The text from Rosie reads When can I give you a call? This is followed by six happy faces, which should drive Meghan into hitting the call button to find out what is going on, but she doesn’t. This is not a good time at all. Will call you when I can, she replies, and leaves the phone on the table. She simply doesn’t have the strength to fake happy.
Meghan pulls away from the kitchen area and motors into the living area. Marley sits on the couch, his dog at his feet, or more accurately, on his feet. He stares straight ahead at the television. He is very upright, very stiff, as he has been ever since the most recent mass shooting. He doesn’t have the sound on; he uses the closed captioning instead of having to hear the continual replay of video from phones recording the mayhem, the barrage, broadcast over the networks. His big hands haven’t stopped shaking. Spike has done her best, pressing herself into him, resting her head on his feet, nosing his hands until he grabs her fur. Meghan has done the best she can. He won’t stop watching, and he won’t talk. She has seen only mild episodes of his PTSD; this shooting has caused Marley to spiral into a full-blown panic attack. He cries and makes no apology for it. She can’t get him to eat; she can’t get him to rest. She has called in sick because he can’t bear to let her leave the apartment.
To be fair, Marley had warned her. When she cried to him about her own fears, he warned her that his were a bigger issue in terms of their relationship. She might be afraid of intimacy, he said, but he was just simply afraid. Most days, he told her, he could pretend he wasn’t. Spike helped normalize his world. Having Meghan in his life made him feel good. But on days like this, when the sound and fury of senseless violence made this country look like the worst of Afghanistan, then there was nothing he or anyone could do to mitigate his panic.
“Can you call Dr. Markowsky?”
“He’ll only tell me to come in. I can’t. Not yet.”
“Would he prescribe anything?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you want me to call him?”
Marley takes her damaged hand in his. “Do you have any oxy left?”
Meghan hasn’t used her painkillers with any frequency in months, but she keeps a prescription for emergencies. She remembers how close she came to dependency on those little white pills, and her other hand goes out to touch Shark’s back. “Yes. But they’re meant for pain.”
Marley lifts his chin to look into her eyes. His are bloodshot. “Ain’t that what I’m going through?”
“You’re safe. You don’t have to worry.” She knows he’s not in a place where he can take in her words; she’s uttering the same kind of babble a mommy offers an inconsolable child. But it’s all she’s got.
“Isn’t that what all those people thought, too? Going to have some fun. Less safe than I was in Afghanistan, walking down the street in full body armor.”
“I was there, too, Marley. You forget that sometimes. I wore the armor; I commanded a platoon; I sent people just like you into buildings. I was blown up. So, yeah, I get your fear. I recognize it and honor it. But I’m not going to let some crazy asshole take my freedom from me out of fear. I’m going to keep on living the best life I can. The fullest.”
Shark is on his feet; Spike, too.
Tenderly, Marley takes her face in his hands and kisses her. “Then let me touch you.”
In Iraq, in Afghanistan, Meghan’s troops needed her; they needed her orders, her direction. They needed to know that she was there, that she was in charge, and that she could be trusted with their lives. She reveled in that responsibility. She was content in it, comfortable being their leader. Marley Tallman needs her now. It is a far more harrowing responsibility, being someone’s comfort.
She shuts off the incessant television coverage of the latest shooting, then moves herself from her chair to Marley’s side on the couch, where he wraps her in his long arms. He whispers in her ear, her good one, “Sometimes I envy you.”
“Why?”
“Because people can see your damage.”
She has no answer for that. She certainly doesn’t envy him, with his unpredictable and uncontrollable reactions to sound and circumstance. And then she thinks that not all of her damage is visible, and he certainly can’t envy her that. “Touch me.”
For a long time, the world condenses into the feel of his skin against her living skin, his touch, his slow kindness. For her, there is no magical release, no well-what-do-you-know moment, but there is a soft transition. She sighs and he kisses her fingertips.
Afterward, she invites both dogs onto the couch with them, and there they are, the foursome, holding and stroking, huddled together against the frightening things.
Meghan’s stomach rumbles and she thinks that at least she’s got feeling there. “I’m going to make lunch.”
Marley shifts. “No, let me.”
She stays put as he eases himself out from under the dogs and heads into the kitchen area. This is good, she thinks. He hasn’t eaten in days. She watches him from the couch, making sure that he is moving, is really foraging for sandwich makings. She’s drained, exhausted. It’s harder sometimes to cope with his emotional pain than with her own physical pain. And yet she is undeniably content.
“Grilled cheese?”
“That would be lovely. And can you toss me my phone?”
Marley walks it to her.
“Rosie called. I’ve got to call her back.”
“Tell her hi from me.” Marley bends and kisses Meghan.
A sense of relief washes through Meghan. He’s through the worst. And maybe she is, too.
Rosie wants Meghan to show her brother Teddy what a service dog can do.