The Way Home (34 page)

Jess felt physically ill. Starvation. Detached retina. Broken bone. In an attack? During torture? She wanted to know. She didn’t want to know. “What . . . what else is he dealing with?”

Again, Dr. Jasper smiled gently. “Another concern is his diagnosis of positional vertigo. He’s fine unless he moves his head the wrong way or he’s jostled, and then it manifests itself. His vertigo is most probably a result of a traumatic brain injury. A blow or several severe blows to the head,” he clarified when Brad looked puzzled. “The TBI also causes him intense headaches. There are several good noninvasive treatments including physical therapy and medications that can help treat both the vertigo and the headaches. We’re conducting a complete neurological
workup to find out exactly what we’re dealing with. The good news here is that they started him on medication in Kandahar, and he’s already seeing some relief on both counts, so that’s very positive.”

Jess nodded and attempted to smile at this bit of good news, but she suspected she hadn’t heard the worst of it yet.

“That’s the extent of his physical issues, although you must be prepared. He was tortured. He has scars from injuries that, fortunately, did not result in long-term health issues but will affect him emotionally for years to come.”

“PTSD,” Jess whispered, and closed her eyes. She’d been prepared for this diagnosis, but still a wave of nausea hit her.

“Yes, I would be very surprised if Jeff doesn’t exhibit some manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder. Regardless, it’s going to be difficult for him to adjust to the real world again. Medications can help, if it’s determined that he needs them, but he will most likely require extensive therapy to regain some semblance of normality. We won’t know how much until we perform further evaluations. Which leads us to the final concern.” He faced Jess somberly. “Jeff’s memory has been affected by all he’s been through.”

“His memory?” Brad leaned forward in his chair. “What’s wrong with his memory?”

“Jeff advises us that it was only recently that he was able to recall his name, his unit and battalion, and what happened to him the night his team was attacked.”

“Because of the TBI or emotional trauma?” Jess asked.

“At this point, we don’t know. RA, retrograde amnesia,” he clarified for Brad, “can also be induced by either physical or severe emotional trauma. So what you must both keep in mind during the coming months is that the brain is very complex and
malleable, and everyone is different in his course of recovery. How well Jeff does will only be known as time passes.”

“Wait—you’re saying Jeff has amnesia?” Brad asked in disbelief. “That there are things he still doesn’t remember?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“He . . . he doesn’t remember me? Or . . . or Jess?”

“I’m sorry. No.”

“What does he remember?” Jess asked, shocked and suddenly fearful of the doctor’s answer.

“Only portions of the last three and a half years. He basically remembers nothing of his life that predates the attack on his convoy. It’s only been within the past month or so that he remembered that.”

She must have looked as though she were in shock, because the doctor reached out and covered her clasped hands with one of his.

“He’s going to get through this, and so are you. It will take time and patience and ongoing medical care, but he will get through this.”

Jess couldn’t sit any longer. She stood and walked over to the window, stared out at the autumn-bare trees planted in neat rows in a failed attempt to break the barrenness of the concrete parking lot.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have better news for you,” Dr. Jasper said. “If you have any questions, at any time, ask the charge nurse, and she’ll get hold of me.”

“What . . . what happens next?” Jess asked, pulling herself together and facing him again. “I mean, when he’s well enough to be discharged, what comes next for him?”

“You’re going to have to speak to his commanding officer at Fort Bragg to get complete information, but in my
experience, what generally happens when a warrior returns home with medical issues is that after he’s released from the hospital, he’ll need to be debriefed about what happened to him over there. In Jeff’s case, since he was held in captivity for so long, they’ll want to gather as much intel from him as they can.

“But please don’t worry. Treating and addressing Jeff’s emotional and mental stability are as important to us as his physical well-being. We won’t let him undergo any questioning we feel he’s unprepared to deal with. But you have to remember, until a panel can convene and determine the ongoing extent of his disabilities, he’s still in the military.”

“You don’t think he’ll be medically discharged?” Brad sounded angry.

“Oh, I absolutely do. In the meantime, he’ll be on leave—needless to say, he’s accumulated a lot of leave—and you’ll be able to take him home. I also want to reassure you that once his discharge comes through—which may be several months—his treatment won’t stop then. We’ll get him hooked up with the VA medical center closest to where you live so he’ll receive plenty of follow-up care.”

Brad had grown very quiet. Jess felt for him. His brother had left whole and had returned a badly damaged man.

“I’ll leave you to process all of this,” Dr. Jasper said gently. “You can go in and see him whenever you’re ready. My suggestion would be to take it slowly with him. All of you will have major adjustments to make. Patience is your friend.”

Then why did she feel friendless? And as barren as that parking lot?

She was married to a man who didn’t remember her.

She was in love with a man she needed to forget.

She felt confused and guilty on both counts. But there was only one thing she could do right now.

On a deep breath, she gathered herself, then made the longest walk of her life.

J
ESS STOPPED HESITANTLY
outside the door of J.R.’s room, steeled herself, and, as Brad hung behind, walked inside.

Oh, my God, oh, my God.

