Promises to Keep (3 page)

Jack
rubbed his temples. His head hurt.

What
a terrible day.

Too
many dead. He slumped in his canvas-folding chair, wiped some of the grime off
of his face and tried to think.

The
noise, the chaos and pain reminded him of an earlier terrible day, the day that
changed his life.

An
idiot with a hot rod had been speeding around his neighborhood. Furious, Jack's
father had called the cops. They said that they'd take care of it, but that was
just a bunch of bullshit.

They
didn’t come.

An
hour later, that same dumbass sixteen-year-old kid and his souped-up 1968
Mustang crashed through the living room window, smashed through their brand new
Sony TV, right in the middle of
The Young and The Restless
, and plowed
into his mom.

His Mom
knew that her soap drama was silly—she'd agreed many times that the show was
simply ridiculous. Yet, there she was, every day like clockwork, glued to the
living room couch and following the daily events in the lives of fake people,
while real life passed around her.

At
that instant, had there been a commercial break, had the phone rung, had the
mailman been at the door or had any number of stupid little things happened
just at that very moment to get her off that damned couch, she'd still be alive.

After
the
accident, the police came.

The
firemen and ambulances came, too.

It
was all too late.

Jack
had seen his first dead bodies that day: a stupid teenage boy with a new
driver’s license, and his mother. The boy had died instantly.

With
a basic first aid class in school, Jack thought he knew what to do for his mom.
He'd tried to stop the bleeding as best he could, but it didn’t help. He felt
her pulse get fainter and fainter, and finally stop.

She
mumbled something to him as she died, with her head cradled in his lap. Jack
couldn't hear her, he was crying too hard.

The
paramedics said there'd been nothing that Jack, or anyone, could've done.
There'd been too much damage—stuff about arteries and fractures and
lacerations.

Fifteen.
He'd been fifteen and as silly and unconcerned about the future as any other
fifteen year old. He was a good student and kept out of serious trouble, but
he'd never given much thought about what he was going to do with himself.

Not
anymore. Not after that.

Jack
had been certain that he could've saved her. After all, she was
alive
when he'd run into the living room. She was
alive
when he took her into
his arms.

The
young Jack, the naive Jack, was determined that if he just knew what to do, she
would still be alive. Right then, he decided that he was never going to let his
ignorance cost another family someone they loved—
ever
. At that moment,
he decided that medicine,
emergency
medicine, was his calling.

Since
then, he’d seen many dead bodies and he’d saved countless people, too. While
the adrenaline rush of an emergency could be a thrill, it was rescuing and
preserving life, pulling people away from the threshold of certain death that
really did it for him.

It
justified his existence to himself. It justified all of the long hours he'd
spent studying and working. It somehow absolved him of the sin of being an
ignorant fifteen-year-old boy, who hadn't a clue how to save one of the people most
dear to him.

All
in all, if he’d been keeping records, Jack figured that he was well ahead, and
the Grim Reaper was behind by a decent margin.

When
he'd signed up for the Navy to pay for medical school, he'd never imagined that
he'd be sitting in the sand, hunched over a desk made of two MRE crates stacked
on top of each other, trying to write one of the worst letters imaginable.

As
head surgeon for the third Marine Battalion, he'd seen a lot of good men die,
but this one was one of his medical staff. This was personal.

Moreover,
it was my fault.

Jack
leaned over the crate and looked at the blank sheet of paper in the mercifully
setting afternoon sun. The canvas flaps of the aid station tent shifted in the
gentle breeze with a barely perceptible hiss.

Tradition
held, as the officer in charge of the dead man, he was responsible to write a
condolence letter to the next of kin. Hell, there was even a template for one,
spelled out in regulations.

Jack
hadn't even known that until Chief Whitley—senior enlisted Corpsman in Jack's
unit, an all-around crusty old salt and Jack's right hand man—had pulled him
aside and explained it all to him.

Navy
doctors didn't get much of an orientation to the life and responsibilities of
being an officer as well as a doc. Jack still found a lot of it confusing.

He
had the prescribed format in his lap, also provided by the good Chief. Eyes
narrowed, he tried to make some sort of sense of it.

