“He can’t go in there.”
Ethan stood behind John’s chair. They watched the argument from the sidelines.
“That isn’t your call, Lieutenant.” Amarta barely reached the young officer’s chest.
The pair had a history. They squared off in a nook by the main hall of the third floor. The L-shaped building had one long hall to the right of the elevators and a shorter hall straight ahead where guards stood on either side and at both ends. The floor had been cleared as soon as Gabriel Gonzales drew his sidearm. He hadn’t threatened anyone. He was just sitting, alone, holding the weapon inside Exam Room 3. It had no windows and only one door. There was no way out except past the uniformed men.
“Respectfully, ma’am, it is my call.” The lieutenant was from Iowa. He was three weeks past his twenty-fifth birthday. He had called the doctor a bitch more than once, but never to her face. He was contemplating it. “Colonel Philip—”
“Isn’t here!” The doctor objected. She had her back to the stairwell, but she wasn’t in a corner.
“I’m responsible for the safet—”
“And I’m responsible for my patients. Corporal Gonzales is my patient. Captain Regent is my patient. The two of them have developed a certain rapport, and in my professional opinion, the best way to get Corporal Gonzales to surrender his sidearm without anyone getting hurt is to send the captain. So that’s what we’re going to do. Both men are my responsibility. The whooole rest of the playground—” Amarta made wide circles off to the side with both hands— “is yours. That’s gonna have to be big enough for you boys, ‘kay?” Amarta motioned Regent in.
John fought back a smile. He liked the doc. She didn’t fuck around. He didn’t wait for the lieutenant to object. He rolled past the guards and down the white-floored hall. The whine from his chair’s electric motor was the only sound. The door to Exam Room 3 was open.
John stopped in the doorway. He wasn’t afraid of his friend, but neither did he want to escalate the situation. He had a time limit. If Ayn’s colleagues showed up and dragged John out, it might send Gabe over.
“How’s the leg?”
Gabriel Gonzales was a stout man of average height, dark complexion, and thinning hair despite his youth. His right leg was artificial from mid-thigh to the floor. He had opted for a more functional prosthesis over a more realistic one. He wore a pair of baggy, camo-print shorts and a loose, white button-down shirt with flower-shaped stitching. His eyes were bloodshot. He sat on a small chair next to a clean counter speckled in taupes and blues: hospital standard colors.
Gabe held a polished .45-caliber automatic. He didn’t look up. “You know, when I joined, I had so much trouble with the long runs. I’ve always been a little heavy, and I had a hard time keeping up. Now, after I get discharged,” he tapped the dark metal prosthesis, “I’m faster than I ever was. Ain’t that just like the army? Doing everything backwards.”
“Pretty much.” John nodded at the weapon. “What’s that for?”
“You shouldn’t have come, Cap.”
Regent was pretty sure he knew what was on Gabe’s mind, but he had no idea how to stop it. He rolled into the room anyway. “You don’t get to give me orders, Corporal,” he joked.
Gabe snorted. “No, sir. I know.” He rested his elbows on his knees and held the weapon between his legs with both hands. His artificial leg curved backward from the knee-pivot to the floor and ended in a long ball of a rubber “foot.”
John moved his joystick and whirled to a stop directly in front of the troubled man, face to face. No sense in holding back.
Gabe exhaled slow. “Esme stopped by to see if I was lying about checking into the hospital.”
“I know.”
“She said she can’t be with me no more, that we’re separated or whatever.” Gabe still didn’t look up.
“I saw her. Downstairs.”
Gabriel nodded.
John waited as Gabe moved one hand from his gun and pulled a folded paper from his shirt pocket. “She gave me this. It’s a sonogram. Of the baby.”
Gabe looked up and smiled weakly. His lips shook. Tears were close.
John could see them coming. He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t one for marital advice.
Gabe held the paper in one hand and the gun in the other. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He cleared his throat and tilted his head to the side. His voice was a whisper. He forced as much curiosity as he could. “How do you keep going, Cap?”