She covered her mouth with her hand to smother a gasp. She barely recognized the man asleep in the bed. His hair was long and threaded with gray. He had a beard. J.R. had hated it when he’d had to grow a beard for a mission.

Tears filled her eyes, and she walked closer and better saw the ravages his captivity had done to him. A pressure squeezed so tightly in her chest she could barely breathe.

Emaciated.

Withered.

Gaunt.

Destroyed.

Those words cycled over and over in her mind as she studied him in stunned disbelief.

And pain.
My God,
the pain he had to have suffered.

What the years and the war had done to him crushed her heart. And what love she’d had for him revitalized and swelled as she remembered the man he had been—now as much a stranger to her as she was to him.

Any question she’d had about whether she could do this, whether she could walk away from a man who loved her and toward a man who didn’t even know her anymore, had been answered in the few seconds since she’d walked through that
door. She could not turn her back on this man. This broken, damaged man. She could not be that selfish.

Then and there, she made a promise to do whatever it took to help heal him and heal their marriage.

Filled with new determination, she went to his side, folded his limp hand in hers, and softly said his name.

Minnesota, late November

J
eff sat in front of
the T      V in the new recliner Jess had bought for him, the dog asleep by his feet.

“To keep that leg up,” she’d said with an overbright smile when the chair had been delivered shortly after she’d brought him home to this apartment above a store he’d apparently frequented but didn’t remember. “Don’t think I don’t notice that it swells up on you if you’re on it too much.”

He’d been back in Minnesota for two weeks. And everything about the Crossroads General Store and the lake where he’d grown up fishing and hiking and hunting and camping remained as foreign to him as a moonscape.

“Did we live here?” he’d asked Jess after he’d painstakingly climbed up the stairs from the store to the apartment for the first time.

“We didn’t, no. I lived here with my parents. You spent a lot of time here, though.”

“Why? Did I work here?”

“No. I did. You hung around so you could flirt with me,” she’d said easily and with a shy smile. “After we got married, you and I lived on several different Army posts. We were at Bragg when you deployed and . . .” She let the thought trail off.

And went to Afghanistan and got killed
, was what she was going to say. Maybe he should have gotten killed. Maybe he should have died over there.

“But then you already know you were at Bragg,” she added inanely.

Yeah
. He knew. After he’d been discharged from the hospital three weeks ago, they’d put him and Jess and his brother up at the Fisher House that had been built specifically for rehabbing soldiers and their families so they’d all have someplace to stay during his debriefing. All of them had been relieved when there’d been three bedrooms.

He’d hoped returning to Bragg would help jog his memory, that maybe he’d remember the good times. Instead, it had been pure hell. The debriefing sessions exhausted him. Worse, though, was when his teammates—the ones who weren’t deployed—dropped by to see him. Men he’d fought side-by-side with, drunk beer with.

Men he didn’t remember.

He didn’t know who had been more uncomfortable, them or him.

Maybe I should have died there.

He stared blankly at the TV. Look at the lives he’d ruined by living. Rabia. Her father. His brother, Brad. Jess.

It hurt him to watch her try so hard to be natural with him. So he didn’t watch. He watched TV instead. For hours and hours on end, even though he couldn’t say what he’d seen an hour ago, let alone the day before. Mostly, he watched it so he
wouldn’t have to deal with the pain in the eyes of a woman who was still a stranger to him.

Sometimes he looked out the window. He couldn’t see much except the tree line, but he passed time watching the wind blow and the snow fall. In northern Minnesota, the snow fell early and often. The fact that he knew that didn’t count.

What counted was what he didn’t know.

At first, she’d brought him high school yearbooks and photo albums. It made his head hurt to look at them, to see himself as a boy he still didn’t recognize. So he asked her not to bring them anymore.

With a patient but sad look in her eyes, she’d understood. “Sure. No problem. I didn’t mean to bombard you. I thought maybe . . . I don’t know. Maybe I hoped seeing the photos might trigger a memory.”

“It’s OK. It’s nice of you. I appreciate it. But nothing’s happening. I’m sorry.”

She’d knelt down beside him, covered his hand with hers. “You don’t have to be sorry. It’ll either come or it won’t. There’s no pressure, J.R.”

But there was pressure. Every time she looked at him that way, every time she drove him to a doctor’s appointment in Hibbing or a counseling session in Duluth, or every time she called him J.R. in that automatic way that said she’d called him that since they’d both been little kids, he felt the pressure.

I can’t come with you, Jeffery.

Rabia.

Another pressure. One he couldn’t get out of his head.

He rose stiffly from his chair. “I think I’ll turn in.”

That hurt look again. “Don’t you want dinner? I fried chicken. Your favorite.”

Maybe it was. He didn’t know. “Sorry. It’ll still be good tomorrow, right?”

“Sure. You go ahead and go to bed.”

So polite. They were so polite to each other. Like strangers meeting on a train, passing through each other’s life to get back to their own lives. Only the train never stopped and dropped him off where he was supposed to be. It kept going and going, and he kept searching and searching.

He forced a smile for her, because she tried so hard, then got up and walked into the bedroom that was supposed to be theirs. Only he slept there alone, and she slept in another room on another bed.