Chapter 15 The Crossing Back
Marlene stepped off the bus at Landstuhl just past noon local time, her bag heavy on her shoulder and the taste of airplane coffee still coating her tongue.
The hospital complex sprawled before her—gray buildings, manicured lawns, flags snapping in a wind that smelled like diesel and autumn.
She'd expected something temporary. Tents.
Field hospitals. The kind of makeshift architecture that existed only in war zones and disaster areas.
This was permanent. Brick and concrete and glass.
This was where they sent soldiers who were too broken for the field but not broken enough to send home.
Gideon was here.
Or he had been. The message was three days old now—three days of flights and connections and sitting in airports with her forehead pressed against cold windows, watching the world slide past at thirty thousand feet. Three days since she'd heard his voice crack on the word can't.
She pushed through the main entrance. The lobby smelled like antiseptic and floor wax.
A woman in ACUs sat behind the reception desk, her hair pulled back in a bun so tight it stretched the skin at her temples.
She was typing something into a computer, her fingers fast and efficient, and she didn't look up when Marlene approached.
"Visiting hours start at fourteen hundred."
"I'm not here for visiting hours." Marlene's voice came out steadier than she felt. "I'm looking for a patient. Sergeant Marcus T. Gideon. He called me from here three days ago."
The receptionist's fingers paused. Something flickered across her face—not recognition, exactly, but a kind of practiced neutrality that Marlene had learned to read in the years she'd spent watching customers' expressions over the diner counter. The woman knew something.
"Your name?"
"Marlene Cross. I'm his—" She stopped. What was she? Girlfriend felt trivial. Fiancée was a lie. Lover was too intimate to offer a stranger. "I'm the one he called."
The receptionist typed something. Waited. Typed again. The computer screen reflected in her glasses, a wash of pale blue light.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Sergeant Gideon is no longer a patient here."
The words didn't register at first. Marlene heard them—heard every syllable—but they arranged themselves into nonsense, like a sentence spoken in a language she'd once known and long since forgotten.
"What do you mean, no longer a patient?"
"He was transferred. Three days ago. To a facility in the United States."
Three days ago. The same day he'd called her. The same day he'd left that message—I can't walk, Marlene—the message that had sent her scrambling for her passport, the message she'd replayed four times before walking out the door.
"Transferred where?"
The receptionist looked at her screen. "I'm not authorized to release that information to anyone who isn't immediate family."
"I'm his—" Marlene's voice caught. She'd been about to say fiancée, the lie automatic, but something stopped her.
The woman was wearing a uniform. She'd heard every lie that grieving families could invent.
"He called me. From this hospital. He didn't know where I was—he thought I'd already left for California. And I got on a plane. I flew across an ocean. Please."
The word felt foreign in her mouth. She'd spent three years in Grady refusing to beg.
"Please, I just need to know where he is."
Something shifted in the receptionist's expression.
The practiced neutrality cracked, just slightly.
She looked at Marlene—really looked at her, not through her—and Marlene realized how she must appear.
Hair unwashed. Eyes shadowed. The same clothes she'd worn on the flight, wrinkled and stale.
The dog tags visible now, pulled out from beneath her sweater at some point during the bus ride, the chain cool against her collarbone.
"Those his tags?" the woman asked.
Marlene's hand went to her throat. "Yes."
A long moment passed. The receptionist glanced at the hallway behind her, then back at Marlene. Her voice dropped.
"I can't give you his medical records. I can't give you his forwarding address. But I can tell you he was transferred stateside. Walter Reed. That's all I know."
Walter Reed. Bethesda, Maryland. Not California. Not Grady. Somewhere in between.
"When?" Marlene asked. "When did he leave?"
"Three days ago. The transport flight left at zero six hundred."
The same day he'd called. He'd left that message from this hospital, his voice broken and crying, and then—what?
Had they put him on a plane immediately after?
Had he tried to call her again before they sedated him for the flight?
