A Chance of a Lifetime (31 page)

“But make no mistake, Bennie: The injuries that Calvin suffers are every bit as real and critical as the injuries that killed your husband. They're as real as the amputations and the third-degree burns and the gunshots, and they can be harder to treat. You look at a broken bone, you put a plate here and screws there and splint or cast it and do physical therapy, and when you're done, you have a pretty good bone. You can't just look at the brain and say, ‘Oh, here's the survivor's guilt; let's do a quick nip and tuck. And over here we need a few stitches to stem the hyperarousal, and as long as we're in here, let's do a happiness transplant to get rid of that pesky depression.'”

The chaplain sadly shook her head. “I'm sorry, Bennie. It just doesn't work that way.”

T
he ring of a cell phone interrupted the quiet that had settled. Bennie watched the chaplain check the screen, smile a tiny private smile, then mute the sound and slide it into her pocket. “Sorry about that.”

Her voice small and quavery, Bennie said, “I want promises, Chaplain.” She was well aware she sounded like a whiny child, but if she couldn't whine once in a while, she might explode.

“Me, too.” Chaplain Roberts's smile was faint and tinged with wryness. “Wouldn't it be lovely if we could have them? If the promise fairy waved her wand and said, ‘I promise that Calvin will heal and recover one hundred percent and will be a man worthy of your commitment'? But if that happened, a commitment wouldn't really be a commitment, would it? You wouldn't be taking any risks. You'd have a promise in writing of sunshine and roses, and someone to hold accountable for it.”

After a moment, she went on. “If the situation were reversed and Calvin had come home in J'Myel's place, and J'Myel had come home with Calvin's diagnosis—”

Bennie's gut clenched.

“You were married to J'Myel. You'd already made promises to him. For better or worse, in sickness and in health. Would those promises have been enough for you?”

“Of course.” Bennie had been raised to take vows seriously. She'd intended one marriage, like Mama, like her daddy, like most of the people in her family.

“You wouldn't have said, ‘Eh, sorry, I didn't sign up for this hassle. I'm outta here'?”

“Never. He was my husband. I loved him.”

“So if you could honor old promises to your husband, what's stopping you from making and honoring new promises to Calvin? Your eyes are open. You know what he faces. You'd be making an informed decision.”

Bennie gazed out the window to the parking lot, the shift change traffic mostly cleared out now. Instead of waiting to be the fiftieth vehicle out of the garage, she would just sail out and still make it home within a few minutes of her regular time. Hopefully feeling a little better. A little more determined.

“You want to know that Calvin will recover, that he'll get stronger every day. That he can hold a job and be a productive member of society, that he'll be a good husband and a better father, and that the idea of suicide will never, ever cross his mind again. But you can't get that, Bennie. None of us can. Things change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but life isn't static. It's always changing.”

Bennie's sigh felt as if it heaved up all the way from her toes, expelling out of her with dismay and dissatisfaction and, yes, a little acceptance. “I know. My mother abandoned me, my father died, my husband died. I just think…” Here came the whiny child again. “I'd just like to think I'm due for a break, that it's my turn to be young and carefree.” She snickered over the last word, and the chaplain joined her. “My grandmother says anyone who's truly carefree lacks the capacity to understand what's going on.”

“Wise woman.” The chaplain toyed with her name tag, sliding it along a deep purple lanyard, as if considering her next words. After a moment, she picked up a framed photo on the shelf behind her desk and offered it to Bennie. “I'm going to set aside my chaplain's hat for a moment and talk to you as a wife—the wife of a survivor. My husband is a Marine. A retired gunnery sergeant. He also has PTSD.”

Bennie studied the photo: a tall muscular man with dark brown hair—still worn in a high-and-tight regardless of his retired status—brown eyes, and a crooked smile that must have melted more than a few hearts. With his right arm he held his wife close, and his left arm braced a little girl on his hip, maybe three years old, with the same hair and eyes and adorable smile. Another girl, looking much the same, just a few years older, stood on his feet, arms flung back and around his knees for stability.

“You look happy.”

“We are. Most of the time. We have our moments, of course.” Taking the frame back, the chaplain smiled tenderly at her family before returning it to the shelf. “I knew Zack's diagnosis before I started dating him. I knew it wasn't going to be the easiest path. There would be bad times and sad times and times when I might feel more like his guardian or his medical advocate than his wife. But I loved him. What else could I do?”

