His Road Home (2 page)

“I heard soldiers arrive at Walter Reed Hospital within twenty-four to thirty-six hours, so you should go right away.”

“Right away?” The phone bounced against her cheek, and she realized her hands shook, perhaps from lack of food, or perhaps from the crazy events of this evening.

“When I say we’re behind you, it’s not a bumper sticker. If you need extra days from the leave bank, they’re yours.” It sounded like his voice cracked. “We care, Grace. You’re part of the Fisheries team. We want to help.”

A response seemed to be expected, so she whispered her thanks.

“By the way, congratulations. Have you set a date?”

“Ahhh—” She didn’t want to lie, but the knowledge that he’d reserved a plane ticket for her stuck the truth in her throat.

“I’m sorry.” He half laughed. “My wife would flash-freeze me. A wedding must be the last thing on your mind.”

“Er, yes.” Lies by omission were still lies, and still tasted like cardboard.

How, she wondered after they’d disconnected, was she going to tell her boss that the latest American hero wasn’t her fiancé, he was a liar?

* * *

“Grace! Grace!” a familiar voice called from across the check-in area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Her sister, Jenni, approached pushing a luggage cart that held a large cardboard apple box. “Ha! Thought you could sneak away like you always do.”

“Jenni.” Even at eleven p.m., her sister’s lipstick looked fresh and her long hair was tangle free, making Grace aware that she had chosen to wear fleece and clogs for the red-eye flight.

The airport wasn’t crowded on Saturday nights. Grace was the next customer at the counter. Her plane started boarding in twenty minutes, but apparently the way her boss had arranged the ticket required her to see a desk attendant, which didn’t leave her time to deal with Jenni. Five minutes earlier and she would’ve missed the unexpected Spanish Inquisition.

“Glad I caught you before you checked luggage.” Jenni wheeled the cart through the exit lane to reach Grace.

“I’m not checking a bag.”

“Yes, you are.” At the open position, Jenni heaved the box onto the scale. “We had a school assembly and everyone made cards and signed a banner. The teachers who remembered Rey spoke, and so did his sister. Lucky I caught you so I don’t have to pay postage.”

Jenni’s words meant everyone in town had discussed Grace’s supposed engagement. People had speculated about her and a man she didn’t know, their couplehood suddenly a given. Her stomach plummeted into her clogs, and no smiling cartoon apples and pears on the side of a box were going to reassure her.

As the digital scale settled at fifty-four pounds, Grace asked, “How did you know I was at the airport?” She hadn’t told her family she was flying to D.C., because she didn’t have answers for the inevitable questions.

Jenni was too wrapped up in bargaining with the woman on the other side of the counter over the extra eighty-five-dollar charge for overweight items to hear or respond. “But she’s taking it to her wounded fiancé! He was hurt in Afghanistan.”

She tuned out the rest of her sister’s spiel by staring at the departure monitors. Boarding began in fifteen minutes. Without her sister’s interference, she would already be finished here.

“Thank you so much.” Jenni beamed at the clerk. “What’s your name so she can submit a compliment card?”

Score another for her sister, and two more minutes of time at the desk. “Let’s just go.”

“I realize you’re in shock.” Jenni headed with her toward the security lines. “But you need some game face.” She glanced sideways at Grace. “Start with makeup. You look blah.”

“Big surprise. I feel blah.” She’d spent most of the last twenty-four hours online trying to understand her situation. She shouldn’t have read internet comments, but she was cursed to be a researcher. The women who wanted to trade places were weird, and the nuts who thought people like her and Cruz ruined the United States were scary, but the men who posted graphically lewd comments describing what they wanted to do to her had made her spend the darkest hours of last night locked in her bathroom.

“You can’t show it. You need to look good. How long since you last saw Reynaldo?” Jenni’s pronunciation sounded Spanish, reminding Grace that her sister was a bilingual elementary teacher.

“Never. I have to tell you—” Her sister hustled into the line at a coffee stand before Grace finished speaking.

“Let’s get you snacks for the plane. What do you want?”