Had he waited at the window, watching the German countryside drop away beneath him, thinking she was already gone, thinking she'd never gotten the message, thinking—
"I need to sit down," Marlene said.
The receptionist pointed to a row of chairs along the wall. "There. I'll get you some water."
Marlene made it to the chair before her legs gave out. Her bag slid off her shoulder and hit the floor with a thump she didn't feel. The overhead lights were too bright. The air was too warm. She pressed her palms flat against her thighs and forced herself to breathe.
He's alive.
That was the first thing. The only thing that mattered. He'd been transferred stateside, which meant he was stable enough to travel. Which meant he wasn't dying. Which meant she still had time.
But he'd been transferred without telling her. Either because he couldn't—or because he chose not to.
She pulled out her phone. International roaming. The signal was weak, three bars that flickered and faded. She pulled up her email. Nothing new since Gideon's last message, still glowing in her inbox like an unanswered prayer: I'm alive. Can't say more. I'm holding onto your promise.
And beneath it, her reply. I'll let you know where I land. I love you.
But she hadn't let him know. She'd flown halfway around the world on the strength of a voicemail, and she hadn't told him she was coming. He'd been transferred back to the United States, closer to her than he'd been in months, and he didn't know that she'd crossed an ocean to find him.
The receptionist returned with a paper cup. Marlene took it. Didn't drink.
"Did he leave a message for me?" she asked. "Before he was transferred. Did he leave anything? A letter? A note?"
The woman hesitated. "We don't handle personal correspondence. But I can check."
She disappeared through a doorway. Five minutes passed. Ten. Marlene stared at the wall and counted the tiles. Forty-three. Forty-four. A number that meant nothing.
The receptionist returned. "I'm sorry. There's nothing."
Nothing. Of course. He'd left a voicemail—that was his note, his goodbye, his assumption that she was already gone.
And then he'd been put on a plane and flown back across the ocean, and now he was somewhere in Maryland, maybe in surgery, maybe in recovery, maybe staring at a ceiling and thinking she'd never heard his voice break.
"I need to get to Walter Reed," Marlene said.
"That's in Bethesda. Near Washington, D.C."
"I know."
The receptionist looked at her for another long moment. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a slip of paper and a pen. Scribbled something. Slid it across the counter.
"Patient affairs office. If anyone can help you, they can."
Marlene took the paper. Folded it. Placed it in her purse next to her passport and her brother's photograph.
"Thank you."
"Good luck."
Marlene stood. Her legs were steadier now, and the dog tags swung against her sternum as she gathered her bag. The hospital lobby still smelled like antiseptic and floor wax, and the flags outside still snapped in the German wind, and somewhere across the Atlantic, Gideon was breathing.
Somewhere across the Atlantic, Gideon was waiting.
She walked out of the hospital and into the gray afternoon light.
Took out her phone. Searched for flights from Frankfurt to D.C. The results loaded slowly, the screen flickering with weak signal, but they came—connecting flights, red-eye flights, prices that made her wince.
She didn't have much left. The savings had covered this trip, barely. Walter Reed would drain the rest.
She booked the ticket anyway.
The confirmation email appeared. She forwarded it to Gideon automatically, out of habit, before remembering he hadn't replied to her last one. Before remembering he might not even have access to email. Before remembering she didn't know if he wanted her to find him.
Too late. She'd already crossed an ocean. She'd cross another one if she had to.
The bus back to Frankfurt left in forty minutes. Marlene sat on a bench outside the hospital entrance, her bag at her feet, her phone in her hand, and she pulled up Gideon's voicemail one more time. Pressed play. Held the phone to her ear.
"I love you," he said. "I still love you. That's the only thing that still works."
"Not the only thing," she whispered to the empty air. "Not even close."
The wind picked up. The flags snapped. And somewhere, on the other side of the ocean, Gideon was waiting—whether he knew it or not.