“Destroyed. Like the rest of us.” I close my eyes and shake my head. “Listen, Jaz, I can’t talk. I have to...”
“Jess, I need to tell you something.” She's talking fast, like she's worried I'll hang up on her. “I wouldn’t bring it up if it weren’t important. I don’t know who else can help me.”
She has my attention now. I’ve never heard Jasmine sound so scared. “What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
I lean against the wall. Michael comes behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Gage.” I breathe his name. She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. I already know. “Does he... did he know?”
“Yeah. I was in denial for a long time. I didn’t tell anyone. My mom came to visit, and she figured it out. She was furious, but she convinced me to tell him.” She laughs. “He totally freaked out at first. Asked me if I was sure it was his. We had a huge, stupid fight about it." Her voice gets shaky. "He called back a couple of days later and said he was sorry. He said whatever I decided was okay with him. He said if I wanted to keep the baby, we could get married when he came home. He said he'd take care of everything. He said he loved me.” She starts sobbing. “What should I do? I don’t think he told his parents. I don’t know how to tell them. I was going to keep the baby. I even thought about marrying him, but now he’s gone.”
One o’clock in the morning.
I miss the haze of the fever. I can’t sleep. My mind won’t shut off. The hole in my chest is consuming me. I should have taken a sleeping pill, like Mom finally did, so I could abandon myself to a black, dreamless sleep. I keep thinking about Kendra, about Tyler, andnow Jasmine. Gage is going to have a son he’ll never know. Matt will never have kids.
If I face the window, I see Gage’s face, grinning at me the night he snuck into my bedroom. If I face the wall, I see Matt sitting in my desk chair, asking me to help him propose to Kendra. When I lie on my back, the glowing stars on my ceiling remind me of the day Matt helped me put them up when I was eight. I pull the pillow over my head and try to shut it all out.
The door opens. "Jess."
I turn. “Michael, what are you doing here?”
He stands in the doorway. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you? I just wanted to see if you were okay. A lot of bombshells got dropped on you today, on top of everything that's already happened."
"I wasn't sleeping, but yeah. Today was insane. Jasmine…" I shake my head.
He comes into my room and closes the door behind him. "That wasn't all. You got something in the mail that upset you. I was wondering what it was."
I can't meet his eyes. "A card from someone who I thought was out of my life for good."
He sits on the bed beside me. "Something you want to talk about?"
"No." The last thing anyone needs right now is for me to share my suspicion that the card came from Brad. My parents have enough to worry about. Besides, he's still in jail. He can't touch me. It was just another stupid attempt to get to me. "Why are you still up?" I ask to deflect questions I don't want to answer.
"I couldn't sleep either. I just keep thinking about them—Chandler and Monroe, Ricks, and especially Matthew. My friends. Just gone. They were good men. All of them.”
“You knew all four? Not just Matt and Gage.”
He nods. “Chandler had a wife and two kids. Monroe was an only child of a single mother. I met his mom at the deployment ceremony. She was so proud of him.” He closes his eyes.
I remember Matt telling me the guys in his unit were like his brothers. For a minute I forget my grief and hurt for Michael and what he's lost.
He leans forward and puts his hands on his face. “I should have been there, Jess. They were my guys, my unit. I should have been with them. If I weren't such a coward, I would have been.”
I touch his back. "You're not a coward, Michael. You choose to go to medical school. That's not exactly the easy way out."
“Isn't it?" He shakes his head. "I’m sorry. You’re the last person I should dump this on right now.”
"It's okay."
"Can I stay?"
“Yeah.” I can see he needs to talk. I'm not sure how much more I can handle, but I feel like I owe him. He's done so much for us. I move over to make room for him on my bed. He lies next to me and puts his arm around me. I lean against his chest. He runs his fingers through my hair, absently untangling the knots.
After a few silent moments, he looks at me like there's something he needs me to understand. "Do you want to know why I couldn't go with them, why I applied to medical school?"
Another conversation comes back to me, almost a year ago, when Jacob admitted he was afraid to go to Iraq. "I would guess you were afraid of being killed. There's nothing wrong with that."
He shakes his head. "No. I wasn't afraid of dying. I was afraid I'd have to kill someone. I don't think I could do it, no matter what the situation. No matter how honorable they make it out to be." He closes his eyes. "I took an oath, and I didn't want to go back on it, but Ididn't want to be put into a situation where I had to shoot someone. That kind of hesitation in a battle could be deadly, not just for me, but for everyone I'm with. I didn't want that on my conscience. I had the grades, so I figured if I could be a doctor, then I could help people instead of hurting them."
