Summary: Luka smokes a cigarette and
remembers more about his past than he wanted.
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence.
Spoilers: Gordana episodes, and the Congo Episodes, so
far.
Disclaimer: If Luka were mine, he'd get his own show
But he's not, alas.
Acknowledgements: Another shoutout to my bud wizened
cynic. She's a great gal and is my new sidekick. Also,
thanks to my toothache, which kept me up all night and made me
write. Thank you, damned cavity.
Author's note: This is sort of a random fic. I was up all
night and my brain decided to make me write something. It's
sorta rambling, and requires a certain knowledge of the universe
of my writings. I mention some stuff from my fic ,
and reference my other stories. I might write another part of
this when I have more time
I must be a masochist, or something...
Today I feel like thinking about my last AMI
trip – my fickle brain often picks things to fixate on, and
there is no way to dissuade it to stop. So I pull out my
Marlboros and light one, breathe the smoke in, blow it out and
remember when my plane landed in Sarajevo two years ago.
The fucking plane seemed to have been made the year I was born,
and not cleaned or fixed after that. I spent half of the flight
clutching the airsickness bag – it did sort of feel like the
plane bounced off the ground all the way from Vienna. I guessed
that the two men and a woman sitting together in the back of the
plane were my fellow program participants, but I ignored them
– I was too nauseous to be friendly, and I didn't feel
like talking. When we got off the plane, I quickly got stamped
through, with the tired-looking woman in the border police
uniform only casting a quick look on my obscenely new-looking
Croatian passport. While the Americans – or Europeans,
whoever they were, tried to find their way out of customs, I
almost set an Olympic record in running from the currency
exchange booth to the kiosk that sold cigarettes and almost
ripped the vendor's hand off when he reached me my pack of
Drinas.
I ripped the plastic apart, opened the pack and got out a
cigarette, which I promptly lit, probably looking absurdly,
almost orgasmically happy for that early hour of the morning. The
vendor observed me with a quirked eyebrow and returned to reading
a magazine. The Americans appeared in a herd, looking for the AMI
person to greet them. I looked around myself, and spotted a bored
man leaning on the wall and half-heartedly holding up a sign that
crookedly said The Americans spotted him too and
trotted towards him. I followed them, almost passing out from
strange happiness that came with the cigarette smoke.
The bored guy disengaged himself from the wall and the Americans
enquired whether he was the guy they were looking for. He
introduced himself as Esad, and clammed up again. I made myself
known, and Esad's eyes fixed on my cigarettes, looking a bit
more interested. I presented him with one, and introduced myself.
Esad lifted an eyebrow and I wondered if something was wrong with
me – either my pants ripped or I got something stuck in my
hair – who knows. We followed him to the car, and the
Americans, who were surprised by our little cigarette exchange
and my mysterious entrance, were squeezed into the back seat of a
somewhat dilapidated BMW with German plates. I took the front
passenger seat, and held a lighter to Esad's cigarette. He
started the car, and we were off, heading for Gorazde somewhat
above speed limit.
Esad drawled in language,
where are you from?
Used to live in Vukovar – but the accent is from
Split, in case you are wondering.
You're kidding! he exclaimed. I just got
back from there a week ago. You go to the University there?
No, up in Zagreb, actually. You?
I did my time in Split and- A car swerved in front of
us, and Esad slammed on the breaks so hard the Americans gasped.
Did your dog fuck your mother, asshole? Esad screamed
to the other driver, who perhaps thankfully wasn't
listening. We continued on our way, and Esad continued where he
left off – even met my wife there.
Small world, I remarked. Listen, I got to
introduce myself to Americans.
Go on, we'll talk later, Esad agreed, honking
the horn at some other stupid asshole and launching into a
muttered tirade that involved mothers of assholes, perverse
sexual acts and animals of many kinds.
I turned myself around and looked at the Americans.
I'm Doctor Kovac – from Chicago. Nice to meet
you.
