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Thoughts about my friend and the future swirl around in my mind as I pull up in front of my mother’s house. I’m dreading the work I have left to do. So far, I’ve emptied out the rooms upstairs and brought all the garbage outside. I need to do several trash runs today and a trip or ten to donate old clothes and furniture to a second-hand store. Then I have to clear out the kitchen and bathroom, fix the plumbing, and god, the basement…
My phone rings, jarring me out of my downward spiral. I hop out of my truck and smile when I see Romeo’s name on the screen.
“Hey, I was just thinking about you! Are you back in the States yet?” I ask him.
“Hey, man,” he says, and my stomach cramps as soon as he speaks.
Something is wrong. I can hear it in his voice. I shift on my feet, the anxiety rising when I realize that the beeping in the background has to be from a hospital heart monitor machine.
“Romeo,” I start, and he clears his throat.
“I’m in Virginia, at the VA hospital by Langley Air Force Base.”
“Are you okay?”
“Kind of…” he says, and I’m on high alert. The hairs stand up on my neck, and my heart thumps painfully in my chest.
“I can be there in a few hours. By tonight,” I promise him.
His mom died two years ago, and he’s always been single, like me, so I know that he has no one else to visit him. Plus, he’s literally done the same thing for me. Of course, I’m going to drop everything to be with him in his hour of need.
“Thanks,” he says, and I promise to see him soon before I run inside to pack a bag and then head back outside to hop in my truck and peel out of the driveway.
I pull up the directions and hit the gas when I see that it’s a ten-hour drive. I can’t wait that long so instead, I turn, heading toward the airport. It will be less than a two-hour flight, and I can rent a car when I land.
My only thought is to see my friend and making sure that he’s okay. He didn’t seem to want to tell me what happened or how bad it was on the phone. That only has my anxiety ticking higher and higher. Surely he’s not dying. He’d have said something. Right?
Fuck.I wouldn’t have told anyone if I was dying.
I can’t lose him. Romeo is the only real family I have left.
Cursing at the confusing airport signs, I pull my truck into what I hope is long-term parking. At this rate, I don’t give a fuck if my truck gets towed. I just need to get to my friend.
Getting a plane ticket on such short notice is expensive and hard. I find my gate and pace back and forth like a crazy man until a flight attendant takes mercy on me and upgrades my ticket just so I’ll be seated sooner and out of her way.
It’s not until the plane reaches its cruising altitude that I realize I left my phone in my truck. What a mess. As I flip through whatever sad replacement for the Sky Mall magazine they now offer, I try to do a few breathing exercises to calm down.
Four tense hours later, I’m fighting off traffic in the only available rental car in all of Virginia, apparently. The sad little Volkswagen chugs along, finally arriving at the hospital. By the time I walk into Romeo’s hospital room, I’m tired, hungry, and stressed out.
“Hey, man,” Romeo says from the hospital bed as I walk in.
I collapse in the chair next to his bed and give him a weary smile.
“How’s it going, buddy?” I ask him, and he laughs.
“I’ve been better.”
I nod, and my eyes scan over his body as he lies in the bed. It’s then I notice something amiss. There’s only one bump under the blankets when there should be two. My stomach drops, and I look back at him.
“I lost my leg,” he says, and I feel tears sting my eyes as he starts to cry.
He’s probably been drugged out of his mind the last day or two ever since it happened, and I’m betting that this is the first he’s had a second to actually process everything.
“What happened?” I ask, leaning forward in my seat.
“We were on a routine patrol and headed back when we got intel that there was a high-level target holed up in this little town. So, we headed there.”
He looks off into the distance, and I know that he’s back there in the desert, reliving the whole thing again.
