Sarah continued, “They say that because of where the tumor is, if it is cancerous then they’ll likely need to do a spinal tap and possibly… probably, eventually need to do surgery.”
“When?”
“The timing is up to us after the first round of chemo but if they want to isolate the spot on her spine so the sooner the better. They’re worried about it spreading higher to where it could affect her brain.” Sarah’s voice was calm but weak, controlled but shattered.
The calmness in her voice told him that she was beginning her own recovery from the stalemate of their argument. She had probably had experience managing several difficult conversations with Hailey recently, and now she was appeasing Stephen with a same soothing voice she had used with their daughter. Stephen was okay with that. He knew his wife could be strong but he worried about the toll it would take on her.
He wanted to tell Sarah she was doing all the right things. As much as he’d like to fix this there really wasn’t anything different that he could do. He truly shared her frustration of not knowing just how sick their daughter was. He wanted to tell Sarah that her comfort to Hailey made him love her even more; how he longed to blanket his arms around her and smell the sweet scent of her hair one more time. He wanted to tell her anything and everything he could to encourage her but instead, he had done the opposite.
Guilt washed him as he considered the way he had spoken to her just moments before and he questioned whether additional words would bear any weight; perhaps he had already ruined the opportunity to be the supporting husband. While it was beneficial to keep his emotions guarded and in check, he felt a hardening that numbed him and prevented him from garnering the strength to speak his true thoughts to Sarah. He knew what he wanted to say but he didn’t know where to start or how to tell her what he was feeling. The words floated around his head but at that moment nothing he did seemed to set them free. Other than the roar of the engine from the truck ahead of them, the air was painfully quiet. The humvee’s silence continued, partially out of embarrassment but mostly out of respect for their squad leader who was obviously having a hard phone call with home.
Stephen knew his wife was barely holding on. While he was in the desert alongside friends making the best of an awful situation, she was at home managing a hellish situation that only got worse with each revelation. Holding the phone in silence, he was still unsure of what to say about the impossible situation they had been pulled into. He tried to clear his throat but struggled to speak.
“Alright, please hear me. We’re going to get through this.” Stephen knew his voice lacked the confidence necessary to convince even himself, much less Sarah. He searched for words to reassure her. In the drift of his ponderous moment he vaguely took note that their portion of the convoy had gone around the road’s bend and was reaching the oddly-placed rusted out car he had seen in the distance moments before. As the truck ahead of them led the way, Tomlison began moving the humvee towards the center of the road preparing to pass the disabled vehicle.
“Okay, thank you.” Sarah responded more out of duty than belief.
“When I get back to the unit this evening I’m going to stop by and have a conversation with the CO. I’ll look into leave options and see if…”
There was no warning to the brilliant flash of light erupting from the tightest corner of his peripheral. Stephen’s mouth did not even attempt to speak the next word, every synapses in his brain fixated on the increasing radiance which began to engulf his total vision. The prolonged calm lingered among milliseconds. His focus on the burst was brutally interrupted by a massive clap of thunder. The shockwave struck their humvee as though it were a favored child’s toy truck being kicked by a jealous and disgruntled sibling. The force carelessly flipped the vehicle over itself, its unfortunate passengers the recipients of the crude bomb’s deadly tantrum.
Mile 6
Nothing more than pure reflex caused Stephen to clench his fist. Because of it, he was able to maintain his grip on the humvee’s passenger side guardrail. He subconsciously made an attempt to grab it with the other hand. When he did, the somersaulting vehicle caused the phone to jump from his grasp and levitate in front of his eyes. His reaching hand missed the guardrail, and grasped nothing but empty air. As the humvee spun around, time in the vehicle’s cabin seemed to slow down until the sheer weight resisted a further topple, settling upright but uneven in the middle of the road. Stephen watched the panning view through the passenger window in horror. The deuce-and-a-half truck had been lifted into the air beneath a wave of sequential explosions as if it were sand being displaced by the crashing surf. Dirt slammed the humvee with the force of a hurricane and struck his view, cracking the glass. In a strange pause, Stephen stared at the steady cracks. The backdrop was a drab brown which he could no longer see through. In the stillness of the momentary millisecond, his own reflection caught his dazed attention in the shattered haze.
His jumbled mind told his face to respond to the reflection with a smile but before the signal could reach his facial muscles the brunt impact of the vehicle’s halted connection to the paved road sent a compression through his own body that forced Stephen’s head uncontrollably into his own lap, smacking his Kevlar helmet into his vulnerable knees. The humvee stopped moving, and Stephen looked through the cracked windshield to see the truck had been upended onto the shoulder on the complete opposite side of the road. All around him Stephen could hear dull droning like he was sitting in the window seat just over the wings of a jet airplane. Fighting off the blur in his head and a wave of nausea, he began to hear a faint yet rapid cracking sound. Unconsciously, uncontrollable breathing ballooned his cheeks while his heart rapidly drummed through his chest. He blinked hard and focused on the floorboard. In a lucid moment which lasted something less than a second he was able to isolate the cracking noise and recognized the distinct discharge of an AK-47 automatic rifle. The brief clarity was pushed out of his head by a steady ringing in his ears which grew increasingly louder. Stephen took a deep breath and looked out the window to see the truck was lying on its side. Its weatherproof tarp roof lay torn and partially exposed to the horizon; offering no protection to the injured soldiers who had been knocked around when the massive cargo truck flipped across the road. Stephen was groggy and didn’t have his bearings. His head was in a disorienting fog while more smoke seemed to appear with every heartbeat; a heartbeat that pounded like a drum inside his head. It seemed to take forever for him to focus long enough to grab the handle of the humvee’s door and open it. With his other hand, he reached for his assault rifle and pulled it from the humvee’s mounting clip. From the wide open door, he jumped out of the vehicle but failed to control his landing and immediately fell down on all fours. Stephen couldn’t shake the ringing in his head as it disrupted his senses. He still heard the gunfire and a few explosions in what seemed to be the far-off distance. Trying to focus on something which could closely represent an ounce of equilibrium, Stephen yelled back into the humvee with an order for anyone who could hear him to start shooting, “Covering-Fire!”
He tried to move forward but an odd pain pulled all of his attention toward his palms. Searing pain ripped through his hands as the consuming asphalt was beginning to burn him. He realized that his fingers were singed and he quickly dropped his rifle and recoiled his hands to his chest. He looked at the ground and had to blink before accepting that the road was almost entirely covered with a lava flow of molten wreckage. Dozens of fires jumped around the road giving it the appearance of a smoldering fire rising from beneath, threatening to consume the entire road at any second.