“Just…everything he did. Trying to get information…trying to break me.”
I opened my eyes to find her staring into my face. My chest rose and fell as I tried to take in enough air. I could see it—I could see it in her face. She knew there was more, and she was going to ask for the details. My hands clenched, and I started to hyperventilate.
“Evan.” Lia’s voice was stern, the tone causing me to instinctively look to her eyes. “You’re all right. You are with me, and I’m not going to ask you anything else about that, okay? He hurt you—I understand that—and that’s enough detail.”
I nodded once, then again. My body was shaking uncontrollably, and I couldn’t even figure out how I’d let it get this far. I could feel sand in my throat and up my nose, heat from the desert sun on my skin, and there were hands on my back and arms—pushing me down and holding me to the ground.
Then they were gone, and it was just me and Lia in a motel room bed. Her arms were around my head, and I rested my cheek on her stomach.
*****
“You don’t have to tell me any more.”
As much as I knew she was trying to make it easier, Lia giving me an out was actually making it more difficult.
“There’s a shit ton I haven’t told you,” I reminded her. “You need to know about some of it because of what’s happening now.”
Lia sighed and nodded.
“I really had lost all track of time after I had been there a few months,” I said. “I was always tied up, so I couldn’t even make scratches on a wall or anything, and I was in that…that fucking hole most of the time anyway. I spent most of the time trying not to think, but there wasn’t anything else to do. I counted up all my sins and asked God to forgive them. I swore if He’d just let me die, I’d do the penance or whatever I needed to do—anything to stop the fucking pain.”
I paused and raised an eyebrow at her.
“So, no,” I said with a sardonic grin, “I’m not Catholic anymore. God can kiss my ass for letting me rot there for a year and a half.”
Lia’s teeth grabbed her lower lip, and her eyes tensed. She nodded slightly, and I went on with my story.
“When their base was raided, and I was rescued, I’d pretty much given up any hope. I didn’t even believe there was anyone there, you know? I thought my mind had totally cracked and I was hallucinating. I don’t think I started believing it was all over until I was at the hospital in Germany, and that was because they finally gave me something strong enough to make the pain stop.”
I took a deep breath.
“Malnutrition, dehydration, muscle atrophy—which took a decent amount of physical therapy before I could walk properly—a dislocated shoulder, four fractured ribs. That’s what they said I had and kept telling me how lucky I was that I was otherwise unharmed.”
I laughed humorlessly.
“That’s a good one, huh? Otherwise unharmed.”
“I can’t say that I find it very funny, no,” Lia remarked.
I pulled my legs up and rested my arms over my knees as I smoked. I held the butt end of the cigarette between my thumb and first two fingers and angled the lit end toward the palm of my hand, shielding the glow from view. It took a few minut
es for me to get myself out of my own head and back to the rest of my little tale, but Lia was patient. I finished the smoke and kept talking.
“My first episode was maybe a month or so after I came back to the States,” I recalled. “I remember the first time because it scared the shit out of me. I was at the gym doing leg presses or something like that, and all of a sudden, they were there—all around me. They were yelling, and I could hear the gunfire and see the smoke. The whole floor had become sand, and when I stood up, I fell face-first into it.”
I grabbed another cigarette and lit it.
“I spent a lot of time in the psych ward at the military hospital in Hampton, Virginia. The doctors there treated me for a couple of months. PTSD, the psych said. He wanted to write a fucking book about what I went through, but I wouldn’t authorize it. They talked about giving me a desk job, and I pretty much told them to shove it. I was a sniper, for fuck’s sake. What was I going to do behind a desk?”
I took a few puffs off the smoke to calm myself again and wondered why I thought it sucked when I just felt numb. I’d give most anything to feel numb about all of it right now.
“I was honorably discharged and moved back to Ohio, thinking I at least knew the area, even if I didn’t really want anything to do with the people I knew there. I spent every dime I had to buy my Barrett rifle. Whatever money I made doing odd jobs, I spent on ammo and time at the shooting range.”
“You bought the rifle?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”