The Last Hour Read online

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s good at that.”

  Sarah bit her lip. “Someone’s going to need to watch out for her now.”

  I sighed. I felt a lump forming in my throat. It was supposed to be me watching out for her, and for now at least, I couldn’t.

  Life is cheap (Ray)

  Sarah and I had to squeeze in between the people on the crowded elevator to get in behind Jessica and Carrie. There’s something just freakishly unnerving about touching people when they don’t know you’re there. It made me want to puke. If I even could puke in this state. And watching Carrie, holding Jessica’s hand with that deadly serious expression on her face … I’d have done anything to be able to touch her. To make her understand I was still here. To tell her everything was going to be okay.

  Somehow, though, I didn’t think that was true.

  Just as the elevator doors closed, I saw the strangest thing. A little boy, halfway down the hall to the emergency room. He was young, maybe eight or ten, and wore a Spider-Man t-shirt and a cap turned halfway to his shoulder. He was looking around, lost, confused, and then a nurse walked right through him. I almost jumped out of the elevator, but the doors closed and he was gone.

  It was frightening.

  Sarah, on the other hand, was beyond ridiculous. Riding on the elevator in front of her was a buff looking EMT in his early twenties. About six feet compared to her five foot two, he nearly hid her from me with his bulked up shoulders and his neck that looked like a tree trunk. This guy seriously worked out. He looked like he hadn’t shaved, and he’d been up a long time. His eyes were drooping, dark circles underneath them, and he leaned against the side of the elevator as if he would just go to sleep.

  “Hey, Ray, check this out,” Sarah said. Then my mouth dropped open because she reached her arms around him, putting her tiny hands on his ample pecs.

  “Sarah, knock it off,” I said.

  She took that as a challenge, pressing herself up against him. Even though I’m a hell of a lot older than she is, and I’m married to her sister, I’d be inhuman to not admit that she’s one very sexy girl, more so in that red dress than in her usual pseudo punk outfit. She grinned at me, stood on her tiptoes, then opened her mouth and slid her tongue up the side of his neck.

  “Oh, for God’s sake! Sarah!”

  The guy twitched, his eyes opening up. There’s no way he felt anything. But he seemed to react anyway.

  She dissolved into snickering and backed away from him. “Have a sense of humor.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me, and said, “There are definite advantages to this nearly dead thing.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator doors slid open and we stepped out behind Carrie and Jessica.

  “Sarah, you can’t do that stuff. Just because we’re ... whatever we are … I mean…”

  She turned toward me, so suddenly I stopped in my tracks.

  “Don’t you tell me what I can or can’t do. For all you know we’re both dead. What the hell happens after this? I don’t know. You don’t know. So just leave me alone!” Her voice rose to a shout at the end.

  I grimaced. “Sarah ... we’re going to be fine. Both of us.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything. What I know is I’m fucking pissed. I’m not even eighteen years old yet. And it’d be nice to get a chance to have a life.”

  A flash of anger ran through me. Anger about Weber and Roberts and Kowalski and all the others we lost. Anger at this spoiled rich girl who somehow thought her life was better or more valuable than theirs. Totally misplaced and wrong, but there it was.

  “Sometimes we don’t get that chance,” I said. “You want to hear the truth? Well, here it is: you’re right. I don’t know shit. I know I’ve seen close friends blown all to hell. I’ve seen people I cared about with their lives ripped to shreds from bullets and bombs, and the survivors turn on each other like fucking rabid dogs. Life is cheap, Sarah. So maybe it’s over. We had our chance.”

  She backed away from me as I spoke, her eyes avoiding mine. Finally she just turned and started to walk away, following behind Jessica and Carrie.

  Crap.

  “Sarah!” I called.

  She ignored me, so I called louder, “Sarah, I’m sorry.”

  She stopped, then finally turned around, and looked at me. Her eyes were cold. “Just because you’ve been in a war doesn’t mean you’ve got a monopoly on shitty situations. And this is a shitty situation. So back to what I said before—don’t tell me what to do.”

