To Love and Heal (The Power of Love Series) (4 page)

As the headline popped up, she instinctively reached up and
gently scratched Merlin behind the ears, drawing comfort from their shared
bond.

U.S. Marine Corps pilot awarded Bronze Star for courage
under fire

Marine Captain Caleb Brown was recently awarded the Bronze
Star for his heroic actions during the War in Afghanistan.  Brown was
piloting a CASEVAC helicopter on a mission to rescue wounded soldiers in
Kandahar, Afghanistan, during an active ground engagement with the enemy. 
Despite being surrounded by heavy fire, Brown managed to land the Super Stallion
safely and the crew immediately evacuated to transport the wounded soldiers on
board.  While approaching an unconscious soldier on the field, Medical
Corpsman Daniel Traverse was shot in the leg and shoulder.  At great risk
to his personal safety, Brown ran through intense enemy fire and dragged
Traverse back towards the helicopter.  As he helped his crewmember aboard,
a mortar exploded at close range, sending shrapnel into his back.  Yet
despite severe wounds, he ran back to the unconscious soldier, again braving heavy
fire as he pulled him to safety.

Anna sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. 
There was more to the article as it detailed the medal ceremony that resulted
from Caleb's actions, but right now she had a full plate of revelations to
digest, and her emotions were stripped raw.  She closed her eyes,
reluctantly yet unavoidably visualizing the gut-wrenching scenario depicted in
the article.  Caleb's back ripped apart by shrapnel, a no doubt
excruciatingly painful injury, and yet he pushed through it to rescue two
others under circumstances that could have easily resulted in his own death.
 She had read less than 150 words, yet it nevertheless spoke volumes about
the kind of man that Caleb was. And she felt woefully inept in comparing her
courage quotient to his.  She had empathy for all living creatures – down
to the spider in her living room that she had scooped up in a cup and released
outside just a few hours ago – but she couldn't even fathom running directly
into a shower of bullets to drag someone to safety.  Even if it were a
loved one and she was willing to sacrifice herself on their behalf, would her
body be able to take direction from her mind, or would she be so frozen by fear
that the only step she could take would be backwards as her knees gave way?

"You can't know how you'd react under those
circumstances," Tina said later that evening as they met for dinner at a
small, dimly lit Italian restaurant. "People find strength they never knew
they had in a crisis situation. I'm sure you've heard about someone suddenly
having superhuman strength and lifting a car off someone in an accident."
She paused to nod at Anna's bare arms. "Although I don't think those twigs
would be able to even grab a fender without snapping into two."

"Very funny," Anna replied, knowing well that her
arms were far from Herculean, but still had enough muscle tone to disqualify
them as twigs.  "As long as they're strong enough to lift a computer
mouse, I'm still in business."

Tina raised her glass of wine.  "Here here."

Anna clinked the glass with her own, but as it caught a
reflection of the table candlelight, her smile faded as an image flashed in her
mind of Caleb inadvertently removing his shirt by the campfire. Knowing now the
story behind his scars did little to quell the unease in her stomach.

"Stop doing that," Tina chided.

"Doing what?"

"Thinking."

Anna smiled sadly.  I've tried that, but my mind has a
mind of its own."

"You must really care about this guy."

Anna twirled the spaghetti on her plate in an effort to
delay her reply.  "I just feel bad for what he's been through,"
she finally said.

Tina looked unconvinced.  "Oh, I think there's a
lot more to it than that."

"Eat your
lasagna," Anna pretended to chide in an obvious attempt to deflect Tina's
observation.

"Just saying
…"

Anna reluctantly
smiled, realizing that Tina knew her all too well … and yes, her feelings for
Caleb were very real − and growing.

Caleb watched through the gatehouse window as lights
flickered on in Anna's house.  It was 9:30 p.m., not late by any means,
but he still felt relieved knowing that she was safely home – even if he still
had no idea where she had gone or with whom.  Not that she owed him an
explanation, he realized.  It was just that it was a dangerous world and
horrible, unpredictable things happened to people all of the time.  At
least they did in the world that he had come to know in the last few years.  He
turned away from the window, unease pulling at him as he wondered if she had in
fact been out on a date.  A few days ago while rummaging through the
bathroom medicine cabinet for a bandage after the slip of a sheetrock knife, he
had inadvertently come across a container of birth control pills.  He had
immediately felt intrusive, and yet it also had put a question mark in his head
that he did his best to shove aside with an exclamation point.