“Nothing, thanks.” Although the security line was as short as check-in, she didn’t think there was time to stop.

“Two double tall nonfat lattes.” As usual, Jenni knew best and didn’t hesitate. “Oops, can’t take that through security, just one. And a bag of chocolate almonds and a croissant.” She turned to Grace with her eyebrows raised as if conveying a significant fact. “It’s nine dollars.”

Eight sixty-four, but Grace pulled a twenty from her wallet. Before she said goodbye, she wanted to make her sister understand. “The engagement isn’t real.”

“Whether he formally proposed down on one knee or not doesn’t matter. It’s too late to dump him.” Jenni shifted the latte to her other hand and pulled Grace’s rolling suitcase through the rope line toward the security station without stopping her mouth. “It’s not what’s on the outside, whatever that might be after his injuries, that matters. He’s still the same person on the inside. Even my students know that.”

“Will you listen?” She quickened her pace to keep up with her sister. The urge to make Jenni shut up before they reached the security desk filled Grace’s chest until she wanted to scream, deny being the local hero’s fiancée and kick a path free. However, only deranged people begged to be Tasered by airport police, so she blew out a breath and tried again in the calmest voice she could manage. “He lied.”

“Whatever he lied about, forget it. He’s hurt, everyone thinks you’re engaged and your boss bought your ticket. So you go.”

“It was frequent flier—” she recognized a verbal detour, Jenni’s specialty. “How do you know that? And how did you know I was going to D.C. tonight?” Jenni hadn’t answered that question at check-in.

“Umma called him because that one little text you sent her saying everything was fine and not to worry made her worry.”

Her life was a deep pile of kimchi, getting deeper. “The point I’m trying to make is, we’re not engaged!” This time she failed to modulate her voice, and both the security officer and the passenger ahead of them at the podium looked up, frowning.
Chill
, she cautioned herself.

“What, because he hasn’t bought a ring?” Her sister shook her head as if Grace had failed the good citizenship category on her report card. “You never cared for jewelry or status stuff. Living in the city’s changed you.” Jenni snatched the paper ticket out of Grace’s hand and slapped it in front of the officer before Grace could respond.

“I’m not talking about a ring. I’m talking about me. I don’t know this guy!” It seemed like the world only listened to women who yelled.

“Picture ID?” the TSA screener asked.

“Then you ought to be more careful about what you write to people! It said
Love
,
Grace
on that photo. For a smart girl, sometimes you’re so dumb.”

“Identification for Grace Kim?” The guard projected his voice over the conversation. Even Jenni stopped talking. “Which one of you is—”

“Her.” Jenni pointed, passing the blame for stalling the line to her big sister, but not offering to hold the snacks while Grace unzipped her purse and fished for her wallet.

She was out of time. When Jenni fell deep into her own narrative, in this case Miss Wiser than Thou delivering tidings from the entire town, it was impossible to correct her. Grace had to let this conversation go until she arrived in Washington, D.C. The big hero could straighten out the record, her life could return to normal, her parents would be fine and their hometown could settle back into rural bliss.

“Have a safe trip.” Jenni’s hug stopped Grace from stuffing her driver’s license back in her purse and crushed the croissant trapped between them. “Be strong and call me from the airport in the morning,” her sister said as she ducked under the retractable barrier.

“Sure.” She’d rather talk to a rental car navigation system. It would listen better.

Chapter Two

The rose-tinted stone buildings and immaculate landscaping of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, reminded Grace of a university campus more than a military hospital. On the parking shuttle route, signs pointed to the Warrior Center and celebrated Warrior Pride, and she half expected men in blue paint and kilts to swarm the bus.

The massed display of flags inside the main lobby pressed home the weight of her false pretenses. The closer she drew to reception, the harder the fictions she hadn’t created but had been too obedient or timid to unravel squeezed her stomach. Five feet from the front desk, her charade bit more uncomfortably than the airplane seatbelt she’d worn all night.

“May I help you, ma’am?”

