4.
Ann squirted my body wash out onto the blue squishy, using her thumb to tell when there was enough on it. She stuck her hand out for me to take the bottle, and after I did, I leaned past her to put it on one of the rock shelves built into the shower. I brushed against her head as I leaned, and she jumped a little.
"Sorry," she said. "you surprised me. I can't hear you move over the noise from the water."
"Then I guess I'll have to keep in constant contact with you, so you don't forget I'm here."
"That's a good idea. You should definitely keep touching me. Speaking of touching, is there somewhere you can sit so I can get to all of you?"
"Sure. I'll sit on this shelf to your left." Holding her shoulders, I backed to the shelf and sat down. Ann started at my head, the hand without the pad leading the other one. First, a delicate examination with her fingertips, then a gentle, slow rub with the soap scrubber. Her face alternately pointed toward me, then away as she used other senses to feel and "see" me. The expressions on her face as she washed me ranged from contentment, to serenity, to anger when she reached the scars.
The pace and pressure of her scrubbing increased as she found the scarring on my left shoulder and chest, until it felt like she was grating carrots on my chest. The sensations passed seamlessly from tickling to pain, depending on the damage. She was obviously unaware of the change in her ministrations, and eyebrows knitted as she scowled.
"Ann? Annie? Piglet, you need to lighten up, you're gonna hit bone here pretty soon!" I took her hands in mine and she collapsed against me, sobbing. I tipped her chin up and began to kiss her face as she wept. All thoughts of sex evaporated as I held her and subconsciously, I think I was glad. I hadn't had sex since I'd gotten back from the Gulf, and I realized I hadn't had much of an erection, either. Before I had a chance to worry about it, though, I grabbed a giant towel from my left and wrapped it around Annie, then picked her up as I had in the airport and padded back into the bedroom.
I swept back the covers and laid my Piglet in the bed. I dried off quickly and got in beside her. She wriggled quickly over to me and I put my arm under her neck and shoulder and rolled her toward me. She put her head on my chest and sighed.
"You OK, girl?" I asked.
"It's just so sad, what they did to you, Pooh. It must have hurt so badly."
"I was about to say the same thing, Annie. I wish I could go to Africa and kill every one of them, very slowly and painfully."
"NO!" she yelled, her face coming up off my chest. She spoke into my eyes, as if she could still see them perfectly. Her face was livid. "You are better than them, David! You don't have to give me retribution, don't you see that? What is done to us is done. My captors did what they did to get attention. They live in unbelievably awful conditions, harassed by people who look just like them, but some historical fight or argument makes them hate each other. It's the same with Iraq. We went there with good intentions, but history is against us. But we have to be better than they are, David. We have to stop hating, because it will destroy us. Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." I am living proof of that, Pooh. I don't need your wrath to protect me. Your love will be enough, OK?"
And then,"I'm sorry I yelled, Pooh."
I've been yelled at by top-kicks, I've been yelled at by enemies and allies. But I've never been so determined to take a lesson to heart as I was at that moment, and I was determined to learn and do better.
"You're right. I'm sorry for that, I really am. I think that violence is all I've known for so long that it's kind of a knee-jerk reaction for me. I will try to do better. OK, Piglet?"
I pulled Annie up onto my chest, and she kissed me a couple of times, then snuggled into my neck. In a few minutes, her breathing slowed, and I slid her back into my armpit and we both slept.
5.
The early morning sun was low enough that it came in through the small side window of the hummer. It was not yet 0800, but it was already past 85 degrees and rising quickly. Looking ahead at the sand swept road, I noted that the two other Humvees ahead of us were making best time around the various obstacles. I didn't hear a sound as the pavement ahead and to our left erupted like a mushroom cloud of asphalt and sand. The vehicle twisted to its right and overturned, and I found myself on the sand beside the road. The events slowed down to a crawl as I found my rifle and began to search the wreckage. My driver was partially trapped under the vehicle, and as I pulled on the collar of his flak vest, I thought that he didn't weigh much and, with no particular haste, that adrenaline surely does make you stronger. I didn't actually see that the lower half of him was missing until I noticed the blood trail we were leaving. I looked over his shoulder and saw the shiny white of his pelvic bones.
I remember thinking that I wasn't going to be able to use the tourniquets inside the pockets of his BDU pant side pockets because they were obviously gone. I realized that the man was dead, finally, and as I reached around his shoulder to grab his tags, I noticed a leg moving by the largest pile of rubble in my view. I ran to the side of the overturned hummer and saw one of my men, a Corporal named Ambler, sitting against a wheel from one of the hummers, blood oozing from a wound in his back. The wheel and tire was flat on the ground, and I could see the hub and lower control arm sticking up from it. Ambler looked over his shoulder at me and pointed with a shaking hand. Ten feet in front of him was a child's red backpack. It bore the likeness of a well known purple dinosaur, smiling gaily and apparently pointing with glee at the Nokia cell phone duct taped to one of its shoulder straps. In the instant that I processed what I was seeing, the screen on the phone lit, and I knew it was going to explode. I jumped out to grab Ambler and pull him over the tire just as a wave of heat and pressure rolled into me like a hammer. My left arm flew back away from my friend and I was thrown against the undercarriage of my own hummer. As the skin on my face and chest burned, I passed out.
When I awoke, I was up to my armpits in a stainless tub, and a person in a dinosaur-purple scrub suit was leaning over me. As I burst into crystal clarity, I realized he was pulling dark, burned patches of skin off my chest with a pair of forceps. I drew back my hand and screamed in anger and agony.
"DAVID! WAKE UP!" There was enough light in the predawn sky to illuminate my bedroom well enough that I realized right away the it wasn't the debridement room in the military hospital in Germany. Ann cowered near my waist, her hands on my stomach. Her eyeless face was turned in my direction, and she was panting with stress.
