“Was that the worst part? Of being a warrior, I mean?”
I want to joke about his sudden shift in perspective—from being surprised I was in the military to now calling me a “warrior”—but I resist. He’s probably just looking for camaraderie, and if I’m being honest, I sort of want to give him that.
“No,” I finally say. “It wasn’t the worst part.” It was certainly in the top three, though. “Maybe that makes me a bad person, but when someone’s trying to kill you, you don’t have much choice in how you respond.”
“That does not make you a bad person.” He pauses, and I feel his eyes dance over my skin before he asks, “What was war like?”
“That’s a big question.”
“I have time.”
My toes rub along the inside of my shoes as I shift my weight. “It was different than I thought it would be. There was a lot more waiting around, I guess. We’d spend weeks doing nothing and then suddenly, we’d be fighting for our lives. After a while, the waiting got harder. Everyone was on edge, just knowing how quickly things could shift from calm to chaotic. We’d be sitting on the side of a mountain, or in an empty house, or in the back of a truck, and guys wouldbe praying for the next bullet to fly, just so we weren’t stuck in limbo anymore.
“It sucked, but it gave me a real appreciation for camaraderie and gallows humor.” I let out a hollow laugh. “Honestly, if it weren’t for the jokes, I don’t think any of us would have come out of it sane. We got through it together.” And that’s why being here is so impossible. I’m alone. No one has my back, and at the end of a really messed-up day, there’s no one to joke about it with. “I dunno. It was all just so surreal. Like we were living in a really weird, really fucked up dream.”
“What made it so surreal?” he asks, genuinely curious.
I rest my elbows on the edge of the mattress for some added stability while I continue working. “The war I fought in wasn’t a normal war. At least not in the way most human warfare had been fought up to that point. We weren’t on a battlefield; we were in cities and villages. There were always civilians around. We’d be in the middle of a firefight, look over into a house, and see some guy watching TV.”
“That sounds very unsafe.”
“No kidding. We’d be walking down the street in full battle-rattle while people were out buying groceries.”
“And the enemy would attack with civilians around?”
This is easily my least favorite thing to talk about.
“Yeah,” I take a breath, “the enemy was desperate, and desperate people do some really, really fucked up things.”
He gives me a long look. “That seems to be something most species have in common.” A few moments later, he adds, “I have a question. You were a medic, but you speak like a warrior. Why?”
My cheeks heat, not because he said I “speak like a warrior”, but because it’s clear he’s genuinely interested. I don’t think I realized how much I missed this kind of interaction. “I was inthe Navy,” I say, “which is just one branch of my country’s military. The Navy trains its own corpsmen, or medics, and they’re really good at it.” I squint and ask, “Am I confusing you with the terms?”
“Corpsman or medic is fine.” He smiles softly. “My memory was not wounded, just my flank.”
“Right,” I say with a chuckle. The guy knows a bunch of languages. A few new terms aren’t going to trip him up. “The Marines—the branch of our military that focuses on taking the fight to the enemy—doesn’t train their own medics. Which makes sense,” I say with a shrug. “Those folks are about as far from healers as you can get. So, the Navy sends its corpsman to keep the Marines alive. And since the Marines bring the fight to the enemy, being efficient with resources is important. Having someone who only serves as a medic and doesn’t carry a gun isn’t efficient. So, corpsmen who deploy with the Marines are trained like a Marine and fight like a Marine. At least until someone gets hurt, then we become ‘Doc’.”
“‘Doc’? Is that a title?”
“It’s more like a term of endearment and respect.”
“Doc,” he says, like he’s trying the word on for size. “I like the term.” The muscles in his side bulge as he shifts a bit. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
I’m fairlyconfident that if Vexar knew what was actually going on here, he’d want to stop it. Everything about him screams, “Good guy”. Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I think his heart is in the right place, and I think I have to tell him. If not for myself, then at least for the other nurses who might still be stuck here after the Magistrate is dead.
My heart pounds and palms sweat as I search for the best way to start the conversation. Do I just come out and say I’m a slave? That this isn’t just some job that pays the bills? Or do I like, slowly work into the subject?
Fuck.And what if he already knows?God, I hope he doesn’t know. I really hope he doesn’t know.
The more I think, the more my anxiety builds. Just the thought of saying the words out loud has me?—
Vexar’s hand flies to his chest as he says, “What is wrong?”
I jerk back, surprised by his sudden movement. “Jesus! What was that for?”
“Something is wrong. Tell me.”
I glance around, confused. “What are you talking about?”