She'd believed him worthy of commitment, Bennie thought. Just as
she
knew Calvin was worthy of the same.

“Zack is a leader, your typical gung-ho Marine. He would charge a thousand enemy troops by himself if it meant giving his men a chance to survive. He would throw himself in front of a speeding train to save a stranger, and there is
nothing
he wouldn't do to protect the girls and me. Life is precious to him…but he attempted suicide twice before he got a diagnosis and began treatment. Trust me when I tell you that psychologically, morally, ethically, he's the strongest man I know. But men who live hard and fight hard and love hard also hurt hard.”

Bennie nodded in agreement. Calvin had always been the most responsible of them. He'd been the planner, the leader, the one who found the flaws in their ideas and kept them out of too much trouble. How much more seriously had he taken that responsibility as a soldier? While J'Myel had been letting everything roll off his back, the way he'd always done, Calvin had been internalizing everything, holding himself responsible for everything. Was it any wonder it got to be too much for him?

“Zack and I have been married seven years. Sometimes it's a little harder than I'd like. But there's a character in an old movie who says she'd rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special. That's my golden rule. I could have kept looking, maybe found a guy without Zack's medical history, maybe even learned to love him, but it wouldn't have been dazzling, heart-stopping love. It wouldn't have given me my babies, and the freedom from worry wouldn't have been worth settling for a lifetime of nothing special.”

Bennie loved
wonderful
. She loved the way her heart skipped a beat when she saw Calvin, the way she craved his kisses more with each one she got. She loved that he cared so damn much about the people in his life and the way he was gentle and kind with a stray dog that had never known tenderness. She loved the idea of spending the rest of her life with him, of having babies with him, of giving to him when he'd already given so much of himself.

“It's okay to be a little scared,” Chaplain Roberts said. “Love and marriage and babies are a huge deal no matter what else is going on in your life. It's all about commitment and sacrifice and promises and compromises.”

Bennie's fingers knotted tightly together as she summoned a faint smile. “I thought the promise fairy didn't exist.”

“It's the promises you make to Calvin and to yourself that matter. Zach and I—our promise is to do the best we can. That's it. Nothing fancy or complicated. Whether we're having a good day or a bad one, and we both have those bad days, we promise to try our best.” Chaplain Roberts left her chair to sit in the one next to Bennie, taking Bennie's hand in both of her own. “That's all you can ask of Calvin, Bennie, and that's all anyone can ask of you. Try your best.”

Calvin leaned against the wall outside his apartment door, unlacing his work boots, using the toe of one to pry off the first, then carefully nudging off the second. He'd just come from the shelter, and the thick treads were caked with dirt, gravel, mud, and something much more pungent. It was amazing how much crap—poo—small animals could generate.

He'd talked with Meredith this afternoon, and as soon as she decided Nita was ready, the pup was moving into Gran's house until he had a place of his own. It was a good thing Nita, small as she was, wasn't a big producer of stinky stuff since if there was one thing Gran didn't like, it was cleaning up after critters, regardless of how many legs they had.

But at least he'd have one pretty girl sharing his life with him.

Leaving his boots, he went inside, tossed his keys on the counter, and headed down the hall to turn the shower to hot. He dropped his clothes on the bedroom floor, gave the unmade bed a look, then left it unmade. After all, he'd be getting back in it in five hours or so.

Music came through the wall from next door, Garth Brooks, Oklahoma's favorite hometown-boy-made-good. Calvin wasn't a country music fan himself, but it was better than the classical music the soldier on the other side preferred.

He made his shower quick, dressed in PT shorts and a T-shirt, and rooted through the kitchen for a snack. After tossing a foil pan of frozen lasagna in the oven and setting the timer, he located the cookies Elizabeth had sent home with him yesterday, took two of those, poured himself a glass of milk, and wandered into the living room to stare out the window.

