Alright, guys. This is it. The holy-crap-the-end-is-here. Hope you like it.
I don’t believe in those things, but Faye said she ‘felt something was wrong’. So she called me. When I didn’t pick up the third time, she figured it was just a mile away from her house to mine, so she could walk. As she approached my home, a feeling of uncertainty set on her chest, making her breathing a little difficult. She became uneasy and her heart began beating faster for no apparent reason.
She knocked on the door and waited for my dad to open up. He was surprised when he did.
“Faye?”
“Hello, Mr. Brenan, is Riley home? I keep calling her but she won’t pick up. I’m a bit worried.”
“She’s upstairs. What do you mean worried?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry. I’ll go check on her.”
Faye went up the steps with the weight on her chest getting bigger. She knocked on the door and said, “Ry, It’s me. Open up.”
Nothing. Not a sound came from inside that room. Faye tried again, and when the room stayed in perpetual silence, Faye tried the doorknob. Maybe I’d left without anyone noticing, maybe I was listening to music… But when she couldn’t twist the knob, her heart stopped. The third time. She didn’t knock. She slammed her hand against the wooden door.
“Riley, open the door!” Her screams became louder, the louder she slammed the door. “Open the fucking door! Riley!”
Hearing the noise, my mom and dad came upstairs asking what was happening, when Faye explained she couldn’t hear anything inside and that the room was locked, they knocked.
“Riley, what are you doing? Open the door,” my dad demanded.
But again, they couldn’t hear anything, and suddenly, they became as nervous as Faye. My dad punched the door with the side of his hand demanding me to open up. The bangs could be heard all throughout the house.
When they were convinced that something was wrong, my dad took a few steps back, and lunched himself at the door, breaking the lockset.
I don’t think they were prepared for what they’d find. Their minds were in high alert, yes, but they didn’t have the time, nor the desire to imagine something actually bad had happened to me. But it had, long before that night, that night just happened to be the last night I would try to push those feelings away.
As they walked into the room, they found me on the floor, next to a pool of my own vomit, with a bottle of rum in my hand. Faye was the first one to notice that I wasn’t just passed out because I was drunk. On the bed, two empty jars lay. Jars that she knew should not be even close to empty, because she had always made sure I had my pills.
She knew what I’d done.
“No! no, no, no, please, no,” she muttered, kneeling next to me. “Riley, wake up. Riley, baby, come on, wake up!”
She placed her index and middle finger on my carotid to see if I still had a pulse.
“Call an ambulance!” she yelled.
My mom didn’t react immediately, but after my dad repeated the order, she ran downstairs to call 911. Faye and my dad turned me around. Faye put her fingers inside my mouth to force me to vomit. I was so gone I gaged, but couldn’t puke.
“Come on, baby, you gotta throw up. Please, please, don’t do this to me, please.”
My dad and Faye managed to get me to throw up once, but of course, that wouldn’t be enough to take me back. The ambulance arrived a few minutes later. My mom and dad jumped inside and Faye went back to her home to pick up the car and go to the hospital, too. She decided not to tell her mom anything. ‘She just swallowed a lot of pills with alcohol’ was not something she was ready to say out loud.
I woke up lying on a stretcher, with a bright light that hurt my eyes and the incomparable smell of disinfectant in the air. Yeah. I was in the hospital, alright.
There was a curtain delimiting the space they had designated for me. And I was connected to some cables, and an IV in my arm. I never thought I would wake up like this again. I actually wasn’t planning on waking up, period.
Outside the curtain, I could her a man’s voice talking to the voices I would recognize as my parents’.
“Is she going to be alright?”
“We did a gastric suction, emptied the stomach but she already suffered from a brain injury, so we can only wait. She should be out of danger, but she’ll feel weak and disoriented for a while. Give her time.”
“Of course,” my mother replied.
After that, I went back to sleep. When I woke up again, someone was sitting next to my bed. No my mother, not my father, not my brother, not even Faye. If was Scott Keane.
