Requiem (11 page)

The plane fell again, causing the overhead
storage bins to vomit various items, and the already dim lights
flickered violently until they surrendered, and the fuselage turned
dark.

I jerked awake, and Jared sat where Gabe had
been. The lights were on, and the floors were clear of debris.

“
It’s you,” I said,
relieved.

“
Yes,” he said with a
confused smile, “who did you think it would be?”

After a short pause, I shook my head. “No
one. Just forgot where I was for a second.”

Jared nodded, and then rested his hand on my
knee. “We’ll be there in two hours.”

He spent the remainder of our flight on his
cell phone. He made arrangements for a car to pick us up at the
airport, and for a friend, Colonel Jason Brand to meet us at
Landstuhl with visitor identification.

Upon arrival, the pace accelerated. The
second the plane came to a stop, Jared had the few things we
brought with us in hand, and he held out my jacket.

“
It’s chilly,” he said,
helping me twist into the sleeves.

Descending the stairs of the plane, it was
clear why Jared had to make so many phone calls. Pilots walked to
and from their jets, crew chiefs were parking and marshelling out
jets, while others were busy with flight inspections. Jet engines
screamed as they prepared for takeoff.

We had landed at Ramstein air base. Jared’s
connections spanned farther than I had imagined.

We rushed off the tarmac to the waiting car.
The driver was a stranger to me. He spoke fluent German to Jared,
so I was unsure if he was just a local or someone Jared had met
before. He looked about Jared’s age. Light blonde hair peeked from
his dark green ball cap, but his eyes were hidden behind dark
sunglasses.

“
Warum gehen Sie nach
Landstuhl?” the driver said.

“
Claire’s Taleh ist
verletzt worden,” Jared said.

The driver’s eyebrows pulled in. He was a
friend. Jared mentioning Claire’s Taleh could even mean that he was
a Hybrid, and by the features I could see, he was.

“
Gutes
Glück zu Ihnen,
Freund,” he said, shaking his head.

“
Danke,” Jared frowned. He
leaned toward me, then. “He was asking why we’re here. I told him,
and he wished us luck,” he whispered against my cheek.

Nodding, I hugged Jared’s arm to me.
Landstuhl was just three miles from the West Gate of the base. The
soldier guarding the gate seemed to know the driver, and after
checking out his identification, let us through quickly.

An officer in a blue decorated dress uniform
waited at the front entrance of the hospital.

“
Colonel,” Jared said,
shaking his hand. He was definitely not a hybrid, with his dark
hair and eyes. “Nina, this is Colonel Jason Brand,” he
said.

I shook his hand. “Thank you,” I said.

“
Not at all. Claire’s
pretty famous around here. We’ve all trained with her at some
point,” Jason said with a small grin. “Jared, we’ve got good news
coming from the surgeon,” he said as we followed him inside. His
voice was firm and no-nonsense. It reminded me of the way my father
spoke. “Claire is in the waiting room on the third floor. They know
you’re coming.”

Jared nodded. He kept me by his side as we
walked to the elevator. The space was quiet, and despite Jason’s
positive comment earlier, Jared was on-edge. He rubbed his thumb
compulsively against the top of my hand as he held it a bit too
tight in his.

“
What can I do,” I asked,
touching his arm with my free hand.

One corner of Jared's mouth turned up in an
appreciative half-smile. “You're here with me. That's all I
need.”

The door opened to a bustling hallway. The
walls were devoid of anything but white paint, and the halls were
full of equipment and people. Medical personnel attended to the
wounded wearing either utility attire or green scrubs. Soldiers
past by in wheelchairs, accompanied by their attentive wives or
mothers. A few were trying on their new prosthesis and learning to
walk again.

My stomach instantly felt sick, wondering
what was waiting for us in Ryan’s room.

Jared pushed through a set of double doors
and stopped. Claire, tiny and alone, stood at the end of the hall.
She was looking down an adjacent hall, but the second she felt
Jared’s presence, she slowly turned to face him. His stoic
disposition deteriorated as he looked into the eyes of his little
sister, and a small sound escaped from his throat.

