Page 10 of The Darkness Within

I’ll give you a fat fucking lip in a minute.

He’s immune to my glaring and cursing, just plowing through the workout with a bright and determined smile.

I fucking hate him.

“Ten…nine…eight… get your knee higher… seven… six… five. Don’t forget to breathe.”

I wonder if kicking him would suffice for my last five reps.

“You’re doing great, Sergeant.”

I let my leg drop heavily, making the weights clang. “Were you a drill sergeant before this?”

“No, Army nurse,” he says with a smirk.

“That explains a lot.”

“I could point out that if you’d been doing therapy all along, it wouldn’t be this hard right now, but I won’t.”

He’s still fucking smirking. “How gracious of you,” I mumble with a sour face.

There’s a woman across the gym with one leg lifting more weight than me, and she doesn’t even appear to be winded. I power through another set of reps, the muscles in my thigh burning like fire. The bone aches—that’s what I hate about therapy, the pain deep down in my bones. My shattered femur is crying out for mercy.

“It gets easier, Sergeant. Don’t give up before the magic happens.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

For the remaining two weeks I’m at Womack, Riggs works me over just about every day, and by the time I’m discharged, I’m able to add twenty-five pounds of weight to my workout.

“So, what are your plans after this,” Liza asks.

“Even with the Brass fast tracking my discharge, I’ve still got a couple weeks left on base. I’ve got a townhouse here I used to share with—” Gutierrez. “I’ll need to look for somewhere new to live for now.”

“My friend has an apartment off-base. She’s staying with her boyfriend, so I can ask if she’d sublet to you temporarily.”

“That’d be great.” Like hell I could go back home without G. His family had no doubt been by to collect his things, but I’d still feel his ghost everywhere. That would be more than I could take.

“Well, don’t be a stranger, Sergeant. When you get hungry for takeout, stop by and see me,” she offers.

My best and only friend is an Army nurse. Of all the unlikely odds, what could be more absurd? But Liza is one of a kind, and I’m grateful for her friendship. Her confident, no-nonsense attitude and sunny smile make everything feel more manageable—less dire. She puts things in perspective, reminding me there’s a whole world happening outside my head, a world I need to be a part of.

Riggs stops by one last time. He drops a glossy brochure on my tray table.

“What’s this?” I ask, picking it up. “BALLS?”

“Beyond The Army: Legion Of Love Soldiers.”

“Sounds like a group of Mormon Vets. No, thanks.”

Riggs chuckles. “Figured you say something dumb like that. Just do me a favor, smartass. When you’re feeling at your lowest, come see me there. I’ll be waiting for you.”

I nod, but deep down, I know it’s highly fucking unlikely I’ll ever see Riggs again.

Returning to active duty without my unit feels like having a limb cut off. I’ve never lost one, but I imagine this is what the phantom pains feel like—the tingling numbness where a part of you is missing that’s always been there. There’s only one other face I recognize in my rear detachment unit, Colonel Berdorf. He blew out his knee and was sent home before me, while I was in captivity. He knows what I’ve been through, which is probably why he makes wide circles around me. Everyone else is new.

They offered me an apartment on base, but I declined, more than happy with my current accommodations. I felt like I needed to get as far away from the base as possible, far enough that the memory of Gutierrez wouldn’t haunt me at night. Apparently, my new apartment isn’t far enough away because I see him every night in my dreams.

Mind-numbing busy work wastes the minutes and hours in my day—taking inventory of supplies, maintaining and cleaning the vehicles in the motor pool, scoring my unit on PT tests and physical evals, signing leave slips, and coordinating overseas phone calls for the unit to call family back home. This mundane shit is all I’m capable of anymore.

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