He noticed I was opening my eyes, so he reached out to me. “Ry? Can you hear me? I’m gonna call the nurse.”
I grunted, making him stop half way standing up. “I’m fine. Don’t call anyone.”
He sat back down and although I saw in his eyes that he wanted to come closer, he kept his distance.
“How do you feel?”
“Like a cow sat on my chest… and hasn’t gotten up,” I replied in a thick voice I couldn’t recognize.
He smiled for a split second before saying, “Everyone was really worried. Do you… do you remember what happened?”
“I swallowed a shit tone of pills with alcohol.” He didn’t add anything. I think he was afraid of somehow, making me upset. “What do you want, Scott?”
“I don’t know. I went to Mrs. Burton’s place to talk to Faye and I found out… Your parents went home to get clothes and shower, I think. Faye is in the cafeteria. She hasn’t slept since they brought you so…”
“You haven’t answered.”
Scott looked at the floor, and with a frown looked up at me again. “You think I don’t know? You think I don’t look at myself in the mirror and wonder what the hell happened? I… I don’t know what happened, okay? My whole life I’ve been told what to do, what to be. I had my career and the university I’d go to chosen for me.”
“Scott. I’m lying in a hospital bed and what you wanna do is talk about yourself?”
“I want to say I’m sorry, I guess.”
“You guess? You forced Faye to marry you and then, you didn’t even try to make her happy! You took away Barbara Burton’s house! I worked on that house, Scott. I worked on the third floor alongside Erick! He wanted that house to be for Faye and I, and you are sorry?” If I would’ve felt strong enough to say something else. That wouldn’t have been the end of it, but my body was already weak, and I couldn’t finish my sentences feeling I was running out of air.
Scott’s eyes broke contact. For the very first time since I’d gotten back, he seemed ashamed of himself. Of the things he’d done. “It was a slap in the face… losing the baby. I thought everything was just mine for the taking. I thought if I had everything I wanted I’d be happy. Turns out, that’s not how it works. Because she doesn’t love me. Never has. Riley, I know you are angry at me, and you have every right to be, just like Faye has every right to feel disgusted with me but… I really am sorry. I just… look, I just wanted to tell you I’m giving the house back. I don’t need it. I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“Yeah, I wanted to be a photographer, remember? My dad was the one who made me get into business. I think it’d be better for all of us, especially after the divorce.”
“She asked for the divorce?”
“Yeah. That day in the hospital when we lost the baby. As soon as I walked in, she said ‘I want the divorce. And I don’t wanna see you ever again.’ She hates my guts. Can’t blame her. She handed me the papers a few days ago on the mail, I haven’t gathered the courage to sign them, but I will. Then, you won’t hear from me again. I’m too tired of this. I’m tired of pretending… and for what? Everything is a lie. I just thought I should let you know. And I do hope you get better, Riley. I mean in here.” She finished tapping his chest.
Scott stood up, and before he left, I said. “You’re still a brother to me, Scott. A shitty one, but a brother nonetheless.”
He smiled, and left. I closed my eyes and even thought I couldn’t fall asleep again, I tried to rest. I was having chest pains because of the stomach suction and my body felt dull and numb. Everything seemed like a dream, one that I could remember completely, but just a surrealistic.
It could’ve been thirty seconds or thirty minutes after Scott left when I saw Faye opening and closing the curtains. She was carrying a cappuccino and a granola bar that she placed on her lap when she sat down.
“Hey,” I said.
She looked up and pulled her chair closer. “Hey… how are you feeling?” Oh, no.
She used that slur in her voice. The one that people use when they are condescending or patronizing and don’t even realize. “Please don’t talk to me like that. I’m not a kid who hurt her knee.”
“Sorry. How are you feeling?” she repeated correcting her tone.
“Weak. A bit of pain but nothing to be worried about.”
“I’ll call the doctor. Tell him you are awake.”
She left and I stared at the ceiling. God, the conversations that were ahead of me I had no rush to have. ‘Why did you do it, Riley? What were you thinking, Riley? Tell me it wasn’t on purpose, Riley’. I closed my eyes trying not to think about how to face my mother.
