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I shook my head. I couldn’t think about that right now.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I’ll meet you back at the New York office to debrief.”
“I owe you.”
“No.” He held up his fist. “Till death, right?”
I dipped my chin. “Till death, brother. Welcome to hell.”
38
Justin
The hospital swarmed with police officers, federal agents, and journalists from all over the country. Fox News, CNN, ABC News, even someone from Canadian broadcasting wanted an exclusive.
It was a circus.
The news that a CIA agent, presumed to be dead, had been rescued after being held hostage for four years dominated the headlines the moment the information was leaked to the press. The Feds were working overtime on damage control, spinning the information faster than a dinner plate.
Honestly, it was both hysterical and appalling to watch. Only Nate, Sophia, and I knew the true story, and we wanted to keep it that way.
Nate was being held in a restricted wing of the hospital under heavy security. Only two people were allowed in his room at a time, not including me.
The doctors had held off the Feds as long as they could, conducting a bevy of examinations that included multiple X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs, and a full blood workup, checking for vitamin and mineral deficiencies, infections, and parasites—all of which he had.
After it was confirmed that Nate had no life-threatening conditions, the interviews began. The debrief process, this is called. Though it varies from situation to situation, the process consists of multiple stages of medical assessments and interviews, and then a decompression time assisted by ongoing rehabilitation and therapy.
Sophia had also been admitted to the hospital, undergoing most of the same tests as Nate, despite her protests. It was only after she was deemed in excellent health that I allowed the doctors to tend to my gunshot wound. Had Sophia not been by my side to ensure I complied, I would have likely been arrested for disturbing the peace.
I did not want to be admitted. My brother was my sole focus, not my health.
After cleaning, stitching, and stabilizing my arm in a sling, they finally allowed me to see my brother. Sophia, not permitted into the restricted area, returned to a conference room they’d sectioned off from the staff, where she was also being interviewed.
During the hours I was banished from Nate’s room, I’d paced outside his door like a rabid animal. My only moments of respite came in the form of text messages between Sophia and me.
The communication between us, her concern and support, will be etched into my soul for all of eternity. It was the first time I had someone, an anchor, to pull me back to earth when everything around me seemed so out of control—including my anger.
Looking back, I think it was a good thing that my time with Nate was limited in those initial hours. Wild, disjointed thoughts ran like freight trains through my head, colliding in explosions of rage. Hatred for Black Cell, anger at the universe for allowing such horrible things to happen to innocent people, and outrage at the government for misleading my mother and me regarding Nate’s death.
We still didn’t have solid answers on the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. I didn’t know if someone knew he was kidnapped and covered it up, or if the DOD truly believed he’d been in the safe house when it exploded.
We will probably never get the truth.
It was a lot to process, seeing my brother’s living, breathing body after having watched his casket be lowered into the dirt. Seeing him in the flesh after seeing his ghost in my dreams every night for years. Seeing him again after I’d turned into someone completely different—because of his death.
I realized that Nate’s death had become my identity. Every thought, every decision, everything I’d thrown away, was all a side effect of unprocessed grief. I’d allowed the anger to poison me from the inside out, erase everything I knew to be true and replace it with darkness.
Now that he was alive, who was I?
Nate had been given a second chance at life, and in those few days, I knew I had been too.
• • •
“Mr. Montgomery.”
I spun away from the window I’d been staring out of. Two Feds in suits, one pinstriped, one navy blue, stepped out of Nate’s room, quietly closing the door behind them.