Claire ran down the hall at full speed, and
crashed into Jared, wrapping her arms around him. She had run so
hard, and hit him with such force, it made a clapping sound that
echoed through the halls as if a door had slammed. Even with
Claire’s incredible strength, Jared didn’t budge. He lifted her off
the floor, taking her into his long arms and squeezed her
tightly.

“
You didn’t have to come,
stupid!” she said. Her voice was muffled against Jared’s shoulder.
When she pulled back to look at him, tears blurred her round,
ice-blue eyes. “But, I’m glad you came.”

She reached for me, and hooked her arm
around my neck, adding me to their embrace. We stood there in
silence for a long while, knowing once we let go, reality would set
in.

Time was not on our side, and too quickly
the reunion was over. We walked to the waiting room, dazed and
emotionally exhausted. Jared sat beside me on the sofa, and Claire
took a chair adjacent to us.

Jared cleared his throat. “I’m going to
apologize in advance, Claire. This is hard for me.”

“
Déjà vu?” she said in
understanding.

“
Something like that,” he
said, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and
thumb.

“
You mean me,” I said
softly.

Jared didn’t meet my eyes; he simply nodded
as he stared at the floor. I had tried to imagine many times what
he went through while waiting to hear whether I would live or die
after the shoot out in the restaurant.

“
I
remember,” Claire said with a far-off look in her eyes. “Mom was
there. Bex was stuck in Dubai with Amir.” She spoke low and slow,
looking to Jared with weary eyes. “You sat on that horrible, fake
leather chair until you couldn’t stand it, and then you paced the
length of the room until
we
couldn’t stand it. It was harder to watch than
when Daddy slipped away. Then Samuel came, and Eli….”

“
They were there?” I asked,
surprised.

Jared nodded. “They appeared after I called
for Gabriel. I begged him to take me the second...I didn’t want to
know what it would feel like when you were gone.”

“
Would it be painful?” I
asked, touching his arm.

Jared breathed a heavy sigh. “My father
described it as weakness, growing so debilitating that eventually
every system in our bodies stop.” He looked into my eyes. “We
literally need our Taleh’s to breathe.”

Claire watched us for a moment before
speaking. “I had to restrain Jared several times. He couldn’t stand
the thought of you lying on a table without him, letting
strangers—humans—try to save you. He wanted to force his way into
the O.R. I’d never seen him so unreasonable.” Claire’s icy eyes
melted when she looked at her brother. “Seeing Jared feel so
helpless and desperate—Mom waiting to hear if she would lose you
and her son—the collective pain in that room will be burned into my
memory forever. Just like yesterday will.”

I grabbed her hand. “And I’m okay. Just like
Ryan will be.”

Claire wore what used to be a white tank
top, now more of a grey-brown, and khaki utility pants with heavy,
lace-up boots. A blood-stained hijab sat bunched up in the chair
next to her. Her moist eyes and smeared mascara had mixed with the
desert sand, but only around her eyes.

“
Did Ryan recognize you?” I
asked.

Claire shook her head. “I should have pulled
us out earlier. He looked up at me, but he was pretty out of it.
And with the hijab…he could only see my eyes.”

Jared placed his hand on ours. “It doesn’t
matter. What matters is that you’re both alive.”

“
Ryan's company was
conducting a raid to extract two contractors that had been missing
for a few days. I made a lot of mistakes today, Jared. They were
ambushed. I should have seen it coming. I should have heard the
snipers get into position, but my mind was full of complaints and
resentment.” She stared at the floor, deep in thought. “They always
raid at night. Everything was off, and I missed it.”

Jared grabbed Claire's jaw in his hands.
“You know better than to beat yourself up about this. What were you
telling me in the waiting room in Providence? He’s alive, Claire.
No one else could have gotten him here with a chance.”

She pulled away from him, and looked out the
window. In her mind, she was still on that street corner, watching
the extermination of Ryan's company in real time. “It was like
Shock and Awe out there—one explosion after another,” she snapped
her eyes shut. The memory replayed in her mind. “I could hear him,
but I couldn’t see,” her eyebrows pulled in, “I couldn’t see.”

