did something to me. The visions started coming back, like after Iraq.
Before I left for the desert, I visited him one more time.
He was barely awake, but his nurse sat with me, asked me my story.
She mentioned something called the Hearts for Heroes Project and gave me the pamphlet.
I stuffed it in my bag and didn’t find it again until things got bad. ”
“Bad how?” I ask.
“I started hallucinating, thinking I was seeing some of my squad mates who had fallen. It was…dark. Darker than it had been for a while,” he admits.
“Why not call me, Mom, Dad, your doctors?” I ask.
“I just couldn’t. I made the decision that if I couldn’t figure it out on my own, I was done.”
“Done how?” My voice shakes.
He doesn’t answer.
“Done how, Denzel?”
Blue comes over and wraps his arm around my waist.
“The pain was in control,” he finally answers. “When it gets like that, it’s hard to see a way out.”
“I don’t understand. You have me, you have people who would have gotten on a plane to be there with you as soon as you called. Why?” I look away as my eyes burn.
Blue leans in, anchoring me with his arm.
“I know. I just couldn’t see it,” Denzel murmurs. “I’m sorry.”
“You need a minute?” Blue asks me quietly.
I shake my head. I need answers. “Go on,” I tell Denzel.
“That night, I found the pamphlet the nurse had given me. It had people sitting on the beach in some tropical place, and inside there was a story about a former Marine who has PTSD. She had sold all her stuff and traveled to South America. She talked about taking medicine there that helped her deal with the flashbacks and nightmares from her time overseas. I didn’t really believe it, but I was so low, I was willing to try just about anything. ”
“Medicine? What are you talking about?” I ask.
“Ayahuasca, psilocybin,” he answers.
“You’re telling me you disappeared for months to get high in Mexico?” I ask incredulously.
“Wait,” Blue says, rubbing my chest. “My therapist told me about this. I struggle with C-PTSD,” he tells Denzel.
“Me too,” Ana?s says.
“Zuri said there are clinical trials that use Indigenous medicine like psilocybin and MDMA to help with what he’s describing. It’s not about getting high.”
“It’s true,” Denzel says. “It was structured just like a clinical trial. We met one-on-one and in groups with mental health facilitators and Indigenous healers for a few weeks to prepare us. Then we took the medicine, and then there was a period of integration.”
“Did it work?” Ana?s asks.
“Not for everyone in my group, but it helped me some. I still need therapy, but?—”
“How?” I break in. “How did it work for you?”
“I’d been stuck in a loop of what happened to me overseas—like pieces of memories—the same scenes over and over, but with the sessions, I could zoom out and see the full picture without having to relive it.
I’ve been sleeping better than I can remember in a long time.
” He blows out a breath. “I also got my appetite back and?—”
“Why couldn’t you call?” I demand, noticing the tic in his left hand is barely noticeable. “I’m glad you got help, but why couldn’t you just pick up the phone and text me or Mom or Dad?”
“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t. As soon as I got sleep and started coming back online, I realized how worried you all must’ve been. I skipped the closing ceremony and got on the first plane back.”
I shake my head, staring at the floor. Every day, I’d wished for this moment—him alive and okay, at home with me. And now that he’s here, I want to hold him close, but I also want to yell and shake him for all the worry he’s caused us.
The terror he experienced serving this country.
I am angry about all of it.
Blue works his thumb inside my closed fist. “It’s hard, you know,” he says, looking at me but speaking high enough for Denzel and Ana?s to hear.
“Whether we mean to or not, we can ask a lot of the people who love us when we aren’t well.
We can miss how hard it is for them too.
” He turns to Denzel. “I’m speaking from my own experience.
And based on what Salem has told me, he’s been worried about you since you enlisted.
Now that you’re doing better, are you planning to stick around for a while? Be here for him?”
I wipe my face on the neck of my tee.
“Yes. I want to be here in Brooklyn. I’m better around you,” Denzel says to me.
“I’m thinking of getting my own place nearby and either partnering with the Hearts for Heroes Project or opening my own version here in New York.
And I was going to ask for your help. You and I always talked about wanting to do more for vets. ”
There’s a part of me that’s wanted Denzel around for years. I still do. But there’s another part that’s angry we’ve lost so much time. Then there’s the other part of me that feels like I can’t care about him this much anymore. It’s too hard.
The only problem is that I don’t know how not to care about him so much.
I don’t know how to make sense of all these parts.
I clear my throat, then say, “I need to take it one step at a time.”
“That’s fair,” Denzel replies as Blue rubs the small of my back.
“It’s bullshit that you think you have to disappear to heal. Please, no more.” I raise my gaze to Denzel, then turn it on Blue. “No more.”
Blue leans into my shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Me neither,” Denzel adds.
I blow out a breath. “You spoke to both Mom and Dad?”
Denzel nods, and the guilt written on his face tells me he probably got a sense of how worried they’ve been. “I am going to fly out to see them soon.”
I take a second and lean into the support of Blue against my side before blowing out a breath and wiping my face. “Still scrambled eggs with extra cheese and ketchup?” I ask Denzel.
“Yep.”
I turn to Ana?s.
“Cheese omelet?” she says.
“Come on,” Blue says to me. “I’ll help.”
“Hey.” I turn to Denzel. “We’ll talk more later. Your room upstairs hasn’t changed.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping closer to palm my shoulder.
“I’m glad you’re safe and here.” I pull him into a hug.
“Psst,” Ana?s whispers.
I look over, thinking she’s talking to me, and catch her mouth to Blue, Big bro’s a ten too.
“Not the time,” Blue whispers back, before mouthing, Definitely a ten.
“I saw that,” I tell him.
“Sorry.” He purses his lips, not an ounce of apology in his voice.
Besides the scar under his jaw and his sharp eyes, Denzel and I do look similar.
Similar enough that I was called Little Denz growing up.
“Denzel, how do you like vampires?” Ana?s asks.
I shake my head as Blue and I head toward the kitchen.