CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Al was confused. Bewilderment clung to him like rain-soaked clay: cold and heavy. It smothered logic and transmogrified reasoned thought into an impossible task. Unable to intellectualize, he focused on small and incontestable truths. These were easier for his muddled mind to grasp.
First, he was aware that he was clean, dry and warm. That was an extraordinary combination. It almost seemed impossible. Al pushed the thought away, because it was too puzzling. Fact, he told himself firmly. Clean. Dry. Warm.
His arms were bound: he could feel the pressure of the restraints in the crook of his left elbow. It surprised him that the bonds were loose enough that there was still feeling in his fingers. He was all too aware of the bone-deep burning in his shoulder, however, and knew that there was no rest for the wicked.
That was nothing new or puzzling. Suffering was instinctual by now. He wasn't sure what he would do if he woke up one morning to find that nothing hurt. What wasn't so easy to grasp was the conflicting feelings in his head. It was pleasantly thick and fuzzy, as if he was still half asleep after lying in late and waking gradually in his body's own time. Yet by the same token, there was the blistering pain that usually followed after days in the sun without respite. A pounding sensation was underlying these sensations, like the beginnings of one truly murderous hangover.
There was a hissing noise, and Al opened his eyes with a start. You had to watch out for snakes. Most were harmless and some were good eating, but there were a few that were so deadly that Charlie wouldn't even know what hit you.
It wasn't a snake. A guard had just raised the window shade, letting the sunshine flood into the cell. Al watched him warily, heart pounding as he realized that this wasn't a cell. It was too clean, too airy and open, to be a cell. Where was he? He had never seen an interrogation room like this. What were they going to do to him now?
"Good morning, Captain," the guard said. "Did you sleep well?"
Al spared a moment of confusion as he looked around the room for the addressed captain, only to find that he was alone with the guard. Calavicci and one diminutive soldier, and out that broad window he could see the sky. No walls, just the sky. Escape, he thought at once. If he could silence this one scab and get out that window…
The guard drew nearer the bed. He was smiling. Al knew from experience that when they smiled you were in for a terrible time. Not wanting to seem as weak or vulnerable as he was he tried to sit up, but anguish shot through his shoulder and he fell back against the mattress—mattress?—with an involuntary cry.
"Careful!" the man cried, reaching out to brace him against the sudden discomfort. Al tried to scramble away from the hands he knew meant to hurt him, but he was stopped by a hard metal railing. Trapped, he lashed out with his only weapon: his voice.
"Get away, you slant-eyed bastard, and leave me alone!" he cried, using his good arm to drag the blankets over his head as some meager protection from the blows he knew were coming.
The hands withdrew abruptly, and Al could sense the hostile presence withdrawing. He froze, terrified by this unexpected twist. When no assault came from any other direction he pulled back the covers, peering cautiously over them. As this makeshift shield was lowered, he emerged in a different time and place.
The hospital room he had occupied since the early hours of Tuesday surrounded him. In front of him, wearing a look of concern, compassion and valiantly disguised hurt, was Doctor Nyugen.
Al stared, his mind trying to form a cohesive profile of his environment through the fog in his mind. "Doc?" he whispered.
"Good morning," the physician repeated. "I'm sorry I startled you."
"I…" Al rubbed his eyes. "I…"
"You're probably still groggy from last night's morphine," Doctor Nyugen said, coming nearer as Al sat up, touching the sling-and-strap apparatus immobilizing his left arm and shoulder against his chest. "How's your arm?"
"Sore," Al admitted. He was more concerned with the state of his head. He probably shouldn't have polished off that vanilla with the pain meds. This was one beaut of a hangover.
"We would like to send you for one more set of x-rays. Then, once we've set up appointments with an orthopedist and a physiotherapist in Arizona, you're free to go," Nyugen said.
"Really?" Al asked.
"Yes."
"What about a shrink?" His opiate-loosened lips betrayed his mind.
Nyugen frowned. "I'm sorry?"
Al tried to shrug it off. "I thought maybe you'd want to pawn me off on a headshrinker or something stupid like that."
"Oh, no. Your performance on the psychology portion of the evaluation was excellent," the physician assured him.
"Really?"
The smaller man nodded. "You're obviously a very intelligent, capable and well-adjusted officer—though obviously your ordeal was on your mind this morning," he added quietly.
