Chapter 7: The Descent

MILO'S POV

It’s been a week since I woke up. A week, but it feels like years. I’ve forced myself to walk everyday, but I’m quickly becoming more and more unable to feel my feet. Devan, my day nurse, seemed irritated with me when I stubbed my toe on the frame of the bed and bled on the floor.

“You’re torturing yourself for nothing,” she said through tight lips.

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. If she doesn’t understand, there’s nothing I could tell her to explain it. I made the mistake of asking her if she knew if Aiden had made it. Her blank look told me she didn’t.

I look forward to seeing Nori, though. She always breezes in smelling like fresh air and with her hair done up in curls that remind me of something from Saving Private Ryan or The English Patient.

Just thinking about that makes me want to brush my teeth. She should be coming in for her shift any minute now. The sink and toiletries are kept in the center of the room, surrounded on each side by dividers for a modicum of privacy. I try to swing my legs off the edge of the bed, but they don’t do much more than twitch. I use my hands to help them get started.

My legs shake as I cross the floor. The unnerving thing is that I can’t feel them quaking. I know it’s so because I can see it. I grit my teeth, willing my lead feet to move. It’s like moving through molasses. I used to be strong. The gear I wore neared my body weight, and I moved around in it like a second skin. I went from defender of earth to teetering toddler.

The floor is suddenly coming up to meet my face. I mash my cheek into the scarred linoleum. One of the other soldiers, stuck in bed, comments.

“Bruh, that sucks.”

He gets out of bed to offer me a hand, but I’m hesitant to take it. He looks waif-like. I don’t need to pull him down to the ground with me.

“C’mon,” he says, wiggling his fingers at me, “I’m tougher than I look.”

“And I do a great Mickey Mouse,” I say with a grin.

“Whatever you do in your private time is your business, man,” the other patient says.

Half his face is, well, hard to describe. It looks like it may have melted. The skin sags as if the bones underneath no longer hold it up and what flesh is there is deeply cratered.

“You look like sh*t, soldier,” I say from my *ss, unable to get my knees underneath me.

“Pot, meet kettle,” the other man says, bending over to grip me at the elbow.

We look at eachother, I smile, and he bursts out laughing. That’s when I hear Nori’s voice.

“What have you two gotten yourselves into?” she asks, rushing over to help the other man lift me.

With my arms around their shoulders, they drop me off at the sink. I hear them talking, him asking her to play Whist with him when she gets a moment. She tells him of course she’ll play and, with her voice raised, says I’ll play, too. I grin at her assumption.

They take me back to my bed, the soldier returns to his, and Nori takes my vitals. After writing them in my file she flits away, stopping at several beds and chatting with the men that are awake. At times she closes the curtains around a bed, helping one man or another with something personal. My eyes watch her every move, although I try not to make it obvious and creep her out.

It’s hours later, after she’s helped with making sure everyone eats and is bathed, that she, the other soldier, and I are sitting around a rickety card table. We’re whispering so we don’t wake anyone else. He’s telling jokes, talking about how one soldier in his unit got so nervous the first time he faced an alien he p*ssed his pants, shorting out the camouflage tech on his bottom half. The solider says it looked like just a pair of bodiless pants haunting the battlefield. I smile, but it’s brittle. This talk only makes me think of Chavo and Aiden. One is gone, and I pray every night that one is not.

Already a little on edge, my leg involuntarily twitches, knocking into the table and sending the cards flying. I curse. It doesn’t help the wave of rage that takes over. I can’t walk. Not really. Not anymore. I have a thing for this beautiful woman in front of me, and there’s no reason she should reciprocate it. I’m a dying man, and all I can look forward to is watching my body fail by degrees. F*ck this. F*ck everything. What the f*ck has fighting for the last eight years been for if it’s going to end like this?

I flip the table, not able to care if I’m scaring Nori or my brother soldier. Even after battle, even after witnessing death after death, I’ve never felt this kind of burning, helpless anger. Clearly, I’m not going to sail into the end of my life with grace. Nope, I’m deciding, not purposely, to go out like a rabid animal losing autonomy savagely.

I try to stand up, to get away from the mess I’ve made, and fall on my face again. I’m turning into Lieutenant Dan, and I can only growl about it. I feel everyone’s eyes on me.

Arms, slim and cool, bracket my back and legs. Nori. I can tell both by the feel of her skin and the smell of her, muddied by so many hours in the ward. She does something that shocks me. She lifts me, almost in a farce of a bridal carry. This girl, slight and stylish, is far stronger than she looks. Weirdly strong.

She puts me on my bed gently, then sits down next to me. I can feel the chilliness coming off her skin sitting so close like this.

“You’re a girl Bruce Banner,” I tell her.

“I don’t know who that is,” she replies.

“You don’t know who the Hulk is? Big green guy, people don’t like it when he’s angry?” I ask.

“Oh, yes, maybe I do. I am not the one here acting out in anger,” she says pointedly, no fear in her gaze as she addresses me.

“I can’t do a damned thing for myself. I don’t know how to be that person. I built my first house, with my dad, when I was fifteen. Put the walls up, installed all the electric and plumbing, helped him sell it. I always promised him I’d grow the business. I’d take care of them so he could retire. Then, when I was 18, those alien f*ckers showed up and knocked over every major city. I helped my parents and siblings get to the countryside and knew I had to join up. I served and killed and waded through nightmares for four years. When I was done, on my way home to make sure everyone was okay, I was told my planet still needed me. My R&R was revoked. Effective immediately. I went back into the field, living knee to knee with other men. I was coming up on the anniversary of my second tour. I accepted that it wouldn’t stop, I’d never get a break, until the war was over. I just didn’t think it’d end like this,” I say, having talked more than I recall doing in nearly a decade.

She leans into me so our arms are touching. There’s something I can’t put my finger on, something about her that makes her seem utterly at peace. Maybe it’s that I’ve never heard her express frustration or any other emotion with breath. She doesn’t sigh. She doesn’t huff.

“When was the last time you had fun?” she asks me.

That’s an unexpected question. I can’t remember. I had a laugh with that other soldier earlier in the day, but that hardly counts as actual fun. Gallows humor is a coping mechanism, not an act of joy.

“The spring before I graduated. During festival. I drank too much orujo, puked in the streets, and bought the dumbest looking shirt off a vendor so I could keep dancing with the girls without wearing vomit,” I answered.

“You charmer, you,” she teases.

We sit quietly for a few more moments. It’s not uncomfortable. The anger drains away.

“Did you dance the bolero?” she asks me, breaking the companionable quiet.

“Does the best pizza have pineapple?” I say.

“No?” she answers with a lopsided smile.

“Of course it does,” I correct.

“Then come, mister, dance it with me,” she says, pulling me off the bed by my forearms.

“I can’t…” I protest.

“I’m strong enough to support both of us,” she vows.

And she is. Holding me close to her, one hand on my back and the other clasped on my forearm, she hums the beat of a traditional bolero. I join, adding my base to her alto. She dances the bolero differently. I recognize it, it’s similar enough, but there’s something almost old fashioned about the way she progresses through the moves. I like it. I like her. And it is fun. I catch myself smiling into her hair, laughing at the cat calls from the other injured men when they start, and when she dips me, I laugh out loud.