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“It was from an old friend. One that I served with overseas.”
“That’s nice… right?” I ask cautiously when he doesn’t look happy.
“Yeah, it was nice to hear that he’s doing good after everything that happened.”
I nod encouragingly, urging him to go on.
“He… we talked about the attack. The one that sent both of us back to the States.”
“The one where you were injured,” I clarify and he nods.
His hand goes to his shoulder and I wonder if it’s bothering him or if it’s just a subconscious movement. He’s been lifting me a lot and helping me carry my groceries in the other day. Maybe he just overdid it and needs to rest.
“Yeah, the one that everyone keeps calling me a hero over.”
“But you don’t think that you’re a hero?” I ask, my voice coming out soft.
I’ve never tried to broach this topic with him. It always seemed off-limits. He would get tense and upset whenever anyone stopped him to thank him or shake his hand. At first, I thought that maybe it was just because he didn’t like the attention. I know that he’s shy and prefers to be alone or with a small group of people, but even when we were with our friends at dinner, he hadn’t reacted well.
“I’m not a hero,” he insists.
“What happened?” I ask him and he looks away from me.
There’s so much pain in his eyes and I hate it. I just want to help him feel better.
I want him to see himself the way that I see him. I don’t know what happened that day or during any of his time in the military but I know that he’s a hero. He served his country. He’s an honorable guy. He saved me when my car broke down. He carried me when I was scared of the animals in the forest even though I know now that it must have really hurt his shoulder. He fixed my car when he didn’t have to.
Jonah is a good guy and I’m sure that he was a good Marine too.
“We were outside the wire and driving back to base. We had just driven through this tiny little town. It was barely more than a dozen buildings,” he says and I can see him getting lost in his memories, in what happened that day.
“There was just sand and dirt. Everything over there is just sand and dirt,” he says with a humorless laugh.
His eyes look a little misty and my heart breaks for what he went through. If it’s making him cry, then I know that it must have been bad.
I remember laughing with my friends. Smith, he fancied himself a ladies’ man and he was trying to give us some pickup lines, but they were all awful. We were cracking up and I remember looking out the window and seeing this old shoe half buried in the sand.”
His hand tightens around mine and I swallow. I have a feeling that I already know where this is going and I wish that I could take some of his pain away. I wish that it had never happened to him.
“The first Humvee went over an IED and Tobinas, he was driving, he slammed on the brakes. We were already taking fire when Maxwell climbed out and I was right behind him when…” He trails off and I feel the first tear start to fall.
I can’t imagine how scared he must have been. Not just for himself but for all of his friends as well.
“Reyes, he climbed out after me and that’s when Maxwell got shot. I tried to… I tried to stop the bleeding,” he says, his voice breaking and my heart breaks alongside it.
“He was gone. I couldn’t save him. I didn’t see Tobinas get shot, but by the time that I made it around to his side of the Humvee, he was already dead.”
His voice goes flat and I see him stare off into the distance.
“I tried to run to the other Humvee, but they started shooting mortars at us. They hit the Humvee and it exploded. They weren’t…” he starts and he has to stop to clear his throat. “They didn’t make it. None of them.”
“Reyes got hit by some of the blast from the mortar. He was bleeding really bad and his leg, well, half of it was already gone. I just reacted. We had called in for air support and the drones were overhead. I tied my belt around Reyes’s leg, or what was left of it, and laid him in the back seat.”
I draw in a shaky breath. It must have been pure chaos, and I’m not sure how I would have reacted in that situation. I would like to think that I would have stayed and fought, that I would have helped my friends, but no one really knows. Not until they’re in that situation.
“I went back for Tobinas and Maxwell’s body and that’s when I got shot,” he says, rubbing his shoulder.
“But you made it back to base.”
