Devil’s in the Details (36 page)

Clearing my throat, I glanced at the Go Navy! Sign hanging over my bed, "I looked you up on the internet Victoria. I read about what happened on May 7th, 2004. Well, what the news wanted to tell the world about that day."

I heard her let out a heavy breath, "Can you come over? I don't want to do this over the phone." Her voice now had the slightest quiver to it.

Moving to the closet, I started unconsciously grabbing the clothing I had stolen from her, dumping them into a bag. I had been down this road more than once, twice, three times, shit it had been a lot of times that I was returning borrowed clothes and facing the inevitable, it's not you it's me, talk. Followed by the stupid break up speech that would always come next.

I knew what would come next after hearing, I don't want to do this over the phone or over text. "Yes, but only if we talk honestly. Lay it all out, Victoria. You don't need to hide from me. I can't keep doing this if you want to keep hiding from me." I paused, knowing I was back to where we were the last time I made nachos in my apartment.

I was fighting a hopeless battle, but at least I would go down in flames, "I meant what I said. All of it." I drifted off, zipping up my bag and catching Baby sitting on the edge of my one pillow.

I almost went to reach for him too, to add him in with the rest when Victoria's voice filled my ear. "Then honesty you will get. It won't be pretty, and it won't be polished up like the news has done. There are things missing in all of those reports and video clips I know you watched. It will be brutal, harsh, painful, but it will be me, Alex. You will be getting me." Victoria cleared her throat, "I will see you in an hour." She hung up before I could reply or comment on the fact I caught the tail end of a sob as she pulled the phone away.

Victoria never cried.

Pulling into her driveway, I didn't get out right away. I sat for a moment, staring at the front door with the porch light on, and then staring at the time on my watch. It was close to two in the morning, and like the saying went, nothing good happens after midnight. Granted, the saying generally referred to getting wasted and having one night stands, but sitting in my raggedy mini, the saying felt heavier to me. Like a foreshadowing phrase of what was actually waiting for me. What could be so bad that Victoria had to warn me? Prepare me for? She knew I was a nurse and had more stories of gore and graphic debauchery than a B horror movie.

Then the one thought that got me here and kept me motivated to actually come to her house fell into my head, I loved her. I loved Victoria like no one before and for the many red flags and gut feelings that told me to leave it, I couldn't. I loved her more than anything and I would always regret it if I let her fade away out of fear of what was waiting for me. The horrid truths that kept Victoria locked away from the world and me.

I let out a heavy sigh, grabbed my bag and got out of the car. The upside to the hour long drive back to her house was that I was able to collect my thoughts and become the nurse I was. The one who was detached, but caring. The woman who could handle the gore, shout orders and go toe to toe with any doctor or surgeon especially if I knew they were wrong. If Victoria wanted to put on masks, I could too. I would handle her truths like I would looking at someone's chart, only looking for the facts as my heart hid behind the walls to keep it safe.

Walking up the stone path, I saw a white piece of note paper taped to the door.

"
Alex. The door is open. I’ll be in the den. Please lock it behind you."

I frowned, shaking my head as I snatched the note off the door, crumpling it in my hand. I didn't like how this was already starting off.

Opening the door, I dropped my bag on the floor underneath the coat rack before turning to close and secure the door as instructed. I moved to go into the den, tugging the edges of the long sleeved thermal I threw on in haste, before folding my arms. "Victoria?" I called out tentatively, hoping to mask the burgeoning nerves and anger that were colliding all at once.

"In the den."

Victoria's voice had not a hint of emotion to it. I sighed hard and walked to the den. This was going to be a long night, and not in the way I had imagined it when she showed up at my apartment and started taking my clothes off, groping me in the most amazing ways imaginable. I walked around the corner into the den, looking into the kitchen to see a half empty bottle of bourbon sitting next to a glass smeared with fingerprints, "I locked the door as you asked."

