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Finally, the clock read 12:30 and after I finished up my meeting with one of my staff, I took my car to Colm’s restaurant. As I stepped into the cool interior of the building, I wondered what questions she’d ask and how she’d respond.
Miranda sat alone at a round booth at the side of the restaurant. I went over and bent down to kiss her cheek. I sat beside her, close, and wrapped my arms around her, kissing her deeply. She kissed me back and at that moment, I felt so incredibly relieved.
“Ask me anything. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Tell me why.”
I inhaled and folded my hands on the table. “We lost our GPS and strayed into enemy territory,” I said, staring at the salt shaker, remembering back to the day. “We’d been out testing the comms tech Brimstone developed with a DARPA contract and—”
“No,” she said and held her hand up. “Tell me why you didn’t tell me who you were right away.”
I closed my eyes. That why was harder to explain. It was easy to explain why Dan came to rescue us. It was far harder – practically impossible – to explain why I didn’t tell her who I was right away.
“I was afraid that if I had told you the truth, you would’ve hated me. I didn’t want you to hate me.”
“Why would I hate you?
“He died because of me,” I said, my throat constricted. “His team was dispatched to rescue us. He came with me in the chopper. I was his patient,” I said.
She took my hand and entwined her fingers with mine and that gave me strength.
“When we crashed, he wasn’t strapped in yet, and when we hit, he was caught beneath the airframe…”
I heard Miranda’s intake of breath. “Did he die quickly at least?”
I said nothing. I’d lied to her too many times. “I’m so sorry,” I said, not wanting to tell her how he screamed in pain while the other members of the team tried to rescue him, and how they finally freed him after he’d suffered horrific burns, ripping off his clothes to apply bandages and tourniquets to stop the bleeding because of amputations caused when the rotor blades cut him.
She covered her eyes with a hand and I heard her sob. My eyes blurred, remembering the ghastly scene. I pulled her into my arms and remembered the scene that replayed over and over in my mind every day since then.
It was the only thing I remembered from the week before the accident to three weeks afterward. It was the one thing I couldn’t forget, even if I tried.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice breaking.
After a moment, she seemed to get ahold of herself. Finally, she glanced up, her eyes wet. She reached out and touched my cheek, her gesture so tender. My throat closed up with emotion.
“Dan was a medic,” she said soft
ly, smiling through her tears. “Rescuing you was his job.” She squeezed my hand.
“I wasn’t even in the Marines at the time,” I said, barely able to speak. At that moment, a huge weight of guilt lifted off my chest. “I was a civilian contractor. I was just there to test some new technology that Brimstone developed for the military.”
She held my eyes. “He was doing his job. He loved his job.”
I nodded, and wiped my eyes. “He shouldn’t have died because of me.”
She smiled faintly, her own eyes wet. “No one should die,” she said softly, “but we all do. My father died taking down a racketeer. It was what he loved to do. Dan died being a medic. It was what he loved to do. You could have died. You almost did. Thank God Dan was able to save your life or the mission would have been a total loss.”
I couldn’t speak my relief was so great. She was so accepting of what I told her. Her husband died when he came to save my life.
She didn’t hate me.
“I feel responsible.”
She shook her head, still holding onto my hand. “It was an IED. The insurgents who set it are the ones responsible. It was the sandstorm getting into the engines that brought down the chopper…”
“If I hadn’t been there…”
She took both my hands in hers. “If my father hadn’t gone to work that day. If you and Sue hadn’t gone snorkeling.”
