I woke up slowly, dreams of scattered colors and sounds blurring into the dim room. The night outside bathing the walls in cool light. For a long while I laid there, staring at the paint as I slowly figured out what had happened.
I had forgotten to take my medication, started "over-heating", and then didn't bother to take my medication because "I felt fine" even as I spiraled further and further into a whirlpool that led to another psychotic break.
Rolling over slowly, I saw I was alone in bed again. I could dimly and blurrily remember Miss Lily-Rylee laying down with me and holding me till the pills pulled me down. Now I was just alone in bed.
Scrubbing my face with my hand I sighed, getting up. I got a clean pair of jeans out of the drawer and pulled them on. I thought about it for a second, then put on a light flannel shirt that I'd torn the sleeves off of after one had ripped. I didn't bother buttoning it up. It wasn't like there was anyone around to see me. My stomach ached, telling me I was hungry, so I stretched and headed for the kitchen. The small light-sensitive lights I'd installed kept the hallway and the kitchen dimly lit, enough for me to navigate around. I opened the fridge, pulling out a quick snack, then sat down at the table, slowly eating it as I looked around.
My instincts registered the opening door before my conscious mind, pushing me to my feet, sweeping the chair away in one smooth movement as I dropped into a crouch.
"Sam?" Miss Lily-Rylee said, gasping, her hand coming up to her mouth.
She was topless, only her panties on, coated in sweat, my headset on her head. She was holding a controller in one hand with her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail high up on the back of her head so it arced off of her neck. Her blue eyes were wide, shocked, and I could see a trace of fear in them. She was in the hallway, the door to the computer/gaming room open and spilling light into the hallway.
I closed my eyes, willing my body to relax. I straightened up slowly, letting my arms fall to my side, straightening my legs.
Miss Lily-Rylee waited for my eyes to open before she spoke again. "Are you here? Do you need help?"
I nodded slowly. "I'm here. Just... just an old reaction."
She moved toward me, slowly, her hands at her side, the one without the controller open so I could see it.
"Can I hug you?" She asked softly. When I nodded she stepped forward, putting her arms around me and hugging me gently. "You're here now. With me. I'll hold you."
I put my arms around her, holding her tight.
"You're trembling," She said softly.
"Adrenaline," I told her.
"Where were you?" She asked, her free hand rubbing my back.
"I was here, I just... just reacted. I thought I was alone," I told her. "I'm sorry, Miss Lily-Rylee."
"Don't be. I should have let you know I was still here," She told me. She squeezed me tighter for a moment, then let me go. "I'll be right back, I'm going to get my shirt."
I reluctantly let her loose, and watched her walking back to the game room, admiring her plump little bottom in those t-backs. I leaned against the counter, picking up my glass of kool-aid and sipping off of it. When she came back, she just had her t-shirt on, the cut off sleeves making her look kind of cute to me.
"I logged out," She said, smiling. She held up my pack of cigarettes. "I've been smoking yours."
That made me chuckle. "It's cool."
She came over and leaned against the table with me. She was almost a foot shorter than me, but felt solid, real in a way I can't describe. She leaned her head against my arm and handed me my cigarettes.
"Do you want one?" I asked her.
"Please," She said softly.
"Want to go sit on the back porch?" I asked her.
"I'd have to put on my..." she started.
"Nobody can see you," I told her. I lit two, dropping the lighter and pack into the left breast pocket of the thin flannel. I picked up the glass of kool-aid. "Come on."
She looked nervous as she followed me out, but relaxed when she saw I had turned off the automatic lights and we'd be sitting in the dark. She sat next to me, looking up, as she smoked the cigarette. Once in a while she'd stare up at the stars for a long moment and sigh.
"Thank you," I said, after a few minutes.
"For what?" She asked me, frowning.
"Coming to check on me when I was over-heating," I told her.
"Why do you call it overheating?" She asked me. "I mean, aside from the fact you were running a fever."
"That's why," I told her. "Since I was little, every time I took medication, I'd start running a fever, like my body was trying to burn it out of my bloodstream."
She shook her head. "I'm not sure that's how it works," she told me.
I just shrugged. "Happens every time. That's why the doctor has me on a high dose," I told her. I stubbed my cigarette out and leaned back in the chair. "Been like that since I was a kid."
"Huh," She said. "You're an odd man, Sam English."
I snorted. "I'm nobody special."
"You didn't check your mail," She told me suddenly.
"Oh?" I looked at her, wondering about the sudden change.
"Well, I went down and picked up your mail, then I had to go talk to my uncle, then I came back," She seemed a little excited. "I made you present."
I cocked my head. "You did?"
She stubbed out her cigarette, getting up and holding her hand out. I took her hand, letting her pull me up. She led me back inside and into the game room. On the table that I'd turned into a tabletop RPG miniatures table she had several shadowboxes set up.
