Evan Arden 05 Irrevocable (34 page)

I laugh.

“She just barely got the hang of it,” I say.  “I think she brought it back to me about three times the entire afternoon.”

“She does like carrying the ball around.”

“That’s the last thing I remember,” I tell her.  “I was trying to get her to fetch.”

Dr. Reiss comes in the room to go over some of the test results.  Most of the physical stuff came out normal, but the memory tests were a little suspect.  Apparently, they aren’t bad enough for the doctor to be concerned.

“The counselor will be here tomorrow,” Dr. Reiss informs me.  “I want him to do a full psychological profile on you before you are discharged.  In the meantime, rest.”

“Can I stay with him?” Alina asks as she turns toward the doctor.

“Yes, you may.  I’ll make a note that it’s approved.  Just let him rest though.  No more talking.  I’ll be back in the morning to check in on you both.”

Alina agrees and Dr. Reiss leaves.

The next day, I get additional visitors.

“There he is!  Back from the dead!”  Jonathan saunters in and leans over the bed to hug me.  “It’s good to see you with open eyes, brotha.”

“Thanks.”

“Looking good, LT.”  Eddie-boy shakes my hand.  “They giving you anything decent to eat around here?”

“Better than rations,” I tell him, “but not by much.”

I take Alina’s hand and tell her to go check on Maisy and the apartment.  She narrows her eyes but complies with my request.  She knows I just want her out of the way but doesn’t make a fuss about it.  Jonathan scans the room for any kind of monitoring devices before the guys sit down to talk business.

“Tell me what happened.”  I adjust the pillow behind my head and try to sit up a little straighter.

“What do you remember?” Jonathan asks.

“Nothing.  Not a damn thing.  Who shot me?”

“Whoa.”  Jonathan inhales audibly.  “I’ll start when you called me, then.”

Jonathan tells me everything he knows about that night.  I had been worried about a text from Alina and had contacted Jonathan and Eddie-boy to find her.  Eddie-boy fills in a few gaps about meeting me at Walgreens and taking Alina to safety, but I still don’t remember a thing.  Jonathan tells me about being stuck in traffic and arriving just as Becca and Joshua Taylor were about to kill me.

“This guy right here,” Jonathan says as he points his cigarette at Eddie-boy, “saved your ass.  If he hadn’t shoved you right then and there, you would’ve been killed.”

“That’s when I was shot?”

Jonathan nods.

“I thought you were dead for sure,” Eddie-boy says quietly.  “I mean, who gets shot in the head and lives?  You weren’t moving much, but you were still talking.”

“What happened to Becca and Joshua?”

“Jonathan stayed with you,” Eddie-boy says.  “I went after them.  Let’s just say they had an unfortunate car accident on their way out of town.”

He turns to Jonathan.

“You know, the electrical systems on those new cars are pretty nifty.”

“Nifty?” Jonathan laughs.  “Where do you military guys get all your lingo?”

The casual way they talk about killing two people makes my gut cramp up.  Becca had been working with us for a long time—even before she was doing Rinaldo’s books.  Now she’s dead, and I can’t even remember exactly why.  I don’t understand why she would want to kill me.  I’d never done anything to her.

I understood Joshua’s motivations—I’d killed his brother.  It was no wonder he wanted me dead.  Now I was responsible for the death of both brothers.

I can’t take that back.

“We took care of Donald Hansen,” Eddie-boy says.  “He was there in the alley.  I looked him up.”

“I recognized him,” Jonathan says.  “He was the dude you set up in that hotel.”

There’s a brief flash of Don’s blank eyes as I roll him over, and then nothing.

“I saw his tat,” Eddie-boy tells me.  “We made sure he had a proper burial.  He had a sister in Indianapolis, and we got her here for it.  I’ll take you to where he’s buried when you get out.”

“Thanks,” I say quietly.  “I appreciate it.”

I ask a few questions to try to piece together the rest of the night, and they answer one after another.  Nothing sparks any other memories.  Listening to people talk about a situation involving me and not remembering any of it is a little unnerving.

“How did Bastian end up here?” I ask.

“I called him,” Jonathan says with a shrug.  “I knew you’d been talking to him, and well…honestly, brotha, we didn’t think you were gonna make it.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Briefly.  He had to get back home to his family, but he said to call him if your condition changed.  I gave him a shout this morning.  I have the feeling he’ll be booking a flight pretty soon.”

It occurs to me that the only time I have been in physical contact with Bastian since finding out we were half-brothers was when we were trying to kill each other.  We had come to a truce, but my intent was to end him.

How could I have considered that?  He’s my only known relative.

The callousness of the thoughts I had at the time shock me.  All my life, I’d wondered who my family might have been.  I tried to find substitutes in the Marines, but that ultimately failed.  When I discovered I had a true, flesh-and-blood relative, I’d held him in my crosshairs and nearly pulled the trigger.