No one else was behind her. She was the ma’am.

The man on the other side of the desk smiled at her. “Are you here to see someone?”

Although she’d read his name in dozens of news articles, she hadn’t said it aloud. Her first attempt was a whisper. “Reynaldo Cruz.”

The keyboard clicked as he asked, “Are you Sergeant Cruz’s next of kin?”

“No.” Her stomach somersaulted as another lie rose to the surface to join so many others.

“Whoa, ma’am.” He reached across the desk as if to catch her. “Sergeant Cruz arrived yesterday from Landstuhl, but we have to ask because sometimes people pretend to know soldiers who’ve been in the news.”

That was her, a pretender. She clutched her jacket over her chest, chilled even inside the building, and hoped the airplane bagel didn’t revisit the scene.

“Name and photo identification, please.”

“Grace Kim.” Her driver’s license shook until she dropped it on the counter.

More clicking and peering before he said, “I don’t have you listed.”

If she couldn’t find out why Reynaldo Cruz had turned her life upside down, she’d never put it back together. Her chest expanded with bottled frustration.

“Hold on, I’ll call the ward to get permission.”

While the receptionist muttered into the phone, she willed the hot ball in her throat to dissolve. If she had to leave, this farce would end without an explanation to share with her family, her boss, her co-workers. The reporters calling her parents would change their tone, and people in Pateros would stop eating at the restaurant.

“Duty nurse confirmed you’re Sergeant Cruz’s fiancée.”

Relief snapped through her, even as the label made her squirm
.

“Petty Officer Boichek will escort you. Visiting hours until twenty-hundred.” He clarified, “That’s eight tonight. I’ll add you as a permitted visitor. Here’s your temporary badge.”

Her escort was a woman, younger than her. “Morning, ma’am. This way to the elevators.”

As they left the lobby, Grace’s clogs clomped on the gleaming bare floor. At least her escort wouldn’t hear her thudding heart.

“No matter what, when you see your warrior, smile.”

Her sister had said the same thing. The last twenty-four hours must be etched on her face.

“And say his name. People forget.”

A man waited in front of the elevator bank and joined them inside. He wore a short-sleeved T-shirt with graffiti-style writing, but she couldn’t decipher it because the rounded blob hanging from one sleeve stole her attention. It looked more like a chunk of frozen salmon that had been thawed, pink and shiny, than like an arm.

“It’s okay to touch him.”

“What?”

When the other woman continued speaking, she realized
him
didn’t mean the man sharing their elevator. “Go ahead and hold your fiancé’s hand or kiss him, within reason. Touch helps them heal and think of themselves as still men.”

At the ninth floor, the doors opened onto a man in a motorized wheelchair.

“Hey, Mike!” They exited, and her escort held the doors while the smiling blond entered and swiveled to face them. “Looking good!”

“Back at you, Boichek.” This soldier’s shirt read Some Assembly Required and his grin was like any twenty-year-old’s, except he didn’t have legs. “Going dancing tonight?”

“If you’re coming.”

“Next week I’m due C-legs. Try keeping me away.”

The two stared at each other, and Grace realized she was watching a crush play out.

“You up here visiting?” Boichek finally asked, sounding as if she’d been running.

“Checking on the new arrivals.” His grin slipped. “One doesn’t have family in yet.”

The petty officer nodded at her. “She’s a fiancée. For Sergeant Cruz.”

“That’s him.” He looked at Grace for the first time. “Those snake-eaters never quit. I had to tell him to knock off trying to do arm curls with his water jug. Your man is a crazy dude.”

“You have no idea.” If Reynaldo Cruz was like this soldier, they’d share a laugh, and then he’d explain and her life could return to normal.

With Mike gone, Boichek patted her lightly on the shoulder to urge her forward. “You should feel free to kiss him.”

