HER HEART POUNDED so fast Lieutenant Andy Stuart thought it would burst from her body as she stopped suddenly in the hall of the military hospital.
It couldn’t be, but still, she stared at a doctor and nurse whispering to each other in a corner.
Jared. It was Jared. Jared and herself. Joy surged through her. Jared wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead! His face. Her face. Together.
She was transfixed. Then the couple moved and Jared’s face dissolved into an older, wider face. The woman...
No. Come back.
Confusion filled her and she started to shake.
A nurse approached. “Is anything wrong?”
Yes. Everything. She shook her head.
“Can I help you find someone?”
“No... I know where...” Andy stopped. How could she explain seeing her dead fiancé? How could she explain the joy, then the anger replacing it? It should have been Jared and me.
Trembling, she watched as the couple disappeared down the hall. Anger swept through her. Anger at Jared. Anger at the world in which two people whispered together and lived.
“Let me help you,” the nurse tried again. “Where are you going?”
Andy directed that fury at the nurse. “It’s none of your business,” she said and was immediately appalled at herself. She was never rude, particularly to someone who was trying to help. Never until the past seven months.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” she said, then took off for Dr. Payne’s office. How could she have thought she saw Jared?
She burst into the reception area, past the receptionist and into his private office. He looked up from his desk, a question in his eyes. She placed herself directly in front of him. “I saw him. I saw Jared. And myself. But it wasn’t us. It was strangers, but they had our faces. How could that be?” She was shaking.
Andy hadn’t bothered closing the door as she stormed inside. Anger and confusion were too strong.
Dr. Robert Payne calmly got up and closed the door, then sat back down in his chair. “About time,” he said.
She stared at him as if he were the crazy one. “A couple,” she said. “A nurse and doctor. Whispering to each other in a corner. For a second I thought it was Jared...and me. And then I looked again, and they were strangers. I was so angry. I am angry. So damned angry.” She wasn’t making sense. She knew she wasn’t making sense, but she couldn’t stop.
Dr. Payne leaned forward. “What you saw isn’t that unusual with people who have lost someone they love. Especially given the circumstances.”
He paused, then added, “I’ve been waiting for that anger,” he said gently.
Andy paced the floor. “I don’t understand.”
“You’ve bottled it all up. You haven’t let yourself feel anything. You’ve just been drifting, indifferent to everything.”
“So wanting to hit two innocent people is healthy?”
“You didn’t do it, did you?”
“No, but I wanted to.”
“It’s normal, Andy. It’s normal getting angry when you see a happy couple. It’s something you expected to be. And it was torn away from you in the worst possible way. It’s okay to be angry. It’s good, even. Better than stifling those feelings to the point of not being able to function.”
“I’ve been functioning,” Andy said defensively.
He just looked at her.
“Have you found a job yet?”
“Cash register and waitress at a coffee shop. Just two days a week, but it helps pay for my part of an apartment.”
“What about nursing?”
She shrugged. “Who wants to hire someone who hears a noise and drops to the ground screaming? Wouldn’t instill much confidence in patients. Not to mention a bum hand. I can operate the cash machine and take orders, but I can’t carry heavy trays.”
“There’s a lot of fields in nursing where you can work.”
She looked at him with hostile eyes. “Doc, I really don’t think I can do that.” Dammit, he knew why. He knew all the reasons. He knew everything about her. Well, practically everything, after two visits a week for the past six months, including two months while having surgeries and later as an outpatient for PTSD.
“We’re getting pressured to let you go now that your medical discharge has gone through. You’ll transfer to the Veterans Administration.”
“I’m losing you?”
“I thought you didn’t like me.”
“I didn’t like where you made me go.”
“Today is important, Andy. I’m not saying tomorrow is going to be easier. What happened today will happen again. You’ll see someone who reminds you of Jared. The anger will come flooding back. But it’s the beginning of taking your life back.”
She looked doubtful.
“Have you cried yet?” The question came out of nowhere. Or maybe not. He’d asked it a month ago.
She thought about lying, but what the hell. “No,” she said. It was unnatural. She knew it, but she hurt too much for tears.
“You can only keep them inside so long,” he said.
She only nodded.
He sat there studying her. “I have a proposal for you,” he finally said.
“What?” she said suspiciously.
“I wouldn’t have suggested it yesterday. You weren’t ready. You still might not be, but given the circumstances I think it’s worth a try.”
She waited.
“There’s a cabin in a small town in Colorado that’s available,” he said slowly, and she knew he was carefully choosing his words. “It belongs to a veteran who recently married. It was passed to another vet who no longer needs it. The town has a large number of veterans, and they look after each other.”
She hated his calm, reasoning tone. She didn’t want reason. She wanted to turn back the clock to a time before her world had fallen apart. And she didn’t want to go to someone else’s cabin.
Andy knew she didn’t have many choices. She had worn out her welcome at the military hospital. She couldn’t go home. She didn’t want to take her grief and anger there or be a burden on her family back home. Jobs were rare, if not nonexistent, in a dying coal town, especially for a surgical nurse who would start trembling uncontrollably at loud noises and who had a hand that didn’t work. Never mind the nightmares that made a night’s sleep rare.
She should be married now,