I close my eyes for a moment, remembering.  It feels so different, so strange.  I’d thought only of strategy to keep Rinaldo’s businesses on top of the Chicago mafia chain yet nothing of the potential relationship I could have with a real brother.

The only thing that mattered was what Rinaldo wanted.

But he’s gone now.

His family is long gone at this point—back to Italy where the crime families over there can keep track of them.  All the businesses belong to me, and I don’t give a shit what happens to them.  I have more money stashed away than I will ever be able to spend.  I’d lived to be in his service, and now that he is dead and his family gone, what do I have that matters?

Alina.

She never gave up on me even when no one else thought I was going to make it.  She kept coming here and checking on me.  Dr. Reiss said Alina would sit next to me, hold my hand, and talk to me for hours.  I remind myself once again how well she understands me.  She knew who I used to be, and apparently thought that man still exists inside of me somewhere.

Does he?  Can I be that person again?

I’m not completely sure if that is good enough.  I had a rough start, and I don’t think I’ll ever fit anyone’s idea of Prince Charming.  I’m on too much medication right now to remember any dreams, but I doubt my nightmares will just disappear when I go home.  I still have the occasional panic attack, and I’m ultimately a mess to anyone in my life.

Alina’s seen all that in me.  What’s more, she saw a different side of me first.  It might not have been in person, but she knows what I went through and seems to get it.

I fucked it up with Lia.  I am not going to let that happen again.

I open my eyes and realize Jonathan and Eddie-boy have been talking the whole time.

“Omarie and Junko were definitely working with them.”  Eddie-boy brings something up on his phone, but I don’t look at it.  “We recovered all the guns from a storage place out in the west side of town.”

“I got a plan for them,” Jonathan says.  “I got security putting it together now.”

“No,” I tell him.  I shake my head vigorously, which makes me a little dizzy.  The last thing I need is more blood on my hands.  I already have a spot in hell right next to Lady Macbeth.

“No?” Jonathan narrows his eyes at me.  “What do ya mean, brotha?  They were in on it.  We gotta take care of them.”

“No, we don’t.  If what you said is right, they were being paid off by Taylor, Beni, and Becca.  All three of them are gone now, so there’s no one left to pay them.  They aren’t a threat anymore.  Let them know they’re getting their one and only pass, and make sure they stay in the south.”

“All right,” Jonathan says with a shake of his head.  “If you say so, boss.  I’ll call off the dogs.”

“I do.”  I look between both men and take a deep breath.  “I’m tired, guys.  I think I need to get some sleep.”

“You got it, boss.”

I don’t chastise Jonathan for his reference, but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.  They both stand to leave, and I reach out for Eddie-boy before he can get away.

“You saved my life,” I say as I grip his hand.  “Thanks, Eddie-boy.”

“Aw, shit, LT.  You saved my ass plenty of times.  You’re going to have to get shot a few more times before we’re even.”

“I’d rather not if that’s okay with you.”

He laughs.

A nurse walks in and places her hands on her hips.

“Visiting hours ended twenty minutes ago.  Mr. Arden needs his rest now.”

“Don’t get your scrubs all in a bunch,” Jonathan says to her.  “We were just goin’.”

I really don’t know what I’m going to do.

“Hello, Evan.”

I look at Mark Duncan for a long moment.  He’s thinner and a little greyer than the last time I saw him.  There’s also a ring on his finger that didn’t use to be there.  I’m actually pleased to see it—he’d been dwelling on a love long gone.

It’s good to move on.

“Are you good to talk to me?” he asks.  “When I heard you were here, I had to come and check on you.  I’m glad to hear that you’re doing so well.  I have to admit, I’m also glad to hear the gunshot was not self-inflicted.”

“You think I would have shot myself?”

“There were times when I thought you were capable of that, yes.”  He sits down on the rolling stool by the bed and lays his notebook on his lap.  He pulls a pen from his pocket and opens up a blank page.  “It’s been a long time since we talked, though.  You’re going to have to catch me up.”

I look at him for a long moment as I remember all the sessions I’d had with him in the past.  We always talked about my experiences while I was deployed because there was nothing in the present I either could talk about or was willing to talk about.  He’d occasionally offer me some insight, but I’d never gotten much out of it.

“No,” I say as I shake my head.

“No?”  Mark cocks his head and looks at me quizzically.  “You don’t want to talk?”

“I don’t want to talk about the past,” I tell him.  “I want…I want…”

I can’t find the right words.  I lick my lips and concentrate, but I don’t know what I want to say.

“I have a girl,” I finally tell him.  “Alina.  I want to make things right with her.”

“Are you fighting?” he asks.

“No, not at all.”  I’m not saying the right things.  “The last girl dumped me, and I don’t want that to happen again.  I don’t want to fuck this one up.”