Doctor Jensen – Milwaukee. We're practically
neighbors, the taller guy said, shaking my hand.
Doctor Anders, I'm from Tampa, the other one
remarked, looking somewhat carsick.
The woman smiled and reached her hand to me, smiling.
Doctor Bajuk. I'm from Pittsburgh. But please, call me
Michelle.
Michelle. I smiled at her then and turned around, wanting to hide
my sudden paleness. I think of my Michelle now, and the thoughts
of her replace the thoughts of Esad and the Americans. I have not
thought about her for a long time – almost ten years, in
fact. It is easy to forget people you knew ten years ago, yet I
have not really forgotten her – just put her in the back of
my mind, saved the thoughts about her for the metaphorical rainy
day. I don't have a photograph of her but I can imagine her
if I close my eyes – deep sad brown eyes behind thick
glasses, the chocolate brown sweater almost the same color as her
skin and the little braid in her hair that had some colorful
beads pleated into it. When we went out for coffee, she usually
faded into the grayness of Baltimore and looked just like the all
the African and African-American women whereas I always stuck out
– six foot something white guys always tend to, especially
if they look like an extra for The Night of the Living
Dead.
Michelle met a very different Luka eleven years ago. I was in
transition between my old and new self back then, having moved to
another land after spending all my life in one country, and it
hurt to be so different. I longed to smoke in non-smoking spaces,
the liquor store clerks asked me for ID, the food tasted like
shit and everything was so goddamned cold and gray. To say that I
was experiencing culture shock was an understatement. I
didn't know how to be politically correct – I was
either too polite or too impolite to women and I always forgot
about the Americans' personal space, and after a while I
gave up on touching people at all, because they would immediately
think I was either sexually harassing (if they were female) or
coming on to them (if they were male.) If I closed my eyes, I
could remember hands touching me – my wife's soft hand
caressing my face or the sticky hands of my children after they
had eaten dessert sliding into mine, or my friends' hands on
my shoulders as we squeezed unto tiny couches in tiny living
rooms and sang songs of our small country. Whenever someone shook
my hand I was overjoyed – I looked forward to those
handshakes like other people look forward to holidays.
If I try really hard, I can remember myself that year. I was a
bit scary to look at – I looked nothing like the photographs
taken only two years ago, and it hurt me to see the face that
looked nothing like the face I remembered looking back at me from
the mirror. I hated my face, which seemed to have been taken over
by my suddenly razor-sharp cheekbones. I hated my body, which was
not strong or healthy, not a body that I wanted to be stuck in
and strangely foreign, with sharp angles where none used to be
and barely healed wounds it should not have received. I hated my
mind too, but for a while, I put the hate away, and outside of
eating, drinking, sleeping and going to the bathroom, all I did
for my first month in United States was study English and
American medical terminology, and by some miracle passed all the
re-certification exams on the first try. After lots of ass
kissing and several dozens of calls to Zagreb University medical
school I was able to put together a somewhat sketchy record of my
education and employment, which was quite hard to do, since my
last place of work was most likely leveled to the ground. By
sheer force of will I persuaded the Chief of Staff at Johns
Hopkins to allow me to get into the trauma residency, and by some
stroke of luck I was allowed not to repeat my first year.
I was about the same age as the other second-year residents, but
I was separated from them by many walls – they chatted about
their boyfriends and girlfriends and bemoaned medical school
loans, while I could not fathom how to become close enough to
another human being again to love them and sent as much of my
salary as I could spare home – for an American, a
second-year resident's salary was not much, but I never had
that much money in my life before. They went out for drinks after
long shifts, they went over medical journal articles together
during lunch breaks and I hid in stairwells to do my readings and
spent my free time sitting in my tiny room, repulsed by the way I
looked, alternately depressed and anxious, unable to predict the
way I would feel the next day. I was frequently mistaken for a
patient that year – people don't expect a scrawny pale
limping man who seems to have lost his razor and clothes iron to
be their doctor.
