Battle Scars Ch. 04

Her brows had begun to come together as soon as I knelt, and I decided I had to move quickly if I was to pull this off before she misunderstood." When I went to pick you up, I didn't know what to expect; you're right about that. The minute I saw you again none of that made a bit of difference, because I have loved you all of my life, but I never felt that I was good enough to be with you."

Her head began to shake in denial, and as the tears started to fall, she whispered, "It was always you, David."

"And it was always you, Ann. I can't obligate myself to marry you when I am running off around the world to potentially get killed every month..."

She inhaled and began to cry in earnest. It was now or never.

"So I have retired. Anne Marie Taylor..."

"YES!" She shrieked.

"I'm not done yet," I whined. "How do you know what I was going to say?"

"Okay, I'll be quiet." She smiled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

"Anne Marie Taylor, will you..."

"YES! I lied, Pooh I can't be quiet! Oh Pooh, yesyesyesyesyesyesyes, I'll marry you!"

She was bouncing up and down on the bench, and her cleavage was doing flip-flops in the bra, but her face was, for once, the winner in the 'where do my eyes want to look' contest. It was radiant, her eyebrows high, her face beaming in a smile that lit up the garden and my very world. I remembered the beautiful eyes that used to live in the dark hollows before me, and I decided that she was every bit as beautiful without them as with them.

After a few minutes of cuddling, she got cold, so we went inside. Well, she was mostly naked after all. I helped her dress after she asked if we could still go for a ride. I gave her the package of leathers that Randy had custom built for her, and typical of his designs, they fit her like a second skin. The vest presented her cleavage very, very nicely and was longer in the back to eliminate cold breezes and prevented her showing her gorgeous ass to anyone but me. The chaps fit snugly at the tops of her hips, and zipped down the back of each leg, with a leather cover Velcro secured over each zipper. I mentioned that they would be quite spectacular worn by themselves, and got a playful swat on the arm for my comment.

Just as I started to the garage, she reminded me that I was supposed to call the Doctor up at the V.A. in Portland, so I wandered into the kitchen and dialed the speaker-phone as Annie began to breeze sightlessly through the refrigerator, making sandwiches appear as if by magic. It was important that everything in the fridge be put in its own place, and I tried hard to be good about it. The results were delicious meals that I really loved.

My call was transferred to a Dr. Jennings in the orthopedic rehab unit.

"This is Dr. Jennings," an alto woman's voice stated.

"Dr. Jennings, This is David in Ashland. You left a message with my fiancé this morning?" Anne smiled at the use of the term and put her hands over her mouth to stifle a happy giggle. "Excellent, Gunny! Thanks for calling back. I have a former Company member of yours here in the ortho ward, Corporal Gabby Jackson."

Annie's hands flew to her face again, this time in shock; we'd both gone to school with Gabby, and she'd once been Piglet's best friend. Unfortunately, I'd only had contact with her a couple of times; a Company is a large number of soldiers.

"Brief me in, Doc. What do you need from me? Whatever it is, it's yours."

"Corporal Jackson has been stateside for five months and she's due to be separated in a couple of weeks, Gunny. She won't tell us anything about her destination, her family, where she intends to live, etc. We intend to send her to VA Camp White near you, but after that, she's adrift unless we can find her a billet."

"Roger that, Doc. Consider it found. Can you give me a SitRep on her injury?"

"Jackson has lost both of her legs at the hip, and has sustained some notable other injuries, including partial paralysis of her left arm and some nerve damage in her neck. She is coping as well as I could expect under the circumstances, but as I am sure you know from personal experience, a lot of the damage is deep inside. I have approved Total Disability for her, as well as lifetime palliative care and hardware, but that's pretty much going to consist of a wheelchair and driving aids, am I clear? This is going to be a long term relationship if you decide to commit to it, Gunny."

I looked at Annie, and was not a bit surprised to see her nod once, very decisively.

"Consider it done, Doc. What is her departure ETA?"

"Two weeks from today, Gunny."

"Oh, Doc?"

"Yes?"

"Don't billet her at Camp White. She'll be staying here."

"Roger that. Well Done, Gunny."

"Semper Fi, Doc."

'Oorah!"

Annie held on tightly to my waist as we thundered down the highway toward Howard Prairie Lake. The trees flashed by us as we swept through the gentle curves, surrounded by primordial forest. Her head lay against my shoulder, the helmet turned to the right, since she had no need to look at the scenery. The visor was open, and I could hear her inhaling deeply through the intercom.

