Page 3

“Helena?”

My eyes flick up, watching my therapist, Dr. Hawthorne, as he leans back in his chair. Thirty minutes have passed. How did I get here?

“Are you still with me?” He tilts his head in question, using that tone I despise. Caution. Concern. Pity. He knows it pisses me off, but he never changes it—something about empathy and active listening being a natural response to other’s trauma.

My last response got me reprimanded. “Yes, sir.”

His smile is polite.

“Morgan is fine.” He nods toward the leather journal in my hands. “Do you want to continue?”

I open the book, cold and hard like stone. I watch my fingers grip the leather and trace over the cover, but they don’t feel like mine.

It’s been a year. My CO says the feeling will go away—the feeling that I’m not in my own body. Still, I somehow manage to watch myself like a ghost as I flip through pages, trying to make sense of the scribbles on them.

Everything is written haphazardly. Some days are skipped or scratched out with my pen, but I don’t need words to be able to read about the disgusting things I wrote in it. Dr. Hawthorne said it would help—writing it out, reliving that day, but what does he know? He sits in a cozy office, listening to people scream and cry about their trivial issues before he goes home. He can walk inside his house without people throwing rocks at him, telling him he should’ve died too. He can go to bed without nightmares. He can live.

When my fingers touch the last page, that feeling comes back and I have to force them to turn the wilted paper.

“The report from Syria.”

I could’ve recited it from memory. Writing it down is disrespectful. It won’t bring them back. It won’t change what happened. They’re dead and I killed them.

The pages are withered from sweat and crumpled from my uneven grip. They feel grainy…like sand.

There’s a flash of blood, and I rear back. It’s gone. My hands are clean.

“Don’t overwhelm yourself,” Dr. Hawthorne insists. “If you need to stop—”

“I’m fine!” I snap, without looking up. “I just lost my place.” I clear my throat, reading those words over and over again. My fingers curl around the page.

Tear it. Rip it up. You don’t need words to know what happened. The images will never stop unless you make them. Make them go away.

The lights in the tiny office suddenly become scorching, and a bead of sweat trickles down my temple, the way it had in the driver’s seat of the Humvee.

“There wasn’t anywhere we could take shelter,” I paraphrase. “Most of our vehicles had blown on contact, but I managed to escape most of the damage and pursued the target shortly after I got my lieutenant to safety.”

Dr. Hawthorne nods in thought, pointing at my journal.

“You haven’t mentioned your lieutenant much in our sessions, but she was your first concern before putting yourself in harm’s way.”

I roll my eyes. Sara’s my best friend. Of course I’d go back for her. It’s because of her I led the extraction to begin with—a debt that I repaid by taking her leg.

A car screeches to a halt outside, and I shut my eyes tightly. Six trucks entered the desert. Six trucks. Forty-five soldiers. Only two walked out. Nothing was left—trucks, guns, soldiers. Everything was gone, and the terrorist we apprehended ran as soon as the doors blew.

I straighten myself, folding my arms across my chest. “You always go back for your team. I called for medevac before we took on fire. I assumed they were his followers.”

“Is there something that made you think otherwise?”

My eyes tick to the floor.

His followers were dead. We killed them all.

“No,” I lie. “But it wouldn’t really matter after they put three rounds in his skull before I was in range.”

Dr. Hawthorne scribbles in his notebook, the word PTSD flashing briefly before the pages fold over. “That must have been very traumatic to watch.”

More words are scribbled, and I frown.

“I’m not a control freak.”

He turns his notebook face down and sighs.

“It says ‘struggles with control’. This session isn’t meant to insult or debase you, Helena. I’m here to listen, if you’ll let me.”

I sit back, the leather couch squeaking as it sinks under me. He deliberately keeps the lights dim when I show up to the office every week; he thinks the bright lights trigger some sort of traumatic response. Isn’t that what he wants—to force my trauma out so he can psychoanalyze me?

The air smells heavily of lavender, attempting to cover the faint scent of bleach and Lysol. The shag carpet hugs the entire floor, and it feels like fur, almost like the rugs I’d help my dad skin after a hunting trip.

