It’s nights like this that I miss Miguel the most.
“You know you don’t have to stay up with me,” I remind Miguel, keeping my voice low as to not disturb the others from their slumber. This mission has been rough on us and the humidity has been a silent killer. Even now, with the stars on display against the black sky, it feels like the sun is blazing down on us.
Miguel smiles at me and the warmth reaches his brown eyes. I swear he smiles so much that he already has crows feet and smile lines that represent a middle aged man. “I know,” he agrees easily before adding, “but that would mean you’re alone.”
I shoot him an amused look as my lips twitch. My head nods to the back of me where Roman, Isaac, and Jude are asleep on their sides, bodies pressed together because of the close quarters we are residing in. “I’m not alone, Miguel.”
“A man can be in a room with one hundred people and still be alone,” he wisely tells me.
“Are you suggesting I’m a lonely man, Miguel?” I tease him with a brow raised.
He chuckles softly. “I’m merely making a point.”
“A point that is being made because?” Over the years I’ve come to know Miguel like my own flesh and blood. He’s not known to make an observation and not explain what he sees.
He looks at me and then up at the stars.
“You’ve been quiet lately,” he murmurs. He then looks back at me and I see the worry in his eyes. “More quiet than usual.”
I swallow and avert my gaze.
“And you’ve been insistent on keeping watch at night,” he also points out.
My heart thumps inside my chest. “I’m the Sergeant, it’s what I should do,” I say matter-of-factly.
“I would believe that if I didn’t know you,” he says half humored. “Seriously, Ethan, what’s going on? We’re brothers, talk.”
I grit my teeth as I look out into the dirt field. We will be staying here for the remainder of the night before we move on in the early morning.
Our mission is to free women and their kids who are being held hostage by their own people.
The buildings in which they are located is another ten miles away.
While my mind has been focused on the mission it also has been drifting. Drifting to uncharted territories that I’m not quite sure I’ll survive once I make it back home.
I’ve seen too much here. We all have. And I can’t lie and say that the shit that I have seen, the shit that I have done hasn’t affected me.
There are times I’ll look down at my hands and see them dripping red.
There are times where it’s deadly silent and I’ll hear a pitched cry wail of one of the many of women who we couldn’t save.
There are times when I close my eyes all I can feel is the devastation from losing a brother.
But what’s worse than all of that?
Is how easy it’s all becoming.
“Aren’t you afraid?” I ask Miguel softly.
“Afraid of what?”
I swallow again, the grittiness in my throat not easing. “Of how easy it’s becoming.”
“What’s becoming easy, Ethan?” He gently probes.
I shake my head softly as I grit my teeth. With a heavy exhale I respond, “All of it.”
From my peripheral vision I see him nod his head. “I never thought I would get used to the sight of blood,” he says to me somberly, “or seeing combat up close. But then again I never thought I would gain another family. One I would risk my life for. One if they called me fifteen years from now saying they were in trouble I’d stop everything to help them.”
