The Way Home

Chapter 27

JEFF WAS ALONE IN THE hospital room when he woke up the second time. A machine blipped softly in the background. He lifted his arm, let it fall. A plastic tube ran into an IV port inserted into the back of his hand. A cuff on his arm tightened, measuring his blood pressure and pulse. The plastic clip on his finger measured his blood-oxygen levels.

He vaguely remembered someone telling him they were treating him with IV fluids that dripped from a bag hanging somewhere behind him.

He specifically remembered Nate Black assuring him that they’d made it. That he was safe. Once again, he didn’t remember everything that had happened to him. He remembered that the rough, hot, dizzying ride inside the belly of the Stryker had kicked up the vertigo with a vengeance. He’d puked his guts out and then gotten the dry heaves. Long before they’d made base, he’d been barely conscious despite the team medic—Coulter—hanging an IV to rehydrate him.

He didn’t remember much after that, including the flight to the AFB or his admission into the hospital.

“The NATO-run hospital at the Kandahar Air Force Base is a forty-plus-million-dollar facility,” Black had assured him, as he’d helped him into the ambulance that had met their air transport from FOB Shaker. “The medical staff will do everything humanly possible to get you squared away again.”

Everything but one. They hadn’t let him see Rabia.

“Rabia.” He could barely speak, his throat and mouth were so dry. He didn’t know how long he’d been out this time, but he was frantic to know what was happening with her. “Rabia.” He tried again. Her name came out as a hoarse croak.

“Well, hello, soldier. Welcome back to the land of the living. How you feeling?”

He opened his eyes. A tidy Air Force nurse in a prim white uniform stood by the side of the bed.

“Rabia,” he croaked again.

“I’m sorry. I can’t understand you.” She turned away, then came back with a wet sponge swab that she gently wiped over his lips. “See if this helps.”

He sucked on the swab like a man dying of thirst.

“Better? How about an ice chip? It’s not much, I know, but we don’t want to overdo it.”

He nodded, then regretted it as the room began to spin.

“The vertigo should settle down a bit for you soon.” She laid a sympathetic hand on his arm. “Doctor prescribed both antinausea and antivertigo meds. That’s why you conked out on us again. Stuff makes you sleepy, but I guess you already figured that out. We’re pumping fluids to get you rehydrated. In the meantime, try to stay still and let the meds do their work. If you continue to progress, I wouldn’t be surprised if they authorize a flight home to a hospital in the States tomorrow.”

She went on, checking his IV bag, then fluffing his pillow, “Normally, they would ship you to Ramstein AFB in Germany, but since you’re a special case, you’re going straight home.”

He was a special case, all right. He still didn’t know where home was. He had so many questions. No one had come up with any answers.

He opened his mouth for the ice chip, let it melt, then reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Where. Is. Rabia?”

“Rabia? Is that the Pashtun woman who came in with you?”

“Yes. Where is she?”

“She’s down the hall.”

“I want to see her.”

She carefully removed his hand from her arm and laid it on top of the pristine white sheets. “Let me go see what I can find out, OK?”

He closed his eyes, afraid to feel too much relief. “Thank you.”

“I’ll be right back. You rest.”

NATE ADDRESSED THE team once Albert had been turned over to the medical staff. “It goes without saying, we need to keep the mission and Sergeant Albert’s rescue quiet, for national security reasons and for Albert’s privacy. The last thing the guy needs is for his story to blow wide open on an international scale. He’d be bombarded by the press. Hell, his story has blockbuster movie written all over it. But for now, he has a lot of recovery ahead of him. A lot of healing physically and emotionally. A lot of adjusting to do.”

For that reason, Nate asked for a volunteer to stand guard outside Albert’s hospital room.

Despite the fact that his back was killing him, Ty had stepped forward without hesitation and now stood at parade rest outside Albert’s door.

For the same reason that he couldn’t articulate why he needed to be a part of the rescue mission, he couldn’t explain, even to himself, why he’d volunteered for this duty.

“Why are you doing this to yourself, bro?” Mike had asked on the plane from Minnesota to Virginia before they’d deployed to Kandahar.

“What would you do?” Ty had asked. “If you suddenly found out the woman you loved had a husband, a war hero, a man who has to have been through hell and back… wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want to see for yourself if he was alive and, if he was, face him so you’d know firsthand what kind of man she’s leaving you for?”

“You don’t know that she’ll go back to him.”

Unfortunately, he did know. Now that he’d seen Albert and knew what sad shape he was in, he knew exactly what she would do. “I know Jess. She’s loyal. She doesn’t quit on anything. If he needs her, she’ll be there for him. And we both know where that leaves me.”

So yeah, maybe in a way, he was doing this more for Jess. He sure as hell wasn’t doing it for himself. Was he glad Jeff was alive? Of course. That didn’t mean he wasn’t dying by degrees knowing he’d lose Jess because of it.

So here he stood, making sure he knew that Albert was a stand-up guy. Making sure he wasn’t so far off the deep end emotionally and mentally after his ordeal that Jess wouldn’t be safe with him. And making sure he had an impression of the man to remind himself that Albert had Jess first, so he would always remember where his place was.

