The Last Hour (5 page)

She smiled, her eyes catching mine from behind hair that curtained across her face. It was so sexy I almost gasped. “That’s what I like about it.”

At the end of that weekend, we exchanged contact information, and she’d returned to Texas. I stayed in New York for a few more weeks, mostly watching out for Dylan and Alex, who were a mess, as usual. I wanted to knock Dylan upside the head. He’s a great guy, and my best friend. But he’s stubborn as hell, and has a martyr streak a mile wide. Major drama queen, and Alex is pretty much the same. Between the two of them, I was going out of my mind.
 

So my outlet was chatting with Carrie over Facebook or on the phone. And that we did, a lot. It started out short and simple ... a comment here, a text message there. But on the third night after she left town, we chatted for almost two hours on Facebook, and the night after that, I called her, and we talked long into the night. By the end of the week, our calls were turning into goodnight calls, where I’d lay in bed chatting with Carrie until both of us were ready to sleep. In the mornings I’d send her text messages, and usually a couple hours later when she woke up, she’d text me right back.

I don’t know if it was because the interaction was online and on the phone, but I found myself opening up more, and quicker, with Carrie than anyone I’d ever known. We talked about our families, our lives, our ambitions. We talked about the people we’d dated, our hang-ups and insecurities. I told her things I’d never told anyone before. And as crazy as it sounds, I knew I was falling for her, over the phone of all things, weeks before we saw each other again.

As I finished my story, Sarah said, “So … you just look like a soldier. Inside, you’re as big of a geek as my sister.”

I laughed. “Pretty much.”

She gave me a serious look. “You guys have had a tough year.”

“That’s an understatement,” I replied, my voice low. She had no idea. Whatever the news had reported, the reality was a thousand times worse. The news might have reported on the trial, but they hadn’t reported the betrayals, the loss of faith, the closing of ranks of people I’d loved. The news hadn’t touched on the doubts I’d lived with, the questioning, the moments when I wished I’d just taken that report and tossed it in the burn pit instead of turning it over.

Sarah looked over at Carrie. Carrie was just finishing the paperwork. She had a serious, exhausted expression on her face.
 

“Carrie’s always been the one who watched out for us.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s good at that.”

Sarah bit her lip. “Someone’s going to need to watch out for her now.”

I sighed. I felt a lump forming in my throat. It was supposed to be me watching out for her, and for now at least, I couldn’t.

S
arah and I had to squeeze in
between the people on the crowded elevator to get in behind Jessica and Carrie. There’s something just freakishly unnerving about touching people when they don’t know you’re there. It made me want to puke. If I even could puke in this state. And watching Carrie, holding Jessica’s hand with that deadly serious expression on her face … I’d have done anything to be able to touch her. To make her understand I was still here. To tell her everything was going to be okay.

Somehow, though, I didn’t think that was true.

Just as the elevator doors closed, I saw the strangest thing. A little boy, halfway down the hall to the emergency room. He was young, maybe eight or ten, and wore a Spider-Man t-shirt and a cap turned halfway to his shoulder. He was looking around, lost, confused, and then a nurse walked right through him. I almost jumped out of the elevator, but the doors closed and he was gone.

It was frightening.

Sarah, on the other hand, was beyond ridiculous. Riding on the elevator in front of her was a buff looking EMT in his early twenties. About six feet compared to her five-foot two, he nearly hid her from me with his bulked up shoulders and neck that looked like a tree trunk. This guy seriously worked out. He looked like he hadn’t shaved, and he’d been up a long time. His eyes were drooping, dark circles underneath them, and he leaned against the side of the elevator as if he would just go to sleep.

“Hey, Ray, check this out,” Sarah said. Then my mouth dropped open because she reached her arms around him, putting her tiny hands on his ample pecs.
 

“Sarah, knock it off,” I said.

She took that as a challenge, pressing herself up against him. Even though I’m a hell of a lot older than she is, and I’m married to her sister, I’d be inhuman to not admit that she’s one very sexy girl, more so in that red dress than in her usual pseudo punk outfit. She grinned at me, stood on her tiptoes, then opened her mouth and slid her tongue up the side of his neck.

“Oh, for God’s sake! Sarah!”

The guy twitched, his eyes opening up. There’s no way he felt anything. But he seemed to react anyway.

She dissolved into snickering and backed away from him. “Have a sense of humor.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me, and said, “There are definite advantages to this nearly dead thing.”

I breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator doors slid open and we stepped out behind Carrie and Jessica.
 

“Sarah, you can’t do that stuff. Just because we’re ... whatever we are … I mean…”

She turned toward me, so suddenly I stopped in my tracks.

“Don’t you tell me what I can or can’t do. For all you know we’re both
dead.
What the hell happens after this? I don’t know. You don’t know. So just leave me alone!” Her voice rose to a shout at the end.

I grimaced. “Sarah ... we’re going to be fine. Both of us.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know that. You don’t know
anything.
What I know is I’m fucking pissed. I’m not even eighteen years old yet. And it’d be nice to get a chance to have a life.”

A flash of anger ran through me. Anger about Weber and Roberts and Kowalski and all the others we lost. Anger at this spoiled rich girl who somehow thought her life was better or more valuable than theirs. Totally misplaced and wrong, but there it was.

“Sometimes we don’t get that chance,” I said. “You want to hear the truth? Well, here it is: you’re right. I don’t know shit. I know I’ve seen close friends blown all to hell. I’ve seen people I cared about with their lives ripped to shreds from bullets and bombs, and the survivors turn on each other like fucking rabid dogs. Life is cheap, Sarah. So maybe it’s over. We had our chance.”

She backed away from me as I spoke, her eyes avoiding mine. Finally she just turned and started to walk away, following behind Jessica and Carrie.

