Page 74 of No Greater Love
"These people are suffering," Linda said, speaking for all of them. "They've been through enough. Evacuate if you want to, but we're not leaving."
I stared at them—this ragtag group of women from every corner of America, every age and background you could imagine—and felt something shift inside my chest. Something that had been broken since Fallujah.
They weren't leaving. When faced with danger, with the easy option of walking away, they were choosing to stay. They were choosing the people who needed them over their own safety.
Rita never made landfall with any real force, but that wasn't the point. The point was that twenty nurses had looked at a community full of scared, desperate people and said, unequivocally, "We're not leaving you."
I'd never seen anything like it.
* * *
I blinked, the memory fading, and found myself back in my kitchen, staring at legal papers that threatened to take away the most important thing in my world. My hands had stopped shaking, but I felt hollow.
I'd carried that memory with me through the rest of my enlistment, through my separation from the Navy, through years of aimless drifting that followed. I took random classes at the community college—intro to psychology, basic computer skills, whatever filled the schedule and qualified for my GI Bill benefits. Nothing with any real direction or purpose, just... existing.
That's where I met Sarah, in a completely pointless "Introduction to Philosophy" class that I'd only taken because it met the general education requirements and fit my work schedule at the warehouse.
She was twenty-seven, like me, working at a coffee shop and taking random classes without any clear goal. We were both killing time, both avoiding making real decisions about our lives. She had an easy laugh and didn't ask too many questions about why a former Navy corpsman was taking freshman-level classes with eighteen-year-olds.
When she got pregnant, neither of us knew what to do.
"I don't think I want to be a mother," she'd said, sitting on my couch with the pregnancy test in her hands. "I don't think I'm cut out for it."
"Whatever you decide, I'll support," I'd told her, and I'd meant it. "One hundred percent, whatever you choose."
We'd gone to Planned Parenthood together, where they'd separated us so Sarah could make her decision without pressure. The counselors were amazing. Non-judgmental, informative, completely supportive of whatever choice she made. When we left, I'd told her again: Whatever she decided, I'd respect it completely.
She chose to keep the baby.
"Okay," I'd said, and something had crystallized in my mind with startling clarity. "Then I need to get my shit together. I can't keep drifting around if I'm going to be somebody's father."
Sarah's pregnancy was brutal. Preterm premature rupture of membranes at twenty-six weeks, which meant months of hospital bed rest and medical bills that nearly bankrupted me. But I was there every day, bringing her books and drinking terrible hospital coffee, holding her hand through the fear and uncertainty.
When Paige was born—tiny and perfect and completely helpless—I'd felt something I'd never experienced before. Not just love, but purpose. This small person needed me, depended on me completely, and for the first time since Iraq, I felt like I had a reason to be alive.
Sarah had looked at our daughter like she was a beautiful stranger.
Three months later, she was gone.
"I told you from the beginning I wasn't cut out for this," she'd said, standing in our apartment doorway with a single suitcase. "I tried, Nate. I really tried. But I can't do it. I'm not mother material."
I'd held Paige—three months old and completely innocent—and watched Sarah walk away. And in that moment, sitting alone with my daughter in our tiny apartment, Linda Kowalski's words had come back to me with startling clarity.
You can either be the kind of person who shows up, or you can be the kind who finds excuses. But you can't be both.
I looked down at Paige, sleeping peacefully in my arms, completely trusting that I would take care of her.
I had to become the kind of person who showed up.
That was when I'd remembered the Red Cross nurses and their unwavering commitment. The way they'd refused to abandon their post when things got dangerous.
I'd applied to nursing school the next week.
That was when the military bearing had really kicked in. Not just for Paige, but for me. Because if I fell apart, she fell apart. If I failed, she suffered.
Eleven years of holding it together. Eleven years of being enough for both of us. Eleven years of proving to myself that I could be the kind of person who showed up, day after day, no matter what.
And now Sarah was back, with lawyers and legal papers and the biological claim that trumped everything I'd built.