The sky was darker than normal for this time of day, and tiny whirlwinds of dust and leaves skipped across the grass separating the barracks from the WTU. He hadn't listened to the forecast—not much point as changeable as the local weather was—but the chill radiating from the window glass showed the temperature had dropped significantly since he'd come home. Maybe they would have a really good, loud thunderstorm, the kind that rushed across the prairie, drenched the ground, and rattled the windows in their frames. Or maybe a nice, gentle snow, no sleet, no ice, just thick fat flakes to turn everything white and make the world a quieter place for a while.

Maybe, he thought with a grin, they'd get thundersnow, J'Myel's favorite: rumbling thunder and lightning muffled by heavy snowfall.

With his free hand, he rubbed absently at his chest, not at the gut-wrenching ache that had always accompanied thoughts of J'Myel but at the absence of it. It still hurt—it always would—but it wasn't the despairing never-gonna-stop throb that had convinced him he would be better off dead. This was a natural kind of hurt, full of regret and missing but nothing insurmountable. This was a hurt he would survive.

He would survive the hurt with Bennie, too. He wanted like hell for her to decide he was worth taking a risk on, but if she didn't…He swallowed hard, and his fingers pressed a little harder on his chest.

If she didn't, it would break his heart. It would mean the end of a lot of hopes and dreams. It would be one of the worst things in his life.

But it wouldn't kill him. It wouldn't make him backslide into the bleakness where he'd lived so long. Every day he made it through was a victory. He intended to reach the point where he didn't count days but weeks, months, years. He intended to be whole and healthy and happy.

Though right now it was hard to imagine happiness without Bennie.

He reached for the milk he'd set on the windowsill and realized the glass was empty. The cookies were gone, too, though he didn't remember more than the first few sips, the first few bites. Mindless eating, Elizabeth called it, patting her rounded curves with a laugh.
It's one of the things I excel at.

The thought of her made him smile, and the glass reflected it back at him. He stared at the image for a long time until a steady tapping caught his attention. He glanced at the door, then back at the window, where his view was distorted by raindrops hitting the glass. They were fat and ran into rivulets to the bottom before streaking out of sight. Rain, storm, snow—he didn't care what the skies delivered. He was home, and he was comfortable. He didn't feel the need to go anywhere, do anything. He didn't need to dwell on ugly memories, but he didn't need to hide from them, either. He could watch TV, get online, read a book, and just
be
.

God, he had waited a long time to just
be
.

The tapping grew louder, more insistent, but not at the window this time. When he'd first come here, a knock at the door would have made his gut clench, but all he felt as he crossed the room was mild curiosity. Other than the one time with his family, his only visitor was Justin, either bringing food or wanting to go out and get some, both of which, Calvin had finally realized, were his way of taking care of the new guy. Maybe, given the weather, Justin would like some of Elizabeth's lasagna and the garlic bread she'd sent with it. Homemade meals like that—

Calvin opened the door, wind whistling between the two halves of the building, and stopped cold. Stopped breathing. Stopped thinking. Stopped everything except feeling, and all he could feel was,
Damn
, he was lucky.

Bennie stood on the landing, a deep purple parka covering her to her knees, her curls glistening under the hood, her fingers hidden in black gloves, and black pants showing beneath the coat's hem. Instead of her ready smile, she wore a look of intense seriousness, though a flash of pleasure passed through when she saw him.

The silence dragged out a long time, him looking at her, her looking back at him. He searched her eyes and face for any hint to what she was thinking, feeling, and found uncertainty, hesitancy, and—the best thing he could have found—hope.

A gust of wind made her hug her arms across her middle and loosened her tongue. “I meant to come bearing gifts, but the cold front moved in, and I couldn't bring myself to make any unnecessary stops. Can I come in anyway?”

He gazed at her—the soft round lines of her face, the exotic tilt of her eyes, the smooth mocha shade of her face, the lush body hidden beneath the dripping coat, the black boots that made her seem three inches taller and hopefully kept her feet dry if not warm. Then another blast of wind came down the passageway, and he stepped back, opening the door wide. She hustled inside.

“I swear, the temperature has dropped forty degrees since I left Mama's. The weather guys are saying snow, but you know how that goes. The more certain they are, the less likely it is to happen. Whatever, it's definitely cold and wet out there.” She lowered the hood, unzipped the parka, and shrugged out of it. Calvin watched the sensuous movements of her shoulders, arms, spine, then wordlessly took it and hung it on the coat rack in the corner next to his PT jacket and hoodies.