Crap.

“Sarah!” I called.

She ignored me, so I called louder, “Sarah, I’m sorry.”

She stopped, then finally turned around, and looked at me. Her eyes were cold. “Just because you’ve been in a war doesn’t mean you’ve got a monopoly on shitty situations. And this is a shitty situation. So back to what I said before—don’t tell me what to do.”

With that, she turned back around, the skirt of her dress swirling as she turned and walked away.

Anger gone as quick as it came, now I just felt like an idiot. Not that this was the first time, and probably wouldn’t be the last.

Then again, it just might be. I followed after her, but slowly. Part of me thought I should find the operating rooms. See how things were actually going. But then again, maybe that wasn’t such a smart idea. Not to mention I couldn’t exactly stop and ask someone for directions. Would my being there screw with the electronics? I had no way of knowing. Not to mention the thought of seeing my own body being cut open and operated on ... that seriously freaked me out. I’d seen people’s insides before, of course, but my own? That took a special kind of courage, courage I didn’t think I had.

When I finally caught up, Sarah was sitting in the far corner of the room, arms across her chest, and she was staring at the floor. The waiting room itself was fairly large, with plenty of seats, and it was crowded. At the nurses’ station, the EMT she had molested was standing across from a nurse. Carrie and Jessica were right behind him.
 

I decided to let Sarah wait. I’d get back to her in a few minutes. I stood beside Carrie, wishing I could reach out and take her hand.

The EMT said to the nurse at the desk, “I just wanted to check on a patient we brought in earlier to the emergency room. Name is, um ... Sarah Thompson.”

I felt Carrie tense beside me, as the nurse looked up Sarah’s name. “I don’t have any information yet, she’s just gone into emergency surgery.”

The EMT nodded, looking a little glum.

Carrie reached out and touched him on the arm. “You brought in Sarah? I’m her sister.”

The guy’s face tightened a little, and he said, “I’m so sorry about the accident. I’m Eddie Vasquez. I just ... sometimes I want to know how it comes out. She’s awful young.”

Jessica just stood there, looking numb, and Carrie said, “She is.”

I took a deep breath. I think it was a breath. If I’d actually been here physically it might have been, but I wasn’t, so I don’t know what the hell it was.
 

The EMT—Eddie—took Carrie’s hand. Who names their kid Eddie? He said, “I’m sorry if I’m intruding. I usually try to not let this stuff get to me. It’s just … she’s so young. Bad accident.”

Carrie nodded, her face stressed, and said, “I appreciate you checking on her. If ... if you’ll give me your number, I’ll call when we hear something.”

Eddie stared at her then said, “Sure.” Then he reached over the desk, grabbing a pen and a sheet of paper, and wrote down his number. “I’ll understand if ... if you don’t call. I’m not like a stalker. I’m in college actually, pre-med. This helps pay the bills.”

Carrie took the paper, looking a little lost. She didn’t have her purse on her and didn’t seem to realize it until this moment.
 

 
Jessica took the paper from her hand. “I’ve got it, Carrie.”
 

She had a concerned expression on her face as she looked at her older sister. And no wonder. Carrie always had it together. Always. Right now it was like the blind leading the blind, a couple of shell-shocked sisters just hanging on to each other. More than anything, their vacant, exhausted expressions reminded me of the guys in my squad the afternoon Kowalski threw himself on the grenade. Dylan, Weber, Roberts ... they looked ... hollow. As if there was nothing left.

Within 24 hours after that day, Roberts was dead and Dylan was crippled. Weber lasted maybe another month before a sniper picked him off. I remember when Weber died. Hicks’ fire team took point that day, because I was still babying along three fresh replacements. Hicks and I didn’t get along too well, but we didn’t need to. He was reliable and had a good team.

As a bonus, all of his guys were still alive.

We stopped at one point, spread out along the trail, five meters between each of us. I had just hunkered down on my haunches, trying to keep from getting mud soaked through my uniform, which was a futile effort, and I saw Weber walk off the trail maybe fifteen meters to take a piss. He was goofing off like always, a big grin on his face, and had just cracked a joke. Then we heard a slap, like a knife hitting a piece of meat, followed by the crack of a high-powered rifle maybe ten seconds later. It was a long shot and caught him right on the forehead, and he collapsed right in his own puddle of piss.
 

We never found the sniper. I winced at the memory of Hicks and Sergeant Colton putting Weber’s junk back in his pants before zipping him in the body bag. No way in hell were we going to let some rear-echelon motherfucker use Weber for laughs. We were all grim, silent, as we got him into the bag. Colton was shaking with so much anger he had to try three times before he could get a grip on the zipper.

It’s not that I dwell on that shit. It’s just that … the war got so ugly after Kowalski was killed. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to even think about it without becoming overwhelmed with rage. The shadow of the month between Kowalski’s death and Weber’s casts darkness over everything, even the short time I’d been with Carrie.
 

It’s easy to get caught up. Even now, at a time when I’ve probably got much bigger things to worry about. But seriously, bigger to who? Did I have any more right to life than that kid in Dega Payan? He was twelve years old, maybe. And he died just like Weber did, a bullet through the forehead, and I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
 

I needed to get my shit together and focus. Carrie was here and needed help.
 

I just wished I knew what I could do for her. Increasingly, it seemed that the answer to that was nothing.

Carrie and Jessica were finished at the desk. They half-walked, half-stumbled to a pair of seats against the wall. I crouched, leaning against the wall, next to Carrie.

“She can’t tell you’re there,” Sarah said. “You might as well be a million miles away.”

“Shut up, Sarah.”

“You might as well be dead.”

I sighed and looked up at her. “I’m sorry I got mad.”