As I Recall by boasamishipper
*One thing Tully knew for sure was that you couldn't miss what you couldn't even remember.
After the positive response I got from Breath of Life, I felt the urge to write another Tully-centric fic. This one will be at least five or six chapters long, so be on the lookout for updates. :) With no further ado, I hope you enjoy 'As I Recall'.
Disclaimer: I don't own Rat Patrol. Wish I did, though...
(*) (*)
Time it was
And what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence
A time of confidences
Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They're all that's left of you
Simon and Garfunkel "Bookends"
(*) (*)
They're driving their jeeps out on the desert back to their lines, exhausted after a hard mission. Moffitt and Hitch are in one, and Troy and Tully commandeer the other one.
When he drives, Tully sometimes likes to think back to when he was a kid, remembering when he'd stood on the roof of his house with his arms outstretched, pretending that he was on a sailboat. He and his siblings would stay out there for hours sometimes, playing pirates, talking, sitting quietly with the wind ruffling their hair until their parents called them in for supper.
But then the memory always makes him sad, and he suppresses it while chomping down on his ever-present matchstick.
"Sarge?" asks Tully, wanting to make some conversation.
His sergeant looks over at him. "Yeah, Tully?" Troy replies, cocking an eyebrow.
Tully makes a turn, following Moffitt and Hitch up one of the dunes. He clears his throat, trying to phrase his question properly while chewing on his matchstick. "What're you going to do when this is all over?" he inquires.
Troy pauses, thinking it over. Tully knows that Troy always thinks an answer out carefully before responding to anyone's questions, so he waits.
"Not sure," Troy says, because after all this time in the desert, how can he just adjust to civilian life? Tully's right: what will he do? Now's as good of a time as any to begin thinking about it. "What about you?" he asks his private, who shrugs.
"I dunno about you, Sarge," Tully says with a small smile, "but I'm thinking of goin' somewhere quiet for once."
Troy chuckles as the jeep makes its way up the dune. Moffitt and Hitch are already a few yards ahead of them, slowly driving towards the flickering lights of their camp. The American sergeant thinks that he'd like nothing more than a beer and a good night's rest.
He gazes over at Tully, whose smile is wide and carefree, face turned up toward the moonlight.
And then the world explodes into orange and scarlet.
(*) (*)
Sergeant Sam Troy can't see through the black smoke. It threatens to smother him. He hacks a cough into the crook of his arm. The smoke is beginning to burn his eyes, so he shuts them. His coughing starts to hurt his throat.
He's sitting, more or less sprawled, in the sand when someone finds him.
"Sarge!" The person's voice is shrill as his fingers tap Troy's face. He recognizes the voice as Hitch's. "Oh, God. Sarge!"
Troy opens his eyes, and can instantly see the man relax. He tries to say something, but winds up coughing. "Wh-what happened?" he croaks, sounding like he has something lodged in his throat.
"Land mine," Hitch says. "That's what Doc says, anyways." He grips Troy's arm. "You alright, Sarge?"
His ribs are killing him, his head is foggy, there is a cut leaking blood on his forehead, and his heart is pounding like a drum. "I'm fine."
Suddenly, Troy remembers. "Tully!" He tries to sit up, and Hitch pushes him back down. "Hitch, where's Tully?"
"I…I dunno," Hitch stammers. "Uh, when you guys were driving up, Tully accidentally drove you into a land mine. The jeep—it exploded, Sarge." Great, Troy thinks. Their colonel is really going to be pleased about that. Hitch presses on. "You—you and Tully g-got blown off of the jeep in different directions. I found you, but..."
Suddenly, Moffitt's voice rings out. "Hitch! Troy! He's here."
Troy sends a stern look at Hitch, who immediately helps him to his feet. Leaning heavily on the private, the two men make their way halfway up the sand dune, where the smoking, charred remains of the jeep are scattered.
Tully lies in the wreckage, completely unconscious. His face is an eerie pale with closed lids, having somehow been spared the bits of glass from the broken helmet. His arms are lax at his sides, and his left leg looks sprained, if not broken.
Moffitt sits on his knees next to him, gripping his wrist. Troy is dumbfounded for a second before realizing that he's taking Tully's pulse. "Find anything?" he asks.
"He's alive," Moffitt assures Troy and Hitch. Hitch instantly relaxes, but Troy refuses to, at least not yet. "But," the Brit continues, "it's serious. Very serious. From what I can tell his left leg is broken, and he probably has a concussion. We need to get him back to our lines."
"How far is that?" Hitch asks quietly.
"About a mile or two."
Troy fights the urge to curse.
"Are you alright, Troy?" asks Moffitt, cocking an eyebrow. He stands up and walks over to the sergeant, tilts his head and thoroughly looks him over.
Troy feels very self-conscious of himself then, and angrily swipes the blood from the cut on his forehead aside. "Forget about me, I'm fine," he says gruffly. "It's Tully I'm worried about." He exhales slowly before looking over at Hitch. "Does your jeep still work, Hitch?"
"Yeah, Sarge."
"Alright. Moffitt, help me pick Tully up. Hitch, go start the jeep and clear out some room in the back for him." He sounds harsh, and as Hitch immediately scurries up the sand dune Troy makes a mental note to himself to apologize to Hitch later. His injured man was his top priority now, that's all.
Troy and Moffitt bend down and pick up Tully, grunting as they steadily make their way up the sand dune. "Watch his head," Moffitt instructs Troy.
Troy shifts position so that Moffitt carries Tully's legs and he carries Tully's upper half, making sure that his head isn't dangling.
Once they get to the jeep, Hitch helps them carry Tully into the back and try to make him comfortable. The private sits in the back with Tully while Moffitt drives and Troy stares out at the remains of their other jeep.