  With that, she turned back around, the skirt of her dress swirling as she turned and walked away.

  Anger gone as quick as it came, now I just felt like an idiot. Not that this was the first time, and probably wouldn’t be the last.

  Then again, it just might be. I followed after her, but slowly. Part of me thought I should find the operating rooms. See how things were actually going. But then again, maybe that wasn’t such a smart idea. Not to mention I couldn’t exactly stop and ask someone for directions. Would my being there screw with the electronics? I had no way of knowing. Not to mention the thought of seeing my own body being cut open and operated on ... that seriously freaked me out. I’d seen people’s insides before, of course, but my own? That took a special kind of courage, courage I didn’t think I had.

  When I finally caught up, Sarah was sitting in the far corner of the room, arms across her chest, and she was staring at the floor. The waiting room itself was fairly large, with plenty of seats, and it was crowded. At the nurses’ station, the EMT she had molested was standing across from a nurse. Carrie and Jessica were right behind him.

  I decided to let Sarah wait. I’d get back to her in a few minutes. I stood beside Carrie, wishing I could reach out and take her hand.

  The EMT said to the nurse at the desk, “I just wanted to check on a patient we brought in earlier to the emergency room. Name is, um ... Sarah Thompson.”

  I felt Carrie tense beside me, as the nurse looked up Sarah’s name. “I don’t have any information yet, she’s just gone into emergency surgery.”

  The EMT nodded, looking a little glum.

  Carrie reached out and touched him on the arm. “You brought in Sarah? I’m her sister.”

  The guy’s face tightened a little, and he said, “I’m so sorry about the accident. I’m Eddie Vasquez. I just ... sometimes I want to know how it comes out. She’s awful young.”

  Jessica just stood there, looking numb, and Carrie said, “She is.”

  I took a deep breath. I think it was a breath. If I’d actually been here physically it might have been, but I wasn’t, so I don’t know what the hell it was.

  The EMT—Eddie—took Carrie’s hand. Who names their kid Eddie? He said, “I’m sorry if I’m intruding. I usually try to not let this stuff get to me. It’s just … she’s so young. Bad accident.”

  Carrie nodded; with her face stressed she said, “I appreciate you checking on her. If ... if you’ll give me your number, I’ll call when we hear something.”

  Eddie stared at her then said, “Sure.” Then he reached over the desk, grabbing a pen and a sheet of paper, and wrote down his number. “I’ll understand if ... if you don’t call. I’m not like a stalker. I’m in college actually, pre-med. This helps pay the bills.”

  Carrie took the paper, looking a little lost. She didn’t have her purse on her and didn’t seem to realize it until this moment.

  Jessica took the paper from her hand. “I’ve got it, Carrie.”

  She had a concerned expression on her face as she looked at her older sister. And no wonder. Carrie always had it together. Always. Right now it was like the blind leading the blind, a couple of shell-shocked sisters just hanging on to each other. More than anything, their vacant, exhausted expressions reminded me of the guys in my squad the afternoon Kowalski threw himself on the grenade. Dylan, Weber, Roberts ... they looked ... hollow. As if there was nothing left.

  Within 24 hours after that day,
Roberts was dead and Dylan was crippled. Weber lasted maybe another month before a sniper picked him off. I remember when Weber died. Hicks’ fire team took point that day, because I was still babying along three fresh replacements. Hicks and I didn’t get along too well, but we didn’t need to. He was reliable and had a good team.

  As a bonus, all of his guys were still alive.

  We stopped at one point, spread out along the trail, five meters between each of us. I had just hunkered down on my haunches, trying to keep from getting mud soaked through my uniform, which was a futile effort, and I saw Weber walk off the trail maybe fifteen meters to take a piss. He was goofing off like always, a big grin on his face, and had just cracked a joke. Then we heard a slap, like a knife hitting a piece of meat, followed by the crack of a high-powered rifle maybe ten seconds later. It was a long shot and caught him right on the forehead, and he collapsed right in his own puddle of piss.