“All right, Evan,” Mark says as he holds up his notebook.  “I have to get a few things out of the way first so I can complete your assessment.  Then let’s focus on the new relationship.  Does that sound okay?”

“Yeah.”

We go over everything I remember and everything I don’t.  We talk about how I feel physically and how I feel about being out of it for nearly two months.  I tell him that I don’t seem to feel the same now as I did before.

“How do you feel different?”

“I just…I don’t think of things the same way.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Things that used to get me really upset just…well, they don’t anymore.  I don’t care.”

“An example would help me understand.”

“Like, I’ve got all these businesses, right?”

“I understand you had quite an inheritance, yes.”

“I don’t even want them.  I don’t want anything to do with them.  I’m supposed to care.  I’m supposed to run them like Rinaldo did.  I told him I would.  That promise wasn’t made lightly or anything.  I mean…I meant it when I told him I would do it.  But now…”

“Your priorities have changed?”

“Yeah.”  I nod.  “Priorities.  That’s the word I wanted.  Those things that were important just aren’t on the priority list anymore.  It’s not even that they moved down—they aren’t there at all.  I keep waiting for Ralph to show up and tell me how screwed up I am, but he hasn’t.”

“Who’s Ralph?”

I pause, realizing I slipped up.  I never should have mentioned him.

How is he going to help me if I don’t tell him?

“Ralph is kind of hard to explain.”

“Try.”

“I dunno.”  I shrug and look at Mark.  “He’s my imaginary friend, I suppose.  He’s usually around when I haven’t slept and I’m stressed out or having a panic attack.  I know he isn’t real, but I see him anyway.”

“Did this start after you woke up here?” Mark asks.  He’s doing his best not to look concerned, but it’s not working.  His fingers tense around his pen.

“No, it’s been a while now.  I used to see him all the time, but he hasn’t been around lately.”

“So you don’t think it has to do with your injury?”

“No.  I first started seeing him after I got out of prison.  When Lia was around, he stopped appearing.  He came back when she left.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”  Mark’s making furious notes in his little notebook.

“I’m not sure,” I say.  “Sometime before Rinaldo died, I believe.  Things in my head are kinda jumbled.  The timelines are messed up, I think.”

“That’s not uncommon.”

“I think it was around the time Alina moved in with me,” I say.  “I think the last time I saw him was just before that.”

“Can you describe Ralph to me?”

“He’s…he’s…”  I pause and collect myself.  “He’s a kid I killed in Iraq.  An insurgent kid.  He was heading for our base when I shot him.”

“I remember you bringing that up before,” Mark says.  “You refused to give me any details and never mentioned having hallucinations about him.  Why the name Ralph?”

“It just fit.”  I shrug.  I really don’t have a better answer.

“Tell me more about this kid in Iraq.”

“I used to talk to myself a lot,” I tell him.  “That always kind of pissed me off.  Like, it was admitting I was crazy.  Talking to Ralph is still crazy but different.  Does that make any sense?”

“I can at least understand the difference,” Mark says.  “Can you tell me about the
real
Ralph?”

Mark’s tenacious; I have to grant him that.  I go over the story slowly—from the first moment I saw the kid in my crosshairs to exactly seventy-five seconds later, when I pulled the trigger.  By the time I finish, I’m sobbing.

“Who does that?”  I choke out the words.  “Who sends their kid out there like that?  It was a fucking battle zone.  And he knew…I could see it in his eyes.  He knew he was going to die.  He was either going to be shot or he was going to blow himself up.  Someone just sent him out there to die!  Why?  Why the fuck would anyone do that?”

“It was war, Evan,” Mark says quietly.  “People do things in a war that they would never do under other circumstances.  You did what you needed to do to protect your unit.”

“I didn’t protect them,” I remind him.  “They all died a couple of months later.”

Mark passes me a handful of tissues from a box on the side table, and I take a few minutes to get myself back together.

“Shit, I don’t usually do this.”

“Maybe you should.”  Mark stares at me.  “It’s good to see some emotion come out of you, Evan.  That’s not a bad thing at all.”

“Maybe getting all sensitive will help me keep the girl this time.”

“Alina is important to you.”

“Yeah.  You met her?”

“She was here when I came to check on you the first time,” he says.  “She seems very sweet.  She obviously cares about you a lot.”

“I really like her, and she seems to understand me.  Even though she knows what I can be like, she’s stuck by me.  Still, I’m not sure about it all.”

“Why not?”

“Because I thought the same thing about Lia.”

“That was the woman you left Chicago to be with, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to her?”

“She left me.”  I feel my chest tighten up as I remember.  “I came home—I’d been gone a while, and she didn’t know where I was.  I found a note saying she’d left.  My dog fucking
died
for her, and she left me.”

