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She was helping the wounded, you know. She’d only had basic medical training, but she demanded to be out on the front lines, helping those who had been hurt get to safety. She’d always wanted to help people.
Her dream was to become a paramedic
. Pretty ambitious for a woman at the time, but I can’t imagine anyone better suited for the profession. I never even got to say goodbye, or thank you, to her. The bomb tore her to pieces, literally destroyed her until there was nothing left. I remember the
last thing she said to me was ‘don’t leave the shelter
, I don’t want you dead okay?’ It’s ridiculously ironic, really.

Anyway, after that I realised that I was tired of doing nothing. Of never being good enough. I wanted to do something with my life, something more than cowering in a stupid bomb shelter and watching as other people’s lives were destroyed around me. I wanted to be who my sister was: al
ways trying to change the world
around her. So I enlisted. Went through the training, got spit on and had my nose bloodied and broke a few noses myself, and eventually got my uniform.
They shipped me out to the battlefields, to fight for ‘our country’ and all of that patriotic shit they feed you when it’s not their lives they’re sacrificing. Anything to keep you loyal, really. Anything to keep you fighting, to make you believe that you still have something to fight for that’s bigger and better and more important than your own damn life.

People who say that war ‘isn’t that bad’ are those who have never experienced it first-hand. It certainly was not the glamorous, heroic duty to your country they made it out to be. We slept in trenches at night, maybe for an hour or two at a time, before the shells woke us up again. That’s why they call it shell shock, you know. After a while it just becomes too much to take and you begin to lose your mind. You think it’s never going to end, that life is just this constant routine of eat, sleep, shoot, pray.
You hear the shots in your head and drop to the ground on instinct, because you know you only have a split second to save yourself. At night you see the faces of those you’ve killed during the day, imprinted on the backs of your eyelids.
You see the expression of fear on your friend’s face as he dies in your arms. You see the hardness in your commander’s eyes, when he tells you that there’s no guarantee you’ll get out alive. You replay the last conversations you had with your family, wondering if you’ll ever get to keep those promises you made or answer those questions you couldn’t at the time.

But t
here’s no escape from war
.
It’s the darkest side of humanity, and some of that darkness stays with you even when it’s over. It burrows into your chest and stays there like a par
asite, festering with time. N
othing can ever really destroy it completely. It breaks everyone in some way. When I came back, I was mute. The depression threatened to overcome me, and my mother was in no position to help. I went to a psychologist for a year, but I still couldn’t speak or sleep at night. And then, I met her.

She was the
reason I started to live again. She was working as a nurse in the hospital at the time. She was so much like my sister, always wanting to help people, but
at the same time so different. Unlike the others s
he
did
n’t treat me like fragile glass, as if I would snap at any moment and go on a homicidal rampage
. She treated me like anyone else, as if I had never gone to war. She would sneak into my room in the evenings with an extra pudding cup, some tea and a new story to share about her colleagues. She didn’t mind if I couldn’t reply, she seemed to understand. She said once that she would wait for me, wait until I was ready and that hearing my voice for the first time would be something really special.
She said I was worth waiting for.
So I spoke for her. I said ‘thank you’ for everything she had done for me, for not giving up on me, for believing that I was not just a lost cause like everyone else had labelled me to be. A year later we got married. It was a small ceremony held at the beach, nothing fancy, but it was one of the best days of my life.
I’ve loved the sea ever since, because it reminds me of that day and of the colour of her eyes.
I felt the darkness lift, if only for a few hours. She accidentally threw the bouquet into the sea. And we danced barefoot on the sand, but a crab bit me, so I crashed into her and got her dress wet. It just made her laugh harder though. I miss her laugh more than anything now. I still watch over her, from this purgatory, but it seems like nothing can make her laugh the way she laughed for me anymore.

We put o
ur money together and got a small
house. I found work at a travel agent, and she continued being a nurse. We were happy. Not that fake happiness people claim they feel when really they’re just biding their time for something better, but real happiness. I didn’t want anything else except for her, and I think she felt the same. I could live wit
h not having the money for fancy holidays or cars
. I was truly content during those years, and having her by my side each night subdued the nightmares. We had a son together, and a few years later another son.
I loved them both dearly, even more because they had
eyes the exact same shade as the sea, just like her. I
promised myself that I would do everything in my power to give them happy childhoods. I
never wanted them to experience the abandonment
I felt
from my father.
And for a while everything was perfect. I felt like I had made up for some of the horrible things I had done.
Family trips to the seaside, Sunday morning breakfasts, rainy day car trips, those are the sorts of things I remember when I think about them.
Sounds sappy, I know.
But then, when my oldest son was only 5 years old, I was diagnosed with cancer. It was a brain tumour that had developed into cancer – the worst kind, because it’s almost impossible to treat.
I thought of it as retribution, and a sick little part of me that had never let go of the darkness was glad because I
felt that I could finally repay my sins.

I knew I was dying, that the disease was terminal. My wife however refused to accept it; she said that I had survived a
war
, that after overcoming so much it was ludicrous to die by some stupid illness. I was calmly resigned to it though. Maybe it was because I had spent so many years already resigned to my own death, anticipating it at every gunshot. I was sad, yes, that it had to come now after everything had finally worked out for me, but that’s life I guess. Unpredictable and cruel.
Anyway, my wife insisted on finding a cure. She was willing to pay all sorts of ridiculous sums of money which we didn’t have to private doctors. I tried to convince her that it was useless, but she just wouldn’t believe me. ‘You’ve given up so much already for nothing in return’ she used to say, ‘but your life is just too much.’