"One for the whole time you were in, one for Just Cause, one for Desert Storm, and one for that 2/19th place," She said proudly, tapping each one of the four shadowboxes. I had to admit, she'd done a nice job. I could tell she'd gone online and looked at examples.
"They're very nice," I said, my voice soft. I reached out and trailed my fingers over the Desert Storm one.
"Um, you don't mind that I read those documents that you were showing them at the court house so I could get the right things in the right box, do you?" She asked me, biting her lip when she was done.
I shook my head. "No. It's all right."
"I wish you had a couple of pictures. I really wanted to put a couple of them in like one of the corners or something," She said.
I thought about it. Heather AKA Melissa had some pictures on her MySpace, so did Taggart. I could download them and print them off.
I sighed.
"Can you load the printer with that photo paper and walk me through printing full color glossies?" I asked.
She nodded, smiling.
I sat down, logging into MySpace and looking around. I checked Melissa's first. She had some from Just Cause up, and a few from us out at Atlas. She'd changed the "Who's in this picture with me" label. I saved them, following her instructions to get good high quality ones. Taggart had more, including some from my old site where she ended up working. I chose carefully, none where you could see my nametags.
"You look so young," She said, holding up the first one I printed out. "It's definitely you. That mustache and jaw are unmistakable," She smiled. "And those eyes."
I flushed, looking down.
"You were good looking even when you were younger," She smiled. She carefully trimmed the paper, then opened up the shadowbox, carefully pinning the pictures.
I was carefully going through the pictures, making sure none of them were too bad.
One I clicked to view full size left me staring. I was giving the camera the thumbs up, sitting next to Anthony "Ant" Stillwater, my top taken off and a bandage on my chest and left shoulder. Stillwater was glaring at the camera, a bandage around his head covering his left eye. Aine was crouched down next to me, smiling at the camera, and Heather was looking over her shoulder at the camera, her hands busy putting a bandage over my leg. I was in my boxers, blood all over me. Tony looked like always, covered in blood and pissed at the world. He was in the middle of shoving a medic from 101st away from him and snarling.
"What happened?" Miss Lily-Rylee asked from over my shoulder.
I jumped, startled, yanked out of the memory of Heather treating us once we'd pushed through to the Panamanian Airport and linked up with the rest of the American forces. We'd been pretty beat up, five days of running firefights and moving from objective to objective.
"Ambush," I said, swallowing thickly.
"Let's not use that one," Miss Lily-Rylee said, reaching forward and hitting a key to shrink the photo back down. Her other hand came up to rest on my shoulder, warm through my shirt.
I nodded quietly, backing out from the pictures and leaning back. "I shouldn't have been looking at those pictures," I said, shivering for a second.
"Did they send you to a hospital?" She asked me.
I shook my head. "No. We kept going."
Miss Lily-Rylee just looked at me, her fingers drifting down to my chest where the bandages had blood on them in the picture, rubbing gently with her fingertips the shrapnel scars.
"You're an odd man, Samuel English," She said. "Finish printing those last photos."
"I've never really looked at those pictures," I said, slowly following her instructions to print them out in max detail on the glossy photo paper. "I mean, yeah, when we got back, but it's been..."
"Years," She said, putting both hands on my shoulders then sliding them down to my chest. "When was the last time you looked at pictures from back then?"
"I don't know, ninety-one?" I said softly. I went back to Melissa's profile and saw she had Desert Storm pics. I sighed and started looking through them. There was one of her bent over a guy in desert BDU's, Groom and Sawmoth holding him down while she worked.
There was a link there to another photo album and I clicked it before I'd finished reading it.
FINAL DAY - PERMISSION ONLY
When the photos came up I jerked away from the monitor, bent at the waist, and vomited on the carpet.
Photos taken by Military Intelligence.
Photos she shouldn't have had.
But somehow she did.
Blown up vehicles. Bullet riddled walls. Craters in the pavement.
The dead.
Groom. Sawmoth. Hendricks. Brubaker. Gordons. The pictures of all of those who died on that fateful day. Thumbnailed, only an inch or so wide, tiled down the screen.
The dead of Echo-Five-Actual.
"Oh God, Sammy," Miss Lily-Rylee said. She reached forward, clicking the mouse wildly.
STAND AND DELIVER!
If they take this goddamn facility the whole fucking war changes!
STAND AND DELIVER!
IT'S JUST US, BROTHER! KEEP UP THE PRESSURE!
STAND AND DELIVER!
Miss Lily-Rylee helped me up, helped me out of the room to the bedroom. I was shaking, crying, able to smell the rotting flesh stench of the Iraqi desert, the sharp smell of chemical weapon precursor chemicals, the reek of cordite, the hot smell of blood. I could hear it, the hammering of the weapons, the screams of the dying, the burning vehicles.
