Page 68 of Lavender Moon

I scramble to my feet and hustle through the living room, staggering through the lightheadedness until I make it to the kitchen and retch over the sink. My stomach cramps and caves as I empty its contents in a series of heaves. When I feel I can trust there’s no more coming, I turn on the faucet, simultaneously rinsing out my mouth and the sink, before patting my face dry with a nearby dish towel.

My breathing deep and rhythmic, I try to reel in my calm while at the same time trying to sort through the whirlwind of thoughts in my head.

He’s coming home, but… it shouldn’t have been this way. It’s four months early, but I would give those four months back just to have him come back unharmed, not to mention his spirit still intact. What happened must’ve been terrible… horrifying… painful. Even for the toughest of the tough like Kaleb, this had to be so frightening and traumatic.

Folding my arms on the counter and resting my head on them, I try to sift through my conversation with the official that called me, but everything is mud. There’s only one thing that I’ve taken away clear, and it’s the very obvious.

Kaleb’s coming back… and he’s going to need me more than ever.

29

KALEB

Pain sears through me as something jagged and hot scrapes across the flesh of my shoulder, making me see white-hot light behind my eyes. I barely have time to register the sharp pierce of the lead before another hit tears through my side, bouncing along my rib cage. I feel every cell react to the agony as another bullet whizzes by my ear, the sound like a mosquito from hell – which is where I am.

Then, as if those two hits were gearing up for the grand finale, the ultimate pain blasts through the meat of my thigh. It’s like some beastly creature with hot steel for teeth is sinking them in and mangling my leg.

I feel my body fall with a thud against the dirt, my head slamming hard against something, ringing my bell louder than shit. That, and the other various points of pain on my body are lighting me up, the rest of my senses picking up everything and nothing all at once. It’s hot, like all around me is fire, yet the pain drowns it out. The noise… gunshots and explosions and… some kind of sputtering, gurgling sound beside me. Someone choking on something. What the fuck? I almost want to laugh to myself because some bastard has the nerve to just lie here and choke while the world is quite literally exploding around them.

Risking burning my eyes in the hot smokey air, I crack them open just enough to see a blur of snow falling in slow motion. How the fuck can that be? It’s so damn hot here, yet I’m certain those are fat, grey snowflakes. And rain? It’s hard to tell against the night sky and the glare of the fire all blurring together in my burning eyes.

I smell everything burning, and it makes my stomach turn over. Rubber, metal, dirt, and what I don’t want to believe is human flesh; it’s all burning and making my gut revolt.

I feel the heat creeping around me, closing in, and I’m boiling. And then just as quickly, I feel cold. Merciful cold is enveloping me in frost, chasing the flames away.

And the visions flash through my head. Luna, laughing as she flings her paintbrush at me, splattering blue paint across my shirt and face. Cut to another flash where she runs from me, squealing with laughter before I catch her in my arms and smear my face all over hers while she hollers in delighted protest. Her smile is brighter than any light I’ve ever seen as she laughs loud and hard, blue paint clinging to the strands of hair that have come loose from her messy bun.

My vision tries to blur back to life, and when I hold my hand up in front of my face, I find it coated in liquid that turns from dark blood red to bright blue paint and back again.

Returning my hand to press down over the oozing raw wound on my leg, I bring my mind to that moment with Luna. I will myself to be there with her instead of this filthy hell; fighting the blackness that tries to burn it away from the edges in like an old photograph.

Death can take me, but he can’t choose what I see when I go with him. Keeping my eyes closed, I hold Luna from behind, both of us covered in paint splatters on the hallway floor. I breathe her in and smile into her neck as the blackness takes over.

* * *

My own panickedshouts and heavy breathing are what bring me back to wakefulness once again. It was like this in Germany, where I was first sent, and continues here stateside. And, cue the medical staff that comes rushing in, trying to talk me down while shining their annoying fucking penlights in my eyes and quizzing me on my orientation to self, time, and place.

“Corporal Shane, try to relax. Do you know where you are?” one of the nurse-bots asks me, and I wish she’d just fuck off and leave me alone. I can calm myself down, I don’t need these people checking to see if I’m crazy.

Because no such luck. Going insane would be a godsend right now, but I’m completely alert and oriented, and my miserable reality couldn’t be clearer. Slipping into some oblivious state would be a merciful experience. Or better yet, if the alternative had happened like I thought it was going to… like it was supposed to.

I bat them away and growl as I throw an arm over my eyes to block them out. “Corporal Kaleb Shane, Second class. My birthday is January 22nd, and I’m this damn military hospital in Maryland,” I gripe out before cynically adding, “anything else you need to know? My middle school locker combination maybe?”

Content that I know where the fuck I am and what’s happening, most of the staff turn to leave the room, ignoring my snark, leaving only one nurse at my bedside. Millie, or as I call her, the sigher.

“Corporal Shane,” she sighs, dropping her shoulders and looking despondent.

“Just Kaleb,” I correct her, with my arm still over my face. “We can drop the formalities.” I don’t add that I don’t want to be addressed by my rank as I’m sure my military career is pretty much done.

At this point I know I have muscle and nerve damage from a piece of shrapnel the size of a damn dinner plate piercing my left thigh.

“Kaleb,” she concedes, with, you guessed it, a sigh. “You know you hit your head pretty hard. We have to do neuro checks every few hours, especially when we hear you screaming from your bed.”

“You go get yourself blown up, shot at a few times, and stabbed in the thigh while the rest of your family dies all around you. I bet you don’t scream once,” I blow out on a heavy breath. I’d roll my eyes too if my arm weren’t laying on them.

“You’re wrong about that,” she shoots back firmly, “which is why you should be taking advantage of the resources we’ve been offering you endlessly since you got here.”

“Your designated hospital shrink who’s never met me can see inside my fucked up brain and make me all better? I don’t think so,” I snap. There’s only one person I want to talk to about all this, and since Alex choked to death on his own blood right next to me while I was sliding in and out of consciousness, I’m shit out of luck. “Look,” I try to collect myself and take a calmer approach. “If you’re not going to get me anything for this rip-roaring pain in my leg,” I gesture with my free hand at my left leg that’s been mummified in gauze, “could you please just shut off the light and let me attempt to sleep again?”

---