I almost smile, but Dr. Hawthorne shifts in his chair and it stirs the sharp scent of the lavender-bleach. Everything is stacked meticulously on shelves, ordered by color, and arranged in perfect heights without a single speck of dust on them. Everything is perfect, meant to resemble warmth—a home—but it’s not. It’s too clean, too perfect. Dr. Hawthorne is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, smiling at me with white, razor-sharp teeth, waiting for me to turn my back so he can attack.

But I’m not that naive, and I won’t be lulled to false security by warm lights and a soft voice. He’s not a friend; he’s a scientist, probing me with fake smiles and clinical words to provoke a response until my CO decides I’m still useful, or to cut me loose.

‘I’m here to listen,’ he said.

How are you supposed to outsmart an expert in human behavior?

“I don’t know what to say.” My eyes scan the diamond-patterned carpet again. A flash of bone. A rib piercing through flesh. A gurgle from a soldier drowning in his own blood

Dr. Hawthorne looks at me, his hands folded politely in his lap. “What was going through your mind when you saw him die?”

The clock’s ticks fade the longer I trace the lines of the carpet. Soon, the ticks become an echo, along with the voice of my therapist. The leather feels softer, and the soft light warms my skin. The bleach is gone.

My eyes flutter closed. I see home again. My mom is fueling the furnace, the flames blazing momentarily before they settle again. My dad lays down starch on a wolf skin, the first I’d ever shot. The shotgun left a sizable bruise on my shoulder, and he joked about it being my first battle scar. I blow out a breath on the fire, watching as the embers glow like stars.

Home…

A bang rips me back and my gun is in my hand before my eyes fully open. Gunfire. Smoke. Sand. Survive. Shoot them!

“Woah, take it easy.” A man grabs my wrist with jarring strength. “You’re safe here. It’s just us.”

The battlefield fades, the scent of blood and gunpowder molding into lavender-bleach, Dr. Hawthorne staring at me with wide eyes. My eyes move down to my hand gripping the gun in its holster, and I let go just as he releases my wrist with a soft nod.

“Are you still having flashbacks?” he asks.

I shake my head, tossing my head back with a smile as if I didn’t just try to kill my therapist. “I’m fine, really. The medicine helps.”

Lies. I threw them in the trash the day he gave them to me.

He gives me a condescending look before writing on the paper. ‘Avoidant’. ‘Dangerous’. ‘Check weapons privileges’.

I’m not dangerous! I don’t go around hurting people—okay that was a mistake, but I really did think it was a gunshot and my therapist didn’t get hurt. I’m fine.

I groan. My CO already revoked most of my carry privileges. I was lucky he let me keep my sidearm. His words: ‘I couldn’t kill shit with a .22’.

See? Completely fine.

“It’s not the first time someone had their brains blown out in front of me.” I shrug. “After seeing what he did to my squad, he definitely deserved it. I’m pissed I couldn’t do it myself.”

I ignore the questioning look this time. Special Forces are great at teaching compartmentalization. Innocent people die—men, women, children. They scream. They beg. They’ll reach out for help, and we can’t always save them. That’s the first thing we’re taught. To detach.

When we found the HVT, he’d taken refuge in a brothel, using women as shields. He died as a coward, but his screams weren’t the ones I remembered. They were the screams of my best friend. My squadmates. The innocent women who caught bullets instead of being evacuated first—the ones who didn’t deserve to die.

My chest tightens. Another flash—Sara being lifted onto a stretcher. Her leg is found shortly after. The limb is too shattered to reattach.

I shake the memory.

“I thought I was being clever by staying off the roads, but the truck wasn’t checked for mechanical errors and I—” My voice catches and I clench my jaw to stop the tears from falling.

“It’s easy to blame yourself when you face a traumatic event, especially when you’re one of the only survivors,” he says. “There doesn’t always have to be someone at fault. Trauma doesn’t always have a purpose. They just happen.”

I scoff.

‘They just happen.’

That’s the easiest way to disrespect everyone who died. They didn’t die for their country; they died because of failure to follow procedure.

