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Page 22.
"The stuff in your prescription bottles. I found them in your backpack, Rick Buchan."
"My wallet." It was a question.
"I took it out of your jeans and put it in your backpack. All your money is still there. Forty Euros. I counted."
He reached out and took her hand. She let him pull it toward him, onto his lap. They sat holding hands. Their fingers closed together in a gentle, desperate squeeze. "You must be an angel."
"Hardly." She wiped tears away with her free hand, and sniffled. Her blue eyes were rimmed with pink, swollen—she must have cried during the night.
"That bullshit in the bar cost me twenty Euros for nothing." He laughed bitterly, thinking of how he'd been poisoned, how it had felt as if a tiny alien was cutting its way out of his solar plexus with a dull wooden blade.
She squeezed his hand a little extra. "You're okay now. I found some tummy medicine and some headache medicine for you, plus the stuff in your pill bottles. Got anxiety disorder?"
"PTSD. Long story."
"You and me both." She scrunched her shoulders in a brief shrug. "Life goes on."
"Why are you here? Why are we here?"
She pulled her hand away, folded her arms straitjacket style, took a deep breath, and nodded as if putting a sheet of paper in a typewriter to start a very long story. "I am here…" she started, and stopped.
He thought she was going to start crying again. He reached out to offer his arms in an embrace, but she was strong and pulled away.
"I'm going to tell you the whole thing so you understand. Right now, Rick, you are all I've got. You didn't have anything incriminating in your pants or your backpack, so I want to trust you." She squinted at him suspiciously. "You're not a drug dealer or a—?"
"A what? I'm a law-abiding guy. I'm also a deserter on the run from Uncle Sam for something I didn't do."
"I believe you."
"So does my lawyer, I think."
"You have a lawyer?"
"Yeah, nice lady. JAG officer. I'm just not sure that the Army can accuse you and defend you at the same time."
"That doesn't seem logical."
"To the Army it does."
"What's the nutshell?"
"I was in the war, and lost my squad. I was squad leader. A dozen guys died in an IED explosion on a road we should not have been sent down. I got blamed, and I take full responsibility. They sent me back to Germany, and patched me up at Landstuhl. That's the big U.S. Army hospital. Then want to hold a General Court Martial. Only I don't think I'm guilty of any crime. Just losing my buddies. I'll carry that in my soul forever. Can you see the difference?"
She stared at him with large, luminous blue sky-eyes, shaking her head no, she didn't get it, but yes, she wanted to. She placed both her paws on his lap, and he held them as if they were playthings. He longed to hold them to his cheeks, because they were soft and feminine, but she'd have razor burn, and besides that he didn't like himself too much.
She said, "So you stopped taking your meds. You wanted to die."
"Yeah." It was an uncertain word. "I wanted to run away. You know, it was so sweet to feel the rain and cold air, like I was starting life all over again. I knew it was bullshit. You can't just run away and leave your skin behind."
She laughed suddenly. "What a silly idea. Stepping out of your skin and walking away."
He caught her emotion and laughed too.
She said, "You'd look very funny without your skin, Rick. Like—" her expression clouded, at a morbid vision best left unspoken.
He shook her hands as if they were little stuffed toys. "That's my story, Hannah. I'm wanted for desertion because I went out the window of an MP van while my guards stopped for bratwurst with mustard and sauerkraut at a street stand. I was handcuffed to a rail, but wriggled forward and snagged the master key from the glove compartment. I lost so much weight over there in the desert and then the hospital that I just slipped out the window of the cop car and down the street. I went in my plain old civvies. They didn't even have me in an orange jail suit yet."
"Lucky." She blew her nose on a paper napkin she'd gotten from somewhere. Collecting herself, she said, "Sounds like a fashion statement."
"Yeah. I had my backpack along, with all my stuff in it. So what about you?"
She kneaded the napkin in her hands, between folded legs, with those ridiculous pajamas. "I was a sex slave."
"Oh my god."
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Thank you for reading the first half (free, what I call the Bookstore Metaphor). If you love it, you can (easily and safely at Amazon) buy the whole e-book for the painless price of a cup of coffee—also known as Read-a-Latte (hours of reading enjoyment; the coffee is gone in minutes, but the book stays with you forever). You can also get those many hours of happy reading from the print edition for the price of a sandwich (no, I don't have a metaphor for that, like a 'sandwich metaphor?'). To help the author, please recommend this book your friends, and also post a favorable (five star!) review at Amazon, Good Reads, and similar online reader resources. Thank you (JTC).
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