Page 101 of To Save Him

 

 

 

Chapter Thirty-four

 

AFTER SPENDING ALL morning driving around, searching in vain for County Road S-45-133, I was ready to give up.  Brandon had said just days ago that he wasn’t hiding anything from me, but his admission about my son earlier that morning told me otherwise.  And so my suspicions were mounting again.  I’d put miles upon miles upon miles on the car that morning, driving down this road and that, starting to wonder if we would be getting completely lost…because it felt like we were driving away from civilization.

That thought was sinking completely into my bones, making me once more fear for my life.  Had that been Brandon’s plan all along?  To bring me out in the middle of nowhere to a part of the country my kids and I had never seen so that it would be easy to first kill me and then hide my body and disappear without a trace?

This fear was beginning to grip me as I drove down yet another nondescript road, and that was when Brandon’s voice broke the loud silence.  “There.  Turn there.”  It was another road like any other, but there was a stop sign with no road identification sign.  There was something about Brandon’s voice, though, that told me he was confident about something.  He’d seemed lost before and almost like he too had been beginning to doubt himself, which had been the only reason why I’d continued going instead of running off, fearful for my life.  Now, though, he seemed confident.  His voice indicated that this was where we needed to go.

It was a narrow paved road lined by trees.  After what would have normally been several city blocks (but we were in the middle of nowhere), the road widened like a river delta into a parking lot.  In front of the lot was a large white nondescript building with two stories.  There was a sign that I wasn’t able to read until I drove around the parking lot before finding a space to stop the car.

The small white sign, easy to miss, said Basse Veterans Medical Center.

We got out of the car and I realized that, while not advertised, this place wasreal.  More than that, it wasn’t a secret.  First, the sign and, second, all the cars here indicated that plenty of people knew about its existence.  Brandon had kind of frozen beside the car after getting out, so I walked over and touched his arm.  It was then that I noticed his hands were shaking and his face was pale—not like he’d seen a ghost but like hewasa ghost.  “Brandon?”

His jaw was clamped shut and he wouldn’t even look at me.  His focus was entirely on the building in front of us.

“Brandon?  Are you okay?”

He swallowed then and managed to turn his head to look at me.  Then he sighed before he said, “I didn’t realize this was going to be so hard.”

Nor had I.  Seeing his reaction was a good reminder for me that he might not be faking…that the PTSD was all too real—as well as what he and my son might have suffered through.  I made a decision then, something I’d have to find a way to live with if he took me up on my offer.  “Should we leave?”

He shook his head slowly before he turned his gaze from the building in front of us back to me.  “No.  Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.”  He took a long breath.  “I’m hoping that facing my demons will help me put it behind me.  ‘Cause if not…”  His voice trailed off as he once more looked at the building, and the vibes coming off him definitely communicated the way he felt about this place.  And that was when I started believing him again—no doubts, no fears, no wondering: all in.  He started moving away from the car as if compelled by something possessing his body and I joined him.  It wasn’t until we were following the sidewalk leading to the front door that he reached down and took my hand.

I knew my touch alone was support for him, because I could see his body take my strength.  His spine straightened and his face grew smoother and looked calmer.  By the time he pulled one of the doors open, I knew no one would be able to see how bothered he’d been moments ago.

Once inside, I felt an anticlimactic sense of relief.  It felt like a normal hospital.  Well, no, that wasn’t true.  It was even nicer than a regular hospital.  In fact, the lobby seemed like the waiting room for a doctor’s office or a nursing home.  There were a dozen or so fabric chairs, and they were arranged as if we were in someone’s living room.  Here and there were end tables with lamps and just a handful of magazines arranged aesthetically.  Paintings, vases, and a rich brown carpet belied the fact that we had entered a medical facility, and a government-run one at that.  By the front desk, there were even a coffee pot and water pitcher, making us feel like welcome guests.

One thing gave away the fact that it was a hospital, and nothing they could do would change that.  In the air was a citrusy but sterile scent.  It was meant to smell clean but it actually had an unpleasant undertone.  Maybe that was because they used it to clean up all manner of bodily fluids and germs that were unseen by the naked eye.

Brandon’s hand was crushing the bones in mine, making the tiny band of silver on my right ring finger cut into my flesh.  I winced but pursed my lips together, because I needed to be strong for my lover.  I saw his shoulders move as he pulled more air into his lungs and then he began moving forward again.  He wasn’t walking quickly, so I was able to keep up with him fine, but his gait was confident, his stride strong.  No one who wasn’t holding his clammy hand gripping theirs too firmly would ever know his internal struggle.

We approached the reception area, and this was where I began to get a better idea of what we were perhaps dealing with.  It was enclosed in glass with holes for communication and exchange of documents, but these folks seemed to be protected from any outside threats.  I didn’t go to hospitals often and I knew they had to be cautious, but I wasn’t too sure—this felt excessive.  It was then that I noticed looking around that all the doors leading from the lobby to deeper inside the hospital had coded locks on the doors where employees would have to enter a code to in order to gain access.  And there were cameras in every corner of the large waiting room, tucked away as high as possible, but I could see them nonetheless.

Needless to say, security seemed tight.

I didn’t see any guards, but at that point, I had no doubt they were around.

A young African-American woman hung up the phone and looked at us through the glass.  “How can I help you today?”

Brandon was quiet for a bit and I wondered if I was going to have to step in to help.  But he finally said, “I was a patient here last year…and I was released sometime in January.  I’d like access to my records.”

The woman raised an eyebrow, seeming to assess Brandon in all but five seconds, but it was next to impossible for me to figure out what she was thinking.  She nodded and then said, “One moment, please.”  She stood and left the room through a door at the back of room the reception area was housed in, and I wondered what was happening.  Wouldn’t it have been easy enough to just answer Brandon’s request?  I looked up at him and he turned his head to me.  The look on his face was one of intense curiosity, as if he knew he was going to learn something new.

I was beginning to grow nervous.  If theprogram, as Brandon so affectionately called whatever had happened to him during his second stint with the Marines, was as horrible as he’d said—if his PTSD was caused by everything that had happened to him there—then maybe these folks had something to hide.

But the receptionist walked back in then, holding a clipboard and allaying my silly fears with each step she took toward us.  Once she was back at the glass, she slid the clipboard through the opening on the bottom, along with a black ballpoint pen.  It was then that I noticed the papers clipped to the board.  “You just need to fill out this form.  Once you’re done, bring it back to me and I’ll get it to the records folks.”

Brandon’s eyes were scanning the top piece of paper on the board, ready to begin filling it out, but I had a question.  “So can he see his recordstoday?”  We had no assurance that they would be accommodating.  I wanted to know how long the process would take.

“Yes.  Please just fill out this form and bring it back when you’re done.”

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