Coming around the corner of the living room, I paused when I turned my head to look into the den. Victoria was standing at the far window across from her desk, looking out it as the night sky was clear enough for the moon and stars to be seen. She had her eyes focused on the sky with her arms folded, still wearing the same clothes she had worn to my apartment, but that wasn't what made me pause. It was the line of items neatly laid out on top of the large wooden desk that drew my full attention.

The shadowbox of her medals sat on the far corner, opened and some of them pulled out to sit on the desktop to the right of the box. Next to that was a thick brown file folder that had the appearance of passing through many hands to get to where it now rested. Underneath the file were a few photographs and patches with dark stains on them and looked to be torn off whatever uniform they had once belonged on.

Taking a step towards the desk, Victoria began to speak, "May 7th was when I was rescued. They never bothered to tell anyone that I had been missing for almost twenty five days. That I was taken hostage since I was the commanding officer and tortured for twenty four of those twenty five days." Victoria peered over her shoulder, nodding at the items on her desk. "Go ahead. It's all there."

I swallowed hard and went for the file, sliding my forefinger under the front page and opening it. I had to hold back the gasp as the first thing I saw were bright color photographs of what I could best describe as the scene of a rescue. I fanned most of the pictures out, grimacing as I caught Victoria's face covered in red splotches. I picked up one that caught my full attention, it was a picture of Victoria sitting outside a building made from stone and mud, smoke billowing around it as she sat on a chunk of broken wall. She was looking off to the side of the photographer, ignoring the person crouched in front of her. Her face was covered in blood. Blood that ran down her face, over her uniform and down to her hands in a morbid abstract painting way. An abstract painting that looked like it fell out of a horror film. I could see large cuts on her forehead, rope burns around her neck and wrists.

There was something in her eyes that upset me deeply, it was the look I had seen far too many times and seeing it in the face of the one I loved with my whole heart, made me want to throw up. I clenched my jaw and looked to the edge of the desk to steady myself, glancing up to look at Victoria now facing me.

Her face was still void of emotion, looking right in my eyes she started speaking again, "It wasn't a citizen refugee rescue envoy I was on. It wasn't a humanitarian mission that went wrong. I was sent in there as an intelligence officer working with the CIA and the NSA in conjunction with the Navy's own intelligence branch. I was to lead a team of six into the small village, town, whatever you want to call it, and interrogate the elders and others. All of us knew that the Iraqi army had folded up and disappeared into the outlying areas of Baghdad hiding with the innocents."

Victoria looked down at her arms, "I wasn't lying to you about my background at the Academy. I just never told you that I had been selected for the intelligence sector because of my test scores and what my instructors saw in me. I wanted to be a Surface Warfare Officer and sail the seas. What I became was an intelligence officer. One who was sent out exactly like you see in the movies. Extract information, but in a gentler way since the states were facing backlash for other techniques they used. So, they picked the top female intel officers and sent us to the desert. I was handpicked by the CIA and the NSA to go into the roughest parts of Baghdad and try to gather intel under a very classified mission that was never to see the light of day. I was twenty-three, young and eager to start my career. Fresh out of the Academy and willing to do my part for the war effort. We were only supposed to gather intel, talk to a few people and send it back. Let the CIA and other agencies do the dirty work." Victoria smirked sarcastically, "But nothing about that was simple. Nothing about war is ever simple, clean and easy."

I stared at the woman, trying hard to hold firm as her voice lacked emotion as she told her story. I turned back down to look at the photographs. "I wouldn't have cared about that, your job in intelligence. I know a lot people who work for the government in jobs that they can't ever really talk about."

I picked up a few aerial photographs, "I just care that you let me in." I kept my voice steady. I wanted to show her that I was listening, but wasn't going to take the usual bullshit reasons Victoria gave for why she couldn't do anything. Couldn't let me touch her, let me love her, let me in.