He turns back after a few moments and sees Hitch clenching Tully's hand in his own. Troy swallows, and turns away, the sound of the explosion and Tully's last words echoing in his mind like a bullet in a metal box.
I dunno about you, Sarge, but I'm thinking of goin' somewhere quiet for once.
Sergeant Sam Troy hopes against hope that "goin' somewhere quiet" doesn't qualify as the afterlife.
(*) (*)
Private Mark Hitchcock paces outside the waiting area; sure that he's dug a hole in the floor by then. Moffitt holds a cup of coffee in his hand, but doesn't drink it. Troy gazes down at his feet, absentmindedly fingering the bandage on his forehead.
"What's taking them so long?" Hitch says after a while.
As if to answer the private's question, a doctor steps out of a room, marking something on his chart.
Troy gets up. "How is Private Pettigrew doing?" he asks the doctor.
"And you are?" the stranger asks. Hitch takes a quick look at the man's name tag, identifying him as Dr. Thomas Ames.
"Sergeant Sam Troy from the Long Range Desert Group," says Troy, scowling. "Over there is Sergeant Moffitt and that's Private Hitchcock. That's one of my men you have in there. I'm not going to ask again, Doctor. How. Is. He?"
Dr. Ames's eyes widen and he nods. "He's in serious condition right now," he says quietly. "I'm not gonna lie to you, Sergeant Troy; so far, it doesn't look very good. He hasn't woken up yet, and as you know, he has some pretty severe head trauma." He exhales. "To be honest with you men, it doesn't look too good for Private Pettigrew right now."
The private tries to control his breathing and fights to remain standing. Even throughout all of Hitch's injuries that had nearly cost him his life, the doctors had remained cautiously optimistic after the surgery. But to say that it didn't look good...
He glances at Moffitt, just to be sure that the doctor isn't lying. But the Brit nods solemnly, and Hitch takes a shaky breath.
Tully, he thinks, you have to wake up, you just have to...
"Can we see him?" Troy asks, his voice calm, but Hitch can tell his concern from the slight crack in his voice.
"Certainly. He's right in there."
"Thank you," Hitch says as they pass the doctor on their way into Tully's room. He's the only one that does.
The scene inside the hospital room isn't nearly as horrific as Hitch had been imagining this whole time, but is still jarring nevertheless. Tully lies flat on his back, an IV trailing from his hand up to a bag hanging above his bed, dripping some kind of clear liquid into his veins. The covers on his bed come about halfway up his chest, and his head's wrapped with white bandages. His eyes are closed and his chest steadily rises and falls, like he's just sleeping.
The idea is vaguely comforting for a split second before the illusion shatters, and then Hitch clearly sees his fellow private—his best friend—unconscious, his head wrapped in bandages, with a pessimistic outlook on his future set in stone by a medical man.
"Tully." Hitch sighs, unable to take this any longer. "Wake up. Please. Just wake up."
(*) (*)
His eyes open, and instantly his head feels like someone is banging on it relentlessly with a sledgehammer. His arms and legs feel heavy, and if he squints, he can see the barest outline of a cast on his knee.
What happened? he thinks groggily. His throat is dry, like the desert. He'd kill for some water right about then.
After a moment, he realizes that he's lying in a bed, a pretty comfortable one too. There are two pillows stacked under his head. He reaches up to scratch an itch on his forehead, only for his fingers to hit a cloth bandage.
Okay. This is...understandably weird.
He gazes to the side of his bed and sees a few matchsticks scattered on a nightstand. Almost as if on reflex, he places the end of one into his mouth and starts to chew on it, the motion calming him down significantly.
Strange, he thinks, taking the matchstick out of his mouth and placing it back on the nightstand. It's tempting to go back to sleep—he wants to, he really wants to—but there's something about the situation at hand that doesn't seem quite right.
He frowns and swallows, his throat blanching painfully as he tries to figure out what's wrong. When he moves his tongue, it's thick and sticky and licking his lips just makes it worse.
Where's water when I need it, huh? He laughs, something that comes off sounding more like a croak.
Suddenly, the door cracks open and three men come in, whispering quietly. One's wearing some sort of hat that looks like a beret—a kepi, he corrects himself, it's a kepi—although he's not sure exactly how he knows this. Another wears a black beret and speaks with a different accent than the other two. The third one, whose hands are stuffed in his pockets, wears some kind of cowboy hat.
They must really like hats, he thinks, coughing slightly. He coughs again, and the three men instantly look towards him. The one with the kepi grins. "About time you're awake," he says, chewing on a piece of gum.
"You had us worried there for a while, Tully," says the one in the black beret. Tully. Is that his name? It sounds vaguely familiar, if anything. At least he has something to refer to himself as now. "Glad you're alright." Something registers on a subconscious level and Tully knows that the man's speaking with an English accent.
The one in the cowboy hat looks worried. His eyebrows scrunch together. "Hey, you can talk, can't you?"
Tully coughs again. Despite the pain in his throat, he speaks anyway. For this man, it seems worth it, even if Tully isn't sure why. "Y'all talk… too much," he croaks.
The men all smile slightly. "The doctor says once you woke up, you'd be okay to come back out with us after a little while," the gum-chewer says. "Once your leg heals up, that is. You're going to be okay."
That's good. Isn't it? Tully frowns deeper, trying to make sense of all of this.
The British man tilts his head to the side. Tully feels uncomfortable, like the man's gaze can see into the depths of his soul. "Is everything alright, Tully?"
"I guess so," Tully says slowly. "Except, well…"
The one in the beret raises his eyebrows; the one with the cowboy hat crosses his arms over his chest. "Except what?"
Tully shrugs. He may as well just say it now. "Except...I don't know who the hell you people are."