She knew where Boichek’s imagination had been, but kissing Reynaldo Cruz was so far down her list, it wasn’t there. As she lifted her arms for a disposable hospital gown, she almost laughed at her escort’s suggestion, then she noticed a nurse push a wheelchair toward her. This soldier’s face had scabs. His shaved head showed a jagged set of Frankenstein staples. No grin, no laughter or chat like Mike. For a heart-stopping moment she searched for features she recognized from pictures, but then she saw that his stubble was reddish-blond. He wasn’t Reynaldo Cruz, but he could have been.

“Help me.” The plea to her escort burst out. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“You won’t.” The petty officer rested a hand on her shoulder. “Like I said, say his name, look him in the eye, touch his arm, then do what feels right.”

Nothing felt right, nothing, but with her surgical gloves and hair cap on, delay was futile.

Reynaldo Cruz looked terrible. Two fat rolls of bandages stopped above where legs and feet should fill the bed. Tubes emerged from the wrappings and disappeared under the sides. He’d lost both legs, that was obvious. He also had an oxygen tube taped under his nose and an intravenous line in his hand. Dark hair stuck to his head, and his tan skin shined as if coated with lotion or sweat. His eyes were closed.

She’d studied the pictures she could find, including one of him on the Pateros football team as a junior in 2003 and one printed in the
Quad City Star Tribune
when he’d completed basic training. Ten years ago, he’d been a skinny boy in an oversized army hat, but the arms and shoulders of this man were too muscled to be labeled boyish. Her stomach lurched over the contrast of his upper body filling the space between the bed rails and the empty mattress at the foot of the bed.

When the nurse looked over her shoulder and connected with Grace, she jerked her head at the bed, as if she’d been waiting for Grace to enter. Maybe some visitors fled without stepping inside, but taking the easy route wouldn’t give her answers about the engagement photo. To get her life back, she’d have to come all the way in.

Despite the monitors arrayed around the top of the tilted bed, the room was quieter than she’d expected. No repetitive beeps, just the generic white noise of electronics and humming ventilation.

“Hello.” She swallowed and tried again, but the new greeting sounded too loud.

The man in the bed fluttered his eyelids and turned his head, and then his mouth fell open and his skin flushed to his hairline. She might have no earthly idea why he’d fabricated an engagement, but even with the robe and hairnet, he recognized her.

“Surprise, Sergeant.” The nurse stood. “Your fiancée’s here!”

The whole world believed the lie.

Standing at the head of the bed, if she focused on his face, she could keep the bundled stubs out of her peripheral vision. “Hello, Reynaldo.”

The nurse gathered a tray of dishes. “Buzz if you need me.”

After the other woman left, the silence absorbed the energy Grace’s nerves had supplied on the way to the room. She could almost graph how the longer she stood five feet from the bed, the smaller she became. Eventually, if neither of them spoke, maybe she would disappear.

On a paper taped to the wall, someone had written
SSG Reynaldo Cruz
,
Pateros
,
WA
and a string of numbers and letters that must have meaning to army people.

Enough time passed with her studying the room and him staring wordlessly that any change felt awkward, but she tried again. “I’m Grace Kim. But you know that, don’t you?”

The disposable paper cap created a desperate urge to scratch her scalp, a feeling almost as sharp as the one that overcame her when her cubicle-mate talked about his kids’ headlice, but she kept her hands at her sides and waited for the man in the bed to reply.

He nodded, and his lips flexed like a ling cod until he managed to say, “Rey Cruz.”

“This is awkward, isn’t it?”

“No.” This time his voice was deeper and stronger than she’d expected, and he nodded, which confused her.

“You don’t think so?”

He closed his eyes and blew out a huff of air while he made a twisting gesture with his hand, as if screwing in a light bulb or flipping things.

“You meant yes?”

He nodded again.

She pulled a chair beside the bed and looked over the rail at his head and shoulders. The edges of a tattoo peeked below the sleeve of his blue hospital gown. “I had two flights full of babies, so let’s cut to the chase. Why’d you claim we’re engaged?”

“Long.” His lips moved, and eventually a word emerged. “Stor-stor-story.”

“I have a week off that I didn’t want. Go ahead and tell me.”

He rolled his eyes and lifted empty hands, palms up. “No.”