Her eyes popped open, and she immediately
wiped away her tears. “My first glimpse of Ryan didn’t surprise me:
He was sprinting from the debris cloud with Tommy on his back.” She
smiled. “Of course it would be Tommy. Ryan's only saved his hide
three times already.” Her smiled faded. “They were close. Closer
than the others. Ryan felt responsible for him.”

Jared stood, and walked to the other side of
the room. He rubbed the back of his neck; the worry and memories
were clearly overwhelming him.

“
That was when I decided to
move in,”” Claire explained, “but a sniper clicked on his sights.”
Claire laughed once. “The jerkface got one off after I severed his
brain stem with one bullet, Jared. That shit only happens in the
movies.”

“
So Ryan was hit?” I
prodded. My mind raced with where the story would end. I had no
idea what injuries Ryan had sustained, and with the vivid detail of
bombs and bullets, I needed her to get to the point.

“
Twice. A bullet ricocheted
off a rock, and clipped his right lung; the other blew straight
through his shoulder. It was fate. Both injuries are going to send
him packing.”

Jared glanced at me, and then returned to
his seat. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “That was
when you evac’d?”

Claire sniffed. “He wouldn’t let Tommy go. I
had to pry all ten of his fingers from the guy’s flak jacket.”

“
Figures,” Jared
grumbled.

“
Ryan’s
whole unit was wiped out in three seconds. He needed to
save
one
of them. It didn’t matter that Tommy was dead ten meters from
the explosions…Ryan was going to carry him home.”

Tears welled up in my eyes and overflowed.
“Can we see him?”

Jared hugged me to his side. “He can’t know
you were ever here. We can’t take that chance.”

Jared's reasoning made sense. Explaining
Ryan’s memories of me at his bedside in Landstuhl would be too
difficult to explain away to our friends at Brown.

Claire looked at her dirty hands. “I hauled
him to an empty shack off the path, stayed the night until Morning
Prayer, and then back-tracked East to my Jeep.”

Colonel Brand knocked on the door jamb.
Jared and Claire immediately stood, and Jared pulled me with
him.

“
Colonel,” Jared and Claire
said in unison, both nodding.

“
He’s out of the woods for
now. Doctor Vanhooser is closing, and he’ll be in to speak with you
shortly. He has been informed that Sergeant Scott is to be kept
unaware of your presence.”

“
Thanks, Jason,” Claire
said, letting out a big sigh of relief.

“
There is something you
should know,” Colonel Brand said. “Ryan is going to need
substantial physical therapy, and after losing his entire unit, his
debriefing will be substantial.”

“
What does that mean for
Ryan?” I asked.

“
Sergeant Scott’s chances
to return to active duty are slim,” Colonel Brand said,
matter-of-factly.

I was ashamed of the relief the Colonel’s
words brought me. Ryan would be devastated, and I could only think
of myself. Thoughts of Ryan returning to Brown on the military’s
dime, and his empty seat at the Ratty being filled peppered my
mind, and I had to cover my smile with my hand.

Jared glanced at me. He knew how Colonel
Brand’s prediction had made me feel, and his eyes tightened. I sunk
back into my seat, crimson splashing across my cheeks.

Claire took a walk down the colorless
hallway, giving Jared the perfect chance to scold me. Before he
could get the chance, my cell phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.

“
Hello?”

“
Grant is out sick, you’re
gone, and the Japan firm is on line two asking questions I don’t
know the answers to,” Beth barked in her southern accent. “I don’t
understand half of what he says, Nina. Is there some way to patch
you through?”

I smiled. “Just tell him I’m out of town,
and I will call him tomorrow.”

“
He said he’s been waiting
on a return phone call from Grant for a week.”

“
Then he can wait one more
day,” I said.

“
Where are you? I only have
a billion documents for you to sign, and the billing on the
Peterman account is messed up.”

“
Ask an intern. They know
the software better than the accountants.”