This story is fictional, and involves two characters that stand in for me now and then.
I arrived at the airport at least an hour before the flight. Partly habit, but partly nerves, I have to admit. I didn't really know how I was going to do with this, didn't know what to say. All I knew is that I had to be there.
Some weird logic told me that it was supposed to be me returned from far away, an injured warrior returning to a loving friend.
Not her.
I had made it through two tours in the Gulf. I came back with a purple heart. I reached out for a friend who'd been hit by shrapnel from an IED, just as another exploded next to him. He'd been blown apart, and I was hit in the chest and face, as well as my left hand, losing the outer three fingers. At the same time, my best childhood friend was on a mission of mercy with the Peace Corps in the Sudan. I got home a whole year before I got news that Ann had gone missing.
As much as I'd like to say that I had headed a Rambo-like rescue mission to Africa to free her from her captors, the reality of it was that she had already been freed by a faction in opposition to the one that had kidnapped her by the time we heard of her disappearance. I'd found out a week ago that she'd been exposed to some contaminated water in Africa and gotten parasites, which required the removal of both her eyes.
That's all I'd known until three days ago, when a former boyfriend of hers called to ask me meet her flight at the airport in Medford. He said he "Just couldn't bear to see her 'that way". Now, as the flight taxied to the jet way, I found myself thinking of the not-too-distant past, when we'd been best friends.
Ann was tiny, even when we were kids. Two years younger than me, she looked like she was five when I was twelve. But then, everybody looked small around me. At 5"10", I was taller than either of my parents and most of the adults I knew. I leveled out at 6'7" when I was 19, but Ann had not broken five feet or 90 pounds. She became tiny Piglet to my huge Pooh.
She was the kind of friend who never cut anybody any slack, but was never mean about it. She took my teasing like a trooper, and somehow, I knew how far to push, never once going too far, either. She was my harshest critic while being my staunchest defender. She held my hand, huge compared to hers, while I cried after a girl broke my heart. I beat the snot out of a boy for breaking hers, then stood and took a pounding from her for doing it.
We told each other everything as we grew up, and looking back, it may have been a reaction to her leaving for the Peace Corps than drove me to become a Marine. My parents didn't show up for my graduation from boot camp, but she did. Came all the way from Ethiopia. She said she'd had vacation, but a mutual friend told me otherwise. Ann was afraid no one would be there for me.
We knew each other very, very well. I had spoken to a friend of mine, an Incident Debriefer for LAPD about Ann, and she'd told me what to do, how to do it, and had given me her cell phone number just in case.
Ann came up the jet way before the other passengers, holding the elbow of a female flight attendant. She had a folded-up white cane in her other hand. The flight attendant looked at me, and asked, "Are you Robert Akins?"
"I'm afraid he couldn't come." I replied.
"I can't release Ms. Taylor to anyone else, Sir," she replied.
I took a step toward her. "Is Ms. Taylor a minor, unable to make her own decisions, Miss?"
"Well no, but I have instructions to release her only to a Robert Akins."
Ann's face grew concerned beneath her dark glasses. I had been using my Marine voice, and I don't think she'd recognized me yet. As her sightless face scanned back and forth, she asked, "Who is it, Deborah?"
Smiling, I bent over and whispered in the worried flight attendant's ear.
She said, "It's an extremely large, intimidating man, who has just told me to say, "Hello, Piglet?"
Ann gasped and flung out her hands. I swept her up and spun her around, nearly knocking the other woman over.
"Oh my God! Pooh, is it really you?" she yelled. Her laugh quickly turned to sobs as she melted, the need to be tough having vanished when I wrapped her in my arms. I waved one-handedly at the woman, who surprisingly, blew me a kiss and retreated. I put my other hand under Ann's knees and cradled her to me as she sobbed.
"Shh, little one. I'm here for you. Pooh's here. Do you have any luggage?"
She shook her head, sobs turned to sniffles and hitches of breath. "Where are you going to take me, David?" she sniffed.
"We're going to my house, Annie. Is that OK?"
"That would be awesome. I didn't know you were home yet, so I called Robert."
