Dear Heart

23. Ollie

23

Ollie

Ollie's dad's sister used to live in Georgia, just south and east of Atlanta, and the summer he turned eight, his family went down for a two-week visit. One stewy, sweltering night, when it was too hot to exist and lightning flirted with the horizon in shy flickers, they went to a carnival that had been set up in an abandoned department store parking lot. The sort of place where you expected to get food poisoning and motion sickness. He remembered the ponytailed guy running the shooting gallery winking at his mother.

There was a ride called The Zipper. A tall, oblong track that cycled flipping cages full of screaming riders. The whole ride spun - spinning on top of spinning. The sight of it sent Ollie's stomach halfway up his throat. And then his cousin Justin dared him to get on it.

How was an eight-year-old boy to refuse a dare?

He membered being strapped into the seat of the cage beside Justin; the sharp smell of fresh vomit; the awful whirring and clacking as the ride started up. White-knuckled. Heart hammering. It was the most horrifying, disorienting five minutes of his life. The last thing he remembered, before he blacked out, was puking all over himself.

That was what came to mind - that awful ride on The Zipper - when his Humvee went through the air. One moment: riding point with his hands loosely braced on the .50 mounted up top. The next: chaos.

He lost time.

He came to choking on vomit, and opened his mouth with a gasp.

He heaved and heaved, until his empty stomach cramped. Pale starbursts bloomed behind his eyes; unconsciousness threatened to take him again. He breathed through his mouth – short, sharp pants – and waited, fought it off. "Awake, awake, awake," he whispered, fiercely. And then he knew he hadn't drifted because of the pain.

His entire right side was on fire. His heart was lodged somewhere behind his sinuses, and there was a terrible stiffness in his neck that made him wonder if he was paralyzed.

No, he reasoned. You couldn't feel anything when you were paralyzed, and oh how he could feel.

A fresh wave of nausea gripped him and he breathed carefully through his mouth. Finally got his eyes open. They burned; there was something in them, something wet and warm. Sweat. Blood. He tested his hand – his fingers curled, and the movement sent pain radiating up the nerve pathways in his arm.

"Ah. Shit." He reached, trembling, and wiped his eyes, fingertips coming away red: yes, blood.

Through the haze of pain, and sickness, and dizziness, a voice said "sitrep, solider" in the back of his mind.

He tilted his head to the side, and the small movement sent daggers down his spine, sharp and angry at his collarbones and around his chest. Nerve pain, nerve pain, he told himself, to keep from thinking it was a heart attack. His mouth tasted of sand and vomit, and his nose throbbed: maybe it was broken.

He lay on his side on the hard-packed sand of the road. It burned his exposed skin – more of it than there should have been; his clothes must have been damaged. In front of him, the hulking shape of the Humvee, upside down, its rear tire still spinning idly. Through the windows, Ollie glimpsed the rest of his team. Slumped at odd angles. They weren't moving.

There was a faint ringing in his ears, and despite it, the few, faint sounds around him seemed magnified. A hiss of steam from the engine. The slow plink-plink-plink of something dripping.

He smelled smoke. It twisted up from the wreckage of the Hummer like fat wicked snakes, thick black coils of it.

IED, his addled brain provided.

Something long and black lay a few inches from his face. It took him a moment to realize it was the barrel of his Maw Deuce. The bolts holding it onto the Humvee must have sheared off during the flip. He tilted his head – pain, pain, pain – and saw that the .50 looked to be intact somehow, miraculously. He was awfully fond of that gun.

Then he heard something else. Footsteps. Muffled by the sand, but unmistakable all the same. Multiple sets, coming closer.

Murmured words. A laugh.

He gritted his teeth and sat up. It was a slow, blindingly painful experience. He almost passed out. His stomach churned. Tacky, cooling blood rolled down his face in a wave.

The gun was heavy, so heavy.

The footsteps crew closer, closer.

Plink-plink-plink.

Two men in pieced-together camo walked around the rear of the Humvee.

At close range, the .50 chewed them into pulp.

~*~

They'd moved to the couch before he started, and at some point during his story he'd pulled his feet up onto the cushion and pressed his face into his knees, hands clamped down over the back of his neck.

"I can't...I can't..." he stammered. Every time he blinked he saw the spray of blood.

"Ollie." Wendy pushed her fingers through his newly dark hair, kissed the crown of his head. He felt her warmth and softness pressed to his side, up on her knees and leaning against him, like she was trying to cover his much-larger body with her own. "They killed your whole team. They would have killed you too."

"You'd think that wouldn't make me feel guilty, wouldn't you?" he whispered through his teeth. He was shaking so hard he thought he might fly apart. This was why he'd quit therapy: Dr. Ambrose had wanted him to tell this story, and he couldn't, he just couldn't. It nearly unmade him even to think about it, much less put it into words.

He swallowed around the lump in his throat. "I got a Purple Heart, and I got sent home." He shuddered and leaned into Wendy, though he knew it was selfish and terrible of him. "Everybody else came home in a coffin."

Her arm went around his shoulders, squeezing as tight as she was able. The pressure felt nice, a relief. Like she could physically hold him together. She couldn't, though – she was too small. And that was why he hadn't wanted to tell her, either. She wanted to fix him, and he couldn't be fixed.

Wendy pressed her face down into his hair. "Ollie. Listen to me. What happened to you – what you went through – was terrible. But you didn't do anything wrong." Before he could protest, she repeated, "You didn't. Those guys killed your team; they didn't deserve the chance to kill you, too. Don't give them that dignity: don't say it was okay for you to die, because it wasn't. It wasn't, Ollie. I'm sorry – God, I'm so sorry – but I'm glad you had the gun. It's the reason you're here with me right now."

He breathed through his mouth, in and out, and imagined he tasted bile.

"Ollie," she said again, and her voice was so strong. He had no idea how she did it. "I love you."

Even if he didn't believe anything else, he believed that – that she loved him – and maybe that was all he had to believe. The only thing that mattered.