John took a deep breath. “Some days, I really don’t know.” It was the truth, and he said it without thinking.
“So why keep fighting?”
Regent thought for a moment. It seemed like he should have a ready answer to that. But he didn’t. “I could say ‘because we’re soldiers’ or something like that, but you’d know that ain’t it.”
Gabe shook his head and looked at the floor. “Don’t play me, Cap. All right? I’m asking about you. Why do you keep going, even after everything?”
It wasn’t something Regent liked to face head on. He preferred helping others. It was easier than helping himself. He felt his own tears coming and choked them back. He took a deep breath and let it out slow. He liked to think he wasn’t afraid of anything, but it wasn’t always true.
Gabe looked up, waiting.
“When I was over there, in that pit, I learned something about the world, kind of like what you read about when some scientist makes a discovery. They always talk about the ‘fabric of the universe’ being pulled back and shit like that. I guess . . .” John shrugged. “I thought maybe something was going to come of that, that something was going to happen. Something big. A chance to count. But it looks like that’s passed.”
Gabriel kept gripping the gun tight and then letting loose.
Regent could see the muscles in Gabe’s arm tense and relax. “I don’t have any answers, Corporal. I know I pretend like I do sometimes. I want folks to feel like they can make it. But I’m just going a day at a time.”
Gabriel wiped his eyes on his short sleeves. He sniffed. “There’s nothing left for me, Cap.”
“Yes, there is.”
“No.” Gabriel shook his head. “There isn’t. I fucked it all up.”
“Can I see?” John held out his hand—his shriveled, shaking left hand—towards the folded paper. It was a gesture.
Gabe looked at the mangled, atrophied arm. It was hard to say no. Regent reached and Gabe let go of his most valuable possession.
John unfolded it: a black and white print out, a computer-generated render of Gabe’s daughter in the womb. It wasn’t very clear, but you could definitely see tiny hands pressed to a face as if in prayer.
Regent set it flat on the counter facing the corporal. “Then what’s this?”
“I want to be there for her, Cap.” Gabriel ran the barrel of the gun over his forehead as if scratching an itch. He was sweating. “I really do.”
John waited for a moment. “But?”
Gabe shrugged. “Maybe this is the best way.”
The captain nodded. He had been right. A wounded vet with PTSD shoots himself under the army’s watch, odds are they pay out. Now Esme and the baby have some money and—in Gabriel’s head anyway—no dead weight holding them down. John knew the feeling. He nodded to the picture. “This what she wants? Or what you want?”
“I’m just gonna fuck it up. Before, you know, the baby was just this thing that was gonna happen. But now,” Gabriel didn’t take his eyes off the print out, “there’s a picture and everything. Here she is. For real. Mi frijolita.”
Regent didn’t have kids, but he saw what his sister went through, especially after her husband left. John watched Gabriel’s mouth turn into a frown. Here it comes, he thought.
“Shit, I just love her so much.” The corporal slurped his words between tears and rasping breaths. His lips quivered. He put his hand on the paper. He ran a finger along the blurred trace of a face. “Isn’t that crazy? She hasn’t even been born yet . . . and I just love her so much.” His eyes clenched in tears. He began to sob. “I want her to have everything. The best. And that ain’t me, Cap.” He sniffed. “You know, if Esme has some money, she can get outta here, ya know, meet someone. People get remarried all the time. She can find our girl a good dad.”
John watched tears fall, one after the next. He could feel his own tears well. He had plenty of reasons to cry. But this wasn’t about him. He spoke softly. “She’s already got a good dad.”
“No.” Gabriel got angry. “I can’t do shit.”
“That’s not tru—”
“Everything I do is shit!”
“Corp—”
“Naw, man! Naw. I fucked it all up. Everything. Me and Esme had it good. I fucked that up. I fuck everything up. My unit. My fucking leg. Everything. I killed all those guys ‘cuz I’m a moron. They’re dead, Cap.”
