Shot Throught the Heart

Part 2

Over the long travel day and all of my anxiety that led up to flying out here, I ended up crashing for the whole night. I barely woke up enough to get under the covers. So the next morning when I did wake up, I wasn't surprised it was already late morning. Morgan was still sound asleep next to me. Just when I was about to roll over and try and get some more sleep I heard some noise coming from Kuzma's room. I tried to ignore whatever it was but as another minute went by, the nose didn't stop. Sighing, I left a kiss on Morgan's shoulder before I untangled myself from my wife to investigate what was going on.

            I couldn't tell what the noise was so I knocked on the door and gave him a second to answer. When I didn't hear a response, I pushed it open. Kuzma was still buried under a mountain of blankets and was breathing heavy. I slipped inside and walked over to the side of the bed and pulled the blanket down a little to find him sweaty and hyperventilating. I pulled the blankets off of him and knelt down on the floor by the head of the bed before calling out his name. It took a few repeats, getting louder and louder each time, but finally Kuzma jumped and pushed himself away from me. I didn't reach out for him because I knew how bad it was to wake up from a nightmare like this. I made sure I stayed in his line of sight with my hands out in front of me and just started repeating he was okay in Ukrainian.

            It took a minute for the light to come back to his eyes but once it did, Kuzma reached his hand out towards me. I wasted no time pulling him off the bed and into my arms on the floor as he cried. I just tucked his head into the crook of my neck and pulled him onto my lap as he cried and waited it out. It took a while before he cried himself out but I didn't let go.

            "You want to talk about it?" I asked quietly and moved some hair off his forehead.

            "It was from the night you found me. But instead of making it out, you and Morgan died when the apartment collapsed on top of all of us." Kuzma said as his breathing started to pick up again.

            "Hey, in and out, that's it, just follow my lead." I said and controlled my breathing for him to follow.

            It didn't take long before his breath pattern matched mine and I kiss the top of his head. It was then that Morgan came and sat next to me. She didn't say anything, just put her head on my other shoulder and picked up Kuzma's legs up and put them in her lap to hold.

            "Is this the first time you've had nightmare like this?" I asked.

            "No" Kuzma said quietly.

            "You know, Morgan and I get them too. Bad ones, just like the one you woke up from." I said.

            "What are they about?" Kuzma asked, his head still tucked into my shoulder. Morgan squeezed my hip and I knew I had her blessing to tell him.

            It took a while, but we went through a lot of what Morgan and I did in country after leaving him behind at the farm with Cosima's father. We kept everything PG-13 and left a lot of details out but now he knows. He knows how hard it was for the both of us to come back here and face this all again, why we were so put off when he first brought it up, why we have never really talked about it before and why I never really speak about my years in the Army before I went to teach at Sniper School.

            Kuzma listened quietly to all of the things we had to say. He took it all in and asked questions here and there about the different people in our lives, now finally making the connections as to where Morgan and I knew them from. I touched on my time as a Ranger a bit and Morgan told Kuzma about what she does at her job now. Since he was old we thought he would be able to process everything Morgan and I do and have done while serving.