The Assignment Page 5

  My heart was pounding, and I was just glad they'd let me take off that fucking monitor before I'd tried to sit up. I didn't need anyone knowing how that had affected me. The whole room had fucking tipped, and I'd been helpless to stop it.

  “BPPV,” Dr. Bouton said grimly.

  Before I could demand an explanation, I got one from an unexpected source.

  “Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo.” A gruff voice came from the doorway. “Your stupid cousin got it from those two years he spent as a roadie for that metal band.”

  My father filled the doorway of the hospital room. He stood ramrod straight, his pants and shirt so perfectly pressed that one would've thought he'd come straight from a dry cleaners rather than having been on a plane for hours.

  “We took the earlier flight,” he said as he came into the room. “Your mother will be here in a moment. She seems to think you need flowers.” His mouth twitched but he didn't smile.

  Captain Kenneth Welch wasn't a hard or cruel man, but he rarely smiled. He crossed the room and shook my hand before clapping me on the shoulder. His heavy hand stayed there and squeezed. The gesture was both as familiar and comforting as my father's deep green eyes and military-cut silver hair. He was only fifty-seven, but he'd been solid silver since his late thirties.

  “We're proud of you, son,” he said. He didn't give praise lightly, but he always meant it when he did.

  “So it's basically vertigo?” I asked, needing to hear the doctor say it. I didn't remember it affecting my cousin Robbie's life very much, but then again, he hadn't been a soldier. “But it'll fade and I'll be cleared for active duty. In what, a few weeks?”

  “Duty?” Dr. Bouton asked. He glanced at my father and then slid his eyes over to the doorway where my mother was now standing.

  Dad frowned and squeezed my shoulder again. My mother had her always-present smile hovering just above an enormous bunch of flowers. A 'get well' balloon bumped on the ceiling behind her. I saw her chocolate-brown eyes dart from me to my father and then to the doctor. Her smile lost some of its light and she hurried to my side, dropping the flowers and balloon on the nearby chair.

  “Sergeant Welch, BBPV can, technically, be cured, but I don't know if I'd ever be able to sign off on you going back to Special Forces.”

  My fingers twitched against the sheets, but I didn't let myself show any emotion. I'd worked my ass off to get into Special Forces. My dad's fingers tightened on my shoulder, but I didn't take my eyes off of Dr. Bouton.

  “But it's not even the BBPV that's the main problem,” he continued. “Since we last spoke, I went over your x-rays with a specialist. While we'll need to run some tests for final confirmation, I can tell you that your left eardrum was partially perforated.”

  I could feel the tension radiating off of both my parents now.

  “Spit it out, Doc.” The words came out quiet, but harsh. “Don't sugar-coat it.”

  “No matter how your hearing tests come back, Sergeant, I'm afraid your days of active duty are over.”

  Chapter 5

  Haze

  I gripped the edge of the sink and waited for the room to stop spinning. Dr. Bouton told me it helped to look at something steady, like how sailors watch the horizon and fight off seasickness. As it faded, I slowly raised my head and looked out the window at the nearly unending fields of wheat. The dizziness had passed, but the grim thoughts took longer, especially since I had nothing else to do.

  I reached up without looking and found the coffee mug. I was six three, but even I couldn't look at the top shelf without tipping my head back, and that was one of the positions that I couldn't manage without losing my balance. Four months had passed since I'd woken up in the hospital and learned that my world would never be the same.

  The nausea had faded, but the dizzy spells still caught me by surprise. Dr. Bouton had assured me that I'd learn what actions and positions caused the vertigo. If it had only been the BBPV, I might've had a chance of avoiding vertigo altogether, but my eardrum hadn't healed properly, ensuring me a lifetime of dizziness if I turned my head the wrong way.

  And it had also earned me a one hundred percent chance of never getting my old life back.

  Kansas had never bothered me before. I wasn't like a lot of kids from small towns who'd signed up for the service to see the world. I'd signed up because it was what the men in my family did. And we served proudly. All of us.

