Prologue
Only in your head
Time will help you out
*Put It Behind You – Keane*
"And do you think about things often?"
Gunfire. Somewhere nearby.
But there's blood in front of her. On her hands and on her fatigues.
"Doctor Watson! Doctor Watson, please! Help me!" She remembers hearing them cry.
All the wounded. For her, for Jerry, for Steve.
They were all shouting, screaming, begging. It hurt to think about and it was bitter to recall. God, why didn't they just stop?
They were dead. All of them.
Why didn't they just get out of her head?
"What? Oh, no, no. Hardly. I try to let things slide by now, you know." It was grey today, and looked like it might rain. That would be annoying later.
"It's not serious; you can walk, Captain Watson."
"No, I can't! Don't you see?" She struggled to pull herself to her feet, sling her legs over the side of the dispensary bed. "I won't walk normally again! I've been wounded; you're not blind, surely you know that, doctor?" She stumbles, nearly falls. He catches her by the shoulder. The good one. A nurse near him comes over. Helps put her back in bed.
"When you want to, you'll find you can walk, Captain. This is a sympathetic injury; Lieutenant Steven McGuire, had he lived, would've had a similar limp. It will take time for your mind to recover from the loss of your companion."
"Yet you still carry your gun and don't sleep regularly." Ella began writing, and she couldn't help it, she followed the scratch of the bad pen with her eyes and ended up trying to look for medical jargon amongst the notes for her troubles.
"Of course I don't! Why. . . Why would you say that?"
The woman across from her looked up, resting her pen easily between her hands. "How's your blog going?" There it was. That pointed, clear look interrogators always gave their victims. Inwardly she scowled and cursed. Outwardly she attempted to lie.
"Yes, hmm, it's good. Coming along fine." She cleared her throat, hating that she sounded weak. What had the war done to her? She didn't need this; she didn't need anything but a good bottle of whiskey and perhaps some meth. But, she hurriedly reminded herself, that was in her younger days. She was all past that now. All past that.
Ella Batterston was the name of her therapist; the therapy was required after her long stint 'across and beyond,' as she liked to call it.
"You haven't written a word, have you?" Her therapist's voice was disapproving around the edges, and it made her feel like squirming; something she hadn't done since she was green and a rookie. The pen scratched in the quiet, and she followed it again.
"You just wrote, 'still has trust issues.'" A small part of her wanted congratulations or something for her accomplishment of reading the scrawly writing upside down, but the larger part of her was terrified that she'd said the words out loud. What was wrong with her?
"And you just read my writing upside down. D'you see what I mean?" Ella smiled knowingly. How she hated those kinds of looks. Knowing was disgusting sometimes, especially when someone knew something about you better than you did.
She struggled to give back an understanding smile; God, why was it so hard to empathize with people these days? It felt better shutting everything down except what she needed to keep going to survive. But then sometimes she wondered if she wasn't shutting down but burning out.
"Johnny, you've been an operative for a long time. It's going to take you a while to adjust to civilian life. You need to learn to be a woman again, not an officer; and writing a blog about everything that happens to you will honestly help you."
Three, two, one. And there it was: the pity. Curse it to hell and back! She didn't need pity; she didn't need blogs. What she needed was something to keep her mind busy. She didn't want to shut down and twiddle her thumbs again.
"No, you're wrong about that. It won't help, because what happens to a retired op? Nothing."