Nobody

Past Events

It felt weird, opening the door and sitting down in Miss Lily-Rylee's little compact car. It was a 1980's model, a little gas-crunch sub-compact little beater, but she kept it clean. The seat was busted out but comfortable, even if my knees were up by my chest.

"How are you?" Miss Lily-Rylee asked quietly, turning to look at me after she buckled up.

"All right," I told her.

She patted my leg, smiling for my benefit.

I buckled the seat-belt, staring at my legs for a long moment.

"It's not too bad," She said quietly. "It could be worse."

I could almost feel a click inside my brain, like an old rusty cog clicking into place to lower a bulkhead to seal off part of my thought process.

I gave her a big grin. "Very true. It can always be worse. Hell, it's been worse."

My words made her stop reaching for the ignition, putting her hand back in her lap, and look back at me.

"You're taking the fact that you have to have surgery pretty well," She said carefully.

Again, I smiled at her. "The damage is old damage. If the doctor's right, having this operation will make it easier for me to breathe."

She shook her head. "You aren't afraid?"

That made me chuckle. "Do you have any idea what military medical care is like?" I grinned at her. She shook her head and my grin got wider. "The doctor's do their best, but the injuries they deal with are usually massive, they deal with outdated equipment, people who say 'I'm fine' with an arm bent wrong with the bone sticking out, and limited to 'authorized procedures' that are usually a decade or so behind current medical technology."

She frowned at that. "I thought military medicine was cutting edge," She said.

I shrugged. "It's complicated. During war-time, or at the bigger hospitals that are better equipped, they do cutting edge stuff for life-saving techniques. Hell, I'm alive because the doctor that worked on my chest had experience with the kind of trauma I'd taken."

I didn't tell her that despite the all of the doctor's, on three different continents, best efforts I'd lost my career. It was a lot of damage, and I'd been lucky. Luckier than 4/5ths of Echo-Five-Actual had been.

STAND AND DELIVER

"Are you worried?" She asked me.

Again, I shook my head. "There's a decade of medical advances, a couple of years of war time medical advances in treatment of injuries like mine."

She asked a question I knew was coming.

"Sammy, what happened?" She asked me.

I sighed, pulling my cigarettes out of my top pocket. I lit two, giving her one, and rolled the window down.

Then up.

Then down.

Then up.

I didn't realize she had watched me roll it up and down, her eyes narrowing. I looked out the window and blew smoke outside. I wasn't sure how much of what had happened was still classified. Even though a decade had gone by, even though Iraq was cooperating with the UN Inspectors, the facility and its contents could still be classified.

They'd never given us a cover story for it. Just told us it was classified. The award letter was written in generalities, just mentioning combat against superior numbers and a position that was vital to hold.