The medevac wasn’t the end of the story. It was the end of my version. The acceptable version. The medics airlifted us out of Syria when they arrived on scene, but I ran. I went after the target. For almost a mile, I ran after him, and someone got there first. Two men found him and shot him without a word. They looked at me. Both of them.

Then they laid down their guns and walked away.

I was unarmed, my right leg torn from shrapnel. I had no way to run. No way to defend myself or fight. No way to even call for help. They looked at me, and they left.

The airlift came, and the men watched from the wreckage as Sara and I were evacuated—two men dressed in black, with gear and weapons that mirrored our own, weapons that could take down an unsuspecting helicopter. But they just watched.

“It didn’t take long for Colonel Bane to find the crash site,” I tell my therapist. “He took us back to base, admitted us to a hospital for a while. Had to undergo a physical and a psych eval.” I bark out a laugh, gesturing to the small office. “Guess I passed the fucking test, didn’t I? Locked me in here to talk about my feelings like it’ll change anything.”

“Do you think this place is a prison, Helena?”

My mouth shuts with an audible click. There’s no good way to answer that without ending back up in that psych ward, and I’m not going back there. I managed to talk Bane down to mandated therapy, but the thought of being sent back to that white Hell makes a rock form in my throat. I’d rather go to prison. At least they don’t force you to talk about your feelings there.

I glance at the clock. Fifteen minutes.

Dr. Hawthorne catches my not-so-subtle glance at the clock, nodding like he’s been counting the minutes too. “I’ve been doing this for almost fifteen years, Helena, and one thing I can tell you about almost everyone who steps into my office is that guilt is one hell of a drug.”

My eyes narrow.

“I’m not addicted to guilt.”

He nods. “Maybe not in a traditional sense, no, but the brain is a complex organ.” He picks up a model skull from the edge of his desk. “When someone experiences trauma, your brain tries to process it in any way it can.” He pulls out a piece from the underside of the model and sets it aside. “It’s trying to rationalize with anxiety—your nightmares, your flashbacks, the what-ifs. Your brain is processing by forcing you to find alternative ways to prevent something that’s already happened.”

I open my mouth to speak, but he holds up his hand, and I begrudgingly force it shut.

“Punishing yourself won’t bring them back. It happened, and it could’ve happened if you went another day, took another route, if someone else had led. It’s okay to accept that there was nothing you could’ve done. You can’t control that.”

I try to swallow the lump in my throat long enough to answer. Control. That’s all I have, if not to bring them back, then to make sure I won’t ever make that mistake again. What do I have if I don’t have control?

“Their families thought differently,” I mumble.

He huffs.

“You didn’t kill anyone, Helena. What happened was an accident,” he says, enunciating the last word. “Colonel Bane already said he has no intention of dishonorably discharging you. That’s why you’re here—to heal and learn how to cope.”

My fingers recoil from the wet leather. Small drops of water glisten in the dim light. No, not water. I wipe my eyes quickly, ignoring the box of tissues he offers me seconds later.

“Focus on the things you can control.” He sets the tissues on the table in front of me. “Eating, drinking water, going out with friends—”

“I don’t have any friends.”

He frowns and sits back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Five minutes.

“You need to go out,” he says tightly. “Isolating yourself is only going to hurt you, and interacting with people will help.”

“I’m interacting with you,” I say, but he shoots me a glare. His pitiful smile is gone, and I’m not sure if seeing his frustration is a better alternative if he reports it to the colonel.

Fine.

“I will…work on it.”

His eyes light up, and I almost feel bad for lying to him. Almost.

“You’re making a lot of progress, Helena. Give yourself a break from everything. You’ve been through enough.”

Like clockwork, the timer goes off, and I flinch. It’s just a timer. A timer like the sound of a C-4 seconds before detonation.

I offer my hand before he notices.

“Thank you.”

The snow is melting. Walls of white pack the edge of the street, and the remaining slush crunches under my boots while I count my steps to ignore the bustling of shops gearing up for summer. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two—

I jump back when a car blares its horn, narrowly missing me when I leap out of the way. My eyes pinch shut, flashes of sirens while the civilians run screaming. I cover my ears but the noise never lessens. It only gets louder and louder…

My phone rings and I almost grab my gun again.