Doctor came in a minute later. Asked some questions; what’s your name, how old are you, what year is it, who’s the president. When I answered all of them correctly, he proceeded to point a flashlight directly at my eye.
“Any pain?” he asked while moving the light towards my eye for a few moments, then away.
“I’m having chest pain, and a headache.”
“That’s normal. I’ll have the nurse give you something through the IV. Apart from that, how are you feeling?” He turned the flashlight off to ask the final question.
“Fine, I suppose.”
“Okay, well, everything looks fine so I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
The doctor gave me some last minute advice and left. Faye and I stared at each other in silence.
“Go on,” I said.
“What?”
“Just get it over with.”
Faye took a deep breath and looked at the floor, then back at me. “You promised me. You said you weren’t going to hurt yourself. You promised.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all you’re gonna say?”
“What do you want me to say? It wasn’t like I actually thought I’d be having this conversation.”
Those words bothered her more. I had basically admitted to having all the desire to never wake up again.
“I can’t believe you. After everything we’ve done. After everything we’ve been through… now you’re giving up. Now. After Scott and I got divorced, after he gave the house back. Now you want to give up.”
“After I almost strangled you. After I watched my Colonel commit suicide. After I caused your unborn child’s death.”
“You didn’t cause anything!”
“After I caused the deaths of my entire unit.” I added without acknowledging her statement.”
She sighed. “We’ve spent nearly a year ignoring this. Every time you woke up screaming, every time I had to bring you back after a car’s fire escape went off, every time I went to physical therapy with you about your arm and I never tried to bring up the subject… And now you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I’m just listing my fuck ups. But of all of them… that one has to be the biggest one.”
“What did you do, Riley?”
“I let my unit walk into a trap, okay!? I knew it was a trap and I let them walk into it. We were massacred!”
Faye didn’t add anything else, except “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk. I’ll wait until you’re ready, again. I’ll keep ignoring it, again. I’ll pretend I don’t know it’s an open wound, again. And you can keep lying to everyone else, again.”
She stood up and disappeared behind the curtains. Sometime later, my parents walked in. They were excited and had no intention of talking about what had happened. There was even some suggestion that it had all been an accident. I was too weak, and too uninterested to correct them. Everything they wanted to do was take me home and act like this never happened. But my doctor was about to drop a bucket of ice on them.
About two days after I’d woken up I heard them taking outside my room.
“Is she going to be alright?” my mother asked.
“Yes. She’s fine. She’s still not in perfect condition, but she’d be okay.”
“So, when can we take her home. Today?” My dad asked.
The doctor took a moment before he answered. “Mr. Brenan, letting your daughter go just like that would be incredibly irresponsible.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if we leave this unattended, there’s no guarantee that she won’t try to do it again.”
“It was an accident!” My father rose his voice.
“With all due respect, Mr. Brenan, no one swallows over thirty pills with alcohol… by ‘accident’. Because of organization policies, we cannot let her go until she’d seen a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Do you know one?”
“Oh, dear God. Uh, no. Not really.” My mother said. “Can’t you find one for her.”
“Yes, we can but, God knows how long it would take.”
“I know someone.” Faye said. Up until that moment, she’d been so quiet I wasn’t aware she’d been involved in the conversation. “I know someone who knows a therapist. And as far as I know, this therapists guy specializes in vets. Is that okay with you guys?”
My mother took the liberty to answer. “Of course. Whatever makes this horrible thing go away.”
That was part of the problem. The reason my parents, and really no one had been able to understand me. In their heads, this was just a thing that happened. A thing that need dirty to be thrown over it and to be forgotten. To me, it was the pain I carried inside me all day, every day. The pain that I could push aside, but never quite forget it was still there. I’d become a part of me that I could ignore long enough to act like a functional human being, but not enough to actually be one.
That night, Faye walked into the room and said, “I got you a therapist.”
“A what?”