“You never told me about that.”

“It was right before we left,” I say as I take a breath to calm myself.  I don’t want to give Mark a lot of details.  “She was…well, there was an intruder in the apartment.  Odin tried to protect her and was shot.”

“Wow.  That’s a loyal dog.”

“He was.”

“Finding a note is a difficult way to discover a relationship has ended,” Mark says.  “You don’t get a chance to talk about it before the decision is made.  Have you talked to her since?”

“No.  I’m not going to, either.  I can’t go back to that, and I don’t want to.  She made the decision, but I’m respecting it.”

“Fair enough.”

“I just don’t want to fuck up what I have now like I did the last time.  I made a lot of mistakes, and I never really apologized for any of them.  I didn’t care.  I don’t want to be like that now.”

“What do you want, Evan?”

“I
want
to take it all back.  I want to take back all the horrible shit I’ve done in my life and make it all disappear.  I want to start all over.”

“You can’t make it all disappear like it never happened, Evan.  You have to figure out how to live with the consequences of your actions.  You can learn from them—make sure they don’t happen again—but you can’t take them back.  Some actions are simply irrevocable.”

Mark leans forward and places his hand on my arm.

“However, you can still start over.”

Mark finishes up his paperwork and schedules some time with me for tomorrow.  As soon as he leaves, there’s a figure in the shadows along the wall.  I watch as Ralph approaches the end of my bed.

His expression is different.  When I’ve seen him before, he’s always looked either sad or angry.  This time he looks…proud.

“You
are
different now, you know,” he says.

“Am I?”

“Can’t you tell?”  He sits down on the stool and spins side to side.  He looks more childlike than he ever has before.

“Maybe.”  I crumple one of the used up tissues in my hand, squeezing it in my fist.  “If I leave that part of me behind though…what’s left?”

“Someone better.”

I stare at him and notice him becoming more and more transparent as we speak.

“I think I’m done with you,” Ralph says.  He stands up and walks over to the window.

“So that’s it?” I ask.  “You just disappear?”

“You don’t need me anymore.”

“Why did I need you in the first place?”

He smiles and shakes his head slowly.

“You’ve lost what you needed to lose.  The question is what have you gained?”

*****

The hospital staff is surprised by how quickly I recover.  Physical therapy is a bitch, but I’m used to pushing my body to extreme limits.  It feels a bit like basic training again and brings back some good memories for a change.

The mental stuff, well, that’s a little different.

I still don’t recall being shot.  The memories of earlier in the day are pretty clear, but from the time I remember playing with Maisy to the time I woke up in the hospital, there is nothing but a brief glimpse of Don, dead in the alley.

Mark Duncan keeps referring to it all as a miracle.

“So, what?” I ask him.  “Maybe I should have been shot years ago?”

“No, Evan—definitely not.  I don’t want anyone thinking that this kind of damage is somehow beneficial.  In fact, this is probably the most unusual and bizarre thing on the books when it comes to head wounds.  The fact that you survived has odds of a million to one, probably higher.  There may be other issues you haven’t encountered yet.  I also don’t want you assuming that because you’re feeling better right now means your journey is over.  You may feel calmer at the moment, and that’s good, but it doesn’t mean you are suddenly cured.  PTSD doesn’t just disappear.”

“But everything feels different,” I tell him.  I feel like I’m walking a tightrope.  I want him to understand, but I can’t divulge what I’ve been doing with my life.  “All the…the desire for violence in my head… I can’t say that it’s gone, but I know I want things to be different.”

“Evan, you basically had a lobotomy by bullet.”  Mark crosses his arms.  “Do you realize how few people ever survive such a thing?”

“Phineas Gage,” I say.

“Not a bad comparison.”  Mark nods.  “He wasn’t shot though—he had an iron rod blasted through his head.  It also made him more violent and unpredictable.”

“But I’m the opposite.  I
don’t
feel violent.”

“The brain is a baffling thing.  There is still a lot about it we don’t understand.  We do know it has a remarkable way of self-repairing.  New neural pathways are generated to replace the ones that have been damaged.  Even Gage improved drastically over time, and that was with what they knew two hundred years ago.”

I nod.  Our session is over, and Jonathan is waiting outside the door.

“You’re due to be discharged,” Mark tells me.  “I can’t force you to see me after you leave here, but I’d like you to consider it.  My phone number hasn’t changed.  If you ever want to get together, please let me know.”

“I’ll do that,” I tell him.  “Take care of yourself.”

We shake hands, and Mark is on his way.  As he leaves, Jonathan comes in with a report on business activity.  He tells me all about the new bookkeeper he’s hired and how he now has monitoring software in place to watch for discrepancies.  We go over some numbers and shipments, but I’m only half paying attention.  When he’s done, I speak up.

“Jonathan, we need to talk about something else.”