Al looked up at the doctor, and his own words of not ten minutes past flooded back in a torrent of shame. "God, I'm sorry," he whispered, unable to articulate his contrition in any other way.
Nuygen shrugged. "So what?" he said. "You didn't mean it. Now, I'm just going to take your blood pressure—"
"It still hurts," Al murmured.
"It'll take a while to heal," the doctor said, indicating the bandaged shoulder. "The therapist you'll be seeing back home will be able to give you a better idea of when you can expect—"
"No, what I said," Al interrupted. "It still hurts you, even though I didn't mean it."
The physician regarded him soberly. "Captain, I wouldn't be working on this ward if I took such remarks personally. You spoke in confusion. We don't take the morphine insults any more seriously than we do the morphine compliments."
He smiled again, completed the blood pressure check, then promised to send the nurse in with Al's belongings. Left alone, the one-time MIA crumpled in an agony of self-flagellation.
He shouldn't have said that. Said it? He shouldn't have thought it. It was a horrible, racist thing to think. The doctor had been perfectly considerate, aside from the poking and prodding that doctors inherently did, and there had been no reason…
What had happened, he wondered as he berated himself, to that honorable young ensign who had used his month's leave to march with the civil rights protestors in Selma?
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The wonderful thing about the uniform was that the second you put it on your confidence took a quantum leap. It was so easy to hide thoughts and feelings beneath the crisply pressed khakis. Al signed his release papers under the watchful eye of the warden in nurses' clothing, flashing her a grin that she didn't return.
"Captain Calavicci!"
Al turned to see Untreigner, the nocturnal shrink, striding swiftly into the lobby. He paused, kit bag on his good shoulder.
"I was hoping to catch you before you left," the psychiatrist said. "Do you have a minute to talk?"
Al looked around the bustling admissions floor. "Here?" he asked.
"Outside, if you don't mind," Untreigner said. "I'm on a twenty-minute break in appointments and could really use a smoke."
Al laughed in spite of himself. "You could really use a smoke? Who's been locked up in this joint for a week, anyway?"
They left the building together, and Al followed the doctor around to a stretch of lawn. There were hydrangea bushes forming a windbreak, conveniently screening the men from the sightline of the building. Al whipped out the cigar he'd intended to light up when he got to his car, and the psychiatrist took out a packet of Camels. Al was quicker with the lighter, and ignited the cigarette first, and then his own implement.
"Thanks," Untreigner said, inhaling contentedly. "Now, Captain, I wanted…"
Al sighed. "You want me to get a shrink," he said. "Shape up, Calavicci, and that's an order! Spill your guts or you don't eat! God, I love the Navy."
"No, Captain." The voice was firm and earnest. "It won't do you any good if you don't want help."
"Well, I don't want help," Al said crossly, taking a vicious puff on his cigar. "I'm coping quite well, thanks."
"I can see that. Your unending list of citations and honors bears it out. Obviously not only the Navy but also the government agrees with that assessment. I merely think that there comes a time in each person's life when they could do with a copilot for a little stretch."
"So what are wives for?" Al quipped.
"Do you talk to your wife about your experiences?" Untreigner asked.
"My wife finds me very experienced."
The psychiatrist chuckled a little. "I can imagine," he said. "Captain, sometimes there are things we can't stand to share with the people we love. Things that are so painful we would rather cope with them all alone than risk hurting others with the knowledge of tragedies and atrocities that they would never be exposed to otherwise. I know how it is to—"
"Oh, you do, do you?" Al snapped. He hated when people said that. He must have heard those goddamned words eight thousand times after repatriation. I know how you must feel, Al: this one time my girlfriend dumped me, and… I know what you're going through: those barbarians did such terrible things to our boys… I know how much this'll hurt. I had my leg set twice in one day when I was fourteen. Football injury. If you didn't know, say you didn't know! There was nothing more infuriating than people paying lip service to your worst agonies.
"Yes," Untreigner said. Something in his gray eyes gave Al pause. It wasn't pity or compassion, it was… it was grief. Deep, penetrating sorrow. "Yes, Captain Calavicci, I do. You see, I have nightmares, too. Nightmares about something that happened to me, back in '44. Do you want to know what?"
Al stared. This shrink was going to spill his guts at a patient's say-so? Voluntarily share his dark secret with a complete stranger? It was beyond belief. "You'd tell me?" he blurted. "Why?"