Like
anything in the Navy, the things you were expected to cover were set down in
precise bullet points. A) Sorry about your loss,
"insert name here."
B) _____was a good sailor/Marine and an asset to his unit. C) "
Put
something personal about how much he/she was liked here
." And, D) “
How
sorry you are goes here."

It
was such bullshit—all of it.

Bob
Wynn was a good guy, Jack thought. Green, a little overeager at times and a
little lazy at other times, but generally, he was an OK kid. He was a decent
corpsman when he wasn't hiding from doing things. He needed a little
"encouragement" now and then to do his job, but he wasn't bad at it.

Bob
Wynn had been simple and unsophisticated, yet there'd been a kindness in him.
Something wholesome.

The
way that he’d faced death had been an unexpected surprise and had earned him more
than a little of Jack's respect. For a moment, Jack remembered the courageous
and selfless manner in which Bob Wynn had chosen to pass away.

“Take
care of someone else. Take care of yourself. I’ll be OK. I don’t mind dying
alone. I’ll be thinking of Laura.”

Who'd
expect that a green kid of that age had
that
kind of decency in him?
He'd thought of others with his last breath.

It
made Jack wonder. What might Bob have been capable of becoming if he’d lived?
If he’d been given the chance to grow up?

Yet,
now Bob Wynn was dead. None of the “what if’s” mattered anyway, and Jack had to
figure out how to write a letter to his wife.

Fuck
me. Wynn had a wife and a kid on the way, and he couldn't have been twenty-one
yet.

A
part of Jack thought that Wynn was stupid and naive to be married at such a
young age. Yet another part of him was jealous. It would be nice to have a
woman waiting at home. Someone who'd be there for him.

Someone
who loved him.

Loved.
What a concept. Jack’s chest tightened and something low in his gut did, too. For
a long moment, he sat and considered the matter, lost in possibilities. For all
his youth and inexperience, Bob Wynn might have had the important things
figured out.

Maybe
I’m the idiot.

Shooting
started up in the distance. Jack heard it way out in the middle of the city. It
was accompanied by the familiar sound of long, low rolling booms from
explosives.

He
knew that his free time would rapidly drift away, as more wounded Marines came
in to their collection of tents and trucks that made up this "ER."

"Bullshit,"
Jack said as he crumpled up the official template for condolence letters. He
tossed it aside, into the dirt. Bob’s wife deserved better.

Determined,
he bent forward and began to write his letter.

North
Carolina.

Laura
Wynn opened the door to her apartment and kicked off her shoes.

Her
back hurt.

Standing
on unforgiving tile floors all day, slinging drinks to fishermen and tourists
wasn't an easy job, but she still had to do it. By the end of her shift, it
pained her to walk the six blocks back home. She no longer had a car, so she
just had to do that, too.

She'd
gotten a small pension from the Navy when Bob died, but he'd forgotten to fill
out his serviceman's group life insurance paperwork before he went overseas.
All she received from them was a wooden, "We're sorry, but we can't help
you."

Yeah,
she'd get a monthly check that amounted to a fraction of his pay when he was
alive, but it didn't even begin to cover the rent, much less anything else.

So
every day, she found herself walking to Clancy's Irish Pub. She'd sling booze
and snacks for eight, ten or twelve hours, and then walk back again. Once home,
she'd sit alone in front of the TV before going off to bed, only to do it again
the next day.

At
least I don't have to worry about anybody else to feed,
she
thought, as she absently rubbed her belly. She’d miscarried and that still hurt
too.

When
Bob died and then the baby, Laura felt indescribable numbness, followed by an
all-encompassing, heart-wrenching sadness.

It
took a while, but she’d gotten over that.

Laura
had been fighting a hard battle to stubbornly find her way in the precarious,
“just take one-step at a time,” and “you can get through this” gloom that was
her life.

Giving
in to misery was not in Laura’s nature.

Giving
in or getting high had been her mother’s solution—not hers.

There
was a pile of envelopes lying on the scuffed wooden floor. They were exactly
where they'd landed upon being stuffed through the slot in the door by the
mailman.

Laura
bent down with a groan and picked them up.