  Plus, having been raised a military brat, I'd already seen plenty of the world. We'd settled here just after I'd finished my sophomore year of high school, and since my family had stayed, this was more home than any other place I'd lived. One thing someone like me learned at a young age, the building and location weren't what made it a home. It was the people.

  “Knock, knock,” my mother called from the front door. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

  “It's unlocked,” I called back. I probably should've gotten up and gotten the door for her, but I knew she wouldn't be mad. She'd just chalk it up to me not wanting to get dizzy, instead of what it really was: me being a depressed asshole.

  “Oh, I do love it here. Colin did such a nice job,” she said as she came in with a woven basket full from the farmer's market.

  She was right. The renovated barn was an amazing space. The front door opened directly into a two-story living room. To the right was a wall of bookshelves my oldest brother had made from reclaimed wood. A large chandelier created from old glass bottles strung from a long beam over the rectangular farm table illuminating the kitchen slash dining room. In the back section of the main floor, the doors from the old horse stalls remained to wall off an office and full bathroom. A steep open staircase, meant to look like an oversized ladder, ran up between the kitchen and office to two sizable bedrooms carved out of the old hayloft.

  At twenty-nine, Colin had been the first of us to enlist. Now, he was a CBRN Officer. Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear. And he did carpentry and home renovation as a way to deal with the stress. He was stationed in Texas, but even though he'd never lived here, he came home as often as he could.

  “You look pale, Cormac, darling. Are you okay?”

  It was strange, I thought, that she still called me by my first name when everyone else, even my father, called me by my nickname. My middle name was Hayes, after my mother's middle name, and I'd tried getting people to call me that when I was younger. My little brother, Teague, had turned it from Hayes into Haze. And it had stuck. With everyone but Mom.

  “I'm fine.” I didn't look at her.

  “Are you sure?” She reached out and stroked my hair like she had when I'd gotten the chicken pox as a kid.

  I wanted to pull my head away from her gentle hand, but I was afraid the motion would cause the world to spin. She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead as if checking my temperature, and then plunked the heavy basket down on the kitchen island.

  “I brought you plenty of fresh berries. I know how you like them in cream,” she said.

  “Mom, I am capable of feeding myself,” I said with a sigh.

  She lifted an overflowing container of strawberries from the basket and whisked it to the sink to rinse them. “You're not going to deny me the chance to do my duty, young man. You're a recovering hero, and I'll fuss over you if I want. That's my duty.”

  “I'm not a hero,” I said, back in my chair and sipping my coffee.

  “Tell that to the men you saved,” she said, giving me the no-nonsense mom look that had kept all six of us kids in line better than any drill sergeant we'd ever had.

  I stopped myself from shaking my head. Mom must've caught my grimace in her periphery and dropped the strawberries.

  “Another episode?” she asked, taking my hands.

  “They're not episodes,” I said firmly. “And I'm fine. Honestly, Mom, a little dizziness here and there doesn't stop me from being a functional human being.”

  My tone was terse, but it had been a long four months. While I loved my mother, I
wished she'd turn her babying back to my little sister, Brenna, the true baby in the family at eighteen.

  Still, there was at least some truth to Mom's concern. For nearly two months, the waves of nausea and dizziness had been enough to drop me to the floor. But it had been the overwhelming feeling of helplessness as the world spun around me that had been almost too much to take. I'd spent the first week in bed, refusing to move, telling myself the entire time that it had only been because I hated feeling like I had to throw up.

  My parents had let it go for that week, but as soon as it became clear that nothing was changing on my end, the shit had hit the fan.

  While I'd still been in the hospital, I'd been assigned a psychiatrist and a support group. My father had yelled and my mother had pleaded for me to take the anti-depression medications I'd been prescribed. The oversized orderlies had tried moving me to an armchair and leaving. If I wanted to go back to bed, I'd have to walk there. I'd slept in the chair.

