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Harborview Medical Center, 1997
I ascended to consciousness from some deep, dark place where a man sobbed in anguish. When my eyes fluttered open, it took me a minute to remember where I was. In a hospital room, but where? Ah, back in Seattle. Harborview Medical Center. Unfortunately, I knew it well. But something seemed new and different. I wasn’t alone. In the predawn dimness, I realized I cradled someone in my arms, and then it all flooded back to me.
Paralysis on the hike, medevac to Harborview, Luka following me somehow, some way. Then last night, late, baring his soul to me. Telling me about the horror of his past, prison, suffering, watching his loved ones killed by a land mine.
A torrent of emotions washed through me—shock, empathy, and guilt that I had doubted his character. Gingerly, I stroked Luka’s back, fingers gently walking the subtle rise of scar tissue like a crab making its way along a rocky shore. The very scars that had made me doubt him, as if he was some violent man responsible for a fight that resulted in the slashes along his back. But no, he was, in fact, an innocent, tortured by his captors, released only to watch his fiancée and best friend die. How wrong I had been.
My secret seemed lame compared to his. My reason for escaping to Stehekin insignificant compared to his. I would be embarrassed to tell him, but I would tell him. He deserved to know.
He jerked in his sleep. Luka’s hand moved as if he were trying to grasp something, to pull something back from the edge, as if he were trying to stop something horrific from happening.
Then his eyelids fluttered open, and for a few moments he looked as confused as I had been upon wakening in this strange place. In bed, no less, with a woman who wasn’t Anya. But when cognition snapped into place, he looked directly into my eyes and smiled, a soft, almost apologetic smile.
“Good morning,” I whispered.
He moved out of my arms, and I mourned the absence of his warmth. He sat up but hesitated. He took a pillow and fluffed it behind him, leaned back against it, sighed deeply, and put an arm back around me. “Good morning,” he whispered back.
Hospitals never sleep, and we stayed still for a while until the inevitable nurse marched into the room. She stopped short when she saw us. I had been in the hospital for several days now, and Luka had been with me most of that time, but always in the chair, never in my bed.
She got over it fast, just a stutter in her walk. “Good morning, you two. Awake bright and early, I see. Mr. Vandenberg, if you don’t mind, I need to do a short assessment on your wife this morning.”
I twittered like a middle school girl with a new boyfriend. The nurse thought we were married, but Luka didn’t miss a beat. He gave me one last squeeze and climbed out of bed as gracefully as a six-foot, 190-pound man can.
“I’ll go to the cafeteria, get some coffee,” he said and disappeared out the door.
By the time he returned with two coffees, his hair was combed and his face looked freshly washed. I could only imagine what I looked like after three days in bed.
I took the coffee. The nurse had completed her checkup and left, so Luka sat in his usual chair, and we sipped in silence for a bit. I finally worked up the gumption to say something. “I owe you an apology.”
He had the good grace to look surprised. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
How to explain? “I misjudged your character. I saw the scars on your back, and they scared me.”
“Ah,” he shrugged, looking not entirely displeased. “I thought you just decided you didn’t like me after our... time together. This is better. I was... disappointed.”
I smiled into my coffee, then grew serious. “I’m so sorry about your loss,” I said. “I can’t imagine war. I can’t imagine prison, especially the kind you were in. I can’t imagine watching my loved ones...” my voice trailed off.
He stayed still for several minutes, then said, “Thank you,” and sipped his coffee. “Maybe now you will tell me why you are here?”
My own moment of truth. I took a deep sip of coffee, relishing the warmth, the hint of caffeine coursing through my veins along with the steroids that brought back life to my limbs and clarity to my brain.
I hesitated to begin. Once I told him the truth, he would never think of me in the same way again. The truth would change everything. From then on, there would always be pity in his crystalline green eyes when he looked at me. I fixed my gaze on his face. His handsome face. He looked concerned but calm. Curious, even.
“Has anyone told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Why I’m here.”
“No. Kathy knows, I think, but wouldn’t tell me. Instead, she showed me how to come to you here.”
I closed my eyes again, thinking back to the day my bad thing began.