“You need to be seen by a therapist before they let you leave, so I got you one. She’ll be here tomorrow morning so you should be discharged in the afternoon. After that, we can finally put this behind us and… move on.”
I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t that simple.
Next morning, like clockwork, an blond English woman, about my height, a lot thinner and wearing elegant clothes entered my room followed by my parents and Faye.
“Hey, honey,” my mother said “This is Dr. Sophia Williams. She’s here to check on you and give you the green light.”
She smiled. “Only if she’s well enough,” The Dr. said taking a seat next to my bed. “Hello. You can call me Sophia. How do you feel? Any pain?”
“Not really. Just tired.”
“Do you want us to leave?” My dad asked.
“Not yet. I’ll tell you when to leave,” she replied without taking her eyes off me. Then spoke to me again, “How’s your mood?”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“You don’t try to kill yourself if you are ‘fine’.”
At this response, my parents looked at each other. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“That’s okay. Is it okay if I call you Riley?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, Riley. Let’s talk about something else. How long were you in the military?”
“About four years.”
“Front?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you make friends?”
“Yes. Some.”
“How many of them died?”
The air in my lungs ran away. I had to lick my lips to keep myself concentrated.
“Hey, Doc, don’t you think that is a little… delicate?” Faye questioned.
“Yes, I do,” she replied, again with her eyes fixed on mine. “Riley?”
“A lot of them.”
“And after years of good service you went up to Captain, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“How many people did you kill in those four years?”
I didn’t have time to react to that one. My dad rose his voice. “Hey! That’s enough. That is a private question.”
Dr. Williams turned to my father. “Of course it is, Mr. Brenan. But if you think asking her about the weather will, in some way, give us any insight into why your daughter tried to commit suicide, be my guest.” My dad remained quiet. “I am sorry, Mr. Brenan, but clearly ignoring Riley’s issues has not been working.”
I had never seen anyone shut my dad up without raising her voice. Not even my mom.
Dr. Williams turned to me again. “So?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You know what I’ve found out throughout the years? Every single veteran I’ve spoken to always knows the answer to that question. The exact number. No need to think about it. So would you please tell me?”
I sighed, then said, “Thirteen. Last nine on the same night.”
“The failed rescue operation, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“Was it the failed recuse operation?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes.”
“Would you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t want my parents here.”
Dr. Williams turned around at my parents, and without even making a gesture, they understood she was asking them to leave.
“Wait!” I said “Don’t leave. I—I think everyone should know.”
“Go on,” Dr. Williams said. Her voice was thick, calming, collected. There was something soothing in it.
“It was supposed to be a simple mission. An interpreter had disappeared and we had intel about where he was. Everything we had to do was distract them, secure him, and get the hell out. Simple enough. We drove a truck to the other side of the building where they had the interpreter. We were going to cause the mother of all distractions, and be in and out within five minutes. But I knew something was wrong. I knew it was a trap and I still let them go. I should’ve said something, try to stop it. Maybe it was my fault that the Colonel would not even care for my opinion in the first place. They were waiting for us. Caught us with our pants down. It was all my fault.”
“Oh, honey,” my mother murmured.
“You said you didn’t give the order to back down,” Dr. said.
“Yes.”
“And that it was you fault your Colonel didn’t back you up.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t add up.”
I glanced up at her. “What?”
“Riley, I’m Matthew Duffy’s therapist. Matthew and I went through the whole thing extensible. I even talked to the late Colonel Sieves, may he rest in peace, and they both agreed that things didn’t happen that way.”
“Then they are protecting me.”
“How could they be? Colonel was clear about how he felt about you, and their version was corroborated by the files.”
“The files they filled.”
“Think about it. You were not the top rank there. The Colonel was. How could you have given an order that surpassed his, how is it your fault that he didn’t obey you?”
“What are you saying?”
She sighed. “I asked Matthew for permission to bring this with me and share it with you, because I thought I might need it. I’m glad I did,” she pulled a digital recorder out of the pocket of her jacket.
“What’s that?”