“That’s your dad talking.”
“Maybe he’s right! You ever think about that? I mean, look at what I do. I keep trying real hard but only I make everything worse. He saw it. He was right about me.”
Gabe had told John about his father and what the man had done and said. It had only stopped when Gabe’s dad abandoned his family shortly before Gabe’s fifteenth birthday, right about the time the boy was getting big enough to fight back.
John listened as his friend parroted an asshole. He could hear his stepmom echoed in the words.
Gabriel slurped again. “Esme chose me, you know, and—and I love her for it, but I fucked that up too, and now she’s gone. But this little girl doesn’t know.”
“Stop.”
“She can’t choose for herself. She don’t know what a loser her da—”
“STOP!” John yelled. He was still a big man with big lungs and a strong heart. The noise bounced off the walls. There was silence across the floor.
Gabriel rubbed the gun barrel back and forth across his forehead. The metal was wet from sweat and tears. It shook.
“Just . . . Stop.” John leaned in. He could see the safety was off. The gun was live.
Gabriel shook his head. He wrapped a finger around the trigger. “Just go,” he breathed.
Captain Regent picked up the paper and held it in front of Gabe’s eyes. “You think there’s any other man on this earth who’s ever gonna care so much for this little girl that he’d give his own life for her? Huh?”
Gabriel Gonzales took slow, heaving breaths. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t look. He hadn’t thought about that. He ran the barrel back and forth across his lips then up to the tip of his nose and down.
He hadn’t thought about that.
“You know, wherever you think it comes from—God, Allah, the universe, whatever—you’ve been given a chance, man. Same as the rest of us. A chance to count. Most folks don’t take that chance because most folks don’t take chances.” Regent tapped on the picture with twisted, shriveled fingers. “You gotta decide what a chance to count looks like. Something in a movie? Or maybe something like this right here.”
Gabe started to cry again, then stopped, then started a third time. “Why you doin’ this, Cap? Huh?” He dribbled and sucked his words. “Why you care so much about some fuck-up enlisted?”
Regent nodded. It was a fair question. “Set the gun down and I’ll tell you.”
Gabriel looked at his weapon. He took a breath and set it on the counter. He rested his hand on top.
At least it was a step in the right direction. “You know,” John exhaled. This would be tough. He didn’t like talking about his friend Danny. Not after what had happened. “I was in Bangladesh once, long time ago. We were chasing some guys. Real bad fuckers. Kept their women in a compound like slaves. Not that our guys cared. We were just after some rogue bioweapon. They wouldn’t tell us what it was, just that no matter what, the case had to stay sealed or goodbye civilization.
“Somehow I get on the rooftops of this shantytown kinda thing, and I’m chasing this guy. Fucker was fast. I thought I read him good, squirrely scientist type, feels he’s too smart to play by the rules, feels the world owes him ’cuz he’s so awesome. Only now he’s terrified. To your enemy, you’re always the bad guy, right? And here we were coming for him.
“I knew he had a pistol, but for guys like that, it’s a safety blanket more than anything. I knew weapons. I’d been trained. I had experience. I knew you can’t be afraid. So I kept after him, jumping across gaps, making sure not to look down, keeping my eye on the target. Only I couldn’t because there was all this laundry.”
“Laundry?”
John chuckled and nodded. “Hanging out on the roof to dry, right? They don’t have room for dryers and shit there. All these different colors, sequins and stuff on it. Millions of lives on the line and I’m fighting laundry for a clear shot.
“Anyway, I bust through some robes or sheets or something and POW. Turns out the bastard had run out of roof. I had read him good. He was just like I thought—as long as he could keep running. But once he faced that dead end, there was a moment of desperation.
“People do some crazy shit when they’re desperate.” He looked Gabe in the eye. “Stuff that don’t make no damn sense. It’s panic.
