Anguish - Epilogue Two
Lee was drying himself off after a nice long hot shower. He rubbed the towel over his abdomen. He paused and fingered the bullet scar. He looked at his hands on his belly remembering placing a bandage on a hole that didn't bleed, when it wasn't him moving those hands. He lifted his hands up and pondered them turning them front to back.
He remembered them doing other things with the familiar revulsion raising the bile in his throat. Hitting Chip, smoking, and touching the necklace on Maria's throat. Touching more of Maria. The thoughts made him ill and he turned, sank to his knees and retched into the toilet.
After a bit the convulsive heaving stopped. No wonder he couldn't regain the weight after this mission. So many times he thought the wrong things after a good meal and lost it.
He lost it. He had lost. He had lost his honour, his integrity, his dignity. What about his honesty? They had really contrived a great story for the report. Enough truth to pass muster but enough information completely left out to write a couple of novels. And the Admiral … he really lost it there.
They were trying to patch things up. He knew the Admiral was completely sincere and honest in his regret and remorse. He missed his friend so much and he was trying. Trying so hard, but it was so hard. He knew that he was faking it quite a bit when they were together trying to be easy with each other. He was trying but when he looked at the Admiral he saw a trembling chin, shocked blue eyes, a smoking gun. How could he trust?
The tears started. He missed the Admiral so much. Missed the camaraderie, missed the way they were before. Before Krueger. Was his whole life going to be a story of before and after Krueger?
Chip and the Admiral told him a missile destroyed Krueger. How did a missile destroy a ghost? Riley and Patterson shot Krueger. They buried him at sea with all the appropriate rituals. He read the service himself. Shouldn't that have stopped the haunting? Lee didn't think a missile would do what a proper burial couldn't.
He wondered. What if a missile couldn't destroy a phantom?