Anne Brontë Nightwalker

Chapter 21

"It's in your military records."

"I don't need the department to know."

"This report is private." Indignant, I try to extricate my arm, but he grips it so hard, I can't free myself without revealing my strength. "This is an entirely inappropriate way to treat a paramedic and you know it. If a civilian ever touched you this way, you'd throw them in jail."

"Delete it, Bell. Erase it." His voice is growing louder, his grip on my wrist tighter. "This has nothing to do with my knee."

"Alright. Take it easy." I rip my hand out of his grip.

He gives me a suspicious look.

"I'm very thorough with my reports. I assure you, you're not special. I can't take a blank report to the hospital." I set it down and cross my legs. I can just see it: all his medical history pouring out to the intake nurse while she shakes her head at my empty report.

"What's that scar on the inside of your knee?" I ask. He stares at me as if deciding whether or not to answer. I wait.

"A bullet ricocheted, hit my knee and dislocated it." Empathy rises, but he shoots it down. "It was just a flesh wound. Somehow I forced my knee back in, but it hasn't been the same since." His face is impassive as if none of this bothers him at all.

"When was that?"

"Oh-two."

"Operation Anaconda?"

He looks at me, surprised. "How'd you know?"

"I read about it."

Two gods at war in the remote mountains of Afghanistan. The god of Abraham and the god of Ishmael. And a great serpent was their image.

I wasn't there but I can picture it. Overturned trucks and broken bodies. Bombs of friendly fire incinerating their own. No time for grieving, get back in the fight. A mountain peak. Helicopters crashing. Men pinned down for days, dragging their wounded through graves of snow to be refused medevac. Mortars raining with chaotic consistency. Reinforcements that didn't come. Fighting hypothermia and an enemy five times greater than what they'd expected.

One of the chinks in a vivid imagination is the ability to envision all the horrors others have suffered.

"That must have been early in your career."

"It was my first time in combat. I was straight out of Ranger school. So fucking green and gung ho. Way to pop your cherry, huh?" He laughs without humor. "We lost awesome guys that day and all I got was a dislocated knee."

"You sound disappointed. You were lucky." I correct myself. "Not lucky. That's not what I meant—"

"That's all it was. Dumb luck. I don't want it. I lost a lot of guys and all I ever suffered was minor bullshit. It's not right."

"And parted friends, how dear so ever, will soon forgotten be.

It may be so with other hearts, it is not thus with me."

He gazes at me and frowns.

"It's not your fault."

"You have no fucking idea whose fault it is," he snaps.

I lean back to give him space. If he only knew how many men have shared their shame with me. Survivors suffer the greatest guilt of all. The injured are too busy healing and the dead don't feel blame.

I look him straight in the eye. "I know you're a brave man who has dedicated his entire adult life to protecting others."

He scoffs. "A lot of good it's done. People keep dying. Everyone except me."

I think of Papa. "That, Sergeant, is the price life reaps on the strong."

He stares out the rear window into darkness.

"Perhaps you have a powerful guardian angel," I tease to lighten the mood.

"She can go fuck herself."

"That's no way to talk to an angel."

"I know," he says, staring down at his hands.

"I suppose it doesn't matter. They don't listen very well anyway."

"What do you know about angels?" There is a wary expression in his eye that comes from having others scoff at your beliefs. A feeling I know all too well.

"After my mother died, when I was little, my sister swore she saw one by my bed."

"Did you believe her?"

"I don't know. My sisters were always seeing things—ghosts, angels. Emily said she could hear the dead whispering." Shelley, in particular. "And my brother heard voices." The opium didn't help. I look at him to see if he thinks I'm crazy.

"Yeah, my mom too," he says.

"Did she give you that?" I indicate the small Catholic medallion he wears around his neck. On each side are colored beads, emblems of Santeria I suspect, but I'm afraid to ask.

"Yeah." He looks a little embarrassed. He takes it in his fingers, the brown of his hand dark against the silver. "St. George. He was an officer in the Roman Army. Now he's the patron saint of soldiers. Mom gave it to me after boot camp. For protection. The damn thing works too good."

"St. George, the dragon slayer, rescuer of fair maidens," I say. "He chose torture and sacrifice over conversion to paganism." Santos' faith intrigues and frightens me. To a true believer, I must be an abomination. More daughter of Satan than child of God.

He tucks the medallion beneath his bulletproof vest. "You know a lot for a paramedic." The tone of suspicion is back.

"I read. It's amazing what you can pick up from books."

He stares at his boots.

"Despite your disdain for life, I see you're wearing your vest. That's wise."

"My mom made me promise to wear it. She can be hardcore when she gets something into her head."

"And you keep your promise?"

"Of course." He looks at me like I'm clueless. The hospital lights shine through the window as Dana pulls in and deftly backs up to the ER. Santos groans in frustration, laying his head back against the stretcher, revealing his pulsing throat. "I don't have time for this shit. Goddamnit!"

His heart throbs in his neck and my mouth waters. He snaps his head up and looks at me. I glance away, down to the thick vein in the crook of his elbow and long to start an IV and draw his blood, but I'm afraid. With another patient I would, but with him I just can't. Anyway, we're here. I'm out of time.

Little passive Anne.

How perfectly I embody my childhood avatar, a tiny soldier Papa brought home from one of his trips—Waiting Boy. Waiting to eat. Waiting to die. Waiting for salvation.

When will I take control?

Santos' breath kicks up and he shifts, inadvertently moving his knee and flinching. I have to get vitals. I can't drop him off with an empty report. Before he can protest, I reach for his wrist and take his pulse. He lets me. His flesh is surprisingly cool beneath my hand, and his pulse bounds beneath my touch, elevated, whether from pain or fear I'm not sure. He's the armed one, but he's nervous with me. Vulnerable. And though they are physical opposites, he reminds me of Branwell, with that same sense of wounded idealism wearing at his fractured pride.

Who is more idealistic? The poet or the soldier? I have known both to die for their beliefs, and still, after all this time, I cannot decide.