  We never found the sniper. I winced at the memory of Hicks and Sergeant Colton putting Weber’s junk back in his pants before zipping him in the body bag. No way in hell were we going to let some rear-echelon motherfucker use Weber for laughs. We were all grim, silent, as we got him into the bag. Colton was shaking with so much anger he had to try three times before he could get a grip on the zipper.

  It’s not that I dwell on that shit. It’s just that … the war got so ugly after Kowalski was killed. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to even think about it without becoming overwhelmed with rage. The shadow of the month between Kowalski’s death and Weber’s casts darkness over everything, even the short time I’d been with Carrie.

  It’s easy to get caught up. Even now, at a time when I’ve probably got much bigger things to worry about. But seriously, bigger to who? Did I have any more right to life than that kid in Dega Payan? He was twelve years old, maybe. And he died just like Weber did, a bullet through the forehead, and I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

  I needed to get my shit together and focus. Carrie was here and needed help.

  I just wished I knew what I could do for her. Increasingly, it seemed that the answer to that was nothing.

  Carrie and Jessica were finished at the desk. They half walked, half stumbled to a pair of seats against the wall. I crouched, leaning against the wall, next to Carrie.

  “She can’t tell you’re there,” Sarah said. “You might as well be a million miles away.”

  “Shut up, Sarah.”

  “You might as well be dead.”

  I sighed and looked up at her. “I’m sorry I got mad.”

  “Whatever, Ray. I get it, okay. You lost friends. Things sucked over there. But that doesn’t take away from how bad this sucks, all right? I had plans for my life.”

  I dropped my eyes to the floor and said, “It’s not over yet, kid.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the surgeons aren’t out here telling them we’re dead, all right? We’ve still got a chance.”

  “Whatever.” She rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling.

  Jesus. It’s kind of funny. Dylan was always the king of drama queens. I mean, who the hell shoots a clip of ammo through their laptop? But Sarah just might have the edge on him.

  On the other hand, she might be right.

  “What kind of plans?” I asked.

  Her face scrunched up in a skeptical look. “Seriously?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Musician.”

  “Oh yeah? Like Crank?”

  She smiled. “Better.”

  “Nice. That’s why you were showing off the guitar with Crank at New Year’s.”

  Our brother-in-law Crank was the lead singer and guitarist for the very successful alt-rock band Morbid Obesity. I had a chance to see them in concert for the first time back at New Year’s, right before everything went to hell. Carrie got us backstage passes.

  I looked over at her. “Your parents don’t know, do they?”

  She smirked. “Are you kidding? They’d have a heart attack. As it was, when I got the guitar, my father went all pale and wandered off to his study, and Mom had an anxiety attack. She’s not as bad as she used to be, just ... very controlling. But you know, I’ve played viola since I was tiny. It was time for something new.”

  “Viola?”

  She nodded. “All of us had lessons. Mom says it’s part of being a well-rounded person.” Sarah curled her fingers into air quotes as she said the words well-rounded person. She continued. “Jessica plays violin.”

  “What about Carrie?” I asked. I’d never seen her touch any instrument.

  “She hated it. She loves music, but not being a musician. But she studied cello right up into high school.”

  I glanced over at Carrie. She had her arm around Jessica, who was leaning against her. Both of them had their eyes closed. “I wish I could have known her back then.”

  Sarah said, in almost a whisper, “She’s the best big sister. Always watched out for us and took us places. Gave us hugs and Band-Aids and even after she left home, we talked on the phone almost every day. She’s what I imagine a mother would be like, if my mother wasn’t crazy.”

  I sighed as she said the words. We’d had a conversation about that, just once. Most of the time, we didn’t talk about the future. Most of the time, our only goal was to get through the present. But we did talk about kids, just once.

