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Two hours later, Lieutenant Colonel Yarvis greeted us at the entrance to Brooke Army Medical Center, giving a cold nod to the nurse as he lowered Luke’s platform to the ground. “That guy’s a bastard,” Yarvis said as soon as we were rolling back to Luke’s room, out of earshot.
I decided I liked him.
“So,” Yarvis said, wheezing a bit as he settled across from us. “How long have you been married?”
“Four months,” I said.
“Five months,” Luke said at the same time.
“We got married in the middle of August,” I said, grabbing Luke’s hand, burying my nails into it. That seemed to wake Luke up. That’s better, you jerk. I’m sad, too, but we have a job to do. He cleared his throat.
Yarvis looked from me to Luke, back to me. “Well, I can’t imagine the separation was easy. I know my wife and I couldn’t stand to be apart in our first year, and it’s clear that Cassie being able to visit you has helped a lot.”
“I come when I can,” I said, hoping he’d change the subject soon. The truth was I’d been there only a handful of times. An hour and forty-five minutes was a long drive, and when I did visit, we sat in silence while Luke watched the Dallas Mavericks on TV and I worked on mixing songs on GarageBand.
Luke and I tried to smile at each other. It looked more like we had gotten headaches at the same time.
Yarvis stared at his clipboard. “You’ve made significant progress, Private Morrow, and the doctors say you’re ready to go home.”
We were quiet.
Home. Okay. It took a while for what exactly that meant to set in. Luke didn’t have a place, so “home” meant my home. What else could it mean? We were married. That was why people got married. Not to deceive the U.S. government into giving them money. Most people got married because they liked each other enough to share a home.
The silence stretched on until Luke cleared his throat. “Wow, we’re obviously speechless, here.”
“Yay!” I followed, lifting our clasped hands in a pathetic cheer.
“I’ll be checking in on you every week or so,” Yarvis said, “and of course you should be doing your physical therapy, but for now, you get to make like a tree.”
“Great!” Luke offered.
“It’ll still take a couple of days before we discharge you,” he said. “We’ll discuss your situation first, give you a chance to transition.”
“Got it,” Luke said, though his eyes looked glazed.
“I’ll leave ya to it and let the doctor know.”
When Yarvis had shut the door, Luke let go of my hand, putting his own to his forehead. “Shit,” he said.
My stomach was churning. “Yeah.”
“I could stay at my brother’s,” he suggested, but I shook my head. Both of us knew that would look too weird, unless I were to stay with him, and of course I couldn’t. I had to work in Austin.
“Plus not a good idea to live near your dad, considering he’s a former army police officer. When were you going to tell me that?”
I had overheard his father and Yarvis talking about Vietnam one day. Yarvis had asked what his dad’s role was. The CID were the very people who busted illegal activity within the military. Rights violations, protocol violations, you know, stuff like fake fucking marriages.
“I honestly forgot,” he said, shrugging.
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “What are we going to do?”
Luke put a fist to his palm. “We wait for my leg to heal, then I get an honorable discharge, then we make a plan to go our separate ways. We can get through this.”
For a minute, he felt more present. It felt like we were on the same planet. The same hostile, hurtling-through-space-toward-a-black-hole planet.
Then I remembered Toby. Sweet Toby, who spent hours in my apartment, taking baths, cooking bland spaghetti, and going through a serious early-nineties hip-hop phase.
“What?” Luke said, studying my face.