  Dr. Bouton had been the most devious of all. He'd removed my catheter knowing full well I'd have to fight the BPPV to make it to the bathroom in time. He wanted to prove that my life wasn't over, that I hadn't lost everything. That I'd be able to work past it. The thing was, I wanted to work. I wanted to get back to doing the only job I'd ever wanted, the only job that had ever made me feel complete.

  But I knew that wasn’t possible. Dr. Bouton wasn’t a military doctor, but he'd laid out things clearly enough that when he'd brought one in, the results hadn't surprised me. The BBPV would eventually clear up, but my dizziness would continue to be a problem thanks to my perforated eardrum.

  I was done.

  I'd been numb, barely going through the motions for days after the official word had come down. Dad had already gone home, unable to be away from work any longer. Mom, however, had stayed until the day Dr. Bouton told me to go home. I'd protested, but he'd told me that I would need my family to help me continue to recover.

  I'd known he hadn't only meant physically.

  I adjusted the bracelets on my wrists and avoided my mother's probing look. Dr. Bouton had given them to me before I left. They each held a magnet against a pressure point on each of my wrists. Surprisingly, they helped relieve any lingering nausea.

  Too bad we couldn't make them standard army issue.

  It was clear that while I was getting better, I'd never be the same. The hardest part was looking in the mirror and not seeing any marked difference. I was still in peak physical condition. All of my other injuries had healed. I'd been able to do weight training, even jogging as long as I kept my head straight. I was able-bodied and willing. The only physical difference was the tiny tear inside my ear where it wasn't even visible. And because of that, I was no longer in the army; I was no longer eligible for active duty.

  My whole family tried to congratulate me when I'd received the honorable discharge. They all told me I was a hero, but that hadn't changed the fact that I was the first Welch since World War II to be taken off active duty.

  My father still had shrapnel wounds from his second tour. Colin had crushed his knee in Afghanistan six years ago, and was still dealing with all of that fun chemical weaponry bullshit. My other older brother, Keith, had nearly blown himself up more than once thanks to his job as an EOD Specialist. Teague had almost lost an eye during a training exercise during basic, but he was a Calvary Scout now.

  None of them had ever thought about not going back to active duty.

  None of them had the choice taken away from them.

  “Don't worry,” Mom said. “Your dad will find you a job at Fort Riley. They need men like you there.”

  I smiled and continued nodding in all the right places as she kept talking. Dad had found satisfaction in his training position at Fort Riley. So what if it was a couple decades earlier than when I'd thought I'd have to make the transition. If Dad had done it, so could I.

  After she left, her words echoed in my head. Men like me. Men like me didn't sit behind desks and handle mountains of paperwork behind closed doors. Men like me didn't stand still while battalions marched past outside and shipped overseas.

  So what did a man like me do now?

  “Your mom pushing the Fort Riley desk job route?” my brother-in-law asked as he strolled in the open front door.

  “How'd you know?” I asked.

  “Heard her discussing it with your sister. I'm surprised Gwen didn't come with her. The two have been campaigning to get you settled here permanently from the moment we got word...”

  He let his voice trail off as he wandered around the renovated barn and spied the whiskey bottle I had pulled out of the locked liquor cabinet in the living room. I knew it wasn't smart to indulge when my balance was already impaired, but it was the only way I'd been able to function over the last few months.

  “Not you too, Blake. Checking up on me?”

  “Hell no,” he said, “I'm here because your sister's pregnancy hormones are at high tide, and I need a drink.”

  Blake was a retired army doctor now working at Irwin Army Community Hospital. When I'd first arrived home, my big sister had dragged him over to check on me immediately. Within sixty seconds, Blake had announced to everyone that my recovery was my own, and when he visited it would be strictly off-hours.

  “Pour me one too,” I said.

  “Not here, Welches everywhere,” Blake said with a smile, his dark blue eyes amused. “When was the last time you had a drink in town?”