“Matthew’s side of the story.”
She pressed the play key and placed the recorder on the bed so everyone could hear it. Immediately afterwards., I heard Matt’s voice.
‘ “Do I start now?”
“Yes.” ‘ said Dr.’s voice.
‘ “Okay… uh. I don’t know where to start.”
“You can start wherever you want to start.”
“Thing is… it wasn’t just that night, you know? It’d been accumulating for a long time before… well, before it happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“Colonel Sieves was out to get Riley. Since the very beginning. He was old fashion in the most horrible way possible. Sexist, homophobic, overly aggressive, a bit of jerk. Just imagine one of the guys from the transformers movies. He kept mocking Captain Brenan and saying very offensive things that people just laughed at because he was a Colonel, you know. What could you do? He was disrespectful to her, you know? Complaining about ‘the dyke’. About how women shouldn’t be on the front because they make us weak and yada, yada, yada. What impressed me the most was Captain Brenan’s attitude towards it.”
“What sort of attitude?”
“Like she didn’t care. Not like she was pretending not to care, but like she actually didn’t care. Like she was used to been… discriminated. Which only made Colonel Sieves angrier. Riley never said anything back. Out of respect, I guess, but she never even joked about Sieves… until this one day.
“We had this thing, you know? We had a pull-up bar outside of the dining room and every time we were going to eat, each of us was supposed to do five pull ups before going in. I did my five and went in, but when I was going to get my plate, I heard Sieves saying something disrespectful to Captain Brenan. I don’t remember what it was, but it was basically something about him bidding she couldn’t get two in a row. Captain Brenan, like always, ignored it. She jumped, got on the pull-up bar and didn’t do five. She did ten. And she wasn’t even tired. But, if she would’ve left it like that, it would’ve been like admitting she was trying to prove herself to Colonel Sieves. And she wasn’t.”
“Then why did she do that?”
“Because, after she did the ten pull-ups, she turned to Colonel Sieves and said, ‘There, sir, I even did yours. Wouldn’t want you to get tired’. Can you imagine the anger that man felt? A girl half his age doing his pull-ups so he doesn’t get tired. She didn’t need to mention the Colonel’s age. Everyone added it to the joke. After that, the Colonel became more bitter towards her and it finally came to boiling point when he told Riley that even at fifty he could still lift more than a little girl and asked Captain Brenan for some face off, I guess. I think she just accepted to get out of it. I don’t think she cared as much as he did.”
“Cared about what?”
“About who was stronger. She had nothing to prove. In his, he had plenty to prove. So they agreed on weighted squats, same weight, as many repetitions as possible. Now, funny thing is, even I thought she was going to lose. No one thought she was going to win but… as it turns out…”
“Strogen helps women heal muscle faster and slow twitch muscles help them endure for longer.”
“Yeah! I didn’t even know that was a thing. Women tend to do higher reps with a given weight. Who would’ve thought, right? Well, Riley knew.”
“She beat him?”
“She didn’t just beat him. She wiped the floor with him. Slowly and calmly, Riley did ten reps more than the Colonel. I honestly tried not to laugh but couldn’t stop myself. After she was done, Riley dropped the weight and said ‘Don’t worry, I can still do your pull-ups for you if you want’. He was pissed, really pissed, but she’d won fair and square. Two weeks after that, we got the mission. And Colonel out raked Captain Brenan. It was a bad idea from the beginning but… I don’t know. She couldn’t say anything. Last thing she needed was to give people more reason to believe she was weak.” ‘
Matt stopped, sighed and seemed to be taking a moment to put the following events into order.
‘ “Look, I’m gonna be honest. I was passed out for most of it. I’d just lost a leg for fuck’s sake. But what I do remember is printed in my head, and I’ll never forget it. We divided ourselves in two groups. The firs group was supposed to be led by Captain Brenan. They were going to drive the truck to the other side of the compound and blow it up to call attention to themselves. Boom-boom, bang-bang. The fight would give us an open window and the Colonel and I would go get the package.
