Page 8 of The Darkness Within
“Is that you?” he whispered. “Nash?”
Gutierrez. “It’s me. Are you okay?”
“They bathed me.”
“Is that what you would call it? More like fucking waterboarding. How’s your foot?”
“I can’t feel it anymore,” he sobbed, giving into tears. “My leg feels hot, like I’m being stuck with hot pokers, but I can’t feel my foot anymore.”
“Maybe it’s better that way. The pain would only weaken you. We have to stay strong. Until they come for us.”
“Are they really coming?”
I slithered over the dirt floor in the darkness until my fingers connected with his leg, and I pulled myself up his body to sit beside him. His clothes were as cold and wet as mine, and he shook despite the heat in his leg, most likely fever from the sepsis.
“Yeah, G. They’re coming. Just hold on.”
I’ve dreamed of returning home for weeks, like a single obsessive thought. Returning to the United States, back to Fort Bragg. But being a patient at Womack Army Medical Center? No, I didn’t dream about this shit. Also, the staff here are a lot less professional than at Walter Reed.
“The guy across the hall says he can smell you all the way from over there,” my nurse Liza remarks as she pushes into the room with her rolling med cart.
I wonder if she purposely tries to bang it on every surface between the door and my bed, or if it’s just coincidence. A deaf person could hear her coming from a mile away.
“The guy across the hall has two options. He can shut the fucking door or go fuck himself.” My sweet smile belies the acid in my words.
Liza chuckles. I’ve learned nothing phases her. “Your dinner should be here shortly. In the meantime, you can start with this delicious amuse-bouche I’ve prepared for you,” she says with a flourish of her wrist as she presents me with a paper cup. When I just stare, she adds, “I could crush it and sprinkle it over applesauce for you, or pudding.”
With a glare that could burn holes through her, I swipe the paper cup off the tray table and down them in one gulp, fighting my gag reflex when they stick in my throat.
“You don’t have to be a badass,” she adds, placing another cup on my table. I chase the cocktail with water. “If you’re going to shower, do it before these meds kick in.”
We’re interrupted by the delivery of my dinner tray from food services. It’s less appetizing than the cup of pills or the promised applesauce and pudding. Spaghetti, and the red sauce is watered down, a clear pink liquid forming around the edge of the plate in a puddle. The guy in the kitchen must be the cousin of the guy who cooked for us on base. My stomach turns and then knots, and I can feel the pills coming back up. Pasta nuggets and watered down sauce. I swallow down bile and push the plate away without interest.
“You have to eat, Sergeant. You can’t keep taking pills on an empty stomach. You’re losing weight.”
“I can’t eat that,” I croak.
With a tired sigh, she shuts and locks her med cart and pushes to her feet. “I’m about to go on my dinner break and I’m ordering Chinese takeout.” Her face softens as she leans on the rail of my bed. “Can I order you something?”
I’m not just triggered by the bad memories, I’m triggered by the good ones as well, the ones that bring tears to my eyes and make my throat close up.
“Do they have crab Rangoon? There’s a place down the street that makes the best crab Rangoon.” I hate how broken my voice sounds, how close my emotions are to the surface, plain for her to see.
“Wok Choy?”
“That’s the one,” I rasp, losing my battle with my tears.
“I’ll make you a deal. If you get up and take a shower, I’ll go and order dinner. My treat.”
Her kindness is my undoing. The tears fall unbidden, fat wet drops on my blanket. Liza risks touching me, something no one has done in weeks. She slides her small soft hand around my shoulder and squeezes me to her slender body, smelling sweet with perfume. It’s such a jarring contrast to the men who roughly handled me, who tortured me mercilessly, that I don’t even mind. It’s a comfort.
“Have you eaten anything besides hospital food?” I shake my head, and she sighs again. “I hope you have an appetite because I’m going to order a lot of food,” she teases with a smile.
When I get out of the shower, Liza is gone and so is her med cart. Padding back to the bed, I climb under the covers wearing a clean pair of worn gray sweats with the Army logo. The remote sits on the bedside table, and although it weighs no more than a couple of ounces, it weighs on me like a brick. I haven’t watched TV since… I’m not even sure how long it’s been. In the desert, I watched a couple of movies in the rec room, but TV? It’s been more than a year.
When I came back to the States, the nurses at Walter Reed confiscated my remote control, warning me about being exposed to things that would trigger me. They were right. My name was all over the TV; pictures of me were in the headlines every day.
‘POW returns home minus one.’