Chương 12
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Dana said you probably didn't have food.”
“I have food.”
“You have mustard, old eggs, and six yogurts.”
“The yogurts are new.”
“Congratulations.”
I put the pizza in the oven.
Marcus sat on the couch with his injured leg stretched across the coffee table.
The apartment filled slowly with the smell of cheap tomato sauce and overheated cheese.
Nothing dramatic happened.
That was strange enough to feel almost dangerous.
I folded laundry while Marcus criticized a game show contestant who failed an easy geography question.
He ate half the cookies before dinner.
I told him Dana was going to kill him.
He said Dana would need to catch him first.
We both looked at the crutches.
Neither of us said anything.
Then we laughed.
Later, while the pizza cooled between us, Marcus reached into his jacket and placed a folded sheet of paper on the table.
“What is that?”
“My appointment.”
I picked it up.
Dr. Samuel Vance.
Thursday.
Fourteen thirty.
I looked at Marcus.
“Right after mine.”
“Seemed efficient.”
“You scheduled it today?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He took a slice of pizza.
“Because I said Thursday.”
I stared at the paper.
There were no speeches.
No promise that either of us would be fixed.
No certainty that treatment would return me to flight duty or Marcus to the team.
Just two appointments, forty-five minutes apart, with a doctor neither of us particularly wanted to meet.
I folded the page again and set it beside his Trident.
For the first time since the crash, Thursday did not feel like a test I had to pass alone.
Thursday arrived with the kind of efficiency I had always admired in other people’s problems.
I spent the morning reviewing charts I was not allowed to touch clinically and correcting a training handout that used the phrase “massive blood loss” without defining massive.
At eleven, Petty Officer Sanchez appeared at my desk with a cup of coffee.
“I didn’t order this.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then why is it here?”
“Because you’ve been staring at page six for twenty minutes.”
“I’m editing.”
“You changed one comma.”
“It was an important comma.”
He set the cup beside my keyboard.
Sanchez was twenty-six, perpetually cheerful in a way I found suspicious, and incapable of entering a room without knowing everybody’s business within three minutes.
He glanced at my left arm.
“How’s the hand?”
“Attached.”
“Strong endorsement.”
“I’m considering keeping it.”
He nodded.
“Good.”
I waited.
He continued standing there.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You have a face.”
“So do you, ma’am.”
“You have a specific face.”
He folded his hands behind his back.
“Commander Patel said not to bother you.”
“That sounds unlike you.”
“I’m growing.”
I looked at the coffee.
“Did Marcus tell you to bring this?”
“No.”
“Sanchez.”
“He suggested caffeine supports emotional stability.”
“That man should be prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license.”
“He also said you’d say that.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“Leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He made it three steps.
“Sanchez.”
He turned.
“Did he tell you anything else?”
His expression became careful.
“Just that you had an appointment.”
“Of course he did.”
“He didn’t say why.”
“You didn’t ask?”
Sanchez looked offended.
“I have boundaries.”
I stared.
He lasted less than two seconds.
“I asked once.”
“Leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
At twelve thirty, I stopped pretending to work.
The appointment was across base in a behavioral health building I had entered dozens of times as a physician accompanying patients.
Going there for myself changed the architecture.
The same beige walls looked accusatory.
The same reception desk seemed too exposed.
I arrived twelve minutes early and immediately regretted it.
A Marine staff sergeant was filling out forms with his wife beside him.
A young sailor bounced one knee hard enough to shake the plastic chair.
Nobody looked at me.
That should have been comforting.
Instead, I found myself wondering whether they recognized my uniform, whether they knew why I was there, whether anyone from my clinic would walk through the door.
I hated the thought so much that I nearly laughed.
There I was, professionally offended when patients feared stigma, privately calculating the fastest route out of a behavioral health waiting room.
A receptionist called my name.
Dr. Samuel Vance did not look like the man I had constructed in advance.
I had expected polished shoes, a perfectly arranged office, perhaps an expression designed to radiate compassionate neutrality.
Vance wore brown loafers with one untied lace and had a coffee stain near the cuff of his shirt.
He looked about fifty.
His hair was mostly gray.
His office contained a dead plant.
I respected him slightly more for the plant.
“Lieutenant Ward.”
“Doctor.”
“Sam is fine.”
“I’ll stick with Doctor.”
“Fair.”
He pointed to a chair.
I sat.
He sat across from me instead of behind the desk.
That annoyed me immediately.
“You do this professionally,” I said.
“Sit?”
“Arrange furniture to make people feel less evaluated.”
“Yes.”
“At least you admit it.”
“I find denial exhausting.”
He opened a thin folder.
“Mercer sent a referral summary.”
“How generous.”
“He also documented that his initial concern regarding self-inflicted injury was unsupported after restricted records became available.”
I looked at him.
“That was fast.”
“He called me personally.”
That surprised me.
“What did he say?”
Vance closed the folder.
“That he got it wrong.”
Nothing more.
No defense.
No explanation.
I looked at the dead plant.
“Did he tell you about his brother?”
Vance’s expression did not change.
“No.”
I immediately wished I had said nothing.
“That wasn’t mine to share.”
“Then we can leave it there.”
He did.
That helped.
For the first fifteen minutes, Vance asked questions that sounded almost insultingly ordinary.
Sleep.
Appetite.
Concentration.
Alcohol.
Medications.
Relationships.
Work.
I answered accurately enough to satisfy myself and cautiously enough to notice I was doing it.
He noticed too.
“You’re good at this.”
“At what?”
“Giving complete answers that reveal very little.”
“I’m a physician.”
May you like
“That explains the technique.”
I crossed one ankle over the other.