He glanced back out the window one more time, then closed
the blinds.   It was none of his business, nothing he needed to
concern himself with … he had enough crap to deal with right now without all
the rollercoaster highs and accompanying lows of caring for someone in that
way.  She was safely home – that's all he needed to know. 

A hot, muscle-soothing shower a short time later helped to
disperse Caleb's knotted thoughts, and he began to breathe easier as he opened
a bureau drawer to pull out a folded tee-shirt and jeans. Reaching inside, his
hand landed on something cold and hard, its significance immediately pulling at
his stomach and violently erasing his semi-relaxed state.  Against his
better judgment, he extracted the object from the drawer and stared as it
rested in the palm of his hand.   The Bronze Star … a symbol of
bravery and courage, and yet he felt no more deserving of such an honor than
many of the soldiers who served beside him during the course of his three tours
in Afghanistan.  He had witnessed selfless acts of heroism on a regular
basis, and felt the only reason he was deemed more qualified for an award was
that he had the unfortunate timing to step in front of an exploding mortar
shell.

He closed his eyes, images of wounded and lifeless fellow
soldiers flashing frame by frame in his mind, some whom he had met for the
first time as they were zipped into body bags, others who were not anonymous
soldiers but also friends, laughing and joking beside him one moment, silenced
by a bullet or bomb the next.

Caleb clasped the medal inside his closed fist, sweat
forming beads on his forehead before trickling downwards.  And the
question that kept coming back … the four words that had refused to vacate his
mind, if not his soul:
Was it worth it?

THREE

Anna hummed to
herself as she unpacked groceries, pausing to apologize to Merlin as he cocked
his head to the side. "What's the matter – is my humming as bad as my
singing?"

As if on cue,
Merlin meowed, and Anna reached down to scratch him on the head.  It was a
lazy Saturday afternoon, and the sound of male voices sailed in through the
open screen window over the kitchen sink. Moving towards the window to get a
closer look, she spotted Caleb and another man sitting in the lawn chairs. With
a white tee-shirt and camouflage pants, it didn't take long to figure out the
visitor's connection to Caleb. With the mid-afternoon sun bearing down and no
drinks in their hands, Anna hesitated momentarily before opening the back
entrance and peeking her head out.

"Would you
guys like something to drink?"

They looked over at
her simultaneously, Caleb's friend looking back at him as if to say,
"Who's
that
?"

"Sure,"
Caleb replied. "What's on the menu?"

"I have iced
tea, soda, lemonade … let's see … Crystal Light …"

The two men
exchanged horrified glances for effect.

"Crystal Light,"
Caleb's friend repeated with mock disdain.  "I don't suppose you have
any beer stashed away between the iced tea and lemonade."

"White
wine?" Anna offered, doubt in her voice.

Caleb laughed –
the first time she had ever actually heard him do so. It was a low, hearty
sound that both surprised and pleased her.

"No
worries," he said as he rose from his chair.  "I was planning to
run out and get some beers anyways.  This is Joel, by the way."

Acknowledging the
introduction, Anna came out to greet him.  They could almost be brothers,
she surmised as she noticed their striking physical similarities, but the
likeness ended there.  Joel's affable, outgoing personality was channeled
through his vigorous handshake and gregarious smile.  The thought flashed
through her mind that perhaps Caleb had once been as equally happy-go-lucky …
before circumstances had erased at least part of that from his being.

"Here, why
don't you keep my seat warm until I get back," he offered to Anna.

"I don't want
to interrupt you guys–"

"Please,"
Joel said, rolling his eyes.  "The view from my chair will be quite
an improvement."

"Hey!"
Caleb growled, clearly joking as he gave Joel a quick shove while his eyes
still honed in on Anna. "Watch your step or someone's going to get hurt,
and it ain't going to be me."

"You mean
you'd hit a woman?" Joel deadpanned as Caleb shook his head and then
grasped Joel's hand in an impromptu handshake as if to signal his threat was
for naught. They shared a history – that much she could see.  And if it was
forged in Afghanistan, then chances were it wasn't exactly a happy one.

