The women in his family seemed to know how to
make him cry. But—funny thing—each time, the tears
seemed to cleanse him of bitterness and remind him of
a humanity he’d feared he no longer possessed.
“THE DAY YOU GOT HURT.”
Until this moment, John couldn’t have said what
color the counselor’s eyes were. They weren’t startling
in any way. But damn could they pin him to his chair
like a butterfly on a board.
Blue, he realized. They were a washed-out blue. To
go with an ordinary face, brown hair, a body average in
build and height and a rumpled sport shirt tucked into
wrinkled khakis.
The guy didn’t believe in leading gently up to the
hard part. Say, a week from now. Maybe use this first
session to get to know John, to exchange war stories.
No, he’d asked a few brisk questions. What unit?
How much action had he seen? How many friends had
died?
Ten minutes, tops. Now he looked at John and said,
“The day you got hurt. What’s your most vivid memory? Just a snapshot.”
John felt like a phobic in a dentist’s chair waiting for
the drill to descend. Pretending he was just fine, when
his body was rigid. God, he wanted to bolt.
Fiona, he thought desperately. Fiona.
Drawing a shallow breath, he said, “Blood dripping
down a soccer ball. Lying there wondering why it
hadn’t popped.”
“When you wake up at night screaming, what are
you trying to do?”
He started to shove up from his chair. “How the hell
do you know? Did Liz tell you…?” He stopped, feeling
foolish. “You had your own nightmares.”
“We all have nightmares.” His expression was kind.
“Even veterans who aren’t suffering from PTSD
have ’em. It’s the mind’s way of processing traumatic
memories.”
He sank back into the chair, but didn’t let go of the
arms. “Mine doesn’t process them. It’s stuck replaying.”
A nod. “Like a vinyl record with a scratch. Why do
you think you’re here?”
Trying to joke, to lighten the mood, John said, “Because my little sister bullied me into it?”
“If that’s the only reason, we shouldn’t be wasting
our time.” Apparently Brian Lehr—that was his name—
didn’t have a sense of humor.
Fiona.
“Because of the scratch.” He had to clear his throat.
“Because I must be damaged.”
Lehr nodded. “So let’s back up. What are you yelling
when you wake up?”
The Arabic word sounded alien when he said it.
“Run,” he translated. “I was trying to warn them.”
“Them?”
“The kids.” He closed his eyes, but opened them
quickly, unable to bear the scene playing behind his
eyelids. “The boys.”
“How many?”
“Eleven. It…varied. Eleven that morning.”
The voice was both gentle and relentless. “And one
of them had a soccer ball?”
“Most of them did. Afterward…” He swallowed. “I
just saw the one.”
“They were going to practice? Play a game?”
His chest hurt. “Pickup game. The other team hadn’t
shown up yet.”
“How old were they?”
Were. That was the operative word. Six dead. Four
maimed, lives over for all practical purposes. Only one,
had walked away unharmed.
“Fourteen, fifteen.”
“You saw them regularly.”
Breathe, he told himself.
“Couple times a week.”
“You play soccer yourself, back here in the States?”
“Yeah. Youth, high school, college.”
“Natural that a soccer game would draw you.”
Lehr didn’t get it, John thought incredulously. He
imagined this soldier exchanging a few words with the
boys when he happened by.
“What did you see that made you shout the warning?”
“I don’t know if I did shout it. It was in my mind.
But…things happened fast.”
“There’s the scratch,” the counselor murmured. “You
feel like you failed because you didn’t warn them.”
As if John hadn’t figured out that one himself. But