Andy McNab - War torn

'Not fucking surprised,' Steve said. 'They didn't want your language upsetting me, you old heap of shit.'

Dave laughed not because it was funny but because no dying man could speak that way and it meant Steve was going to live. Beneath his laugh, though, he felt uneasy. He'd been mates with Steve, but, even as a mate, Steve had never called his platoon sergeant a heap of shit.

'How are you?' Dave asked.

'Terrible.'

'All over?'

'All over, mate. Broken a bunch of ribs and an arm and I've got a shitload of bruising and I'm every colour of the rainbow.'

'Is that all?'

'Isn't that enough?'

Dave proceeded cautiously. 'You've been lying there a long time for a bloke who's only got bruising.'

'Bit of shrapnel in the arm, broken rib… let's see, was there something else?'

Dave felt his lungs tighten, then his gut.

'How's the leg?' he asked.

'My legs are all right, mate.'

'Does your head hurt?'

'Yep.'

So that was why no one had been allowed to speak to Steve.

'Only because I need a beer,' Steve added. 'What sort of country is this, where no one can drink a beer?'

'Well, what country is it?' Dave asked. 'Go on, you tell me.'

'Can't remember the name…'

'Can you think straight?'

'Since when could I think straight?'

'Do you remember anything about the accident?'

'The last thing I remember we had our stuff ready and we were getting in the Vector to go somewhere…'

Steve's voice petered out.

'Who was in the Vector with you?'

'Everyone!'

'Name them if you can, Steve. Go on. Name all the lads in 1 Section.'

Dave hoped his questions weren't causing Steve anguish but he had to know. He had to know if the IED had blown away a piece of Steve Buckle's mind.

'Well. There's you…'

'I'm not in 1 Section, am I?'

'Aren't you?'

'Not really. What do I do?'

'Ummm… who am I talking to?'

Oh shit.

'I'm Dave. Your sergeant. So you'd better look sharpish.'

'Oh, yeah. Dave. Yeah.'

'Now tell me what's wrong with you apart from shrapnel in your arm and bruising.'

'Um… I keep falling asleep.'

'That's the morphine.'

'I'm falling asleep now. The doc's here, want to speak to him?'

'Yeah, all right, Steve. Listen, you need a lot of rest so just relax. That's an order. Have you spoken to Leanne yet?'

But Steve wasn't there any more.

Dave was aware that people in the ops room had been listening to him. Major Willingham was at a desk nearby and so was the 2 i/c. The OC's laptop blinked and people seemed to be on the radio or working on documents or shuffling papers around but it was all a pretence. The note of alarm he could not edit from his voice had somehow placed the ops room on alert.

He avoided everyone's eye. A new, crisp voice crackled on the phone now.

'Rob Webb speaking. I'm the doctor monitoring Rifleman Buckle.'

'Dave Henley, Buckle's platoon sergeant. So is it the morphine or has he got head injuries?'

'Probably still traumatized. It's hard for us to do detailed assessments here: we just have to get him well enough to ship him off to England, but we've had a bit of trouble stabilizing him.'

'He started off sounding like Steve… and then I realized he wasn't really there.'

'Sometimes he is. For brief periods. That's why we're still hoping his head injuries won't cause a long-term problem.'

'Does he actually know he's lost a leg?'

The doctor's reply, when it came, was careful. 'Well, he has been told.'

'Has he taken it in?'

'His nervous system's telling him it's still there and it hurts a lot. He's chosen not to look.'

'Christ… Has he spoken to his wife?'

'Actually, that's what I wanted to ask you. Now you've talked to him, what do you think?'

'Well…' Dave said. 'I know Leanne's desperate to be in touch. But if she hears him like that then it could make things worse. Has he asked to phone her?'

'He hasn't remembered he's married yet. But he remembered you were his sergeant.'

'Christ.'

'That's soldiers for you. He asked to speak to you by name. I heard him forget who you were towards the end of the conversation, but he certainly knew at the beginning.'

'I don't reckon he should speak to Leanne.'

'He's good for thirty seconds, maybe.'

'But he's not going to say any of the things Leanne will want to hear.' When do any of us say the things they want to hear?

'OK, maybe we'll wait a bit longer.'

'I'll tell her we've spoken but morphine got in the way. How's his leg?'

The doctor paused again.

'Well… it's a bad injury and we're still fighting to keep things under control. And if this call had taken place earlier in the day he'd have been a lot more lucid.'

When the call ended Dave sat staring into space. People were looking at him, waiting for him to say something, but he surrounded himself instead with a ring of silence.

'Do I conclude,' asked the OC eventually, 'that Rifleman Buckle isn't doing so well?'

Dave remembered how Steve Buckle was one of the quickest, funniest lads in the platoon. Just when Billy Finn thought he'd had the last word, Steve would always come back with a killer punch line.

'He's making a physical recovery. It's just he doesn't sound much like the Steve I used to know,' Dave said quietly.

'Early days,' the major said.

Dave's call to Jordan Nelson was a picnic by comparison. The machine-gunner could remember almost everything up until the moment of the blast.

'Did you see me, Sarge? Did you watch me flying?'

'Poetry in motion, mate,' Dave assured him.

'I haven't looked in the mirror yet. I expect I look like Tutan-fucking-khamun. And they won't take the bandages off for weeks.'

He paused. 'How's Steve?'

'Stable,' Dave heard himself saying.

The constant use of this word since Steve's accident had pissed him off big-time, but now he understood. You could take refuge in the sheer dependability of a word like stable. Without really thinking what it might mean.

VICKY WENT TO NURSERY FOR TWO HOURS ON A WEDNESDAY AND Jenny had a list as long as her arm of things to do in that two hours. But she had no sooner got home in the empty car and begun to tackle her chores than the doorbell rang.

She sighed. It might be Leanne, armed with a twin on each side, saying she needed to talk. She had to talk to someone, poor love, since they still hadn't let her talk to Steve.

But it was Agnieszka. Luke was in his pushchair throwing his arms up and down in that strange way of his and Agnieszka stood there, white-faced, tight-jeaned, barely smiling. Jenny felt resentful until she reminded herself that, in the superstore, she had actually invited her.

'Come in!' she said. 'And just don't look at the mess.'

'I don't see any mess,' said Agnieszka. Although there was plenty.

Agnieszka left the buggy on the doorstep and carried Luke into the house. She sat stiffly, holding Luke, while Jenny made coffee. She didn't want any herself. The very smell of it revolted her at this stage of her pregnancy.

'We've got some baby toys Luke might like to play with…'

Jenny dragged herself upstairs to the box under Vicky's bed. She selected so many toys that she could not see the steps properly when she came back down and three from the bottom she tripped. She lurched forward, losing her balance, pulled by gravity and her own unaccustomed bodyweight towards the floor. She saved herself by grabbing the banister just in time. The toys thudded down the stairs as she swung there. She felt so much like a big baboon that she wanted to cry and laugh at the same time.

Carefully she disengaged herself from the rail and her feet found the ground. She picked up the toys and went back into the living room where Agnieszka was drinking her coffee. Luke did not need the baby toys. He was lying on the sofa across his mother, falling asleep.