Harry Parker - Anatomy of a Soldier

She put me down on the white painted chair and bent over the toilet and was sick. She was sick again and concentrated on not making any sound — not wanting them to hear.

She crawled over to the door and locked it and leant back against it. She felt inside me for tissues and wiped around her mouth and then brushed the tears away from her eyes. She wasn’t crying, the tears were from being sick, and she wondered why not. She focused on her breathing and waited. There were footsteps below and the woman whose name she couldn’t remember was calling up the stairs. She answered impatiently that she was fine, she just needed a minute.

She replaced the pack of tissues and left her delicate hand limp in me. It trembled and her rings glinted. Then she clenched her hand until it hurt and her skin whitened and the fine veins bulged blue.

She brushed her teeth but couldn’t bring herself to look in the mirror. And then she left me and went downstairs. The murmur of voices came from below and a car crunched over the gravel and the dog barked with excitement. Her husband’s deep voice entered the conversation as the talking continued. It was dark when a car left.

They both came up and she sat on the white chair while he rested on the edge of the bath. She reached down and took the phone out of me and started to text and then rang instead to tell her mother what had happened. He watched her talk and, when she had finished, said there was nothing they could do until tomorrow. He asked if she was sure she didn’t want anything to eat.

In the middle of the night she came in and sat on the toilet and held her head for a long time and then clicked the light off and went out.

He shaved in the morning. She stepped past him and showered. He asked if she was okay and she could tell he felt stupid asking. There was a distance between them that neither wanted to bridge with words. She dressed and took me downstairs and pulled out her address book and phoned the kennel — yes, it was an emergency. He called his office and they sat at the table looking at the toast rack. Neither knew what to do. He walked the dog and she lay on the bed.

*

They received a call and were suddenly urgent. She was glad of something to do and packed a case. They loaded the car and I was in the footwell below her feet. They held hands across the gear-stick and she looked at the rivulets of rain that streamed along the window and blurred the casket-brown motorway embankment beyond.

Her throat was tight and a sickness pulled down in her stomach. The tightness remained even when she wasn’t thinking about it, a constant physical reminder knotted inside her. She sighed deeply and the knot fluttered, loosened and then pulled taut again.

The car stopped and he put a small piece of paper on the dashboard. He opened her door and smiled at her. She picked me up and we walked into a building through sliding doors and down cream-coloured corridors.

He asked for directions at the desk. Her arm that held me was trembling. She wanted to brace herself but couldn’t — the blow was coming. The woman behind the desk smiled at them and pointed down the corridor and she stared at her until he gently tugged her elbow and asked again if she was okay.

*

I was next to her in a room and she reached into me and turned the phone to silent. Its glow illuminated the pens and the address book, the opened tissues and the phone charger until it dimmed to black.

There were other people in the room; a woman whose young daughter pushed coloured blocks along a spiralling wire and glanced at her mother, another who clutched her phone and a man whose face was blank but who cried silently. They sat in silence, each of them separated by a few seats.

A nurse came in and they all looked up and she asked the man and the second woman through. They stood and shuffled out. They came back later and sat closer to each other and he rested a hand on her arm. Both of them stared at the same spot on the floor.

I was on her lap, held between her hands, when a man opened the door and asked if they would like to follow him. Her husband stood and ushered her out protectively and we walked down a corridor to another room where the man said Dr Morris would join them soon.

A man wearing a grey suit entered and asked them if they would like to have a seat. He introduced himself and explained that he was the doctor in charge of the intensive care unit. He said their son had been flown back and arrived in the hospital three hours ago. His team had assessed their son and decided to take him straight into surgery.

He listed wounds and turned his professional knowledge into words they could understand. They held hands and her husband asked questions for them that the man answered. Their son was now stable but very seriously injured — her hand clenched on my strap — and they were also worried about an exposed femoral artery.

The doctor told them they would be able to see him soon and her pulse quickened. He warned them that their son was heavily sedated — they needed to keep him that way — and there was currently no plan to bring him round.

Her heartbeat thumped in her head. They could see him. He was back from that place, she thought, and would never have to go there again. The relief flooded through her — nervous excitement wrapping around the knot in her throat. She smiled at her husband and squeezed his hand.

The doctor led them in. I hung by her side and her husband had his arm around her and supported her across the ward, past the beds and dividing curtains, the flickering machines and the attending nurses, towards the bed her son was in. When she saw him she faltered and her husband held her closer.

She hugged me as she sat in the chair next to his bed. She looked at his face that was on its side and covered by a breathing mask — like a fighter pilot, she thought — and through the plastic she could see the thick tube that made his chest rise and fall.

There were other tubes entering her son but she wasn’t sure what they all did. She wanted to hold him and hugged me even tighter on her lap. Please be okay, she thought. Please don’t be brain-damaged; they hadn’t ruled that out. He had lost a lot of blood but his reflexes were good — that was encouraging.

They had shown her the legs below a sheet tent but she couldn’t register it. They were grossly swollen, covered in plastic dressings and pipes that drained the wounds. The bottom of one was missing — this didn’t matter, it wasn’t him, he was in there. She reached out and stroked his forehead. Please be you. She remembered his smile. Please be able to smile again. His hair was fairer than normal and she thought of the heat and sun where he’d been and it all seemed so far away.

*

We were in the transit accommodation. She couldn’t recall how we had got here, only that they’d left him and now were in a room with a print of a lighthouse on the wall, where only people who worried ever stayed.

She rummaged around inside me, peered in and pushed things aside to see my contents. And then she turned me upside down on top of a chest of drawers and everything from inside me spilt across its hard surface. She looked again but couldn’t find what she wanted and threw me across the room, then caught her reflection in a mirror and started to cry. She swept the address book and tissue and pens away and they scattered on the carpet as her body heaved. He came in from the toilet and held her and moved her across to the bed away from where I lay on the floor. Through sobs she told him she’d lost her phone — it was in me but had disappeared. He went over to the hook by the door and took her phone from her coat pocket and placed it in her hands and sat down beside her. He put his arm round her and she cried onto his shoulder while looking at the phone. He undressed her gently and pulled the blue duvet over her.