Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

In the morning when Nate brushes his teeth, he hears Charles’s voice in his head, sees him sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Charles is in his green-and-khaki ACUs and wears his combat helmet, but one thing is different: There is a massive hole blown in his stomach, and he is dripping blood onto the ivory bathroom tiles.

“What the fuck?” Charles says. “It’s indulgent, all this moping and shit. Get over it already. You’re home. ”

“I know,” Nate says through a mouthful of toothpaste. “I know that. But I can’t get it from my head into my gut.”

Charles peers through the hole in his stomach wall. He flexes, making the intestines wiggle, then looks up with a pleased smile. Noting Nate’s expression, he assumes a serious face. “Don’t get boring.”

Nate spits foam into the sink, rinses. “Sorry. I’m hung up on killing you.”

“That crap again?” Charles waves a bloody hand. “What could you have done?”

For the first time, Nate actually speaks out loud. “I could’ve jumped first.”

He goes in search of work but inevitably winds up sitting with Casper on the curb by the car wash, watching the vehicles go in filthy and come out spotless, that toxic film reel throwing images against the walls of his skull, corroding him from the inside out. No matter how many times he works and reworks the equation he is locked inside, it is destined to tally up the same-two dead legs, three frozen seconds, threadbare rucksack five feet away.

Nate takes Casper out late when the neighborhood is still enough to mute the noise in his head. One night he arrives home to find Janie swaying on the porch swing. “Maybe you should bring Cielle on your walks. I’m worried about her weight.”

He says, “I’m not home most nights until she’s in bed.”

“Maybe that’s why she’s getting so heavy,” Janie says. “She’s been comforting herself with food since you-”

“I know.” He feels a burn across his face. “I just … can’t clear my head right now. It’s just temporary.”

“Maybe if you were busier…?”

He waves a hand, but the gesture loses momentum. “I can’t buy men’s suits again, Janie.”

“I don’t want you to buy men’s suits. I don’t care about the money. I’ll pick up an extra shift at the hospital if I have to, to cover the mortgage.”

“I will always make sure the mortgage is covered. I just need a little time. I’ve been home five fucking weeks.”

Her face reddens, bringing the freckles into relief. “You know what?” She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “We don’t do this. We don’t talk to each other this way.”

He stares at her, and she stares back, unflinching. Agitated, Casper trots to Janie’s side and whimpers until she pets him.

“I can’t reach you, Nate. No one gets through to you.”

“You do.”

“Not anymore.”

Her face holds so much sadness he has to look away.

Janie says, “I know you loved Charles-God, we all loved Charles. But you have to let go of what happened.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

Though he never considered it, the truth is right there, waiting, and it comes out in a heated rush: “Because then I’d be abandoning him. Again.”

She receives this, bracing into the weight of it. She nods once. The breeze blows through him.

“When you were gone,” she says, “Cielle would crawl into bed where you used to lie. How do I explain to her that now that you’re home, you’re still not home?”

He cannot lift his eyes from the porch boards.

Janie says, “You are the only man I want to be with. I feel like I dreamed you up playing ‘boyfriend’ when I was nine. I love you too much for us to turn into roommates. Some couples can do that, maybe. But not us. Doing that with you … It would be worse than not being with you.”

He clears his throat. “You and Cielle are all I want. But I can’t … I can’t find my way back here.”

Janie quotes him to himself: “Stop fighting,” she says. “I got you.”

His mouth is dry. “I don’t know how.”

Silence. The porch swing creaks, Janie’s toes touching the wood as though stirring water. She says, “We build our own cells, brick by brick.”

He thinks of his father shuffling around the house after his mom’s funeral, how he’d blank out in front of the microwave sometimes, staring at the number pad, unable to proceed.

He says, “Maybe this is what I have to do right now.”

She swallows hard, then says, “I have not a thing to say I won’t regret later.”

He walks upstairs into their bathroom, shuts the door, and sits on the closed toilet. A while after, her footsteps enter the bedroom, the sheets rustle, and the light clicks off. Through the thin door, he hears her crying softly, and though he wants to hold her more than anything, he cannot rise, cannot turn the doorknob. His courage is gone; he lost it back in the Sandbox in that goddamned helicopter. He lost it when he made his daughter a promise that he’d come home to her. He thinks back to the day Charles dragged him to the beach, Janie’s cries carrying across the water. Nate was The One Who Had Jumped into the Riptide When No One Else Would. He had borne her to shore. And now he is huddled on a toilet, shuddering, scared to open a bathroom door.

He waits until her breathing grows regular, then sneaks out to slip into his side of the bed.

* * *

Later that night screams awaken him. He bolts off the mattress and his boots sink into burning sand and there is smoke in the air and he is yelling for Charles: “Where are you? Where are you?” The screams keep coming in the dark, and he stumbles and smacks his head into the corner of the wall by the door. Blood streams down his forehead, tacky and hot, and then his eyes are stinging and he lurches through the door, knocking it free of the top hinge and Janie is at his side holding his arm and then he sees Abibas staring with unreadable eyes and he shoves and Janie flies back and hits the wall and he is staggering down the hall, Charles’s blood streaming down his face, bellowing, “Where are you? Where the fuck are you?” and the screams have stopped suddenly but Casper is barking and he fills his daughter’s doorway but she is gone. Janie is behind him, yelling, her cheek carrying a plum-colored bruise and her words flood in: “Stop it! You’re scaring her. You’re scaring her!” and he follows her quaking finger to where Cielle has tried to wedge herself beneath her bed to hide. Janie goes to her and holds her.

He wipes his forehead, and his arm comes away dark. Quietly panicking at what he has done, he says, “No, no. I don’t scare her. I don’t. Do I scare you?”

And Cielle looks out from beneath the dark row of her bangs and says, “Yes.”

His insides crumble. He stands, swaying, mouth ajar. His skin on fire, he retreats slowly into their bedroom, Casper at his heels. Nate washes the blood from his face. Uses Band-Aids to close the gash at his hairline. Finds an instant cold pack in the emergency kit beneath the sink. When he steps out, Janie stands watching, pale, silent.

He says, “I am so, so sorry I hurt you.”

“You didn’t know what you were doing. Cielle was crying. She had a nightmare.”

“It is unacceptable what I did.”

“I know you didn’t mean it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I need to get myself…”

“What?”

“To a place where I deserve to live here again.”

Janie looks away. Her eyes well. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

He can’t find any words. His throat clutches. Desperate for something to do, he cracks the ice pack, but she says, “I’m fine.”