Idiotic laughter, as sudden as the tears she’d almost released downstairs, bubbled close to the edges of her control. Of course he must have some sort of brain damage. “So how are we going to clear up this mess if you can’t even tell me how it started?”

“Need. Pick.” His chin thrust forward and his eyes squinted at the ceiling as he struggled for words. “Pick. Her. Pick-her.”

“You need picture? Oh, you needed a picture.” His nod meant she must have guessed correctly. “Why mine?”

He tapped his temple, then pointed at her, and the flash hurtled her a decade into the past.

“That’s it? All the women in the world, but you chose my picture for something, I don’t know what, because you think I’m smart?” The adolescent awareness of being brainy in a small town washed over her, the out-of-place feeling that had driven her to Seattle a dozen years before. She hadn’t endured that mix of self-aware humiliation and pride for a long time, and she didn’t like roiling in it now. “You don’t even know me. Why pretend to be engaged?”

“Fit.” The word bounced in the pause between his wordless mouth movements. “You fit.” He shrugged as if apologizing.

The effort that lowered his dark eyebrows as he struggled to speak convinced her he hadn’t been playing a prank with her as the punchline, even if he couldn’t explain.

“Cruz, hey,
amigo.
” The deep voice behind Grace made her jump in her seat. “Should’ve guessed that even flat on your back at Walter Reed you’d scout a beautiful woman.”

Rey’s face lit when he saw the blond man and dark-haired woman in the doorway. The newcomers sported the same paper gowns over their civilian clothes, and their smiles seemed as tense as she suspected herself of looking. Grace slipped toward the empty end of the bed, allowing them access to their friend.

“Wu-wu-wu,” Rey struggled to speak as he grabbed the man’s hand, but to the woman he said “Doc” quite clearly.

“Reynaldo? How come I never knew your first name?” She had his chart in her hand as she smiled at Grace. “I’m Theresa. This is my husband Wulf, and we’re old friends of Rey-nal-do’s.” She exaggerated the syllables until the man in the bed blushed.

“Grace Kim.” The other woman’s smile prodded her to continue beyond that simple statement. “I, ah, I grew up in Pateros with Rey.” Momentary panic over whether her sister had used the correct nickname jerked her gaze to the man in the bed. His upward tilting lips and relaxed eyebrows reassured her that she hadn’t yet said the wrong thing.

Wulf stage-whispered to Rey, “We saw the photo. How long you been holding out on the team about a hometown girl?”

Rey made a hand gesture for a large distance, but when he intercepted her raised eyebrows, he shrunk the space between his thumb and first finger to an inch.

His friends laughed, and the man continued, “Now I know why you were always big talk and no action.”

When he turned toward her, Grace’s back and shoulders clenched. She’d successfully concealed her disappointment that they couldn’t explain the truth either, but she wouldn’t be able to field any questions about a mythical courtship.

“Cruz is like a brother. If there’s anything you need from my wife or me—” he broke off, squeezing his eyes shut, and Grace suspected he was close to tears.

Not the moment to tell him his best friend was a liar.

Theresa immersed herself in the clipboard’s papers. “This is good.”

Anything that could possibly be called good about the half-empty bed and flailing speech imposed on this man eluded Grace.

The other woman flipped pages and periodically muttered “I see” and “oh.” She must not have realized she had Grace and both men transfixed. “You are one lucky—”

“Gonna share your findings with us?” her husband asked.

She gave him the type of look that flowed between people who didn’t need to use words with each other. “Apparently the explosion was a Soviet anti-personnel mine, not an IED. Either because of water damage or age, they estimate it expended half its rated force. Because Rey-nal-do—I do like saying that name—was in water over his waist, it slowed the blast wave. Debris wasn’t driven as far into his body. The ditch had some fecal coliform—” she shrugged like the only words Grace understood were no big deal, “—but that’s responded to antibiotics and it’s not the variety of infections caused by particles in a ground-based explosion.” She stopped and blinked. “I hope that’s clear.”