"So how long
have you known Caleb?" Anna asked as she settled into the lawn chair soon
after Caleb's departure.

"Just over a
year.  He was already into his third tour of duty when my reserve unit was
sent over."

"Wow – it
seems like you guys have known each other a lot longer."

Joel's
lighthearted smile began to falter, and she could sense the deliberate effort
that was needed to refuel it. "Well, time takes on a life of its own when
you're in a war zone.  A single day can feel like the equivalent of a year
when all your senses are on high alert from the moment you wake up to the
second you fall asleep.  Heck, it even stays that way in your dreams when
you're in that mode. Has Caleb told you about his time over there?"

Anna shook her
head, explaining what she was able to dig up on her own after his troubling
reaction to the helicopter. "But I still feel like I don't know the whole
story," she added.

"And if were
up to him, you probably never would.  To be honest, I don't know how guys
like him handle multiple deployments.  I've been over there once, and let
me tell you – I don't think I'm ever going to look at life the same way
again."

"Were you a
pilot like Caleb?"

"I was a
medical corpsman assigned to the same Super Stallion. That guy literally saved
my ass a dozen times and then some."

"How
so?"

"We were on a
Casevac helicopter, which means our mission was to rescue wounded soldiers on
the battlefield in combat conditions.  So unlike the Medevac helicopters,
we were armed − and let's just say we took a lot of fire every time we
went out there, and we gave just as much back. More than once I was convinced
that I wasn't going to get out alive.  Any lesser of a pilot and I wouldn't
have.  We took a round of enemy fire once and the chopper started going
down. I had just been sent over and it was my first rescue mission – talk about
trial by fire. You have no idea how easy it is to lose control of that chunk of
metal when everything's going haywire and the stick is pulling your hand in
five different directions. I don't think he even broke a sweat.  I sure as
hell did – all I could think about was my wife back home and our two-year-old
son.  I was literally saying goodbye to them in my thoughts.  Then
Caleb tells us – perfectly calm, mind you – to brace for impact. He managed to
pull the chopper over a ridge and away from enemy fire – all the while that it
was going down. We took a hard landing and everyone got jostled around pretty
good. Caleb took a piece of metal to the face, was bleeding so bad it looked
like he stepped off the set of
Chainsaw Massacre
. But he was immediately
on the radio giving our coordinates for rescue, making sure everyone was okay
and basically completely oblivious to his own injuries. That was my very first
impression of him.  And it's never changed."

An image of Caleb,
bleeding profusely from what now was a scar, seared through Anna's mind and
grabbed at her stomach. She felt almost protective of him … and yet the reality
was that her only real connection to him was that of someone who hired him to
do a job.  At least that was no doubt how he viewed her, even if her heart
was starting to feel more.

"I wish he
could find comfort out of the fact that other people are alive because of
him," she said quietly.

"It's human
nature, I suppose.  I think his mind keeps going back to the one that
couldn't be saved."

"What do you
mean?"

Joel hesitated for
several moments. "It's not something that he's ever going to want to talk
to you about, I can tell you that."

"And I don't
want to pry … but maybe it will help me better understand where he's coming
from."

Several moments of
silence passed.  "It was about three months into my deployment. 
We were sent out on a rescue mission, and one of medical corpsman was this
young kid, Dwayne. He had just been sent over on his first tour, had been there
maybe two weeks.  His wife was about to give birth to their first child,
and he was over the moon.  We headed out to rescue a wounded pilot and
copilot of a downed Apache chopper.  Enemy fire everywhere, but Caleb
still managed to get to the chopper and land without taking any hits.  The
pilots were pretty badly injured but still alive and doing what they could to
hold off a few Taliban stragglers that were sniping at them. We managed to get
them on the chopper, but not before more Taliban fighters came up over the
hills and started shooting at us. I was inside starting a blood transfusion for
the copilot who was going to into shock, and Caleb was climbing back on board
with Dwayne behind him.  When he heard the shots, Caleb jumped out and
fired a few rounds, told Dwayne he had him covered and to get inside.  A
second later Caleb took a bullet to the helmet.  The impact started to knock
him backwards, and that's when Dwayne …"