It is at that point in my life (if one could call it that) when I
met Michelle. Our first meeting was unexpected – no one
expects to find a friend in a group of people so scared they
don't trust themselves, much less a complete stranger.
Milan, a Slovenian guy I knew from re-certification course, heard
about a support group for medical personnel affected by armed
conflict and violence and literally dragged me with him. I
resisted, told him a million reasons why I shouldn't, but he
pressed on, and on a Friday evening that would be usually spent
blindly looking at the screen of my television I found myself
being bodily pushed into a room full of people by my friend, who
only managed to do that because he was stronger then me. Milan
said he would wait for me outside, I rold him to go home, so he
squeezed my shoulder and departed, leaving me alone in a room
full of strangers.
Most attendees looked the same – gaunt and frightened,
drowning in their large wool sweaters as they tried to hide their
trembling hands in the too-long sleeves. Men and women of every
color were represented equally in a sick equality of war and
repression. A passerby who looked into the room would have never
guessed that about twenty or so sickly looking people were once
doctors, or were doctors again. We introduced ourselves, staring
at the others nervously. A man rose and explained the rules of
the group, and invited anyone to share their experience or tips
on how to deal with problems. A young Chinese doctor began to
talk about dealing with anxiety, her hands trembling as she tried
to hold on to her glass of water. I subtly moved my chair until I
was next to the women – I did not like sitting close to men
I didn't know then, but women were safe. Women wouldn't
do anything to me. Some of them looked at me nervously, and one
or two moved away, but the rest understood, and one even patted
me on the shoulder, and I mouthed a thank you to her, somehow
feeling like I finally fit in somewhere.
After about an hour passed in the discussion of coping techniques
the woman sitting next to me, the one who patted my shoulder,
started talking, introducing herself as Michelle, a psychiatrist
from Zaire. She turned out to be the one who organized the
meeting – and she brought up some issues to talk about the
next time. The meeting came to an end, and I got enough courage
to engage Michelle in conversation. She was incredibly charming
– a warm, friendly person who made anyone who talked to her
feel safe. I ended up inviting her to a diner, and we sat there
all evening, pouring our life stories to each other although we
only had known each other for hours. Michelle's story,
although different in many details, was much like mine. She lost
a daughter in an explosion and was raped by some soldiers and
left for dead, but she somehow survived, just like me not sure
for what purpose God had spared her. She climbed out of her
depression and got asylum in United States. We only stopped when
the diner was closing, and I was overjoyed when I learned that
she also worked at JH. We promised each other that we would meet
for coffee next Monday, and went our ways. When I got home, I
fell asleep happy for the first time in months, knowing that I
finally had a friend.
Speaking of friends, I wonder how Gordana is doing. Ante seemed
to be okay when I left – I hope that the operation has been
successful in the long run. If I'll have some vacation time
anytime soon, I am going to visit her and we're going to
gather together Stipe and Tomo and just get falling down drunk
together. I have missed Gordana terribly, and now I have her back
– she is my only female friend and the only one I could
speak with about Danijela in ages. When she was at my apartment,
after recounting the various exploits of the Four Musketeers, we
came to the topic of my unhappiness after lots of beer had been
consumed on top of the wine. I was mindful of the fact what would
happen if I got too drunk, but I needed this time with her to
feel like the old times.
Luka, you're unhappy, she said and finished off
her beer. We were sitting together on a chair, and her hand was
over my shoulder, and it was so much like the old times I was
feeling a bit sad.
No, I'm – I'm just – I'm- I
mumbled, knowing that she was right.
What happened to you, Laki? Gordana's beer-free
hand was lifted and she ran her fingers through my hair.
They don't even know your laugh here. I never knew it
took so much away from you. Fuck them She took
another beer from the table and popped the tab off. I wish
they would have known you like I do, like you were when –
when Danka was alive.
