Chương 8
Marcus smiled but did not push.
My phone vibrated on the table.
The screen showed a message from my department head asking me to call when I had a minute.
I turned it facedown.
Marcus watched.
“Bad news?”
“Work.”
“Same thing, sometimes.”
“She probably heard something.”
“About Mercer?”
“Maybe.”
“Call.”
“I have a minute.”
“You clearly don’t.”
I left the phone facedown.
He did not argue.
Three months of recovery had reduced my life to appointments, forms, measurements, and people asking me to describe pain on scales that never seemed designed for actual pain.
One was discomfort.
Three was distracting.
Five was interfering with activity.
Seven was severe.
Ten was supposedly unimaginable.
I disliked ten because imagination had never been the problem.
Memory was.
I picked up my cup.
“Do you remember all of it?”
Marcus’s gaze shifted to me.
“The helicopter?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
I waited.
He rolled the cup slowly between his palms.
“Pieces.”
“What pieces?”
“You.”
The answer came without hesitation.
My stomach tightened.
“What else?”
“Noise.”
He shrugged one shoulder.
“Somebody stepping on my hand.”
“That was probably me.”
“I assumed.”
“I was busy.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
His eyes went distant for a moment.
“I remember thinking the ceiling was too low.”
“That’s strange.”
“I was bleeding to death.”
“Fair.”
“I remember fuel.”
The word changed the air between us.
I had forgotten the smell until he said it.
Not completely forgotten.
Buried.
Fuel mixed with smoke and hot metal, sharp enough to sting the back of the throat.
The cabin floor had been slick.
I had braced one knee against a structural support and kept slipping.
Marcus continued speaking quietly.
“I remember the crew chief grabbing your vest.”
I nodded.
“I remember you hitting him.”
“I did not hit him.”
“You absolutely hit him.”
“I pushed his arm.”
“With your fist.”
“That’s not anatomically possible.”
“Fine.”
He took a drink.
“You medically redirected him.”
I almost smiled.
Then his expression changed.
“I remember asking you if we were going down.”
My fingers tightened around the cup.
“You did?”
“You said no.”
I looked at him.
“That sounds irresponsible.”
“It was comforting.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I figured.”
“What did I actually say?”
“Just no.”
He swallowed.
“Like you were irritated with the possibility.”
The memory did not return.
That bothered me more than it should have.
There were entire minutes from that flight that belonged to other people now.
Statements had filled gaps I could not.
Marcus had become the keeper of things I had said while barely conscious.
Crew members remembered movements I had no access to.
My own body had preserved the scars and discarded the sequence.
“Was I lying?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Very convincingly.”
I rubbed my thumb over the edge of the cup lid.
“What else?”
Marcus hesitated.
That was enough to make me nervous.
“What?”
“You asked me a question.”
“What question?”
He looked down.
“I don’t know if you want this.”
“You brought it up.”
“Yes.”
“So now you have to finish.”
He sighed.
“You asked whether I had kids.”
I stared at him.
“I knew you had kids.”
“I know.”
“You showed everyone those ridiculous school pictures.”
“They were not ridiculous.”
“Your son was wearing a cape.”
“He was six.”
“At school picture day.”
“Commitment.”
I shook my head.
“Why would I ask that?”
“You were checking orientation.”
The answer came automatically.
Then I stopped.
“Was I?”
“Maybe at first.”
He rubbed his jaw.
“You asked their names.”
“Emma and Luke.”
“Yes.”
“I knew that too.”
“You made me say them.”
The coffee shop noise seemed farther away.
Marcus’s voice stayed even.
“Then you told me I was going to tell them myself what happened.”
I looked at him.
He gave a small shrug.
“You got pretty bossy.”
My throat tightened.
“Did you believe me?”
“No.”
The honesty hurt.
“I didn’t think we were getting out.”
“You never said that.”
“I wasn’t feeling chatty.”
“I could tell.”
“I thought the aircraft was going down.”
His eyes stayed on mine.
“I thought you were going with it.”
I looked at my left arm.
The sleeve covered most of the damage, but one pale scar curved above the cuff near my wrist.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“That’s the annoying thing about plans.”
Neither of us spoke for a while.
My phone vibrated again.
This time it was the clinic coordinator.
I ignored that too.
Marcus glanced at the screen.
“You’re going to have to deal with work eventually.”
“I know.”
“You usually like work.”
“I usually like things I’m good at.”
“And right now?”
I did not answer.
That seemed to answer him.
The truth was that clinic had become difficult in ways I had not told anyone.
Not because of blood.
Blood was easy.
Blood had rules.
Find the source.
Control it.
Assess perfusion.
Replace volume.
Call surgery.
The difficult part was frightened people.
A young sailor had come in two weeks earlier with a laceration from broken glass and started crying when I irrigated it.
Nothing about his injury was serious.
His tears had been.
For one ugly second, I had wanted him to stop because his fear made my own body feel unsafe.
I had stepped out, told the corpsman I needed more gauze, and stood in the supply room until my hands stopped shaking.
I had gone back.
I had sutured the wound perfectly.
The sailor thanked me.
No one noticed.
That had frightened me more than if they had.
“I’ve had moments,” I said.
Marcus did not move.
“What kind?”
“With patients.”
“Bad?”
“Not dangerous.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
I hated everyone who had learned that phrase.
“I get impatient with fear.”
His brow furrowed.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning people are afraid of things that are objectively manageable, and sometimes I want them to get over it.”
“That sounds like half the military.”
“I’m their doctor.”
“So?”
“So I’m supposed to have more empathy than half the military.”
“Is that written somewhere?”
May you like
“It should be.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