A name lights up on the screen—four bold letters of my lieutenant sparring confusion on my face as I answer.

“Sara?”

“I hate boats.”

I pull the phone away as a loud crash sounds. She gags.

“Are you still deployed?” I say after a moment.

Another crash and Sara’s frustrated groan fills the static on the line.

“I can’t stay for very long. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

I scoff to hide my laugh. Even after the disaster in Syria, the first thing she did was ask for me when she regained consciousness. She didn’t even notice her leg was gone until I pointed it out later. She’s the only one who’s checked on me since I was forced on sabbatical.

“I’m fine,” I assure her. “I just got out of therapy. Why are you on a boat?”

“Bane called in a DA strike north of the Adriatic. The coast of Croatia, I think.”

“Sara!” I shout, a little louder than intended. My eyes dart across the streets and hidden corners for anyone within earshot. “My phone isn’t encrypted. Someone could be listening.”

Sara scoffs, like she was challenged by my warning. “If they want to come find us on this floating death trap, be my guest. A coffin would smell better than this.” Her voice raises a level, though it’s muffled as she shouts outwardly. “Come on already! Shoot me! I’m getting seasick!”

If I hadn’t gone to therapy today, I’m sure that would’ve already raised my blood pressure. Sara’s smart, but she also loves to play with fire. She’s never reckless like this unless she’s pissed off, and god help anyone that gets near her when she’s angry. My bunkmates learned that when I met her out of basic. Three of them tried to haze me and came out with broken fingers, bloody noses and orders to sweep the sun off the sidewalk until the day I was discharged.

I laugh. They should’ve known that only she is allowed to fuck with me.

She kidnapped me from my platoon just to prove a point. No one came and got me and she laughed for weeks about it. Then she punished me for acting stupid by making me spin records in my marksman training, like I chose to be kidnapped.

I probably would’ve if it got me out of PT again.

“Sara,” I say in a warning tone.

“I’m careful,” she laughs. “You know me.”

I roll my eyes. “When are you due?”

“Soon,” she says. “We need to move in before their evac comes.”

“Then let me come help,” I offer. “I can shadow your team, like old times.”

She falls silent for a moment, and then sighs. “You’re not ready.”

“I’m a hell of a lot better than I was a year ago.”

“But you’re still not ready.” Soldiers talk in the background, chatting and laughing with each other, baiting the others to look overboard. “I know how you feel about being home, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe this is your chance to start over.”

I press my ear against the speaker like she’s going to laugh with the other soldiers, telling me it’s a prank.

She doesn’t.

A car screeches when it skids along the not-yet-melted ice, and I jerk, clenching my fists to avoid another memory that tries to surface.

“I’m sorry,” I say as I blow out a breath. “I know what happened in Syria was a shitshow, but I learn from my mistakes.”

“This isn’t about your mistakes, Helena, and what happened in Syria wasn’t your fault, I promise you.”

Her answer is quick, rehearsed, speaking in that same tone my therapist used.

“Sara, please—”

“This isn’t my decision. It’s Bane’s.” She pauses, seeming to wince at the sharpness in her own voice, but it’s gone before I can speak up. “I’ll see you when I get back.”

The line clicks. People shuffle through the street, pushing past me while I stare at the call screen on my phone. She doesn’t want me back. My superior. My best friend. My only friend.

She doesn’t want me back.

The clock strikes noon. I step back as a crowd swarms the sidewalk, people laughing and chatting above the noise of passing cars. The sparrows are singing again, shrill and piercing like missiles, picking up fallen food as the crowd trudges forward.

A flash. A falling bomb. It whistles in the air. Smoke and fire floods the area. We evacuate the city. They all survive.

The crowd moves in sync and their voices fade. Their winter hats turn to helmets and their coats turn to vests. They march on, towards an unknown destination. Marching. Moving. Always moving. One after the other. One. Two. Three. Four.

I look back at my hands, stained with blood again.

I follow.