Page 15 of Codename: Dustoff
CHAPTEREIGHT
Inever used to be those fate, kismet-y kind of people. Until Gemini fell—literally—into Finn’s arms and the rest was history. Having watched the two of them and their relationship develop over the last year, I’m now convinced that when you throw an intention out into the universe, the universe listens. How else can you explain someone like Amelia just dropping into our laps seemingly out of nowhere?
Except, small issue. I’d asked the universe for a couple hours having coffee—and to not be awkward and unlikeable while doing so—not to create a massive blizzard and take out the access bridge. Now she was in my house. In my personal space. Making my skin tingle when she got too close, smelling like warm, freshly laundered sheets in the dead of winter. Crisp, clean, and comforting.
“While it’s not nearly as lush as the Echo Creek, I’d say it’s probably a step up from an army base.”
Shit—first pitch and I’m already taking a wild swing and a miss. Of all the places to remind her of, I choose a fucking Army base. Bravo, Emmett. I internally kicked myself, waving her into my kitchen.
“So.” I rubbed at the back of my neck, trying to cover for the fact my dumb mouth had just dragged me into a pile of shit. “Let me show you the bedroom. You can set your stuff down. The bathroom is right over here.” I pointed to the door next to the TV and dresser. “I’ll grab you some towels. It’s an accessible tub, you open and close it like you would a car door. Don’t start the water till you’re in the tub, otherwise, it will leak everywhere. But the water heater is on demand, so there’s no sitting there shivering while you wait for the water to warm up. Epson salt is on the windowsill—you know for the pain.”
She seemed surprised that I sussed out how she was feeling. Given my own arm throbbed when the weather got damp and cold, that bathtub could be a godsend. While she nodded and smiled politely while I chattered away, her not saying actual words, only made me desperate to fill the silence even more. I needed to get out of that bathroom before I made a total fool of myself.
“There’s Penetrex, hemp oil, and arnica in the medicine cabinet. Feel free to pick your poison.” I handed her two towels from the linen cabinet, and then showed myself out. “If you need help, just let me know. I’ll hang around and watch some TV just to be safe. It’s the room right on the other side of the bathroom, so seriously, just holler if you need me.”
I tried to keep an ear out for sounds of distress, but nothing ever came. Eventually I must have dozed off. Some watchdog I was. My phone said it was nearing two in the morning and I was out like a light slumped in my damn La-Z-Boy. I’d just flipped the TV off and turned towards the stairs when I heard what sounded like a whimper coming from Amelia’s room. I didn’t want to creep her out by leering into her bedroom.
“Amelia?” I whispered, “Are you okay?”
There was no response. I waited another breath just in case she responded and turned to make my way upstairs when I heard it again. The door from the bathroom to her bedroom was partially open, and I could see her, wrapped around a pillow, snuggling it like it was a prize teddy bear. She wore her hair down while she slept. Her curly-que hair spread out like the mane of a lioness across the pillows. She’d wiggled her way out from under her covers in the middle of the night, the angry jagged lines of her scars catching the moonlight from the window. I traced the angry lines of my own scar, remembering the day at the rail yard.
Amelia’s whimpers drew me back into the present. She’d begun to thrash wildly in bed, kicking off the remnants of her blanket before shooting up into a sitting position and screaming at the top of her lungs. All too familiar with night terrors like that, I was action before thought.
“Hey, Amelia.” I tried to cradle her against my chest, but the strength in a single arm wasn’t enough for someone shackled by the weight of their own trauma. “Amelia.” I tried a second time, rocking her back and forth while she writhed and keened.
Desperate to try to raise her into wakefulness without startling her, I hummed the lyrics of “HaveYourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Meet Me in St. Louis was on the TV before I’d turned it off, so it was the first song that came to mind. I’d entranced myself in my own humming and rocking, and honestly, I have no idea how long I sat there doing it. Eventually, I felt her tense in my grasp.
“What are you doing in here?” The tightness in her voice mirrored the discomfort I could feel rippling through her muscles.
“I heard you scream.” I released my arm and held it up and away, giving her the room to push off me and readjust. “I tried to calm you down. I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to wake up in a strange house, already discombobulated because you aren’t in your own bed, and also try to find the line where reality started, and the nightmare faded away.”
Amelia wiped her face with the back of her hand, settling against the headboard, before drawing up her knee and resting her chin on it.
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
“Would you like me to grab you something? Water? Tea? Are you in any pain?”
“Water would be great,” she said on a yawn, turning her head against her knee to follow my steps out of the room.
“When the accident first happened,” I handed her a water bottle, as well as my bottle of Alleve, which she took and set on the nightstand, “I used to have such a hard time sleeping through the night. Every time I closed my eyes, the whole scene would play out again. It became so bad, I started to become afraid of going to sleep.”
“But you say it in past tense—you don’t have them anymore?”
“No, not really. Sometimes.” I shrugged, trying to remember the last time I’d even have a night terror. “Certain things knock loose memories. For the most part though, I sleep pretty sound these days.”
“How did you make it through?”
It shouldn’t embarrass me. I was a grown assed man, and the fact I found a way to cope and move on should be the key point to this conversation. So what if I needed my best friend to be my safety blanket to scare away the demons.
“Well,” I ran my hand through the back of my hair, “to be honest my best friend Finn would sleep here. Not together, mind you. We didn’t like share a bed. But I put a twin bed in here over there by the closet. And he slept over every night for probably a month. Anytime I needed anything he’d get it for me. Pain meds, something to drink, help getting to the bathroom if I felt too dizzy to walk there on my own.”
Those beginning days had been a haze of pain and sleepless nights. Without him I have no idea what I would have done. My pa didn’t know how to handle caring for an invalid. Especially trying to care for me while at the same still trying to work at the very place that had rendered me useless in the first place. So Finn came and helped, and my pa did what he knew how to do best. Buried himself in work.
“Eventually as my body healed, my brain started to go sideways. And that’s when the terrors got really bad. Normally, Finn sleeps like the damn dead. You send the whole marching band through his bedroom, and he’ll wake up the next day humming whatever song they were playing but have no recollection of there being any disturbances in his REMS. But he’d be here at my side every single time I started screaming, crying, or calling for help.”
She took a long drink from her water bottle before popping open the cap of the pain killers and swallowing one. Interesting that she moderated her painkiller consumption. The recommended dosing was two capsules for an adult, and yet she still halved her dosage.
“The cases for pain killer abuse amongst amps is like triple the rate of any other group.” She told me, setting her water back on the nightstand, and inch worming into a horizontal position. “I try to stay really cognizant of even how much over the counter meds I’m taking. It’s way too easy to fall into a habit of popping pills because the pain is ever present.”