“I thought I was done. Game over. But my friend Danny had come up on flank. He’d got up to the roof just in time to give me a little shove. Saved my life.
“Without that little shove, I woulda taken one right in the face.” John tapped his cheek with two fingers. “Boom. DOA. Something like that happens, you get to thinking a lot about life, death, and all that, and I realized . . . We all like to think we are who we are because of the shit we’ve done or the choices we’ve made or how hard we’ve worked. But that ain’t even half of it. Luck, environment, all that, comes first. Every single thing we do is built on top of what the world gave us. Some folks get lucky. Others . . .” John shrugged.
“Your dad. My stepmom. That’s the kind of shit they don’t teach you how to deal with as a kid. We all do the best we can. But I got lucky with my Moms. And my Granddad. I look at you and I see what woulda happened if they hadn’t given me that little shove, ya know? That’s how I started out. I got lucky. That’s all. That’s the only difference between you and me. I got a little shove in the right direction.” And that’s how it’ll end, John thought, by giving one back.
“Besides,” he tapped his friend’s artificial knee, “last time I checked, you and me were still soldiers in the same army. It’s just a different war here. That’s all.”
Corporal Gonzales glanced at the burnt and broken man in the wheelchair. He saw the captain’s arm twitch, and his upper lip. The man was in pain. All the time. Gabriel turned away in shame.
John saw it. “The damned cool thing is, you don’t gotta do any of this alone.”
“Esme—”
“She told me.” John stopped him before he could get started. “She didn’t leave. All she said was that you fucked up and you gotta earn your way back. Just like pulling latrine, right?”
Gabe looked at the floor. He smiled and nodded.
“I’m sure it seems like a lot right now, but the doc, ya know, she cares, man. She really does. You’re the one who’s gotta do the hard work, but she’ll help. You can trust her. And I don’t say that about too many folks.”
Gabriel Gonzales ran his fingers over the polished stock of his weapon. He saw his own dark and twisted reflection.
“Time to put that away.”
The corporal stared at the gun. “Yes, sir.” He said it instinctively, but his mind was elsewhere and his hand didn’t move.
Thousand-yard stare, John thought. Gotta bring him back. Give him an order. A mission. “You’re gonna do something for me.”
“Yes, sir.” Still Gabe didn’t look up.
“No matter what happens, no matter how tough it gets, you’re gonna stay alive long enough to give this back. One of these days, you’re gonna meet a guy, someone like you. Maybe it’s the same kind of thing. Maybe it’s different. But he’s gonna need some help. You understand?”
Gabriel looked John in the eye.
That did it.
“Yes, sir.” He nodded.
“He’s not gonna be perfect. Maybe he’s got a temper or it’s alcohol or just really bad B.O.”
Both men smiled.
“Whatever. You wait around for someone perfect to help, you’re never gonna give back to anyone in your whole damn life. Right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re gonna do for that guy what I did for you. And you’re gonna make him promise to pass it on, just like this. Got it?”
Gabe nodded again.
“Promise. On your honor.”
“Yes, sir.” Gabe sniffed and cleared his throat. He was calm. His head kept bobbing in tiny nods. “I promise. I won’t ever forget this. Not me or Esme.”
“All right.” Regent sat back in his chair. He realized his heart was racing. He looked at the gun, then the picture. “You didn’t tell me if babygurl has a name.”
“Serenidad.”
“That’s beautiful, man. Beautiful.” John lifted his right hand and held out an open palm.
Gabriel Gonzales lifted his sidearm, flipped the safety, cleared the chamber, removed the clip, and put the weapon in the captain’s hand.
John held it in his lap. “Corporal Gonzales.”
“Sir.” Gabe put the picture of his unborn daughter in his shirt pocket.
“Dr. Zabora is your new commanding officer.”
“Yes, sir.” The stout man stood on two legs, one real and one artificial, the result of a surreal trauma.
“Report for duty.”
Gabriel locked his eyes to the horizon and gave a stiff salute. “Yes, sir.”