Michael looked at the therapist. “I don’t suppose she’d throw anything at her children.”
Conny grinned. “Nope. I don’t suppose she would.”
*
On Saturday, Jolene sat in bed, watching visitors stream past her open door, holding balloons and carrying flowers, talking animatedly to the family members they’d come to visit.
She had thrown Conny out of her room and then tried to read a book. But she kept forgetting the sentence she’d just read. Finally, she gave up and closed her eyes.
In that split second, she was in the Black Hawk again, going down.
We’ve been hit. Tami—
She opened her eyes. God, she was tired of this, tired of the pain, tired of the nightmares … just tired.
“Hello, Jolene.”
She turned slightly, saw Conny at the door. Before she could tell him to get the hell out of her room, Michael walked in, ushering the girls in with him. They moved all together; he had a hand on each girl’s shoulder. Lulu was wearing the small camouflage fatigues that Jolene had made for her last year, with the wings pin on her collar. Her long black hair was a bird’s nest of tangles that framed her small face. Her socks didn’t match.
“Hi, Mommy!” Lulu said, beaming. She walked right up to the bed, grabbed the metal rails, and rattled them. “Daddy said we needed to be good little soldiers to help you get better. I’m all ready. See?” She twirled around to show off her outfit.
Michael patted Betsy, gave her a little push. She stumbled forward. “Hi, Mom.” She wouldn’t look at Jolene, kept tilting her head forward so that hair fell across her face.
Jolene stared into Betsy’s wounded, angry eyes. “I’m sorry I yelled at you the other day,” she said quietly.
Betsy shrugged and looked away. Obviously, she didn’t know where to look—not at Jolene’s face, which was still scraped up and bruised, or at the missing leg. “Whatever,” she mumbled.
Jolene didn’t know how to fix what she’d done. The silence in the room expanded. Then Michael said, “Conny said you needed some motivation to get started on your PT. I knew you wouldn’t let the girls down. They know it will be hard work—and scary—and they want to help.”
“We wanna help! Like when you help us when we have nightmares,” Lulu said, eager to show off her understanding of the plan.
Jolene could picture what had happened last night. Michael had gathered the girls close and told them their mom was hurt and scared and that they needed to help her.
She looked at her children and it hurt so much she couldn’t breathe. She knew what Michael was counting on; he expected her to be the woman she’d been before all this. That woman was gone; she’d been shot down and died in the desert.
Lulu pulled off her Dora the Explorer backpack. Burrowing through it she pulled out her yellow blanket—the special one she used to stroke as she sucked her thumb. “Here, Mommy,” she said solemnly, coming up to the bed. “You can have my blankee.”
Jolene’s heart seemed to break open at that. For a second, she felt it, all the love that used to fill her up. She took the sad, worn yellow blanket, remembering how pretty it had once looked in Lulu’s white spindle crib. And she wanted it back, all of it, her life, her ability to love, her sense of motherhood. “Thank you, Lucy. I’ll be careful with it.”
“But I get it back when you’re more better, right?”
“Of course.”
They stared at her expectantly.
Come on, Jo. Fake it.
She finally managed a smile. She refused to let her children down. “Okay, Conny. What do I do?”
“You know the answer to that, Jolene. You’re going to learn how to wrap your leg.”
She nodded, hating the sick feeling that clutched her stomach. “Okay. But the kids don’t need to be here for this.”
“Why not?” Michael said, coming to the side of the bed.
“They shouldn’t see this,” she told him, her eyes pleading. She could see that he was afraid, too.
“This? You mean you, Jo? We talked about it,” he said, nodding down at the girls. “It’s you, and we love you, and you’re hurt. We’re not afraid. We’re more afraid of what we can’t see.”
“Like nightmares and monsters in the closet,” Lulu said. “When you turn on the light, poof! They’re gone and you’re safe.”
Jolene stared at Michael, mouthed please.
We’re staying, he mouthed back.