"It smells so great, here, Pooh! I'd forgotten how wonderful it is in the forest. The smells, the feel of the wind, even the sun coming and going as we move into the cool shadows, it's all just amazing!"

"I was hoping you'd like it, Annie; before you arrived, this bike kept me sane."

"I really like the sounds and the feeling of the power it has. It's like flying, and what's with the seat vibrating?"

"Just an extra added benefit women have discovered, and Milwaukee has refined, I guess. If there's a particular rpm you need, just let me know and we'll try to find it, OK?" She laughed out loud; what a wonderful sound.

We pulled off the road at Howard Prairie Resort and parked the Harley by the dock. Annie took my elbow and we walked into the resort and got an ice cream cone. Sitting on the top of a picnic table by the lake, I gazed at my Piglet as she turned her eyeless face into the sun and let the breeze blow her hair.

"It's hard for me to imagine what it's like to not see the light of the sun through my eyelids. Can you describe it for me, or would you rather not?" I asked.

"I don't mind at all, Davey. It's who I am now, and I think I can say with total honesty that I'm okay with it now. I don't find myself trying to turn toward sounds anymore like I used to, trying to look for the source. The muscles in my eye sockets stopped twitching a couple of months ago, probably since my brain stopped trying to control non-existent eyeballs. I still feel my eyelids twitch all the time, and I don't really understand that. When I turn my face to the sun, I just feel heat. You might think that my world is completely black, but it's really not. I think that the loss of my sight has engaged different types of awareness instead, and I think I sense things almost as colors now."

"Let me give you an example. Close your eyes and listen with me, okay?"

"Okay," I said, and moved to sit on the bench between her knees, facing away from her. She put her hands on my cheeks from behind and turned my head to the right and down a little.

"There's a small animal over there, probably a squirrel. He's chewing on something hard, stopping every once in a while to chew and look around. Open your eyes and tell me what you see. I see the color brown in my mind, probably because I remember squirrels being brown."

Sure enough, a Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel sat on his haunches about ten feet from us, exactly in the direction Annie had my head pointing. "Got it in one." I said. "Tell me this, Piglet. Do you ever think you'd like prosthetic eyes? They wouldn't turn or anything, but I just wondered."

"Actually, Pooh, I have called around to see what my options might be, and they come down to this: One, doctors cut off my lashes, and graft my eyelids to the back of my eye sockets. Then I could get a set of eyes with eyelashes and lids that pop into the holes. Or, they permanently implant filler balls into the sockets and sew the eyelids closed, so it looks like I am sleeping all the time. The thing is that I don't seem to have any of the problems that most people in my circumstances have, like eyelashes turning in and growing into the lids. I don't really find that I want to do any of those things, Pooh. If you would rather I did one or the other, I'd do it for you, but we haven't talked about it. Do my empty eye sockets gross you out? I try to wear big sunglasses in public."

"You know, Annie, they don't bother me at all, but then I love every little bit of you anyway.. I think that they're expressive, and somehow kind of sexy, probably because they are so different. I like it when you try to blink; please don't get me wrong, but it's so erotic, kind of like your eyes are in bondage, that it really gets me hot. I guess it seems so natural to me now that I wish you wouldn't change it. And I think the Stevie Wonder glasses need to go. All the girls are wearing smaller ones now, and I just happen to have gotten you a set. "

"So the message is to go without the glasses when we're among friends or alone and wink at you frequently, right? Well then, I think that's settled. Let me check out those glasses, okay?"

I went to the Harley and got the glasses out of their case and handed them to her. The lenses are quite dark, round, and about the diameter of quarters. She put them on and immediately looked even more sexy to me

"Wow, those make you look even hotter! Give me a kiss, little one?" S

he puckered and I matched my lips to hers seamlessly, just as her tongue slipped out and licked my teeth.

"Oh, wow, they're so light! I love them already, but do you think they will show too much socket?"

"Oooh, you know how I love you to talk dirty, baby!"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Davey! Do you ever think of anything other than sex?" She laughed.

"Not since I've been around you, love." I answered.

"Good answer, big guy."

"You know, I proposed to you a little out of the timeline I'd decided on, and I didn't have anything to put on your finger. Hold out your hand, Piglet."

"Oh, David! Describe it for me, will you?"

