Chapter 14: Waking up to pain

My world was pain, nothing but pain. Pain and a sense of dread, of something missing, of something go wrong. “Go back to sleep, Carl, Sister said, and I felt her cool hand on my forehead and then she did something at my wrist and…

My world was pain, nothing but pain. Pain and a sense of dread, grief, loss, fear. I heard Justina playing, talking with her doll. I heard Uncle Andrew talking in the background. A soft beep went off and Sister started talking to me again, and…

I had to pee! I hurt all over and I had to pee! Sister came over, which was embarrassing, but she put some bottle or something there when I told her, and then I could go back to sleep…

“Carl, Carl, it’s time to get up!” Sisters voice pounded incessantly, if gently, at my brain. I knew I didn’t want to get up. The pain was better, but the dread, the grief, stood at the door of my brain like a lion waiting to tear me apart.

“Is he still sick?” Justina asked, at my elbow.

“Yes, Justina, but he’s getting better now and he needs to move about, to eat and drink, or he’ll start to get sicker. “Carl!” Sister said, as if she knew I was awake, “Open your eyes now.”

I did, slowly. I was hoping that I would see, somewhere in the background, Mom and Dad… but I knew I wouldn’t. If I was this sick Mom would have been there with me, and if she couldn’t, Dad would have. He would have found it hard, but he would have been there. And when I opned my eyes I saw… Sister, and Uncle Andrew, and Justina. I looked around, still hoping, hoping for some of them! Even little Dustin!

But, when I looked back at Sister’s eyes I knew the truth. “Their all gone, aren’t they?” I asked. “When the shuttle…” I looked at Justina, wonderingly.

“Yes, Carl dear,” Sister said, pushing my  hair back from my face. “Justina was in the bathroom, and you were out on the rappelling line.”

I nodded, and Justina said, “Can you make them come back, Carl?”

I looked at sister, who looked pained. No doubt she had told Justina dozens of times but, I was her big brother, the one who always did things for her. “No, sorry ‘stina, Carl can’t do that.”

Justina’s face fell, and then brightened, “Uncle Andrew made me a ‘ammock,” she said. “And you can sleep in it two when you can get off the floor and climb in it. I can climb in it!”

“Cool, ‘stina,” I said. I reached out my hand to sister, and she helped me sit up.

“Here are some shorts,” Sister said, and together we struggled me into them. When we got done I lay back on my bed, as exhausted as if I had run a four mile race in the deep sand. “You need to eat,” she said. “I’v made some nice lizard soup.”

I had to chuckle, remembering how much sister had complaind about having to eat lizards. I liked them, myself. Mom always said they tasted like ‘lobster’. Not that I would know. I’ve eaten a bunch of stuff, but never lobster. I struggled to sit up again, with Justina helping me, while sister ladled me some soup… a thing broth with small pieces of lizard floating around in it.

“Oh, wow, this is great,” I said and then, remembering again, my eyes started to flood with tears, which I hurriedly blinked back.

“You can cry, Carl,” Sister said, but I shook my head, angry at her.

“I’m a soldiers son!” I said “Soldiers don’t cry.”

“I cried,” Justina said.

‘You’re a girl,” I said. “Girls can cry.”

Uncle Andrew looked at me, and he looked proud, so I went back to my soup knowing I had done the right thing. I was getting big enough I wasn’t going to get to see my family much anyway, I thought to myself. Why, Sister’s sister, my partner, would be showing up any day now. I hoped I would be better by then; it would be humiliating not to be able to perform our first time!

“Drink slowly,” Sister said to me, “I don’t want you to get sick.”

I was just about to tell her that that was silly, when I felt my stomach complaining, and slowed down my eating. I got the entire bowl down, though, before Sister said to me, “Sleep now. The drugs will take a while go get out of your system. You’ll feel a lot better when you wake up.”

I didn’t though. I woke, next, in the middle of the night. I had to pee, bad, again, but Sister had left me a bottle, which I used. And then I cried. I cried really quietly, I couldn’t let Uncle  Andrew see me! What would he think of me? What kind of soldier was I, crying my Mommy and my Daddy and all my brothers and sisters.

“Carl?” Sisters voice came, out of the darkness, “Are you up?”

“Yes,” I said, hurriedly wiping a hand across my eyes, “I had to go.”

“Did you find the bottle?”

“Yes,  and I used it,”

“OK. Do you need anything? Are you hurting?” I was, even if not in the way she meant,

“No, Sister,” I said.

“Night then,” she said, and I heard her roll over.

I chocked back my tears, then, and thought… if you could call it thinking… and decided. How should a soldier react to this? What could I do?