I’m losing him.
16
Mack
2014
The stairwell echoes as I run up another flight at the hospital. With every step my prosthetic leg thuds against the concrete, despite my best efforts to hit it lightly. I want my feet to sound the same when I walk. I won’t stop practicing until I can’t hear the difference between them anymore. It’s not because I’m ashamed.
Far from it.
I lost my leg so two men could live. I’d call that a fair trade. No, it’s not shame. It’s that I don’t want anyone knowing that I have a prosthetic leg just by looking at me, or by listening to me. I don’t want to deal with people’s questions all the time. And even worse: their pity.
The muscle fibers in my ribs wrench angrily, making me stop dead in my tracks. When did I become such an old man? I throw my arms over my head and lean back against the cool wall closing my eyes. I remember when I first went to West Point, I could march ten miles with a sixty-pound ruck sack in the morning, hit up the gym in the afternoon and then stay up all night fucking the brains out of my flavor of the week. The energizer bunny was a pussy compared to me. Fuckin’ pink rabbit.
Speaking of old men, I wonder how Cameron Armstrong is making out. When I went to Walter Reed to learn to function again, he made good on his word. He didn’t renew his next military contract and went to Colorado University instead. When I was first learning how to walk with my prosthetic, Armstrong sent an e-mail my way. He thanked me for doing what I did and for saving his life. He let me know that he made it onto the Buffaloes as a quarterback. He even got kinda gushy at the end when he said he’d never had a brother, but that as far as he was concerned I was his brother, not just in arms, but blood.
His e-mail was kind, thoughtful and uncharacteristically vulnerable.
It pissed me the fuck off.
Instead of being happy to hear about him following his dreams, I was jealous. There I was, sweating my sack off trying to learn to walk like a damned toddler again, and he was set up to be the star of his college football team. Yeah, jealous doesn’t really cover it.
I should really look him up now that I’m here. Let him know I’m happy for him.
I pop my eyes back open, dropping my arms back by my sides. Time to get back at it. I pull the air deep in my lungs and get mentally prepared to continue my run.
Thud!
A door opens into the stairwell a couple floors above me. I tilt my head and listen. Just because the door opened doesn’t mean anyone’s in here. Several floors above me I hear a huge sigh. So much for that theory.
Suddenly sniffles ring off the walls. It’s a woman. At least I assume so, from the crying. Not to say I’ve never shed a tear or two, I’m well aware that men cry too. It just sounds different when it’s a lady, that’s all.
I guess that’s the end of today’s run. I should just head back down to the lobby exit and give this chick some privacy. I think about it, I have every intention of going, yet for some reason that’s beyond me, I keep moving up the stairs.
Now, I’m no white knight. Sure, you might be inclined to think differently because of how I lost my leg. You’d be wrong. I’ve never been the kind of guy to swoop in and dry some girl’s tears. Women cry too much and for too many reasons to get tangled up in that. Yet, I can’t stop my legs from guiding me up toward the sound of her cries. Something about the noise tells me her tears are deeper than a bad day. Her sorrow sounds like it’s rooted deep in her soul.
The space between us closes and her sobs shatter the quiet. The empty stairwell reverberates her pain from the walls. I come up around the last flight of stairs and my heart clenches in my chest.
It’s Lauren.
I stop dead in my tracks and my chest feels like it’s been hollowed out as I watch her. She’s sitting, slumped against the door with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head lying against them like a pillow. She’s got her arms wrapped around her legs in a hug she so clearly needs from someone.
From me.
She looks like someone who has lived two full lifetimes of pain and suffering. I’m not saying she looks old or haggard. Cause, damn it, I don’t know a woman on this earth that is more radiant or sexy than she is. It’s not at all that she’s aged, it’s that she’s defeated. She’s broken down. Stomped to the earth.
And it’s all my fault.
“Lauren, I’m sorry.”
As I close the final stairs between us, she looks up, startled. She wipes fat tears from her perfect face with her knuckles. I reach the landing and hold my hand open to her, to help her off the floor. Plan B is to sit next to her, if that’s what she needs. Instead, she grabs my hand and springs from the floor like a jack-in-the-box as I give her a tug.