“But as we left the truck hidden and took a look at the place, Captain Brenan’s alarm went off. She kept saying ‘Something’s off. I don’t like this. There should be more people here’ but the Colonel ignored it. The more we stared at the place, the more I started feeling the Captain was right but… I didn’t say anything. There really was something wrong. I don’t know how we could tell but, the amount of people, the darkness inside the room, the silence of the night… I mean the whole point of bringing the truck was that there were supposed to be a shit tone of people inside that we needed to scare out of the building to get the package… But I was afraid of the Colonel. I should’ve said something.”
“What happened then?”
“Captain Brenan kept insisting it smelled wrong. Finally, the Colonel had enough and made Captain Brenan come with us, if she was so ‘scared‘. Funny thing is, if Captain Brenan would’ve gone with the rest of the team… chances are we would’ve died. All of us.
“Anyway, they parked the truck about thirty yards to the right and blew it up. As soon as we heard the shouting and the shooting, we went inside, took care of the whoever we came across and found the package on a room in the back. He was dead, lying on an interrogation table. He’d been dead for days. Next thing I hear, Captain Brenan screams ‘GET DOWN!’. Boom. I didn’t even know what hit me.
“When I woke up, the ceiling had been torn open. There was nothing but debris and dust around me and my leg was gone. Captain Brenan had a deep cut in her arm and some in her back, but she could move better than me. She pulled me out screaming we had to get out of there but there was a RPG somewhere nearby. We found the Colonel under a pile of debris. He looked like every bone in his body was broken. I think I was crying. I mean, we talk about the survival instinct but what most people don’t know is that it leaves you as soon as hope does. We were trapped in a building, with a RPG not far away and… the shooting was slowing down in the background.”
“Which meant either the other group had managed to kill them and would come for you…. Or…”
“Yeah, and as you know, they didn’t. They were massacred. The amount of metal those sons of bitches were packing. However, we could, Captain Brenan and I managed to take some of the down but, we were badly hurt. Captain Brenan’s wound was getting bleeding even more because she helped me pulled the Colonel out and she was carrying a rifle.
“Our only hope was to get to the radio and ask for backup…. That radio was about half a mile away and we couldn’t even get out of the building. It didn’t matter how many bullet we shoot, how many grenades we threw we were going to die there, and I knew it. I was bleeding to death and no one was coming. But Captain Brenan kept saying ‘I’m not dying here. Not like this, not today. I’m going home and no one is gonna fucking stop me!’ She stood up and just… fought. I thought she was gonna die. But her will to live was much stronger than anything I’ve ever seen. She killed nine men with five bullets, a grenade, a hunting knife and an arm about to fall off. She used the radio, and then came back for us. And some people blamed her, you know? People who weren’t there. People who thought maybe if she wouldn’t have talked like that to the Colonel, he would’ve listened to her.”
“What do you think?”
“That’s bullshit. The Colonel never respected her enough to listen to a word she said. She wasn’t about to change that by letting him step on her. On out way to the chopper, we saw them.”
“Who?”
“Our friends… their bodies massacred, covered in their own blood. Blown to pieces. I think that’s why the Colonel’s so depressed, you know? Our people, all of them, died for nothing. Like dogs. They died so that he could feel better about his ego. They died because I wasn’t man enough to say something…” ‘
The digital recorder stopped and no one said anything.
I stared down at the blanket covering my lap. “Does that sound accurate to you, Riley?” Dr. Williams asked.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because you tried to kill yourself.”
“Yeah, lesson learned. Next time I’ll just buy a gun.”
Faye hit me hard on the head and scream, “Don’t say that! Don’t you ever say that again.”
“I was joking…”
“Well, I’m sorry for not laughing! You think this is pretty? You think finding you lying in your room, choking on your own saliva it’s pretty? Having to make you puke, having to call a fucking ambulance for you?”
“Faye,” my mother said placing her hand on Faye’s shoulder. Faye burst out of the room and my parents followed saying it might be time for us to be alone.
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