Page 30 of Dream Girl

Eddie. I should thank him for being there for Amelia when I couldn’t be. It’s a lot of her to take in at once, and I’m glad that he’s a good friend to her. It also explains the clothes that she has on and the backpack on the couch towards the window.

There are more clothes spilling from the bag, and I wonder how many days she can go without showering, but I rather not think of the possibility of forever not waking up.

The doctor explains that a knife’s tip had been broken off, lodged in my lowest rib. The knife was contaminated with a highly toxic metal, and she is surprised that it had not taken immediate effect on my body.

It must have been a gradual process where the tip of the knife leaked the metal into my bloodstream, and it’s only now that it has been affecting me. They had to take it out and put me under anesthesia to cleanse my blood.

A process that requires patience and a keen eye, but the team of medical professionals made it happen, and I woke up six days later. The doctor recommends that I stay another night to see if there are any changes or risks, but I don’t want to reside in a hospital any longer.

They have no authority to hold me as long as I’m not of danger to society. The doctor agreed to release me in the morning after she has another checkup with me, and I think my imposing demeanor also played a part in her agreement.

The doctor and the nurse leave, shutting the door to give Amelia and I the privacy of the room. She toys with the gown, picking at the material mindlessly, and finding a rhythm for her breathing after crying into me.

My arm continues to rub the side of her head, finger dipping down to the curve of her round cheek.

“I had a dream, Amelia.”

She pokes her head out, eyes still wet and red from the new session of crying. The familiar words have her sitting up more, leaning partially on my chest while folding my arm around her waist so she can lace our fingers together.

“I met them again, the brothers that trusted me with their life, and I was back in the desert.”

I have hated myself for being the only one that came out of there alive, and the despairing part of me wants Amelia to hate me. I want her to see what kind of weak man I am because I couldn’t protect them.

“We were pinned down by the enemy fire, and the backup wouldn’t come until the morning. We tried so hard to fight back, but there were too many of them. So many that we couldn’t tell which one of them are villagers.”

The flashbacks are explicit, with the smoke in my eyes and the stretch of ringing in my ears from the shouts in foreign tongue and gunfire.

I need to do this. I will never be able to move on unless I can bring myself to accept that I am the one that got them killed. I killed the men that I vowed to protect.

“We hid in an abandoned building when the insurgents came searching for us,” I say solemnly, eyes casting towards Amelia’s hand in mine.

I shouldn’t have her clean, soft, and innocent hand in my bloodied one, but I can’t find myself to let go.

“It was one in the morning when we got word that backup was coming, but we still had to hold down the fort with the enemies searching for us. And he was there. We didn’t hear him because he was small—malnourished and scared; he was a child. A child holding a knife with dried blood, and I couldn’t shoot him.”

I struggle with that decision every day, and I imagine how the circumstances would be different if I had pulled the trigger. My brothers would be alive, but the child’s blood would be in my hands.

It’s a decision that would be wrong either way. I would still end up in the same place in every imagined outcome. I would be the same broken, devastated, and listless shell.

“He came at me, shaking and begging me to leave his village alone. Without us, the insurgents would have just remained the driving force of panic and suffering in the village. The child, he had the intent to kill me, but he got me in the ribs.”

I was too slow to block it, too taken back by the presence of a child on a battlefield, that his dull knife had gone into my body. I expected injuries, and that wasn’t out of the norm of our Navy training but seeing it up close despite being a SEAL for years didn’t prepare me to experience the misery on his face.

“The knife had been a poisonous one, and it took immediate effect on me, rendering my body in a paralytic state.” I squeeze her hand, finding some comfort in her as my friends’ shouts replay in my head.

“We were once again pinned down by gunfire because the child had been screaming when he ran away. One of my brothers, his name was Jared, tried to help me. It wasn’t working because he had no way of knowing how to treat it without risking my life, so he risked his and everyone else did too.”

I slam my eyes shut; the painful memories are resurfacing with the weight of my choice haunting me. My eyes burn, the pain in the stitches becomes worse, and the last thing I care about is the erratic heartbeat monitor.

“I’m here, Milo.” Amelia’s comforting words brings a wave of guilt; the regrettable actions that I have done to her neck laugh back at me.

“One by one, I saw them die. They didn’t die in vain; they were soldiers, and the strongest I have seen. They took the insurgents with them, and they didn’t fall until every one of our enemies had fallen first.”

Amelia rubs her little fingers against my knuckles; it’s a reminder that she’s not running away and berating this cowardice of mine.

“When I woke up in the hospital, they were all gone.” My mouth dries, teeth sinking into my bottom lip, and the copper taste fills my tongue.

“I don’t deserve to live.”

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