I closed my eyes and blinked a couple of tears away. Her hand
felt soft, warm and so much like my mother's that I could
almost imagine that I was a little child again.
They have no idea what happened to us. I wouldn't wish
it on them – it's good that it didn't happen to
them, she continued. But they cannot imagine what we
all went through. They don't know electricity outages that
last for weeks, they don't understand what a food shortage
is, they have been blessed with peace. They don't know what
a war is. They send their soldiers off into other countries but
they never have other soldiers come to theirs. I just wish that
somehow they could understand all of this.
I nodded, not sure of what to say, and reached for the next beer.
Gordana took another drink from her can and resumed her musings.
I remember when they announced Vukovar was besieged. God, I
was cursing at your for your stupid, innocent, unknowing decision
to work there until I was blue in the face. And then they told us
that you were missing and we were praying to whatever asshole
that is in charge of this earth that it meant that you were not
dead. She sniffled and removed her hand to swipe at her
face. I pulled out a Kleenex from the box that for some reason
was next to the beer, and gave it to her. She reached for it and
suddenly stopped.
Luka, when did that happen? she asked, and for a
moment I could not figure out what she was talking about. Then, I
followed her line of sight and saw my left hand holding the
Kleenex, with the palm up. I realized what specifically she was
referring to when I remembered that I took my watch off earlier
and a faint but still visible scar that was usually covered by it
was presented in full glory.
That scar was a result of some ingenious feat of strength and
insanity on my part. One day, some guard forgot a plastic knife
in the bag of food that we got shoved into our room, and while
everyone was asleep, I spent the night diligently sawing at my
left wrist with that piece of plastic. I did manage to cut
through the skin and some small blood vessels, but didn't
get much deeper before Drago woke up and confiscated the knife
from me and bandaged my wrist with a piece of his shirt. He sat
down next to me and made me drink water from the water bottle we
had in the room.
What are you thinking? he whispered, sounding angry
and commiserating at the same time.
I want to die, I said, meaning exactly that.
You have to hope. You need to not give up. His hand
found my uninjured hand and squeezed it, but I didn't
squeeze it back.
I want to die, I repeated. I don't want to
be here.
he said, thinking of something else
encouraging. I looked up and saw Marijan sitting in the corner of
the room opposite us, his eyes wide open and unseeing, blood
running down his pale face.
They killed Kristo, I mentioned offhand. They
killed his brother, his twin. I think they killed him too, inside
at least. I want them to kill me too.
Stop saying this nonsense! Drago hissed suddenly and
slapped me. I didn't flinch, just continued sitting still,
wishing I could drop dead.
You're alive for a reason, Drago whispered,
sounding slightly guilty for slapping me. Just believe me,
please. Please don't try to hurt yourself again. Promise
me.
I said numbly. I promise I won't
do it again.
Suddenly the door was pushed open and the lights went on. Those
who were sleeping woke up immediately and darted to the walls.
Marijan continued staring through the dpace. A man in the
brand-new fatigues who seemed to be new and who stunk of alcohol,
along with one of the guys who brought us there entered the room,
a knife in his hand. His buddy grabbed Marijan, jerked him to his
feet, and pushed him out of the room. The new man looked around
the room at our gray faces that could not show any fear anymore
and stopped his gaze on me. I couldn't help myself and
smiled. He smiled as well and grabbed me by the collar of my
almost unraveled sweater.
Me and you are going to have some fun tonight,
asshole, he said to me. And fun we had that night, fun that
made me wish that the plastic knife were sharper
...Well, no need to bring up more bad memories before sleep. I
need to have a good night's sleep for tomorrow – much
needs to be done, and I'm feeling tired anyway. My cigarette
has long burned out, and the sky is getting darker. I'll
think about all of this another day, when I will have more time
for a repeat visit from my demons and remembering all things that
should remain forgotten
* * *
(to perhaps be continued)