She
groaned again as she went through them. Bill, bill, bill, her mother writing
again
asking when she was going to share all of her "gov'ment" money,
another bill and one dingy envelope, marked "free postage, armed forces,
Iraq."

At
first, she thought it was from Bob. Could it be a letter finally reached her,
long after his death? It was like one of those military mail mix-ups she'd seen
in war movies as a kid. A pang of pain went through her as she thought of him.
Why'd he have to die?

All
of the promise in his future, all the pure, sweet innocent love he had for her,
everything was
gone.
Just now, after a hard day’s work, she didn’t feel
up to reading an enthusiastic and loving letter from her dead husband. Not
right this minute.

Maybe
not ever.

Wholesome
and kind-hearted, I cared for Bob. I admired him. Yet, I never really loved him—not
like he loved me. Together we had the potential for something more. I wanted to
have his child. That was all we had, but it had been enough.

She
was about to put the letter down on the hallway table when she caught the
return address.

Laura
didn't recognize the name, but it certainly wasn't from Bob. This made her
curious enough to look. After fetching herself a beer from the kitchenette
fridge, she settled down on her threadbare couch to open it.

Bob
had been in the ground for over a month by then—Hell, they'd been married less
time than that. Laura couldn’t remember much from the moment she was told that
Bob was dead, until right after the funeral.

Was
this weird form of amnesia from what had happened? Or was it more from the way
that everything had been so professionally taken care of?

It
was so cold. So impersonal. How else could it be done?

Discovering
Bob’s death was a chaotic blur that started with dour men in uniforms with a
bunch of shiny stuff on their chests at her front door. They told her how sorry
they were, but they had something to tell her. Could they please come in? She'd
better have a seat first.

Everything
out of their mouths seemed to have been memorized by rote, as if they were
quoting a manual or something.

"We're
sorry to inform you...blah, blah...deepest regrets...blah, blah...will help in
any way we can...blah, blah."

It
was false and she knew it. It didn't feel genuine or sincere—it felt fake.
Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it just seemed that way to her because they had to do it
so many damned times. It had become just the same lines, in the same play that
they repeated over and over again.

It
really didn't matter if they cared or not. Bob was still dead, and she was
still alone. She was still living in this crappy apartment that she could
barely afford, with a crappy job and an uncertain future.

At
least she’d almost managed to pay off the debt from her car that her ex crashed
when DUI. Two more payments to go, thank God.

For
a moment, she recalled Bob’s family: four tall older brothers, two younger
sisters, a somber father and his mother. Her husband had come from a big
family. Laura was happy he'd had that.

As
an only child, she imagined how much fun it would be to have built-in
playmates, to never to be lonely and never to be alone. No wonder he’d been so
happy and idealistic. Inexperienced and sweetly naive, at least Bob knew who he
was. He’d had a broad and secure foundation to build on.

She
felt guilty for not having a big wedding in Iowa—his family would've loved
that. But everything was all done in such a rush as Bob had to ship out. Bob’s
family were overjoyed that his wife was pregnant.

Laura
called and spoke to his mother about her miscarriage already. Giving them that
news during the funeral would have made burying her son even more painful.

Bob’s
mom had made a huge impression on her during the memorial service.

The
woman was a stout, dowdy lady with forearms that could crack walnuts and a red,
tear-streaked face. Mrs. Wynn put her arms around Laura and hugged her with
strength that a fully-grown boa constrictor would admire.

“My
boy loved you,” she sniffed. “You made him a happy man. I thank the good Lord
every day for that. It ain’t right for a man to die without having been loved
by his wife, and I know you loved him. You’re a blessing, sweetheart. You’re
family now. You need anything, you call us, OK?”

For
one long moment, Laura basked in those strong arms, wondering about the love
that a
real
mother might give her. She even seriously considered going
home with Bob’s family. Could she make a fresh start in Iowa?

It
was her love of the ocean that held her back. How could she live landlocked?
She’d feel trapped and smothered in the center of the continent. Surrounded by
earth, as if buried alive.

No,
she had to live near the ocean.

The
seaside was the only place where Laura felt she could breathe.