"I don't think I need to, Annie. You know what it looks like."

Her head tilted and she frowned a little.

"After your mom passed away, your Dad came to me. He told me, and this is a direct quote. 'Son, I don't know what is wrong with you and why you haven't married my Annie, but I know in my heart that someday you are gonna come to your God-damned senses. When you do I want you to have this. If you don't marry her, then I don't give a fuck what you do with it.' And then he gave me your mother's emerald wedding ring. And now I am giving it to you, if you'll have it. The omly regret I have in this is that he never jnew we were going to go through with this before he passed."

She held out a tiny shaking hand, and I slid the ring on her finger. It was a perfect fit. She held it out in front of her face and turned it as if she could see it. "Is it beautiful like I remember it, Pooh?"

"Yes it is, Darlin'."

"This day just gets better and better, Pooh. I look back on the night the witchdoctor took my eyes out, and it's suddenly the greatest thing that ever happened to me because it brought us together. I am absolutely the happiest woman in the world."

"I'm just sorry it took that to get the job done, I guess."

"It would have happened eventually. Nothing can stop True Love."

We sat in the sunshine for a while, just enjoying each other's company. Talk eventually turned to Gabby, and the changes we'd have to make in our lives when she came to live with us. The facts were that we didn't know very much; the Doctor had just filled us in as best she could and there was no way to tell what Gabby's state of mind was. I thought that the only way to see was to go to Portland, and I said as much. We agreed to go north to Portland at the beginning of the week, and rode home on a different road after a short walk along the shore. Rough ground was hard for my girl, so we stayed on a nice pathway. She described everything she heard, which was really quite amazing to me, especially when she told me that she can hear when I smile, since apparently my teeth make noise...weird.

Interstate 5 bisects Oregon north to south, and it's about a five hour drive from our house to the Portland VA Hospital, which is just off Terwilliger Boulevard, overlooking the Willamette.

It took us closer to seven hours, partially due to me having to pump off bilges (Pee), and partially because there is an unwritten law in girl-land that says that you have to stop for ice cream every so many hours. We stopped at a little place in a town called Rice Hill, where a small ice cream cone is about a foot tall.

I had called ahead and reserved a hotel room at a nice older hotel called The Benson, and we took a nice bath together in the evening, and then slept like the dead until 0700. We ate quickly and then headed to the hospital.

When the sliding doors opened and the smell hit my nose, I stopped like I'd hit a wall, and Annie almost walked in without me.

"Geez Pooh, you could warn a blind girl when you're gonna stop! I nearly...what's wrong, David?"

In an eye blink, my skin had gone clammy, my heart was banging in my chest, and I was certain that I was going to pass out. Within seconds, Piglet was yelling and a pair of large black hands had me by the shoulders and had guided me back out the door and sat me on the bench outside. The hands fished down my shirt and had my dog tags out and read.

"Stand Easy, Gunny!" a basso profundo voice rumbled in my ear. "First time in a hospital since your injuries, I'm bettin'. Ain't no big thing brother, it happens to most of us. Places like this have nothin' but bad memories for us, and your brain is throwin' up flags and telling you to evac not only now, but Right Now. It'll be better if you have a chance to breathe and set your jaw against it. You let Master Chief Phillips know when you're good to go, and we'll take a run at this together, you copy?"

"Roger that, Chief. I don't know what that was all about, but I have a soldier to see, and I'll be damned if bullshit like this is gonna stop me."

"Miss, turn to your right 90 degrees and walk 20 feet. You have no obstacles," rumbled the Master Chief. Shit! I'd forgotten all about Annie!

"I'm sorry, Piglet! I forgot about you for a second, there."

"No worries, Pooh, it was pretty obvious the Master Chief had your back. If you don't mind my asking, is it that obvious that I am blind?" Her cool hands slid over my neck and the world regained a good part of its focus.

"No Ma'am, not unless you stand at these doors for a long time, as I have. I've seen a lot and when your man went down and you started feeling for him with your hands, it became somewhat obvious. Pooh...Piglet, well I have heard it all now," the Master Chief grunted, and began to laugh.

"Thank you for your help. Buy you a cup of coffee after I've seen the Corporal, Chief?" I asked.

"Very well, Gunny. I am on duty here until 1700 hours."

