Three weeks since the blast

Leonardo

The medical term for what I was 'grievously injured' - but that phrase did not do justice to the extent of the damage. It didn't tell the whole story, of how I had been physically and mentally scarred. Or why I wrote myself off as a lost cause.

How could two words describe what I'd become? The truth was far more complicated than any medical terminology.

The ringing in my ears continued even now, three weeks after the dreaded blast. My phantom left limb twitched, urging me to run away from the memories of that day. No amount of surgeries or skin grafts could ever erase the images burnt into my mind. Physical therapy was a futile attempt at restoring me to normalcy; I knew it would never heal the wounds of my soul.

"Here, Sergeant," a soft, voice addressed me as I looked up. "Your medicines."

Amara sat on the chair beside my bed, holding a glass of water, an assortment of rainbow-colored pills, and a smile that irked me every time I saw it.

"What is it?" I asked, looking around the new hospital room I was put in.

Since they rescued me from death, a team of army doctors tried their best to save my left leg. With my shattered bones, burnt-off muscles and blood loss that drained my life, they decided to chop it off.

Yes, chop. Like it wasn't my leg but a rotten piece of a vegetable.

"Medicines, sir," Amara said, letting out a frustrated sigh but keeping that fucking smile on. "It's for your recovery."

"Who wants to recover?"

"You. You still have to take them for your-"

"Pain?" I scoffed. "I know I'm in pain. You don't have to fucking tell me. Put the damn things on the table and go."

"Sir, but..."

"Miss. Safi. That's an order."

I was getting annoyed at the one person who accompanied me from Afghanistan and continued giving me company even when I tried pushing her away. I was an inconsiderate prick who wished to have died than be a broken piece for the world to see.

Handicapped.

Good for nothing.

Useless Sergeant Brenton.

"Okay, sir. As you wish."

Like always, she didn't protest. She couldn't.

I was still a commanding officer and she was a subordinate. Though I wanted to know why she left her post and followed me back to the base camp before coming back to the States, I never bothered asking.

Amara Safi, from what little interaction I had with her, displayed resilience. She may nod at my orders and pretend to accept them, that woman had her ways of getting around it.

"But I'm not leaving you out of sight," she said, placing the medicines and pills on a side table and walking back to her usual place; a chair at the far end of the private hospital room from where she could monitor me but wouldn't disturb me with her presence.

Part of me felt bad for the way I treated her. But as I said, I was a selfish prick. The scalding pain I felt over my body with every passing second made it difficult to think rationally. To talk normally.

I wanted the world to burn like I did.

The sound of the telephone ringing echoed in the room, breaking my thoughts.

Amara moved across the table to pick it up, adjusting wisps of brown hair back into her bun. I sat in silence, my peripheral vision taking account of her frozen expressions and constant nod in reply.

She turned to me for a second, her wide, brown eyes widening even further while her teeth dug into her lips.

I had been waiting for it. That call was to free me from my service on medical grounds. An amputee couldn't serve his country, much less himself.

When Amara walked back to my bedside, head leaning forward as she addressed her white, support-providing shoes, I knew the news was worse.

"Sir, your family has come to meet you," she said.

"My mom?"

"Your fiancée."

That word.

That one fucking word was more jarring than all the blasts I'd heard and felt. That word had the power to toss up things I digested from weeks ago.

My mind pureed at that word and my phantom limb wanted to jerk me up from my state of rest and push me outside the room. My whole body wanted me to run away. Anything to not see her.

"Who the fuck has she come to meet?" I asked, my voice hitting all corners of the room and replaying back. "Isn't she done with me?"

"Sir... I...don't... I am informed that she's outside."

She was outside.

Zemira Ford was standing outside my room.

Outside the nostril-burning, antiseptic-infused pungent hospital room. She was separated from seeing me by a wall and a door. A fucking door which she could open and walk in, only to witness how incapable and helpless I was to face her. Or anyone else.

"Sir..." Amara's voice shattered the dissonance. "What shall I tell her? She's waiting."

"I know she's outside," I said, trying to push myself up on the bed. "You don't have to keep telling me that."

I felt my left stump, dull and numb from the painkillers. But my back had a different story. It felt like someone raked sharp nails across my skin, leaving behind a searing ache that pierced straight to the spine. My chest burned as if someone held a scorching iron against my flesh.

Some part of me was still laying somewhere on the dirt-paved path in Afghanistan, praying for water. And death.

"Fuuucckkkk...." A growl escaped as I sat erect. "Gawdd."

The tubes and needles in my body gnawed into the flesh. It gripped my attention - do not move.

"Tell her... I'm...I'm not here," I said, "or better, tell her... I was shipped somewhere else before she arrived."

I expected Amara to protest.

Though a low-ranking officer, she never had a problem questioning what didn't fit with her conscience. I liked that she wasn't a rule-following rat but a woman capable of using her brain.

To my surprise, she walked back, vanishing behind the door.

My heart pounded. My stomach churned bile, souring my mouth.

All I could do was sit inside the white-walled room in god knows what part of the country, praying for Amara to lie.

Doubts flooded me - of Zemira walking inside the room or trying to talk to me after everything she did. Or that she bought the paparazzi along with her.

All of them vanished when Amara arrived.

With pursed lips, she walked over to the table beside me and pointed at the medicines she kept.

"Have this and I will tell you what I said."

"You better give me good news, Lieutenant Safi."

Maybe it was the IV drip to strengthen my body that only made me weak or that I was tired from eating the bland hospital food to protest any further. I gulped the colorful assortment of pills leaning my head back to swallow.

"Zemira Ford was outside." Amara began. "Somehow, she knew how to track you down."

"Her father must have helped."

The gentle lullaby of the earlier course of painkillers began, weighing down my eyelids.

"I don't know about that, Sir, but she seemed very... very...flustered. I told her that you were shifted to an unknown location but I think she knows I was lying."

"She knows." I leaned into my bed, my head feeling the soft padding of the pillow. "You have...have to... sell a lie. To make it sound real."

"I couldn't lie to a woman who looked as if she didn't sleep for ages," Amara protested. "If I may, why didn't you want to meet with her, Sir?"

"Because..." Sleep took over, gently caressing me to forget everything. The pain, the past. Everything. "Nothing is left between us."

~

There you have it...

A man running from his past and a woman chasing hers.

Let me know if you like this chapter.

Why do you think Leo is avoiding Zem?