When Rylee walked into Neesa’s office the next morning, Neesa was sitting in one of her side chairs by the window. Her legs were draped over the arm, and she was cradling a mug of steaming coffee. She looked a little bleary. “Did you sleep last night?” she asked.
“Nope.” Rylee headed over to Neesa’s coffee pot and poured herself a mug of her own. “Thick. You made it high test.” She made her way over behind Neesa’s desk, flung herself into the captain’s chair, and kicked her feet onto the desk surface with a groan.
“Yeah, that’s how it feels. My whole body aches. All of it. Every tiny little forgotten muscle.” Neesa sipped her coffee. “Want to hear the crazy shit that was circulating through my head at three in the morning?”
“I’m afraid,” Rylee said. “Do I want your middle-of-the-night crazy thoughts in my head? I mean, I have my own.” She reached for her mug and wrapped her hands around the warmth. “This about Benny?”
“I just kept wondering if he would make it, and then I was lying there talking to the ceiling, asking his wife to forgive us because she wasn’t the last woman to kiss her husband.”
Rylee blinked in bewilderment. “Wait, Neesa, you were kissing him?”
“You get what I mean. Put my lips on his lips. It feels sacrilegious that he should go out with another woman’s lips on his and not his wife’s.”
“Okay, that’s dark, and I didn’t see it coming. I will remind you that he had the pressure of your lips on his, but you were using a shield. Also, we’d only be the last if he died before his wife could get to the hospital. And I refuse to believe that happened.”
“The only way we’ll ever know is if it ends up in the news, which it won’t because there was no one around to film it and put the images out on social media.” Neesa pulled in a deep breath and exhaled it toward the ceiling. “I’m imagining he lived. In my mind, he got to the hospital, and they had to do some tests, some interventions. We cracked some ribs, he’s sore but grateful and wondering who the hell it was kissing him back to life like some gender-bending Snow White tale.”
“Girlfriend,” Rylee said with a shake of her head, “you need some sleep.” She took a sip of coffee. “This tastes terrible.” She took a second sip. “It’s my observation that when you’re in a life-or-death situation, working for survival, relationships are cemented. We will think about Benny for the rest of our lives. He and Briefcase and Bean Counter.”
“Bean Counter was on the phone with 911?” Neesa paused. “Bean Counter, okay, at least she has a name since she’s cemented to me.”
“I swear I can feel the tug of my Neanderthal roots,” Rylee said.
“See? I’m not the only one who’s sleep-deprived and filled with odd thoughts. Neanderthal?” Neesa asked.
“What I’m saying is that it’s got to be written in our DNA that in a situation that intense, irrefutable bonds are forged.” Rylee sniffed the bitter coffee. “I wish I knew who everyone was,” Rylee said. “It would be nice to raise a toast together to acknowledge our forever connection and then send Christmas cards each year with an update. I can’t tell you how many Marines—just kids, really—I patched up on the battlefield. Inmy mind, they’re all my brothers and sisters. I declare—because I want it to be so—that they are all healed and living wonderful lives. They visit me in my dreams. I think of them and float good thoughts their way.”
“You don’t see them in real life, though?” Neesa asked. “None of them?”
“Another day, another battle. I choose to think about it like a mother who can’t leave Ireland during the Potato Famine because her roots are set too deep, but her children sail across the ocean to Canada, where they’re filling their bellies and thriving. My love flows to them on the wind.”
“Poetic.”
“Don’t be that way. I’m a little bit serious here.” Rylee closed her tired eyes.
“What did you name them, Bean Counter and Briefcase?” Neesa asked rhetorically. “Them, Benny, and weirdly the friend on the phone with his steady beat of support and love for this guy, you’re right, I’ll never forget them.”
“Yup, there was Phone-a-friend and, of course, me,” Rylee said.
“Girlfriend, you’ve been my ride or die for over a decade. These people are newly cemented.”
Rylee lifted her mug. “May our newly cemented find peace.”
Neesa lifted hers in response, and then the women sat in exhausted silence.
Rylee peeked at the clock on the wall. “What time is the lawyer getting here?”
A knock sounded at the door.
“Now.” Neesa pulled herself around, so she was sitting professionally, but Rylee did not.
“Come in.” Neesa waited for Sun to snick the door shut before offering, “Find a chair. Tell us what you know.”
“Hello.” He followed Neesa’s finger to the empty chair and went to sit down. “The Secret Service will be here in about twenty minutes. They’re bringing their K9 with them,” he said, facing Rylee.
“I’m out on a training evolution. Neesa will be handling all that.”
Sun swiveled toward Neesa. “Our plan is to bend over backward to be helpful.”