  I laughed. “I'm pretty sure I haven't been to Corner Tap since that Christmas you decided we could walk into town. What'd we get that night? Seven inches of snow?”

  “A light dusting,” Blake said. “Come on. They put up a new dartboard next to the bar, big changes. Better see for yourself.”

  I knew that expression on his face. He may have been right in between Colin and Keith age-wise, but he and I had always been closer. And that meant I knew that Blake wasn't going to give up until he got me out of the house.

  I followed Blake to his car and tried not to scowl as I thought about my complete lack of freedom without being able to drive. I understood the danger and wasn't about to risk someone's life just because I didn't want to admit that a sudden movement could make me too dizzy to be safe. I'd been cleared by the doctors to take the test again. I just had to schedule it. I'd been trying to avoid it, not wanting to risk failing or having restrictions placed on me. I'd do it at some point, but not now.

  As Blake drove into town, I felt my pulse accelerate. I'd been isolated for a few months, only putting up with the intrusions of my family. Though our little town had no more than four hundred citizens, the Corner Tap was sure to be crowded since it was the only bar on Main Street.

  I adjusted the motion sickness bracelets and tugged my shirt cuffs down over them. If I was careful, nothing would happen.

  Chapter 6

  Haze

  The Corner Tap looked the same as it had the first time I'd snuck in just after my seventeenth birthday. Snuck in and kicked out. Even though my family had only arrived a few months before, everyone had already known who I was. Like I said, small town.

  Neon beer signs glowed in the narrow casement windows and obscured any view of Main Street. Dark-stained wooden booths edged the walls with matching square tables scattered down the L-shaped room. Hanging lamps of bottle brown dangled above the bar with low watt bulbs and in the corner a jukebox pulsed.

  As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, I noticed there were actually a few changes. The low ceiling tiles were new and surprisingly white. The old ceiling, hanging like a brown cloud of nicotine stains, was gone. The ripped vinyl stools and chairs had been replaced with sturdy, dark-stained wood. And next to the bar, the new dartboard still retained its red and green colors and readable numbers.

  “Hardly recognize it, right?” Blake said.

  The biggest change, though, was the clientele. The Corner Tap had always been a scattered crowd of older men and boys who thought they could drink. Now
women sat in groups or clustered around the bar. They were young, bright, and not at all bothered by the scowls of regulars. It was a definite improvement.

  Blake noticed my eyes scanning the new crowd, and he chucked me on the shoulder. “Better watch out, Haze. These ladies have been starving for new blood.”

  “There's a booth in the corner. It looks good,” I said, ignoring his statement.

  Blake laughed and led the way, nodding at a lady here and there. I glared at him.

  “Just being friendly,” he said, holding his hands up.

  “And about to be a father,” I reminded him as I slid into the booth. “How's that going?”

  “Easier for me than your sister,” Blake said. He gave me a knowing look. “She's not good at slowing down. Guess you can relate.”

  I laughed. My family had never been known for taking things slow or easy.

  Tap beers arrived at the table before the waitress asked for our order. The Corner Tap assumed it knew what its patrons wanted, and nine times out of ten, it was right.

  “This is good, thank you,” I said.

  “No problem,” the waitress said with a wink. “I'll keep 'em coming. And you just let me know if there's anything else you might need.”

  Blake grinned at me as the blonde walked away. “Could be a good night for you. What was it your brothers used to say, 'Haze's got it made'?”

  I choked on my beer and grimaced. I coughed, tensing as I waited for the wave of dizziness. Relief came instead. “Like any of my brothers have room to talk. None of them have ever had a hard time getting a woman's attention.”

  The beer tasted good and the booth afforded us both an easy view of the entire Corner Tap bar. One of the things I always liked about Blake was how easy it had always been for the two of us to be quiet together. We watched a group of four women down a round of shots at the bar and make their way to the new dartboard. Giggles and more drinks punctuated a decent game, and I kept an eye on them as they played.

  “You used to be pretty good at darts, I recall.” He elbowed me.