chapter 11
Kara
October 16th, 2010
Her name is Lena. And I think….it’s love at first sight. First smile? I don’t know. I can’t think past how incredible her eyes are, and how pleasant she is even after I practically threw my pile of notebooks and pens on her. Her smile, wow. Just wow!
Alex is right, I’m super clumsy. Running into walls and beautiful women.
But I’m meeting Lena at the library after my morning class. She’s letting me borrow How the Other Half Lives textbook I need for my advanced journalism course, saving me a precious $145.
I looked up to find Lena asleep, taking deep breaths as her medications worked their magic and pulled her into a restful sleep. I let out a slow breath, using my finger as a bookmark in the journal. It wasn’t the journal I wanted to start with. It was the other journals, the ones with dirty pages, worn edges and stains across the leather cover, I wanted, needed to read from. Those were the ones I needed to pull out of my heart, page by page, and give them to someone else before they sat in silence with me.
But of course, kismet had me reaching for the journal I kept for that first year Lena exploded into my life. The first entry was that dumb day when I crashed into her in line at the bookstore, flustered from the high price of being a college student in the Big Apple. I panicked over the price of the necessary texts for my core classes. My savings from summer jobs was dwindling fast, and working two jobs barely covered food. I literally smashed into her, knocking her over with all the crap in my hands and hers.
I smiled, leaning back in the chair as I set the journal on the floor, reaching for the others. They looked like ragged soldiers next to the happy clean college years. My smile faded at the sight of the first journal. The worn sticker of The Times logo, curled at the edges, threw me back seven years in the blink of an eye. I ran my fingers over the scarred leather, feeling every ridge, scratch and dip, connecting each one to a similar scar, ridge, or scratch on my body.
Staring at the cover, I chewed on the inside of my cheek, hesitating. I knew opening the cover, flipping these pages and the thousands after, would open a series of doors I kept locked inside of me. There was pain, blood, darkness, and the slow spiral into becoming the woman I am now. My therapist calls me a survivor, I call me a dumbass.
It was her suggestion to open these journals and read them. Read them alone, or read them to Alex, Winn, anyone I trusted enough to pry open the locked doors. I’d shoved the journals in my bag the morning I woke up after my nightmare about Lena dying. It didn’t make sense why at the time, maybe I was building the courage to pull the trigger and ask someone to indulge my insanity and listen to all the dumb shit I did over the years.
And yet, I didn’t choose any one of them. Alex would freak out and poke at me until I showed her all the scars I hid. Winn would cry. Sweet, sensitive, Winn. Everyone else would probably stare at me like a circus animal, repeating vapid sentiments of how strong and incredible I am. It would be fake, thin, and not what I needed to rip the band aid off.
So, I choose the woman laying in the bed across from me. The woman who gave me the greatest joy I ever experienced, and followed it up with the greatest pain I’d ever experienced. The woman sleeping to the gentle hum of one of her greatest inventions. An invention that would change the world as soon as she perfected it.
“What am I doing?” I whispered to the walls, shaking my head as I glanced at the clock. It was almost six in the morning. The sun would be poking it’s head out, bringing on a new day. “Shit.” I pulled my hair back into a messy ponytail and scooted the chair closer to her bed. I set the journal on the duvet and flipped it open. I glossed over the first few entries about how it felt to sit on a cargo plane with this grizzled team of journalists I was assigned to. The excitement of seeing the jungle up close, the smells, the sounds and the adrenaline of the hunt for the story. I chuckled at baby me writing how I finally felt like a true journalist, sleeping in the back of a rusted out jeep in the Congo.
I turned another page, and the tiny dots of dried blood pulled me right back to the day. I let out a slow breath and started reading aloud to a sleeping Lena and the dimly lit walls of her bedroom. A very captive audience.
June 6th, 2013
I had to escape to the bathroom so the guys wouldn’t see me cry. They’re all so tough, rugged, worn. They call me little miss sunshine, always chuckling and offering to carry my gear. But they look at me different ever since I woke up. They look at me with worry, fear. Even Gibbs is nicer when he stopped by the hospital this morning. He’s never nice to anyone. After twenty years in war zones, I didn’t expect him to be.
I brush off their concern, trying to be the tough girl, taking her licks as a form of induction into the team. My first battle scar as I called it. I have to be tough. I can’t run home, I don’t have a home. She was my home, and when she walked out….
But it hurts. It hurts so much, and burns like I’ve laid on an open fire. I didn’t see it coming, the knife. I barely felt it when it pierced my skin. I didn’t hear Sean yelling for me to run, the adrenaline was clouding my hearing. I was too focused on what I saw in that hut, the drugs, the US dollars piled up next to US relief crates. The tired Congolese women were stacking bricks of heroin and I was too excited to have my first real breakthrough on a story. I was too excited and too stupid to know I was in danger. I was too stupid to see him come up from behind.
When the guard stabbed me, it felt like the time Alex poked me with the big tree branch in our backyard. Sharp, piercing, but it didn’t stop with Alex laughing and running away from me. The sharp, piercing pain went through to what felt like my ribs, and hurt like hell when he quickly pulled the knife out, stabbing me once more before I got my feet to respond and I started running towards Gibbs.
I’ll always remember his face as he screamed for me to run, jumping off the back of the truck to come for me, digging in his backpack for the gun I know he carries in secret.
I want to call Alex. I want to cry until I can’t breathe, and go home. But I know I can’t call Alex. She’s in her last week at Quantico. I can’t ruin this for her. I’ve ruined enough. I can hold it in. Gibbs is sending me back to New York in a day to get proper medical attention before infection sets in with the jungle heat and humidity. Jamie is helping get a ride to England first. She’s been so kind.
