Page 6 of Cooper

I have no choice but to comply.

“Hey, guys! What’s…” The head of palace security, Joe Westfield, comes in and stops talking when he spots me. “Hey, you okay?” He sits beside me, one of his warm hands on my back.

“Just a little dizzy,” I murmur.

It feels weird to have them all looking at me, but I can’t seem to push through whatever this is.

“…full physical,” I hear Sandor saying.

My head jerks up. “No, I’m okay. I didn’t eat before the gym and?—”

“When was the last time you had a physical?” Joe interrupts quietly.

I sigh. “I don’t know. We had to send my medical records to the U.S. military before I deployed, so it was last year sometime.” After I got shot while attempting to rescue Princess Elen. We got her out okay, but I wound up with a bullet in the gut. Luckily, it didn’t hit anything vital, and I healed relatively quickly. It made me hate doctors, though.

“Yeah, but that was more about your recovery after getting shot,” Sandor says. “I think you need a full physical. Blood work. Everything.”

I groan because Sandor is the boss. If he says I need it, I have to do it. Otherwise, he can take me off the schedule, and that’s the last thing I want. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll call and?—”

“I’m making you the appointment for today,” Sandor says. “I know you, and you’ll make it for next June or something.”

I scowl at him. “I just didn’t eat, that’s all.”

“Then let’s get some breakfast,” Joe says, getting up. “Come on, I was going to get something anyway.”

I breathe deeply and get to my feet. “Yes, all right.”

“I can assign you to diaper duty,” Sandor calls after us.

I give him the middle finger salute without turning around and am gratified to hear his laugh. Things are casual in situations like this, where we’re technically off duty.

“You have anything you might want to talk about?” Joe asks as we settle in the main security conference room where we hold our daily briefings. We order breakfast from the kitchen, and someone has already brought us coffee and pastries.

“Not really.” I pour a cup of coffee and am about to turn away when I glance back at the cream longingly. I learned to drink it black when I’d been deployed, but I really miss cream and it’s not like I can’t afford the calories. Sandor’s right that I’ve lost a few pounds, so I dump in more than I usually do because I can use a creamy distraction today. I know Joe well enough to sense he isn’t going to let me off the hook any easier than Sandor did.

“So what’s going on with you? You haven’t been yourself since you got back and, based on the report I got from your commanding officer, you didn’t see much in the way of action. It was a quiet deployment.”

“Deployment was fine,” I reply crisply.

“Then this is about Logan.”

Ireallydon’t want to talk about Logan.

“It’s okay to be afraid,” he says gently. “It’s also okay toadmityou’re afraid.”

“I was fine in Iraq!” I blurt out. “Why would I be afraid now?”

“Because Logan didn’t die in Iraq,” he replies, meeting my gaze. “He diedhere.”

“I don’t know how to stop seeing his face everywhere I go,” I whisper. “In the gym, the conference rooms…”

“I know.” He pats my hand. Joe is almost sixty, and though he’s in excellent shape and doesn’t look his age, he’s become a fatherly figure to most of us. “Believe me, I see him too. That’s why we had a therapist come in for a while. Most of us did group therapy, but a few of the crew saw Dr. Saluga privately as well.”

“Well, if you saw the therapist and are still seeing him everywhere, what’s the point?” I demand.

“Because it doesn’t hurt as much anymore and for me, at least, I’ve come to terms with his death. I’ll never completely get over it, but at least now I’ve dealt with most of the emotions and understand that it’s part of what we do. It’s part of this life, and though it doesn’t happen often, it happens. Just like in the military.”

“But it shouldn’t have happened. We train as hard as we do so it doesn’t happen!”

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