I felt Victoria move closer to me, "Alex, this is all part of the story of who I am now, who I became." She waved at the photographs, "What's in there is why I can't..."

She let out a soft sigh, "Why I can't be touched." Victoria's voice shook as she spoke, something I had never heard from her. Another little thing that told me that what she was sharing me was a huge piece of her, a huge piece of her past that had not yet seen the light of day outside of those involved.

I let out my own heavy sigh, closing my eyes, opening my mouth to say something when Victoria filled the awkward pause. "The mission went wrong when our intel was tainted. The insurgents got a hold of it and set my unit up. We never stood a chance as they swarmed us. I was taken first since it was clear I was the commanding officer by the stupid brown bar insignia on my collar. The insurgents had studied our ranking system and I was so young that I hadn’t learned the tricks of ripping patches off to hide your identity."

Victoria now stood on the opposite end of the desk. Leaning forward on it, she reached across to the file. Moving the pictures on the top of the stack out of the way, they shifted to images with less dirt and sand filled. The ones at the bottom were cleaner, more sterile looking.

It was pictures of Victoria in a hospital gown sitting on the edge of a bed. Her face was clean, clearly showing the damage done to her face. Her eyes were swollen shut, the gashes and bruises on her forehead and cheeks told me that she had been beaten repeatedly. There were pictures of her hands, swollen and cut in a way that resembled defense wounds. "They beat me. Beat me every day until I passed out hoping I would give up information. They hit harder when they saw I was a woman as my long blonde hair fell free of its ties. Thinking the harder they hit me, the quicker I would give in." She held up the last photograph in front of my face, "I never gave in. Every punch they gave me, I stood back up, ready to take the next one."

She reached around and tapped at the image to draw my attention to it, "Then there's this. This was when their fists stopped having any effect on me. It frustrated them that every time they punched me or slapped me, I would just stare back at them harder in silence or repeat the same bullshit story I’d been fed to use as a cover in case of capture. Recycling old intel that would lead them back to their own pockets of supplies or insurgent hiding places." She picked the photograph up and held it between us so we both could look at it as she continued.

Looking down at the photograph, I had to bite the inside of my cheek to hold back the strangled sound that wanted to come out. It was of Victoria's back. Covered in bruises down to the one spot I knew there was a scar, but instead of puckered and raw skin, there was angry red burns turning yellow at the edges as infection began to set in. There were large puncture holes, three of them, and I could easily see they had been reopened over and over, with whatever tool that had caused them, used repeatedly. Those wounds were also filled with signs of infection and poor medical treatment.

"They moved to dirty steel rods, sharpened into spikes. Letting a few of them to sit in the fire pit they sat me in front of all day. Forcing me to watch the metal turn a bright molten red color. When the spikes were hot enough, they would pick it up out of the fire and re-ask their questions. Teasing me with the heat and the bright blinding color of the spikes. Thrusting them close enough to my face, I could feel and smell my eyebrows burn."

Victoria tilted her head up to look at the ceiling. "When I wouldn't answer their questions, they would start by driving a clean, cold sharp spike into my back. Tearing through the skin like it was nothing, causing me to almost bleed out. When I was just on the verge of passing out, they would switch to the hot spike to cauterize the wound and stop my bleeding. The extreme pain from the heat and the smell of my own flesh burning would wake me up so they could start the process all over."

Victoria held the photograph up until I took it from her with a shaking hand. My eyes and mind struggling to maintain the nurse in me and not fall apart at what I was looking at. Looking at the one I loved with everything like this. Bloodied, broken.

Victoria straightened up, "I'd endure anywhere from six to fifteen cycles of this particular treatment each day from morning to nightfall. Some days they would beat me after, some days they would leave me after I passed out. All I can remember is the pain and the harsh sounds of men yelling at me in Farsi, Arabic and broken English, asking the same goddamn questions over and over. I would only tell them a few things to keep the others in my team alive. Small useless pieces of intel that was true but would lead them to nothing."