I retched again.
She helped me into the bedroom, half slinging me on the bed, grabbing me around the chest and hugging me tightly.
"I've got you, Sammy. I'm right here. You're OK," She kept saying over and over.
seeing Ant blown clear of the vehicle, seeing him get up, staggering but firing his weapon with one hand, and a tracer go through his knee and he went down onto that knee, screaming, dropping his rifle and pulling his .45 and firing. seeing him get up, lurching, staggering, firing his 203 at the wall and the bloom tearing apart infantry
DON'T LET UP! STAND AND DELIVER! FIGHT! FIGHT! GET UP AND FIGHT!
Lips pressed against mine, a tongue forcing its way into my mouth, breaking me out of the memory. Hands on either side of my face, sweat slickened skin pressed against mine. I realized I was staring into Miss Lily-Rylee's open eyes as she kissed me.
I blinked rapidly, my hands, clenched in the bedspread, relaxed and my arms went limp. I collapsed, falling back.
After a minute she broke the kiss, sitting up, looking down at me. She'd stripped off her shirt, and her position was very suggestive.
"Don't move," She said gently, reaching down and putting her hand on my chest. "Just lay there. Get your breath. It's very important you don't move right now."
I nodded.
"You had a seizure, Sam," She said, staring at me. She spoke slowly and distinctly. "I want you to just lay there," She reached over and picked up the phone handset. "Just lay there, don't get up," She said. "I'm not calling 911, I'm going to call Doc Rutheford."
She got up, heading into the hallway and down to the kitchen.
I had a splitting headache and my limbs felt heavy. My muscles hurt and my stomach kept cramping.
I could hear her talking in the kitchen, but I had a hard time making sense of it.
My headache was killing me.
After a little bit, I wasn't sure how long, she came back in, sitting on the bed.
"Can you understand me, Sam?" She asked softly, putting her hand on my stomach.
"Yes," I said.
"Um, I don't know what that has to do with anything," She said. She sighed and put her hand on my chest. "OK, Doc Rutheford said this might happen. Blink once for yes," She waited and I realized she wanted me to do it now. I blinked and she smiled. "Blink twice for no," When I blinked twice she sighed. "Good. Now, he wanted me to do some quick checks. If you have any problems, I'm supposed to call him."
Miss Lily-Rylee stood up and went toward the bathroom. "I need to wash your face. You had a nosebleed and you bit your tongue or cheek, I'm not sure which."
She came back in and sat down, looking at me. "I'm not going to hurt you, Sam, OK?" I blinked once and smiled. "Close your eyes, I don't want you to see the blood, all right?" I blinked once again. "All right. Don't open them until I tell you."
She gently washed my face, her other hand on my chest. When she was done she got up. She came back after a moment. "OK, open your eyes."
She still had her shirt off, wearing only her t-backs. She smiled at me. "All right, I'm going to ask you a few questions. Blink once for yes, twice for no."
I blinked once.
She asked me my birthday, what day it was, who was president, where I was, things like that. Some of them I answered no, because Lincoln wasn't president and I wasn't in Texas.
"You're a little confused, but Doc Rutheford told me to expect that," After a bit she smiled at me. "Your brain is all right. It'll just take an hour or so for the confusion to completely recede."
I nodded slowly. The back of my neck hurt.
"You had a seizure. Doc Rutheford says that happens sometimes with PTSD," She was gently rubbing my chest, her hand warm against my skin. "You lay there, I need to do some stuff. I'm not going anywhere, but if you get sleepy, the best thing for you is to rest."
I nodded again, and watched her get up.
I couldn't remember what happened. The last thing I remembered was smoking cigarettes outside with her. I would dizzy now and then and hold onto the bed. I heard her flush the toilet several times, then the vacuum cleaner for a few minutes. After I heard the sink running she came in and sat next to me.
"Are you awake?" She asked.
"Yeth," I slurred.
Miss Lily-Rylee looked down at me. "According to Doc Rutheford, you have severe PTSD triggered by those photos we looked at."
Her fingers traced over the scars on my chest. "Sammy?"
"What?" I managed to slur.
"Did you go get treatment? Ever?" She asked me softly. "Or did you just hold onto your wife like a drowning man?"
I swallowed. "Thith never happened before."
She nodded slowly. "I want you to sleep. I'm going to stay here tonight. We'll see how you're doing in the morning. I'll help you up, and then I'm going to change the bed. After that, we're going to go to sleep, all right?"
I nodded, still feeling weak and shaky.
I'd never had an episode like that when Pru was around. I'd never even had a serious flashback.
But Pru is dead
she left you all alone