  It was during a phone conversation. Carrie had returned to Texas, and I was in New York, helping out Dylan and trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life now that I was out of the Army. That night, I had been sitting on the roof of Dylan’s apartment building, looking out over the rooftops and at Morningside Park. It was unseasonably warm, just a couple of days before Thanksgiving last fall, and we were having one of our many long, long phone conversations.

  “What are you doing?” she had asked.

  “Thinking about you,” I said.

  “Stop that,” she replied. I could almost hear her blush.

  “Stop what? I’ve also been working on applications. And babysitting Dylan.”

  “Applications? Where are you thinking about?”

  I sighed. Awkward question, because I’d given a lot of thought to a few places. “American University. Georgetown. Columbia … Berkeley ... Rice.”

  “Oh yeah? Why Rice?”

  “Lot warmer in Texas than Long Island.”

  She laughed. “How do you rate your chances?”

  “Good. I know I seem like a knucklehead, but I’ve got a 3.9 GPA and a full ride from the GI Bill, or close enough.”

  She chuckled. “You know I teach undergraduates. Dating you ... if that’s what we’re doing ... it feels like robbing the cradle.”

  “Lady, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. I’m a lot of things, but ... I don’t feel young. Not anymore.”

  She was silent. I’d stepped in it a bit. I usually didn’t even make oblique references to the Army or Afghanistan. I didn’t like to talk about it, and she knew it.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “You don’t need to apologize,” she replied. “I’m happy to talk about it any time. It’s you who won’t.”

  “There’s a lot of good reasons for that,” I said.

  “Alexandra said…”

  Her voice trailed off, and I waited. Finally, after what seemed like an interminably long wait, I said, “Alex said ... what?”

  “She said Dylan has talked about Afghanistan quite a bit.”

  I didn’t answer right away. I just looked out at the park. The sun was going down, and headlights bracketed both sides of Morningside Park. So why could Dylan talk about it and I couldn’t? Why could a 60-watt bulb light up a room, yet be swallowed in the darkness of the park below me? Why not ask the ocean why it had current? Or the sky, why there was wind? It was just too big. Too big to get my mind around, too big to even think about. Not to mention that any day now, a JAG lawyer was going to open an envelope, and find a letter and thumb drive inside. And when that
happened, my whole future would come into question, my whole life.

  Or maybe not. Maybe the lawyer would look at the contents, and decide it was better left alone. A simple format command, and everything on the thumb drive would be erased.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have turned it in.

  Maybe I should have gone in person.

  No. I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t stay in the Army. At least now, when it all came out, it would be on my terms.

  Finally, I said, “I think Dylan is starting to see a future.”

  Abruptly, she changed to a quick, almost clipped tone. “Maybe that’s it. I’ve gotta go, talk to you later.”

  I sat up straight, as it started to sink in that I’d said something seriously wrong.

  “Wait,” I said, but it was too late. She’d hung up already.

  I get it. I’m not the brightest bulb in the room, but even I know when I’ve said something stupid. I had this awful feeling in my gut. Because if she was feeling about me the way I was about her ... then I’d have been hurt if she said something like that. So I called her back.

  It rang three times, and I thought for sure she was going to send me to voicemail before she finally picked up. By the time I heard her voice, I was sitting up straight in my seat, my pulse pounding at my temples.

  “Hello?”

  “Look,” I said without any introduction. “It’s not that I don’t see a future. In fact ... I’m gonna lay it out there, Carrie. I like you a hell of a lot. I rated my possible schools by the places you’re most likely to be. I’m honestly ... a little overwhelmed by how quickly my feelings have developed for you ... us. But it’s an adjustment for me, all right? It’s not even been a month since the only thing I could look forward to was making it through the day without getting shot at.”

  She was silent, but I could hear her breathing. Finally she asked, “Did you really do that?”

  “What?”

  “Rate your schools by where I might be?”

  I coughed. “Yeah. Yeah I did.”

  “Start thinking Georgetown or American University then. I’ve got a place here at Rice ... but I’m up for a fellowship at National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. I’ll know in a couple more weeks.”