I didn’t want her and my children to live in poverty while she drained our money on cures that would never work. I didn’t want them to worry about me. I didn’t want to be the darkness in their lives, the constant shadow which had been following me around for so long. So I did the only thing I could think of. I lied to my wife. I told her that the hospital had made a mistake, that I didn’t have cancer after all. I waited a few weeks, and then I left the house. I told her I didn’t love her anymore, lying the whole time. It killed me to say those things, but at the time I was convinced it was the only way to make things slightly better for them. This way she wouldn’t try to track me down. I figured betrayal would be better than them witnessing my slow, painful death.

I lived the last few months of my life in a hospice, in this same city. I didn’t have the strength to move further away. I never saw my family again, so I guess they must have believed me.
I made the staff promise to keep my death a secret
, so they would never find out.
So far, it’s worked.”

Brian stopped talking abruptly, and a pained expression crossed his face.
His eyes were faraway, no longer in the present.
Sean could see the weariness in his eyes, more prominent than before, and was surprised that he hadn’t noticed it before. This wasn’t just anguish from reliving the painful events of his life, it went deeper than that. This was a constant ache and cynicism that permeated his very being, entwined with his essence until the two could no longer be distinguished.
It was a look that Sean found distinctly familiar. But where had he seen it before?
Sean was silent for a long time, not knowing what to say. Because really, what could he possibly say that would change anything? Any words of comfort he tried to offer now would sound insignificant and petty comp
ared to the enormity of the agony
that Brian must have felt, and must still be feeling.

“I-I’m sorry,” Sean stuttered at last. “I never knew…everything that you’ve gone through and suffered. How do you cope, watching them from here but knowing you can never go back again?”

Brian shrugged, but the haze shrouding his eyes seemed to dissipate. “You get used to it after a while,” he answered gruffly, as if embarrassed by his show of emotion. “And it’s not so bad. As long as they’re safe, and happy, I have something to keep me going.”

“Are they happy?”

“Maybe not at the moment, but one day…I hope they can understand why I left.” Brian glanced at Sean, and there was a strange emotion in his eyes. Almost like remors
e. But it was fleeting, like the flutter of wings from the nightingales in the brush.

“Do you regret it?” Sean asked quietly.

“Sometimes. But everyone has something they regret. It doesn’t mean they made the wrong choice. Because you can’t always win, you know, sometimes you can only make the decision that hurts the least. It’s so easy to lose yourself thinking about how you could have made t
hings perfect, but it’s not always an option.” Sean nodded, not knowing how to respond. “This is what I’m trying to tell you,” Brian continued. “You can’t just make these assumptions without knowing the full story. Right now my family thinks that I deserted them, and I don’t blame them for believing it, but it’s not the truth. I never wanted to leave. Perhaps there’s more to Drew than you think, too. P
erhaps if you get to know him a little better, you’ll find that his motives are far more complex than you originally thought.”

Sean narrowed his eyes. “
You keep preaching at me about that.
It really sounds like you know something you’re not telling me.”

“What would I know?” Brian smiled mischievously, and any trace of the pain in his eyes was buried once more. “I am but a helpful stranger.”

Sean scoffed,
mostly at the ‘helpful’ bit,
but did not press the subject. He could tell that Brian was not being entirely truthful, but doubted he would be able to get much more out of the man tonight. “So what about Penny, then? Is
she related to you or something?” His gaze flitted to the long grass, where the little girl was just visible, laying still in the night.

“No, she’s not.
She was born with a heart defect. She had an operation to try and fix it, but she was weak and died during the surgery. Terribly sad, she’s a sweet girl and she was so confused in the beginning. I found her outside her old home, crying because her hand kept passing through the doorknob. She told me her parents were inside and that they were upset about something. She said she didn’t understand why they were ignoring her and why they wouldn’t let her in because she didn’t like being left alone outside. She kept on asking me what she’d done wrong to make them angry with her. It took me a while to explain everything.
I mean, it’s hard enough trying to explain the concept of death to a six year old, let alone all of
this.
” He waved a hand at himself for emphasis. “I’m surprised I didn’t completely destroy all of her innocence. I got through to her eventually. I felt like it was my…responsibility to look after her. I’d already had a lifetime of experiences and good memories, it didn’t seem fair that she should have to die before really beginning to live. It still doesn’t seem fair. It was the same thing for Drew as well. He was so timid and scared in the beginning, just after he died. Bitter as well, not that I blame him. He was nothing like the smartass he acts like now. If I hadn’t found him and tried to pull him out of it, he might have ended up like one of those blank faces you saw on the street. I guess I thought that if there were three of us, we could be some sort of make-shift family.” Sean noted that there was admiration in the man’s eyes as he talked about Drew, something he could not understand.

“Stop trying to change my mind about him,” Sean growled, fighting down the annoyance. “Whatever you say, no matter how much you
respect
him for whatever reason, it won’t change what he did. And what he did to me was wrong, even you can’t argue with that.”

Sean was surprised to see anger enter Brian’s eyes, if only momentarily. “I was simply answering your question. I did not try to change your mind about anything. I am only asking you to be open-minded.”

“Okay, fine,” Sean sighed. “Can we just talk about something else? I’m tired of talking about Drew, and I’m tired of arguing.”

Brian shrugged, but seemed to become more relaxed after that. “Okay. Then maybe it’s your turn to tell me your story.”