I’ve been given time off to heal and go to Alex’s graduation. Then it’s off to Afghanistan to ride with a in-country USMC unit for two months.
I want to call her. It’s only been four months. She won’t answer my calls, or texts. She hates me.
What am I doing? What am I doing here?
June 9th, 2013
I got my first headline! The story about the drug runners in the Congo will be in the Sunday extra magazine they send out to subscribers. It’s amazing! I’ll get an advanced copy and I can’t wait to send it to Eliza for her to frame.
I ended up at City Hall Station on the way to the airport after my meeting. I had to walk out and walk five blocks to the next station. Everything still feels too raw. We met there every Thursday. I need to forget the past. I have a whole future ahead of me.
June 14th, 2013
I’m writing this sitting on the floor at Dulles. Alex graduated yesterday. I’m so proud of her. She’s a real agent and is moving to National City. I’m glad she’ll be closer to Eliza.
She knows something is wrong, but I won’t tell her. She hugged me and pinched my stitches too hard and they started bleeding. She freaked out and tugged at my shirt. I brushed it off as a scrape from falling in the jungle. I saw the look in her eyes, she knows I’m lying. She knows I’m hiding something. I wouldn’t be surprised if she followed me to the emergency room in the middle of the night. I blew out my stitches and had to get new ones and a giant bottle of antibiotics.
I left her party early to call my editor and push up my flight to Afghanistan. Everyone keeps giving me the sympathy pat and sad eyes, telling me they heard about the breakup. I just smile and nod, trying to avoid talking about it, talking about her.
I hate lying to my sister. I hate lying to everyone.
“I saw you leave her party that day.”
I looked up, startled by Lena’s soft voice. She was staring at me with tired, glassy eyes filled with tears. I mumbled shit, under my breath, wondering how long she’d been awake, and how much she heard.
“I just left the Special Agent in Charge handling Lex’s case. I had to give a deposition about what I knew of my brother’s activities before he tried to blow up the manor.” She paused, scooting to sit up in the bed, wincing as her arm hummed a delicate warning. “Who knew I’d be back there in a week to testify against my family when he blew up Metropolis.” She searched my face, blinking back tears. “I saw you rush out of the conference room, pressing your jacket to your side. I went after you, feeling as if this was the moment. Lex was in custody, they were searching for Lillian. I was five more months away from total freedom from her control.” She swallowed hard. “You called your friend, the doctor, and the tone in your voice. The love.” She smiled tightly, plucking at the duvet. “In that moment, kismet be damned. I’d lost you and someone else had captured your smile.”
I clenched my jaw, nodding. “She was a friend, a good friend. One I should probably call and tell her to stop checking the news every morning to see if the world finally ate me to pieces.” I glanced at my journal, knowing what the other stained pages held. “She wasn’t anything more.”
A heavy silence fell between us. I was on edge from peeling open the pages of the beginning, jiggling the lock to the first locked door of my life. I could almost smell the jungle, feel the heat of the small infection in my side and the way the stitches tugged when I moved. I clenched my jaw tighter as the sounds of Gibbs screaming at me, the guards footsteps running at my back, threatened to consume me. “Um.” I stood up suddenly, tossing the journal on my now empty chair. “I’ll get you some water. You should sleep for a few more hours.”
“Kara.” Lena reached for me with her left hand. “Wait.”
I shook my head, pushing my glasses up as I fought a wave of tears. I was half a breath away from breaking down, falling to the floor in a ball as I cried out the tears I swallowed in the Congo. In Syria. In Afghanistan. In Ukraine. “It’s fine.” I closed my eyes, swallowing the lump in my throat. I just needed to walk out of the room, then I could breathe.
“Kara. You can let go now. I’m not Gibbs, I’m not the guys. You don’t have to hide from me. I made a silent promise in the Congo when I watched you walk away, and again when I watched you walk away from Alex’s party, and every time after. I’m here now, I might not be able to hold you up with one arm, but I’m here.” Lena’s voice trembled.
My face scrunched up as I lost the fight, and a broken sob slipped past my lips. The tears quickly following. “It hurts. It still hurts.” My hand absently fell to my side where the bumpy ridge of scar tissue laid. “Why does it hurt?” I curled my hand, digging my fingers into the flesh, balling up the fabric of my shirt, wishing I could rip it out and the memories with it. I the tears ran down my cheeks, I let them, unable to stop the flood now.
I flinched when I felt a warm hand cover mine, Lena’s fingers pushing her way into mine to pull loosen their grip on my side. She pulled my hand free, curling hers into mine, squeezing it. “Kara.”
I hastily wiped my tears, moving to turn around. “Your arm, you should be careful.”
Her other hand slid across my waist, pulling me back into her warmth as her palm pressed against my stomach. I felt her cheek press against the scars on my shoulder, making me shiver. Another quiet sob escaped as I unconsciously leaned into her, my body missing her. “Kara. My pain will never equal yours. I can’t answer why it hurts with any ounce with my scientific knowledge and degrees.” She took a shuddering breath. “Let it out, let it out, Kara. Cry, I’m here to hold you now. Let me take some of it on. Please.”
The way her voice cracked at the end, shattered my strength and I let go. I cried, sobbed, and let out the shards of the Congo I kept trapped in my heart, clutching to her hand wrapped in mine.
And in that moment, I started kicking down the locked doors.