Without the army.
She hadn't needed to tell me that part. I wasn't stupid. I knew these were career-ending injuries.
After all I'd been through, there were two things that had saved my life and the army had been one of them. I didn't know what I was going to do if I couldn't be a soldier.
Except I wasn't even sure I needed to think that far ahead.
The doctor was optimistic about my chances for survival, but there was caution in her voice. I wasn't medically trained, but I knew enough to know that it was far too early to tell for sure that I was going to make it.
And I wasn't sure I wanted to.
I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to push the darkness away.
Not the darkness that came with drug-induced sleep, but rather a different kind. The kind I'd experienced a few times before in my life, but not in a long time. I didn't want to go back there.
I had to think of something else.
Focus.
One detail, then the next. That was the way to do it.
Fuck, my arm hurt.
No, I wasn’t a detail to focus on, no matter how true it was. Because if I thought about how much it hurt, then I'd start thinking about what was wrong with it and what that meant for my future...
Home.
Philadelphia, not the base. I'd been at different bases and stationed all over the world. But none of those were ever home.
Even with all the bad memories Philadelphia held, it was familiar. It was home.
I tried picturing the different parts of it in my mind.
The graffitied buildings and rusty basketball hoops of my childhood.
The cobbled streets and small shops of Germantown.
When I'd been there last, I'd walked for hours, imprinting the images in my mind.
The various shapes and kinds of fish marking the sidewalk and buildings in Fishtown.
The rainbow flags that showed the transition into another neighborhood.
The trains that ran from one end of the city to the other.
Local theater. Historical monuments. The Liberty Bell. The famous steps that everyone wanted to run.
Hell, I'd run them more than once.
I wondered if I'd ever be able to run them again. If my lungs would heal enough to let me run like that again.
And there I was again, back to the pain.
I couldn't think about Zed or my men, or the base, because then I'd be thinking about my life without any of those things.
If I didn't have the army, what did I have?
The girl from the other night? What was her name? Naomi? Nancy? Nance. Right. She'd been fun, but that wasn't a relationship.
I didn't have someone to sit by my bed. No family. I was sure Zed would come by as soon as he was able, but it wasn't like he had some nine-to-five job. He'd come when he could, but that was only until he was shipped out again. And we were friends, but he wasn't family. I trusted him to have my back, but I wasn't his responsibility.
I didn't want to be anyone's responsibility.
Fuck it all!
How the hell had it come to this? I'd survived a hell of a lot, and this was how it was going to end?
But maybe this was how it was supposed to end.
The fragments of my dreams and memories from when I was first injured came to me, reminded me of what I'd been thinking during that foggy haze of time. That I deserved this.
Mea culpa.
Was this just karma's way of fucking me over like I deserved?
I didn't doubt it.
A flash of movement caught the corner of my eye and I tried to turn my head to see, but the stupid tube prevented it. It was unnerving, not being able to see, not being able to protect myself.
But I didn't need to protect myself.
No one could hurt me here.
Movement again, coming closer this time. I waited for it to come into my line of sight.
For a moment, I hoped it was her, the brunette. Nori.
She'd sat next to me. Held my hand. I'd heard the doctor talking to her when I first woke up and it sounded like she'd been here with me quite a bit.
I wondered why.
I didn't know her.
I was sure I didn't.
I wasn't one of those men who went through women so fast and so loose that he couldn't even remember their faces. And I knew I'd remember hers. It wasn't just because she was pretty either. I remembered how she'd kept telling me to hold on, kept encouraging me.
The fact that she'd done that for a complete stranger intrigued me.
Hell, she was pretty much the only thing that intrigued me at the moment.
Then the person who'd come into the room stepped close enough that I could see who it was. My heart twisted, suddenly too full of emotions.
Tall, muscular despite his age. Dark brown hair streaked with white. Emerald eyes that looked sadder than they had in a long time.
“Oh, kid. What'd you do now?” The old man shook his head as he pulled up a chair.
Father Doron O'Toole. The closest thing to family I had.
My throat felt like it was tightening around the tube, and my eyes stung. I appreciated the fact that he was here, but I didn't want him to see me like this. Weak. Helpless.