I looked at the Chief as I stood. A handsome black man, the Master Chief looked to be about 250 pounds of Navy stuffed into a six foot block of dusty black granite. His wrinkled face wore a trimmed salt and pepper beard under a shiny shaved head, and his powerful arms and shoulders held sway over a pair of artificial legs that appeared to begin about mid-thigh. I shook his hand and thanked him again as Annie and I headed through the doors of the hospital once more. He was right, it was better if you were expecting it; not fine, but better.

We were met right away by an intern to Doctor Jennings. "Corporal Jackson is in the lounge at the end of the hallway, Gunny." She offered.

"What is her state of mind, Doctor?"

"I would say she is guardedly optimistic, but frankly, by the time most soldiers have been in the hospital as long as she has, they'll act like a duck if they think it will get them out of here. Having said that, I think she's pretty much accepted the loss of her legs, possibly because that's a given. Her hand and wrist are another thing for her. We don't know how much of that function will return, and we don't have a lot of confidence that very much will. We have her in a brace that keeps her hand from curling up, but it is probably futile, and I think she knows that. It could be a year before we would consider her medically stable, which means that improvement is unlikely. She caught some shrapnel in her neck and it has damaged the nerves that control her vocal cords. Today she's just hoarse sounding, but sometimes she can't speak at all. It comes and goes, and we all know that it could go and not come back. We don't know very much about the regeneration of nerves, and they are totally unpredictable. She has agreed to return to Southern Oregon with you, and I actually think she's looking forward to it pretty seriously. I'll have her paperwork done very shortly, and you can take her around 0900 hrs."

"Really? We were led to believe that it would be another week."

"Well, Gunny, when a Senior Gunnery Sergeant who is a recipient of a Navy Cross and three purple hearts says he has the situation in hand, we tend to believe him."

"What's that all about, Pooh?"

"It's nothing, really Annie; we can talk about it later if you want."

"It's hardly nothing, Gunny, if you will excuse my presumption," Said the Doctor, looking at Annie. "The Navy Cross is the highest award for heroism the Navy can bestow, and there are only a handful of recipients in the history of the Navy."

"So my Pooh is a hero to somebody besides me, then Doctor?"

"Your 'Pooh', as you have so strangely named him, is a hero to more people than you can imagine, Ma'am." said the Doctor with a smile.

"Thanks for the compliment, Doc," I said, embarrassed by the attention, "but in my opinion, every bed in this hospital has a hero in it, and I'd like to go see one in particular, so if you don't mind..."

"Understood, Gunny. She's at the end of the hall, room 2644. Carry on."

"You know that we will be talking about this later, right?" Piglet said.

"Never doubted it, friend."

As we neared the end of the hallway, I pulled Annie into a hug and spoke softly over her head so that she could hear me.

"I'm glad we are setting out to do this thing, Annie, but I don't have any misconceptions either. This is going to be really hard, and I want to make it clear that I am going to do my best to see this through, but I am not willing for it to affect ourrelationship. You are my first priority, now and always, so let's keep the communication going and we'll get through this, okay? I don't know what to expect, but I'm pretty sure that she's going to be deeply depressed and in denial over a lot of stuff. I have lined up a VA psychologist just in case."

"Thanks, my love. I'm ready to do battle for Gabby, and I couldn't if you weren't beside me. Let's do this."

As much as we had steeled ourselves to prepare for it, when we pushed open the door on room 2644, we were not prepared for the sounds that echoed off the walls.

Laughter. Not giggling or a little chuckle, but roaring belly laughs that would have made a demon smile. Gabby sat on her bed in a NAVY sweatshirt and a pair of grey running shorts, her arms wrapped around her belly basically laughing her ass off. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, and her face was red from exertion. From the small screen hung from the gantry arm extending from the wall came the unmistakable sounds of Patrick Warburton's voice from "Family Guy".

I stepped around the door and said. "Is this a good time, Gabby?"

"Holy shit, it's...you!" She croaked. The doctor was right, her voice was screwed up, the sound grating and soft, the words halting as her brain tried to fix things. Her smile got even broader and she held out her hands to me. Well. Her right hand, anyway. Her left arm moved out, but her hand just flopped at the end of in. The hand was in some sort of glove with springs holding the fingers outstretched, and it dangled at the end of her arm like a rag. I slid onto the bed, trying not to get close enough to touch anything sore or tender. She appeared to have no legs whatever, and she was propped up with pillows at each hip. She held me fiercely and buried her face in my neck. Soon I felt her shoulders start to shake and the tears began.