Chapter 11: The Relief of Betrayal
"I'll use you as a warning sign/ that is you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind." – I Found, Amber Run.
He closed the book and stared at the cover emptily. Glancing down at the notebook in his lap, half filled with neat-dark script, he added a final bullet point.
Sighing, he set the book on the stack to his right and picked up another from the pile to his left.
Settling himself more comfortably in the hard kitchen chair, he opened to the first page.
Sam Wilson looked cool and competent as he organized folders in a file box, shifting stacks of important papers into their places. Steve leaned part way through the office doorway and smiled lightly as he rapped his knuckles against the doorjamb. Sam looked up, his familiar smile breaking out like sunshine in a dreary room.
"Running-man! Haven't seen you in a few days. Back from saving the world? "
Steve shrugged non-committedly, smile jerking one corner of his mouth. "Duty calls when duty calls. How are you?"
Sam glanced down at the reports in his hand and shrugged. "Hey, it's not exciting, but it feels good."
"Any luck with the girl at the front desk? Becca, right?"
Sam's grin, if anything, doubled in exuberance and embarrassment. "Well, what about you? Asked that lovely nurse across the hall out yet?"
Steve's voice cracked in surprise. "What do you know about that?"
"Last time you decided to stop beating me around D.C., we stopped at that coffee shop. She was picking up an espresso after her morning shift, said hi on her way out the door, and you blushed – like now, actually. 'Just a neighbor', I recall you saying."
Steve rubbed his face, trying to get the blush to disappear. "Knock it off." he muttered, still smiling.
"Hey, you started it." His gaze lost a bit of its jovial quality when Steve didn't retort. "What's going on?"
"I…" Steve hesitated a minute, sticking his hands in his pockets and taking them out again. His tongue felt big and awkward. "I've been …" he swallowed and finally nodded towards the wooden bookcase behind the desk.
"I've been reading a bunch of those recently I…need someone to explain some of the concepts to me."
Sam followed his gaze to the volumes on PTSD, trauma, war mentalities and counselling. He folded his arms and turned back, nodding. "Which ones?"
"Um…" Steve craned his head sideways and approached the bookshelf. He glanced at Sam, who nodded encouragingly, and then slid a blue book off the shelf.
"That one." He said, setting it on the desk. He selected a red one. "And that."
Green with crossed rifles. "That."
White with red letters. "That.
White with black. White with a bunch of pictures. "These two."
Three near the corner. A heavy volume on trauma effects on the brain. Four pamphlets, two scientific studies, and a final thin paperback. "These, plus a few others and a dozen scientific reports on the internet."
Sam looked fixedly at the teetering stack, then looked up at Steve. "Only a dozen?" he asked flatly.
Steve grimaced a little. "Maybe 20." He estimated. "I don't know, it all blurred together after a while." He pulled his knapsack from his shoulder and reached inside, pulling out 14 school notebooks and setting them beside the stack. "I took notes."
Sam reached forward, flipped open the top notebook and studied the precise script.
He blinked once, then looked up. "Notes."
"Yeah."
"Are they all like this?" he asked, flipping through the closely written pages. Barely an unused line in all 70 sheets.
"More or less."
"How long have you been doing this?"
"Uh….I started the 14th."
The notebook fell out of Sam's hand. "Of this month?"
He nodded.
"Steve, it's –"he checked his watch for clarification, "- the 28th. Have you slept at all?"
"It was kind of the point to not do that."
Sam up slowly. "Explain."
"I've been having…dreams.' Steve finished lamely; the word felt ugly and traitorous in his mouth.
"Why do I get the feeling that is not as benign as that sounds?" Sam asked the ceiling.
Steve smiled a quirky smile.
Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, groaning. He looked as though someone had handed him a box of homeless, sick, yapping puppies and had told him to take care of them. But his only response was to pick up a notebook of his own, stick a couple of capped pens in his pocket, and reach for his jacket.
"Let's get coffee. I know a place. And I'm going to need a frappe in my hands if I'm going to be able to handle all this."
"Frappe?" Steve questioned, frowning in confusion.
Sam stared at him in shock for a second, then pointed a pen at Steve's nose decisively.
"Second most important problem for me to fix: introduce a large mocha frappe, double chocolate shot, to your life. Let's go."
The soldier looked strong to the world, like a man moving on with life. But she knew the truth. She saw the pain in his mind, the countless silent screams that reached from the depths of his soul to the uttermost reaches of heaven and hell. There was no place he could hide from the guilt that wracked him, the gut sense that denied all the wise learning of finite mortals.