"Because you know what it's like," Untreigner said. "You know what it feels like to have something like this that you can't stop reliving. I was a ship's surgeon onboard a—"
"Stop!" Al said. "Stop. I don't want to know, Doc. It wouldn't be fair. I can't swap you stories about the service. I just can't."
"We could change that," the older man said softly.
Al shook his head. "No, thanks," he said. "Nothing needs changing. It's perfect. It's all perfect."
"Perfect?" Untreinger echoed mildly.
Al wilted under the canny gaze. "Okay, not perfect," he acceded. "But as good as it's going to get."
"At least come and see me," the doctor suggested. "If you won't seek a regular counselor, at least let me book you in for an appointment so that we can talk again before your next checkup."
Al's eyes narrowed. "When?"
The psychiatrist chuckled ruefully. "I'm booked solid 'til October," he said. "I could fit you in then."
"October?" Al repeated. So it wasn't urgent. This shrink didn't think there was anything really wrong with him, if he could put it off till October. Maybe he just wanted to commiserate: old sailors together, and all that jazz. In any case, October seemed a hundred years away. "Sure. I guess I could manage October."
"I'll have my secretary schedule you in, and have her give you a call closer to the date," Untreigner said, digging out a leather sleeve and giving Al a business card. "In the meantime, if you ever need to talk, just give me a call. I know you're used to fighting alone, but you don't have to do that anymore."
"That's the way I like it," Al said. "Alone."
"Then you're a braver man than I am," said Untreigner somberly. "It was an honor to meet you, Captain Calavicci. Safe journey home."
He stubbed out his cigarette in the stone ashtray and strode back towards the hospital. Al glanced at the business card, preparing to tear it up. Then, for reasons he didn't understand, he shoved it into his uniform pocket before making his way to the inpatient parking lot.
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Chester heard the Corvette first, but Sharon wasn't far behind. She had been celibate for way too long, and the weekend watching Juan's beautiful body had done nothing to quash the romantic mood. As soon as she recognized the sound of the car, she abandoned her brush and palette and ran through the trailer and out the front door. Al, his arm in a sling and bound to his chest with a broad elasticized strap, was pulling into the driveway. He grinned as she approached.
"How's my girl?" he asked, getting out of the car. He was hampered only slightly by the bound arm as he hugged her and gave her a firm smacker right on the lips.
"You're a selfish jerk," she said fondly. "When were you going to tell me about this surgery anyway?"
Al shrugged. "It's not important. How's Stevie?"
Sharon had hoped he would take a little longer to come around to that. "Are you hungry?" she asked.
"Ravenous," Al told her. "They didn't feed me anything but hospital slops the whole time. And man, could I use a drink!"
It was ample distraction. He jogged up to the trailer, quite forgetting his baggage and his anal-retentive habit of covering the car. Once he was inside Sharon could hear him fussing over the dog. She took the kit bag from the front seat and followed him inside.
"I was thinking," she mused, coming up behind Al and twining her arms around him. "I was thinking maybe we could go out for supper tonight—my treat."
"What brought on this sudden burst of generosity?" Al asked, rocking a little against her.
"I was thinking," she whispered seductively, leaning closer to his ear; "that we'd need a little exercise before we went."
Al chuckled and turned so that he could face her. He kissed her neck. "Sounds like a plan," he said. "Now. How's Stevie?"
She tried to hide her emotions, but he saw it. Suddenly his desiring hold fell flat. He pulled back, shaking his head numbly. "Oh, no," he whispered.
"It hasn't got any worse," Sharon said hastily. "His abnormal cell count is still too high, that's all. They've booked him in for more chemo starting next week—the doctor said it's very common, and—"
Al closed his eyes over his feelings. When he opened them, his expression was grave but schooled. "I've got to go and see Celestina," he said softly. Then he brushed past her and was gone.
Sharon stomped her foot in frustration. It wasn't fair! All she wanted was a man, and all she had was a husband! It just wasn't fair!
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Long into the night, Al lay awake, trying to reconcile himself to disappointment. There was the world he wanted, and the world he lived in. There was the life he longed for, and the life he had. The wife he ached for, and the woman lying beside him--the woman who had gone to sleep angry because he wasn't in the mood for sex. There was the test results he had needed, and the test results Stevie had been given. And there was the Al Calavicci he wanted to be, and the Al Calavicci he was.
The only thing in the Universe that hadn't let him down, he thought in the darkness as he stroked the five-pound bundle of fur and love, was Chester.