He overheard Albert and the nurse speaking. Sensed Albert’s distress when he’d asked about the Pashtun woman, Rabia. After observing the two of them together in the back of the truck and then in the Stryker, Ty could see there were very close ties between them. What kind of close he wasn’t even going to speculate. She had saved his life. He’d depended on her for his very existence for months. They’d been through a lot together. Now she and her father were homeless, and Albert got to add guilt to the pile of things he needed to deal with.

The nurse slipped out of the room, gave him a quick smile, and headed silently down the hall in her soft-soled shoes. Not long after, footsteps brought his head around to see Nate Black escorting the Pashtun woman toward Albert’s room.

The hospital staff had helped her clean up and given her a pair of scrubs and a scarf to replace her dirty clothes. Her head was down, but he could see enough of her face to know she looked drawn and exhausted. In shock, no doubt. She’d been through a firefight. She’d lost her home. Now she was going to lose Albert. Regardless of what they meant to each other, everything in her world had turned upside down in a few hours.

“You’re relieved, son.” Nate nodded to him. “Go find Reed to replace you, then get someone to look at your back and get some shut-eye. As soon as the base commander and the medical staff release him, we’ll see Albert the rest of the way home.”

It wasn’t exactly relief Ty felt as he nodded and walked away.

It wasn’t exactly anything. Physically he was in pain. Emotionally, he felt numb. He felt as if his body and his mind were operating on two separate planes. And it felt as if his heart was back home in a cabin by a lake, in a big log bed where he would never lie with the woman he loved.

TY FOUND REED, but instead of finding a doc or bunking down, he located the commo room, talked someone into letting him use a SAT phone, and dialed Jess’s number.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Ty. Thank God.” It hurt to hear her voice, expectant, scared, relieved.

“We found him, Jess. I wanted you to hear it from me before you got the official word. We found him. He’s coming home.”

“I’LL BE RIGHT outside the door, ma’am.”

Rabia acknowledged the man named Nate Black, who had been so kind to her and her father. Then she walked slowly into Jeffery’s hospital room. Wanting to see him. Needing to see him. Knowing it would be the last time.

Her heart squeezed tightly at the sight of him lying in the bed, tubes coming out of his arm, intricate machines with pulsing lights making soft swishing sounds. He looked so pale. His eyes were closed, and he lay so still she did not know if he was awake or sleeping.

Then, as if sensing her there, he opened his eyes.

She walked hesitantly to his bedside. When he lifted his hand, she folded it in both of hers. “How are you, Jeffery?”

“I’m fine. Just… weak as a damn baby.”

She knew well how difficult it was for him to have his strength desert him. “You were very ill. The ride… was difficult for you. But I am told you are stable now.”

“Are you OK? Are they taking care of you and your father?”

She nodded, focused on their joined hands because she could not look him in the eye. “Yes. Yes, we are fine. They have treated us well.”

“Is your father still angry?”

She managed a small smile. “I could not say that he is happy. But he has accepted. What did you say to persuade him to come with us? I could not hear your conversation.”

He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “I told him he had to think of someone other than himself. That he had to think of you. I told him that he was the sun and the moon to you, and without him in your life, your days would be as dark as your nights.”

Tears filled her eyes. How could he have known so well what was in her heart? Could he possibly know that he also was the sun and the moon to her?

“Come with me, Rabia. Come to the States with me. Shh.” He raised their joined hands and pressed a finger to her lips when she started to protest. “You can return to teaching there. There’s a huge Muslim population in the States. We’ll find a mosque you and your father can attend. You can live in peace.”

This hurt so badly. But she must be strong. “We will be fine, Jeffery. Family in Kabul will make my father soon forget why he ever wanted to stay in the village. I will go back to my job.”

“What about the Taliban? They lost a lot of fighters last night. They lost a lot of face. They’ll retaliate. They’ll search for you. They’ll know when they return to the village and find you gone that you were the one who hid me.”

“How will they know? People abandon homes all the time. Salawat is a poor village. Many families leave to seek work in the city. It is not an unusual occurrence.”

“It’s unusual to have your front and back door blown off,” he said desperately. “They’ll know you didn’t leave because you wanted to. They’ll question your neighbors. Someone will have seen what happened. They’ll talk.”

He was right. And she knew she was in possible jeopardy. But she had no choice. “Kabul is a large city, Jeffery. They could not find you in a tiny village. They will not find us among three million people.”

“But they’ll search. They won’t quit.”

“They will search, yes. But they will not find us. There are many, many people named Kakar in Kabul. They do not know what I look like. And they will quit. Kabul is not Kandahar. The Taliban are not welcome there. You do not need to be afraid for me.”

He closed his eyes again, and for a moment, she thought he had fallen asleep. Then he squeezed her hand hard. “Please come with me. Please.”

Would life always be about loss? Would Allah continue to test her? Would she never be allowed to keep something—someone—so close to her heart that the thought of living without him left a huge hole inside her?

She must not question. She must only do what was right. She must do the only thing that was possible.

“You know that cannot happen. I cannot go with you. Even if it were possible to persuade my father, I cannot go.”

“You can.”

It physically hurt to look into his eyes and see her own pain reflected there. “Jeffery. Did they not tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

She searched his face through a blur of tears and knew what she had to do. She had to tell him what she had overheard Nate Black tell the American doctor.

“Jeffery. You have a wife waiting for you to come home.”