“If you can stand it.”
Duncan lifted his arm over his head. I bent to follow the sight of the scar around his ribs and to the back. It was hard to look—to see the evidence of how badly he’d been injured—and that definitely held my focus in the moment, but I couldn’t help but be aware of other things, too, right there: how close I was to his bare shoulder, his body heat rising toward me; the sound of his breathing as he waited for me to finish looking; his muscles and his smooth skin and his living presence right there, so close, all that energy and movement contained so quietly just inches away.
How had I not suspected something like this? Of course he had a past I knew nothing about. Of course he was full of contradictions. Of course his life contained layers and layers of history. Wasn’t that true of everyone?
“I should have died,” Duncan said, when I stood back up. “That’s what everybody said. They all thought I was going to. I even thought I had died for a little while there.”
I stood back up so I could meet his eyes. “I’m glad you didn’t die,” I said.
“Me, too,” he said. “Most of the time.”
“What happened?”
But Duncan shook his head. “I never talk about that.”
“Never? To anyone?”
“Nope. Can’t. Not even on all these drugs that cause aphrodisia.”
“Amnesia?”
“Yeah. That sounds more like it.”
He was still sitting on the side of the bed, feet apart, and I was standing between them. He was still shirtless, and now, I really noticed that for the first time.
There he was. Shirtless.
I took in the sight of him—starting up high, at the dip above his collarbones and the square bulk of his shoulders, and then descending down, and to the side, where everything disintegrated into chaos.
I met his eyes again. What could I say? What was there to say? My voice, when it came, was saturated with emotion. “I wish I could make it better,” I said, at last.
Duncan’s eyes were steady and fixed on me. And then, deliberately, without breaking the gaze, he put a hand on each of my hips and pulled me toward him.
I stepped between his knees to get closer. He clasped his arms around me and leaned in to rest his head against me as he held on. I rubbed his shoulder with one hand and let the other hand stroke his hair. The buzz cut on the back of his head felt velvety on the skin of my palms.
Why not? We’d forget it all by morning, anyway.
After a few minutes, he said, “I thought this would make it better, but I think maybe it’s just making it worse.”
“You’re okay, you know,” I said.
“Am I?” he said, sounding like his eyes were closed. “I’m not sure that’s right.”
“You need to lie down and rest.”
“Fair enough,” he said, but he didn’t let go.
I didn’t let go, either.
The weight of his arms felt steadying, and comforting, and I let myself just stand there and enjoy it.
This moment would change everything.
I didn’t know how, exactly, but I knew it would.
When his breathing started to get steady, like he might be dozing off against me, I laid him back on his bed and pulled a blanket up over him. His eyes were closed as he relaxed back onto the pillow. I couldn’t help it: I stood there a minute longer and stroked his hair.
But it was okay. He was already asleep.
* * *
I pulled his bedroom door mostly closed and then went to root around in his kitchen to make sure he’d have some food when the time came for the next round of painkillers. I checked the time and reread the discharge instructions. I’d have to wake him later for a pill to stay ahead of the pain, and he’d need to eat before he took it.
I found a can of soup in the pantry, set it by the stove, and then I half-snooped around his apartment, both scolding myself and justifying my behavior at the same time.
The scars had thrown me, that was for sure.
The sheer size of them. The unfaded, saturated color of them. The anger.
I walked around his apartment, just trying to let it all sink in.
This was why he was so obsessed with safety. This was how he could call our sweet, sunny school a nightmare. He’d seen the worst-case scenario.
He’d lived it.
There was a collection of little succulents on his kitchen windowsill that looked like they were dying, and I found myself wondering how it was possible to kill succulents.
Just then, his phone rang.
I wasn’t going to answer it—but then it kept ringing. I found it on his bedside table, and as I was pressing buttons to silence the ring, I saw it was Helen.
So I answered.
“Hey!” she said. “How is he?”
“Good, I think. He’s asleep.”
“Are you staying there tonight?”
“I just read the post-op instructions, and it looks like I’m supposed to. Just in case.”
“You’re the best.”
“It’s fine. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“He’s so lucky to have you there. I was supposed to do it, but our ninety-year-old grandma got sick.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Just a touch of pneumonia,” Helen said. “She’s tough as a boot.”
“Hey…” I said. “I saw the scars.”
“Oh,” Helen said. “Well, I’m glad. I never thought he should have worked so hard to keep it from you in the first place.”
“Well he’s not hiding anything right now. They doped him up like crazy.”
“I bet.”
“So…” I said, wanting the full picture, but not sure what questions to ask. “It looks like it was really bad.”
“It was really bad,” Helen confirmed. “He was hit three times. One just grazed him, but another pierced his abdomen, and another punctured his lung. It would have been bad with regular bullets, but these were military, and so they were designed to do as much damage as possible.”
“The scars are…” I paused to look for the right word, but I couldn’t find it. “The scars are awful.”
“They’re from the exit wounds,” Helen said. “The shot to the abdomen destroyed part of his intestine. He wound up getting a blood infection that almost killed him. The shot to his chest punctured his lung—but that’s not even the right way to describe it. Going in, it punctured it, but going out, it pulverized it. They had to cut out a square section of his ribs with a saw to get in there and take out all the bone and tissue, then repair what was left.”
“I’m amazed he didn’t die.”
Helen’s voice was shaky. “He survived, yes.”
“But he’s different now,” I finished for her.
“He can’t talk about it. He won’t come home. He doesn’t want help.”
“He definitely doesn’t.”
“I want to believe that he’s getting better. But I worry he might be getting worse.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you for being there,” Helen said. And then she added, “Hey—how are the succulents doing?”
I frowned. “You mean—on the windowsill?”
“Yeah.”
I walked over to the kitchen window and assessed the plants on the sill. Even I could tell they were mostly dead. “They are not exactly long for this world,” I said.
“Totally dead or just mostly?”
“I’d say ninety-nine percent dead,” I said. “How do you kill a succulent? They don’t even need water.”
“That’s just it,” Helen said. “He keeps watering them.”
“Doesn’t he know you’re not supposed to water them? Once a month—max.”
“That’s exactly the problem.”
“He’s watering them too much!” I said, getting it now. “He can’t stop watering them. He’s not neglecting them. He’s drowning them!”
“Poor Duncan,” Helen said. “Can’t escape it. He’s a nurturer.”
I considered that for a second. “I really miss the guy he used to be,” I said.
“Oh, God, so do I,” Helen said. “And you know what? I think he does, too.”
* * *
When it was time, I brought Duncan a mug of soup and a heavy-duty painkiller.
He was all wrapped up in his blankets, shirt still off, curled up on his side.
“Hey,” I said, gently, touching him on the shoulder. “Time to drink some soup and take your medicine.”
He sat up, slowly. I tried to hand him the mug, but instead he shuffled off to pee, and then spent some time brushing his teeth. The door wasn’t entirely closed. Through the crack, I could see his elbow moving.
“Why do you have a whole windowsill of dead succulents?” I asked.
I saw him lean down and spit. “They’re not dead. Yet. Not quite.”
“I mean, how do you kill a succulent? All you have to do is just not water them.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It is easy.”
“Not for me,” Duncan said, leaning his head back to gargle.
“Here’s my advice,” I said. “Every time you feel the urge to water them … don’t water them.”
He spat in the sink, rinsed his mouth, washed his face, and shuffled back into the room. He was shirtless still, and the sight of him as he perched on the bed’s edge, lit from the side by the light in the hall, was so dissonant: his shoulders and arms just covered in muscles, and his side covered in scars. A picture of health—and destruction.
“Thank you for being here,” he said.